GULF TIMES

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QATAR

since 1978SATURDAY Vol. XXXXI No. 11690

October 3, 2020Safar 16, 1442 AH www. gulf-times.com 2 Riyals

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Amir sends greetingsto Guinea’s president

Four held for violatinghome quarantine rules

Sheikha Moza off ers condolences on the death of Sheikh Sabah

MoPH reports 123,108 total Covid recoveries

Drought forces Namibiato auction 100 buff aloes

His Highness the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani and His Highness the Deputy Amir Sheikh Abdullah bin Hamad al-Thani sent yesterday cables of congratulations to the President of Guinea, Professor Alpha Conde, on his country’s Independence Day. HE the Prime Minister and Minister of Interior Sheikh Khalid bin Khalifa bin Abdulaziz al-Thani also sent a similar cable to Prime Minister Ibrahima Kassory Fofana.

Competent authorities in Doha yesterday arrested four people for violating the legal requirements of home quarantine as set by the health authorities in the country. The arrests came in implementation of the precautionary measures in force in the country, approved by the Ministry of Public Health to ensure public safety and to curb the spread of the coronavirus (Covid-19). The four people being referred to the competent prosecution: Bandar Badr Awad al-Bandar, Sameh Najeh Mahmoud El Sherbiny Azzam, Al-Murtada Ali Razzouk and Abdulaziz Yahya Zain al-Omal. The authorities concerned called on citizens and residents who are subject to quarantine to fully adhere to the requirements set by the ministry, to ensure their safety and the safety of others.

Her Highness Sheikha Moza bint Nasser off ered her condolences yesterday in Kuwait to Sheikha Sharifa Sulaiman al-Jasem, wife of the Amir of Kuwait Sheikh Nawaf al-Ahmad al-Jaber al-Sabah, on the death of Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Jaber al-Sabah. Her Highness Sheikha Moza also off ered her condolences to the sisters of Sheikh Sabah, Sheikha al-Anoud al-Ahmad al-Jaber al-Sabah and Sheikha Amthal al-Ahmad al-Jaber al-Sabah, and the ruling family, praying to Allah The Almighty to have mercy on his soul and to rest it in peace in Paradise, and to inspire his family with patience and solace. (QNA)

The Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) announced yesterday 205 new confirmed cases of coronavirus (Covid-19) during the last 24 hours, of which 195 are from community cases and 10 from travellers returning from abroad who are subject to quarantine. It also reported the death of a 63-old-year patient who was receiving the necessary medical care. The MoPH recorded 197 recoveries from the virus during the past 24 hours, bringing the total number of cases recovered in Qatar to 123,108. Page 2

Drought-hit Namibia said yesterday it was putting 100 wild buff aloes up for sale to reduce the animals’ population, in a bid to alleviate pressure on diminishing grazing in its parks. The semi-arid southern African country said the animals will come from Waterberg Plateau Park, a national reserve located in central Namibia. “The auction is to reduce pressure on the grazing vegetation in the park,” environment ministry spokesman Romeo Muyunda said. The auction was first announced through adverts placed in local newspapers on Thursday, off ering 70 female and 30 male animals. “The buyer will bear all the risks during and after the capture,” said the advert.

See Pages 4,5 & 6

COMMUNITYCOMMUNITY

Qatar Biobank ensures genomics data security By Joseph VargheseStaff Reporter

Qatar Biobank, which collected 363,076 samples from 25,934 participants so far, has ensured

that the genomics data acquired by the institute is stored and protected against any security breach.

“The genomics data is kept within the borders of Qatar in a secure envi-ronment so that it does not become exposed to the Internet and become vulnerable to hackers,” said Dr Nahla Afi fi , director, Qatar Biobank, a part of Qatar Foundation.

The human genome is perhaps the single most vital and powerful piece of information about a human being. It reveals sensitive information about their past, present, and future –im-portant clues to diseases.

“As long as it is anonymised data, we can share it,” Dr Afi fi explained. “But it is very important, especially in Qa-

tar, that individual data is not shared. Qatar is a small country, and if you fi nd a variant or a genetic disease and you identify the individual, you will be able to identify the family of this person directly. I fi nd this as a challenge here,

and so we have to be careful in how we share our data.”

It is not just privacy that is often the top priority for such data; the owner-ship of this data also remains a criti-cal aspect of genomic research. How-ever, if this data is withheld, it could mean scientists will be unable to tackle chronic diseases, especially those that are prevalent in the region.

“There are diff erent examples of data collection and governance of data,” says Dr Afi fi , “If you look at the Scandinavian model, they have a very well-established database that in-cludes information from the time a person is born until their death. It’s a slightly open access model without many constraints.”

As a large-scale medical research initiative which collects data and bio-logical samples from the local popula-tion, Qatar Biobank is working to de-velop customised medical solutions to the various diseases and health issues prevalent in the country.

And if hacked, as Ameena al-Ema-di, IT manager at Qatar Biobank ex-plained, “The data can be used to iden-tify the vulnerabilities of a nation, for example and viruses can be produced to attack that country.”

“We consider genomics data as highly sensitive and is stored in a sealed environment and no external or unauthorised users can get access to it, not even for research, unless it comes through a proper request channel, said al-Emadi.

“All our systems are built in-house, and all our data is stored in locally hosted systems. Genomic sequencing for our samples is done at Sidra Medi-cine, where the DNA samples are also stored. This is a huge infrastructure which Qatar Foundation invested to build.”

As a large-scale medical research initiative which collects data and bio-logical samples from the local popula-tion, Qatar Biobank is working to de-velop customised medical solutions to

the various diseases and health issues prevalent in the country.

And through such eff orts, Qatar Biobank will make it possible for sci-entists to conduct research to address some of the greatest health challenges facing Qatar and the region, including cardiovascular disease, obesity, diabe-tes and cancer.

A genome is the complete set of a living being’s DNA. A single human genome contains more than 3bn DNA base pairs and takes up to 100 giga-bytes of storage space. With the ad-vancement of precision medicine and genomic research expanding, more and more genomes are being sequenced, with storage space eventually expected to run into exabytes – the equivalent of 1bn bytes.

Qatar’s investment in research, de-velopment and innovation refl ects its aspirations to help revive the Arab world’s tradition of scientifi c discovery and innovative thinking – and shape a healthier nation and a healthier world.

Dr Nahla Afifi

A picture taken on October 1 shows the Eiffel Tower illuminated in pink to mark the start of “Octobre Rose” (Pink October) or Breast Cancer Awareness Month in Paris.

Pink October in Paris

Pre-fl ight rapidCovid tests forQatar Airwayspassengers soon

By Peter AlagosBusiness Reporter

Qatar Airways has assured its passengers that pre-fl ight rapid Covid-19 tests would be avail-

able by mid-October as other major air carriers worldwide are struggling to overcome the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the industry.

“We will start testing our passen-gers, a lot of them, hundreds of thou-sands of them, starting from the mid-dle of this month. So, we want to be at the forefront of giving comfort to pas-sengers that when they travel on Qatar Airways, they are in safe hands,” Group chief executive HE Akbar al-Baker told aviation analyst Alex Macheras in an online session hosted on Thursday by the World Aff airs Councils of America.

Al-Baker also lauded the progress that has been made in terms of testing passengers prior to boarding, which Macheras described as “the ultimate goal” and “one of the few strategic op-tions” available for airlines prior to a Covid-19 vaccine.

“As far as the testing is concerned, again, there are major advancements in testing, which is good news for us as an airline and also good news for coun-tries because they will be able to test people quickly.

“Coming to that, Qatar Airways is already one of the fi rst airlines to have placed a huge order for the rapid tests, which are now out. Roche is one of the pharmaceutical companies that have brought this rapid test. Abbott is an-other one that has got out a test,” al-Baker responded.

According to al-Baker, Qatar Air-ways had made sure that the airlines had a “Plan B” as the airline industry, and even economies across the globe, grappled against the eff ects of the health crisis.

“I only realised the magnitude of this pandemic by the end of February. I was not expecting it to be so severe and

so drastic, but we had to make sure that if something drastic happens that we had a ‘Plan B’ because I could see that airlines were going to stop operating, airports will start shutting down be-cause of the huge warnings that started to come out of the WHO (World Health Organisation).

“So, we had to prepare ourselves. But what I really never expected it to be so severe that it will not only destroy the aviation industry but it will also halt the economy of the world, which is, quite frankly, unprecedented – some-thing that even in our wildest dreams we never expected,” al-Baker pointed out.

During the virtual session, al-Baker also lauded American Airlines’ part-nership with Qatar Airways, saying that both air carriers have a “strong re-lationship,” citing it as a “win-win” for both companies. He also said both air-lines are constantly “expanding” their relations, and “will continue to do a lot more business together.”

“American Airlines was the fi rst car-rier to realise that it was good and in mutual benefi t to start working with Qatar Airways…and American Air-lines was the airline that invited us, together with British Airways, to join One World.

“And we had to work together; there was no other alternative,” said al-Baker, adding that American Airlines has “a fi ne team of individuals that are running the airline, and even during the pandemic,” al-Baker said. Page 12

Qatar Airways Group chief executive HE Akbar al-Baker.

Al-Baker lauds ‘major advancements in testing’

Trump’s Covid-19 diagnosis roils White House, presidential electionReutersWashington

US President Donald Trump is experiencing mild symptoms after testing positive for the

coronavirus, administration offi cials said yesterday, as the White House and election campaign scrambled to adjust to an extraordinary twist in his turbulent presidency.

Trump, who has played down the threat of the coronavirus pandemic from the outset, said he and his wife Melania were going into quarantine after testing positive for the virus, which has killed more than 200,000 Americans and severely damaged the US economy.

Trump, 74, is exhibiting mild symp-toms but will keep working in isola-tion, administration offi cials said.

“We have a president that is not only on the job but will remain on the job and I’m optimistic that he will

have a very quick and speedy recov-ery,” White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows told reporters.

It was the latest in a series of blows to the Republican president, who is

trailing Democratic rival Joe Biden in opinion polls ahead of the Nov 3 pres-idential election.

An ill-tempered debate between the two candidates on Tuesday seemed to do little to boost Trump’s prospects, and he has faced questions about his honesty and business acu-men after the New York Times report-ed he paid little or no federal income tax in many recent years.

Moreover, the virus could compli-cate Trump’s push to install conserv-ative judge Amy Coney Barrett on the Supreme Court.

At least two people who were at a White House event to announce her nomination, University of Notre Dame President John Jenkins and Re-publican Senator Mike Lee, said yes-terday they have tested positive.

Barrett herself tested positive for the virus earlier this year and has since recovered, according to a person familiar with the matter. Page 7

Qatar aff irmed its firm position towards supporting the unity, stability, sovereignty of Sudan and the right of the Sudanese people to fulfil their aspirations for freedom, peace and justice, in order to achieve development in all fields.This came in a speech delivered by Qatar’s Permanent Representative to the UN Off ice in Geneva HE ambassador Ali Khalfan al-Mansouri during the enhanced interactive

dialogue on the report of the independent expert on Sudan.HE al-Mansouri said that Qatar welcomes the holding of this dialogue and hopes that it will contribute to further promotion and protection of human rights in Sudan.He added that Qatar values the positive developments that occurred in Sudan with the transitional government and a number of armed movements initialling the peace

agreement in Juba. HE al-Mansouri stressed that Qatar noted the challenges that the independent expert mentioned in his report, especially those related to the negative impact of the continued classification of Sudan on the list of states sponsoring terrorism, and calls for removing Sudan’s name from the list, in order to facilitate its eff orts to overcome the obstacles faced at this critical stage in its history.

Qatar calls for removing Sudan from ‘terrorism sponsoring’ list

His Highness the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani yesterday wished US President Donald Trump and the First Lady a speedy and full recovery from Covid-19.

QATAR

Gulf TimesSaturday, October 3, 20202

Qatar reiterates support to Palestinian causeQNAGeneva

Qatar renewed yesterday its position of supporting the Palestinian cause by

providing political and develop-mental support to the Palestinian people until they regain all their rights.

Qatar stressed that compre-hensive and fair peace in the Middle East is the strategic op-tion, and can only be accom-

plished by ending Israeli occu-pation of Palestinian and Arab land in a set timeframe, and by empowering the Palestinian people by establishing the State of Palestine with East Al Quds as its capital on the borders of 1967, in accordance with the Arab Peace Initiative and internation-al resolutions.

This came in Qatar’s state-ment read by HE Permanent Representative of the State of Qatar to the United Nations in Geneva ambassador Ali Khalfan

al-Mansouri at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) during its meeting on Article 10, on its assistance to the Palestin-ian people. He stressed Qatar’s commitment to providing de-velopmental and humanitarian assistance to improve the Pales-tinians’ living conditions in the West Bank and Gaza.

Qatar provided $1.2bn worth of support in the last eight years in vital fi elds such as educa-tion, electricity, infrastructure,

housing, and job creation. He also noted that Qatar pledged to grant $150mn over six months in support of eff orts to con-tain the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic. Permanent Repre-sentative to the United Nations in Geneva expressed Qatar’s ap-preciation to UNCTAD, for its eff ort in preparing a report on its support to the Palestinian people. He condemned Israel’s undermining of UNCTAD’s ef-forts by making the movement of UNCTAD employees into and

outside of Palestine diffi cult.He expressed Qatar’s concern

about the assessment of the eco-nomic and social conditions in Palestine, which the report said was deteriorating.

He noted that this deterioration was a result of the Israeli occupa-tion’s policies and restrictions it places on trade, in addition to the dangerous repercussions of the Covid-19 pandemic.

HE al-Mansouri stressed that the Israeli occupation’s control of two-thirds of Palestinian tax rev-

enues and the entry of Palestinian fi nancial resources into the Israeli treasury undermines fi nancial stability in Palestine and adversely aff ects its economy.

He added that Palestinian de-velopment cannot be achieved as long as Israeli occupation and ille-gal settlement activities continue.

Al-Mansouri highlighted the lack of freedom of movement of people and goods in the besieged Gaza Strip.

He praised the important work carried out by the UNCTAD to sup-

port Palestinian development, call-ing on the international community to allocate more resources to help the Palestinian people and to help build institutions, for an independ-ent and stable economy.

Al-Mansouri expressed his condolences to the leadership and people of Kuwait on the death of Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Jaber al-Sabah, an Arab icon, who was renowned for his hu-manitarian and diplomatic ef-forts in the world, and particu-larly in the region.

Ashghal to complete revamp of sewage pumping stations by 2021 second quarterThe ongoing refurbishment

and upgrading work of four sewage pumping sta-

tions by the Public Works Au-thority (Ashghal) will be com-pleted by the second quarter of 2021 remarkably increasing the capacity of the pumping stations in Doha.

According to details given by Ashghal, the capacity of the pumping stations will be in-creased by 62% to 211% in vital areas within Doha. As part of the project, upgrading and re-furbishment works are carried at New Slata, Al Mansoura, Al Messila, and Al Rayyan, in order to accommodate both current and future sewage fl ows within these important areas, and to cope with the future develop-ment and the expected popula-tion growth.

The capacity of New Slata pumping station will be in-creased by approximately 62% allowing around 8,600 cu m per day to be pumped instead of the current 5,300 cu m per day. The capacity of Al Messila pump-ing station capacity will be in-creased by approximately 211%

allowing 14,000 cu m per day to be pumped instead of the cur-rent 4,500 cu m per day. The Al Rayyan pumping station’s ca-pacity will be increased by 161%, allowing pumping of around 4,700 cu m per day instead of the current 1,800 cu m per day.

Refurbishment works include the installation of new equip-ment to improve the pumping stations’ performance and func-tionality with the upgrade of

pumping stations’ control sys-tems, including new telemetry systems, improved fi re alarm and suppression systems, new instrumentation, among others. This is in addition to improved odour control systems to prevent or reduce bad odours in the sur-rounding areas.

The New Slata, Al Messila and Al Rayyan pumping stations will undergo a dramatic increase in their ability to accommodate

and pump the sewage fl ows as opposed to the current capacity with the existing pumping sta-tions and equipment.

Upgrade works at Al Mansou-ra pumping station include the installation of new equipment and constructing a new Odour Control Unit (OCU) to enable more effi cient operations and to prevent bad odour at this loca-tion.

In addition, the project in-cludes the decommissioning of Ras Abu Abboud pumping sta-tion to be replaced with a new gravity sewer line.

During the implementation, Ashghal is also supporting local manufacturers by making use of locally made materials such as concrete, reinforced steel, precast manholes, Glass Rein-forced Plastic (GRP) pipes and ducts, GRP tanks, Unplasticised Polyvinyl Chloride pipes and conduits and Reinforce Concrete jacking pipes.

Ashghal has ensured that these pipes meet the required quality standards and qualifi ca-tions for the implementation of the project.

MoPH reports 123,108 total Covid recoveriesQNADoha

The Ministry of Pub-lic Health (MoPH) an-nounced yesterday 205

new confi rmed cases of coro-navirus (Covid-19) during the last 24 hours, of which 195 are from community cases and 10 from travellers returning from abroad who are subject to quar-antine.

It also reported the death of a 63-year-old patient who was receiving the necessary medi-cal care.

The MoPH also recorded 197 recoveries from the virus dur-ing the past 24 hours, bringing the total number of cases re-covered in Qatar to 123,108.

The MoPH issued a state-ment on Covid-19 develop-ments in Qatar, which said all new cases have been kept in isolation and are receiving nec-essary healthcare.

Measures to tackle Covid-19 in Qatar have succeeded in fl at-tening the curve and limiting

the spread of the virus and the number of new daily cases and hospital admissions are contin-uing to decline each week.

Qatar’s proactive and exten-sive testing of suspected cases has enabled us to identify a high number of positive cases in the community.

Qatar has one of the low-est Covid-19 death rates in the world.

This is a result of: Very high quality of care

provided through the public healthcare sector

Qatar’s young populationProactive testing to iden-

tify cases early Expanding hospital capac-

ity, especially intensive care, to ensure patients receive the medical care

Protecting the elderly and those with chronic diseases

Even though restrictions are being lifted, and numbers are declining, this does not mean that the Covid-19 pandem-ic is over in Qatar, as people continue to be admitted with moderate to severe Covid-19

symptoms. “Unless we follow all precautionary measures, we may experience a second wave of the virus and see numbers increasing, as there are already signs of this happening in other countries around the world.”

Avoid close contact with others, crowded places and confi ned closed spaces where people congregate. Now more than ever, we must be careful and protect the most vulner-able.While the restrictions of Covid-19 are gradually being lifted in Qatar, it is important for everyone to play their role in controlling the virus by follow-ing the precautionary meas-ures:

Adherence to physical dis-tancing

Wearing a face maskWashing hands regularly

Anyone suff ering from Cov-id-19 symptoms should either contact 16000 helpline or go directly to one of the designat-ed health centres to undergo the necessary checks at Muaither, Rawdat Al Khail, Umm Slal, or Al Gharrafa health centres.

Govt teachers’ licence registration on hold

The Teachers Aff airs De-partment at the Ministry of Education and Higher

Education has decided to sus-pend the registration of profes-sional licences for teachers at government schools, and no new applications will be received during the current school year 2020/2021, local Arabic daily Arrayah has reported.

A circular issued by the de-partment directed to govern-ment schools, said the depart-ment will only address the unprocessed applications from the past year. The priority for application to the professional li-censing programme will be given to the co-ordinators of subjects and experienced teachers. Co-ordinators who have not got such a license can apply for the second level of the programme, while those who already got the license and have spent fi ve years accord-ing to the previous system can apply to receive the third level, in case they comply with the set reg-ulations and required standards.

Accordingly, schools prepare timetables for the relevant class-room demonstrations of teachers, and subject co-ordinators and the academic deputies in co-ordina-tion with the school inspectors concerned, to comply with the set requirements for acquiring the professional licence from the targeted category. The application process is online.

The strategy of granting pro-fessional licences for such cat-egories is mainly based on the routine activities inside schools and classrooms and gives special focus on their real performances on a daily basis, besides their way of evaluating students, analysing the results and communicating this to the parents to take the nec-essary steps to address any short-comings and to make the required improvements.

The system is meant to enhance quality of educational process and improve the results of both teach-ers and students, which would refl ect positively on their future, Arrayah added.

QU Law Clinic’s global project on legal implications of Covid-19

The Law Clinic at Qatar University (QU) College of Law has launched a

unique project in collaboration with 30 diff erent clinics from 20 countries.

These countries are Spain, India, the US, South Africa, Croatia, Nigeria, Morocco, Australia, New Zealand, Jor-dan, the UK, Pakistan, Malawi, Oman, Kuwait, Tunisia, Can-ada, Romania, Turkey along with Qatar.

The project, which aims to address different legal impli-cations of the Covid-19 crisis in different countries around the world, will be carried out during the fall semester 2020.

The Law Clinic is planning to host an online symposium on November 30, to share in-formation and discuss the le-gal implications of the crisis in each represented country. It will collect and analyse re-ports from different clinics and will publish a final re-port on this very exciting and

promising project. The Law Clinic will be focusing mainly on eight topics: International Liability for Transmission and Proliferation of Viruses and Pandemics, Observance of Rules of International Hu-man Rights Law in Addressing the Coronavirus Crisis, The Impact of the Coronavirus on Contractual Obligations: Force Majeure and Hardship, Modifications of Employ-ment Contracts to Address the Coronavirus, Criminal Liability for Transmission of Contagious Diseases and Epidemics, Economic Con-sequences of the Coronavi-rus: Debt reconstruction and Bankruptcy of Companies, The State’s Administrative Authority in Restriction of Freedom for the Protection of Public Security, Public Health and Public Tranquility and Social Responsibility and the Culture of Voluntarism: A Role for Civil Society and the Private Sector.

Dr Khalid Saleh al-Shamari, associate dean for Academic Affairs, said: “We believe at our College of Law in the international legal education model of learning where we engage students from around the world in our programmes to share infor-mation and exchange ideas. We constantly contribute to the United Nations Academic Impact programme and the United Nations Education 4 Justice programme. This se-mester through our Law Clin-ic, where we are addressing a global problem that requires global solutions, we will be addressing the legal implica-tions of the coronavirus crisis in collaboration with different Law Clinics in different uni-versities around the world”.

“Our students at the Law Clinic will present with pride and confidence the efforts made by Qatar to confront the public health crisis of our time,” Dr al-Shamari added.

Work in progress at a sewage pumping station. Interior ministry specifi es capacity of marine vessels, tourist dhows

Diff erent marine vessels can operate at 50% of their carrying capacity,

including the crew, subject to a maximum of 30 people.

This has been highlighted through a notifi cation posted by the Ministry of Interior (MoI) on social media.

The notifi cation pertains to the carrying capacity permitted for marine vessels in Phase 4 of the gradual lifting of restrictions imposed on their movement as part of the precautions to control Covid-19.

Tourist dhows can operate at 30% of their carrying capacity, including the crew, with a maxi-mum of 30 people allowed on board, according to the MoI.

“Adherence to the precau-tionary measures ensures safety and security,” the notifi cation stressed.

Phase 4 of the gradual lifting of Covid-19 curbs began on Sep-tember 1 with schools reopening for the new academic year, Doha Metro and public bus services

resuming operations and food courts reopening at malls, all with limited capacity, among other key developments.

All precautionary and preven-tive measures had been put in place to ensure protection from the virus, and the public has

been urged to follow the guide-lines provided by the relevant authorities for everyone’s safety.

The Supreme Committee for Crisis Management on Thurs-day affi rmed that Phase 4 would continue to be implemented in the country.

Qatar committed to protecting biodiversityQNADoha

Qatar stressed the importance of re-sponding to environmental challeng-es collectively to fi nd the appropriate

solutions.This came during the statement of HE the

Minister of Municipality and Environment Abdullah bin Abdulaziz bin Turki al-Subaie during the UN Summit on Biodiversity.

HE al-Subaie highlighted Qatar’s commit-

ment to environmental development in its 2030 vision, naming it one of its four pillars.

Preserving biodiversity is one of national developmental strategies.

He stressed Qatar’s commitment to legis-lation and environmental initiatives to raise awareness on biodiversity, particularly in Qatar.

HE the Minister added that the event re-fl ects the commitment to protecting biodi-versity and the eff orts made to achieve sus-tainable development on a global level.

He said that the 2030 Agenda for Sustain-

able Development showed the close connec-tion between its goals and protecting biodi-versity.

He noted that the multilateral UN agree-ments would help enhance comprehensive co-operation between countries and build capabilities in protecting biodiversity.

HE the Minister stressed the importance of global co-operation to prepare ambitious plans and initiatives to protect biodiversity.

He concluded his statement by expressing his thanks to the organizers, and expressed hope that it could yield fruitful outcomes.

REGION/ARAB WORLD/ASIA3Gulf Times

Saturday, October 3, 2020

Artists in overdrive to restore Beirut’s beautyAFPBeirut

Lebanese stained glass artist Maya Husseini had hoped to retire after dec-

ades spent designing colour-ful windows, but she has been flooded with work since the blast that ripped through Bei-rut.

“I can’t possibly not try to restore what is gone,” said the 60-year-old woman, her bright red curly hair in a short bob.

The massive explosion at the capital’s port on August 4 killed more than 190 people and wounded thousands more as it sent lethal shockwaves pum-melling through the city.

But it also ravaged dozens of Beirut’s most cherished heritage buildings.

Husseini is one of several art-ists slowly starting to restore

artworks devastated in the dis-aster.

In her basement workshop on the outskirts of Beirut, she ges-tured at what remained of win-dows of a 19th-century church she had restored after the 1975-1990 civil war.

A gaping mess of mangled metal, dotted by a few surviving pieces of orange and blue glass, lay in a cardboard box.

“At least seven projects I had worked on were blown away,” Husseini said.

They included one of her fi rst projects designing biblical scenes on glass for a church, and the dazzling yellow and orange windows she had crafted for the famed Sursock Museum.

Before the blast, she had planned to retire after complet-ing glass windows for a last ca-thedral in Jordan.

“But now I won’t allow myself to stop,” she said.

On her work table, she picked a green piece of glass and lodged it between curving lengths of soft lead to rebuild a window of fl owers and leaves for a private home.

Even if she has now taken on apprentices, she said there is still a lot of work ahead.

“For some people who have asked me, I won’t be able to start anything for at least two years,” she said.

In neighbourhoods near the port, the race is on to cover up 100 heritage buildings before the autumn rain.

The United Nations culture and education fund, Unesco, has said it will hold a conference to try to drum up hundreds of mil-lions of dollars for restorations.

But until that aid arrives, Leb-anese are doing what they can on their own.

Among them, artwork conser-vation specialist Gaby Maamary

has decided to off er to restore damaged paintings for free.

He says he was inspired after seeing Lebanese youths sweep-ing away seas of rubble and glass after the blast, and decided to channels his skills towards pre-serving Beirut’s heritage.

“It’s something that you can lose easily if you don’t pay atten-tion,” the 58-year-old artist and university lecturer said.

In his Beirut studio, he care-fully held up a 17th-century na-ture morte by Italian artist Elena Recco, depicting a cat greedily eyeing up some dead fi sh.

In several places, the can-vas had been slashed by fl ying shards of glass.

Wearing white gloves, he turned over the back of another canvas he had started clean-ing, the untreated part a shade darker and shimmering with fi ne glass dust.

Nearby, he pointed to a work

by late Lebanese artist Sophie Yeramian whose dried paint had been cracked by the blast.

“We did not expect that amount of calls,” he said.

The initiative has taken him to assess damage in art galleries,

but also private homes.In one, he pulled a painting

worth tens of thousands of dol-lars out of the trash.

To his horror, he found anoth-er bound up in sticky tape.

The owner had rushed to hos-

pital with her severely injured son after the explosion, and someone helping to clean up the mess had not realised their worth.

But even without sticky tape to complicate matters, Maamary said conservation is a complex process that involves hours of planning before even touching the artwork.

“Sometimes the same step has to be done several times, simply because we don’t have the mu-seum equipment,” he said.

Bringing in specialised mate-rials from abroad is also tricky, with bank transfers blocked from Lebanon’s crisis-hit banks.

But drawing on the help of friends and using what is locally available, Maamary is deter-mined to carry on.

“We’re going to continue do-ing that on a daily basis until we run out of materials or means,” he said.

Gaby Maamary, a Lebanese artwork conservation specialist, examines a painting by late Lebanese artist Sophie Yeramian, damaged in the Beirut port blast, at his studio in the capital Beirut.

Ardern vows to tackle housing crisis as NZ readies for votingReutersWellington

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ar-dern yesterday vowed

to tackle the country’s chronic housing shortage, focusing in on a vulnerable election issue for the Labour Party ahead of early voting starting this week-end.

Ardern is expected to secure re-election in the Oct 17 poll af-ter winning praise for her han-dling of the Covid-19 outbreak and other crises, but Labour has done less well on some domes-tic issues, including plans to build new homes and rein in the cost of housing.

The Labour Party-led coa-lition’s ambitious aff ord-able housing project to build 100,000 homes in a decade has faltered, with only 600 homes being built so far and about a 1,000 under construction.

Yesterday, Ardern promised to deliver more homes and re-place a 30-year-old law blamed for high housing costs and im-peding urban development.

“Overly restrictive planning rules are one of the causes of high house prices,” Ardern said, adding she was determined to remove barriers to the supply of land and infrastructure for housing, including replacing the country’s Resource Man-agement Act (RMA).

New Zealand’s house prices

have soared nearly 90% over the past decade, analysts have said, due to a shortage of over 100,000 homes.

Successive governments have failed to ease the red tape around land approval, making land artifi cially scarce.

For private developers the costs and consent process are signifi cant hurdles, making properties unaff ordable.

Ardern said the party would also support fi rst home buyers with loans and introduce regu-lations for property manage-ment services.

While opinion polls sug-gest Ardern is on track for a comfortable win to secure a second three-year term, the opposition National Party has

been clawing back support.National Party leader Judith

Collins, whose party said previ-ously it would scrap the RMA, yesterday dismissed Ardern’s housing plans as copying its own.

“What Labour’s housing an-nouncement is, is an admission of 3 years of failure,” Collins said.

Nearly 450 advance polling stations will open their doors on Saturday.

Chief Electoral Offi cer Alicia Wright said advance voting has become steadily more popular.

It accounted for 47% of all votes in 2017 and could reach as much as 60% this time round.

Preliminary results will be announced on Oct 17.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is handed a bouquet of flowers as she visits a building site in Auckland yesterday.

Malaysia leaders draw fl ak as virus cases jumpReutersKuala Lumpur

Malaysians took to so-cial media yesterday to lambast politicians for

violating social distancing pro-tocols and refusing to self-iso-late, after the country recorded its second-highest spike in daily coronavirus cases following a state election last week.

The southeast Asian country has reported a steady climb in cases after an increase in travel-lers to Sabah, on Borneo island, ahead of its state polls last Sat-urday.

Malaysia recorded 287 new cases yesterday, the highest daily rise since it started tracking the spread of the pandemic.

Prime Minister Muhyid-din Yassin’s government has been criticised for failing to im-pose controls such as manda-tory screening for travellers from Sabah prior to the election, and for allowing people to cut short a 14-day home quarantine order if they tested negative for the vi-rus.

Muhyiddin’s offi ce did not im-mediately respond to a request for comment, but health offi cials have defended not announcing control measures sooner, saying authori-

ties did not want to discourage Sabah voters from returning home to cast their ballots.

However, health ministry director-general Noor Hisham Abdullah said yesterday that the spike in Sabah could have been mitigated by compliance with guidelines set by the ministry on minimising physical contact.

“The issue now is the non-compliance to SOP at every lev-el,” Noor Hisham said at a news conference, referring to the min-istry’s guidelines.

“We are not blaming (anyone), but we are reminding...

we hope that all of us learn this lesson so we do not repeat this mistake again.”

From the early stages of the pandemic, Malaysia’s health ministry prescribed guidelines to minimise the spread of the vi-rus, which included wearing face masks, maintaining a distance of at least 1m between people and washing hands regularly with soap.

The hashtags #Politician-sCauseVirus and #Minister-Cluster were trending on Twit-ter in Malaysia yesterday after ministers and political fi gures were reported attending public events upon their return from campaigning in the state.

At least two politicians tested

positive on the campaign trail, while cases linked to travel to Sabah have been recorded in all 13 Malaysian states.

“Why didn’t you quarantine yourself for 14 days?” Twitter user @safi qshahid asked Fed-eral Territories Minister Annuar Musa who posted photos of him-self at a business congress after returning from Sabah this week.

In a statement, Annuar’s press secretary denied that the minister had breached quaran-tine rules, saying he had already completed self-isolation and tested negative days before the election.

Some Twitter users also raised concerns over risks posed by na-tional elections, which could be called as early as this year amid uncertainty over the stability of the ruling alliance, which has only a two-seat majority in par-liament.

Muhyiddin is facing a leader-ship challenge from opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, who said last week he had secured the support from a majority of law-makers to form a government.

Malaysia has reported 11,771 coronavirus cases so far, includ-ing 136 deaths.

The economy has contracted for the fi rst time since the 2009 global fi nancial crisis.

Malaysia’s King Al-Sultan Abdullah was discharged from hospital yesterday after treatment for food poisoning and sports injuries, state news agency Bernama reported.The king has recovered and will continue resting at the palace, Bernama reported, citing the palace comptroller Ahmad Fadil Shamsuddin. The king’s return to the palace could result in some movement in a power struggle over the country’s premiership, after opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim sought a meeting with him to replace Muhyiddin Yassin as prime minister.

Anwar said last week that he had secured a “strong, formidable” majority from lawmakers in parliament to oust Muhyiddin.But he has to convince the king that he has the numbers to form a government.The king had agreed to meet Anwar last week but the appointment was cancelled as the king was unwell.The king plays a largely ceremonial role in Malaysia but he could appoint a prime minister who in his view is likely to command a majority in parliament.He could also dissolve parliament

and trigger elections on the premier’s advice.The political turmoil comes just seven months after another power struggle that led to Muhyiddin getting the premiership and could delay eff orts to stabilise an economy that is reeling from the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.No major political party has come out in support of Anwar but the leader of the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), the largest party in the ruling coalition, said there were “many” in his party who supported Anwar.

Malaysia’s king discharged from hospital

Pay fi refi ghting bill before leaving, Sri Lanka tells stricken oil tankerAFPColombo

Sri Lanka will not allow a Panamanian-registered oil tanker stricken off its

coast to leave its waters until the vessel’s owners pay a $2mn fi re-fi ghting bill, government offi cials have said.

The New Diamond, carrying 270,000 tonnes of crude, was en-route from Kuwait to India when an engine room explosion on September 3 killed a Filipino crewman and set off a massive fi re.

Firefighters from Sri Lanka and India battled and put out the blaze on the vessel, which is now tied to a tug boat and guarded by a Sri Lankan navy ship some 140km (90 miles) east of the Indian Ocean is-land.

Offi cial sources said the owners of the tanker had planned to begin towing the

stricken vessel to the United Arab Emirates.

But Sri Lanka’s Marine En-vironment Protection Agency (MEPA) said on Thursday the ship can leave only after paying

a $2.38mn bill for fi refi ghting and compensation for marine pollution.

Last week, Sri Lanka had said the tanker’s owner, Liberian-registered Porto Emporios

Shipping Inc, had agreed to pay the fi refi ghting costs, but on Thursday announced that no payment had yet been received.

“MEPA will grant approval to tow the ship away from of Sri Lankan waters once the nego-tiation process (for payment) is completed,” the agency said in a letter to the navy.

The vessel is managed by New Shipping Limited of Greece.

The remaining 22 crew of the New Diamond were rescued and are in quarantine as a pre-caution against the coronavi-rus in the southern port city of Galle.

The vessel leaked some of its heavy fuel oil but salvage work-ers have since fi xed the rupture, the navy said adding that there was no risk of its crude oil cargo leaking.

Sri Lanka has said it wants to charge the skipper of the tanker for negligence and causing pol-lution.

In this handout file photograph taken on September 4, 2020, and released by Sri Lanka’s Air Force shows fireboats battling to extinguish a fire on the Panamanian-registered crude oil tanker New Diamond.

Lebanon to put over 100 districts on virus lockdown

Lebanon is to put 111 villages and towns nationwide on lockdown for a week after a series of record novel coronavirus daily infection rates, the interior ministry said yesterday.The move came after widespread objections to a nationwide lockdown in August, as the country faces its worst economic crisis in decades.From early Sunday and for eight days in the villages listed, residents were to “remain at home”, and “wear a mask covering their mouth and nose if forced to go out”, the ministry said in a statement.State institutions and places of worship would close, but health centres and delivery services would be exempted, it added.The head of a major Beirut

public hospital battling Covid-19, Firass Abiad, welcomed the new district-by-district approach.“This will help identify hotspots and (implement) a more focused approach to restrictive measures.This can be a good alternative to the unpopular total lockdown,” he said on Twitter.Cases have spiked in the aftermath of a massive explosion at the Beirut port on August 4 that killed more than 190 people and overwhelmed the capital’s health services, with thousands of wounded.The country has recorded 40,868 Covid-19 cases since February, including 374 deaths.Authorities fear that a major spike would overwhelm the country’s fragile health sector.

Demonstrations in northwestern Iran in support of Azerbaijan in its conflict with Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh region have been dispersed by police, the Fars news agency reported. Police broke up on Thursday a rally in Tabriz, the capital of Iran’s East Azerbaijan province, where a large Azeri minority lives, wrote Fars. In Tabriz, “around 500 people gathered and chanted slogans in support of the end of the occupation of Karabakh”, an Armenian separatist enclave within Azerbaijan, according to Fars. “Some tried to disrupt the atmosphere with ethnic slogans (but) the police intervened to stop the rally,” the agency added. Fars published two videos showing dozens of people gathered in streets chanting “Karabakh” and “Long live Azerbaijan” in the Azeri language.

Iran police disperse pro-Azerbaijan demonstrations

4 Gulf TimesSaturday, October 3, 2020

COMMUNITY

Qatar off ers numerous options to develop an ‘artistic career’By Mudassir RajaStaff Reporter

Art is a never-ending reel of ideas and thoughts. Everyone is an artist in his

or her own way. Only the coura-geous express their imaginative self and ideas for the world to view.

Sarfan Nazar is a Sri Lankan expatriate and artist in Qatar. Hailing from a village, he has always enjoyed intimacy with nature and its beauty. The nature and motivation from his parents have helped him pursue his love for art besides his regular job.

“I hail from a village called Irakkamam. It is a sprawling green haven, lush with trees and a beautiful lake. My proximity to nature in its true essence is among the prime reasons that explain my penchant towards art,” said Sarfan in a recent in-terview with Gulf Times.

Born and brought up in a mid-dle class family, Sarfan realised very soon that he could not pur-sue art as his career.

“I always felt that taking art as a career full-time was not viable and that it had no future. Hence, I took up engineering and design with the intent of getting a good job to support my family. I am now working as a landscape de-signer for a reputed company in Qatar. I never regret taking this decision as I enjoy my job, be-

cause it helps me hone my crea-tive skills.”

The artist is a nature-lover and grew up appreciating it in its various forms.

“Be it the fl ora and fauna around or the sheer brilliance of a sunrise, I am always entranced by the beauty of nature and its off erings. So much so that I sometimes just stand awestruck and wonder how beautiful the world around us is. At the age of fi ve, I started using my imagi-nation and tried replicating my thoughts on paper. And my love for art only grew from there.”

Sarfan usually uses oil paints with special focus on realism. All his artworks are oil on canvas. “Before fi nal piece execution, I do my initial sketches and com-parisons. I take my artwork from various stages. I also work with charcoal on paper to produce life-like detailed sketches. Dur-ing my teenage, I was inspired by the renowned Sri Lankan artist Solies Mendis and was greatly inspired by his usage of colours which was unique only to him. Later in life, I was intrigued by the works of Leonardo Da Vinci. His work made me understand realism in detail. I am also an ardent follower of Salvador Dali. His level of creativity and sur-realist masterpieces amazes me every time I see it.”

The artist has been part of

various exhibitions in Sri Lanka and Qatar.

“I have attended exhibitions in Fire Station, Katara and other major venues. I fi nd these ven-ues as a source of inspiration and I also take it as an opportunity to network with fellow artists.

“I have been a part of more than 40 competitions back home with a couple of them on the na-tional level. I have won several accolades. I take pride in men-tioning that I was recognised by the Sri Lankan government to be one of the ‘Young National Art-

ist’ of Sri Lanka in 2017.” For the young artist, art is

a journey of a million years. It evolves and breathes continu-ously.

“I believe it to be a never-end-ing reel of ideas and thoughts. I believe everyone is an artist in his/her own way. Only the cou-rageous express their imagina-tive self and ideas for the world to view. You give anybody a blank sheet of paper to express themselves and every person can do wonders. All it takes is cour-age.”

Sarfan fi nds the pandemic lockdown time to be a positive healing for his soul.

“First of all, my heart goes out to all those who have been fi ghting day and night to get the world rid of this pandemic. Their eff orts are commendable and will not go unnoticed. The lockdown seems to have proven frustrating to a lot of people be-cause they feel they have been forced into confi nement. On the contrary, I fi nd this time to be a positive healing to my soul. I have had much more time to refl ect on my ideas and present them better. That’s what an art-ist needs in my opinion. Leaving the hustle and bustle of the daily life behind, and being closer to what you want to present eff ec-tively.”

The artist believes Qatar is do-ing an excellent job to promote local residents and foreigners in many aspects.

“There are a lot more venues and options for senior artists and upcoming artists. There are lots of places to showcase your artwork and boost a new artistic career. The Qatar scene has developed significantly in the past few years. Opening of Qatar National Museum and various private art platforms combine together to give many options for young talent to come up.”

Sarfan Nazar, a young Sri Lankan landscape designer, is fast finding his feet as an artist in Qatar

Call for determined eff orts to reduce food wastage By Mudassir RajaStaff Reporter

For the fi rst time, the world marked ‘International Day of Awareness of Food Loss

and Waste’ (IDAFLW) on Sep-tember 29 this year.

The day highlights the need to have food security and to reduce food wastage. This cannot come at a better time than during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The economic wizards around the globe have been making hue and cry about the lasting impact of the pandemic including the looming increase in poverty and hunger. More and more people will be facing scarcity of food and one way to tackle the issue is by reducing food waste.

Reducing food loss and waste, can bring benefi ts to society as a whole and can result in: in-creased food availability to the most vulnerable; a reduction in greenhouse gas missions; re-duced pressure on land and wa-ter resources; and increased pro-ductivity and economic growth.

There are however people who have already committed to the cause in Qatar, by collect-ing extra food and distribut-ing it among the less privileged. Wa’hab Food Heroes can be the best example of taking care of

the extra food and raising aware-ness about food loss. The initia-tive was started by Wardha Ma-mukoya, an Indian expatriate and mother of three, in 2017. She along with her family moved to Qatar in 2015 after her husband – Shahid Abdusalam – got a job with Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy.

An electronics and communi-cation engineer by qualifi cation, Wardha’s passion lies in sustain-able energy, circular economy and social entrepreneurship. She got the idea of starting Wa’hab after she witnessed food waste during a party.

“There were instances where we had surplus food after a party and were unsure of what to do with it. I would recall the Hadith of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) which states: ‘He is not a believ-er, who eats to his fi ll while his neighbour is hungry’ and won-dered how surplus food could be put to a better use.”

The food volunteer started thinking of a way to manage extra food and share it with those who need it. “Wa’hab was founded in 2017 to connect the two ends, with an aim to save food and money and contribute to better the circumstances of the peo-ple in need and their families in their home countries, which is the primary reason they are here

for. By involving the community in the form of volunteers – food heroes – to collect and redistrib-ute surplus food, we expect to help bridge gaps and foster bet-ter relationships. Wa’hab in Ara-bic is derived from one of Allah’s attributed name ‘Al Wahhab’, and it means to do a good deed without expecting anything in return.”

The food hero along with her volunteers raises awareness re-garding food wastage and how to reduce it. She has some won-derful future plans as well. “The volunteers help in collecting and redistributing the surplus food to the benefi ciaries and most importantly, they help put a smile on their faces. We have

some great projects in the pipe-line like our surplus food shar-ing app which we are hoping to launch in January 2021 and many innovative ideas to reduce food wastage and reuse the surplus food through which we hope to widen our impact in society.”

She added: “By compost-ing unusable food like vegetable peels, coff ee grinds and plate scrapings, we add essential nu-trients back into the soil, thereby replenishing the soil. It is also known to help sandy soil retain

water and nutrients which is a key to grow the next generation of crops, and ties in directly with Qatar National Vision 2030, which aims to achieve self-suffi ciency in food production. Wa’hab aims to make compost-ing easy and accessible to all by providing an array of compost-ing solutions: ranging from ma-chines intended for large scale commercial institutions to small compost bins for urban homes.”

When asked what she thinks makes her work worthwhile, Wardha said: “One moment that

stands out is a conversation we had with the manager of a food bank that we have been work-ing with for the last few years. He had then just returned from a charity trip to Somalia, after a severe famine there. He told us that he met with some local tribesmen there, and what they told him also choked us. They told him: “We were once affl uent people, having enough to eat and we used to throw away plenty of our surplus food, with no second thoughts. Today, our situation has reversed, where our people

would even fi ght for the scraps of leftover food”.

Speaking about the IDAFLW, the food hero said: “Qatar-based sustainability advocacy group EcoMENA estimates that half of the waste sitting in Qatar’s land-fi lls is made up of organic items including leftover food. In addi-tion to this, food waste rots and releases potent greenhouse gases that are responsible for rise in temperatures and contribute to global warming.

“According to researchers, food waste is the single great-est solution to reverse climate change, way ahead of a global plant-based diet, electric cars, regenerative agriculture or even utility-scale solar panels. So we need to ask ourselves, why isn’t food waste a cause of alarm? Why aren’t we doing more to reduce, reuse and recycle food waste, in that order?”

She added: “It is high time that we have a fundamental shift in our food norms and this re-quires changing our attitudes towards food. Sustainability is not just about the bigger changes in society, it’s just as much about the small choices we make in our everyday lives – choosing to re-distribute that surplus meal af-ter an event can go a long way to reduce food waste and warm the hearts of those who receive it.”

Sarfan Nazar

‘Oryx in the Wild’, oil on canvas.

‘The old man’s gaze’, pencil and charcoal on paper.

‘The Majestic Peregrine Falcon’, oil on canvas.

‘Letters for Good’ is a campaign initiated by Riya Mahajan, a young student, in Qatar to say thanks to the healthcare workers during the Covid-19 pandemic. Riya calls them healthcare heroes and invites people of all backgrounds and age to share handwritten letters and to recognise the contributions made by them.Gulf Times has joined hands with the student and will be publishing one selected letter each week, to highlight the services rendered by healthcare workers. The rest of the letters will be sent by Riya to HMC for circulation among the healthcare workers. There is no limit to the number, creativity or personal feel to the letters, which should be scanned and e-mailed to lettersforgood2020@gmail.com

Campaign recognises services of healthcare workers during Covid-19 PSS opens new kindergarten branch

The inauguration cer-emony of Pak Shamaa kindergarten (KG), a

new branch of Pak Shamaa School (PSS) was recent-ly held at Al Mashaf area branch of the school. MA Shahid, PSS president; Na-bila Kaukab, PSS principal; co-ordinators and head of wings from all branches were present on the occasion.

The ribbon was cut by MA Shahid.

PSS always puts best ef-forts to facilitate students in accessing quality education. For this purpose, the school opened its fourth branch that has started functioning from September 2020. This means more than 150 stu-dents will have access to an early childhood education which will set the founda-tion for the

life long process of learn-ing, by equipping the chil-dren with basic literacy and social skills.

The school was designed using an inclusive approach so that the students can en-gage not only in curricular activities but also co-cur-ricular and extra-curricular activities.

For this purpose, the school has a playground where children can engage in physical activities, equipped with latest technologies such as smart boards, projectors etc to enhance student’s learning and to encourage them in the learning process.

The aim of PSS is to con-tribute to Qatar’s eff orts to achieve access to education for every child, so that every person is able to achieve his or her full potential.

The school management believes that early child-hood education is the base on which future success is built, so they are happy to be part of any action that supports improved access to education.

M A Shahid cutting the ribbon to inaugurate the new KG branch.

More than 150 students will have access to early childhood education at the KG branch.

Wardha Mamukoya

Wa’hab Food Heroes was started in 2017.

Food heroes collect and redistribute surplus food.

COMMUNITY5Gulf Times

Saturday, October 3, 2020

Community leaders pay tribute to C K MenonSeveral Indian community

members remembered the late Qatar-based Indian

businessman and philanthro-pist, C K Menon, as they recently marked his fi rst death anniver-sary. Menon passed away on Oc-tober 1, 2019.

Menon was one of the most prominent Indian businessmen in Qatar with several business initiatives in Qatar, GCC and be-yond. He was awarded one of the highest Indian civilian awards – Padma Shri – in 2009 as well as Pravasi Bharatiya Samman in 2006, the highest award for non-resident Indians, besides dozens of awards from other entities. He also received the Qatar National Award from Doha International Centre for Interfaith Dialogue in 2012 for his humanitarian work.

Recollecting his close associa-tion with Menon, Girishkumar, former president of Indian Cul-tural Centre, described him as an

“emperor of mercy” and a “lead-er of humanity, in several fi elds.

“Aff ectionately called as Me-non Sir, C K Menon was an em-peror of mercy and is cherished

in the hearts and minds of thou-sands. He overcame all odds in his life to emerge as one of the leading businessmen in the Mid-dle East.

A deeply spiritual man, he humbly dedicated all his achievements to God. He fi rmly attributed his success to untir-ing hard work, high degree of honesty and deep dedication,” said Girishkumar.

According to Girishkumar, Menon was well known for his philanthropic activities and the scale of his charity activities is unmatchable, cutting across all sections of people.

“C K Menon was a beacon of humanitarian activities, a saviour who till his last breath served humanity. His philan-thropic activities in the Middle East and India helped the most deserved segments of the soci-ety in a big way. He devoted his life in the service of humanity

and stayed closely with people while rising above caste, colour or creed. This is the reason C K Menon is greatly adored and respected by the people,” high-lighted Girishkumar.

Girishkumar also recounted a personal experience with Menon

where he had taken a very gen-erous approach to save the lives of four Indian nationals from a GCC country.

“I was also involved in the whole process. He was willing to pay huge amount of money to save these low-income work-

ers though he did not even know any of them personally. He used to say ‘there is a need for incul-cating charity as a culture. Busi-nesses are making money be-cause of the common people and every business person must give back to society a certain propor-tion of their earnings.’”

Meanwhile, John Gilbert, global member of Overseas Indian Cultural Congress of which Menon was the patron for a long time, said that he had lost a guide and mentor and the memories of their association are still very vivid.

“His death was a great shock and a huge loss for me person-ally and for the community. I have had decades of associa-tion with him and he was close-ly associated with many of our activities. He not only inspired us to work for the community and uplifting of the poor but led from the front to assist the

needy and the weaker sections of the society,” said Gilbert.

According to Gilbert, Menon will eternally be remembered for his humanitarian deeds.

“Though a very success-ful businessman, Menon was a very humble human being with special focus on helping the needy. Irrespective of his po-litical ideologies and beliefs he was always at the forefront of helping out needy people.”

Gilbert, who has penned a poem in memory of the late philanthropist, said that Me-non also was the true face of secularism.

“Irrespective of his own re-ligious beliefs, which he prac-tised very firmly, he always stood for the entire humanity. Whenever, there was a need for any particular religious group back in his native state, he was always supportive of their gen-uine causes.

C K Menon, one of the most prominent Indian businessmen in Qatar, passed away on October 1, 2019.

John Gilbert Girishkumar

IIS celebrates Gandhi JayantiIdeal Indian School (IIS) re-

cently celebrated its fi rst virtual Gandhi Jayanthi to

commemorate the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gan-dhi with the theme ‘My Life is My Message.’

The programme was graced

by Syed Shoukath Ali, IIS prin-cipal; Zarina Ali, HR manager; Azam Khan, vice principal of Boys’ section; Shobana Menon, vice principal of Junior section; Dr Nazima Bi, headmistress of Girls’ section; Shirley D’Sales, headmistress of KG section;

Khatija, assistant headmistress of Boys’ section; and Shaikh Shamim, assistant headmaster of Junior section.

Speaking on the occasion, the principal kindled the patri-otic spirit through his inspiring message.

He stressed the importance of following Gandhi’s princi-ples of truth and non-violence, which will solve all the prob-lems of today and will ensure a peaceful world. Azam Khan and Dr Nazima Bi also spoke on the occasion.

Students from various classes delivered speeches and presented PowerPoint slides. The programme started with a prayer by Fadhil Mohamed Ri-yas of XI-B.

The compering was done by Safa Sheikh of VII-J, Vaaeza Ali of VII-I welcomed the gathering and Bhavith Babu of VII-C proposed the vote of thanks. Co-ordinated by Glo-ry Thomas and Sajna Nair, the celebration took shape a week ahead with various competi-tions like elocution, poster designing and

PowerPoint presentation. Masood Khalid Khan, HOD of Social Science, thanked the gathering and concluded the programme with an urge to follow Gandhian princi-ples.

Students and teachers par-ticipated in the Gandhi Jayanthi celebration.

SIS teachers discuss National Education Policy’s key aspects

Shantiniketan Indian School (SIS) recently had a discussion on some of the

key aspects of the National Edu-cation Policy (India) 2020.

The virtual session was in-teractive with the panellists and the participants exchanging new actionable thoughts that could be considered as educational strategies of SIS.

Shakir Hussain moderated the discussion on National Edu-cation Policy 2020 that would open up new challenges and responsibilities for teachers as well as students in the coming years.

Sreejith discussed the impor-

tance given to early childhood education and care, and Pooja Roy enlightened the attendees with the need and methods to strengthen foundational literacy and numeracy.

Kavitha Sureshkumar shared diff erent methods and tech-niques used at SIS to ensure that learning is holistic, integrated, enjoyable, and engaging.

Nithya Abhish talked about the importance of equitable and inclusive education, and the ways in which it is practised at SIS.

Fatima Rizna triggered a dis-cussion on ways in which In-dian languages, art, culture and

values can be integrated during normal classroom transactions.

Shihabudeen, SIS senior vice principal, congratulated the moderator, panellists and par-ticipants for the lively discus-sion that generated new ideas and thoughts.

He expressed hope to trans-form the ideas into action and to strengthen all the existing prac-tices to ensure larger benefi ts to children in becoming more re-sponsible and productive global citizens.

The SIS family congratulated Nazia Saleem for meticulously co-ordinating the teachers’ dis-cussion forum.

Electrical engineers’ group conducts third technical webinar

Institute of Integrated Elec-trical Engineers State of Qatar Chapter (IIEE-SQC)

recently organised its third tech-nical webinar, general member-ship meeting and nomination for 2021 board of directors via Zoom. The organising commit-tee and the nominees for the up-coming election for the board of directors attended the event at Hilton Hotel in Doha.

The occasion was graced by Evelyn Laranang from the Philippine Embassy; Francis V Mapile, chairman of Profession-al Regulation Commission and

Board of Electrical Engineer-ing; Rodrigo Pecolera, national president of IIEE; Dene Horneja, incumbent governor of IIEE-Middle East region; and Robert Mabulay, IIEE-Middle East re-gion 2018.

The technical topic, ‘Electrical Safety in Healthcare Facilities’ was presented by Benjardi Wong, former president IIEE-SQC. The webinar had the participation of more than 300 viewers and at-tendees from Qatar, the Philip-pines, other Gulf countries, Sin-gapore and New Zealand.

As a way of giving support to

electrical engineering students in the Philippines, the webinar was also attended by students from Mapua Institute of Tech-nology, Adamson University, Nueva Ecija University of Sci-ence and Technology, St Peter’s College Iligan City and Lyceum of Iligan Foundation.

Eighteen nominees were also presented to the members by Mario B Morales, chairman of the nomination committee. The election for the new set of board of directors 2021 will be held on November 6, 2020 during the annual conference.

Short story competition for Malayali residents

Madhyamam Club Qa-tar is organising a short story compe-

tition for the Malayali resi-dents in Qatar and for former

residents, who are 18 years and above. The stories that focus on ‘Athijeevanam’ (Survival) and which have not been pub-lished before can be sent for

the competition. Length of the story should not exceed four pages.

Stories typed or legibly written in Malayalam, need

to be scanned and e-mailed to madhyamamclub@gmail.com on or before October 20, 2020.

Contact person is Rafeeq Mechery (Mobile: 66572518)

IIQS-Qatar conducts fi rst annual general meetingIndian Institute of Quantity

Surveyors - Qatar Chapter (IIQS-Qatar), associated

to Indian Business and Profes-sionals Council (IBPC) under the aegis of Embassy of India in Qatar, recently conducted its fi rst annual general meeting (AGM) by virtual mode.

Kiran Kumar Podakanti,

IIQS-Qatar president, chaired the meeting which was con-ducted by Ahamed Zubair, gen-eral secretary. Kiran thanked IIQS Global Board, IBPC team and members of IIQS-Qatar team for the help extended. Ahamed Zubair submitted the annual report for 2019 and Venkat Reddy, treasurer, ex-

plained the fi nancial status of IIQS-Qatar.

The AGM approved the ac-tions of the managing committee for fi scal year 2019 by unanimous vote and also approved the fi -nancial report of 2019. Avinash Gaikwad, adviser, addressed the meeting and thanked the past management committee mem-

bers and requested co-operation in improving the member base of IIQS-Qatar. Sudheer Edamana, vice president, gave the vote of thanks. Earlier, the institute had announc

ed that it would postpone its AGM originally planned for March 21, and hold it in virtual form, to protect the members.

The AGM approved the actions of the managing committee for fiscal year 2019 by unanimous vote.

IIEE-SQC organised its third technical webinar, general membership meeting and nomination for 2021 board of directors via Zoom.

The virtual session exchanged new actionable thoughts that could be considered as educational strategies of SIS.

Codeword

Wordsearch

Every letter of the alphabet is used at least once. Squares with the same number in have the same letter .in. Work out which number represents which letter

Puzz

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Adam

Pooch Cafe

Garfield

Bound And Gagged

Sudoku

Sudoku is a puzzle based

grid. The grid ٩x٩ on a

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boxes. You are given (٣x٣)

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.anone is repeated

ARGUEDEBATEORATEBANDYDICKERPARLEYBARGAIN

DISPUTEPOWWOWCOMMENTEXAMINEQUESTIONCONFERFORUM

RELATECONSULTMENTIONTALKCOVERNARRATE

ARIESMarch 21 — April 19

CANCERJune 21 — July 22

LIBRASeptember 23 — October 22

CAPRICORNDecember 22 — January 19

TAURUSApril 20 — May 20

LEOJuly 23 — August 22

SCORPIOOctober 23 — November 21

AQUARIUSJanuary 20 — February 18

GEMINIMay 21 — June 20

VIRGOAugust 23 — September 22

SAGITTARIUSNovember 22 — December 21

PISCESFebruary 19 — March 20

Don’t get so stuck in your ways today that you insist on having the

one true answer without really considering the options. You must

be aware of a lot before you commit yourself one way or another.

The people around you are apt to get annoyed with your narrow-

mindedness, for this is how you will be viewed unless you stop and

take a considered look at the whole picture.

You may feel as if your smile is unwelcome today, Cancer. It may

seem to you like there’s some sort of gloom and doom to people’s

attitudes that makes them unwilling to accept any sort of good

news. Don’t let this stop you from maintaining your own cheerful

state. It’s important that you not probe too deeply into the reasons

behind other people’s behaviour now.

This is a good time to take a stand on an issue that you may have

been vacillating about lately, Libra. People will lose confidence in

you if you can’t seem to make up your mind. What they don’t realise

is that you’ve been working overtime to process all the information.

Now it’s time to express orally what you’ve discovered mentally.

There may be a great tension between you and someone older

today, Capricorn. Perhaps there’s someone who’s adopting a sort

of “parent knows best” personality that’s starting to annoy you.

Take a breather. Realise that this person isn’t being critical or

judgmental but just giving you advice. You should open your eyes

and understand that this advice could be very useful.

Quietly step into the background if things aren’t going the way

you’d like, Taurus. Don’t try to stick your nose into someone else’s

business, even if you think you know the right way to proceed.

People probably have strong opinions, and they won’t be swayed in

any direction. The best you can do is take care of yourself. You will

probably find that this means you shouldn’t be seen or heard.

Keep careful track of things today, Leo, for you will find that the

smallest detail will make the biggest diff erence. Don’t hesitate to

go with your hunches when something simply doesn’t sound right.

Stay focused and try not to get caught off guard when emotional

issues come out of nowhere and disturb your thoughts. Trust

yourself regardless of what’s going on around you.

Today is one of those days in which you will be bursting at the

seams to share big news with your friends, Scorpio. Perhaps you

just received an important package or piece of information and

you can’t wait to spread the news. Be careful about who might be

lurking around, however, because there could be others listening in.

They may not necessarily be acting in your best interests.

There’s apt to be a comfortable feeling about today that should

make you feel quite secure and nurtured, Aquarius. Perhaps you’re

feeling protected by a strong force, maybe an internal one, that’s

reminding you that as long as you stay within the lines, everything

will be fine. There’s a familiarity to things that will make it easy for

you to navigate any rough waters.

You may have gotten yourself tangled up in a deep mental drama

over a series of recent incidents, Gemini. Your mind may be working

overtime in order to solve the riddles. It’s quite possible that the

reality of the situation is that you’re simply making a big deal over

nothing. Today is one of those days in which you will face the harsh

reality that comes as a consequence of your over-the-top thinking.

You may feel as if your hands are tied today and you’re faced with

absolutely no options, Virgo. Don’t despair over a situation that

seems insurmountable. Think of yourself as a terrific magician who

can burst out of the strongest chains. You have tricks up your sleeve

that can help you escape just about any situation in which you find

yourself.

Your reluctance to speak could get you in trouble today, Sagittarius.

You may hesitate to share what you know for fear of what others

might think. You should realise that you’re using this as an excuse to

hide what’s really just selfishness. Share your knowledge with others

and you will be amazed at the knowledge that comes back to you in

return. Keep in mind that you may need to wait for it.

You could feel like a rat in a maze today, Pisces. Walls and long, narrow

corridors take you around corners and through doorways, yet there’s

no indication that you’re going in the right direction. Instead of

wandering aimlessly, stop and ask for help. You might not have noticed

that if you look up, there are knowledgeable beings there who are

willing to give you advice based on their lofty perspective.

Across1 Roman garb, so to speak (5)4 Total number, we hear, who like it hot? (4)7 How to produce good tarts in Derbyshire? (8)8 Record held by piano teacher (4)9 Long for a tree (4)10 Care for very amusing person (7)12 Sport scaring hero badly (5-6)14 Yob diverted in funfair (7)16 A long time for some wage slaves (4)19 Taking part in protest against deer (4)20 I hope it changed a country (8)21 Granny, for example, taking some thick notepaper (4)22 Policeman starts to search extremely small wood (5)

Super Cryptic Clues

Solution

Down1 Long walk from public transport beginning to pall (5)2 Good slimmer, one gathers (7)3 Regard daughter as off spring (4)4 Fruit as seen by a ruler (8)5 Artist in a film one tried to see (5)6 Lusty saint in error, ignoring leader (6)11 After ten years leaders in Northern Territory degenerate (8)12 Places frequently visited — by ghosts? (6)13 Coterie pouring fluid (2-5)15 Dickensian villain, female, with a beverage (5)17 Transparency of a bit of playground equipment (5)18 Smart Conservative greeting another (4)

Answers

Co

dew

ord

Word

search

Colouring Horoscope

6 Gulf TimesSaturday, October 3, 2020

COMMUNITY LEISURE/HOROSCOPE

AMERICAS/BRITAIN7Gulf Times

Saturday, October 3, 2020

Republicanspush to confi rmcourt pickBarrett

ReutersWashington

Senate Republicans yester-day said they will press for-ward with the confi rmation

process for Supreme Court nom-inee Amy Coney Barrett despite President Donald Trump’s posi-tive Covid-19 test, with judiciary committee hearings still set to begin on October 12.

Majority leader Mitch Mc-Connell said the senate would proceed with Barrett’s confi r-mation.

The Republican president has asked that the senate to confi rm Barrett, a federal appeals court judge, by the November 3 elec-tion, which would forge a 6-3 conservative majority on the top US judicial body.

“I think we can move forward. Our biggest enemy, obviously, is...the coronavirus, keeping everybody healthy and well and in place to do our job,” McCon-nell told radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt.

“Full steam ahead,” an aide to judiciary committee chair-man Lindsey Graham said when asked if the schedule for hear-ings due to begin on October 12 could change.

Graham spoke to Trump yes-terday morning and said the fi rst thing the president asked about was the senate’s plan for Barrett’s confi rmation, the aide added.

Barrett, who was last with Trump on Saturday, has tested negative for the coronavirus and is following government guide-lines on social distancing and other best practices, according to a White House offi cial.

Barrett was last with Trump on Saturday when he nominated her, and has been meeting with individual senators on Capitol Hill this week, accompanied by Vice President Mike Pence, who has also tested negative.

McConnell described the sen-ate’s decision on whether to con-fi rm Barrett as being “front and centre for the American people” and said the senate would act after a committee recommenda-tion due on October 22.

Millionaire killed inland speed record bidGuardian News and MediaLondon

Zef Eisenberg, the mil-lionaire sports nutrition company founder and tel-

evision presenter, has been killed during an attempt to break the British land speed record at the same airfi eld where he almost died four years ago.

The 47-year-old, who found-ed fi tness fi rm Maximuscle, died at Elvington airfi eld, east of York, on Thursday afternoon.

Elvington is where the fellow TV presenter Richard Hammond was involved in a near-fatal ac-cident while fi lming for BBC’s Top Gear in 2006.

Eisenberg was also known as a TV presenter on the ITV4 series Speed Freaks, which was broad-cast last year, and held more than 50 British and world land speed racing records.

Emergency crews were called to the airfi eld after reports of a “serious vehicle incident” at around 4.30pm on Thursday.

North Yorkshire police said: “The incident occurred during a British Land Speed record at-

tempt and the driver, 47-year-old Zef Eisenberg tragically died at the scene. Offi cers attended with the ambulance service and an investigation is ongoing.”

Motorsport UK also said an investigation into the circum-stances has begun. After leaving school at 15, Eisenberg competed as a bodybuilder and went on to launch Maximuscle in 1995.

He sold the business to Glaxo-SmithKline for £162mn in 2011.

The Guernsey-based busi-nessman had been involved in a “near-death” 230mph crash at Elvington in 2016, breaking 11 bones including his pelvis. Before that crash Eisenberg had set oth-er speed records at the airfi eld.

He ran the Madmax Race Team, which attempts speed records with motorcycles and cars, and holds the Guinness World Records’ fastest turbine-pow-ered motorbike run of 243mph, a feat he achieved in 2015.

Eisenberg returned to rac-ing in 2017, despite concerns he might never walk again, and in 2019 he broke Idris Elba’s world record for the “fl ying mile” at Pendine Sands in Wales, setting a new record of 201.5mph.

Merkel optimistic despiteBrexit talks hurdlesReutersBrussels/London

German Chancellor An-gela Merkel yesterday said she had no break-

through to announce in EU talks with Britain but remained optimistic that sealing a deal on a new trade relationship after Brexit was still possible before the end of the year.

With just two weeks before what both British Prime Min-ister Boris Johnson and the EU have set as a deadline for reach-ing a trade agreement, there are still major hurdles to ensuring smooth ties after a standstill post-Brexit transition ends.

“I can’t announce a break-through,” Merkel told a news conference after two days of talks among the 27 national EU leaders in Brussels, including on Brexit.”As long as negotia-tions on Brexit are ongoing, I’m optimistic.”

Ireland’s Prime Minister Micheal Martin said earlier yesterday Britain must respect

the Brexit arrangements it had agreed with the bloc for the sen-sitive Irish border as a fraught week with little progress towards a new trade deal wrapped up.

Johnson will speak to the head of the EU’s executive, Ursula von der Leyen, today to agree next steps after the bloc launched a legal case against Britain over moving to under-cut their earlier divorce deal.

Speaking after the summit yesterday, von der Leyen said it was time to “intensify” Brexit talks with time available by the end of the year to put a new deal in place running out. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” she said.

“We have made progress on many, many diffi cult fi elds but the main ones all remain very much open,” she added, nam-ing guarantees on a level play-ing fi eld of fair competition as a key sticking point. “There is still a lot of work to do.”

Referring to another major sticking point in the trade talks, Merkel also said the UK’s new deal on fi sheries with Norway

announced this week “shows...agreements can be found”.

The deal includes access to each other’s waters, as well as annual fi shing quotas negotia-tions.

The latter has long been fa-voured by Britain but so far re-jected by the EU, where fi sheries is politically sensitive for France.

But an EU diplomatic source said Merkel’s comment suggests that positions may be inching closer after the sides discussed a potential compromise that would also include a “phasing-out mechanism” for fi sh quotas.

Under this idea, Britain would increase its quotas in time, rath-er than overnight from January 1, 2021, when it has so far said it would become an “independent coastal nation” with full control of its own waters and who fi shes in them. With businesses in-creasingly concerned over what future trading terms will be, US Citi bank expected the two sides to agree “a rudimentary Brexit deal” and JPMorgan agreed a deal was more likely than not, though only a narrow one.

Trump’s Covid diagnosis rocksWhite House,poll campaignReutersWashington

President Donald Trump is experiencing mild symp-toms but will keep work-

ing after testing positive for the coronavirus, administration offi cials said yesterday, as the White House and presidential election campaign scrambled to adjust to the bombshell devel-opment.

Trump, who has played down the threat of the coronavirus pandemic from the outset, said he and his wife Melania were go-ing into quarantine after testing positive for the virus, which has killed more than 200,000 Amer-icans and dealt severe damage to the US economy.

Trump is not incapacitated and is working in isolation to avoid infecting others, offi cials said.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said the president, 74, was exhibiting mild symptoms. They gave no more details about his condition.

“We have a president that is not only on the job but will re-main on the job and I’m optimis-tic that he will have a very quick and speedy recovery,” Meadows told reporters.

An active Twitter user, Trump has not posted any messages since announcing his positive test early yesterday morning.

Stocks on Wall Street fell al-most 1% on news of one of the biggest health scares involving an American president for dec-ades.

The president’s illness up-ended his re-election campaign with just 31 days to go until the November 3 Election Day.

Polls show Trump trailing his

Democratic opponent, former vice president Joe Biden.

Trump advisers acknowl-edged they would have to rip up their plans for the fi nal weeks of the campaign.

Trump has held in-person ral-lies with supporters who mainly decline to wear masks, and has mocked Biden for avoiding such events.

“Trump is a high-energy president with a giant person-ality. Without his persona, the campaign is missing its ener-gy,” Republican fundraiser Dan Eberhart said.

Biden and his wife Jill Biden tested negative yesterday, his campaign said.

Trump’s illness also raised questions about the health of others atop the US government.

Vice President Mike Pence and his wife tested negative, a Pence spokesman said.

The White House offi cial said Pence would work from his own residence several miles from the White House and his staff was being kept separate from Trump’s staff .

Pence, 61, a conservative former lawmaker and Indiana governor, would take over if Trump were to become incapacitated.

House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi, third in line for the presidency, said on MSN-BC that she had tested negative.

Just hours before Trump’s an-nouncement, the president had proclaimed the pandemic almost over, while Biden had accused Trump of trying to distract from a “failed” response to the disease, which has killed more people in the US than any other country.

Trump is at high risk because of his age and weight.

He has remained in apparent

good health during his time in offi ce but is not known to ex-ercise regularly or to follow a healthy diet.

Biden wished Trump and the fi rst lady a speedy recovery. “We will continue to pray for the health and safety of the presi-dent and his family,” he said on Twitter.

Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris tested negative yesterday, according to a person familiar with the mat-ter.

Staff ers were told to go ahead with the day’s planned events.

The Republican National Com-mittee would chose a replacement nominee if Trump were to become incapacitated, but it is already too late in most states to change the names on the ballot.

Millions of ballots have been sent out to voters and at least 2.2mn people have already voted, according to fi gures compiled by University of Florida professor Michael McDonald.

Trump understated the seri-ousness of the coronavirus out-break in its early stages and has repeatedly predicted it would go away.

He has rarely worn a mask in public and regularly mocks oth-ers including Biden for wearing them so often.

Questions surrounded his decision to go ahead with a fun-draiser at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club on Thursday after White House staff er Hope Hicks tested positive.

Some at the event wore masks while others did not, a source fa-miliar with the event said.

Trump’s positive test also means that others at the highest levels of the government have been exposed and may have to quarantine, too.

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden departs New Castle Airport yesterday. Biden yesterday said he has tested negative for Covid-19, three days after his debate with Donald Trump, who has contracted the illness.

Whales face threat

Kentucky’s attorney-general yesterday released audio recordings of the grand jury proceedings that cleared three policemen of homicide charges in the shooting death of Breonna Taylor. The release off ers a rare peek at the inner workings of a grand jury, which is normally kept secret, in a case that has captured national attention and prompted street protests in the debate over racism and police use of force. Attorney-General Daniel Cameron filed 14 audio files of grand jury testimony with the Jeff erson County Circuit Court Clerk. He had previously said there were more than 20 hours of proceedings

Derek Mahon, the Belfast-born poet who became an immense figure in Irish poetry with poems such as A Disused Shed in Co Wexford and Courtyards in Delft, has died at the age of 78 after a short illness. Mahon, whose poetry career spanned a half-century, was most often compared to W H Auden, Louis MacNeice and Samuel Beckett, with the critic Brendan Kennelly calling him “a Belfast Keats with a Popean sting”. Several of his poems became staples of school curricula. His final collection, Washing Up, is due to be published later this month. Announcing his death yesterday, Mahon’s publisher Gallery Press called him a “master poet” and a “pure artist”.

Northumbria University, in northeast England, yesterday said it has been hit by a mass outbreak of Covid-19 with at least 770 students testing positive for the virus. Covid-19 outbreaks have hit nearly 50 British universities in the last few weeks, forcing students to self-isolate in halls of residence just days after their arrival for the new term. “We can confirm that we are aware of 770 Northumbria University students who have tested positive for Covid-19, of whom 78 are symptomatic,” the university, based in the city of Newcastle, said in a statement. All infected students were self-isolating, as were their flatmates and any close contacts for 14 days in line with government guidance.

Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei has ordered the detention of thousands of Hondurans who entered his country as part of a US-bound caravan of migrants. “At this moment the order has been issued to detain in Guatemalan territory all of those (Hondurans) who have entered the country illegally,” Giammattei said in an address to the nation. The migrants surged across the border into Guatemala on Thursday, defying restrictions linked to the coronavirus pandemic. Giammattei said that the migrants would be returned to the border and handed over to Honduran authorities. However he urged the migrants “to please return” voluntarily to their country.

Paraguay’s Congress has declared a national emergency as forest fires raged, burning vast swathes of the Chaco dry forest, home to sprawling cattle ranches, jaguars and many indigenous tribes. The emergency declaration boosts funds for fire-fighting and opens the door to requesting international aid to tame the blazes, which have sprouted up throughout the country. Authorities said two firefighting aircraft had arrived in the country and would douse the most heavily impacted regions. Regional neighbours Argentina, Bolivia and Brazil are also struggling to contain fires that threaten to reach historic levels amid drought and dry weather.

Recording of Taylor juryproceedings released

Belfast-born poet Mahon dies aged 78

770 students at universitytest positive for Covid-19

Guatemala orders captureof US-bound migrants

Paraguay declares state ofemergency over forest fires

LEGAL OBITUARYOUTBREAK DECISION DISASTER

A whale is seen near a sailboat near the Faslane nuclear submarine base in Gare Loch as rescuers race to herd a group of whales out of the Scottish loch ahead of major military exercises in Scotland, Britain, yesterday.

EUROPE

Gulf Times Saturday, October 3, 20208

With coronavirus in-fections soaring, the city of Madrid braced

yesterday for a partial lockdown that will cut it off from the rest of the country.

The coronavirus causes the Covid-19 respiratory disease.

The new restrictions, which will also apply to nine other nearby towns where infection rates are high, came into force at 10pm (2000 GMT) with people only allowed to leave the area for work, school or medical and le-gal reasons.

Although Madrid’s regional leaders have agreed to imple-ment the restrictions, they strongly oppose the closure, fi ling an appeal at the National Court to challenge its legality.

The new measures, which will initially be imposed for 14 days, will aff ect 4.5mn people in the city and the other nine towns, requiring them to avoid all un-necessary travel, but not confi n-ing them to their homes.

The provisions were out-lined in a decree that lays down conditions for restrictions in areas where the virus is spread-ing rapidly, which were agreed on Wednesday at talks between the health ministry and most of Spain’s 17 regions, which are re-sponsible for managing the pan-demic.

In reality, Madrid is the only region where the restrictions will apply, given its infection rate of 730 cases per 100,000 people, compared with just 300 per 100,000 in the rest of Spain – which in itself is the highest in the European Union.

The talks came after a two-week standoff between the left-

wing coalition government of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and Madrid’s right-wing ad-ministration headed by Isabel Diaz Ayuso over the region’s management of the crisis.

But the new rules will be dif-fi cult to apply within the capital, which is home to 3.2mn people, with regional offi cials warning the mobility restrictions will cause mayhem.

“Thanks for the chaos, Pedro Sanchez,” tweeted Diaz Ayuso.

And Madrid’s justice chief Enrique Lopez warned the clo-sure would cost the economy €8.0bn ($9.4bn) over the course of a month.

But Sanchez, speaking in Brussels, said that Madrid was facing “a moment of extraordi-nary gravity” and defended the move as necessary “to limit the circulation of the virus” in a re-gion that counted 36% of Spain’s infections in the past fortnight.

For now, the court challenge will not impede implementation of the restrictions.

In the fi rst few days, police will not be issuing fi nes until the new restrictions are validated by a regional court.

With so many exceptions to the rule, monitoring the mo-bility restrictions is likely to be something of a logistical night-mare in a city where 2mn trips are made every day.

As they currently stand, the new rules suggest a person liv-ing outside the city could take

a suburban train, travel 15km to the offi ce, then go shopping or have a drink with friends after work anywhere within the capi-tal.

“There are so many loopholes that checking everyone to fi nd out why they are travelling is go-ing to be very diffi cult,” warned Madrid’s mayor Jose Luis Mar-tinez Almeida.

The rules will also mean that 1mn people living in badly-hit areas in or around the capital who have been under a localised lockdown – some for four days, others for 11 – will now be able to circulate freely.

The partial lockdown is far less stringent than the one im-posed across the country in March and April, which was one of the toughest in the world.

Back then, people could only leave home to buy food, to work or for medical reasons and for a long period were not allowed out for a walk or to exercise.

The virus has now killed near-ly 32,000 people in Spain and has infected around 760,000.

Meanwhile, the French health ministry has reported 12,148 new confi rmed coronavirus in-fections over the past 24 hours, lower than Thursday’s 13,970 and well below highs of over 16,000 seen last week.

The total number of infec-tions since the start of the epi-demic rose to 589,653.

France also reported 136 new deaths from coronavirus – the

highest daily toll since mid-May – for a cumulative total of 32,155.

Last Friday it had reported a death toll of 150 in one day.

Hospital admissions for Cov-id-19 rose by 106 to 6,758 and intensive care admissions by 11 to 1,276, continuing an uptrend from recent weeks.

Poland’s daily coronavirus cases topped 2,000 for the fi rst time yesterday, the latest record in a surge in infections that has raised the possibility that the government will have to bring forward the introduction of new restrictions.

Having weathered the fi rst wave of the pandemic better than most western European neighbours, Poland has seen daily infection rates spike, with more than 1,000 new cases each day over the last week.

The country of 38mn re-ported 2,292 daily coronavirus cases and 27 deaths related to Covid-19 yesterday, the health ministry’s Twitter account said.

In total, Poland has reported 95,773 cases of the coronavirus and 2,570 deaths.

Local authorities have ruled that face masks will have to be worn at all times out of doors in

the Italian capital Rome and the surrounding Lazio region.

Italy on Thursday registered more than 2,000 new coronavi-rus cases for the fi rst time since the end of April.

Lazio accounted for some 265 of those cases and has been increasingly concerned by the growing contagion.

A number of other Italian regions, including Campania centred on Naples, have already made mask wearing obligatory outdoors.

Previously, masks had to be worn only in closed public spac-es, such as shops and cinemas.

“Most of the cases are tied to the lack of respect in using masks and in social distanc-ing,” Lazio’s health chief Alessio D’Amato told reporters yester-day as he announced the new measure.

Italy was the fi rst country in Europe to be slammed by Cov-id-19 and has the second highest death toll in Europe after Britain, with almost 36,000 people dy-ing since the outbreak fl ared in February.

It has 317,409 cases.Thanks to one of the strict-

est lockdowns in the world, the

government managed to get the contagion under control by the summer.

Cases have slowly picked up over the past two months but Italy is still seeing far fewer daily infections than elsewhere in Europe, with France, Spain and Britain all registering thousands more cases per day.

Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte has ruled out any return to a nationwide lockdown, but offi cials have said tighter re-strictions might have to be ap-plied in future to limited areas to contain any localised fl are-ups.

Denmark will cull around 1mn mink after fi nding further coronavirus infections among the animals at farms that breed them for their fur, authorities said.

The Nordic country is the world’s largest producer of mink and had previously culled ani-mals on farms hit by infections, but outbreaks have persisted.

Fresh cases have been regis-tered at 41 mink farms and an-other 20 were believed aff ected, totalling up to 1mn minks, En-vironment and Food Minister Mogens Jensen said at a press briefi ng on Thursday evening.

As a precaution, the cull-ing will include farms situated within 8km of a farm with in-fected mink.

“My main focus is on ensur-ing, that the ... mink farms do not become an infection risk for people, and therefore the gov-ernment has decided to cull the mink,” Jensen said.

In May, Spain ordered the culling of all 93,000 mink at a farm to prevent human conta-gion after fi nding that most of the mink there were infected with the coronavirus.

The Netherlands reported a similar outbreak and undertook a cull after two people were re-ported to have been infected by mink, though such cases of animal-to-human transmission are believed to be extremely rare.

There have also been occa-sional cases of zoo animals and house pets coming down with the coronavirus during the glo-bal pandemic, with their owners the likely cause of infection.

Madrid braces for partialclosure as virus cases rise

France reports more than 12,000 new coronavirus infections

Poland’s daily virus cases exceed 2,000 for first time

Face masks become mandatory in Rome as virus cases rise

Denmark to cull up to 1mn mink due to risk of contagion

AFP/ReutersMadrid/Paris/Rome/Copenhagen

Political journalist Attila Rovo began work yesterday at Hungary’s latest experi-

ment in independent journalism – a crowd-funded online news service called Telex.

Operating from a small apart-ment near the Danube and fi -nanced solely by donations from more than 34,000 readers, Telex is an attempt to break free from what Rovo and other critics de-scribe as growing government infl uence over Hungary’s media via owners supportive of Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

Rovo, 40, has worked for the state radio and three privately-owned websites over the past decade.

He was fi red from the radio in

2011, shortly after Orban’s gov-ernment took control of state media.

He quit all three websites due to what he said was state med-dling.

The last website was Index, then the largest independent news site in Hungary.

Rovo’s career there ended on July 24 when the staff of Index resigned over what they called an “open attempt to exert pressure” on the site after its owner sacked the editor-in-chief.

“We started to feel like the frog in a pan of cold water that’s slow-ly being cooked ... the frog says it’s OK, it is still OK, but then the water suddenly starts boiling,” said Rovo.

Telex is being set up by 60-70 former Index journalists, with Rovo as its new deputy editor-in-chief.

The European Union and pro-democracy groups have long ac-cused Orban’s nationalist gov-ernment of curbing media and other freedoms, a charge it de-nies.

In a report this week, the Euro-pean Commission said state ad-vertising was being channelled to pro-government outlets, leading to “indirect political infl uence over the media”.

“Independent media outlets face systematic obstruction and intimidation, while a trend of economic takeover of such out-lets raises additional concern,” the EU executive said.

Government spokesman Zol-tan Kovacs said in an emailed comment to Reuters that the EU report was “absurd and untrue”.

Rovo said he had not experi-enced direct political interfer-ence over content at Index.

But after pro-government businessman Miklos Vaszily ac-quired signifi cant control over Index’s funding this year, Rovo said fi nancial pressure had in-creased, for example in threats to cut editorial jobs despite strong sales.

When the editor-in-chief was dismissed, it was time to leave, the soft-spoken Rovo added.

In e-mailed comments to Reu-ters, Vaszily said that after he acquired a 50% stake in Indame-dia – the company that controls Index’s funding – he took no part personally in its operational de-cisions or in any negotiations be-tween Indamedia and Index.

He said Indamedia had de-manded greater cost effi ciency from Index due to the worse than initially expected impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the outlook for advertising revenues.

As journalists set up their computers in the new Telex of-fi ce, editor-in-chief Veronika Munk said they had enough funds for several months – in-cluding a promised donation of €200,000 from Czech media group Economia – and that the eventual aim was for Telex to be-come subscription-based.

Despite the challenges, Rovo said, journalists in Hungary are free to write what they want without fear of being jailed but that they need to escape the pressures exerted by the own-ers of media outlets and funding channels.

“They (the government) are gradually tightening (control), the air is getting thinner. And you don’t even know who is doing it, as it is not a politician, or the prime minister, or a party ... but people who act on their behalf.”

Hungarians launch crowd-funded news siteBy Krisztina Than, ReutersBudapest

Editor-in-chief Munk (left) is seen in the editorial room amongst other journalists of the independent news website Telex before launching their new website in Budapest.

A healthcare worker takes details at a drive-through testing centre in Warsaw.

A waiter waits for customers in his terrace at Plaza Mayor square in Madrid.

Police arrested 16 people who took part in overnight protests marking the anni-

versary of the illegal referendum on Catalan independence that triggered Spain’s worst political crisis in decades, a spokesman said yesterday.

But compared with previous years, the demonstrations on the third anniversary of the October 1, 2017 referendum were sparse, with all mass gatherings banned under coronavirus restrictions.

Fifteen of the arrests took place in Barcelona while another person was detained in the city

of Girona, about 100km fur-ther north, police in the wealthy northeastern region said.

This year’s anniversary came as Spain battles a second wave of coronavirus cases, chalking up close to 780,000 infections as of Thursday night, the highest number in the European Union, and almost 32,000 deaths.

The 2017 referendum saw police violently cracking down on would-be voters as regional leaders pushed ahead with a bal-lot that Madrid had declared il-legal.

Later that month, Catalan lawmakers narrowly approved a motion to declare an independ-ent republic, sparking an imme-diate backlash from Madrid.

The failed independence bid also stoked political divisions within the Catalan separatist movement, which have sharp-ened in the ensuing three years.

On Thursday night, several hundred demonstrators gath-ered outside the Catalan regional government’s headquarters in Barcelona, accusing the authori-ties of not making good on their promise of independence from Spain.

Around 300 protesters later continued the protest in the city centre, hurling objects at police vans and burning barricades, an AFP correspondent said.

Although the regional govern-ment is dominated by separatist parties, there are deep divisions

within their ruling coalition about what strategy to adopt to achieve independence.

Catalonia is now heading to-wards an early regional election after its president, Quim Torra, was disqualifi ed from offi ce ear-lier this week when Spain’s Su-preme Court upheld a previous conviction for disobedience.

Torra was convicted for re-fusing to remove a banner with separatist slogans from his gov-ernment’s headquarters in the run-up to the April 2019 general election.

Torra’s deputy, Pere Aragones, is to serve as interim regional chief until the election, which is expected to take place in Febru-ary.

Police arrest 16 on Catalan vote anniversaryAFPBarcelona

A garbage container burns near a police car during a protest on the third anniversary of the region’s failed declaration of independence from Spain, at Barcelona city centre.

Armenia says it is ready to work for ceasefireArmenia said yesterday that it would work with Russia, the United States and France on renewing a ceasefire in Nagorno-Karabakh as the death toll rose on the sixth day of fighting over the breakaway enclave in the South Caucasus.Azerbaijan, which is fighting ethnic Armenian forces in Nagorno-Karabakh, has not responded to a call for a ceasefire on Thursday by the three countries – co-chairs of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Minsk Group, which mediates in the crisis.Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev ruled out talks with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh on Tuesday and Azerbaijan’s ally Turkey said on Thursday that the three big powers should have no role in peacemaking.More fighting was reported overnight.Nagorno-Karabakh’s defence ministry reported 54 new military casualties, taking the death toll among its forces to 158.Eleven civilians have been reported killed and more than 60 wounded in the mountainous enclave, which is part of Azerbaijan but is run by its mostly ethnic Armenian inhabitants.

Russian journalist dies after setting herself on fireA Russian journalist died yesterday after setting herself on fire in front of the local branch of the interior ministry in the city of Nizhny Novgorod, a day after her apartment was searched by police, her news outlet said.Prior to her self-immolation, Irina Slavina wrote on her Facebook page: “I ask you to blame the Russian Federation for my death.”She worked as editor-in-chief at Koza Press, a small local news outlet that advertised itself as having “no censorship, no orders ‘from above’”.A day before her death, she wrote on Facebook that police off icers and investigators had searched her apartment, writing that they were looking for “brochures, leaflets and accounts” from the Open Russia opposition group, which is financed by Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky.She said they seized notebooks, her laptop and other electronics, as well as her daughter’s laptop and her husband’s mobile phone.Russia’s Investigative Committee said it was opening a preliminary inquiry after a woman self-immolated in Nizhny Novgorod, a city of 1.3mn east of Moscow.

EU, US hit top Belarus off icials with sanctionsThe European Union imposed sanctions on Belarus’ interior minister and the head of its electoral commission but spared President Alexander Lukashenko, the bloc said in its Off icial Journal yesterday.Publishing the names of the 40 individuals that EU leaders agreed to sanction early yesterday in response to an August 9 election that the West says was rigged, the EU list included commanders, security off icials and prison directors.Lukashenko is not on the EU’s list.Yesterday the US imposed sanctions on the interior minister of Belarus and seven other off icials of the former Soviet republic as well.

Team Nadda‘snub’ leavesBJP leaders inKerala fumingIANSThiruvananthapuram

A week after the long-await-ed team of BJP president J P Nadda was announced

there is growing anger over the poor representation of veteran leaders of the party from Kerala.

Former organising secretary and senior leader of the BJP in Kerala, P P Mukundan, said it was most unfortunate that party leaders who have been working hard for years have been ignored in the rejig.

“Those who came to the party in recent times are being pre-ferred over those who have sweat-ed it out in the party for long. This does not augur well as numerous leaders who have even served jail terms for the party have been overlooked. These are people who came to the party with no pre-conditions and hence such people should not be ignored,” said Mukundan, who had left the party in 2006 but returned a few years later.

One BJP leader whose inclu-sion in Team Nadda has raised eyebrows is former CPI-M Lok Sabha member and former Con-gress legislator A P Abdulla Kutty, who has been given the post of national vice-president.

Fifty three-year-old Kutty began his political career with the CPI-M’s student wing. He achieved prominence by defeat-ing present Kerala Congress chief Mullapally Ramachandran twice — in 1999 and 2004 — from the Kannur Lok Sabha constituency.

In 2009, the CPI-M sacked him amid mounting diff erences and after he praised Modi’s Gujarat development model.

Kutty won the Kannur As-sembly by-election in 2009 as a Congress candidate and repeated his victory in 2011, but in 2016, lost the polls from the Thalassery seat.

In 2019 he joined the BJP. Soon he was made the vice-president

of the Kerala unit and on Saturday got elevated to a national vice-president post.

Among the other Keralites who got posts is Tom Vadakkan, a former Congress spokesper-son who hails from Kerala but is based in Delhi and businessman-turned-Rajya Sabha member from Karnataka, Rajeev Chan-drasekhar.

In Kerala the BJP is caught be-tween the factions of Union Min-ister of State for External Aff airs V Muraleedharan and P K Krishna Das and at times their diff erences spill out into the open, which has been a cause of displeasure for the BJP national leadership.

The recast came as a setback for some Kerala-based senior leaders including former Mizoram gover-nor and former Kerala BJP presi-dent Kummanam Rajasekharan and P K Krishna Das respectively.

Sobha Surendran is another leader to have missed out and as a protest, she has practically gone silent. She had been expecting a big post as she is one of the top BJP women leaders in the state.

Another senior Kerala BJP lead-er who has occupied crucial posts at the national level, but missed out this time is R Balashankar, a former editor of the RSS journal Organiser.

Balashankar is known for his close ties with various social groups in Kerala and also the church.

On a few occasions in the past, his name had been doing the rounds for the state presi-dent’s post, but for some reason he always lost out at the very last minute.

Playing down the discontent was Central minister from Kerala, Muraleedharan, who said that there were no issues and all lead-ers, including Shoba, were active in the party.

State general secretary M T Ramesh added that when there is a national rejig it is done at the national level and all state units accept it.

Police chief and four otherssuspended after rape furoreIANSLucknow

In a major decision, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath yesterday sus-

pended superintendent of po-lice, Hathras, Vikrant Veer and four other local policemen for alleged dereliction of duty in the events that led to the death of a 19-year-old woman and then her hasty cremation in the dead of the night in the absence of her family members.

Others who have been sus-pended include circle offi cer Ram Shabd, inspector Dinesh Kumar Verma, sub-inspector Jagveer Singh and head consta-ble Mahesh Pal.

Shamli superintendent of police Vineet Jaiswal will take charge of Hathras district.

According to additional chief secretary, Home, Avan-ish Awasthi, all the offi cers will have to undergo a narco test, along with family members of the victim, to ascertain the truth behind the incident since both have been giving contradictory statements regarding the inci-dent.

Sources said the action had been taken based on the prelimi-nary report given by the SIT that is probing the case.

Earlier in the day, Adityanath had said his government is com-mitted to women’s safety and those who even think of harming their self-respect will face total destruction.

The warning came days after the 19-year-old Dalit woman was allegedly gang-raped in Hathras by four men. She died at Delhi’s Safdarjung hospital on

Tuesday morning.While her family maintained

that the victim had been sub-jected to gang rape, top police offi cials in Lucknow claimed that rape had not been proved in the autopsy report.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal yesterday joined a citi-zens protest at Jantar Mantar in Delhi yesterday against the inci-dent.

Kejriwal appealed to the Uttar Pradesh government to ensure the strictest punishment for the accused in the case.

Earlier a court has ordered po-lice to protect the victim’s family after her brother said they feared reprisals by the perpetrators of the crime.

“We’re not safe in this village. They can do anything to us. We don’t trust the police or the ad-ministration. Our fears have in-

creased now,” he said.“We’re on their radar more

than ever before. They won’t let us live. We might have to leave the village. We don’t trust poli-ticians.”

The state’s high court ordered authorities to “ensure that no coercion, infl uence or pressure is exerted upon the family mem-bers of the deceased in any man-ner, by anyone.”

Mumbai region Covidtoll crosses 16,000IANSMumbai

Covid-19 deaths and cases continued to cause con-cern as the Mumbai Met-

ropolitan Region toll crossed the 16,000 mark — higher than all states barring Maharashtra — while Mumbai city fatalities sur-passed the 9,000-level, health offi cials said here yesterday.

The state witnessed 424 deaths yesterday, lower than the peak of 515 on September 15, and the death toll zoomed from 37,056 to 37,480 now.

The state recorded 15,591 new patients — though lower than the peak single-day tally of 24,886 on September 11 — pushing up the state total from 14,00,922 to 14,16,513 cases till date.

In a relief, the state recovery rate also shot up for the third day – from 78.84% to 78.91% – while the current mortality rate stood at 2.65% yesterday.

Against this, 13,294 fully re-

covered patients returned home taking up the total number of dis-charged patients from 11,04,426 to 11,17,720 till date – much high-er than the 260,876 ‘active cases’ currently in the state.

As per the fi gures yesterday, there was one death roughly

every 3.39 minutes and 650 new cases added every hour to the state tally.

Of the 424 deaths, Raigad led the state with a staggering 90 fa-talities, 46 in Pune, 42 each in Mumbai and Satara, 29 in Nagpur, 24 in Nashik, 20 each in Solapur and Sangli, 19 in Thane and 10 in Palghar — in the higher bracket.

Remaining in the sub-50 range for the second day this month, Mumbai recorded 42 fatalities. The city toll crossed the 9,000-mark, shooting up from 8,972 to 9,014 while the number of corona cases shot up by 2,440 with the total now 210,060 from 207,620.

Of the total eight circles, the situation in the Mumbai circle (MMR — comprising Mumbai, Thane, Palghar and Raigad) re-mains on the edge as deaths spi-ral and cases pile up.

Gujarat meanwhile reported 1,310 new Covid-19 cases, taking the state’s coronavirus tally to 1,40,055, with 15 fatalities in the past 24 hours tasking the death toll to 3,478.

Modi doing injusticeto farmers: SoniaIANSNew Delhi

Congress president Sonia Gandhi yesterday hit out at the prime minister on

new farm laws which have been enacted.

In a video statement, she said the prime minister was doing a grave injustice to farmers by im-plementing the black laws.

On the occasion of the Ma-hatma Gandhi birth anniversary, Sonia invoked both Gandhi and Lal Bahadur Shastri and said the soul of India lives in villages while Shastri gave the famous slogan of “Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan”.

The Congress president said, “During the Congress govern-ment no law was passed with-out consultation with farmers or stakeholders, but in this govern-ment laws are passed to help the crony capitalists”.

Sonia said that the party along with farmers will oppose the new laws till it becomes infructuous, while giving an example of the Land Acquisition laws.

She attacked the government

for scrapping the Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC). She also said that dur-ing the pandemic the poor were given ration because of the farm-ers, but this government wants to promote the hoarders and make the farmers labourers in their own farms.

The party has already asked its government to override the farm laws by passing new laws.

The party yesterday held pro-tests against the law across the country. Former Congress party president Rahul Gandhi plans to hold tractor rallies from Punjab from today up to October 5, in pro-test against the Centre’s recently enacted farm laws, party sources said.

All Punjab ministers and the Congress legislators will partici-pate in the protest rallies, along with AICC general secretary in-charge of Punjab aff airs, Harish Rawat, and state president Sunil Jakhar.

The protests are to give the voice to the angst and pain of the farm-ers, whose livelihood and future has been put at stake by the central legislations, the party said.

Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi attends a prayer meeting organised in the memory of the rape victim who died earlier this week, in New Delhi yesterday.

Three arrested for Bhadohi girl’s murder

Three persons have been arrested for the murder of a 14-year-old Dalit girl who was found dead in a field with her head smashed. The three have been identified as Kundan, Collector and Prince, all residents of Gopiganj in Bhadohi.They have confessed to their crime, as per the police. The Bhadohi police spokesperson said there was enmity between the girl’s family and the

accused, and the latter had threatened the victim’s family with dire consequences on Monday.The accused found the girl alone in the field on Thursday and killed her. Her brother, who went out to look for her, found the body in the field. The police said her head had been smashed with bricks. The girl was a resident of Chakrajaram Tiwaripur village of Gopiganj police station area.

Nationalist Congress Party president Sharad Pawar yesterday said the Covid-19 vaccine being manufactured by the Serum Institute of India (SII) in Pune would be made available by the end of January 2021. The 79-year-old leader’s brief comments came after a visit to the SII facility to get a dose of the BCG vaccine to increase immunity. This was Pawar’s second visit since August to the SII which is currently under global spotlight for its plans to produce vaccines against coronavirus. SII chairman Dr Cyrus S. Poonawalla and his son and CEO Adar Poonawala share a close rapport with the Pawar family.

A “minor” explosion was reported at a 370MW gas power plant of the state-run Karnataka Power Corporation in Bengaluru early yesterday, leaving 15 persons injured, including two critically, an off icial said. Karnataka state Fire and Emergency Services director K Shiva Kumar said the blast occurred in the KPCL’s combined cycle power plant in Yelahanka at around 3am yesterday while engineers were carrying out tests in a gas turbine chamber. “The plant was supposed to commence its operations in December. The incident occurred when KPCL engineers were conducting checks to test the turbine,” he explained.

Customs off icials yesterday let off Karat Faizal, a high-profile Left Democratic Front councillor, after questioning him for over 30 hours in the Kerala gold smuggling case. Faizal, a member of Koduvally Municipality near Kozhikode, was taken into custody on Thursday. Faizal was on the customs radar ever since the gold smuggling case surfaced in July. He was taken into custody after the wife of accused Sandip Nair told the customs about the alleged relations between Nair and Faizal. Faizal came into the media limelight a few years ago when state CPI-M secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan travelled in his luxury car during a party rally in Kozhikode district.

The economic offences wing of the Delhi Police after tracking the Instagram account of a woman arrested her from Surat in Gujarat where she had fled after duping at least 200 people of Rs200mn by luring them to invest in fictitious schemes in Delhi. According to police a man named Parveen Kumar Singh along with the woman had been operating Jai Maa Laxmi Co-Operative Thrift & Credit Society Ltd and running a shop called Arpit Cloth Store in Mandawali in Fajalpur, Delhi. Both cheated around 200 people from Mandawali on the pretext of investing in different schemes to earn high profits.

Tesla chief executive Elon Musk yesterday indicated the US electric carmaker will make a foray into India in 2021. “Next year for sure,” Musk said on Twitter in reply to a post with a photograph of a T-shirt with the message: “India wants Tesla”. “Thanks for waiting,” Musk said. Tesla’s entry could come at a time when Prime Minister Narendra Modi is increasingly becoming focussed on promoting the use and manufacture of electric vehicles. Musk commented last year about coming to India, in response to someone on Twitter who asked “What about India sir?”. “Would love to be there this year. If not, definitely next!” he said in March 2019.

Covid jab to be availablefrom January, claims Pawar

15 people hurt in blast atBengaluru gas power plant

LDF councillor let off in gold smuggling case

Woman who duped 200of Rs200mn held in Surat

Tesla CEO Musk suggestsIndia entry in 2021

DISCLOSUREACCIDENT PROBE CRIMEPLAN

INDIA

Gulf Times Saturday, October 3, 2020 9

Prime Minister Narendra Modi pays his respects at the Mahatma Gandhi memorial on the occasion of his 151st birth anniversary, at Rajghat in New Delhi yesterday.

Kerala sees 9,258new virus cases

Kerala seems to be moving towards a 10,000 daily Covid tally, with the state recording 9,258 new cases yesterday. In a statement issued in Thiruvananthapuram, state Health Minister K K Shailaja said at present, there are 77,482 active cases. “Yesterday saw 4,092 people recovering, which was the highest in a single day. So far, 1,35,144 people have been cured and 63,175 samples were tested in the past 24 hours,” she said. The state also saw 20 new deaths, taking the toll to 791.

Gulf Times Saturday, October 3, 2020

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TV news networks to reap ad windfall from US poll chaos

Television news networks will benefi t from a US presidential race that may not be decided on election night.

With few sporting events and a captive audience due to the Covid-19 pandemic, a drawn-out, nail-biter of an election could appeal to marketers like the fi nance, technology, retail, social media and entertainment companies that have bought debate and election night ads.

At least two networks, Fox Corp’s Fox News and Comcast Corp’s NBC, are expecting or already seeing high demand for the week following the November 3 election night. Fox News is also off ering its major sponsors the option to extend their campaigns if election results are not in after that fi rst week.

Determining the next president of the United States could take some time after voting ends on Election Day due to a surge in mail-in ballots and expected legal challenges by the campaigns of Republican President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden.

Jeff Collins, head of ad sales at Fox News, said the cable network is seeing a signifi cant increase both in average unit rate as well as average deal size since 2016 for election night coverage.

A 30-second spot during the 2016 presidential debates cost as much as $220,000, according to Standard Media Index, a marketing intelligence company.

This year, Walt Disney Co-owned ABC is charging up to $375,000 for a 30-second spot during the debates, according to a source familiar with the network.

“With election coverage, you’re going to be reaching people who were previously harder to reach on TV,” said

Catherine Warburton, chief investment offi cer at ad agency 360i, adding that the elections have attracted new buyers who previously were not interested in advertising during this period. “You’re going to be reaching people who are community- and civic-oriented. That’s attractive to advertisers.”

TV news has already seen a viewership spike this year, with NBC, ViacomCBS Inc-owned CBS and Disney’s ABC experiencing their biggest news audiences in years, siphoning viewers from sports. In July, August and September, Fox News was the highest-rated network in all of television for prime-time viewers, according to Nielsen.

NBC, MSNBC, ABC, CBS and Fox News sold out their ad inventory for the fi rst debate, according to people familiar with the networks. An estimated 73.1 million viewers tuned in to the fi rst debate, below the record 84 million four years ago — a decline that may refl ect changing viewing habits and an uptick in the number of people who stream content online.

ABC sold out its ad inventory for election night and the October 7 vice presidential debate, according to a person familiar with the network, and was nearly sold out for the October 15 and 22 presidential debates.

NBC, MSNBC and Fox News are getting close to being sold out on election night and for other debates, according to sources familiar with the networks.

Thanks to viewer interest in politics and news, ad revenue between June and August was up 68% from the same period a year earlier at CNN and 46% at Fox News, according to Standard Media Index.

Kagan, the media research unit of S&P Global Market Intelligence, is projecting that annual advertising revenue at Fox News will be up 8.2% from 2019 and up 5.2% at CNN from 2019.

“I anticipate that there’s going to be a greater demand within the news cycle, leading into and following the election period, and that brands will chase the consumer, where they concentrate viewership,” said Gregory Aston, head of digital media research science at data and consulting fi rm Kantar.

A post-election scenario that involves protests and violence could deter some marketers, according to media forecasters.

‘With election coverage, you’re going to be reaching people who were previously harder to reach on TV’

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CHAIRMANAbdullah bin Khalifa al-Attiyah

EDITOR-IN-CHIEFFaisal Abdulhameed al-Mudahka

Deputy Managing EditorK T Chacko

Production EditorAmjad Khan

Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measuresThe IMF is predicting a 5% economic contraction in 2020 and a slow recovery after that. An “L-shaped” depression is a very real possibility

By Lee Jong-whaSeoul

Asia is home to many exemplars of small but eff ective govern-ment, countries where sound policies and strong institu-

tions underpin economic stability and robust growth. But during the Covid-19 crisis, many are pursuing expansive macroeconomic interventions and im-plementing measures that infringe on privacy. They are perched on the edge of a slippery slope.

To be sure, extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures. The Covid-19 pandemic has led to the deepest global recession since World War II, with the International Monetary Fund predicting a 5% economic contraction in 2020 and a slow recovery after that. An “L-shaped” depression is a very real possibility.

Asia is no exception. While the Asian Development Bank expects China to achieve positive GDP growth, it predicts that India’s economy will shrink by 9%. Developing Asia’s GDP will fall by 0.7% – the region’s fi rst contraction since WWII.

In response to these dire growth conditions, governments worldwide have expanded their fi scal spending considerably with serious consequences for public balance sheets. This year, the government debt of advanced economies is expected to increase by 19 percentage points, on average, to 131% of GDP.

In Asia, both China and India are forecast to record fi scal defi cits exceeding 12% of GDP, leading to a signifi cant rise in the government debt-to-GDP ratio. In many Asian economies — such as China, Indonesia, and South Korea — that isn’t much of a problem, because those ratios are relatively low. But in some others — such as Pakistan and Sri Lanka — debt already exceeds 85% of GDP.

Just how risky such a debt burden is remains the subject of heated debate. In an infl uential 2009 study, Kenneth Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart argue that debt becomes risky only beyond about 90% of GDP, though the specifi c threshold depends on certain conditions. If, for example, nominal GDP grows fast enough to reduce the debt ratio over time, a country would

have less to worry about.But in today’s highly uncertain

context, nobody can count on prolonged growth. Even if C-19 were to disappear soon, many Asian economies would struggle to return to achieve sustained robust recovery, owing to structural weaknesses, such as ageing populations and low productivity growth. Weak external demand — rooted in protracted stagnation in the United States and Europe, as well as a shift toward trade protectionism — further undermines their growth prospects.

A country can also tolerate a higher debt burden if its government can continue issuing bonds at low interest rates to cover its repayments. In fact, some scholars and politicians argue that, as long as central banks continue to purchase those bonds — as the Bank of Japan has done for decades — government debt will remain manageable, regardless of its share of GDP.

But an increase in the central bank’s bond holdings could lead to permanent monetary expansion, spurring infl ation

or fuelling asset bubbles. Emerging economies that rely on money-fi nanced fi scal programs have often experienced foreign-exchange crises, as has been the case in many Latin American countries since the 1970s.

This is not to say that increased fi scal spending is the wrong response to the Covid-19 crisis. But such spending should be deliberately planned, effi ciently allocated, and carefully managed. It should not only support the economy today, but also lay the groundwork for sustainable growth tomorrow.

This means that fi scal programmes should support productive fi rms, improve education and training programs, and stimulate the private economy. Prolonged protection of less productive fi rms or workers would damage long-term productivity growth.

Moreover, governments should consider boosting investment in public infrastructure, such as roads, hospitals, and schools, as well as “green” infrastructure that supports the transition to a low-carbon economy.

Yet, to succeed, any large-scale project must be rigorously evaluated and judiciously managed.

According to the IMF, one-third of global public infrastructure investment, on average, is wasted, owing to ineffi ciencies. And many Asian countries still have weak and corrupt governance. Strengthening their institutional capacity, including by boosting their fi scal authorities’ expertise and autonomy, is required to maximise short-term benefi ts while ensuring mid-term fi scal sustainability.

Beyond fi scal spending, Asian governments must also avoid overreach in another critical area: privacy. In order to minimise the economic and social disruption of Covid-19 without endangering lives, many East Asian governments — including in Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam — have adopted a proactive containment strategy based on comprehensive testing, contact tracing, and quarantine.

This approach has “fl attened the curve” of infection. But governments’ newfound authority to regulate behaviour and collect personal data risks enabling serious violations of civil liberties and human rights. To see how, one need only consider China, where an authoritarian government has used Covid-19 as an excuse to harness its mass surveillance tools to tighten social control.

This is not a model that other Asian countries, which have worked hard to expand the role of the market and the private sector during their transition toward democracy, should be emulating. Yet in South Korea, for example, the aggressive use of surveillance tools and excessive disclosure of private data have already raised privacy concerns.

During the Covid-19 crisis, Asian governments should take care to avoid a “China-lite” system of excessive overreach. They should also ensure that whatever powers are given to state authorities during the pandemic last only as long as the crisis. To this end, adequate checks and balances — including the rule of law, the media, and civil-society groups — are vital.

During a large and complex crisis like the Covid-19 pandemic, government’s role naturally grows. But so does the risk of unproductive spending and abuse of power. That is why, as Asian economies seek to contain Covid-19 and its economic fallout, they must also contain their own governments. — Project Syndicate

Lee Jong-wha, Professor of Economics at Korea University, was Chief Economist at the Asian Development Bank.

Minding digital economy’s narrowing gapsBy Michael SpenceMilan

Informational asymmetries between buyers and sellers have long been known to impair market performance. But thanks to digital

technology and the large, accessible pools of data that it generates, these informational gaps are closing, and the symmetries are declining.

Until recently, market formation has been circumscribed by physical and geographical boundaries. A prerequisite for a market to form is that buyers and sellers are able to fi nd each other, and this process has traditionally been accomplished in physical spaces like bazaars, stock exchanges, stores, or dealerships (albeit with intermediaries using phones and fax machines to facilitate transactions). Things started to change with eBay, the original model for many online marketplaces. Suddenly, geographical boundaries no longer operated as insurmountable barriers between widely dispersed buyers and sellers.

Arguably, freeing markets from geographical constraints has had the greatest impact on market access for remote populations. In many places globally, and for subsets of potential consumers everywhere, online channels can be the only practical option for accessing a wide range of goods and services, including primary health care and education. This applies to both the demand and the supply side. And because consumers enjoy expanded access to goods and services, sellers and producers can scale up dramatically to meet the increased demand. In China, for example, the digital expansion of the potential market for small and medium-size enterprises was a major impetus for much of Alibaba’s development, demonstrating how digital technologies, together with the rapid growth of the mobile Internet

globally, can drive more inclusive growth patterns.

As online marketplaces developed, however, it soon became clear that additional information issues would need to be addressed for these markets to function eff ectively. For example, because it is diffi cult for buyers to detect variations in quality among sellers and among goods and services off ered online, more information was needed to capture the reliability or trustworthiness of market participants. The problem is essentially the same for both buyers and sellers, with the former worrying about receiving what she pays for and the latter worrying about being paid.

It is precisely this kind of bilateral information asymmetry that prevents market formation or limits market exchange in the fi rst place. Hence, a number of digital-payment platforms initially were created to address online markets’ fundamental “trust” problem. Following the model of escrow systems that are familiar in real-estate transactions, e-commerce platforms created intermediaries that they hoped would be trusted to collect and hold payments from buyers until delivery of the goods or services had been confi rmed.

In the case of Alipay in China and Mercado Pago in Latin America, these systems were initially designed to accelerate the uptake of e-commerce platforms, but over time evolved into mobile-payments systems used offl ine and throughout the entire economy. This process is very advanced in China, while cash continues to hold on in Latin America. Not only have these systems yielded a growing trove of tremendously valuable data, but they have also allowed market-making platforms to become more powerful with each transaction, as the data accumulates.

Ratings of sellers (and sometimes buyers) and products are now a common feature of online marketplaces, and studies indicate that they are highly infl uential in buyer decision-making. But for this function to serve

its proper purpose, the platforms needed to develop additional systems and safeguards to prevent ratings manipulation, and to stop banned users from reappearing under a new handle. Thus, in addition to closing information gaps, ratings also create incentives for market participants to behave better.

As more and more “stuff ” appeared in online marketplaces, users starting having diffi culties fi nding what they were looking for, because they could not browse through options in the same way that one does when shopping in a physical store. To address this issue, online platforms developed search algorithms and recommendation engines based not only on individual users’ browsing and purchase history, but also on behavioural data from all other users. These algorithms have been further improved by advances in artifi cial intelligence and increases in the volume and quality of data. Search and recommendation engines are a partial solution to the “matching problem,” and thus a key source of online market performance. They add value for both buyers and sellers, and boost transaction volume substantially, especially for lesser-known sellers and brands.

Moreover, because it is widely available and inexpensive to access, online information has reduced information asymmetries beyond the realm of e-commerce. For example, markets in automobiles, health care, and insurance have also been transformed, even in the offl ine world, leaving consumers better informed and more empowered vis-à-vis sellers.

A fi nal informational challenge relates to access, specifi cally giving consumers accessible online identities and tracking records that signal their attractiveness as counterparties in a variety of market settings.

Credit is a good example. In the offl ine world, people and businesses have track records and fi nancial histories that hypothetically could be used to underpin credit or insurance

markets. The problem is that these offl ine records tend to be scattered and inaccessible, whereas in the digital economy — especially following the high penetration of mobile payments and e-commerce — they become easily retrievable and far more useful. Like knowledge, data is non-rival: using it does not diminish its value for further use or for use by multiple parties.

AI algorithms can be deployed to assess and price credit for people and businesses with no collateral and little prior contact with the traditional non-digital economy and financial sectors. As in platform-based evaluation systems, informational gaps are reduced and incentives are improved, while market access is expanded for households and small businesses.

In short, data-driven digital markets have evolved from struggling with informational gaps to having higher informational density than their offl ine counterparts, leaving fewer information gaps and asymmetries. The accessibility of digital data allows for new screening mechanisms and signalling behaviour that are frequently missing in the offl ine world. Of course, highly accessible stores of data come with own real and much discussed risks, and these must be addressed in order to achieve the potential effi ciencies and inclusivity benefi ts on off er.

After all, the institutions (including governments) that collect data and act as digital gatekeepers must be trusted, too. At a minimum, they must be subject to enforceable regulation that provides clear defi nitions of individuals’ rights with respect to transparency, data use, privacy, and security. Here, arguably, we are making progress, but we still have a long way to go. — Project Syndicate

Michael Spence, a Nobel laureate in economics, is Professor of Economics at New York University’s Stern School of Business and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution.

PAKISTAN11Gulf Times

Saturday, October 3, 2020

Men, women, diff erently-abled, and the transgender community of 20-50 years of age stand to benefit

InternewsLahore

Launching the ‘Punjab Rozgar Scheme’ worth Rs30 billion yesterday,

Punjab Chief Minister Sardar Usman Buzdar said over 1.6 million needy persons will get employment through this scheme.

Addressing the ceremony, the chief minister maintained the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI)-led government had

started taking practical steps to fulfil the promise of provision of jobs and the scheme would make the youth self-reliant and job-providers.

“Youth will be provided loans on priority basis and owners of small and medium enterprises as well as those economically suffering from Covid-19 pandemic, would be able to resume economic ac-tivities,” he said.

Giving details, Buzdar announced that loans of Rs100,000 to 10 million would be given at minimal interest rates in collaboration with the Punjab Small Industries Cor-poration (PSIC) and the Bank of Punjab. Men, women, differ-

ently-abled, and the transgen-der community of 20-50 years of age would get benefit from that beneficial scheme, he said.

Small loans would be pro-vided for 339 sub-sectors of 23 assorted sectors, including 26 sub-sectors of the textile industry, to boost business, trade, and manufacturing in the province, he added.

This facility will promote the cottage industry and in-terested persons could expand their businesses by benefiting from the scheme.

Buzdar maintained that the loan process had been made easy and the interested youth could submit their applications through PSIC, Bank of Punjab websites, or Punjab

Rozgar App.The PTI government was trans-

forming skills as an investment as it was the biggest social asset to make the youth prosperous, he added.

Provincial Minister Mian Aslam Iqbal lamented that the metro (bus service) was conceived in the pre-vious government but the welfare of the poor was badly ignored as past rulers spent a whopping 250 billion rupees on the Orange Line Metro Train but did not give a pen-ny to the needy skilled workers.

“Had this money been spent on imparting skilled education to the poor children, the coun-try would have been diff erent today,” he added. A project like the metro did not earn the poor

bread as such projects were started for the sake of kick-backs and political gimmickry, he said.

Finance Minister Hashim Jawan Bakht in his speech termed the youth as an asset and announced to empower it to strengthen the national economy.

This scheme will be re-viewed every month to make it better than the best.

He announced to motivate banks to give loans to the housing sector and hoped that the scheme would prove a game-changing initiative.

The MD PSIC stated that the target of giving loans to 68,000 SMEs has been fi xed.

Punjab launches scheme promising 1.6mn jobs

Pemra bans air time to abscondersPakistan Federal Union of Journalists has criticised the ban, citing ‘dual policy’ in dealing with freedom of speech

InternewsLahore

The Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Au-thority (Pemra) has is-

sued a prohibition order to all satellite news channels barring the broadcast and repeat broad-cast of speeches, interviews and public addresses by proclaimed off enders and absconders on na-tional television.

Pemra also barred the broad-cast of any sort of debate on the possible outcomes of sub-judice matters.

Although the order came af-ter speeches by former prime minister Nawaz Sharif were aired on national television, Pemra referred to a complaint by an individual, Mohamed

Azhar Siddique, against the airing of speeches by a pro-claimed offender.

The regulator referred to its own directive made in Octo-ber 2019, and said that Pemra has already directed all satellite television channel licensees to form an in-house committee to ensure compliance with the Electronic Media Code of Con-duct 2015.

Pemra referred to Supreme Court decisions made in 2016 and 2019 and warned that any channel that fails to comply with the authority’s directives will face action under sections 29 and 30 of the Pemra Ordinance, which includes the imposition of fi nes and the suspension of the licence.

However, Pemra has until now ignored SC directives and did not issue notices to any channels airing Sharif’s previous speeches recently.

The notice issued referred to the Pakistan Law Digest 2016, Karachi 238, which states that

a proclaimed off ender or ab-sconder is not legally entitled to enjoy the privileges that an ordinary citizen enjoys, and an absconder is normally not sup-posed to enjoy certain rights.

The apex court in 2016 had observed that there were 59,267 absconders in the country and they were likely to be enjoying facilities available to ordinary citizens such as banking serv-ices, property transfers, physical movement, obtaining SIM cards and so on.

The court stated: “If they have been enjoying such rights then the purpose and object of decla-ration of one as absconder/pro-claimed off ender never served its objective nor would so, if al-lowed to continue in the hearts of the fi les only.”

Reacting to the development, the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists (PFUJ) criticised the government and Pemra for im-posing a ban on the broadcast of speeches by political leadership of the country, through a prohi-

Lawyers’ body concerned over judge’s remarks about SharifInternewsIslamabad

The Pakistan Bar Council (PBC) vice-chairman ex-pressed its disappoint-

ment over remarks of Justice Mohsin Akhtar Kayani, a judge of Islamabad High Court (IHC), against former prime minister Nawaz Sharif.

In a press release issued by the PBC, the council’s vice-chair-man, Abid Saqi, said the judge should have avoided making such remarks against a former prime minister, while hearing the matter of compliance of ar-rest warrants upon him, earlier issued by the court, in the Aven-fi eld Apartment case.

“Passing avoidable observa-

tions/remarks by the courts, while hearing of cases often ex-pose the court and concerned judges to criticism, which at times, undermines the neu-trality and independence of the courts and the presiding judges, thus, shaking the confi-dence of the people in the sys-tem of dispensation of justice,” Saqi said.

Justice Kayani had said: “Ac-cused [Sharif] knows that he went abroad after defeating the system. He must be laugh-ing at the system, while sitting abroad. It’s a shameful conduct by the accused.”

The judge passed the re-marks after Additional At-torney General Tariq Khokhar presented a compliance report on Sharif’s arrest warrants is-

sued by the high court.The report was submitted to

the two-member bench, com-prising Justice Mohsin Akhtar Kayani and Justice Aamer Fa-rooq.

Khokhar, while briefi ng the court on the attempts made to arrest Sharif, said that Rao Abdul Hanan, an offi cer of the Pakistani High Commission, had visited the residence of the PML-N chief in London. He added that Eddie, the person at the apartment, “refused” to re-ceive the arrest warrant.

“Every eff ort was made to en-force Mr Sharif’s arrest warrant,” the government’s lawyer told the court. He also read Hanan’s statements regarding the arrest warrant.

After Khokhar’s explanation,

Additional Prosecutor General of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Jahanzaib Bhar-wana informed the court that they were aware of the attempts made to arrest Sharif.

Khokhar then told the court that the Pakistani mission in London also contacted the Com-monwealth Offi ce, via telephone,

over the warrant. He added that the Commonwealth Offi ce in-formed them that it was not in their jurisdiction to implement the IHC’s order.

“This means that they [Com-monwealth Office] are not ready to assist us,” observed the court. It added that the court has to be satisfied with evidence that it did its best to comply with the warrants. “The purpose of all this exer-cise is so that when the accused comes tomorrow he does not say that he did not know [about the warrants],” remarked Jus-tice Kayani. He then added that the accused knew that he had defeated the system to leave the country.

“He [Nawaz Sharif] must be sitting there laughing at Paki-

stan’s system. It’s a shame,” ob-served Justice Kayani. He added that the court will issue a verdict on the matter.

The court also observed that the federal government should also take care “from now on” who it can allow to leave the country. It also remarked that the time spent on delivering an arrest warrant to an accused could have been spent on pro-viding relief to other litigants.

“The court, the government, the Foreign Offi ce and the high commission are jointly execut-ing a single warrant,” observed the court.

The hearing of the case was adjourned till October 7 as the IHC ordered that the statement of the high commission’s coun-sellor, Rao Abdul Hanan, will be

recorded in the next proceedings via a video link.

Earlier this month, the IHC had issued non-bailable ar-rest warrants for Sharif during a hearing over the former prime minister’s petition requesting exemption from appearing be-fore the court.

In the brief ruling, IHC’s Justice Mohsin Akhtar Kayani remarked that the PML-N su-premo neither underwent a sur-gery despite citing it as a reason behind obtaining bail to travel to the United Kingdom nor was he admitted to a hospital.

“Our bail order has expired, which has its own eff ects,” the judge said during a hearing at the IHC over a petition to cancel Na-waz’s bail in the Avenfi eld prop-erties reference.

Authorities in Karachi have closed six marriage halls and 103 restaurants in the metropolis for not complying with health guidelines and Covid-19 prevalence, said the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) yesterday.The country’s nerve centre in the fight against coronavirus said that it has also instructed all provinces, including Gilgit-Baltistan, Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Islamabad to ensure health guidelines and abidance of protocols.The NCOC also cautioned the authorities that restaurants and marriage halls were “emerging as the epicentre of the disease”.Federal minister Asad Umar also warned that indoor restaurants and marriage halls were emerging as “high contributors to the Covid-19 spread”.“NCOC today has directed all provinces and federating units to crack down on SOP violations in these places,” said the minister.

Mor than 100 restaurants closed forviolating SOPs

Govt blasts deposed PM for criticising state institutionsInternewsIslamabad

Minister for Information and Broadcasting Syed Shibli Faraz yesterday

said former prime minister Na-waz Sharif was criticising state institutions to protect his assets made through corruption.

Talking to media in Islama-bad, he said it is unfortunate that a three-time prime min-ister of the country is making anti-state speeches. He said Sharif made assets of billions of rupees abroad through money laundering.

He urged the former prime

minister to explain his as-sets abroad instead of beating about the bush. He contrasted that with Prime Minister Imran Khan, who, Faraz said, had pro-vided money trail in court.

The minister said the people of Pakistan gave three chances to Sharif to rule Pakistan, but he ruined the country’s economy and its institutions. He said former rulers wasted $23 billion to artifi cially control the value of greenback.

Faraz said the govern-ment and the judiciary, while showing sympathy, allowed Sharif to go abroad for medi-cal treatment, but in response the ex-PM was busy in weak-

ening the country.Regarding Sharif’s allega-

tions of rigging in last general elections, the minister said the Sharifs were “professional li-ars”. He recalled that Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) had launched a movement in the opposition and demanded the opening of a mere four con-stituencies in General Election 2013 (to verify their claims of a rigged election).

He said around 487 election petitions were fi led by vari-ous political parties, while the majority of them was submit-ted by the PTI. He said in 2018 elections, 287 election petitions were fi led and 90 of them were

about National Assembly con-stituencies.

He said 45 of those 90 peti-tions were fi led by PTI where its candidates had lost elections with a margin of 50 to 2000 votes. He said Pakistan Muslim League – Nawaz considers Punjab its stronghold, where the total elec-tion petitions were 13 of which 11 belonged to PML-N.

“What an irony it is that af-ter the lapse of two years, Sharif is now talking of rigging. They should have followed the due process instead of maligning the entire election proceedings,” Faraz noted.

He said the Sharifs were try-ing to mislead the people but

would not succeed in their nefarious designs. He alleged Sharif was blackmailing the government and state institu-tions to hide his corruption. But he vowed the government was determined to go after the corrupt regardless of the con-sequences.

Speaking about the govern-ment’s eff orts to reduce in-fl ation, Faraz said there was suffi cient stock of wheat and sugar in the country. He said the government was working on evolving a strategy to ensure essential items like fl our, sugar, ghee, pulses, and other things at aff ordable rates to the general public.

In the eye of a storm: Former prime minister Nawaz Sharif is currently in the eye of a storm over his criticism of the military in speeches telecast live across the Pakistani media and which has led to a controversy, and now, ban.

bition order issued after Nawaz Sharif’s address to the Central Working Committee via video link from London.

In joint statement PFUJ Presi-dent Shahzada Zulfi qar and Secretary-General Nasir Zaidi alleged that Pemra was following dual standards in taking dicta-tion from those who are against media and freedom of speech

as earlier the very same author-ity rejected a request to ban the broadcasting speeches of re-tired military strongman Pervez Musharaf and rabble rousing Pa-kistan Awami Tehrik leader Ala-ma Tahir ul Qadri who have been absconding since long.

PFUJ urged the government to ensure freedom of speech and ex-pression in the country guaran-

teed to citizens in Article 19 of the Constitution of Pakistan and avoid practising dual standards and in-terface in the working of Pemra.

“There is need to make Pemra a truly autonomous and in-dependent body instead of it following the dictates of the government and Ministry of In-formation and Broadcasting,” the statement concluded.

Upset: Sharif has been criticising state institutions to protect his assets made through corruption, says Shibli Faraz.

Court orders confi scation of Sharif’sproperties

The accountability court hear-

ing multi-billion rupees fake

bank accounts case ordered

confiscation of movable and

immovable properties of former

prime minister Nawaz Sharif in

Toshakhana reference.

The accountability court judge

Asghar Ali, on September 9,

while hearing the case had

declared Sharif as proclaimed

off ender over failing to appear

before court, despite being

summoned multiple times and

indicted former president Asif

Ali Zardari, former prime minis-

ter Syed Yousuf Raza Gillani and

others in the same case.

During the same hearing, the

court had also ordered the NAB

to submit details of movable

and immovable properties

and before it, in order to start

process of seizing the accused

properties.

As per the direction of the

court, the bureau off icial

submitted details of properties,

bank accounts and vehicles

of Sharif, following which the

court ordered seizure of Sharif’s

properties.

Justice Kayani had said: “Accused [Sharif] knows that he went abroad aft er defeating the system. He must be laughing at the system, while sitting abroad. It’s a shameful conduct by the accused”

QATAR

Gulf Times Saturday, October 3, 202012

Qatar Airways has announced its winter schedule in line with passenger and cargo demand

and the continued relaxation of entry restrictions around the world.

Having become the largest inter-national carrier during this crisis, the airline has applied its knowledge of global passenger fl ows and booking trends to load a reliable winter sched-ule passengers can trust, according to a statement.

Qatar Airways Group chief executive HE Akbar al-Baker said: “We are proud to be the global airline passengers trust to take them where they want to go safely and reliably.

“This trust begins by off ering an honest schedule of fl ights that is re-alistic of the current market condi-tions and entry restrictions around the world.”

“Also we ensure when entry restric-tions change, forcing us to postpone or cancel fl ights, we support our pas-sengers with the most fl exible and generous options to reschedule their

plans,” he said. “While no airline can predict with 100% certainty how the market will recover or future entry re-strictions, our unrivalled experience accumulated by becoming the larg-est international carrier during this crisis uniquely positions us to build a realistic schedule of fl ights with con-fi dence.”

Al-Baker said: “Since the onset of the pandemic, we have fl own over 175mn km, taking home more than 2.3mn passengers on over 35,000 fl ights.”

“We have also operated more than 400 charter fl ights across the world, allowing us to stay up-to-date with the latest airport and national health procedures and maintain a fi nger on the pulse of global passenger fl ows, in particular in markets where we do not operate regular fl ights,” he added.

“Our strategic investment in a va-riety of fuel effi cient twin-engine aircraft, including the largest fl eet of Airbus A350 aircraft, has enabled us to continue fl ying throughout this crisis and perfectly positions us to lead the sustainable recovery of international travel,” he said.

“As we continue to rebuild our glo-

bal network, we remain focused on providing seamless, safe and reliable connectivity to our millions of passen-gers and ensuring we continue to earn their trust every time they choose to fl y with Qatar Airways.”

By the end of 2020, Qatar Airways’ plans to rebuild its network to 124 des-tinations: 21 in Africa, 10 in the Ameri-cas, 42 in Asia-Pacifi c, 38 in Europe, and 13 in Middle East.

Many cities will be served with a schedule of daily or more frequencies.

Qatar Airways destinations operat-ing by end of 2020 (subject to regula-tory approval):

Africa – Accra, Addis Ababa, Al-giers, Cape Town, Casablanca, Dar Es Salaam, Djibouti, Durban, Entebbe, Johannesburg, Kigali, Kilimanjaro, Lagos, Luanda, Maputo, Mogadishu, Nairobi, Seychelles, Tunis, Windhoek, and Zanzibar

Americas – Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Mon-treal, New York, Philadelphia, Sao Paulo, and Washington, DC

Asia-Pacifi c – Ahmedabad, Ad-elaide, Amritsar, Auckland, Bali, Ban-galore, Bangkok, Brisbane, Calicut, Cebu, Chennai, Clark, Colombo, Dha-

ka, Guangzhou, Hanoi, Hong Kong, Ho Chi Minh City, Goa, Hyderabad, Islamabad, Jakarta, Karachi, Kath-mandu, Kochi, Kolkata, Kuala Lumpur, Lahore, Male, Manila, Melbourne, Mumbai, Nagpur, New Delhi, Perth, Peshawar, Phuket, Seoul, Singapore, Sydney, Tokyo Narita, and Trivandrum

Europe – Amsterdam, Ankara, Athens, Baku, Barcelona, Belgrade, Berlin, Brussels, Bucharest, Buda-pest, Copenhagen, Dublin, Edinburgh, Frankfurt, Helsinki, Istanbul, Istanbul Sabiha, Kyiv, Larnaca, London (Hea-throw), London (Gatwock), Madrid, Manchester, Milan, Moscow, Mu-nich, Oslo, Paris, Prague, Rome, Sofi a, Stockholm, Tbilisi, Vienna, Warsaw, Yerevan, Zagreb, and Zurich

Middle East – Amman, Baghdad, Basra, Beirut, Erbil, Isfahan, Kuwait, Mashhad, Muscat, Najaf, Shiraz, Su-laymaniyah, and Tehran.

According to the latest International Air Transport Association (IATA) data, Qatar Airways has become the largest international carrier between April to July by fulfi lling its mission of taking people home.

This enabled the airline to accumu-late unmatched experience in carry-ing passengers safely and reliably, and uniquely positioned the airline to ef-fectively rebuild its network.

The carrier has stringently imple-mented the most advanced safety and hygiene measures on board its aircraft and in Hamad International Airport.

Qatar Airways operations are not dependent on any specifi c aircraft type.

The airline’s variety of modern fuel-effi cient aircraft has meant that it can continue fl ying by off ering the right capacity in each market.

Due to the coronavirus’s impact on travel demand, the airline has taken the decision to ground its fl eet of Air-bus A380s as it is not commercially or environmentally justifi able to oper-ate such a large aircraft in the current market.

The airline’s fl eet of 49 Airbus A350 and 30 Boeing 787 are the ideal choice for the most strategically important long-haul routes to Africa, the Ameri-cas, Europe, and Asia-Pacifi c regions.

Qatar Airways’winter schedule is announcedThe international carrier plans to rebuild its network to 124 destinations by 2020-end

Since the onset of the pandemic, Qatar Airways have flown over 175mn km, taking home more than 2.3mn passengers on over 35,000 flights.

Qatar Airways is extending its commitment to off er passengers fl exible booking options, now

available for all tickets issued before De-cember 31, 2020, it was announced yes-terday.

For passengers who would like to change their travel plans, they can hold their ticket value for two years, benefi t from unlimited date changes, and ex-change their ticket for a future travel voucher with 10% extra value.

If passengers have had their travel plans impacted by factors outside their control, they can change their destina-tion – within the same continental re-gion for Qatar Airways Privilege Club members or within the same country or a 500-mile radius for non-members, swap their ticket for Qmiles, and refund their ticket with no fees applied.

Qatar Airways’s latest re-booking op-tions will provide passengers “an unri-valled peace of mind”.

The national carrier of Qatar now op-erates over 650 weekly fl ights to more than 90 destinations, providing more fl exible travel options to more global destinations than any other airline.

For full terms and conditions, visit qa-tarairways.com/RelyOnUs.

Throughout their journey, Qatar Air-ways passengers can expect the high-est standards of hygiene and the latest security measures, whether on board or at the state-of-the-art Hamad Interna-tional Airport (HIA).

Qatar Airways’s onboard safety meas-ures for passengers and cabin crew in-clude the provision of personal protec-tive equipment (PPE) for cabin crew and a complimentary protective kit and dis-posable face shields for passengers.

Business Class passengers on aircraft equipped with Qsuite can enjoy the enhanced privacy the award-winning business seat provides, including sliding privacy partitions and the option to use a “Do Not Disturb (DND)” indicator.

Qsuite is available on fl ights to more than 30 destinations.

In addition, the HIA has imple-mented stringent cleaning procedures and applied social distancing measures throughout its terminals.

All passenger touchpoints are sani-tised every 10-15 minutes and every boarding gate and bus gate counter is cleaned after each fl ight.

Hand sanitisers are provided at im-migration and security screening points.

For more information on Qatar Air-ways’s safety policies and procedures, visit qatarairways.com/safety.

A multiple award-winning airline, Qatar Airways was named “World’s Best Airline” by the 2019 World Airline Awards, managed by the international air transport rating organisation Sky-trax.

Qatar Airways was also named “Best Airline in the Middle East”, “World’s Best Business Class”, and “Best Business Class Seat”, in recognition of its ground-breaking Business Class experience, Qsuite.

It is the only airline to have been awarded the coveted “Skytrax Airline of the Year” title, which is recognised as the pinnacle of excellence in the airline industry, fi ve times.

Its home and hub, the HIA, was re-cently ranked “Best Airport in the Mid-dle East” and “Third Best Airport in the World” by the Skytrax World Airport Awards 2020.

Qatar Airways extends commitment to off er fl exible booking options

Qatar Airways is extending flexible booking options for all tickets that were issued before December 31, 2020.

Closure on Al Wakra Road

The Public Works Authority (Ashghal) has announced a temporary traffi c closure

on Al Wakra Road for those com-ing from Airport Street towards

Al Wakra from 11pm today until 4am tomorrow (Sunday).

The closure, implemented in co-ordination with the General Directorate of Traffi c, is to com-

plete installation of ITS Gantries.Ashghal will install road signs

advising motorists of the closure and requested all to follow them and abide by the speed limit.

Qatar University’s (QU) College of Pharmacy (QU-CPH), in collabora-

tion with Qatar Pharmacy Un-dergraduate Society (QPhUS), recently marked the 10th World Pharmacists Day with an online event that was attended by all faculty and students, and was screened on YouTube.

The theme for this year’s event was Transforming Global Health, taking the opportunity to communicate how pharma-cists are transforming health-care through a variety of health services in their communities.

World Pharmacists Day is an annual celebration recognis-ing the role of the pharmacist in contributing to and improving patient health.

Dr Mohamed Diab, associate professor and dean at QU-CPH, opened the event with welcom-ing remarks: ‘We are honoured to be able to celebrate the annual occasion of the World Pharma-cists Day here in CPH.

“The Pharmaceutical Inter-national Federation started cel-ebrating this day in 2009, and since the start of the college we have been keen on sharing the celebration, and that is to stress on the importance of pharma-

cists as an integral part of the healthcare team as well as their role in advancing healthcare.

“This aligns with our vision in advancing healthcare in Qatar and the world through excel-lence and innovation in phar-macy education, research and service.”

Hend al-Naimi, QPhUS president and Professional Year 4 pharmacy student, welcome the audience, saying: “This year we’re celebrating World Phar-macists Day under the theme Transforming Global Health, which is timely with the corona-virus pandemic that we all face.

“During this event QPhUS

would like to take the oppor-tunity to say ‘thank you’ to all of the pharmacists around the world, including our future pharmacists, who are passion-ate and enthusiastic about the bright pharmacy future await-ing them.”

This was followed by a key-note speech delivered by Dr We-sam Smidi, assistant executive director of Clinical Services, Mental Health Hospital at Ha-mad Medical Corporation.

In his address Dr Wesam commented: “We want to con-gratulate and recognise our fel-low pharmacists on their day, and appreciate all the hard work

and dedication they put, day in and day out, to provide the saf-est and most eff ective care for our patients here in Qatar.”

He discussed the evolving roles of the pharmacist in Qatar, as an integral part of the health-care profession, during the on-going coronavirus pandemic.

The coronavirus causes the Covid-19 respiratory disease.

These roles include the home delivery service of medication, providing telephone patient counseling, and participation of pharmacists in continuously updating the guidelines and protocols to treat Covid-19.

Finally, a “thank you” video produced by QU-CPH pharma-cy students honoured all phar-macists and thanked them for their hard work.

The event concluded with the announcement of the win-ners of the video competition “Building Resilience in Phar-macy Students”.

The winner was Duha Akasheh, Professional Year stu-dent.

Duha commented: “I am very happy to participate and win a new and unique competition off ered to us as students at the College of Pharmacy.”

QU-CPH marks World Pharmacists Day

The panellists at the World Pharmacists Day event hosted by QU.

DHFC announces revamped brand identity focused on memorable moments

Doha Festival City (DHFC) has announced its brand relaunch, “geared towards

a stronger engagement with the community, creating memorable moments and off ering unique experiences”.

“Our visitors are who we value the most, the very reason of the DHFC’s existence,” DHFC gen-eral manager Robert Hall said in a press statement.

“The main purpose of this

brand relaunch is to create more engagement, making our guests feel like they are truly part of the DHFC family.”

While the brand pillars and philosophy remain the same, the focus is shifted towards the ex-periential side of the DHFC, an off ering that stimulates all fi ve senses, refl ecting the destina-tion’s interactive approach with its visitors.

To celebrate this major shift,

a host of new events and activa-tions are scheduled.

The DHFC’s Perceptual Art display, composed of a 3D sticker and 50 hanging art pieces form-ing “The one and only” tag line, invites visitors to create memo-ries by taking photographs and interacting with the unique art pieces.

To create mystery and make the experience truly immersive, the tag line will be “hidden” –

viewers will be able to see the full message from only one specifi c point, uncovering the DHFC’s brand tagline.

In partnership with Mazaji FM, a new DHFC radio show will of-fer an interactive media platform for Arabic speakers in the heart of the mall.

Hosted by Hassan Sager and Ahmad al-Aglan, Ghaddh’a is an entertainment interactive show that will be aired daily from 7pm-

8.30pm, where guests will be able to participate in a myriad of com-petitions and games.

The show will also be featuring a celebrity guest every day.

A host of off ers and special deals are also now available at the mall for guests to celebrate the end of season.

More details are available on www.DohaFestivalCity.com.

The DHFC will hold a corpo-rate social responsibility (CSR)

initiative for October’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month, in col-laboration with the Teal Society and sponsored by Jamie’s Italian restaurant, combined with the #FestivalCares and #QatarU-nitesUS digital campaigns.

The DHFC will release also new episodes of its exclusive FFTV.

Tomorrow’s episode will be fo-cused on motherhood and new-borns.

FFTV has over 6mn viewers reached.

In November, a dedicated “Fashion Month” will be held, gathering local designers, fash-ion stakeholders, DHFC retail-ers and guests, to enjoy exclusive fashion shows, and fashion-re-lated installations.

The European Outdoor Cin-ema Film Festival, in the new parking space of the DHFC, is another attraction.