BUSINESS | Page 1

GULF TIMES

published in

QATAR

since 1978TUESDAY Vol. XXXX No. 11329

October 8, 2019Safar 9, 1441 AH www. gulf-times.com 2 Riyals

SPORT | Page 1

Patience the key to Qatar’s sporting success: Bravo

QP takes over Idd El-Shargi North and South Dome oilfi elds

Amir patronises QU male graduation More than 3,220 students, comprising 2,468 females and 752 males, graduate this year, from the 42nd batch Female students’ graduation ceremony will begin today Total number of graduates crosses 50,000

His Highness the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani honours a student.

His Highness the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani with the students, dignitaries and university off icials at Qatar University’s graduation ceremony.

His Highness the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani at the graduation ceremony along with HE the Prime Minister and Minister of Interior Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa al-Thani, HE the Speaker of the Shura Council Ahmed bin Abdullah bin Zaid al-Mahmoud and a number of Their Excellencies Sheikhs and Ministers.

‘QU helps realise country’s development plans’By Joseph VargheseStaff Reporter

His Highness the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani at-tended Qatar University’s (QU)

annual graduation ceremony for male students of Class of 2019 yesterday.

At the ceremony held at the univer-sity’s Sports & Events Complex, the Amir honoured the graduates by hand-ing them their diplomas, symbolising the beginning of the next phase of their lives.

More than 3,220 students, compris-ing 2,468 females and 752 males, are graduating this year, from the 42nd batch of QU. The graduates are from a full academic year that comprises Fall 2018, Winter 2019, Spring 2019 and Summer 2019. The graduation ceremo-ny of the female students will begin to-day and continue until October 16.

Speaking on the occasion, QU presi-dent Dr Hassan bin Rashid al-Derham praised the achievements of Qatar un-der the wise leadership of His High-ness the Amir and noted that the to-

tal number of graduates has crossed 50,000.

“As we celebrate the 42nd batch of graduates from QU, our beloved na-tion is witnessing a renaissance that has been manifested in all fi elds. No

doubt, this renaissance would not have been achieved without the eff orts of the sons of our nation and their unfl inch-ing support for our leadership since the time of its founding until present day. QU has the great honour of contribut-ing to this renaissance through succes-sive generations of graduates who now exceed 50,000,” stated Dr al-Derham.

“During the past few years, the uni-versity has achieved, through the con-tinuous support of our Board of Re-gents, an advanced role in international university rankings. The university has been placed 276 in QS Quacquarelli Sy-monds Global Rankings and 408 in the Times Higher Education World Uni-versity Rankings,” highlighted the QU president.

The offi cial noted that the fi rst role of the university was to provide academic programmes that follow high interna-tional standards for the undergraduate and postgraduate level, to realise Qa-tar’s development plans. “The univer-sity provides academic programmes that follow high international stand-ards at the undergraduate and post-graduate level. QU off ers 45 bachelor

programmes and around 40 graduate programmes in various academic dis-ciplines, which compete with the best universities globally. This year also marks the establishment of the College of Dental Medicine, which received its very fi rst class of students this aca-demic term, and now makes up the 10th college at QU,” he explained.

According to Dr al-Derham, the second role of the university is the production of knowledge and inter-national research that distinguishes itself through its impact on ground and touches on the central needs of the Qatari community. He referred to the efforts of the Qatar Mobility Innovations Centre in building in-tegrated systems and solutions for technology development that has resulted in a number of technology platforms. He also pointed out that QU recently founded QU Press to lead in the dissemination of knowledge in the region with highest standards.

In its third role, QU considers itself as a house of expertise that provides various state institutions with aca-demic advice that contributes to public

policy. In this context, Dr al-Derham referred to the eff orts of the Social and Economic Survey Research Institute at QU in supporting government and non-government entities with sound and reliable data based on high quality fi eld research. The institute’s research agenda spans a wide range of substan-tive areas of importance to Qatar, such as education and health, family struc-ture, national identity, the fi nancial and business environment and other an-nual and semi-annual comprehensive surveys.

Abdulaziz al-Obaidly, student speaker and a graduate from the Class of 2019, described the benefi ts of re-ceiving education at QU. He said: “We stand before you today as lawyers, en-gineers, judges, diplomats, researchers and scholars of our Arab authenticity, Islamic culture and national identity.”

Graduate AbdulKarim al-Ruwaili was the anchor of the ceremony and delivered a powerful speech. “One stage has fi nished, but the journey is not over. We are not the fi rst to arrive and we will not be the last,” he added. Page 20

QU president Dr Hassan bin Rashid al-Derham speaks at the event.

Trump warns Turkey aft er troop pullout

FM sends message toItalian counterpart

US President Donald Trump warned Turkey yesterday against going too far in Syria, one day after giving Ankara a green light to invade its southern neighbour, sparking panic among Washington’s Kurdish allies. The Pentagon pulled back about two dozen of its forces from Syria’s northern frontier, where they serve as a buff er between the Turkish military and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, after Trump’s surprise announcement late Sunday. Page 8

Italian Minister of Foreign Aff airs and International Co-operation Luigi Di Maio received a written message from Qatar’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Aff airs HE Sheikh Mohamed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani pertaining to bilateral relations and ways to enhance them. The message was delivered by Qatar’s ambassador to Italy Abdulaziz bin Ahmad al-Malki.

2 Gulf TimesTuesday, October 8, 2019

QATAR

HE the Minister of Justice and Acting Minister of State for Cabinet Aff airs Dr Issa Saad al-Jafali al-Nuaimi met with Minister of Justice and Human Rights, and Keeper of the Seals of the Republic of Cote d’Ivoire Sansan Kambile, and his accompanying delegation. During the meeting, they reviewed the areas of legal co-operation between Qatar and the Republic of Cote d’Ivoire, and the exchange of experiences in various aspects of legal work, in addition to a number of issues of common concern.

Top Qatar officials meet visiting Cote d’Ivoire justice minister

HE the President of the Supreme Judiciary Council and President of the Court of Cassation Dr Hassan bin Lahdan al-Hassan al-Mohannadi met yesterday with Minister of Justice and Human Rights, and Keeper of the Seals of the Republic of Cote d’Ivoire Sansan Kambile, who is on a visit to the country. During the meeting, they discussed legal and judicial relations and ways of enhancing co-operation between the two countries.

HE the Attorney General Dr Ali bin Fetais al-Marri met yesterday with Minister of Justice & Human Rights & Keeper of the Seals of the Republic of Cote d’Ivoire Sansan Kambile, and his accompanying delegation. During the meeting, they exchanged views on a number of issues in the legal and judicial fields, and discussed joint co-operation in the exchange of experiences and training.

Jordanian Prime Minister Dr Omar Razzaz met with HE the President of the Audit Bureau Sheikh Bandar bin Mohamed bin Saud al-Thani as part of the delegation of Audit Bureau’s visit to Jordan. During the meeting yesterday, they discussed bilateral relations and ways of developing them, in addition to a number of issues of common interest. HE Sheikh Bandar bin Mohamed bin Saud al-Thani met with President of the Jordanian Senate Faisal al-Fayez, and Speaker of the Jordanian House of Representatives Eng Atef Tarawneh. HE Sheikh Bandar also met with President of the Jordanian Audit Bureau Dr Abed Kharabsheh, where the two sides discussed bilateral relations and means of enhancing co-operation in the field of supervisory work.

Audit Bureau delegation meets top dignitaries in Amman

Ooredoo announces success of IAAF in telecom arena

Ooredoo, which acted as National Partner of the IAAF World Athletics

Championships 2019, has an-nounced the “all-round success” of the event from a telecommu-nications perspective. Ooredoo worked with the IAAF and Khalifa International Stadium to ensure the fan experience was unrivalled, with access to incredible connec-tivity, the fastest speeds, and reli-able voice calling.

Its service provision was made possible by its groundbreaking 5G network and state-of-the-art fi bre, as well as teams of quali-fi ed, experienced experts on the ground.

Khalifa International Stadium was equipped with the latest mo-bile technologies, including Elas-tic Cloud Radio Technology and Antennas with High Order Mimo to provide the best possible cus-tomer experience, with more than 60 experts in the Ooredoo Opera-tion Centre and more than 40 ex-perts on site in the stadium itself.

The Ooredoo network delivered 40TB mobile data traffi c with a user download speed of more than 30Mbps, while the voice

network was able to handle some 2mn voice calls serving more than 200,000 customers throughout the championships. Set-up suc-cess rates were a record high, in excess of 99.6%, with a less than 0.1% call drop rate.

The stadium was prepared with more than 600 of the latest smart antennae, and an interruption-free service was delivered through 350km of state-of-the-art fi bre. Ooredoo reports its teams were able to achieve network phone speeds of up to 1.37Gbps in the Fan Zone and 700Mbps inside the stadium, using its pioneering 5G network.

Customers also enjoyed ultra-fast speeds of 1Gbps and more in the Villaggio Food Court, and more than 50,000 spectators enjoyed in excess of 15TB of free Internet usage across the cham-pionships.

Getting footage of the champi-onships out to a wider audience,

KDDI, China Unicom, and Euro-vision used Ooredoo’s transport network to broadcast the event. Ooredoo COO Yousuf Abdulla al-Kubaisi said, “We’re beyond proud to have acted as National Partner for such a prestigious in-ternational event, and delighted to have worked with the IAAF to bring the Championships to Doha. We’ve seen some phenom-enal athletics throughout the week, including some incredible performances from Qatari ath-letes.

“Overall, the event was a re-sounding success. We’re very happy to have been able to show-case some of our state-of-the-art, best-in-class technologies and services at the event and are confi dent these technologies and services greatly enhanced overall fan experience. We look forward to the next big sporting event in Qatar, and to continuing our sup-port for the sports world.”

The stadium was prepared with more than 600 of the latest smart antennae, and an interruption-free service was delivered through 350km of state-of-the-art fibre.

Success at securing IAAF big boost for 2022 World CupQNADoha

HE the Deputy Chairman of the Security Com-mittee of the Supreme

Committee for Delivery & Leg-acy (SC) Brig Gen Abdulaziz bin Faisal al-Thani has affi rmed that the Security Committee of the World Athletics Cham-pionship Doha 2019 succeeded in fulfi lling its role in the best way.

In a statement at the end of the 10-day tournament, he said that the committee managed to implement the security cover-age plan for the championship and all its members operated in accordance with a sophisticated work system and the spirit of one team, keeping in mind their main task that is to protect fans, participants, delegations and sports facilities, in addition to providing security by utilising the committee’s advanced se-curity techniques.

HE Brig Gen Abdulaziz bin Faisal al-Thani explained that the committee has tested the security technologies and sys-tems which will be applied in securing the 2022 World Cup including modern techno-logical devices such as surveil-lance cameras, security robot, remote-guided aircraft (drone) and multiple task vehicles, in addition to equipping the op-erating rooms with advanced equipment and other techni-cal devices, where the Security Committee showed high effi -ciency in carrying out its tasks and providing safety for all par-ticipants.

He pointed out that the Secu-rity Committee of the tourna-ment included a group of young cadres to whom executive tasks were assigned and they had a full opportunity to prove their ability to perform and excel, and face various challenges, adding that the offi cers and the rest of the members proved their com-petence, high effi ciency and re-sponsibility.

The Deputy Chairman of the SC Security Committee stressed that Qatar is fully ready to host any regional or inter-national tournaments and the plans to secure the hosting of the 2022 World Cup are in full swing.

“The world will see a distin-guished tournament at all lev-els,” he said.

Director of Security Systems Department at the Ministry of Interior Lt Col Jassim al-Sayed praised the performance of the Security Committee in securing the tournament, stressing that everyone worked hard and sin-cerely and the committee was able to harness all the techni-cally advanced possibilities to achieve maximum security and comfort for all participants.

He praised the performance

of security men in using ad-vanced communication sys-tems and good communication with the operating rooms, and the great co-operation and co-ordination between the diff erent security units that participated in securing the championship to provide the best services to the sports fans, stressing that the success in securing such sports tourna-ments is a realistic training op-portunity for security person-nel in preparation for securing future sporting events.

For his part, the Assistant Head of the Security Com-mittee of the World Athlet-ics Championship Doha 2019 and the Director of Security of Khalifa International Sta-dium Captain Burhan Saleh al-Turki, said that all the units of the committee contributed to the success of securing the tournament for 10 days, where they were located in their des-ignated places, whether on the roads leading to the stadium or in the areas adjacent to it or inside or on Doha Corniche, security personnel were also present on the stands to secure them, ensure fans’ comfort and direct security clearance hold-ers to their places.

The Director of Security of Khalifa International Stadium pointed out that the masses showed remarkable co-opera-tion with the security offi cers, which contributed to the suc-cess of the championship as re-quired, and the security offi cers also displayed safety instruc-tions on the stadium screens. He explained that the secu-rity committee has followed up the operations of securing the championship through multiple

operating rooms, including the control room within the stadi-um and another at the National Command Center, the security units involved in the applica-tion of the security mechanism used worldwide to manage the movement of the masses, which contributed to the success of the process and maintain the security and safety of all.

The Traffi c Unit offi cial at the Security Committee of the championship Captain Fahad Abu Hindi pointed out that the traffi c patrols in all the tour-

nament sites played their role perfectly, where they were de-ployed in the places and roads leading to the stadium and Doha Corniche to maintain the fl ow of traffi c and to ensure the movement of the fans. He praised at the same time the full co-ordination between the traf-fi c patrols, Al Fazaa patrols and Lekhwiya force.

For his part, the Chairman of the Security Committee of the championship Captain Mu-barak Bilal al-Ali, stressed the success of the committee in its mission, like all other commit-tees working in the Supreme Organising Committee, where units, according to their spe-cialisation, secured the venues of events, whether in Khalifa International Stadium or Cor-niche area, in addition to the training area of Qatar Sports Club.

He pointed out that the work of the Security Committee was not only to secure these places, but also included the accommo-dation of the participants, the media centre and the fans area. He stressed that the entry and exit of the stadium throughout the tournament was smooth

and systematic in a manner that took into account the security and safety standards.

He said that during the tour-nament, world athletes com-peted in a safe atmosphere, and the young Qatari cadres formed a pioneering, unique and suc-cessful experience by all stand-ards and the experience con-tributed to the development of their skills in the fi eld of sports security.

He stressed that things went as planned by the security au-thorities and was fully accom-plished thanks to co-ordination between the various involved parties.

The Director of Marathon Security Captain Saeed Juma al-Hitmi, said that the efforts made by the security commit-tee were successful, thanks to the continuous follow-up of the leaders throughout the tournament. He explained that the Corniche witnessed five athletics races, where the opening was with the women’s marathon, then the walking competition (women) and walking competition for (men) and men and women walking competition, and concluded with the men’s marathon.

He stressed that this tourna-ment was a successful test for Qatari cadres who are wait-ing for upcoming events in the future stage, pointing out that what distinguishes this tourna-ment is the volume of great co-ordination and good co-oper-ation between colleagues in all units of the tournament com-mittees, including the Security Committee.

Al-Hitmi appreciated the public awareness and their un-derstanding concerning the temporary closure of the en-trances to some of the roads that lead to Corniche during the night marathon.

The IAAF event was a successful test for Qatari cadres waiting for upcoming events in the future.

Qatar is fully ready to host any regional or international tournaments and the plans to secure the hosting of the 2022 World Cup are in full swing

QATAR3Gulf Times

Tuesday, October 8, 2019

CRA, Qatar Charity conduct ‘Digital Inclusion’ campaignThe Communications Regula-

tory Authority (CRA), in co-operation with Qatar Charity

(QC), has concluded a charity cam-paign launched under the title ‘Dig-ital Inclusion’.

The campaign, held at Mall of Qa-tar from October 1 to October 5, was aimed at receiving donations of ei-ther used or new electronic devices to redistribute them to students, or-phans, workers and widows in order to improve their technical knowledge and capabilities.

The in-kind donations of elec-tronic devices such as computers, laptops, smartphones and tablets were collected at a booth, which also included activities for children such as colouring and handcrafts, the CRA said in a press statement.

“The CRA has launched its fi rst charity campaign at the aim of con-tributing to the achievement of one of the Qatar National Vision 2030 goals: fostering innovation, creativity and capacity-building within young people. This is in addition to enhanc-ing the co-operation and community partnership with Qatar Charity, espe-cially in matters related to the CRA’s mandate: regulating Qatar’s informa-tion and communications technology

(ICT) sector,” said Sheikha Noor al-Thani, International Relations spe-cialist at the CRA.

“We are proud of our partnership with the CRA and Mall of Qatar and our co-operation in the ‘Digital In-clusion’ campaign, which is part of our keenness to establish strategic partnerships with various institu-tions and entities in the country to serve the community through chari-table work. It also came due to our keenness to involve the Qatari so-ciety in volunteer work to support

the humanitarian programmes and projects of Qatar Charity,” said Jas-sim al-Emadi, director of the Local Development Department at QC.

The CRA launched the campaign as part of its participation in the Dig-ital Inclusion Week for the Arab Re-gion, organised by the International Telecommunication Union and the

United Nations Educational, Scien-tifi c and Cultural Organisation.

The Digital Inclusion Week aims at highlighting and raising awareness about mechanisms to integrate mar-ginalised sectors of Arab societies using ICTs, especially persons with disabili-ties, women, youth, children, rural and remote populations, as well as migrants.

The initiative also included activities for children such as colouring.

Sheikha Noor al-Thani

Paraplegic athlete-turned-politician hails Qatar Foundation’s inclusivityAn Austrian politician and former record-

breaking athlete who was left wheelchair-

bound after a training accident has hailed

Qatar Foundation’s (QF) commitment to

accessibility and inclusivity while visiting

its Education City home.

Kira Grünberg held her country’s pole

vault record and was about to compete in

the IAAF World Championships in Beijing

four years ago when, during a routine train-

ing jump, she landed on her head and neck

and broke vertebrae in her spine.

The accident left her a paraplegic, but

her response to adversity drew global

admiration, and she has now entered the

political arena as a member of Austria’s

National Council.

While in Doha, she gave a talk titled ‘My

Jump Into A New Life’ at Qatar National Li-

brary, in Education City, and learned about

QF’s mission, facilities, and dedication to

providing opportunities for everyone to

fulfil their potential during a visit to the

2015 building.

“What QF has established is really im-

pressive,” said Grünberg. “The universities

at Education City are some of the best in

the world and the various courses of study

on off er are fantastic.”

“It’s extremely important to provide

education to all, including providing access

to it for everyone with disabilities. That is

what is provided by QF and it creates an

inclusive environment for everyone. It also

ensures that everyone who has something

of value to add to the country can do so,

and that makes a nation strong.”

Grünberg described diversity as “the key

to success”, saying: “The more diverse a

society is, the better it is. An open, inclusive

system for all members of society lets each

and every person find out where their tal-

ents lie, and that ensures that a society has

its most talented people working together

to make a brighter tomorrow.”

And she had a piece of advice for anyone

uncertain about how to overcome the ob-

stacles that life has placed in their way, say-

ing: “The most important thing to do when

faced with a challenge is to be surrounded

by people who support you. It is essential

to create a strong, positive environment

around you in order to face great challeng-

es. You have good days, you have bad days,

but always try to focus on the positive.”

Kira Grunberg at Qatar Foundation.

The mega draw for the LuLu-Nestle Promotion has been held at LuLu Hypermarket, D-Ring Road branch, under the supervision of Mohamed al-Kubaisi, inspector from the consumer protection department at the Ministry of Commerce and Industry. Ten dish washers (Samsung), 10 washing machines (Samsung), 10 LuLu gift vouchers worth QR1,500 each and 11 LuLu gift vouchers worth QR1,000 each were given away as prizes to the winners. Off icials from LuLu Hypermarket and Nestle Qatar were present at the draw.

LuLu-Nestle promotion draw held Qatar Post opens new branch

Qatar Postal Services Com-pany (Qatar Post) has an-nounced the opening of a

new branch under its network in the Madinat Khalifa area.

The ceremony was attended by Qatar Post chairman and manag-ing director Faleh al-Naemi, as well as senior offi cials, depart-mental heads and directors.

This latest branch opening is

part of a transformation drive that Qatar Post has undertaken since it launched its nationwide re-branding campaign two years ago.

Ever since, several branches were re-opened with state-of-the-art facilities and several products and services were intro-duced to usher in the next digi-tised growth era for the company.

Qatar Post COO Hamad Mo-

hamed al-Fahida said: Our ef-forts are directed toward a sus-tainable postal network, powered by partnerships in and outside of Qatar, as well as by our growing footprint in the country. We will continue to invest our resources into connecting our customers to what matters most to them, and into bringing the world to their doorstep.”

Qatar Post off icials at the launch of the new Madinat Khalifa branch.

Doha Forum: Youth Edition to be held in NovemberThe Ministry of Foreign Af-

fairs and Qatar Foundation are set to hold the second

edition of Doha Forum: Youth Edition on November 9 at Mina-retein (College of Islamic Stud-ies) in Education City.

Doha Forum: Youth Edition – a precursor to the 19th edition of Doha Forum, which takes place on December 14-15 – is aimed at enabling insightful debate on topics relevant to youth.

It serves as a platform for stu-dents, young adults, and other members of the public to voice their opinions on trending top-ics, allowing them to take an ac-tive role in conversations about the future.

HE Lolwah Alkhater, spokes-person for the Ministry of Foreign Aff airs and executive director of Doha Forum, said, “Doha Forum:

Youth Edition is about empower-ing those that do not have a plat-form. Last year, we launched the fi rst edition of the youth edition – a conscious eff ort to engage the youth in the culture of dialogue and debate – and this year we continue the tradition with new topics, exciting panellists, and youth moderators.”

Mayan Zebeib, chief commu-nications offi cer, Qatar Founda-tion, said, “If our youth are to be the leaders and impact-makers of tomorrow, they must have the opportunity to lend their voice, opinions, and perspectives to the conversations that matter today and this is the opportunity that the Doha Forum: Youth Edition provides them with.”

“Refl ecting Qatar Founda-tion’s commitment to fostering dialogue, the open exchange of

views, and critical thinking, and to empowering young people to broaden their fi eld of vision and be part of the solution to the world’s greatest issues, the Doha Forum: Youth Edition demonstrates why our youth, rather than simply be-ing recipients of the future, need to have an active and prominent role in shaping it – and that they are ready to do this.”

Last year, Doha Forum: Youth Edition gave participants the chance to speak in front of lead-ers including HE Sheikha Hind bint Hamad al-Thani, vice chair-person and CEO of Qatar Foun-dation, and Alkhater.

The panels covered topics such as mass immigration and the role of media and social media in the contemporary age, with debates being conducted in both English and Arabic.

Young people who attended represented a number of diverse backgrounds, providing new and constructive insight on the se-lected topics.

This year, the event hopes to engage young people in the val-ues of the Doha Forum, including dialogue, diplomacy, and diver-sity.

Attendees will tackle the top-ics of radicalisation, climate change, and identity, while nur-turing their leadership and advo-cacy skills.

The event takes place ahead of Doha Forum, which this year will be held under

the theme of ‘Reimagining Gov-ernance in a Multi-Polar World’, gathering world leaders and poli-cymakers in one city for a two-day conference on pressing glo-bal issues.A file photo from a discussion at Doha Forum Youth Edition 2018.

Design of innovative Ras Abu Abboud Stadium revealedThe Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy (SC) yesterday posted, on Twitter, renderings of the design of Ras Abu Abboud Stadium, which will be the first stadium in the history of the FIFA World Cup that can be entirely dismantled. Constructed using shipping containers, removable seats and other modular ‘building blocks’, not only will this innovative stadium have a remarkable design, but will also be entirely dismantled and repurposed after the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar. Its parts will be used in other sporting events or projects in needy countries, in co-ordination with FIFA, to set a new standard in sustainability and introduce bold new ideas in tournament legacy planning. (Images courtesy of the SC’s Road to 2022 Twitter page)

QATAR

Gulf Times Tuesday, October 8, 20194

Huawei has received the high-est rating from DxOMark for the recently-launched Hua-

wei Mate 30 Pro’s “industry-lead-ing camera system”, the company said in a statement.

The Mate 30 Pro’s SuperSens-ing Cine Camera received an overall score of 121, four points higher than the second-highest score.

“Both accolades recognise the Huawei Mate 30 Pro as the new

‘king’ of smartphone photography,” said a press statement that was is-sued by Huawei in Doha.

DxOMark is a photographic rank-ing system which evaluates the im-age quality of smartphone cameras.

“With an overall DxOMark cam-era score of 121, the Huawei Mate 30 Pro is the new number one in our smartphone camera ranking.

“The new record is largely due to a phenomenal photo score of 131, a

full fi ve points ahead of the previous leader,” DxOMark commented.

The Mate 30 Pro’s camera sys-tem includes a 40MP SuperSensing Camera, a 40MP Cine Camera, an 8MP Telephoto Camera, and a 3D Depth Sensing Camera.

The SuperSensing Cine Camera is a dual-main camera system capable of taking “stunning photographs”, including Ultra-Wide Night shots, Ultra-Wide Angle shots with HDR+

and portrait shots with Pro-Bokeh Eff ect.

The RYYB colour array is de-signed to attract more light, en-suring that the device takes “very detailed and clear images” in super low-light conditions.

Coupled with an ISP 5.0 Im-age Signal Processor, the Huawei Mate 30 Pro captures photographs and videos of the “highest possible quality”, the statement notes.

Huawei scores highest DxOMark ratingRecall order for HP, Apple laptopsThe Ministry of Commerce and Industry, in co-operation with HP Company, has announced a free of charge recall of HP ProBook 640 G2, HP ProBook 650 G2, HP ZBook 17 G3, and HP ZBook Studio G3, due to the fire safety risk and burn hazard that the battery may pose if overheated.The ministry, in co-operation with Redington and Apple, has also announced a recall of Apple 15-inch MacBook Pro units sold between September 2015 and February 2017, for the same risk posed by an overheated battery.The ministry urges all customers to report any violations to its Consumer Protection and Anti-Commercial Fraud Department, which processes complaints, inquiries and suggestions through the following channels: Call Centre: 16001, e-mail: info@moci.gov.qa, Twitter: @ MOCIQATAR, Instagram: MOCIQATAR, mobile app for Android and IOS: MOCIQATAR.

The Master in Fine Arts (MFA) in Design programme at Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Qatar (VCUarts Qatar) will hold an ex-

hibition and auction of 18 “one-of-a-kind” digital glass lamps, or *fawanees, at Katara Art Centre, Building 5, from October 10 to 31.

All are welcome to attend, VCUarts Qatar has said in a statement.

The exhibition opening and launch of the auction will take place from 6-8pm on October 10, with a 7pm public presentation showing the lamps and an explanation of the processes that went into their making.

The lamps will be auctioned online, with the winners being notifi ed on October 29.

Auction proceeds will be reinvested by the department to fund future fi eld study project expenses.

The unique and beautiful *fawanees lamps were de-signed and made by the graduate students and their pro-fessors during an annual fi eld study trip to the United Kingdom.

The MFA in Design programme travels each year to con-duct an annual fi eld study, a trip the university has built into a distinguishing feature of its programme.

Each year’s fi eld study culminates with an immersive week-long workshop, during which the students and pro-fessors produce tangible objects of cultural relevance to Qatar.

The workshops foster closer collaboration between the students, professors, artisans and makers, the statement notes.

The 2018-19 MFA fi eld study trip re-examined the tra-ditional Arabic lantern, a symbol of festive welcome and safe haven.

Each lamp contains a rechargeable battery, a program-mable LED light source and a unique piece of mould-blown glass.

The inspirations for the lamp designs were as diverse as the students and professors who created them.

They ranged from the capacity of a light source to draw people together to tell stories and share memories, to ino-sculation – a natural phenomenon where two trees with separate roots meet and grow together in harmony, be-coming stronger together.

A “Meet the Artists” event with one-on-one interac-tive programming sessions showing how the lamps were created and how they are operated, will take place from 6-8pm on October 24 at the exhibition space in Building 5 at Katara Art Centre.

The online auction bidding deadline is 8pm on October 29, and the highest bidders will be notifi ed shortly after-wards.

The closing reception will take place from 6-8pm on October 31, with a 7pm awarding of the lamps to the high-est bidders who have paid – either at VCUarts Qatar’s bookstore, or at Katara Art Centre at the exhibition clos-ing.

High bidders can pay online, at VCUarts Qatar’s book-store, or at the closing.

The lamps will be handed over at the closing reception or afterward by appointment.

Exhibition and auction of digital Arabic lamps

Qatar’s participation in the Beijing International Horticultural Exhibition

(Expo Beijing 2019) serves as a platform to showcase Qatar’s contributions to horticulture, agriculture and green develop-ment, as well as the possibilities and opportunities that Qatar has, qualifying it to host Expo Doha 2021.

Qatar concluded its participa-tion in Expo Beijing 2019 yes-terday, with the Qatar Pavilion having attracted more than 2mn visitors of various nationalities and ages, during the expo period which lasted nearly six months.

Expo Doha 2021 will be held on

an area of 1.7mn sq metres and will be for fi ve months from Oc-tober 14, 2021 to March 17, 2022.

About 80 countries are ex-pected to take part in Expo Doha 2021, with some 3mn visitors projected.

The exhibition will be held un-

der the theme Green Desert, Bet-ter Environment.

The logo of the event, launched at Qatar Pavilion at Expo Bei-jing 2019, symbolises the use of technology and innovation in agriculture and promoting en-vironmental awareness and sus-

tainable development.Expo Doha 2021 would be

aimed at achieving cultural ex-change, learn about the experi-ences of the participating coun-tries in several fi elds, and to identify their culture and herit-age.

At the Qatar Pavilion in Expo Beijing 2019, the successful ef-forts by the Ministry of Munici-pality and Environment and the Qatar Pavilion organising com-mittee were evident in the large number of visitors to the pavil-ion.

Qatar attaches great impor-tance to green development, ag-riculture, aff orestation, increas-ing green areas and reducing carbon emissions.

The closing ceremony of Expo Beijing 2019 will be held tomor-row in the presence of HE Min-ister of Municipality and Envi-ronment Abdullah bin Abdulaziz bin Turki al-Subaie, Qatar’s am-bassador to China and commis-sioner-general of Qatar Pavilion at Expo Beijing 2019 Mohamed bin Abdullah al-Dehaimi, and a number of offi cials from the Ministry of Municipality and En-vironment.

The closing ceremony will also

be attended by senior offi cials from the participating coun-tries and exhibitors, along with representatives of international associations and organisations interested in agriculture and horticulture, as well as senior Chinese offi cials.

During Expo Beijing 2019, the Qatar Pavilion reviewed Qatar’s experience in horticulture, agri-culture and sustainable develop-ment, as well as a number of top-ics in the economic, sports, social and cultural fi elds.

The pavilion also highlighted Qatar’s eff orts to achieve food security.

Qatar’s National Strategy for Food Security 2019-2023 is based on a number of key elements, the most important of which is the enhancement of local production and strategic storage, and the work to feed the needs of stra-tegic stock through strengthen-ing and developing international

trade and logistics, unifying the eff orts of the stakeholders of the food security system, the optimal use of natural resources and im-proving the quality and safety of food.

The strategy aims to achieve self-suffi ciency.

Eff orts in this regard have re-sulted in Qatar achieving 106% of self-suffi ciency in dairy prod-ucts and 124% in fresh poultry.

Eff orts also continue to in-crease fi sh self-suffi ciency, which currently stands at 47%, to exceed 90% during the imple-mentation period of the strategy, through fi sh farming projects.

Meanwhile, 10,000 tonnes of meat are currently produced to reach 18% of self-effi ciency, the percentage will reach 30% in the coming years.

The production of eggs and vegetables stand at 28% and 27% respectively, to reach 70% of self-suffi ciency in the future.

The Qatar Pavilion

Expo Doha 2021’s objective is knowledge, culture exchangeQatar’s participation at Expo Beijing 2019 showcases its ability to host Expo Doha 2021

QNABeijing

The fawanees were designed and made by the graduate students and their professors.

QATAR5Gulf Times

Tuesday, October 8, 2019

Commercial Bank targets Qataris with premium Sadara Youth serviceCommercial Bank has launched a unique and exclusive service, Sadara Youth, for Qataris aged 18 to 25 years, off ering digital banking service with a first-in-Qatar vertical card.Designed to fit the needs and lifestyles of its audience, the service off ers a style of banking through a dedicated digital app that is educational and fun to use.It is the first application in Qatar that combines mobile banking and rewards, as one learns how to transact and acquaint with day-to-day banking services.The app has a familiar feel for the younger generation, where points and coins are awarded. Users can activate these awards to trade in, trade up, and ultimately benefit from a wide range of privileges and off ers, including the ‘CB Entertainer’, to access the region’s largest ‘2 for 1’ range of off ers.Within the ‘Sadara Youth’ app, users can access the augmented reality ‘Quest’ function to find further available instant discounts and off ers.Being the first dedicated digital banking app in the country, the ‘Sadara Youth’ proposition also delivers another first in Qatar, by issuing eligible customers, an upright design bank card. Unlike standard bank cards, this has a fashionably striking, vertical design, bearing the ‘Sadara Youth’ brand.“This comes as part of the bank’s responsibility to create a financial dialogue with the Qatari youth in a way that understands and addresses their needs. Sadara Youth is considered to be one of the main tools that can present these customers with an

exceptional digital experience,” said Amit Sah, EGM and head of retail banking of Commercial Bank.Consistent users of the app progress through loyalty levels of bronze, silver, gold and black memberships, which unlock access to the VIP rooms on the app, thus

enabling access to VIP events.“Young Qataris are the most receptive segment to latest technologies and innovations. Sadara Youth comes to complement their trendy lifestyles and to answer their day-to-day needs,” according to Roya Khajeh, AGM and head of cards and payments.

Sadara Youth vertical card

WISH gives a voice toRohingya refugee kidsBy Joey Aguilar Staff Reporter

Art as a therapy is a valu-able tool in addressing mental health issues

among children, particular-ly those in Rohingya refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar, Bangla-desh, World Innovation Sum-mit for Health (WISH) CEO Sultana Afdhal said.

“As a therapeutic tool, art is very valuable especially when you look at the children’s draw-ings, this is what is in their heads and sometimes they cannot articulate that but they can draw it,” she told reporters on the sidelines of the recently held ‘Artistic Dimensions to a Healthier World’ exhibition at the Doha Fire Station.

Besides showcasing the works of award-winning Brit-ish photographer Giles Dule, the exhibition also displayed

several artworks produced by refugee Rohingya children as part of a project by UK-based humanitarian charity, Save the Children.

The art collection, titled ‘Inspiring Hope Through Art – The Stories of Rohingya Chil-dren’, tells the stories of young children who fl ed to Bangladesh after being persecuted in My-anmar.

According to Save the Chil-dren, more than 6,000 children are living in makeshift tents unaccompanied and separated from their families.

All the refugees who reached Bangladesh survived traumatic and harsh conditions to reach the place.

Afdhal noted that teams from the humanitarian charity have been working hard to use art as a platform in helping Rohingya children in these camps deal with their trauma.

Highlighting one of the art-

works at the exhibition, Afdhal said “it is a child drawing their journeys through the river to Bangladesh, so it is a story of hope.”

“As a message to children, art therapy is a very valuable tool and this is something that we at WISH very much support because mental health is always a pillar that we try to address in our summits and in general,” she stressed.

In November 2018, Afdhal said WISH published a report on healthcare in confl ict set-tings, which underscored the importance of giving a voice to people who are forced to suff er health challenges in war zones.

In a statement, Save the Children said that a programme dubbed as ‘Creative Method-ologies for Mental Health and Psychological Support with Children in Emergency Set-tings’, which encourages the use of art as a form of response,

“may help these children over-come the traumas they are ex-periencing daily during their ongoing ordeal.”

Save the Children’s mental health and psychosocial support technical adviser Aladin Borja told Gulf Times that they pro-vide Rohingya children with “a lot of opportunities to come to-gether in order for them to have, build that sense of normalcy.”

“After an emergency and dis-placement, usually the social fabric is broken, it is disrupted,” he noted, underlining the im-portance of aff ording them a safe, child-friendly, and ado-lescent-friendly spaces to be together.

He said these temporary learning centres also provide children with spaces to learn basic literacy, gather together and “regain their identity as Rohingya people, their worth as human beings and also to try to start supporting each other.”

Rohingya children tell their stories through artworks. PICTURE: Joey Aguilar

International gold medalaward for HMC doctorThe Institute of Physics and En-

gineering in Medicine (IPEM) recently honoured Dr Huda al-

Naemi, a consultant medical physicist at Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) with the ‘Healthcare Gold Medal’.

The Gold Medal and Early Career awards are for IPEM members who have made outstanding contribu-tions in academia, innovation and healthcare, and in recognition of the achievements of Early Career mem-bers.

The prizes were presented by Prof Stephen O’Connor, IPEM’s president, at a ceremony in Bristol, UK.

Dr Huda al-Naemi has worked for more than 20 years at the HMC.

In 2006, she became executive di-rector of occupational health and safety and established the provision of medical physics services in support of medical imaging, including consulta-tion, preparation of new equipment tenders and specifi cations for dif-ferent imaging equipment as well as quality control testing.

She is also involved in training and education programme for radiology residents.

Dr al-Naemi became chair of the National Medical Radiation Licencing Committee at the Ministry of Public Health and has undertaken projects with the International Atomic En-ergy Agency and Qatar Foundation,

all contributing to improvements in healthcare.

She has participated in a number of projects funded by the Qatar National Research Fund and has developed and implemented a system for quality and safety in women’s imaging in collabo-ration with Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

Dr al-Naemi has recently been ap-pointed an assistant professor of Med-ical Biophysics Research in Radiology at Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar.

In 2017, she received the ‘State En-couragement for Medical Sciences Category Award’, in recognition of outstanding contributions in various scientifi c and humanitarian fi elds.

Prof Stephen O’Connor presents the gold medal to Dr Huda al-Naemi

The Ministry of Public Health has announced that the team of the anti-blindness programme in the non-communicable diseases section of the ministry will conduct eye examinations in a number of government schools and primary healthcare centres, on the occasion of the World Sight Day on October 10.The Ministry of Public Health and its partners are participating in

celebrating World Sight Day on the second Thursday of October each year as selected by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness (IAPB).The Ministry of Public Health, in co-operation with the Ministry of Education and Higher Education and the Primary Health Care Corporation, organises many important activities

and events aimed at raising health awareness on the importance of prevention of blindness and eye diseases. These include conducting eye examinations, as well as distributing educational brochures on eye diseases and prevention and raising awareness of the importance of eye health.World Sight Day is an annual awareness day held to focus global attention on blindness and vision impairment.

Health ministry to hold eye check-ups in schools, health centres

QATAR

Gulf Times Tuesday, October 8, 20196

Qatar attends Vienna conference on ‘Educating for the Rule of Law’Qatar participated in the

high-level international conference ‘Educating

for the Rule of Law’, which kick-started in Vienna yesterday, a press statement by the Ministry of Interior (MoI) said.

The three-day conference is organised by the Education for Justice initiative which is one of the components of United Na-tions Offi ce on Drugs and Crime’s (UNODC) Global Programme for the Implementation of the Doha Declaration, the four-year initia-tive that’s funded by Qatar.

The programme discusses the numerous educational tools de-veloped together with academ-ics around the world in order to contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), spe-cifi cally SDG 4 (Quality Edu-cation), SDG 16 (Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions — the overarching mission of UNODC) and SDG 17 (Partnerships for the Goals).

It’s aimed at helping educa-tor acquire the ability to help students gain skills to face chal-lenges and address woes in edu-cational and social sectors by

creating and spreading educa-tional activities and materials that are designed for the primary, secondary and tertiary levels.

The conference also looks to promote the culture of lawful-ness and the rule of law.

The Qatar delegation, in the conference, is headed by Ma-jor General Dr Abdullah Yousef al-Mal, adviser to the Minister of Interior and chairman of the Follow-up Committee for the World Programme for the Doha Declaration.

Qatar’s ambassador to Austria and it’s permanent representa-

tive to the United Nations and international organisations in Vienna, Sultan bin Salmeen al-Mansouri and representatives from the Ministry of Education and Higher Education are part of the delegation.

Al-Mal stressed Qatar’s keen-ness on implementing the objec-tives of the Doha Declaration.

He said the country is striv-ing to implement the declaration through funding and donation.

He thanked the UNODC for it’s eff orts to implement the Doha Declaration and said discussions during the conference will be

fruitful and the presence of spe-cialists will be benefi cial.

The conference is attended by 350 high-ranking specialists in the fi eld of education, justice, and policymaking.

During the high-level open-ing session, a number of themes were addressed, including the International Framework for Education in the Rule of Law, how can the UNODC, through the Global Programme for the Implementation of the Doha Declaration, support the con-solidation of a culture of respect for law in primary, secondary

and university education, in-tegrating the rule of law issues, quality of education and its role in supporting the achievement

of the goals of sustainable devel-opment of 2030, Education Plan 2030, the possibility of promot-ing meaningful participation of

young people in the establish-ment of a culture of respect for law, benefi ting from their vision, energy and creativity.

The Qatar delegation attends the Vienna conference.

Qatar promotes values of justice and equality through education

The State of Qatar has said it

promotes the values of justice and

equality of young people through

education, to prepare a generation

armed with science and knowl-

edge, believing in the rule of law,

human rights and the principle of

tolerance, constructive dialogue

and a correct understanding of dif-

ferences in visions and ideas.

This came in a speech delivered

by assistant undersecretary

for Private Education at Qatar’s

Ministry of Education and Higher

Education, Omar Abdulaziz al-

Neama, at international high-level

conference ‘Educating for the Rule

of Law: Inspire. Change. Together’,

in Vienna.

Al-Neama praised eff orts of the

United Nations Off ice on Drugs

and Crime (UNODC) to accelerate

the achievements of the Doha

Declaration, noting that Qatar is

proud to fund this programme

which has achieved an unprec-

edented accomplishment since its

inception in 2016 by turning the

recommendations into projects on

the ground benefiting more than

25,000 people from 186 countries.

The programme has reached

out to more than 600,000 people

worldwide and is expected to

reach 1mn.

Referring to the ‘Education

for Justice (E4J)’ initiative of the

Doha Declaration, al-Neama said

E4J has clearly demonstrated that

education is an essential tool in

achieving all the goals.

He reiterated that education is

one of the most successful means

of achieving the full objectives of

the Charter of the United Nations,

first and foremost the achieve-

ment of peace, security and the

well-being of humanity.

He highlighted the important

role of educators, noting that the

State of Qatar has been imple-

menting extensive programmes

to train and develop teachers and

curricula.

Al-Neama said that facts dem-

onstrate the close link between the

promotion of education and the

gradual decline in crime levels and

the enhancement of community

security, stressing that investment

in education is the most successful

means to achieve the UN Sustain-

able Development Goals.

In this context, he referred to

another global initiative launched

by the State of Qatar in the field of

education, which is the ‘Education

Above All’ initiative, launched by

Her Highness Sheikha Moza bint

Nasser in 2012.

The initiative works with the

Unicef and other governments to

provide education opportunities,

especially in communities aff ected

by poverty and conflict. — QNA

HMC care, rehabilitation services benefi t cerebral palsy patientsQNADoha

Hamad Medical Corp (HMC) has revealed that more than 1,000 patients

with cerebral palsy children and adults, receive treatment at the HMC’s hospitals.

Cerebral palsy care pro-grammes are implemented at Qatar Rehabilitation Center, which is tailored to the needs of the patient through various re-habilitation clinics and special-ised services such as swallowing disorder clinics, assessment and

treatment of movement disor-ders, a clinic for assessing cases of students with this disease, a spastic hypertension clinic and a newly established clinic to cor-rect sitting positions.

HMC joined health authori-ties around the world in cel-ebrating World Cerebral Palsy Day, which falls on October 6th every year.

The head of the Pediatrics Rehabilitation Department at HMC’s Qatar Rehabilitation In-stitute, Dr Mahmoud Ibrahim Abeidah, says reframing how people view cerebral palsy is crucial to both ensuring those

with the condition get the med-ical care they need and to re-ducing stigma and misconcep-tions about this neurological disorder.

“Historically, cerebral pal-sy was considered a paediat-ric condition. However, thanks to modern medicine and bet-ter healthcare standards, most children with this disorder now

live into adulthood. Many adults with cerebral palsy have a near-normal life expectancy,” said Dr Abeidah.

“Cerebral palsy aff ects each person diff erently, so no two families will have the same ex-perience. Symptoms can range from mild to severe, and the severity of those symptoms can change over time. There are a lot

of myths about cerebral palsy among the general public and these misconceptions and mis-understandings, such as that children with cerebral palsy have a limited future and will never live independently, nega-tively aff ect how we view these important members of our com-munity,” added Dr Abeidah.

Cerebral palsy refers to a group of disorders that aff ect muscle movement, co-ordination, and posture. In many cases, vision, hearing, and sensation are also aff ected.

According to the US-based Centers for Disease Control and

Prevention, the condition aff ects up to four out of every 1,000 chil-dren worldwide.

Dr Abeidah says cerebral palsy is the most common cause of motor disabilities in childhood, with symptoms usually appear-ing before the age of three.

“The cause could be con-genital, genetic, inflammatory, anoxic, infectious, traumatic, or metabolic. The injury to the developing brain may be prena-tal, natal, or postnatal. In rare cases, cerebral palsy happens because something goes wrong during a child’s birth. The most significant risk factor for cere-

bral palsy seems to be prematu-rity and low birth weight,” said Dr Abeidah.

He says while there is no cure for cerebral palsy, early interven-tion and ongoing medical treat-ment are essential.

He says therapy for movement, learning, speech, hearing, and social and emotional develop-ment are an important part of ensuring children with CP reach their full potential.

He added that medications and surgery may also be neces-sary to help those with signifi -cant muscle pain and stiff ness, or dislocated hips and scoliosis.

QRCS to bring 8th batch of doctors under Amiri medical scholarship programmeQNADoha

Qatar Red Crescent So-ciety (QRCS), together with Hamad Medical

Corp (HMC) and Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS), has fi nalised the process of bringing an eighth batch of Palestinian physicians to Qatar under the Amiri Medical Scholarship Pro-gramme.

This academic year, 10 phy-sicians from Gaza and the West Bank will come to Qatar to at-tend postgraduate studies for 4-5 years.

After that, each graduate will receive the Arab Board of Health Specializations (ABHS) certifi -cation from HMC.

The physicians from the West Bank will specialise in internal medicine (major: pulmonol-ogy), psychiatry, anaesthetics & intensive care (major: pain management), radiology (major: conventional & interventional radiology), and general surgery (major: paediatric surgery).

Those coming from Gaza

will study internal medicine (major: clinical haematology/oncology), internal medicine (major: rheumatology), pae-diatrics (major: Neonatol-ogy NICU), paediatrics (ma-jor: paediatric ICU/GI), and emergency medicine (major: trauma critical care).

Recently, the contracts were signed with the selected physi-

cians, who will be soon travel-ling to Doha.

With this batch, the overall number of benefi ciaries from this programme since its in-ception in 2003 will rise to 72 physicians, to be added to 26 physicians who received their specialisation studies in Jordan.

The signing ceremony was attended by Dr Khaled Gouda,

General Director of PRCS, Dr Haytham al-Hassan, member of the programme’s advisory com-mittee in the West Bank, and Zeina Hamoud, representative of QRCS in the West Bank and Al Quds. This programme is part of QRCS’s capacity-building strategy for the health sector in Palestine, to fi ll the gap in well-trained medical professionals.

Off icials attend the signing ceremony.

Special envoy meets AU Commission offi cial

Ambassador in Paris meeting

Qatari municipalities participate in GNLC conferenceAl Wakrah and Al Shamal municipalities have participated in the annual conference of Unesco’s Global Network of Learning Cities (GNLC) in Medellin, Colombia. The conference was attended by Al Wakrah Municipality director Mansoor al-Buinien and Al Shamal Municipality director Hamad Jomaa al-Mannai. Both municipalities won membership of the GNLC in 2017 and in 2019, having achieved all the criteria required to attain this membership through the adoption of a strategy to spread the concepts of sustainability and partnership with civil society institutions and achieve Qatar National Vision 2030. The conference was also attended by members of the Unesco Global Network of Learning Cities and representatives of 159 countries worldwide, as well as a large number of representatives of UN agencies, regional and non-governmental organisations and multinational companies.

HE the Special Envoy of the Foreign Minister of the State of Qatar for Counterterrorism and Mediation of Conflict Resolution, Dr Mutlaq bin Majed al-Qahtani, has met with African Union (AU) Commission chairperson Moussa Faki during his visit to Ethiopia. The meeting in Addis Ababa reviewed the partnership between the State of Qatar and the African Union in mediation, good off ices, peacekeeping, combating terrorism and achieving peace in the Horn of Africa in general, and Sudan in particular.

French Ministry of Foreign Aff airs Secretary General Francois Delattre has met in Paris with the Ambassador of Qatar to France, Sheikh Ali bin Jassim al-Thani. They reviewed bilateral relations, ways of boosting and developing them and matters of common concern.

QATAR

7Gulf Times Tuesday, October 8, 2019

QLC programme participants gain insight into innovation in GermanyParticipants from Qa-

tar Leadership Centre’s (QLC) Executive Leaders

Programme met with key fi g-ures in Germany’s market and visited some of the country’s premier educational institutes to observe how they foster a spirit of innovation and techno-logical excellence.

They also met with offi cials of several major corporations to achieve an insight into entre-preneurship methods that con-tribute to Germany maintaining its famously robust economy.

The learning journey forms a crucial component of the Ex-ecutive Leaders Programme every year, complementing what participants learned in their coursework with insights formed at the highest-level boardrooms in key markets. Ideally, this will contribute to the development of their own capabilities as they return to Qatar’s market.

“This year’s learning journey focused on innovation, a prac-tice as infl uential as any in our modern world. It drives tech-nological change, which fun-damentally impacts our socie-ties and boosts our capabilities as leaders. It inspires us to seek new ways in which to lead our organisations into the future,” said Dr Ali J al-Kubaisi, acting managing director at QLC.

He added: “Using the lever-age of insights achieved during this learning journey, the ob-jective is for Executive Leaders Programme participants to take their experiences in Germany and help create a spirit of in-novation at the head of some of Qatar’s leading companies,

which will contribute to a cul-ture of searching for ground-breaking solutions for the chal-lenges of our time.”

The agenda included en-gagements with infl uential fi g-ures and organisations to gain a unique perspective into how creative problem-solving can be encouraged in the country with partners either locally or inter-nationally.

The group met with the Ger-man State Minister of Digitisa-tion, Dorothee Bar, to discuss the challenges that the govern-ment faces in trying to boost

innovation throughout the country and how they plan ac-cordingly. The participants also had meetings with key players in the public and private sec-tors of Germany’s market. Dur-ing the Journey, the group was hosted at the Arabic Cultural House, ‘the Divan’, where they learned of the Qatari centre’s mission to spread awareness of Qatar’s culture in Germany.

The group also toured the Transparent Factory of Volkswa-gen in Dresden, where they had a tour and received a presenta-tion on the Volkswagen Group’s

strategy up to 2025 and learned of the carmaker’s history of innova-tion in transportation. They also explored the SAP Software Solu-tions Innovation Centre in Pots-dam and engaged with company executives to learn about SAP’s brand strategy, principles of de-sign thinking, and industrial best practices.

Part of the learning journey introduced the participants to the fi eld of cultural diplomacy and how it can build economic bridges. As such, they visited the Institute for Cultural Di-plomacy, which is an interna-

tional, not-for-profi t, non-governmental organisation with headquarters in the US and in Berlin. During their visit, they acquainted themselves with the institute’s primary mission, which focuses on the relations between economics, politics, and culture.

Finally, the learning journey also included visits to educational institutions in Germany, includ-ing world-renowned research hubs, such as the Hasso Plattner Institute and the Technical Uni-versity of Dresden to gain a fi rst-hand look at the state of the art

of innovation across the fi elds of digital engineering, mechanical science, and material technology.

Similarly, they visited the European School of Manage-ment and Technology, Berlin, (ESMT Berlin) where they were welcomed by President Profes-sor Jorg Rocholl before gather-ing with professors and partners from ESMT Berlin’s executive network to connect and exchange leadership knowledge.

To learn more about QLC and to apply to one of the centre’s three National Leadership Pro-grammes, visit www.qlc.org.qa

Qatar to take part in GCC cultural panel meetingQNADoha

The State of Qatar, repre-sented by the Ministry of Culture and Sports, will

participate in the meeting of the Cultural Committee of the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) scheduled to be held in the Om-ani capital Muscat today.

The meeting is a preparatory meeting for the 23rd GCC Min-isters of Culture to be held next Thursday.

Director of Culture and Arts Department at the Ministry of Culture and Sports Hamad Mo-hamed al-Zakiba, who repre-sents the Ministry at the meeting of the Cultural Committee, told QNA, that the committee will discuss the recommendations issued by the drafting commit-tee of the new cultural strategy of the GCC countries, and will promote and develop policies and organise frameworks for a cultural development plan, to achieve its objectives.

He pointed out that the Com-mittee’s meeting will be fol-lowed on Wednesday by a meet-ing of the Undersecretaries of the Ministries of Culture and Sports, who in turn will discuss the most important items of the meeting of the Cultural Com-mittee, in order to be approved at the meeting of the 23rd GCC Ministers of Culture next Thurs-day.

Within the framework of en-hancing the joint work between the cultural and tourism sectors in the GCC countries, the second joint meeting of the Ministers of Culture and Tourism in the GCC countries will be held on Octo-ber 10.

The meetings of the GCC Culture Ministers will also be accompanied by a ceremony to honour creative individuals. The ceremony is held in conjunc-tion with the annual ministerial meetings, during which two in-dividuals from each country will be honoured in various cultural fi elds. Qatari writer Dr Mariam al-Naimi and top artist Ghazi Hussein from the State of Qatar will be honoured during the cer-emony.

Qatar to attend GCC education ministers’ meeting

QNADoha

The State of Qatar will par-ticipate in the third meeting of the Committee of Minis-

ters of Education of the Gulf Co-operation Council member states scheduled to be held in Muscat today.

The meeting will discuss the recommendations of the ministe-rial committees and seek to en-hance the role of the educational institutions in developing the cul-ture of volunteerism, international co-operation, technical education and vocational training in the GCC countries as well as the position of the GCC States towards achieving the fourth Sustainable Develop-ment Goals related to education, in addition to the Secretariat’s proposals on the strategy of the ministerial committee and other topics. The ministerial meeting was preceded by a preparatory meeting for the higher education and scientifi c research undersec-retaries in the GCC on Sunday.

The State of Qatar participated with a delegation headed by HE Undersecretary of the Ministry of Education and Higher Education Dr Ibrahim bin Saleh al-Nuaimi.

Participants from Qatar Leadership Centre’s (QLC) Executive Leaders Programme with key figures in Germany’s market and off icials of several major corporations during a tour of Germany.

Journo reveals battle against

discrimination in new edition of

Education City Speaker Series

A journalist who is part of the team that pro-duces America’s most-watched news pro-gramme has told a Qatar Foundation audi-

ence how she has had to overcome discrimination in the media industry during her career.

Magalie Laguerre-Wilkinson, an associate producer on CBS News’ 60 Minutes show, spoke of her experiences of prejudice in the workplace during the latest edition of the Education City Speaker Series.

“People have gone ahead of me in a way I deemed unfair, but you just have to speak your voice,” she recalled. But she believes it is now a good time for women to be carving out careers in journalism. She also aired her views on the cur-rent state of news reporting – including coverage of Middle East issues by US networks – fake news, and the way people engage with journalism in the event at Northwestern University in Qatar, under the theme, ‘Do I Have Your Attention? Journalism in the Age of Two-Minute Attention Spans’.

Speaking about the sexism she has faced in the media world, Laguerre-Wilkinson said: “I’ve been doing this for 30 years and, at times, it has been challenging to navigate, especially when you have an idea that you think is good, you pitch it, and you fi nd out that people don’t say yes or no but instead a man will go behind your back to fi nd out if it’s really worth covering – why do you need to do that?

“There are times when you’ll say something, and then someone will say the same thing in a diff erent way and it’s received and embraced. So it has been a rollercoaster ride. But you have to focus on doing your thing, and that is what I have taught myself and how I have operated, because I have been in un-fair situations.”

Answering questions from the audience at the Qatar Foundation (QF) partner university, Laguerre-Wilkinson said she felt “the reaction to ideas would often be very diff erent” if those assessing them did not know whether they had come from a man or a woman, but added: “While it’s been, in many ways, an uphill battle, it’s much better now than when I started in journalism. “I experienced a lot of inappropriate things in my career, but I think today’s female journalists are lucky to be in the profession as it is right now.”

Laguerre-Wilkinson – who has worked on 60 Minutes since 2005, is a reporter for New York’s CUNY TV station, and co-hosts the Carnegie Council’s digital franchise Ethics Matter – said US news coverage of the Middle East has im-proved, albeit partly a result of more war corre-spondents being based in the region.

“We have done a much better job of cover-ing the normalcy and beauty of so much that comes from this region,” she told the audience. “We have veered away from simply doing sto-ries about hijabs and stories that repeat them-selves, but we can still do better.”

The Ministry of Municipality and Environment has aff irmed the state’s interest in supporting and encouraging Qatari farms especially in the field of marketing their products, and to boost local production. This came during a visit by Assistant Under-Secretary for Agriculture and Fisheries Aff airs at the Ministry of Municipality and Environment Sheikh Dr Faleh bin Nasser al-Thani and delegation to Nebeti Farm in Mekaines area. The visit is within the framework of the ministry’s interest in local farms for follow-up eff orts in its bid to achieve self-suff iciency in vegetables. The delegation visited the farm, which has a number of greenhouses, that produces various ordinary and exotic vegetables. Sheikh Dr Faleh was briefed by Director General of the Nebeti Farm about the modern farming techniques used, including a modern irrigation system and the use of agriculture without soil (hydroponics). The farm has 17 protected houses for winter production and two chilled houses, in addition to a smart greenhouse on an area of 12,000sqm, for production throughout the year. Pictures above and below show Sheikh Dr Faleh bin Nasser al-Thani and delegation at Nebeti Farm.

Ministry affi rms support for local farms

Magalie Laguerre-Wilkinson during the latest edition of the Education City Speaker Series.

HBKU-CHSS marks European Day of Languages

High-level staff from several of Eu-ropean embassies in Qatar were guests at the recent celebration

of the European Day of Languages by the College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHSS) at Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU).

The event underscores the university’s support for initiatives that promote lan-guage skills and teaching.

Declared by the Council of Europe in 2001, the European Day of Languages is an annual event that highlights the rich linguistic and cultural diversity of Europe. The day also promotes lifelong language learning both in and out of traditional ed-ucational settings, for fun and profession-al development. In doing so, the European Day of Languages encourages plurilin-gualism and better cultural understanding

across the continent. CHSS’ celebration took place ahead of the United Nations’ International Translation Day, fi rst insti-tuted on September 20, 2017.

This annual day, pays tribute to lan-guage professionals and their role in fa-cilitating dialogue, understanding, and co-operation around the world. Like other UN days, International Translation Day educates the public on issues of concern while celebrating the achievements of hu-manity.

Speaking after the event, Dr Amal al-Malki, founding dean of CHSS, said, “It was important to mark the European Day of Languages for two very important rea-sons. First, our guests at the celebration refl ect Qatar’s warm relations with all European states. For our part, HBKU con-tinues to develop constructive and proac-

tive ties with like-minded organisations from across Europe. “Second, CHSS is the home of the Translation and Interpreting Institute, which prides itself on being the only institute in the region to off er inter-nationally validated translation and au-diovisual translation masters programmes and professional development workshops, while teaching 11 languages to the public and university and school students. The college in essence continues to promote diversity as one of its core values.”

Dr Willy Kempel, ambassador of Aus-tria, said: “The European Day of Languag-es is a day we celebrate around the world to make European languages and cultures known. However, it’s a two-way street; as we are also listening to our host countries and seek to cater to their needs and inter-ests.”

High-level staff from several of European embassies in Qatar were guests at the celebration of the European Day of Languages.

ARAB WORLD/AFRICA

Gulf TimesTuesday, October 8, 20198

A fourth Senegalese UN peacekeeper has died after he was injured in a combat helicopter crash in the Central African Republic two weeks ago, the UN said yesterday. Three other Senegalese crew died when the Russian-made helicopter went down on September 27 in Bouar, in the western CAR, during a UN operation. The Senegalese captain, badly wounded in the accident, died of his injuries on October 6, Mankeur Ndiaye, chief of the UN mission known as MINUSCA, said on Twitter. The helicopter crew were part of a military operation against the 3R militia, one of several Central African armed groups, UN off icials said.

Rwanda’s Mara Group launched two smartphones yesterday, describing them as the first “Made in Africa” models and giving a boost to the country’s ambitions to become a regional technology hub.The Mara X and Mara Z will use Google’s Android operating system and cost 175,750 Rwandan francs ($190) and 120,250 Rwandan francs ($130) respectively. They will compete with Samsung, whose cheapest smartphone costs 50,000 Rwandan francs ($54), and non-branded phones at 35,000 Rwandan francs ($37). Mara Group CEO Ashish Thakkar said it was targetting customers willing to pay more for quality.

Doctors striking in Zimbabwe for pay hikes defied a government order to resume work yesterday and asked the UN and private busi-nesses to help fund their return to the wards. The doctors are in the second month of a strike over salaries which have dwindled to less than $100 per month in some cases as a result of galloping inflation. They say their pay has lost value by at least 1,500%. In a statement, the Zimbabwe Hospital Doctors Association (ZHDA) said they have used up their savings by “subsidising the employer” for them to just report for work.

Armed “bandits” killed nine soldiers in an attack last week in an area of northwest Nigeria wracked by cattle rustling and kidnappings, military and civilian sources said yesterday. Dozens of gunmen on motorcycles on Thursday stormed a military post in the remote village of Sunke in Zamfara state and opened fire, the sources said. “We lost nine soldiers,” a senior military off icer in the state capital Gusau, said. “Investigations are ongoing to unravel what really happened,” said the off icer, who asked not to be identified. Residents said the bandits attacked the troops to avenge the killing of their comrades after the military raided their camps in a nearby forest.

Rwandan authorities have paraded five suspects in a deadly weekend attack who told journalists they were from the FDLR Hutu militia based in neighbouring DR Congo. The attack, in which 14 civilians were killed, took place near the Volcanoes National Park, which is famous for its mountain gorilla sanctuary. It is an area repeat-edly targeted by Rwandan rebels operating from the Democratic Republic of Congo. One such group is the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), created by Rwandan Hutu refugees in eastern DRC after the 1994 genocide of Tutsis by majority Hutus in Rwanda.

Fourth UN peacekeeper dies after chopper crash

First ‘Made in Africa’ smartphones launched

Striking Zimbabwe doctors defy order to resume work

‘Bandits’ kill nine soldiers in northwest Nigeria attack

Govt parades ‘attackers’ from militia based in DRC

TRAGEDY TECHNOLOGYLABOUR CRIME UNREST

Zuma’s son denies $40mn bribe off ered to former SA ministerAFPJohannesburg

The son of South Africa’s former president Jacob Zuma yesterday denied

allegations by the former dep-uty finance minister that he was offered a $40mn bribe.

Duduzane Zuma, 35, was tes-tifying before a judicial inquiry probing allegations that his father organised a systematic plunder of government coffers in a scandal known as “state capture”. He has been named by various witnesses that have appeared before the inquiry,

including former ministers, as having been a conduit for the Guptas, a wealthy migrant business family that allegedly had a corrupt relationship with his father.

Mcebisi Jonas, former depu-ty finance minister, said he was offered a $40mn bribe by one of the Gupta brothers Ajay, at a meeting arranged by Duduzane Zuma.

The bribe was for a promo-tion to the position of full min-ister in exchange for business favours.

Jonas said Ajay threatened to kill him when he turned down the money.

But Zuma yesterday denied any offer was made, claiming that while the “meeting hap-pened” the “Guptas were not present”.

“No offers were made,” Zuma told the inquiry chaired by deputy chief justice Raymond Zondo.

Zuma’s father, Jacob, testi-fied at the same inquiry in July but withdrew on grounds that he had been “treated as some-one who was accused” accord-ing to his lawyers.

But he later agreed to return at a future date.

Jonas, who was deputy fi-nance minister between 2014

and 2016, said Ajay warned him never to speak about the meet-ing.

“They would kill me,” he told Zondo, adding that he was “very shaken” after the meet-ing.

But Zuma rejected Jonas’ version, saying that “when we all emerged from that room, it was all cool.”

The younger man said his ac-cusers could not point to what he did wrong. “I find it inter-esting that I’m always placed at these meetings but I never say anything....And I’m always a couch or lamp shade that never says anything,” Zuma said.

His elder brother Edward and his twin sister Duduzile were both present to show support for their sibling.

Jacob Zuma, South Africa’s ex-president, was forced to re-sign early last year over graft scandals centred around the Gupta’s, who won lucrative contracts with state companies and were allegedly even able to choose cabinet ministers.

Zuma’s successor President Cyril Ramaphosa has vowed to tackle corruption in South Africa, which has been led by the ANC party since Nelson Mandela came to power in 1994 after the end of apartheid rule.

Duduzane Zuma, the son of former South African President Jacob Zuma, gestures before the start of the commission of inquiry in Johannesburg, yesterday.

France warns US, Turkey over IS revival after Syria movesReuters/AFP Paris

The US decision to with-draw from northeast-ern Syria leaving Turkey

to launch an off ensive against Kurdish militants in the region could open the door to a revival of Islamic State, France’s armed forces minister said yesterday.

France is one of Washing-ton’s main allies in the US-led coalition fi ghting Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, with its war-planes used to strike militant targets and its special forces on the ground co-ordinating with local Kurdish and Arab fi ghters.

The United States began pull-ing troops back from the north-east Syria border yesterday, in a move US President Donald Trump hailed as a bid to quit “endless wars”. The move ap-peared to leave allies scrambling to assess the impact.

“We are going to be extremely careful that this announced dis-engagement from the United States and a possible off ensive by Turkey does not create a dan-gerous manoeuvre that diverts from the goal we all pursue — the fi ght against Islamic State — and which is dangerous for the local population,” Florence Parly told reporters in northern France.

“We must be extremely vigi-lant that a manoeuvre of this kind can not, contrary to the goal of the coalition, strengthen Daesch (Islamic State) rather than weaken it and eradicate it,” she said.

French offi cials have said in the past that a US withdrawal would force Paris to also draw back its troops and after a simi-lar an announcement by Trump in January, French President Emmanuel Macron had claimed he had convinced Trump to change his mind.

France is especially sensitive to the Islamic State threat af-ter several major deadly attacks on its soil and offi cials believe the militant group continues to pose a threat.

Hundreds of French nationals joined the group in Syria and are currently being held in Kurdish-controlled camps.

With an impending Turk-ish attack, the Kurds could be forced to reduce security at those camps.

“Terrorist fi ghters in deten-

tion, including those of foreign nationality, must be tried in the place where they committed their crimes,” France’s foreign ministry spokeswoman told re-porters, warning Ankara against a unilateral operation.

“This judgment and their secure detention in north-east Syria are a security impera-tive to prevent them from re-inforcing the ranks of terrorist groups,” she added.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon said yesterday the United States

does not endorse a threatened Turkish military invasion of northern Syria, and cautioned that such a move risked desta-bilising the region.

The warning came after Pres-ident Donald Trump announced late on Sunday a pullback of US troops from the Syria-Turkey border, seen as paving the way for the off ensive.

Defence Secretary Mark Es-per and Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley told their counter-parts in Ankara that “unilateral

action creates risks for Turkey,” Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoff man said in a statement.

“The Department of Defence made clear to Turkey — as did the president — that we do not endorse a Turkish operation in Northern Syria,” he added.

Hoff man said the US, along with Nato allies and coalition partners, would reiterate to An-kara “the possible destabilising consequences of potential ac-tions to Turkey, the region, and beyond.” Trump unexpectedly announced the pullback of US forces.

It sparked concerns that the Kurdish-led Syrian Defence Forces would be forced to aban-don some 10,000 captured Is-lamic State fi ghters they have been holding, potentially al-lowing the group to re-establish itself.

If Turkey does invade the area, Hoff mann said, it “would be responsible, along with Eu-ropean nations and others, for thousands of ISIS fi ghters who had been captured and defeat-ed in the campaign (led) by the United States.”

UN APPEAL TO PROTECT CIVILIANS

Civilians must be spared in any Turkish military operation in northeast Syria, where the United Nations hopes that mass displacement and Srebrenica-like killings can be prevented, a senior UN aid offi cial said.

The United Nations currently delivers aid to 700,000 peo-ple in the densely-populated northeast region of 1.7mn.

It has drawn up contingency plans to reach people who might fl ee south with food and medi-cal aid, said Panos Moumtzis, UN regional humanitarian co-ordinator for the Syria crisis.

“Any (military) operation that takes place at the moment has

to take into account to ensure that we don’t see any further displacement,” Moumtzis told reporters in Geneva.

”We are hoping for the best but preparing for the worst”. Moumtzis, asked about the Turkish off ensive against Kurd-ish-led forces and the ‘safe zone’ idea, said: “I really can-not talk about what type or how would the intervention be or how extensive it is going to be in terms of the military operation that will take place.

“For us as the United Nations, the safe zone concept is one that we have a bitter history (with) and actually we never promote or encourage.

We don’t think it is something that had worked for the United Nations, keeping in mind Sre-brenica and what had happened in the past,” he said.

He was referring to the slaughter by Bosnian Serb troops of 8,000 men and boys in 1995 in a UN-declared “safe zone” where Dutch peacekeep-ers were unable to protect civil-ians.

“We understand that there is going to be some kind of securi-ty zone which will be very spe-cifi cally targeted to a military operation or to an area where there has to be some clearance,” Moumtzis said.

“So our hope is that there will be full co-operation by all to make sure that it happens as smoothly as possible, without resulting in displacement, and ensuring protection of civil-ians, ensuring that the basic principles of humanity will be respected on the ground.”

The United Nations is in con-tact with all sides to explain where clinics, schools, water points, markets and residential areas are located, and to urge them “to stay away from civilian people”, Moumtzis said.

Turkish-backed Syrian rebel fighters gather near the Syrian-Turkish border north of Aleppo, yesterday.

Renewed demonstrations in eastern Baghdad DPABaghdad

Around 200 protesters took to the streets in eastern Baghdad yes-terday after Iraqi Prime Minis-

ter Adel Abdel-Mahdi ordered replac-ing army troops in the area with police following the use of “excessive force” against demonstrators.

In Baghdad’s Sadr City eastern suburb, the protesters chanted slogans demand-ing job opportunities and denouncing the killing of demonstrators the night before, witnesses told DPA.

At least eight people were killed in clashes between army forces and pro-testers in Sadr City on Sunday night, ac-

cording to witnesses. A security source said scores of people were wounded.

The Iraqi military said in a statement yesterday that an “excessive force be-yond the engagement rules” was used in the clashes and measures to hold offi cers who committed such mistakes account-able have begun via investigating coun-cils.

Since Tuesday, thousands of Iraqis have taken to the streets of several prov-inces in the oil-rich country to protest corruption, lack of job opportunities and poor services — in particular access to electricity and clean water.

More than 104 people, mainly demon-strators, have been killed and about 6,107 others injured in the protests.

On Sunday, Abdel-Mahdi discussed

the protests in a phone call with US Sec-retary of State Mike Pompeo.

“The prime minister reviewed the latest developments and the return to normal life after a curfew was lifted and affi rmed that security forces have con-trolled the situation, and stability has been restored,” a statement by Abdel-Mahdi’s offi ce said yesterday.

He also asserted that his government has outlined a package of reforms and measures and will continue to provide more to respond to the protesters’ de-mands, according to the statement.

Pompeo expressed his trust in the Iraqi security forces and affi rmed Wash-ington’s support for Iraq and its govern-ment’s eff orts to boost security and sta-bility. Iraqi police are seen deployed in Baghdad’s Sadr City, yesterday.

Palestinian hurt in clashes dies

AFPGaza City

A Palestinian wounded by Israeli fi re during protests and clashes along the

Gaza border in February has died from his injuries, the health min-istry in the Hamas-run enclave said yesterday.

Fadi Osama Hijazi, 21, was wounded during clashes east of Jabalia in the north of Gaza, the health ministry said.

Palestinians have been gather-ing for weekly demonstrations at various points along the border of the blockaded territory since March 2018.

At least 311 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fi re in Gaza since the protests began, the ma-jority during the demonstrations and clashes. Eight Israelis have been killed in Gaza-related vio-lence over the same period.Israel and Hamas have fought three wars since 2008.

Children among six injured in Libyaair strikeAFPTripoli

An air raid on riding stables near the Libyan capital Tripoli has wounded at

least six people, including chil-dren, sparking condemnation from the United Nations and the unity government.

An African worker was also among the six people wounded in Sunday’s attack on the eques-trian club in the Tripoli suburb of Janzour, a hospital source said.

Libya’s UN-recognised Gov-ernment of National Accord (GNA) and the UN mission in the North African country UNSMIL both accused forces of strong-man Khalifa Haftar of being be-hind the attack.

Ahmad al-Mismari, spokes-man for pro-Haftar forces who control eastern Libya, denied “any responsibility”.

The GNA denounced “the cowardly air strike carried out by the war criminal (Haftar) and his militias against an equestrian club in Janzour,” a suburb east of Tripoli.

UNSMIL condemned a “hor-rifi c attack” it said was carried out “by General Haftar’s forces”.

AMERICAS9Gulf Times

Tuesday, October 8, 2019

The United States recorded 7 new measles cases last week taking the total cases for the year to 1,250 in the worst outbreak since 1992, federal health off icials said yesterday. As of October 3, the highly contagious and sometimes deadly disease has been reported in 31 states, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Despite the outbreak, the United States retained its World Health Organization designation as a country that has eliminated measles, the agency had said on Friday. Under WHO rules, the ‘measles eliminated’ designation is withdrawn if cases are reported over a 12-month-period.

Negotiations to resolve a three-week-old strike at General Motors for better pay, benefits and job security have taken “a turn for the worse,” a top negotiator with the United Autoworkers Union said late on Sunday. “After making some progress on important issues a couple days ago, the company has shown an unwillingness to fairly compensate the great workforce of the UAW,” union vice president Terry Dittes said in a statement. “These negotiations have taken a turn for the worse,” he said. Nearly 50,000 GM workers walked off the job in mid-September, launching the biggest labour dispute to hit the automaker in more than a decade.

A US lawmaker yesterday introduced a bill that seeks to regulate e-cigarette makers by capping the amount of nicotine in the vapes they manufacture to make them less addictive. The bill, introduced by Illinois Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi, is the latest eff ort by lawmakers to clamp down on e-cigarette use, given a spike in underage vaping. The bill seeks to stymie use of e-cigarettes among youth by allowing e-liquids, solutions of nicotine and other chemical compounds that are heated and inhaled by users to contain no more than 20mg per millilitre of nicotine. At present, e-cigarettes are not subject to nicotine regulation in the United States.

Former president Jimmy Carter, 95, fell at his home in Plains, Georgia, but “feels fine” and will attend a Habitat for Humanity event in Nashville, Tennessee, his staff said. Carter’s fall on Sunday required stitches above his brow, said spokeswoman Deanna Congileo in a statement emailed to reporters. “He said he feels fine and wanted everyone to know that he and Mrs Carter are eager to be at a Habitat for Humanity’s Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Work Project in Nashville, Tennessee,” Congileo said. Carter, a Democrat who was governor of Georgia from 1971 to 1975, was elected president in 1976 and served one term in the White House.

General Electric Co said yesterday it was freezing the pension plan for about 20,000 US employees with salaried benefits, as the industrial conglomerate looks to cut its huge debt pile. The company will also freeze supplementary pension benefits for about 700 US employees, and these actions are expected to reduce net debt between $4bn and $6bn, GE said. The move will also help reduce the company’s pension deficit by about $5bn to $8bn. The company has announced net debt reduction actions of between $9bn and $11bn, including tender off ers to purchase up to $5bn of its existing debt, in the past one month.

Seven new cases of measles last week

GM strike negotiations take ‘turn for the worse’

Congressional bill to cap nicotine content in vapes

Jimmy Carter falls, needs stitches, but ‘feels fine’

GE to freeze US workers’ pensions to cut debt

HEALTH INDUSTRIAL ACTIONLEGISLATION AGE WOES FINANCE

After blackface scandal, Trudeau faces key debateBy David Ljunggren, Reuters Ottawa

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, whose electoral fortunes are re-

covering after images appeared of him in blackface, was last night taking part in a debate that could help him retain power in an October 21 vote.

Liberals leader Trudeau, who has apologised repeatedly for the photos, was to appear in a live two-hour debate in English with the heads of the other fi ve parties, most notably Andrew Scheer from the offi cial opposi-tion Conservatives.

English is spoken by two-thirds of Canada’s 38mn popu-lation and the session has tradi-tionally been regarded as crucial.

The leaders will also face off in French, Canada’s other offi cial language, on Thursday.

“The offi cial debates are going to be the big enchilada, perhaps more so than for any national de-

bates in our history,” said Frank Graves, president of polling fi rm Ekos.

A Nanos Research poll yes-terday for CTV and the Globe and Mail put the Liberals at 34.3% and the Conservatives at 33.4%, in contrast to surveys that showed Trudeau falling behind after the blackface scandal broke on September 18.

Trudeau has gained momen-tum since Scheer stumbled through a French-language de-bate on private channel TVA last Wednesday.

French is the main language in the populous province of Que-bec, which accounts for 78 of the 338 seats in the House of Com-mons.

Scheer is also facing questions about why he did not reveal he has dual US citizenship.

A Liberal offi cial said Trudeau expected to be the main target during the debates. A Conserva-tive strategist said: “We’re 100% focused on Trudeau.”

Scheer said yesterday he would

focus on presenting to Canadians “our positive plan for how they will get ahead under a Conserva-tive government and holding up Justin Trudeau’s record of failure.”

Scheer, however, may have a challenge landing serious blows, given there will be six leaders on stage — the most in Canadian political history.

Ellie Alboim, who has helped four Liberal leaders prepare for debates, said the event would be a referendum on Trudeau.

“If the blackface incidents have indeed turned this into an election about character, voters who are still undecided will want to see how the prime minister fares,” said Alboim, who works for government relations fi rm Earnscliff e.

Trudeau yesterday took aim at his rival, foreshadowing what is likely to be his theme in the de-bate, saying a Conservative gov-ernment “always cuts services, looks for austerity, and gives tax breaks to the wealthiest instead of to everyone.”

Leader of Canada’s Conservatives Andrew Scheer campaigns for the upcoming election in Ottawa yesterday.

Liberal leader and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau meets teachers during an election campaign visit to Ottawa yesterday.

Trump appeals court order to turn over his tax returnsBy Jonathan Stempel, Reuters New York

A federal judge said yesterday President Donald Trump must hand over eight years of tax

returns to Manhattan prosecutors, forcefully rejecting the president’s argument that he was immune from criminal investigations.

Trump’s immunity claim was “re-pugnant to the nation’s governmental structure and constitutional values,” US District Judge Victor Marrero wrote in a 75-page decision.

“The court cannot square a vision of presidential immunity that would place the president above the law,” Marrero added.

Trump quickly fi led an emergency appeal to the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan, which tem-porarily blocked Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance from enforcing the subpoena, citing the “unique is-sues” in the case.

Marrero’s decision would have forced Trump’s longtime accounting fi rm Mazars USA to start turning over documents yesterday afternoon.

Vance, a Democrat, had subpoe-naed personal and corporate tax re-turns from 2011 to 2018 and other records from Mazars, as part of a criminal probe into the president and his family business.

“The Radical Left Democrats have failed on all fronts, so now they are pushing local New York City and State Democrat prosecutors to go get Presi-dent Trump,” Trump, a Republican, tweeted after Marrero’s decision. “A thing like this has never happened to any President before. Not even close!”

In suing Vance last month to block the subpoena, Trump said he was immune from criminal probes while in the White House and that the US Constitution required Vance to wait until after he left offi ce.

The Constitution does not say whether sitting presidents can be in-dicted, and the Supreme Court has not decided the issue.

Federal prosecutors cannot charge sitting presidents, the Department of Justice says, because presidents have temporary immunity, but that does not block state-level prosecutors like Vance or even federal prosecutors from criminal investigations.

Vance issued the subpoena four weeks after issuing another subpoena to the Trump Organization for records of hush money payments, including to two women prior to the 2016 election who said they had sexual relation-ships with Trump, which he denies.

Those probes are separate from the debate over whether Trump should be impeached because of his dealings with Ukraine.

The 2nd Circuit appeals court heard oral arguments in the Deutsche Bank case on August 23. It has yet to rule.

Jay Sekulow, a lawyer for Trump, said he was pleased the New York subpoena would not be enforced im-mediately.

Danny Frost, a spokesman for Vance, declined comment. Both sides proposed schedules to allow Trump’s appeal to be heard this month.

The Justice Department, which op-posed dismissing Trump’s challenge to the subpoena, declined comment.

Marrero, who was appointed by Democratic President Bill Clinton,

declined to assert jurisdiction over the Vance subpoena, saying Trump should have brought his case in a New York state court.

The judge, however, made clear that if the appeals court disagreed with that fi nding, Trump should lose.

Marrero said Trump failed to show that enforcing the subpoena would interfere with his presidential duties, cause irreparable harm or be against the public interest.

He also rejected as too broad the idea that the president, his family and his businesses should be shielded from criminal process.

“The expansive notion of constitu-tional immunity invoked here to shield the President from judicial process would constitute an overreach of ex-ecutive power,” Marrero wrote.

Marrero said even then-president Richard Nixon had conceded during the Watergate scandal that he would be required to produce documents in response to a judicial subpoena.

In seeking a stay, Trump’s lawyers said the case raised “momentous” questions about the president’s immu-nity and that complying with the sub-poena would cause irreversible damage.

“There will be no way to unscram-ble the egg scrambled by the disclo-sure,” Trump’s lawyers said.

US Supreme Court kicks off new term, with Justice Thomas absentBy Lawrence Hurley and Andrew Chung, Reuters Washington

The US Supreme Court yesterday kicked off its new nine-month term with a fl urry of activ-

ity, hearing arguments in three cases including one involving the insanity defence and rejecting numerous busi-ness-related appeals that piled up over the summer.

Justice Clarence Thomas, 71, was ab-sent due to illness. Thomas likely has the fl u, a court spokeswoman said. One of the nine-member court’s most con-servative members, Thomas has served since 1991 and is its longest-serving justice.

In remarks from the bench before the fi rst argument, Chief Justice John Rob-erts said Thomas was “indisposed” due to illness but would still participate in deciding the three cases.

During yesterday’s fi rst argument, the justices wrestled with the insanity defence, which bars holding criminally responsible a mentally impaired de-fendant who does not know right from wrong.

They seemed divided over a Kan-sas law, enacted in 1996, that prevents defendants from arguing they were in-sane.

Instead, they can argue under the law that, due their mental illness, they could not have intended to commit the crime.

The case involved an appeal by James Kraig Kahler, who was sentenced to

death in Kansas for fatally shooting four family members — his wife, two daugh-ters and his wife’s grandmother — while suff ering from severe depression.

Kahler argued that Kansas is violat-ing the US Constitution’s 14th Amend-ment guarantee of due process under the law and the Eighth Amendment prohibition on cruel and unusual pun-ishment.

Idaho, Montana and Utah — like Kansas — have abandoned the insanity defence.

Other states, the District of Colum-bia and the federal criminal justice sys-tem, have retained the defence.

The other two oral arguments sched-uled yesterday were on whether the US Constitution requires unanimous jury verdicts and on fees in patent litiga-tion. The court will issue rulings in all its cases by the end of June.

In another action of note, the court said it would go ahead and hear a chal-lenge to New York City restrictions on handgun owners transporting their fi rearms outside the home.

The city had argued over the sum-mer that because the measure — chal-lenged by gun owners and the state’s National Rifl e Association affi liate — was recently amended, the case before the justices was moot and there was no reason for the Supreme Court to hear the matter.

The justices in a brief order said they would consider that argument when they hear the case on December 2, leav-ing open the possibility they will toss the case later.

Another major case to be heard on

November 12 is over Trump’s move to end a programme created by his Demo-cratic predecessor Barack Obama that protects from deportation hundreds of thousands of immigrants — mostly Hispanic young adults — who were brought into the United States illegally as children.

The court declined to hear several appeals including multiple business disputes. One involved Amazon.com’s bid to avoid a lawsuit seeking to en-sure that warehouse workers for the e-commerce giant get paid for the time it takes them to go through extensive post-shift security screenings.

It also rejected appeals in several patent disputes including one involv-ing Apple Inc and another concerning Acorda Therapeutics Inc.

The court declined to hear Las Vegas sports gambler William “Billy” Wal-ters’ appeal of his 2017 insider trading conviction that landed him a fi ve-year prison sentence in a case that also drew attention because of his ties to billion-aire investor Carl Icahn and golfer Phil Mickelson.

The court rejected a bid by Sempra Energy’s San Diego Gas & Electric Co to recover $379mn from customers re-lated to damages it was forced to pay out in litigation after the deadly 2007 California wildfi res that burned hun-dreds of homes.

It also turned away a bid by Dom-ino’s Pizza Inc to avoid a lawsuit by a blind man who accused the company of violating a law barring discrimination against people with disabilities after he was unable to place an order online.

Democrats subpoena Pentagon documents

Congressional Democrats yesterday

slapped subpoenas on the Pentagon

and White House budget off ice as

part of their advancing impeachment

probe, demanding documents tied to

President Donald Trump’s withholding

of military aid to Ukraine.

The chairmen of three House

panels leading the impeachment

investigation are seeking information

related to Trump pressing his Ukrainian

counterpart to uncover dirt on 2020 US

presidential contender Joe Biden — and

the alleged conditioning of military aid

on that favour.

The chairmen ordered Defense

Secretary Mark Esper and Off ice of

Management and Budget acting direc-

tor Russell Vought to hand over the

documents by October 15.

The materials are “necessary for

the committees to examine...the

reasons behind the White House’s

decision to withhold critical military

assistance to Ukraine that was ap-

propriated by Congress to counter

Russian aggression,” wrote House In-

telligence Committee chairman Adam

Schiff, foreign affairs panel head Eliot

Engel and oversight committee head

Elijah Cummings.

Failure to comply “shall constitute

evidence of obstruction of the House’s

impeachment inquiry.”

Protesters covered in fake blood gather around the Wall Street Bull during an ‘Extinction Rebellion’ demonstration in New York yesterday. The rally is part of a global network of protests and events around the globe this week to raise awareness of the climate crisis’ potentially disastrous eff ects.

‘Extinction Rebellion’

10 Gulf TimesTuesday, October 8, 2019

ASIA/AUSTRALASIA

More than 16,000 residents fl ee unrest in Indonesia’s PapuaAFPJakarta

More than 16,000 scared residents have fl ed an unrest-hit city in Indo-

nesia’s Papua region, the mili-tary said yesterday, as one of the deadliest eruptions of violence in years sparked calls for an inde-pendent probe.

Several dozen people were

killed when violence broke out in Wamena city last month, with some victims burned alive when buildings were ablaze, and others stabbed in the chaos, according to authorities.

Since mid-August, Papua has been hit by waves of mass pro-tests and violence fuelled by rac-ism against indigenous Papuans by Indonesians from other parts of the archipelago, as well as calls for self-rule in the impoverished

region. The majority of Papuans are Christian and ethnic Mela-nesian with few cultural ties to the rest of Indonesia. Yesterday, the air force said about 11,400 people — mostly migrants — had been evacuated aboard military aircraft.

Several thousand more have left aboard commercial aircraft since late September, it added. Also yesterday, Human Rights Watch called for a probe into 33

deaths during the Wamena riots to be led by the Southeast Asian country’s National Commission on Human Rights.

“The Indonesian government should also immediately allow the United Nations human rights offi ce unfettered access to (Pa-pua) to investigate the situation,” the rights group said in a state-ment. The violence in Wamena was reportedly sparked by racist comments made by a local teach-

er towards students, but police have disputed that account.

Since then, thousands of resi-dents — both Papuans and non-Papuans — have been evacuated, as news of looming violence cir-culates on social media. How-ever, there were signs that Wa-mena was returning to normal with many shops and schools reopened — although most stu-dents have stayed home — while government offi ces have also

been operating since last week, according to an AFP reporter.

In August, protests broke out across Papua and in other parts of the country after the arrest, racial abuse and tear-gassing of dozens of Papuan students, in the city of Surabaya. Migrants have become an infl uential mi-nority in Papua, moving there from other parts of the country in pursuit of opportunities in the mineral-rich region — home to

the world’s biggest gold mine. A low-level separatist insurgency has simmered for decades in the former Dutch colony — which shares New Guinea island with the independent nation of Papua New Guinea — after Jakarta took over in the 1960s.

A UN-sponsored vote to stay within the archipelago in 1969 was widely viewed as rigged, and Jakarta has long refused to con-sider another referendum.

Record number of candidates to contest Lanka’s presidential pollReutersColombo

A record 35 candidates have fi led nominations to take part in Sri Lanka’s presi-

dential election on Nov 16, near-ly twice as many as participated in the last poll in 2015, posing a logistical headache for election authorities.

The election is likely to be dominated by security issues af-ter a wave of suicide bombings claimed by Islamic State killed more than 250 people in April, denting the island’s critical tourism industry. It is also ex-pected to have far-reaching con-sequences for Sri Lanka’s foreign policy orientation.

“The large number of can-didates mean higher costs. We will need ballot sheets twice

the length of last time, we may have to import ballot boxes, and we may need more offi cials for

election processes,” Mahinda Deshapriya, head of the election commission said after the nomi-

nation process closed yesterday.The number of candidates

tops the previous record of 22 candidates who took part in the 2010 election.

Political pundits view Sajith Premadasa, the housing min-ister in Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe’s United Na-tional Party (UNP), and former wartime defence chief Gotabaya Rajapakse of the opposition Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP), as the two leading con-tenders.

Sri Lanka’s current president, Maithripala Sirisena, has decid-ed not to seek re-election and his party Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) has not offi cially picked a candidate, or indicated whether it will back any of the 35 declared nominees.

Sirisena in 2015 unseated Ra-japakse’s elder brother, Mahinda

Rajapakse, following his nearly decade-long rule, during which Sri Lanka forged close ties with China. Sirisena, along with his party’s coalition partner the UNP, has sought to neutralise Rajapakse’s pro-China foreign policy. Aides close to Gotabaya Rajapakse have said he plans to “restore relations” with Sri Lan-ka’s top lender China if he wins the election.

Rajapakse’s popularity has risen in recent months after it emerged that Sirisena’s govern-ment failed to act on repeated intelligence warnings from India ahead of the Easter Sunday at-tacks.

Some Buddhist leaders and also victims of the Easter at-tacks have since expressed their desire for the Rajapakse family to return to power, given the hard-line stance they adopted towards

Tamil Tiger rebels. Other ethnic minority parties though, have already pledged support to Pre-madasa, who has vowed to eradi-cate poverty and improve hous-ing under a slogan of “shelter for all at 2025”.

Premadasa, son of former president Ranasinghe Premada-sa who was killed by a Tamil Ti-ger rebel suicide bomber in 1993, also enjoys popularity among the rural poor, strengthening his po-sition against Rajapakse.

There is only one round in the election but voters can rank can-didate preferences. If no candi-date wins more than 50% of the vote, the winner among the top two is determined after tallying the preferences of voters who backed all the other candidates.

Nearly 16mn out of Sri Lanka’s total population of 21mn will be eligible to vote in the election.

Sri Lanka’s Housing Minister Sajith Premadasa after filing his nomination papers to contest the upcoming presidential election, in Colombo, yesterday.

Sri Lanka People’s Front party presidential election candidate and former wartime defence chief Gotabhaya Rajapakse waves at media as he arrives to hand over nominations papers at the election commission ahead of Sri Lanka’s presidential election, in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

Bangladesh student killing sparks university protestsStudents in Bangladesh staged protests and blocked major roads yesterday after an undergraduate was beaten to death, allegedly by ruling party activists, for criticising the government over a water-sharing deal with India. Protests broke out at several universities in Dhaka and the northern city of Rajshahi following the killing of Abrar Fahad of the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology. Students chanted slogans demanding “justice” and blocked major roads in the two cities. Teachers joined some of the protests. Dhaka deputy police commissioner Munstasirul Islam told AFP that Fahad was beaten to death and that ruling party activists were in custody for questioning. His body was found in his university dorm and media quoted other residents as saying that members of the student wing of the ruling Awami League had interrogated and beaten him. Ashikul Islam Bitu, a vice-president of Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL), told NTV that Fahad had been questioned over alleged links to a party’s youth group. After examining CCTV footage, police detained nine men from the same dorm, at least five of whom were BCL activists, local police chief Sohrab Hossain said. He added that the victim’s father has filed a murder case. Fahad put up a post on Facebook that went viral hours before his death. In it, he criticised the government for signing an accord that allowed India to take water from a river that lies on the boundary the two countries share.

Netherlands PM Mark Rutte (left) speaking with Indonesian President Joko Widodo at Bogor Palace on the outskirts of Jakarta.

Netherlands PM in JakartaNorth Korea boat collides with Japan sea patrol; 60 crew rescuedAFPTokyo

Around 60 members of a North Korean fi shing boat were rescued yes-

terday after it sank following a collision with a Japanese patrol vessel, local media said. The North Korean ship — believed to be illegally fi shing in Japa-nese waters — capsized after the collision, the coast guard said.

Satoshi Kuwahara, a Japa-nese fi sheries agency offi cial, told reporters the patrol boat Okuni had earlier warned the North Korean vessel to leave the area.

All of the estimated 60 crew members aboard the North Korean boat, were rescued, Jiji Press said, while public broad-caster NHK added they had been transferred to another North Korean vessel sailing nearby. Local media said none of the Japanese patrol vessel crew were injured.

Immediate confi rmation of the news reports was not avail-able.

The collision occurred in waters some 350km northwest

of Noto peninsula in Ishikawa prefecture in central Japan. “We’ve been strengthening patrols around the water there in co-operation with the fi sh-eries agency,” said Kazuma Nohara, another coastguard spokesman. In the wake of the accident, Prime Minister Shin-zo Abe told parliament: “We will continue taking resolute action to prevent illegal opera-tions by foreign ships.”

Experts say some fi shermen from the North are travelling far out to sea in order to satisfy government mandates for big-ger catches.

But their old and poorly equipped vessels are prone to mechanical faults and other problems, including running out of fuel, and there are few ways for them to call for rescue.

A record 225 suspected North Korean fi shing vessels washed up on Japan’s coast last year, according to the coastguard. Boats have also washed up on Japanese shores with the crew dead — referred to as “ghost ships” by local media. In 2018, 10 North Koreans rescued from a tiny wooden boat drifting off northern Japan were deported back to their country.

Dozens arrested during climate protest in Australian cities

Hundreds of climate demonstrators blocked roads in Australia’s cities yesterday afternoon to mark the start of a week-long global Extinction Rebellion protest. In Sydney police said 30 protesters were arrested as they refused police orders to clear the road near Central Station. “Alleged off ences committed range from obstructing traff ic to disobey reasonable direction,” police said in a statement. There were similar protests at Melbourne’s city centre and in Brisbane, but reporters covering the event said protesters were generally peaceful.

Hong Kong cabinet member fl oats Internet curbs AFPHong Kong

Hong Kong’s government may curb access to the Internet in a bid to con-

tain months of increasingly vio-lent pro-democracy protests, a cabinet member told AFP yester-day, after an emergency-law ban on demonstrators wearing face masks failed to quell the unrest.

The warning came as the in-ternational fi nancial hub re-mained partly paralysed from three days of protests in which the city’s rail network and busi-ness outlets seen as pro-China were badly vandalised.

The surge in protests was in

response to the Hong Kong gov-ernment’s announcement on Friday it would invoke colonial-era emergency laws not used for more than 50 years to ban dem-onstrators from wearing face masks.

Chief Executive Carrie Lam said the ban was needed to con-tain the unrest, which began nearly four months ago and has seen millions of people take to the streets demanding China stop strangling their freedoms. Ip Kwok-him, a veteran pro-Beijing politician and member of Hong Kong’s executive council, fuelled those concerns when he said controls on the Internet could be introduced.

“The government will not rule

out the possibility of placing a ban on the Internet,” he told AFP.

Ip said the Internet has been crucial to protesters, who have no public leaders and use online forums and encrypted messaging apps to mobilise.

But he said the government recognised any online shutdown could have a knock-on eff ect. “I think a condition for implement-ing the Internet ban would be not to aff ect any businesses in Hong Kong,” he said.

The executive council is Hong Kong’s cabinet, an advisory body to Lam. She announced the ban on face masks immediately af-ter meeting with the council on Friday. Yesterday night, hard-core protesters returned to the

streets, vandalising store fronts, blocking roads in multiple ar-eas and trashing two subway sta-tions. Police fi red tear gas in at least three locations although the clashes were less sustained and widespread than in recent nights.

Earlier in the day a male uni-versity student and a 38-year-old woman were the fi rst people to be charged with illegally wear-ing masks as supporters packed the courtroom – many wear-ing face coverings. They were charged with unlawful assembly, which carries up to three years jail time, and with defying the mask ban, which has a maximum one-year sentence. Both were re-leased on bail.

Outside the court, demon-

strators queued to get in, some chanting slogans such as “Wear-ing a face mask isn’t a crime” and “The law is unjust”.

Many said they feared the mask ban was just the fi rst of more emergency orders to come. “It’s an excuse to just introduce other totalitarian laws, next is martial law,” one protester out-side the court, who gave his sur-name Lo, told AFP.

The protests were ignited by a now-scrapped plan to allow ex-traditions of criminal suspects to the mainland. This fuelled fears of an erosion of liberties promised under the 50-year “one country, two systems” model China agreed to ahead of the 1997 handover by Britain.

Nepal former speaker held over rape allegations

Police have arrested the former speaker of Nepal’s parliament after a female employee in the assembly accused him of rape. A police van arrived at Krishna Bahadur Mahara’s residence late Sunday and took him into custody after the district court ordered his arrest. “He was taken into custody yesterday to investigate the case,” Shyam Lal Gyawali, Kathmandu police spokesman told AFP. Mahara, a senior member of the ruling Nepal Communist Party and former Maoist rebel, denied the allegation but stepped down as speaker last week after the woman gave details of the assault to media. The communist government had faced mounting pressure over the case. In a video interview published by the hamrakura.com news website yesterday, the woman said Mahara was drunk when he arrived at her home on September 29. He persuaded her to drink alcohol before assaulting her.

No 10 blamesEU as Brexitplan fails tomake progressGuardian News and MediaLondon

Downing Street has sought to defl ect the blame for the Brexit impasse on to

Britain’s EU counterparts, as Boris Johnson’s plans continue to meet a frosty reception.

After the French President, Em-manuel Macron, set a deadline of Friday for progress towards a deal, Johnson’s offi cial spokesman repeatedly said that the PM was waiting for the EU27 to “engage” with Britain’s plan.

“We are ready to have discus-sions at pace. For that to happen, the EU needs to engage fully with the proposals we have put for-ward,” the spokesman said, brief-ing journalists yesterday.

“The PM believes that we have set out a fair and sensible compro-mise, and we are now looking to the EU to match the compromises that the UK has made.”

With just 10 days to go until EU leaders are due to meet in Brussels for their fi nal European council meeting before the Brexit dead-line, there has been scant evidence of any progress.

In particular, the EU has fl atly rejected the UK’s suggestion that Northern Ireland exit the customs union. That would necessitate customs checks on the island of Ireland – though the government insists they could take place away from the border.

Johnson’s spokesman said the government was determined not to budge on this point.

“The PM set out in his letter, that this provided a broad landing zone, and we were willing to en-gage in further discussions on our proposals. But if your question is are we prepared for Northern Ire-land to be in a diff erent customs territory to the UK, the answer is a very fi rm no.”

Despite the tight deadline for securing a deal, Johnson currently

has no plans to visit EU leaders for face-to-face talks. “There isn’t anything in the diary at present,” said the spokesman.

He said Johnson was expected to hold discussions with the Swed-ish, Danish and Polish prime min-isters by telephone, after speaking to Macron on Sunday.

Johnson was asked about the state of the Brexit negotiations while visiting a hospital yesterday morning.

He said the government had made a signifi cant compromise in agreeing that Northern Ireland should remain aligned to EU rules for goods and agriculture – subject to agreement by Stormont – and called for the EU to make clear its objections to his plans.

“What we are saying to our friends is, this is a very generous, fair and reasonable off er that we have made. What we would like to hear from you now is what your thoughts are. And if you have is-sues with any of the proposals that we’ve come up with, then let’s get into the detail and discuss them,” he said.

After declining to meet with the prime minister in person, Ma-cron insisted during a phone call on Sunday that the talks would only be advanced through Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator.

“Boris Johnson presented his latest proposals,” an offi cial at the Elysee Palace said of the conversa-tion. “The president told him that the negotiations should continue swiftly with Michel Barnier’s team in coming days, in order to evalu-ate at the end of the week whether a deal is possible that respects Eu-ropean Union principles.” Barnier has already said he does not have a mandate from the EU27 to agree a deal on the terms so far presented by Downing Street.

The prime minister’s chief ne-gotiator, David Frost, has also been repeatedly told there will no last-minute negotiations with leaders at the summit on October 17.

Court rejects plea to forcePM to seek Brexit extensionReutersLondon

A Scottish court yester-day rejected a bid by campaigners seeking an

order to force Prime Minister Boris Johnson to ask for a Brexit delay if he has not struck a deal with the European Union in less than two weeks’ time.

The court concluded there was no need to take any pre-emptive action against Johnson because he had given legal as-surances that he would abide by a law compelling him to ask

the EU for an extension if no di-vorce deal had been agreed.

“The government accepts that in executing its political policy it must comply with the 2019 Act,” the judge, Paul Cul-len, said in his ruling.

“That being the govern-ment’s clearly stated position before the court, there is no need for coercive orders against it or against the prime minister to be pronounced.”

Last month, the parliament passed legislation, known as the ‘Benn Act’, which requires the premier to send a letter to the EU asking for a delay if he

had failed to agree a deal by Oc-tober 19 unless he had lawmak-ers’ approval to leave without any agreement.

With the clock ticking down to Britain’s departure on Octo-ber 31, Johnson has consistently said he will not ask for a Brexit delay and that he would rather be “dead in a ditch” than seek any further extension.

But he has also said he will not break a law that forces him to request one if no withdrawal agreement deal has been agreed without explaining that appar-ent contradiction.

Anti-Brexit campaigners,

who believe Johnson will use a legal loophole or send a second letter, threatening to sabotage EU processes if they grant a Brexit delay, asked Scotland’s Outer House of the Court of Session to issue an order com-pelling him to comply with the Benn Act.

But the judge said assurances given by the government’s top legal officer in Scotland not to frustrate the Benn Act meant it was unnecessary to do so.

“The advocate general has set out clearly and unequivo-cally the prime minister’s in-tention to comply with his

statutory duties,” he said.“This has been done so by

way of detailed and specific averments in written pleadings put before the court on the pro-fessional responsibility of those acting for the prime minister and the government.”

He said “extra-judicial” statements could not be taken as “conclusive statements of the government’s understand-ing of its legal obligations”. Lawyer Jo Maugham, one of the campaigners who sought the order, said they expected Scotland’s highest court to hear their appeal today.

Premier urges returnof US diplomat’s wifeGuardian News and MediaLondon

Boris Johnson said he is pre-pared to hold talks with the White House over the deci-

sion to give immunity to a US dip-lomat’s wife wanted by police in relation to a fatal car crash.

The US has been urged by the prime minister to “reconsider its decision” to grant immunity to Anne Sacoolas, 42, who is being treated as a suspect after the colli-sion that led to the death of Harry Dunn.

Dunn, 19, of Charlton, Banbury, was killed on August 27 after his motorbike collided with a car close to RAF Croughton in Northamp-tonshire, a military base used by the US air force.

Police disclosed on Saturday that Sacoolas has left the UK de-spite telling offi cers she intended to remain in the UK.

Police have written to the US embassy in London to demand immunity is waived for Sacoolas

in order for their investigation to continue.

Johnson said he would raise the issue with the White House if nec-essary. He said: “I do not think it can be right to use the process of diplomatic immunity for this type of purpose.”

Speaking to reporters during a visit to a hospital in Watford, he added: “I think everybody’s sym-pathies are very much with the family of Harry Dunn and our con-dolences to them for their tragic loss.”

The PM continued that he hoped Sacoolas would come back and “engage properly with the processes of law as they are carried out in this country.

“That’s a point that we’ve raised or are raising with the Ameri-can ambassador here in the UK and I hope it will be resolved very shortly. “And to anticipate a ques-tion you might want to raise, if we can’t resolve it then of course I will be raising it myself personally with the White House.”

The prime minister’s offi cial

spokesman said discussions about the case had been held between Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab and the US ambassador Woody Johnson and the details were “ex-tremely concerning”.

“The justice process should be allowed to take place and we urge the US to reconsider their deci-sion,” the spokesman added.

It comes as the parents of Dunn said they were prepared to travel to Washington to meet Donald Trump about waiving Sacoolas’s diplomatic immunity.

Dunn’s mother, Charlotte Charles, said if the diplomatic waiver was declined then funds raised by friends and family would be used to travel to see the presi-dent.

Charles said it was a “dishon-ourable thing to do” for Sacoolas to leave the UK while she remains a suspect.

She told BBC Radio 5 Live: “We will go and see President Trump. We will ask him to waive it; we will ask him directly. We will do what we can to bring her back.”

Thomas Cookrefund site crashesGuardian News and MediaLondon

A refunds website set up for Thomas Cook customers with future holiday book-

ings struggled to cope with the “unprecedented demand” as the fi nal repatriation fl ight touched down in the UK.

What was described as the larg-est-ever refunds programme of its kind was launched by the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority yesterday – but many customers were ini-tially left angry and frustrated af-ter receiving error messages when attempting to submit their claims.

It also emerged that custom-ers will have to wait for up to two months to receive their money back.

Thomas Cook collapsed on September 23, triggering Opera-tion Matterhorn, Britain’s biggest peacetime repatriation mission.

The two-week operation has brought more than 140,000 peo-ple back to the UK and involved more than 740 fl ights using 150 aircraft from 50 partners around the world, with the majority of people fl ying on their original

travel date. It concluded yesterday, with the fi nal fl ight, from Orlando in Florida, touching down at Man-chester airport with the last 392 passengers on board.

However, while the airlift is judged to have been a success, the huge reimbursement programme for those who had booked holidays failed to cope with demand after opening – prompting many cus-tomers to take to Twitter and other social media sites to vent their frustration.

The site will be used to refund more than 360,000 bookings for Thomas Cook Atol-pro-tected holidays, covering trips that would have been taken by 800,000 people over the coming months. Atol (Air Travel Organ-iser’s Licence) is a fi nancial pro-tection scheme run by the CAA, and this is its largest-ever mass refunds programme.

Some of the tens of thousands of people keying in their details yesterday morning were con-fronted with a message saying that “an unhandled fault has occurred”, while others were told: “Your claim has not been successfully submitted. Please try back again shortly.”

Arcuri refuses to rule out claims of aff air with JohnsonGuardian News and MediaLondon

The American businesswom-an at the centre of a confl ict of interest row involving

the prime minister confi rmed she had a “very close bond” with Boris Johnson and refused to rule out claims they had an aff air.

In her fi rst broadcast interview since her links to Johnson were exposed, Jennifer Arcuri said the then London mayor visited her

fl at in Shoreditch, east London, a “handful of times” but she denied he had given her favours to boost her career.

Speaking live to ITV’s Good Morning Britain, Arcuri said her business achievements as a tech-nology entrepreneur were made without Johnson’s help. “Boris had nothing to do with my other achievements,” she said.

Arcuri’s company, Innotech, was awarded £26,000 in public money and she was given privi-leged access to three foreign trade

missions led by Johnson despite initially being refused. Her latest company, Hacker House, was also given a £100,000 grant earlier this year by the department for digital, culture, media and sport.

Asked if she ever discussed the awarding of that money with Johnson, Arcuri said: “Categori-cally no.” She added: “Do you think I would waste his time talk-ing about this stuff ?”

She confi rmed Johnson spoke at four of her company’s events for no fee, but added: “Boris never ever

gave me favouritism.”And she denied a report in the

Sunday Times that he wrote her a letter of recommendation to head a tech quango in 2012, saying: “That letter doesn’t exist. Fake news.” She also insisted she won spon-sorship, grants and places on trade missions on merit. She told ITV: “Someone has written down every single thing I’ve done in London and found a way to drive it back to Boris – it’s absolute lies.” Asked if she loved Johnson, she said: “I care about him deeply as a friend

and we do share a very close bond, but I wish him well. I want him to be happy. I wish Carrie (Symonds) well. And I really do want him to focus on making Britain great again.”

Arcuri was asked nine times whether she had an intimate rela-tionship with Johnson, but refused to answer. She said: “Because the press have made me this objec-tifi ed ex-model pole dancer, I am really not going to answer that question. I am not going to be putting myself in a position for you

to weaponise my answer.”She said she and Johnson “al-

ways had a laugh” about the pole in her Shoreditch fl at where her offi c-es were located. She said: “I said he could have a go. He sat down with his tea and started muttering.” She also confi rmed the Guardian’s rev-elation that she listed Johnson on her phone as “Alex the Great”.

She said she could not recall how many times Johnson visited her fl at but suggested it was be-tween fi ve and 10 times. “We tried having drinks out in public or hav-

ing lunch, it just became too much of a mob show, so I said: ‘You just have to come to my offi ce.’”

Arcuri said she met Johnson in 2011 when she was impressed by the way he “electrifi ed” a previ-ous dull gathering of venture capi-talists. She said she and Johnson shared a love of Shakespeare and classical literature. She said the last time she was in regular contact with him was in 2016, but she has since sent him occasional messag-es about government policy and personal greetings.

BRITAIN

Gulf Times Tuesday, October 8, 2019 11

Film premiere

Actor Eddie Redmayne attends the premiere of The Aeronauts at the BFI London Film Festival 2019, in London yesterday.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson speaks to nurses as he visits the Watford General Hospital in Watford yesterday.

EUROPE

Gulf Times Tuesday, October 8, 201912

Thirteen women were con-fi rmed dead yesterday and “at least 15” were reported

missing at sea following a mi-grant shipwreck overnight off the Italian island of Lampedusa.

“For the moment 13 corpses (all women coming from West-ern Africa) have been recovered, and at least 15 migrants are still

missing,” tweeted a UN migra-tion agency spokesman, Flavio Di Giacomo.

Earlier, an Italian coastguard statement said that 22 survivors were rescued after a vessel car-rying about 50 people capsized some 11km off Lampedusa’s shores.

Di Giacomo, who works for the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), told DPA that Tunisians and sub-Saharan Af-ricans from Ivory Coast, Burkina

Faso and Guinea were on the boat.

It overturned in rough sea con-ditions shortly after midnight (2200 GMT) because migrants rushed to one side as two Italian rescue units approached it, the coastguard said.

Salvatore Vella, a Sicilian pros-ecutor investigating the acci-dent, told reporters that the boat had set off from Libya and made a stop in Tunisia before heading north.

He added that nobody aboard had life jackets.

“If they had, they would all be safe now,” Vella said in comments carried by the Ansa news agency.

Children, including babies, are among the missing, Vella said.

Ansa quoted a survivor as say-ing that her sister and her eight-month-old niece were unac-counted for.

The Ocean Viking charity ves-sel, operated by Doctors Without Borders (MSF) and SOS Mediter-

ranee, and units co-ordinated by the EU border agency Frontex were taking part in the search for the missing.

Another charity, Spain’s Open Arms, rescued 40 people in an-other overnight operation.

“One child and a baby among them. We found them in a wood-en shell and took them to the #OpenArms,” it tweeted.

Lampedusa, a small island that is roughly halfway between Sicily and Tunisia, is often the fi rst port

of call for Europe-bound mi-grants and refugees from North Africa.

According to the IOM, 660 people have died or gone missing since the start of the year on the sea route between Tunisia and Libya on the one side, and Italy and Malta on the other.

Yesterday’s shipwreck took place on the eve of EU talks in Luxembourg in which the bloc’s interior ministers are due to discuss an EU-wide relocation

mechanism for incoming sea mi-grants.

The mechanism is meant to end the bitter intra-EU disputes that have roiled the bloc over the past few months on who should take in sea migrants.

During those disputes, mi-grants rescued by charity ves-sels were left waiting at sea for days and weeks because Italy and Malta refused to take them in un-til other EU nations also agreed to take some of them.

At least 13 dead after migrant shipwreck off Italy isleDPARome

Thousands of climate-change protesters took to the streets in cities

around the world yesterday, launching two weeks of peace-ful civil disobedience to demand immediate action to cut carbon emissions and avert an ecologi-cal disaster.

In London, police arrested 217 activists from the Extinction Rebellion group as they blocked bridges and roads in the city centre, and glued themselves to cars, while protesters in Berlin halted traffi c at the Victory Col-umn roundabout.

Dutch police stepped in to arrest more than 100 climate activists blocking a street in front of the country’s national museum and there were similar protests in Austria, Australia, France, Spain and New Zealand.

“SORRY that we blocked the road, but this is an emergency,” declared placards held by activ-ists in Amsterdam.

In New York’s fi nancial dis-trict, protesters spattered the Wall Street Bull and themselves with fake blood and lay prone around the sculpture to evoke their fears of a deadly environ-mental catastrophe.

The protests are the latest stage in an global campaign for tougher and swifter steps against climate change co-ordinated by Extinction Rebellion, which rose to prominence in April when it snarled traffi c in central London for 11 days.

Last month, millions of young people fl ooded onto the streets of cities around the world, in-spired to take action by 16-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg.

Extinction Rebellion says it expects peaceful protests over the next two weeks in more than 60 cities from New Delhi to New York calling on governments to reduce greenhouse gas emis-sions to net zero by 2025 and halt a loss of biodiversity.

Banging drums and chanting, protesters in London took over Trafalgar Square and marched down the Mall, the avenue that leads to Buckingham Palace.

They carried banners with slogans including “Climate change denies our children a fu-ture unless we act now”.

“We’re here because the gov-ernment is not doing enough on the climate emergency,” pro-tester Lizzy Mansfi eld said. “We only get one planet, and so we’re here to try and defend it.”

Police chiefs said last week they would mobilise thousands of offi cers to handle the protests in London and that anyone who broke the law, even as part of non-violent civil disobedience, would be arrested.

On Saturday, offi cers used a battering ram to enter a building

in south London where activists had been storing materials to use during the protests.

Eight people were arrested during the raid.

Defying almost freezing tem-peratures in Berlin, activists singing “Solid as a rock, rooted as a tree” gathered at dawn at the Victory Column roundabout near Tiergarten park.

No arrests were made and the protest remained peaceful.

Police blocked the fi ve av-enues that converge on the

roundabout to stop cars and buses reaching the demonstra-tion, as this would have resulted in traffi c chaos during rush hour.

By midday, the protest had swelled to 4,000 people, a po-liceman said, and a second main roundabout was also blocked by activists sitting in the middle of the road.

Police began removing chant-ing protesters from Berlin’s Potsdamer Platz later in the day after they had occupied the cen-tral artery for much of the day,

singing, making speeches and fashioning a makeshift camp out of salvaged armchairs and tents.

The rallies came as Ger-man Chancellor Angela Merkel defended climate protection measures her government is due to approve tomorrow, but which critics have condemned as un-ambitious.

In Amsterdam, police were lining up empty buses to take the arrested demonstrators away as they tried to clear a major thor-oughfare in the afternoon.

“The climate crisis is not be-ing taken seriously enough by politics, and also not by the companies. That’s why I joined,” said one demonstrator, who gave his name as Christiaan.

In central Paris, dozens of Extinction Rebellion activists blocked a street and bridge in the Chatelet district.

They also built temporary shelters or held impromptu con-certs and workshops in a good-natured atmosphere.

With events like extreme

weather, thawing permafrost and a sea-level rise unfolding much faster than expected, sci-entists say the urgency of the climate crisis has intensifi ed since the signing in 2015 of the Paris accord on curbing global warming.

Nearly 70 countries an-nounced plans at a UN climate action summit last month to beef up their Paris pledges, but most major economies including the US and China failed to an-nounce stronger new measures.

Mass arrests in climate ‘rebellion’ worldwideReutersLondon

Climate change activists from the group Extinction Rebellion, dressed in red, join the demonstration yesterday on Whitehall in central London.

Right: A woman sits atop hay bales during a demonstration in Paris.

Left: Protesters block one of the roads around Berlin’s Victory Column (Siegessaeule).

Below: Climate change activists block a road in Vienna.

French PM open to idea of quotas for migrantsReutersParis

French Prime Minister Ed-ouard Philippe said yes-terday that he was not op-

posed to introducing quotas for migrants, part of an eff ort by his government to heed voters’ con-cerns about immigration that are being seized upon by far-right political rivals.

The government, closely al-lied to centrist President Em-manuel Macron, is walking a political tightrope because it is under pressure too from its own supporters who opposed any measures they view as pander-ing to the far-right.

Setting out the government’s position in a parliamentary hear-ing on immigration, Philippe said it was important to act with humanity towards migrants.

However, he said: “The ques-tion of being steered by targets for admissions for residency is not a taboo. I’m not afraid of thinking about the idea of quo-tas.”

Philippe also said there would be a review of the system for pro-viding free medical care to im-migrants who do not have offi cial status in France – a system that critics say is open to exploitation by illegal migrants.

“France should take care of all those who live on its terri-tory. But it should be neither more, nor less, attractive than its neighbours,” he said.

France last year recorded 123,000 asylum requests, an in-crease of 22% on the previous year.

Macron’s government, while trying to navigate a middle course on immigration, has come under fi re from both right and left.

Speaking last week, Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Rally, said the govern-ment was undermining national security by letting people with violent Islamist tendencies into the country.

“The government worsens a deadly danger every day, with its senseless immigration policy. The state is absent, dramatically absent, criminally absent.”

In the debate yesterday, Jean-Luc Melenchon, leader of the leftist France Unbowed party, said in remarks directed at the government: “You want to make the immigrant, once again, into a scapegoat, rather than the fi n-ancier who pillages our wealth through fraud and tax evasion.”

Portugal’s Socialist party was yesterday weighing alliances with other par-

ties that would allow it to head a stable minority government as the country faces growing economic headwinds after it fell

short of a parliamentary major-ity in a general election.

The party of Prime Minister Antonio Costa strengthened its position in parliament in Sun-day’s polls, winning 106 seats in the 230-seat assembly, up from 86 seats but still 10 shy of an outright majority.

Four seats still must be attrib-uted according to the results of

votes cast abroad which have yet to be counted.

In his victory speech, former Lisbon mayor Costa said he would try to “renew” his alliance with the two hard-left parties that propped up his government during the past four years – the Left Bloc and the Communists.

However, it remains to be seen what these two formations will

demand in exchange for their support this time around since “all the dividends of this expe-rience fell into the hands of the PS”, daily newspaper Publico wrote in an editorial.

The Left Bloc won 19 seats – the same number as in the 2015 election – while the Commu-nists took 12, down from 17.

But unlike in 2015 when the

backing of these two parties was indispensable, this time around Costa will need the support of only one of them to reach a ma-jority.

“The PS can swing between the two or play them against each other,” Publico said.

Prime Minister Costa also has two other possible allies – the People Animals Nature party

(PAN) which had just one law-maker in the assembly and now has four, and upstart eco-so-cialist party LIVRE (free), which entered parliament for the fi rst time with a single seat.

Another option for Costa would be to forgo a formal alli-ance with other parties and ne-gotiate support to pass legisla-tion on a case-by-case basis.

Portugal’s Socialists seek stability after election victoryAFPLisbon

Kosovo opposition parties win poll

Kosovo’s opposition won in snap election on Sunday, ending the long dominance of President Hashim Thaci’s Democratic Party (PDK).The leftist Vetevendosje (Self-determination) party was narrowly leading another opposition party, the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK) with 25.8% to 25% after 93.7% of the ballots had been counted.The two parties are likely to build the next government coalition and had earlier ruled out any co-operation with the PDK, which had been involved in all governments since 2007.The PDK came in third, with 21.2% of the votes, while the coalition led by outgoing Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj’s Alliance for the Future of Kosovo ended up with just 11.6%.

INDIA13Gulf Times

Tuesday, October 8, 2019

Fallen trees are seen at a construction site of a metro train parking shed for an upcoming subway line in the Aarey Colony suburb of Mumbai yesterday.

Tourists to be welcomed backto Kashmir,says governorAgenciesSrinagar

Tourists warned by India to leave Kashmir just days before stripping the region

of its autonomy will be welcomed back later this week, Governor Satya Pal Malik said yesterday.

Authorities in early August called for holiday-makers to leave “immediately” over “terror threats” to the Amarnath Yatra Hindu pilgrimage, sending thou-sands scrambling for places on planes and buses.

New Delhi also imposed a clampdown on movement and cut off all communications in-cluding the Internet and phone lines just before the controver-sial autonomy decision to quell unrest.

But Malik said in a statement after a security meeting that the “Home Department’s advisory asking tourists to leave the valley be lifted” from Thursday.

There were no further details about why the advisory would be lifted this week.

Malik repeated New Delhi’s assertions that authorities were gradually lifting the curfew, adding that “all the security re-strictions were removed in most parts” of the region.

Tourist operators said in late August they were badly hit by the sharp drop-off in visitor num-bers, and were worried many people would stay away for a prolonged period of time.

More than half-a-million peo-ple visited the valley in the fi rst seven months of this year, ac-cording to offi cial data.

In addition, some 340,000 re-ligious tourists were also visiting the valley in July before Amar-nath Yatra was called off due to the terror claims.

Just 150 foreign travellers vis-ited Kashmir after August 5 when New Delhi scrapped its autono-my until the end of the month, the fi gures showed.

In New Delhi, Home Min-ister Amit Shah said that nei-ther a “single bullet” was fi red nor a “single person died” after

Kashmir’s special status was scrapped.

He said the restrictions are now limited to areas only under 10 of the 196 police stations in Kashmir Valley.

“Not a single bullet had been fi red or not a single person had died after the abrogation of Arti-cle 370. Only 10 police stations of Kashmir, out of 196, have Section 144 in force,” he said.

Shah reiterated that Jammu and Kashmir would not remain a Union Territory (UT) forever and that statehood would be returned once the situation normalises.

“All regional identities are in-herently protected by the Indian Constitution. Article 370 was the root cause of cross border terror-ism,” he said.

Speaking on the need for a Na-tional Register of Citizens (NRC), Shah said it was essential not just for national security but for good governance as well.

“NRC must not be seen as a political exercise as it is very im-portant to have a national citizen register in order to ensure that benefi ts of development reach all our citizens,” he said at an event.

Referring to the need to im-prove police effi ciency, Shah told a group of new Indian Police Service offi cers, their job would be to ensure that there is freedom to take decisions and owning up responsibility at all levels, with-out overstepping boundaries.

He urged the young offi cers to encourage and inspire their staff and build the capacity of consta-bles.

“An organisation can only be as strong as its base, and the base of the police system is the con-stable,” he said.

Speaking on the increasing proportion of women in police at every level, Shah said lady IPS offi cers can inspire other women to join the police.

“Gender-based reservation was not the answer to the issue of inadequate representation of women in the police. There is need to change societal mindset in this regard. This would gradu-ally happen,” he added.

Top court halts Mumbai tree felling after protestsAgenciesMumbai

A mass felling of trees in one of the world’s most-polluted megacities was

halted by the Supreme Court yesterday, amid protests their removal would strip Mumbai of a precious “green lung”.

Some 2,700 trees were being cut down in Mumbai to make way for a depot for subway carriages in the city of nearly 20mn people.

But the felling angered lo-cals, with Bollywood stars and residents joining regular dem-onstrations that grew over the weekend after workers started removing the trees at night.

More than two dozen ac-tivists were arrested during

weekend protests were all later released on bail, police said.

Following an emergency hearing called after petitions from activists, the Supreme Court said no more trees in the suburb of Aarey were to be felled until a next court session on October 21.

The date is also when crucial state elections are to be held, with the dispute taking on po-litical significance.

The court also ordered the Maharashtra government to maintain status quo until that date.

The Shiv Sena, a powerful ally of Prime Minister Naren-dra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Ja-nata Party in Maharashtra, has criticised the federal govern-ment over the felling.

The subway project has

sharply divided opinion and triggered a nationwide debate over conservation and need for development.

Supporters say Mumbai – ranked the world’s fourth most polluted megacity by the World Health Organisation last year – badly needs new transport, citing its overburdened colo-nial-era railway system used by some 7.5mn people every day.

Officials have defended the construction, saying only 30 hectares of the 1,300 that make up Aarey – a lush, green oa-sis close to the Sanjay Gandhi National Park – were being cleared.

Solicitor General Tushar as-sured the court that the Ma-harashtra government would not cut down any more trees further.

Part of the dispute over the development is whether the area should fall under forest protection laws that cover the national park.

Appearing for petitioners, senior lawyers Sanjay Hegde and Gopal Shankaranarayanan told the court that the issue whether Aarey was a forest or not was pending with the court.

They also told the court the that National Green Tribunal was hearing the issue whether the area is an eco-sensitive zone or not.

The Supreme Court also sought a report from the Ma-harashtra government on the afforestation drive to compen-sate for the tree cutting.

Solicitor General Mehta told the court over 20,000 trees

were planted in the last few years by the government.

But, it failed to convince the court, which asked the state to place a report with photo-graphs declaring how many trees have since survived.

Police have barricaded all access points to Aarey, and yesterday stopped activists and journalists from entering the area.

Environmental activist Puja Damadia said that after the de-cision was handed down, resi-dents reported “hearing chain-saw noises, which means the trees are still being cut”.

“We cannot go inside to even vet the information. Mumbai police has not been letting us organise protests anywhere in the city despite procuring per-missions in advance,” she said.

Buses remain parked in a depot during a transport strike in Hyderabad.

Rafale will be a ‘game changer’ for India, say expertsIANSNew Delhi

The induction of the Rafale fi ghter jet will be a “game changer” for India in re-

gional geopolitics, defence ex-perts said yesterday.

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh will ceremonially receive the fi rst of the 36 Rafale aircraft in France today, even though the combat jet will be seen in Indian skies only in May 2020.

Air Chief Marshal R K S Bhadauria had said soon after taking over Indian Air Force chief on September 30 that the induc-tion of the Rafale was going to be a “game changer”.

Rafale, categorised as a 4.5 generation aircraft for its radar-evading stealth profi le, will be a game changer for the IAF since most of the aircraft in its inven-tory – including the Mirage 2000 and the Su-30 MkI – are classi-fi ed as either third- or fourth-generation fi ghters.

“Pakistan has the multi-role F-16 in its inventory. But it is only as good as the Mirage 2000 of In-dia. There is nothing equivalent to the Rafale in Pakistan,” retired Air Marshal M Matheswaran told IANS.

The upgraded version of the Mirage and the Sukhoi 30 can at best reach up to the category of fourth-generation fi ghters. The indigenously developed Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) Tejas can be categorised as fourth-gen-eration in terms of avionics and

technology but it is too small an aircraft to make a diff erence.

India will be the fourth country after France, Egypt and Qatar, to fl y the Rafale. But the Rafale can-not be compared with the J-20, an indigenously developed fi fth-generation aircraft of China.

The J-20 is soon set to be in-ducted in large numbers into the People’s Liberation Army Air Force of China after it was successfully developed and dis-played, defence sources said. The Hong Kong-based English

language newspaper South Chi-na Morning Post had reported, quoting the Chinese state media, as far back as March 2017 that the PLAAF had inducted the latest stealth fi ghter J-20.

Besides, China already has over 600 4 to 4.5 generation fi ghter jets in its air force.

“We have the capability to de-fend ourselves. But capabilities also include a lot of strategic is-sues in the global system. The diff erentials are too much be-tween India and China as far as

air power is concerned,” added Air Marshal Matheswaran.

According to defence experts, with its J-20, China is eyeing to compete with the US, which boasts of fi fth-generation fi ghter jets in-cluding F-22 and F-35 manufac-tured by Lockheed Martin.

India’s mega deal with Russia to develop a fi fth-generation air-craft, which could have put it in the same league as US and China, fell off in 2018 amidst uncertain-ties. There is no decision yet on whether fi fth-generation aircraft

will be purchased off the shelf even as the IAF is short of at least 10 to 12 squadrons of fi ghter jets.

With both the Bison and non-Bison versions of the MiG 21 also set to be decommissioned soon, the IAF has claimed that it is fully committed to developing the indigenous Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA) as re-placement. Air Chief Marshal Bhadauria had said in New Delhi last week that “there is no ques-tion of imports whatsoever in the foreseeable future”.

Telangana sacks 48,000striking transport staff AgenciesHyderabad

Telangana has sacked more than 48,000 employees of the state’s bus department

over an indefi nite strike, offi cials and news reports said yesterday.

The striking workers of the Telangana State Road Transport Corporation had refused to end their two-day protest by the government deadline on Satur-day, after which authorities an-nounced the decision late Sun-day night.

Chief Minister K Chan-drashekar Rao ruled out any negotiations with the striking workers – mainly bus drivers and conductors – to reinstate them and had made fresh recruit-ments.

“It is an unpardonable crime that they went on a strike during the festive season and at a time

when the road corporation is incurring huge losses and an in-creasing debt burden,” Rao said, NDTV news channel reported.

In recent days, millions of people are returning home to visit relatives and celebrate the festival of Dussehra, which falls today.

Senior state offi cial K Ram-akrishna Rao confi rmed that authorities had taken action by invoking provisions of the Es-sential Services Maintenance Act (ESMA), which rendered the strike illegal.

“Under ESMA provisions, if the conduct of employees is il-legal, they are liable for dismissal from service,” he said.

Around 50,000 workers had gone on strike on Friday with 26 demands, including releasing dues and a merger of the corpo-ration with the government.

Over 1,200 had not joined the strike.

The transport department had already recruited 5,400 drivers and bus conductors for its 10,400 buses, 60% of which were op-erational yesterday, according to transport offi cials.

The Centre of Indian Trade Unions described it as an “au-thoritarian” move to suppress the strike and demanded the immediate reinstatement of the dismissed employees.

Legal experts were divided over the controversial move, say-ing it was not tenable in court.

Government officials main-tain that under Indian law, es-sential services include public transport, power and water supplies, and the sackings were valid.

Meanwhile, tension prevailed at Telangana Martyrs’ Memo-rial at Gun Park near the state assembly when leaders of TSRTC employee unions reached there to pay their homage.

Indian engineers freed in Taliban prisoner swap

ReutersKabui

The Taliban have released three kidnapped engineers from India in exchange for

11 members of the militant group who were held in an Afghan pris-on, a senior Afghan government source said yesterday.

The Indian engineers were among seven, along with an Af-ghan national, who were kid-napped in May 2018 while work-ing at a power plant in northern Baghlan province of Afghani-stan.

No group had previously claimed responsibility.

None of the Taliban prisoners who were released were senior commanders, said the govern-ment source, who was not au-thorised to speak publicly.

He said the deal was not re-lated to recent Taliban meetings in Islamabad.

Two sources close to the Tali-

ban confi rmed the exchange took place on Sunday.

The Indian embassy in Kabul declined to comment.

Spokesmen for the Taliban and the US embassy in Kabul did not respond.

One of the seven kidnapped Indian engineers was released in March, the Indian government said at the time.

The status of the others was not clear.

Some 150 Indian engineers and technical experts were working across Afghanistan on large in-frastructure projects at the time of the kidnapping.

Kidnapping of foreigners and Afghans for extortion is common in Afghanistan.

Rampant poverty has wors-ened the situation.

The release of the three Indi-ans comes after the Taliban and US special representative for Af-ghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad met last week for the fi rst time since US.

14 Gulf TimesTuesday, October 8, 2019

INDIA

No life lost due to dengue in 2019,says Kejriwal

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal yesterday claimed that the number of dengue cases in Delhi this year were just 356, compared to 650 last year, and said no life was lost due to the disease.“I am happy to share that the anti-dengue campaign, ‘10 Baje-10 Hafte-10 Minute’ has shown stunning results. Congrats to the people of Delhi! The number of cases in Delhi so far is just 356, compared to 650 by this time last year. Most importantly, we have not lost a single life yet,” Kejriwal tweeted.Kejriwal on September 1 started the campaign urging people to inspect their homes for 10 minutes every week for 10 Sundays at 10am.The government has claimed that people have taken part extensively in the campaign that ends on November 15.Kejriwal said that in 2015, there were 15,000 cases and 60 people were killed due to dengue.

ED carries out fresh raids inMumbai in PMC Bank probeIANSNew Delhi

The Enforcement Directorate said yesterday it was carry-ing out raids at two places in

Mumbai of Housing Development and Infrastructure Limited (HDIL) chairman Rakesh Wadhawan and his son Sarang Wadhawan follow-ing fresh revelations in the Pun-jab & Maharashtra Co-operative (PMC) Bank fraud case.

The agency also said it had found another jet and a yacht registered in the names of the HDIL promoters.

“During raids today, we identi-fi ed a huge bungalow of 22 rooms in Alibag. It will be attached shortly,” said a senior ED offi cer, adding that one more private jet has been found to be in the name of the promoters of HDIL.

The offi cer also said that the agency has also found that the owners of HDIL gifted a number

of houses in posh locations in Maharashtra to top politicians.

However, the agency is tight-lipped about the names of the politicians.

On Saturday, the agency seized a private jet and jewellery worth Rs60 crore of Rakesh and Sarang Wadhawan. The ED said it was in touch with authorities in the Maldives to attach Wadhawan’s yacht which is anchored there.

The ED has also frozen the bank accounts of Waryam Singh, a former chairman of the bank, and also deposits and fi xed de-posits of around Rs10 crore.

On Friday, the agency seized 12 high-end cars which included two Rolls Royces, two Range Rov-ers and one Bentley of the HDIL chairman during raids at six places in Mumbai. The ED carried out raids, including at the head offi ce of HDIL and the residence of Rakesh Wadhawan which is known as Wadhawan House.

The fi nancial investigating

agency also raided the premises of Waryam Singh and former bank managing director Joy Thomas. The agency had fi led a money laundering case against HDIL promoters in the Rs4,355 crore bank fraud case.

The ED has said that they are also looking into the roles of sev-en directors of HDIL, including the Wadhawans. Both were ar-rested on Thursday. The agency is also looking for details of other 18 companies linked to HDIL.

It is alleged that HDIL, which is facing bankruptcy proceedings, and its group companies had tak-en huge loans from PMC Bank.

It is also alleged that HDIL accounted for nearly 73% of the bank’s total loans. Out of the Rs4,355 crore of loans under the scanner, around Rs2,146 crore were transferred to accounts held by the Wadhawans. An ac-count belonging to them had a balance of Rs2,009 crore on Au-gust 31, 2019, the ED said.

Kerala lady serial killer a psychopath:police chiefAgenciesKozhikode

A woman in Kerala who has confessed to poisoning six members of her family

over a 14-year period probably suff ered from a personality dis-order, police said yesterday.

Police suspect that Jolly Tho-mas could have hidden traits of a psychopath, who went on to eliminate her husband, in-laws and relatives one after the other.

Jolly, who killed six fam-ily members at regular intervals, could also be suff ering from split personality, where she led two diff erent roles in life – that of a housewife and a cold blooded serial killer, Director General of Police (DGP) Lok Nath Behera said.

The overall jovial personality of the 47-year-old suspect has baffl ed investigators, who are interrogating one of the most in-triguing criminal minds accused of wiping out an entire family.

While primary forensic evi-dence suggests that Jolly poi-soned six family members by serving them food laced with cy-anide, her friends and close rela-tives feel she is ‘innocent’ and is being framed.

The police have fi nally decid-ed to conduct an in-depth psy-choanalysis of Jolly to establish whether she had any traits of be-ing a psychopath.

“Let me admit, this case is too complicated as it involves a lady who apparently looks very nor-mal in her behaviour, but evi-dence gathered by us indicates that she is a serial killer. I have now asked offi cials to engage the best psychologists to carry out an in-depth study of her mental

behaviour,” the offi cer told IANS.Behera said that forensic ex-

amination of the remains of the victims, which have been ex-humed, suggests that cyanide poisoning caused all the deaths.

“But we have to probe thread-bare into the cause of deaths. To ascertain that cyanide was used to kill the victims, I intend to dispatch the samples to the best forensic labs. If we do not get any specifi c leads from the Indian labs, the government would send the samples to England, which is considered to have the most advanced forensic toxicology labs, to fi nd out traces of cyanide if the chemical was used in the killings,” said Behera.

Meanwhile, Jolly’s son Romo Roy, 21, said that though it was diffi cult to believe that her mother could carry out the kill-ings of his father, grandfather, grandmother and other family members, if the evidence gath-ered suggests that she is the ac-cused, then the law should take its own course.

Romo’s statement could shed more light on the mystery kill-ings which were buried in police fi les for years.

Jolly was allegedly motivated by wanting control of the fam-

ily fi nances and property, police said.

According to police, the fi rst poisoning was of her mother-in-law, who died in 2002 after eat-ing mutton soup. In 2008, her-father-in-law died, followed by her husband in 2011, who police said died after eating rice and curry. An autopsy conducted on his body at the time confi rmed poisonous substances in his stomach, but police treated his death as suicide.

Jolly’s husband’s uncle was then allegedly given coff ee laced with cyanide as punishment for insisting that a postmortem be carried out on his nephew.

In 2014, police said Jolly killed the two-year-old daughter of her dead husband’s cousin, Scaria Shaju. The cousin’s wife was then killed in 2016. A year later Jolly and Shaju married.

The police yesterday ques-tioned Shaju. He told the police he had no role in the killings.

After 90 minutes of question-ing, the police took him to the Vadakara offi ce of the Superin-tendent of Police K G Simon and after another round of question-ing, Shaju was let off .

“Our probe is going on in the right direction and if required we will ask Shaju to come back again. We are in the process of verifying all aspects as many more will be also questioned,” Simon said.

Shaju’s father Zachariah, who had told the media earlier that his son was trapped into mar-riage by Jolly and her elder son, was asked to present himself be-fore the probe team.

In a related development, Jolly’s friend and beauty parlour owner Sulekha denied that Jolly was her partner in business.

One of the 22 rooms in the bungalow of the Wadhawans in Alibag in Maharashtra.

Nationalist Congress Party leader Supriya Sule, Maharashtra Congress president Balasaheb Thorat and NCP Maharashtra president Jayant Patil launch their joint election manifesto in Mumbai yesterday.

Crisis-hit Congress, upbeat BJP gear up for assembly electionsIANSNew Delhi

The Congress is feeling the heat as the party is locked in a severe infi ghting in

Maharashtra and Haryana, two states which go to elections on October 21.

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, on the other hand, has planned mega campaign rallies in both states to be addressed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah.

The prime minister is set to address four rallies in Haryana and nine in Maharashtra, while Shah will hit the campaign trail after the Dussehra festival.

Saff ron units in both states have been galvanised to make all arrangements to ensure the success of these public meet-ings.

The Congress, on the other hand, is mired in internal con-fl icts and the party’s star cam-

paigner Rahul Gandhi too is missing in action after report-edly fl ying to an unknown des-tination on Saturday.

However, sources in the party said that Gandhi will campaign in the two poll-bound states.

Given the present backdrop, the Congress is relying on party general secretary Priya-nka Gandhi to lead the charge in campaigning for the upcoming assembly elections.

Former prime minister Man-mohan Singh will also cam-paign for the party and is likely to pose some serious questions on the economic slowdown fac-ing the country.

Congress’s interim president Sonia Gandhi may not be able to address many rallies, but will make her presence in both states, a party leader said.

Meanwhile, senior Congress leader and former Haryana fi -nance minister Sampat Singh resigned from the party yester-day.

Though he is yet to announce his next move, speculation is rife that Singh, who had a meeting with BJP leader and Haryana Chief Minister Mano-har Lal Khattar on Sunday, may join the ruling party.

“Either I am not fi t for the Congress, or the Congress is not fi t for me. I am quitting the Congress,” he told reporters in Hisar.

Singh said that he had helped the Congress form the govern-ment in Haryana in 2009, but he was not given his due.

Announcing his resignation, Singh said he took the decision after realising that he was not needed there.

He said he was upset with former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda for not intervening in ticket allocation in Hisar district.

According to him, at least 40 strong party candidates were ignored at the time of ticket al-location.

Asked if he would join any

other party, Singh said: “I was contacted by a former col-league, but was not in a position to take a decision.”

In 2009, Singh resigned from the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) and joined the Con-gress.

In Panaji, president of the Congress women’s wing Pra-tima Coutinho denied reports that she was planning join the BJP.

Coutinho’s comments came a day after Congress MLA Aleixo Reginaldo said he was hurt by the actions of his party, even as BJP leader Chief Minis-ter Pramod Sawant praised him for doing a good job as an oppo-sition legislator.

Coutinho said yesterday that the social media posts which claimed she would quit the Congress soon were base-less.

“I will never leave the Con-gress party. I am here to stay,” Coutinho said at a press confer-ence in Panaji.

The alumni and students of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) yesterday accused the institute’s administration of ‘killing JNU’s culture’, and ‘taking away freedom and liberty from students’ after it uploaded a draft of new hostel manual on its website, seeking suggestions from both students and teachers. The draft that mentions fixing a curfew time of 11.30pm, “appropriate dressing rule” in dining halls and revision in fee structure, drew flak from both current and former students of the university as they claimed that the authorities have been trying to take away ‘liberty’ of students. JNU alumni Yogendra Yadav, president of Swaraj India said: “The post-dinner meetings in the university began only after 10pm and such rules that put restrictions on entry timings would amount to killing JNU’s culture.”

A 25-year-old man has been arrested after he allegedly impersonated as a Biju Janata Dal (BJD) legislator and tried to dupe a smartphone shop owner in Odisha’s Bolangir district, police said yesterday. Lokan Mishra from Barpalipada in Bolangir district, posed as Patnagarh MLA Saroj Meher by creating a fake account on Facebook, the police said. Mishra used to make shady transactions in the name of Meher. The police said Mishra had messaged from the fake account to Sriram Das, the owner of a mobile phone store, demanding a smartphone from him. Das informed the matter to Meher, who filed a police complaint. The police arrested Mishra after setting up a trap.

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) yesterday said it has seized immovable and movable properties totalling Rs1,489 crore across six states in the case of embezzlement of public deposits by the Adarsh Credit Co-operative Society Ltd (ACCSL). The properties belong to the Adarsh Group of Mukesh Modi, Virendra Modi and his family, the Riddhi Siddhi Group of Mahendra Tak and Saurabh Tak. ACCSL was accused of not returning money invested in the company by depositors. “The investigations reveal that Mukesh Modi, in collusion with his relatives Virendra Modi, Rahul Modi and other associates, siphoned off depositors’ funds,” said the ED. “Huge amounts were siphoned off by means of exaggerated salaries, incentives and commissions to the relatives and companies of Mukesh Modi’s family,” the ED said.

A Right to Information (RTI) activist has allegedly died in police custody in Rajasthan’s Barmer district. Superintendent of Police Sharad Chowdhary said: “Three people including the RTI activist Jagdish Golia were brought to the Pachpadra police station on Sunday following a complaint received against them for indulging in a fight. All three of them were cousins and the fight broke out due to some land dispute.” The activist’s cousins were granted bail but in the meantime, Golia’s health deteriorated. He was immediately rushed to the Nahata Hospital where he was declared dead. Further investigation is on, Chowdhary added. An FIR has been registered against the police staff which also includes a Station House Officer (SHO).

Six people including folk singer Sushma Nekpur’s live-in partner and two contract killers have been arrested for her murder, police said yesterday. According to the police, the live-in partner, Gajendra Bhati, hatched a conspiracy to kill Nekpur as he was fed up with her increasing demands and hired the contract killers. “The contract killers have been identified as Mukesh, a resident of Bulandshahr and Sandeep, a resident of Gautam Budh Nagar,” Senior Superintendent of Police Vaibhav Krishna told IANS. Apart from Bhati, police have also arrested his driver Amit, Amit’s cousin Ajab Singh and Bhati’s friend Pramod Mahsana, the SSP said. There was an attempt on her life earlier too, but she survived, the officer said.

JNU students, alumni slam new hostel rules draft

Youth impersonating as MLA arrested in Odisha

ED attaches assets inembezzlement case

Rajasthan RTI activist dies in police custody

Six arrested in folk singer’s murder case

CONTROVERSY CRIMEINVESTIGATION TRAGEDY CRIME

Jolly Thomas: personality disorder?

Deportation ofundocumentedHaitians to startin BahamasTribune News ServiceNassau

A moratorium on depor-tations for Haitians in the Bahamas who sur-

vived Hurricane Dorian when it slammed the islands of Abaco and Grand Bahama last month has run its course.

Speaking to members of Par-liament for the fi rst time since Dorian made landfall in the Bahamas, Prime Minister Hu-bert Minnis issued a warning to undocumented migrants in the island nation.

“I serve notice to all those who are here illegally that they can leave voluntarily or they will be forced to leave,” Minnis said.

The Bahamas has confi rmed 60 deaths from Dorian, with another 400 people still miss-ing. Minnis also said there are more than 1,600 people still living in shelters. Earlier the US Agency for International De-velopment announced that it would be providing additional aid as search and rescue eff orts continue in Abaco, where debris removal began last week.

In the immediate aftermath of the devastating storm, Min-nis had said his administration would put a hold on deporta-tions and personally told Hai-tians during a visit to Abaco that they would be assisted. But now, a month after the storm, the government is changing its tune.

Immigration Minister Elsworth Johansen told report-ers earlier that shelters would not be used to “circumvent the law.”

“If you’re in a shelter and you’re undocumented and you’re not here in the right way, you’re still subject to deportation and the enforcement of the immigra-tion laws,” Johnson told the Nas-sau Guardian. “There’s an Immi-gration Act and the Immigration Act is in full eff ect and the direc-tor (of immigration) understands that he must enforce it.”

The deportation announce-ment comes after the Bahamas government issued a statement last month saying that residents of four shantytowns, among them The Mudd and Sand Banks in Abaco, were forbidden from rebuilding. The government also said that it would acquire the land of the shantytowns and monitor them by drone and helicopter to ensure people do not return.

Bahamas Attorney General Carl Bethel said no one in a shel-ter is currently being asked to

show immigration documents. That, however, will change once individuals start to re-enter society and try to resume their lives.

“I can assure you that no per-son in a hurricane shelter any-where in the Commonwealth of the Bahamas is being subjected to any kind of immigration in-quiry,” he told the Miami Her-ald. “None. That’s a fi rm and fi xed policy of the government.”

Bethel could not say how many undocumented Haitian migrants lived in the Bahamas. But the government’s decision is creating fear among immi-grants and their advocates, who over the years have criticised the Bahamas for its treatment of Haitians.

“At some point in time peo-ple are going to move out of the shelters ... they are going to seek to make arrangements for employment, etcetera,” Bethel said. “At that point it’s a legiti-mate inquiry. You’re no longer a refugee, you’re moving out and seeking to move into the main-stream again. But enter that mainstream in the correct way.”

Haitian activists in Miami have condemned the decision to deport undocumented Hai-tians.

“It is unconscionable for the Bahamas to deport un-documented immigrants after they’ve gone through such trau-matic experiences,” said Mar-leine Bastien, executive director of the Family Action Network Movement. “It is inhumane to deport (people) to Haiti which is going through one of the worst political crisis in its his-tory, with grave human-rights abuses, arbitrary killings and massacres.”

During the address, Minnis reported that the Bahamian Na-tional Emergency Management Agency has received $5.1mn in donations. The amount does not include funds that have been pledged, he said.

In addition, he said, the United Nations Development Program will contribute $1mn for Dorian recovery eff orts. The Inter-American Develop-ment Bank has also provided a $100mn loan.

“We must maximise our ability to recover as quickly as possible in order to quickly get our communities and the economy back on track fol-lowing catastrophic events,” Minnis said. “A key part of any readiness plan is to have access to resources as quickly acces-sible to speed up response and recovery efforts.”

Wildlife traffi cking on therise across Latin AmericaGuardian News and MediaLima

The illegal wildlife trade is increasing all across Latin America, the fi rst high-

level conference on the issue in the Americas was told.

After drugs, guns and human traffi cking, wildlife traffi cking is the world’s most lucrative or-ganised crime with an annual value of around $20bn each year, according to a 2016 report by In-terpol and the UN environment programme.

As the world’s most biodiverse continent, home to roughly 40% of the world’s plant and animal species, Latin America is a hub for the criminal trade. Wildlife traffi cking is increasing in most countries in the region, includ-ing the conference’s host, Peru, said the head of its forestry and wildlife service, Luis Alberto Gonzales-Zuniga.

“It’s not stalled, or declin-ing, it’s on the rise. It’s a glo-balised business and it needs a globalised response,” he told the Guardian.

Whether it is the trade in live wildlife or dead animals and their parts, the countries from which they originate need to take the crime more seriously, said Salvador Ortega, Interpol’s head of forest crime for Latin America. They need to under-stand that they are part of the supply chain for a transnational criminal organisation, he told the Guardian.

“Corruption is the most dis-ruptive element for our inves-tigations in this region,” Ortega added. “It damages internation-al police co-operation and tran-snational investigations which are fundamental to combat a crime whose origin may be this region, but whose destination is the regions which fi nance these crimes.” While collectors in the

US, Europe and the Middle East largely drive the smuggling of live specimens, east Asia, par-ticularly China, is a major desti-nation for wildlife parts, Ortega noted.

The poaching of jaguars, the largest big cat in the Americas, for teeth, skin and bones has grown for the fi rst time since the 1970s to feed rising demand for Chinese traditional medicine and exotic jewellery. It is linked to increased Chinese investment in the region, experts say.

The threatened carnivore was the image chosen as the emblem for the initiative launched in Lima on illegal wildlife trade last week. Revered by several pre-hispanic cultures, the animal continues to hold a mystical appeal for the continent’s many peoples even as it faces new threats.

Lishu Li, programme man-ager for the Wildlife Conserva-tion Society (WCS) in China, said that the government there

was taking “serious actions to combat the illegal wildlife trade” with more prosecutions, longer jail terms and fi nes.

Sue Lieberman, vice president for international policy at the WCS, said there were strong in-centives for the region to combat wildlife traffi cking beyond fi ght-ing crime.

“Ecotourism for one is re-ally important source of foreign exchange,” she said. “But if you don’t have wildlife to view peo-ple aren’t going to come.

“If enforcement is increased and governments collaborate more with each other I believe we can stop this in time,” she added.

Both the UK and the US gov-ernments have backed this sum-mit, which is a follow-up to the illegal wildlife trade conference in London last year.

The UK Environment Minis-ter, Zac Goldsmith, commended the conference. “We need to

make sure this wildlife trade doesn’t drive further biodiver-sity loss and damage fragile eco-systems,” he said.

A US state department spokes-person said the country was a “leader in the global fi ght against wildlife traffi cking, a serious tran-snational crime that threatens security, undermines the rule of law, fuels corruption, robs com-munities of legitimate economic livelihoods, and pushes species to the brink of extinction”.

An executive order signed by President Trump in 2017 “spe-cifi cally recognised wildlife traffi cking as one of four prior-ity areas in eff orts to dismantle transnational criminal organisa-tions”, the spokesperson added.

The 27 mostly Latin American and Caribbean countries at the conference agreed to share in-telligence and enforcement and take the crime more seriously. The next meeting was scheduled to be held in Colombia in 2021.

Ecuador shopkeepers facearrest for food price hikeReutersQuito

Ecuadorean authorities be-gan arresting shopkeepers for raising food prices as

indigenous groups clashed with security forces in protests against President Lenin Moreno’s aus-terity measures.

One man died in central Azuay province when roadblocks blocked an ambulance from reaching him after he was hit by a car, authorities said.

Local media identifi ed him as a protester, but that could not be confi rmed.

Ecuadoreans complain con-sumer prices have risen sharply as a knock-on eff ect of Moreno’s abolition of fuel subsidies, which has also triggered the nation’s worst unrest in more than a dec-ade.

“Everyone’s raising prices with the excuse of the gasoline price rise,” disgruntled pen-sioner Camilo Salazar, 65, said at a food market in the coastal city of Guayaquil, where prices have risen by up to a third in just a few days.

The government said 20 people were detained over the

weekend for over-charging for products including corn, onions, carrots and potatoes, which are all subject to price controls.

“There is no justifi cation for raising the prices,” Interior Minister Maria Romo said in a statement. Ecuador’s dollarised economy had infl ation of just 0.27% in 2018. After a two-day strike by transport unions, in-digenous groups have taken the lead in demonstrations against Moreno’s economic measures.

They barricaded roads in vari-ous places with burning tyres, branches and rocks.

Some protesters threw stones at security forces, who responded with tear gas.

The CONAIE umbrella indig-enous group published a video showing spear-wielding inhabit-ants blocking a road and shouting “Down with the government!”

The 66-year-old Moreno won the 2017 election and has set the oil-producing nation on a centrist track after years of socialist rule under predecessor Rafael Correa.

Moreno has declared a two-month state of emergency. Though he enjoys the support of business-men and the military, Moreno’s popularity has sunk to under 30% — compared with 70% after his

election — and Ecuador has a vola-tile history.

Indigenous-led protests top-pled three presidents in the decade before Correa took power in 2007.

Witnesses said that in Lasso, south of the capital Quito, indig-enous groups captured and took away several soldiers after violent confrontations.

Struggling with a large foreign debt and fi scal defi cit, Quito this year reached a $4.2bn loan deal with the International Monetary Fund that requires belt-tightening economic reforms.

As well as ending fuel subsi-dies, the government is reducing the state work force and planning some privatisations.

Moreno says the fuel subsi-dies, in place for four decades, had distorted the economy and cost $60bn.

Though transport unions stopped their action after being allowed to raise fares, other sec-tors have called a national strike tomorrow.

Moreno, who uses a wheelchair after a 1998 shooting during a rob-bery that left him paraplegic, has refused to overturn the fuel meas-ure but said the government will increase benefi ts for the poor to compensate its impact.

Rains help douseBolivian forest fi res

ReutersLa Paz

Heavy rains over recent days in the Bolivian Amazon have helped put

out forest fi res that have raged for two months across the land-locked South American nation, charring more than 4mn hec-tares of land, local authorities said yesterday.

The storms helped Bolivia’s military contain blazes in the region of Chiquitania, home to large areas of dry forests and indigenous communities that have lived in them for centu-ries.

“Satellite images no longer detect burning or reactivated fi res,” said Cinthia Asin, an of-fi cial for environmental issues for the provincial government of Santa Cruz, a farming province in eastern Bolivia hard-hit by the fi res.

Indigenous groups have marched through the province, while in the capital city on Fri-day hundreds of thousands of people protested against what they said had been a slow re-sponse to the fi res by the na-tional government.

The national weather service also told Reuters that in Chiq-

uitania no fi res were registered yesterday.

But it warned that strong sun and high temperatures were ex-pected to return to the region over coming says, raising the risk of fi res ahead.

Armed forces commander Williams Kaliman said there was no immediate plan to with-draw about 5,000 troops that had been sent to battle the worst fi res Bolivia has had over the last two decades.

Critics say deforestation, caused by the government’s policy of increasing farming, is to blame for the disaster.

The government says it has spent more than $20mn in its eff ort to douse the fl ames.

Complaints over the govern-ment’s handling of the crisis have dented the popularity of Bolivia’s leftist President, Evo Morales.

In neighbouring Brazil, the number of fi res in the Amazon rainforest receded in September amid improved weather condi-tions and containment eff orts by the country’s military.

The army said there was no immediate plan to withdraw about 5,000 troops that had been sent to battle the worst fi res Bolivia has had over the last two decades.

Poll results contested

Former president (1996-2000 and 2004-2012) and presidential pre-candidate for the Dominican Liberation party (PLD), Leonel Fernandez (left), announces in a press conference that he won’t recognise results yet, claiming that a problem in the software in the voting machines adulterated results, as his main competitor Gonzalo Castillo takes the lead in the primary elections, in Santo Domingo. The first primary elections with automated voting in the Dominican Republic took place on Sunday, in which the two main parties, the Dominican Liberation (PLD) and the Modern Revolutionary (PRM), chose their candidates for the May 2020 elections.

LATIN AMERICA

Gulf Times Tuesday, October 8, 2019 15

Campaign rally

Argentine presidential candidate Alberto Fernandez of Frente de Todos party delivers a speech during a campaign rally in Buenos Aires yesterday. Argentina will hold presidential elections on October 27.

PAKISTAN

Gulf Times Tuesday, October 8, 201916

Prime Minister Imran Khan is meeting Chinese Presi-dent Xi Jinping and Pre-

mier Li Keqiang in Beijing today to discuss the security situation in the disputed region of Kash-mir as well as economic ties, his offi ce said yesterday.

It would be Khan’s third visit to Beijing in less than a year.

Tensions over Kashmir have risen drastically since August when New Delhi revoked the autonomy of its portion of the territory, which both India and Pakistan rule in part and claim in full.

Pakistan expelled India’s am-bassador and suspended bilat-eral trade soon after, and Khan launched an international di-plomacy campaign in an attempt to draw global condemnation of India’s treatment of Kashmiris.

In a speech to the UN Gen-eral Assembly in New York last month, Khan urged world pow-ers to intervene to prevent a pos-sible face-off between the two nuclear-armed rivals.

China, which also holds a thinly populated high-altitude area of Kashmir and has a long-standing dispute over the border with India, has called New Del-hi’s actions “unacceptable”.

“The visit will be instrumen-tal in further cementing Paki-

stan’s economic, investment and strategic ties with China,” said the statement from Khan’s offi ce. “The prime minister will exchange views ... the state of peace and security in South Asia arising from the situation in oc-cupied Jammu and Kashmir.”

India says that the status of Kashmir is a domestic issue and that Kashmir will economically benefi t from its move.

Khan’s visit will also include talks on the progress of the China Pakistan Economic Cor-ridor (CPEC), the $60bn infra-structure programme that China launched as part of its fl agship “Belt and Road” project.

Some offi cials and observers have said momentum on CPEC projects is slowing, in part due to concerns over the size of Pa-kistan’s debt and struggling economy, which led Islama-bad to turn to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a $6bn bailout package in July.

In a news conference on Sun-day, Pakistan’s Khusro Bakhtiar, the minister for planning, de-velopment and reforms, denied that there had been any slow-

down in CPEC projects.“(There’s) a narrative be-

ing built up that they have be-come slow; I reject it, it’s totally wrong,” he said.

Bakhtiar also said that the Beijing visit would include talks on the ML-1 railway, one CPEC project which has stalled due to questions over funding.

Prime Minister Khan’s visit comes before the Financial Ac-

tion Task Force (FATF) is due to decide whether Pakistan’s ef-forts to clamp down on terror fi nancing are suffi cient for it to avoid being placed on a ‘black list’ of nations that includes Iran and North Korea.

China is one of 39 FATF mem-bers.

The government did not say whether Khan’s trip would ad-dress the issue.

PM Imran meeting Xi to discuss Kashmir, CPECReuters/DPAIslamabad

Prime Minister Khan: making his third visit to Beijing in less than a year.

Pakistan stops Kashmiri activists’ march to Indian border

Authorities in Pakistan-administered Kashmir have

blocked activists of a separatist group from march-

ing to the de facto border with India in the disputed

region, off icials said yesterday.

Activists from the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation

Front (JKLF) group began the march on Friday to

cross the Line of Control (LoC), a frontier that divides

the region between India and Pakistan.

They wanted to cross the LoC to protest an Indian

move in August to strip the part of Kashmir under its

control of special autonomy.

“We want to cross the line dividing Kashmiris but

our march has been stopped,” protest leader Abdul

Hammed Butt said yesterday.

The JKLF wants the freedom of Kashmir from both

countries and has the history of making attempts to

run over the LoC, which the group does not recognise

as legitimate frontier.

The police erected barricades to stop protesters 8km

from the frontier, said Mushtaq Minhas, information

minister of Pakistan-administered Kashmir.

“It’s a highly-militarised area and there are mines

everywhere ... we don’t want to expose them to the

danger,” Minhas said.

Off icials would meet protest leaders to convince them

to call off the march, he added.

Anger has been growing in Pakistan and the area of

Kashmir under its control after the Indian August 5 de-

cision and a subsequent lockdown of the region with

restrictions on movement and communication. – DPA

The council of the Hu-man Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) has

expressed serious concern over what it said were recent attempts to undermine political opposi-tion in the country and curtail the freedom of expression, urg-ing the need for criminalising enforced disappearances and protecting the rights of religious minorities.

In a statement issued on be-half of its chairperson Dr Mehdi Hasan after its biannual meeting here, the HRCP maintained that it is seriously concerned over the government’s recent attempts to undermine political opposition.

There were alarming signs that the role of parliament was reced-ing.

“The recently-promulgated KP Actions (in Aid of Civil Power) Ordinance 2019 not only curtails certain fundamental rights, but it also runs contrary to democratic principles,” it said.

It said that the government must take steps to implement the Supreme Court’s 2014 judgment

to protect the rights of religious minorities. “Our reports show that Pakistan’s religious minori-ties remain vulnerable to faith-based discrimination and to the misuse of the blasphemy laws.”

The statement said the HRCP’s recent fact-fi nding missions re-vealed that “enforced disappear-ances” were still being used as a means of coercion by state actors.

There was an urgent need for legislation to criminalise this practice so that perpetrators were held accountable, it added.

It also said the surge in recent cases of child abuse pointed to the increasing brutalisation of society, and both the state and society must take responsibility for protecting children.

The body condemned any measures by the state to curtail freedom of expression or to frag-ment the media through the in-troduction of media tribunals.

It demanded provincial status for Gilgit-Baltistan and all fun-damental rights given to other citizens of Pakistan, for its peo-ple.

It was perturbed by the re-surgence of religious extremism in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) in

the form of the KP government’s distribution of burqas among fe-male students, saying that such moves were blatant attempts to restrict women’s freedoms (see report on the right).

It said that rather than invest-ing more in healthcare and edu-cation, the government appeared to be diverting resources away from these sectors.

The body also said that it is deeply alarmed by the lockdown in Indian-administered Kashmir by the Indian government and the subsequent war rhetoric from both sides of the border.

Both India and Pakistan must recognise immediately that the people of Kashmir have the right to self-determination and that both have a duty to protect and promote regional peace.

Earlier, speakers at a seminar on reclaiming Pakistan’s civic space organised by the HRCP at its headquarters expressed con-cern over the way citizens’ fun-damental freedoms were being compromised in Pakistan, urging the legal community, academia, rights groups and civil society to jointly keep this from escalating.

Former HRCP secretary-gen-eral and veteran journalist I A Rehman wondered who would question the state if it was not abiding by the Constitution.

“There has to be a civil so-ciety which can hold the state accountable. But for that, one

needs a civil society that is or-ganised and dynamic. Our state has gone into sectarianism be-cause it does not want to be ac-countable to people,” he added.

Rehman expressed concern over infl ation, the marginalisa-tion of women, and the ban on 62 unions in Baluchistan.

He also demanded that the au-thorities make public the report of a commission constituted by former chief justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Chaudhry on missing persons.

He said that the report had stated that only the police had the authority to arrest any citi-zen, and those recovered from the custody of any other institu-tion must be compensated.

Politician Afrasiab Khattak said the country had two sys-tems, de jure (constitution) and de facto (the real management).

He said that eff orts are being made to reverse the 18th Amend-ment, further claiming that there might be a national government in the near future.

The politician said that while the freedom of expression is the soul of a democracy, political parties have been largely silent

over attempts to curb it.He also said that for the fi rst

time, Punjab had demanded de-mocracy.

Khattak said he hoped that this demand would gain strength, that all the democrats get to-gether, and the people – the real owners of the country – would change its direction.

Activist Hina Jilani said that people are being prosecuted without any legal framework, adding that one could not talk of protecting human rights without protecting human rights defend-ers.

“We need recovery of the missing persons and not their fi gures,” she asserted.

Jilani also said that civil spaces in Pakistan had shrunk, making it diffi cult to protect human rights.

Politicians, bureaucracy and democratic institutions are being marginalised.

It is the basic right of the peo-ple to criticise political parties, but it is also their duty to protect them.

Rights activists Mohamed Tehseen and Fareeha Aziz, jour-nalist Badar Alam, Lahore Uni-versity of Management Sciences (LUMS) professor Ali Usman Qasmi, and HRCP secretary-general Harris Khalique also spoke on the occasion, citing ex-amples of how space for civil lib-erties is being shrunk in Pakistan, threatening basic human rights.

Human rights body alarmed at moves to curtail the freedom of expression

InternewsLahore

Pakistani social media was fuming yesterday after pictures showing girls in

burqas bought for them by lo-cal authorities went viral, ignit-ing anger in a deeply patriarchal country where women have fought for their rights for dec-ades.

A district councillor in the small village of Cheena, in Khy-ber Pakhtunkhwa province, used some Rs90,000 ($570) of local government funds to buy around 90 burqas for students at the government-run middle school in the village.

The region is deeply conserva-tive, and many women there traditionally wear burqas which cover them from head to foot – including their faces.

The offi cial, Muzafar Shah, said that he had purchased the garments at the request of par-ents who could not aff ord them as one of his fi nal acts before stepping down from his four-year tenure.

“Around 90% of the girls al-ready wear burqas, so I thought these poor girls should have new burqas,” he told AFP, adding that previously he had used the funds to buy the school a solar panel, build a washroom, and purchase new furniture.

However, he snapped two pic-tures – one showing a classroom full of girls wearing the burqas,

and a second showing them piled on a desk – which swiftly ignited outrage on social media.

The garments were purchased “instead of focusing on improv-ing quality of education, enforc-ing strict and exemplary punish-ments for: harassing, abusing and raping”, tweeted one user, Fatima Wali.

Gulalai Ismail, a Pakistani women’s rights activist who fl ed the country recently for New York, cheered the outrage.

“I’m glad to see time is chang-ing and now more & more people are standing up against objecti-fi cation of women in the garb of protection,” she wrote.

Shah said he did not under-stand the criticism.

“The people of the area are very happy with me ... had I dis-tributed jeans among the girls, the media and liberals would have praised me,” he said.

Provincial minister of educa-tion Zia Ullah Bangash said that an inquiry has been launched in the matter, and stressed that the garment is not part of the school uniform.

“Our dress code includes white trousers and a loose blue tunic, however it is up to girls if they want to dress a burqa over the uniform. We can’t force them,” he said.

The move came weeks after government was forced to scrap an order for female students to wear veils in two other conserva-tive districts of the same prov-ince.

Social media outrage over burqa purchaseAFPPeshawar

The HRCP statement said that recent fact-fi nding missions revealed that ‘enforced disappearances’ are still being used

Rights activist Hina Jilani says that civil spaces in Pakistan have shrunk, making it diffi cult to protect human rights

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan has urged the government to take steps to protect the rights of religious minorities

All in a day’s work

A painter applies a layer of paint on a wooden panel used as a base for a boat, while others have their tea, at boat building yard at Karachi’s Fish Harbour.

Despite the eff orts of the provincial government to monitor and contain the

spread of the dengue virus, the disease continues to affl ict scores of people in Rawalpindi.

Under the circumstances, many people are turning towards esoteric healing (traditional rem-edies) instead of allopathic med-icines to treat dengue patients.

Instead of going to hospitals and clinics, many people have started relying on alternative therapy and homoeopathic med-icines which, according to users, is proving to be quite eff ective in curing the dengue fever.

Rawalpindi-based hakeem (a practitioner of traditional medi-cine) Shamim Ahmed Khan said that to cure dengue, he uses a concoction made up of diff erent leaves and herbs.

The typical medicine that he prescribes to dengue patients includes guava leaves, half a cup of arq mako (black nightshade water), arq kasni (distillate of chicory), and arq saunf (fennel seed water) mixed with sharbat bazooreen (a syrup made of vari-ous herbs).

“The concoction, which a pa-tient must consume thrice a day, not only cures the fever but it also helps the body to rapidly re-generate the blood platelet count which becomes severely low when a person is infected with the dengue virus,” he said.

He added that as a precau-tionary measure, people should consume a concoction made up of lemon juice, mint leaves, ap-ple and banana peel two to three times a day.

“The concoction is known for strengthening a person’s im-mune system, therefore, con-suming it will reduce the likeli-hood of contracting the virus.”

Explaining the benefi ts of non-traditional medicine to treat dengue patients, homoeo-pathic doctor Ishrat Bhatti said that in case of dengue fever, three homoeopathic medicines can be used to bring the fever down and increase the platelet count.

He added that the medicines also work as a relaxant.

Even though people endorse alternative medicine, it is worth noting that there is no scientifi c evidence to support homoeopa-thy or traditional medicine as ef-fective treatments for dengue or any other health condition.

“People have been using alter-native medicines for hundreds of years, however, it is hard to com-ment on the eff ectiveness of al-ternative medicine or lack there-of because it may or may not work, depending on individual cases,” said Dr Ahsaan-ul-Haq Chaudhry, specialist of internal medicine at Mumtaz Hospital Karachi.

Pakistanis turning to traditional medicine to treat dengue patientsInternewsRawalpindi

Scheme to provide food to the poor ready for launchEstablished by the Poverty Alleviation and Social Safety Division and Saylani Welfare International Trust (SWIT) in less than a month, the Ehsaas Langar scheme is all set to be inaugurated with the opening its first langar (community eating) in Islamabad.The initiative, which aims to reduce inequality and invest in people through a public-private partnership model, will feature free distribution of charity food among the deserving and marginalised on a regular daily basis.The scheme will be gradually expanded across the country, providing meals to people in need.Reflecting on the initiative, Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Social Protection and Poverty Alleviation Dr Sania Nishtar stated: “Ehsaas Langar is a diff erent scheme that has been established on the instructions of the Prime Minister to make sure that charity reaches out the deserving.:“It is indeed, the highest honour for Ehsaas to feed the poor with respect and dignity,” the off icial added.The SWIT, which is partnering with Ehsaas on this langar initiative, is a reputable Pakistani charity that is focused on social welfare of the poor and distressed.The trust endeavours to provide quality services, including food, education, medical and social welfare, free of cost to the marginalised.

PHILIPPINES17Gulf Times

Tuesday, October 8, 2019

Palace backs plan for lifestyle check on copsBy Catherine S ValenteManila Times

Malacanang yesterday backed the proposal to have police offi cers

undergo lifestyle check amid the investigation of several police offi cers allegedly involved in the recycling of illegal drugs.

Palace spokesman Salvador Panelo said the Philippine Na-tional Police (PNP) internal af-fairs unit could initiate the life-style review.

“It is a good idea. There should be lifestyle check inter-nally among PNP, and for that matter, all heads of department should conduct their own,” Pan-elo told reporters.

“It will help (the anti-corrup-tion campaign).If you see there are people who are not supposed to be having this kind of wealth, then you have a problem,” he added.

Sen. Richard Gordon, who leads the Senate probe on the recycling of seized illegal drugs, said PNP chief Oscar Albayalde and the 13 alleged “ninja cops” in Pampanga must undergo life-

style check to determine if they benefi ted from the controversial 2013 drug sting against an al-leged Chinese drug lord.

Albayalde and his former sub-ordinates were accused of ac-quiring new sports utility ve-hicles after the drug operation where some 200 kilograms of shabu were allegedly seized.

But the police officers only declared 36 kilograms as evi-dence.

Gordon yesterday said Al-bayalde was either negligent or knew about the link of his former men to illegal drugs but chose not to investigate them.

Albayalde was Pampanga police chief when the drug op-eration was held.

“He is between negligence and possible knowledge of the offence and never did any-thing about it except talk to Gen. Aquino,“ Gordon said in a phone patch interview, re-ferring to Philippine Drug En-forcement Agency chief Aaron Aquino.

Asked if the Senate has clear proof for President Rodrigo Duterte to decide on Albayal-de’s fate, Gordon said, “I think

we have enough information for him to make a decision.”

“You’ll see that the Senate is interested to help in the presi-dent’s undertaking (against

drugs). That was why it is wrong to say that this was all about politics),” he said.

“But again I want Gen. Al-bayalde to come forward to an-

swer questions that need to be answered. “We will not make any hasty conclusions with-out him answering some ques-tions,” he added.

Asked whether the commit-tee has established Albayalde’s link to the illegal drugs trade, Gordon said, “Well, there are ways of being involved. One is by negligence or by your own fault. He never explained. One is by negligence wherein you did not do anything or by your own fault, you were really in-volved. He never explained why he did not conduct any investi-gation.”

Also yesterday, Justice Sec-retary Menardo Guevarra cre-ated a three-member panel of prosecutors to reinvestigate the complaint filed by the Crimi-nal Investigation and Detection Group against the so-called ninja cops.

The panel shall be headed by Senior Assistant State Pros-ecutor Alexander Suarez with Assistant State Prosecutors Jo-sie Christina Dugay and Gino Paulo Santiago as members.

The panel has 30 days to complete its investigation.

A man and a child walk along the shore of the western Philippine coastal town of Baler, Aurora province facing the Pacific Ocean.

Leisure WHO stresses

need for Asia,

Pacifi c nations to

immunise childrenDPAManila

The World Health Or-ganisation (WHO) yesterday urged coun-

tries in Asia and the Pacific to step up efforts to immunise all children against such pre-ventable diseases as polio and measles following outbreaks in the Philippines and New Zealand.

Even in countries with high immunisation coverage at the national level, there are ar-eas where coverage is still low and needs to be increased, said Takeshi Kasai, WHO re-gional director for the West-ern Pacific.

Kasai lamented the fact that children are still dying from diseases that can be prevented by safe and effi-cient vaccines.

“We’re really, really en-couraging countries to pro-vide good information to parents to make sure that their children are protected by the vaccination,” he told a press conference at the start of WHO’s annual regional conference in Manila.

Kasai said the WHO con-siders the anti-vaccine movement as one of the top risks to global health, and called for governments to in-crease awareness about the risks of not protecting chil-dren against such vaccine-preventable diseases as polio and measles.

The Western Pacific region covers 37 countries and areas that are home to 1.9bn peo-ple.

The case of the Philip-pines, where a polio outbreak was reported 19 years after the WHO declared the coun-try free of the disease, should be a lesson for other coun-tries about the need to boost

immunisation coverage, the world health body said.

“It is an example that is a warning to other countries,” said Rabindra Abeyasinghe, WHO country representative to the Philippines.

“It’s a problem of holisti-cally addressing low vaccine coverage for vaccine-pre-ventable diseases.”

Abeyasinghe said that aside from low immunisa-tion coverage and vaccine hesitancy, disease outbreaks are also aggravated by com-placency, logistical concerns and busy lifestyles.

“The anti-vaccine move-ment and on top of that, vac-cine hesitancy, complacency because of the lack of out-breaks in many countries...

and busy lifestyles have led to significant portions of children remaining unvacci-nated,” he said.

Last month, the Philip-pine Department of Health confirmed two cases of polio in the country. The first case was a three-year-old girl in the southern province of Lanao del Sur, and the sec-ond a five-year-old in La-guna province, just outside Manila.

There is no cure for polio. It can cause paralysis, but is rarely fatal. It can only be prevented through vaccina-tion. Abeyasinghe said the Philippines also suffers lo-gistical problems, such as a low supply of vaccines and lack of sanitation, which raises the risk for such conta-gious diseases.

The WHO is donating po-lio vaccines and dispatching staff to help the government vaccinate more children.

“We are looking at strengthening the logistical management and strength-ening availability of vac-cines,” he said.

Oscar Albayalde: under scrutiny

Allies downplay concerns over Duterte’s healthReutersManila

Allies of Philippine Presi-dent Rodrigo Duterte played down concern

about his health yesterday after the fi rebrand leader announced he is suff ering from a chronic neuromuscular disorder.

Duterte, who has quipped that he might not live out a six-year term that ends in 2022, told members of the Filipino com-munity in Russia at the week-end that he has a rare autoim-mune neuromuscular disease that is causing one of his eyelids to droop.

News of the 74-year-old leader’s latest condition comes on top of back problems, mi-graines, a throat illness and another disease that aff ects the circulation.

“He has localised ocu-lar myasthenia. He had been worked up on this and it has not progressed, it remained local-ised,” said a close Duterte aide, Senator Christopher “Bong” Go.

The president has had the condition for a long time, Go told Reuters, although Duterte’s spokesman, Salvador Panelo, told a news conference he only

became aware of Duterte’s dis-order after he mentioned it on Saturday.

“Nothing serious,” Go said, adding the president was “con-scious of his health”.

Duterte’s ailments were to be expected because of his age, but they have not stopped his work and would not be a political is-sue, said Earl Parreno of the In-stitute of Political and Electoral Reforms.

Since his 2016 election, Du-terte’s popularity remains at a level that other politicians would “die for”, Parreno said.

With an approval rating of about 80% and a super-ma-jority in Congress, there is little prospect of an opposition chal-lenge to his authority on health or any other grounds.

Opposition politicians con-tacted by Reuters declined or did not respond to request for comment on the health issue.

Known for a busy schedule and long speeches — often up to three a day — several disap-pearances from public view have fuelled rumours about Duterte’s declining health, but the government has repeatedly dismissed any suggestion of a problem.

Panelo said he did not think that the president’s latest illness

was serious, adding it didn’t get in the way of his “punishing schedule” in Russia.

“I’m even amazed how he was able to survive this Russian trip,” Panelo said in an inter-view with ANC news channel.

There is no cure for myasthe-nia gravis, which causes muscle weakness, but treatment can help relieve symptoms.

Dr Jose Paciano Reyes, a fel-low at the Philippine Neurolog-ical Association, said if a person had ocular myasthenia for more than two years, the chances were that weakness and fatigue would not spread to other mus-

cle groups. Duterte was the old-est person to be elected presi-dent in the Philippines since World War Two.

Late last year he said he had tested negative for cancer, and he blamed his long exposure to the sun when the public took notice of discolouration in his face. The Constitution provides for the public to be told of the state of health of a president, if serious.

If a sitting president dies, is permanently disabled or re-moved through impeachment, the vice-president serves the remainder of a six-year, single

term. Vice-President Leni Ro-bredo, a leader of the opposi-tion, was elected separately in 2016.

Duterte’s known ailments include back issues, migraines due to nerve damage after a mo-torcycle accident and Barrett’s oesophagus, which aff ects his throat.

He also suff ers from Buerger’s disease, caused by heavy smok-ing in his younger days.

Duterte is known for an un-orthodox work schedule that typically starts in the mid-af-ternoon and can go on well be-yond midnight.

President’s ratings dip, but still most trusted govt offi cialPhilippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s trust and

approval ratings dipped in the three months to Sep-

tember amid a number of controversies about alleged

corruption among police and jail off icials, a research

firm said yesterday.

According to Pulse Asia Research Inc, Duterte’s

trust rating dropped 11 percentage points to 74% in

September, from 85% in June, while his approval rating

declined seven percentage points to 78% from 85%.

The number of Filipinos who distrust Duterte rose to

9% in September, from 4% in June, while disapproval

among the public rose to 8% from 3%, Pulse Asia said

in a statement.

Despite the drop in ratings, presidential spokesman

Salvador Panelo said Duterte remained the most

trusted and appreciated government off icial in the

Philippines. “The ratings (are) still high...(at) more than

70%,” he told reporters. “Surveys fluctuate depending

on when they get them. If it is taken at a time when

there are controversies hounding (the government), it

may aff ect the survey results.”

The poll, which queried 1,200 respondents nationwide,

was conducted on September 16-22 when public

outrage was high over allegations of corruption at

the Bureau of Corrections over the early release of

convicts based on good conduct.

Duterte fired the head of the bureau, who was a

trusted aide that formerly headed the Bureau of

Customs before he was moved due to allegations of

irregularities.

Indonesian caught with drugs worth millions

Manila TimesManila

The Bureau of Customs (BoC) intercepted P54mn worth of shabu from an

Indonesian yesterday at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) Terminal 3.

Customs authorities said the passenger, Agnes Alexan-

dra, arrived at 1am on board Cebu Pacifi c fl ight 5J528 from Siem Reap, Cambodia.

Port of NAIA Collector Mimel Talusan said Alexan-dra denied owning the luggage that contained the illegal drugs that weighed eight kilograms.

Alexandra said a person she met in Cambodia asked her to bring the luggage to Manila.

Top court to junk ruling favouring Robredo

By Jomar Canlas Manila Times

Majority of Supreme Court (SC) justices are poised to junk the draft

ruling of Associate Justice Ben-jamin Caguioa dismissing the election protest fi led by former senator Ferdinand Marcos Jr against Vice President Maria Le-onor Robredo, sources said.

The high court, sitting as Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET), is set to tackle the case today.

The magistrates are expected to vote on Caguioa’s ponencia during the en banc session. Un-impeachable sources told The Manila Times that nine to 11 magistrates out of the 14 justices are expected to vote against the Caguioa draft ruling.

There are only 14 justices be-cause Associate Justice Francis Jardeleza retired last month.

The voting comes days before the retirement of Chief Justice Lucas Bersamin and Senior As-sociate Justice Antonio Carpio.

Sources said the justices would vote on whether or not the election protest case should be dismissed outright or if it

should be pursued further to de-termine if fraud marred the vice presidential election in 2016.

Caguioa’s 54-page draft rul-ing recommended the dismissal of the case for lack of merit, sources said.

They added that two justices — Carpio and Associate Justice Mario Victor Leonen — were in-clined to side with Caguioa.

The sources said “an over-whelming majority” of the jus-tices wants the case to proceed to the next level — the reception of evidence to determine if there was electoral fraud in the vice presidential contest.

If most of the Supreme Court justices will vote against the Caguioa draft, a source said the next step would be the reception of evidence for the annulment of election results in Basilan, Sulu and Lanao del Sur.

This process would be sepa-rate from the revision of ballots held by the tribunal.

Robredo would be given the chance to proceed with the re-vision of her pilot provinces for her counter protest, the source explained. The source said sev-eral justices had manifested their disagreement with the draft ponencia.

By Anuradha Nagaraj Guwahati, India

Abanti Deka had no idea when she married her husband that taking his name would jeopardise her Indian

citizenship.That was before authorities in the

northeast Indian state of Assam, where she has lived all her life, launched a vast and highly contentious exercise to register all its citizens as part of a campaign against illegal immigration.

When the register was published at the end of August, the names of nearly 2mn of the state’s about 33mn people were missing, plunging them into a bureaucratic nightmare that human rights experts fear could render some stateless.

Abanti was one of the unlucky ones.“The notice came suddenly,” she told

the Thomson Reuters Foundation at her lawyer’s offi ce.

“I don’t understand. I was born here, I have voted here before, but suddenly none of that matters any more.”

Resentment against illegal immigrants has simmered for years in Assam, with residents blaming outsiders for taking their jobs and land.

To be included on the register, residents had to produce documents proving their families lived in India before March 24, 1971, when hundreds of thousands of people began fl eeing confl ict across the border in what is now Bangladesh.

Lawyers and campaigners dealing with such cases say they present particular challenges for women.

About one in three women in Assam is illiterate – a higher proportion than for men – and many marry young, moving away from home and losing access to any documents that might prove their origins.

They also take their husbands’ names, a move that has complicated things further for many married women in a region where family names are markers of ethnic and religious affi liation.

“The women have had to pay a higher price,” said Tanya Laskar, a lawyer working on such cases.

“They have struggled the hardest to get relevant documents and many failed because they were child brides or the family did not put their names on a land document because women are not entitled to property in many homes.”

India is expected to face pressure at a major intergovernmental meeting in Geneva to assess progress in a global decade-long campaign aimed at eradicating statelessness by 2024.

On Wednesday, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi expressed concerns that the Assam exercise could result in some people being made stateless.

There are an estimated 10-15mn stateless people worldwide who are not recognised as nationals of any country and are deprived of basic rights most people take for granted such as education and healthcare.

Those excluded from India’s register will have 120 days to prove their citizenship at hundreds of regional quasi-judicial bodies known as foreigners’ tribunals.

If that goes against them, they can

appeal all the way up to India’s Supreme Court.

From land deeds to school leaving certifi cates, voter lists and birth certifi cates, residents of Assam have had to spend thousands of rupees to access their documents from government offi ces.

Laskar, who runs awareness campaigns on the process, said poorer families often spent their limited resources on the men.

“In poor families, a woman’s right to justice comes at the end,” she said.

“We have had women fainting in our awareness meetings because they are so worried of what lies ahead. Many know that they will have to fi ght lonely battles.”

Education is another factor, said Digambar Narzary, head of the Nedan Foundation, a human rights charity that works in a remote autonomous region inhabited mostly by tribal people.

“In many parts of the state, access to education for girls has been a challenge,” she said.

“Since they haven’t been to school or dropped out early, they do not have essential school leaving documents that establish one’s age and other details.”

State authorities have not provided a breakdown of men and women omitted from the register.

But many married women like Abanti say they have been left off even though their siblings and parents were included.

Among them is Aladi Mondol, 42, the only member of the family she was born into whose name is not on the citizens’ register.

Mondol lost key documents in

fl ooding, common in Assam, and said she did not realise how important they would become.

“I was trying to salvage so many things from the house as the river crept in,” she said.

“I cried when I found out because my brothers and parents are on the list. I am a little scared.”

Debasmita Ghosh, the lawyer representing Abanti at a foreigners’ tribunal in the state capital Guwahati, said her client had not known that her married name would cause problems.

“They are Assamese and she was born here. She didn’t realise that the surname mattered,” Ghosh told the tribunal at a recent hearing to which the Thomson Reuters Foundation gained rare access.

“In fact, she never mentioned her father’s name to us either, we found it by chance in an old document she gave us,” said Ghosh, who works with the Human Rights Law Network, a collective that provides legal aid.

That proved Abanti, who does not know her exact age but is in her 40s, was called Deka before she married Adhir Hajong and took his name, which many associate with Bangladesh.

Abanti said her ordeal had made her feel almost invisible, but knew she had to see it through for her children’s sake.

“If I am declared a foreigner, it will impact my children. They will not get jobs or benefi ts from the state,” she said.

“I am not a criminal, but if the tribunal is not convinced that I was born here then I might be in a detention camp and that will be the end of the road for my children as well.” – Thomson Reuters Foundation

Gulf Times Tuesday, October 8, 2019

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CHAIRMANAbdullah bin Khalifa al-Attiyah

EDITOR-IN-CHIEFFaisal Abdulhameed al-Mudahka

Deputy Managing EditorK T Chacko

Newcastle win shows United’s lustre is fading

How far will Manchester United sink? Just two points above the relegation places, the one-time powerhouses of English football are without an away win since March and are enduring their worst start to a league season for 30 years.

Old Traff ord has witnessed a decline in fortunes since Alex Ferguson stepped down in 2013.

Under Ferguson, United fi nished in the top three every year from 1992 until 2013, winning 13 league titles. In the six seasons since, the Red Devils have fi nished in the top four just twice.

But while they kept their heads above water in the immediate aftermath of the Scot’s departure, winning a handful of cups and fi nishing second under Jose Mourinho, they are now in the middle of a full-blown crisis under beleaguered boss Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.

Mourinho, speaking a few weeks after his rancorous departure from Old Traff ord last year, spoke about how taking the club to second in the table in 2017/18 was one of his best achievements.

Eyebrows were raised as Solskjaer oversaw a dramatic turnaround in fortunes during his caretaker spell in charge, but the wheels started to come off towards the end of last season.

United’s 1-0 defeat at Newcastle on Sunday left them languishing in 12th spot in the Premier League — an incredible 15 points behind leaders Liverpool after just eight games.

Goalkeeper David de Gea apologised to United supporters, saying it was the toughest time he had experienced since

moving to Old Trafford in 2011.“It’s diffi cult to say something. Sorry to the fans, we will

keep fi ghting for sure,” he told Sky Sports. “We will come back but at the moment we are in a diffi cult situation.”

United are woefully short of midfi eld spark and clinical fi nishers. Just two goals in their past fi ve games is part of a longer-term trend, with men scoring more than once in a game just three times in their past 23 matches.

The risk in allowing forwards Romelu Lukaku and Alexis Sanchez to depart to Inter Milan without signing a replacement has massively backfi red, with a out-of-sorts Marcus Rashford shouldering the attacking burden alone in the absence of the injured Anthony Martial.

Over-reliant on a crop of raw youngsters, Solskjaer pointed to a spate of injuries after the Newcastle defeat but said it was not an excuse for their lame display.

United have spent hundreds of millions of pounds under four different managers since Ferguson’s departure and have the highest wage bill in the Premier League, but are still miles behind rivals Liverpool and Manchester City.

Former United defender Gary Neville said the club’s hierarchy should take responsibility for the mess, saying they were getting the pain “they deserve” for poor decisions at board level related to recruitment and managerial policy.

Since Solskjaer was appointed permanently in late March, United have won just 17 points in 16 Premier league matches, the fourth-worst tally among the 17 ever-present teams in that time.

United remain one of the richest and biggest clubs in the world but their lustre is rapidly fading.

Liverpool, who dominated English football during the 1970s and 1980s, have taken 30 years to get back to the top.

Ferguson famously quipped his biggest challenge at United was to knock Liverpool “off their perch” in his early years in charge.

Looks like United are facing that challenge all over again.

Old Traff ord has witnessed a decline in fortunes since Alex Ferguson stepped down in 2013

India’s citizenship drive hits women the hardest

As Assam leaves millions off a register of citizens, women are struggling to get documents proving their right to register as Indian.

COMMENT

Gulf Times Tuesday, October 8, 2019 19

Pakistan mediation moves into high gearBy Kamran RehmatDoha

Donald Trump can claim to have a nodding acquaintance with cutting a deal. After all, he co-authored the 1987 The

Art of The Deal – part memoir, part business-advice book – with journalist Tony Schwartz, and which apparently, announced his shrewd capital to most Americans, if not the world.

However, it would seem the Taliban have either not heard of it or don’t set too much store by it. To be fair to Trump, they have tested the mettle of mightier negotiators and held their own against war machines the like of which the world hasn’t seen for nearly two decades. If there’s something they have in reserves which trumps brute military power, it is the nagging ability to bide time and wait in on their perceived enemies in classic warfare.

And so, despite the earlier bombast about annihilating them, the Trump administration – much to its chagrin, but like its predecessors chagrin has had to come around and try to negotiate a settlement of the Afghan imbroglio. It has proved elusive so far, but his keenness – desperation, to others – is apparent despite a sudden halt to the negotiations last month after a bombing in Kabul killed an American soldier. This happened as Trump was readying to host, by his admission, a secret Camp David rendezvous that would have reportedly brought “major leaders” of the Taliban face-to-face with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, who, the militia have until now refused to acknowledge as legitimate partners in the negotiations.

The drive was kicked into high gear last year in December when President Trump wrote to incumbent Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan, seeking Islamabad’s help to bring the Taliban to

the negotiating table as it eyed a troop pullout from Afghanistan following a draining war that has cost the US an estimated $975bn until now, according to The Balance website. The Balance is renowned for expertise in the fi eld and is engaged monthly by 24mn visitors. Its research data – reported by Forbes – indicates that the US was spending an annual budget of $52bn by 2018, to stay in business.

President Trump is widely known to have tired of America’s longest war – and the most costly since the infl ation-adjusted $4.1tn spent in World War II – and would rather get into a re-election bid for the White House next year with the ‘trophy’ of bringing his servicemen back home safely.

Washington would, of course, retain an essential contingent to help with the rehabilitation process in the post-pullout scenario. Currently, there are approximately, 14,000 US troops on the ground in non-combative role, but the Trump administration wants to pull out the troops from its fi ve bases in Afghanistan.

Some 2,400 US troops have been killed since the American invasion of the war-torn country in 2001, including 16 this year, according to Al Jazeera.

After several months, the talks reached an advanced stage and the extensive round in Doha recently paved the way for an impending peace deal. Qatar, as always, was instrumental in taking the process forward by playing the role of a peacemaker in graciously hosting the partners to help them fi nd a durable and peaceful solution to the confl ict in Afghanistan.

Just when an agreement appeared in sight with US Special Representative on Afghanistan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad even going on record about a deal “in principle”, and the withdrawal of 5,000 American troops within 135 days of it becoming fi nal, the Kabul

bombing early last month so incensed President Trump that he cancelled the reported fi nal negotiation in Camp David.

Given to form, he tweeted the talks were “dead” and vowed no negotiations hence.

However, as predicted by many pundits at the time, there are strong indicators of an impending offi cial resumption of talks after a fl urry of activity in Islamabad last week which fi rst saw Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi hold talks with a Taliban delegation led by the co-founder of the group, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, even though for offi cial purposes, the talks were said to be wide-ranging including the fate of more than 1.5mn Afghan refugees in Pakistan, and then, Khalilzad meeting the group.

It was no coincidence that the US envoy, who has held nine rounds of talks with Taliban negotiators during the past year, spent considerable time in Islamabad meanwhile, meeting senior Pakistani offi cials in what the US Department of State described as follow-up meetings to the ones held in New York during the UN General Assembly session last month.

Prime Minister Imran Khan, who is a longtime proponent of a settlement away from the battlefi eld, had then, pronouncedly pushed with President Trump for the resumption of the dialogue, reasoning that there was no military solution to the problem. During his dozens of meetings with key US stakeholders and interaction with think-tanks on the New York circuit, he had vocally advanced his favoured mantra.

The Taliban, which was also unrelenting in sticking to its stand after the Kabul fiasco – at least publicly – has been working the windmills to find a meeting ground. Its delegates have visited China, Russia and Iran in the weeks following Trump’s sudden red card.

Few details have emerged following Khalilzad’s “informal” meeting with the Mullah Baradar-led Taliban delegation in Islamabad, and then, too from an unidentified Taliban member of the delegation, who was not authorised to speak. The State Department and Taliban spokesperson have both refused to comment. But there are strong indicators that a resumption may be in the works, including the presence, at the time, in Islamabad, of the

Commander of US-led mission in Afghanistan, General Austin Miller, according to The New York Times, though it is unclear if he attended the “informal” session.

However, given how fragile even the semantics are, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani sacked his foreign ministry spokesperson Sibghatullah Ahmadi after he welcomed Pakistan’s talks with the Taliban to push the peace process forward. Ahmadi has since been referred for prosecution. Until now, the Taliban refuse to accord any recognition to the government in Kabul, which is wary of any settlement without its participation.

The writer is Community Editor.

He may be reached at kaamyabi@gmail.com

Want to cut food intake? Dine alone

Using real-time data to help children thrive

Live issues

IANSLondon

If you are planning to cut down on your daily food intake to get into shape, better dine alone as a new research has found that

people tend to eat more with friends and family.

Eating “socially” has a powerful eff ect on increasing food intake relative to dining alone, said the study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

“We found strong evidence that

people eat more food when dining with friends and family than when alone,” said research leader Helen Ruddock from the University of Birmingham in Britain.

Previous studies found that those eating with others ate up to 48% more food than solo diners and women with obesity eating socially consumed up to 29% more than when eating alone.

For the study, the researchers evaluated 42 existing studies of research into social dining.

The researchers found that people eat more with friends and family because having food with others is

more enjoyable and social eating could increase consumption.

Social norms might ‘permit’ overeating in company but sanction it when eating alone and providing food becomes associated with praise and recognition from friends and family, strengthening social bonds.

The researchers called the phenomenon of eating more with friends and family “social facilitation”.

They found that this social facilitation eff ect on eating was not observed across studies which had looked at food intake among people who were not well acquainted.

“People want to convey positive impressions to strangers. Selecting small portions may provide a means of doing so and this may be why the social facilitation of eating is less pronounced amongst groups of strangers,” Ruddock said.

The researchers explained that ancient hunter gatherers shared food because it ensured equitable food distribution.

“In the case of social facilitation, we have inherited a mechanism that now exerts a powerful infl uence on unhealthy dietary intakes,” the researchers said.

One of the challenges institutions face is understanding the impact of their actions, and being able

to use that understanding to augment actions in the future.

At a governmental level, information – in the form of comprehensive and comprehensible data – drives policy and legislative considerations, so it is imperative for it to not only be collated in a systematic and consistent fashion, but to be made available to policymakers in the way that best aligns with what they require.

As contribution to achieve the goals of the Qatar National Development Strategy 2018-2022, which emphasises on the importance of promoting child well-being and family cohesion within the country, Doha International Family Institute (DIFI), a member of Qatar Foundation, has been working with its partners and key national stakeholders to provide evidence on child well-being in Qatar.

As Dr Anis Ben Brik, director of Family Policy at DIFI, explained about the report that DIFI presented at the Family Policy Symposium: Child Well-being in Qatar: “The challenge when developing management information systems or decision-making tools is the availability and quality of the data as well as the maintenance of the data, because it’s no use just having information relevant to this year – you need to make sure that you’re obtaining real-time, continuous and contiguous data sets, or they are valueless.”

In its report ‘Child Well-Being in the Gulf Countries’, published in

2018, DIFI illustrated how assessing children’s physical health, behavioural adjustment, psychological well-being, social relationships, safety, and cognitive well-being would allow Qatar to establish whether they were being given every possible advantage and opportunity to prosper in their formative years.

The use of indicators like these in other parts of the world off ers Qatar the opportunity to measure itself against an equitable peer group that, despite some regional and culturally driven variances, provides an overall assessment that is credible and informative.

“Any understanding of child well-being needs to be combined with an equally weighted understanding of child development and rights,” Dr Anis said, “as many aspects of

both are influenced by the same forces families, peers, communities, schools, programmes and policies. A child’s well-being determines much of their lives as an adult which, on a macro scale, has wider, societal impacts.”

Studies have indicated that countries that fail to invest in the well-being of children face losing billions of dollars because of the lower economic productivity and higher healthcare costs that result.

Qatar believes that the best way for a country to ensure its prosperity is to provide its future generations with their best possible outcomes, and

that this is only possible if children are provided with every opportunity to thrive in environments where their weaknesses are strengthened, and their strengths are focused through sensible, appropriate and comprehensive government policies on health, education and security.

“Evidenced-based policymaking”, says Dr Brik, “has overwhelmingly proven to deliver more eff ective, more appropriate and more cost-effi cient returns to countries.

The frameworks being put in place in Qatar will, quite rightly, deliver equally eff ective benefi ts for all of us in the future.”

Dr Anis Ben Brik, director of Family Policy at DIFI.

DIFI published its report ‘Child Well-Being in the Gulf Countries’, in 2018.

Re-engagement: Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi (fourth right), with the Taliban co-founder Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar (fourth left) and his delegation at the Pakistan Foreign Ministry in Islamabad last Thursday.

WARNINGInshore : NilOffshore : Expected strong wind

with high sea/thunder rain at times

WEATHERInshore : Relatively hot daytime

with scattered clouds and chance of rain at places, relatively humid by night

Offshore : Partly cloudy to cloudy with a chance of scattered rain maybe thundery at times

WINDInshore : Southeasterly-North-

easterly 05-15/18 KTOffshore : Southeasterly-North-

easterly 08-18/24 KT Visibility : 4-8 KM

Offshore : 4-6/8 FT

TODAY

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BaghdadKuwait City ManamaMuscat Tehran

AthensBeirut BangkokBerlinCairoCape TownColomboDhakaHong KongIstanbulJakartaKarachiLondonManilaMoscowNew DelhiNew YorkParisSao PauloSeoulSingaporeSydneyTokyo

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20 Gulf TimesTuesday, October 8, 2019

QATAR

Qatar University a beacon of academic, research excellenceQNADoha

Qatar University (QU) has become a beacon of aca-demic and research ex-

cellence. QU is committed to providing high-quality education in areas of national priority and prepares qualifi ed graduates who contribute eff ectively to the fu-ture of their country and nation.

It also includes a distinguished and diverse group of faculty mem-bers who are committed to im-proving the education process, conducting studies and research related to local and regional chal-lenges, advancing knowledge, and contributing positively to the ful-fi lment of society’s needs and aspi-rations and providing state sectors with qualifi ed national cadres.

As a result of its eff orts, QU celebrated the graduation of the 42nd batch of students, which includes more than 3,220 stu-dents, 2,468 females and 752 male. Qatar University has the great honour of contributing to this renaissance through succes-sive generations of graduates who now exceed 50,000.

The university ranked 276 in the QS (Quacquarelli Symonds) rankings for world universities in 2020, becoming one of the most improved universities in the rankings, and progressing with 56 positions from the 2019 ranking.

It has also recently developed an ambitious research roadmap that includes national develop-ment priorities and a number of important research successes of global signifi cance. In addition, it includes a large group of in-ternationally accredited colleges and programmes which witness a high level of excellence and quali-ty, besides maintaining a close re-lationship between the public and private sectors, where it initiated a number of memorandums of understanding and co-operative agreements.

In its endeavour to develop its goal to be a leader in the fi eld of economic and social develop-ment in Qatar, the QU signed dur-ing the academic year 2018/2019 a number of memorandums of understanding and agreements. Academic partnerships were held with the industrial, governmen-tal, academic, fi nancial and civil society institutions in Qatar.

As many as 46 memorandums of understanding and agreement were signed of which 20 with ministries and community bod-ies, 16 with companies and 10 with other universities and col-leges.

Prominent agreementThe most prominent agree-

ments concluded by Qatar Uni-versity during the current aca-demic year were the launch of a detailed environmental study project for the Doha Corniche, a co-operation agreement with Qatar Islamic Bank, a co-op-eration agreement with Smeet Company (one of the Qatari Diar companies) to fi nance the project of artifi cial coral reefs that the centre intends to install in mul-tiple places in national territorial waters, a memorandum of un-derstanding with Sidra Medical Center to prepare the next gener-ation of healthcare professionals, a memorandum of understanding with the Administrative Control and Transparency Authority, and a memorandum of understanding to co-operate in establishing the fi rst Huawei Academy in Qatar.

Qatar University encourages its students and faculty mem-bers to actively engage in research activities, the number of faculty members engaged in research during the past two years are 866 and the number of contributors to research are 625, or 72% and included research activities au-thoring a book or conference pa-pers or contribution to a scientifi c journal.

In addition, the Offi ce of Sci-

entifi c Research Support serves and supports the research com-munity at Qatar University to fi nd new sources and opportunities for funding by working with uni-versity partners in industry and government, and international research support bodies.

The offi ce manages internal and external grants to support and facilitate research projects, and there are various types of internal research funding for students and faculty. In terms of external scholarships, Qatar

University has achieved great success in the National Priori-ties Research Program (NPRP), under the umbrella of the Qatar National Research Fund. In the 11th round of this programme, QU researchers received research grants for 37 out of 77 winning research proposals, representing 48% of the total winning research proposals.

The Undergraduate Research Experience Programme (UREP), which is located within the framework of external scholar-ships, also supports students participating in research con-ducted under the supervision of faculty or specialised research-ers.

In the 23rd session of the pro-gramme, the university received research grants for 20 out of 60 research proposals, achieving 33% success, while in the 24th session 24 research grants were received for 24 of the 71 propos-als submitted, with a success rate of 34%.

As a leading national institu-tion, QU continues its eff orts to invest and contribute to research projects and studies that serve the community, especially given the university’s independent re-

search units seek to bring about global change, making it a pio-neer in the use of modern tech-nology and fully aware of envi-ronmental issues.

The Biomedical Research Center (BRC) at QU focuses on improving health in Qatar by fo-cusing on research, training and service delivery in biomedical and applied research in three key areas: metabolic diseases, infec-tious diseases, and genomics. The Center for Advanced Materials is concerned with conducting valu-

able research in the fi eld of inno-vative materials with the aim of supporting technology in various fi elds, such as energy and envi-ronment.

They provide all kinds of tech-nical, analytical, consultancy and training support to faculty, researchers and students within Qatar University and the indus-trial sector of Qatar.

Meanwhile, Environmental Science Center aims to under-stand and protect Qatar’s rich marine cultural heritage and bio-diversity environment and the Gas Research Center, established by the College of Engineering at Qatar University in 2007, also conducts many applied research-es that provide practical solutions to the challenges facing the oil and gas industry.

KINDI Center for Computing Research conducts high-quality research programmes in the vital fi eld of computer science, infor-mation and engineering, with a greater focus on cybersecurity and emerging technologies.

The Laboratory Animal Re-search Center is the fi rst and only facility in Qatar to have a sterile environment free from rodent-causing organisms.

The Qatar for Transport and Traffi c Safety Center, established in 2012, is the leading national centre that contributes to ad-vanced studies of transport and traffi c safety through research, innovation, development, con-sulting, education and social par-ticipation. The Social and Eco-nomic Survey Research Institute, established in 2008, has played an active role in the formulation of policies in Qatar.

The Center for Law & Develop-ment is also a gateway to achiev-ing the law-related objectives of Qatar National Vision 2030. Qa-tar National Research Strategy and other research centres were established by QU to serve the community as an entrepreneurial centre, Ibn Khaldun Center for Humanities and Social Sciences, Center for Sustainable Develop-ment, and Gulf Studies Center.

Development indicatorThe number of students regis-

tered according to their academic level, colleges, specialisations, nationalities and gender amount to 21,474 students, including Qa-tari and non-Qatari males and females, which includes students from Qatar, GCC states, non-GCC Arab countries, Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, South America, and Australia.

As an important indicator of the development of Qatar Uni-versity and the quality of its pro-grammes, the university has fo-cused on academic accreditation as an important indicator of the development of universities and a proof of its excellence and quality of its outputs. Qatar University has been interested in academic accreditation for years and has sought accreditation from lead-ing international institutions of recognised quality.

Various programmes and col-leges have received academic ac-creditation at Qatar University from prestigious international bodies such as engineering,

management, economics, edu-cation and pharmacy, as well as a number of programmes at the College of Arts and Sciences.

This year the Bachelor of Sci-ence in Statistics programme at the College of Arts and Sciences was accredited by the Royal Sta-tistical Society of Britain (RSS), and the Bachelor of Science in Chemistry programme was ac-credited by the Canadian Society for Chemistry (CSC).

The Bachelor of Science in En-vironmental Sciences programme was accredited by the Institute of Environmental Sciences (IES) and the Master of Science in En-vironmental Sciences programme was accredited by the Committee of Presidents of Environmental Science Programs (CHES).

The Bachelor of Arts in Media programme was accredited by the Accrediting Council on Edu-cation in Journalism and Mass Communications (ACEJMC), and the College of Engineering at Qatar University has renewed its academic accreditation for its bachelor’s degree programmes (7) by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET).

The College of Education has also obtained accredita-tion for a new set of educational programmes to be added to a previous set of various educa-tional programmes that received accreditation last year, from ac-credited international accredita-tion institutions.

The total number of accred-ited programmes in the College of Education is seven, and other accreditation programmes that have received conditional accred-itation will soon be added.

Qatar University focuses on excellence and the highest stand-ards of quality and professional-ism, and is committed to integrity and the highest ethical standards of honesty, justice, transparency, responsibility and accountability, as well as providing an educa-

tional environment that supports freedom of inquiry and expres-sion and the search for the truth and express wisdom and respon-sibility, and faith enrichment that respects the constants of society as a source of excellence.

Qatar University has been the main educational institution for higher education in the country since its inception in 1977. Qa-tar University stands today as a beacon of academic excellence and scientifi c research in the GCC countries, with a number of students of about 20,000 regis-tered in its various scientifi c pro-grammes.

The University is commit-ted to providing high-quality education in various national scientifi c fi elds. As part of this commitment, the University aims to apply the latest interna-tional standards and implement best academic practices in pro-grammes and colleges.

As a result, Qatar University has succeeded in its academic ac-creditation initiatives by various organisations. Qatar University continues its eff orts to develop a culture of scientifi c research. The University’s research com-plex comprises 14 distinguished research centres working on over 400 collaborative research projects with leading institutions from around the world.

Mission and visionAt the heart of Qatar Univer-

sity’s mission and vision is com-munity engagement. The uni-versity is committed to ensuring a rich campus environment that encourages academic excellence, volunteerism, civic responsibil-ity, and leadership. Qatar Univer-sity is working to boost its goal of becoming a pioneer of economic and social development in Qatar through collaboration and part-nerships with government, in-dustry, academic, business and civil society in Qatar and other countries.

His Highness the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani honours students at QU graduation ceremony yesterday.

A graduate receiving the certificate from QU president Dr Hassan bin Rashid al-Derham. QU College deans and off icials.

Amir attends QU male graduation ceremony

At the heart of Qatar University’s mission and vision is community engagement. The university is committed to ensuring a rich campus environment that encourages academic excellence, volunteerism, civic responsibility, and leadership