Tuesday 9 June 2020

17 Shawwal - 1441

2 Riyals

www.thepeninsula.qa

Volume 25 | Number 8283

BUSINESS | 01 PENMAG | 03 SPORT | 08

QU holds 52nd place in THE Asia University Rankings 2020THE PENINSULA — DOHA

Qatar University (QU) has ranked 52nd in the Times Higher Education (THE) Asia University Rankings 2020 for the third year in a row despite the significant increase in the number of ranked universities (approximately 400 in 2019, nearly 500 in 2020).

The THE Asia University Rankings 2020 use the same 13 performance indicators as the THE World University Rankings after they are recalibrated to reflect the attributes of Asia’s institutions.

The universities are judged across all their core missions — teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook – to provide the most comprehensive and balanced com-parisons available. The performance indicators are grouped into five areas: the Industry

Income (7.5 percent), International Outlook (7.5 percent), Research (30 percent), Citations (30 percent), Teaching (25 percent)

QU President, Dr. Hassan bin Rashid Al Derham expressed his pride in achieving the 52nd place in the Times Higher Education (THE) A s i a U n i v e r s i t y Rankings 2020, saying that this achievement highlights QU’s con-

tinuous efforts to advance its standing in the Asia region.

He also stressed the University’s efforts to achieve excellence in education and high quality scientific research and its commitment to provide the best educational means for its students and to motivate them.

COVID-19: 1,597

more recover;

1,368 new casesTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Ministry of Public Health announced yesterday the regis-tration of 1,368 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 and recovery of 1,597 people, bringing the total number of recovered people in Qatar to 45,935.

The Ministry also announces that three people have died from the virus. The Ministry has expressed sincere condolences and sympathy to the families of the deceased.

The total number of positive COVID-19 cases recorded in Qatar till now stands at 70158 and there are 24166 active cases under treatment. So far, 57 people died from the coronavirus in Qatar. Ministry has tested 4113 people yesterday taking the total number of people tested so far to 259646, yesterday. Also 19 new cases have been admitted to intensive care due to health complications resulting from infection with the virus, bringing the total number of cases currently in intensive care to 241.

The Ministry also stated that there has been a small decrease in the number of acute COVID-19 positive patients being admitted to intensive care thanks to the measures taken by the Min-istry of Public Health and the con-cerned authorities to limit the spread of the virus, the most important of which is the early detection of the virus which can contribute significantly to reducing the severity of infection.

The Ministry explains that the patients who died yes-terday were receiving medical care in intensive care, and the deceased were suffering from several chronic diseases.

The Ministry affirms that efforts to tackle the virus in Qatar have succeeded in flat-tening the curve and reducing the impact of the virus mainly through the preventive measures taken and the coop-eration of all members of society, and that the number of new hospital admissions is now showing a limited decrease.

Anyone who has symptoms of COVID-19 should either quickly contact the 16000 hel-pline or go directly to one of the designated health centers for testing. The four main testing centers are: Muaither Health Centre, Rawdat Al Khalil Health Centre, Um Slal Health Centre and Al Gharafa Health Centre.

First phase Monday, June 15, 2020

Second phase July 1, 2020

Third phase August 1, 2020

Fourth phase Sep 1, 2020

T Limited opening of mosquesT 20% of employees start work at workplace with the

implementation of all precautionary requirementsT Trips outside Qatar in cases of extreme necessity

and everyone who returns to Doha will be subjected to hotel quarantine on their personal expense for full two weeks.

T Partial opening of some stores in shopping centers, provided that the area of the shop is not less than 300 square meters, and the capacity of the complex does not exceed 30 percent.

T 40% of the capacity in some private health facilities while continuing to provide emergency services

T Limited parks for exercise. Children under 12 years will not be allowed to enter.

T Sports training will be permitted in open spaces and large halls for the professional sportspersons for no more than 5 people.

T Opening of malls for limited hours

T Opening of markets and wholesale markets with limited capacity and specific hours

T Limited opening of restaurants with low capacity

T Museums and libraries with limited capacity and specific hours

T 50% of employees get back to their workplace with the implementa-tion of all precautionary requirements

T Low risk inbound flights for priority passengers like returning residents.

T The full opening of shopping centersT Opening wholesale markets with limited

capacity and specific hoursT Limited opening of restaurants with gradually

increasing occupancyT Reopening of driving schools will be allowed.T Nurseries and creches can reopen; meanwhile

all other educational institutions can resume operations in September.

T 80% of employees get back to their workplace with the implementation of all precautionary requirements

T 50% of the capacity for the following activities:

pools

T The full opening of shopping centers

T The full opening of markets and wholesale markets

T The completion of gradual opening of restaurants

T The total opening of museums and libraries.

T 100% of employees will start working from their workplace with proper health precautions

1 2 3 4

Private health clinics will be allowed to open 40% in the first phase, where in the second phase, it will become 60%, the third 80% and in fourth 100%, while continu-ing to provide emergency service

Amir issues order appointingAdviser to Amir on Economic Affairs

Qatar to gradually liftrestrictions in 4 phasesTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Qatar announced yesterday that the restrictions that were put in place to limit the spread of COVID-19, will be lifted in a phased way, with first phase starting from June 15. The second phase will start on July 1, the third on August 1 and the fourth on September 1.

Addressing a press con-ference yesterday, Assistant Foreign Minister and Spokes-person of the Supreme Com-mittee for Crisis Management, H E Lolwah bint Rashid bin Mohammed Al Khater, said that economic activities cannot stop indefinitely and there will be a gradual lifting of restrictions but with continued precautions.

“Gradual lifting does not mean that we do not take pre-cautionary measures. Health and safety is a priority with its various social, psychological and other dimensions,” said Al khater.

Giving details about gradually removal of restrictions, H E Lolwah bint Rashid bin Mohammed Al Khater advised the elderly people with chronic diseases, and the children should not to go out during the first and second phase of the lifting of restrictions.

The workforce will also return to offices gradually as 20 percent of employees will return to workplace in phase 1,

50 percent from phase 2, 80 percent in the third and 100 percent from phase 4. All employees will have to maintain strict health and safety measures.

Travel outside Qatar will be allowed only in cases of essential reasons and everyone who returns to Doha will be subjected to hotel quarantine on their personal expense for full two weeks.

In the first phase of health restrictions, there will be a limited opening of private health clinics with 40 percent capacity, which will increase to 60 percent capacity by second phase, 80 percent by third and 100 percent capacity by the fourth phase.

H E the Assistant Foreign Minister and Spokesperson of the Supreme Committee for Crisis Management said that partial opening of some stores in shopping centers with a con-dition that that the area of the shop is not less than 300 square meters, and the capacity of the complex does not exceed 30 percent. Entry to public parks

for exercise will be allowed but children under 12 years will not be allowed to enter.

Regarding sports training facilities, H E Lolwah bint Rashid bin Mohammed Al Khater said that sports training will be permitted in open spaces and large halls for the profes-sional sportspersons for no more than five people.

The second phase, starting from July1, will allow opening of malls for limited hours, opening of markets and wholesale markets with limited capacity and specific hours. It also includes limited opening of restaurants with low capacity, and museums and libraries with limited capacity and specific hours. �P2

Assistant Foreign Minister and Spokesperson of the Supreme Committee for Crisis Management, H E Lolwah bint Rashid bin Mohammed Al Khater (centre), addressing a press conference, yesterday. Also seen is Dr Abdullatif Al Khal (left), Co-Chair of the National Pandemic Preparedness Committee and Head of Infectious Diseases at Hamad Medical Corporation.

Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani issued yesterday Amiri Order No. 4 of 2020, appointing H E Sheikh Ahmed bin Jassim bin Mohammed Al Thani as an Adviser to the Amir on Economic Affairs. The Amiri order shall be imple-mented from the date of its issuance and to be published in the Official Gazette. -QNA

Gradual lifting does not mean that we do not take precautionary measures. Health and safety is a priority with its various social, psychological and other dimensions.”

H E Lolwah bint Rashid bin Mohammed Al Khater,

Assistant Foreign Minister and Spokesperson of the Supreme

Committee for Crisis Management.

ORT | 08

Barca, Real

renew

close-run

title race

Classifieds

and Services

section

included

Qatar marks

milestone towards

creating regional

hub of sports tech

02 TUESDAY 9 JUNE 2020HOME

MADLSA seminar highlights incentives for SMEsQNA — DOHA

The Ministry of Administrative Devel-opment, Labor, and Social Affairs (MADLSA), in cooperation with the ILO Project Office in Qatar and the Inter-national Organization of Employers, held a seminar entitled "The Economic Response Plan on Coronavirus (COVID-19)” for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Qatar.

The webinar aimed at exchanging ideas on specific short-term measures to support small and medium-sized companies and protect employment amid pandemic crisis of (COVID-19), as well as discussing best practices fol-lowed by governments and employers to support these companies.

Mohammed Hassan Al Obaidli, Assistant Undersecretary for Labour Affairs, reviewed the economic response plan and possible measures for small and medium-sized com-panies, and the ongoing efforts of the State to support them to address the threats they face as a result of the pan-demic, including exempting small and medium companies from covering the

costs of isolation and treatment, as the State provides all medical, food and housing expenses.

He also touched on the directives issued by the MADLSA related to the preventive measures to be followed in the workplace, housing and others on the contractual relationship, and the possibility of agreement between workers and employers that workers take unpaid leave, reduce working hours, or temporarily reduce wages in order to reduce the company’s costs during this temporary period, which encourages the building of sound industrial relations between workers and employers and solidarity during crises with a view to sustaining business.

For his part, Majid Al Khulaifi, Assistant Undersecretary for Com-merce Affairs at the Ministry of Com-merce and Industry, referred to the announcement by Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, on the financial incentives package to support the private sector at a value of QR75bn , or about 10 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP), policies and

programmes supporting the private sector, especially small and medium-sized companies, financially and logis-tically, besides tax exemptions and rent payments and utilities announced.

Khalid Al Mana, Executive Director of Business Finance at Qatar Devel-opment Bank (QDB), spoke about the national guarantees programme that was launched to respond to the reper-cussions of COVID-19.

For his part, Hamad Al Mulla, Assistant Executive Director of the Supervision and Control of Financial Institutions at Qatar Central Bank (QCB), praised the mechanism approved by banks in postponing the repayment of outstanding loan instal-ments and interest for some sectors for a period of six months starting from March 2020.

Matthias Thorns, Deputy Sec-retary-General of the International Organization of Employers (IOE), dis-cussed the impact of small and medium-sized companies worldwide, and presented international experi-ences in order to support them and avoid job losses.

Mosques to reopen under strict safety guidelines

THE PENINSULA — DOHA

The Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs has released an illustrative video for worshipers explaining the procedures to be followed for praying in mosque while announcing to reopen the mosques from June 15 under certain rules and regulation.

“We inform you that the mosques will be reopened for prayers (with the exception of Friday prayers) starting from June 15, and a specific number of mosques which will be announced later, according to specific precautionary measures illustrated in this video,” the Ministry said in a tweet.

As per the preventive measures, the worshipers should make ablution at home before going to mosque because the bathrooms and ablution places at the mosques will be closed.

The worshipers are asked to not go to the mosques earlier because the mosques will open with the call to prayer (Azan) only. There should be no crowding and people should maintain dis-tance of two meters with others.

The worshipers should avoid shaking hands even if they wear gloves and they should cover mouth and nose while sneezing and coughing. They should show the Ehteraz application to the to mosques’ administrators before entering the mosques.

The worshipers should bring their own prayer rug and not to share with others or leave it in mosque.

They should wear facemask as long as they are in the mosques. The wor-shipers should bring their own copy of the Holy Quran, or they can read Quran on their mobile phones.

The old and sick people are allowed to pray at home and people with chronic and dis-eases diabetics should pray at home according to the pre-ventive measures.

Stringent safety measures at health centersQNA — DOHA

Primary Health Care Corpo-ration (PHCC) has confirmed that it is taking the utmost care to protect patients and medical personnel from the risks of transmission of the corona-virus (COVID-19).

The Head of Al Thumama Health Center at PHCC, Dr. Hanadi Al Hail, said in press statements that PHCC has developed a comprehensive plan for health center patients that includes the presence of medical staff at the gates to take the pathological history of each patient and measure temperature and separate sus-pected cases with directing them to emergency department which prevents them from mixing with other patients, as well as organising waiting and

reception areas and marking and tips for social distancing to ensure everyone’s safety.

She explained that among the measures, medical consul-tations were activated remotely over the phone to communicate with patients in most services, such as family and specialty medicine clinics, dentistry, nutrition, psycho-logical and health education, while the health centers con-tinue to receive emergency cases, in addition, medicines are dispensed to patients through home delivery services in cooperation with Qatar Post, especially for the elderly who are more susceptible to the disease, in order to reduce the frequency of visitors to health centers for routine cases in order to preserve their safety and to reduce crowding and

infection risks.As for the precautions

taken to protect the medical staff, Dr. Hanadi Al Hail pointed out that the medical teams in health centers are constantly keen to wear medical facial masks, hand washing and the use of sani-tizers , while ensuring dis-tancing, especially since medical staff are considered models for patients.

On quarantine, Dr. Hanadi explained that the quarantine is usually applied when an infectious disease spreads, whereby those who are exposed to infection are required to remain at home or in a place designated for quar-antine in order to prevent the spread of the disease to others and as an attempt to control disease conditions.

She added that during quarantine, people are fol-lowed up in terms of the appearance of any pathological symptoms such as high body temperature and others, while the quarantine period is deter-mined based on the incubation period of the disease.

With regard to tests for COVID-19, Dr. Hanadi Al Hail said that PHCC first assesses cases by a doctor, and in the event that a person is suspected to be infected, a patient’s swab shall be made according to the protocol, where the results appear within 12 to 24 hours from the time of taking the samples, then the specialized team will inform the patient of the result and give the appro-priate instructions in both cases, whether the result is negative or positive.

Ministry successfully completes academic yearQNA — DOHA

The Ministry of Education and Higher Education has succeeded, with distinction, in completing 2019-20 academic year, despite COVID-19 epidemic, which halted education in most countries.

The Ministry implemented distance learning education system to complete the aca-demic year after parents and society feared the effects of the epidemic on the health and safety of their children, as well as a halt in education.

Minister of Education and Higher Education, H E Dr. Mohammed bin Abdulwahed Al Hammadi emphasised that the Ministry had taken all the pre-ventive and precautionary measures, among the measures taken by the country to curb the outbreak of coronavirus, to ensure the health and safety of the students and all of the schools’ employees during the exams.

The great success of the dis-tance learning process in com-pleting the academic year 2019-20 confirms that the coro-navirus pandemic did not affected the educational process, or even the start or start of the new academic year.

On March 23, students

began their studies through the distance education system and the Ministry cancelled the end of the second semester tests for the students from grade 1 to11 and replaced it by conducting an evaluation process for these students, provided that general and specialised high school stu-dents take the end of the second semester tests as usual. These tests started on June 1 and it will end on June 13.

Undersecretary of the Min-istry of Education and Higher Education Dr. Ibrahim bin Saleh

Al Nuaimi said in an interview to Qatar News Agency (QNA) that the evaluation process and the standards taken for the stu-dents from grade 1 to11 that planning for the evaluation process was carried out in par-allel with the education process through planning for daily and weekly assessments. He added that they are continuous assess-ments covering all learning goals and emphasized the joint responsibility of students, teachers, parents, school administrations and the edu-

cation affairs sector.He pointed out that the Min-

istry has received positive indi-cators in this regard, and there is accountability for any failure of all parties involved in the evaluation process in the Ministry.

He said that the Ministry prepared the educational content for distance study for each of the academic levels, by filming and producing videos of daily lessons, with a focus on providing the student with the concepts and values of these lessons on electronic links via the digital platforms provided.

With regard to distance learning for people with special needs, the Undersecretary said that the Ministry provided edu-cational materials that meet the needs of this group of students according to the level and type of disability.

On the level of private schools, the Undersecretary confirmed that the evaluation

process went well, where the application rate reached 100 percent, indicating the multi-plicity of systems used in private schools as a result of dif-ferent experiences in the e-learning system, and the dif-ferent policies adopted according to the special systems and curricula in each school.

Educational experts as well as schools administrations, teachers and specialists empha-sized that the remote educa-tional programs have assisted students to reach the content and do their homework through the internet, and so it reduced the teachers’ efforts in the daily and weekly evaluation process.

In addition it enabled the teacher in another hand to share the interactive lessons through using the whiteboard, texts, audio and video, as well as recording the illustrated and viewing lessons, which enabled the students to reach them at all times.

Minister of Education and Higher Education, H E Dr. Mohammed bin Abdulwahed Al Hammadi says the Ministry took all the preventive and precautionary measures to ensure the health and safety of the students and all of the schools’ employees during the exams.

QC wins Orphan Care Excellence AwardQNA — DOHA

Qatar Charity (QC) has won the Excellence Award in the field of orphan care (Kafel) for the current year, from the Regional Network for Social Responsibility in cooperation with regional and international organizations and bodies, during its participation in the activ-ities of the 3rd World Conference on Orphan Care 2020, which was held virtually.

Qatar Charity received the award in rec-ognition of its role in supporting compre-hensive orphan care services in the social, health, educational and entertainment fields.

The assistant CEO for International Oper-ations and Partnerships Sector at Qatar Charity Faisal Al Fehaida, expressed his hap-piness with this award that supports and encourages charitable work efforts, especially with regard to caring for the orphans.

Al Fehaida said that the award represents an additional incentive for Qatar Charity to upgrade its programs, develop its services, improve its performance in terms of quantity and quality, expand the circle of beneficiaries , especially sponsoring orphans, and support initiatives that care for them.

Qatar Museums joins observance of World Oceans DayRAYNALD C RIVERA THE PENINSULA

Qatar Museums (QM) joined the cele-bration of World Oceans Day yesterday by highlighting the importance of oceans and the urgent need to take important steps to save them.

Taking place on June 8, this annual international day officially recognised by the United Nations (UN) supports the implementation of Sustainable Devel-opment Goals worldwide, and fosters public interest in the management of oceans and their resources.

With this year’s theme “Innovation for a Sustainable Ocean,” this UN day celebrates the role of oceans in everyday life and inspires action to protect oceans and promote sustainable use of marine resources.

“Apart from covering 71% of the

Earth’s surface and holding 97% of our planet’s water, oceans play a key role in our existence. Oceans feed us, provide most of the oxygen we breathe and play a vital role in regulating the climate,” QM said in an email sent to Culture Pass members.

Different organisations around the world mark the day in various ways such as launching campaigns and initiatives and holding special events and activities such as competitions and festivals.

QM has been organising beach cleanups in a number of important areas around the country in collaboration with various organisations.

As it marked its first anniversary this year, the National Museum of Qatar (NMoQ) recently announced an open call for artists and designers in Qatar and around the world to submit creative designs for the museum’s new mascot

— the dugong which is a large marine mammal that has lived in Qatari waters for over 7,500 years.

The Arabian Gulf is home to the second largest population of dugongs in

the world, thus they are significant to Qatar. These mammals are currently on the World Wildlife Fund’s vulnerable list and raising awareness of them links to the museum’s key themes around sus-tainability and conservation.

The mascot design competition is part of the a special exhibition on Dugong NMoQ is working in collabo-ration with Exxon Mobil Research Qatar and is slated to open sometime next year.

The winning mascot design will be part of NMoQ’s living identity and will be featured in various educational pro-grams and publications of the museum.

On World Oceans Day, QM has also highlighted simple ways on how to save the oceans and recommended docu-mentary features to watch that raise awareness on the current status of oceans around the world and the chal-lenges that beset them.

National Museum of Qatar has sought creative designs for the museum’s new mascot, the dugong.

Minister of Education and Higher Education, H E Dr. Mohammed bin Abdulwahed Al Hammadi

Qatar announces

phased lifting of

restrictionsFROM PAGE 1

The third phase, which will begin from August 1, will include, the full opening of shopping centres, opening wholesale markets with limited capacity and specific hours, limited opening of restaurants with gradually increasing occupancy, reo-pening of driving schools.

In this phase nurseries can re-open, meanwhile all other educational institu-tions can resume operations in September.

The third phase will also allow opening of health clubs, fitness halls and swimming pools, beauty salons and massage centres and barber and hairdressers with 50 percent capacity of their capacity.

H E Lolwah bint Rashid bin Mohammed Al Khater said that the fourth phase includes the full opening of shopping centres, markets and wholesale markets, full opening of restaurants and museums and libraries.

For his part, Dr Abdul-latif Al Khal, Co-Chair of the National Pandemic Prepar-edness Committee and Head of Infectious Diseases at the Hamad Medical Corpo-ration, said If the precau-tionary measures were not applied during the gradual opening process, Qatar may return to the first phase of infection.

“We remind everyone that we did not reach this level except because of the commitment of all members of society to the preventive measures that we must con-tinue to practice routinely,” he said.

Al Khal said that Qatar has succeeded in flattening the curve and reducing the number of infections and this is because of com-mitment to the precau-tionary measures.

Assistant Undersecretary for Commerce Affairs at the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Saleh Al Khulaifi, said that customers above 12 years and less than 60 years will only be allowed to enter the malls and shopping complexes.

He said that the cus-tomers and those working in the malls are required to wear face masks and undergo temperatures meas-urement which is allowed 37.8 degree as maximum.

“The entry and exit of the malls will be regulated and visitors should produce Ehteraze app to ensure their status of COVID-19,” said Al Khulaifi. He said that the malls should provide sani-tizers in enough quantity.

03TUESDAY 9 JUNE 2020 HOME

WIZA intensifies

worker-safety

efforts amid

pandemic

QNA — DOHA

Qatari company for labor recruitment (WIZA) has inten-sified its preventive efforts to ensure the safety of its customers, employees and workers from the repercus-sions of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic by implementing its recently launched prevention program, which includes a set of preventive measures and educational activities aimed at preventing coronavirus infection and limiting its spread.

The prevention pro-gramme targets two segments: firstly, the employee category and the company's employment, and secondly, the community segment, espe-cially domestic work.

The first segment included the application of health and safety standards, social dis-tancing procedures at admin-istrative headquarters, housing and periodic checks, and the implementation of training and awareness pro-grams through various means with employees and workers in addition to adhering to rel-e v a n t g o v e r n m e n t decisions.

In this regard, remote work was applied in March to most of the employees, acti-vating the attendance feature and leaving via faceprint and location identification, and the program also included proce-dures for internal sterilization and periodic checks.

The second segment pro-vided awareness messages to the public and customers because of the company’s belief in the social responsi-bility entrusted to it.

Katara announces winners of World Children’s Day art contestTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

The Cultural Village Foundation (Katara) yesterday announced it received a total of 572 drawings from 390 participants aged seven to 14 years for its art competition organised in the run-up to this year’s World Children’s Day celebration.

The entries were submitted by children from 46 national-ities including those from India, Egypt, Qatar, Syria, Pakistan, the US, Canada, Japan, Italy, Turkey, the United Kingdom, Indonesia, Kazakhstan and Sudan, among others.

Launched on April 30, the competition was held in coop-eration with Qatar Post and entries were submitted via email.

Six winners were chosen among the hundreds of entries

to receive QR2,500 each and the rare chance for their drawings to be printed on postage stamps on the occasion of World Children’s Day.

The winners are seven-year-old Sunetta Earn from Malaysia, 14-year-old Simra Shamshad from India, nine-year-old Kashinadh SR, 13-year-old Abdullah Yusuf Al Mulla from Qatar, nine-year-old Najla Al Dirham from Qatar, and 11-year-old IIhem Boughanmi from France.

World Children’s Day is cel-ebrated on November 20 every year “to promote international togetherness, awareness among children worldwide, and improving children’s welfare” according to the United Nations.

It provides “an inspirational entry-point to advocate, promote and celebrate

children’s rights, translating into dialogues and actions that will build a better world for children".

This annual occasion coin-cides with two important UN General Assembly events namely the adoption of the Dec-laration of the Rights of the Child on November 20, 1959 and the adoption of the Con-vention on the Rights of the Child on November 20, 1989.

World Children’s Day takes on special significance for Katara, which directs programs and activities for children throughout the year aimed at developing their skills and honing their creativity, and cel-ebrating this day represents the culmination of the Foundation’s continuous efforts in achieving the utmost welfare for the children.

Last year, Katara marked this global celebration by organising the three-day Katara Children’s Festival which included a number of cultural, entertainment and educational events as well as workshops, games, Arabic calligraphy, and children’s murals among others. One of the highlights of last year’s celebration was a painting competition entitled, “Qatar in the eyes of children” organised in partnership with

Qatar Post. Katara’s World Chil-dren’s Day drawing contest was part of the series of activities and competitions being organised by Katara through its social media sites in the wake of global COVID-19 pandemic.

While majority of the activ-ities and competitions had been catered to citizens and resi-dents, a number of contests were opened for international participation. The competitions targetting mainly children five to 15 years old varied from cul-tural to literary to artistic and winners were awarded cash prizes. Its writing competition alone generated more than 1,800 participants.

In addition, Katara also suc-cessfully organised a slew of religious, cultural and heritage competitions during the holy month of Ramadan.

Qatar-Greece ties continuously developing: Envoy QNA — DOHA

Ambassador of the State of Qatar to the Hellenic Republic, H E Abdulaziz Ali Al Naama has affirmed the continuous development of Doha-Athens relations, and the great economic growth witnessed as a result of the estab-lishment of a Qatari-Greek business council specialised in the private sector to activate investment between the two countries.

In an interview with the News Agency of Greece, H E Ambassador Abdulaziz Ali Al Naama said that the Greek-Qatari relations are in a state of continuous development thanks to the constant com-munication between officials of the two countries and the exchange of official visits by high-level delegations.

He referred, in this context, to the presence of a Qatari interest in investing in Greece, saying: The State of Qatar has a prominent interest in the field

of investment and growing activity at the regional and international levels, noting that the State of Qatar raises the ceiling of its interest in the investment movement in Greece based on special agree-ments in the field of investment between the two sides, high-lighting in this regard the establishment of a Qatari-Greek business council spe-cialized in the private sector to activate investment.

He said that the State of Qatar had dealt with the corona virus pandemic at the local level, based on several pillars to combat the pandemic, which include: community awareness, checking, providing sufficient beds to receive infected cases, and allocating a number of hospitals to treat those infected with the coronavirus (COVID-19), by providing a sufficient number of beds.

H E Ambassador Al Naama added that the State of Qatar had made global cooperation a n d s o l i d a r i t y k e y

way to confront the COVID-19 pandemic in the world, by pro-viding humanitarian assistance to many friendly countries, including: Lebanon, Iran, Albania, Palestine, the Demo-cratic Republic of the Congo, the Republic of Angola, China, Nepal, the United States, Italy, Rwanda and Somalia and others, believing in the impor-tance of supporting brotherly and friendly countries in com-bating the virus.

He said that the State of Qatar, based on its conviction is ensuring the health and safety for all citizens and residents, coordinating facilitating the response, and providing assistance to countries in need to combat corona as a top

priority, and has repeatedly called for the necessity of inter-national cooperation to overcome this ordeal.

H E the Ambassador stressed that Doha had suc-ceeded in overcoming this unjust blockade and getting out of its negative effects, adding that the Qatari people folded its page and turned it into an incentive to achieve more political, diplomatic, economic and industrial achievements.

He pointed out that the State of Qatar, since the beginning of the Gulf crisis, had called for dialogue and remained sublime on the prin-ciple of reciprocity, and did not expel any of the citizens of the blockading countries, or

dispersed any Gulf family.Regarding the agreement

concluded between the United States and the Taliban in Doha, H E Ambassador Al Naama said that this agreement, which was sponsored by the State of Qatar, is of great importance, describing it as a “historic achievement” that contributes to peace in the region and enhances hope for ending the war that has been going on in Afghanistan for nearly 18 years and was the longest United States foreign wars.

On expectations of the State of Qatar organising and hosting the 2022 World Cup, H E the Ambassador con-firmed that Qatar has become a sports hub by hosting the 2022 World Cup, and it wel-comes all those coming to attend the World Cup, which will be held for the first time in the region, noting that the ongoing preparations for hosting it are in full swing and “fans and visitors will have an

unparalleled experience”, stressing that Qatar promises the world a unique edition of the World Cup.

H E Ambassador Al Naama said that the State of Qatar pays great attention to the workers’ rights within the framework of promoting and guaranteeing human rights in the country through the issuance of the law of permanent residence of foreign workers, and the amendment of entry and exit of expatriates and their resi-dence, besides issuing a law establishing a fund to support and secure expats, as well as the labor dispute resolution committees in the State.

He added that the State of Qatar had recently imple-mented comprehensive reforms with regard to labour laws and regulations to con-solidate basic rights in the field of work, considering that Qatar places the rights of all migrant workers at the centre of its economic and social policies

New building of IndonesianEmbassy inaugurated in OnaizaTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Indonesian Ambassador to Qatar, H E Muhammad Basri Sidehabi, offi-cially inaugurated the new Indo-nesian Embassy building in Onaiza on Sunday.

The inauguration of the new building was attended by the owner of the building, Muhammad Ibrahim Abdullah Obaidah Fakhroo and several representatives of Indo-nesian diaspora in Qatar. In accordance with the Qatari govern-ment’s regulation, the attendees wore face masks and practised physical distancing during the event.

In a statement, H E Ambassador Sidehabi emphasised the impor-tance of informing the public about the new Embassy building which reflects new spirit and good hope for a promising bilateral relation between Indonesia and Qatar.

H E the Ambassador also wel-comed all Indonesian citizens in

Qatar telling them to feel com-fortable in visiting the new Embassy premises at any time.

“Please consider the building as your second home, while you’re eight hours away from your own home. Be proud of such beautiful building,” he said.

The new Embassy, which has been operating since June 1, is located in House Plot No. 13 Street No. 943, Zone No. 66, Al Salmiya, Onaiza, Doha.

The Embassy will continue pro-viding service for around 27,000 of its citizens in Qatar.

The new office building will display Indonesia’s tourism desti-nations and cultural richness, as well as economic potentials, which include trade and investment sectors.

Before shifting to the new building, the Embassy was located in the New Salata Area for around 21 years since 1999.

Indonesia’s Ambassador to Qatar, H E Muhammad Basri Sidehabi; the owner of the building, Muhammad Ibrahim Abdullah Obaidah Fakhroo, and othersduring the inauguration of the new building of the Indonesian Embassy in Onaiza, Doha, on Sunday.

Sidra conducts complex airway surgery for kid with rare throat conditionTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Surgeons at Sidra Medicine, a member of Qatar Foundation, have performed a laryngotra-cheal reconstruction surgery on a baby born with a rare throat condition.

Baby Lulwa was born with a laryngeal web and subglottic stenosis. This meant that her upper windpipe (trachea) was very narrow and her larynx (also known as voice box) had a thick layer of web-like tissue covering it, making it difficult for her to breathe normally. The condition is a rare birth defect, with an estimated incidence of 1 per 4,000,001.

Dr. Faisal Abdulkader, Division Chief of Ear, Nose and Throat (ENT) and Otolaryn-gology, Sidra Medicine said: “When Lulwa was transferred to Sidra Medicine in late 2019, it was important to get a full picture of her condition so as to plan the right treatment program. Laryngeal web can sometimes be misdiagnosed for

asthma, as the symptoms of raspy breathing and shortness of breath are very similar. Without immediate inter-vention, the openness (patency) of her airway will be at risk.”

During her initial assess-ments at Sidra Medicine, a laryngoscopy, which is a small flexible telescope, was inserted into Lulwa’s airway to see the extent of the blockage and the thickness of the web-like tissue. Taking Sidra Medicine’s renowned multidisciplinary team (MDT) based approach to patient care, Dr. Abdulkader and the MDT reviewed all the options available — minimally invasive and surgery — in con-sultation with her parents.

Lulwa’s MDT-based care at Sidra Medicine was handled with the combined expertise of otolaryngology; head and neck surgery; pediatric anesthesia; the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU); speech and language therapy and child life services.

Laryngotracheal recon-struction surgery is considered

a best practice methodology and is used by some of the leading children’s hospitals around the world. It is a safe and stable procedure and a suitable alternative to clearing blocked windpipes without the need for a tracheostomy.

Lulwa underwent two phases of the reconstruction surgery. During the first phase, the division of her vocal cord

web and a balloon dilatation to her trachea was performed. This helped address the nar-rowing at her vocal cords however, her trachea needed more definitive surgical reconstruction.

The second stage of Lulwa’s reconstruction surgery involved inserting a small piece of car-tilage into the narrowed section of her windpipe to make it

wider. This final procedure allowed surgeons to open her airway to its full capacity for her breathe freely and clearly. An endotracheal tube was used as a stent to open the airway (known as intubation). She was then transferred to the PICU for a week to keep her intubated.

Lulwa’s parents said: “During our daughter’s initial assessments, we sought a second opinion with doctors outside of Qatar to confirm whether we were taking the right approach. We were assured when they validated that Sidra Medicine, with its expert team and technologies, was one of the best children’s hospitals in the Middle East to conduct the surgery. We couldn’t be happier to see our beautiful daughter thrive under the care and attention of the staff. We were equally impressed how we as parents were part of the decision making progress. This helped us become a very important part of our daughter’s recovery.”

In the weeks following surgery, the MDT team per-formed regular endoscopic exams and a video fluoroscopy to check on Lulwa airway and her ability to swallow. She was also assessed by a speech and language therapist and received an outpatient based care plan to ensure her full recovery.

Dr. Mansour Ali, Chair of Pediatric Surgery at Sidra Med-icine said: “I am very proud of the teamwork in Lulwa’s case. Despite the rarity and the com-plexity of her condition, this was the first time the management of such a case was performed in Qatar without the need for a tracheostomy. It is important to highlight the specialist expertise that we have at Sidra Medicine throughout the entire journey of care for our young patients — from our surgery to pediatric anaesthesiology, through PICU and child life services. We want families in Qatar to be assured of our commitment to providing the highest levels of care for their children.”

The baby after the successful surgery

The State of Qatar has made global cooperation and solidarity a key way to confront the COVID-19 pandemic in

the world, by providing humanitarian assistance to many friendly countries.

Katara’s World Children’s Day drawing contest was part of a series of activities being held online due to COVID-19.

04 TUESDAY 9 JUNE 2020HOME

THE PENINSULA — DOHA

United Development Company (UDC), a leading Qatari public shareholding company and master developer of The Pearl-Qatar and Gewan Island, has obtained five certifications for developing and implementing an Integrated Management System conforming to interna-tionally recognised standards set by the International Organ-ization for Standardization (ISO) including ISO 9001 (Quality Management), ISO 14001 (Envi-ronmental Management), ISO 45001 (Occupational Health & Safety Management), ISO 27001 ( Informat ion Securi ty Management) and ISO 18788 (Private Security Operations Management).

This international recog-nition was awarded to UDC by Alcumus – UK after a compre-hensive and extensive external audit of all the Company’s public services delivered to res-idents and visitors of The Pearl-Qatar.

These services cover Com-munity Management, and Co-Owners’ Association Man-agement services including hard and soft services, in addition to Landscape, Building

and Utility Maintenance of common areas.

In this context, UDC Pres-ident, CEO and Member of The Board, Ibrahim Jassim Al Othman said: “Achieving these ISO certifications, is a key mile-stone for UDC and a funda-mental pillar for establishing a performance and result-ori-ented culture based on quality in the implementation and management of our projects and service delivery, in line with Qatar National Vision 2030. It helps us to continually improve our customer experience and satisfaction, effectively manage

business risks and align our operations with international benchmarks through com-mitting to legal and regulatory requirements”.

Al Othman further added: “This certification was not possible without the deter-mined efforts of our employees and stakeholders who have helped shape UDC’s image as a leading regional developer. UDC is therefore fully committed to providing the highest standards of administrative, social and environmental practices in all its operations to achieve

community welfare, safety and security.”

UDC is a leading Qatari public shareholding company with a mission to identify and invest in long-term projects contributing to Qatar’s growth

and providing shareholder value. Established in 1999, the Company was first listed on the Qatar Exchange in June 2003. It has an authorized share capital of QR3.5bn and total assets of QR8bn as at March 31,

2020. UDC activities cover a multitude of vital investment sectors including real estate development, property man-agement, infrastructure and utilities, maritime and hospi-tality related businesses.

Achieving these ISO certifications, is a key milestone for UDC and a fundamental pillar for establishing a performance and result-oriented culture based on quality in the implementation and management of our projects and service delivery, in line with Qatar National Vision 2030.

Ibrahim Jassim Al Othman, President, CEO and Member of The Board

Huawei Mate Xs 5G exclusively available at Ooredoo eShopTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Ooredoo has announced its customers can now purchase the all-new Huawei Mate Xs 5G exclusively from its online Ooredoo eShop.

The sleek, foldable smart-phone is powered by the Kirin 990 5G chipset. With this at its core, the HUAWEI Mate Xs achieves cutting-edge speed and performance, allowing users to maximise the potential of the 5G era. The CPU archi-tecture of three-level energy efficiency brings ground-breaking performance with much reduced battery life consumption.

The device supports Multi-Window functionality, allowing for two apps to be displayed side by side interactively. Text, images and documents can be transferred easily via dragging and dropping the content from one app to the other.

The HUAWEI Mate Xs fea-tures a flagship SuperSensing Leica Quad Camera system with a vertical array along the

sidebar. The system consists of main wide-angle camera, an ultra-wide-angle camera, a tel-ephoto camera and a 3D Depth Sensing Camera.

Customers can stay home and stay safe while they get their hands on the latest device from Huawei; the Mate Xs 5G is available at the Ooredoo eShop for QR9,999 with free home delivery and a set of Freebuds 3 absolutely free.

Speaking of the new device, Sabah Rabiah Al Kuwari – Director PR at Ooredoo – said: “We know our customers place great importance on being able to access the latest devices and the most cutting-edge tech-nology, and we have many cus-tomers who covet high-end devices such as the Huawei Mate Xs 5G. We’re proud to be able to continue bringing these desirable new devices to our customers even in these chal-lenging times, and pleased we can enable customers to make purchases safely from home via our eShop.”

The Pearl-Qatar

Msheireb Properties offers virtual toursTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

In part of its continuous effort to adopt innovative ways of communication and reflecting current restrictions on social distancing, Msheireb Properties, the leading sustainable real estate developer in Qatar, has recently launched a new service that allows customers to virtually explore the new Al Khail apartments at Msheireb Downtown Doha from the comfort of their living rooms.

The new digital initiative revolves around the customer journey of exploration and cre-ating an immersive luxury experience for the customers. Consumers can go on virtual tours of the apartments with 360-degree viewings that reflect a real sense of immer-siveness that is as close to viewing the property in person.

Commenting on the launch

of the new service, Ali Al Kuwari, Acting CEO of Msheireb Properties, said: “Customer needs across the country are rapidly changing. With the advancement of digitization, Msheireb Properties has developed new ways to utilise technology that best meets the needs of the consumer and makes life easier while also adhering to life in a post-COVID-19 world. Those looking to have an enhanced lifestyle at Msheireb Downtown Doha can now easily explore our new Al Khail apartments through virtual tours without the need to leave their homes.”

“The new virtual tour for Al Khail apartments is part of our strategy to use technology for creating practical solutions that make customer experi-ences easy and safe. Our offerings can now be perused with the single click of a

mouse,” Al Kuwari added.Al Khail apartments are

located in Msheireb Downtown Doha, the flagship project of Msheireb Properties and the smartest most sustainable fully-built city district in the world. With different areas and facil-ities available for viewing, cus-tomers can tour the apartments, move around the rooms, hallways and balconies, utilize virtual measuring devices to calculate spacial measure-ments, and check the various amenities. The apartments are available in 2-bedrooms of dif-ferent areas, 3-bedrooms fur-nished, 3-bedrooms Duplex, and 4-bedroom apartments.

Additionally, the 360-degree viewing experience is available for Al Khail Courtyard, an open space garden for tenants, equipped for family gatherings.

Msheireb Downtown Doha, the flagship project of Msheireb Properties, is a smart and sus-tainable city that aims to change the current trends of urban developments and change the lifestyle of people and offer a new way to live, work, and entertain. Msheireb Properties has won numerous prestigious regional and international awards in the areas of sustain-ability, smart cities, and architecture.

‘Taraweeh’ radio program gets huge response from benefactorsTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

The “Taraweeh” radio program, produced by Qatar Charity in cooperation with the Al Quran Al Kareem Radio, witnessed a great interaction and received a favourable reaction from philanthropists and benefactors to the projects proposed by Qatar Charity at home and abroad.

The program, which was broadcast live in Doha, managed to contribute to easing the sorrow of 12 indebted persons, and providing

treatment for 10 cancer patients, in cooperation with the Qatar Cancer Society.

The benefactors also pledged to sponsor a number of orphans and families, including 100 families in Palestine, 100 orphans in Burkina Faso, and 30 orphans in Senegal, in addition to other projects.

Mohamed Rashid Al Kaabi, Assistant CEO for Communi-cation and Resource Devel-opment, extended his thanks and appreciation to the Al Quran Al Kareem Radio for its con-tinuous cooperation in

supporting and promoting Qatar Charity’s projects by broad-casting programs live, noting that it is a strategic partner of Qatar Charity in supporting humanitarian action.

Qatar Charity, through its radio and television programs, seeks to diversify its charitable programs and projects, and to maximize the number of bene-ficiaries within and outside the country.

The “Taraweeh” program aims to acquaint listeners with Qatar Charity’s projects, urge people to do good, and promote

moral values among people. The “Taraweeh” program,

through its 17 episodes throughout Ramadan, reviewed several charitable projects worldwide, such as building mosques and Quran memori-zation centers, helping low-income families affected by the coronavirus pandemic by pro-viding them with food parcels, and sponsoring orphans and poor families, in addition to drilling wells, running Tiba complex project for orphans in Sudan, and establishing multi-service centers.

Volunteers highlight importance of mental healthTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Irrespective of a crisis, being separated from loved ones causes a great deal of anxiety and stress. And coupled with quarantine or isolation, stress levels can sky rocket. Amid the current COVID-19 quarantine situation in Qatar, there is one such initi-ative that allows workers who have been quarantined to virtually interact with someone, speak in their native language, and share their anxieties.

The Connecting for Care Project (CFC) offers an interactive website (https://cfc.qa) that brings together volunteers and quaran-tined workers for friendly con-versations and support. “Those who come to chat seem to be happy with the service,” Sumedha De Silva said. “I feel like they were relieved to talk to someone who empathized with them and also gave them some information that they did not pre-viously know.”

De Silva has been volun-teering with Reach Out To Asia

– a program of Education Above All (EAA) and key partner in the CFC Project – since October 2017. Alongside De Silva, sixty other ROTA-EAA Volunteers have been actively resourcing the CFC website. From wanting to “make a difference, however small, in the world” to “genuinely wanting to help people”, these volunteers are passionate about their cause.

For Ranjiv Abraham, another ROTA-EAA Volunteer, his expe-rience with the CFC Project has been both challenging and rewarding. He is involved in “translation, proof reading, and fine-tuning the platform apart from the regular chat support for workers.”

Speaking about his expe-rience with CFC, he said: “One of the workers was concerned regarding the availability of food and medicine for his sickly parents due to the lockdown in India. I shared the contact infor-mation of various NGOs that could help in his locality and he was very thankful.”

Abraham also acknowledged

that workers felt good when being listened to. “Being listened to is one of the most important things people are missing in their busy daily lives and it’s hard to find someone to confide in.”

A study titled ‘Mental health outcomes of quarantine and iso-lation for infection prevention: A systematic umbrella review of the global evidence’ has indicated that individuals or populations who were quarantined or isolated have exhibited severe mental health problems such as post-traumatic

stress and depression. Globally, there is widespread concern about people’s mental health during quarantine with the United Nations calling for mental health to be treated as a core element of our response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“This project has provided some sort of relief to the workers during this trying time,” De Silva says. He also adds that it is important to make the workers feel that they are being cared for by the government, irrespective

of their work or visa status. “And that they can depend on the Qatar government for assistance during this difficult time.”

The CFC website offers live one-on-one chats in ten lan-guages, namely English, Arabic, Hindi, Urdu, Nepali, Bengali, Malayalam, Sinhala, Tamil, and Tagalog. Needless to say, speaking to someone in their native language facilitates easier and more effect ive communication.

“I’ve noticed that the visitors

are happy to know that they can speak to someone in their lan-guage,” says Asiya Shafi, another ROTA-EAA Volunteer. “I have been chatting sessions with workers in Hindi, and in almost all conversations I have been told that they feel calm being able to voice their concerns and be responded to in their language.”

In a session, Shafi says, she came across a visitor who com-plained that he had trouble sleeping and didn’t know why. Volunteering in a crisis situation, while being a rewarding expe-rience, can also be psychologi-cally challenging. In an honest response, Shafi says that the experiences do weigh her down, and she knows that there’s a limit to how much she can do. “We can’t fix all the concerns that are brought to our attention, all we can do is support them with a kind word or point out the resources that would be useful for them. But I constantly worry if I have done enough to support each visitor.”

Sumedha De Silva (left), Ranjiv Abraham (centre), and Asiya Shafi

UDC receives five ISO certifications

05TUESDAY 9 JUNE 2020 HOME

Palestinians protest

06 TUESDAY 9 JUNE 2020GULF / MIDDLE EAST

AFP — OCCUPIED JERUSALEM

Palestinian business owners in occupied east Jerusalem are worried they will be forced to shut up shop by Israeli authorities over plans to build a vast high tech hub in their neigh-bourhood.

The main thoroughfare through the Wadi Al Joz area, close to Jerusa-lem’s Old City, is lined by mechanic workshops and usually hums with the sound of car horns. But business owners are facing an uncertain future,

with fears that more than 200 premises could be forced to close including garages and popular restaurants.

Fathi Al Kurd, whose workshop opened in 1966, is worried that he and his two sons will not be offered another location. “My son has four children, if he doesn’t work for a week his children will starve,” the 77-year-old said.

“We can’t confront this (municipal) government, but we ask that they at least provide us with an alternative,”

he added. His son Muhannad Al Kurd, a car electrician, said a municipal official visited them last summer and warned “eviction is coming”.

East Jerusalem was occupied by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War and later annexed in a move never recog-nised by the international community.

The Jerusalem municipality aims to create a “new high tech centre” that would “reduce social gaps and eco-nomic inequality in east Jerusalem,” according to city hall.

Netanyahu moving ahead with annexation plans: Settler leaderAP — OCCUPIED JERUSALEM

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has assured Jewish settlers that he is going ahead with plans to begin annexing parts of the occupied West Bank next month, a settler represent-ative said yesterday.

Netanyahu told a group of settler leaders late on Sunday that President Donald Trump’s Mideast plan allowing the annexation has not been finalised, Oded Revivi, mayor of the Efrat set-tlement, said. But Netanyahu said that once a final map is agreed upon with the Americans, he will present it to settler leaders individually, Revivi said.

Despite what is widely viewed as a pro-Israel plan, some settlers have voiced concern that it does not go far enough. They note that many settle-ments would be turned into isolated enclaves surrounded by Palestinian territory. They also reject the US offer to recognise Palestinian statehood, albeit with far less land and far less authority than the Palestinians seek.

“This doesn’t answer all our dreams but you have to keep it in perspective and see what the alternative is,” Revivi said. “We have an opportunity with this

president, this prime minister and this international climate and we have to seize it.”

The schism in the settlement lead-ership burst into the open last week when David Elhayani, chairman of the Yesha Council, an umbrella settlers’ group, told an Israeli newspaper that the plan was inadequate and proved Trump was “not a friend of Israel.”

Netanyahu, fearful of upsetting his close ally in the White House, responded harshly, lauding Trump’s friendship and accusing the settler leadership of being ungrateful.

Revivi, a senior figure in Yesha, said the majority of settlers supported the plan, even if they harbored some con-cerns, and were solidly behind Netanyahu.

Netanyahu and much of his nation-alist base are eager to move ahead with annexation, especially with Trump facing shaky re-election prospects in November. The presumptive Demo-cratic nominee, Joe Biden, has said he opposes annexation.

Netanyahu has said he wants to annex parts of the West Bank, including the stra-tegic Jordan Valley and dozens of Jewish settlements, in line with Trump’s Mideast plan. He’s lauded the move as a historic opportunity to establish Israel’s per-manent borders, without having to evacuate a single settler. Previous peace plans have all included far greater Israeli concessions.

The US plan envisions leaving about one third of the West Bank,

which Israel captured in 1967, under permanent Israeli control, while granting the Palestinians expanded autonomy in the remainder of the ter-ritory. The Palestinians, who seek all of the West Bank as part of an inde-pendent state, have rejected the plan, saying it unfairly favours Israel.

They have already cut off key security ties with Israel and say they are no longer bound to agreements signed.

Iran urges people to wear face masks amid fears of new virus waveREUTERS — DUBAI

Iran’s health ministry urged people yesterday to wear face masks in public areas, state television reported, following warnings that the Islamic Republic could face a new wave of coronavirus infections.

Health officials said last week there could be a second, stronger wave of novel coro-navirus infections if people ignored social distancing rules. Iran’s death toll from the coronavirus reached 8,351 yes-terday, with 70 deaths in the pre-vious 24 hours, health ministry spokesman Kianush Jahanpur said. The number of new cases had dipped to 2,043, he said, bringing the total to 173,832.

“Everyone should wear masks when attending public places like shops or any other places where fully observing social distancing is not pos-sible,” Jahanpur said.

With 3,574 new infections, Iran recorded its highest number of cases in a single day last Thursday. The authorities have said wider testing may be

a reason for the increase in the number of cases reported.

Iran imposed restrictions to curb the spread of COVID-19 in mid-April. It started easing them after the daily number of deaths and infected cases fell, partly out of concern about the impact of the measures on the sanctions-hit economy. But the rate of reported infections rose again in May, and the government has been forced to reimpose restrictions in some provinces after localised outbreaks.

Meanwhile, the Kuwaiti Ministry of Health announced 662 new coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours, bringing the total infections to 32,510, while 5 deaths were reported raising the number fatalities to 269 .

All the new cases were in contact with previously infected people or are being investigated for sources of infection, the Health Ministry’s spokesman Dr. Abdullah Al Sanad said. Earlier, the Health Ministry announced the recovery of 1,037 people from the coronavirus, bringing the tally to 21,242.

Iranian doctor Majid Taheri (left), who had been detained in the United States for 16 months, is welcomed by his wife and an Iranian Foreign Ministry official upon his arrival at Tehran’s Imam Khomeini International Airport, yesterday.

Palestinians taking part in a demonstration against police brutality and in support of US protesters over the death George Floyd, an unarmed black man who died after a white policeman knelt on his neck during an arrest in the US, in the centre of the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah, yesterday.

Iranian scientist back home from US after prisoner swapAFP — TEHRAN

An Iranian scientist returned home yesterday after his release from a US jail in what the Islamic republic said was a prisoner exchange it hopes can be repeated between the arch-foes.

Majid Taheri — an Iranian-American who had been working at a clinic in Tampa, Florida —had been detained in the United States for 16 months.

He was freed on Thursday as Iran released US Navy veteran Michael White, who had been detained in the country since his arrest in July 2018.

Upon his arrival at Tehran’s Imam Khomeini International Airport, Taheri was greeted by deputy foreign minister Hossein Jaberi Ansari.

State media published pic-tures of the pair speaking to journalists.

“I hope to see the release of (other Iranians imprisoned abroad) in the near future,” Ansari was quoted as saying by ISNA news agency, adding his ministry would do its best to achieve this.

Ansari said the scientist was freed after months of efforts by the ministry in coordination with Switzerland, whose

embassy in Tehran handles US interests. Taheri for his part thanked Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.

“I thank the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran and dear officials, including Mr. Zarif, who worked hard, and other officials who took months to help release me, as an Iranian physician accused of circumventing US sanctions on medicine,” he was quoted

as saying. Taheri was the second scientist to have returned to Iran from the United States in the past week, after Cyrus Asgari flew home on Wednesday.

A US federal judge issued an order to free Taheri on time served.

Taheri had been accused of violating US sanctions by sending a technical item to Iran and in December pleaded guilty

to charges he violated financial reporting requirements by depositing $277,344 at a bank, repeatedly showing up with loose cash, according to court documents.

Government spokesman Ali Rabiei called on the US to release all Iranians in its custody. “We hope that this process of the full release of all Iranian prisoners in the United States will continue,” he said, quoted by ISNA.

“Iran is fully prepared to exchange all prisoners, and the US government is responsible for this procrastination.”

Taheri yesterday rejected accusations against him as “unfair and false”, according to Iran’s Fars news agency.

“I was helping the Uni-versity of Tehran to develop a cancer vaccine, especially for women,” he was quoted as saying.

Iran-US tensions have soared in recent years as Pres-ident Donald Trump has pursued a campaign of “maximum pressure” against America’s sworn enemy.

Since unilaterally with-drawing the US from the Iran nuclear deal in May 2018, Trump has hit the Islamic republic with sweeping sanctions.

Israel arrests 21

Palestinians in

Jerusalem raids

AP — OCCUPIED JERUSALEM

Israeli police rounded up 21 Palestinians in overnight raids in East Jerusalem, according to local residents yesterday.

Israeli forces raided several homes in Jerusalem’s Old City and Al Tur neigh-bourhood and took them into custody, they said.

Jerusalem remains at the heart of the decades-long Mideast conflict, with Pales-tinians insisting that East Jeru-salem — occupied by Israel since 1967 — should serve as the capital of a Palestinian state. International law con-tinues to view East Jerusalem, along with the entire West Bank, as “occupied territories” and considers all Jewish set-tlement construction there as illegal.

Iraqi security forces are deployed to enforce an extended curfew amid the COVID-19 pandemic in Baghdad, yesterday.

Call for expulsion of UAE-backed forces from SocotraANATOLIA — SANA'A

Hundreds demonstrated in the Yemeni island of Socotra yesterday to demand the expulsion of forces of the Southern Transitional Council (STC), which is backed by the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Waving Yemeni flag, pro-testers chanted slogans in support of President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi and in rejection of the STC’s self-rule. A statement issued by the dem-onstrators called for ending all forms of military presence in the island and reiterated

support for efforts by the inter-nationally recognized gov-ernment to maintain peace and security in the island.

Yemen’s southern prov-inces have witnessed repeated clashes between government forces and STC fighters since the latter declared self-rule in Aden late April.

Yemeni government forces captured the city of Ja'ar in the southern Abyan province on Sunday. The city fell to gov-ernment forces after fierce clashes with fighters of the Southern Transitional Council (STC), which is backed by the

United Arab Emirates (UAE).The source said Abdel-

Rahman Shineini, a senior com-mander of STC forces, was injured during the clashes.

The claim, however, was swiftly denied by STC spokes-person Mohammad al-Naqib, who said his forces had dealt with an "infiltration attempt" into the city.

Yemen has been devastated by a conflict that escalated in March 2015 after Iran-backed Houthi rebels seized the capital Sana'a and forced President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi to flee the country.

Israel to stop easing coronavirusrestrictions after spike in new casesREUTERS — OCCUPIED JERUSALEM

Israel will stop easing corona-virus restrictions after a sharp increase in new COVID-19 cases, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said yesterday.

“There is a very sharp rise in illness,” Netanyahu said in a statement. “The first thing we’ve decided to do is put the brakes on it. We’ve stopped all

the easings we were going to put in place in the next few days.”

Israel could already be facing a doubling of the infection rate within 10 days, Netanyahu said. He urged the public to keep social distancing, wear face masks and maintain good hygiene.

Netanyahu did not detail what planned relaxations had been shelved but Israeli media

reported that they included reopening the national rail service, theatres and cinemas.

Israel has reported a total of 17,863 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 298 deaths. After enacting restrictions early in the outbreak, the government eased its lockdown in mid-April and gradually allowed schools, businesses, shopping malls, beaches, shops and restaurants to reopen.

UN sends 72 truckloads of humanitarian aid to Syria's IdlibANATOLIA — HATAY, TURKEY

The UN yesterday sent 72 truck-loads of humanitarian aid to northwestern Syria, where millions of people are in need of assistance due to internal

conflict in the country.The trucks carrying supplies

entered Idlib, Syria through the Cilvegozu border gate in Tur-key’s southern Hatay province.

The aid will be distributed among residents of Idlib and

nearby rural areas. Syria has been ravaged by a civil war since early 2011, when the Assad regime cracked down on pro-democracy protesters.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed and

more than 10 million displaced, according to UN estimates.

Idlib falls within a de-esca-lation zone forged under an agreement between Turkey and Russia. The area has been the subject of multiple cease-fire

understandings, which have frequently been violated by the Assad regime and its allies.

It is currently home to four million civilians, including hun-dreds of thousands displaced in recent years by regime forces.

Palestinians fear expulsion for Jerusalem high-tech hubNetanyahu and much of his nationalist base are eager to move ahead with annexation, especially with Trump facing shaky re-election prospects in November. The presumptive Democratic nominee, Joe Biden, has said he opposes annexation.

Garbage-filled streetGarbage piles cover streets after heavy rainfall in Lagos, Nigeria, yesterday.

07TUESDAY 9 JUNE 2020 AFRICA

Libyan government forces press gains despite truce moveAP — CAIRO

Libyan fighters allied with the country’s UN-supported government in Tripoli pressed their advance yesterday, boosted by recent battlefield gains and their rivals’ with-drawal from around the capital, the warring sides reported.

The push came despite a unilateral ceasefire proposal over the weekend by Egypt, a backer of the rival Libyan forces commanded by Khalifa Haftar, who has waged a year-long campaign trying to capture the capital.

The Tripoli forces, backed by Turkey, gained the upper hand last week after retaking the capital’s airport, all main entrance and exit points to the city and a string of key towns near Tripoli, forcing Haftar’s fighters to withdraw — defeats their command painted as a tactical measure to give the UN-backed peace process a chance.

Haftar accepted Egypt’s proposal on Saturday, envisaged a ceasefire, as did

Aguila Saleh, speaker of the country’s east-based par-liament. But the militias fighting to defend Tripoli rejected the proposal, instead pushing eastward towards the coastal city of Sirte, a former stronghold of the Islamic State group that Haftar’s forces cap-

tured in January.In a press conference yes-

terday, Haftar’s spokesman, Ahmed Al Mosmari, said that his forces have stepped up air-strikes against the Tripoli militias in response, “and we will not stop until they commit fully to the (ceasefire) initiative

or are completely removed.”Tripoli-based Interior Min-

ister Fathi Bashagha said the government side would engage in political talks only after taking Sirte and also the inland Jufra air base, to the south. The US last month accused Russia of deploying at least 14 aircraft

at the base to support Russian mercenaries backing Haftar, a claim dismissed by Moscow.

Taking Sirte would open the gate for the Tripoli-allied militias to press even farther eastward, to potentially seize control of vital oil installations, terminals and oil fields that tribes allied with Hifter shut down earlier this year, cutting off Libya’s major source of income.

Jalel Harchaoui, a research fellow specializing in Libyan affairs at the Clingendael Neth-erlands Institute of Interna-tional Relations, said the Tripoli forces were unlikey to stop at Sirte.

“Now what do you have right to the east of Sirte, you have the most strategic area of Libya,” Harchaoui said, “you have effectively a series of oil terminals capable of exporting everyday more than 6,000 barrels a day.”

Libya’s national oil company meanwhile said on Sunday it has resumed pro-duction at the country’s largest oil field, after negotiations with the tribes.

A vendor displaying potatoes at his stall at a vegetable market in the eastern Libyan port city of Benghazi, yesterday.

Kenyans march in capital against police violenceAFP — NAIROBI

Around 200 people turned out yesterday for a protest in a poor Nairobi neighbourhood against police violence linked to the deaths of 15 people nationwide since the authorities imposed a curfew to fight coronavirus.

The crowd in the Mathare neighbourhood was composed mostly of young people and mothers carrying signs with the names of friends, neighbours and sons killed in police oper-ations in recent years.

“I am here to protest for our youth who have died in the hands of the police without any wrongdoings and we are saying enough is enough. As mothers, many of our youths have been killed while being labelled as thieves,” said Mathare resident Rahma Wako.

Kenya’s Independent Policing Oversight Authority (IPOA) reported last week it had received 87 complaints against police since the dusk-to-dawn curfew and heightened security measures were imposed on March 27.

Some 15 deaths and “31 incidents where victims sus-tained injuries” have been “directly linked to actions of police officers during the curfew enforcement”, it said.

In recent days, cities around the world have seen massive protests against racism and police violence prompted by last month’s police killing of George Floyd, a 46-year-old unarmed black man in the US state of Minnesota.

Though Floyd’s killing has not led to major protests in Kenya, activists on social media have seized the moment to highlight the country’s own

scourge of police brutality, which typically goes unpunished.

Kenya’s police force is often accused by rights groups of using excessive force and car-rying out unlawful killings, e s p e c i a l l y i n p o o r neighbourhoods.

In April, Human Rights Watch (HRW) accused the police of imposing the corona-virus curfew in a “chaotic and violent manner from the start”, sometimes whipping, kicking and teargassing people to force them off the streets.

It described the case of 13-year-old Yassin Hussein

Moyo who died in Nairobi on March 31 after being shot while standing on his balcony as police forced people into their homes on the street below.

Other cases include a tomato seller who died in western Kakamega after being hit by a teargas canister, and

four men who were beaten to death in different parts of the country. Interior Minister Fred Matiangi on Friday criticised police excesses, but “took exception to painting the entire service with the same brush”, his office said in a statement.

On Thursday, the IPOA

announced six police officers would be arrested and prose-cuted -- one for Moyo’s death; another for shooting dead a sec-ondary school teacher while responding to a burglary at a market in western Siaya; and four others for seriously assaulting a man during an arrest.

Residents of the Mathare slum carry placards, with some bearing the names of friends and neighbours who have been killed in the slum during security operations in the last few years, during a demonstration against what they term as arbitrary police killings in Nairobi, Kenya, yesterday.

Tunisia ends coronavirus curfew

REUTERS — TUNIS

Tunisian President Kais Saied yesterday ordered an end to a curfew imposed in March to help slow the spread of the coronavirus, his office said, citing success in controlling the disease.

Tunisia has already reo-pened shops, businesses, mosques, cafes and hotels after locking down nearly all normal business for months.

Tunisia has cut yesterday fuel prices by 1.5% for the third consecutive months the energy ministry said as global oil prices still low.

The new price cut is under a new mechanism for auto-matic price adjustments adpoted this in order to reduce fuel subsidies.

The price of a litre of gasoline will decrease by to 1.975 Tunisian dinars ($0.6919) from 2.005 dinars, the ministry said in a statement.

Tunisia expects hydro-carbon subsidies will reach 1.8 billion dinars out of 4 billion dinars allocated for all sub-sidies. But the low level of global oil prices will reduce the government’s fuel subsidie

Arrest of military pilot sparks protests in DjiboutiREUTERS — NAIROBI

The tiny Horn of Africa nation Djibouti has witnessed days of anti-government protests after a detained air force pilot said in a video clip he had been tortured, his lawyer said yesterday.

The government did not respond to a request for comment but Djibouti’s ambassador to neighbouring Ethiopia said the pilot, Fouad Youssuf Ali, had been arrested for treason. The envoy denied

that Fouad had been tortured.

“Many spontaneous protests in support of Fouad’s unlawful detention and mistreatment have taken place in Djibouti,” said the lawyer, Zakaria Ali, adding that some 200 people including members of the pilot’s family had been arrested in recent days.

“I visited him on May 13 and saw severe signs of torture on his legs,” Ali added.

Grainy footage posted on social media sites appeared to

show people protesting in the streets of Djibouti.

According to social media, the protests began last week after a video clip began circu-lating online showing the pilot being held in what appeared to be a toilet of a jail.

Asked about the case, Dji-bouti’s ambassador to Ethiopia, Mohamed Idriss Farah, said the pilot had been arrested on April 9 in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, where he had escaped after attempting to steal and fly a plane to Eritrea.

“He was extradited to Dji-bouti the following day on charges of treason, as he incited people to rebellion in a video he took in the plane,” Farah said.

“Claims that the pilot has been tortured while in detention are false,” he added.

Djibouti is home to both Chinese and US naval bases. Its strategic position on the Gulf of Aden means it overlooks the world’s busiest shipping lanes for oil cargos, but many of its citizens are impoverished and

human rights groups say abuses by the security forces are common.

Independent news sites are blocked in Djibouti and journalists often arrested and beaten, global media watchdog Reporters Sans Frontieres says.

“We should not underes-timate the ability of the gov-ernment to be very brutal in its response if the unrest con-tinues,” said Rashid Abdi, a Nai-robi-based Horn of Africa political analyst.

At least half of mystery deaths in Nigeria’s Kano due to COVID-19

REUTERS — ABUJA

As many as 60% of the “mysterious” deaths in Nigeria’s northern Kano state were likely due to the new coronavirus, the govern-ment’s health minister said yesterday.

Nigeria’s task force on COVID-19 sent a team to the northern economic hub in late April to investigate and conduct “verbal autopsies” after local newspaper the Daily Trust reported a spike in deaths to around 150 people in Kano city.

Government Minister of Health Osagie Ehanire said the inves-tigation found a total of 979 deaths were recorded in eight municipal local government areas in Kano state at a rate of 43 deaths per day, compared with the typical death rate of roughly 11 deaths per day.

“With circumstantial evidence as all to go by, investigation suggests that between 50-60% of the deaths may have been trig-gered by or due to COVID-19, in the face of pre-existing ailments,” Ehanire said.

He said the peak in deaths occurred in the second week of April, and that by the beginning of May, the death rate had gone back down to the normal rate.

The Kano state government had said the deaths were caused by complications from hypertension, diabetes, meningitis and acute malaria and not the COVID-19 pandemic.

Sudanese demand end to lockdown

REUTERS — KHARTOUM

The transitional civilian government, which runs Sudan under a power-sharing deal with the army, ordered most businesses, markets, schools and mosques to shut and imposed travel restrictions nearly two months ago.

But it is facing growing demands to end the restric-tions from a population mired in poverty and facing annual inflation of nearly 100% as well as complaints that promised aid for poorer Sudanese has failed to materialise.

"We demand that the lockdown is lifted immediately so that we can... get on with our lives, because hunger is worse than corona,” said Othman, who is paid by the day. And it is not only the poor who are unhappy.

“We’re facing huge daily financial losses,” said super-market owner Magdi Yousif.

The government says the lockdown, extended again in the capital Khartoum until June 18, has helped to curb the pandemic.

Sudan has so far reported 6,081 confirmed cases of COVID-19, the lung disease caused by the new corona-virus, with 359 deaths. The daily infection rate, at around 200, is much lower than, for example, in neighbouring Egypt.

Kenya’s Independent Policing Oversight Authority (IPOA) reported last week it had received 87 complaints against police since the dusk-to-dawn curfew and heightened security measures were imposed on March 27. Some 15 deaths and “31 incidents where victims sustained injuries” have been “directly linked to actions of police officers during the curfew enforcement.

The reopening of schools provides a new opportunity to extend education to the children persistently excluded from schooling before the crisis.

08 TUESDAY 9 JUNE 2020VIEWS

CHAIRMANDR. KHALID BIN THANI AL THANI

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

editorinchief@pen.com.qa

ACTING MANAGING EDITORMOHAMMED SALIM MOHAMED

m.salim@pen.com.qa

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

EDITORIAL

IT’S BEEN 100 days since the first case of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) emerged in the State of Qatar. Ever since, a total of 70,158 confirmed cases of the infection and 57 deaths have been recorded in the country. However, timely and effective pre-ventive measures adopted by the state and quality healthcare for those infected has resulted in the country having a very high recovery rate and one of the lowest mortality rate in the world. Majority of the total COVID-19 patients — 45,935 — have already fully recovered.

The past few weeks witnessed a large number of new cases as well as several deaths from COVID-19 as the country passed through the peak phase of the outbreak. However, as the health officials have indi-cated, the country has succeeded in flattening the curve, which means the spread of virus has been slowed down. Concerted efforts by the government have also meant that the impact of the virus has been reduced by 75 percent.

The approach by the government to focus on tracing, testing and isolating cases of infection has started showing gains as the number of daily new cases seems to have levelled off and come down in recent days. Qatar has tested 259,646 people for COVID-19 so far, which is one of the highest testing rates in the world per one million people.

Treatment using plasma donated by recovered patients has also shown positive results. Half of the more than 170 patients who have received plasma so far in the country improved and eventually recovered. A plasma donation center has been set up at Hamad Medical Corporation’s Communicable Disease Center. Initially, the plasma has been given to very sick patients but after encouraging results the officials say it can now be given to patients with moderate COVID-19 infection before they reach the stage where they require intensive care.

Qatar’s virus-tracing mobile phone app, Ehteraz, has also been very effective in the fight against COVID-19. The app, which is mandatory for all outside homes, will help authorities in gradual lifting of the restrictions as it has added an extra layer of protection for the community. Citizens, residents as well as busi-nesses have adopted the app as part of collective efforts to curb the pandemic. Many stores, banks and telecom companies are encouraging their customers to use the app.

The app, which could earlier be activated using only a Qatari ID number, now also allows activation using a visa number if the user does not have an ID number.

100 days of COVID-19

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF OFFICE: TEL: 4455 7741 / 767FAX: +974 4455 7758

MANAGING EDITOR: TEL: 4462 7505

DEPUTY MANAGING EDITOR: TEL: 4455 7769

LOCAL NEWS SECTION: TEL: 4455 7743

BUSINESS NEWS SECTION: TEL: 4462 7535

SPORT NEWS SECTION: TEL: 4455 7745

ONLINE SECTION: TEL: 4462 7501email: INFO@PEN.COM.QA

PUBLIC RELATIONS: TEL: 4455 7613email: PR@PEN.COM.QA

ADVERTISING DEPARTMENT: TEL: 4455 7837 / 780FAX: 4455 7870, email: adv@pen.com.qa

CLASSIFIED DEPARTMENT: TEL: 4455 7857email: adv@pen.com.qa

SUBSCRIPTION & DISTRIBUTION: TEL: 4455 7809 / 839 FAX: 44557819, email: info@tawseelqatar.com

D-RING ROAD, POST BOX: 3488, DOHA - QATAREMAIL: editor@pen.com.qa

Quote of the day

Racism has no place in the population,

nor in the police. I want zero tolerance

for racism in the law enforcement

agencies.

Christophe Castaner, French Interior Minister

Students queue before being screened as schools begin to reopen after the coronavirus disease lockdown in Langa township in Cape Town, South Africa, yesterday.

“I loved school,” said 11-year-old Radwan. “I liked to study math, and I miss going to school very much.”

Radwan could be any one of the more than 1.5 billion stu-dents whose schools closed because of the COVID-19 pan-demic, but he is not. Radwan is Syrian, and fourth grade ended for him when his family fled the war to Turkey. He is among the 258 million children and youths, including half of all refugee children, who were out of school last year.

Without education, children do not gain the skills they need to fully participate in society and exercise their rights. They are more vul-nerable to exploitation, including child labour, child

marriage, sexual violence, trafficking, and recruitment into armed groups and forces. Education helps economies, and when children are not in school, societies lose all the benefits that education brings. These include passing on health information, which in a pandemic is critical.

School closures necessi-tated by the COVID-19 pan-demic risk undermining the benefits reaped from marked increases in school enrollment in recent decades. While schools in only a few places have reopened, many are considering how and when to safely resume. Important new guidance for officials making those deci-sions has come out that addresses how to get schools running again. But children like Radwan, and his three brothers and sisters who were also already out of school, are still missing from the picture.

The reopening of schools provides a new opportunity to extend education to the children persistently excluded from schooling before the crisis. These children should feature prominently in government plans. Education can be built back better - if it is done right.

First, as schools prepare to reopen, governments will have to do intensive outreach to ensure that at-risk children return. This should include pregnant, parenting, and married girls; children sent to work as families sink deep into poverty, leaving them unable to pay school costs; children with disabilities or underlying health conditions whose families fear that they

are at greater risk if they return; and children who simply fear they have fallen too far behind. Governments and schools should compare who left school and who came back, and seek out those who fell away. Outreach should be broad, to include children who were already out when schools closed.

Second, once schools open, educators will need additional support. Many will be unable to take up where they left off but will be forced to adapt to students at an unusually wide range of levels, from those who enjoyed books, internet, and quiet places to learn to those who had no real distance learning for months.

Children with disabilities who were unable to get accessible materials or were not provided with needed accommodations may be especially disadvantaged. The need to help so many students catch up makes it plausible to incorporate those who were out for other reasons.

Third, governments should eliminate discrimi-natory rules that prevent children from attending. This should include policies that explicitly block refugee children for political or other reasons. Bangladesh, for example, should lift its prohi-bition on formal education for most Rohingya refugee children and allow humani-tarian agencies to provide it. Armenia, Kazakhstan, and Serbia - to name a few - should end their discrimi-natory practices against children with disabilities.

Governments should also change policies that harm all students and encourage dropouts, by banning corporal punishment, mandatory preg-nancy testing, and the exclusion of pregnant stu-dents and young mothers. Governments that have not done so should prohibit mil-itary use of schools.

International education donors, including the World Bank, Education Cannot Wait, and the Global Partnership for Education - and donor gov-ernments such as those of the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, and France and other European Union countries - should use their leverage, especially when pro-viding new funding, to secure commitments now that coun-tries will take these steps.

Finally, in light of profound financial pressures on the global economy from COVID-19, both host govern-ments and education donors should not only target funding for education but also recon-sider the low priority so long given to providing education under emergency conditions.

Many officials are parents whose new experience with their own children missing school should give them a better understanding of the impor-tance of resuming education for all children as quickly as pos-sible. This is a lesson from COVID-19 that should be learned for good: education should be vigorously protected, and truly be available and accessible to every child.

Zama Neff is the chil-dren’s rights director at Human Rights Watch.

NISHA GOPALAN BLOOMBERG

I returned to the office this week, joining thousands of bankers from Citigroup to Morgan Stanley that are trickling back to their desks in Hong Kong. After almost five months working from home, it’s going to take some getting used to.

The easing of coronavirus lockdowns heralds the beginning of the end for the world’s greatest work-from-home experiment. Perhaps. Twitter will let employees work from home permanently even after the outbreak recedes, while others such as Google have said staff should expect to stay away for the rest of the year. The upheaval caused by the pandemic has caused many to question

whether we will ever return to business as usual, giving rise to headlines such as “the death of the office.” I have my doubts.

My initial reaction at being told to stay home in January was panic. With two teenage daughters about to start online schooling and a husband who would also need to work from home, I struggled to see how our crowded 47th-floor apartment would cope. I’d had a taste already, when the office became all but inaccessible for several days during the height of Hong Kong’s protests last year, so I knew what we were facing. Over the following, fractious few months, I have jostled for space on the dining table, mediated disputes between the girls, and tussled over the yoga mat - a crucial stretching prop for laptop-induced shoulder strains, as

well as an essential accessory for online PE classes.

Somewhere along the line, I grew to like it. I’ll miss the home-work experience, when it finally ends. The family has bonded more tightly as a result. I’ve grown accustomed to the home-office rhythm, acquiring some admittedly unhealthy habits along the way -- such as snacking on Cheetos, binging on TV news channels, and reading the obituaries.

I’m in the minority, though. We’re fortunate in having more living space than most. In a city such as Hong Kong, which is densely packed with tiny apartments, it’s simply not viable for many people to work from home indefinitely. The average apartment size is 40 square meters (430 square feet)

compared with 137 square meters in New York City, according to Jones Lang LaSalle Inc. Many employees just don’t have the room to set up a home office. And living in such cramped quarters, they need to get out regularly.

The cost-benefit equation for Hong Kong is skewed. With urban areas being closely packed and the subway system efficient, getting to the office is quick and easy for most people. It may be a different story in the U.S., where cities sprawl into the suburbs, commute times may be long, and public transport is often less reliable. Or in Asian metropolises such as Mumbai, which is densely packed but plagued with hor-rendous traffic congestion and a more than 150-year-old train network that make suburban working attractive.

When schools reopen, many children will be missing

/PeninsulaQatar

/ThePeninsulaQatar

/Peninsula_Qatar

/ThePeninsulaNewspaper

+974 6698 6188

www.thepeninsula.qa

The office isn’t dead. It’s just convalescing

Established in 1996

ZAMA NEFF AL JAZEERA

09TUESDAY 9 JUNE 2020 OPINION

Most of us encounter a version of Keynesianism in Econ 101 courses, where we learn that Keynes was the guy who counseled governments to spend big during recessions to help bring the government out of the doldrums.

Eleven years ago, environ-mental scientist Jesse Ausubel dreamed aloud in a commencement speech: What if scientists could record the sounds of the ocean in the days before propeller-driven ships and boats spanned the globe?

They would listen to chit-chat between blue whales hundreds of miles apart. They would record the familiar chirps and clicks among a pod of dolphins. And they would do so without the cacophony of humankind - and develop a better understanding of how that undersea racket has affected sea life.

It was a flight of fancy, more aspirational and inspi-rational than a plan.

At first, Ausubel says, he (very fancifully) suggested a year of a “quiet ocean,” during which shipping would come to a halt, or at least slow down. Then a month. And finally, just a few hours.

As far-fetched as even that was, a small fraternity of about 100 similarly curious scientists picked up on his vision. In 2015, they published a plan of how to conduct the

International Quiet Ocean Experiment, should the opportunity ever present itself.

When the COVID-19 pan-demic sparked an extreme economic slowdown in March, sending cruise ships to port and oil tankers to anchor, they mobilized. Last month, they finished cobbling together an array of 130 underwater hydrophone listening stations around the world - including six stations that had been set up to monitor underwater nuclear tests.

“Well, we’re not excited that COVID happened, but we’re happy to be able to take advantage of the scientific opportunity,” says Peter Tyack, a professor of marine mammal biology at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and one of the early instigators. “It would have just been impossible any other way.”

Tyack says the recordings should give scientists a never-before glimpse of the ocean with little human inter-ference. It’s a bit like looking at the night sky if most of the world’s lights were turned off.

He says some research suggests large whales have adapted to man-made noises by raising their voices and their pitch. He speculates that many species also have moved to quieter regions of the world so they can find food, and one another, more easily.

Generally, the group will be looking to see if the whales

and other sea mammals adapt to the quieter oceans by low-ering their volume, communi-cating more efficiently or shifting their habitat.

Some of the project’s lis-tening posts are connected to land via cables, but many of them are not and the recordings have to be retrieved by ships. Now that economies around the world are reopening, the quiet oceans group has started gath-ering the soundscape data.

It won’t be until the end of

the year, however, that the researchers will have cleaned up the recordings and can compare them to previous years for changes in human and animal noise alike.

The focus of the serendip-itous project is on the so-called SOFAR (Sound Fixing and Ranging) channel, a natu-rally occurring ocean stratum in which sound can travel long distances.

It’s where large baleen and fin whales sing for a lover or join in a friendly chorus. But it’s also where the human racket from fishing boats, tankers and motorboats, as well as oil rigs and wind tur-bines, gets trapped and then propagated around the world.

Sound waves travel farther and faster in water than in the air. That’s espe-cially true of the bass notes of a whale’s song, the low grinding of a ship’s shaft, even the rumble of a nuclear explosion. Those sounds can travel hundreds or even thou-sands of miles, bending around the planet by bouncing up and down in the SOFAR channel, a kilometer-deep band of water.

The 130 recording stations used by the researchers are a hodgepodge of locations and sensitivity in that channel. Part of the planning process includes identifying and recruiting partners who operate listening stations run by governments, universities, environmental groups and other agencies.

The humblest station is four kilometers off the Spanish coast and operated by the Polytechnic University of Barcelona. It records sound up to 10 kilom-eters away. At the other extreme are six stations, each with mul-tiple hydrophones, operated by the Vienna-based Compre-hensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization. Those stations can not only pinpoint underwater nuclear explosions anywhere on the planet, but also eavesdrop on whales an ocean away.

Ausubel, the director of the Program for the Human Environment at New York’s Rockefeller University, says he and his fellow dreamers were ready, even if their plan seemed unrealistic.

“We spent a lot of time planning: How would you try to set up this kind of study, even though we realized that it wasn’t really practical?”

But the plan, Ausubel says,

anticipated moments of opportunity such as an extreme weather event, not a pandemic.

“Immediately after a hur-ricane or a typhoon, it’s very quiet for a day or two because of the fear of large waves or storms,” he says. “Fishermen don’t go out to sea; shipping routes are changed; oil and gas platforms may be shut down.”

Amid the pandemic and the lockdowns that ensued, major ports in the Northeast of the United States, such as Boston, Philadelphia, New York and Baltimore, saw a nearly 50% drop in ship and boating traffic in April com-pared to the same month in 2019, according to Marine-Traffic, a ship-tracking firm.

Large European ports, such as Lisbon, Antwerp, Le Havre and Rotterdam, saw about a 25% drop in the same month, the firm said.

“I think there’ll be some variability in different places, which is quite important to test this,” Tyack says. “It isn’t really a controlled experiment, so it’s better to have 50 different sites, some of which noise is much lower and some of which it isn’t, to be able to look at the impact of the reduction.”

Still, Ausubel says he already sees anecdotal evi-dence that marine mammals are changing their behavior.

“There have been obser-vations near Vancouver of orcas coming closer to the city than was customary, and off Scotland,” he says.

Orcas, dolphins and humpback whales, which communicate using high-fre-quency sounds that don’t travel particularly far, often congregate in shallower waters. They may have moved closer to once-busy ports and harbors, he speculated.

The group hopes to publish a paper this summer that gathers anecdotal reports of changes observed in recent months. At the end of the year, a group led by Tyack will report how much the volume went down. And finally, next year, the researchers aim to publish a full analysis of how the reduction in sound changed the behavior of marine mammals and other marine life.

“What did the pre-indus-trial ocean sound like,” Tyack says, “and how are marine ecosystems going to respond to that?”

Pandemic offers scientists unprecedented chance to “hear” oceans as they once were

Who’s afraid of big spending now? Across western democ-racies, the impact of the coro-navirus pandemic has compelled governments of various stripes to unleash fiscal stimulus on their battered societies. Even before the virus paralysed much of the global economy, public attitudes toward austerity had long soured, with parties across the political spectrum increas-ingly embracing more active social spending and eschewing platforms that touted cuts.

In “The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy and the Life of John Maynard Keynes,” journalist Zachary Carter vividly explores the career of the early 20th-century econ-omist whose prescriptions for economic crises linger with us. As The Washington Post’s review of the book puts it, gov-ernments are “still in thrall” to Keynes in myriad ways, but especially when faced with the troubles of our present. Carter,

a reporter at HuffPost, spoke to me about Keynes and his legacy. Below is an edited version of our chat.

Q: What do we mean when we talk about “Keynesianism?”

A: Most of us encounter a version of Keynesianism in Econ 101 courses, where we learn that Keynes was the guy who counseled governments to spend big during recessions to help bring the government out of the doldrums. But Keynes himself never wanted to be remembered as a deficit therapist. He was a social thinker who was concerned with the great problems of his day: war and economic depression.

Q: Are there ways in which he viewed social goods and the responsibilities of law-makers that would challenge the mainstream norms of our present, especially in America?

A: Very much so. Keynes was deeply afraid of social upheaval and revolution, but his social values were essen-tially radical. He was a gay man who lived with a com-munity of pacifist artists and writers, who was very com-fortable living against the grain of the social norms of his time. But I think he would be perplexed by what we deem to be political battles in the United States. He thought

economic policy was the central political battleground for social justice, and the way economics has become tech-nocratised and hived off from mainstream politics as an arena for specialists would have both excited and frightened him. He would be terrified by the idea that central political questions about equality and inequality have become the terrain of experts who essentially rule in favor of inequality, regardless of which political party is in charge. Keynes viewed ine-quality as a very dangerous thing - it’s something that preoccupied him when he wrote “The Economic Conse-quences of the Peace” and “The General Theory” - his two masterpieces.

Q: For all the impact he’s had on economic policy thinking, he faced repeated political disappointments through much of his career.

A: I think there are very few people who have culti-vated such monumental political legacies who had such pathetic political careers. Keynes lost essentially every public policy battle he waged between 1917 and 1941. All of his economic thought was developed in an attempt to prevent another calamity like World War I, and he obviously failed in that project. But that failure forced him to be

increasingly ambitious with his thinking. If he had been able to persuade governments at Paris in 1919, for instance, to cancel international debts, we might never have seen “The General Theory.”

Q: The conventional under-standing now places Keynes, a champion of stimulus, against Milton Friedman, who came after him and is seen as a champion of austerity. Is that a useful binary?

A: I think we lose track of the fact that Friedman and Keynes had different social visions. They weren’t just arguing across the genera-tions about which policies would best create the same desired result. They were arguing about what kind of world they wanted to live in. And the mathematicisation of economics in the 20th century really obscures this deeper ideological conflict, often by design. Keynes wanted eve-ryone to live in the Bloomsbury of 1913, having their hair cut by Virginia Woolf while drinking cham-pagne and debating post-impressionism with Lytton Strachey. Q: So literal cham-pagne socialism?

A: It depends on which Keynes you’re talking to, but by the end of his life, I think that’s about right. Keynes had a com-plicated relationship with the word “socialism.” He was

ferociously critical of the Soviet Union. But he also thought the socialist Labour governments in Britain during the 1920s and 1930s were much too timid and insufficiently committed to eco-nomic justice for working people.

Q: Given the pandemic and the kind of spending many governments are mus-tering now, are we entering a new age of Keynesianism?

A: In a narrow sense, we’ve always been living in a Key-nesian world. Even Repub-licans spend big to save the economy. But since 2008 and particularly today, it’s obvious that there is no market economy absent political support for economic activity, and recovery will require pro-found, long-term guidance from today’s great powers.

Keynes never stopped believing in the potential for people to create a better world, even as the world in his own lifetime descended deeper and deeper into chaos and dys-function. There was no problem he believed democ-racies were incapable of over-coming. People criticized him for being naive, but I don’t think democracies can afford to break that faith in the future.

Ishaan Tharoor is a col-umnist on the foreign desk of The Washington Post, where he authors the Today’s WorldView newsletter and column.

The economist who could save the world

MAURICE TAMMAN REUTERS

ISHAAN THAROOR THE WASHINGTON POST

Amid the pandemic and the lockdowns that ensued, major ports in the Northeast of the United States, such as Boston, Philadelphia, New York and Baltimore, saw a nearly 50% drop in ship and boating traffic in April compared to the same month in 2019, according to MarineTraffic, a ship-tracking firm.

When the COVID-19 pandemic sparked an extreme economic slowdown in March, sending cruise ships to port and oil tankers to anchor, they mobilized. Last month, they finished cobbling together an array of 130 underwater hydrophone listening stations around the world - including six stations that had been set up to monitor underwater nuclear tests.

Shipping containers sit on train tracks amid the spread of the coronavirus disease, in Los Angeles, California.

10 TUESDAY 9 JUNE 2020ASIA

India reopens morepublic places amidrecord infectionsAGENCIES — NEW DELHI

With shopping malls, places of worship, restaurants and state borders reopening yesterday, some of the last vestiges of India’s 10-week-long corona-virus lockdown disappeared even as the country reported its highest single-day death toll and experts said things would get worse.

In the capital of New Delhi, shoppers applied hand sanitiser and underwent temperature checks before entering Ambience Mall, where a sign read: “Welcome back to the life-style you love.”

The doors were also reo-pened at New Delhi’s historic Jama mosque. The troughs for washing before prayers had been drained, and the carpet was replaced with floor markings encouraging wor-shipers to practise social dis-tancing on their own prayer rugs.

Instead of marigold gar-lands and other temple offerings, staff at Hanuman shrine gave visitors thermal checks and hand sanitiser.

But a committee of experts warned the New Delhi gov-ernment that such measures would do little to slow the infection rate, and that it would need to nearly double its hos-pital bed capacity by the end of June as the number of cases needing treatment is expected to surge.

With cases doubling every two weeks, “we will require 15,000 beds by the end of June,” the committee’s head, Dr. Mahesh Verma, wrote to

the government.About a quarter of New

Delhi’s 83 hospitals treating COVID-19 patients were full by yesterday afternoon, according to a government-run online dashboard. About half of the city’s 512 available ventilators were in use.

The numbers have crossed 28,000 in the capital, stretching limited health resources.

Over the weekend, New Delhi’s top official, Chief Min-ister Arvid Kerjiwal, said hos-pital beds would be limited to city residents, amid rising demand from people in the neighboring corporate hubs of Noida in the state of Uttar Pradesh and Gurugram in Haryana state.

But, federal authorities yes-terday struck down an order by the Delhi city government to reserve hospital beds for residents.

Delhi Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal, who represents the federal government, said denying treatment simply because someone was not a res-ident of the capital would be legally impermissible.

“All government and private hospitals and nursing homes have to extend all COVID-19 treatment facilities without any discrimination against residents or non-residents,” he said in an order.

Delhi has also stopped hotels from reopening as it might want to convert them into temporary hospitals if there is a big jump in cases. Health experts say India’s peak could still be weeks away, if not months.

India’s lockdown — one of the world’s most stringent — was considered mostly effective

in staunching the spread of the virus. Most industry shut down, and a stay-at-home order was imposed for all but a handful of essential activities.

But in recent weeks, as restrictions have gradually eased to help India’s ailing economy and get millions of poor daily wage earners back to work, cases have soared nationwide.

The Health Ministry reported another 9,983 cases yesterday, raising India’s count past 256,000 to fifth most in the world. It also reported 206 fatalities, the highest single-day

rise, bringing the country’s death toll to 7,135. Like else-where in the world, the actual numbers are thought to be higher for a number of reasons, including limited testing.

There has been a surge in infections in India’s vast coun-tryside following the return of hundreds of thousands of migrant workers who left cities and towns after losing their jobs.

India had already partially restored train services and domestic flights and allowed shops and manufacturing to reopen.

People walk along the sea front after the government eased a lockdown imposed as a preventive measure against COVID-19, in Mumbai yesterday.

Policemen turn to yoga sessionsto boost health during pandemicAFP — DHAKA

Sitting cross-legged on mats in a courtyard, dozens of Bang-ladesh policemen breathed in and out in sync as they took part in mass yoga sessions organised to boost their health during the coronavirus pandemic.

Police officers played a key role in enforcing a lockdown in the country of 168 million people before it was lifted at the end of May.

But the virus has also infected more than 6,000 officers throughout Bangladesh, with 19 dying of COVID-19.

In the capital Dhaka, at least 1,850 policemen got the disease and 10 died, according to gov-ernment figures.

“They are playing a vital

role staying on the streets to maintain law and order,” said Rajon Kumar Saha, a spokesman for Dhaka police’s diplomatic security division, which initiated the yoga ses-sions on Sunday.

“It was important to keep them stress-free during duty,” he said.

Coronavirus cases in the impoverished nation were rising daily even during the lockdown, and experts fear there could be sharper increases with the economy now opening up.

In congested Dhaka, main-taining social distancing has been difficult for locals, adding to the pressure on police and other law enforcement agencies, Saha said.

“We were instructed to do

what could be done to morally boost the force amid this crisis. This yoga is a part of that mission for us,” he said, adding that up to 1,200 personnel will participate in the sessions.

Yoga instructor Shama Makhing, who led some 100 officers in stretching and breathing exercises early Monday, said the ancient practice from India would support the officers physically and mentally.

“They cannot skip duty,” Makhing said. “Therefore it is important for the policemen to be fit. Yoga... can help with their breathing.” The unit’s deputy chief Muhit Kabir Sarneabat said police were considering rolling out yoga and other physical exercises for officers in other divisions.

Bangladesh arrests 19 suspected people smugglersAP — DHAKA

Authorities in Bangladesh have arrested at least 19 suspected people smugglers following the killings last month of 26 Bang-ladeshis in Libya who were trying to reach Europe illegally, police said yesterday.

Detectives have arrested six people since Sunday in Dhaka, Bangladesh’s capital, in con-nection with the migrant workers who were killed or injured in Libya, raising the total number of detained suspects to 19, said Abdul Baten, additional commissioner of the Dhaka Metropolitan Police.

A series of arrests have been made in Dhaka and elsewhere

in recent weeks, with Bangla-desh’s police chief saying the people smugglers will not be spared.

In last month’s attack in Libya, the family of a slain Libyan human trafficker attacked a group of migrants in a town that recently had changed hands amid the fighting over the country’s capital, killing 26 Bangladeshis and four African migrants.

The Libyan government has said 11 other Bangladeshis were wounded in the May 28 attack.

The UN migration agency said the migrants were shot and killed in a smuggling warehouse in the desert town of Mizdah,

where a group of migrants were being held.

Baten said the crackdown on the rogue recruiters of migrant workers and human smugglers continued after two separate cases were filed by the victims’ families following the killings.

He said it appeared that the victims of the attack had been trafficked to Libya via India, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt.

He also said the victims were detained in various camps in the North African nation and subjected to physical and mental torture.

The traffickers made video and audio recordings of the

victims and sent them to their families in Bangladesh to extract money, Baten said.

Bangladesh’s inspector general of police, Benazir Ahmed, had earlier said that “the way our people were b r u t a l l y k i l l e d i s unacceptable.”

“No one will be spared who has deceived our citizens … took them overseas and are respon-sible for these miserable deaths,” he said.

Migrants fleeing poverty and conflict in Africa and the Middle East typically pass through Libya on their way to Europe, departing Tripoli’s rocky coast in inflatable dinghies.

The Libyan coast guard, trained by the European Union to keep migrants from reaching European shores, intercepts boats at sea and returns them to Libya, where many migrants land in detention centers rife with torture and abuse.

Sending workers abroad is crucial for Bangladesh’s economy. Some 10 million Bangladeshis working overseas send home about $20 billion per year.

Saudi Arabia has long been the largest source of remit-tances, followed by the UAE, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain, Kuwait, Libya, Iraq, Singapore, Malaysia, the United States and Britain.

Ardern dances for joy after New Zealand eliminates coronavirusREUTERS — WELLINGTON

New Zealand lifted all social and economic restrictions except border controls after declaring yesterday it was free of the coronavirus, one of the first countries in the world to return to pre-pandemic normality.

Public and private events, the retail and hospitality indus-tries and all public transport were allowed to resume without the distancing rules still in place across much of the world.

“While the job is not done, there is no denying this is a milestone... Thank you, New Zealand,” Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern told a news conference, saying she had danced for joy at the news.

“We are confident we have eliminated transmission of the virus in New Zealand for now, but elimination is not a point in time, it is a sustained effort.” New Zealand’s five million people are emerging from the pandemic while big economies such as Brazil, Britain, India and the United States continue to grapple with spread of the virus.

Its 75 days of restrictions included about seven weeks of a strict lockdown in which most businesses were shut and eve-ryone except essential workers had to stay home.

“Today, 75 days later, we are ready,” Ardern said, announcing that social dis-tancing restrictions would end at midnight.

Ardern said she had done a “little dance” when she was told there were no more active COVID-19 cases in New Zealand, surprising her two-year-old daughter, Neve.

“She was caught a little by surprise and she joined it having absolutely no idea why I was dancing around the lounge.” New Zealand has reported 1,154 infections and 22 deaths from COVID-19 since the virus arrived in late February.

Ardern had vowed to elim-inate, not merely contain, the virus, which meant stopping transmission for two weeks after the last known case was cleared. For now, everyone entering the country will continue to be tested and quarantined.

Ardern was quickly trending on Twitter, and many said they wanted to move to New Zealand.

“Such news really brightens up your day! There is hope and this too shall pass for the entire world,” one user tweeted.

Former prime minister Helen Clark tweeted: “Clear leadership and an engaged public have produced this result.” Ardern, 39, has won global praise for her leadership during the pandemic.

Her popularity at home has soared and recent surveys suggest she is well placed to win a second term in Septem-ber’s election.

Even so, the government will need to show it can revive the economy, which is expected to sink into recession. Oppo-sition parties have criticised Ardern’s decision to maintain restrictions for so long.

Ardern did not commit to a timeline for a quarantine-free ‘travel bubble’.

“We will need to move cau-tiously here. No one wants to jeopardize the gains New Zealand has made,” she said.

Members of the Bangladesh police attend a yoga session to boost the immune system of police personnel during the COVID-19 pandemic, in Dhaka, yesterday.

50% of Singapore’s

new COVID-19

cases are

symptomless

REUTERS — SINGAPORE

At least half of Singapore’s newly discovered coronavirus cases show no symptoms, the co-head of the government’s virus taskforce said yesterday, reinforcing the city-state’s decision to ease lockdown restrictions very gradually.

Tiny Singapore has one of the highest infection tallies in Asia, with more than 38,000 cases, because of outbreaks in cramped dormitories housing thousands of migrant workers.

It reopened schools and some businesses last week after a near two-month lockdown, but many residents are still required to work from home and mix socially only with their families.

“Based on our experience, for every symptomatic case you would have at least one asymptomatic case,” said Law-rence Wong, adding that the discovery was made in recent weeks as Singapore ramped up testing.

“That is exactly why we have been very cautious in our reopening plans,” Wong said.

Singapore has not previ-ously disclosed how many asymptomatic cases it has recorded. Wong did not reveal the number of asymptomatic cases in Singapore, which has reported 6,294 infections in the last two weeks, mainly among migrant workers.

China said 300 symp-tomless COVID-19 carriers in its central city of Wuhan, the pandemic epicentre, had not been found to be infectious. But some experts say asymp-tomatic infections are common, making for a huge challenge in controlling the disease as countries start exiting lockdowns.

Wong said that while asymptomatic individuals had fewer opportunities to spread the virus as they were not coughing or sneezing, there have been cases of asympto-matic transmission in Sin-gapore, especially between patients living in close quarters.

“People have commented - why are we not reopening the economy faster?” Wong said. “We have to take a more cautious approach. There are still asymptomatic cases which we may not have detected cir-culating in the community.”

Singapore plans to give all its 5.7 million residents a small Bluetooth device, worn on a lanyard or carried in a handbag, to trace interactions with virus carriers.

There has been a surge in infections in India’s vast countryside following the return of thousands of migrant workers who left cities and towns after losing their jobs. The country reported its highest single-day death toll and experts said things would get worse.

11TUESDAY 9 JUNE 2020 ASIA

Taliban say readying for talks with Afghan leadersAP — ISLAMABAD

The Taliban have started putting together their agenda for nego-tiations with the political lead-ership in Kabul, Taliban officials said, a significant first step toward talks seen as perhaps the most critical next phase in the Afghan peace process.

No date has yet been set for negotiations but Washington’s peace envoy is currently criss-crossing the region in efforts advance the US-Taliban accord signed earlier this year.

Zalmay Khalilzad, the architect of Washington’s deal with the Taliban, was in Pakistan over the weekend, meeting with the political and military leadership, according to a US Embassy statement yesterday.

The Taliban leadership

council, meanwhile, began taking proposals from its members in preparation for the start of negotiations, Taliban officials said, speaking on con-dition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

They cited Taliban leader Haibatullah Akhunzada, who expressed the insurgent group’s readiness to participate in the

talks with Kabul.A sticking point ahead of the

talks was the exchange of pris-oners between the warring sides. After stalling for weeks, the prisoner swaps unfolded and by yesterday, the gov-ernment had released 2,710 Taliban prisoners, according to Javid Faisal, spokesman for the national security adviser’s office in Kabul.

Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen says the insurgents have so far freed 531 Afghan military and civilian gov-ernment personnel they held captive.

Shaheen, however, tweeted that the government freed so far only 2,284 Taliban prisoners. The discrepancy could not be immediately explained, but the Taliban have been counting only those prisoners they had listed as part of the US-Taliban deal.

This deal calls for the Kabul government to release 5,000 Taliban prisoners and the Taliban to free 1,000 gov-ernment and military personnel ahead of the negotiations - an exchange billed as a goodwill gesture.

The accord, signed February 29, was seen as Afghanistan’s

best chance for peace and an opportunity for US and Nato troops to leave the war-torn country after nearly two decades of fighting.

The withdrawal of interna-tional forces, which has already begun, is tied to promises from the Taliban that they will not allow Afghanistan to be used as a staging arena for attacks against the United States and its allies.

Washington also wants Tal-iban’s help in battling the Islamic State group, based in eastern Afghanistan and increasingly active in recent weeks. The US has blamed IS for a horrific attack on a maternity hospital in Kabul last month that killed 24 people, including two infants and several mothers.

IS has also claimed respon-sibility for several attack over

the past two weeks, including on a busload of journalists that killed two people.

Khalilzad, who was in Doha, Qatar, meeting the Taliban at their political headquarters before going to Pakistan, was expected sometime yesterday in Kabul for a meeting with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani as well as his longtime political rival, Abdullah Abdullah. The two have since signed a power-sharing agreement.

Sediq Sediqi, a spokesman for Ghani said the president would like to see talks with the Taliban start in one month. However, he did not clarify whether the Afghan gov-ernment would release the remaining 2,000 plus Taliban prisoners beforehand, which has been a pre-condition for the start of negotiations.

Pakistan cracks down on safety breaches as virus cases top 100,000REUTERS — ISLAMABAD

Authorities in Pakistan have stepped up enforcement of government safety measures after a rise in the daily number of coronavirus infections pushed total cases to more than 100,000.

Official statistics released yesterday showed 103,671 infections and 2,067 deaths from the virus. Record numbers of new infections over the last 10 days partly reflect increased testing.

The south Asian nation lifted its lockdown last month, putting protocols in place for the reopening of markets, industries and public transport — including mandatory wearing of masks and social distancing.

But Planning Minister Asad Umar, who is in charge of the national response to the

pandemic, told a weekend news conference that many markets and shops had been sealed because of non-compliance over the last few days.

“First we educated the masses about the protocols, then we warned them, and now, in the last meeting with the prime minister in the chair, we directed administrations to crack down on places protocols are not being followed,” he said.

Of 23,000 daily tests, more than 1 in 5 have been positive over the last 10 days. Before the lockdown was lifted on May 9, the number of tests finding the coronavirus was approximately 1 in 10, government statistics show.

Government officials say safety protocols are not being followed, particularly since just before Eid Al Fitr, which marks the end of the holy fasting

month of Ramadan.The decision to lift the

lockdown on May 9 despite increasing infections of the coronavirus, which causes the respiratory illness COVID-19, was prompted by a worsening

economic cris is and unemployment.

Pakistan is the 16th country to exceed 100,000 infections, a Reuters tally showed.

Infections among high profile political personalities

has also increased in the country, with Minister for Railways Shaikh Rasheed, and former prime minister of Pakistan Shahid Khaqan Abbasi also test ing posit ive yesterday.

Commuters return from Islamabad, in Rawalpindi yesterday. Pakistan has recorded more than 100,000 cases of coronavirus, health authorities said.

No students in

school without

virus vaccine,

says Philippines

AFP — MANILA

Tens of millions of children in the Philippines will not be allowed back to school until a coronavirus vaccine is available, officials announced Monday, saying they may have to broadcast lessons on TV.

Nations like France and South Korea began resuming face-to-face classes as they got their outbreaks under control, but Philippine authorities see the risk as too great.

President Rodrigo Duterte said last month that even if students could not graduate, they needed to stay out of school to fight the spread of the disease.

“We will comply with the president’s directive to postpone face-to-face classes until a vaccine is available,” education secretary Leonor Briones said in a statement yesterday.

Classes are to resume at the end of August and teachers will use distance learning methods via the Internet or TV broadcasts where needed, Briones added.

Millions live in deep poverty in the Philippines and do not have access to com-puters at home, which is key to the viability of online classes.

“The teacher and the school will have to adjust... depending on the availability of communication,” Briones said in a press briefing.

There has been little public opposition to the post-ponement of face-to-face classes in the Philippines, where hundreds of new infec-tions are being detected daily despite early and strict lockdown measures.

HK security law like ‘anti-virus software’: Beijing officialAFP — HONG KONG

A sweeping national security law that will soon be imposed on Hong Kong will be “like installing anti-virus software”, a top Beijing official said yesterday, in a speech that warned democracy protesters had gone “too far”.

The comments by Zhang Xiaoming, deputy director of the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, were the most detailed from a senior party cadre since Beijing announced plans last month to outlaw subversion, secession, terrorism and foreign interference.

His remarks came a day before the restless city marks one year since huge and often violent protests erupted, raging

for seven straight months in the most direct challenge to Bei-jing’s rule since the city’s 1997 handover.

“Once in force, this law will be like installing anti-virus software into Hong Kong, with ‘One Country, Two Systems’ running more safely, smoothly and enduringly,” Zhang said, referencing the model by which China allows Hong Kong certain freedoms and autonomy denied to its citizens in the authori-tarian mainland.

Opponents fear the law — which is currently being drafted in Beijing and will bypass Hong Kong’s legislature — will bring mainland-style political oppression to a business hub sup-posedly guaranteed freedoms and autonomy until 2047.

On the authoritarian mainland, anti-subversion laws are routinely used to stamp out dissent.

During his speech, Zhang repeated Beijing’s assertions that the law would only target an “extremely small number of people”.

“The opposition camp radical separatists have been mistaking the central govern-ment’s restraint and for-bearance for weakness and timidity,” he said. “They have gone too far.” Millions of Hong Kongers hit the streets last year during the months of rallies, the culmination of years of rising fears that Beijing was prema-turely eroding the city’s freedoms.

But Beijing has portrayed

the movement as a plot by foreign powers to destabilise mainland China.

“The opposition camp... wants to turn Hong Kong into an independent or semi-inde-pendent political entity, a bridgehead for the external powers to oppose China and the Chinese Communist Party and a chesspiece which external powers can use to contain China,” Zhang said.

During last year’s protests, Zhang’s office and Chinese state media previously said issues like a lack of housing and the high costs of living may have fuelled the unrest.

But in recent months Beijing has instead cast the city’s political crisis as a national security threat.

“From my point of view, the key problem in Hong Kong is not an economic problem, nor a livelihood problem con-cerning people’s housing and employment... It is a political problem,” Zhang said.

The planned law approved by China’s rubber stamp par-liament has also proposed allowing mainland security agents to set up shop in Hong Kong for the first time.

Zhang dismissed “rumours” they might make arrests and send suspects to the mainland.

“National security organi-sations have to follow the laws strictly when they are handling cases in mainland China, how is it possible for them to become unconstrained in Hong Kong?” he said.

Workers and trade union members gather at a meeting against South Korean and North Korean defectors, at the courtyard of the Kaesong City Hall of Culture, in North Korea, yesterday.

N Korea halts communication at Joint Office with SouthBLOOMBERG — SEOUL

North Korea was not answering the phone at a liaison office with South Korea for the first time since it opened in 2018 after saying it was abolishing the project that once allowed the rivals to communicate around the clock.

South Korea’s Unification Ministry said yesterday its

phone calls were going unan-swered to the North Korean delegation at the facility in the North Korean border city of Kaesong, ministry spokesman Yoh Sang-key told reporters.

“It is true that inter-Korean exchanges are at a standstill due to several factors including the COVID-19 outbreak, but we will continue to do what we can do to promote peace on the

Korean Peninsula,” he said.The facility was opened in the

spirit of rapprochement advo-cated by South Korean President Moon Jae-in and was part of moves to reduce threats along the border, where the two countries have stationed about 1 million troops. It allowed for constant communication between the two sides for the first time since the start of the 1950-53 Korean War.

Japan hopes to draft G7 statement on China legislation on Hong KongREUTERS — TOKYO

Japan hopes to draft a joint statement on China’s new security legislation on Hong Kong at the next Group of Seven (G7) foreign ministers’ meeting, a Japanese government source familiar with the matter said yesterday.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said earlier that Japan is watching the situation in Hong Kong with “deep concern” fol-lowing the passage by China of a new law for the Hong Kong which could endanger the city’s special autonomy and freedoms.

“Hong Kong is an extremely important partner in terms of both tight eco-nomic ties and human rela-tions, and it is important that the original system of ‘one nation, two systems’ be upheld and things proceed stably and democratically,” he said in parliament.

His comments followed a

Kyodo news agency report on Sunday that cited officials from Britain, the United States and other countries as saying Japan had decided not to join them in issuing a statement scolding China for the new law.

Tokyo is in a sensitive sit-uation regarding the US-China tension over Hong Kong as it plans for a state visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping, originally set for April but postponed over the coronavirus.

Another Japanese gov-ernment source familiar with the matter said Japan did not participate in the joint statement partly because of “rather short notice” and partly in order to focus on efforts by the G7, rather then the signatories.

“Japan took the position to do what it has to do independ-ently, in this case because of, first, time constraints, and sec-ondly, our basic position is that we emphasise our efforts in the G7,” the source said.

Jakarta back in

business as

infections climb

REUTERS — JAKARTA

Restaurants, shops and transport services were back up and running in Indonesia capital yesterday, as restrictions were eased further despite the country posting its biggest daily spike in coronavirus infections two days earlier.

Offices in Jakarta, the epi-centre of Indonesia’s outbreak, were operating with limits on employee numbers while traffic wasted no time in returning to gridlock, with cars bumper-to-bumper and clusters of motorcycles sand-wiched between lanes.

After two months without businesses, the easing of curbs was a welcome relief for many, among them Kusnoto, who for 14 years has run a small streetside restaurant.

“Thank God today I can reopen my business, but I’m not sure how the customer traffic will be,” said Kusnoto, 60, who uses only one name.

His simple restaurant has no hand washing facilities or screens to protect diners, whom he relies on to take their own precautions.

A sticking point ahead of the talks was the exchange of prisoners between the warring sides. After stalling for weeks, the prisoner swaps unfolded and by yesterday, the government had released 2,710 Taliban prisoners, according to Javid Faisal, spokesman for the national security adviser’s office in Kabul.

12 TUESDAY 9 JUNE 2020EUROPE

Britain records 55 virus deaths, lowest daily count since MarchAGENCIES — LONDON

Britain yesterday recorded 55 coronavirus deaths in the previous 24 hours — the coun-try’s lowest daily total in more than two months, with Scotland now going two days without a fatality.

The government said it is the lowest 24-hour total since March 21, two days before the country went into lockdown, although figures on Mondays are usually lower due to a reporting lag from weekends.

“Though the number is much lower than it has been, each of these deaths still repre-sents a tragedy for a family and a community,” Health Secretary Matt Hancock said.

“We will continue all of our work to drive that figure down.” Hancock told the daily briefing on the government’s response to the outbreak that there were no deaths in the last 24 hours in London hospital, nor in Scotland for the second day running.

“That’s very good news for

the capital and for Scotland. All these data are pointing in the right direction,” he told reporters.

“It shows we are winning the battle with this disease. But they also show that there is further to go.” Despite the downward trend, the latest deaths takes Britain’s official toll to 40,597, although broader data that includes suspected deaths puts the tally nearer 50,000.

On either measure, the country is the worst-hit in

Europe and has the second-highest number of deaths in the world behind the United States.

In Scotland, which has reported 2,415 deaths after pos-itive tests, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said the latest figures showed COVID-19 was “in retreat”.

She said she was now “opti-mistic” the country could move to the second phase of its four-part plan to ease lockdown measures when they are reviewed next week.

The COVID-19 epidemic in British care homes is coming under control, Health Secretary Matt Hancock said yesterday after announcing that all remaining adult care homes would have access to testing for residents and staff.

The announcement means that working-age care homes will have access to a full COVID-19 testing service, in addition to care homes for the elderly, which had been prior-itised previously.

“With all the measures that

we’ve put in place over the last few months... it is clear that the epidemic in care homes is coming under control,” Hancock said at a daily news conference, citing a fall in the number of new care homes reporting an outbreak in latest weekly figures.

“Even those care homes where there are cases have very strong infection control proce-dures in place,” he added.

Meanwhile, according to

two international studies pub-lished yesterday, lockdowns imposed to curb the spread of COVID-19 have saved millions of lives and easing them now carries high risks.

“The risk of a second wave happening if all interventions and all precautions are aban-doned is very real,” Samir Bhatt, who co-led one of the studies by researchers at Imperial College London, told reporters in a briefing.

The Imperial study analysed the impact of lockdowns and social distancing steps in 11 European countries and found they had “a substantial effect”, helping to lower the infection’s reproductive rate, or R value, below one by early May.

“But any claims that this is all over, that we’ve reached the herd immunity threshold, can be firmly rejected,” Bhatt said. “We are only at the beginning of this pandemic.”

Health Secretary Matt Hancock gestures as he speaks next to Chair of the National COVID-19 Social Care Support Taskforce, David Pearson, during the daily briefing to update on the outbreak, at 10 Downing Street, in London yesterday.

Felling of slave trader statue prompts fresh look at British historyREUTERS — LONDON

The toppling by anti-racism protesters of a statue of a slave trader in the English port city of Bristol has given new urgency to a debate about how Britain should confront some of the darkest chapters of its history.

The statue of Edward Colston, who made a fortune in the 17th century from trading in West African slaves, was torn down and thrown into Bristol harbour on Sunday by a group of demonstrators taking part in a worldwide wave of protests.

Statues of figures from Brit-ain’s imperialist past have in recent years become the subject of controversies between those who argue that such monuments merely reflect history and those who say they glorify racism.

By taking matters into their own hands, the protesters raised the temperature of a debate that had previously remained confined to the realms of marches, petitions and newspaper columns.

Prime Minister Boris John-son’s spokesman said the removal of the statue was a criminal act.

“The PM fully understands the strength of feeling on this issue. But in this country where there is strong feeling, we have democratic processes which can resolve these matters,” the spokesman said.

But others countered that such processes had failed to recognise the pain caused by the legacy of slavery.

“People who say - author-ities should take statues down after discussion. Yes. But it isn’t happening. Bristol’s been debating Edward Colston for years and wasn’t getting any-where,” said historian and broadcaster Kate Williams on Twitter.

A street and several buildings in the city are still named after Colston, and the plinth where the statue stood bears the original inscription from 1895, which praises Colston as “virtuous and wise”.

The mayor of Bristol, Marvin Rees, said he did not support social disorder, but the community was navigating complex issues that had no binary solutions.

“I would never pretend that the statue of a slaver in the middle of Bristol, the city in which I grew up, and someone who may well have owned one of my ancestors, was anything other than a personal affront to me,” said Rees, who has Jamaican roots.

Bristol police said they made a tactical decision not to intervene because that could have caused worse disorder.

“Whilst I am disappointed that people would damage one of our statues, I do understand why it’s happened, it’s very symbolic,” said police chief Andy Bennett.

Even Britain’s wartime hero, Winston Churchill, was under renewed scrutiny: a statue of him on Parliament Square in London was sprayed on Sunday with graffiti that read “Churchill was a racist”.

Churchill expressed racist and anti-Semitic views and critics blame him for denying food to India during the 1943 famine which killed more than two million people. Some Britons have long felt that the darker sides of his legacy should be given greater prominence.

These debates in Britain echo controversies in the United States, often focused on statues of confederate generals from the Civil War, and in South Africa, where Cape Town University removed a statue of British colonialist Cecil Rhodes in 2015.

Glasgow streets 'renamed' after black peopleREUTERS — GLASGOW

Anti-racism campaigners have placed new signs on streets in the Scottish city of Glasgow that are named after historical figures with links to the slave trade, unofficially renaming them in honour of prominent black people.

Scotland, like many coun-tries, has seen demonstrations against racism in recent days, inspired by protests in the United States over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

On Cochrane Street, named after a man who made

a fortune in tobacco in the early 18th century at a time when American and Caribbean plantations relied on slave labour, the campaigners put up a sign that read “Sheku Bayoh Street”.

Bayoh was a black man who died in police custody in 2015, aged 31, after being arrested in the Scottish town of Kirkcaldy. The circumstances of his death are the subject of an ongoing public inquiry.

Other Glasgow streets were also given alternative names by the campaigners.

One was renamed “Rosa

Parks Street”, after the US civil rights activist known around the world for starting the 1955-56 bus boycott in Mont-gomery, Alabama, that was one of the milestones in the struggle against racial segregation.

Another was given the name “Harriet Tubman Street”, after the abolitionist born into slavery in the United States in the 19th century who escaped and organised rescue missions to help other slaves to escape.

A “George Floyd Street” sign was put up in another road,

although local media reported it was later removed.

In the US capital Wash-ington, DC., a plaza outside the White House has been officially renamed “Black Lives Matter Plaza”.

It is the spot where Pres-ident Donald Trump caused controversy by posing for a photo holding a Bible just after peaceful protesters were removed by force.

On Sunday, protesters in the English port city of Bristol tore down a statue of a 17th century slave trader and threw it into the harbour.

France police to ban chokehold arrest as protest anger mounts

AFP — PARIS

France said yesterday it would ban the controversial chokehold method used to detain suspects, after the death in custody of George Floyd in the United States intensified anger over the behaviour of French police.

A wave of global protests in the wake of Floyd’s fatal arrest magnified attention on the 2016 death in French police custody of Adama Traore, a 24-year-old black man, and renewed contro-versy over claims of racism and brutality within France’s police.

The country’s police watchdog said yesterday it had received almost 1,500 complaints against officers last year — half of them for alleged violence.

Seeking to take serious action after a string of protests in recent days, Interior Minister Christophe Castaner announced the chokehold method “will be abandoned”.

“It will no longer be taught in police and gendarmerie schools. It is a method that has its dangers,” he said in a tele-vised press conference, while stressing he would pursue a policy of “zero tolerance” for racism in law enforcement.

“Racism does not have a place in our society and even less in our Republican police,” said Castaner, adding too many officers “have failed in their Republican duty” in recent weeks, with several instances of racist and discrimi-natory remarks revealed.

“It is not enough to condemn it,” said Castaner. “We have to track it down and combat it.” Earlier yesterday, President Emmanuel Macron urged his government to “accelerate” steps to improve police ethics.

The presidency said Macron had met Castaner and Prime Min-ister Edouard Philippe on Sunday after some 23,000 people pro-tested in several French cities on Saturday to demand “justice” for victims of crimes allegedly com-mitted by police officers.

The French demonstrations started in response to an expert report clearing the three officers who arrested Traore.

Some 20,000 people rallied in Paris last Tuesday to demand justice for Traore and Floyd,

defying a coronavirus ban on public gatherings of more than 10 people, followed on Saturday by more protests in several French cities.

Floyd had similarly died after being pinned to the ground while under arrest.

Media outlets last week published the contents of a private Facebook group on which French police members repeatedly used racist and sexist terms and mocked victims of police brutality.

Ireland comes back to life as lockdown restrictions easedAFP — DUBLIN

Ireland’s shops and workplaces lurched back to life yesterday, as the nation pressed ahead with its plan to lift coronavirus lockdown restrictions ahead of schedule.

As the new week started, all shops were permitted to trade and travel limits were massively relaxed in a dramatic quick-ening of the government’s reo-pening plans.

Employees able to maintain social distancing were also

encouraged to return to their workplaces as Ireland took its largest step yet since lockdown was imposed on March 28.

“This is a great day for our country,” health minister Simon Harris told state broadcaster RTE.

“It’s a day of hope, it’s a day that we weren’t guaranteed to get to.” Ireland has suffered 1,679 deaths in the outbreak, according to the latest official figures.

Deaths recorded in a single day peaked at 77 mid-April but

on Sunday the figure had fallen to just one.

Prime Minister Leo Var-adkar announced the accel-erated slackening of restrictions on Friday, and brought forward the planned date to drop almost all coronavirus containment measures from August to July.

Under the new blueprint, social home visits were per-mitted for the first time, with up to six allowed to meet indoors or outdoors. Vulnerable people “cocooning” are allowed “a small number of visitors”.

Meanwhile, citizens were allowed to travel anywhere in their county of residence or up to 20km from home, in an unexpected extension of the previous five-kilometre limit.

Nonetheless radio broad-casts yesterday urged citizens to “stay local”.

Harris urged the public to visit only a modest list of friends and family, to strictly maintain social distancing and to log names in case they are needed for purposes of contact tracing.

Livestock markets and elite sports training facilities were also opened as scheduled under the second stage of the gov-ernment roadmap.

Under the government plan, shops are not permitted to open before 10.30 am in order to prevent overcrowding on public transport and will allocate time for vulnerable customers.

Shopping centres will not reopen until next week, and must put in place measures to prevent the public congregating in shared spaces.

“Over the last few months fear has exerted a kind of gravity pulling us down, but now we find there is hope lifting us up again,” Varadkar said on Friday.

“We are making progress, we are heading in the right direction and we have earned the right to be hopeful about the future again.” Ireland began its tentative first step out of lockdown on May 18, allowing small groups to meet outside, outdoor shops to reopen and activities such as golf to tee off.

People attend a protest against police brutality and the death in Minneapolis police custody of George Floyd, in Nantes, France, yesterday.

Lockdowns imposed to curb the spread of COVID-19 have saved millions of lives and easing them now carries high risks according to two international studies published yesterday.

13TUESDAY 9 JUNE 2020 EUROPE

Moscow lockdown to end today as Russia eases anti-virus curbs

AFP — MOSCOW

Russia announced yeserday it would lift a range of anti-coro-navirus measures including a strict lockdown on Moscow, despite still recording thou-sands of new infections every day.

Moscow Mayor Sergei Sob-yanin said the capital’s general lockdown and pass system would end today, allowing res-idents to travel freely for the first time since late March.

“Moscow is returning to the usual rhythm of life,” he said in a video message on Facebook, adding that the elderly and those with chronic diseases will be allowed to leave their homes.

Russia has been moving quickly to ease restrictions even as it registers nearly 9,000 new coronavirus cases and more than 100 deaths on a daily basis.

The country had recorded a total of 476,658 coronavirus infections as of yesterday — the third-highest number in the world — and 5,971 deaths.

Officials say the high number is the result of a huge testing campaign, with more than 13 million tests carried out so far, and point to Russia’s rel-atively low mortality rate as evidence it is safe to ease lockdowns.

Critics have accused author-ities of under-reporting deaths and say officials are rushing to lift restrictions for political reasons.

President Vladimir Putin has rescheduled a high-profile World War II military parade in Red Square for June 24 and a vote on constitutional reforms for a week later, on July 1.

The vote, which will clear the way for changes allowing Putin to potentially stay in power beyond his current Kremlin term, was the centre-piece of the longtime leader’s political calendar for this year but had to be postponed from April 22 as coronavirus cases surged.

Moscow, Russia’s largest city with more than 12 million people, had been under lockdown since March 30.

Some measures have been gradually lifted over the last few weeks, with non-food retail shops permitted to reopen and residents allowed to go for walks according to a fixed schedule.

Sobyanin said that as well as all restrictions on movement being lifted from today, hair-dressers, beauty salons and vets will be allowed to reopen.

Beginning next week, libraries, real estate offices and

companies that provide services to residents will be able to resume their work, he said.

Restaurants and cafes would open in two stages beginning June 16 with Moscow residents allowed to visit ter-races, with further restrictions easing the following week.

But the mayor urged caution, saying that the “likelihood of coronavirus infection has decreased, but still exists.” “We must constantly monitor the sit-uation and prevent a new outbreak.”

Russia also yesterday announced the first steps to allow its citizens to travel abroad, with Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin

saying a government order had been signed allowing them to leave the country to work, study or take care of sick relatives.

Foreigners could also visit Russia to care for relatives, he said, without making it clear how soon these new measures would be implemented.

All international flights were grounded in late March, although there have since been a few flights ferrying stranded Russians in and foreigners out.

Mishustin said the move was justified because the infection rate has stabilised over the last six days, particularly in Moscow.

Moscow is Russia’s most-affected city with almost

200,000 confirmed cases and 2,970 deaths.

Other parts of Russia have seen emerging clusters of cases, including the Far Eastern Kam-chatka peninsula, where 24 staff were infected at a children’s home, Interfax news agency reported yesterday.

The region, known for its active volcanoes and spectacular nature, has confirmed 1,168 cases out of a population of just over 300,000.

The number hospitalised in the region at 423 is already higher than the 406 beds pre-pared for virus patients, according to the regional health ministry’s website.

People enjoying warm weather in downtown Moscow, yesterday, during a strict lockdown in Russia to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

Kosovo ready for

dialogue with

Serbia: PresidentANATOLIA — BELGRADE

Kosovo’s President Hashim Thaci said yesterday that the government is ready for dialogue with Serbia, and the process should not be delayed.

Thaci’s remarks came during a press conference in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo.

He said Kosovo should move quickly in that direction such that it could join both the European Union and Nato.

Thaci added that he is opti-mistic, and believes that an agreement with Serbia will be reached by this year.

“I am grateful to the gov-ernment for removing the excuses that Serbia used to avoid dialogue. Kosovo is clear in what it wants in dialogue. Above all, Kosovo is in this process together with the United States and all other allies. We must move in that direction as soon as possible to become part of Nato and the EU,” the president said.

The Kosovo Assembly on June 3 elected Avdullah Hoti as the new prime minister of the country’s sixth government since declaring self-rule.

Kosovo declared inde-pendence from Serbia in 2008 but Belgrade insists the country is one of its provinces.

The international com-munity has also remained divided on the recognition of Kosovo as a sovereign state.

While over 100 countries, including the US, Britain, France, Germany, and Turkey, have recognized Kosovo’s inde-pendence; Serbia, Russia, and China have not.

Poland to temporarily close a dozen mines to stop virus spreadREUTERS — WARSAW

Poland will close two coal mines owned by state-run JSW and ten mines of PGG group today for three weeks to stop the spread of the new corona-virus among miners, Deputy Prime Minister Jacek Sasin said.

Poland, which generates most of its electricity from coal, says miners account for almost 20 percent of all coronavirus cases in the country, with the southern coal producing region recording the highest number of those.

“Such action is needed to eventually quell these epidemic

outbreaks,” Sasin told a news conference yesterday.

He added that the miners would receive full pay for the three weeks and that there was no threat to coal deliveries.

The pandemic has exacer-bated financial problems facing the Polish coal industry, which is bracing for a government restructuring plan expected to be announced in coming weeks.

The state assets ministry said JSW’s Knurow-Szczy-glowice and Budryk mines, which produce mostly thermal coal, would close today.

The PGG mines closing also

do not include those with the highest numbers of infections. The Wujek coal mine, which sources said earlier this month will likely be permanently closed as part of the

government’s restructuring plan, will however be amongst the closures.

“This is a surprise to me that these are the mines to be closed. This may indicate that

the government aims to reduce the output of thermal coal,” said mBank analyst Jakub Szkopek. Sasin said workers in the mines to be closed had yet to be fully tested.

COVID-19 cases

rising in

Moldova, seen

as ‘out of control’

AP — CHISINAU

Moldova registered a record number of new cases of the coronavirus during the first week of June, the government said yesterday, as a former health minister described the pandemic situation in the country as “out of control.”

Moldova, one of the poorest countries in Europe and plagued by corruption and political turmoil, confirmed 1,449 new cases of COVID-19 the week of June 1-7, nearly 300 more than the previous week, according to data from the Ministry of Health. It was the fourth consecutive week with more than 1,000 new cases. During the first week of June, Moldova also suffered 46 coronavirus deaths, including two medical workers, compared to 45 deaths a week earlier.

A country of 3.3 million people, Moldova has become a politically strategic area for both the West and Russia since gaining independence after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. Since its first confirmed case on March 7, Moldova has registered 9,700 cases of the coronavirus and 346 deaths.

Dr. Ala Nemerenco, a former health minister, was very critical of the government’s handling of the pandemic.

“You don’t have to be an epidemiologist, a virologist, or even a doctor to understand that the situation has gotten out of control,” Nemerenco said in a Facebook post in reference to the rising number of cases.

Nato chief defends US amid Germany troop rowAFP — BRUSSELS

Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg defended America’s military commitment to Europe yesterday, following reports President Donald Trump plans to slash troop numbers in Germany.

Berlin has voiced concern at the proposal reported by US media to cut the 34,500 American military personnel posted in Germany by nearly a third.

The move would significantly

reduce the US commitment to European defence under the Nato umbrella, and appeared to catch Berlin off guard.

Asked about the plans, Stoltenberg refused to comment directly on “leaks or media spec-ulation” but said he was “con-stantly consulting” with Wash-ington on its military presence in Europe.

And — as he often does when pressed about the Trump admin-istration’s ambivalence towards Nato — Stoltenberg launched into a detailed defence of

Washington’s commitment to European security.

“In the last few years we have actually seen an increase in the US presence in Europe again,” he said.

“And this is not only about Germany. We have seen for instance a new US brigade deployed to Europe, we have seen more rotational presence, we have seen the US taking a lead function in the Nato battle group in Poland.”

Despite transatlantic political tensions, Stoltenberg insisted that

Nato allies were “doing more together now in Europe than we have done for many, many years”.

Stoltenberg was speaking in an online question-and-answer session to launch an exchange of expert ideas aimed at strengthening the alliance in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

There has been no official confirmation about the reported plan to cut US troop numbers in Germany and cap them at 25,000. But Trump’s lukewarm

support for longstanding coop-eration agreements with European allies has long caused alarm on the continent.

He has been particularly scathing about Germany, Europe’s economic powerhouse, accusing it of not spending enough on its own defence.

Germany hosts more US troops than any other country in Europe, a legacy of the Allied occupation after World War II, and while the presence has declined since the Cold War, it remains a crucial hub.

A file photo of miners leaving the shaft at the Knurow mine after a night shift in Knurow, in Poland’s southern mining region of Silesia.

MH17 suspect’s lawyers say pandemic stymying defenceAFP — BADHOEVEDORP

Lawyers for a Russian suspect in the trial of four men accused of downing flight MH17 said yesterday that the coronavirus pandemic has severely hampered efforts to prepare a preliminary defence.

The high-profile trial on the shooting down of the Malaysia Airlines jetliner over eastern Ukraine in 2014, killing all 298 people on board, resumed yes-terday after being postponed two and a half months ago as the coronavirus pandemic was peaking in the Netherlands.

At the high-security court-house just outside Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport, judges and prosecutors sat next to each other but separated with glass plates.

At the last hearing on March 23, the Netherlands had already entered into lockdown while Russia later followed suit, making contact with suspect Oleg Pulatov virtually impos-sible, his defence lawyer Sabine ten Doesschate said.

“All these measures have had a huge impact on the prep-aration for the preliminary defence of Oleg Pulatov,” she

told the hearing, which was also attended by a limited number of relatives and journalists.

“Our contact with our client has been minimal... and discus-sions about matters which could be hugely relevant to his defence

have simply not been possible,” Ten Doesschate said.

This included details of accu-sations against Pulatov and whether the Netherlands had jurisdiction to try the case, she said.

Pulatov, a Russian national, together with fellow countrymen Igor Girkin, Sergei Dubinsky and Ukrainian citizen Leonid Kharchenko have been charged by Dutch prosecutors with murder and causing the flight to crash. As has been the case in previous hearings, none of the four suspects were in court, with only Pulatov being defended by a legal team.

Prosecutors say all four were linked to pro-Russian separa-tists on whose territory the plane’s wreckage fell near the start of Ukraine’s bitter civil war. All 298 on board died when the

Boeing 777 jet was ripped apart by a surface-to-air missile while on a routine flight between Amsterdam and Kuala Lumpur on July 17, 2014. Prosecutors argue the men were instru-mental in bringing a BUK missile system to Ukraine from its original base in Russia — even if they did not pull the trigger.

If found guilty, the four sus-pects could be given life sentences.

Russia has long denied any involvement in the downing of MH17, and has offered a series of alternative explanations for the plane’s downing.

Russia has been moving quickly to ease restrictions even as it registers nearly 9,000 new coronavirus cases and more than 100 deaths on a daily basis. The country had recorded a total of 476,658 coronavirus infections as of yesterday — the third-highest number in the world — and 5,971 deaths.

The high-profile trial on the shooting down of the Malaysia Airlines jetliner over eastern Ukraine in 2014, killing all 298 people on board, resumed yesterday after being postponed two and a half months ago as the coronavirus pandemic was peaking in the Netherlands.

14 TUESDAY 9 JUNE 2020AMERICAS

Democrats unveil police reform overhaul AP — WASHINGTON

Democrats proposed a sweeping overhaul of police oversight and procedures yesterday, a poten-tially far-reaching legislative response to the mass protests denouncing the deaths of black Americans in the hands of law enforcement.

Before unveiling the package, House and Senate Democrats held a moment of silence at the Capitol’s Emancipation Hall, reading the names of George Floyd and others killed during police interactions.

They knelt for 8 minutes and 46 seconds — now a symbol of police brutality and violence — the length of time prosecutors say Floyd was pinned under a white police officer’s knee before he died.

“We cannot settle for any-thing less than transformative structural change,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, drawing on the nation’s history of slavery.

The Justice in Policing Act would limit legal protections for police, create a national database of excessive-force incidents and ban police choke holds, among other changes, according to an early draft. It is the most ambi-tious change to law enforcement sought by Congress in years.

Rep. Karen Bass, D-Calif., chairwoman of the Congressional

Black Caucus, which is leading the effort, said called it “bold” and “transformative.”

“The world is witnessing the birth of a new movement in this country,” Bass said.

Despite the worldwide pro-tests, with tens of thousands of demonstrators taking to the streets in cities across America and abroad since Floyd was killed May 25, the idea of broad-based US police reforms remains polit-ically polarised and highly uncertain in this election year.

While Democrats are expected to swiftly approve the legislation this month, it does not go as far as some activists want to “defund the police.” The outlook for passing the package in the Republican-held Senate is slim.

President Donald Trump, who was to meet with law enforcement officials later yes-terday at the White House, was quick to characterise the Demo-crats as having “gone crazy!”

As activists call for restruc-turing police departments the president tweeted, Republican campaign officials followed suit.

“No industry is safe from the Democrats’ abolish culture,” said Micahel McAdams, a spokesman for the House Republican cam-paign committee, in an email blast. “First they wanted to abolish private health insurance,

then it was capitalism and now it’s the police.”

Democrats fought back.This isn’t about that,” Pelosi

said. Congress is not calling for any wholesale defunding of law enforcement, leaving those deci-sions to local cities and states, she noted. The package confronts several aspects of law enforcement accountability and practices that have come under criticism, especially as more and more police violence is captured on cellphone video and shared widely across the nation, and the world.

The proposed legislation would revise the federal criminal police misconduct statute to make it easier to prosecute officers who are involved in mis-conduct “knowingly or with

reckless disregard.”The package would also

change “qualified immunity” protections for police “to enable individuals to recover damages when law enforcement officers violate their constitutional rights.”

The legislation would seek to provide greater oversight and transparency of police behavior in several ways. For one, it would grant subpoena power to the Justice Department to conduct

“pattern and practice” investiga-tions of potential misconduct and help states conduct independent investigations. It would ban racial profiling and boost requirements for police body cameras.

And it would create a “National Police Misconduct Reg-istry,” a database to try to prevent officers from transferring from one department to another with past misconduct undetected, the draft said. A long-sought federal

anti-lynching bill stalled in Con-gress is included in the package.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-NY, a co-author with Bass and the Democratic senators, will convene a hearing on the legis-lation tomorrow. It is unclear if law enforcement and the pow-erful police unions will back any of the proposed changes or if congressional Republicans will join the effort.

Congressional Black Caucus Chairwoman Representative Karen Bass, flanked by US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, addresses reporters at the US Capitol, in Washington, yesterday.

Court orders dismissalof Trump’s Muslimtravel ban challengesAP — RICHMOND

A federal appeals court yesterday ordered a lower court to toss out legal challenges to President Donald Trump’s 3-year-old ban on travellers from predomi-nantly Muslim countries, finding that a judge misinterpreted a Supreme Court ruling that found the ban has a “legitimate grounding in national security concerns.”

The ban, put in place just a week after Trump took office in January 2017, sparked an inter-national outcry from Muslim advocates and others who said it was rooted in religious bias.

A three-judge panel of the Richmond-based 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled yesterday that a federal judge in Maryland made a mistake when he refused to dismiss three lawsuits after the Supreme Court upheld the ban in 2018 in a separate case filed in Hawaii.

“We conclude that the dis-trict court misunderstood the import of the Supreme Court’s decision in Hawaii and the legal principles it applied,” Judge Paul Niemeyer wrote in the unan-imous decision.

Justin Cox, an attorney with the International Refugee Assistance Project, the lead plaintiff in the case, said the groups who sued are considering their legal options, which could include asking the panel to reconsider its ruling, appealing to the full 4th Circuit court of 15 judges or asking the Supreme Court to hear the case.

“The panel definitely got the legal issues wrong. It seems unlikely that this will be the final word,” Cox said.

“Basically, it comes down to can the president shield obvi-ously bigoted actions by

essentially laundering them through Cabinet officials coming up with neutral-seeming cri-teria?” he said.

The US Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment.

During a hearing in January, Mark Mosier, an attorney repre-senting US citizens and per-manent residents whose rela-tives have been unable to enter the US because of the ban, asked the court to allow the legal chal-lenges to proceed.

Mosier argued that the Supreme Court — in the Hawaii case — rejected a preliminary injunction to block the travel ban, but did not decide the merits of the constitutional claims made in the lawsuits. The plaintiffs argued that the travel ban vio-lates the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, which prohibits the government from favoring one religion over another.

Mosier said the lawsuits should be allowed to proceed so the plaintiffs can gather evi-dence on their claim that the travel ban is rooted in anti-Muslim bias and that the Trump administration’s claim of national security concerns is a pretext for the policy.

But the three 4th Circuit judges who heard the case — all nominated by Republican pres-idents — repeatedly questioned Mosier about the Supreme Court’s finding that there is a plausible rationale to support the travel ban.

The ban applies to travellers from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen. It also affects two non-Muslim countries, keeping out travelers from North Korea and some Venezuelan gov-ernment officials and their families.

Mourners gather to honour George FloydREUTERS — HOUSTON

Mourners gathered in Texas yesterday to pay their respects to African American George Floyd, who died in police custody two weeks ago, as pressure intensified for sweeping reforms to the US justice system in the wake of nationwide protests.

Demonstrators’ anger over the May 25 death of Floyd, 46, is giving way to a growing determination to make his case a turning point in race relations and a lightning rod for change in the way police departments function across the country.

Floyd died after Derek Chauvin, the white officer accused of killing him, knelt on his neck for nine minutes in Minneapolis.

A bystander’s cellphone captured the scene as Floyd pleaded with the officer, choking out the words, “I can’t breathe.”

In Houston, where Floyd grew up, American flags fluttered along the route to the Fountain of Praise church as hun-dreds of people waited in line to view his casket, some wearing T-shirts with the words, “I can’t breathe.”

“It’s a great day today. A lot of changes are being made. It’s a tragedy a life had to be taken,” said Perence Mcintosh, a black Houston resident who was among those in line.

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, who is challenging Republican President Donald Trump in a November 3 election, planned to meet Floyd’s family in Houston later in the day, according to his aides.

Floyd will be buried today. Reverend Al Sharpton, a black civil rights leader, is e.xpected to give the eulogy.

In Washington, Democrats in Con-gress unveiled legislation that would make lynching a hate crime and allow victims of misconduct and their families to sue police for damages in civil court, ending a legal doctrine known as qual-ified immunity.

Democrats vowed to bring the legis-lation in coming weeks to the floor of the Democratic-controlled House of Repre-sentatives, where it is likely to face at least some Republican opposition.

House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy tweeted support for the police and said, “Democrats want to defund you, but Republicans will never turn our backs on you.” The support of the

Republican-controlled Senate and Trump would be needed for the measure to become law if it passes the House. Dem-ocrats hope public support for the pro-tests that have swept the country since Floyd’s death will propel the bill.

Though there was violence in the early days, the protests have lately been over-whelmingly peaceful. They have deepened a political crisis for Trump, who repeatedly threatened to order active duty troops onto the streets.

Huge weekend crowds gathered across the country and in Europe. The high-spirited atmosphere was marred late on Sunday when a man drove a car into a rally in Seattle and then shot and wounded a demonstrator who confronted him.

Floyd’s death was the latest in a string of deaths of black men and women at the hands of police that have sparked fresh calls for reforms and renewed calls for racial equality as the United States reopens after weeks of unprecedented lockdowns for the coronavirus pandemic.

Chauvin, the officer who was seen with his knee on Floyd’s neck, was due to appear in a Minneapolis court on Monday. He has been charged with second-degree and third-degree murder as well as second-degree manslaughter.

Three other officers involved in the incident have been charged with aiding and abetting second-degree murder and aiding and abetting second-degree man-slaughter. All four officers have been fired.

A majority of the members on the city council in Minneapolis have pledged to abolish the police department in favor of a community-led safety model, a step that would have seemed unthinkable before Floyd’s death.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, who ran a gauntlet of jeering protesters over the weekend after telling them he opposed their demands for defunding the city’s police department, told CNN on Monday he was opposed to abolishing the police.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said on Monday he believed people were asking for fundamental, basic changes to policing and that departments would have to understand that they were operating in a different reality.

“I think you will see a shift all across police departments,” Cuomo said.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced reforms aimed at building trust between residents and the police, including shifting money out of the police budget and toward youth and social services in communities of colour.

Texas Governor Gregg Abbott speaks to the press after attending the public viewing for George Floyd at the Fountain of Praise church in Houston, Texas, yesterday.

Poll: Pandemic does little to alter US views on health careAP — WASHINGTON

The coronavirus pushed hospitals to the edge, and millions of workers lost job-based coverage in the economic shutdown to slow the spread, but a new poll suggests Americans have remarkably little interest in big changes to health care as a result of the pandemic.

People are still more likely to prefer the private sector than the government on driving inno-vation in health care, improving quality and, by a narrower margin, providing coverage, according to the survey by the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy and The

Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Those views are basically unchanged since February, when an earlier edition of the AP-NORC poll asked the same questions at a time that the coronavirus was still largely seen as a problem in other countries, not the United States.

“It does strike me as odd,” said Gaye Cocoman, a retired data processing administrator from small-town Macedonia, Ohio, who has Medicare. “I’m covered, but I look at the millions of people who aren’t and wonder what in the world they’re going to do if they get sick. There seems to be no appetite for change.”

The poll found that people are more likely to trust private entities over government at driving innovation in health care (70 percent to 28 percent), improving quality (62 percent to 36 percent) and providing insurance coverage (53 percent to 44 percent). Americans had more confidence in government’s ability to reduce costs, preferring it over the private sector 54 percent to 44 percent. All of those preferences are unchanged since before COVID-19 arrived.

Not that long ago Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders’ “Medicare for All” plan was at the centre of the Democratic presi-dential debate. But even with an

estimated 27 million people losing employer coverage in the economic shutdown, there’s been no groundswell of support for the Sanders plan, which calls for replacing the nation’s hybrid system of private and gov-ernment coverage with a single government plan for all.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, asked last month whether waves of layoffs were prompting her Democratic caucus members to reconsider the employer-based system that covers most working families, responded: “That’s not our conversation.”

Pelosi said Democrats are backing measures to tide over workers who have lost coverage

— such as expansions of the Affordable Care Act — but “rather than saying let’s take that (employer coverage) away from them, we should say let’s get them their jobs back.”

It could simply be a reflection of human nature to shelve ambi-tious schemes during a crisis, said health economist Katherine Baicker, dean of the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy. There’s only so much available bandwidth.

“I wonder if the short-term crisis dampens people’s appetite for health system reform,” Baicker said.

“The idea of upending the health system at this moment ...

it may be that people think, ‘No - let’s get a vaccine.’”

After the spectacle of coro-navirus-related shortages of eve-rything from cotton swabs, to protective gear for nurses and doctors, to breathing machines for desperately ill patients, the poll did find 56 percent saying the US is spending too little on improving and protecting the nation’s health.

That is a significantly bigger share than the 42 percent who think the government is spending too little in general.

Still, views on the need for more health care spending were unchanged since before the pandemic.

The proposed legislation would revise the federal criminal police misconduct statute to make it easier to prosecute officers who are involved in misconduct “knowingly or with reckless disregard”.

15TUESDAY 9 JUNE 2020 AMERICAS

‘All eyes’ on New York: Reopening tests a city torn by crisesAP — NEW YORK

Scarred by the deadliest coro-navirus outbreak in the nation, New York City gradually began reopening yesterday in a turning point in the three-month-long crisis and an important test of the city’s disci-pline.

With the virus in check — at least for now — stores previ-ously deemed nonessential were cleared to reopen for delivery and curbside pickup, though customers cannot yet browse inside. Construction, manufacturing and wholesalers also were cleared to resume work.

“So far, so good,” con-struction management company owner Frank Sciame said as job sites started humming again, with new pre-cautions such as health screening questionnaires and lower limits on the number of workers allowed in construction hoists.

“Let’s hope it continues.” “New York,” he said, “will always come back.”

Some major store chains took it slow: Macy’s declined to give a date for starting curbside pickup at its flagship store,

where smash-and-grab thieves hit amid last week’s protests over George Floyd’s death. Saks Fifth Avenue, which girded itself with razor wire last week, and Tiffany’s may launch pickup service later this week.

Owners of smaller shops were eager to reopen, even if they didn’t expect much business.

“We are going to be open every day for the sake of showing life,” said eyewear designer Ahlem Manai-Platt, who was reopening a lower Manhattan store.

Mayor Bill de Blasio wel-comed the reopenings as evi-dence of how “strong and resilient” New York is. But he also warned the city against letting its guard down and jeop-ardising its hard-won progress against the virus: “Let’s hold onto it. Let’s build on it.”

Unrest over racism and police

brutality could compound the challenges facing the nation’s biggest city as it tries to move past three bleak months. Officials who had focused for months on public health and economic woes are now also facing urgent pressure for police reform.

More than 21,000 deaths in New York City have been blamed on COVID-19, or roughly 1 in 5 of the more than 110,000 people who have died of the scourge across the US.

At its peak, the virus killed more than 500 people a day in New York City in early to mid-April. The number has since dropped into the single digits. New hospitalisations, which topped 800 a day in late March and early April, were down to 67 on Saturday.

Reopening the economy could spark a resurgence of the virus as people circulate more.

“All eyes will be on New

York this next couple of months,” said urban policy expert Jonathan Bowles, exec-utive director of the Center for an Urban Future.

“The city now has to prove that it really knows what it’s doing, that it can still be a dense city like New York and yet figure this out.” Sam Solomon wondered what normal will look like from now on.

“I don’t know if it’s ever going to be like it was,” said Solomon, 22, who has a health-related job. After months of rel-ative isolation, “it’s going to be an adjustment being around so many people,” said the native New Yorker, who never thought she would have to get used to crowds.

Around the world, the coro-navirus has killed more than 400,000 people, with the toll rising by thousands every day.

The virus is sill raging in places like Brazil, which over the weekend stopped reporting its death toll. Its official count stood at more than 34,000, giving Brazil the third-highest number of dead in the world, behind the US and Britain.

New York City, population 8.3 million, has already reawakened somewhat as warm weather drew people outdoors, more restaurants offered carryout service, and thousands of people marched in protest over Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police.

Subway ridership is ticking back up after plunging from 5.4 million rides per weekday in February to under 450,000 in April, the city’s transit agency says. Subway schedules are returning to normal, though workers are dispensing masks and hand sanitiser, signs show

riders how far apart to stand on platforms, and the 1 am-to-5 am shutdowns that began in May will continue so trains can be cleaned.

Governor Andrew Cuomo took a subway ride yesterday to send a message of safety.

Many activities, such as indoor dining and gym workouts, aren’t yet allowed, Broadway theatres and other big venues remain shuttered, and New Yorkers are still required to wear face masks when close to others in public.

Months of social distancing and mask-wearing have made New Yorkers better prepared to keep the coronavirus under control, said Dr. Bruce Polsky, chairman of medicine at NYU Winthrop Hospital in suburban Mineola.

Still, he said, reopening is “going to be a big test.”

Governor Andrew Cuomo waves after riding a subway train, in New York, yesterday.

Cuba declares coronavirus pandemic ‘under control’AFP — HAVANA

Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel has declared the corona-virus pandemic “under control” after the island nation regis-tered an eighth straight day without a death from COVID-19.

It paves the way for an announcement next week on Cuba’s strategy to gradually lift its lockdown.

The country of 11.2 million

has recorded just under 2,200 cases and 83 deaths from the virus.

With 1,862 people having recovered, Cuba has only 244 active cases.

However, Diaz-Canel said the country could not become complacent given a spate of new infections since May 28.

“This was a week in which the number of active cases and

the number of daily cases increased in comparison to the previous weeks in which, as already announced, we were at the tail end of this epidemic,” he said on Saturday.

“We need to keep focusing on how we’re going to eliminate the residues that remain, espe-cially those associated with the incompetence or poor func-tioning of any institution, which

give rise to events that can provoke a rebound,” he added.

In any case, next week “we will be able to inform the people about how we will approach this phase and when we can do so.”

Schools and borders remain closed, public transport has been suspended and the wearing of masks in public is mandatory.

But with an economy largely dependent on tourism and external trade, and crippled by a six decades-long US embargo, Cuba can ill afford to remain in lockdown for much longer.

Lockdown has worsened the social situation for millions of Cubans i n a country that was already suffering from food and fuel shortages.

Chile reports 635 new virus deaths;total at 2,290AFP — SANTIAGO

Chile on Sunday reported 653 deaths from COVID-19, bringing its overall toll to 2,290, authorities said.

Health Minister Jaime Manalich said some mis-counting pointed out by the WHO in March and April was corrected, in addition to 96 new deaths.

That sent the toll from 1,541 on Saturday to 2,290 one day later, he explained.

Ninety-six marked a record-high number of deaths reported in a single day, according to Manalich.

Chilean health authorities will also start counting the deaths of people who show symptoms in line with the virus, even if the victim did not undergo a COVID-19 test.

“We are making a method-ological change in the way we count people who have died and whose death presumably could be linked to a COVID-19 infection,” the minister said.

Meanwhile, a record number of new infections in the last 24 hours, of 6,405, was also reported in Chile, totaling 134,150 infected since the pan-demic began in the South American country on March 3.

The virus’ spread has come despite a three-week lockdown in the crowded capital, Santiago.

Protests across Quebec province against racism and police brutalityAFP — MONTREAL Protesters in Montreal were tear-gassed on Sunday as thousands gathered across Quebec to demonstrate against racism and police brutality in the French-speaking Canadian province.

Demonstrators marched peacefully in the centre of the city for the second time in a week as part of a global wave of protests sparked by the death of George Floyd, a black man killed in US police custody when a white officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes.

After the march ended some of the protesters gathered near police headquarters where officers used tear gas to disperse them, Radio Canada reported.

Last Sunday’s protest also ended in clashes in the evening.

During the march, protesters chanted, “Black Lives Matter”, “No justice, no peace”, “je ne peux

pas respirer” (“I can’t breathe”) and “il faut que ca cesse” (“this has to stop”).

Organisers gave speeches before the start of the march, slamming Quebec’s Premier Francois Legault for claiming a few days prior that there was no “systemic racism” in the province.

Protester Madani Ba, a 28-year-old musician and artist, said that he once was subjected to two different identity checks in the span of five minutes on the same street.

“There’s a lot of racial pro-filing, ask anyone of colour and they will tell you the same thing. It’s unbelievable — and it has to change,” he said.

Jessica Francois, 29, said she had come to the protests to show that “the colour of your skin does not justify the inequalities we can see, for instance, in Quebec.”

Demonstrators marched peacefully and were asked to

stop several times to kneel in memory of Floyd.

While many protesters wore masks, it was hard to maintain social distancing of two metres, particularly while waiting for the march to begin.

More protests took place in Sherbrooke, east of Montreal, and in the provincial capital Quebec City. Other demonstrations had occurred on Saturday in Toronto, and other cities across the country.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau joined thousands in Ottawa on Friday. He knelt for eight minutes and 46 seconds, the same length of time that police officer Derek Chauvin had kept his knee on Floyd’s neck.

People march during a protest against racial inequality and police brutality in the aftermath of the death in Minneapolis police custody of George Floyd, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, on Sunday.

Brazil ‘driving in the dark’ on COVID-19 ascontradictory data deepens confusionREUTERS — RIO DE JANEIRO

Brazil drew further criticism for its handling of the coronavirus pandemic yesterday after it published contradictory figures on fatalities and infections, deepening a scandal over the country’s COVID-19 data.

Initial data released on Sunday from the health ministry on the number of cases and death toll in Brazil was later con-tradicted by numbers uploaded to the ministry’s online data portal. Yesterday, the ministry said in a statement the dis-crepancy was predominantly due to mistakes in the numbers from two states that were later

corrected. It explained that the later, lower daily death toll of 525 was the correct one.

It said it had “been improving the means for releasing information on the national situation of the han-dling of COVID-19.”

The discrepancy followed recent decisions to remove from a national website a trove of data about the country’s out-break, and to push back the daily release of new numbers late into the evening and after the coun-try’s main television news programme.

“By changing the numbers, the Ministry of Health covers the sun with a sieve,” Rodrigo Maia,

speaker of the lower house, said on Twitter.

“The credibility of the sta-tistics needs to be urgently recovered. A ministry that manipulates numbers creates a parallel world in order not to face the reality of the facts,” he added. The World Health Organisation (WHO) yesterday stressed the importance of “con-sistent and transparent” com-munication from Brazil, which is now one of the main corona-virus epicentres. It has the second highest number of con-firmed cases behind the United States, and a death toll that last week surpassed Italy’s.

Far-right President Jair

Bolsonaro has come under growing criticism for the way his government has handled the pandemic, which he has regu-larly played down as a “little flu.”

For Carlos Machado, head of research at the National School of Public Health, part of the respected public institute Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, the lack of dependable data is dangerous.

“Not having updated and reliable data during a pandemic of this proportion is like driving in the dark,” he said.

“While we do not have a vaccine, information is the best weapon we have at our dis-posal,” he added.

Argentina's former president Macri

accused of spying on 400 journalists

AFP — BUENOS AIRES

Argentina’s Federal Intelligence Agency (AFI) has called for an inves-tigation into former president Mauricio Macri for allegedly spying on more than 400 journalists, a source said on Sunday.

Dozens of foreign journalists, including several representing AFP, appeared on a list of people to be investigated in relation to the G20 and World Trade Organization (WTO) summits held in Buenos Aires in recent years.

“The complaint was lodged on Friday and yesterday, all the evi-dence will be presented,” the official source said on condition of ano-nymity. Around 100 academics, businesspeople and prominent figures from civil society also appeared on the list.

The documents relating to the case were found in three dossiers named “2017”, “G20 Journalists” and “Miscellaneous”, in a safe in the office of the AFI’s former director of counterintelligence.

Buenos Aires hosted the 11th WTO Ministerial Conference in 2017 and the 13th G20 Summit a year later.

“The investigation into the journalists was straightforward. They dug up information from social media and that way built an ideo-logical and political profile,” said the source.

The complaint was lodged by Cristina Caamano, who has been tasked by centre-left President Alberto Fernandez to carry out an audit of AFI as part of a reorganisation process.

With the virus in check — at least for now — stores previously deemed nonessential were cleared to reopen for delivery and curbside pickup, though customers cannot yet browse inside. Construction, manufacturing and wholesalers also were cleared to resume work.

16 TUESDAY 9 JUNE 2020MORNING BREAK

FAJR SUNRISE 03.14 am 04.43 am

W A L R U WA I S : 30o↗ 35o W A L K H O R : 26o↗ 36o W D U K H A N : 30o↗ 35o W WA K R A H : 27o↗ 39o W M E S A I E E D 27o↗ 39o W A B U S A M R A 26o↗ 37o

PRAYER TIMINGS WEATHER TODAY

HIGH TIDE 05:45–19:29 LOW TIDE 02:40 – 13:12

Hot daytime with slight dust at some places and relatively hot by night.

Minimum Maximum31oC 40oC

ZUHRMAGHRIB

11.33 am06.25 pm

ASR ISHA

02.56 pm07.55 pm

Ocean geoengineering tests‘violate’ UN conventionAFP — PARIS

Experimental geoengineering schemes to protect areas such as Australia’s Great Barrier Reef are “distracting technofixes” that violate an international moratorium on the largely untested tech projects, a coalition of nearly 200 environ-mental groups said yesterday.

On the occasion of World Oceans Day, the Hands Off Mother Earth (HOME) Campaign urged communities and govern-ments to “vigorously oppose” marine geoengineering projects that it said could imperil Earth’s already vulnerable sea ecosystems.

Up to 90 percent of the excess heat produced by man-kind’s burning of fossil fuels is absorbed by the world’s oceans.

And as atmospheric green-house gas levels continue to rise despite the 2015 Paris climate deal, scientists and industry are coming up with ways to try to mitigate the damage caused by rising temperatures using technology.

One such plan, which began preliminary experiments last month, involves spraying tril-lions of microscopic salt crystals into the air above the Great Barrier Reef.

Its proponents hope that the salt will mix with low-altitude clouds, making them brighter and able to reflect more sun-light away from the reef.

But HOME said the project contravenes a 2010 United Nations moratorium on ocean geoengineering.

“Geoengineers are flying in the face of global moratoria agreed at the UN,” said Silvia Ribeiro of the ETC Group that monitors the projects.

“The potential for large-scale versions of these project — driven by the fossil fuel industry’s motivation to keep extracting, selling and burning — poses a clear and present danger to our oceans.” Coral reefs — which cover less than one percent of the ocean’s surface but support a quarter of marine species — are especially vulnerable to warming waters.

Recent spikes in tropical and sub-tropical sea surface temperatures, magnified by an especially potent El Nino, have triggered an unprecedented mass bleaching of corals, affecting 75 percent of global reefs.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2018 issued its landmark report on the Paris deal temperature goals — “well below” two degrees Celsius (3.6 Farenheit) above pre-industrial levels and a cap of 1.5C if at all possible.

It found that at 1.5C hotter, more than 70 percent of Earth’s coral reefs will likely die off; at 2C, that increases to 99 percent.

HOME said that the Great Barrier Reef testing sets a “dan-gerous new precedent” and fails to take into account the under-lying cause of rising ocean tem-peratures and coral bleaching: fossil fuel emissions.

“To really address climate change, we need serious cuts to CO2 emissions, not distracting technofixes,” said Louise Sales from Friends of the Earth Aus-tralia’s Emerging Tech Project.

O t h e r m a r i n e

geoengineering projects cur-rently undergoing testing include injecting glass micro-bubbles into sea ice in Alaska and Canada in the hope that they will reflect more sunlight.

That project has already been opposed by indigenous groups.

In waters off the coast of Chile and Peru one firm has begun an ocean fertilisation project aimed at promoting the

growth of plankton which consume carbon dioxide absorbed by the ocean.

HOME said that at large scale the technique threatened to create “dead zones” of deox-ygenated water devoid of life.

“These experiments would violate international moratoria, and scientific evidence indicates that the risks and impacts far outweigh the supposed ben-efits,” said Samuel Leiva from Terram, a Chilean NGO.

An aerial view of a beach in Playas de Tijuana, Baja California State, on the Pacific coast of Mexico, on June 5, 2020. World Oceans Day was marked yesterday.

Chanel may call time on extravagant Paris fashion showsAFP — PARIS

Chanel may be about to bring down the curtain on its ultra-spectacular Paris fashion shows, its new designer Virginie Viard hinted yesterday, as the French brand revealed its first collection since the coronavirus crisis.

Extravagant, hugely theat-rical shows on enormous sets inside the French capital’s Grand Palais became synon-ymous with the luxury label during the long reign of German designer Karl Lagerfeld, who died last year.

But his discreet successor Viard, the Kaiser’s longtime righthand woman, said recre-ating almost life-sized space

rockets, jumbo jets, river gorges, Eiffel Towers and even com-plete Alpine villages with snow and ski slopes was not her thing.

“I have never been a fan of pharaonic shows, even if they were great with Karl,” she told the French daily Le Figaro.

“Sometimes he would ask me, ‘Is it too much?’ and I would reply, ‘For you it is great but I dream of a little show’,” Viard added. Even so, she said that coronavirus permitting, Chanel would return to the Grand Palais for its next show during Paris fashion week in October.

“It will be the last at the Grand Palais which is under-going major refurbishment in January,” Viard said.

“It is a place filled with

memories, and every time we marvelled (at the shows). I like the cinematic aspect of what we did there,” she added.

Viard said that although she hugely misses Lagerfeld, she has a “different vision” to him.

“With me, you won’t be risking walking out in some-thing weird,” she laughed.

Sometimes Lagerfeld “would ask himself if he had gone too far,” Viard said.

“But since he always took it to the nth degree, his idea would become brilliant.” Viard, 58, who dreamt of being a film director before dedicating herself to fashion, revealed the cruise collection through a studio-shot film evoking the Italian island of Capri, where

the show was supposed to have been unveiled in May.

She said the highly practical summery looks were conceived so they could be thrown into “a little suitcase on wheels, a shopper and an embroidered handbag”, with long skirts becoming strapless dresses when pulled up.

The collection was very much in Viard’s own image with plenty of deft Parisian classic chic touches to go along with bare midriffs adorned with strings of jewellery and tummy belts, tiny bags, flip up sun-glasses and gladiator-style armband bracelets.

Cruise collections tradi-tionally showcase holiday wear for glamorous foreign travel, a

luxury some jetsetters may have to forego this year.

The daughter of two doctors, Viard said she was not immune to the effects of the coronavirus which she said has “left us all feeling more fragile”, and therefore steered clear of evening dresses. Instead she wanted to create something “simple and luxurious and charming. I hope people will be touched by it.” Viard said the clothes will be in the shops in November along with her summer collection which has been eclipsed by the COVID-19 crisis. And she insisted that Chanel’s haute couture col-lection will be ready to show in Paris in July, when the shows will be held digitally.

Up to 90 percent of the excess heat produced by mankind’s burning of fossil fuels is absorbed by the world’s oceans.

A World Redrawn: Aphotographer sees chance for solidarityAFP — NICOSIA

Iranian photographer Gohar Dashti has created a body of work that explores the rela-tionship between nature, human migration and the ripple effects of conflict and social upheaval.

The coronavirus pandemic presents, she believes, an opportunity to remind us of our mutual responsibility toward each other.

With the pandemic is cre-ating a collective sense of unmooring from the familiar, what is important is that “it will make us understand that we’re all in the same boat,” she said.

“This is a shared pain,” she told AFP from Cambridge, Mas-sachusetts in the United States, where she has been based for several years.

“I hope that from this situ-ation, we will come to an understanding that the world is one. If a tree is cut in Africa, it impacts the life of someone in France,” the 40-year-old pho-tographer and video artist said.

“It’s good that we under-stand the relationship between the world, economy and nature and maybe this epidemic has allowed us to think about all these issues again.”

Nature and its relationship to mankind trace a thread through Dashti’s 15-year oeuvre

— exhibited worldwide and fea-tured in prestigious permanent collections — with nature often acting as a foil for examining social issues and identity in her l a r g e - s c a l e , s t a g e d photographs.

Dashti’s own life was marked by conflict and its legacy. She was born in Iran’s Khuzestan province at the start of the Iran-Iraq war that ravaged the oil-rich eastern region that borders Iraq and killed hundreds of thousands from 1980-1988.

One of her series, “Today’s Life and War”, placed a couple going about day-to-day domestic life — cooking, watching TV, hanging up washing — amid the trappings of a battlefield, with tanks and soldiers looming in the background.

Another series, “Stateless”, produced in 2014/2015, features scenes similar to those familiar in news coverage of refugees and migrants but rendered stark and semi-theatrical against vast and towering landscapes.

Touching on ongoing con-flicts, she said she hopes people, particularly those in wealthy countries, will come to rec-ognise amid the pandemic that they are not unaffected by the suffering of others around the world. “What is much more important to me is the view of

countries with high economic power. For them to understand that they are not separate... we all live in the same world,” she said. “Sometimes we see some-thing like war in the media and think that it has nothing to do with us — that’s Afghanistan’s problem or that’s Yemen’s problem.

“But what’s happening now shows that it has to do with all of us. If a war breaks out in Yemen or in Afghanistan, it also has an effect on our lives, so we can’t stay silent.” She said her compatriots in Iran, which is facing the deadliest coronavirus outbreak in the Middle East, had rallied in solidarity in the face of the pandemic, drawing on resilience from previous crises.

“Iran, like all countries, was

taken unawares by the virus and experienced very difficult conditions and continues to see very difficult conditions. But, really, with the cooperation between people and the com-mendable efforts of medical staff, they have been able to manage the crisis,” she said.

“In my opinion, the people in Iran have shown a lot of sol-idarity — one reason is that they are a people that have known crisis.” Resilience to the anxiety triggered by uncertainty is something Dashti thinks we can learn from the pandemic.

“The conditions created by the coronavirus all over the world teach us how to live with instability,” she said.

“In my opinion, artists and migrants can deal with these

situations better. They know how to live and work with an uncharted future.” Thrown into her own state of uncertainty with exhibitions of her work “Land/s” — a meditation on finding the familiar in foreign landscapes — cancelled or post-poned, Dashti is still working on a film about the project, but like many others around the world, experiencing a change of pace.

“I am spending a lot of time with my four-year-old son, giving him lessons. Really, I feel like I have never spent so much with him,” she said. “Another activity that I love is to take walks in nature. “More and more I think I should pay more attention to and work on nature and its rela-tionship with humanity.”

A handout image taken on July 17, 2019, shows a photograph, taken in the US, placed within a natural setting in Iran as part of the 'Land/s' photo project.

Police hunting for gigantic crocodile in Spanish river

ANATOLIA — OVIEDO, SPAIN

Spanish police are on a hunt for a crocodile in the region of Valladolid after several people reported seeing a massive creature near the confluence of the Duero and Pisuerga rivers over the weekend.

The first calls came in on Friday, when two young boys reported seeing the animal swimming in the river. On Sat-urday, local police also iden-tified the animal.

“We get all kinds of calls but the one we received today surprised us,” tweeted the Castile and Leon emergency phone number on Saturday. “Police have been deployed to find the crocodile.” On Sunday, biologists also discovered two suspected nests and parts of fish leftover from the croco-dile’s supposed feast, according to local newspaper El Norte de Castilla.

From the evidence, the experts believe they are dealing with a Nile crocodile, which is the second-largest reptile species in the world and considered to be highly aggressive.

Although Nile crocodiles can grow beyond five meters, this specific animal is thought to be around 1.5 meters long (5 feet) and weighing around 200 kg. They are widespread in sub-Saharan Africa but not native to Spain.

Local police, a group of biologists and SEPRONA, a special nature unit of Spain’s Civil Guard, are patrolling the rivers and setting up lures in the hopes of capturing the animal.

According to local media, the search crew is being extremely cautious to avoid scaring the crocodile, which could cause it to flee to another area and further complicate the search.

The current focus is on a 20 km stretch between the towns of Simancas and Tordesillas.

Although the hunt began on Saturday, the crocodile has still not been captured and the search teams were reinforced on Monday. Local authorities are calling the animal “dan-gerous” and warning residents to avoid the river.