Work on Sharq Crossing project to start by third …...2019/12/25 · Work on Sharq Crossing...

Volume 24 | Number 8116 | 2 RiyalsWednesday 25 December 2019 | 28 Rabia II 1441 www.thepeninsula.qa

BUSINESS | 01 SPORT | 12

Croatian star Mandzukic joins Al Duhail

WB projects Qatari economy

to grow by 3.2% in 2021

QP announces change in pricing methodology from Feb 2020THE PENINSULA/DOHA

Qatar Petroleum has announced that starting February 2020, pricing for the crude oil grades of Qatar Marine and Qatar Land, marketed and sold by Qatar Petroleum for Sale of Petroleum Products Company Ltd. (“QPSPP”), will be changed from a retroactive pricing basis to a prospective pricing basis.

As a result, the new Qatar Marine and Qatar Land crude pricing methodology will be based on the averages of readily available and transparent regional crude oil pricing benchmarks.

The change to the pricing methodology will improve the overall competitiveness of Qatar Marine and Qatar Land, and allow existing and new cus-tomers to better align and compare the Qatari crude grades with other crude grades.

Sixteen experts take oath to perform works in judiciaryQNA/DOHA

Sixteen experts yesterday took the oath as experts accredited to the judicial authorities in the country, in accordance with the regu-lations set out in Law No. 16 of 2017 on the regulation of works of expertise.

The experts were handed the regis-tration certificate to start their duties after taking the oath and after they were regis-tered within the roster experts in the Min-istry of Justice. They will start providing technical and specialized works of expertise at the state level, in front of the judicial authorities, and any authority determined by a decision of the Minister. This batch includes a number of Qatari cadres in accurate and rare specialties that include weapons, explosives, security, engineering, electronic and chemical systems, electronic crime engineering as well as engineering, real estate and accounting specialties.

After taking the oath, the Minister of Justice and Acting Minister of State for Cabinet Affairs H E Dr Issa bin Saad Al Jafali Al Nuaimi met with the experts, and wished them success in carrying out the

tasks assigned to them to ensure the cor-rectness and integrity of the judicial procedures.

The Minister affirmed the Ministry’s readiness, represented by the Department of Experts, to provide full support to the experts and to do everything possible to facilitate their work, adding that the Min-istry of Justice is working to develop justice systems. He said that the work of experience is of great importance to provide assistance to the judiciary, in a way that contributes to

achieving completed justice and not pro-longing litigation. The Minister noted that the Department of Experts in the Ministry of Justice is currently focusing in its work plan on rare and specialized experiences to meet the judicial needs in this regard.

His Excellency added that the Min-istry of Justice is keen on developing the rule of law system, and working to provide and facilitate all services related to citizen services in various fields, of which the reg-ulation of works of expertise is one of its

most important tools for achieving the desired goals.

The Minister said that the Ministry will work to increase the number of experts and diversify their areas of expertise by providing qualified Qatari legal cadres to provide technical expertise in various fields, in order to keep pace with the rapid developments taking place in the country in all fields, to meet judicial needs, and to achieve the goals of the Qatar National Vision 2030.

Work on Sharq Crossing project to start by third quarter of 2020THE PENINSULA/DOHA

The Public Works Authority (Ashghal) held yesterday a briefing session with local contractors to form global alliances to implement Sharq Crossing project, a strategic hub for the main roads in the country to help ensure a smooth traffic flow cutting travel time from Ras Bu Abboud to the West Bay by seven minutes.

The project, scheduled to start construction by third quarter (Q3) 2020, will consist of bridges con-necting to each other through a water tunnel with a total length of 12km above sea level, linking Ras Bu Abboud Street and the West Bay area. As per directives of Prime Minister and Interior Minister H E Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani, Ashghal invited local companies to attend a briefing

session on the launch of Sharq Crossing project with the aim of forming alliances with international companies to implement the vital project, said a statement issued by Ashghal.

The session included a pres-entation on the project details and the timetable for launching the project and its implementation to start their preparations and submit their requests to tender through

forming a partnership and alliance between local and international companies.

The President of Ashghal, H E Eng. Saad bin Ahmed Al Muhannadi said: “We trust local contractors and their ability to form an alliance to implement this project with the required quality and time, as this is the first of its kind in Qatar, which will cause a qualitative shift in traffic.” �P4

Minister of Justice and Acting Minister of State for Cabinet Affairs, H E Dr Issa bin Saad Al Jafali Al Nuaimi, with the experts.

Prime Minister and Interior Minister H E Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani, with Ashghal staff who were honoured for their distinguished service in implementing “Ashghal” projects for 2019, at La Cigale Hotel, yesterday.

Qatar tops region in Internet speed in NovemberSACHIN KUMAR THE PENINSULA

Qatar has topped the region and is second globally in terms of mobile Internet speed in November. The country has ranked second in the global mobile broadband speed test in

November, in Ookla’s Global Speed Test Index.

The average download speed in Qatar was 77.07 Mbps in November while the upload speed was 21.49 Mbps. The internet speed in Qatar is more than double of the global average download speed. The global

average download speed was 30.93Mbps in November while the upload speed was 11.88Mbps.

South Korea has topped the global ranking of internet speed while Norway is just after Qatar, securing third place in the ranking. The average download speed in South Korea was 117.79

Mbps while the upload speed was 18.95 Mbps. In Norway, the average download speed in Norway was 72.80 Mbps while the upload speed was 18.86 Mbps.

The Ookla Speed Test Index compares Internet speed data from around the world on a

monthly basis. Data for the Index comes from the hundreds of mil-lions of tests taken by real people using Speedtest every month.

The average download speed in South Korea was 112.77Mbps in October, while it was 75.02Mbps in Qatar and 69.53Mbps in Norway.�P2

PM attends ceremony honouring Public Works Authority staffTHE PENINSULA/DOHA

Prime Minister and Interior Minister H E Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani attended a ceremony honouring staff of the Public Works Authority ‘Ashghal’, held yesterday evening at the La Cigale Hotel .

The event is held within the framework of encouraging and sup-porting competent cadres that are keen to implement the country-led infrastructure projects to achieve sustainable and high-quality projects in line with the Qatar National Vision 2030. H E the President of Ashghal, said: “We are proud to honour efficient Qatari cadres who have proven their efficiency by their commitment and keenness to provide the best for the State of Qatar.” At the end of the ceremony, the Prime Min-ister and Interior Minister H E Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani, honoured a number of distinguished staff in implementing “Ashghal” projects for 2019.

SPECIAL SUPPLEMENTWEDNESDAY 25 DECEMBER 2019

Included withtoday’s edition is a

special supplement

02 WEDNESDAY 25 DECEMBER 2019HOME

Qatar strongly condemns attack in northeast NigeriaDOHA: The State of Qatar

voiced strong condemna-

tion and denunciation of

the attack which took place

in northeast Nigeria, leav-

ing a number of people

killed and others kidnapped.

The Ministry of Foreign

Affairs reiterated the firm

position of Qatar on reject-

ing violence and terrorism

regardless of motives and

reasons. The statement

expressed Qatar’s condo-

lences to the families of the

victims and to the govern-

ment and people of Nigeria,

wishing safety of the kid-

napped. QNA

OFFICIAL NEWS

Qatar strongly condemns blast in eastern AfghanistanDOHA: Qatar voiced strong

condemnation and denunci-

ation of the explosion which

took place in Laghman prov-

ince in eastern Afghanistan,

leaving deaths and inju-

ries. The Ministry of Foreign

Affairs reiterated the firm

position of Qatar on rejecting

violence and terrorism regard-

less of motives and reasons.

The statement expressed

Qatar’s condolences to the

families of the victims and

to the government and peo-

ple of Afghanistan, wishing

the injured a speedy recov-

ery. QNA

Amir, Cuban President exchange greetings on 30th anniversary of diplomatic ties DOHA: Amir H H Sheikh

Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani

and the President of the

Republic of Cuba, H E Miguel

Diaz-Canel, exchanged con-

gratulatory messages on the

occasion of the 30th anniver-

sary of the establishment of

diplomatic relations between

the two countries, which falls

in December this year.

H H the Amir and H E the

Cuban President expressed in

the congratulatory messages

their satisfaction with the level

of the strong Qatari-Cuban

relations in the past decades.

They also affirmed their joint

determination to support and

consolidate them in various

fields for the good of the peo-

ples of the two countries. QNA

PM attends ceremony honouring Ashghal’s staff

The Prime Minister and Interior Minister, H E Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani, at the ceremony honouring staff of the Public Works Authority (Ashghal) at the La Cigale Hotel, yesterday.

Qatar tops region in Internet speed in November

FROM PAGE 1

Qatar augmented its ICT infrastructure and improved the Internet quality, and became the first country in the world to launch 5G services. The country has invested sub-stantially in 5G technology which allows peak Internet connection speed to reach 1 Gbps. The roll out of 5G has also accelerated the development of wider communications infra-structure in Qatar.

A 5G network has the capacity to allow 10,000 times the volume of traffic compared to LTE, and provides peak capacity of 10 Gbps. Ooredoo was the first in the world to launch a commercially-available 5G network, and has made substantial progress towards rolling it out across Qatar. For users, 5G services means having access to very fast download and upload speeds compared to 4G network. 5G is also a great step for Internet of Things (IoT), applications that need extremely high speeds, and it will pave the way for a host of smart technologies like smart cars, VR, AR and drones to be part of our everyday lives.

MME’s action plan succeeds in protecting strategic sea fish reserveSANAULLAH ATAULLAH THE PENINSULA

The Director of Fish Wealth Department at the Ministry of Municipality and Environment (MME), Abdulaziz Mohammed Al Dehaimi, has said that action plan of the Ministry succeeded in protecting the strategic reserve of sea fish.

He said that under the action plan, MME issued a number of decisions to protect strategic reserve of fish like prohibiting overfishing, specifying sizes of fish to be caught.

“The decisions also banned hunting some fish in hatching period like king-fish. The main goal of the Fish Wealth Department was to protect the strategic reserve of fish in the sea. We succeeded in our action plan as it reflects positive results and

we are working on it to make it safer,” Abdulaziz Mohammed Al Dehaimi told The Peninsula.

He said that Qatar achieved self-sufficiency in fresh fish pro-duction about 75 percent and 34 percent in other all types of fish including caned and frozen. “MME’s ongoing five-year stra-tegic food security program will help Qatar to become almost self-sufficient in fresh fish pro-duction,” said Al Dehaimi.

To reduce the stress on stra-tegic reserve of fish in sea, he said that projects of fish farming on floating cages were launched already. “The projects are being developed which will be func-tional very soon,” said Al Dehaimi. The Director also said supply and demand rule the market, the unfavourable weather affect fish catching thus pushing prices of fish upwards.

Work on Sharq Crossing project to start by third quarter of 2020

FROM PAGE 1Projects Affairs Director at

Ashghal, Engineer Yousef Al Emadi confirmed that the con-tractors were invited to enter and compete for the Sharq Crossing project and to define the required schedule for the project where local companies are to form an alliance with international companies and provide a list of those alliances in mid-January to start offering the project to tender in Feb-ruary, the project starts imple-mentation in the third quarter of 2020. The Sharq Crossing is considered one of the most important infrastructure projects in Qatar and is con-sidered a strategic hub for the main roads in the country, as it consists of bridges that connect to each other through a water tunnel with a total length of 12 km above sea level, linking Ras

Bu Abboud Street and the West Bay area. Sharq Crossing will also serve many vital areas, including the 2022 World Cup stadiums, such as the Ras Bu Abboud stadium and Lusail stadium. With the completion of the project, motorists from Ras Bu Abboud will be able to reach the West Bay in about seven minutes. While Katara is another important link between Ras Bu Abboud and the cultural village, making it easy to reach Katara and Lusail.

The project also contains construction elements, which include the implementation of bridges and roads with lateral inclinations, in addition to a water tunnel up to 1 km in length to ensure the continuity of the navigation movement of ships in a smooth manner without hindering the passage of ships over the tunnel.

A graphic view of Sharq Crossing project released by Ashghal at a briefing session, yesterday.

03WEDNESDAY 25 DECEMBER 2019 HOME

SC graduates 184 officers to ensure highest level of security, safety for World Cup 2022SIDI MOHAMED THE PENINSULA

The Qualifying and Training Unit of the Security Committee at the Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy celebrated yesterday the graduation of 184 officers to secure major events.

The ceremony was held at the Officers Club of the General Directorate of Civil Defense and attended by Major General Ali Mohammed Al-Rashed, Head of the Competitive Establish-ments Unit at the Security Com-mittee of the Supreme Com-mittee for Delivery and Legacy, and Major General Khalifa Abdullah Al Nuaimi, Head of the National Command Center (NCC), Head of the command and control unit of the Security Committee and a number of directorates and officers from the Ministry of Interior and the Lekhwiya Force.

“The efforts exerted by the unit are aimed at achieving the highest levels of excellence and success in securing interna-tional sporting and mass events in Qatar,” said Deputy head of the Security Committee’s Qual-ifying and Training Unit, Abdul-rahman Al Suwaidi.

Speaking at the outset of the ceremony, he said that the out-comes of those efforts were evident in the 24th Arabian Gulf Cup, and 2019 FIFA Club World Cup. The previous stage wit-nessed the graduation of 86 bronze officers and 22 silver officers, while 95 bronze officers were graduated today.

He explained that the pro-gramme, which was imple-mented in cooperation with the Al Jazeera Media Institute and

the Turkish Police, through which the trained officers will play a major role in spreading the culture of security and will contribute to training about 6,000 members in the coming year from the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022.

Al Suwaidi added that the ceremony also witnessed the graduation of the first batch of 19 security sense training officers who received several qualifying courses in training trainers, preventive security sense skills and other internal and external specialized courses .

Major Fahd Al Subaie, Head of the Security Com-mittees’ Training Unit, said that the training programmes implemented by the Com-mittee met with praise and approval of international partners, including FIFA, the British police, the Spanish police, the Portuguese police, the Dutch police and the Russian police.

Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the ceremony , he said that the Qatari officers and trainers, who were extensively rehabilitated, were prepared

through 13-week courses, which ended with their obtaining internationally accredited certificates either as trainers or as bronze leaders.

The graduation ceremony includes three programmes: bronze level programme, security sense programme, security and safety programme, within the framework of the training plan of the committee in preparation for the World Cup 2022.

The bronze level pro-gramme for securing sporting events graduated 95 officers from different departments of the Ministry of Interior, Lekhwiya Force and the Qatar Armed Forces. The graduates received a high level of com-prehensive qualification in the field of human rights, the man-agement of major events and the management of sports crowds.

The programme con-tributed to enhancing the par-ticipants’ capabilities to interact with audiences from different countries, customs and tradi-tions of fans, to become bronze leaders in the sports stadiums where matches are held within the championships hosted by the State of Qatar.

The graduate officers will join those graduated in 2018, most of whom participated in security missions in sports tournaments this year, including the World Athletics Championships, the 24th Arabian Gulf Cup, and the World Club Cup.

As many as 19 officers from various security units partici-pated in the security sense training programme. They were

prepared as trainers through the use of the best programmes and courses in this field, in cooperation with specialised agencies including the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Turkish police security department.

The trainers will contribute to training security personnel and sports events organisers on the principles of security to raise their skills and enhance their capabilities in detecting crime before it occurs.

The third programme grad-uated 70 safety and security trainers in sports stadium, in addition to 30 trainers of the female who specialised in training safety and security principles in sports stadiums in accordance with the require-ments of FIFA and the interna-tional community.

This programme has received international accred-itation from the Highfield

Foundation specialised in granting safety and security credits in European stadiums. The trainers participated in training 1,333 police and

security personnel who took upon themselves the tasks of securing the stadiums in the sport tournaments hosted recently by the country.

The participants during the graduation ceremony held at the Officers Club of the General Directorate of Civil Defense, yesterday. PICS: ABDUL BASIT/THE PENINSULA

A graduate receiving a certificate of appreciation during the ceremony.

The trainers will contribute to training security personnel and sports events organisers on the principles of security to raise their skills and enhance their capabilities in detecting crime before it occurs.

Spring Festival pulls huge crowd at Souq Waqif and Souq Wakrah SIDI MOHAMED THE PENINSULA

The ongoing Spring Festival at Souq Waqif and Souq Al Wakrah has witnessed a large turnout in the last four days since its launch while the organisers are expecting more visitors in coming days.

“The aim of the festival is not only to provide quality enter-tainment to people but also to make people visit these markets and know more about Qatari culture. That is the reason why we are organising the festival during mid-year vacations in order to attract more people,” said Khalid Saif Al Suwaidi, Manager of Souq Al Wakrah.

Speaking to a local TV, yes-terday, Al Suwaidi added that such events are used to market both the Souqs. The festival will run until January 4, and opens daily from 4pm until 10pm.

The festival features around

60 games and rides in the two souqs. Visitors can see wild animals like lions and tigers at the circus shows. Singers and dancers enthral the spectators with a variety of songs and dances.

Al Suwaidi, said: “What dis-tinguishes this year’s festival is the Russian circus, which is being held out of Russia for the first time in Doha. Exotic animals are part of this Russian circus.”

“We have seen great turnout from the visitors during the last four days specially from families who are keen to witness such shows,” he pointed out.

The event is being organised by the Private Engineering Office in order to draw local and inter-national tourists and give them an opportunity to enjoy various entertainment and shows. It started last Saturday.

Also popular groups from different countries including those from Arab world entertain visitors with cultural presen-tation such as folk dances and songs with the accompaniment of native musical instruments.

The Festival also attracted many Arab and foreign tourists, who flocked to Souq Waqif, to enjoy various events. A number of visitors praised the holding such activities at these Souqs which combines the originality of the past with the modernity of the present.

A performance during the Spring Festival at Souq Waqif. PIC: ABDUL BASIT/ THE PENINSULA

The festival features around 60 games and rides in the two souqs. Visitors can see wild animals like lions and tigers at the circus shows. Singers and dancers enthral the spectators with a variety of songs and dances.


Chief of Staff meets Chief of Staff of FAF

The Chief of Staff of Qatari Armed Forces, Lieutenant General (Pilot) H E Ghanem bin Shaheen Al Ghanim, with the Chief of Staff of the French Air Force (FAF), H E General Philippe Lavigne, yesterday. During the meeting in Doha, they reviewed the existing bilateral relations, especially in the field of military cooperation between the two sides, and ways to enhance and develop them.

Shura Council’s legal committee studies draft law regulating charitable activitiesQNA/DOHA

The Legal and Legislative Affairs Committee of the Shura Council held a meeting yesterday, chaired by its Rapporteur H E Nasser bin Rashid bin Saree Al Kaabi. During the meeting, the

committee completed the study of a draft law amending some provisions of Law No. 15 of 2014 Regulating Charitable Activities, in the presence of the Director General of the Regulatory Authority for Charitable Activ-ities (RACA), Ibrahim bin

Abdullah Al Duhaimi, and Director of the Legal Affairs Unit of the RACA, Saud bin Mohammed Al Athba.

The committee approved the said draft law and submitted its recommendations regarding it to the Shura Council.

The Rapporteur of the Legal and Legislative Affairs Committee of the Shura Council, H E Nasser bin Rashid bin Saree Al Kaabi, with other members of the committee during a meeting in Doha, yesterday.

WISA workers elect representativesTHE PENINSULA DOHA

The Qatar Manpower solutions company ‘WISA’ organised the process of electing its workers representatives in the joint committee of the company under the supervision of the Ministry of Administrative Development, Labor and Social Affairs and the presence of a representative of the ILO, and this comes in accordance with

ministerial resolution No. (21) for 2019.

WISA is one of the leading companies to implement this decision believing in the important role played by the worker in the company and keen to provide all the requirements of comfort and commitment towards the welfare of worker’s rights. The company organised a seminar to explain the mech-anisms followed by the reception of the applications of candidates,

who numbered up to five appli-cations for two seats, within the time limit.

WISA’s activation of this decision comes for the hoped results of the joint committee’s work to contribute to strength-ening cooperation, improving working relat ionships , increasing organisational effec-tiveness and addressing com-plaints, as well as an important role in the awareness and edu-cation process.

WISA workers during the process of electing their representatives at the workers joint committees.

Farm owners hail Katara Farmers’ Forum initiativeRAYNALD C RIVERA THE PENINSULA

Local farm owners taking part in the fourth annual Mahaseel Festival have lauded the Cultural Village Foundation-Katara for launching the Farmers’ Forum — its latest initiative which supports Qatar’s agricultural sector.

The Farmers’ Forum head-quarters located in Building 47 was inaugurated on Monday coinciding with the opening of the six-day festival.

“We need this valuable ini-tiative through which farm owners can gather in one place to meet and exchange experi-ences and ideas and find solu-tions to the challenges we face,” said Khamis Al Kuwari, one of the farm owners participating in the festival.

Al Kuwari thanked Katara for their keenness to support local agricultural production and in achieving food security by organising Mahaseel market every year.

Youssef Ahmed Mohamed Al Taher, another local farm owner participant, was of the same view praising the great value of what Katara is doing in “supporting local agricultural production,

whether by spreading the culture of patronising local products or by giving farmers the oppor-tunity to introduce their products as well as supporting their efforts in developing their product and overcoming the difficulties they encounter, which is what the Farmers’ Forum will do, making it a very valuable initiative that will have a very positive impact on agricultural production in the country.”

He said that the fourth edition of the festival which attracted more Qatari farms offering their products to con-sumers of different nationalities contributes in a big way to local farm production.

This edition of the festival has also seen participation of several initiatives, one of which is “Gharsa” – a home farming initiative.

“We are a voluntary, non-profit initiative that comes within the promotion of social respon-sibility and aims at promoting agricultural awareness of all women at all levels and engage them In the farming and food industries, as well as increasing the percentage of self-sufficiency and domestic food security,” said Maryam Al Dosari, the founder of the initiative.

Al Dosari said they work “to support agricultural innovation, and seek to revive the popular agricultural heritage, even if it is simple, and to benefit from the experiences of our mothers.”

“The initiative currently presents 10 products by several women, and we are constantly working to develop their hobby

and surround them with tech-nical foundations as well as encourage the transfer of expe-riences,” she added.

On their first participation in the festival, she was satisfied with the positive response from visitors and thanked Katara and the Ministry of Municipality for the opportunity to take part in

the event.Mahaseel Festival saw a huge

number of people throng the more than 40 stalls offering fresh fruits and vegetables, meat and dairy products, juices and honey and flowers and ornamental plants in addition to food stalls selling authentic local cuisine and a number of food trucks.

There are also designated play areas where a number of inflatable and video games are available for children to play and enjoy their stay as well as edu-cational events and activities to raise awareness on the impor-tance of local produce and food products, making the festival a one-stop shop for the entire family.

The festival located in the Southern Area of Katara is open until December 28 from 9am to 9pm, after which the Mahaseel market will remain open on Thursdays, Fridays and Sat-urdays until March 31.

A storekeeper arranging fresh vegetables in preparation for the rush of buyers at the fourth Mahaseel Festival, yesterday.

Mahaseel Festival saw a huge number of people throng more than 40 stalls offering fresh fruits and vegetables, meat and dairy products, juices and honey and flowers and ornamental plants in addition to food stalls selling authentic local cuisine and a number of food trucks.

MoCI recalls various models of Porsche Panamera, Porsche Cayenne and Ford EcoSport due to possible defects THE PENINSULA DOHA

The Ministry of Commerce and Industry (MoCI), in cooperation with Al Boraq Autmobiles Co., dealer of Porsche in Qatar, announced the recall of Porsche Panamera models from 2017-2020 and Porsche

Cayenne models from 2018-2020, due to a possible defect in the visual warning light on the instrument panel which alerts drivers when the brake pads are worn out.

The Ministry of Commerce and Industry, in cooperation with Almana Motors Company, dealer of Ford in Qatar, has also announced the recall

of Ford EcoSport model of 2017, due to a possible defect in the welds on the front lower control arms.

The recall campaigns come within the framework of the Minis-try’s continuous efforts to protect consumers and ensure that car dealers follow up on vehicle defects and repairs. The Ministry said that it

will coordinate with the dealers to follow up on the maintenance and repair works and will communicate with customers to ensure that the necessary repairs are carried out. The Ministry has urged all customers to report any violations to its Consumer Protection and Anti-Commercial Fraud Department.

MoPH starts using LIMS in central food laboratories THE PENINSULA DOHA

The Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) announced yesterday the actual start of using the elec-tronic program of Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) in central food laboratories, which will allow the exchange of information on food analysis electronically, as is the case in the prestigious international laboratories.

This programme is imple-mented through an electronic system marked by the ability to manage information related to analysing food samples from the first stage of receiving samples until transferring them to the concerned departments with

h i g h a c c u r a c y a n d effectiveness.

The electronic programme also automates workflow tasks and specifies standard tools and methods to be followed, in addition to managing and con-trolling the movement of sample analysis and related information as well as ensuring the attainment of more accurate and faster results and facilitating the

task of tracking data sequentially over time and across experi-ments to improve efficiency.

This new programme is one of three interconnected pro-grammes that have been in operation for about a year, namely the electronic food control system for local foods, and the imported and exported food control system, which is expected to be completed soon.

This programme is implemented through an electronic system marked by the ability to manage information related to analysing food samples from the first stage of receiving samples until transferring them to the concerned departments with high accuracy and effectiveness.


Qatar Live: Katy Perry, Maluma, and Maroon 5 dazzle Doha THE PENINSULA DOHA

Global pop icons Katy Perry, Maluma, and Maroon 5 wowed crowds with sensational performances at the Doha Exhi-bition and Convention Centre (DECC) for the Qatar Live series of concerts held recently.

The artists celebrated their first appearances in the State of Qatar as part of the Qatar Live series of special music concerts and festivals organised by Qatar Airways and Qatar National Tourism Council (QNTC), sup-ported by Ooredoo as Platinum Sponsor. The concerts attracted thousands of residents and visitors.

Qatar Live was organised to align with the FIFA Club World Cup Qatar 2019™ (December 11 to 21) to provide world-class entertainment for football fans, visitors and local residents.

Qatar Airways Group Chief Executive and Secretary-General

of QNTC, H E Akbar Al Baker, said: “We are delighted to have had the opportunity to welcome some of the biggest stars on the planet to Qatar to share in the incredible Qatar Live festival of music and entertainment. To see so many people coming together to attend Qatar Live alongside the FIFA Club World Cup Qatar 2019™ has firmly placed Qatar at centre-stage in terms of enter-tainment and sport.”

Earlier this month, Cheb Khaled and Hatim Ammor per-formed to hundreds of fans at DECC and, in addition to the Qatar Live concerts, Qatar Airways and QNTC brought the Daydream Festival to Qatar for the first time.

The world-renowned fes-tival, hosted at the Ritz-Carlton, Doha, takes place each year at different locations around the world, bringing together the best DJs in dance and electronic music. Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike, Robin Schulz, Sam Feldt, Matt

Sochon and Wankelmut were among the world-class DJ names who performed on December 12. Afrojack, Lost Frequencies, Mark Knight, Steff Da Campo and Matt Sochon performed on December 20.

A multiple award-winning airline, Qatar Airways was named ‘World’s Best Airline’ by the 2019 World Airline Awards, managed by Skytrax. It was also named ‘Best Airline in the Middle East’, ‘World’s Best Business Class’, and ‘Best Business Class

Seat’, in recognition of its ground-breaking Business Class experience, Qsuite. It is the only airline to have been awarded the coveted ‘Skytrax Airline of the Year’ title, which is recognised as the pinnacle of excellence in the airline industry, five times.

Qatar Airways currently

operates a modern fleet of more than 250 aircraft via its hub, Hamad International Airport (HIA), to more than 160 destina-tions worldwide.

The world’s fastest-growing airline has added several exciting new destinations to its growing network this year, including

Rabat, Morocco; Izmir, Turkey; Malta; Davao, Philippines; Lisbon, Portugal; Mogadishu, Somalia; Langkawi, Malaysia; and Gaborone, Botswana. The airline will add Santorini, Greece; Dubrovnik, Croatia; and Osaka, Japan to its extensive route network in 2020.

A view of the crowd at one of the Qatar Live concerts held in Doha recently.

Al Wakra Hospital to introduce fat grafting, laser therapy servicesTHE PENINSULA DOHA

Qatar’s only dedicated Burns Unit, located at Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC)’s Al Wakra Hospital, is set to introduce some new and advanced services soon.

There are plans to introduce new services at the Unit in the coming months, specifically fat grafting and laser therapy to treat patients with burn scars, said Parwaneh Al Shibani, Assistant Executive Director of Nursing at Al Wakra Hospital.

“Caring for patients who have been burned is complex as a burn injury can be one of the most severe forms of trauma. Patients with burn injuries often present with unique clinical, psychological, and social chal-lenges,” said Al Shibani.

She said Al Wakra Hospital’s Burns Unit is unique in the way that it provides patients with multi-disciplinary care.

According to Al Shibani,

caring for patients with burn injuries is so complex because, in addition to the serious nature of the injury and the patient’s discomfort, the recovery can be challenged by psychological and social factors, such as fears around their employment, the loss of income, and uncertainty about the future. “The

complexity and rarity of burn injuries makes delivering burn care a specialised service. To achieve the best possible clinical outcome for patients with burn injuries, their care must be delivered by expert multi-dis-ciplinary teams who are spe-cialised in burn services,” said Al Shibani.

“The care a patient needs depends upon the severity of the burn. More serious injuries will require treatment by a larger multi-disciplinary team. Patients treated at the Burns Unit at Al Wakra Hospital are supported around the clock by physicians from more than a dozen medical and surgical specialities, including neurosurgery, vascular surgery, and psychiatry, as well as nurses, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, dieti-tians, psychologists, and social workers. We work together as a team to assess a patient’s injuries and develop the most appro-priate course of care,” added Al Shibani.

Parwaneh Al Shibani, Assistant Executive Director of Nursing at Al Wakra Hospital

Planning and Statistics Authority celebrates GCC Statistical DayTHE PENINSULA DOHA

The Planning and Statistics Authority celebrated the GCC Statistical Day, which falls on December 24 every year.

The celebration aims at emphasising the importance of statistics in planning and valuing the efforts of those working in this field.

A statement issued by the Authority affirmed its keenness to integrate the innovation

methodology in all areas of official statistical production operations, with a focus on defining user needs, including building data and indicators platforms and providing them to users.

The Authority said that those efforts are within the goals of the Statistical Centre for the Cooperation Council for the Arab Countries of the Gulf.

As the centre’s efforts focus on providing accurate statis-tical information, indicators

and data that contribute to drawing strategic plans for sus-tainable Gulf development, achieving contemporary visions of the GCC countries towards enhancing economic growth, diversifying its sources, a n d e n h a n c i n g competitiveness.

The decision to celebrate December 24 as the GCC Sta-tistics Day was taken by the GCC Ministerial Council held in Manama on November 24, 2016.

Officials of the Planning and Statistics Authority during the event to mark GCC Statistical Day, which is celebrated on December 24 every year.

The Unit has cared for over 6,400 patients at its outpatient clinics so far this year.

As of November 2019, staff at the Unit also cared for more than 80 paediatric patients who were treated in the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit, over 180 patients who required surgical intervention, and more than 200 patients who received recon-structive burn treatment at Al Wakra Hospital’s Plastic Surgery Division.

The Burns Unit at Al Wakra Hospital was relocated from Rumailah Hospital in 2014 as part of HMC’s efforts to transform many of its key clinical services in response to managing the health care requirements of Qatar’s growing population.

Situated over two floors, the Burns Unit has a dedicated oper-ating room, inpatient rooms, an occupational therapy room, con-sulting rooms for outpatients,

and reception and recovery spaces. Al Shibani said that while the focus of her work is caring for those who have been burned, preventing burns from happening in the first place is also part of the service provided by the Unit.

“In addition to the burn care provided by our specialised team, we also work closely with government agencies, including the General Directorate of Civil Defense, the Ministry of Edu-cation and Higher Education, and Primary Health Care Cor-poration, as part of our pro-gramme to prevent burn injuries,” added Al Shibani.

The Burns Unit at Al Wakra Hospital has cared for over 6,400 patients at its outpatient clinics so far this year.

Qatar Live series of concerts was organised to align with the FIFA Club World Cup Qatar 2019™ to provide world-class entertainment for football fans, visitors and local residents.


Lexus AAB launches premium Sakura lounge for customersTHE PENINSULA DOHA

The word Sakura means cherry blossom. The Japanese cherry blossom, or Sakura, has long been adored by people across the globe. It is regarded as a symbol of renewal, vitality, and beauty. During the spring season of each year, thousands travel to Japan to view the wondrous spectacle of these white or pink flowers blooming. The flower bloom for two weeks in April.

The Lounge is inspired by the concept of Omotenashi, which is the Japanese spirit of hospi-tality that not only fulfils people’s needs, but anticipates them. Omotenashi is a key element that makes up Lexus Dealership culture, customer service and the L-finesse design philosophy for many Lexus models, according to R.K. Murugan, AAB Acting CEO.

Inspired by Lexus covenant, AAB & Lexus are determined to

treat their customers as they would treat a guest in their own home. True to the concept of Omotenashi, AAB strives to do more than simply meet the needs of Lexus owners.

Ambassador of Japan to Qatar, Kazuo Sunaga; Ambas-sador of Cuba to Qatar, Emilio Caballero Rodriguez; and Ambassador of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela to Qatar, Giuseppe Angelo Yoffreda Yorio along with R.K. Murugan & Firas Mufti, Senior Marketing Manager, inaugurated the Sakura Lounge. Social media, bloggers, influencers and media attended the inauguration of Sakura Lounge. Sakura Lounge is located in Lexus State of the Art Showroom and it is located in the first floor.

Firas Mufti said: “At AAB we treat our customers as guests to our home and have them expe-rience true Omotenashi. Being a member of the Sakura Lounge, you and your accompanying

friend/family member (a plus one) get the privilege to enjoy a host of benefits.”

He said that the benefits include unlimited Starbucks Coffee, free WIFI, reading mate-rials, dramatic racing simulations while being in the driving seat of the Gran Turismo Play Station Racing console, playing billiards with your friends to improve your skills and coordination, reducing your stress and anxiety in one of premium massage chairs.

AAB also provides you with the option of using one of their two meeting rooms equipped with state of the art Microsoft surface hub. Sakura Lounge will provide Lexus customers with a sophisticated, tranquil envi-ronment where they can feel at ease and anticipate the joy of owning a Lexus. It will be their home away from home. AAB commitment to their customers has always been their top priority.

The Ambassador of Japan to Qatar, Kazuo Sunaga (second right); Ambassador of Cuba to Qatar, Emilio Caballero Rodriguez (extreme left); and Ambassador of Venezuela to Qatar, Giuseppe Angelo Yoffreda Yorio (third right) along with R.K. Murugan (second left), AAB Acting CEO, and others inaugurating the Sakura Lounge at Lexus showroom.

Winners of Mall of Qatar’s art competition announced THE PENINSULA DOHA

As part of the Qatar National Day celebrations, the Mall of Qatar invited schools to take part in a unique contest to showcase students’ creativity and get a chance to win prizes. Under the motto ‘In the future I see Qatar as’, 17 schools participated in Mall of Qatar’s initiative to show their crea-tivity, talent and love for Qatar.

During a ceremony held on December 15 in the Mall’s

luxury court, Khaled Sam Hosn, CEO of Mall of Qatar, announced the nine winners per age group 8-10, 11-13/ and 14-16 years, who secured cash prizes of QR5,000 (1st place) QR2,500 (2nd place) QR1,000 (3rd place) and QR 500 (Peo-ple’s Choice Award) for their schools.

While the nine winners were selected by a jury based on criteria such as relevance to the theme, visual effec-tiveness, creativity and orig-inality, the People’s Choice

Award was selected by fans of Mall of Qatar’s Facebook page.

“We have been amazed at the outstanding talent which has been displayed across the 37 entries, which made judging a very difficult, but extremely enjoyable process. We would like to thank all the schools and students for their participation and creativity. The competition is an annual event which gives talented students the opportunity to have their artwork publicly

displayed to celebrate Qatar National Day and connects Mall of Qatar with our

community,” said Khaled Sam Hosn, CEO of Mall of Qatar. All the students’ original artworks

can be seen in Mall of Qatar ground floor, in the Luxury Court.

Schoolchildren during the art competition at the Mall of Qatar. A total of 17 schools participated in the competition under the theme ‘In the future I see Qatar as’.

Qatar participates in technical committees of GCC Youth and Sports MinistersQNA MUSCAT

The meetings of the technical committees of the Council of Ministers of Youth and Sports of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) continued in the Sultanate of Oman.

The meetings are organised by the GCC General Secretariat from December 22 to 26. The State of Qatar participates in the meetings with a delegation headed by the Director of Youth Affairs Department at the Ministry of Culture and Sports, Hussein Rashid Al Kubaisi.

Also, the 12th meeting of the GCC Youth Hostels Committee was held on Monday, where Ahmed Al Obaidly, the Executive Director, represented the Qatar Youth Hostels.

The meeting discussed several topics, the most prominent of which was a review of the mech-anisms for implementing the deci-sions of the 32nd meeting of Their Excellencies the Ministers of Youth and Sports and the most important obstacles preventing the imple-mentation of the previous joint programmes and activities plan of the Youth Hostels Committee for 2021. They chose the chairman

of the Youth Hostels Committee for the coming period.

The meetings of the technical committees of the Council of Min-isters of Youth and Sports of the GCC started on Sunday morning. The meetings started with a meeting of the youth technical committee of the Council of Min-isters of Youth and Sports in the presence of the members of the committee, where the Ministry of Culture and Sports was repre-sented by Director of Youth Affairs Department at the Ministry of Culture and Sports, Hussein Rashid Al Kubaisi.

The youth technical com-mittee reviewed the mechanism for implementing the youth work diploma in the field of qualifying sports leaders, and the draft exec-utive action plan emanating from the recommendations of the implemented youth workshops. The members of the committee also discussed the plan of joint work teams in the field of youth

with the Moroccan and Jordanian sides, joint programmes and activ-ities for the youth technical com-mittee for 2021, and the draft guide for standards for the quality and efficiency of youth activities as well as the mechanisms for organising youth activities within the annual GCC days and spon-soring youth entrepreneurship projects.

These meetings will follow up on the mechanisms for imple-menting the decisions issued by the meeting No. (32) for GCC Youth and Sports Ministers, where technical committees will discuss in their successive meetings topics and items on their agendas related to youth activities, programmes, and events, and prepare and train Gulf youth leaders.

The technical committees include the youth hostels com-mittee, the training and leadership preparation committee, the sports for all technical committee and the media committee.

Ooredoo strengthens Business Broadband securityTHE PENINSULA DOHA

Ooredoo, the region’s leading enabler of digital business inno-vation, announced the rollout of new security features for its Business Broadband portfolio, in partnership with Secure64 Software Corporation, a leading provider of security as a service solutions.

Ooredoo’s Business Broadband customers, especially small and medium-sized enter-prises (SME) and small office cus-tomers, can find enhanced levels

of protection from malware, ran-somware, and malicious software on their networks and devices.

Ooredoo is rolling out Secure64’s security solutions across its Business Broadband at no extra cost to protect users from malware distribution sites. The service also neutralises devices that can become infected when not on the Ooredoo network, to avoid them from causing harm to the business and their network.

Yousuf Abdulla Al Kubaisi, Chief Operating Officer, Ooredoo Qatar, said: “In the face of increas-ingly complex cyber-threats,

Ooredoo’s partnership with Secure64 provides our Business Broadband customers with new levels of simple and robust security features. Our customers can reduce the risk of data loss, protect their reputation, and provide simple protection of all devices without management overhead.”

Ooredoo’s Business Broadband already provides cus-tomers with high-quality, reliable, broadband Internet, along with multiple value-added services. Providing new levels of security further enhances Ooredoo Business Broadband as Qatar’s

most innovative and secure business fibre product on the market.

Worldwide, Secure64’s DNS-based security solutions protect more than 1 billion subscribers. Secure64’s SecureOS is a DNS-focused operating system that pro-vides service providers with scalable and virtualised DNS per-formance and unmatched security.

Steve Goodbarn, CEO of Secure64, said: “Qatar’s organisa-tions need secure, reliable, and responsive broadband service. Ooredoo is among leading global service providers that are

pioneering Secure64’s protective security services that can shield business customers from cyber-threats. We will continue to work with Ooredoo to roll out unparal-leled business security services.”

Business customers can

leverage the Ooredoo Advantage, making Ooredoo “Best for Business”, thanks to its breadth and depth of talent, best fixed and mobile networks, broadest port-folio of ICT services and solutions, and trusted partner for 60 years.

Sri Lankan Foreign Ministry receives copy of credentials of Qatari AmbassadorThe Chief of Protocol at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Sri Lanka, H E Thushara Rodrigo (right), has received a copy of the credentials of H E Jassim bin Jabor Jassim Al Suroor, as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the State of Qatar to the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka. H E the Chief of Protocol wished H E the Qatari Ambassador success in his duties, and the bilateral relations between the two countries further development and prosperity.

The meeting discussed several topics, including a review of the mechanisms for implementing the decisions of the 32nd meeting of Their Excellencies the Ministers of Youth and Sports and the obstacles preventing the implementation of the previous joint programmes of the Youth Hostels Committee for 2021.


QU holds Annual International Conference & Exhibition on ELT

THE PENINSULA DOHA

The Qatar University (QU) Foun-dation Program (FP), under the Deanship of General Studies, held its 4th Annual International Conference & Exhibition on English Language Teaching (ELT) with the theme “Critical Thinking in Language Curriculum for the 21st Century”.

The conference aimed to highlight the importance of pro-fessional development and brought together over 400 English teachers and researcher in ELT from Qatar, GCC, Canada, the US, Africa, and the UK.

QU Vice-President for Aca-demic Affairs, Dr. Omar Al-Ansari, inaugurated the con-ference on behalf of the QU President, Dr. Hassan Al Derham. The Dean of General Studies, Dr Ibrahim Al Kaabi, gave a welcome address. Also in attendance were the FP Director, Dr. Hezam Al Awah, a n d t h e A s s i s t a n t

Undersecretary for Educational Affairs at the Ministry of Edu-cation and Higher Education (MoE&HE), Fawzia Abdulaziz Al Khater and officials from MoE&HE, the US Embassy, as well as QU faculty and staff.

Plenary speaker, award-winning author, and a Professor at the Faculty of Education, Uni-versity of Ottawa, Professor Awad Ibrahim, talked about “Critical thinking, curriculum studies, and generation Z in lan-guage classrooms”.

In addition to more than 60 research-oriented sessions, teaching tips, and workshops that covered topics on L1 rela-tionship with L2 in the context of ELT for example, the con-ference featured four panels on “Critical Thinking and Language Curriculum”, “Disabilities and Special Needs”, “Incorporating translingual pedagogy into EMI program in the Gulf”, “Improving process-based writing in L2 classrooms”.

In addition, there was an

exhibition with 22 booths. Among the exhibitors were the US Embassy, Oxford University Press, Garnet Education, Cam-bridge University Press, Express Publishing, Pearson, ASAS Lan-guage Center, and many others including, QU Centers such as, QU Testing Center, Center of Continuing Education and Student Learning Center. This year’s conference attendees had the opportunity to learn about the latest trends in ELT.

In his remarks, Dr. Omar

Al-Ansari, said “Critical Thinking in the Language Cur-riculum for the 21st Century” requires us to not only think critically ourselves about what we do and what we offer our students, but also to encourage our students to become inquis-itive, critical thinkers.”

He added, “The success of our students is our primary goal; we must not lose sight of the importance of this in anything we do. We are gathered here today to exchange ideas, share knowledge, and seek ways of making our students not only better learners, but better cit-izens, ready to contribute to their society and its devel-opment. This conference is geared towards helping us encourage our students to become passionate, life-long learners who can critically engage with the modern world.”

Dr. Ibrahim Al Kaabi said: “we believe strongly in the vital role continuous professional development plays in ensuring that our faculty meet high standards performance. To maintain that, we strive contin-uously to host and organise pro-fessional development events to Qatar University, local, regional and international community.”

“Since not everyone can attend international conferences in any given year, hosting one in Qatar University offers them with the opportunity to network with fellow professionals from outside the university and outside Qatar. ”

According to Dr. Al Awah, this conference underscores the commitment of the man-agement and faculty to support ELT practitioners in Qatar and the region, and he added,

“It is a great opportunity for researchers, presenters, teachers, educational tech-nology developers and ELT textbook writers to network, enhance collaboration among ELT community segments and sustain an ongoing dialogue to optimise the quality of teaching and learning.”

As part of QU collaboration, the US Embassy in Doha, in coordination with the MoE&HE, has sponsoring 50 public school teachers in Qatar to participate in the conference where the Training and Educational Devel-opment Center at MoE&HE, has sponsoring 100 English lan-guage teachers, to avail them-selves of the latest trends and practices in ELT.

In addition, Texas A & M University at Qatar has spon-sored the plenary speaker for the conference.

Dr. Mohammad Manasreh, the FP Department of English (FPDE) Head said that, “the con-ference is a unique professional development opportunity for TESOL practitioners in the country and the FPDE is proud of this event.”

“Every year we get to network and share experiences with colleagues from schools, private institutes and higher education institutions, both in Qatar and the GCC countries”.

FROM RIGHT: Dr. Ibrahim Al Kaibi, Dr. Omar Al Ansari, Fawzia Al Khater, Dr. Hezam Al Awah, Dr. Hayat Al Samad and Shaikha Al Rumaihi during the 4th Annual International Conference & Exhibition on English Language Teaching.

QC continues to support education sector of GazaTHE PENINSULA/DOHA

Qatar Charity (QC) has started the construction and furnishing of six classrooms at the Fahd Al Sabah School in Gaza, to benefit more than 240 female students.

This comes as part of Qatar Charity’s educational devel-opment projects implemented in the Gaza Strip. This 350 sq metre project, funded by Qatar Charity with a value of QR781,500, will contribute to reducing over-crowding in classrooms of the school, increasing literacy rates, and providing an appropriate learning environment for students.

Earlier this year, Qatar Charity has opened the Al Shaimaa Sec-ondary School for Girls in Beit

Lahia, north of the Gaza Strip, in cooperation with the Palestinian Ministry of Education and Higher Education. The school was built at a total cost of QR5.4m, with financial support from ‘Qatar Cyclists’ Club and several Qatari companies.

Last year, Qatar Charity opened the Kamal Al Ahoud Primary School in Gaza to benefit 600 students in a remote area. It is worth mentioning that Qatar Charity works on supporting the Palestinian education sector along with its other sectors.

It has worked on rehabili-tating the scientific laboratories of public schools, in addition to providing alternative energy to 60 schools, in light of the continuous power cuts from the Gaza Strip.

A view of construction work by Qatar Charity to add classrooms at Fahd Al Sabah School in Gaza.

The conference aimed to highlight the importance of professional development and brought together over 400 English teachers and researchers in ELT from Qatar, GCC, Canada, the US, Africa, and the UK.

Doha Municipality launches awareness program on food safetyTHE PENINSULA DOHA

The Department of Health Control at the of Doha Munici-pality has launched an awareness programme on food safety to raise health awareness among the public by distributing pamphlets to consumers at shopping complexes and malls.The pamphlets contain detailed information on food safety in both Arabic and English.

Food safety is one of the functions of the Ministry of Municipality and the Envi-ronment represented in a number of works assigned to the health control departments that operate under the umbrella of the Municipal Control Department in the municipal-ities, said the Ministry in a statement.

A number of inspectors with specialised scientific cadres, graduates of public health, vet-erinary medicine, science and agricultural engineering, have been prepared by the state to advance these works in order to ensure the safety of consumers.

The awareness programme includes cards about the details of food items like food name,

ingredient list, nutrition data, country of origin, expiry date, and conditions for storage and use.

The consumers are advised to ensure food safety when shopping. The golden rule for food safety includes maintaining hot foods in a hot temperature and cold foods in a cold temper-ature and not leaving food in a warm temperature where bac-teria grow and what to look for when buying to avoid damaged packaging and broken eggs and to ensure the expiration date and temperature of the food Whether cold or frozen.

Meat, poultry, and chilled and frozen food should be picked up at the end of the shopping and placing the chilled and frozen food in one bag to maintain its temperature and put it inside the fridge immediately upon arrival at home.

Raw fruits and vegetables should be kept away from other foods such as meat and poultry. All fresh products should be washed before eating. Removing external leaves or peeling reduces the amount of harmful pesticides and microbes on the surface of fruits and vegetables.

Always remember to wash

hands and tools, cutting boards and surfaces with soap and water before handling raw food and preparing meals.

Cleanse your kitchen with chlorine solution. There are two ways to disassemble (chilling) food through the refrigerator and the microwave, and in the event of disassembling by the microwave, it must be cooked immediately.

Most people think that the disease has affected them from the last food that was eaten, but in fact symptoms of poisoning appear after eating contami-nated food may reach 48 hours and as a correct procedure you should go to the doctor or the nearest hospital if the symptoms are severe especially if the patient is old, pregnant woman and baby.

A representative of food safety programme educating children about food safety at a mall.

A number of inspectors with specialised scientific cadres, graduates of public health, veterinary medicine, science and agricultural engineering, have been prepared by the state to advance these works in order to ensure the safety of consumers.

Qatari Forum for Authors unveils new bookTHE PENINSULA DOHA

The Qatari Forum for Authors held a session recently on ‘Writer and Book’ during which the inauguration and discussion of the new edition of the Qatari writer Maryam Ibrahim Al Mansoori book, titled ‘Al Rehala (Journey) 101’ on self-development, was launched in the framework of the continuous efforts of the forum to support the writers and introduce their literary work.

The new edition falls within the category of books on self-devel-opment, and it is unique in a different presentation style through which it provides answers to life matters in a simple way to creativity and thinking outside the ordinary, it also addresses

a large segment of people in different waks of life.

The writer, Maryam Ibrahim Al-Mansoori, said that her book is a reflection of reality and it digs into life of human being calling them to revise the themselves and rethink the reality, but this meditation is its primary goal to raise the level and skills development.

The attendees expressed their admiration for this work, which reduced many years of experience and deep thinking, and mixed between the intensity of the content and the impor-tance of the ideas included in the book on the one hand and the simplicity of presentation and the smoothness of the method on the other hand to be accessible to all segments and levels and ages.

During the discussion, the author said that she deliberately changed the style of writing and selected new topics in which innovation to present a unique artistic work in which she put her experience in simple sentences accompanied by beautiful expressive images to present an integrated work in form and content.

The guest of the Qatari Forum for Authors talked about the sources of her inspiration for writing this book.

She revealed the secrets and mys-teries of her writings, and about the book, the author said that the idea came to her while she was traveling and on a plane considering that the trips are for her.

It is the best time to meditate, get rid of restrictions and think more freely because each perspective

changes and looks at things from dif-ferent angles and with new approaches

with the eyes of a flying bird, as she put it.

Qatari writer Maryam Ibrahim Al Mansoori during an interaction at the Forum.

For a country like Qatar, which is known as an arid desert land with very limited availability of arable land and natural fresh water, local production of enough food for the whole country can be a Herculean task. But when we look at the development in the recent past in the country, it is evident that nothing is impossible for Qatar under its visionary leadership.

Trump’s denial of climate change in the face of a rapidly escalating crisis, as I have argued before, is perhaps his greatest dereliction of duty. He formally initiated US withdrawal from the Paris agreement in November - a reprehensible move by the world’s second-largest carbon emitter that gives other countries, such as China, an excuse to shirk their obligations.

YUSUF OZCAN ANATOLIA

08 WEDNESDAY 25 DECEMBER 2019VIEWS

Climate movement is gaining momentum in spite of Trump

The selection of 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg as Time magazine’s “Person of the Year” seemed

to trigger many on the political right, led by President Donald Trump, who called the choice “ridiculous” and mocked Thunberg for supposedly having an “Anger Management problem.” The episode was a dis-graceful yet fitting end to a year that saw bold new ideas to fight climate change meet with inaction, ignorance and worse.

This month, world leaders held global climate talks in Madrid, where they hoped to resolve lingering issues related to the Paris agreement and build momentum toward more aggressive measures. Instead, the talks ended in frustration and finger-pointing, with Trump and the United States receiving much of the blame. “We’re in a very politically difficult time right now where we’ve got one key world leader denying climate change,” said a representative from the island nation of Tuvalu. “So it’s very hard to get other countries to

move forward when you’ve got such a critical country playing a spoiling role.”

Trump’s denial of climate change in the face of a rapidly esca-lating crisis, as I have argued before, is perhaps his greatest dere-liction of duty. He formally ini-tiated US with-drawal from the Paris agreement in November - a reprehensible move by the world’s second-largest carbon emitter that gives other countries, such as China, an excuse to shirk their obliga-tions. In the past year, his admin-istration has also gutted the Obama admin-

istration’s Clean Power Plan and moved to permit more drilling and fracking on federal lands. In total, the administration and Congress have taken more than 130 actions since the president took office “to scale back or wholly eliminate federal climate miti-gation and adaptation measures,” according to the Climate Deregulation Tracker at Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law.

Yet as the federal government abdicates its responsibilities, states across the country are stepping in to fill the leadership void. After California passed a landmark bill in 2018 requiring the state to transition to 100 percent clean power for its electrical needs, New Mexico, New York, Wash-ington, Maine, Nevada and Colorado adopted similar laws in the past year, as did the District of Columbia. Twenty-four states have also banded together to form the US Climate Alliance, committing to meet the carbon emissions targets established in the Paris agreement.

Meanwhile, with the support of grass-roots activists, some lawmakers are beginning to expand the scope of the climate debate. In October, for example, the Colorado legislature approved a measure sponsored by state Rep. Emily Sirota, a Democrat, that will require an official assessment of many bills’ impact on carbon emissions.

As lawmakers grow more attuned to the importance of keeping the climate crisis at the center of the debate, this idea, which mirrors the traditional budget-scoring process, could serve as a model for other states and even Congress in the future.

And it’s not just states that are

taking action. A new report from the America’s Pledge initiative, led by former California governor Jerry Brown and former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg, finds that states, cities and businesses committed to ful-filling the goals of the Paris agreement account for more than half of US emis-sions and more than two-thirds of the economy. Together, this growing coa-lition is helping ensure that progress continues until the election of a pres-ident, hopefully in 2020, who takes the threat of climate change seriously. The report concludes that “full achievement of already-on-the-books policies from state and local actors - paired with rapidly shifting economics in the power sector - would reduce emissions by 19 percent below 2005 levels by 2025 and 25 percent below 2005 levels by 2030.”

Of course, these steps should not obscure the need for global and US leaders to embrace bold measures to address the crisis, including a Green New Deal and the decarbonization of the economy. It will take coordinated action on a global scale to stave off catastrophe. But the climate movement is gaining momentum. It now includes cities and states, busi-nesses and activists. And it is proving that while the Trump administration might be able to slow progress, it cannot suppress the will of millions of people who are fighting to save the planet. As Thunberg said at a recent UN climate conference, “We do not have to wait. We can start the change right now.”

The author is the editor and publisher of the Nation magazine and writes a weekly column for The Post.

KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL THE WASHINGTON POST

QUOTE OF THE DAYJapan and South Korea

are geographically, historically, and

culturally, the closest neighbors as well as the most important, mutually beneficial

partners in terms of human exchanges.

Moon Jae-in South Korean President

French colonialism more than just ‘grave mistake’

French President Emmanuel Macron has trivialized France’s colonial past in Africa

in which more than two million people were killed as a “grave mistake” while the country looks for new ways to maintain its dominance over the continent.

“Too often, France is per-ceived as taking a supremacy stance and to dress itself in the rags of colonialism, which has been a grave mistake, a serious fault of the Republic,” Macron said during a visit Sunday to Abid-jan province in Ivory Coast in a joint press conference with his counterpart Alassane Ouattara.

But he neither apologized for France’s bloody history in Africa nor signal that the country would withdraw from the conti-nent’s economy. On the contrary, it is known that Macron, who is trying to downplay a colonial-ism full of massacres, wants to maintain French dominance in Africa through colonial practices.

France is accused of using

resources such as uranium, iron and oil for its own interests with its military presence in many African countries.

The West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA) announced Monday that next year it will abolish the 74-year-old CFA franc, the currency used since the colonial period, and use a new currency known as the Eco, which will remain pegged to the euro. UEMOA is an organiza-tion of eight West African states comprising Benin, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Mali, Niger, Senegal, Togo and Guinea-Bissau.

It was established to pro-mote economic integration among countries that share the CFA franc as a common currency.

Under the new system, France is expected to withdraw its representatives from the Cen-tral Bank of West African States (BCEAO), the banking commis-sion and the monetary policy council, and end the practice of keeping 50% of the foreign exchange reserves of African countries in the Central Bank of France.

But France will be the guarantor country in case of an

economic crisis. If countries that use the Eco are unable to pay for their imports, France will cover these payments and in exchange will be entitled to return to the monetary policy council.

This indicates that the Afri-can countries may not manage the new currency independently. Moreover, African economists interpret the replacement of the CFA franc as a new maneuver to maintain the dominance of France’s monetary policies in its former colonies.

Pauline Tetillon, co-head of Survie, an association research-ing French policy in Africa, said France will maintain its dom-inance over the new currency.

Patrice Garesio, who co-heads the group, said: “This reform was announced by the French president and Ivory Coast President Alassane Ouat-tara. Ouattara came to power in 2011 with the intervention of the French army.” “The two leaders, who justified the CFA franc until yesterday, are not the legitimate people to carry out this reform. This reform was conducted with-out consulting the countries in the region,” Garesio added.

France’s history in Africa is more than just a “grave mis-take”. The country, with its colonial occupations launched in 1524, dominated more than 20 countries in western and northern Africa. Around 35% of Africa was under French rule for more than 300 years. Countries such as Senegal, Ivory Coast and Benin were used as slave trade centers of France in those years and all the resources in the region were exploited.

On the other hand, upris-ings initiated by those fighting for France in the World Wars with the promise of independ-ence were violently suppressed. The five-century colonial period and wars of independence in the region killed more than two mil-lion Africans.

Thousands of Algerians were killed by French soldiers in demonstrations initiated by Algerians fighting in the French ranks with the promise of inde-pendence shortly before the end of the Second World War. Vio-lence continued in a systematic way until 1962, when Algeria gained its independence from the events known as Setif and Guelma massacre on May 8, 1945.

CHAIRMANSHEIKH THANI BIN ABDULLAH AL THANI

EDITOR-IN-CHIEFDR. KHALID BIN MUBARAK [email protected]

ACTING MANAGING EDITORMOHAMMED SALIM [email protected]

DEPUTY MANAGING EDITORMOHAMMED OSMAN ALI [email protected]

ESTABLISHED IN 1996

EDITORIAL

Feeding Qatar’s population

For any country, providing enough food, shelter, water and ensuring good health and security for its people is the most important priority, as it is the most funda-

mental yardstick to measure the efficiency of governance. Qatar has fast emerged as a model in ensuring food security for its citizens and residents.

The Minister of Commerce and Industry H E Ali bin Ahmed Al Kuwari had said that Qatar has been able to achieve high levels of self-sufficiency in various agricultural products and to establish a strategic stockpile of food items. The self-suf-ficiency of dairy products has increased 27 percent to 106 percent and the production of fresh poultry rose from 49 percent to 123 percent in two years. During discussion on The Role of Development in Achieving National Sovereignty at the Kuala Lumpur Summit 2019 in Malaysia, H E the Min-ister said that Qatar’s investments in the food industries sector have increased 126 percent to QR5.2bn in 2019 com-pared to 2.3bn in 2016.

This shows the keenness of the wise leadership of the country in ensuring food security through encouraging local production of essential food items. The statistics shows the

efficiency of the governance, which not only ensure enough food products for domestic con-sumption, but also has reached a point where the country is gearing up to export some of the products to regional and inter-national markets.

For a country like Qatar, which is known as an arid desert land with very limited availability of arable land and natural fresh water, local production of enough food for the whole country can be a Herculean task. But when we look at the devel-opment in the recent past in the country, it is evident that nothing is impossible for Qatar under its visionary leadership. Being one of the fastest growing economies in the world, Qatar is facing a large-scale influx of expatriate workers resulting in tremendous increase in population in recent years, which can put more pressure on food availability if not met with advanced planning.

Food security means creating a condition in which eve-rybody has a physical and economic access to safe, ade-quate and nutritious food at all times to satisfy their daily calorific intake which allows the people to lead an active and healthy life.

Qatar has set up a working mechanism to take advantage of its advanced infrastructure and strategic location to propel its food production. The best example of this effort is Baladna Food Industries, which is one of the most successful national ventures on an industrial level, which was able to meet the local demand for dairy products in a very short span of time.

The state is fast becoming self-sufficient in vegetables, fish and other essential commodities and the country is also expanding its green land areas with ambitious efforts to plant more trees.

Environmental activist Greta Thunberg delivers a speech during COP25 Climate Change conference in Madrid.

Like Brexit or lament it, there is a new degree of certainty: Britain is severing its 46-year link to the European Union. Parliament voted for that decisively on Friday. What the new relationship with Europe will look like is a subject for next year.

09WEDNESDAY 25 DECEMBER 2019 OPINION

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Families of Sudan protest‘martyrs’ await justice

For British politics, 2019 meant three funerals and a wedding

ASHRAF SHAZLY AFP

THERESE RAPHAEL BLOOMBERG

Sudan has celebrated one year since the start of peaceful pro-tests that ended a dictatorship, but families of the slain “martyrs

of the revolution” are still waiting for justice.

The autocrat who ruled for three decades, Omar Al Bashir, is now behind bars, but many who served in his security forces have legal immunity from prosecution. “The killers are known, we want justice,” said Samah Ahmed, 27, the sister of Tarek, who was killed on December 21 last year.

“If we don’t achieve justice, it means nothing happened.”

Tarek, then aged 22, was among the first to take to the streets in the dusty industrial city of Atbara, the cradle of the uprising 350 kilometres (220 mile) northeast of Khartoum.

It was here on the on the banks of the River Nile that Sudanese held their first rallies in December 2018 against a government decision that tripled the price of bread. The protests swept across the African nation and by April, they had toppled Bashir -- but Tarek never witnessed that triumphant moment.

His mother, Naimat Abdel Wahab, 52, recalled seeing his bloodied body in the local hospital, a day before he had

been due to sit his final engineering exam in college.

“I tried to call him, ‘Tarek, Tarek’, and called him by his nickname,” she said. “When he didn’t answer, I saw that he had passed away. “His friends who were with him at the protest saw who shot him and they are ready to testify in front of any court.” Doctors linked to the protest movement say more than 250 people were killed during the months of demonstrations.

Amnesty International, which says at least 177 people were killed, has called on Sudan’s new leaders to ensure that those in the security forces “who committed horrific crimes or used excessive force against protestors” must be held accountable.

However, under Sudanese law, members of the Sudanese army, police and intelligence services still enjoy immunity from prosecution.

This also applies to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group that was involved in repressing Khartoum sit-in protests and is also accused of crimes in the Darfur conflict that erupted in 2003.

That immunity can only be waived if the military superiors of the accused authorise it after a specific request from the Prosecutor General’s Office.

That office issued a statement last Thursday -- on the day Sudanese cele-brated the first anniversary of the pro-tests -- calling on the security forces “to remove the immunity faster”.

However, it did not specify whether any requests for the lifting of immunity had already been made to the various security forces.

The transitional civilian gov-ernment of Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok has stepped up measures to dismantle the former regime and to meet the aspirations of protesters.

In September, Hamdok formed a committee to investigate the crackdown on the Khartoum sit-in, which is due to report back within three months.

And days ago Sudan announced it would investigate 50 former regime figures over the Darfur conflict, for which Bashir is wanted by the Interna-tional Criminal Court on charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

But for now, some key figures remain in the state apparatus, among them RSF chief Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, who is a member of the civilian-military council overseeing the post-Bashir transition. The Forces for Freedom and Change movement that spearheaded the protests have declared seeking justice for the slain a priority.

One of its leaders, Ibrahim Al-Amin, told AFP that “this issue must not take a long time. And it has to be done in a transparent way ... Anyone who committed a crime must face accountability.”

Magdi el-Gizouli, an analyst at the Rift Valley Institute, however argued that the current power-sharing arrangement presents a “barrier to a credible investigation”.

Another protester killed in Atbara was Mukhtar Abdallah, 28, who died on April 11, the day the army deposed Bashir. His widow, Afaf Mahmoud -- cradling their baby, born 27 days after his death -- recalled how on that day “the people of Atbara were starting to celebrate in the streets”. After the two were separated in the crowd, she said, she tried to phone him, but another man answered and said her husband had been shot. “We have video showing the people who shot Mukhtar in front of the national security and intelligence building,” she said.

“I wish I could skip to the end of the book to know what happens,” a colleague said in passing, during one of

those late evenings of drawn-out par-liamentary debate that ended, like the bags of popcorn I consumed, without satisfaction. Now at least Part I of the Brexit saga has been written.

Like Brexit or lament it, there is a new degree of certainty: Britain is severing its 46-year link to the European Union. Parliament voted for that decisively on Friday. What the new relationship with Europe will look like is a subject for next year. But looking back on 2019, there’s a good case to be made that where we are is partly the result of three projects that failed and one that didn’t. Think of it as three funerals and a wedding.

The Independents came, saw and didn’t conquer. They were briefly called Labour’s Magnificent Seven, a group of defectors rejecting their party’s radicalism and hoping to form a new and more moderate alternative. Then they became eight and three Tories joined as well. But this breakaway ended like a previous one in 1981 - in failure. The group struggled from the start in deciding on a name, a leader and a platform. They never reached critical mass; they all lost their parliamentary seats or stood down.

I wrote at the time that “the split highlights Labour’s transition to a hard-left, take-it-or-leave-it socialist party from the inclusive, centrist ground it occupied under former leader Tony Blair. That is a place where many moderate voters won’t go and other Labour lawmakers may

find increasingly intolerable.” The flood of resignations that briefly looked possible didn’t materialize. The Labour machine was too strong and many MPs thought that the party, based on its 2017 performance, still had game.

But the defections hurt Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. They under-scored his lack of support in the par-liamentary party, his unwillingness (or inability, if we’re being charitable) to tackle anti-Semitism and his inco-herent Brexit policy. At the same time, they strengthened the hand of the Brexiters; only three Tory MPs joined the new grouping, which never gained traction with the public. It wasn’t going to pose a major threat.

The Remain alliance came undone. In mid-January, former Prime Minister Theresa May offered lawmakers a challenge: They were prepared to say what they didn’t want, she said. Now it was time to specify what they wanted. That became the leitmotif for the rest of the year.

Polls showed a small majority of voters would favor remaining in the EU if the Brexit vote were held again. But not even the parliamentary Remainers could agree on whether to hold a second referendum; many recoiled from the idea and with good reason. If Remain won, Brexiters would feel betrayed and consider it undemocratic. If Leave won, it would offer the worst kind of confirmation for many referendum proponents who were ardent Remainers. There would never be agreement on the all-important details either: What would the question be? How could the

timing work? The longer the Remain alliance’s indecision and division per-sisted, the less faith voters had that Parliament could offer any kind of solution. The deathblow came when Boris Johnson expelled 21 Conserv-ative MPs for trying to block a no-deal exit. The orphaned group proved powerless; many of the big names left Parliament for good.

Theresa May’s deal died in a ditch. May’s time in office was characterized by her flaws as a politician - the ina-bility to build alliances, to persuade - but also by the denial stage of Brexit. Neither Brexiters nor Remainers could accept that their preferred route would entail losses. Thus everyone hated May’s deal which, to borrow a phrase from the financial crisis, socialized the losses. Remainers would have to accept losing access to the EU’s single market, while Leavers would have to accept lingering obli-gations toward Europe to avoid a hard border with Ireland.

With the Brexit deadline looming, May tried a final gambit to break the impasse. She calculated that the opposition would avoid a no-deal exit and hardliners in her own party would intervene if they thought Brexit might be canceled altogether. She was both right and wrong. Although the opposition did avoid no-deal by forcing May to seek an extension, that didn’t get her agreement across the line. And while the hardliners did vote for a deal out of fear there might be no Brexit, in the end that wasn’t enough either; her deal was voted down a third and final time.

By the time Johnson became prime minister, Brexiters were willing to give ground in one crucial area. His deal established what was unthinkable under May: a de facto customs and regulatory border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the U.K. There are some who argue that Johnson might’ve gotten his plan through from the start; I highly doubt it. Timing isn’t everything in politics, but sometimes it’s the only thing.

A new Conservative coalition is born. Now for the wedding. As the pollster and analyst Matt Singh has noted, the roots of the new Conserv-ative majority have been growing for a while. But with uncommon cha-risma and personal branding, Johnson was able to cut through in a way May never could. His campaign was ruth-lessly targeted toward exactly the voters he needed to win a majority. The Tories have always been good at reinventing themselves for electoral gain. This year, they did so yet again.

Amnesty International, which says at least 177 people were killed, has called on Sudan’s new leaders to ensure that those in the security forces “who committed horrific crimes or used excessive force against protestors” must be held accountable.

The first step was making Johnson leader. After he won the leadership contest, his success seemed likely to rest on three premises I described as “shaky” - and it turns out all three held up. The first was that Europe would renegotiate after repeatedly vowing not to. It did, and while Johnson had to sell out Northern Ireland’s unionists to secure the EU’s support for a new deal, he could nonetheless claim victory. Second, Johnson had to convince everyone that a no-deal threat was credible. He did. Finally, he had to sell a no-deal outcome to the public - in fact, polls were moving that way when Johnson clinched his agreement and made the point moot.

Johnson is unquestionably a defining figure. He has now won two mayoral campaigns, a Brexit referendum, a leadership contest, and a decisive majority in a general election; his political instincts and popular appeal can’t be doubted. Nor can his propensity to say any-thing that he feels will help his cause.

Now comes the hard part. For one thing, Johnson has repeatedly misled voters about the challenges and costs of Brexit, the promise of future trade agreements, and even the terms of his own deal. At some point, all that will come home to roost. He’s also borrowed from the populist playbook (at times shame-fully, with digs at immigrants and prisoner rehabilitation), and won by attracting voters who will demand policies that many tradi-tional Conservatives regard as profligate. He’ll have to deliver to keep them.

Britain’s Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn speaking at the opening of the Second Reading of the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) “Brexit” Bill in the House of Commons in London.

11WEDNESDAY 25 DECEMBER 2019 MIDDLE EAST / AFRICA

Syrian army captures village, 8 civilians killedAP/BEIRUT

A missile struck a school building in northwestern Syria last morning, killing eight civilians, opposition activists said, as government forces captured a key village held by Al Qaeda insurgents in the war-torn country’s last rebel stronghold.

Syrian government troops also surrounded a Turkish observation post in the area, the activists said. They said the village of Jarjanaz was captured from Al Qaeda late on Monday.

Syrian forces launched a wide ground offensive last week into the northwestern province of Idlib, which is dominated by Al Qaeda-linked militants. The offensive follows weeks of bombardment that has displaced tens of thousands of people.

The United Nations esti-mates that some 60,000 people have fled from the area, heading south, after the bombings

intensified earlier this month. Thousands more have fled further north toward the Turkish border in recent days, where the UN has warned of the growing risk of a humanitarian catas-trophe. Idlib province is home to some 3 million civilians.

More than 40 villages and hamlets have come under gov-ernment control in southern parts of Idlib since Thursday, according to activists and Syrian Brig. Gen. Ali Mayhoub. The mil-itary statement called on civilians to stay away from mil-itant positions and asked them to come to government-held

Syrians gather at the site of a Russian air strike in the village of Jubass on the outskirts of Saraqeb in the northwestern province of Idlib, yesterday. RIGHT: Abu Ahmad, one of the last people to flee from Maaret Al Numan in Idlib province, reacts as he rides in a pick-up truck before leaving the town with his family towards a camp for the displaced.

areas if they can.The activists blamed Russia

—Syrian President Bashar Assad’s main ally in the war — for yes-terday’s missile attack, which hit the Jobas village school. Among the eight killed were five children and a woman, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Syrian citizen journalist

Hussein Khattab reported the same death toll. The school building was used by people dis-placed by violence in other parts of the country, the Observatory and Khattab said.

Syrian troops have been pushing toward the rebel-held town of Maaret al-Numan, which sits on a highway linking the capital, Damascus, with the

northern city of Aleppo, Syria’s largest. Assad’s forces appear determined to eventually reopen the strategic highway, which has been closed by the rebels since 2012.

The Observatory said the troops are now about 4 kilom-eters (2.5 miles) from Maaret al-Numan, adding that government forces advancing from the east

have surrounded the Turkish observation post near the village of Surman.

Turkey is a strong backer of Syrian rebels and has 12 obser-vation posts in northwestern Syria as part of an agreement brokered last year with Russia. The post near Surman is the second that has been encircled by Syrian troops this year.

Oman, India sign maritime transport dealQNA/MUSCAT

The Sultanate of Oman signed yesterday a cooperation agreement in maritime transport with India, aiming at developing maritime relations between companies and insti-tutions concerned with shipping, maritime transport, and stimulating growth in maritime navigation between the two countries.

The agreement was signed by Undersecretary for Ports and Maritime Affairs in the Omani Ministry of Transport and Com-munications, Said bin Hamdoon Al Harthi, and Indian Ambas-sador to Oman, Munu Mahawar.

The agreement comes within the framework of coop-eration between the govern-ments of the two countries, and in a bid to enhance the eco-nomic and trade relations between the two sides.

A student shouting slogans during the ongoing anti-government protest in Basra, Iraq, yesterday.

Iraq approves new election law; deadlock over PM remainsAGENCIES/BAGHDAD

Iraq’s parliament approved yesterday a new electoral law, a key demand of protesters to make elections fairer, but political deadlock is still holding up the selection of an interim prime minister.

The new election law passed by parliament will allow voters to elect individual lawmakers instead of choosing from party lists, and have each member of parliament represent a specific electoral district instead of groups of legislators representing entire provinces. Protesters have demand not just a new electoral law, but also the removal of the entire political class and an inde-pendent prime minister with no party affiliation.

Meanwhile, the protesters stepped up their demonstrations

yesterday with the authorities in Baghdad increasingly paralysed as they seek a way out of a political impasse. Once again the capital’s iconic Tahrir Square began filling early in the day, with protesters making clear their opposition to names touted by the establishment to fill the post of prime minister.

Portrait pictures of these can-didates — marked by a huge red cross—increasingly adorn facades of buildings and tents in the protest area. And once again the main avenues and roads in cities in the south of the country were blocked, as well as entrances to schools, universities and gov-ernment buildings. After dwin-dling in recent weeks, the civil disobedience campaign has redis-covered its vigour, as the pro-testers seek to uproot a political system condemned as deeply corrupt.

Yemen rebels hold talks with Iran FM in Oman

ANATOLIA/SANA’A

A delegation from Yemen’s Houthi rebel group held talks with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif in Oman yesterday, according to a Houthi-run tele-vision.

Al Masirah television said the talks tackled the humani-tarian situation in Yemen and the “blockade” imposed on the war-torn country. Discussions also took up the latest developments in Yemen and the region, the broadcaster said. The rebel dele-gation to the meeting was headed by Houthi group spokesman Mohamed Abdel Salam.

Yemen has been beset by violence and chaos since 2014 when Houthi rebels overran much of the country, including the capital Sanaa.

The crisis escalated in 2015 when a Saudi-led military coa-lition launched a devastating air campaign aimed at rolling back Houthi territorial gains.

Saudi Arabia and its allies accuse the Houthis of being a proxy to Iran. Since then, tens of thousands of Yemenis, including numerous civilians, are believed to have been killed and injured in the conflict, while another 14 million are at risk of starvation, according to the UN.

Floods hit million in South SudanANATOLIA/JUBA

Many are searching for high ground in South Sudan as heavy rain and severe flooding have beset almost one million people across the country, with the deluge destroying housing, roads and schools.

Since July, South Sudan has experienced unprecedented rainfall and flooding, affecting an estimated 908,000 people, 620,000 of whom require immediate humanitarian assistance, the local UN human-itarian office said.

The rains have hit areas already grappling with serious humanitarian needs. Across the flooded areas, more than three million people required assistance even before the downpour, out of the over seven million people awaiting relief countrywide. Many communities have been cut off from health and food services, and rising waters have destroyed homes, displacing an estimated 420,000 people.

According to a report released by the UN World Food Programme, more than 60% of

those affected by the floods are facing extreme levels of acute malnutrition. With the seasonal harvest now wiped out due to the floods — 75,000 hectares of farmland — families have lost what little food stocks they had, exacerbating food needs well into 2020.

Among health risks, cholera and malaria have increased while displacement has put additional pressure on already-strained host communities and washed-out roads make access difficult for humanitarian missions.

Gaza Christians say few Israeli permits granted for Christmas travelREUTERS/GAZA

Fewer than half of Christians from Gaza who sought Israeli permits to visit holy cities such as Bethlehem and Jerusalem at Christmas have so far had their applications granted, members of the small community and Palestinian officials said yesterday.

Israel had said on Sunday it would admit Christians from the Gaza Strip, a territory it keeps under blockade, reversing a December 12 announcement that barred them on security grounds - a departure from its usual Christmas policy. Yesterday, on the Christmas eve, Palestinian border officials said 316 permits had been issued for Christians to leave Gaza for Jerusalem and in Bethlehem in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Church leaders said they had requested 800 such permits. Gaza has around 1,000 Christians, most of them from the Greek Orthodox denomination who celebrate Christmas on January 7, amid a mainly Muslim population of 2 million Palestinians.

Turkish House working on bill to allow troop deployment to LibyaAGENCIES ANKARA

Turkey may need to draft a bill to allow for troop deployment to Libya and its parliament is working on the issue, Presi-dential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said yesterday, after Ankara signed a military cooperation agreement with Tripoli last month.

Turkey backs Libya’s inter-nationally recognised gov-ernment and has said it could deploy troops there if it receives such a request. Libya’s Tripoli-based government has been fighting off a months-long offensive by Khalifa Haftar’s forces in the east.

Speaking in Ankara after a cabinet meeting, Kalin added that Turkey would continue to provide the necessary support to Fayez Al Serraj’s Tripoli-based government.

Turkey has already sent mil-itary supplies to the Serraj’s gov-ernment despite a United Nations arms embargo, according to a report by UN experts.

Turkish Presidential Spokes-person Ibrahim Kalin and US National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien discussed bilateral rela-tions and issues related to the security situation in Syria and Libya.

Kalin and O’Brien had exchanged views by phone on

the security situation in Syria and Libya, in addition to the relations between the two countries, a statement by the Turkish presi-dency stated.

The statement added that the contact discussed develop-ments in the eastern Mediter-ranean and stressed the prin-cipled position of Turkey in this regard.

It pointed out that Turkey will continue its efforts aimed at establishing security and stability in the region.

Meanwhile, Moscow hosted expert consultations of Russian and Turkish diplomats on Libya on Monday, Russian Foreign Ministry said yesterday.

The talks were held at the

level of deputy foreign ministers, Russia’s Mikhail Bogdanov and Turkey’s Sedat Onal headed the delegations, the ministry said in a statement published on its official website.

As a result of “mindful exchange of views,” the two countries agreed to continue contacts on Libyan issues, including “possible assistance to the early settlement of the crisis in the country,” the min-istry said.

On November 27, Ankara and Tripoli signed two separate memorandums of under-standing: one on military coop-eration and the other on mar-itime boundaries of countries in the Eastern Mediterranean.

The maritime pact asserted Turkey’s rights in the Eastern Mediterranean in the face of unilateral drilling by the Greek Cypriot administration, clari-fying that the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus also has rights to the resources in the area. It went into effect on December 8.

The Turkish president Recep Tayyop Erdogan and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson in a phone call discussed bilateral ties and regional issues, according to an official statement.

Turkey’s Directorate of Com-munications said Erdogan and Johnson also discussed recent developments in Libya and Syria.

The activists blamed Russia for the missile attack, which hit the Jobas village school. Among the eight killed were five children and a woman.

12 WEDNESDAY 25 DECEMBER 2019ASIA

Indian Cabinet okays National Population Register amid protestsREUTERS / IANS NEW DELHI

India’s federal cabinet approved funds yesterday for a census and population survey to be conducted next year, amid fears that the database could be used to build a controversial citizens register, against which there have been widespread protests.

Hundreds of thousands of indians have taken to the streets to protest against a new citizenship law enacted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government that provides non-Muslim minorities from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan who moved here before 2015 a pathway to indian citizenship.

Some of these protests have led to clashes between the police and demonstrators in which at least 21 people have been killed.

Many indians say the law dis-criminates against Muslims and violates india’s secular consti-tution by making religion a test

for citizenship. They say the law and a proposed national register of citizens could be used against the Muslim minority.

The government approved 87.54 billion rupees ($1.23 billion) for conducting the census and 39.41 billion rupees for updating the National Pop-ulation Register (NPR), Infor-mation and Broadcasting Min-ister Prakash Javadekar told reporters.

The census collects data on population, economy activity, social and cultural aspects, migration and demography, down to the lowest adminis-trative level. The NPR is

intended to create a compre-hensive identity database of every resident of india.

The census and population survey will start from April next year. Javadekar said the census exercise had no relation with the national register of citizens.

The Union Cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, yesterday gave its approval for updation of the NPR with no requirement by people to submit any document or biometrics to prove their identity, and conducting of census of India 2021.

Announcing the decision taken in the Union Cabinet meeting, Javadekar said no proof will be sought from people during the process of NPR beginning April 2020.

He said that the upcoming NPR was no different than the one conducted in 2010 by the UPA government and that Census will cover the entire population in the country while NPR will cover all the popu-

lation except in Assam.The NPR updation exercise

will be conducted between April and September 2020 in all states and Union Territories and a head count will be ready by February 2021 —the Census year.

Seeking to allay fears, the government had stressed that NPR is a “National Population Register, not a citizen register”.

“There is no need of any proof, document and biometric as we believe in people. Whatever you will say would

be correct. All states have accepted and notified it. The states have also started their campaign,” Javadekar said at the press briefing.

“NPR will be on self decla-ration or self-certification basis and only head count will be done.”

He said that the NPR was first started in 2010 by the UPA government led by Prime Min-ister Manmohan Singh, ahead of Census 2011, and was last updated in 2015.

“The NPR will have to be updated every 10 years. Lakhs of enumerators will be going from house to house for the NPR,” said Javadekar, adding that from this year onwards, an app will be introduced to facil-itate the process.

The NPR will help in ensuring that the benefits of welfare schemes reach the intended beneficiaries, he said, adding that it will be conducted by the Office of the Registrar General of India (RGI).

Activists of the Youth Congress hold placards and shout slogans during a protest against the new citizenship law in Amritsar, yesterday.

A Christian girl holds balloons as she takes a selfie on Christmas Eve in Amritsar, yesterday

No proof of violence by AMU students: ReportIANS NEW DELHI

A fact finding report on the violent confrontation between the Uttar Pradesh police and protesters in Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) on the night of December 15 has accused the UP police of indulging in “unpro-voked violence in AMU, more brutal than even in Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI)”.

The report also aims gun at the university administration of “abandoning its students and throwing them to a hostile and pitiless state.”

The report titled, ‘The Siege of Aligarh Muslim University’, prepared by the Karwan-e-Mohabbat and Indian Cultural Forum gave a clean chit to the students as the investigators

claimed they could not find any evidence of violence from the students’ side.

“Students attest that there was no provocation from their end to instigate the violence. The faculty also largely agree with this,” the report says as it targets the police for the confrontation.

Though the varsity lacked accounts from the security forces’ side.

“Yes, we did not talk to police, we were convinced by what we saw on the spot,” activist Harsh Mander,who led the fact finding team, said.

“Moreover our concern was not violence from students’ side, we want to focus on how police force was used irra-tionally on the students,” Mander added.

The report has blamed the university administration, dis-trict authorities and the police for failing at their duty.

“Their testimonies (stu-dents, teachers of AMU and doctors in the region) revealed that the university adminis-tration, district authorities and the state government, not only failed in their duty to protect the campus and its residents against the brutality by the UP police,” the report read.

The report also alleges that a PhD student lost his hand after a “stun grenade” exploded while he was holding it.

“The hand of a PhD student had to be amputated from below the wrist due to the injuries sustained from a stun grenade that exploded in his hand,” the report claimed.

Ex-Sri Lankan minister held over car mishap, gets bail

AP COLOMBO

A Sri Lankan court yesterday granted bail to a former Cabinet minister who was arrested last week over a years-old traffic accident, a detention the oppo-sition says is part of a government witch hunt of political opponents.

Patali Champika Ranawaka’s political defection in 2014 trig-gered the fall of a government led by the brother of the current president. Opposition lawmakers say his arrest was politically motivated.

The Magistrate court in Colombo permitted the release of Ranawaka on bail and ordered him to report to police once a month. It also ordered him to refrain from influencing wit-nesses. Ranawaka told reporters after his release that he would continue to fight for “democracy and freedom” and that “hand-cuffs and prisons” cannot stop his struggle.

Ranawaka was arrested last week over a 2016 traffic accident in which a young motorcyclist was seriously injured.

He was Sri Lanka’s urban development minister before the election of current President Gotabaya Rajapaksa on Nov. 16.

His release came a day after about 200 opposition lawmakers and supporters protested in Colombo to condemn his arrest.

On Tuesday, opposition law-maker Ajith Perera accused the government of using police as a tool to harass and destroy political opponents.

In a separate case, a court imposed a foreign travel ban on Monday on another former Cabinet minister at the request of police, which are investigating his alleged involvement in organ-izing a news conference on abductions that took place under the government headed by Rajapaksa’s brother, ex-Pres-ident Mahinda Rajapaksa.

Two people who spoke at the news conference about alleged abductions are now in the custody of police.

Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who was the top defenve official in his brother’s government from 2005 to 2015, has been accused of overseeing what were known as “white van” squads that whisked away critics.

India’s new chief of defence staff will be a 4-star generalIANS NEW DELHI

The Union Cabinet yesterday approved the Chief of Defence Staff’s (CDS) post and its charter and duties. The CDS will be a 4-star general who will head the new Department of Military Affairs.

“He will be drawing a salary equivalent to service chiefs, and will head the Department of Military Affairs to be created under the Ministry of Defence. He will function as its Sec-retary,” Union Minister Prakash Javadekar said during the Cabinet briefing.

He will have all the powers like other secretaries, including financial.

The CDS will act as the Prin-cipal Military Adviser to the Defence Minister on tri-services matters. The three service chiefs will continue to advise

the Defence Minister on matters exclusively concerning their respective forces.

The idea of creating the CDS’ post is that India should not have a fragmented approach. “Our entire military power will have to work in unison. All the three (services) should move simultaneously at the same pace,” said a senior government official.

The CDS was planned after looking into the changing nature of warfare, security environment and national security challenges.

The aim is to bring about jointness between the armed forces of the country in training, procurement, staffing and oper-ations, to enhance the quality of military advice given to the political leadership through integration of service inputs, and to develop and foster expertise in military affairs.

Nepal Police detain 122 Chinese over cybercrime, bank fraudREUTERS KATHMANDU

Police in Nepal have detained 122 Chinese men and women in its biggest crackdown on crime by foreigners entering the country on tourist visas, officials said yesterday.

The chief of police in the capital Kathmandu said the sus-pects were rounded up in raids on Monday following infor-mation that they were engaged in suspicious activities.

The Chinese are suspected of cyber crime and hacking into bank cash machines, the police chief, Uttam Subedi, said, adding that they were being held in dif-ferent police stations and their passports and laptops had been seized.

“This is the first time that so

many foreigners have been detained for suspected criminal activities,” he said.

Another senior police officer, Hobindra Bogati, said the Chinese embassy knew about the raids and had supported the detentions.

Speaking in Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said Chinese and Nepali police had cooperated on the case and China was willing to increase law-enforcement cooperation with its neighbour.

Chinese people are regularly detained in Asian countries on suspicion of involvement in various illegal activities, often involving fraud back in China.

Last week, authorities in the Philippines arrested 342 Chinese workers in a raid on an unli-censed gambling operation.

Festive season

About 100,000 Sri Lankan refugees missing from India’s citizenship law REUTERS MUMBAI

Nearly 100,000 Sri Lankan refugees living in India are not eligible for citizenship under a new law, sparking concerns they may be forced to return to the island nation they fled during a decades-long civil war.

I n d i a ’ s C i t i z e n s h i p Amendment Act (CAA) aims to fast-track citizenship for perse-cuted Hindus, Parsis, Sikhs, Bud-dhists, Jains and Christians who arrived in India before December 31, 2014, from Muslim-majority Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan.

The law excludes nearly

100,000 Sri Lankan Tamils, an ethnic minority, who live in India, including about 60,000 in camps in southern Tamil Nadu state, according to the home department.

Most of these refugees are Hindu or Christian, whose fore-fathers were born in India, said S. Velayutham, an advocacy

officer at the non-profit Organ-isation for Eelam Refugees Rehabilitation in the southern city of Chennai.

“Many were sent by the British as indentured labourers on Sri Lankan tea plantations, and hoped for a better life in India when they came here during the war,” he said.

“Some 25,000 children were also born in the camps. They do not know any country but India, but now they may have no choice but to go to Sri Lanka,” he said.

A Tamil Nadu government official who oversees Sri Lankan refugees in the state did not return calls seeking comment.

Information Minister Prakash Javadekar said no proof will be sought from people during the updation process of National Population Register beginning April 2020.

13WEDNESDAY 25 DECEMBER 2019 ASIA

Pakistan court bails key oppn leader after 6 months

INTERNEWS LAHORE

The Lahore High Court (LHC) yesterday granted bail to Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader Rana Sanaullah in the narcotics possession case.

Sanaullah has been granted bail against two surety bonds worth Rs1m each.

Earlier, on November 10, a special court for the Control of Narcotics Substances had dis-missed Sanaullah’s bail petition. The petition had pleaded that the case against Sanaullah was ‘polit-ically motivated and based on mala fide intentions. It had argued that the alleged recovery of narcotics from Sanaullah had merely been an ‘eyewash’.

The petition had said that the prosecution had failed to present any independent witnesses of the alleged recovery from Sanaullah. It had said that the video evidence presented before the trial court had been contradictory to the

incidents narrated in the first information report (FIR).

Failing that petition, Sanaullah had again approached the LHC on November 20 seeking release on bail.

The Anti Narcotics Force (ANF) had on July 1 arrested Sanaullah while he was heading for a meeting from Faisalabad to Lahore. A case was filed in accordance with the Control of Narcotics Substances Act, 1997 after a large stash of contraband was allegedly recovered from his vehicle.

Speaking to a TV channel, PML-N’s Talal Chaudhry lashed out at the government, saying: “This is a fake government that has made fake cases against the opposition.” “The relief being afforded to our leaders these days is because the cases [registered against them] are fake,” he said. “If today someone is [set] free, tomorrow someone else will be arrested.” He added that the incumbent government was

surviving on fake arrests and “running on fake cases”.

Chaudhry added there were question marks over the ANF now. “The government is using these institutions for political ends,” he alleged.

Meanwhile, an accountability court in Pakistan yesterday ordered PML-N President Shehbaz Sharif to appear before it on January 7 in connection with the Ashiana Iqbal Housing Scheme case.

Shehbaz’s lawyer Muhammad Nawaz Chaudhry had filed a plea seeking exemption for the PML-N leader and requested the court to postpone the hearing due to law-yer’s strike.

The court in its written order said, “As per request on behalf of accused Shehbaz Sharif, adjourn to January 7, 2020 for arguments on the application for dispen-sation of personal attendance and appointment of pleader of accused Shehbaz Sharif, as last opportunity.” “Accused Shehbaz Sharif shall also appear in person on next date,” the court order stated. The court added that the proceedings of the case were being affected due to continuous non-appearance of the opposition leader before the court.

Shehbaz, who is currently in London, says the case was polit-ically motivated.

Ex-planning minister Iqbal remanded in NAB custodyINTERNEWS ISLAMABAD

An accountability court in Islamabad yesterday granted the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) a 13-day remand of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader Ahsan Iqbal in connection with the Narowal Sports City corruption case.

A day earlier, the former planning and interior minister had been arrested by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) as he appeared before it in relation to an ongoing inquiry into the case.

The anti-graft body had in July 2018 started investigating the sports complex, which was built at the staggering cost of over Rs3bn.

During today’s hearing, the NAB prosecutor informed the court about the reasons why Iqbal was taken into custody and sough his 14-day remand.

According to NAB docu-ments, the cost of the project was increased without approval from the competent

authority. Iqbal was accused of bypassing Central Devel-opment Working Party in this regard and taking a decision on his own without adopting the stated procedure in the Development Manual of the Planning Commission.

Detailing the reasons for his arrest, the NAB official told the court that the accused was found to be directly involved in the matter and he may flee the country if not taken into custody. The NAB investigation team had visited the Narowal Sports City project last month to secure records.

The mega venture was one of the primary projects developed under Iqbal during the PML-N’s tenure.

Speaking to a TV channel, Senior PML-N leader Talal Chaudhry alleged that the gov-ernment was trying to control the opposition and arresting leaders through the NAB. “Ahsan Iqbal knew he might be arrested, but he stood by his stance,” said Chaudhry, adding that there was a nexus ‘between Imran Khan and NAB’.

Taliban kill 15 in attack on Afghan security checkpoint REUTERS KABUL

Taliban militants ambushed a government checkpoint in Balkh province in Afghanistan’s north, killing at least 15 members of the security forces, local officials said yesterday, the latest in an escalating series of insurgent attacks.

Mohammad Yousuf, the district governor of Dawlatabad where the incident took place, said dozens of Taliban insur-gents targeted a checkpoint manned jointly by Afghan sol-diers and intelligence agents, killing 15.

An Afghan Defence Ministry statement said seven soldiers had been killed. The ministry tends not to provide exact figures on its casualties sus-tained in fighting with the Taliban.

The Taliban, fighting to oust foreign forces and overthrow the Western-backed Kabul gov-ernment, claimed responsibility and said at least 20 members of the security forces were killed, six wounded and four captured. The Taliban often inflates casualty figure they inflict on Afghan government forces.

More than 18 years after US-led forces toppled the hardline Taliban regime, Afghan forces are suffering record casualties with Afghan and US officials warning that the toll is not sustainable.

Despite a winter lull in fighting due to heavy snowfall in the mountains where the Islamist Taliban typically rest and regroup ahead of their annual spring offensive, assaults on vulnerable security checkpoints continue across the country.

Myanmar Navy commemorates 72nd anniversaryMembers of the Myanmar Navy commemorating the navy’s 72nd anniversary in Yangon, yesterday.

Govt dithers on appealing verdict against MusharrafINTERNEWS ISLAMABAD

The government of Pakistan seems to be in two minds whether or not to file an appeal against the detailed judgment in the high treason case against former military ruler General retired Pervez Musharraf, it emerged yesterday.

“Not only this, but it is also undecided about filing a ref-erence against Peshawar High Court Chief Justice Waqar Ahmed Seth for authoring par-agraph No 66 of the detailed judgment,” sources said.

Justice Seth headed the three-judge special court that convicted Musharraf and awarded him death sentence on five counts.

This shows the level of inde-cision within the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf government as only days after the pro-nouncement of the verdict, top functionaries had told the media that the Ministry of Law and Justice has commenced work on the reference to be filed against Justice Seth.

The sources say one group in the PTI is vehemently opposed to the idea of approaching the Supreme Judicial Council or filing an appeal on Musharraf’s behalf, citing legal hitches as well as the political cost.

“They are of the opinion that the move will be embarrassing for Prime Minister Imran Khan, who had all along been a vocal proponent of Musharraf to be charged under Article 6 of the Constitution,” the sources added.

Also, PTI leaders Ali Muhammad Khan and Nadeem Afzal Chan are conspicuous by their silence over the main judgment against Musharraf which can be inferred as their tacit approval of the judgment.

Even Prime Minister Imran Khan has not yet given any statement on social media or the mainstream media against the special court verdict.

One section within the PTI has raised the question as to how the government can chal-lenge the special court ruling when it is the complainant in the case. They, however, say the federation will be respondent in case it files an appeal in the treason case verdict and can support his stance during the proceedings.

It is learned that Musharraf’s lawyer, Salman Safdar, is expected to file an appeal against the treason case verdict this week. It is not yet clear, however, whether the appeal will be filed by Musharraf or his political party — All Pakistan Muslim League.

M o r e o v e r , s o m e

government functionaries want the renowned lawyer, Makhdoom Ali Khan, to argue the case in the apex court.

A former attorney general for Pakistan says that only an aggrieved person can approach the apex court for the expungement of the special court’s remarks.

He wonders whether an appeal can be filed in respect of Para 66 of the judgment as it is not the operative part of the

majority judgment.A senior government

official, however, says that the Musharraf case is not a big issue for the executive as compared to the army chief’s tenure extension case wherein the apex court had given the government six months to carry out legislation.

He admits that a review petition has limited scope and it can only be filed when clarity is required and that larger bench

will be constituted to hear the matter. Under the Supreme Court Rules, those judges who authored the original verdict hear the review petition.

It is also learned that one section within the PTI has been active against Law Minister Dr Farogh Naseem and Attorney General for Pakistan Anwar Mansoor Khan regarding their failure to deliver in high-profile cases related to the security establishment.

Demonstrators carrying pictures of Pakistan’s former military ruler Pervez Musharraf, during a protest following a special court’s verdict, in Karachi, yesterday. The self-exiled former army chief and president, Musharraf was sentenced to death on December 17 after being found guilty of high treason for suspending the Constitution and imposing a state of emergency in 2007. The slogan on the banner in Urdu reads: The man who safeguarded the borders cannot be a traitor.

INTERNEWS ISLAMABAD

Pakistan has welcomed the announcement of preliminary results of Afghan Presidential election held on September 28.

The Foreign Office (FO) in Islamabad in a statement said that we note that the final results would be announced after completion of adjudi-cation process within the stip-ulated time as per Afghan elec-toral laws.

It said we support Afghan-istan’s democratic process and acknowledge that completion of Afghan presidential elections is a crucial step for political sta-bility of Afghanistan and South Asian region.

Pakistan, Japan discuss ways to strengthen tiesQNA ISLAMABAD

Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan met with Adviser to the Japanese Prime Minister for Foreign Affairs, Kentaro Sonoura.

During the meeting, the two sides discussed the bilateral relations and exchanged views on regional developments and issues of common concern.

The Pakistani Prime Min-ister stressed the importance of promoting the mutual cooper-ation with Japan in various areas, particularly in the fields of investment, trade, agri-culture, industry, human resource development, edu-cation, tourism, and people-to-people contacts. He highlighted the economic turn-around in the country.

PPP denied permission to hold rally at Liaquat BaghINTERNEWS RAWALPINDI

District authorities in Pakistan’s garrison city of Rawalpindi have denied Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) permission to hold a rally at Liaquat Bagh on December 27 to mark the 11th death anniversary of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.

PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari has announced to observe the event in Rawalpindi this year.

In a notification, Rawalpindi Deputy Commissioner Saifullah Dogar said police and the special branch had recom-mended against holding a public gathering at the venue owing to prevailing security situation.

Therefore, “permission for holding jalsa at Liaquat Bagh by

Bilawal Bhutto Zardari cannot be granted”, he said. Addressing a press conference earlier in the day in Karachi, Bilawal accused the government of creating obstacles in his party’s plans to observe late Benazir’s death anniversary in Rawalpindi, saying that the authorities had not yet issued permission for the event.

Bilawal slammed the gov-ernment for suppressing the political activities in the country by harassing the opposition but insisted that the party would not compromise on its principles.

“The government wants to harass the opposition. Any opposition leader, who speaks up [against the government] is arrested.” However, he added that the next year would be the year of elections.

The Anti Narcotics Force had on July 1 arrested Sanaullah while he was travelling from Faisalabad to Lahore. Authorities claimed a large stash of contraband was recovered from the car he was travelling in. But Snaullah and his party have denied the charge and termed the case politically-motivated.

Pakistan welcomes preliminary results in Afghanistan

14 WEDNESDAY 25 DECEMBER 2019ASIA

Typhoon Phanfone hits Philippines on Christmas EveAFP MANILA

Typhoon Phanfone smashed into the central Philippines yesterday, leaving thousands of people unable to get home for the Christmas holidays and forcing many others to evacuate in the face of the onslaught.

The tropical storm was upgraded to a typhoon shortly before it made landfall on Christmas Eve in the mainly Catholic nation, but early reports indicate there had been no cas-ualties so far.

It struck the southern tip of the impoverished island of Samar in the afternoon with gusts of up to 150 kilometres (90 miles) an hour that snapped branches off trees and knocked down power pylons and mobile phone relay towers.

“(There are) no signs of heavy damage except for houses made of light materials,” Ben Evardone, the governor of Eastern Samar province, told AFP, adding there were no cas-

ualties there.Just under 1,700 people were

evacuated from coastal areas as well as those prone to flooding and landslides, according to early official tallies seen by AFP.

“Some families are reluctant to evacuate because they want to celebrate Christmas at home, but local officials will force them out if they refuse to heed our warnings,” regional civil defence official Reyden Cabrigas earlier told AFP.

The state weather service said homes made of wood, straw or bamboo risked “heavy

damage”, though there were so far no reports of giant waves crashing onto coastal commu-nities as the state weather service earlier warned.

Phanfone, Laotian for “animal”, was forecast to cut across the central islands

through Christmas Day Wednesday before roaring out to the South China Sea.

All boats on the storm’s pro-jected path through the central islands were ordered to stay in port and many commercial flights were cancelled, stranding

thousands of people who were trooping to their hometowns.

Though much weaker, Phanfone was tracking a similar path as Super Typhoon Haiyan -- the country’s deadliest cyclone on record which left more than 7,300 people dead or missing in

2013. More than 23,000 ferry passengers trying to get home for the Christmas holidays have been stranded at ports as shipping shut down, the coast guard said yesterday.

The state weather service said Phanfone would bring mod-erate to strong winds over the capital Manila on Christmas Day.

The Philippines is the first major landmass facing the Pacific cyclone belt.

As such, the archipelago gets hit by an average of 20 storms and typhoons each year.

Strong winds and associated dangers such as floods, land-slides, and — more rarely — giant walls of seawater kill scores of people each year, wipe out har-vests and destroy roads, bridges, power lines and other infrastructure.

A July 2019 study by the Manila-based Asian Devel-opment Bank said the most fre-quent storms lop one percent off the Philippine economic output, with the stronger ones cutting output by nearly three percent.

Residents rest in an evacuation centre as typhoon Phanfone makes a landfall, in Borongan, Eastern Samar province, central Philippines, yesterday.

US ready to deal with any N Korean ‘Christmas gift’, warns TrumpREUTERS PALM BEACH, FLORIDA

US President Donald Trump (pictured) Thursday brushed off North Korea’s warning of a “Christmas gift”, saying the United States would “deal with it very successfully,” amid US concerns that Pyongyang might be preparing a long-range missile test.

“We’ll find out what the surprise is and we’ll deal with it very successfully,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort.

“We’ll see what happens.” “Maybe it’s a nice present,” he quipped.

“Maybe it’s a present where he sends me a beautiful vase as opposed to a missile test.”

North Korea warned Wash-ington earlier this month of a

possible “Christmas gift” after its leader Kim Jong Un gave the United States until the end of the year to propose new con-cessions in talks over his coun-try’s nuclear arsenal and reducing tensions between the two long-time adversaries.

In issuing the warning, North Korea accused Wash-ington of trying to drag out

denuclearization talks ahead of Trump’s re-election bid next year and said it was “entirely up to the U.S. what Christmas gift it will select to get.”

US military commanders have said that the North Korean response could involve the testing of a long-range missile, something North Korea has suspended, along with nuclear bomb tests, since 2017.

Trump has repeatedly held up the suspension of such tests as evidence that his policy of engaging with North Korea, which has involved unprece-dented summits with Kim, was working.

North Korea’s last test of an intercontinental ballistic missile took place in November 2017. That involved a Hwasong-15 ICBM, the largest missile it has ever tested, and

which it said was capable of reaching all of the United States.

Trump and Kim have met three times since 2018, but there has been no substantive progress in dialogue.

North Korea has demanded an end to international sanctions while the United States says Pyongyang must first commit to giving up its nuclear weapons.

Recent days have seen a flurry of international diplomacy aimed at preventing a complete breakdown of dialogue and avoiding a return to the heated confrontation seen two years ago that raised fears of war.

China, North Korea’s most important economic and dip-lomatic backer, together with Russia, proposed last week that the UN Security Council lift some sanctions to break the

current deadlock.A US State Department

official responded by saying it was not the time to consider lifting UN sanctions when North Korea was “threatening to conduct an escalated provo-cation, refusing to meet to discuss denuclearisation, and continuing to maintain and advance its prohibited weapons of mass destruction and bal-listic missile programs.”

North Korea has conducted repeated tests of short-range missiles this year and this month carried out what appeared to be engine tests at a rocket-testing facility US offi-cials have said Kim promised Trump he would close.

Pyongyang said the tests were aimed at “restraining and overpowering the nuclear threat of the US.”

28 killed as bus plunges into Indonesia ravineAP PALEMBANG, INDONESIA

A bus plunged into a ravine on Indonesia’s Sumatra island after its brakes apparently malfunctioned, killing at least 28 people and injuring 13 others, police and rescuers said yesterday.

The accident occurred just before midnight Monday on a winding road in South Sumatra province’s Pagaralam district.

Palembang search and rescue operation chief Berty Kowaas said the bodies were taken to a hospital for identifi-cation, including that of a young boy who was pulled from a river near the crash site.

One of the injured was in critical condition, local police chief Dolly Gumara said.

Gumara said the bus plunged into a 80-metre (262-foot) -deep ravine and crashed into a fast-flowing river after the driver lost control of the vehicle in an area with a number of sharp declines.

Survivors told authorities that the vehicle’s brakes appar-ently malfunctioned, but police were still investigating the cause of the accident, Gumara said.

The bus was headed for the provincial capital of Palembang from the neighboring city of Bengkulu.

Some volunteer firefighters to receive paid leave: Aussie PM AP PERTH

Australia’s beleaguered prime minister announced yesterday that volunteer firefighters from the federal public sector will receive paid leave entitlements in a move to help contain wild-fires that have ravaged parts of the country.

About 5 million hectares of land have burned nationwide over the past few months, with nine people killed and more than 950 homes destroyed.

New South Wales, the country’s most populous state, has received the brunt of the damage, with around 850

homes razed in the state.Authorities have warned that the fires in New South Wales could fester for months, causing more angst for exhausted firefighters.

The opposition Labour party has pressed the government to consider compensation for vol-unteer firefighters.

Prime Minister Scott Mor-rison, however, said that federal public servants who volunteer with state rural fire services to battle the blazes would get 20 days of paid leave on top of their regular annual and sick leave.

“With bushfire seasons starting earlier, one of the

things I’ve heard on the ground is that some people are dipping into their other leave entitle-ments to stay out there battling blazes,” Morrison told reporters in South Australia, which last week had 86 homes destroyed after wildfires flared in cata-strophic conditions.

“Today’s announcement is about ensuring our volunteer firefighters can keep focused on the job at hand,” the prime minister said.

Morrison, who has been under pressure since taking a much criticised family vacation to Hawaii during the wildfire crisis, urged the private sector to implement similar measures.

New Zealand police suspend search for 2 missing after volcano eruptionAFP WELLINGTON

New Zealand police yesterday called off the search for two people missing after the White Island volcanic eruption.

There were 47 people, mainly Australian tourists, on the island when it erupted on December 9, and 25 remain in hospital. Many are still in a critical condition.

Authorities have recovered the bodies of 16 of the 18 people killed in the December 9 blast at the popular adventure tourist destination, but two have not been found.

“The search for the two missing victims of the Whakaari/White Island eruption has been

suspended,” police superin-tendent Andy McGregor said Tuesday.

McGregor said they made the decision after “extensive shoreline and substantial aerial searches” of the area.

“Sadly no further items of significance have been located,” he said. A team of special forces troops also went onto the island and retrieved six bodies despite the threat of another eruption.

Police confirmed Monday another death in hospital, taking the toll to 19, including the two people missing.

Police said the families had been informed of the decision to suspend the search but were ready to respond should more information come to light.

Thai scribe gets jail in libel case by poultry farmAP BANGKOK

A court in Thailand yesterday sentenced a reporter to two years in prison for criminal libel for a comment she tweeted about a labour abuse grievance at a poultry farm.

The case against Suchanee Cloitre, then working for Voice TV, is one of 20 lawsuits launched by Thammakaset Co. against 25 workers, activists and journalists.

Critics such as Human Rights Watch say these types of libel cases are meant to deter lawsuits filed in the public interest, such as by labour activists and environmentalists.

They decry criminal libel laws as especially open to abuse. So-called “strategic litigation against public participation” law-suits are meant to intimidate, since they often pit corporations with strong financial and legal resources against individuals and groups operating on shoestring budgets.

HK Police fire tear gas to break up protestREUTERS HONG KONG

Hong Kong riot police fired rounds of tear gas at thousands of protesters, many wearing masks and reindeer horns, after scuffles in shopping malls and in a prime tourist district as pro-democracy rallies escalated into Christmas Eve chaos.

Protesters inside the malls threw umbrellas and other objects at police who responded by beating some demonstrators with batons, with one pointing his gun at the crowd, but not firing.

Some demonstrators occupied the main roads and blocked traffic outside the malls and nearby luxury hotels in the Tsim Sha Tsui tourist district of Kowloon.

A man was shown on public

broadcaster RTHK as falling from the second floor to the first floor of a mall in the rural Yuen Long district as he tried to evade police. He was conscious as he was taken away by paramedics.

There was a heavy police presence into the night in Tsim Sha Tsui with hundreds of officers standing guard on the roads as thousands of Christmas shoppers and tourists, some wearing Santa hats, looked on. A water canon and several armoured police Jeeps were parked nearby.

Dozens of protesters started digging up bricks from the roads and set up barricades, as police said in a statement they would deploy “minimum force to effect dispersal” and arrest “rioters”.

Many families with children had congregated in the area to view the Christmas lights along

the promenade, the spectacular backdrop of Hong Kong island on the opposite side of the harbour.

The protests in Chinese-ruled Hong Kong, now in their seventh month, have lost some of the scale and intensity of earlier violent confrontations.

A peaceful rally this month still drew 800,000 people, according to organisers, showing strong support for the movement.

Scores of black clad, mask wearing protesters chanted slogans including “Revive Hong Kong, revolution of our time,” and “Hong Kong independence” as they roamed the malls.

“Lots of people are shopping so it’s a good opportunity to spread the message and tell people what we are fighting for.” said Ken, an 18-year-old student.

People run away from tear gas during a protest march outside the Harbour City Mall in Hong Kong, yesterday

The tropical storm was upgraded to a typhoon shortly before it made a landfall on Christmas Eve in the mainly Catholic nation, but early reports indicate there had been no casualties so far.

15WEDNESDAY 25 DECEMBER 2019 EUROPE

Gloomy Christmas Eve on 20th day of French strikeAFP PARIS

Christmas Eve 2019 was an unusually gloomy one for France, as the 20th day of a transport strike left many scram-bling yesterday to reach their loved ones for the traditional family feast, while others simply gave up.

The protest against pension reform has led to thousands of trains being cancelled or delayed, with taxis, ride-sharing services and car rental agencies unable to make up the shortfall.

“We’re not sure what to do,” said Joel Rossignon, 66, visiting Paris from the east of France to spend Christmas with his son, who lives in a far-flung suburb of the capital to which there was none of the usual trains yes-terday evening.

“We even tried to book a taxi, yesterday already, but there were none,” he said, standing with his suitcase on the street.

Kady Dao, 23, said she will stay at home in a suburb southwest of Paris with her nine-month-old daughter, as her usual public transport route has been

cut off. “I have no choice.” Nego-tiations with unions last week failed to find middle ground, and strikers vowed there would be no holiday truce unless the gov-ernment scraps its plan to merge the country’s 42 pension schemes into one.

Talks will resume on January 7, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe’s office said on Monday.

Since it started on December 5, the strike has hit daily com-muters hard — especially around Paris and other large cities — and is now impeding tens of thou-sands of ticket holders who had planned to spend the festive season with family or friends.

Rail operator SNCF provided only 40 percent of its usual high-speed TGV and regional TER train services yesterday, and 20 percent of inter-city and Paris

suburban trains. Between a third and two-thirds of trains to some European destinations were running.

And in the capital, six of 16 metro lines were closed, eight provided a much-reduced service, and only two — which are driverless — functioned as usual.

The government’s pension overhaul, which it says would create a fairer system, would see some public employees

— notably railway staff — lose early-retirement benefits.

But workers baulk at the inclusion of a so-called “pivot age” of 64 until which people would have to work to earn a full pension — two years beyond the official retirement age.

Unions are hoping for a repeat of 1995 when the gov-ernment backed down on pension reform after three weeks of metro and rail stoppages just before Christmas.

But the action is taking a heavy toll on businesses, espe-cially retailers, hotels and res-taurants, during what should be one of the busiest periods of the year.

Industry associations have reported turnover declines of 30 to 60 percent from a year earlier, and the SNCF said yesterday it had lost ¤400m ($442m) in potential earnings so far.

Non-transport workers have also started joining the protest.

Musicians perform in front of the Palais Garnier opera house against the French government’s plan to overhaul the country’s retirement system, in Paris, yesterday.

Russia frees Japan boats held near disputed islandsAFP TOKYO

Russia released 24 Japanese fish-ermen and their vessels yesterday, after detaining them for allegedly exceeding the octopus catch quota off a chain of disputed Pacific islands, Japan’s foreign ministry said.

The five boats departed a port in Kunashiri island, one of the four southern Kuril islands disputed by Tokyo and Moscow, a foreign ministry official in charge of Russian affairs

confirmed. The fishermen are in good health, top government spokesman Yoshihide Suga later told reporters.

The Soviet Union seized the strategically located volcanic archipelago north of Japan’s Hokkaido in the final days of World War II and has main-tained a military presence there ever since.

The five ships were detained last week after a Russian inspection deemed they had exceeded their quota for octopus allowed under a 1998 agreement.

Foreign ministers discussed the incident at talks last Thursday, which also tried to find a breakthrough in the long-lagging dispute between Moscow and Tokyo over the islands.

Details about the Russian allegation “will be probed by rel-evant organisations”, the Jap-anese ministry official added.

A Russian court ordered the fishermen to pay an 11 million yen ($100,000) fine, which was paid before leaving for Japan, public broadcaster NHK and other local media reported.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Japanese Prime Min-ister Shinzo Abe have met more than two dozen times since 2013 over the territorial dispute, which prevented the two coun-tries from signing a peace treaty to formally end World War II.

Tokyo maintains its claim over the four southernmost islands of the Kuril chain, known as the Northern Territories in Japan. Nationalist sentiment on both sides makes both govern-ments wary of considering concessions.

Tourists walk in St. Mark’s Square during high tide in Venice, Italy, yesterday.

Flood damage to St. Mark’s Basilica totals millionsAP VENICE, ITALY

St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice suffered at least ¤5m ($5.5m) in damage during last month’s devastating great tides. The first, on November 12, was the highest in 53 years, followed by two above 1.5 meters (4.9 feet), a series of severe inundations never before recorded.

Though the highest was seven centimetres less than the

famed 1966 flood of 1.94 metres, St. Mark’s chief caretaker, Carlo Alberto Tesserin, said, ‘’We say this was the worst.’’ Unlike other natural disasters, like, say, an earthquake that leaves images of collapsed bell towers and fallen walls, fresh damage from the Venice floods is so far not visible to the naked eye.

‘’Someone who comes to Venice to see the high water, and who goes to St. Mark’s Square the next day, sees tables in the

square, says, ‘Hey, look, the orchestra is playing. Nothing is wrong here.’ While, in reality, what is hidden, is everything we have verified in these days,’’ said Tesserin, who submitted the damage estimate earlier this month to city and national officials.

Peaking at 1.87 metres (6.14 feet) above sea level, last month’s great tide was accompanied by wind gusts of up to 120 kph that pushed the waters even higher.

Britain’s Prince Philip leaves hospitalAP LONDON

Prince Philip was discharged from a London hospital yesterday and immediately taken by helicopter to join other senior royals at Queen Eliz-abeth II’s rural retreat in time for a traditional family Christmas.

Buckingham Palace did not reveal details about Philip’s medical treatment and said that he wished to thank everyone who had sent good wishes during his four-night stay at the private King Edward VII hos-pital in London.

The palace had previously said that the 98-year-old prince was being hospitalised for planned treatment of a pre-existing condition. The fact that he did not go to the hospital by ambulance and that the queen did not change her plans to be by his side suggested it was not an emergency situation.

Philip walked out of the hospital on his own yesterday morning even though many patients of that age use wheel-chairs when they are dis-charged. The prince left the hospital on foot and entered a vehicle unaided. He was dressed elegantly with his tie in a Windsor knot and waved to a nurse as he departed the hospital.

The palace said he had been hospitalised as a “precautionary measure.” Officials did not explain the nature of his treatment, which appeared to have been timed to allow him to receive the care he needed and return to the family in time for Christmas.

He has suffered from heart disease and other ailments including a bladder infection in recent years and has largely stepped out of the public eye since he announced his retirement from royal duties in 2017.

UK’s Queen Elizabeth stresses reconciliation after “quite bumpy” 2019REUTERS LONDON

Queen Elizabeth will stress the value of harmony and reconcil-iation in her Christmas message this year, Buckingham Palace said yesterday, after a “quite bumpy” year for her own family and for Britain as it struggled with Brexit.

The palace released two short extracts from the 93-year-old monarch’s televised Christmas Day message.

On reconciliation, the queen talks in the excerpts of “how small steps taken in faith and in hope can overcome long-held differences and deep-seated divisions to bring harmony and understanding...”

She adds: “The path, of course, is not always smooth, and may at times this year have felt quite bumpy, but small steps can make a world of difference.”

Britain’s regional and political divisions have been exacerbated in recent years since it voted to leave the EU.

A landslide election win for Conservative Prime Minister

Boris Johnson this month enabled him finally to win approval for his Brexit deal in parliament, but also re-awakened calls north of the border for another referendum on Scottish independence.

Newspapers pored over details in the excerpts of the queen’s message and the Times noted that a collection of family photographs on her desk seemed to focus attention on the direct line of succession.

Alongside a framed photo-graph of her son Charles with his wife Camilla, another showed William with his family including six-year-old Prince George. The queen’s father, the late King George VI, also appeared.

But the collection of photo-graphs did not include any of Harry and his wife Meghan, unlike last year when the queen showed a picture of their wedding, the Times said.

The Daily Mirror noted there was no picture of Andrew either.

The Queen’s message was filmed at Windsor Castle, west of London, and produced by the BBC.

Belgian King calls for government to be formed ‘quickly’AFP BRUSSELS

Belgium’s King Philippe used his Christmas address yesterday to call for the formation of a government after a year of political tractions to face up to a number of national challenges.

An executive needs to be formed “as quickly as possible” in order to “take balanced deci-sions,” the monarch said in a recorded speech broadcast on television.

Belgium, largely split between its Dutch-speaking and right-leaning north and its

French-speaking and leftist-voting south, has been without government for a year. The rise of extremist politics in both com-munities has made the task of forming a national adminis-tration difficult. King Philippe, speaking in French, urged com-promise and criticised “the

violence explicit in language that judges and gestures that destroy”.

Analysts viewed that as a condemnation of the sharp exchanges between the leaders of the two main Belgian political groups, the French-speaking Socialist Party and the New

Flemish Alliance of the north.“We live in a pivotal time,

one calling into question our social, economic and environ-mental model. A period where many have lost their bearings. And that demands of us greater involvement. This is not a time to give up,” he said.

Russian fighter jet crashes, pilot survivesAP MOSCOW

Russian officials said yesterday that a top-of-the-line fighter jet had crashed on a training mission but that its pilot bailed out safely.

Russia’s United Aircraft Corporation said in a statement that the Su-57 fighter came down during a training flight near Komsomolsk-on-Amur in the country’s far east. It said the plane’s pilot safely ejected and there was no damage on the ground.

The cause of the crash wasn’t immediately known.

The Su-57, which made its maiden flight in 2010, is Rus-sia’s most advanced fighter plane. It has stealth capability and carries sophisticated equipment and weapons. The twin-engine aircraft has been designed by the Sukhoi company to compete with the US F-22 Raptor stealth fighter.

The crash marks the first loss of a Su-57, 10 of which have been built at Sukhoi’s plant in Komsomolsk-on-Amur for pre-production tests and combat evaluation. Some of them have been flown in combat during Russia’s military campaign in Syria.

The Russian air force has placed an order for 76 such air-craft to be delivered by 2028.

Greek top court stays extradition of Russian manREUTERS ATHENS

Greece’s top administrative court has suspended a decision to extradite a Russian man suspected of laundering billions of dollars in digital currency to France until it hears an appeal, his lawyer said on Monday.

Greece’s justice minister decided on Friday to extradite Alexander Vinnik, accused of being the mastermind of a $4bn bitcoin laundering ring.

The extradition decision led Vinnik to start a new hunger strike, his lawyer Zoe Costan-topoulou said. She called the decision unfair and a “death sentence”.

The date for the top court’s hearing has not yet been set.

Government’s negotiations with unions last week failed. The government said talks would resume on January 7.

16 WEDNESDAY 25 DECEMBER 2019EUROPE

Putin: Russia is world leader in hypersonic weaponsAP MOSCOW

President Vladimir Putin said yesterday that Russia has got a strong edge in designing new weapons and that it has become the only country in the world to deploy hypersonic weapons.

Speaking at a meeting with top military brass, Putin said that for the first time in history Russia is now leading the world in developing an entire new class of weapons unlike in the past when it was catching up with the United States.

The Russian leader noted that during Cold War times, the Soviet Union was behind the United States in designing the atomic bomb and building stra-tegic bombers and interconti-nental ballistic missiles.

“Now we have a situation that is unique in modern history when they are trying to catch up to us,” he said. “Not a single country has hypersonic weapons, let alone hypersonic weapons of intercontinental range.”

He said that the first unit equipped with the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle is set to go on duty this month, while the air-launched Kinzhal hypersonic missiles already have entered service.

Putin first mentioned the Avangard and the Kinzhal among other prospective weapons

systems in his state-of-the-nation address in March 2018.

Putin said then that the Avangard has an intercontinental range and can fly in the atmos-phere at a speed 20 times the speed of sound. He noted that the weapon’s ability to change both its course and its altitude en route to a target makes it immune to interception by the the enemy.

“It’s a weapon of the future, capable of penetrating both existing and prospective missile defense systems.” the Russian president said yesterday.

The Kinzhal, which is carried by MiG-31 fighter jets, entered service with the Russian air force last year. Putin has said that the missile flies 10 times faster than the speed of sound, has a range of more than 2,000km and can carry a nuclear or a conventional

warhead. The military said it’s capable of hitting both land targets and navy ships.

The United States and other countries also have worked on designing hypersonic weapons, but they haven’t entered service yet.

The Kremlin has made mil-itary modernization its top pri-ority amid tensions with the West that followed the 2014 Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea.

Putin yesterday described a buildup of Nato’s forces near Russia’s western borders and the US withdrawal earlier this year from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty among top security threats.

He argued that Russia must have the best weapons in the world.

“It’s not a chess game where it’s OK to play to a draw,” he said. “Our technology must be better. We can achieve that in key areas and we will.”

Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu reported yesterday that the military this year has received 143 warplanes and hel-icopters, 624 armoured vehicles, a submarine and eight surface warships. He said that the mod-ernisation of Russia’s arsenals will continue at the same rapid pace next year, with 22 intercon-tinental ballistic missiles, 106 new aircraft, 565 armoured vehicles, three submarines and

14 surface ships to enter duty.Putin noted that the work to

develop other prospective weapons, including the Sarmat heavy intercontinental ballistic missile, the Poseidon nuclear-powered underwater drone and the Burevestnik nuclear-powered cruise missile was going according to plan.

The Burevestnik has stoked particular controversy. The US and the Soviet Union worked on nuclear-powered rocket engines during the Cold War, but they eventually spiked those projects considering them to be too hazardous.

The Burevestnik reportedly suffered an explosion in August

during tests at a Russian navy range on the White Sea, killing five nuclear engineers and two servicemen and resulting in a brief spike in radioactivity that fueled radiation fears in a nearby city. Russian officials never named the weapon involved in the incident, but the US said it was the Burevestnik.

Russian President Vladimir Putin attending a military exhibition before a meeting of the Defence Ministry Board, in Moscow, yesterday.

Defence Minister said that the modernisation of Russia’s arsenals will continue with 22 intercontinental ballistic missiles, 106 new aircraft, 565 armoured vehicles, three submarines and 14 surface ships to enter duty.

162 migrants rescued off Libya land in ItalyAFP ROME

Some 162 migrants rescued off the Libyan coast have disem-barked in the southern Italian port of Taranto, the NGO SOS Mediterranee said yesterday.

The migrants, including 50 minors and five pregnant women, “were rescued by the SOS Mediterranee Search and Rescue team in two critical rescues in international waters off the coast of Libya on Friday, December 20th,” said the NGO,

which charters the Ocean Viking rescue ship along with medical charity Doctors Without Borders.

The first operation involved a rubber dinghy that had deflated and was carrying 112 “terrified” people on board, it said.

Fifty others were plucked from a wooden boat shortly before midnight the same day “in dangerous meteorological and maritime conditions,” the NGO added.

The 50 could not be trans-ported to Malta due to adverse

weather conditions. Italian authorities then gave

permission for all the rescued migrants to land in Taranto and the operation was carried out on Monday, SOS Mediterranee said.

It described both rescue oper-ations as “extremely difficult.”

“As the weather was rapidly and severely deteriorating, both cases would almost certainly have resulted in tragedies if help had arrived only a little later,” said Nicola Stalla, the NGO’s search and rescue coordinator onboard the Ocean Viking.

Migrants disembark at the port of Taranto after spending three nights on board the Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) and SOS Mediterranee-operated Ocean Viking ship, in Italy, yesterday.

Sprinting champion police officer nabs two bag snatchers in SpainAFP MADRID

Two Spanish robbers who tried to flee on foot after snatching a bag containing $3,300 met with more than they bargained for

when one of the police officers pursuing them turned out to be a record-holding sprinter.

The pair snatched the bag on Friday from a man who had just been to a bank in the southern Spanish city of Seville, the city’s

emergency services said on its official Twitter feed yesterday.

He quickly alerted the police, saying the bag snatchers had fled in a car.

After realising the police were on their tail, they

abandoned the car and tried to run — but were quickly out-paced, ABC newspaper reported.

“The suspects, who had just stolen more than 3,000 euros in Seville, didn’t know that one of the local police officers who was

chasing them was a world-record-holding relay runner, and a Spanish champion with a European masters record for 400 metres,” the emergency services tweeted.

“Running for 200-300

metres, I can do that” very quickly, the police officer said, giving his name only as Sergio.

And on collaring one of the crooks, Sergio could not resist telling him: “You’ve had a bit of bad luck, mate!”

Russia extends detention of US man in spy caseAFP MOSCOW

A Russian court yesterday extended until late March the pre-trial detention of a US man already held in jail for a year despite Western requests for his release.

Paul Whelan, who also has Irish, Canadian and British citi-zenship, was arrested on December 28 last year for allegedly receiving state secrets.

On Christmas eve, the Moscow City Court extended his detention by another three months, to March 29, a court spokesman said.

He risks up to 20 years in prison if convicted.

Whelan, 49, has denounced the case against him and said he is being held “hostage” for a pos-sible prisoner exchange.

On Monday, US charge d’affaires Bart Gorman and dip-lomats from Canada, Ireland, and Britain visited Whelan in Moscow’s high-security Lefortovo prison, bringing him food and holiday greetings from family and supporters.

“It’s two days before Christmas. A holiday Paul Whelan will spend alone in Lefortovo,” the US embassy quoted Gorman as saying.

“In the past 12 months, Paul

has not heard his parents’ voices. Bring Paul some holiday cheer and let him call home.”

Whelan, a former US marine, maintains he has been framed and that he took a USB drive from an acquaintance thinking it contained holiday photos.

His lawyer Vladimir Zhere-benkov has said the acquaintance that handed over the drive is the only witness against Whelan while the rest of his longtime acquaintances in Russia gave witness statements in his defence.

During a previous court hearing in October, Whelan insisted that he was not a spy.

“Russia thought they caught James Bond on a spy mission, in reality they abducted Mr Bean on holiday,” he has said.

Whelan and his supporters claim that the American has been mistreated in jail.

Moscow has rubbished the claims, saying foreign dip-lomats have regular access to Whelan and calling the com-plaints a “provocative line of defence”.

“Whelan’s complaints con-cerning the conditions of detention and actions of inves-tigators have never once been confirmed,” the Russian foreign ministry has said.

German lifestyles must change to help protect climate: OfficialREUTERS BERLIN

Germans will have to change their lifestyles, cutting back on holidays and paying a real price to master the challenge of climate change, the speaker of Germany’s parliament Wolfgang Schaeuble said yesterday.

In a Christmas interview, Schaeuble, a conservative who as finance minister during the euro zone debt crisis famously urged

austerity and fiscal discipline on poorer southern countries, said climate change would demand sacrifices of Germans.

“We will have to change our lives,” Schaeuble told the Neue Osnabruecker Zeitung news-paper. “It’s certainly a great pleasure to fly off to the Maldives or visit Venice. But in future we will have to indulge that pleasure more sparingly.”

Popular in Germany for pre-siding over years of economic

growth, Schaueble became a bete noire for opponents like then Greek Finance Minister Yannis Varoufakis, who accused him of imposing needless aus-terity on his recession-struck country.

Climate change has surged up the agenda of the German government, led by Schaueble’s conservative ally, Chancellor Angela Merkel, since it took office in 2017, helped by several extremely hot summers and also

Swedish schoolgirl Greta Thun-berg’s Fridays for Future movement.

A climate protection package agreed earlier this year envisages sharp cuts to emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide over coming decades, as well as investment in railways, energy-efficient housing and electric vehicles.

But Schaueble said that, even if the package will seek to min-imise the direct cost to

consumers, Germans will all pay a price for the change.

“We can manage the switch to a climate-aware life,” he said. “We have mastered far greater challenges in history. But it would be wrong to present the climate package as an act of generosity: climate protection is not free.”

Heating and fuel would become more expensive, he said, even if lower electricity prices and cheaper rail tickets would offset some of the increase. Bosnia forms

govt 14 months after electionsAFP SARAJEVO

Bosnia’s lawmakers approved a central government after more than a year of arguments, boosting hopes that its bid for EU membership could get back on track.

The European Union said the move “opens the way for renewed commitment of the political parties to allow for progress on the EU path of the country”.

Zoran Tegeltija (pictured), a 58-year-old Bosnian Serb economist, was chosen as Prime Minister and, along with his Cabinet, received the backing of 29 MPs in the 42-seat assembly.

However, the central gov-ernment has limited power and Bosnia’s politics is often grid-locked by disagreements between the Muslim, Serb and Croat communities.

Tegeltija’s nomination as prime minister was made last month by the country’s three presidents — an Orthodox Serb, a Catholic Croat and a Muslim Bosniak — who had spent a year arguing over relations with the Nato military alliance.

Bosnia’s complex political system was put in place after the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s to ensure each community had representation.

17WEDNESDAY 25 DECEMBER 2019 AMERICAS

Trump lashes out as trial stuck in limboAP PALM BEACH

President Donald Trump lashed out yesterday as his Senate impeachment trial remains at an impasse, with Republican and Democratic leaders at odds over its format and whether witnesses should be called.

Speaking at his private club in Palm Beach, Florida, after a teleconference call with troops stationed across the globe, Trump singled out Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is indefinitely holding up sending the articles of impeachment the House passed last week to the Repub-lican-controlled Senate.

“She hates the Republican Party. She hates all of the people that voted for me and the Repub-lican Party,” Trump charged on Christmas Eve. “She’s doing a tremendous disservice to the country.”

Trump has long seen a Senate trial, where he is almost certain to be acquitted, as an opportunity for vindication after he became the third president in the nation’s history to be impeached by the House.

“We have the majority and now they want McConnell to do wonderful things for them,” Trump complained of Demo-crats, adding that he will leave it to Senate Majority Leader Mitch

McConnell to do whatever he thinks best.

“He’s very smart guy, a very good guy, a very fair guy. But they treated us very unfairly. And now they want fairness in the Senate,” he said.

Pelosi has said she is waiting until she receives more clarity from McConnell about what a trial will look like. He has said he has not ruled out calling wit-nesses, but has also indicated that he is in no hurry to seek new testimony either. Meanwhile the Senate’s top Democrat, Chuck Schumer of New York, has coun-tered that any trial without wit-nesses would be “Kafkaesque” and a “sham.”

“Let’s put it like this: If there are no documents and no wit-nesses, it will be very hard to come to an agreement,” Schumer said on Monday.

Schumer is demanding wit-nesses who refused to appear

during House committee hearings.

McConnell, who has all but promised a swift acquittal of the president, has resisted making any guarantees, and has cau-tioned Trump against seeking the testimony of witnesses for fear of prolonging the trial. Instead, McConnell appears to have secured Republican support for his plans to impose a framework drawn from the 1999 impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton.

“We haven’t ruled out wit-nesses,” McConnell said Monday in an interview . “We’ve said let’s handle this case just like we did with President Clinton. Fair is fair.”

That trial featured a 100-0 vote on arrangements that estab-lished two weeks of presenta-tions and argument before a par-tisan tally in which Republicans, who held the majority, called a limited number of witnesses. But Democrats now would need Republican votes to secure witness testimony - and Repub-licans believe they have the votes to eventually block those requests.

In a letter on Monday to all senators, Schumer argued that the circumstances in the Trump trial are different from those of Clinton’s, who was impeached after a lengthy independent

counsel investigation in which witnesses had already testified numerous times under oath. Schumer rejected the Clinton model, saying waiting until after the presentations to decide on witnesses would “foreclose the possibility of obtaining such evi-dence because it will be too late.”

Schumer also demanded that the Senate, besides receiving tes-timony, also compel the Trump administration to turn over doc-uments and e-mails relevant to the case, including on the decision to withhold military aid from Ukraine. He said that Dem-ocrats aren’t trying to delay but are simply asking for information

directly relevant to the charges in the impeachment articles.

He said that if McConnell won’t agree, “we can go to the floor and demand votes, and we will.”

Pelosi has delayed sending the articles of impeachment to the Senate in hopes of giving Schumer more leverage in talks with McConnell. But the White House believes Pelosi won’t be able to hold out much longer, and the impasse between the Senate leaders leaves open the possi-bility of a protracted delay until the articles are delivered.

Trump has called the holdup “unfair” and asserted, wrongly,

that Democrats were violating the Constitution, as the delay threatened to prolong the pain of impeachment and cast uncer-tainty on the timing of the vote Trump is set to claim as vindication.

“Pelosi gives us the most unfair trial in the history of the US Congress, and now she is crying for fairness in the Senate, and breaking all rules while doing so,” Trump tweeted Monday from his private club in Palm Beach, Florida, where he is on a more than two-week holiday vacation.

“She lost Congress once, she will do it again!”

US President Donald Trump making a video call to the American troops stationed worldwide, at the Mar-a-Lago estate in West Palm Beach, in Florida, yesterday.

Top baby names in NYC were Liam, Emma in 2018: OfficialsAP NEW YORK

The most popular baby names in New York City last year were Liam and Emma, according to data released by city health officials yesterday.

Of the babies born in New York City in 2018, there were 779 Liams and 501 Emmas, according to the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene’s birth certif-icate records.

The number of births in the city decreased from 117,013 in 2017 to 114,296 in 2018, according to the city’s data.

Liam has been the top name for boys since 2016, and Emma has been the top name for girls since 2017.

Some New Yorkers opted for rarer names: There were a handful of girls named Aminah, Ida and Zadie and boys called Bentley, Lucian and Warren.

Nine of the top 10 boy names from 2017 remained on the list in 2018.

Jayden was dropped from the 2018 list while Alexander was added as the tenth most popular name.

Eight of the top girl names stayed on the top 10 list for 2018.

Amelia and Chloe joined the list as the ninth and tenth most popular names in 2018 respectively.

Ex-Trump staffer sues overpregnancy discriminationREUTERS WASHINGTON

A staff member of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign is suing the campaign for pregnancy discrimination, alleging she was stripped of job responsibilities after being impregnated by her supervisor.

In court papers filed yes-terday in New York, Arlene Delgado said she learned she was pregnant in mid-November 2016, around the time Trump won the presidential election. Delgado was a senior official for outreach to the Hispanic community.

Delagado named Jason Miller, a top spokesman for Trump’s 2016 campaign, as the father of her child in the lawsuit. Miller was married during their relationship, Delgado told the Atlantic magazine in a 2017 interview.

Miller was initially named as

Trump’s first White House com-munication director but days later declined to take the job. Miller said at the time his family took priority over career moves and that he and his wife were expecting their second daughter in January 2017.

Reuters was unable to reach Miller for comment.

Delgado alleges in her lawsuit that after letting the campaign know of her preg-nancy, she immediately stopped receiving work e-mails and was excluded from projects on which she had been working.

Delgado said her career suf-fered after she was passed up on White House jobs following Trump’s inauguration. She “also suffered future pecuniary losses, emotional pain (and) humili-ation,” according to her lawsuit.

Tim Murtaugh, a spokesman for Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign, declined to comment on the allegations.

US considers pulling troops from West Africa: ReportAFP WASHINGTON

The Pentagon is looking into reducing or even withdrawing US troops from West Africa, part of a worldwide redeployment of military forces, the New York Times reported yesterday.

There are between 6,000 and 7,000 US troops in Africa, mainly in West Africa but also in places like Somalia.

The US presence includes military trainers as well as a recently built $110m drone base in Niger, the Times said.

A withdrawal would also end US support for French mil-itary efforts in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso in their war along with local troops against Al Qaeda and IS militant group.

The Pentagon supports them by providing intelligence, logis-tical support and aerial refueling

at an annual cost to the Pentagon of some $45m a year, the Times said.

France has had a major mil-itary presence in Mali since 2013, when it launched an intervention against Al Qaeda-linked mili-tants who had overrun the coun-try’s north.

France then launched a regional counter-terrorism oper-ation and prodded five countries —Burkina Faso, Chad,

Mauritania, Mali and Niger — to set up their own joint force.

US Secretary of Defence Mark Esper is studying a global redeployment of US forces with a decreased emphasis on anti-terrorism operations and a stronger emphasis on con-fronting China and Russia, the newspaper said.

No decision on the matter was likely before January, it added.

The Pentagon had no imme-diate comment when contacted by AFP.

President Donald Trump has often promised to halt the US’s “endless wars.”

He has already ordered a significant reduction of US troops deployed in Syria, and is on track to do the same in Afghanistan.

Some 13,000 US troops remain in Afghanistan.

Brazil President pardons security forces convicted of unintentional crimesAFP RIO DE JANEIRO

Brazil’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro (pictured) has used his first Christmas pardon to excuse members of the police and military convicted of unin-tentional crimes during lethal operations.

The 64-year-old was elected just over a year ago on a cam-paign in which he vowed to get tough on crime.

But the president caused

uproar even before he was elected last year when stating that security forces accused of killing criminals “should be dec-orated and not have to go to court” to be held accountable for their actions.

It’s not known how many members of the security forces have been pardoned in the measure that was signed by Bol-sonaro on Monday night and published in the Official Journal yesterday.

The pardon covers those

convicted of “crimes committed unintentionally” by members from all the different branches of the security forces, the presi-dency said.

It also pardons those con-victed of crimes committed when off duty but done so with the intention of “eliminating a present risk to the self or third parties.”

Those excluded from the order include people convicted of “terrible crimes” such as torture, terrorism or corruption,

as well as serious disciplinary infractions.

Bolsonaro has come under fire over several policies since assuming power in January.

One proposed law from his Justice Minister Sergio Moro aimed at preventing police from being convicted over their actions during anti-crime oper-ations was rejected by Congress.

Critics said that it would give security forces impunity to commit unlawful killings.

Brazilian police, particularly in Rio de Janeiro state, have long been accused of heavy handed tactics when tackling crime in poor neighborhoods, known as favelas.

In the first quarter of the year, a record number of people — around 434 — were killed by police in Rio during such interventions.

Bolsonaro also courted con-troversy in May by signing a decree relaxing rules on carrying guns.

Coat drivePeople in need of coats pick from a table of jackets, in New York City, yesterday. New York Cares has collected 50,000 of the 100,000 coats it aims to collect and distribute to its hundreds of school and non-profit partners in the 31st annual coat drive.

She (Nancy Pelosi) hates the Republican Party. She hates all of the people that voted for me and the Republican Party. She’s doing a tremendous disservice to the country: Donald Trump

18 WEDNESDAY 25 DECEMBER 2019AMERICAS

11 arrested after raid of military outpost: MaduroREUTERS CARACAS

Venezuela has arrested 11 people in connection with a weekend raid of a remote military outpost in southern Bolivar state, but some suspects have fled across the border to Brazil with stolen weapons, President Nicolas Maduro (pictured) said yesterday.

Authorities have accused Brazil, Colombia and Peru— all adversaries of socialist Maduro who recognise opposition leader Juan Guaido as the rightful pres-ident — of complicity with the attack, in which one Venezuelan soldier was killed. All three

countries’ governments have denied involvement.

In an evening address on state television, Maduro called on Brazilian President Jair Bol-sonaro to cooperate.

“Capture the assailants in Brazilian territory and return the

weapons to the Venezuelan armed forces,” Maduro said.

He said that the 11 detainees included both military and civilian suspects, without pro-

viding any details.Authorities have blamed

“extreme sectors of the oppo-sition” for the raid.

Venezuela, whose economy has collapsed under Maduro, has been locked in a deep political crisis since Guaido, the head of the opposition-held National Assembly, assumed a rival pres-idency in January.

Maduro dismisses Guaido as a US puppet seeking to oust him in a coup.

Information Minister Jorge Rodriguez said in an address yes-terday that Darwin Balaguera, a former National Guard member who deserted in February and

fled to Colombia, was detained over the raid. The channel broadcast video of Balaguera answering authorities’ questions in custody.

Balaguera was among hun-dreds of Venezuelan soldiers who defected to Colombia during a Guaido-led attempt to bring humanitarian aid into the country through Colombia and Brazil in February. Some have said they are prepared to take up arms to remove Maduro.

Olnar Ortiz, an attorney with non-profit rights group Penal Forum, said at least seven members of the Pemon indig-enous group were arrested in

connection with the incident. Ortiz said four other Pemon indi-viduals were missing.

Ortiz said authorities raided homes in the Pemon village of Kumarakapay near Venezuela’s border with Brazil on Monday, searching for suspected partici-pants in the raid.

“They are criminalizing eve-ryone without concrete evidence, without respect for due process,” Ortiz said.

There were deadly confron-tations between indigenous Pemon and authorities during the February aid effort.

Troops loyal to Maduro blocked the aid from entering.

Ecuador concerned about recovery of sunken barge in Galapagos REUTERS QUITO

Ecuador’s Environment Minister, Raul Ledesma, said that a situ-ation involving a sunken barge in the Galapagos Islands which was carrying 600 gallons of diesel is under control but added that authorities are “very concerned” about the vessel’s recovery.

The barge sank on Sunday after a crane at the La Predial dock of San Cristobal — the east-ernmost island of the Galapagos archipelago — fell while unloading cargo, Ecuador’s navy said in a statement on Twitter.

The Galapagos Islands, which are included on the world heritage list of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cul-tural Organization (Unesco), were labeled as at risk in 2007 after population growth, fishing, and tourism had put pressure on natural resources there, though the designation was removed in 2010 following work by Ecuador.

The crane was taking off a container holding an electricity

generator when it fell into the vessel, causing it to sink. Ledesma said the sunken gen-erator was the source of the oil seen in the water.

The vessel was carrying the fuel for its own operations. It was not transporting fuel,” he said. “The oils that are leaking are from the machine that was inside the container, so this is the oil that can be seen leaking.”

Ecuador ’s Navy, alongside authorities from the Galapagos National Park, placed barriers and hydro-carbon-absorbing cloths around the stricken vessel to prevent the dispersal of any-thing that might leak.

One person was injured in the incident, said the attorney-general’s office, which is investigating.

“This fuel spill could have caused serious effects on the sensitive ecosystem of this protected area,” the attorney-general’s office said.

Ledesma said sea

iguanas and two sea lions had been tested following the accident but added that no bad effects on their health had been reported, adding that while the situation was under control, authorities

could not afford to relax.“We are very concerned

about the recovery work of the tanks because there could be a potential spill if it is not done efficiently and swiftly”.

Authorities are seen at the site where a barge carrying 600 gallons of diesel sank at the La Predial dock of San Cristobal, the easternmost island of the Galapagos archipelago, in Ecuador, yesterday.

Authorities have accused Brazil, Colombia and Peru of complicity with the attack. All three countries’ governments have denied involvement.

Mexico says surveillance of embassy in Bolivia has easedREUTERS MEXICO CITY

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said that excessive monitoring of Mexico’s diplomatic facilities in Bolivia had eased since his government issued a complaint about it a day earlier.

Mexico on Monday accused Bolivia of intimidating its dip-lomats in La Paz after a chill in relations since Lopez Obrador decided last month to give political asylum to former Bolivian president Evo Morales.

Bolivia’s government responded by saying Mexico had hijacked a regional summit, and had dragged its feet in recognising its new, conservative premier.

Mexico’s foreign ministry said there was “excessive” sur-veillance of the Mexican ambas-sador’s residence and Mexican embassy in Bolivia by about 150 Bolivian intelligence and security service personnel.

During a regular gov-ernment news briefing, Lopez Obrador declined to comment on what had motivated Bolivia to act as his government alleged, but said things were improving.

“I have news that this situ-ation of extreme surveillance on our embassy in Bolivia has eased considerably,” he said.

Lopez Obrador did not elab-orate, but said “many things” still needed to be cleared up.

Bolivia has moved to the right since Morales resigned in November after a presidential election that the Organization of American States (OAS) said was rigged in his favour.

Bolivia is currently governed by interim President Jeanine Añez, a former senator and opponent of Morales.

Lopez Obrador said Mexico was eager to know if new elec-tions would be held in Bolivia and whether all “political forces” would be able to take part in them.


HBKU to host professional interpreting workshopTHE PENINSULA DOHA

Professional interpreting will be in the spotlight when the Trans-lation and Interpreting Institute (TII) of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHSS), part of Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU), hosts a four-day workshop from December 29 to January 1 as part of the Translation and Training Center’s workshops.

Following its successful Pro-fessional Interpreting Basics workshop in October, TII will provide more advanced training during level two of the pro-gramme. Under the guidance of award-winning senior interpreter and certified legal translator Mazen Alfarhan, of the Institute’s Translation and Training Center (TTC), level two will see partici-pants develop strategies to solve linguistic and non-linguistic problems during the interpreting

process through live interpreting exercises using a variety of texts and accents.

The theme for the opening day of the Professional Interpreting workshop is “Sight, Liaison and Consecutive Interpreting,” while the following three days will focus on Simultaneous Interpreting, with individual and group sessions

helping to enhance participants’ skills.

Mazen Alfarhan, a reviser and trainer at TTC, TII, said, “The workshop is aimed at individuals who completed the Interpreting Basics Level workshop, or who have intermediate experience in the field. We will continue the training of those who completed

level one in October and will build on already acquired skills by pro-viding intensive training in inter-preting techniques and modes.

“The workshop will enable participants to conduct live inter-preting exercises using a variety of texts and accents, and will develop their interpreting skills and confidence in one of our state of the art interpreting booths. Attending this workshop will lay the foundation for participants to develop advanced skills that are used by profess ional interpreters.”

TII provides the local com-munity with high-quality edu-cation in translation, interpre-tation and foreign languages, helping it to contribute to the growth of a knowledge-based economy.

Interested applicants may visit www.tii.qa/community, for more information about enrollment and details on the workshops,

Level two workshop aims to enhance the skills previously learned at the Professional Interpreting Basics workshop.

National Day celebrations at Mall of Qatar drew huge crowd THE PENINSULA/DOHA

Mall of Qatar organised dazzling and capti-vating family entertainment on Qatar National Day. The patriotic program included Ardah shows, five diverse traditional arts & crafts areas for kids, marvelous decorations throughout the mall and a wonderful one-hour concert from the Superstar Rahma Riad at the iconic Oasis stage.

Rahma Riad is an Iraqi singer who rose to popularity after participating in Super Star 2, the pan-Arabic version of Pop Idol. She par-ticipated in Star Academy 7 and placed 2nd and has generated a popularity across the Arab world.

“Qatar National Day is the occasion on which we convey our gratitude to the country and the nation. As Mall of Qatar, we were proud to celebrate this day with our community and visitors who have inspired the continued

solidarity, growth and prosperity of Qatar. We were also happy to witness the popularity of our celebrations and hope everyone had a great National Day at the Mall,” said Khaled Sam Hosn, Chief Executive Officer, Mall of Qatar.

Situated next to the award-winning Al Rayyan FIFA 2022 stadium, Mall of Qatar is a jewel in Qatar’s National Vision 2030 with 500 varied retail, dining and café options. Since December 2016, Mall of Qatar captures the imagination of the entire nation with mall-wide entertainment and spectacular shows on a 360-degree custom developed revolving stage.

The Mall’s encompassing experience com-pletes with an international edutainment concept, 19-screen Megaplex inclusive of IMAX’s revolutionary laser projection on the region’s largest screen and the 5-star Al Rayyan Hotel Doha operated by Curio, a collection by Hilton.

Children during National Day activities at Mall of Qatar.

CROSSWORD

A group of women take on Fox News head Roger Ailes and the toxic atmosphere he presided over at the network.

MALL ROYAL PLAZA

Hero (2D/Tamil) 2:00pm Prati Roju Pandaage (2D/Telugu) 2:15pmFrozen II (2D/Animation) 2:30 & 4:45pm Bonnie Bear: Blast Into The Past (2D/Amination) 4:15pm Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker (2D/Action) 6:30pm; Jumanji: The Next Level (2D/Action) 6:00pm; Spies In Disguise (2D/Amination) 8:30pm; Dabangg 3 (2D/Hindi) 5:00, 8:00 & 11:00pm; El Folous A.K.A The Money (2D/Arabic) 9:00 & 11:00pm; Driving License (2D/Malayalam) 11:15pm

Dabangg 3 (2D/Hindi) 10:30am, 1:45, 5:00, 8:15 & 11:30pm; Hero (2D/Tamil) 11:45am, 5:45 & 11:45pmJumanji: The Next Level (2D/Action) 11:45am, 11:30pm; Thambi (2D/Tamil) 3:00 & 9:00pm; Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker (2D/Action) 2:30pm; Mamangam (2D/Malayalam) 5:30pm

LANDMARK

AL KHOR

Dabangg 3 (2D/Hindi) 6:30 & 9:30pm

Thambi (2D/Tamil) 3:15 & 6:15pm

Hero (2D/Tamil) 9:00pm

Mamangam (2D/Malayalam) 5:45 & 11:15pm

Kettyolanu Ente Maalakha (2D/Malayalam) 8:45pm

ASIAN TOWN

ROXY

FLIK Mirqab Mall

Dabangg 3 (2D/Hindi) 5:40, 7:25, 8:50, 10:35pm & 12:00 midnight

Frozen II (2D/Animation) 10:30am, 12:40 & 2:50pm

Go Fish (2D/Animation) 10:35pm

Jumanji: The Next Level (3D/Action) 10:10, 12:40, 3:10, 5:00pm

Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker (2D/Action) 10:30, 11:00am,

11:50, 12:10, 1:20, 1:50, 2:40, 3:00, 4:40, 5:30, 5:50, 7:00, 7:30, 8:20,

8:40, 9:30, 9:50, 10:50, 11:10, 11:30pm

Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker (3D/Action) 10:00am, 11:30am,

12:50, 2:20, 3:40, 5:10, 6:30, 8:00, 9:20, 10:50pm & 0:10am,

Bonnie Bears: Blast Into The Past 10:30 & 3:45pm; Dabangg 3 (2D/Hindi) 10:30, 1:00, 2:50, 4:00, 4:50, 7:00, 8:00, 10:00, 11:10pmFrozen II (3D/Animation) 12:30, 2:45, 5:00 & 5:45pmHero (2D/Tamil) 12:30, 6:40 & 10:10pmJumanji: The Next Level (3D/Action) 11:00, 12:30, 1:20, 2:40, 3:30, 4:20, 5:10, 7:40, 8:00 & 9:00pmRuler (2D/Telugu) 10:30pmStand Up (2D/Malayalam) 10:30am, 12:30, 1:20, 4:00, 6:00, 7;00, 8:10, 10:00 & 11:30amThambi (2D/Tamil) 3:40, 7:30, 10:00 & 10;30pm

Prati Roju Pandaage (2D/Telugu) 2:00pm;Hero (2D/Tamil) 2:15pm; Dabangg 3 2:30, 5:15 & 8:15pm;Frozen II (2D/Animation) 4:30pm;El Folous A.K.A The Money 8:45 & 11:00pm;Legend Of The Christmas Witch (2D/Comedy) 5:30pm; Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker (2D/Action) 6:15pm;Kettyolanu Ente Maalakha (2D/Malayalam) 6:45pm;Jumanji: The Next Level (2D/Action) 7:15pm;Spies In Disguise (2D/Amination) 9:15pm; Driving License (2D/Malayalam) 11:15pm; I See You (Horror) 11:15pm

Prati Roju Pandaage (2D/Telugu) 2:00pm;Hero (2D/Tamil) 3:15 & 11:30pm; Dabangg 3 (2D/Hindi) 6:15 & 11:15pm;Spies In Disguise (2D/Amination) 8:30pm;Go Fish 2:00pm; Prati Roju Pandaage (2D/Telugu) 2:30pm; El Folous A.K.A The Money 9:00 & 11:15pm; Frozen II (2D/Animation) 2:30 & 4:15pm;Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker (2D/Action) 6:00pm; Jumanji: The Next Level (2D/Action) 5:00 & 7:15pm; Driving License (2D/Malayalam) 9:30pm

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