MONDAY 28 DECEMBER 2020 www.thepeninsula.qa13 JUMADA I - 1442 VOLUME 25 NUMBER 8485

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Nationwide vaccination drive continuesTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

As a growing number of citizens and residents get the COVID-19 vaccine as part of the ongoing inoculation drive in the country, two Ministers of State received the shots yesterday.

Ministers of State, H E Sheikh Hamad bin Suhaim Al Thani and H E Abdul Rahman bin Hamad Al Attiyah received the first dose of COVID-19 vaccine.

On the occasion, H E Sheikh Hamad bin Suhaim Al Thani praised the leadership of the country for the efforts taken to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic from the beginning and for pro-viding a safe vaccine to all cit-izens and residents.

He thanked Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al

Thani for making Qatar one of the first countries in the world to provide a safe, effective and approved COVID-19 vaccine totally free for its population, according to a message shared by Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) on social media yesterday.

H E Sheikh Suhaim bin Hamad also appreciated the Minister of Public Health H E Dr. Hanan Mohammed Al Kuwari and all healthcare workers who have been serving the com-munity since the beginning of the pandemic.

He also called upon all eli-gible members of the com-munity to get vaccinated against COVID-19.

H E Abdul Rahman bin Hamad Al Attiyah also thanked the leadership of the country for

providing the COVID-19 vaccine free for all in the country. “This vaccination campaign repre-sents importance given to the people in this country. It also affirms the commitment of the

country to keep its people healthy and safe,” he said.

H E Al Attiyah also empha-sised that the COVID-19 vaccine available in Qatar is safe and effective.

Qatar has authorised the emergency use for Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine.

The vaccination drive was launched at seven health centres on December 23. �P2

Indian minister thanks Qatar forsupporting community, hails tiesSANAULLAH ATAULLAH THE PENINSULA

The Minister of External Affairs of India, H E Dr. S Jaishankar, has lauded Qatar for taking care of Indian expatriate community during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The primary reason I came here (is) to thank the government of Qatar, starting from H H the Amir for the support and care they have been taking of Indian community members during the very difficult time of COVID-19 pan-demic,” said Jaishankar.

The Minister was speaking to the Indian community in Qatar virtually yesterday. The virtual event was attended by Ambassador of India to Qatar, H E Dr. Deepak Mittal, com-munity leaders, educationists, bankers and prominent businessmen.

The Minister of External Affairs also appreciated contribution of Indian community, especially their leaders in addressing COVID-19 challenge suc-cessfully, and urged their participation in the development of new India. Speaking about Qatar-India ties, the Minister said: “The relationship with Qatar is strong. I am here to urge them to look at more opportunities, taking the relationship to higher level.”

He said India had historical and contemporary relations with Qatar and the bilateral ties are being further strengthened.

“My visit in a way is a precursor to what we hope to be a normal year in 2021 and resumption of a kind of close

contacts and exchanges that we should have,” said the Minister.

“I began my visit here with a business roundtable meeting. The reason I did so was to underline the message that we consider economic cooperation is the foundation of the contemporary relationship.”

“I am pleased to see enthusiasm among Qatari partners for working with India,” said the Minister, giving credit to Indian expatriates for making good name of the country in Qatar.

The Minister thanked Indian com-munity leaders for taking care of their fellow citizens during pandemic like

arrangement of chartered flights, Vande Bharat Mission and many more.

“I would like to recognise the services that you have rendered through your organisations and posi-tions in Qatar like doctors, nurses responding to the pandemic,” said the Minister. He said India also responded to the pandemic in a generous and full-hearted way to the global nature of the pandemic, sending medicines to 150 countries worldwide and medical teams in many cases.

Giving first hand information about the pandemic situation in India, he said the pandemic was very tough in India like the rest of the world. He said the government’s preparations helped control the situation and reduced the new cases drastically. “We created health infrastructure to respond to coro-navirus and established 15,000 dedi-cated centres to deal with COVID-19.”

After the speech by the Minister, the community leaders raised their con-cerns seeking support of the Minister and Indian Embassy for building better facilities for sports and culture to improve the services which their organ-isations offered to the community.

An educationist made a proposal to help create more educational oppor-tunities to Indian students in term of the provisions of more school seats and higher educational institutes.

The Minister assured the com-munity leaders to address their con-cerns with authorities concerned in Qatar and India as soon as possible. �P2

Qatar attends preparatory meeting for 41st session of GCC Supreme Council QNA — DOHA

The State of Qatar partici-pated yesterday via video conference in the 146th preparatory ministerial council meeting for the 41st session of the Supreme Council of the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf (GCC).

Minister of State for Foreign Affairs H E Sultan bin Saad Al Muraikhi rep-resented the State of Qatar in the meeting.

Qatar Visa Center in Dhaka to

reopen from December 30SIDI MOHAMED — THE PENINSULA

The Ministry of Interior (MoI) will reopen its Qatar Visa Center in Dhaka, Bangladesh from December 30, 2020.

“As part of reopening of Qatar Visa Centre Abroad, Dhaka Centre in the People’s Republic of Bangladesh will be working starting on 30 December 2020,” the Ministry said in a tweet yesterday.

The Ministry said that the appointment bookings are now open for the Dhaka center through QVC website.

The QVCs abroad project is being implemented in cooperation between the Ministry of the Interior, the Min-istry of Administrative Development, Labour and Social Affairs, the Min-istry of Public Health, and the Min-istry of Foreign Affairs.

The Qatar Visa Centers abroad are aimed at facilitating and simpli-fying the procedures of recruitment in general and protecting the rights of expatriates and ensure their safety and facilitate all procedures for their entry into the country, as well as ver-ifying and documenting the process of their employment and accelerate their work under simplified, smooth and effective procedures.

This decision will help companies to bring workers at a time when local market needs workers. Recently, the Ministry also reopened a number of Visa Centers abroad in Nepal, Pakistan, and the Philippines. The first overseas Qatar Visa Center was

inaugurated in Colombo, Sri Lanka, in October 2018.

The project targets employment through 20 service centres in eight countries: Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Nepal, Tunisia, Pakistan, India, Bang-ladesh, and the Philippines.

One of the significant benefits of QVCs is that they allow workers to get detailed information about their work contracts including salaries, vacations, incentives, and allowances — in their own languages — before they leave their countries for Doha.

Among the stars: QNL is Qatar’s newest astronomy research hubTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Qatar National Library will give Qatar’s astronomers and scien-tists access to world-leading robotic telescopes from the Las Cumbres Observatory (LCO) in the US. The agreement makes the Library one of LCO’s Global Sky Partners, supported by the Simons Foundation, a flagship programme recently recognised by the HundrED Foundation as one of the 100 most innovative educational projects in the world for 2021.

Through the programme, an unlimited number of students will have access to 50 hours of viewing through LCO’s robotic telescopes. Teachers will guide students in special lectures at the Library as they look at planets, asteroids and comets using the powerful technology.

This new initiative, as well as the popular Astronomy Club,

is part of the Library’s Science Book Forum. This special pro-gramme encourages the next generation to enrol in science and engineering studies in Qatar and the MENA region by pro-moting science books and topics. It is chaired by Dr. Essam Heggy, a research scientist in earth and planetary sciences and a member of several space exper-iments that seek answers to key questions about Earth and plan-etary evolution.

Manager of the Children’s and Young Adults’ Library at the Library, Hind Al Khulaifi said, “This partnership represents a huge milestone for our role in spreading enthusiasm for science in the community and makes us a hub in Qatar for astronomy research projects. We want people to ask questions about the universe and to help empower the next generation of scientists, researchers and

philosophers. We also want to use the excitement that outer space generates to increase public understanding of science and scientific methods, and to show inquisitive minds that science is a pathway to discovery and knowledge."

The Science Book Forum recently ran its first Astronomy Club educational programme

with LCO telescopes, called “Exoplanet Transit.” The Library ran four sessions teaching stu-dents how to prepare the robotic telescope for observation, submit an observation to a research lab and analyse the data. Research papers from the classes will be posted at regular intervals on the Library’s website.

In October, the same instru-ments spotted a rare blast of light from a star being ripped apart by a supermassive black hole. The phenomenon, known as a Tidal Disruption Event, is the closest such flare recorded to date, at just over 215 million light-years from Earth.

Ahmed Saad, the Library’s Outreach Program Coordinator, said: “The Science Book Forum seeks to give all students access to high-quality STEM education. I’m amazed by the tenacity of the Astronomy Club participants in the “Exoplanet Transit” pro-gramme, which persevered through this year’s challenges and continued to learn and conduct their research during an unprecedented global pandemic.”

In a joint statement, students Adham Ramy El Araby, Yousef Mohammed, Muneeb Abdel-rahman and Aryan Irfan, under

the guidance of Dr. A. Smith at Newton British Academy in Qatar, said: “As physics students, we naturally gravitated towards this research programme pre-sented by the Library, driven by our curiosity about the world around us and even the world beyond what we normally view or study.

“During the programme, we were able to confirm the existence of exoplanet WASP 98b. In addition to this, we also managed to calculate the period, density and volume of the exo-planet itself. “We are extremely proud of our work and the effort of each team member during this process. We must thank the Library for this great learning experience, which has helped us advance and develop not only our scientific investigative skills, but also the understanding of planets beyond our own solar system.” �P3

Qatar Visa Centers have already reopened in Pakistan, Nepal, and the Philippines.

Visa centers facilitate and simplify the foreign workers' recruitment process and ensure workers' rights.

The primary reason I came here is

to thank the government of Qatar,

starting from H H the Amir for the

support and care they have been

taking of Indian community

members during the very difficult

time of COVID-19 pandemic.

H E Dr. S JaishankarMinister of External Affairs

of India

Ministers of State H E Sheikh Hamad bin Suhaim Al Thani and H E Abdul Rahman bin Hamad Al Attiyah take the shot, thanking the leadership for making Qatar one of the first coun-tries to start mass COVID-19 vaccinations.

Effective measures taken by the government from the start to tackle the pandemic lauded.

People urged to take the vaccine.

Through partnership with Las

Cumbres Observatory from the US,

the library is providing Qatar’s

astronomers and scientists access

to world-leading robotic

telescopes.

Lulu Master Home Chef Contest winners

Qatar attends preparatory meeting for 41st session of GCC Supreme Council

02 MONDAY 28 DECEMBER 2020HOME

QF and partners bring art and sustainability to public spaces

THE PENINSULA — DOHA

The World Innovation Summit for Education has (WISE) unveiled a photography series – Using the Used: A Reflection Of The Future Of Our City – at the Msheireb Metro Station in Doha, giving commuters the unique opportunity to learn about sustainability through the lens of youth in Qatar.

Created through a collabo-ration between the World Inno-vation Summit for Education (WISE) – an initiative of Qatar Foundation (QF) – Qatar Rail, Photo Art Qatar (PA.Qatar), and QF partner university Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Qatar (VCUarts Qatar), the project aims to encourage young people to explore sustainability using cre-ative mediums, specifically pho-tography, that can translate into public spaces as forums of civic participation.

Learning Ecoystems Policy Associate at WISE, Farah Abel said, “It is important for us to tap into the collective intelli-gence of our community and invite them to actively partic-ipate in reimagining public space as an opportunity for learning and creativity.

“The photography exhi-bition at Msheireb Metro Station is an example of how we, at WISE, are striving to create young champions of thought-leadership who can creatively engage in social topics in public forums.”

The photography series is part of WISE’s Doha Learning Days (DLD), a week-long initi-ative that takes place annually and aims to encourage the youth to become active members of their communities through meaningful activities co-curated in collaboration with relevant local and global learning eco-systems stakeholders.

This year’s program focused on the municipality of Al Wakra, who are constituents

of Unesco’s Learning City’s Network, with the city serving as the canvas for the photog-raphy workshops led by Photo Art Qatar.

PA.Qatar, which delivered workshops and activities for students between the ages of 15-25, brought in experts such as Reem Al-Sahlawi, Qatari environmental e thics researcher and advocate, and Abdulla Alqatami, environ-mental enthusiast and founder of Greener and Tadweer, lev-eraging various efforts being done locally around the cross-over of art, sustainability, and public space.

“When developing this project, we decided it was essential to provide students with as much knowledge as possible and how creatives are tackling such issues in their own projects,” said Ammar Alqamash, co-founder and exhibition curator, PA.Qatar.

The exhibition also features outputs from a workshop jointly conducted by VCUarts Qatar, WISE, and Qatar Academy Al Wakra (QAW) part of QF’s Pre-University Education. The session saw nine fashion design senior students from VCUarts Qatar mentor groups of school students from QAW to repurpose material found in their homes and create new objects, such as masks and face-shields, sta-tionary holders, a miniature dark room, notebooks, shoe-box homes for pets and toys, indoor green houses, and a miniature foosball table.

Qatar Rail, as a strategic partner, played an important role in supporting the objective of leveraging public spaces to promote civic engagement around art and social topics, especially sustainability. The Doha Metro was designed with sustainability at the forefront of decision making – from society, to the economy, to the environment – and strives to support national objectives.

Photography exhibition unveiled at Msheireb Metro Station.

138 people referred to Public Prosecution for not wearing masks

QNA — DOHA

The designated authorities yesterday referred 138 people to the Public Prosecution for not wearing masks in places where they are mandatory.

The measure is in line with the Cabinet decision, decree law No. 17 of 1990 on infec-tious diseases, and the precau-tionary measures in force in the country to contain the spread of coronavirus.

The designated authorities called on the public to adhere to the precautionary measures in place to ensure their safety and the safety of others.

Distribution of prizes and certificates to the winners of Lulu Master Home Chef Contest was held on Saturday at the Regional Office of Lulu Hypermarket Qatar on the D-Ring Road. Regional Director Shaijan M O and Regional Manager Shanavas P M distributed the prizes and certificates to the winners. In the ‘adult category’, Roy Elipio Clemente, Bensha Bennet and Roubell Vasili Cotiangco won the first three prizes respectively, while in the ‘kids category’, Biya Mie Aleria, Hisana Aneesh and Sufyan Noufal Arakkaveettil won the first three prizes respectively.

HIA dismisses rumours about temporary closureTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Hamad International Airport (HIA) yesterday rebutted rumours circulating about the airport being temporarily closed.

“We confirm that we will continue to operate as normal for all travellers,” HIA tweeted.

It also clarified: “The pol-icies and procedures for entry into Qatar continue to be care-fully managed by the Ministry of Public Health and it is con-stantly updated on the MoPH website.”

Hamad International Airport has advised people to take accurate information from official sources only and disregard rumors coming from unidentified sources.

People urged to get information about COVID-19 vaccine from reliable sourcesFAZEENA SALEEM THE PENINSULA

People have been urged to get information about COVID-19 vaccine from reliable sources as there is a lot of misleading and incorrect details circulating on the Internet and social media.

Medical Director of Hamad General Hospital, Dr. Yousef Al Maslamani, has emphasised the importance of deciding whether the information about COVID-19 vaccine is trust-worthy further recommending to follow the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) website and its official social media accounts.

“Look at who is giving infor-mation, if the person is an expert in the field or an official then it is trustworthy. In Qatar for trusted information about COVID-19 vaccine, visit the Ministry of Public Health website or its social media accounts,” he said while speaking in a video message posted on COVID-19 vaccine microsite.

MoPH has launched the COVID-19 vaccine microsite, following its decision to

approve the emergency use authorisation for Pfizer-BioN-Tech’s COVID-19 vaccine.

Dr. Al Maslamani has said that vaccine is the best hope to end the pandemic.

“Due to comprehensive measures and restrictions put by the Qatar government the COVID-19 was controlled. Despite that many lives were affected. The elderly com-munity more isolated, children’s education was effected there are many public activities post-poned. Many of our expatriate community were not able to visit their family and friends. Despite taking preventive measures like hand washing

social distance, masks, the virus is still present,” said Dr. Al Maslamani.

“Now we have an approved, safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine which is our best hope to end this pandemic and take life back to normal. If we acknowledge our responsibility to get vaccinated, we will get closer to normal life,” he added.

Qatar started administering the vaccine from December 23 and in the first phase of vacci-nation until January 31, pref-erence will be given to people over 70 years old, adults in chronic care and home care facilities, healthcare personnel most at risk of infection and

people over 16 years of age with severe chronic diseases.

Eligible group of the popu-lation receive the COVID-19 vaccine at seven designated health centers for free.

“The deployment of the COVID-19 vaccine marks a new chapter in our fight against COVID 19. It will play important role in saving lives and pro-tecting the community. The whole purpose of this vaccine is to protect the community and help getting life back to normal,” said Executive Director of Operations at Primary Health Care Corpo-ration, Dr. Samya Ahmad Al Abdulla.

She said that all necessary arrangements have been put in place to deliver a smooth and efficient service to the public during the COVID-19 vacci-nation campaign. “Your safety is our priority,” said Dr. Al Abdulla.

People who have been selected are being contacted by phone/SMS to advise them of their selection for the vaccine and invited to attend an appointment at one of the seven designated health centers.

The State of Qatar participated yesterday via videoconferencing in the 146th preparatory ministerial council meeting for the 41st session of the Supreme Council of the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf (GCC). Minister of State for Foreign Affairs H E Sultan bin Saad Al Muraikhi represented the State of Qatar in the meeting.

5 people arrested for violating home quarantine conditionsQNA — DOHA

The competent authorities arrested yesterday five people who violated the requirements of the home quarantine they committed to following, which they are legally accountable for, in accordance with the procedures of the health authorities in the country.

It is in implementation of the precautionary measures in force in the country, approved by health authorities represented in the Ministry of Public Health (MOPH), to ensure the achievement of public safety and to curb the spread of the coro-navirus. The arrested persons being referred to the competent prosecution are Khalid Mohammed Abdullah Al Aswad, Mohammed Ahmed Jassim Al

Obaidan Fakhroo, Mohammed Abdulhamid Mohammed Said Nasrallah, Mohammed Abdullah Taha Abdulsalam Mohammed and Faisal Ahmed Baharde.

The concerned authorities in the State called on citizens and residents who are subject to quarantine to fully adhere to the requirements set by the Min-istry of Public Health to ensure their safety and the safety of others. They warned that anyone who violates these conditions will be subject to the penalties stipulated in accordance with the provisions of Article 253 of the Penal Code No. 11 of 2004, and the provisions of Law No. 17 of 1990 regarding the prevention of infectious diseases, and Law No. 17 of 2002 on the protection of society.

SC highlights achievements of Generation Amazing in 2020THE PENINSULA — DOHA

In 2020, the Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy’s (SC) social and human legacy programme, Generation Amazing (GA), celebrated its 10th anniversary with several major milestones, including reaching over 160 000 people worldwide with its online programme streamed weekly via Instagram Live.

In January, GA teamed up with partner club and Belgian First Division side KAS Eupen to host a football-for-devel-opment session for local school children during the team’s winter training camp in Doha. Eupen players trained with par-ticipating children at Aspire Academy to instill a greater

appreciation for teamwork. This initiative with Eupen marks one of several organised since GA signed a strategic partnership with the Belgian side in Sep-tember 2019.

In February , the announcement of former Aus-tralian international Tim Cahill as a new global ambassador of the SC and Qatar 2022 was cel-ebrated through an engagement with GA, which took place at Aspire Academy, engaging GA school programme children, who were all excited to meet the former English Premier League player.

With the spread of COVID-19, on-pitch sessions, including the school and worker programme sessions, came to a halt in March - leading to GA’s

decision to take its football for development programming online. This year brought a chal-lenging set of circumstances, and it was important to set up a plan to ensure continued out-reach to youth. GA was com-mitted to taking the programme online to raise the spirits of its followers and empower the learning journey of youth around the world.

In efforts to continue to inspire youth and audiences in Qatar and globally, GA streamed football for development drills, for example, in the form of GA master-led home workouts designed to get those confined at home active and learning about programme-taught skills like teamwork, communication, and organisation. The streams

also included an array of weekly GA Star Chats featuring SC global ambassadors and regional ambassadors.

The programme’s online presence has opened new doors for how football for development can positively impact youth. There are plans to continue to leverage this opportunity to raise awareness and connect with our target audience in Qatar and worldwide.

In July 2020, GA teamed up with Josoor Institute (JI) and the University Campus of Football Business (UCFB) to deliver a series of webinars about the role of sport and learning in supporting youth during the COVID-19 pandemic. This was the first in a series of monthly discussions involving the SC

Legacy programmes and rep-resentatives from their strategic partners.

Later in October, GA hosted a high-level webinar about the soft power of sports diplomacy. Titled ‘Introduction to Sports Diplomacy: From Concept to Practice’, the virtual event was organised with JI, in collabo-ration with the UNESCO Office for the Gulf States and Yemen, to provide a platform for sharing a global perspective on using the power of sport to advance national goals.

GA is wrapping up the year with two prestigious Golden Bridge Awards for the GA Live online campaign to inspire youth to stay active and healthy at home during the ongoing pandemic.

“Now we have an approved, safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine which is our best hope to end this pandemic and take life back to normal. If we acknowledge our responsibility to get vaccinated, we will get closer to normal life,” Medical Director of Hamad General Hospital, Dr. Yousef Al Maslamani, said.

Nationwide vaccination drive continues

FROM PAGE 1

During the first phase of vacci-nation, people aged over 70, healthcare staff and people with chronic diseases are being vacci-nated. The first phase of vacci-nation will last until January 31. The vaccine consists of two shots, given three weeks apart.

Indian Minister hails strong ties

FROM PAGE 1

Ambassador of India to Qatar, H E Dr. Deepak Mittal said he had taken complete note of the expec-tations that the community attached with the Embassy. “I would like to assure in the presence of the Minister that the Embassy remained committed to continue to work for the welfare of the community,” he added.

03MONDAY 28 DECEMBER 2020 HOME

HBKU College of Science and Engineering study uses AI in pursuit of football successTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Researchers at the College of Science and Engineering (CSE) at Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU) have developed what is an innovative artificial intel-ligence (AI)-based model to analyze and improve players’ performance in professional football leagues.

PhD student Jassim Mohammed AlMulla, a Qatari national with a passion for football, worked with his super-visor, Dr. Tanvir Alam, an assistant professor in CSE’s Infor-mation and Computing Tech-nology Division, to develop an AI-based model to analyze and recommend key performance metrics to win matches for the Qatar national team players. With less than two years to go until Qatar hosts the first ever FIFA World Cup tournament held in the Middle East, the researchers are optimistic that the study could boost the national team’s overall performance.

Matches held in the coun-try’s top league, the Qatar Stars League (QSL), between 2012 and 2019 were analyzed using AI-based models. The study analyzed players’ performances

in a total of 864 QSL matches. For each match, the collective performance of the players in key playing positions (defender, midfield, forward) was ana-lyzed to understand their effec-tiveness in winning games.

The researchers formulated the study as a classification framework under machine learning (ML), which is a major branch of AI, to distinguish the winning team from the losing team in a match. Different ML models were considered for the classification task, and the logistic regression-based model was considered the best per-forming model with more than 80% accuracy. The proposed methodology can be used by the football management team to

identify players’ performance metrics that could be considered as contributing factors to determine match results. Several sophisticated mathematical models (based on AI) were then developed to analyze the players’ performance in QSL matches, and the study revealed some key winning strategies for the teams. The research work has been pub-lished in the IEEE Access Journal. Dr. Alam said: “We believe the proposed machine learning model can support the players, coaching staff, and team man-agement in Qatar to focus on spe-cific performance metrics that can enhance the team’s performance.”

Founding dean, CSE, Dr. Mounir Hamdi said, “We are

delighted to see our Qatari graduate students advancing their research aspirations and using the opportunities to work side by side with our talented faculty members. The study not only highlights the potential of this rapidly evolving field, but also the role of our programs at CSE to meet the growing need for professionals with the fun-damental knowledge to apply these technologies for real-world impact.”

Ahmed Khellil Abbassi, Executive Director of Compe-titions and Football Devel-opment at Qatar Stars League, said: “In Qatar, we believe in adaptive changes in the improvement of our sports and football. Such data-driven AI-based research will allow us to learn from the past and to create a better plan for the future, aligning Qatar as a global pioneer in innovation and football technology.”

Jassim AlMulla said: “This study is one step towards using advanced machine learning technologies that help build an understanding of local athletes’ performance as they participate in national and international competitions.”

Dr. Mounir Hamdi Jassim AlMulla Dr. Tanvir Alam

Philippine envoy participates in ‘Plant Million Tree’ initiativeTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

As part of the ‘Plant Million Tree’ initiative, the Ministry of Munic-ipality and Environment repre-sented by the Public Parks Department has planted saplings of different trees.

The event was organised in collaboration with the Philippine Embassy in Qatar. Ambassador of the Republic of the Philippines H E Alan L. Timbayan and Fahad Mohammed Al Kaabi, Head of the Parks Department at Al Daayen Municipality participated in the event in addition to a number of employees of the Philippine Embassy and officials and engineers of the Public Parks Department.

The initiative to plant million trees was launched at the opening of the first Qatar International Environmental Exhibition and the

7th Qatar International Agricul-tural Exhibition in 2019, as the State of Qatar complies with inter-national pledges and the Paris Agreement on reducing carbon emissions, given the importance of trees in the ecosystem and its effects on human health and quality of life.

So far, the initiative suc-ceeded to plant thousands of trees with the participation of ministers, embassies, schools, community leaders, public and private companies during dif-ferent events.

In its statement, the Ministry of Municipality and Environment has invited all entities, institu-tions and community members to contribute to the initiative to plant one million trees, because of its importance in preserving the environment and on human health and quality of life.

Ooredoo transforms self-service app to boost efficiency

THE PENINSULA — DOHA

Ooredoo Qatar has announced it has rebuilt the main screen of its Ooredoo App to provide a better customer journey and experience. Key changes include easier navigation through the App, allowing customers to reach the page they want promptly and efficiently.

By innovating to create an enhanced user front-end, Ooredoo will ease customers’ access to view their remaining data and minutes.

Other than online payment, online SIM purchase, and Hala migration to Shahry, a new section highlights eli-gible free content for each cus-tomer based on their plan.

This section of the App will direct customers to the free content and benefits they can activate, such as Netflix or beIN sports coverage, among numerous other services. In a practical and attractive change of appearance, the App back-ground will include a day/night mode that changes according to the time of day while issuing greetings according to whether the customer is accessing the App by day or at night.

Director PR at Ooredoo Sabah Rabiah Al Kuwari said: “It is with great pleasure that we advise Ooredoo users of these innovations and enhancements. In keeping with the move to a more ‘lightweight’ economy driven by digital communica-tions, I would encourage cus-tomers old and new to use the App and experience its utility and advantages over our physical shops.”

Revitalising the App is designed to benefit all current customers, including prepaid, postpaid, Mobile Broadband, and Ooredoo ONE. It will also allow quick and simple com-parisons between different data/call plans, allowing users to organise changes in the services they purchase to pursue the best value deals.

“By increasing its user-friendly qualities, Ooredoo has revamped its key consumer App in such a way as to release customers’ time and effort so that they can further enjoy the opportunities inherent in a 5G digital world,” added Al Kuwari.

QRCS signs cooperation agreement with QCPATHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Qatar Red Crescent Society (QRCS) signed an agreement with the Qatar Association of Certified Public Accountants (QCPA), to exchange experiences and enhance cooperation in scientific and technical fields in issues related to accounting and auditing.

The agreement was signed by Chief Executive Director of QRCS Eng. Ibrahim Abdullah Al Maliki and Chairman of QCPA Dr. Hashem Al Sayed. The agreement aims to achieve knowledge integration between the two sides by exchanging information and experiences, benefiting from join programs, courses, and events, as well as the library and scientific refer-ences available at QCPA.

In reference to this agreement, Chief Executive Director of QRCS Eng. Ibrahim Abdullah Al Maliki said that it is considered a significant mile-stone to support activities and projects that will likely provide the two sides with important accumulations of skills,

experiences and knowledge, through which both QRCS and QCPA will be able to gain famil-iarity with many aspects, such as accounting and international auditing standards and code of ethics and professional conduct.

Eng. Al Maliki also said that this agreement represents an extension of the strategic approach followed by the QRCS by strengthening partnerships with various governmental and non-governmental institutions as well as the private sector, in a way that serves the common interests of the QRCS and its partners, which is reflected in the performance of employees and the institution as a whole, and contributes to achieving the goals of Qatar National Vision 2030.

The Chairman of QCPA Dr. Hashem Al Sayed expressed their keenness for this joint cooper-ation with the QRCS, as it is a sig-nificant Qatari voluntary human-itarian association, hoping to reach compatibility and comple-mentarity between the two sides through this step.

Chief Executive Director of Qatar Red Crescent Society (QRCS), Eng. Ibrahim Abdullah Al Maliki, and Chairman of Qatar Association of Certified Public Accountants (QCPA), Dr. Hashem Al Sayed, exchanging documents.

QSRSN Chairman: Create understanding, spreadawareness on issues of persons with disabilitiesQNA — DOHA

Qatar Society for Rehabilitation of Special Needs (QSRSN) in cooperation with the Cultural Committee of Al Arabi Sports Club, organised a panel discussion on invisible disabil-ities and social and functional rehabilitation for people with disabilities, via visual commu-nication technology.

The panel, titled “Not all dis-abilities are visible,” dealt with three main axes: “An Analytical View of Invisible Disabilities,” “Social Rehabilitation for People with Disabilities between Reality and Expectations,” and “Functional Rehabilitation for Persons with Disabilities,”. The panel witnessed distinguished participation, interventions, and valuable inquiries from the public, specialists, those inter-ested in the field of disability, and parents.

Chairman Sheikh Thani bin Abdullah Al Thani explained that the QSRSN aimed, through the panel, to shed light on dis-abilities that are not apparent or invisible, and to create a deeper understanding and awareness of the visible and invisible disabilities, affirming

that this is one of the important roles of cultural and educational institutions such as concerned societies, sports clubs, youth centers, special education centers, and others.

He called on all cultural and sports institutions to continue to spread awareness on the issues of persons with disabil-ities and rehabilitate them according to their needs and the types of disabilities they suffer from, as this is a solidarity

responsibility for all members of society. During the panel discussions,

Dr. Tariq Al Essawi revealed the World Health Organization’s estimates on disability, which confirm that 15 percent of the world’s population, or more than one billion people, suffer from a disability and that about 450 million of them suffer from a mental or nervous state, pointing out that there are roles in the field of caring and pro-viding services for persons with disabilities in most countries of

the world, which requires uniting and coordinating efforts

to integrate and facilitate it for the persons with disabilities and their families.

In turn, Dr. Ibrahim Attia, stressed the importance of exploring the capabilities, skills, and energies of persons with disabilities and leading them in the correct direction, calling on media agencies and media pro-fessionals to double their roles to highlight rehabilitation and support efforts for people with disabilities.

For her part, Dr. Jihan Madani, stressed the impor-tance of job rehabilitation for people with disabilities, devel-oping their functional and pro-fessional capabilities and qual-ifying families and parents to build confidence in their children and encourage them to make double efforts to qualify their children for self-reliance and deal with them as independent people who can give and play important roles in society. She demanded to provide job rehabilitation centers for persons with disa-bilities according to the types of disabilities to qualify them for the labor market and compete in it and enable them to be pro-ductive and independent.

QSRSN Chairman Sheikh Thani bin Abdullah Al Thani

Dr. Tariq Al Essawi

Chairman of the Qatar Society for

Rehabilitation of Special Needs

(QSRSN), Sheikh Thani bin Abdullah

Al Thani, called on all cultural and

sports institutions to continue to

spread awareness on the issues

of persons with disabilities and

rehabilitate them according to

their needs and the types of

disabilities they suffer from, as this

is a solidarity responsibility for all

members of society.

Ambassador of the Republic of the Philippines, H E Alan L Timbayan, planting a sapling.

Among the Stars: QNL is Qatar's newest astronomy research hub

FROM PAGE 1

LCO is a non-profit science institute based in California with the mission of advancing science and education. Its global telescope network was founded in 2005 by technologist Wayne Rosing, with groups and organ-isations from around the world competing to become a Global Sky Partner through an open round of proposals.

Education director at LCO, Dr. Edward Gomez, said: “With Global Sky Partners, we have the opportunity to inspire commu-nities that would not normally have the opportunity to use our robotic telescope network. We are very pleased to be working with Qatar National Library to realise this potential for Qatar, and look forward to introducing a new audience to science through robotic telescopes.”

MoPH reports 179 more recoveries from COVID-19THE PENINSULA — DOHA

The Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) yesterday announced the registration of 159 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 among them 47 from travellers returning from abroad. Also 179 people have recovered from the virus bringing the total number of cases

recovered in Qatar to 140,866. All new cases have been intro-duced to isolation and are receiving necessary healthcare according to their health status.

The measures to tackle COVID-19 in Qatar have suc-ceeded in flattening the curve and limiting the spread of the virus and the number of new

daily cases and hospital admis-sions is continuing to decline each week. Qatar’s proactive and extensive testing of suspected cases has enabled us to identify a high number of positive cases in the community.

The Ministry further said that even though restrictions are being lifted, and numbers

are declining, this does not mean that the COVID-19 pan-demic is finished in Qatar. “Unless we follow all precau-tionary measures, we may experience a second wave of the virus and see numbers increasing – there are already signs of this happening in other countries around the world.”

DOHA TODAY04 MONDAY 28 DECEMBER 2020

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Qatari artist breathes new life into lifeless wallsRAYNALD C RIVERATHE PENINSULA

Spray paint is his brush, the blank wall his canvas. Qatari artist Mubarak Al Malik carefully fashions his subject with clear vision and intent on spreading the distinctive beauty of his culture and the innate warmth of his people.

Anyone who happens to visit Al-Abraj Park these days is most likely to feel delighted and wel-comed seeing Al Malik’s latest mural depicting a woman in Batoola - a golden metallic-looking face covering traditionally used by older women in Qatar - carrying an incense burner. Using lively colours, Al Malik puts his personal touch and a modern twist to the traditional elements in his piece.

“In Al-Abraj Park, I have pre-sented the woman in Batoola with the Mdkhan (incense burner) in her hand, where the Mdkhan expresses welcoming, authenticity and orig-inality. I’ve also included red roses as a greeting with love and kindness. I hope that people like it and enjoy my art,” Al Malik told The Peninsula.

He has also created another stunning mural at the Fire Station using similar motif.

A versatile and well-travelled artist who has represented Qatar in many events both locally and abroad, Al Malik has taken keen interest in graffiti art seeing how street artists in other parts of the world bring an important part of their culture to a broader audience.

“From my previous travels abroad I used to see artworks and murals by artists from all over the world as they implement their own symbols of their countries, so I decided to use the Batoola which is in most of my artworks. The Batoola is considered one of the heritage and popular symbols in Qatar,” he said.

The artist is exceptionally fluent and adept in traditional art forms

including sculpture and fine arts, but his appreciation of graffiti art was born out of “my personal desire to add aesthetic and artistic touches to some remote or old places, and I developed this applying my own patterns and lines implementing them on murals in many official places in Qatar.”

Al Malik is one of the 17 Qatari and expatriate artists actively involved in Jedariart, a fresh Qatar Museums initiative aimed to further enhance public art in Qatar by allowing artists to create stunning murals in a number of locations across the country.

“No doubt I feel very pleased and honoured to be one of the chosen artists for this important project especially because it’s cov-ering places all over Qatar to give the city a glimpse of art,” he said, while lauding how the initiative helps a diverse group of artists.

“What makes this project unique is that there are many names and some of them are artists, who for the first time are imple-menting artistic works on murals

and large spaces, so it is considered a beautiful opportunity for them to unleash their energies and introduce people to their art,” he stressed.

Held in partnership with The Supreme Committee of Beautifi-cation of Roads and Public Places, QRail, Woqod, and the Fire Station: Artist in Residence, Jedariart wit-nesses the participating artists create their mark in various loca-tions such as Al-Abraj Park, Al-Asmakh area, Doha Festival City Interchange, Al Khor Interchange, Post Office Park, 5/6 Park, 5/6 Flyover, Qatar National Library Metro Station and the Woqod Petrol Station in Fereej Kulaib.

Acting Director of Public Art Department at Qatar Museums, Abdulrahman Al Ishaq, is upbeat on how this large-scale project will contribute to further enhancing the country’s already vibrant art land-scape especially when it comes to public art.

“The Jedariart Initiative is the first of its kind in Doha, allowing artists the permission to activate

walls of the city with mural art. While Qatar’s art scene has an established community of galleries, museums and various art spaces, Jedariart has brought art outside these four walls. Jedariart will add colour to the streets in a way that is relatable and reminiscent of Qatar’s cultural landscape. By allowing the chosen artists the freedom to implement their con-cepts and designs onto various walls around the city, we hope to add value to Doha’s infrastructure and activate spaces,” Al Ishaq told The Peninsula.

Qatar’s public art scene has seen meteoric rise in recent years with massive number of artworks that pop up all over the country, both by prominent local artists and globally renowned names.

“In the past few years, there has been a great interest in public art in Qatar, as Qatar has become full of artworks all over, and of course we are grateful to Qatar Museums for these efforts,” said Al Malik, citing works by Richard Serra, Louise Bourgeois, and Ali Hassan as some of the notable pieces that attract attention of visitors to Qatar.

Travellers to Qatar can even enjoy a great number of these public art pieces without leaving Hamad International Airport as the airport is home to a vast collection of works by celebrated artists, he noted.

Public art has been an important aspect of the country’s art scene, and with the current challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, it has become even more relevant.

“Public art has played a vital role in the country’s art landscape by creating memorable landmarks and food for thought," said Al Ishaq.

"The current COVID-19 situ-ation has been challenging, however, it has not hindered our progress as a department in deliv-ering public art projects around the city whether they are direct

commissions or through our Open Call Programs including Jedariart, our 6/5 Initiative and Student Com-petition. While galleries and museums have been closed during the pandemic worldwide, public art often expands outdoors and has given the community a space to still interact with art,” added Al Ishaq.

KRCC wins TWA Cricket LeagueTHE PENINSULA - DOHA

KRCC team beat Doha Knight Riders to claim the Telangana Welfare Asso-ciation Cricket League.

The event was hosted by TWA as part of its welfare activities for bluecollar workers with nominal entry fees and subsidised fees to few teams.

Ten teams participated in the competition.

Prizes were distributed to the man of the match, man of the series, best bowler, best batsman and best sup-porter, runners-up and winners.

TWA President Khaja Nizamuddin congratulated KRCC for their victory. He praised the other participating teams for making the competition interesting and called for more activ-ities toward healthy lifestyle.

The tournament was conducted to promote sports and develop the rela-tions within the Telugu Community in Qatar.

Nizamuddin thanked the guests and the association’s sports secretary for making the competition a success.

Bangladesh Ambassador hails expat cricket teamTHE PENINSULA - DOHA

Ambassador of Bangladesh to Qatar H E Md. Jashim Uddin congratulated the expatriate Bangladeshi cricket team in Qatar for finishing as runners-up in the Qatar National Day Cricket Tournament.

The Qatar Cricket Association (QCA) organised a tournament among expatriates from Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka to mark Qatar National Day. The expatriate Bangladeshi cricket team reached the final by defeating Sri Lanka by eight

wickets. They, however, lost the final against India.

The Ambassador was present at the opening ceremony of the tournament at the Cricket Stadium in Asian City. President of Qatar Cricket Association Yusef Jehem Al Kuwari, Bangladesh Team Manager Md. Aminul Islam and Coach Bulbul Ahmed, and dignitaries were present at the opening ceremony. The Ambassador also met the expatriate Bangladeshi cricketers and thanked them for their contribution to sports despite having regular jobs.

THE PENINSULA – DOHA

The Aligarh Muslim University Alumni Association Qatar (AMUAAQ), an associate organization of ICBF under the Embassy of India-Qatar, celebrated the 100 years of AMU recently.

To mark the milestone occasion, AMUAAQ also launched a mobile app and membership card.

The Ambassador of India to Qatar, H E Dr. Deepak Mittal, was the chief guest from Qatar, and Vice-Chancellor, AMU Aligarh Prof. Tariq Mansoor, was the chief guest from India. SRH Fahmi (First Secretary Indian Embassy, Qatar), Hasan Chougule (Entrepreneur), Ahmed Kazi (CCT), Naseem Ahmad (Retd. IAS & Ex-VC AMU Aligarh), Prof. Zaheeruddin (PVC, AMU Aligarh), Prof. MM Sufyan Beg (Principal ZHCET and Chairman Alumni Affairs Committee Aligarh), Prof Najmul Islam (GS-AMUTA) and Prof. Rahat Abrar ( EX-PRO, AMU), Mahesh Gowda (Acting President. ICBF), attended the programme. Omar Peerzada (PRO, AMU Aligarh), the main guest speaker, spoke on the topic ‘100 Years of AMU Achievement and Future Expectation.’

Avinash Gaikwad (GS-ICBF), Mohammed Sultan (CCT), Obaid Tahir, Shahabuddin Ahmad, and Arshia attended the event as special guests.

In his address, Ambassador Mittal said that Sir Syed Ahmed Khan was one of the world’s greatest educationists and felt great to be a part of this event. He highlighted AMUAAQ’s achievements in education, community service, and sports and congratulated the alumni for the university completion of 100 years.

Upon completing AMU’s

remarkable journey of 100 years, the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Tariq Mansoor, congratulated the students, teachers, non-teaching staff, alumni, and well-wishers.

“This day is not only an occasion to celebrate but also to express our indebtedness and gratitude to the illustrious community leaders who strove hard to get MAO College upgraded into Aligarh Muslim University. We also remember all those who contributed to the all-round development and growth of the university and making it an Institution of national and international reputation,” Prof. Mansoor said.

“It is a matter of pride and self-containment that the university has made steady progress since its

inception in 1920. It is at present included amongst the top-ranked Indian universities due to its faculty’s concerted efforts and focused research of its scholars,” he added.

Meanwhile, First Secretary Indian Embassy, Qatar SRH Fahmi, requested all AMU alumni to work towards the benefit of their alma mater and contribute more towards education. He congratulated all the alumni worldwide.

AMUAAQ President Jawed Ahmad, in his address, gave a brief on Sir Syed Ahmed Khan. He reiterated a long-standing demand to the Indian government to confer Sir Syed Ahmed Khan with Bharat Ratna to recognize his contributions to the nation’s development towards education and

communal harmony. Ahmad congratulated all the

Aligarians for being exemplary ambassadors of their alma mater and contributing meaningfully towards realizing Sir Syed’s dream. He enjoined them to work hard and raise the school’s standards to give Sir Syed Ahmed Khan a complete tribute.

Hassan Chougle, in his address, said that all Aligarian in Qatar should come together to fulfill the AMUAAQ mission towards community and alma mater. He appreciated the AMUAAQ for their tremendous efforts towards community services.

In his speech, Ahmed Kazi praised the association for its efforts it is making for the progress of the university and community. He also

mentioned that education can be spread easily now by applying technology.

AMUAAQ General Secretary Farman Khan talked about the association’s activities like the Zaiqa E Aligarh, including women empowerment and child abuse. Other engagements include alumni meet, free medical camp, felicitation program, beach cleaning, supporting and standing with India and AMU, and supporting the community financially, especially area affected by the coronavirus (COVID-19) in India. AMUAAQ also carried out many one-on-one activities to build brotherhood and a positive environment among all residing in Qatar. It helped those in need to benefit from the Vande Bharat Mission flights etc.

Several games were held online and winners were presented with their prizes.

05MONDAY 28 DECEMBER 2020 DOHA TODAY

THROUGH THE LENS

Ambassador Mittal said that

Sir Syed Ahmed Khan was

one of the world’s greatest

educationists and felt great

to be a part of this event. He

highlighted AMUAAQ’s

achievements in education,

community service, and

sports and congratulated

the alumni as the university

completes 100 years.

AMUAAQ marks centenary milestone of AMU

AMUAAQ members celebrating 100 years of Aligarh Muslim University (AMU).

MSDCA celebrates completion of first term with cricket tourneyTHE PENINSULA – DOHA

The MS Dhoni Cricket Academy (MSDCA) branch in Doha recently completed its first term and celebrated the occasion with a National Day friendly tournament for their budding talents.

After the end of three months of preparations, the junior (ages 7-9) and senior (ages 10-15) cat-egory players were deemed ready to take part in proper games and thus got the oppor-tunity to play at the Asian Town Cricket Stadium, Qatar ’s premier cricketing venue, for the first time.

The matches were followed by a prize dis-tribution ceremony to honour the best per-formers. Prominent sports officials from the Indian community were present at the event to show their support for the young cricketers.

Indian Sports Centre vice-presidents Sharaf P Hameed and EP Abdurahiman were in attendance at the prize distribution ceremony, alongside Nisha Agarwal ISC - General Secretary

Adv. Jafarkhan (ICC - Sports head) Safeeru-rahman( ISC - Secretary football) Zeyaul Haque, ,Nihad Ali (QIA Convener)and Riyaz Cheeroth- Ibn Ajayan projects sports convener

The MSDCA’s Doha branch is a joint venture between Aarka Sports, the management firm of MS Dhoni and Absolute Sports Academy, a leading multi-sports coaching institution in Qatar. The branch started its operations earlier this year.

Students of the MS Dhoni Cricket Academy pose with their certificates after completing the first term.

Organisers review Kalanjali 2019, postpone 2020 edition due to COVID-19THE PENINSULA – DOHA

Mediapen, in association with Ideal Indian School & Radio Malayalam 98.6, recently conducted a review programme themed ‘Reflections on Qatar Indian School Festival (Kalanjali 2019).’

The programme was held to review Kalanjali 2019 and announce the postponement of Kalanjali 2020 to 2021 due to the pandemic.

Kalanjali 2019 & Ideal Indian School President Dr. Hassan Kunhi M.P, the Chief Guest, offered his support for Kalanjali 2021. Speaking on the occasion Ideal Indian School President Dr. Hassan Kunhi said that pro-grammes like Kalanjali would provide students and schools a platform to compete and send a message of togetherness, rela-tionship and help the children to stars of the future.

Chairman of Kalanjali 2019 and President DPS MES Hassan AK Chougule, through a video message, said events like Kalanjali are needed right now to help the students develop their skills.

Kalanjali 2019 General Con-vener & Principal of Ideal Indian School Syed Shoukath Ali, General Coordinator & General Manager Binu Kumar, all attended the event.

More than 170 companies, with a wide range of products from around the world including Qatar, Turkey, Syria, Morocco, Tunisia, China, Iran, Pakistan and India, are participating in the Doha Winter Trade Fair being held at the Doha Exhibition and Convention Center (DECC). A variety of clothes, Abayas, accessories, perfumes, cosmetics, furniture, carpets and foodstuff are on display at the venue. PICS:ABDUL BASIT/THE PENINSULA

MES student bags silver in online math eventTHE PENINSULA – DOHA

Aaesha Fathima Basheer, a 4th Grade student of MES Indian School, bagged Silver in Harangue (Declamation) in the Mathphi, International Online Math Event, which was conducted recently for students aged 8 to 16 years by City Montessori School, Lucknow, India.

A total of 216 students from 58 schools in various

countries, including eight stu-dents from MES Indian School, participated in the compe-tition. Vanshika Kapur of Grade 4 and Haizam Nishab of Grade 7 was awarded first and second consolation prizes in Jingle It Loud’ and Poster Making, respectively.

All the participants were awarded a participation e-certificate. Hameeda Kadar, Principal M.E.S Indian School, congratulated the winners.

An MES Indian School student giving her presentation during the competition.

06 MONDAY 28 DECEMBER 2020 MIDDLE EAST

Oman has received 15,000

doses of Pfizer-BioNTech

vaccine and expects to

receive another 28,000

doses in January.

Oman Health Minister Dr. Ahmed bin Mohammed Al Saeedi reacts as he receives the first dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, in Muscat yesterday.

Oman launches vaccination campaign, to reopen bordersQNA/AGENCIES — MUSCAT

The Sultanate of Oman started yesterday the COVID 19 national vaccination campaign under the slogan “Immunization is Prevention.”

Omani Minister of Health Dr. Ahmed bin Mohammed Al Saeedi, received the first dose of the “Pfizer-BioNTech” anti-virus vaccine, marking the start of the campaign and confirming its safety.

The Minister of Health expected 28,000 doses to reach the Sultanate in January, clarifying that a person will need two doses 21 days apart. He explained that the 15,000 doses that arrived in the Sultanate on Thursday will benefit 7,000 people, indicating that a mechanism has been set up for the vaccination process and priorities have been set for those targeted for vaccination.

He stressed that the vacci-nation will include all residents and expatriates in the Sultanate,

but priority will be for those who are in the front lines of defence in the health sector and other sectors, as well as people whose COVID-19 poses a threat to their lives espe-cially the elderly and those who have chronic diseases, such as kidney failure and chronic respiration.

He pointed out that the vacci-nation will include all citizens and residents, and it has been dis-tributed to all governorates of the Sultanate and will be given according to priority.

The Omani Ministry of Health announced yesterday that the total of number of coronavirus (COVID-19) cases in the Sultanate had reached 128,472.

The total number of deaths due to COVID-19 reached 1,495, at a rate of 1.17 percent, while the recoveries stood at 120,976, bringing the recoveries rate to 94.2 percent, the Ministry said in a statement reported by Oman News Agency.

The number of patients who have been isolated in hospitals due to infections in the past 24 hours reached 17, bringing the total to 87, while patients in the intensive care units reached 35, the Ministry added.

Oman is also reopening its airport and borders to travellers from December 29 after closing them amid concerns over a newly discovered strain of COVID-19.

Travellers to Oman must show a negative virus test conducted within 72 hours before entering the country and must have health insurance, according to the coun-try’s supreme committee. All trav-ellers must submit to a seven-day quarantine and take another test on the eighth day after their

arrival. Countries across the Middle East shut-tered borders on December 21 because the new strain is said to be faster-spreading. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Oman halted international flights and closed borders for a week.

Saudi Arabia has yet to announce whether it will lift the suspension this week, while Kuwait has said it plans to re-open on January

1. Oman is hoping to quickly start receiving tourists, especially from its wealthy neigh-bouring countries, to boost its economy that has been hit hard by slumping oil prices and the pandemic.

The International Monetary Fund has esti-mated Oman's economy to contract by 10 percent this year.

Turkey warns Haftar, supporters against attacking its forcesREUTERS — ANKARA

Turkish Defence Minister Hulusi Akar warned yesterday that the forces of Khalifa Haftar and their supporters based in eastern Libya would be viewed as “legitimate targets” if they attempted to attack Turkish forces in the region.

Turkey is the main foreign backer of Libya’s internationally recognised Government of National Accord (GNA) based in

Tripoli, which for years has been fighting Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA).

In October, the GNA and LNA signed a ceasefire agreement and the United Nations has been pushing a political dialogue aimed at elec-tions next year as a solution. Russia on Wednesday called for international efforts toward a peace settlement in Libya to be intensified. Speaking during a visit to Turkish troops in Tripoli,

Akar said Haftar had recently started making calls targeting Turkish forces in Libya and calling for attacks on Turkish troops, and also called on all parties to support political talks instead.

“This war criminal, thug Haftar and his backers should know that in the event of any attack attempt waged on Turkish forces, the killer Haftar’s forces will be viewed as legit imate targets

everywhere,” Akar said. “They should get this in their heads. If they do something like this, they will have nowhere to run,” he said. “Everyone should con-tribute to reaching a political solution here. Any move other than this is wrong.”

Turkey has sent military personnel and equipment to the GNA, helping to turn the tide of the war in Libya, while engaging in talks with Moscow for a solution to the conflict between

the GNA and LNA. Both sides have stopped short of with-drawing forces from the frontline, as demanded by the truce. A panel of UN experts has cited the foreign supporters of both sides as breaching an arms embargo on Libya. This month, the LNA also intercepted a Turkish ship, under a Jamaican flag, heading to the port of Misrata, prompting an angry rebuke from Ankara. The ship was later released.

Syrian refugee campin northern Lebanonset ablaze after rowAFP — BEIRUT

A Syrian refugee camp in northern Lebanon was set on fire on Saturday night following a fight between members of the camp and a local Lebanese family, state media reported.

The United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, confirmed a large fire had broken out in a camp in the Miniyeh region and said some injured had been taken to hospital, but did not provide an exact number.

“The fire has spread to all the tented shelters” — made of plastic sheeting and wood — UNHCR spokesman Khaled Kabbara told AFP.

The camp housed around 75 families, he said.

The National News Agency reported that the fire followed an “altercation” between a member of a Lebanese family

and “Syrian workers”.Other youths from the Leb-

anese family then “set fire to some of the refugees’ tents”, the NNA added.

The Lebanese Civil Defence worked to control the blaze while the army and police were deployed to restore calm, according to the report.

A security source told AFP shots were heard, saying the fight in the Bhanine area was sparked when Syrian workers demanded a wage which their employers refused to pay.

However, the same source said later that initial inquiries found the dispute could have been sparked by the har-assment of a Syrian woman.

“Some families have fled the area out of fear because there were also sounds of explosions caused by household gas can-isters blowing up,” Kabbara

said. Lebanon says it hosts some 1.5 million Syrians, including around one million registered as refugees with the United Nations.

Authorities have called on

refugees to return to Syria even though rights groups warn that the war-torn country is not yet safe.

In November, around 270 Syrian refugee families fled the

northern Lebanese town of Bsharre after a Syrian national was accused of shooting dead a Lebanese resident, sparking widespread tension and hostility.

Syrian refugees salvage belongings from the wreckage of their shelters at a camp set on fire overnight in the northern Lebanese town of Bhanine, yesterday.

Scenic BasraA fishing boat is moored by the bank of Shatt Al Arab river in the southern Iraqi city of Basra, yesterday.

Ministry: Iraq at risk of power shortages after Iran slashes gas supply REUTERS — BAGHDAD

Iraq’s capital Baghdad and other cities are at risk of serious power shortages after Iran slashed gas exports, the elec-tricity ministry said yesterday, potentially placing further pressure on the government of Prime Minister Mustafa Al Kadhimi.

Iran has reduced gas exports to Iraq to five million cubic metres from 50 million cubic metres two weeks ago citing unpaid bills, a ministry spokesman said.

It also officially informed Iraq’s electricity ministry yes-terday that it plans to cut ship-ments further to three million cubic metres, the spokesman said.

Iraq has lost around 6,550 megawatts of electricity, spokesman Ahmed Moussa said.

Iraq’s daily consumption during peak hours of winter reaches around 19,000 mega-w a t t s w h i l e t h e

country generates around 11,000 megawatts, replying on imports to fill the gap, he said.

Iran’s Energy Minister Reza Ardakanian is scheduled to visit Baghdad on Tuesday to discuss the unpaid bills with his Iraqi counterpart, Moussa said.

“We strongly encourage Iraq’s finance ministry to resolve the unpaid bills with Iran to avoid critical shortages of power supplies in Baghdad and other cities,” Moussa said.

Washington has repeatedly extended by 90 or 120 days a sanctions exemption to allow Baghdad to import Iranian energy, but in November it granted only a 45-day extension.

The United States has insisted that oil-rich Iraq, OPEC’s second-largest pro-ducer, move towards self-suf-ficiency as a condition for its exemption for importing Iranian energy, yet Baghdad has struggled to do so, in part due to low oil prices.

Iran reports

lowest daily

deaths from virus

in over 3 months

REUTERS — TEHRAN

Iran reported 119 deaths from the new coronavirus yesterday, the lowest daily fatalities in more than three months, the health ministry said.

Ministry spokeswoman Sima Sadat Lari told state TV that 5,502 people had been infected in the past 24 hours, taking the total number of COVID-19 cases in the Middle East’s worst-affected country to 1,200,465.

Sunday’s death toll was the lowest since September 12 when it registered 116 deaths.

Iran extended a night-time traffic curfew to 330 lower-risk cities and towns on Sunday in an effort to sustain the recent decline in the number of infections and deaths.

The curfew running from 9 pm to 4 am — already in place in 108 “orange” medium-risk, cities — is extended to lower-risk “yellow” areas.

The curfew, under which the use of private cars is banned, resulted in nearly 100,000 fines being issued in one night in the past week.

Iran said on Thursday it had received approval from US authorities to buy coro-navirus vaccines from the World Health Organization-led COVAX alliance. It did not say which vaccines it was buying.

Israeli forces arrest 9 Palestinians in West BankQNA — OCCUPIED JERUSALEM

The Israeli occupation forces arrested yesterday nine Pales-tinians from different parts of the West Bank. The Israeli

occupation forces arrested three young men from Tulkarm, one of them while working in the lands of 1948 and the other two after raiding and searching their relatives’ homes, the

Palestinian News Agency (WAFA) reported.

The occupation forces also arrested three Palestinians from Hebron while three others were arrested from Ramallah.

Magnitude 5.3 quake strikes eastern TurkeyREUTERS — ANKARA

An earthquake of magnitude 5.3 struck eastern Turkey yesterday, the country’s Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD) said, while the interior minister said there were no immediate reports of casu-alties or significant damage.

The earthquake occurred at a depth of 15.95 km (9.91 miles), AFAD said, adding that the epicentre of the quake was the Elazig province.

“There is nothing negative so far. All our teams continue their examinations on the ground,” Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said on Twitter.

Turkish media said the earthquake was also felt in Malatya, Diyarbakir and San-liurfa provinces.

In January, a 6.8 mag-nitude earthquake struck Elazig, killing 41 people in that province and neighbouring Malatya. Another deadly quake struck western port city of Izmir in October, killing 116 people.

07MONDAY 28 DECEMBER 2020 MIDDLE EAST / AFRICA

Rebels seized election

materials in Koui in the

country's northwest and

officials received death

threats in Ngaoundaye,

according to a UN official.

In some areas, rebels

threatened anyone who

went to vote.

Central African Republic votes in polls marred by violenceAFP — BANGUI

Voters went to the polls yesterday in the Central African Republic in presidential and legislative elections marred by the latest flare-up in a long-running civil war, with many voters unable to cast their ballots.

Incumbent Faust in Archange Touadera is the front-runner in polls that follow a week of turbulence marked by accusations of an attempted coup, rebels briefly seizing the fourth-largest town and Russia and Rwanda dispatching mil-itary personnel to help the beleaguered government.

UN peacekeepers and local and Rwandan soldiers were patrolling the streets of the capital yesterday with armoured vehicles posted outside polling stations.

Although some stations opened late in Bangui because of a lack of voting materials, senior election officials said they would stay open later to make up for it.

"It's very important for me to be here, as a citizen. I think this vote will change our country, whoever the president will be," teacher Hortense Reine

said. Sixteen candidates are vying for the presidency —Touadera's main rival is former prime minister Anicet Georges Dologuele.

Polling stations began to close at 5:00 pm (1600 GMT) with partial results expected on January 4 and the final totals on January 19.

A runoff will be held on Feb-ruary 14 if there is no overall majority in the first round.

Momokoama Theophile of the National Elections Authority (ANE) said at the end of the day that turnout had been good "despite minor security con-cerns in some places".

Away from Bangui, sporadic fighting has been going on for nine days and scattered inci-dents were reported early yesterday.

In the northwest, more than 500 km from the capital, rebels seized election materials in Koui and officials received death threats in Ngaoundaye, according to a senior UN official. In some areas, rebels threatened anyone who went to vote. Meanwhile, thousands of people had not received their voter cards because of the dire security situation, according to local and UN officials who all

requested anonymity."How do we vote when we

don't even have our voter cards," Robert, from Boali 80 km north of Bangui told AFP by phone — explosions audible in the background.

"Everyone is fleeing at the moment. I'm holed up at home."

Ahead of the elections many of the 1,500 candidates con-testing the 140 seats in the national assembly were unable to campaign.

Former president Francois Bozize, who wanted to stand but was barred by judges because he is under UN sanctions, urged people not to vote and backed a rebel coalition.

"Stay at home. Let Touadera place his ballot in the box

alone," Bozize said in an audio message published online.

The government on December 19 accused Bozize of attempting a coup alongside armed groups advancing on the capital, a charge he denies.

Fears about the rebels swept the city in the following days, although the UN peacekeeping force MINUSCA said their advance had been stopped.

The rebel coalition on Wednesday announced a 72-hour "unilateral ceasefire" in the runup to the vote, only to

call it off on Friday saying it would resume its march on the capital.

On Tuesday, the CAR's fourth-largest town, Bambari, 380 km northeast of Bangui, was overrun but security forces backed by UN peacekeepers regained control the following day. Yesterday, polling stations in Bambari remained closed in the morning because of gunfire from armed groups, according to Jeannot Nguernendji, pres-ident of the local peace com-mittee. The mineral-rich but

poverty-stricken CAR has been unstable since independence 60 years ago.

Thousands of people have died since a civil war erupted in 2013 and more than a quarter of the population of 4.9 million have fled their homes. Of these, 675,000 are refugees in neigh-bouring countries and cannot vote. Even though bloodshed has receded in intensity over the last two years, violence remains chronic. Militia groups hold sway over two-thirds of the territory.

The motorcade of Central African Republic President Faustin Archange Touadera surrounded by Rwandan peacekeepers of the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic and the presidential guard arrives at a polling station in Bangui, yesterday.

At least 10 dead in Boko Haram attack in northeast NigeriaAFP — KANO, NIGERIA

Boko Haram insurgent group killed at least 10 people including four security personnel in raids on three villages in northeast Nigeria, local and security sources told AFP yesterday.

Fighters in six trucks attacked the villages of Shafa, Azare and Tashan Alade in Borno state on Saturday and set

fire to homes and public buildings while firing sporadi-cally at residents.

“They killed 10 people and burnt homes, shops and churches, said Sani Mohammed, head of an anti-insurgents militia.

The assailants went from village to village. In Azare, they “burnt a police station and killed two policemen, a member of the civil defence and a

vigilante,” another militiaman Bulus James said.

The attack forced residents to flee into the bush amid shooting from the militants.

“We recovered five dead bodies with gunshots on them from the bush along with six women with gunshot injuries,” James said.

“They were all hit while trying to escape,” he added.

In Tashan Alade, residents

fled into the hills overlooking the village before the assailants arrived, resident Luka Musa said. “When they came they went on a burning spree, burning three churches, three houses and a drug store,” Musa said. Boko Haram has stepped up attacks in recent days.

In a video it released on Sat-urday the group claimed responsibility for a Christmas Eve attack on a village in which

11 people died as well as the kidnap of a priest who appeared in the video.

On Thursday dozens of loggers were kidnapped and three killed near the border with Cameroon.

Boko Haram and a splinter group known as ISWAP have killed 36,000 people in the northeast and forced roughly two million to flee since 2009, according to the United Nations.

Niger votes in presidential, legislative electionsAP — NIAMEY, NIGER

Voters went to the polls in Niger yesterday in presidential and legislative elections that could see the West African country’s first democratic transition of power since independence amid a growing threat from militants in the region.

Polls opened with a good turnout.

“Equipment was well installed and the first voter was able to vote,” just after 8 am at the Diori school in Niamey, according to the head of the polling station there, Khadija Hassan. “Everything has been going normally.” Other voting centers in the capital reported successful openings as well, with COVID-19 restrictions in place. Some 7.4 million Nigeriens are voting to elect legislators and the successor to President Mahamadou Issoufou.

Issoufou, who has served two terms, is stepping down, paving the way for the first peaceful transfer of power between two elected presidents since Niger became inde-pendent from France in 1960. Niger has seen four coups since then. Issoufou voted yesterday with his wife and the president

of the National Assembly.He said he hopes the

election “will allow Niger to consolidate its status as a model of democracy in Africa and in the world.” More than 6,800 observers from various organ-izations are deployed around the country, he said.

“We are the bearer of an ambition, the ambition to mod-ernize politics, the ambition to detribalise politics, the ambition to put policy around values and not on identity,” he said. “The victory will belong to the Nigerien people.”

A peaceful transfer would be significant not only in Niger but also in West Africa, where leaders recently have held on for disputed third terms in Guinea and Ivory Coast.

Niger’s next president will have to deal with major problems including extremism, poverty, displacement and cor-ruption. Attacks by extremists have affected local elections for weeks. In the most recent incident, the Nigeria-based Boko Haram fighters killed more than 28 people in Toumour in the Diffa region, the day before the vote.

Niger also faces increasing attacks from fighters linked to the Islamic State group and Al

Qaida. Thousands of people have been killed and hundreds of thousands have been dis-placed despite the presence of thousands of regional and inter-national troops.

Former foreign affairs min-ister Mohamed Bazoum, the candidate of the current presi-dent’s Nigerian Party for Democracy and Socialism, is among the front runners in the election. A teacher by training, Bazoum has promised to build boarding schools for girls to

encourage them to stay in school longer, which he said would help reduce child mar-riage in a country with many teenage pregnancies.

Another candidate, retired Gen. Salou Djibo, a former head of state who staged a coup in 2010, has said he is best placed to fight extremism. Ibrahim Yacoubou, a former foreign affairs minister who was kicked out of the ruling party because of indiscipline, is campaigning against corruption. But

Bazoum’s biggest competition comes from former President Mahamane Ousmane, who has the endorsement of opposition leader Hama Amadou, whose candidacy was rejected by the constitutional court because of a one-year prison sentence for charges of baby-trafficking. Amadou denies the charges, calling them politically moti-vated. If no one candidate wins more than 50%, Nigeriens will vote in a second round on Feb-ruary 21.

People queue to vote at a polling station in Niamey yesterday.

Uganda oppn leader says bodyguard killed in poll violenceAP — KAMPALA, UGANDA

A bodyguard for Ugandan opposition leader Bobi Wine was killed and two journalists injured yesterday amid violent confrontations between security forces and followers of the singer and lawmaker who is challenging the country’s long-time leader.

A tearful Wine, whose real name is Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, said his bodyguard had died of his injuries after allegedly being run over by a truck belonging to the military police. The victim, Francis Senteza, was attacked while helping to transport a journalist injured during an earlier confrontation between police and a group of

Wine’s supporters, he said.Authorities didn’t immedi-

ately respond to the allegation that Senteza’s death was a deliberate killing.

Wine was campaigning yes-terday in parts of central Uganda where he has consid-erable support. As his convoy tried to proceed from one rally to the next, police fired tear gas into the crowd, injuring at least two journalists.

Cameraman Ashraf Kasirye, a member of a TV crew that follows Wine wherever he goes, suffered a serious head injury.

“We are hoping against hope that he will live,” Wine said of Kasirye on Twitter.

Another journalist, Ali Mivule of local broadcaster

NTV, was injured after a tear gas canister hit his leg, according to his employer. His condition was said to be stable.

Police said in a statement that while trying to quell con-frontations with Wine’s sup-porters, “journalists were regrettably caught up during the process of dispersing the violent group.” Kasirye is in critical condition after being apparently hit by a tear gas canister, it said.

The three casualties are the latest victims of election-related violence as Uganda’s security forces are accused of trying to stop Wine from holding raucous public rallies. Uganda faces growing pressure from the international community and rights watchdogs to respect

human rights ahead of polls scheduled for January 14. The arrest and detention last week of a prominent rights attorney, Nicholas Opiyo, over criminal charges has added to what some critics see as a campaign of repression targeting civic leaders, activists, journalists and perceived political opponents.

President Yoweri Museveni, who has held power since 1986, faces the strong challenge of Wine, who appeals to young people wishing to see a change of government. Museveni’s gov-ernment is frequently criticised for corruption as well as wide-spread joblessness in the urban centres. Wine has repeatedly urged Museveni to retire, saying he would guarantee his safety.

Wine’s campaign events have become increasingly affected by violent confronta-tions with authorities and Wine himself has been arrested many times by police who accuse him of trying to disrupt public order.

Electoral authorities on Sat-urday banned campaign events in some urban areas, including the capital Kampala, citing an urgent need to control the spread of the coronavirus. That decision has been criticised by some who see it as a ploy to prevent opposition figures from displaying their support in areas where the ruling party is not so popular. Uganda has never seen a peaceful transfer of power since independence from Britain in 1962.

Sudan provincial

governor killed in

car crash

AP — CAIRO

A Sudanese provincial governor was killed in a car crash yesterday in the coun-try’s southeast that also injured four others, authorities said.

Abdel Rahman Nour el Daem Al Tom, governor of Blue Nile province, was heading to the capital on official business when his vehicle overturned close to the city of Wad Madani, around 135 km southeast of Khartoum, according to a statement by the ruling sovereign council.

Police in Wad Madani said the vehicle overturned when the driver attempted to avoid hitting a child crossing road.

Four others — the driver, two of the governor’s relatives and his bodyguard — were injured in the accident, police said.

The state-run SUNA news agency posted a photo of a crushed Land Cruiser SUV vehicle in which Al Tom had been riding. The vehicle appeared to have tumbled off the road into farmland.

Automobile accidents are common in Sudan, often the result of badly maintained roads and poor enforcement of traffic laws. The World Health Organization has said that road accidents killed more than 10,000 people in Sudan in 2018.

In May, a fiery head-on collision between a truck packed with passengers and a tractor-trailer killed 57 people in the country’s Darfur region.

Avalanches

kill 10 near

Iran capitalAP — TEHRAN

A series of avalanches in Iran killed 10 people in a moun-tainous area north of the capital, state TV reported yesterday.

The report said rescue teams were searching for a number of missing people after the avalanches struck in four different areas. State TV aired footage of emergency crews using a helicopter to search for those missing and injured.

The incidents happened on Friday following strong winds and snowfall a day earlier. The Alborz mountain range where the avalanches struck is popular on weekends for its hiking and climbing.

Deadly avalanches are a rare phenomenon in Iran. In 2017, two avalanches killed 11 hikers.

08 MONDAY 28 DECEMBER 2020VIEWS

CHAIRMANDR. KHALID BIN THANI AL THANI

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

editorinchief@pen.com.qa

ACTING MANAGING EDITORMOHAMMED SALIM MOHAMED

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

EDITORIAL

THE year 2020 affected the world of sports badly with the coronavirus pandemic forcing cancellation or post-ponement of major competitions which also include the Tokyo Olympics. But Qatar stood tall in a testing year and gave starving sports fans some much-needed action in the year.

The COVID-19 also disturbed the sports season in Qatar but it turned out to be one of the few countries, which recovered quickly and did not let the pandemic ruin the sports season. Qata not just completed its own sports season in a befitting manner, it also rescued some big events from being swept away completely.

Qatar’s achievement of delivering the successful 2019-2020 AFC Champions League, which was on verge of cancellation due to COVID-19 threats, will last for long in the memory of the Asian football family. Qatar stepped in a big challenge and came out of it with flying colours by hosting matches of both West and East Zones, and the final in which Ulsan Hyundai defeated Iran’s Persepolis.

Qatar offered the best facilities to all in a bio-secure environment with matches being played on its top football stadiums including the FIFA World Cup 2022 venues. The AFC President Sheikh Salman bin Ibrahim Al Khalifa praised the efforts and thanked Qatar on numerous occasions for rescuing the season.

Not just the AFC officials, the players and coaches also showered praise on Qatar. “In my opinion, Qataris kept Asian football alive and we, across the whole con-tinent, should be extremely grateful to them,” said Perse-polis head coach Yahya Golmohammadi.

Last week, Qatari organisers also ensured action for local fans by completing a football season with the Amir Cup final on Qatar National Day. It was a unique occasion as Al Rayyan’s Ahmed bin Ali Stadium was inaugurated with the title-deciding game in front of 20,000 fans. Ahmad Bin Ali Stadium is the fourth World Cup venue to be inaugurated and speaks of Qatar’s commitment to host a memorable FIFA World Cup.

Not just in football, all the federations rose to the challenge and completed their season by ensuring all health preventive measures. In September when the rest of the world was reeling, Doha successfully played host to the final meet of the Diamond League season in which many athletes including 27 World and Olympic medalists participated.

In a nutshell, Qatar has passed the year that brought unprecedented challenges with flying colours and the world will remember it for a long time to come. The nation proved it can brave difficulties with sheer hard work, commitment and the teamwork. With the year 2021expected to bring an end to the virus woes, no matter what, Qatar will continue to rise and shine.

Qatar shines in testing year

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Quote of the day

The post-Brexit trade agreement between

Britain and the European Union was good news

for the whole world.

Guy Parmelin, Switzerland's incoming president

Volunteers from Forgotten Harvest food bank sorting and separate different goods before a mobile pantry distribution amid the COVID-19 pandemic in Warren, Michigan, recently.

THIN LEI WIN & CORMAC O’BRIEN REUTERS

From wildfires in California and locust attacks in Ethiopia to job losses caused by pandemic lockdowns in Italy and Myanmar, climate change and COVID-19 disrupted food production and tipped millions more people into hunger in 2020.

Now there are fears the situation could worsen next year as both the coronavirus crisis and wild weather exac-erbate fragile conditions linked to conflicts and poverty in many parts of the globe, aid officials told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“Even before COVID-19 hit, 135 million people were marching towards the brink of starvation. This could double to 270 million within a few short months,” warned David Beasley, head of the UN World Food Programme (WFP), in emailed comments.

In April, Beasley, whose Rome-based organisation was awarded the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize, told the UN Security Council that the world was facing “a hunger pandemic” and “multiple famines of biblical proportions”.

“Those warnings are backed up by even stronger evidence today,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, noting that Burkina Faso, Nigeria, South Sudan and Yemen faced famine, and the full impact of COVID-19 had yet to be felt in many places.

At the same time, the coronavirus crisis has shown how faster international action and better cooperation in areas like science and tech-nology could help tackle the problem, he added.

Farmers and poor urban residents have so far borne the brunt of the pandemic, meaning inequality between and within countries could deepen further in 2021, said Ismahane Elouafi, chief sci-entist at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Cut off from markets and with a plunge in customer demand, farmers struggled to sell their produce while informal workers in urban areas, living hand to mouth, found themselves jobless as lockdowns were imposed, she said.

As a result, millions of people - from Texas and Geneva to Bangkok and Accra - were forced to rely on food handouts for the first time.

Meanwhile, more than 50 million people in East and Central Africa require emer-gency food aid - and those numbers are set to rise as the region braces for a harsh drought linked to the La Nina climate pattern, as well as more locust swarms, Oxfam said.

With 2020 on track to be one of the hottest years on record, African farmers have already seen a surge in tough climate conditions as well as crop-destroying pests, said Agnes Kalibata, UN special envoy for the 2021 Food Systems Summit.

“The double whammy of extreme weather and COVID-19 has brought the shortcomings of our global food system into sharp relief,” said Kalibata, a former Rwandan agriculture min-ister. Two recent UN reports warned that the coronavirus pandemic could cause a spike in extreme poverty.

One in 33 people will require humanitarian aid to meet basic needs like food and water in 2021, a rise of 40% from this year, said one.

Another said a billion people could be pushed into destitution by 2030.

COVID-19 is “a harbinger” of what the climate crisis will bring, said Saleemul Huq, director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development in Bang-ladesh. “(The virus) hits us in a matter of days and months. Hopefully, it’ll be over in a year or two, if everything goes well with the vaccine - but the climate change problem is going to linger for much, much longer,” he said.

“One of the principal

impacts is likely to be on food production, in all the conti-nents of the world, on agri-culture, on fisheries, on live-stock,” he added.

Climate action has often focused on cutting planet-heating emissions from energy and transport, but transforming food systems is also crucial to keep global warming to manageable levels, said a recent study led by the University of Oxford.

Even if fossil-fuel emis-sions were eliminated imme-diately, food production could still push temperatures beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times, the lowest goal in the Paris climate pact, it warned. But changing the incredibly complex and increasingly global web of food systems is a big challenge, not least because there are no substi-tutes for food, said lead author Michael Clark.

Making the production of food more sustainable will require a focus on how it is grown, what is being con-sumed and ways to reduce loss and waste, he said.

Pandemic-induced lock-downs have fostered changing attitudes in rich countries towards food waste and meat consumption, both of which fuel greenhouse gas emissions.

Meanwhile, there is growing recognition among experts that a narrow focus on crop productivity has come at the expense of the environment, equity and nutrition, said James Lomax, a food systems expert with the UN Environment Programme.

Many in the food industry

have started to grasp this too, even before COVID-19 dis-rupted supply chains, ate into earnings and highlighted the links between agriculture, animal products and zoonotic diseases, he said. These shifts, together with high-profile summits scheduled next year on the interlinked issues of food, health, nature and climate, offer the opportunity to radically change how food is produced and consumed, experts said.

“We have an opportunity to make it right,” as thinking converges around the gath-erings, said FAO’s Elouafi.

UN envoy Kalibata hopes the food systems summit will yield ambitious goals and clarity on what countries, communities and businesses must do differ-ently over the next decade, as well as more financing to help realise those aims.

Solutions already exist to make food systems sus-tainable and environmentally friendly, such as seaweed-based cattle feed to reduce methane emissions and plant-based diets, said Jessica Fanzo, professor of global food policy and ethics at Johns Hopkins University.

But political will is needed to push those to the forefront, she added. As with climate change, she hopes a youth movement will emerge around food to advocate for more ambitious change.

Most people participate in the world’s food systems two or three times a day when they eat, she noted.

“It should be something that is incredibly valued by society, (but) it’s just often not,” she added.

THE WASHINGTON POST

Journalism is becoming a steadily more dangerous profession around the world, including in the United States. The year 2020, with its global pandemic and widespread social unrest, continued the trend. According to the Committee to Protect Jour-nalists’ annual survey, more journalists were in prison on December 1 - 274 - than in any previous year.

COVID-19 was a large factor in the increased repression. A number of jour-nalists were arrested for reporting on the pandemic, and at least two died after contracting the disease while in detention, according to the CPJ’s report. Meanwhile, political upheavals led to the jailing of at least 10 journalists in Belarus and at least seven

in Ethiopia. In the United States, an unprecedented 110 were arrested or criminally charged and around 300 were assaulted. In many cases, reporters and photog-raphers were attacked by police while covering Black Lives Matter protests, according to the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker. Though no American journalists were imprisoned at the time of the survey, a dozen still face criminal charges.

The biggest jailers of jour-nalists in the world were familiar from previous surveys: China, with 47, led the way, followed by Turkey, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Three of those imprisoned in China were arrested for coverage that undermined the official narrative about the emergence of the novel coronavirus. One, video journalist Zhang Zhan,

posted reports from Wuhan, where the virus first began to spread, on Twitter and YouTube in early February. Instead of being honored for groundbreaking work, as she should have been, she was arrested on May 14.

A more tragic victim of repression was veteran Egyptian journalist Mohamed Monir, who criticized the han-dling of the epidemic by the regime of Abdel Fatah al-Sissi. He was arrested June 15 on charges of spreading false news, misusing social media and joining a terrorist group. After contracting COVID-19 in the Tora prison outside Cairo, Monir was released, but he died on July 13. According to CPJ, at least two other Egyptian journalists were arrested for their reporting on the virus. A frequent charge for authorities there and

elsewhere was spreading false news - a line of attack encouraged by President Donald Trump’s “fake news” rhetoric. Thirty-four jour-nalists were jailed for “false news” this year, CPJ said, compared with 31 in 2019.

Turkey, which used to lead the world in imprisoned jour-nalists, is now second to China, with 37 behind bars in December. That’s less than half the total CPJ found in 2016, but the reasons for the decline are discouraging: “As outlet shut-downs, takeovers by pro-gov-ernment businesspeople, and judicial hostility have effectively eradicated mainstream media,” the CPJ report said, “Turkey has allowed more journalists to await trial outside prison.” One still jailed is Fevzi Yazici, the former design director of the Zaman newspaper, who was arrested in July 2016.

Hungry for change: Faulty food systems laid bare by COVID-19 and climate crises

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Journalism gets more dangerous

Established in 1996

09MONDAY 28 DECEMBER 2020 OPINION

Nobody expects a sudden new dawn in EU-UK relations. But the 11th-hour agreement avoids a worse and messier outcome, while allowing the bloc to monitor and limit unfair competition from the Brits and providing a path to more cooperation. Sometimes the least bad option is all there is.

It was 7am on June 2, 1996, in Cairo when Captain Zeyad al-Bada received a surprising phone call from Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat.

Arafat told Al Bada, then a 39-year-old Palestinian Air-lines captain and Arafat’s per-sonal pilot, that he would be the first to land at the newly-built Gaza International Airport.

“There were no aerial maps, no radars, the Gaza airport wasn’t even globally-recognised,” al-Bada, now the airline’s general director, told Al Jazeera.

The Cairo International Airport refused to create a flight plan to Gaza until Arafat asked then-Egyptian Pres-ident Hosni Mubarak to intervene and order the Egyptian Civil Aviation Authority to issue one.

Al Bada worried that he would be landing on an “asphalt street” rather than a high-quality runway. His hands and legs were shaking during the flight, and he broke into tears of joy as he made his descent to the airport.

“As I was landing I saw crowds of people dancing, I spontaneously grabbed a small [Palestinian] flag from Yasser Arafat’s closet and raised it out of the window, greeting the crowds.” Al-Bada flew 55 times to different des-tinations into and out of Gaza International Airport after its official inauguration in 1998 as part of the Oslo Accords, before flights were halted on October 7, 2000, following rising tensions between Israel and Palestine.

It was destroyed by Israeli forces during the second Intifada, a Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation.

Those who worked on the airport in the Palestinian enclave – which has been under an Israeli-Egyptian blockade since 2007 – recall the pride they took in its con-struction, and the pain that remains almost 20 years on from its destruction.

My father – who passed away eight years ago this month – was among those who helped build an airport that was a profound Pales-tinian symbol in a territory under siege.

Runway built in 45 days Arafat initiated the airport project, located near the southern town of Rafah, close to the border with Egypt, in 1994.

Usama el-Khoudary, my father, was a Palestinian sub-contractor engineer who won

the tender to construct the runway and the airport apron where the planes are parked by offering a low bid that did not make him a profit.

“Usama didn’t care about the price of the bid, he wanted to be part of the Gaza Interna-tional Airport, he wanted to be part of this history,” his wife, and my mother, Marwa el-Khoudary told Al Jazeera.

“He was in his 30s when he won the bid, I remember his eyes sparkling the day he was announced as a tender winner.” I am the only daughter among nine children. I was five months old when my dad began working on the project. My father believed that the birth of each of his children won him a new tender. Hammam, my eldest brother, told me: “Your gift to dad was the

airport bid.” In order to min-imise expenses, he decided to build the runway in 45 days, half the expected time.

“I don’t think I saw him for more than an hour during the 45 days,” my mother recalled.

The project started in early 1996 with approxi-mately 150 workers and only four vehicles, laying about 3,000 to 3,500 tonnes of asphalt per day.

My father worked in coop-eration with NORCO, which was the only asphalt and paving company in Gaza when it was established in Jabalya in 1993.

Saleem al-Atwneh, 66, was an asphalt worker who helped build the runway.

He told Al Jazeera that Israel had tried to stall the building of the airport, blocking materials and impeding vehicles accessing the site they were working on day and night.

“We worked 24/7, but we were happy, it was a dream we were making true with our own hands,” al-Atwneh told Al Jazeera.

“We, the asphalt workers and engineers, were there to celebrate the first time the plane landed in the Gaza International Airport,” he said. “The plane landed for the first time without any cracks, eve-ryone was so proud of us!” The opening of the airport seemed to suggest a move towards Palestinian statehood. It became known as Yasser Arafat International Airport. But Israeli forces bull-dozers first tore the runway up in 2001 during the second Intifada.

“Usama and I went to the airport in the morning fol-lowing the Israeli demolition. We were very sad but we didn’t lose hope,” Yasser Rehan, NORCO’s owner, told Al Jazeera with a trembling voice. My father and Rehan fixed the runway.

But Israeli forces carried out air raids in 2001 and in subsequent years that com-pletely destroyed the airport and the runway.

Gaza under siege My father’s engineering and con-struction company had been established in 1985 and carried out 58 projects across Gaza, including The Fish Market, Al Karama Towers, and Qattan Centre for the Child, as well as several school, infrastructure, and housing projects.

But he left the Gaza Strip in 2007. He passed away in December 2012 at the age of 51, leaving behind more than $2m in debt due to a hospital construction project that was abandoned due to the blockade.

Meanwhile, there are still debts related to the airport project 20 years on.

Rehan told Al Jazeera that, due to a disagreement, the Palestinian Authority has still not paid the contractors for the project, who in turn still owe the subcontractors 2 million shekel ($615,000) for its work on the airport’s runway. The PA did not respond to a request for comment.

Meanwhile, Rehan sold NORCO in 2007 and has been forced to halt all his work due to the blockade, which has crippled Gaza’s construction industry. Al-Atwneh has been unemployed for 10 years – just one of the many thou-sands without work in the Gaza Strip.

Five of my brothers and I left the Gaza Strip in order to find a better income to repay our father’s debts. Three of my brothers remain in Gaza with my mother.

Our father’s death was a turning point in my family’s life, especially me for being my father’s only daughter. I got my strength from my father to become a successful journalist.

We are especially proud of his work on the Gaza airport.

Gaza airport was more than a project. It was a symbol of freedom for Palestinians. Flying the Palestinian flag in the sky was the dream of every Palestinian.

Bombed out buildings are nothing extraordinary in the Gaza Strip. But the airport is different, the dream of Pal-estine is completely ruined.

A runway that was built in 45 days with passion and hope is now a pile of sand. You cannot even imagine that a plane ever landed there.

Every time I was working in Rafah and passed by the ruined airport, all I felt was heartache.

But Captain al-Bada told Al Jazeera that he is helping to draw up plans to establish a new airport at a different site in Gosh Gatif, in the southern Gaza Strip.

He said he will seek con-struction approval with the PA after the planning and designing stages are com-pleted and funds are sourced.

Although many believe that Israel will never allow Gaza to have a new airport, al-Bada remains optimistic of reviving this Palestinian dream since it was achieved before.

“I landed the first plane there without any facilities and navigation in 1996,” al-Bada said. “I believe I will fly again from Gaza to the world.”

Gaza airport: The legacy of a Palestinian dream

The defining image of Brit-ain’s Christmas Eve trade deal with the European Union was a beaming Boris Johnson with his thumbs up in the air. There were no celebratory pictures from any of his continental counterparts.

Getting to this point is a win in itself for the UK An end to Brexit’s drama should let the Brits reenter a more breathable political atmos-phere after almost five years talking about nothing else - other than COVID-19. Avoiding a messy “no deal” will save the economy from a long-term shock that might have cost 3% of gross domestic product. Even Nigel Farage is pleased.

The EU, with compara-tively less to lose, has less cause to rejoice. The costs of no deal for the bloc would have been relatively

manageable, at about 0.5% of potential output. It’s also hard to sell the departure of a big member state as a victory, however rocky the historical relationship. European Com-mission boss Ursula von der Leyen expressed “relief” and “quiet satisfaction” when announcing the treaty, while her top negotiator Michel Barnier reiterated his view of Brexit as a “lose-lose” for both sides.

Yet as officials in Paris, Berlin and elsewhere comb through the fine print of the trade agreement’s 1,250 pages, the EU’s capitals should feel they’ve been handed the least bad way to bring Brexit’s opening chapter to a close. The deal enshrines tariff-free, quota-free trade in goods, which will make a big difference to several member nations. New agricultural levies would hit Ireland hard, given that 40% of its agri-food exports go to the UK, its biggest trading partner. Tariffs would cost Germany $10bn of its exports to Britain, and France 3.6 billion euros, according to Euler Hermes.

While the level of access being offered to the EU’s single

market of 450 million people is unprecedented for a non-member, the bloc has hardly opened the floodgates. Trade won’t be frictionless. There will be customs forms, regu-latory checks and other non-tariff barriers. The deal doesn’t cover services, meaning financial trade and data flows are in the gift of Brussels. France’s Emmanuel Macron, for whom fish became a sym-bolic Brexit red line, will be happy that UK fleets will take only 25% of the current EU catch in British waters, rather than the 80% first demanded by Johnson. The Brits have had to give things up.

Ensuring the deal has teeth will now be the priority for Von der Leyen. Protecting the single market was key for the EU, and a rallying point for its 27 members against the British threat to compete head-on with a “Singapore-on-Thames” deregu-latory drive. An analysis of the provisional treaty by my Bloomberg News colleagues outlines how the UK and EU have agreed to uphold their environmental, social, labor and tax transparency standards to make sure they don’t undercut each other.

The punishment is tariffs, subject to arbitration by an independent panel. This sounds rather like being nibbled to death by ducks - as is the case in existing long-running EU trade spats, such as the one between Airbus and Boeing - but if upheld it does offer a sensible deterrent.

Tough geopolitical and strategic questions lie ahead for Brussels and the member states. Brexit redraws the map of European power, halving the number of permanent EU seats on the United Nations Security Council and cutting 40% of the bloc’s military capability. It removes 14% of the EU’s GDP, making it smaller as a single market, and deprives it of more than $100 billion in budgetary resources.

At the same time, the departure of one of the EU’s least enthusiastic inte-grators - a country instinc-tively opposed to deeper union - is an opportunity to create a more ambitious and assertive bloc, one deserving of a seat at the superpower table alongside the US and China. It’s hard to believe that the EU’s new $859 billion COVID-19 emergency fund, a

historic agreement for fiscal transfers from wealthier member states to their less fortunate partner nations, would have been possible with the Brits in tow.

It’s not just Johnson and his fellow Brexiters who want to “take back control.” The EU, too, wants create a more “sovereign” bloc that’s less dependent on others (namely the US) for its security and prosperity. How it asserts itself with its UK neighbor, whose own vision of sover-eignty seems to be the freedom to escape pesky EU rules, will be an important test. Johnson’s previous threat to tear up the terms of Brexit withdrawal, including the agreement for a soft border in Ireland, shows the potential pitfalls. Having a trade deal in place won’t restore trust over-night, but it helps.

Nobody expects a sudden new dawn in EU-UK relations. But the 11th-hour agreement avoids a worse and messier outcome, while allowing the bloc to monitor and limit unfair competition from the Brits and providing a path to more cooperation. Sometimes the least bad option is all there is.

Macron and Merkel get the least bad Brexit option

HIND KHOUDARY AL JAZEERA

LIONEL LAURENT BLOOMBERG

Although many believe that Israel will never allow Gaza to have a new airport, Al Bada remains optimistic of reviving this Palestinian dream since it was achieved before.

Those who worked on the airport in the Palestinian enclave – which has been under an Israeli-Egyptian blockade since 2007 – recall the pride they took in its construction, and the pain that remains almost 20 years on from its destruction.

A file picture of Palestinian workers preparing cement blocks for building the international airport in Rafah in the Gaza Strip.

10 MONDAY 28 DECEMBER 2020ASIA

Bangladesh to relocate second batch of Rohingya to remote islandREUTERS — DHAKA

Bangladesh is set to move a second batch of Rohingya refugees from neighbouring Myanmar to the remote island of Bhasan Char in the Bay of Bengal this month, officials said yesterday, despite calls by rights groups not to carry out further relocations.

Around 1,000 Rohingya ref-ugees, members of a Muslim

minority who have fled Myanmar, will be moved to the island in the next few days after Bangladesh relocated more than 1,600 early this month, two offi-cials with the direct knowledge of the matter said.

“They will be moved to Chit-tagong first and then to Bhasan Char, depending on the high tide,” one of the officials said. The officials declined to be named as the issue had not been made

public. Mohammed Shamsud Douza, the deputy Bangladesh government official in charge of refugees, said the relocation was voluntary. “They will not be sent against their will.” The United Nations has said it has not been allowed to carry out a technical and safety assessment of Bhasan Char, a flood-prone island in the Bay of Bengal, and was not involved in the transfer of refugees there.

Bangladesh says it is trans-ferring only people who are willing to go and the move will ease chronic overcrowding in camps that are home to more than 1 million Rohingya.

But refugees and humani-tarian workers say some of the Rohingya have been coerced into going to the island, which emerged from the sea 20 years ago. Bangladesh Foreign Min-ister Abdul Momen said earlier

this month the United Nations should first assess and verify how conducive the envi-ronment in Myanmar’s Rakhine state was for repatriating the refugees, before carrying out an assessment of Bhasan Char.

Several attempts to kick-start repatriation of Rohingya to Myanmar have failed after refugees said they were too fearful of further violence to return.

Listen to woes of peopletoo, farmers tell ModiIANS — NEW DELHI

While Prime Minister Narendra Modi was addressing the people of the country yesterday through his monthly radio programme ‘Mann Ki Baat’, the protesting farmers opposed it by beating ‘thalis’ (plates) and clapping their hands.

Haryana farmer leader Gurnam Singh Chaduni appealed to the Prime Minister to listen to the “Mann ki Baat” of farmers and voices of other people as well. Gurnam Singh is the Haryana state President of the Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) and is one of the prominent leaders leading the farmer agitation.

Opposing the ‘Mann Ki Baat’ radio programme by beating a ‘thali’ at the Makdoli toll plaza in the Rohtak district of Haryana, Chaduni while addressing Modi said, “We are not convinced by your ‘Mann ki Baat’ address. You speak your mind but do not listen to other people’s voices.”

The farmer agitation entered its 32nd day yesterday. Since November 26, the pro-testing farmers have been camping at the Singhu, Tikri and Ghazipur borders with the adjoining national capital.

The protesting farmers are marching on the streets in protest against the three farm

laws implemented by the central government, saying that these laws are not in the interest of the farmers, while the Centre has said opposition parties are misleading the farmers.

Several rounds of negotia-tions have been held to resolve the ongoing deadlock between the farmers and the central gov-ernment but both sides have failed to reach a final consensus over the issue. The next round of talks between the two sides is set for December 29.

On the request of the gov-ernment, a letter was sent on Saturday by the leaders of 40 farmer organisations protesting under the banner of the ‘Samyukta Kisan Morcha’ citing the date and time of the next round of talks, with four major demands for the talks.

These demands by the farmer leaders include: the procedures to be followed to repeal the three central farm laws; the procedure and provisions for legal guarantee

for procurement on profitable Minimum Support Price (MSP) as suggested by the National Farmers Commission for all farmers and agricultural commodities; amend-ments to the Commission for Air Quality Management in National Capital Region and Adjoining

Areas Ordinance, 2020, which are necessary to exclude farmers from the penal provisions of the Ordi-nance; and necessary changes in the draft of Electricity Amendment Bill, 2020, to protect the interests of farmers.

When asked farmer leader

Darshanpal whether the next round of talks would be held on these four core conditions, he said these are not the conditions but the agenda of the talks which he has proposed only on the request of the central government.

Farmers beat utensils during a protest against the central government’s recent agricultural reforms, on the outskirts of Amritsar, Punjab, yesterday.

China sends top

official as unrest

in Nepal deepens

REUTERS — KATHMANDU

A senior Chinese official arrived in Kathmandu yesterday to assess the political situation, local party officials said, a first diplo-matic step by the neigh-bouring power after Nepal’s Prime Minister dissolved parliament a week ago.

China has poured millions of dollars into Nepal in recent years in the form of aid and infrastructure investment as it incorporates the country in President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative project, which is seen as a new Silk Road.

Guo Yezhou, vice minister in the international department of the Communist Party of China, is the most senior foreign official to visit Nepal since Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli decided to dis-solve the country’s par-liament last Sunday and call for an early parliamentary election.

The move triggered deep political unrest and street protests in the Himalayan nation as it grapples with the COVID-19 pandemic, and left the ruling Nepal Communist Party (NCP) on the verge of a split.

“I think the Chinese have come to assess the overall sit-uation after the dissolution of parliament and virtual break-up of the Nepal Communist Party,” said Narayan Khadka, a senior leader of the oppo-sition Nepali Congress party.

The Chinese Embassy in Nepal was not immediately available for comment.

Bishnu Rijal, a central committee member of the NCP, said the Chinese official was expected to meet Oli and his opponents.

Oli has said that internal squabbling and a lack of cooperation from his party paralysed decision-making, forcing him to seek a fresh popular mandate.

Sydney awaits decision on year-endfestivities as new infections riseREUTERS — MELBOURNE

Sydney’s COVID-19 outbreak continued yesterday with more than a quarter million people in lockdown as Australia’s largest city awaited word on whether any public New Year’s Eve cele-brations will be allowed.

Seven cases of the new coro-navirus were reported in New South Wales state, six linked directly to the outbreak in Syd-ney’s northern beach suburbs, which are under a stay-at-home order until Wednesday. Infec-tions stand at 122.

“I appreciate frustration levels are increasing as we get closer to New Year’s Eve and

days we stay at home increase,” state Premier Gladys Berejiklian told a news conference.

“We hope to have some clear information for everybody tomorrow, or the latest the day after, on what the New Year’s Eve and the next weeks will look like.”

Public countdowns to New Year’s Day in big cities such as Sydney have in the past been an occasion for parties and gath-erings at barbecues, urban park-lands or on beaches in the Southern Hemisphere summer.

But the outbreak has thrown many plans into chaos as state authorities focus on measures to quell the resurgence.

Australia has fared better than most developed economies in the pandemic through swift border closures, lockdowns, widespread testing and social distancing. It has recorded just under 28,300 infections, the overwhelming majority in Vic-toria state, and 908 COVID-19 deaths.

Victoria, Australia’s second-most populous state, neighbours New South Wales. Its capital Melbourne, the nation’s previous hotspot, was in a harsh lockdown for months. Yes-terday, it recorded its 58th con-secutive day with no corona-virus community transmissions and no related deaths.

Vehicles queue at the Bondi Beach drive-through COVID-19 testing centre amid the pandemic, in Sydney, Australia.

Singapore health panel backsPfizer/BioNTech vaccine

BLOOMBERG — SINGAPORE

A group of top Singapore health experts backed the government’s move to approve the Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE’s coronavirus vaccine after it conducted an independent review of clinical data on its safety and efficacy.

The vaccine demonstrated a high efficacy rate of 95% and its safety profile is consistent with the high standards set for other registered vaccines used in immunisation against other dis-eases, the committee of experts said in a statement issued by the health ministry yesterday. It is suitable for use for those aged 16 and above, and is expecting further trial data on other groups, such as pregnant women, the committee said.

The government said sepa-rately yesterday that it’s accepting the committee’s recommenda-tions, and will begin vaccinating health care workers from December 30. The elderly, starting with those aged 70 and above, will get their shots from February.

“Thereafter we will vaccinate other Singaporeans and long-term residents who are medically eligible for vaccination,” the Min-istry of Health said.

“Comprehensive vaccination coverage in the population will ensure that our population is pro-tected from COVID-19. This will also indirectly protect those who cannot be vaccinated due to

medical reasons.” The experts had recommended Singapore prioritise health care workers, the elderly and individuals with chronic health illness given the limited supply. Made up of indi-viduals from the city-state’s public universities, government ministries and research centres, the committee was formed in October to give recommenda-tions on Singapore’s vaccination strategy.

Singapore’s first batch of Pfizer and BioNTech shots arrived last week. The Southeast Asian nation has set aside more than S$1bn ($750m) for vaccines and said there should be enough for its population of about 5.5 million people by the third quarter. “While COVID-19 vac-cination will be voluntary, we strongly encourage everyone who is medically eligible for vac-cination to get vaccinated when the vaccine is offered,” the gov-ernment said.

“Vaccination is not a silver bullet that can end the pandemic immediately, but it is a key enabler to getting us back to a safer state of affairs.”

The expert committee also recommended that about 5% of available vaccine stocks at any given point in time be set aside for specific groups of people who work in essential services, such as water and utilities, to ensure that the country can function effectively in case of an outbreak.

Private hospital in Thailand bannedfrom offer to sell COVID-19 vaccineREUTERS — BANGKOK

A private Thai hospital was ordered yesterday to stop advertising COVID-19 vaccina-tions for sale in advance on the grounds that no vaccine is yet approved in Thailand.

Vibhavadi Hospital told Reuters its online offer for 1,000 initial reservations for the two-dose Moderna vaccine had been the result of a misunder-standing. With reservations priced at 4,000 baht, the total cost of getting vaccinated would have been 10,000 baht ($330).

As the first governments begin vaccine rollouts around the world, questions have been raised over how the limited

supplies are prioritised and whether people will be able to pay to jump the queue.

The Ministry of Health said in a statement that no COVID-19 vaccine had been approved for use in Thailand yet and that advertising one violated hospital regulations.

“The removal of the adver-tisement was ordered,” it said.

Chaisit Kupwiwat, a director at Vibhavadi Hospital, told Reuters: “There was a mis-understanding and so we’ve stopped the programme... We planned to order the vaccines, but now we’ve stopped.” The hospital had sought reserva-tions by January 31 for vacci-nations later in 2021.

Moderna did not respond

immediately to an emailed request for comment on any such sale.

Thailand has signed an advance deal for AstraZeneca’s potential COVID-19 vaccine, but has not set rollout plans for any vaccine yet.

Moderna’s vaccine this month became the second to get emergency use authori-sation from the US Food and Drug Administration after the Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine.

Moderna has said it will deliver approximately 20 million doses to the US gov-ernment this year and is expected to have between 100 million and 125 million delivered globally in the first quarter of 2021.

Shooting victims laid to rest in PhilippinesREUTERS — PANIQUI

Hundreds attended the funeral yesterday of a woman and her son shot dead by an off-duty policeman in the Philippines, a week after a video of the incident went viral on social media, sparking public outrage over police brutality.

Members of the public joined as relatives and friends in Tarlac province, north of Manila, paid their final respects to Sonya Gregorio, 52, and her 25-year old son Frank Gregorio, who were shot in the head after a row over noise.

The shooting, which was recorded on a mobile phone by a member of the Gregorio family, triggered accusations from critics and human rights activists that President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs had created a culture of police impunity.

Policeman Jonel Nuezca was seen in the video engaged in a heated argument with the Gre-gorios over the use of a homemade noise-making device typically used to celebrate New Year, before he shot the mother and her son.

Nuezca surrendered to police

on the night of the incident and faces two counts of murder. The government has promised a thorough investigation.

The victims’ family has for-given Nuezca but is still demanding justice, said Avelina San Jose, a relative of the Gre-gorios. “He should face the con-sequences of the law”, she said.

Duterte, who has talked of killing criminals and issued promises to protect law enforcement while waging a war on drugs and crime, has condemned the shooting and warned “There will be hell to pay” for rogue officers.

Several rounds of

negotiations have been

held to resolve the

ongoing deadlock

between the farmers and

the central government

but both sides have failed

to reach a final consensus

over the issue. The next

round of talks between

the two sides is set for

December 29.

11MONDAY 28 DECEMBER 2020 ASIA

Next round of Afghan peace talks to be held on January 5: OfficialAFP — KABUL

The next round of negotiations between the Taliban and the Afghan government will be held in Qatar from next month, a top official said yesterday, despite President Ashraf Ghani’s recent calls for them to be moved home.

Peace talks began on Sep-tember 12 at a hotel in Doha, but negotiations are currently on a break until January 5.

“The second round of talks will begin on January 5 in Doha,” said Faraidoon

Khwazoon, spokesman for Afghanistan’s High Council for National Reconciliation, which is leading the overall peace process in the country.

“The leadership committee of the council... decided to hold the talks in Doha,” he tweeted, adding that many of the coun-tries that had earlier volun-teered to host the talks withdrew their offers because of COVID-19.

In a separate statement, the presidency tweeted that Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah, who heads the council, held a

meeting yesterday.The two “discussed the

venue for the next round of talks” after which Ghani announced the government’s support for a second stage of talks with the Taliban, the pres-idency said.

Earlier in December, nego-tiators from both sides decided to take a break after months of often frustrating meetings which were bogged down by disputes on the basic framework of discussions and religious interpretations.

Prior to going on the break, negotiators finally announced they were ready to proceed on

preliminary lists of agenda items when talks resumed on January 5. But Ghani and some other top Afghan officials immediately called for the next round of meetings to be held in Afghanistan.

“It is necessary that the people see how the talks happen, which issues are focused on and why,” Ghani said soon after the break in talks was announced.

The Taliban did not comment on Ghani’s call, but they have in the past always refused to hold the negotiations in Afghanistan.

The insurgent group has a political office in Doha and its negotiating team resides there.

The talks follow a landmark troop withdrawal deal signed in February by the Taliban and Washington, which will see all foreign soldiers leave the vio-lence-wracked country by May next year.

Plans for renewed negotia-tions come amid a surge of vio-lence across Afghanistan in recent months, including in Kabul, which has seen regular bomb attacks and targeted killings of prominent figures.

Beijing tightens COVID-19 curbsREUTERS — BEIJING

Beijing has tightened COVID-19 curbs over concerns that China’s mass travel during the holiday period could cause cases to spike in the capital, as it reported locally transmitted cases for a fourth straight day yesterday.

A meeting led by the capi-tal’s Communist party boss, Cai Qi, urged all districts in Beijing to enter an “emergency” mode, sealing off residential com-pounds and villages where infections are found.

China’s southern technology hub of Shenzhen reported one asymptomatic case yesterday, a patient who made two business trips to Beijing this month.

Shunyi district, where all Beijing’s recent coronavirus cases have been reported, has

declared a wartime mode and testing for all its 800,000 people. All the cases reported on Saturday were close contacts of previous cases.

Two villages in Shunyi have been sealed off as a result.

Chaoyang district, which neighbours Shunyi, has finished testing 234,413 people in three neighbourhoods, with none testing positive. People who have not received their test results are not allowed to go out, the district government said.

Some residential com-pounds in Tongzhou have reim-posed temperature checks upon entry and the number of entrances have been reduced, according to local media reports.

China has largely brought the coronavirus under control but sporadic cases are resur-facing in a small number of

cities. Authorities plan to vac-cinate 50 million people in high-risk groups before the week-long Lunar New Year hol-idays from February 11, said state media Global Times.

Beijing has asked its civil servants to stay in the city from

January 1 until the holiday and asked the public to avoid unnecessary travel during the period.

Public venues such as theme parks and churches have scaled back operating hours. Some Catholic churches in Beijing,

including Wangfujing’s Catholic Church, have stopped admitting churchgoers and halted group activities, the archdiocese of Beijing said on its website.

Commercial performances have been banned from January 1 until the holiday.

A group of workers wearing face masks cross a street in Beijing, China, yesterday.

Walvax to make COVID-19 vaccine candidate similar to AstraZeneca REUTERS — BEIJING

China’s Walvax Biotechnology Co has started work on a plant to manufacture an early-stage coronavirus vaccine candidate similar to AstraZeneca PLC’s product, state-backed media said yesterday.

Mass production for the pro-posed vaccine could begin in mid-2021, with an estimated capacity of 200 million doses a year, said Health Times, a paper

run by the People’s Daily.The treatment is based on a

chimpanzee adenovirus to deliver materials that can trigger an immune response against the virus that causes COVID-19, a technique adopted in the can-didate from AstraZeneca and Oxford University.

The Chinese candidate, jointly developed by China’s Tsinghua University and Tianjin Medical University, has not been tested on humans. The

AstraZeneca-Oxford treatment is in final-stage large trials.

AstraZeneca’s late-stage trials in Britain and Brazil last month found an efficacy of 62% for trial participants given two full doses but 90% for a sub-group given a half, then a full dose. An investigation this week revealed problems with the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine study.

Adenovirus is used in other COVID-19 vaccine candidates,

including one from China’s CanSino Biologics Inc, which is based a harmless common cold virus known as adenovirus type-5 (Ad5).

Researchers on the CanSino vaccine have said it might be weaker in people who had been exposed to Ad5 and have pre-existing immunity against the adenovirus.

The potential Walvax vaccine might avoid this problem by using a rare

adenovirus from chimpanzees to which humans normally do not have pre-existing immunity, Health Times said.

Walvax has another pro-duction facility in the works for a vaccine it is jointly developing with the Academy of Military Science and Suzhou Abogen Biosciences Co, which is in early-stage clinical trials.

China has moved at least five vaccine candidates into late-stage clinical trials.

Seven Pakistani

soldiers killed

in BalochistanREUTERS — QUETTA

Seven Pakistani soldiers were killed late yesterday in an attack in the southwestern province of Balochistan, the military said yesterday.

Security sources said the attack occurred in the district of Harnai. Militants from nearby hilltops opened fire on a military checkpost using rockets and then automatic gunfire.

“[The area] has been cor-doned off; escape routes have been blocked,” the military said in a statement.

The resource-rich province of Balochistan is home to some of Pakistan’s largest coal and natural gas reserves, including some being backed by China.

But Balochistan has largely remained undeveloped, and several armed groups have waged a decades-old insurgency in the region.

“Our nation stands with our courageous soldiers who face attacks from Indian-backed ter-rorists,” Prime Minister Imran Khan wrote on Twitter after the attack. Ten militants and one soldier were killed on December 20 in the Awaran district of Balo-chistan, according to the military, which described the clash as part of an “intelligence-based” raid on an insurgent location.

In October, seven soldiers and seven security guards were killed by insurgents in the coastal Ormara district of Balochistan as they escorted a convoy of oil and gas workers. That attack was claimed by an umbrella organ-ization of Baloch militant groups.

South Korea to extend social distancing measuresREUTERS — SEOUL

South Korea said yesterday it will extend social distancing measures introduced to try to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus pandemic for another six days, to January 3, even as it continues to report near-record numbers of new cases each day.

For the run-up to Christmas and New Year holidays, the government banned gatherings of more than four people in greater Seoul and closed down ski resorts and other tourist spots. Beyond that temporary restriction, gatherings of more than 50 people are banned in greater Seoul and indoor res-taurant dining is prohibited after 9pm local time.

“We will observe the situ-ation over the next week and decide whether to adjust the

social distancing measures before January 3 when the special quarantine measures for the year-end holidays ter-minate,” Health Minister Kwon Deok-cheol said, speaking at a briefing.

The country reported 970 new coronavirus cases for Sat-urday, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) said earlier yesterday, bringing the national tally to 56,872 cases, with 808 deaths.

That is the smallest in five days, but still not far off the record 1,241 infections logged on Friday.

Kwon said there will be minor adjustments to current restrictions, such as allowing take-out and delivery only for customers buying just coffee, drinks or desserts in fast-food restaurants, a measure already in place for other cafes. Masked pedestrians walk through the Myeongdong shopping district in Seoul, South Korea.

Pakistan records

58 deaths, 1,853

new infections

INTERNEWS — KARACHI

Pakistan has recorded 58 deaths due to the COVID-19 while 1,853 new cases have been reported in last 24 hours across the country, National Command and Operating Centre (NCOC) reported yesterday.

With more fatalities, the total death tally due to the deadly disease has reached 9,874. As per details, 1,853 fresh coronavirus cases were reported in the last 24 hours while 2,282 patients are in critical condition. The total number of infections in the country now currently stands at 471,335.

Meanwhile, 33,270 tests were conducted across the country during this period. 422,132 people have recovered from the deadly disease while 6,557,112 samples have been tested thus far.

Earlier, the coronavirus positivity ratio in the country reached its highest level of more than 10 percent.

The National Command and Operation Centre stated that five major cities of the country, Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Karachi, Hyderabad and Peshawar were contributing 70 percent of coro-navirus spread. The forum urged the public to follow SOPs and guidelines to curb spread of the disease.

On November 30, Planning Minister Asad Umar said that the NCOC has finalised its rec-ommendations for pro-curement of coronavirus vaccine. Pakistan has increased its funds allocated for pur-chasing COVID-19 vaccine to $250m.

EU aviation agency refuses temporary permit for PIA flightsINTERNEWS — KARACHI

A day after Aviation Minister Ghulam Sarwar Khan expressed hopes that the ban imposed on Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) to operate flights in Europe would be lifted soon, the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) informed the national flag carrier that the ban had been extended by three months and that it would not be reviewed until a safety audit of the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), it emerged yesterday.

The aviation minister had told reporters in Taxila that most concerns of EASA regarding the process of issuing licences to commercial pilots had been addressed and soon the ban

imposed on PIA flights in European countries would be lifted. However, a senior PIA official confirmed that PIA had received a disappointing message in response to a request made by the airline.

He said that the national carrier had asked the European agency to give its provisional per-mission to operate flights to and from European destinations since it had met several conditions.

“We have asked EASA that they can conduct a safety audit of PIA, free from CAA, and in the meantime grant us provisional permission,” he said, adding that in response the agency said it could not issue such a permission.

The EASA letter says:

“Regarding the lack of confidence in certification and oversight activities performed by the Paki-stani CAA, which was the second aspect that led to the suspension of Third Country Operator Authorisation, the investigation performed by the European Commission and by the ICAO have not yet been concluded.

“Consequently, as all precon-ditions to lift the suspension are not met and, as an audit will be necessary, the agency decided not to revoke your Third Country Operator Authorisation but to extend the suspension period by additional three months “

The official explained that the ban was not on PIA per se but on the state of Pakistan and it would not be lifted until the regulator

brought reforms to the satis-faction of EASA.

Sources said that PIA was in constant touch with the European agency and had provided it nec-essary documents as evidence regarding the implementation of the agreed corrective action plan.

EASA had told PIA that it found the documents satisfactory but linked the lifting of the ban with meeting certain conditions that primarily related to the CAA because of the ‘fake’ pilots’ licence issue.

EASA told PIA it was investi-gating the issue of ‘fake’ pilots’ licences and it would review the ban after an audit but added that its officials could not visit Pakistan because of the corona-virus pandemic.

The EASA ban is not only causing a huge financial loss to PIA, it is also giving an oppor-tunity to foreign airlines to expand their operations.

Earlier this month, British airline Virgin Atlantic launched its direct flight operations for Islamabad and Lahore while British Airways had already expanded its operations from Islamabad to Lahore.

EASA had in July suspended the authorisation for PIA to operate flights in the EU member states for six months due to safety concerns after the aviation min-ister, while making public the preliminary report of the May 22 air crash, told parliament that 262 Pakistani pilots possessed dubious licences.

In a separate statement,

the presidency tweeted

that President Ashraf

Ghani and Abdullah

Abdullah, held a

meeting yesterday. The

two “discussed the

venue for the next round

of talks.”

12 MONDAY 28 DECEMBER 2020EUROPE

The vaccine developed

by the University of

Oxford and AstraZeneca

will be approved shortly

and rolled out across the

UK from January 4, the

Sunday Telegraph

reported.

UK lockdowns could ease in weeks with AstraZeneca vaccineBLOOMBERG — LONDON

Lockdowns in the UK could be eased at the end of February as the imminent approval of a COVID-19 vaccine produced by AstraZeneca Plc will permit the vaccination of as many as 15 million of the country’s most vulnerable people, the Mail on Sunday reported.

The country’s health service would no longer be at risk of being overwhelmed by virus cases once that threshold is met, the newspaper said. The vaccine developed by the Uni-versity of Oxford and Astra-Zeneca will be approved shortly and rolled out across the UK from January 4, the Sunday Telegraph reported.

The UK became the first country in Western Europe to begin vaccinations, when it started using the Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE shot on December 8. More than 600,000 people have been vaccinated through December 20.

The government is hoping 2 million people will get a first dose of one of the vaccines within two weeks of the January

roll-out of the new shot, The Telegraph said.

The country has been one of the hardest hit in Europe with more than 70,000 deaths, the most in the region after Italy. Much of the UK has been moved into the harshest Tier 4 restric-tions, which prohibit household mixing and forced the closing of pubs, restaurants and many businesses, after the discovery earlier this month of a more contagious strain of the virus.

The Sun newspaper reported that regulators will approve the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine most likely today. The Medicines and

Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency will need time to carry out a review of the vaccine data, a health department spokes-person said by email, without

indicating when a decision would be reached.

The AstraZeneca vaccine is easier to store and handle than the one from Pfizer, helping

efforts to reach people in secluded parts of the country. Approval has been slowed by dis-crepancies in efficacy rates pro-duced in trials. AstraZeneca Chief

Executive Officer Pascal Soriot told the Sunday Times that new data will show that the vaccine has achieved the 95% efficiency rate reported by Pfizer.

“We think we have figured out the winning formula and how to get efficacy that, after two doses, is up there with everybody else,” he told the newspaper. “I can’t tell you more because we will publish at some point.”

The Telegraph also reported that mass vaccination centers at sports stadiums and con-ference venues are expected to begin in the second week of January. The newspaper said that government officials will hold a meeting on the pandemic today after scientists warned that school closures may be necessary to slow the spread of the new COVID-19 variant.

The rate at which the virus is increasing, known as the R number, is estimated at 1.1 to 1.3 as of December 24, according to the latest government data. A reading above 1.0 indicates the spread of the virus is accel-erating. The UK reported 34,693 more cases and 210 deaths on December 26.

Vaccinations in some German citiesdelayed over cold chain doubtsREUTERS — FRANKFURT

Germany’s coronavirus vacci-nation campaign faced delays in several cities yesterday after medical staff found potential irregularities in the cooling of the shot produced by BioNTech and Pfizer.

The European Union launched a mass COVID-19 vac-cination drive on Sunday with pensioners and medics lining up to get the first shots to see off a pandemic that has crippled economies and claimed more than 1.7 million lives worldwide.

“When reading the temper-ature loggers that were enclosed in the cool boxes, doubts arose about the com-pliance with the cold chain

requirements”, the District Office of Lichtenfels in the north of Germany’s largest state Bavaria said in a statement.

The Pfizer vaccine, which uses new so-called mRNA tech-nology, must be stored at ultra-low temperatures of about -70 degrees Celsius (-112°F) to remain effective before being shipped to distribution centres.

Pfizer has designed special shipping containers filled with dry ice to keep the vaccine from spoiling while in transit. Shots can be kept in an ultra-low temperature freezer for up to six months, or for five days at 2C to 8C - a type of refriger-ation commonly available at hospitals.

Besides Lichtenfels, the

northern Bavarian cities of Coburg, Kronach, Kulmbach, Hof, Bayreuth and Wunsiedel also held off from inoculating people after uncertainty arose about whether the cold chain had been maintained.

“Vaccination against the coronavirus is not about who vaccinates the fastest or who does the most doses. Safety and conscientious work for the benefit of the population has the highest priority”, said Oliver Baer, district administrator of the district of Hof.

Similar problems also delayed the vaccination cam-paign in the southern Bavarian city of Augsburg, daily Merkur reported.Germany’s vacci-nation campaign officially

Members of the public enjoy a stroll on Hampstead Heath in London yesterday, as people continue to live under Tier 4 lockdown restrictions.

Italy vaccinates its first residentsREUTERS — ROME

Almost 10 months after the first Italian patient tested positive for the new coronavirus, Italy yesterday vaccinated the first residents against COVID-19.

Three health workers at the Rome Spallanzani hospital were inoculated shortly before 0700 GMT with the vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, a statement by the commissioner for the epidemic Domenico Arcuri said.

“The vaccine went very well and it was an exciting, historical moment,” 29-year-old nurse Claudia Aliverini told state-owned television RAINEWS24.

“It is the beginning of the end and I hope to be the first of over 60 millions of Italians”.

Italy on Thursday became the eighth country in the world to exceed 2 million officially recorded cases. It has reported 70,909 deaths, the highest toll in Europe and the fifth highest in the world.

The vaccine will be free of charge and health workers and elderly people will be the first to be offered the voluntary inoculation. Hungary and Slo-vakia began their vaccination campaigns on Saturday with

other European Union countries joining Italy in rolling out the shots from Sunday, as the pan-demic surges across the continent.

Around 9,750 doses have already arrived in Italy and another 470,000 are expected

to arrive from next week, the health ministry said.

“Today is a symbolic day which must give the idea of the beauty of Europe that has bought the vaccines for eve-rybody and distributed them,” Commissioner Arcuri said.

To aid the roll out of the vaccine, temporary solar-powered healthcare pavilions will pop up in town squares around the country, designed to look like five-petalled primrose flowers, a symbol of spring.

People receive the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine as Italy began vaccinations against the coronavirus disease, at the Niguarda hospital, in Milan yesterday.

People wait for their registration at the COVID-19 vaccination centre at the Robert Bosch hospital in Stuttgart, southern Germany, yesterday.

kicked off yesterday with resi-dents of elderly care homes being inoculated. The federal government is planning to dis-tribute more than 1.3 million doses to local health authorities by the end of this year and about 700,000 per week from January. Vaccinations will be free and available to everyone

from mid-2021 once the priority groups are expected to have fin-ished being inoculated.

“This makes us proud and above all confident that we can overcome this pandemic - because vaccinating paves our way out of the crisis,” Health Minister Jens Spahn said in a tweet.

British PM sold out fish in Brexit trade deal, fishermen sayREUTERS — LONDON

British fishermen said on Saturday that Prime Minister Boris Johnson had sold out fish stocks to the European Union with a Brexit trade deal that gives EU boats significant access to the United Kingdom’s rich fishing waters.

Some British politicians also said the deal added up to a sell-out.

The United Kingdom will leave the EU’s Common Fish-eries Policy on Dec. 31, but under the trade deal agreed on Christmas Eve the current rules will remain largely in place during a 5-1/2-year transition period. After that period, there will be annual consultations to establish the level and condi-tions for EU access to British waters.

The National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations said the fishing industry had been sacrificed by Johnson. For example, it said, the UK’s share of Celtic Sea haddock will increase to 20% from 10%, leaving 80% in the hands of EU fleets for a further five years.

“In the end-game, the prime minister made the call

and caved in on fish, despite the rhetoric and assurances,” the group said. “There will of course be an extensive public relations exercise to portray the deal as a fabulous victory, but it will inevitably be seen by the fishing industry as a defeat.” The British government said the trade deal reflected the United Kingdom’s new position as a sovereign independent coastal state and provided for a significant uplift in quota for UK fishers, equal to 25% of the value of the EU catch in UK waters.

“This is worth £146m for the UK fleet phased in over five years,” the British government said. “It ends the dependence of the UK fleet on the unfair ‘relative stability’ mechanism enshrined in the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy, and increases the share of the total catch taken in UK waters taken by UK vessels to circa two thirds.” But Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, the leader of the Scottish National Party, said Johnson had “sold out Scottish fishing all over again.” “Promises they knew couldn’t be delivered, duly broken,” Sturgeon said.

Merkel supplanted by Spahn as most popular politician in GermanyBLOOMBERG — BERLIN

German Health Minister Jens Spahn has taken over from Chancellor Angela Merkel as the nation’s most popular politician, a poll showed yesterday, high-lighting his potential as a future leader of Europe’s biggest economy.

Spahn, 40, has long been considered a rising star in Mer-kel’s Christian Democratic Union, and is widely perceived to have made a key contribution to Germany’s relatively suc-cessful handling of the corona-virus pandemic.

According to the Kantar poll in Bild newspaper, 52% of those surveyed said Spahn should play a major role in German politics in 2021, up from 28% at the end of 2019. Merkel’s approval rating was 51%, up 11 percentage points from the pre-vious year.

“Spahn is clearly the winner of the year,” Bild quoted Kantar’s Torsten Schneider-Haase as saying. “From the point of view of the people, he is cutting a pos-itive figure on coronavirus policy.” Merkel is stepping down following the next election due in September 2021 after more

than a decade and a half in power. The CDU will elect a new leader and probable chancellor candidate at a virtual congress next month.

Spahn has backed Armin Laschet, the premier of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, while Friedrich Merz, a long-time Merkel rival, and Norbert Roettgen, a former environment minister, are also running.

The winner will likely be the conservative bloc’s candidate to succeed Merkel next year, though Bavaria Premier Markus Soeder, head of the CDU’s sister party in the southern state, may

be asked to step in.Soeder is the third-most

popular politician on 50%, the Kantar poll showed. Finance Minister and Vice Chancellor Olaf Scholz, the Social Demo-crats’ chancellor candidate, was fourth on 47%, Merz scored 37% in sixth place, Laschet 31% in eighth and Roettgen 29% in ninth.

While Spahn has thrown his support behind Laschet, there is an outside chance he could be tapped to run as the conserv-ative candidate for chancellor if he is seen as having the best chance of winning the election.

German Health Minister Jens Spahn holding a press conference on the start of COVID-19 vaccination programme in Berlin on Saturday.

Storm Bellabatters France;thousands ofhomes withoutelectricityAGENCIES — PARIS/LONDON

Thousands of homes in north-western France were deprived of electricity yesterday due to storm Bella sweeping through the area, with wind guts of up to 120 km/h on the coast.

More than 6,000 homes were without power in Nor-mandy and around 4,000 in Brittany, electricity distributor Enedis said on Twitter. Hur-ricane-force winds reaching up to 106 mph and heavy rain-storms also battered parts of Britain yesterday, disrupting train services and stranding drivers in floodwaters.

The Isle of Wight saw Storm Bella’s strongest gusts hit 106 mph, while parts of the south coast of England and north Wales also saw gusts of around 80 mph. Flooding on the tracks caused train cancellations and delays in southern England, and a main train line into London was blocked by a fallen tree.

In Wales, Western Power said the storm caused power cuts for 21,000 homes. Most of the services were restored Sunday but 1,700 homes still had no power supply.

Some 1,000 people had to be evacuated from a flooded caravan park in Northampton on Christmas Day as heavy rain flooded the site. Severe flood warnings indicating a potential threat to life remain in the area.

13MONDAY 28 DECEMBER 2020 EUROPE

Balafia nursing home resident Milagros Garcia, 79, prepares to receive an injection with a dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, in Lleida, Spain, yesterday.

96-year-old becomes first to getPfizer/BioNTech jab in SpainAFP — MADRID

A 96-year-old living in a care home in central Spain became the first person in the country to be vaccinated against COVID-19 yesterday, in an event broadcast by national television.

She felt “nothing” from the shot, Araceli Rosario Hidalgo Sanchez said with a smile after being injected.

With her short white hair, the pensioner living in the Los Olmos retirement home in Guadalajara got up slowly after pulling on her black jacket and walked off using a frame for support.

Carer Monica Tapias fol-lowed as the second Spaniard to receive the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

“Araceli and Monica

represent a new step full of hope today,” Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez tweeted.

The Los Olmos home was picked to kick off the country’s inoculation campaign because it sits near a Pfizer storage depot, where vaccines were delivered from Belgium Sat-urday ahead of nationwide distribution.

No cases of Covid-19 have so far been detected among the staff or residents. “It’s a great source of pride and a great sat-isfaction for us, we’re repre-senting all the retirement homes in Spain,” director Marina Vadillo said Thursday.

After the European Medi-cines Agency (EMA) approved the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine last Monday, the way is open for injections across the

27-member bloc.Spain aims to vaccinate up

to 20 million people by June, with an initial target of 2.5 million by the end of February.

People at elevated risk or very exposed like care home residents and medical staff will be first in line.

Under EU deals, the country is lined up to receive 140 million doses, enough to vaccinate 80 million people— almost twice the country’s population.

Extra doses will go to “nearby countries that might need them”, the health ministry said earlier this month.

One of the European coun-tries hardest hit by the pan-demic, Spain has recorded 1.8 million cases and almost 49,000 deaths.

Swiss call post-Brexit deal ‘good news’ for whole worldAFP — GENEVA

Switzerland’s incoming pres-ident Guy Parmelin said yesterday the post-Brexit trade agreement between Britain and the European Union was “good news for the whole world”.

Switzerland, which is not an EU member but has a rela-tionship that guarantees market access, is also in its own tricky negotiations with the bloc which is eager to create an overarching agreement for the patchwork of deals.

In the first comments by the Swiss government on the post-Brexit deal, economy minister Parmelin — who takes over the annually rotating presidency on Friday — said the agreement was also welcome news for Switzerland.

“It is good news for the whole world that an agreement has been reached. For Swit-zerland too,” he told the Son-ntags Zeitung newspaper.

London and the EU struck a trade deal on Thursday after 10 months of intense negotia-tions allowed them to soften the economic shock of Brexit.

When Britain leaves the EU single market at the New Year, it will not now face tariffs on cross-Channel commerce.

Parmelin did not comment on what the deal might mean

for Switzerland’s own framework agreement negoti-ations with the EU.

“We are now waiting for the text and will analyse the whole situation,” he said.

Experts believe that the Swiss government is now coming under strong pressure to negotiate a better agreement with Brussels, the SZ reported.

After turning down EU membership in 1992, the Swiss voted in 2000 for a range of bilateral accords with the bloc.

Brussels has made no secret of its growing impatience to pin down a “framework accord” to pull together various bilateral agreements touching on access to the single market and fine-tuning applicable Swiss and EU laws.

Since 2008, the EU has insisted Switzerland must sign a framework agreement before concluding any new bilateral deals with the bloc.

Parmelin had to go into quarantine before Christmas after visiting London to sign an agreement which secures reciprocal, facilitated market access for service providers from Switzerland and Britain from January.

Parmelin takes over as president from Simonetta Som-maruga on Friday.

Despite advances, many Europeans wary of taking shotREUTERS — WARSAW/SOFIA

Europe rolled out a huge COVID-19 vaccination drive yesterday to try to rein in the coronavirus pandemic but many Europeans are sceptical about the speed at which the vaccines have been tested and approved and reluctant to have the shot.

The European Union has secured contracts with a range of drugmakers including Pfizer and BioNTech, Moderna and AstraZeneca, for a total of more than two billion doses and has set a goal for all adults to be inoculated next year.

But surveys have pointed to high levels of hesitancy towards inoculation in countries from

France to Poland, with many used to vaccines taking decades to develop, not just months.

“I don’t think there’s a vaccine in history that has been tested so quickly,” Ireneusz Sikorski, 41, said as he stepped out of a church in central Warsaw with his two children. “I am not saying vaccination shouldn’t be taking a place. But I am not going to test an unver-ified vaccine on my children, or on myself.”

Surveys in Poland, where distrust in public institutions runs deep, have shown fewer than 40 percent of people planning to get vaccinated, for now. Yesterday, only half the medical staff in a Warsaw hos-pital where the country’s first

shot was administered had signed up.

In Spain, one of Europe’s hardest-hit countries, German, a 28-year-old singer and music composer originally from Ten-erife, also plans to wait for now.

“No one close to me has had it (COVID-19). I’m obviously not saying it doesn’t exist because lots of people have died of it, but for now I wouldn’t have it (the vaccine).”

A Christian Orthodox bishop in Bulgaria, where 45 percent of people have said they would not get a shot and 40 percent plan to wait to see if any neg-ative side effects appear, com-pared COVID-19 to polio.

“Myself, I am vaccinated against everything I can be,”

Bishop Tihon told reporters after getting his shot, standing alongside the health minister in Sofia.

He spoke about anxiety over polio before vaccination became available in the 1950s a “We were all trembling in fear of catching polio. And then we were overjoyed,” he said. “Now, we have to convince people. It’s a pity.”

The widespread hesitancy does not appear to take into account the scientific develop-ments in recent decades.

The traditional method of creating vaccines — introducing a weakened or dead virus, or a piece of one, to stimulate the body’s immune system — takes over a decade on average,

according to a 2013 study. One pandemic flu vaccine took over eight years while a hepatitis B vaccine was nearly 18 years in the making.

“We’ll look back on the advances made in 2020 and say: ‘That was a moment when science really did make a leap forward’,” said Jeremy Farrar, director of the Oxford Uni-versity Clinical Research Unit, which is backed by the Wellcome Trust.

Independent pollster Alpha Research said its recent survey sug-gested that fewer than one in five Bulgarians from the first groups to be offered the vaccine — frontline medics, pharmacists, teachers and nursing home staff — planned to volunteer to get a shot.

A general view of the migrant centre “Lipa” during snowfall in Bihac, Bosnia and Herzegovina, yesterday.

Migrants shiver in Bosnia camp

Putin decides to receive vaccine: KremlinREUTERS — MOSCOW

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin will receive the Sputnik V vaccine against the corona-virus, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a Russian state TV channel yesterday. “He said he will be vaccinated, he made this decision and was waiting until all formalities are completed,” the spokesman

was quoted as saying to Rossiya 1 TV Channel on its website.

Russia launched a voluntary vaccination programme with the Russia-made Sputnik V vaccine earlier in December, starting with the most vul-nerable groups in Moscow.

People over the age of 60 may begin to apply for shots on Monday, Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin said on his website

on Sunday, the day after the Russian health ministry said the vaccine was approved for use by elderly people after a sep-arate trial.

The 68-year-old Putin said earlier that the Russian vaccine was effective and safe and he saw no reason not to be vacci-nated addeing that he was waiting until it became available.

Spain ruling

coalition divided

over four-day

work week

AFP — MADRID

Spain’s coalition government is deeply split over a proposal to shorten the work week to four days to fight high unem-ployment sparked by the coro-navirus pandemic.

The measure is being pushed by far-left party Podemos, the junior partner in Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s minority gov-ernment which has ruled the eurozone’s fourth largest economy since January.

Deputy Prime Minister Pablo Iglesias, the leader of Podemos, announced earlier this month that the labour min-istry was looking into reducing work hours, saying this “could without a doubt favour the cre-ation of employment”.

He was responding during a TV interview to the proposal made by a far-left lawmaker that called for the work week to be reduced to 32 hours from the current 40 hours.

“Work time requires a new concept which dares to chal-lenge, as we do, the laws and customs of the working world,” added Labour Minister Yolanda Diaz, also from Podemos, on Twitter.

The proposal comes as the New Zealand branch of Uni-lever earlier this month began a trial of a four-day work week for its staff in the country.

Germany’s powerful IG Metall union has also floated the idea.

But in Spain the idea has been met with reluctance from the Socialists, the dominant party in Spain’s first coalition government since its return to democracy in the late 1970s.

Budget Minister Maria Jesus Montero said the gov-ernment “must not lose focus” from its main priority, which is “to return to the growth rates which we had at the start of the pandemic”.

Spain’s heavily tourism-dependent economy had con-sistently outperformed much of Europe since it emerged from a five-year slump in 2013.

EU begins vaccinations to end virus ‘nightmare’AFP — PARIS

EU countries yesterday embarked on a vaccination campaign to defeat the “nightmare” of COVID-19, as the growing spread of a new coronavirus variant intensified fears the pandemic could wreak further devastation.

The jab is a glimmer of hope for a continent yearning for a return to normal from a pan-demic that has killed 1.76 million people worldwide since emerging in China late last year and caused at least 80 million confirmed cases, according to a tally.

“It is with deep pride and a deep sense of responsibility that I got the vaccine today. A small gesture but a fundamental gesture for all of us,” said Claudia Alivernini, 29, an Italian nurse who was the first in her country to receive the Pfizer-BioNTech jab yesterday morning.

EU commission chief Ursula von der Leyen hailed the cam-paign start as a “touching moment of unity and a European success story”, even if some European states started a day early on Saturday.

Countries are also showing different strategies in their vacci-nation targeting, with Italy focusing on health workers, France the elderly and in the Czech Republic the prime min-ister himself at the front of the queue.

In a sign of impatience, some EU countries began vac-cinating on Saturday, a day before the official start, with a 101-year-old woman in a care home becoming the first person in Germany to be inoculated and Hungary and Slovakia also

handing out their first shots.France began its campaign

in care homes for the elderly in the Paris suburb of Seine-Saint-Denis, a low-income area hard hit by Covid-19, with a 78-year-old woman named Mauricette the first to receive the jab to applause from staff.

“We have a new weapon against the virus — the vaccine,” tweeted President Emmanuel Macron.

China, Russia, Canada, the United States, Switzerland, Serbia, Singapore and Saudi Arabia have also begun their vaccination campaigns.

Britain, which last week finalised a deal on leaving the EU, began its vaccination campaign amid much fanfare on December 8, three weeks ahead of the bloc.

But it was also in Britain that a new strain of the virus emerged that has already reached several other European countries as well as Japan and Canada.

The new strain, which experts fear is more contagious, prompted more than 50 coun-tries to impose travel restric-tions on the UK.

Echoing concerns from offi-cials across the continent, Health Minister Olivier Veran said France has not ruled out imposing a third nationwide lockdown if coronavirus cases continue to rise after the holiday season.

He said it would become clear in the next months if the vaccine did not just stop people falling sick but also from passing the virus on. “This would allow us to leave this nightmare quicker,” he said.

In the Czech Republic, Prime Minister Andrej Babis was given the vaccine, explaining that “yesterday evening I saw a lady in the news on a TV channel saying she would wait for Babis.”

Vaccines other than the Pfizer-BioNTech jab are also in the pipeline, and the United States, where over a million people have already been vac-cinated, last week began jabs with the vaccine developed by US biotech firm Moderna.

Meanwhile, the University of Oxford and drug manufac-turer AstraZeneca have applied to the UK authorities for per-mission to roll out their COVID-19 vaccine.

There is concern that war-iness among Europeans over the vaccine could impede its effectiveness, with a poll pub-lished in the Journal du Dimanche saying 56 percent of French people don’t plan to take the jab.

China, accused of covering up the initial outbreak, has largely curbed the domestic spread of the virus. Its Com-munist leadership issued a statement hailing the “extremely extraordinary glory” of its handling of the crisis.

The jab is a glimmer of hope for a continent yearning for a return to normal from a pandemic that has killed 1.76 million people worldwide since emerging in China late last year and caused at least 80 million confirmed cases.

14 MONDAY 28 DECEMBER 2020AMERICAS

Nashville probe prompts FBI to search homeAP — NASHVILLE

Federal agents converged Saturday on the home of a possible person of interest in the explosion that rocked downtown Nashville as inves-tigators scoured hundreds of tips and leads in the blast that damaged dozens of buildings on Christmas morning.

More than 48 hours after the explosion, a motive remained elusive as investigators worked round-the-clock to resolve unanswered questions about a recreational vehicle that blew up on a mostly deserted street on a sleepy holiday morning after a recorded warning advised those nearby to evacuate.

The attack, which damaged an AT&T building, continued to wreak havoc on cellphone service and police and hospital communications in several Southern states as the company worked to restore service.

Investigators from multiple federal and local law enforcement agencies descended on the home in Antioch, in suburban Nashville, on Saturday after receiving information relevant to the investigation, said FBI Special Agent Jason Pack.

Another law enforcement official, who was not authorized to discuss an ongoing investi-gation and spoke to The

Associated Press on condition of anonymity, said investigators regard a person associated with the property as a person of interest.

Federal agents could be seen looking around the property, searching the home and the backyard. A Google Maps image captured in May 2019 had shown a similar rec-reational vehicle parked in the backyard; an AP reporter at the scene did not see the vehicle at the property in the late afternoon on Saturday.

There were other signs of progress in the investigation, as the FBI revealed that it was looking at a number of indi-viduals who may be connected to it. Officials also said no addi-tional explosive devices have been found — indicating no

active threat to the area. Inves-tigators have received around 500 tips and leads.

“It’s just going to take us some time,” Douglas Korneski, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Memphis field office, said at a Saturday afternoon news conference. “Our investi-gative team is turning over every stone” to understand who did this and why.

Investigators said they were working to identify human remains found at the scene. Beyond that, the only known casualties were three injured people.

The infrastructure damage, meanwhile, was broadly felt, due to an AT&T central office being affected by the blast. Police emergency systems in Tennessee, Kentucky and Alabama, as well as Nashville’s COVID-19 community hotline and a handful of hospital systems, remained out of service.

The building contained a telephone exchange, with network equipment in it - but the company has declined to say exactly how many people have been impacted.

Asked whether the AT&T building could have been a pos-sible target, Korneski said, “We’re looking at every possible motive that could be involved.” Investigators shut down the heart of downtown Nashville’s

tourist scene — an area packed with honky-tonks, restaurants and shops — as they shuffled through broken glass and damaged buildings to learn more about the explosion.

Mayor John Cooper has enforced a curfew in the downtown area until Sunday via executive order to limit public access. More than 40 buildings were affected.

AT&T said Sunday it was rerouting service to other facil-ities as the company worked to restore its heavily damaged building. The company said in a statement that it was bringing in resources to help recover affected voice and data services and expects to have 24

additional trailers of disaster recovery equipment at the site by the end of the day.

Restoration efforts faced several challenges, which included a fire that forced their teams to work with safety and structural engineers and drilling access holes into the building in order to reconnect power.

Ray Neville, president of technology at T-Mobile, said on Twitter Saturday that service disruptions affected Louisville, Nashville, Knoxville, Bir-mingham and Atlanta. “We con-tinue to see service interrup-tions in these areas... Resto-ration efforts continue around the clock & we will keep you updated on progress,” he said.

The outages had briefly grounded flights at the Nashville International Airport, but service was continuing normally as of Saturday. The Federal Aviation Administration has since issued a temporary flight restriction around the airport, requiring pilots to follow strict procedures until December 30.

According to Metro Nash-ville Police Chief John Drake, police officers responded on Friday to a report of shots fired when they encountered the RV blaring a recorded warning that a bomb would detonate in 15 minutes. Police evacuated nearby buildings and called in the bomb squad. The RV exploded shortly afterward.

Law enforcement officers gather to investigate information arising the day after a downtown Nashville explosion, outside a duplex house in Antioch, Tennessee, US, yesterday.

Canada detects

first coronavirus

variant cases:

Health officials

AFP — MONTREAL

The first two cases of a partic-ularly infectious coronavirus variant that recently emerged in Britain have been confirmed in Canada, health authorities said on Saturday.

“The cases are a couple from Durham with no known travel history, exposure or high-risk contacts,” Barbara Yaffe, acting chief medical officer for Ontario, said in a statement.

The couple have been placed in isolation, according to the statement, the same day that Ontario reimposed a lockdown for several weeks due to a spike in COVID-19 cases in the province since early December.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Wednesday his country would prolong its suspension of passenger flights from the UK until January 6 in light of the coronavirus strain sweeping Britain.

The discovery of two cases in Ontario “further reinforces the need for Ontarians to stay home as much as possible and con-tinue to follow all public health advice, including the prov-incewide shutdown measures beginning today,” said Yaffe.

The lockdown in Ontario, Canada’s most populous province at some 14 million residents, will last 28 days in the south of the region and 14 days in the north.

Private indoor gatherings outside the family circle are banned. Essential businesses, such as grocery stores and pharmacies, will be allowed to remain open, but restau-rants will be limited to take-out or delivery service.

Man charged in Illinois shooting that killed threeAP — ROCKFORD

A US serviceman from Florida has been charged in a shooting at an Illinois bowling alley that left three people dead and three wounded, authorities said yesterday.

Winnebago County State’s Attorney J Hanley said Duke Webb, 37, has been charged with three counts of murder and three counts of first-degree attempted murder in the shooting at Don Carter Lanes, in Rockford, on Saturday evening.

While no bowling is cur-rently allowed due to state-imposed coronavirus restric-tions, a bar linked to the business was open.

Webb was taken into custody shortly after the

shooting at around 7pm, Rockford Police Chief Dan O’Shea said at a news con-ference Sunday morning.

“I am very confident the officers that were on the scene in the building were able to stop further violence,” O’Shea said.

He said the three who died were all men, aged 73, 65 and 69, but did not provide names.

Additionally, he said, a 14-year-old boy was shot in the face and airlifted to hospital in Madison in stable condition, and a 16-year-old girl who was shot in the shoulder was treated at a hospital and released.

A 62-year-old man underwent surgery overnight after suffering multiple gunshot wounds and is in critical con-dition, the chief said.

The suspect has no known ties to the victims, O’Shea said.

“We believe this was a com-pletely random act, and there is no prior meeting or any kind of relationship between the suspect and any of the victims in this case,” O’Shea said. He did not provide information on what led up to the shooting.

The bowling alley was closed at the time of the shooting, in accordance with restrictions imposed to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, O’Shea said.

But a bar upstairs was open. The chief said the upstairs venue has double doors that open to the outside, ensuring the bar is in compliance with Illinois’ COVID-19 mitigation guidance.

Up to 25 people were at Don

Carter Lanes when the shooting happened, but most escaped or hid, O’Shea said.

He declined to say whether the shootings happened in the bar or elsewhere in the building, but said those details would come out in court. The teens who were wounded were picking up food at the carryout section of the bowling alley, he said.

He said the suspect tried to conceal his weapons before his arrest, and that he was appre-hended without officers firing a shot.

“Most of the incident was captured on surveillance video from inside the business,” O’Shea said, adding that inves-tigators are studying captured images.

Webb is an active military man, and investigators are in

touch with the US Army, O’Shea said.

The Rockford Register Star reported that 2020 has been the deadliest year on record for homicides in the city of about 170,000 residents located about 80 miles northwest of Chicago. Thirty-five people have been killed in the city this year, breaking the previous record of 31 in 1996.

“As we come to the end of this most difficult year and we look ahead at this New Year upon us, we know that this type of violence needs to stop,” Mayor Tom McNamara said. “... And today, with the eyes of the country upon us, we need to show as Rockfordians how we respond to an incident such as this, as one Rockford, sup-porting one another.”

Health workers of the Mexican Institute of Social Security from Sonora state, arrive to Mexico City as part of ‘Operaci�n Chapultepec’ at Benito Juarez International Airport in Mexico City on Saturday.

Deaths from virus inMexico increaseREUTERS — MEXICO CITY

Mexico City registered 2,664 more deaths than usual earlier this month as authorities fought to contain the spread of COVID-19 that has strained hospitals and forced the city into a semi-lockdown.

The populous capital’s “excess mortality” from December 1 to 12 - deaths above the typical number from prior years - averaged 214 a day, a government report said on Sat-urday. That compared to 141 excess deaths a day in November.

The rate peaked in May when Mexico City, with a pop-ulation of some nine million, recorded 320 excess deaths per day.

With hospitalisations on the rise, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador met with Mexico City’s mayor to discuss increasing the numbers of hos-pital beds, equipment and healthcare workers, the pres-ident said on Twitter on Sat-urday evening.

COVID-19 vaccinations for medical staff will continue on Sunday, he said. Mexico’s first batch of Pfizer-BioNTech vac-cines arrived last week, sup-plemented by a second shipment, with 42,900 doses, on Saturday.

Mexico’s health ministry on Saturday reported 4,974 con-firmed coronavirus infection and 189 COVID-19 deaths, bringing the total to 1,377,217 cases and 122,026 deaths.

Despite smooth election, GOP seeks vote restrictionsAP — ATLANTA

Changes to the way millions of Americans voted this year contributed to record turnout, but that’s no guarantee the measures making it easier to cast ballots will stick around for future elections.

Republicans in key states that voted for President-elect Joe Biden already are pushing for new restrictions, especially to absentee voting. It’s an option many states expanded amid the coronavirus outbreak that proved hugely popular and helped ensure one of the smoothest election days in recent

years.President Donald Trump has

been unrelenting in his attacks on mail voting as he continues to challenge the legitimacy of an election he lost. Despite a lack of evidence and dozens of losses in the courts, his claims of wide-spread voter fraud have gained traction with some Republican elected officials.

They are vowing to crack down on mail ballots and threatening to roll back other steps that have made it easier for people to vote.

“This myth could not justify throwing out the results of the election, nor can it justify

imposing additional burdens on voters that will disenfranchise many Americans,” said Wendy Weiser, head of the democracy program at the Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU School of Law.

An estimated 108 million people voted before Election Day, either through early in-person voting or by mailing or dropping off absentee ballots. That represented nearly 70% of all votes cast, after states took steps to make it easier to avoid crowded polling places during the pandemic.

A few states sent ballots to every registered voter while

others dropped requirements that voters needed a specific excuse to cast an absentee ballot. Many states added drop boxes and expanded early voting options.

The changes were popular with voters and did not lead to widespread fraud. A group of election officials including rep-resentatives of the federal cybersecurity agency called the 2020 presidential election the “most secure” election in US history, and US Attorney General William Barr said there had been no evidence of fraud that would change the outcome of the election.

Argentina to launch COVID-19vaccination from tomorrowREUTERS — BUENOS AIRES

Argentina will begin vacci-nating its citizens against coro-navirus tomorrow using the recently delivered Russian Sputnik V vaccine, the government said on Saturday, following its approval by health authorities for emergency use.

Argentine president Alberto Fernández and provincial gov-ernors said health personnel would receive their vaccines in less than 72 hours. Around 300,000 doses arrived in Argentina on Thursday, and

subsequent shipments are expected early in 2021.

“The idea is that when the (southern hemisphere) fall arrives we will have a large number of at-risk people vac-cinated,” Fernandez said in a meeting with governors.

Argentina, the third largest economy in Latin America, has been hard hit by COVID-19 and logged nearly 1.6 million cases of the coronavirus and 42,501 deaths from the disease. The Russian vaccine is set to arrive in each province of the South American nation by today.

The attack, which damaged an AT&T building, continued to wreak havoc on cellphone service and police and hospital communications in several Southern states as the company worked to restore service.

15MONDAY 28 DECEMBER 2020 AMERICAS

Lawmakers press Trump to clear relief packageAP — WEST PALM BEACH

President Donald Trump appeared no closer to signing an end-of-year COVID-19 relief and spending bill yesterday as unemployment aid expired, the government barrels toward a mid-pandemic shutdown and lawmakers implored him to break the impasse he created after Congress approved the deal.

The fate of the bipartisan package remained in limbo after Trump blindsided members of both parties with a demand for larger COVID-19 relief checks and complained about “pork” spending, even as help for millions of Americans struggling to make ends meet lapsed overnight. The federal government will run out of money at 12.01am tomorrow if Trump refuses to sign the bill as he spends the holidays in Florida.

In the face of economic hardship and spreading disease, several lawmakers urged Trump to sign the legislation immediately, then have Con-gress follow up with more relief.

“What the president is doing right now is unbelievably cruel,” Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont said yesterday. “So

many people are hurting.” Republican Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania also said Trump should sign the bill, then make the case for more. “We’ve got a bill right now that his administration helped nego-tiate,” he said. “I think we ought to get that done.”

That point was echoed by Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, a Republican who’s crit-icized Trump’s pandemic response and his efforts to undo the election results. “I just gave up guessing what he might do next,” he said. Hogan and Sanders spoke on ABC’s “This Week,” Toomey on “Fox News Sunday.”

In South Bend, Indiana, L a n e t r i s H a i n e s , a

self-employed single mother of three, stood to lose her $129 weekly jobless benefit unless Trump signed the package into law or succeeded in his improbable quest for changes.

“It’s a chess game and we are pawns,” she said.

Trump was spending Sunday golfing at his West Palm Beach course.

He has given no indication he plans to sign the bill as he spends the last days of his pres-idency in a rage. Indeed, his dis-satisfaction with the legislation seems only to have grown in recent days as he has criticized it both privately to club members and publicly on Twitter.

“I simply want to get our great people $2000, rather than the measly $600 that is now in the bill,” he tweeted on Saturday.

Washington has been reeling since Trump turned on the deal, without warning, after it had won sweeping approval in both houses of Congress and after the White House had assured Republican leaders that Trump would support it.

Instead, he assailed the bill’s plan to provide $600 COVID-19 relief checks to most Americans —insisting it should be $2,000.

House Republicans swiftly rejected that idea during a rare Christmas Eve session. But Trump has not been swayed in spite of the nation being in the grip of a pandemic.

As the impasse dragged on, Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health warned that the country is at a “critical point” in COVID-19 infections, with the Christmas and New Year’s holidays posing the threat of a “surge upon a surge” as people congregate with families and others, against

the advice of public-health officials.

“As we get into the next few weeks, it might actually get worse,” he said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” President-elect Joe Biden called on Trump to sign the bill immediately as the midnight Saturday deadline neared for two federal pro-grams providing unemployment aid. He accused Trump of an “abdication of responsibility” that has “devastating conse-quences.” The impact is already beginning. Lauren Bauer, a

fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution, has calculated that 11 million people would lose aid from the pro-grams immediately without additional relief; millions more would exhaust other unem-ployment benefits within weeks.

Andrew Stettner, an unem-ployment insurance expert and senior fellow at the Century Foundation think tank, said the number may be closer to 14 million because joblessness has spiked since Thanksgiving.

The presidential motorcade drives along Summit Boulevard near the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach in Florida, US, yesterday.

New York probes

'fraudulently'

obtained

vaccines

BLOOMBERG — NEW YORK

A health care provider in New York may have fraudulently obtained COVID-19 vaccines and diverted them to members of the public in violation of priority guide-lines, the state government said on Saturday.

New York state police has started a criminal investigation into the matter, which could be the state’s first vaccine dis-tribution-related scandal.

The State Department of Health is aware of reports that ParCare Community Health Network, a provider with a clinic in upstate Orange County, “may have fraudu-lently obtained COVID-19vaccine, transferred it to facilities in other parts of the state in violation of state guidelines, and diverted it to members of the public,” the state’s health commissioner Howard Zucker said in a statement.

ParCare’s website shows it has six locations, including four in Brooklyn, New York, and says its patients are “mainly Orthodox Hasidic Jews, Hispanics, and African Americans.”

A hyperlocal Orthodox Jewish news site, BoroPark 24, published a story on December 21, saying ParCare had received a shipment of Moderna Inc.’s vaccines, and showed boxes of the vaccines in what appeared to be a refrigerator.

It also had what appeared to be a copy of a ParCare advertisement touting availa-bility of “The Newest Healthcare Revolution!” on a “first come first serve” basis.

Gary Schlesinger, chief exeuctive officer of ParCare, was cited saying people who are a “health care worker, are over 60, or have underlying conditions” can register online to get a vaccine.

That differs from state guidelines, which allow only frontline health care workers, or staff and residents of nursing homes, to get the first batch of vaccines.

“We take this very seri-ously and DOH will be assisting State Police in a criminal investigation into this matter,” said Zucker in the statement. “Anyone found to have knowingly participated in this scheme will be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law.” Represent-atives with ParCare didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment sent on Saturday.

Health officials warn of post-holiday virus surgeBLOOMBERG — WASHINGTON

Current and former US health officials took to the airwaves yesterday to warn Americans of a potential jump in COVID-19 cases after the holidays.

“A surge upon a surge” may be on the way after the Christmas and New Year’s period, Anthony Fauci, the gov-ernment’s top infectious-disease doctor, warned on CNN’s “State of the Union.” Former US Food and Drug Administration chief Scott Gottlieb said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” that “we have a grim month ahead of us” after a recent increase in cases, with hospitalizations rising on a lag of a few weeks.

The comments came as the number of confirmed cases in the US approach 19 million and deaths are more than 332,000. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infec-tious Diseases warned that the US is at a “very critical point” in combating the pandemic after many Americans ignored guidance to avoid travel.

Flying has picked up recently while remaining well below year-ago levels. Figures from the Transportation Security Administration show more than one million people moved through US airport checkpoints on five of the past nine days heading into and through the holidays.

Admiral Brett Giroir, a member of the White House coronavirus task force, said the risks entailed by travelling

depend mostly on what people do once they get to their desti-nations, as actually being in an airplane is typically safe.

“What we really worry about is the mingling of dif-ferent bubbles once you get to your destination,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.” Vaccina-tions in the US began on December 14 with health-care workers and residents of nursing homes.

So far almost two million doses have been administered in the country, according to a state-by-state tally. Those numbers are accelerating as a second vaccine by Moderna Inc is distributed.

Mutant Strain Health offi-cials are on alert for a more infectious virus strain that’s emerged in the UK, Germany, Switzerland, Ireland and Japan, although there’s no clear evi-dence it results in more severe cases of the disease.

Travellers coming to the US from the UK face more restric-tions because of the new variant, with the US insisting on testing negative for COVID-19 within 72 hours of departing the country.

Gottlieb, a board member of Pfizer Inc, said that he believes the UK strain is already in the US, and in “a reasonable number at this point.” He saw signs that US new daily COVID-19 cases are starting to plateau, but since hospitaliza-tions and the number of deaths tend to lag by two to three weeks, “we have a very difficult month ahead of us.”

Trump’s court appointments will leave decades-long imprintAP — WASHINGTON

On this, even President Donald Trump’s most fevered critics agree: He has left an imprint on federal courts that will outlast his one term in office for decades to come.

He used the promise of con-servative judicial appointments to win over Republican sceptics as a candidate. Then as pres-ident, he relied on conservative legal organizations and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McCo-nnell to employ an assembly line-like precision to install more than 230 judges on the federal bench, including the three newest justices of the Supreme Court.

Indeed, undeterred by Democratic criticism, the Senate was still confirming judges more than a month after Trump lost his reelection bid to Joe Biden.

“Trump has basically done

more than any president has done in a single term since (Pres-ident Jimmy) Carter to put his stamp on the judiciary,” said Jonathan Adler, a law professor at Case Western Reserve Uni-versity School of Law in Cleveland. Congress created about 150 new judgeships during Carter’s presidency, he said.

The impact will be enduring. Among the Trump-appointed judges, who hold lifetime posi-tions, several are still in their 30s. The three Supreme Court picks could still be on the court at the 21st century’s midpoint, 30 years from now.

Beyond the Supreme Court, 30 percent of the judges on the nation’s court of appeals, where all but a handful of cases reach their end, were appointed by Trump.

Judges who have Trump to thank for their positions never-theless rebuffed the president’s legal challenges of his election defeat. But the real measure of

what Trump has been able to do will be revealed in countless court decisions in the years to come on abortion, guns, reli-gious rights and a host of other culture wars issues.

When the Supreme Court blocked New York from enforcing certain limits on attendance at churches and synagogues in areas designated as hard hit by COVID-19, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the newest member of the court, cast the decisive fifth vote.

Previously, the court had allowed restrictions on religious services over the dissent of four justices, including the other two Trump nominees, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.

Five Trump appointees were in the majority of the 6-4 decision by the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals in September that made it harder for felons in Florida to regain the right to vote.

Last month, Judges Britt

Grant and Barbara Lagoa, both named by Trump, formed the majority on a three-judge 11th circuit panel that struck down local Florida bans on a therapy for minors. Other appeals courts around the country have upheld the conversion therapy bans.

In one early look at Trump’s appointees to federal trial courts, political science pro-fessors Kenneth Manning, Robert Carp and Lisa Holmes compared their decisions with more than 117,000 opinions published dating to 1932.

The decisions of judges appointed by Trump were “on the whole, significantly more conservative” than those of past presidents, the political scien-tists concluded.

The one constant of the past four years — through impeachment, the coronavirus pandemic and Trump’s election loss — has been his nomination of and Senate confirmation of judges.

Trump used the issue of the federal judiciary to win trust with voters who might have questions about the conserv-ative credentials of a billionaire real estate developer who had once supported abortion rights and had no track record in politics.

He put in writing a list of potential nominees, provided by the conservative Federalist Society and Heritage Foun-dation, he would select from in filling a Supreme Court vacancy.

As it happens, there was a high court opening at the time, following the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in February.

The Republican blocked President Barack Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland, refusing so much as a hearing for the respected appeals court judge whom Republicans had previously identified as a high court nominee they could support.

Watching sunsetVisitors look out from the Lincoln Memorial across the Reflecting Pool at the Washington Monument as the sun sets in Washington, DC, US.

Judge orders man to pay $35,100 overLake St Clair seawall projectsAP — MICHIGAN

A judge has ordered a south-eastern Michigan man to pay about $35,000 in restitution for failing to start or complete work on seawalls he was hired to repair or build along the Lake St. Clair shoreline.

David Marshall of Roseville must pay $35,100 to four people by October 13, 2021, under a recent order by a Macomb County Circuit Court judge. He had pleaded guilty in August to

seven larceny offenses, five fel-o n i e s a n d t w o misdemeanours.

If Marshall, 56, pays that restitution the felonies would be reduced to misdemeanors under the judge’s order, The Macomb Daily reported.

The judge also sentenced him to 38 days in jail, which was the amount of time Mar-shall had already served.

Marshall had failed to perform promised work on four projects in Harrison Township

and two in St. Clair Shores.He and a company that

assisted him eventually com-pleted the work on two of the projects in Harrison Township and St. Clair Shores, and most of the work on one project in the township after complaints were filed three years ago.

Marshall’s attorney, Glenn McCandlis, said that the reason his client got behind on the projects was that he had suffered a “massive heart attack.”

In the face of economic hardship and spreading disease, several lawmakers urged Trump to sign the legislation immediately, then have Congress follow up with more relief.

16MONDAY 28 DECEMBER 2020

W ALRUWAIS : 18o → 23o W ALKHOR : 16o → 24o W DUKHAN : 17o → 22o W WAKRAH : 14o → 24o W MESAIEED : 14o → 24o W ABUSAMRA : 15o → 21o

Misty at places at first becomes moderate temperature daytime with scattered clouds, relatively cold by night.

Minimum Maximum17

o

C 24o

C

WEATHER TODAY

LOW TIDE 11:46 – 21:38

HIGH TIDE 04:22 – 13:54

PRAYER TIMINGSPPPPRAYRRRAAAYARA MMMMIINNNNNNNNNGGGGGGMMMMMMMMMIIINNNNNNGGGGNNNNGGGIINNNNGNNNNNNNNN

PRAYERTIMINGS

FAJRSUNRISE

04.55 am 06.18 am

DHUHR 11.35 am

ISHA 06.25 pmMAGHRIBASR 02.33 pm

04.55 pm

WHO chief calls for more investments in public healthIANS — GENEVA

World Health Organisation Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus yesterday called on countries to make greater investment in their public health systems to make the world better prepared for future epidemics and pandemics.

“History tells us that this will not be the last pandemic, and epidemics are a fact of life,” Ghe-breyesus said in his message as the world marks the first ever International Day of Epidemic Preparedness yesterday.

“But with investments in public health, supported by an all-of-government, all-of-society, one health approach, we can ensure that our children and their children inherit a

safer, more resilient and more sustainable world,” the WHO chief said.

The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the need for investing in systems to prevent, detect and respond to infectious disease outbreaks.

The first ever International Day of Epidemic Preparedness was called by the United Nations General Assembly to advocate the importance of the prevention of, preparedness for, and partnership against epidemics.

“With COVID-19 having now killed more than 1.7 million people, devastated economies, upended societies and exposed the world’s vulnerabilities in the starkest ways, the value of health emergency preparedness has hit home like never before,”

said UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres.

“As we strive to control and recover from the current pan-demic, we must think about the

next. Unfortunately, it is easy to imagine a virus just as infec-tious but even more lethal.”

The International Day of Epidemic Preparedness falls

on the birthdate of Louis Pasteur, the French biologist responsible for ground-b r e a k i n g w o r k o n vaccinations.

“Preparedness is a sound investment, costing far less than emergency expenditures. Societies need stronger health systems, including universal health coverage. People and families need more social pro-tection,” said the UN Secretary General.

“Communities on the frontlines need timely support. Countries need more effective technical cooperation. And we need to pay greater attention to the encroachment of people and livestock into animal hab-itats; 75 percent of new and emerging human infectious diseases are zoonotic,” he said.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus

COVID-19 hits culturalsector harder thanexpected, says UnescoIANSLIFE — NEW DELHI

The cultural sector, which accounts for 30 million jobs, is struggling to survive and needs our help. Culture has helped us out of the crisis, now we have to help culture and support the diversity to which it owes its strength, says Unesco Director-General Audrey Azoulay.

Unesco says that the impact of measures taken by govern-ments to respond to the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on culture professionals and on the sector as a whole, appears to be more severe than previ-ously assumed, according to data collected by the cultural organization and contained in a new policy guide.

In the film industry, it is estimated that ten million jobs was lost in 2020, while one third of art galleries are esti-mated to have reduced their staff by half during the crisis.

A six-month closure could cost the music industry more than $10bn in lost sponsorships, while the global publishing market is expected to shrink by 7.5 percent due to the crisis caused by the pandemic.

Responding to the crisis, which has led to the closure of a great many cinemas, theatres and bookshops and deprived artists of professional oppor-tunities, Unesco has developed tools for decision-makers pub-lished as a police guide ‘Culture in Crisis: A Policy Guide for a Resilient Creative Sector’, which is both a practical guide to help governments address the challenges artists and cul-tural professionals are facing during the pandemic, as well as offering advice on how to strengthen the resilience of the creative industries in the future.

Artists are often employed informally and are left behind. Women, who hold a higher proportion of precarious jobs in the arts and culture sectors, are particularly vulnerable to social and economic insecurity. Unesco which promotes tar-geted actions to achieve gender equality in these sectors, presents 15 key measures to address the impact of COVID-19 on the cultural sector.

The guide presents the three main types of actions taken by governments around the world: direct support to artists and cultural profes-sionals, indirect support to cul-tural and creative industries, and strengthening the compet-itiveness of cultural and cre-ative industries.

For example, Uruguay and Zimbabwe have established funds to support artists, the Philippines have provided indi-vidual financial assistance to hundreds of cultural workers affected by quarantine restric-tions, while Germany and the United Arab Emirates have commissioned and purchased works of art as a form of relief and income generation for artists.

Since the pandemic hit, concerts and festivals have been taking place online.

While research shows that COVID-19 has accelerated this change, according to one estimate, reducing to three months developments that would otherwise have taken five years; according to one estimate, the Unesco guide recalls that some 46 per cent of the world’s population have no access to an Internet con-nection, depriving almost one in two individuals access to arts during confinement.

Musicians perform in front of a hospital to congratulate child patients on the upcoming New Year, in Moscow, Russia.

Entertaining child patients

PPE art brings a festive smileto virus patients in MoscowREUTERS — MOSCOW

With medics and helpers covered in masks, medical glasses and protective suits, it is sometimes hard to convey festive cheer to the patients on Moscow’s COVID-19 wards.

But Leonid Krasner, who has been volunteering at a hospital since the first wave, has found a way with the colourful pic-tures he draws on the back of his overalls to help patients rec-ognise him and bring a smile to those being treated.

Krasner, 59, decorates his single-use suits before entering the wards every time he is in the hospital. He once drew a car-toonish plane for a sick pilot and

a congratulations card for a mother on Mother’s Day.

“This is to boost your mood and your immune system,” he told an old lady with an oxygen mask, charmed by the Christmas tree daubed on his back.

During the outbreak’s second wave, Moscow has reg-istered around 6,000-7,000 new infections every day, about a quarter of Russia’s nationwide caseload, and it has had to open several temporary hospitals, including one on an ice rink.

Krasner and some of his fellow volunteers are tasked with looking after the weak patients discharged from intensive care units to regular wards. They help them with

every day things like combing their hair, brushing their teeth and shaving. A former busi-nessman, Krasner was one of dozens of Muscovites with no prior medical experience who volunteered to help at corona-virus hospital number 52 in spring when the outbreak hit the Russian capital.

He ended up catching the virus himself shortly after his first shifts and it took him two weeks to recover at home before he could get back to his patients.

“Even if a person is in a bad way and is sick, they still need emotions... This cheers people up,” said Krasner outside a ward where he had been massaging the legs of a recovering patient.

UK libraries fall victim to funding cutsIANS — LONDON

The total funding for libraries in the UK was down by nearly 20 million pounds ($27m) in the year to March amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Falls in funding were matched by drops in bor-rowing, with budgets for next year set to fall by an average of 14 percent, Xinhua news agency quoted a report by the Guardian newspaper as saying.

Librarians warned about the impact of the cuts, partic-ularly in the face of the pan-demic, during which many branches have increased ebook availability and online services to meet demand.

Cuts, they believe, would inevitably have an impact on the people who need libraries most, estimating that England alone faced a funding gap of 4 million pounds due to the increased demand for libraries in 2020.

For many, libraries are more than just a resource, they also hold an important cultural and historical place in British communities. Chetham’s Library in Manchester is a fine example.

Chetham’s has been in continuous use as a public library for more than 350 years. It is housed in a beau-tiful sandstone building dating from 1421.

The library has welcomed the likes of Benjamin Franklin, one of the founding fathers of the US; Celia Fiennes, an English traveller and writer; and Charles Dickens, a famous British novelist, journalist and editor.

Chetham’s is also well-known for an oak desk in its reading room that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels had used during 1840s while exploring the condition of the working class.

Perhaps often mistaken as a middle class retreat, libraries have proven to be a valuable resource to those who need them most, according to veteran librarian Fergus Wilde.

Preparedness is a sound

investment, costing far

less than emergency

expenditures. Societies

need stronger health

systems, including

universal health

coverage.

Tedros Adhanom

Ghebreyesus

WHO Director-General

‘Wonder Woman 1984’ debuts with pandemic-best $16.7mAP — NEW YORK

Despite premiering simultane-ously by streaming service, “Wonder Woman 1984” managed the best box office debut of the pandemic, opening with $16.7m over the Christmas weekend, according to studio estimates Sunday.

That’s only a faint glimmer of typical business during the holiday season, when cinemas are usually packed and box office receipts are among the best of the year.

Last year, “Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker” exceeded $32m on Christmas Day alone. According to data firm Com-score, 35% of all North American theaters are cur-rently open.

But Warner Bros. could still celebrate the performance of “Wonder Woman 1984,” which landed in 2,150 theatres the same time it did on HBO Max. The film grossed an additional $19.4m in international

markets where it began playing a week earlier.

The Patty Jenkins-directed sequel, starring Gal Gadot, has made $85m globally to date.

“This is a very weak theat-rical opening,” said David Gross, who runs the movie con-sultancy FranchiseRe. “With more than half of North American theatres closed and the pandemic surging, the majority of moviegoers and fans have little choice but to watch the film on television. Early foreign openings have been weak as well.”

Warner Bros. has been come under criticism throughout Hollywood on its plans to divert “Wonder Woman 1984” and all of its 2021 titles to HBO Max, along with a theatrical run, in a bid to boost subscribers. Earlier this month, AT&T chief exec-utive John Stankey said the service has 12.6 million acti-vated users, up from 8.6 million on September 30.

Reports circulated over the weekend of some users having technical difficulties streaming “Wonder Woman 1984,” par-ticularly when playing the film through Roku. After months of negotiations, HBO Max went l i v e o n R o k u i n mid-December.

Warner Bros. nevertheless seized on the returns for “Wonder Woman 1984” as the best as could be expected, given the circumstances. The studio on Sunday announced that it would fast-track a third

“Wonder Woman” film, with Jenkins and Gadot returning.

“Wonder Woman 1984 broke records and exceeded our expectations across all of our key viewing and subscriber metrics in its first 24 hours on the service, and the interest and momentum we’re seeing indicates this will likely con-tinue well beyond the weekend,” said Andy Forssell, executive vice president and general manager for Warner-Media’s direct-to-consumer operations. “During these very difficult times, it was nice to give families the option of enjoying this uplifting film at home, where theatre viewing wasn’t an option.”

“Wonder Woman 1984” wasn’t the only big movie that detoured into homes over Christmas. The Walt Disney Co. steered the latest Pixar release, “Soul,” to Disney+. It opened theatrically in some interna-tional markets, most notably in China where it earned $5.5m.

Streaming numbers weren’t provided for either “Soul” or “Wonder Woman 1984.” WarnerMedia said nearly half of HBO Max’s subscribers watched “Wonder Woman 1984” on its first day on the streaming platform.

Universal Pictures released “News of the World,” a Western starring Tom Hanks and directed by Paul Greengrass, only in theatres. The Comcast-owned studio has pursued a different approach during the pandemic, cutting deals with exhibitors to radically shorten the exclusive theatrical window to as little as 17 days, before then moving movies to premium video-on-demand. “News of the World” grossed an est imated $2.4m domestically

E m e r a l d F e n n e l l ’ s acclaimed “Promising Young Woman,” starring Carey Mul-ligan, debuted in 1,300 the-atres, making $680,000 for Focus Features.

The Walt Disney Co.

steered the latest Pixar

release, “Soul,” to

Disney+. It opened

theatrically in some

international markets,

most notably in China

where it earned $5.5m.