Qatar Airways to go ahead Deputy PM and Foreign Minister ......edition is a Sheikh Ahmed bin Jassim bin special ... Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister H E Sheikh Mohamed bin

Volume 22 | Number 7445 | 2 RiyalsThursday 22 February 2018 | 6 Jumada II I 1439 www.thepeninsula.qa

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Wang eyes Qatar Masters glory

QIB gets approval to renew Sukuk

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BUSINESS | 21 SPORT | 36

Deputy PM and Foreign Minister meets Jerusalem Mufti

Included with today’s edition is a special

supplement on Doha Jewellery & Watches

Exhibition

Doha Jewellery & Watches Exhibition21 – 26, FEBRUARY, 2018, Doha Exhibition and Convention Center

Thursday 22 February 2018

age of H E the Prime Min-erior Minister, Sheikh sser bin Khalifa Al Thani,

med bin Jassim Al Thani, d Commerce, yesterday 15th Doha Jewellery and

E 2018), at the Doha Exhi-Center (DECC), in the

ries, and special guests.o visitors every day from Monday, 26 February, and

tween 4pm and 10pm.on’s commitment to nur-

creativity, this year’s Young Qatari Designers Ds initiative will shine a

d three returning talented ding them with a unique ir new collections along-nal brands. The designers iraat); Nouf Al Meer (Nouf

nain; Leila Abu Issa (Leila hikha Mohamed (Al Ghla

& Hissa Mohammed Al ).signers and to add to this

local community members and hosted by indus-try professionals and experts. In addition, international watches experts Artcurial, are pro-viding watch collectors with free consultations and valuations daily.

Visitors can take part in one of the complimen-tary fine jewellery workshops led by master craftsmen, sharing the intricacies involved in the delicate art of making jewellery. The three-hour workshop will teach participants how to bring their paintings to life through watercolors, followed by creating designs using wax, and finally the process of preparing metals and setting precious gems.

Back by popular demand, French watchmak-ing expert Objectif Horlogerie returns to host up to

e events planned wellery expo opens

Al Majed Jewellery a subdivision of Al Majed Group and renowned luxury jewellery and

Al Majed Jewellery marks 75th anniversary at Doha Jewellery and Watches Exhibition

Visitors can take part in one of the complimentary fine jewellery workshops led by master craftsmen, sharing the intricacies involved in the delicate art of making jewellery.

Young Qatari designers to shine at six-day DJWE RAYNALD C RIVERA THE PENINSULA

DOHA: The quindecennial edition of Doha Jewellery and Watches Exhibition (DJWE), one of the longest running exhibi-tions in Qatar and one of the largest luxury exhibitions in the region, kicked off to a glittering start yesterday at Doha Exhi-bition and Convention Centre (DECC).

The six-day event, held under the patronage of Prime Minister and Interior Minister H E Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani, was offi-cially opened by Minister of Economy and Commerce H E Sheikh Ahmed bin Jassim bin Mohammed Al Thani.

“We are very happy today because we are celebrating the 15th anniversary of the show and it has been growing and

expanding. Today we have more than 400 brands offered by 47 exhibitors from 10 countries,” Ahmed Al Obaidli, Director of Exhibitions at Qatar Tourism Authority (QTA) told local media at the opening event.

The launch of the first-ever DJWE Forum, the return of Young Qatari Designers (YQDs) initiative and the charity auction which will benefit Education Above All are among the main

features of this year’s show which Al Obaidli highlighted.

Al Obaidli expressed optimism on the turnout of this year’s show with QTA’s more aggressive campaigns to promote the country as a tourist destination.

“We have launched ‘Qatar Welcomes the World’ campaign in which we focus on different target markets. Last year, we also launched visa waiver to 80

different nationalities. For this exhibition, we have partnered with Qatar Airways for a pro-motion providing 25 percent discount to those travelling to Qatar just for the jewellery show. Last year there were 19,000 visitors and with these campaigns we are having now we are hoping to increase this number,” he said.

→CONTINUED ON PAGE 4

Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister H E Sheikh Mohamed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani yesterday met Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and Palestine, Sheikh Muhammad Hussein, on the sidelines of the 13th Doha Conference on Interfaith Dialogue. The meeting reviewed developments in Palestine and issues of mutual interest.

Qatar Airways to go ahead with expansion plansSACHIN KUMAR THE PENINSULA

DOHA: Qatar Airways will continue to march ahead with its expansion plans, despite the unjust siege on the country. The award-winning airline will add 30 aircraft to its fleet in 2018 and will launch new destina-tions, said Akbar Al Baker, Group Chief Executive, Qatar Airways.

The airline marked another global first yesterday with the touchdown of the world’s first commercial passenger A350-1000 at Hamad International Airport.

Minister of Finance and Chairman of Qatar Airways Group, H E Ali Shareef Al Emadi, said: “As a nation, we are tre-mendously proud to accept this aircraft as part of Qatar Airways’ fleet by bringing it to Doha. It is testament to our continued com-mitment to the expansion of our national carrier, and to operating the most modern and

technologically advanced aircraft available in the skies. We look forward to welcoming pas-sengers from around the world on board our spectacular new A350-1000”.

After performing a cele-bratory fly-by over Doha’s Cor-niche, the arrival of the aircraft from the Airbus production facility in Toulouse, France, was greeted by a celebratory water cannon salute.

“As a Qatari, this is a moment of great pride for me, and for the country as a whole. Despite the illegal blockade against the State of Qatar, we have continued to thrive and grow. This

ultra-modern aircraft will enable us to continue on that journey and bring people together from all parts of the world, allowing them to experience our renowned, world-class service,” said Akbar Al Baker. “With this blockade we are the winners because it has made Qatar stronger. In 2018, We will be adding close to around 30 aircraft,” he said, talking to reporters at the Hamad Interna-tional Airport.

The national carrier of Qatar is the global launch customer for the A350-1000, the world’s most advanced passenger aircraft, fitted with the airline’s revolu-tionary Qsuite Business Class seat. The carrier also announced it took delivery of an additional A350-900 yesterday.

“Qatar Airways is not going to slow down. We are going to keep on our expansion. We have announced so many new desti-nations and all this we will do as we are receiving more and more aeroplanes,” Al Baker said.


The airline marked another global first yesterday with the touchdown of the world’s first commercial passenger A350-1000 at Hamad International Airport.

Qatar-Kuwait relations emerging strongerSIDI MOHAMED THE PENINSULA

DOHA: The Speaker of the Advisory Council H E Ahmed bin Abdullah bin Zaid Al Mahmoud said that the rela-tionship between Qatar and Kuwait is very strong and appreciated the Kuwaiti stand not only on GCC issues but also on humanitarian issues. He was speaking at the event organised to celebrate the 57th Inde-pendence Day and 27th Liberation Day of Kuwait organised by the Embassy of Kuwait at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, yesterday.

“On this occasion we greet our brothers in Kuwait and we are cel-ebrating this day with them. We love and wish them the best,” he said.

The anniversary was attended by Minister of Finance H E Ali Shareef Al Emadi; Minister of Economy and Commerce H E Sheikh Ahmed bin Jassim bin Mohammed Al Thani; Minister of Development Planning and Statistics H E Dr Saleh bin Mohamed Al Nabit; Minister of Municipality and Environment H E Mohamed bin Abdullah Al Rumaihi; and Minister of State for Foreign Affairs H E Sultan bin Saad Al Muraikhi, Minister of State, H E Dr Hamad bin Abdulaziz Al Kawari in

addition to a number of senior dip-lomats and officials.

Speaking to reporters at the event on unjust siege imposed on Qatar by blockading countries, Al Muraikhi said that “Qatar has no problem and the one who have problem are the siege countries”. He also added the Qatari people

are celebrating the anniversary of independence with Kuwaiti brothers and there are some Qatari ministers who are participating in this anni-versary celebrations in Kuwait. “This our duty towards our brothers in Kuwait,” he said.

“We wish to our brothers in Kuwait all the best and also to other

GCC countries and we wish them sta-bility. Our ambition is that the rela-tionship with all GCC countries, Arab countries and Islamic countries to be on high level,” he added.

The Ambassador of Kuwait to Qatar Hefeez Mohamed Al Ajmi said in a statement that bilateral relations between the brotherly countries Qatar and Kuwait are very strong, mentioning that the size of investment between both countries is $7bn in different sectors.

In a meeting with journalists on the

occasion of 57th Independence Day, he said that the relations cover all aspects including economy, com-merce and military cooperation. About the size of Qatar exports to Kuwait, he said that it reached half a billion dollar last year, while the size of imports from Kuwait to Qatar reached $220m.

H E Ahmed bin Abdullah bin Zaid Al Mahmoud (third right), Speaker of the Advisory Council, and H E Ali Shareef Al Emadi (second left), Minister of Finance, cutting a cake with Kuwait Ambassador to Qatar, Hafeez Mohamed Salem Al Ajmi (third left), Minister of Development Planning and Statistics, H E Dr Saleh bin Mohammed Al Nabit (left), Minister of State H E Dr Hamad bin Abdulaziz Al Kawari (right) and Qatari Businessmen Association Chairman Sheikh Faisal bin Qassim Al Thani to mark Kuwait National Day reception, at the Ritz-Carlton Doha, yesterday. PIC: ABDUL BASIT / THE PENINSULA

DICID calls for implementation of religious valuesTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: In its closing statement the 13th Doha Conference on Interfaith Dialogue (DICID) called for the implementation of religious values in the divine religions and to strengthen international laws to protect human rights and to stop viola-tions, wheather the perpetrators are the states, individuals or groups.

The conference called on the international community to provide the necessary protection for children, women and people with special needs, and the family, especially those who are subjected to violations during war and conflict

Dr Ibrahim bin Saleh Al Nuaimi, Chairman of the DICID, stressed the need to find effective inter-national mechanisms to guarantee freedom of belief and practice of religious rites, as well as the need to respect religious sanctities, customs and traditions of all peoples, An act of intolerance, con-tempt for religions, extremism and terrorism. He stressed that the international community must act quickly to find solutions to the issues of vio-lations of human rights that are afflicting many countries of the world today and threaten global security and stability, especially the issue of reli-gious minorities, refugees, human trafficking, victims of war, armed conflicts, civil wars and ethnic cleansing.


02 THURSDAY 22 FEBRUARY 2018HOME

Cabinet praises Emir’s speech at Munich meetTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: The Cabinet yesterday appre-ciated the participation of Emir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani in Munich Security Conference and the call made by the Emir during the conference to all the countries of the Middle East to engage in a compre-hensive security agreement, reflecting Qatar’s keenness to achieve security and stability in the region.

The Cabinet also expressed hope that the countries of the Middle East would respond positively to this sincere call and accelerate to conduct this proposed security agreement that would guarantee security, stability and peace.

The Cabinet’s appreciation was also extended to Kuwait’s initiative to hold the Kuwait International Conference for the Reconstruction of Iraq from February 12 to 14 and its great role in making it a success under the patronage of the Emir of the State of Kuwait H H Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Jaber Al Sabah.

The meeting of the Cabinet was chaired by the Prime Minister and Interior Minister H E Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani. The meeting was held at the Emiri Diwan yesterday morning.

Following the meeting, Minister of Justice and Acting Minister of State for Cabinet Affairs H E Dr Hassan Lahdan Saqr Al Mohannadi stated that at the outset of its meeting, the Cabinet praised the speech of the Emir at the opening session of the Munich Con-ference last Friday. The speech included positions and visions towards the issues of the region and the world as well as constructive ideas and pro-posals to address these issues.

The Cabinet affirmed that the wide welcome of the Emir’s participation in this conference and the great attention paid to the Emir’s speech inside and outside the Conference reflect the

distinguished status of the State of Qatar regionally and internationally and the appreciation and respect it enjoys throughout the world. In addition to the understanding and support for its positions, orientations and policies that call for dialogue, renunciation of disputes, rejection of violence and terrorism, and compliance with the International Law and Inter-national Conventions.

The Cabinet, meanwhile, welcomed the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed Tuesday by the H E Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs with Minister of Foreign Affairs, African Integration and Inter-national Cooperation of the Republic of Chad on resuming the relations between the State of Qatar and the Republic of Chad.

This positive development in the relations between the two countries comes in the interests of the two peoples and in the interest of devel-oping bilateral cooperation and strengthening the two countries’ direc-tions towards peace and stability in the regions, said the Cabinet.

After that the Cabinet reviewed topics on its meeting’s agenda and approved a draft law regulating the land transport and referred it to the Advisory Council.

Among the provisions dealt with in the draft law are provisions related to the conditions and procedures for licensing the activity of land transport and the licensee’s obligations to engage in this activity.

The Cabinet also approved a draft of Emiri Decree on the reorganization of the General Authority for Civil Aviation.

The draft provisions included terms of reference of the Authority and the terms of reference of its administration, and the establishment of an inde-pendent unit called the Accident Inves-tigation Unit, which would be respon-sible for the investigation of aviation

accidents and would be fully inde-pendent in its work in accordance with the requirements of the International Civil Aviation Organization.

The Cabinet also approved the draft resolutions prepared by the Ministry of Justice in the framework of the issuance of executive decisions of the provisions of Law No. 22 of 2017 organ-izing the work of real estate brokerage.

Meanwhile, the Cabinet approved a draft resolution of the Minister of Justice on the Committee of Experts and determines its system of work and reward.

The Cabinet approved a number of draft resolutions of the Board of Directors of the Qatar Development Fund, including a draft decision on the organizational structure of the Fund as the views of the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Administrative Development, Labor and Social Affairs in this regard.

Also approved the participation of the State of Qatar at the Hannover International Industrial Fair,Germany, from April 23 to 27 2018.

The Cabinet also approved a draft Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for cooperation in the field of security between the Ministry of Interior of the State of Qatar, and the Ministry of Interior of the Republic of Iraq.

Meanwhile, the Cabinet reviewed the following topics and took the appropriate decision:

The letter of H E Minister of Economy and Commerce on the results of the first meeting of the Joint Minis-terial Committee for Economic, Com-mercial, and Technical Cooperation between the Government of the State of Qatar and the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (London - December 2017). A memorandum of HE Minister of Public Health on the results of her visit to the Republic of Turkey in November 2017.

Health Minister meets French counterpartMinister of Public Health H E Dr Hanan Mohamed Al Kuwari, currently on a visit to Paris, met France’s Minister of Solidarity and Health Agnes Buzyn. They reviewed cooperation between the two countries and means of enhancing and developing them, especially in the health sector. The Minister of Public Health visited a number of specialised hospitals in France and discussed medical cooperation with their officials.

Under the patronage of H E Dr Khalid bin Mohamed Al Attiyah, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of State of Defence Affairs, the Qatari Armed Forces celebrated yesterday the graduation of the 9th batch of National Service Recruits at the Meqdam Camp. The celebration was attended by the Chief-of-Staff of the Qatari Armed Forces, Major General Ghanem bin Shaheen Al Ghanem; Brigadier Saeed Hamd Al Nuaimi, head of the National Service Authority and a number of senior military officers and recruits’ parents.

Defence Minister attends graduation

03THURSDAY 22 FEBRUARY 2018 HOME

Qatar, Turkey issue joint commemorative stampsTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: Qatar Postal Services Company (Qatar Post) and the Turkish Postal Corporation (PTT) have issued joint commemorative stamps, marking of 45 years of diplomatic relations between the State of Qatar and the Republic of Turkey.

The new issuances were unveiled yesterday at the Ministry of Transport and Communications in the presence of Chairman and Managing Director of Qatar Post, Faleh Mohammed Al Nuaimi, and the Turkish Ambassador to Qatar, Fikret Ozer, as well as a number of offi-cials from both sides and a delegation of Turkish investors.

The joint stamps include photo-graphs of famous historic landmarks in Qatar and Turkey. The first stamp bears pictures of the Zubara Fort and the Rumeli Fortress, while the second features Ankara Castle and Barzan Towers. The value of the stamp is esti-mated at QR8.50 and will be put up for sale soon.

Speaking on the occasion, Qatar Post Chairman and Managing Director

Faleh Mohammed Al Nuaimi praised the distinct relations between the two brotherly countries, noting that stamps are the shortest and most powerful means of communication between nations, and it was customary to issue commemorative stamps to celebrate the historic turning points in the march of States.

“Last month we launched the Turkish market site and today we are pleased to issue commemorative stamps to celebrate 45 years of fruitful diplo-matic relations between our two broth-erly countries that have evolved over

the years in many strategic areas including trade, investment and culture,” Al Nuaimi added.

Meanwhile, the Qatari Embassy in Ankara and the Turkish postal corpo-ration also celebrated the joint issuances of commemorative stamps. The inau-guration ceremony was held at the Postal Museum and was addressed by Director-General of the Turkish Postal Corporation, Kenan Bozgeyik.

Bozgeyik praised the Turkish rela-tions and the joint cooperation initia-tives between the Turkish Postal Cor-poration and Qatar Post.

He noted that the issuance of the commemorative stamps would perpet-uate the fraternal relations between the two countries.

For his part, Qatar’s Ambassador to Turkey, Salem bin Mubarak Al Shafi, said that the diplomatic relations between the two countries were established in 1973 based on brotherly relations, under-standing and mutual respect, in addition to a great legacy of history and the common civilization of the two peoples.

The Ambassador added that the launch of joint bilateral initiatives by the

postal corporations in the two countries, notably the e-market initiative a few months ago, is expected to achieve a quantum leap in the field of e-commerce and the provision of Turkish goods to the Qatari consumer at the lowest cost and as fast as possible.

Such initiatives will encourage pro-ducers to adopt modern and sophisti-cated means to market their goods and increase their production through e-commerce. They will also open new horizons in the economic relations between the two countries and

will contribute to achieving the great objectives of the Qatari and Turkish sides, the Ambassador said.

The ambassador stressed:“We believe that the official authorities in Qatar and Turkey are doing great work to keep the momentum in the strategic relations between the two countries, but that is not enough on its own. There is a need to push the private sector in both countries to expand its own initiatives and partnerships with each other and with the public sector in Qatar and Turkey as well”.

Qatar’s Ambassador to Turkey, Salem bin Mubarak Al Shafi, and Director-General of the Turkish Postal Corporation, Kenan Bozgeyik, with the commemorative stamp.

The joint stamps include photographs of famous historic landmarks in Qatar and Turkey. The first stamp bears pictures of the Zubara Fort and the Rumeli Fortress, while the second features Ankara Castle and Barzan Towers.

QU president stresses providing highest level of educationQNA

DOHA: President of Qatar University (QU), Dr Hassan bin Rashid Al Derham, underlined the university’s keenness on providing the highest level of education for its student and the best scientific programs.

Speaking during a meeting with QU students, Dr Al Derham referred to important aspects of the university’s strategy, espe-cially in its student-related aspect, noting that the university has developed a new strategy for

the period from 2018 to 2022.He talked about the steps

to develop the student affairs sector, such as increasing the number of academic advisors to provide more support and advice to university students, and the construction of the largest building in the univer-sity dedicated to student affairs.

He explained that the Stu-dent Affairs Building contains halls that accommodate more than 1500 people, restaurants, offices and others, as well as a

sport hall and the hall for the University celebrations, and new parking lots.

In a related context, the QU President said that the univer-sity has established a student housing on the campus that is the best and finest in the region at a cost of about QR1bn noting that the student housing has become directly dependent on the Stu-dents Affairs in order to achieve greater harmony.

Meanwhile, Dr Al Derham said that the University’s distin-guished programs have earned

it a global reputation to ranks among the most prestigious uni-versities in the region, stressing the keenness on maintaining this high position, and the intention to provide more master’s and doctorate programs and to expand the scientific research capabilities that focus on n a t i o n a l d e v e l o p m e n t priorities.

He stressed that these devel-opments make QU graduates more distinguished and able to compete in the labor market.

Dr Hassan Al Derham noted

that the university has nine fac-ulties and currently provides various educational programs for more than 20,000 students.

On the other hand, QU President announced that the health services at the univer-sity will witness a qualitative leap this year through the establishment of a large health center. He also stressed that the university has placed a large number of services in its library, sports halls, reinforce-ment classes and recreation faci l i t ies , in order to

encourage the students to spend the longest period of time on the campus during the study.

The President of Qatar Uni-versity urged the students to speed up achievement and engage in the development process witnessed by the State, stressing that the current condi-tions of the siege and the recent events in Qatar require its people to deal with the challenges and face them with diligence and perseverance.


Sidra & CCQ deliver Healthcare Office Skills ProgramTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: Sidra Medicine, a specialty chil-dren’s, young people and women’s healthcare organisation and member of Qatar Foundation (QF), yesterday said that over 35 Qataris completed a customized four-month “Healthcare Office Skills” program designed in part-nership with the Community College of Qatar (CCQ).

The program primarily targets Qatari high school graduates and diploma holders who are interested in an entry-level career in medical admin-istration. It was established following a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) that was signed between Sidra Medicine and CCQ in August 2017.

The program includes courses such as medical office administration, medical terminology for healthcare, health information management systems and business computer appli-cations. Additionally, it offers partici-pants who show efficacy and interest

in pursuing a career in medicine, an opportunity to be sponsored by Sidra Medicine to pursue further studies in the clinical field.

Dr Kholode Al Obaidli, Chief Learning Officer, said, “National devel-opment is a major focus for Sidra Med-icine because we understand that the healthcare sector is one of the key pillars of a dynamic economy. To nurture this economy and achieve the country’s national vision, we must invest in making healthcare a viable and attractive career choice. We are very proud of the program’s participants and we hope that their achievements and career growth become an inspiration for other talented Qataris who wish to join the healthcare sector.”

The program is part of the National Development Strategy at Sidra Med-icine which identifies, recruits and develops Qatar’s future of healthcare professionals within the organization. The National Development Strategy 2.0, launched last year, focuses Sidra

Medicine’s efforts on expanding the number of Qataris joining the healthcare sector. Aside from training, Sidra Medicine also offers scholarship opportunities in nursing, medicine and allied health and ensures that Qatari students sponsored by Sidra Medicine as well as employees at all levels are given access to the right training tools, mentorship programs and learning opportunities to advance their careers in healthcare.

“CCQ is the fastest growing insti-tution in Qatar with over 4,500 stu-dents enrolled at our campuses,” said Dr. Abdalla Hasaimeh, Dean of the Community College of Qatar. “This partnership and the program, is the first step towards academic and career advancement for our young Qatari youth. Congratulations to the partici-pants who have completed the program. We are very pleased with their success and we are looking forward to hearing their future success stories.”

Speaker of the Advisory Council H E Ahmed bin Abdullah bin Zaid Al Mahmoud met with the Ambassador of the United Kingdom, Ajay Sharma. The Speaker also met separately with Ambassador of the People’s Republic of China, Li Chen. The meetings discussed parliamentary relations between the State of Qatar and UK as well as China and also ways to boost and develop them.

Advisory Council Speaker meets envoys

Finalists for Lexus Design Award announcedTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: Lexus International recently announced the 12 finalists who have been shortlisted for the Lexus Design Award 2018, an international design platform that identifies and recognises the next gener-ation of global creators and designers, and gives them the opportunity to receive mentorship from established global designers, prototype funding, and an invi-tation to exhibit at the Lexus Design Event during Milan Design Week.

Now in its sixth consecutive year, the theme for this year’s award is ‘CO-,’ derived from the Latin prefix meaning ‘with or together in harmony.’ ‘CO-’ explores the possibilities of how design can seek solutions and overcome barriers for a range of global challenges by ensuring the harmonious co-existence of nature and society.

This year’s Lexus Design Award involved an unprecedented level of par-ticipation attracting over 1,300 entries from 68 countries. Sir David Adjaye, one of the judges, said: “It has been thrilling to gain insight into how the next generation of designers is translating new concepts and philosophies into innovative solutions to answer the fundamental concerns facing us today.”

The creations of former Lexus Design Award finalists and winners have been drawing positive attention at prominent industry events, including ‘Iris’ by 2014 finalist Sebastian Scherer that won the German Design Award 2016 and ‘Sense-Wear’ by 2015 finalist Caravan that won Venice Design Week’s Wearable Technol-ogies Contest in 2016.

Yugo Miyamoto, Chief Representative of Middle East & North Africa Represent-ative Office, Toyota Motor Corporation,

said: “It has been exciting to follow the journey of the 12 finalists and the prom-ising work they have delivered to create innovative solutions that can help shape a better future. Through the Lexus Design Award, Lexus is supporting the next gen-eration of designers and creators by offering them a platform to explore their creativity, visualize, and develop their unique design ideas, and work under the expert guidance of distinguished mentors, to showcase their designs to the world. We thank our customers and fans for their support, which serves as a constant source of inspiration for us to continuously create amazing experiences.”

The 12 finalists were chosen after con-siderable deliberation by a panel of pres-tigious judges, which was further strengthened this year with the addition of world-renowned architects Sir David Adjaye and Shigeru Ban. Four of the 12 finalists (listed below) were selected to

prototype their designs under the guidance and mentorship of an elite team of established creators, namely Lindsey Adelman, Jessica Walsh, Sou Fujimoto, and Formafantasma.

Fernandes da Silva (Portugal), Ana Trindade Fonseca (Portugal)}:

Mentored by Lindsey Adelman – A system connecting cork thread, a sustainable material and computational process that gen-erates design products.

Yong Rit Fui (Malaysia), Jaihar Jailani Bin Ismail (Malaysia)}:

Mentored by Jessica Walsh – Connecting Technology (Intel-ligent Ink Pigment) and Design (Indicator) to show egg’s edibility.

(Japan):Mentored by Sou Fujimoto – Co-fusion

textile and green design to repurpose used clothes.

Elliott P. Montgomery (USA)}:Mentored by Formafantasma – A col-

laboratively imagined test site that explores speculative relationships between society, technology and the environment.

The four prototypes and detailed pres-entation boards from the designs of the other eight finalists will be showcased as part of the Lexus Design Event at this year’s Milan Design Week* in April. The 12 finalists will present their work to the judging panel and international media. Following the presentation, a Grand Prix winner will be selected.

Pictures of LDA judges & mentors.

Doha Jewellery and Watches Exhibition opens→CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

Al Obaidli stressed the Prime Minister and Interior Minister’s patronage of the exhi-bition as a clear expression of the govern-ment’s commitment towards developing the country’s tourism sector through supporting and sponsoring exhibitions and events that are the major platforms of business events and contribute to achieving the objectives of the Next Chapter of the National Tourism Sector Strategy.

The pavilion, which showcases jewellery collections of six up-and-coming Qatari designers participating at the second YQDs initiative, has been conspicuously set up right at the entrance of the venue showing the great importance the show gives to nurturing local talent and creativity. Qatari designers Nada Al Sulaiti (Hairaat), Nouf Al Meer (Nouf Jewellery), Ghada Al Buainain, Leila Abu Issa (Leila Issam Fine Jewellery), Shikha Mohamed (Al Ghla Jewellery), and Jawaher & Hissa Mohammed Al Mannai (Ghand Jew-ellery) are showcasing their new collections alongside renowned international brands at the show. Six bespoke pieces by YQDs will be auctioned by AlBahie Auction House on Sunday, proceeds of which will all go to Edu-cation Above All (EAA) foundation.

Fine jewellery workshops led by master craftsmen and complimentary watchmaking sessions by French watchmaking expert Objectif Horlogerie began yesterday and will

continue to be held daily until the last day of the exhibition.

Scheduled today is the inaugural Watches and Jewellery Forum sponsored by Fifty One East. To be held at Shangri-La Doha this morning, this new initiative will high-light jewellery designers’ role in refining the jewelry and gem industry in local and inter-

national markets.International watches experts Artcurial

are providing watch collectors free consul-tations and valuations daily.

Organised by QTA and delivered by Auditoire, DJWE 2018 is open to visitors until Monday from 12 noon until 10pm. On Friday, it will be open from 4pm to 10pm.

Minister of Economy and Commerce H E Sheikh Ahmed bin Jassim bin Mohamed Al Thani with other dignitaries at the inauguration of the ��th Doha Jewellery and Watches Exhibition at DECC yesterday. PIC: BAHER AMIN / THE PENINSULA

WISH 2018 to examine human-centered design in healthTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: The World Innovation Summit for Health (WISH), an initiative of Qatar Foundation (QF), will explore how design impacts patient experience at its forthcoming conference, WISH 2018, which will take place in November at the QNCC.

‘Design in Health’ will be one of nine research topics that will form the focus of WISH 2018, with the research centering on design challenges that can improve health out-comes and the day-to-day expe-rience of healthcare providers. The research findings will be presented in a report that will be published in time for WISH 2018, and will be discussed in depth during a panel session to be held during the prestigious biennial event. The report aims to result in policy recommen-dations that can improve healthcare.

The WISH Design in Health research group is being led by Aaron Sklar, co-founder of Pre-scribe Design and VP of Brand Experience at Giant Creative Strategy in San Francisco, USA. Throughout his career, Sklar has led design teams focused on improving people’s quality of life, health, and wellness. Qatar is represented in the research group by Dr. Dena Al-Thani, Assistant Professor, HBKU.

Sklar said, “I am a firm believer in the power of people-centered design to radically transform health and healthcare. For the most part, designers are an untapped, underutilized asset in healthcare.”

Sultana Afdhal, who was recently appointed as CEO of WISH, said, “We are delighted that this year’s research focus on design in healthcare aims to bring clarity to a subject that has the potential to deliver positive change in healthcare.”


Bone & Joint Center offers holistic services for orthopaedic conditionsFAZEENA SALEEM THE PENINSULA

DOHA: The Bone and Joint Center, which is a branch of Hamad General Hospital (HGH), treats a wide array of orthopaedic conditions and provide a holistic range of services ranging from diagnosis to phys-iotherapy.

With a dedicated healthcare team, the Centre provides specialised outpatient services for fractures, paediatric ortho-paedic, spine, foot and ankle injuries, anthroplasty (surgery of the joint) and sports medicine, according to Dr Mohamed Al Ateeq Al Dosari (pictured), Head of Orthopedic Surgery and Director of Bone and Joint Center. “The services, including a radiology department with specialised CT, MRI and ultrasound capa-bilities, considerably reduce wait time for patients, who also benefit from a multi-disciplinary approach to care at the facility, which minimises patient move-ment throughout the centre and has nurses, doctors and specialists visiting patients in treatment rooms,” he told The Peninsula yesterday.

The clinic rooms at the Centre, have an open concept and have high-tech equipment allowing for up-to-the-minute

access to patient diagnostics and infor-mation. And patients are referred to the Hamad General Hospital for surgical intervention.

The Centre is also the first in the Middle East to operate the low-dose 3D imaging EOS machine, which provides a full body skeletal 3D scan in less than 30 seconds.

While, with an aim to further enhancing orthopaedic care in the country recently, two major conferences were held with the participation of more than 500 delegates and several international

speakers. The fourth Qatar International Spine

Conference was held under the theme spinal deformity including paediatirics and adult deformities. It included inter-national and regional spine surgeons and researchers in the field of spine surgery. It was attended by surgeons, spine prac-titioners, allied health professionals and researchers.

The third Qatar Foot and Ankle Con-ference, was held in collaboration with Hamad General Hospital and the Medical Education Department. The two day event discussed on recent practices and knowl-edge of the orthopaedic foot and ankle discipline. A variety of lectures, workshops and papers were highlighted during the event. “Well-known experts at both con-ferences exchanged their experiences and update on Foot and Ankle and Spine Sur-gery and helped to enhance the level of knowledge in treating patients,” said Dr Al Dosari.

“Such conferences will also enhance the medical service here, we will not be behind other countries. It also provides a platform for us to showcase the services and facilities we have in our country,” he added.

Both conferences also saw 12 research papers presented on different subjects.

QA to go ahead with expansion plans

→CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

Qatar Airways has already added many new destinations to its network in 2018, including Pattaya, Thailand; Penang, Malaysia and Canberra, Aus-tralia, with direct service to Car-diff, United Kingdom; Mykonos, Greece; and Malaga, Spain, set to launch this year. “This expan-sion is going to keep on growing. Next moth we will receive seven more 350s in our fleet. We will receive 777s, again a record for an airline to receive seven aer-oplane in just one month, it shows that our march is going ahead and Qatar Airways is really the star in the airline industry today,” said Al Baker.

Airbus Vice-President Sales Commercial Aircraft, David Dufrenois; Rolls Royce Senior Vice President Middle East, John Kelly, and other senior officials were present during the event.

The new A350-1000 will go into full commercial service on the airline’s Doha-London route, on which the A350-900, the A380, Boeing 777 and 787 Dreamliner already operate, offering six flights a day between

Qatar and the United Kingdom’s capital. The arrival of the A350-1000 is a sign of the airline’s con-tinued commitment to rolling out Qsuite across its fleet. The first aircraft fully-fitted with Qsuite was launched on the

Doha-London route last summer on the B777, and was soon fol-lowed by service to Paris and New York, with service to Wash-ington, DC launched last month.

Qatar Airways is known for its commitment to global firsts;

in addition to being the global launch customer for the A350-1000, the airline was also the global launch customer for the A350-900 in 2014.

The airline also recently took delivery of its fourth

state-of-the-art Gulfstream G650ER executive aircraft, the fastest ultra-long-range business jet in the world, making Qatar Airways the world’s largest owner-operator of Gulfstream G650ERs.

The Group CEO of Qatar Airways, Akbar Al Baker, with other officials during the delivery of first Qatar Airways A��-�� touching down in Doha. PIC: SALIM MATRAMKOT/THE PENINSULA

Dr. Ibrahim bin Saleh Al Nuaimi, Chairman of DICID.

DICID calls for implementation of religious values

→CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

Al Nuaimi stressed that states that foster religious, ethnic or ref-ugee minorities should take serious measures to raise aware-ness of the rights of these minor-ities in their educational curricula and media. At the closing session, the DICID signed MoU with the Center for Islamic Studies of the

President of the Republic of Tajikistan. The conference at its third session held on yesterday the human rights issues between heavenly laws and international covenants, warning of the current challenges to the promotion of those rights in the world.

The participants discussed the religious perspective of human rights in times of peace and con-flict, the position of heavenly laws and international laws on the siege of states, the protection of civil-ians from the dangers of military operations and the religious and legal position towards victims of wars and conflicts. The partici-pants presented experiences from Argentina, Portugal, Nepal, and Croatia to integrate religious values into human rights laws, including constitutional legislation derived from the laws of religions. They noted the responsibility of

international law to protect vul-nerable religious groups and minorities, to combat religious ter-rorism and ethnic cleansing in addition to combat discrimination on a religious basis.

Morocco’s Minister of State for Human Rights Mustapha Ramid underlined the approach of human rights in Islam and its relationship to international legitimacy.

In his speech on behalf of the Moroccan Minister, Abdel Wahid Al Atheer, chief of staff at the min-istry of state in charge of human rights, referred to some conver-gence and intersections between some formulations in the interna-tional legitimacy of human rights and Quranic verses. He said this basic ethical consensus between Islam and the international legit-imacy of human rights does not mean full compatibility in detail, but there are some limited

differences that require scrutiny and reservation.

For his part, Mohamad Anwari from Nepal said that human rights are central to international legis-lation, noting the Doha Conference for Interfaith Dialogue for its interest in this vital subject.

Lawyer and politician at the National Institute Against Discrim-ination, Xenophobia, and Racism in Argentina Claudio Presman underlined the importance of framing religious practices and constitutional freedoms in local laws and in constitutional legisla-tion, pointing to the experience of Argentina in this context.

Prof. Jorge Bacelar Gouveia from the University of Lisbon pointed out that the Portuguese domestic laws that promote reli-gious freedom and practice in the country have granted various minorities their full religious rights.

In the same context, Associate Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Greece’s University of Peloponnese, Dr. Sotirios Roussos discussed the sit-uation of minorities in the Middle East under the current political sit-uation. The High Representative for the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations, Nassir Abdulaziz Al Nasser, stressed the importance of harmonizing religions and human rights and how to avoid conflicts between them.

Al Nasser spoke about the role of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations, calling it a “bridge connecting the members of the human family” to better coexist in peace and tolerance.

During the panel discussion entitled “The Implementation of Religious Values in Support of International Human Rights Law”, the Director of the United Nations

Human Rights Training and Doc-umentation Center for South-West Asia and the Arab Region, George Abu Al Zulf stressed the impor-tance of values and principles regarding the protection of human rights and dignity, as well as other human values stipulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, such as freedom, justice, brotherhood, equality and human solidarity.

For his part Dr. Michael Andrews from the US stressed the need for dialogue with one lan-guage while listening carefully to the other to resolve differences in a changing world with a variety of races and religions, and the estab-lishment of positive relationships between religions followers, reviewing the interaction of reli-gions on human rights in order to live in a world free of violence and extremism.


HBKU hosts diplomatic panel on ME situation THE PENINSULA

DOHA: Hamad Bin Khalifa University’s (HBKU) College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHSS) conducted a panel discussion on ‘Conceptualizing the Middle East’, comprised of college professors and distin-guished members of the diplo-matic community, yesterday.

Hosted by HBKU in Educa-tion City, Willy Kempel, Ambas-sador of Austria; Ajay Sharma, Ambassador of the United Kingdom; and Dr Bashir Al Shirawi, the former ambassador of Qatar to South Africa, were in attendance alongside faculty and students.

HBKU panelists, including Dr Steven M. Wright, associate dean and a professor at CHSS, as well as Dr Reem Meshal, associate professor at CHSS, took part in the dialogue.

In a series of panel conver-sations that were administered by faculty, the speakers each presented their specialist views on a wide array of topics that touched upon emerging

challenges in the region as well as international affairs.

Founding Dean of CHSS Dr Amal Mohammed Al Malki said, “It is a pleasure to bring the academic and diplomatic com-munities together in an insightful conversation about the Middle East. We have drawn on the expertise of the ambassadors and the research of our faculty members to engage the students as active participants on the discussion about the current situation in the Middle East and its ramifi-cations. By engaging students, we were able to successfully build connections between what is taught in the classroom and what happens in reality, further opening a space for intellectual freedom of speech.”

The panel’s areas of dis-course included discussions on the roles of women, gender and youth in the Middle East as well as the ideological challenges and future prospects facing the greater region.

It also touched upon issues such as extremism and hurdles

to coexistence in globalised societies.

In a conversation on the geo-political climate from a Qatar-centric perspective, the panelists deliberated on how other states, outside the region, may

contribute to promoting secu-rity and regional order.

This year’s panel discussion comes as the latest in a series of events that HBKU has organised with diplomatic missions across Doha. Through its collaboration

with embassies, HBKU actively promotes discourse, critical thinking, and multiculturalism at its campus, as well as fosters a dynamic learning environment for all members of its community.

The panelists at HBKU’s ‘Conceptualizing the Middle East’ discussion.

Lecture explores history of US-Arab relationsTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: The shared history of modernisation between Arabs and Americans was expounded at a recent lecture at George-town University in Qatar (GU-Q), where Professor Nathan J. Citino shared insights from his recent book Envi-sioning the Arab Future: Modernization in US-Arab Relations, 1945-1967.

Citino is a professor at Rice University who specialises in the history of US and the world with a focus on the Middle East. His talk focused on modernisation as a key theme of US Arab rela-tions during the Cold War and included case studies of global Arab travel and conflicts over the

development of post-revolu-tionary Iraq.

“The study of past Arab-American relations can help us to see contemporary issues in new ways,” said Citino.

“Not so long ago, the domi-nant political discourse in the Arab world concerned secular economic development, and

Arabs and Americans spoke a common language of modernisation.”

The lecture was based on findings from Citino’s book, which includes new research in both Arabic and English. The book assesses the regional impli-cations of US power while exam-ining a range of topics that tran-scend Arab-Israeli conflict, such as travel, community, gender, oil, and agriculture in both the United States and the Middle East.

The historian, who holds a Ph.D. from Ohio State Univer-sity, is also the author of From Arab Nationalism to Opec: Eisen-hower, King Saud, and the Making of US-Saudi Relations. He has published widely,

including articles in titles such as Diplomacy and Statecraft, the

International Journal of Middle East Studies, the Business

History Review, the Arab Studies Journal, and Cold War History.

Professor Nathan J. Citino during the lecture.

Raytheon and Thales ‘Silver Sponsors’ of DIMDEX 2018THE PENINSULA

DOHA: The organising committee of Doha Interna-tional Maritime Defence Exhi-bition and Conference (DIMDEX) has announced global defence contractor Raytheon Company, and French defence electronics group Thales as ‘Silver Spon-sors’ of the 6th edition of the region’s leading maritime defence show.

DIMDEX 2018 will take place from March 12 to 14 at the QNCC under the patronage of Emir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, and hosted and organised by Qatar Armed Forces. “We are delighted to have global technology and defence leaders such as Raytheon and Thales Group support DIMDEX and become Silver Spon-sors of the world-class event. This demonstrates the confidence DIMDEX has earned and under-scores the value it offers its partners year on year,” said Staff Brigadier (Sea) Abdulbaqi S. Al-Ansari, Chairman of DIMDEX.

Global defence leaders are continuing to support DIMDEX as a recognised strategic plat-form to showcase the latest industry innovations and secure lucrative meetings with VIP delegates.

Raytheon Company is a technology and innovation leader specialising in defence, civil government and cyberse-curity solutions. With a history of innovation spanning 96 years, Raytheon provides state-of-the-art electronics, mission systems integration, C5ITM products and services, sensing, effects, and mission support for customers in more than 80 countries. With 180 exhibitors from around the world taking part in the DIMDEX 2018 , and more than 60 countries will participate in it.

File pictures of Raytheon and Thales stalls.

The lecture was based on findings from Professor Nathan J. Citino’s book, which includes new research in both Arabic and English.

QC to launch 2nd edition of Future’s Writers ProgramTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: Qatar Charity has completed its preparations to launch the second edition of the “Future’s Writers” program.

The second edition will allow larger segments of society, to participate in the program, opening up to a broader spectrum of govern-mental and non-governmental bodies for coordination and partnership.

Ali Ibrahim Al Ghareeb, Executive Director of Local Operations Department at

Qatar Charity, said that Qatar Charity has completed its prep-arations to launch the second edition of the program, which will be characterised by greater openness to the different seg-ments of society, including male and female.

Al Ghareeb added that the program will include two main categories as adolescents (12-16 years) and youth (17-20 years), pointing out that the competi-tion will be held between March and mid-May of this year.

Al Ghareeb also said that the second edition will be

launched under the generous patronage of Barwa Bank, noting that Qatar Charity sought coordination and part-nership with the Ministry of Culture and Sports, Qatar Uni-versity, Qatari Forum For Authors, Dar Roza and the Khair Jalees Book Club to implement the program, in a way that ensures its success.

Al Ghareeb explained that Qatar Charity aims, through this program’ to contribute to enriching the cultural scene, developing and advancing the Qatari society.

The Minister of Culture and Sports H E Salah bin Ghanim Al Ali stressed during the session that writers and authors should be responsible for making a positive change in society through the production of knowledge, so that Qatar will remain as an example of the moral excellence, hoping that the next generation will be the best to serve the country at the cultural and intellectual level.

The first edition of the “Future’s Writers” Program has achieved many of its objectives and was also praised

and promoted by a number of well-known bodies and per-sonalities including the Minister of Culture and Sports, H E Salah bin Ghanim Al Ali.

It is worth noting that six stories have been announced as winners in the first edition of the “Future’s Writers” Pro-gram for the academic year 2016-2017, which was imple-mented at the level of schools in Qatar in cooperation with the Ministry of Education and Higher Education, Qatar Uni-versity and Khair Jalees Book Club.

Top performers to light up Mall of Qatar’s OasisTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: Mall of Qatar (MOQ) kicks off tonight a colorful dancing and light show as part of its line-up of free family enter-tainment.

Running until March 3 at MOQ’s Oasis stage, this amazing light show features two acts namely Alice in Wonderland that will be performed at 6pm and Mélange Art at 8.30pm.

“At Mall of Qatar, we prom-ised to bring spectacular talents and performances to provide a new experience to our visitors

every time they visit our mall. Bringing this world class show to Qatar, aims at promoting Mall of Qatar as a must-visit destina-tion, and supporting Qatar tourism. We are proud to invite families and friends to come to our mall and be part of this one-of-a-kind show” said Stuart Elder, Mall of Qatar CEO.

Dancers and acrobats will take the audience on a journey to a new wonderful world. The entertainers will perform a spec-tacular show, while wearing LED costumes that light in the dark aided by special sound effects. The Mall of Qatar kicks off dancing and light show tonight as part of its line-up of free family entertainment.


General Directorate of Traffic opens office at QUTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: Qatar University (QU) President Dr Hassan Al Derham and General Directorate of Traffic (GDT) Director Brigadier Mohammed Saad Al Kharji yesterday performed the ribbon-cutting ceremony to inaugurate GDT Office at QU.

The event was attended by General-Secretary of the National Traffic Safety Com-mittee Brigadier Mohamed Al Malki, QU College of Engineering (CENG) Dean Dr Khalifa Al Kha-lifa, CENG Qatar Transportation and Traffic Safety Center (QTTSC) Acting Director Prof Faris Tarlochan, and represent-atives from the Ministry of Inte-rior (MoI) and the National Traffic Safety Committee, as well as QU officials, faculty and staff.

The establishment of the new

office at QU aims to develop col-laboration between QTTSC and GDT on the exchange of infor-mation and consultancy on traffic safety. In this regard, QTTSC and GDT will cooperate to develop awareness campaigns and new training programs for drivers, and will run develop-ment programs in coordination with international organizations and research centers. Other

areas of collaboration include joint research projects in areas of transportation and traffic safety. Following the inaugura-tion ceremony, QTTSC and GDT held a workshop on “The change in drivers bahavior and its effect on traffic safety”.

Dr Khalifa Al Khalifa said: “The inauguration of the new office is part of the memo-randum of understanding (MoU) which was signed between QU and GDT last year. The MoU aimed to establish collaboration between both institutions to reduce road traffic crashes and to develop a safe road transpor-tation system in line with the National Road Safety Strategy.”

Brigadier Mohammed Saad Al-Kharji said: “I would like to express my gratitude to QU for its progressive efforts to launch the GDT Office, and for providing

studies, research and surveys that help find solutions for

Qatar’s traffic safety challenges and that add value to our

collaboration efforts to overcome these challenges.”

A group picture of officials at the opening of the General Directorate of Traffic office at Qatar University.

The establishment of the new office at QU aims to develop collaboration between QTTSC and GDT on the exchange of information and consultancy on traffic safety.

Bangladesh Embassy observes Martyrs’ Day & Mother Language DayTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: The Embassy of Bangla-desh in Qatar has observed the National Martyrs’ Day and Inter-national Mother Language Day yesterday with due solemnity.

The programme started with hoisting of the National Flag at half mast by Ambassador Ashud Ahmed at the Embassy premises in the presence of Embassy offi-cials and a good number of expa-triate Bangladeshi nationals. They stood in solemn silence there for a minute as a mark of respect to the memories of the 1952 Language Movement mar-tyrs of Bangladesh. ‘Doa’ was also offered for the salvation of the departed souls in the programme.

The messages from the Pres-ident, Prime Minister, Foreign Minister, State Minister for For-eign Affairs of Bangladesh on the day were read out. A discussion meeting on the significance of the National Martyrs’ Day and

International Mother Language Day was arranged. The speakers highlighted the contributions of the language martyrs towards the birth of an independent Bangladesh.

In his speech, the Ambas-sador recalled the supreme sac-rifices of the language martyrs of Bangladesh and mentioned that the 1952 Language Move-ment is considered as the most decisive episode and a turning point in the history of Bangladesh as its spirit led to the independ-ence of Bangladesh. He also recalled the immense contribu-tions of the Father of the Nation of Bangladesh Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman during the 1952 language movement.

He thanked the expatriate Bangladesh nationals in Qatar for their hard labour and contribu-tions to the nation building. An audio visual presentation on International Mother Language Day was screened during the dis-cussion meeting.

The Ambassador of Bangladesh to Qatar, Ashud Ahmed, hoisting the National Flag of Bangladesh at half-mast on the occasion of the National Martyrs’ Day and the International Mother Language Day 2018 at the embassy premises.

QA & HIA first to test EBTTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: Hamad International Airport (HIA) and Qatar Airways have successfully completed the International Air Transport Association’s (IATA) Electronic Bag Tag (EBT) readability tests, making HIA the first airport in the Middle East and North Africa (Mena) region confirmed ready to accept EBTs.

The programme aims to pro-vide a more seamless travel experience for passengers, including reduced time spent in queues, a simplified baggage drop process and increased relaxation time at the airport, as well as providing greater oper-ating and carbon efficiency. In the future customers will have a permanent electronic bag tag removing the need to print and apply traditional bag tags. Qatar Airways and HIA are taking the

lead on re-inventing the pas-senger journey.

HIA Vice-President Com-mercial and Marketing, Abdulaziz Al Mass, said: “Hamad International Airport is one of the most advanced airports in the world, and is accelerating its digital transformation moved by the ambition to become the ‘air-port of the future’ with the pas-senger at the core of our business.”

Gearing up to welcome 50 million passengers in the years to come, HIA is going a step fur-ther in implementing its Smart Airport Programme aimed at empowering passengers through

cutting-edge technologies. The airport’s passenger-centric approach is designed to give passengers full control and inde-pendence over their journey, from arrival and transfers to boarding, achieving minimal and seamless connection time.

“We are glad to be the first in the region to have confirmed the capability to use electronic baggage tags with IATA, and we will continue to invest in smart technologies to provide our pas-sengers with a smooth and seamless travel experience.”, said Hamad International Air-port Vice President Operations, Ian Metsovitis.

HIA is thriving to introduce automated processes and self-service at every touch point of the travel journey in order to facilitate faster passenger move-ment within the terminal, while complying with the highest standards for service quality, security and safety.

Qatar Airways Group has an established track record of early adoption of technological and operational innovations, making it a logical choice for IATA to col-laborate with in conducting these trials.

Nick Careen, IATA’s Senior Vice President Airport, Pas-senger, Cargo and Security, said: “Qatar Airways’ and Hamad International Airport’s decision to accept Electronic Bag Tags (EBTs) following a successful trial is a significant step towards the global acceptance of EBTs. The IATA Global Passenger Survey reconfirmed that this is something passengers want to use, and the trial proves that the tags are compatible with existing baggage systems. IATA calls on other countries to accept these tags. We thank Qatar Airways for its support of this trial, which again demonstrates its commit-ment to excellence for all customers”.

The Ground Services team that provides passenger check-in and baggage receipt for Qatar Airways, see this successful trial of electronic bag tags at HIA as a significant step forward in pro-viding customers self-service options.

Passengers not travelling with Qatar Airways will also benefit from this world-leading EBT capability through Qatar Aviation Services (QAS) – Qatar Airways Group’s award-winning ground handling company – which handles all baggage through HIA airport.Officials pose for a group picture at Hamad International Airport.

Ooredoo wins ‘Digital Service Assurance Innovator of the Year’ awardTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: Ooredoo, one of the region’s leading ICT providers, announced yesterday it has won the “Digital Service Assurance Innovator of the Year” award for the Middle East and North Africa by global digital software leader BMC Software, highlighting Qatar Data Centre’s innovative digital transformation.

BMC is a global leader in innovative software solutions, and recognised Ooredoo at the recent BMC Exchange 2017 Cus-tomer Awards. Ooredoo was one of three winners from the Middle East and North Africa, and stood out among BMC’s more than 10,000 customers.

Evaluation experts praised Ooredoo for using industry-leading BMC software solutions to take Qatar Data Centre to the next level, particularly in enhancing IT service manage-ment and digital service manage-ment platforms. Ooredoo was cited for the speed of deploy-ment, return on investment, and high levels of customer satisfaction.

Yousef Abdulla Al Kubaisi. Chief Operating Officer, Ooredoo Qatar, said: “Winning the region’s ‘Digital Service Assurance Inno-vator of the Year’ award is a major accomplishment by Ooredoo, underlining our com-mitment to innovation for service automation, operational

excellence, and supporting Qatar’s digital transformation. Ooredoo will continue to enhance Qatar’s leading data centre, allowing our business customers to deliver new digital business models and further e n h a n c e c u s t o m e r satisfaction.”

The Qatar Data Centre is one of the region’s most advanced data centre facilities, offering a full range of managed and hosted services. Business customers can benefit from business continuity

and disaster recovery, cloud solu-tions, data backup and restora-tion, hosting and co-location, infrastructure monitoring and management, IT security, man-aged storage and web content delivery. Business customers can leverage the Ooredoo Advantage, making Ooredoo “Best for Busi-ness”, thanks to its breadth and depth of talent, best fixed and mobile networks, broadest port-folio of ICT services and solu-tions, and trusted partner for 60 years.

The Ooredoo COO and other officials with the BMC Award.

Hamad International Airport and Qatar Airways have successfully completed the International Air Transport Association’s Electronic Bag Tag readability tests in Mena.

Al Hammadi, President of Syriac League discuss cooperationDOHA: Secretary-General of the Foreign Ministry H E Dr Ahmed bin Hassan Al Hammadi, met with President of the Syriac League Habib Afram on the sidelines of the 13th Doha Conference on Inter-faith Dialogue. The meeting discussed prospects for cooperation in addition to matters of mutual interest.

08 THURSDAY 22 FEBRUARY 2018MIDDLE EAST / AFRICA

Sheikha Intisar Salem Al Ali Al Sabah (centre), Kuwaiti film producer of “Swarm of Doves”, the first feature-length film about the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, with the film crew during a screening at the Jaber Al Ahmad Cultural Center in Kuwait City late on Tuesday.

Kuwait’s first film on Iraq invasion to make local debutAFP

KUWAIT CITY: Kuwaiti cinemas today will launch public screenings of “Swarm of Doves”, the Gulf state’s first feature-length film about the 1990 invasion of the Gulf state by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

The film is “inspired by true events” that occurred during the seven-month occupation, pro-ducer Sheikha Intisar Salem Al Ali Al Sabah said during a screening for the press. “These are stories of people who defended Kuwait at that time,” Sabah said.

She said “the aim of the film is not to create any grudge but to highlight the brotherhood, tolerance and unity Kuwaitis experienced during the

invasion”.The film, directed by Ram-

adan Khasrouh and on the fes-tival circuit since 2017, highlights moments of humanity that tran-scended the conflict between Iraq and its tiny, oil-rich neighbour.

In one scene, an Iraqi soldier is ordered by his commander to kill a Kuwaiti but he refuses after remembering words from his father during childhood about the bonds between the Kuwaiti and Iraqi peoples.

Another scene shows a Kuwaiti resistance fighter who forgives an Iraqi soldier during an armed confrontation, prompting the soldier to offer the man an escape from the army siege around his house.

“The film does not bear any ill will to the Iraqi people,” actor Daoud Hussein said.

“The director and screen-writer made sure this film doesn’t put salt on the wound,” said Hussein, who plays the film’s protagonist resisting the invasion.

Kuwait earlier this month hosted an international confer-ence for the reconstruction of Iraq, which is reeling from a three-year war to defeat the Islamic State jihadist group.

Kuwait’s Deputy Foreign Minister, Khaled Al Jarallah, said his country had overcome “past wounds” and had a “moral, humanitarian and Arab” duty to support its neighbour.

Turkey ‘victim of Syrian civil war’: ProfessorANATOLIA

MOSCOW: Turkey is a victim in the Syrian war that has suffered the most because of the events taking place there, head of Istanbul-based Istinye University’s Department of International Relations said on Tuesday.

Turkey has been there for the Syrian people since the start of the civil war in their country and continues to back Syrian territorial integrity, Professor Dr Mesut Hakki Casin said.

Casin, who was in Moscow as one of the participants at the Discussion Club Valday that concluded on Tuesday evening, said Turkey so far has hosted 3.5 million Syrians that ended up taking the pressure off pros-perous European countries where most asylum seekers aim to seek refuge.

But despite everything Turkey continues to suffer from unjust accusations over Syria’s Afrin region, he said.

On January 20, Turkey launched Operation Olive Branch to clear YPG/PKK-Daesh terrorists from Afrin.

According to the Turkish General Staff, the operation aims to establish security and stability along Turkey’s borders and the region as well as pro-tect Syrians from oppression and cruelty of terrorists.

The operation is being car-ried out under the framework of Turkey’s rights based on international law, UN Security Council resolutions, its self-defence rights under the UN

charter, and respect for Syria’s territorial integrity, it said.

The military also said only terror targets were being destroyed and that “utmost care” was being taken to not harm civilians.

The professor said: “Some say Turkey is attacking civilians in Afrin. I can’t agree with it, and I’m from military, I know what I am talking about.

“Turkey is targeting only terrorist organizations — PKK and PYD. Turkey is very careful, every step in Afrin is calibrated, adjusted.

“And Turkey doesn’t aim to break down territorial integrity and independence of Syria. We don’t want problems with Syria, we respect Syrian integrity and we always protect Syrian inde-pendence and sovereignty.” About the role of Russia in the Syrian conflict, Casin said he sees the country as a mediator in the conflict. He suggested that Russian President Vladimir Putin should return to the Middle East “to challenge the balance of power in the inter-national relations to multipolar the situation”.

“Russian role is in com-bining all the parties.” He added he expects Presidents Putin, Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Hassan Rowhani to bring peace and stability to Syria, and help reorganize the future of Syria, including its government and constitution.

“I hope we see them soon in an attempt to solve [the issues in Syria], number one is peace and number two, restruc-ture of Syria,” he added.

Lebanon arrests former IS financial official

REUTERS

BEIRUT: Lebanese intelli-gence arrested a man yesterday they believe was a financial official for Islamic State in Syria, a security source said.

The Syrian, arrested in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli, was responsible for collecting money for the mil-itant group in Albu Kamal, a city in eastern Syria, before Islamic State was routed from the area, the source said.

In November, the Syrian army and its allies recaptured Albu Kamal, Islamic State’s last significant town in Syria. Most IS members withdrew from the town during the battle.

The arrested man, whom the source identified only as Saud, entered Lebanon through a legal border crossing using his brother’s identity. It was not clear when he entered the country and whether he was planning any militant activities, the source said.

Lebanese authorities say they have disrupted a number of IS plots in recent months. The last very big jihadist attack in Lebanon was a sui-cide bombing in Beirut in November 2015 which killed dozens.

Iran teams carry plane crash dead down from mountainAFP

TEHRAN: Emergency teams yesterday began recovering bodies from a plane crash in Iran’s Zagros mountains but the operation had to be suspended due to bad weather, officials said.

Aseman Airlines flight EP3704, carrying 66 people, disappeared from radar on Sunday morning around 45 minutes after taking off from Tehran on a domestic flight. No survivors have been found.

Search helicopters located the crash site after a break in the weather on Tuesday at a height of around 4,000 metres in the Dena range.

Helicopters were unable to land but officials said a recovery

operation had begun yesterday, with emergency personnel car-rying bodies on their backs to a road at the foot of the mountain.

The Iranian Red Crescent later said the operation had to be suspended as the bad weather returned, news agency Isna reported.

It was unclear how many bodies had been recovered. One official reported seven bodies recovered but the Red Crescent said 32 “packages” had been brought down from the moun-tain and that these were not necessarily entire bodies.

A local rescue official told news agency Ilna that it should be possible to identify most of the remains.

Iranian President Hassan Rowhani greeting Acting Dutch Foreign Minister Sigrid Kaag (left) in Tehran yesterday.

Iran President receives Dutch Minister

Three militiamen die in Libya car bomb attackAFP

BENGHAZI: Three mili-tiamen from forces loyal to Libyan strongman Khalifa Haftar were killed yesterday in a car bomb attack in the central Waddan region, a militia spokesman said.

The blast — which was not immediately claimed by any group — wounded two others at a checkpoint on the road leading to Tripoli, some 500km to the north, said commander Ahmed Al Mesmari.

Jihadists from the Islamic State group remain active in central and southern Libya despite being forced out of their northern stronghold Sirte in 2016.

Libya has been gripped by chaos since a Nato-backed uprising toppled and killed longtime dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, with rival administrations and multiple militias vying for control of the oil-rich country.

Lebanon gets tough on the press ahead of pollsAP

BEIRUT: A string of court cases and judicial investigations against Lebanese media figures is testing this country’s reputa-tion as a forum for ideas in a region blanketed by censorship and threats to the press.

Lebanese authorities are get-ting tough on free speech ahead of national elections, summoning two leading talk show hosts to court over on-air remarks and sentencing an analyst to jail for comments she made in Wash-ington about the Lebanese army.

A raft of taboos enshrined by law is shielding the country’s military, political leaders, and religious institutions from criticism.

“The Lebanese journalist used to be a pioneer for freedoms for the entire Arab world,” said Marcel Ghanem, who is facing a suit because of remarks made by a guest on his highly regarded

talk show, Kalam Ennas, in November. “Is it possible that today Lebanese journalists are afraid of the spectre of the authorities?” Ghanem and others targeted by criminal suits and investigations say the political class is closing ranks ahead of parliamentary elections in May — the first national referendum in eight years — and trying to tamp down on the torrent of media opprobrium since a national trash crisis disgraced politicians in 2015.

“The vulnerable ‘system’ needs to be protected,” said Hanin Ghaddar, a Lebanese ana-lyst at the Washington Institute, who was sentenced by a military court to six months in prison for comments she made at a U S symposium in 2014. Ghaddar, who lives in Washington, said she would not return to Lebanon to serve her sentence.

An outspoken critic of the militant group Hezbollah,

Ghaddar charged that Lebanon’s Army was showing leniency to the Shia group while cracking down on Sunni extremists.

Ghaddar’s case is “a mark of shame on Lebanon,” said Ayman Mhanna, the executive director of the Samir Kassir Foundation, a press freedoms organisation named after the late editor of Lebanon’s An Nahar newspaper, who was assassinated in 2005.

“No politician can say that the status of freedom is

acceptable in Lebanon when a military court can issue a sen-tence to prison or exile because of an opinion,” said Mhanna.

Justice Minister Selim Jreis-sati said Ghaddar was accusing the army of treason, and that this was not protected by the consti-tutionally-enshrined principle of freedom of speech.

“She calls herself Lebanese?” Jreissati said in a phone call.

Ghanem, who has hosted his show for 23 years, said he was blindsided by the charges lev-eled against him after he refused to testify in a criminal investiga-tion of a guest accused of defaming Lebanon’s leaders.

Jreissati, who belongs to Aoun’s party, said at the time that the press had lost its “moral and professional bearings.” The epi-sode underscored the perils of journalism in Lebanon’s charged political atmosphere, where Saudi Arabia and Iran grapple for influence in the context of a

wider regional rivalry that has fueled wars in Syria and Yemen.

Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s abrupt resignation last November only served to inflame the situa-tion. Many here saw the resigna-tion as orchestrated by his patron, Saudi Arabia, as an indication of its dissatisfaction with Hezbollah’s sway over Lebanese politics.

Saudi politicos and journal-ists flooded Lebanese channels as the local press sought an explanation, attracting talk and comedy show barbs.

Hicham Haddad, a leading late night host, is facing legal action after making a joke at the expense of Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, in January.It is illegal to “defame” Lebanon’s political leaders, its army and foreign leaders - a tempting threshold for come-dians to cross in a country where foreign meddling is a staple of national politics. It is also illegal to insult religion.

Hariri walked backed his resignation later in November.

Haddad’s case, and Ghanem’s, are still working their way through the judiciary, while new episodes of their shows air on the same Lebanese network, LBC.

Others, too, have faced har-assment. In July, journalist Fidaa Itani was detained and interro-gated after criticizing the army’s treatment of Syrian refugees in a Facebook post. He agreed to take it down. In November, authorities arrested the head of the Civil Islamic Coalition, Ahmad Ayoubi, on charges of defaming the president and insulting a “brotherly nation.” He was later released on bail.

Lebanon has endured a tur-bulent 13 years since its so-called “Cedar Revolution” forced Syr-ia’s military — and its feared intelligence services, which had directed the press and politics from behind the scenes — out of the country.

Lebanese authorities are getting tough on free speech ahead of national elections, summoning two leading talk show hosts to court over on-air remarks and sentencing an analyst to jail.

09THURSDAY 22 FEBRUARY 2018 MIDDLE EAST / AFRICA

Alarm as war rages in Eastern GhoutaAFP

BEIRUT: Syrian jets carried out more deadly raids on Eastern Ghouta yesterday, as Western powers and aid agencies voiced alarm over the mounting death toll and spiralling humanitarian catastrophe.

The regime of President Bashar Al Assad intensified its strikes this month on the rebel enclave east of Damascus, where close to 300 civilians have been killed since Sunday.

Warplanes continued to pound Eastern Ghouta towns yesterday, killing 24 civilians, according to the Syrian Observ-atory for Human Rights.

Most of them were killed when barrel bombs — crude, improvised munitions that usu-ally cause indiscriminate damage — were dropped on the town of Kfar Batna, the Britain-based war monitor said.

More than 1,400 people were wounded in three days that saw the bloodiest wave of strikes on the enclave since the start of the civil war in 2011.

Medics have been over-whelmed throughout February. The five-year siege of the

enclave has restricted access to medical supplies, while three clinics were hit and put out of service this week.

The hospital in the town of Arbin was hit twice on Tuesday and the Observatory said Rus-sian warplanes had carried out that strike and others, its first on Eastern Ghouta in three months.

The Kremlin yesterday denied any involvement in the strikes and rejected reports to the contrary as “groundless accusa-tions.” The hospital in Douma, the largest town in Eastern

Ghouta, is still functioning but the influx of wounded is such that doctors and nurses cannot save everyone.

“We received a mother yes-terday who was pulled from the rubble. She was six-months pregnant and seriously wounded,” said surgical nurse Maram. “We did a C-section but could not save her, nor her baby,” she said.

Next to her a man expressed his anger after bringing the body of his neighbours’ daughter — retrieved dead from the rubble of her home — to the mortuary. “What crime did this girl commit, what is her crime?,” he shouted.

Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said at least 67 children were among the 274 people killed in strikes since Sunday.

The bloodshed prompted UN children’s agency Unicef to issue a largely blank statement saying “we no longer have the words to describe children’s suffering.” U N chief Antonio Guterres said he was “deeply alarmed” by the escalation of violence.

US State Department spokes-woman Heather Nauert criticised the “siege and starve tactics” of

the Assad regime and said: “The cessation of violence must begin now.” Eastern Ghouta is home to more than 400,000 people living under crippling siege, with little access to food or basic services.

Anti-regime groups, mostly Islamist factions as well as Al Qaeda’s former Syrian affiliate, have controlled the area since 2012.

With the Islamic State group’s once sprawling “caliphate” now wiped of the map, the regime looks bent on completing its reconquest by taking on remaining enemies.

In recent days, government forces have been massing around Eastern Ghouta, apparently pre-paring for a ground offensive.

“We have long feared Eastern Ghouta will see a repeat of the ter-rible scenes observed by the world during the fall of east Aleppo and these fears seem to be well founded,” said Mark Schnellbae-cher, the regional head of the Inter-national Rescue Committee.

The battle that saw govern-ment forces wrest back the coun-try’s second city from rebel forces in 2016 caused extensive destruction and suffering that

drew comparisons with the Second World War era devasta-tion in Stalingrad and the Warsaw ghetto.

The regime is also seeking to restore its grip on other areas in the north, including the province of Idlib, the last one that remains largely outside its control.

On Tuesday, regime forces deployed inside the region of Afrin, a Kurdish enclave along Syria’s northern border with Turkey.

The move came after Kurdish forces asked Damascus to pro-tect it from a month-old offen-sive by Ankara.

Syrian Army armoured vehicles moving towards the town of Harasta on the northeastern suburbs of Damascus, yesterday.

Whoever helps Kurd militia is ‘legitimate target’: TurkeyAFP

ANKARA: Turkey yesterday said it would consider a “legitimate target” any group that comes to the aid of Kurdish militia in Afrin in northern Syria.

The threat from presiden-tial spokesman Ibrahim Kalin came a day after Syrian pro-regime forces entered Afrin, only to come under fire from Turkish forces.

Last month Ankara launched a cross-border air and ground offensive backing Syrian rebels against the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) in Afrin.

Turkey says the YPG is linked to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has waged an insurgency against the Turkish state since 1984, and is blacklisted as a terror group by the United States and the European Union.

“Today, tomorrow could they attempt this again? It’s possible. But the relevant measures have been taken,” Kalin said, after Turkey said it fired “warning shots” at Syrian pro-regime forces in Afrin.

“Every step taken in sup-port for the YPG terror organ-isation would mean (any forces intervening on the Kurdish militants’ side) are on the same level as terror organisations. And for us, that would make them legitimate targets,” Kalin told reporters in Ankara.

“It doesn’t matter who makes such an attempt, there will be serious consequences.” Syrian state media on Monday said that pro-Damascus forces would head to Afrin to “join the resistance against the Turkish aggression”.

The YPG has controlled Afrin since Syrian govern-ment forces withdrew from Kurdish-majority areas in the country’s north in 2012.

The US has been working closely with the YPG against the Islamic State extremist group in Syria, sparking anger in Ankara. Turkey has called for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s ouster and sup-ported opposition fighters throughout the seven-year conflict.

More than 90 Nigerian schoolgirls missing after Boko Haram attackREUTERS

BAUCHI, NIGERIA: More than 90 Nigerian schoolgirls are feared missing after Islamist insurgent group Boko Haram attacked a village in the north-eastern state of Yobe, two sources said yesterday.

Their disappearance, if con-firmed, would be one of the largest since Boko Haram abducted more than 270 school-girls from the town of Chibok in 2014. That case drew global attention to the nine-year insur-gency, which has sparked what the United Nations has called one

of the world’s worst humani-tarian crises.

A roll-call at the girls’ school on Tuesday showed that 91 stu-dents were absent, said the two people with direct knowledge of the matter.

“I saw girls crying and wailing in three Tata vehicles and they were crying for help,” said a witness from the nearby village of Gumsa who was reportedly forced to show the insurgents the way out of the area and then released.

Nigerian police and the regional education ministry denied any abductions had taken

place, but parents and other wit-nesses also said some girls were still missing.

The two sources, several parents and other local witnesses said on condition of anonymity because they had been warned by Nigerian security and govern-ment officials not to disclose the disappearance. Seven parents said their daughters were among the missing.

“I hope my daughter is not one of those abducted as we learned that over ninety of them were not seen after going through their register book,” one parent said.

The Boko Haram militants arrived in Dapchi on Monday evening in trucks, some mounted with heavy guns and painted in military camouflage, witnesses said. The insurgents went directly to the school, shooting sporadically, sending students and teachers fleeing, the wit-nesses said, adding that some people had returned to Dapchi after spending the night hiding in the bush.

Nigerian security forces have begun a search and rescue mis-sion, two people said.

Yobe state Police Commis-sioner Sumonu Abdulmaliki on

Tuesday told reporters Boko Haram had not abducted any girls in Dapchi. “They fired shots and left the town toward Gaidam... in the night, where they abducted three people,” he said.

The state ministry of educa-tion also said there had been no established case of abduction, but shut the Dapchi school for a week to allow students to be reu-nited with their families.

More than 20,000 people have been killed and two million forced to flee their homes in the northeast of Africa’s most pop-ulous nation since Boko Haram began its insurgency in 2009.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas speaks at the UN Security Council in New York. Abbas on Tuesday called for the convening of an international conference by mid��- to pave the way for recognition of Palestinian statehood as part of a wider Middle East peace process.

US diplomat meets Lebanon ministerREUTERS

BEIRUT: A senior U S diplomat met Lebanon’s foreign minister yesterday in Beirut as part of a U S shuttle diplomacy effort to resolve tensions between Israel and Lebanon over a border wall and energy drilling in disputed waters.

Disputes over Israeli con-struction of the border wall, Lebanon’s start of oil and gas exploration at sea and the growing arsenal of Lebanon’s Iran-backed Shia group Hez-bollah have caused a spike in tensions between Lebanon and Israel, both friends of the United States.

Lebanon this month signed its first offshore energy explo-ration and production agree-ments with a consortium of France’s Total, Italy’s Eni and Russia’s Novatek. One of two

blocks given to the consortium, Block 9, contains waters claimed by Israel.

David Satterfield, the acting U S assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs, has been shuttling back and forth between Israel and Lebanon in a bid to resolve the disputes.

He met Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil yesterday in Beirut. The two had last met on Friday, after which Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri reiterated Lebanon’s rejection of U S pro-posals to resolve the maritime dispute as “unacceptable”.

This was an apparent ref-erence to a maritime demarca-tion line proposed by U S dip-lomat Frederic Hof in 2012, which would give Lebanon around two-thirds and Israel around one-third of a disputed triangular area of sea of around 860sqkm.

Subdued birthday celebration for ousted MugabeAFP

HARARE: Zimbabweans marked Robert Mugabe’s 94th birthday yesterday with an official day off, but without the extravagant cakes and fawning tributes that defined February 21 for much of his 37-year rule.

As president, Mugabe typi-cally celebrated with a rambling speech while wearing a suit

decorated with images of his own face at a party that included a lavish feast. But following his ousting in November after a brief military takeover, this year’s fes-tivities were restrained.

Other than a solitary editorial proclaiming the former head of state’s big day in the government-run Herald newspaper, there was little in the way of official fanfare.

None of the ministries and

agencies that previously clamoured to mark the day even acknowledged it this year, and the flurry of tributes that filled newspaper pull-outs each year was also absent.

While government offices and schools were closed for the first annual “Robert Mugabe National Youth Day” — declared a week after his forced resignation on November 21 — much civilian life continued as normal.

“It’s a day we treasure and we revere the former president,” Simon Khaya Moyo, spokesman of the ruling ZANU-PF party, told local media.

“The party will send its best wishes and a cake,” added Moyo, whose party switched alle-giances from Mugabe to Presi-dent Emmerson Mnangagwa during last year’s take-over.

Mugabe, whose authoritarian

rule drove Zimbabwe into eco-nomic ruin, has not made any public appearances following his abrupt ousting.

But a close ally said that the nonagenarian was in good health and looking forward to his birthday.

“He is well and resting and ready to celebrate his birthday,” said former central bank chief Gideon Gono.

Palestinian leader addresses UN Security Council

Warplanes continued to pound Eastern Ghouta towns yesterday, killing 24 civilians, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Most of them were killed when barrel bombs were dropped on the town of Kfar Batna, the war monitor said.

THE political situation in the Maldives, an island country in the Indian Ocean, has been

unstable. As the region is an important spot for sea traffic, and China is expanding its influence there, other countries concerned, including Japan, must remain vigilant.

There have been a succession of cases in which opposition leaders have been the targets of charges such as antiterrorism law violations under the administration of President Abdulla Yameen, which was inaugurated in 2013.

In early February, the Maldivian Supreme Court ordered such actions as the release, retrial and reinstatement of exiled former President Mohamed Nasheed and opposition legislators. In the capital of Male, antigovernment demonstrations took place.

President Yameen declared a state of emergency and arrested the chief justice of the Supreme Court and other figures. The release order and other decisions were retracted. There is no doubt that the president is increasingly heavy-handed, hoping to win reelection in a presidential election scheduled for this autumn.

The Maldives sits at one of the key points for sea routes that extend from Asia to the Middle East and Africa. If the current turmoil continues for a long time, there are concerns that regional stability could be undermined. The United Nations, the United States and European nations had good reason to express their anxiety about

Yameen. It is necessary to note that the rivalry between China and India for greater influence in the Indian Ocean is affecting even the Maldivian situation.

Nasheed and other opposition forces are deeply tied to India while Yameen is becoming conspicuously closer to China. At the end of last year, the Maldives and China concluded a free trade agreement, and they exchanged memorandums stating that the Maldives would join the China-led “Belt and Road” initiative, which seeks to set up a huge economic zone.

China has adopted a “String of Pearls” maritime strategy for increasing cooperation with nations along the shores of the Indian Ocean. In Sri Lanka, China extended a massive loan for an improvement project in the southern port of Hambantota, and, in lieu of Sri Lanka repaying the debt, a Chinese corporation obtained port-related rights and interests that extends for 99 years.

The QPCMP is aimed at providing safer pedestrian mobility and at the same time encourage people to walk in a safe environment, thus improving public health.

CHAIRMANSHEIKH THANI BIN ABDULLAH AL THANI

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

ACTING MANAGING EDITORMOHAMMED SALIM [email protected]

10 THURSDAY 22 FEBRUARY 2018VIEWS

EDITORIAL

Qatar has come up with yet another ambitious master plan, this time to increase safety of pedestrians and create a world-class safe pedestrian environment. The Qatar Pedestrian Crossings Master Plan was launched by Prime Minister and Interior

Minister H E Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin K halifa Al Thani. The rights of all users of the road, including motorists, pedestrians, bicyclists, people with special needs and the elderly, among others, have been taken into consideration while launching the comprehensive master plan.

Transportation is a key element for robust economic development and this cannot be achieved without an integrated and efficient transportation system. Minister of Transport and Communications H E Jassim bin Saif Al Sulaiti, addressing the launch event, said: “The QPCMP is one of the key plans for implementing the system and components of land transport in Qatar. It is also an important part of the Qatar National Traffic Safety Strategy action plan. The State of Qatar’s been witnessing an unprecedented economic growth and significant progress in all fields along the lines of the wise vision of Emir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani.”

H E Al Sulaiti explained that road networks is one of the factors of the infrastructure of the

transport system which is linked to urban expansion and its development. This encouraged the Ministry to update its QPCMP. The master plan is aimed at providing safer pedestrian mobility and at the same time encourage people to walk in a safe environment, thus improving public health. The plan includes 50 pedestrian crossings comprising 26 pedestrian o v e r p a s s e s a n d underpasses and 24 crosswalks on roads. The plan would make the transport sector a main

pillar that supports the path to economic, trade and industrial development, in order to achieve Qatar National Vision 2030 goals.

Assistant Undersecretary of Land Transport Affairs at MoTC, Rashid Taleb Al Nabet, said the master plan will help save lives and protect properties by reducing road traffic fatalities. He pointed out that QPCMP has three main pedestrian crossing themes — standard, conventional and modern, in addition to the unique themes and the unique locations such as Doha Grand Park and Aspire Zone where uniquely-designed pedestrian bridges will be constructed to become landmarks for the capital city of Doha. Ashghal President Dr. Eng. Saad bin Ahmed Al Muhannadi said that QPCMP is based on several axes, most notable are improving and developing the existing pedestrian and bicycle paths to be compatible with the plan.

Qatar has made great strides in all fields. The transport sector is the pillar of the country’s growth and so is the safety of pedestrians from all walks of life.

Safety of pedestrians

QUOTE OF THE DAYInternational humanitarian

law was developed precisely to stop this type

of situation of eastern Ghouta in Syria, where

civilians are slaughtered in droves in order to

fulfil political or military objectives of Syria’s

eastern Ghouta.Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein

UN Human Rights Chief

UNRWA praises Qatar’s grant to alleviate difficult conditions in Gaza

China’s influence over Maldives a cause for concern

QNA

THE United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) praised the urgent grant made by the State

of Qatar to alleviate the suffering of the Palestinians living in difficult conditions in the Gaza Strip as a result of the illegal Israeli blockade which has been imposed for years.

In a statement to Qatar News Agency (QNA), UNRWA spokesman Adnan Abu

Hasna underlined the importance of this contribution that provided necessary fuel for the operation of generators in hospitals in the Gaza Strip, and expressed the hope that the State of Qatar would present a role model for other countries to provide the necessary support for Gaza.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Health in Gaza announced the re-operation of the health facilities in Gaza after the Qatari grant that

subsequently saved the deteriorating health sector.

The Ministry hailed the urgent grant announced by the State of Qatar that saved the health sector in Gaza.

For his part, Head of the Popular International Committee to Support Gaza, Essam Yousef praised the support provided by the State of Qatar to the Palestinian people in the Strip who are under the most difficult circumstances as a result of the ongoing unjust Israeli siege for more than 11 years.

In a press statement, Yousef said that the urgent aid directed by Emir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, which details were unveiled by HE Ambassador Mohammed Al Emadi, Chairman of the Qatari Committee for the Reconstruction of Gaza, came on time in response to the humanitarian appeal launched by those trapped in The Gaza Strip and were in desperate need of financial aid.

He expressed thanks and appreciation for the Qatari role that is always supportive of the Palestinian people, especially the people of The Gaza Strip who are suffering from the scourge of the siege.

He noted that the $9 million grant reflects Qatar’s great moral and humanitarian commitment to the people of Gaza and the depth of the brotherly relations, which was and will continue to be affirmed by His Highness the Emir, the government and the people of Qatar at every occasion through their remarkable humanitarian position.

“The people of Gaza can not forget such positions, especially as they support their steadfastness against an unjust siege that has been imposed without mercy or compassion for the children, the sick and the poor, while many hesitate to help, ignoring the humanitarian disaster that beset tens

of thousands of sick and destitute children in the Strip,” Yousef said.

“History will record these brave humanitarian attitudes of the Qataris, and all those who extend their hands from Arab and Muslim brothers and all the free people of the world, to save a premature child from the danger of death, a patient waiting for dialysis, a person in need who is starving, or a student threatened by the risk of losing his future as a result of his absence from school,” he added.

HE Chairman of the Qatari National Committee for the Reconstruction of Gaza Ambassador Mohammed Al Emadi revealed in a press conference at Al Shifa Medical Complex in Gaza yesterday the details of the disbursement of the Qatari grant of $ 9 million, he said the urgent grant would be disbursed to save the deteriorating humanitarian situation in The Gaza Strip.

The Qatari grant includes $2.6 million for food parcels, blankets and financial assistance in the form of cash to families in need for the purchase of cooking gas.

As well as supplying 757,000 liters of fuel to hospitals and health centers of the Ministry of Health for two months in cooperation with the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) for $500,000. A total of $ 2 million has been allocated for the purchase of medicine and medical supplies, and $ 1 million for the rehabilitation of deteriorating homes.

Ambassador Al Emadi noted that the grant also allocates $ 1 million to pay the fees for students in universities, as well as $ 1 million and 900 thousand as assistance for humanitarian and medical cases.

The Maldives sits at one of the key points for sea routes that extend from Asia to the Middle East and Africa. If the current turmoil continues for a long time, there are concerns that regional stability could be undermined.

ESTABLISHED IN 1996

THE JAPAN NEWS

UNRWA spokesman Adnan Abu Hasna underlined the importance of this contribution that provided necessary fuel for the operation of generators in hospitals in the Gaza Strip, and expressed the hope that the State of Qatar would present a role model for other countries to provide the necessary support for Gaza.

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A second referen-dum would certainly arouse furious protests, and quite possibly a political crisis, new elections, and all the dangers and uncertainties that go with that.

BLOOMBERG

ALMOST two years after the UK voted to quit the European Union, and barely

more than a year before the actual exit is scheduled to happen, an all but leaderless Britain is fumbling its way to disaster. The country needs to find a way to change course. There should be a second referendum as soon as possible.

It was a huge error to call the first referendum, not least because the choice put before the country was so unclear. Nobody bothered to say what Brexit would actually mean. Acting on a mixture of no

information and outright misinformation, a narrow majority of voters nonetheless chose to leave the EU.

Nullifying that choice, misguided as it was, requires another popular vote — this time, informed by what’s been learned.

After two years of thinking about it, Prime Minister Theresa May’s government is still split over what it wants — and an upcoming series of speeches intended to lay out its vision is unlikely to help.

Negotiating a tolerably successful Brexit might have been impossible in any case, but the protracted failure to

set goals and develop a strategy for advancing them is making the worst possible Brexit ever more likely.

If Britain leaves the EU in March 2019 without even any transitional arrangements, its trade in goods and services — not just with the EU but with much of the rest of the world — will collapse into chaos. Disentangling the UK from its partnership with Europe is proving to be vastly more complex and difficult than Brexit supporters believed. And as the enormous short-term costs of an abrupt divorce come more clearly into view, the long-term goals that were supposed to justify them are ever more obscure.

Consider one small but especially sensitive part of the overall negotiation: the Irish dilemma. May has promised not to impose a hard border between Ireland, which will remain in the EU, and Northern Ireland, which is part of the UK What she hasn’t said is how such a border, which could unsettle the peace the island has enjoyed for two decades, can be avoided.

Last week, Foreign Minister Boris Johnson gave the first of those speeches intended to clarify Britain’s position on life after Brexit — and failed to so much as mention Northern Ireland.

To be sure, it’s unlikely that May could reverse herself, propose a second referendum, and survive as leader of the Conservative Party. With so much at stake, she should recogniSe that this is a minor consideration. The Labour opposition, itself divided over Brexit, has also said the first vote must stand.

That position also has to change. Remember, Remain supporters in both parties constitute a comfortable majority in parliament — even as they insist that the previous referendum must be honored. On this surpassingly important issue, they need to come together across party lines and press for another vote.

Can it be taken for granted that a second referendum would in fact reverse the country’s choice? Of course not. Opinion is wobbling but hasn’t shifted decisively: The country remains split down the middle.

But this is less surprising when you recall that so few of the country’s politicians are calling on Britain to reconsider. Again, they should do their jobs — and stand up for what they believe to be their voters’ best interests.

One more thing might be needed to make the difference: the involvement of the European Union. Up to now, it has emphasiSed the

difficulties Britain is bringing upon itself and made it clear that Europe isn’t going to help Brexit sting less.

That’s fine —but it ought now to join the debate in a more positive way, calling on Britain to change its mind. It should say, among other things, that if Britain acts promptly, the EU would make reversing the Brexit decision as straightforward as possible.

Extracting Britain from this mess of its own making won’t be easy. A second referendum would certainly arouse furious protests, and quite possibly a political crisis, new elections, and all the dangers and uncertainties that go with that. Yet the alternative — the chaotic Brexit toward which a rudderless Britain is now heading — would be worse.

LAST Friday, the Ethiopian government declared a six-month nationwide state of emergency, invoking a grave threat to the

constitutional order. The emergency, the second in less than a year, was announced a day after the resignation of Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn, in what he described as a bid to “smooth the path for

political reform”.The emergency, which is expected to be

ratified by parliament in the coming days, provides the government with new, sweeping powers, from restrictions on freedom of assembly and free expression to the deployment of combat-ready troops in civilian centres, particularly cities and towns seen as the hotbed of the protests of the last three years.

The Ethiopian constitution authorises the Council of Ministers to decree a state of emergency, which would allow the government to suspend basic rights and freedoms, under very specific conditions. The fundamental condition that must be met before the imposition of such an emergency is the existence of a situation amounting to “a breakdown of law and order which endangers the Constitutional order and which cannot be controlled by the regular law enforcement agencies”. When public emergencies of such magnitude exist, the government not only has the right, but also the duty to suspend the constitution to restore the constitutional order in which citizens’ rights will be fully respected. However, despite facing a crisis of unprecedented magnitude, the current situation in Ethiopia does not meet the very high threshold required by the constitution for the imposition of a state of emergency. Just a day before the government declared the emergency, even the government’s chief spokesperson, Negeri Lencho, told the Voice Of Africa: “There will be no other state of emergency. There are no grounds for it.”

At the moment, however grave the political situation in the country may be, there is no imminent threat to the vital interests of the state, legitimising the declaration of a state of emergency. Consequently, this emergency, like the one before it, has less to do with protecting the constitutional order than reproducing and legitimising violence aimed at the elimination of political adversaries.

The emergency-ethnicity nexusThe state of emergency has always been

the working paradigm of the Ethiopian government. Since coming to power in 1991,

the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) coalition ruled with an iron fist, blurring the distinction between normalcy, where normal constitutional norms apply, and emergency, where exceptional situations justify the use of extraordinary power.

An important feature of Ethiopia’s state of emergency is the intersection between emergency powers and ethnic identity, in which emergency powers are used by the ruling elites to maintain their social and ethnic privilege. While repression structured around ethnic inequality and violence has long been the defining feature of the state, the new state of emergency adds a distinctive, and more dangerous, dimension to this problem.

Former prime minister and chairman of the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) Meles Zenawi was in firm control of the state machinery and institutions until his death in 2012. To this day, Tigrayan ruling elites, which represent about 6 percent of the country’s population, dominate the country’s political, economic, and security sectors. The Oromos and Amharas, the two largest ethnic groups that make up about 65 percent of the country’s population, and that are represented by the Oromo Peoples’ Democratic Organization (OPDO) and the Amhara National Democratic Movement (ANDM), on the other hand, have practically been subordinated.

The protests that gripped the country for the last three years, and were used as a justification for the state of emergency, were the direct result of this undue influence enjoyed by Tigrayan elites, and the violent architecture of repression that is being used to sustain and consolidate this influence.

Consequently, in this diverse nation of over 80 ethnic groups, where political parties are predominantly organised along ethnic lines, and ethnic identity serves as the basic principle of political competition, a state of emergency cannot be seen independently of the ongoing ethnicity-based repression.

This emergency will serve as a legal and political masquerade behind which TPLF’s domination, with all its menacing ideological complexities, will continue to function not only to repress the population into submission, but also to drive a wedge between the country’s various ethnic groups.

This state of emergency is not a security

measure designed to protect the constitutional order; it is a hostile act intended to punish those voices calling for change. Although announced as a nationwide emergency, the Oromo and the Amhara regions, the hotbeds of the protests, would be affected the most.

SuccessionDesalegn’s resignation as prime

minister was not unexpected. Installed as a compromise candidate following the death of Meles Zenawi, the architect behind Ethiopia’s political economy, Desalegn pursued Zenawi’s policies to the letter.

Although his assent to power allowed other coalition partners to carve out space for manoeuvre, history will remember him as the inconsequential leaderwho served as an enabler of the status quo. His resignation comes at a time when the country needed a new direction and a new beginning.

While it is clear that TPLF would use the emergency to control the succession process, it is not clear to what extent the emergency would have a bearing on who the next prime minister of Ethiopia will be.

However, it is widely suggested that the next leader of the EPRDF and prime minister will be from OPDO, the party that governs the largest region in the country and contributes the largest number of seats to the ruling coalition in parliament.

Lemma Megersa, chairperson of the OPDO and president of the Oromia Regional state, and Dr Abiye Ahmed, deputy chairperson of the OPDO, are frontrunners for the position, according to party insiders and analysts.

Megersa, a charismatic, well-spoken, and transformational leader able to entice people across nationalist divides, made a bold and positive case for Ethiopia, arguing that Ethiopian-ness is addictive and that Oromo are the quintessential Ethiopians who protected the integrity and sovereignty of the Ethiopian state with their blood. An Oromo nationalist, Megersa successfully articulated the notion that Oromo nationalism is not the anti-thesis of Ethiopian nationalism, and that being an Oromo and Ethiopian are not two mutually exclusive identities, but rather should be seen as mutually reinforcing imperatives.

However, it is Ahmed, the technocratic, verstile, and ambitious operator of the OPDO that is most likely to be crowned as the next Prime Minister of Ethiopia.

Rudderless Britain needs a second Brexit referendum

Ethiopia’s state of emergency

AWOL K ALLO AL JAZEERA

11THURSDAY 22 FEBRUARY 2018 OPINION

This emergency will serve as a legal and political masquerade behind which TPLF’s domination, with all its menacing ideological complexities, will continue to function not only to repress the population into submission, but also to drive a wedge between the country’s various ethnic groups.

If Britain leaves the EU in March 2019 without even any transitional arrangements, its trade in goods and services — not just with the EU but with much of the rest of the world — will collapse into chaos.

12 THURSDAY 22 FEBRUARY 2018ASIA

Heritage garden opens

Journalist on trial

India to set up Rs200bn defence industrial corridorIANS

LUCKNOW: India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi yesterday announced that his government will establish a Rs200bn defence industrial production corridor in Bundelkhand — a region divided between Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh -- that will generate 250,000 jobs and bring development to one of the most impoverished regions of the country.

“I am making an important announcement. In this year’s budget, we had announced that we will establish two defence industrial production corridors. One of them will be in Bun-delkhand,” Modi said addressing the inaugural ses-sion of the two-day Uttar Pradesh ‘Investors Meet’ at the Indira Gandhi Pratishthan in Lucknow.

The government had ear-lier announced that it would develop two such corridors. The first of the two, announced by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in his budget speech, is being built between Chennai and Bengaluru — connecting Kattupalli port, Chennai, Tiruchi, Coimbatore and Hosur. The project, he said, would bring an “investment of Rs 20,000 crore and generate employment avenues for 2.5 lakh people”.

The Prime Minister said the decision to come with the defence production corridor to Uttar Pradesh was taken keeping in mind the develop-mental requirements of Bun-delkhand region. The corridor will link Agra, Aligarh,

Lucknow, Kanpur, Jhansi and Chitrakoot. Modi said Uttar Pradesh had a vast potential for development but needed policy, planning , performance. He lauded the efforts of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath for setting the state on the path to give a “super hit” performance.

The Prime Minister pointed out how air traffic in the state had grown by 30 per cent in the past one year with just three international airports in Agra, Varanasi and Lucknow.

He said it was more than the national average and indi-cated a huge potential in the state for civil aviation.

The Prime Minister said more airports will be initiated in multiple parts of the state to realize his dream of “hawai chappal pehne wala bhi, hawa mein udna chahiye”.

“New airports will give it (the air traffic in Uttar Pradesh) an additional boost. The state is also home to the largest rail network.” Modi said the Cen-trally-sponsored Prime Minis-terial Kisan Property scheme will reduce crop-grain-fruits

and waste of vegetables as the government was also keen on modernizing the entire supply chain and infrastructure for the agri and allied sectors to help in doubling the farmers income by 2022.

He said the initiatives would help the state in partic-ular because it is ranked number one in the country in production of foodgrains, wheat, sugarcane, milk, potato production. It is number two in terms of vegetable production and third in fruit production.

He also called for a storage and marketing grid, under-lining how the produce of farmers was wasted in a big way because of lack of facilities.

Modi suggested that local manufacturing units for chips and similar products could minimize the losses inflicted on farmers due to lack of storage and transport facilities.

The investors event organ-ised by the Yogi Adityanath government is aimed to show-case the investment opportu-nities in the state. Corporate honchos are attending the summit.

Modi also praised the Uttar Pradesh government for curbing red tape and rolling out the red carpet for investors and taking decisions that have linked industrial development with employment generation.

“There is no dearth of resources and opportunities in Uttar Pradesh where you find ‘Lucknowi chikankari’, ‘Banarsi zardosi’, brassware of Moradabad and glassware industries of Firozabad,” Modi said.

The defence industrial production corridor in Bundelkhand — a region divided between Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh — will generate 250,000 jobs and bring development to one of the most impoverished regions of the country, said Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Prince Karim Aga Khan (third right), walks with Indian Vice-President Venkaiah Naidu (fourth right), as they arrive for the inauguration of the Sunder Nursery, a 16th-century heritage garden complex adjacent to Indian Unesco site Humayun’s Tomb, in New Delhi, yesterday. The 90-acre garden, formally opened by the Aga Khan, whose Trust for Culture has helped recreate the classical garden and restore its crumbling 16th-century monuments.

Detained Myanmar journalist Wa Lone (centre) is escorted by police to a court in Yangon for his ongoing trial, yesterday. The court earlier denied bail to Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, two Reuters journalists charged under a secrecy act that could see them face up to 14 years in jail, in a case that has sparked outcry over shrinking media freedom.

Sri Lankan coalition to continue in govt after local election routREUTERS

COLOMBO: Sri Lanka’s two ruling parties said yesterday they would continue their national unity government, easing the political uncertainty created by their poor showing in local council elections this month.

Prime Minister Ranil Wick-remesinghe’s centre-right United National Party (UNP) and President Maithripala Sirisena’s centre-left Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) were routed by a party backed by

former President Mahinda Rajapaksa, plunging the govern-ment into crisis.

Rajapaksa, who crushed the Tamil Tiger rebels in a 26-year civil war before he was ousted in 2015, called for the parliament to be dissolved and a snap election to be held. Since the February 10 vote, Sirisena has been in talks with Wickremesinghe’s party as well as opponents led by Rajapaksa on forming a new gov-ernment. But yesterday, the coa-lition parties confirmed they would

stick together. “We are working on the motion passed in parlia-ment and we have not rescinded it. And I don’t think there is a need to cancel that,” Wickremesinghe told parliament, referring to the motion passed by the two parties in September 2015 to form the national government.

The secretary of Sirisena’s party, Fisheries Minister Mahinda Amaraweera, also said the agree-ment between the two parties to work together still stood and had not been withdrawn.

Actor Kamal Haasan launches political partyIANS

MADURAI: India’s actor-turned-politician Kamal Haasan yesterday formally launched his political party called Makkal Neethi Maiam (People Justice Centre).

He also unfurled his par-ty’s flag, which has six hands — three in red and three in white — joined together around a star on a white background.

With this, Kamal becomes one more actor from Tamil movie world to float a polit-ical party.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, and former Delhi Minister Somnath Bharati were also present in the public meeting in which Kamal declared the party’s name and flag..

Emergency extension is unconstitutional: Maldives Prosecutor GeneralREUTERS

COLOMBO: Maldives Prose-cutor General Aishath Bisham has said parliament’s approval of a 30-day exten-sion to the state of emergency is unconstitutional, two sources and local media said yesterday.

Parliament approved on Tuesday the extension sought by President Abdulla Yameen, but it was passed without the constitutionally required quorum of 43 lawmakers.

Bisham had informed the police in a letter that the state of emergency is unconstitu-tional, two senior officials of the Prosecutor General’s office said.

Two dead, 22 hurt in Myanmar bomb blastREUTERS

YANGON: A bomb blast killed two bank employees and injured 22 other people in Myanmar’s northeastern city of Lashio yesterday, the government and the military said.

Police said an investigation was under way but would not elaborate on whether there were any suspects in the attack. Lashio is in Myanmar’s restive Shan State where several ethnic insurgent groups are fighting the Myanmar military.

“We just received a (local) police report about the bomb blast in Lashio (on Tuesday) evening,” police spokesman Colonel Thet Naing said in M y a n m a r ’ s c a p i t a l Naypyitaw.

The two dead were both w o m e n , g o v e r n m e n t spokesman Zaw Htay said in a post on Twitter linked to a

government statement on the Lashio explosion. The military said in a statement 22 people were injured. Another police spokesman, Colonel Myo Thu Soe, said no suspects could be identified at this stage. “We’re still investigating,” he said.

A Lashio resident, 27-year-old Lway Dehnin, said she heard the explosion around 4:30 p.m. near two banks close to the regional health ministry building in the heart of the city of 170,000 people.

“The explosion happened near Aya and Yoma banks. The windows in the buildings were broken. Also the windows of the ministry of health and some nearby houses were broken,” said Lway Dehnin.

Yoma Bank said two of its Lashio branch employees were killed and that both of its branches in the city would be temporarily closed.

Trudeau visits Golden Temple; says no support for separatistsIANS

AMRITSAR: Underlining the significance of the large and influential Sikh and Punjabi community settled in his country, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, accompanied by his wife and children, offered prayers at the Golden Temple yesterday.

Dressed in traditional Indian clothes and their heads covered, the Trudeau family bowed before the holy book of the Sikhs and tried their hand at making chappatis at the ‘langar’ as they spent over an hour at the holiest of Sikh shrines.

Trudeau, who later met Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh in a hotel here, said that his country did not support any separatist movement in India or

elsewhere. Amarinder Singh later said that he raised the issue of ‘Khalistan’ and the support certain elements in Canada were giving to it to cause disturbance in Punjab.

“The categorical assurance from Trudeau came when Cap-tain Amarinder Singh sought the Canadian Prime Minister’s coop-eration in cracking down on sep-aratism and hate crime by a fringe element, constituting a miniscule percentage of Cana-da’s population.

“Citing the separatist move-ment in Quebec, Trudeau said he had dealt with such threats all his life and was fully aware of the dangers of violence, which he had always pushed back with all his might,” Chief Minister’s Media Advisor Raveen Thukral

disclosed after their 40-minute meeting. Amarinder Singh thanked Trudeau for his explicit stand on a united India.

He also handed over a list of nine Canada-based operatives alleged to be involved in hate crimes in Punjab by financing and supplying weapons for ter-rorist activities, and also engaged in trying to radicalize youth and children here.

The Punjab Chief Minister also raised the issue of Indo-Canadians, believed to be involved in targeted killings in the state, urging him to initiate stern action against such ele-ments. Pointing out that trade and commerce relations between the two were very low at the moment, he urged Tru-deau to take steps to

push investment by Canadian businesses in Punjab. The two leaders agreed to collaborate through joint projects.

Canadian Defence Minister Harjit Singh Sajjan and Punjab Local Government Minister Navjot Singh Sidhu were also present at the meeting.

Earlier, Trudeau and his family landed at the Sri Guru Ram Dass Jee International Air-port here, where they were received by Union Minister Har-deep Singh Puri and Sidhu, and headed straight for the Golden Temple complex to offer prayers.

Accompanied by five Cana-dian federal ministers, including four of Indian-origin, Trudeau was received at its entrance by Shiromani Gurdwara Par-bandhak Committee president

Gobind Singh Longowal, Shiro-mani Akali Dal President Sukhbir Singh Badal and Union Food Processing Minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal.

Wearing an off-white embroidered kurta-pyjama and head covered with a “kesari” (saffron) headscarf, Trudeau entered the complex with wife Sophie, who was wearing a light turquoise kurta and white pal-azzo and their children, who were also wearing traditional Indian outfits to loud slogans of “Bole So Nihal, Sat Sri Akal”.

The Trudeaus first went to the “Langar Hall”, where thou-sands of devotees partake langar (community food) and also do “sewa”, and sat on small stools to knead flour and roll chapatis.

13THURSDAY 22 FEBRUARY 2018 ASIA

Japan suspects sanctions breachby North KoreaAFP

TOKYO: Japan has reported a new suspected sanctions viola-tion by Pyongyang to the UN after spotting an apparent cargo transfer between a ship marked with Chinese characters and a North Korean vessel, the Japa-nese foreign ministry said.

The incident is the third time this year that Tokyo has reported a cargo transfer by a North Korean vessel in viola-tion of UN sanctions over Pyongyang’s banned nuclear and ball ist ic missi le programmes.

Japan’s foreign ministry said a military patrol plane and an escort vessel observed the apparent transfer in the East China Sea on Friday afternoon.

The Japanese navy ‘found the Yu Jong 2, a North Korean-flagged tanker, lying alongside a small vessel of unknown nationality on the high sea’ around 250 km offshore from the Chinese city of Shanghai, the foreign ministry said.

Four Chinese characters reading ‘Min Ning De You 078’ meaning ‘Fujian Province, Ningde City, oil tanker 078’ in English, were on the small vessel, the ministry said.

“Following a comprehen-sive assessment, the Govern-ment of Japan strongly suspects that they conducted ship-to-ship transfers banned” by the UN Security Council resolu-

tions, the ministry said.Tokyo said it had reported

the incident to the UN Security Council and shared informa-tion with relevant countries.

There was no immediate indication of whether the inci-dent had been raised formally with Beijing. The incident comes as global attention is focused on North Korea’s par-ticipation in the ongoing Winter Olympics hosted by the South, in a diplomatic push by Kim Jong Un’s isolated regime.

Pyongyang is subject to a series of UN Security Council sanctions, including one pro-hibiting all member states from facilitating or engaging in ship-to-ship transfers of goods to or from North Korean-flagged vessels.

The previous two incidents reported by Japan this year both involved a different North Korean tanker, the Rye Song Gang 1, one of the vessels denied international port access by the Security Council.

The incident is the 3rd time this year that Tokyo has reported a cargo transfer by a North Korean vessel in violation of UN sanctions.

Finland’s Foreign Minister Timo Soini (left) delivers remarks beside Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono prior to their dinner meeting at the Foreign Ministry’s Iikura guesthouse in Tokyo, yesterday.

Finland-Japan diplomacy

Forest fires break out in IndonesiaAFP

PEKANBARU: Indonesia was battling a rash of forest fires yesterday as it raised an alert over the blazes which occur every year and emit choking smog that can envelop neigh-bouring Singapore and Malaysia.

Fires have broken out in four provinces -- South Sumatra, Riau, West Kali-mantan and Central Kali-mantan -- prompting them to declare ‘alert emergency’ status, one notch below the most severe warning.

Hundreds of hectares of land have been destroyed over the past week and the government is stepping up efforts to contain the fires.

The blazes are frequently deliberately set by farmers using fire to clear land for cultivation.

The agency will deploy soldiers, police, firefighters and volunteers to combat the fires, officials said.

The annual forest fires on Sumatra island and the Indo-nesian part of Borneo island typically occur during the months-long dry season which usually begins in Jan-uary. In 2015 massive forest fires in Indonesia destroyed some two million hectares and sparked a massive haze outbreak over Singapore and Malaysia, leading to diplo-matic frictions.

A US academic study esti-mated that the crisis may have led to more than 100,000 premature deaths.

Malaysia arrests 10 over links with South Philippines militantsREUTERS

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysian police have arrested 10 people on suspicion of aiding the movement of militants between the eastern state of Sabah and the southern Philippines, a hotbed of Islamist insurgency, the second batch of arrests this year.

The Muslim-majority Southeast Asian nation has been on high alert since gunmen linked to IS launched several attacks in Jakarta, the capital of neighbouring Indonesia, in Jan-uary 2016.

Police arrested the 10 sus-pects in three separate raids between January 25 and Feb-ruary 6, inspector-general of police Mohamad Fuzi Harun said in a statement.

Among the suspects is a 27-year-old Filipino believed to be a senior leader of the Abu Sayyaf, and another Filipino, 32, believed to have arranged pas-sage of foreign nationals to the southern Philippines to join IS.

“Preliminary information gleaned from the 10 suspects revealed an attempt by the Abu Sayyaf group to establish a cell in Sabah,” Mohamad Fuzi said.

Mohamad Fuzi said Abu Sayyaf had intended to bring in IS fighters from Southeast Asia to the southern Philippines for military training.

“The same cell members would then be used to launch attacks on Sabah in the future,” he said.

Malaysia has arrested hun-dreds of people over the past few years for suspected links to militant groups.

A grenade attack on a club on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur in June 2016 wounded eight people. IS claimed responsibility.

Japan donates 10,000 ballot boxes for Cambodia electionREUTERS

PHNOM PENH: Japan donated over 10,000 ballot boxes for Cambodia’s 2018 election yesterday, the first international aid for the vote after European Union and the United States withdrew their support following the dissolution of the main oppo-sition party.

Rights groups and members of the dissolved Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) have urged foreign backers, including Japan, to halt funding for Cambodia’s National Election Committee (NEC) following a Supreme Court decision to dis-solve the CNRP at the govern-ment’s request.

But last month Japan, which is among the largest funders of Cambodia’s elections, said it would continue to provide

electoral aid in the lead up to Senate elections this month and a general election in July.

At a ceremony yesterday, Japan’s ambassador to Cam-bodia, Hidehisa Horinouchi, said the NEC was in need of new ballot boxes to replace the ones given by Tokyo 20 years ago.

“These ballot boxes are a symbol of Japan’s aid for democ-racy in Cambodia and I hope these ballot boxes will provide lasting benefits for holding future election smoothly,” Horinouchi said. “I hope Cambodia achieves an election that reflects the true will of the people.” The Japanese ballot boxes were worth $7.5m.

“Our Japanese friends have never abandoned us,” NEC’s Chairman Sik Bun Hok told reporters yesterday.

The daughter of CNRP oppo-sition leader Kem Sokha, who

has been jailed on treason charges, urged Japan to explain its support for the July election.

“Japan has to explain to at least half of the entire Cambo-dian population why it is sup-porting an artificial election,” Kem Monovithya said.

Cambodia needs 30,000 ballot boxes, said Sik Bun Hok, adding that Chinese equipment for the general election, including ballot boxes and booths, was due to arrive in March.

China is Cambodia’s biggest aid donor and its backing has bolstered veteran Prime Minister Hun Sen in the face of criticism of over what his opponents say amounts to his destruction of democracy.

Hun Sen is expected to extend his 33-year rule at the elections.

Japan’s Ambassador to Cambodia Hidehisa Horinouchi (left) and Cambodia’s Foreign Minister Prak Sokhonn hold a ballot box at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, yesterday.

Thai junta says ‘not concerned’ about ousted PM’s Asia tourREUTERS

BANGKOK: Thailand is not concerned about the movement of fugitive former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and his sister, also an ousted former leader, after recent visits by the pair to several Asian cities and meetings with members of their party.

The Shinawatras have dom-inated Thai politics for nearly two decades and wield significant influence through allies and rel-atives despite both living in self-exile. They are likely to be a sig-nificant factor in a general election the junta has promised for November.

Critics say the military, which took power in a 2014 coup that removed Yingluck Shinawatra’s government, wants to end the family’s political influence - something that is reflected in a new, military-backed charter, party laws and restrictions on

political parties. Thaksin and Yingluck visited China and Japan this month and met at least 30 members of parliament from their Puea Thai party in Hong Kong on the weekend, party members said after returning to Thailand.

The two were spotted in a Sin-gapore hotel on Tuesday, meeting a group of unidentified men, and were in the city state yesterday, party sources said, adding they were having ‘business meetings’.

Political observers say their Asia tour is a sign that their party is gearing up for the election.

A spokesman for the junta, known as the National Council for Peace and Order, said it was not focused on the two Shinawatras.

“Monitoring those who have an arrest warrant is the job of rel-evant agencies. We are not con-cerned about this,” the spokesman, Piyapong Klinpan said.

Former telecommunications tycoon Thaksin was prime min-ister from 2001 to 2006 when he was overthrown in a military coup supported by the Bangkok-based establishment.

He left Thailand in 2008, shortly before a court convicted him of corruption and sentenced him to a two-year jail term. He said the conviction was politically motivated.

He is based in Dubai.Yingluck was elected prime

minister in 2011 but was forced from office by a 2014 court ruling, shortly before the military ousted her government.

Yingluck fled from Thailand in August, weeks before the Supreme Court found her guilty of negligence in mismanaging a rice-buying scheme and sen-tenced her to five years in prison.

She is based in Britain and has not spoken publicly since she left Thailand.

Several Puea Thai members told Reuters Thaksin did not dis-cuss politics when he met party members of parliament in Hong Kong.

“We didn’t talk about politics because we know better than Thaksin what’s going on. He’s been out of the country so long,” said Wattana Muagnsook, a former commerce minister.

He said met Thaksin for a meal.

Phumtham Wechayachai, Puea Thai’s secretary-general, said the party has not held meet-ings because a junta ban on polit-ical gatherings was still in place.

Lawmakers might be trying to play down meetings with Thaksin because they fear legal action.

Legislation on political par-ties that took effect in October prohibits those ‘who are not party members’ from ‘controlling or directing’ a party.

Singaporean in church fraud case tries escaping on boatAFP

SINGAPORE: A Singaporean man convicted over a high-profile fraud case at a mega-church was caught yesterday trying to flee in a boat before he was due to start his sentence, police said.

In a case that gripped the city-state with a heady mix of religion, showbiz and fraud, six leaders from City Harvest Church were convicted in 2015 of pil-fering tens of millions of dollars from the place of worship to pro-mote the pop career of the pas-tor’s wife.

Among them was investment manager Chew Eng Han, who was sentenced to three years and four months but had his impris-onment delayed by a series of appeals. After losing his final challenge, the 57-year-old was

allowed to remain out of prison on bail until after the Lunar New Year holiday, and was meant to start serving his sentence on Feb-ruary 22.

But in the latest bizarre twist to the case, police caught Chew around 8:45am (0045 GMT) in a small fishing boat off eastern Sin-gapore allegedly attempting to flee to Malaysia. He was with a second man who was piloting the craft.

The men were carrying Sg$5,000 ($3,800) in cash, three mobile phones and fishing gear. A source close to the investiga-tion said that when approached, the pair claimed they were going fishing. They will be charged in court today and are accused of attempting to leave Singapore unlawfully, an offence that car-ries a maximum six-month jail term and fine of Sg$2,000.

14 THURSDAY 22 FEBRUARY 2018ASIA

Supreme Court rules ousted PM Sharif cannot lead partyREUTERS

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s Supreme Court ordered yesterday that ousted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif be removed as head of the political party he founded, six months after the court removed him as premier.

The ruling could throw into dis-array Senate elections due on March 3, with opposition figures saying it invalidates candidates from the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) who were nominated by Sharif.

Yesterday’s order overturns a legal amendment by PML-N lawmakers allowing the former premier to lead the party despite being legally banned from holding public office after the Supreme Court disqualified him last July over an undeclared source of income.

“The Election Commission is directed to remove name of Nawaz Sharif as president of PML-N from all

official records,” Chief Justice Saqib Nisar said from the bench.

“As a result, all steps taken, all orders passed by Nawaz Sharif are also declared to be as if they had never been taken.” Faisal Chaudhry, a lawyer for one of the 17 petitioners who sought Sharif’s removal as party head, said the court decision includes Sharif-nominated candidates for the Senate election.

“My understanding is that the can-didates can still contest but as inde-pendent and not as Nawaz Sharif’s party ticket holders,” Chaudhry said.

Sharif has said his removal from office was part of a political conspiracy against him, and in recent weeks he and his party have waged a war of words against the judiciary.

The PML-N holds a majority in the lower house of parliament, the National Assembly, and it has been hopeful of win-ning control of the Senate in the March 3 election. Control of both houses could allow the PML-N to change the consti-tution to make Sharif eligible to hold

office again when the party contests gen-eral elections due later this year. Sharif

has served as prime minister twice before and each time was removed from office

-- in 1999 by a military coup and 1993 by presidential order.

Supporters of ousted Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif chant slogans against a court verdict in front of the Supreme Court building in Islamabad, yesterday.

Duterte a threat to democracy: US intelligenceREUTERS

MANILA: Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte is not an auto-crat and is taking seriously a report by the US intelligence community that names the fire-brand leader among the threats to democracy in Southeast Asia, his spokesman said yesterday.

The report, produced by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, places Duterte alongside Cambodia’s Hun Sen, the Rohingya crisis and Thai-land’s military-backed constitu-tion as impediments to democracy.

“We view this declaration from no less than the intelligence department of the United States with some concern,”

presidential spokesman Harry Roque told DZMM radio. Democ-racy and human rights in many Southeast Asian nations will remain fragile in 2018 because of autocratic tendencies, rampant corruption and cronyism, the US intelligence community said in its Worldwide Threat Assessment report of February 13.

“Duterte has suggested he could suspend the constitution, declare a ‘revolutionary govern-ment’, and impose nationwide martial law,” it said.

Roque dismissed that assessment.

“For one, President Rodrigo Roa Duterte is no autocrat or has autocratic tendencies. He adheres to the rule of law and remains loyal to the constitution,”

Roque said in a statement. There is no revolutionary government or nationwide martial law, which US intelligence officials say Duterte might impose, he added.

Duterte has publicly made such threats on several occasions, however. Philippine lawmakers in December approved a year-long extension of martial rule in the volatile southern region of Mindanao to suppress threats such as communist insurgents and Islamist militants.

This is not the first time the United States has shown concern about Duterte, who is notorious for his defiance of international pressure. Duterte was infuriated by expressions of concern by former President Barack Obama’s administration about

drug-war killings in the Philip-pines. Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, praised Duterte for doing an ‘unbelievable job on the drug problem,’ but refrained from expressing concern about the crackdown during a visit to the Philippine capital last November.

More than 4,000 people have been killed in what police call legitimate operations against sus-pected drug dealers and users in Duterte’s signature war on drugs since July 2016.

Rights groups accused police of summary executions, which authorities deny.

International Criminal Court prosecutors have opened a pre-liminary examination into Duterte’s anti-drugs campaign.

Pakistan & Russia to step up military cooperationINTERNEWS

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan and Russia yesterday announced setting up of a commission for promoting military cooperation while expressing alarm over growing footprint of the mili-tant IS group in Afghanistan and the indifference of US-led Nato forces present in the conflict-ridden country to the problem.

The announcement was made in Moscow at a joint press conference by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and his Pakistani counterpart Khawaja Asif after their bilateral talks.

“We are forming a military cooperation commission in line with our inter-governmental agreement in this area,” Lavrov said as he expressed Moscow’s readiness to strengthen Paki-stan’s counterterrorism capabilities.

“Pakistan is willing to partner with Russia to promote peace and stability in the region and beyond,” Asif said.

Pakistan and Russia in November 2014 signed a defence cooperation agreement and subsequently the two sides in October 2015 inked military-technical cooperation accord providing for arms supplies and cooperation in weapon development.

Incidentally both pacts were signed during Asif’s tenure as defence minister, who at the press conference fondly recalled his six visits to Russia during the past four years the highest number of trips to any country in his official capacity as a minister.

Russia, Lavrov recalled, had provided four Mi-35M combat and cargo helicopters to Paki-stan and the militaries of the two countries also held joint

d r i l l s c o d e n a m e d ‘Friendship’.

The discussions between Lavrov and Asif were wide ranging to include trade, eco-nomic, and energy cooperation and people-to-people contacts besides defence cooperation, but from their statements it appeared that the two exten-sively focused on the aggra-vating situation in Afghanistan and the growing threat of IS there.

Russia has been extremely worried about the narcotics and IS threat emanating from the war-ravaged Afghanistan.

“We are concerned that security situation in Afghani-stan is exacerbating. Terrorism is on the rise and drugs threat is very much present. We see ISIS getting foothold in the region and presence of US and Nato forces has not brought sta-bility,” the Russian foreign min-ister said. He criticised Presi-dent Trump’s new strategy for Afghanistan and said that Russia and Pakistan agree that the policy ‘lacks potential’.

Asif seconded Lavrov’s statement noting: “Afghanistan is in a painful situation. We share concerns relating to threats posed by the prevailing situation of terrorism, exponen-tial increase in drug production, use of drug money for terrorism financing, and increasing pres-ence of Daesh [IS] to the secu-rity of regional countries”.

Speaking about trade and economic ties, Lavrov said both countries had agreed to boost economic relations, especially in the energy sector while Asif said that the two countries would redouble efforts to deepen cooperation in estab-lishing a multi-dimensional partnership.

Senate hearing in ManilaParents of children injected with Dengvaxia vaccine carry pictures of their loved ones as they attend a senate hearing regarding the vaccine at the Senate building in Manila, yesterday.

NEWS BYTESFisherman eaten in crocodile attackMANILA: A crab fisherman has

been killed and half-eaten by a

huge saltwater crocodile, the

latest in a growing number of

attacks on a remote Philippine

island, police said yesterday.

The family and neighbours

of Rebente Ladja, 37, launched

a search after he failed to return

home Monday from setting crab

traps at a mangrove forest on

the coast of Balabac, off the

country’s main southwestern

island of Palawan.

Over 90 species facing extinctionISLAMABAD: There are over

90 species of mammals, birds

and reptiles categorised as

critically endangered, vulner-

able and near the threat of

extinction in Pakistan, the Min-

istry of Climate Change told

a parliamentary committee

yesterday.

Species that are at risk of

or nearing extinction include

50 mammals, 27 birds and 17

reptiles, the ministry informed

the National Assembly Standing

Committee on Climate Change

during a briefing on measures

taken to preserve endangered

species in the country.

Mudslides block road to New Zealand townWELLINGTON: Mudslides

blocked the only road to a small

New Zealand town yesterday

after a powerful Pacific storm

caused disruptions across parts

of the country.

The 1,000 tourists and

5,000 locals in Takaka are not

entirely trapped, but would

have to use a boat, helicopter

or small plane to leave town

now or wait a week or more

before the road is cleared and

repaired.

Australian PM heading to US for talks with Trump and governorsAP

CANBERRA: Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull headed to the United States yesterday accom-panied by the largest Australian political and business delega-tion ever to visit the US.

President Donald Trump’s softening opposition to joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership will be up for discussion when he meets Turnbull at the White House tomorrow.

The trade deal among 11 countries includes Australia, which also has a bilateral free trade partnership with the United States.

Security risks in the Asia-Pacific region created by a more assertive China and North

Korea’s nuclear ambitions will also be on the agenda. Turnbull would be seeking a clear picture from Trump’s on how he expected the North Korean crisis to unfold, said Kim Beazley, a former Australian defense min-ister who was ambassador to Washington until 2016.

“Generally speaking, when an Australian prime minister meets and American president, the globe is traversed, all sorts of things, the commitments we have in common, where we’re going to go in Iraq and all the rest of it,” Beazley told Aus-tralian Broadcasting Corp.

“The difficulty facing Mr. Turnbull is nobody can be abso-lutely sure how the current president engages on any of

those fronts,” Beazley added. While in Washington, Turnbull will address the US National Governors’ Association.

Trade Minister Steven Ciobo said the most significant Aus-tralian political and business delegation to ever visit the United States signified the strength of the bilateral relationship.

The United States is Austral-ia’s most important security partner, while China is Austral-ia’s biggest trading partner. Aus-tralia attempts to avoid taking sides in US and Chinese rivalry.

A recent Australian foreign policy statement and the US National Defense Strategy both view China and Russia as poten-tial threats to global security.

Philippines asks court to declare communist rebels as terroristsREUTERS

MANILA: The Philippines yesterday asked a court to declare the communist party and its armed wing, the New People’s Army (NPA), a terrorist organisation, dashing already faint hopes of a recovery in a tattered peace process.

The petition before a Manila regional trial court seeks to for-mally terminate peace talks with Maoist rebels, a week after a Norwegian diplomat met Pres-ident Rodrigo Duterte to try to convince him to restart negoti-ations that Duterte had scrapped in anger at what he considers duplicity by the communists.

The Philippines has a state policy to not negotiate with any group defined as terrorists, like

the Abu Sayyaf militants behind extremism, kidnapping, ban-ditry and piracy. The United States has since early 2000s listed Abu Sayyaf and the NPA as terrorist organisations.

State Prosecutor Peter Ong said the rebels are ‘merely buying time by deceiving the Philippine government in entering into peace talks’ because their main agenda was to overthrow the duly consti-tuted authorities. Duterte is par-ticularly aggrieved by the failure of a peace process that he made a priority and restarted in August 2016 within a few weeks of taking office. He freed some communist leaders from jail and gave cabinet posts to several known leftists as a show of good faith.

15THURSDAY 22 FEBRUARY 2018 EUROPE

Macron plans tighter asylum rulesREUTERS

PARIS: President Emmanuel Macron’s government yesterday proposed toughening France’s immigration and asylum laws despite strident criticism from human rights groups, in a move that will test the unity of his left-and-right majority.

The bill will double to 90 days the time in which illegal migrants can be detained, shorten deadlines to apply for asylum, and make the illegal crossing of borders an offence punishable by one year in jail and fines.

The government says it wants to be both firm and fair on immigration. Its proposal will also make it easier for minors to get asylum and aims to halve the time it takes for authorities to process any asylum request.

“The law is balanced,” Inte-rior Minister Gerard Collomb

said, arguing that if France did not tighten its laws it would attract refugees put off by tougher rules elsewhere in Europe. “If we don’t take this into account, we won’t be able, tomorrow, to guarantee the right to asylum in France.

But while Macron’s parlia-mentary majority, a mix of law-makers who have their roots both in right-wing and left-wing

parties, has so far been very united, the government’s migra-tion plans have triggered disquiet in its ranks.

Mathieu Orphelin, a law-maker from Macron’s Republic On the Move party, said on Tuesday that increasing the detention time from 45 days to 90 days was problematic, adding that he intended to propose amendments to modify the bill.

Another lawmaker from Macron’s party, Sonia Krimi, has accused the government of “playing with people’s fears” with its migration reform. “Not all foreigners in France are ter-rorists, not all foreigners cheat with social welfare,” she said in a parliamentary debate.

Collomb told a news confer-ence he was confident parlia-ment would approve the law despite such criticism. But Jean-Francois Dubost of Amnesty International said the rights

group would press lawmakers to amend virtually all aspects of the bill.

Macron is accustomed to glowing international tributes as a breath of fresh air since his election in May last year on promises of a break with gov-ernment framed by left-versus-right politics.

But the migration bill has concentrated criticism at home. His approval rating has fallen to 44 percent, its lowest level since October, a poll showed on Sunday, as his government tries to shake up France’s costly civil service.

The prominent left-wing magazine l’Obs in January fea-tured a black and white photo of Macron’s face, wrapped in barbed wire, on its cover, above the words: “Welcome to the country of human rights”.

NGOs, lawyers and employees from France’s asylum

office, on strike for the first time in five years, staged a protest yesterday with placards reading: “Death of the right to asylum.”

This bill “represents a ver-tiginous drop in the rights of ref-ugees and migrants in France,” said Jean-Claude Mas of the Cimade charity, which helps migrants and asylum seekers.

But the bill might prove pop-ular with voters.

A BVA opinion poll earlier this month showed 63 percent of French voters believe there are too many immigrants in France.

The number of people filing asylum requests in France hit a record in 2017, topping 100,000.

That is still well below the 186,000 arrivals of asylum seekers registered that year in Germany.

At the height of Europe’s migrant crisis in 2015, Germany registered 890,000 arrivals.

Merkel sees Macedonia taking steps on path to EUREUTERS

BERLIN: Macedonia is making headway in its bid to join the European Union, German Chan-cellor Angela Merkel said yesterday, praising recent reforms by Skopje and the pros-pect of settling its chronic name dispute with Greece.

Macedonia is among six Western Balkan nations seeking membership. The EU, though wary of admitting a region scarred by ethnic wars and with a reputation for organised crime, but also keen to blunt creeping Russian influence there, has launched a new integration campaign.

Merkel, at a joint news con-ference in Berlin with Macedo-nian Prime Minister Zoran Zaev, welcomed recent judicial reforms in the former Yugoslav republic and steps to improve transparency.

“It is also necessary because it is part of the conditions for moving ahead with talks on EU

membership,” said Merkel. She homed in on progress

in a dispute with Greece over Macedonia’s name which has thwarted Skopje’s ambitions to join Nato and the EU. The two have agreed to step up talks this year to try to resolve the row before a Nato summit in the summer.

Greece, which belongs to both Nato and the EU, objects to the landlocked Balkan country’s use of the name Macedonia, arguing that it could imply ter-ritorial claims over its own northern region of the same name.

“I am very pleased and relieved that .. there is movement in the talks,” Merkel said yesterday.

“In the last 10 years, the solu-tion has not been as close as now and it would be wonderful if the remaining difficulties can be bridged.”

Zaev said: “For Macedonia, there is no alternative to Nato and EU membership. There is no

alternative for the whole region.”Talks between the two states

have been inconclusive since 1991, when Macedonia withdrew from former Yugoslavia. It was admitted into the United Nations in 1993 under the name Former

Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM).

Merkel also promised to try to speed up the sometimes slow process of freeing up EU funds earmarked for the Balkans.

“We Europeans sometimes

need too long. It’s not necessarily a question of how much but of how long it takes,” said Merkel, pointing to lengthy planning pro-cedures for projects such as motorway construction which could frustrate local people.

Court orders arrest of Catalan separatistAFP

MADRID: A Spanish court yesterday issued an arrest warrant valid only in Spain for a former Catalan MP who is in self-imposed exile in Switzer-land to avoid jail while she is investigated over her role in the region’s secession drive.

The Supreme Court “ordered the arrest” of Anna Gabriel, who failed to turn up yesterday before a judge for questioning, it said in its ruling. The arrest warrant applies only “nation-ally”, a court spokesman said.

Public prosecutors had asked the court to issue an arrest warrant for Gabriel and ask Swiss authorities to extra-dite her.

Asked earlier on Wednesday if extradition was a possibility, Swiss justice ministry spokesman Folco Galli said: “Switzerland does not grant, like most other states, extradition and any other form of mutual legal assistance for political offences.

“If there is a request, we have to look at it thoroughly, and from what the media say, it seems to be a political offence, so there is no extradition,” he added.

Gabriel, a top member of the far-left separatist CUP party, is the latest separatist to leave the country after deposed Catalan president Carles Puigdemont and four former regional ministers

went to Belgium shortly after a failed bid to break from Spain.

She had been due to appear before a Supreme Court judge yesterday over her role in Catalo-nia’s failed independence drive, which eventually led Madrid to impose direct rule on the region in October, sack its government and dissolve its parliament.

The CUP held the balance of power in Catalonia’s parlia-ment during that time, as ousted Catalan president Carles Puigde-mont’s ruling coalition lacked a majority and relied on the smaller party’s 10 seats to pass legislation and advance his independence “roadmap.”

Gabriel, a former university law professor and the party’s most famous member, is pop-ular with CUP supporters for her fiery speeches in parliament in favour of independence.

Puigdemont and several of his former ministers left for Bel-gium just hours before he and other separatist leaders were charged with rebellion, sedition and misuse of public funds over their role in Catalonia’s inde-pendence drive.

A journalist holds a photograph, part of the art-installation by Spanish artist Santiago Sierra’s ‘Political Prisoners of Contemporary Spain’ as she informs on its removal from ARCO art fair, in Madrid, yesterday.

The bill will double to 90 days the time in which illegal migrants can be detained, shorten deadlines to apply for asylum, and make the illegal crossing of borders an offence punishable by one year in jail and fines.

Moldova, Ukraine, Georgia in talks on regional securityAP

BUCHAREST: Moldova is set to host a conference on the security challenges facing three former Soviet republics where there are ongoing concerns about Russian influ-ence.

The parliament speakers of Moldova, Ukraine and Georgia will head the confer-ence, which will focus on “common aspirations regarding European integra-tion and regional security.”

Moldova’s Parliament and the Atlantic Council, a US think tank dedicated to inter-national affairs, are jointly hosting the March 2 event in the Moldovan capital.

A statement yesterday says “all three countries are facing the same challenges and security threats,” without explicitly mentioning Russia.

Moldova, Ukraine and Georgia all signed association agreements with the Euro-pean Union in the year 2014 amid sharp criticism from Russia - and a number of pro-visions, including the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Areas sections are pro-visionally applied as of 1 Sep-tember 2014.

The agreements facilitate trade and political coopera-tion and allow nationals visa-free travel to the European Union.

Public prosecutors had asked the court to issue an arrest warrant for Gabriel and ask Swiss authorities to extradite her.

Madrid art fair yanks photo exhibitAP

MADRID: Madrid’s Interna-tional Contemporary Art Fair yesterday yanked a photo exhi-bition called “Political Prisoners of Contemporary Spain,” prompting charges of censor-ship against the government-funded body which operates the event venue.

The spat came during efforts by pro-independence groups in the northeastern Catalonia region to break away from Spain. Some Catalan political leaders and activists have been preventively jailed because of their secession bid, and their supporters claim they are polit-ical prisoners - a charge which

the national government in Madrid has vigorously denied, labelling them “politicians in prison.”

The ARCO fair organisers said in a statement that IFEMA, which runs the fair venue, asked the exhibiting gallery to take down artist Santiago Sierra’s photographs of unidentified prisoners because the contro-versy caused by the collection had diverted attention from the rest of the exhibits. It said the Helga de Alvear gallery com-plied with the request, leaving a broad stretch of blank wall.

The artist’s studio said the move damaged the international prestige of Spain and of the annual fair. It said in a statement

that the common denominator of the prisoners portrayed in the photos was that they had expressed their ideas without resorting to violence.

The collection of 24 black-and-white photographs featured head-and-shoulder portraits of prisoners with their faces pixe-lated. Captions explained who they were, such as Catalan and Basque nationalists, without naming them.

One group of photographs included people facing poten-tial trial for their actions during the recent Catalan independ-ence turmoil, and many Span-iards would likely be able to identify them despite the pixelation.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel (left) receives Macedonian Premier Zoran Zaev for talks in the Chancellery, in Berlin, Germany, yesterday.

Govt delays expansion of Dutch airportAFP

THE HAGUE: The Dutch government yesterday post-poned plans to expand Amsterdam’s second airport to ease pressure on the near-capacity Schiphol, after hitting turbulence over noise pollution fears.

Lelystad airport, which lies about 50km east of the Dutch capital, will now “real-istically only be expanded in 2020,” Dutch Infrastructure Minister Cora van Nieuwen-huizen said.

“We all know that Schiphol has almost reached capacity and that for Schiphol, Lelystad should have already been there yes-terday,” she told a press conference.

“But I want to take more time over the decision to open the airport” to commercial flights, she said.

Initially it had been planned to open up the field to commercial flights from April 1, 2019.

In the first year, Lelystad is due to take some 4,000 flights from Schiphol partic-ularly to southern European holiday destinations during peak summer periods, with that number rising to 7,000 by the second year of com-mercial operation.

By 2022, Lelystad should be able to handle up to 10,000 flights with an even-tual maximum of 45,000, the ministry said in a statement.

The plan is to have Lelystad handle smaller jets with holiday air traffic, while Schiphol takes care of heavier planes and long-haul interna-tional flights and transfers.

Schiphol is one of Europe’s busiest air hubs, handling 68.4 million passen-gers last year, with 497,000 flights to 326 destinations. And recent reports have sounded a warning that it is now over-stretched.

But a furore broke out last year after residents in Flevoland got wind of the plans.

16 THURSDAY 22 FEBRUARY 2018EUROPE

UK eyes longer Brexit transitionAFP

LONDON: Britain yesterday raised doubts about an EU-proposed deadline of December 31, 2020, for ending a post-Brexit transition period allowing time for the two sides to strike an agreement on future trade ties.

According to a leaked doc-ument published by British media, the government said that it was still aiming for the tran-sition period to last around two years after Britain leaves the European Union on March 29, 2019.

But it said the precise dura-tion of the period “should be determined simply by how long it will take to prepare and implement the new processes and new systems that will underpin the future partnership”.

Britain “wishes to discuss with the EU the assessment that supports its proposed end date,” it said.

An agreement on the future partnership between Britain and the EU cannot be concluded until it has actually left the bloc and current negotiations are over the conditions of with-

drawal and the transition.The document was a

response to conditions set out by Brussels for a transition period requested by Britain with the intention of allowing busi-nesses and the general public time to adjust to life after Brexit.

It said that there was “broad alignment” and “only a small number of areas requiring discussion”.

A spokesman for Prime Min-ister Theresa May played down the document saying there was “nothing remotely new”.

Britain has said it wants to leave the European single market and customs union at the moment of Brexit but then con-tinue trading with the European Union “on current terms” during the transition period.

The EU has said this can only happen if Britain agrees to follow all current EU rules including freedom of movement for citizens.

Pro-Brexit MPs have warned this risks Britain becoming a “vassal state” of the EU during the transition period.

The government document issued yesterday also called for “arrangements” to ensure “mutual good faith” regarding any new EU laws adopted during the transition period, without giving further details.

A group of pro-Brexit Con-servative MPs known as the Euro-pean Research Group (ERG) also yesterday sent a letter to May with a number of suggestions for securing a successful Brexit.

The letter, which was signed by 62 lawmakers, in particular emphasised that Britain should be able to negotiate its own free trade deals with other countries as soon as it leaves the bloc.

It also said that any transi-tion period “should be based on WTO principles”.

“Any implementation period must not restrain the UK from negotiating or signing other trade agreements,” they said.

The government document issued yesterday also called for “arrangements” to ensure “mutual good faith” regarding any new EU laws adopted during the transition period.

US-Russia ties will be hard to repair: Moscow

Anti-Brexit campaign bus launchedREUTERS

LONDON,: An anti-Brexit campaign bus was forced into a reversal of its own yesterday as it got stuck in a narrow side-street in central London during its first day on the road.

Pro-European Union cam-paigners launched the bus against Britain’s planned exit from the EU from outside par-liament as it started an eight-day tour of Britain.

The large red campaign bus emblazoned with the slogan “Brexit to cost £2,000 million a

week” had a difficult start to its journey, however, getting stuck as it struggled to drive down a lane in the central Westminster district.

The bus’s aesthetic and slogan refer to the famous claim by Brexit campaigners that leaving the EU would free up $487.90m per week to be spent on improving the state-run National Health Service (NHS).

The 350 million pounds message, plastered across buses driven around the country by Brexiteers ahead of the June 2016 EU referendum, became

symbolic of their “Take Back Control” campaign. Their side prevailed by 52 to 48 percent in the vote.

Pro-Remain members of par-liament and campaigners gath-ered for yesterday’s launch of the “is it worth it?” bus and called for a public vote on the terms of any Brexit deal once it has been reached with Brussels.

Opponents of Brexit are trying to mobilise to stop Brit-ain’s departure from the EU, scheduled for March 2019, even as polls show little sustained appetite for a reversal.

The Brexit Facts Bus, rolled out by European Union advocates as they kick off a new initiative against Brexit, is driven around Westminster, in central London, yesterday.

Swedish murderer gets life sentenceAFP

FRANKFURT AM MAIN: A German court yesterday handed a life prison term to a Swedish convicted killer -- dubbed “the laser man” for using a laser-scoped rifle to target immigrants -- for the murder of a Jewish woman.

John Ausonius, 64, has already been behind bars for years after he received a life sentence in Sweden for a six-month shooting spree from 1991 to 1992, in which he killed one immigrant and wounded 10.

The convict, who was

extradited to Germany in late 2016, was also found guilty of the murder of 68-year-old Jewish Holocaust survivor Blanka Zmigrod in Frankfurt in 1992 yesterday.

In a sign of Ausonius’s noto-riety, Norwegian white supremacist mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik at his own trial had mentioned the “Lasermannen” or “laser man” as a figure who shared the same goals.

Ausonius, having now received life terms in two coun-tries, is almost certain to spend the rest of his life behind bars without parole as the German

court stressed that he is a danger to society.

Born as Wolfgang Alexander Zaugg in Sweden to a German mother and a Swiss father, Ausonius was reportedly bul-lied at school.

He is said to have rejected his foreign origins and devel-oped a strong hatred for immigrants.

Ausonius, diagnosed with a personality disorder, at various times worked odd jobs, studied chemistry, served in the mili-tary, lived on the streets, grew wealthy by trading stocks and bonds and plunged back into homelessness.

Swedish defendant John Ausonius (right), also know as “Laser man”, stands next to his Lawyer as he arrives for his court trial , in Frankfurt am Main, western Germany, yesterday.

AFP

MOSCOW: Moscow yesterday said it would be “very difficult” to improve US-Russia relations, which have plummeted to Cold War lows on accusations of election meddling and crises in Syria and Ukraine.

Deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov accused the US of trying to meddle in Russia’s internal affairs ahead of a pres-idential election next month, after Washington indicted 13 Russians for an alleged covert effort to interfere in 2016 US polls.

“Paradoxically, the Ameri-cans are taking steps towards meddling in our internal affairs and exacerbating tensions in bilateral relations ahead of the presidential election” in Russia on March 18, Ryabkov said.

“Despite this, they continue -- without any foundation or proof -- to reproach us for

apparently interfering in their electoral process,” he said.

“Of course we in Moscow regret all of this,” he said of potential sanctions against the 13 Russians who were indicted last week as part of a US fed-eral government probe.

“It will be very difficult to move relations with the US on from their current state,” he said.

Several US congressional committees and special prose-cutor Robert Mueller are inves-tigating allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 elec-tion and collusion with the campaign of President Donald Trump.

Moscow has long denied any role in election interference.

The Cold War rivals have clashed over crises in Ukraine, Syria and Iran, with reciprocal expulsions of diplomats last year.

Scientists improve malaria drug productionAP

BERLIN: Scientists in Germany who developed a new way to make a key malaria drug several years ago said yesterday they have come up with a technique to make the process even more efficient, which should increase global access and reduce the cost.

The new procedure refines a method developed in 2012 at the Max Planck Institute to use the waste product from the produc-tion of artemisinin, which is extracted from a plant known as

sweet wormwood, to produce the drug itself. That involved a new machine that could convert about 40 percent of the waste acid into artemisinin itself, producing more of the drug from what had in the past been discarded.

The new procedure uses the plant’s own chlorophyll instead of additional chemicals as cata-lysts to drive the reaction, directly using the crude mate-rials to produce the drug more efficiently, chemist Kerry Gil-more said.

“We’re able to get much

more out of the plant than ever before,” he said. “The process we have now is more efficient and significantly cheaper than what we had in 2012.”

The World Health Organiza-tion reported in November that there were 216 million malaria cases worldwide in 2016, up 5 million over 2015, and 445,000 people died of the disease, pri-marily children.

“This development has the potentiation to save millions of lives by increasing the global access and reducing the cost of

anti-malaria medicine,” Peter Seeberger, director of the Max Planck Institute unit working on the issue.

The researchers are working with the US.state of Kentucky on a pilot project to start an opera-tion where sweet wormwood is cultivated on thousands of acres and then processed on site into the anti-malaria drug. The target is to have it operational in three years, Gilmore said.

“We will have the entire supply chain under one roof, going from plants to pill.”

KFC closes some UK stores due to chicken crisisAFP

LONDON: Some KFC outlets in Britain are to remain shut for the rest of the week, the fast food operator said as a supply crisis rumbled on, leaving fans craving a fix of deep-fried chicken.

About 450 of the chain’s 900 outlets remained closed late Tuesday after “operational issues” with new German delivery supplier DHL left them without poultry supplies.

“Each day more deliveries are being made,” said a spokesman for KFC.

“However, we expect the disruption to some restaurants to continue over the remainder of the week, meaning some will be closed and others operating with a reduced menu or shortened hours.”

The crisis erupted over the weekend when KFC switched its delivery contract to DHL, leading to the closure of 700 of its British stores.

A sign outside a closed KFC fast food store in south London explains the closure is due to a shortage of fresh chicken.

Census: Nearly 3,000 homeless in ParisANATOLIA PARIS: “Nearly 3,000” home-less have been counted in the French capital, the first deputy mayor of Paris announced yesterday.

For the first time, the municipality decided to count the number of its homeless.

“Nearly 3,000 people were counted...in the Parisian public space,” the first deputy mayor of Paris Bruno Julliard told a news conference, adding that this figure was “probably far below reality”.

On Thursday night, some 2,000 volunteers and officials counted people sleeping out-side, huddled in doorways, in parking lots, in subway sta-tions or taken in by hospitals for health reasons.

“All car parks were not taken into account, all stair-wells of buildings, ...were not taken into account, we did not wake the homeless, we did not open the tents in which there could be several people, “Julliard explained.

Several welfare organisa-tions put the number at 5,000 and more.

In France, there is no offi-cial census of the homeless. Only a 2012 INSEE -- France’s national statisitics institute -- survey estimated that 143,000 people were homeless in France, including 28,800 French-speaking adults in the Ile-de-France region which encompasses Paris.

17THURSDAY 22 FEBRUARY 2018 AMERICAS

President Donald Trump threw his support behind moves to ban “bump stocks” — an accessory that can turn a semi-automatic weapon into an automatic one.

US presidents lead tributes to Billy GrahamAFP

WASHINGTON: US presidents from Jimmy Carter to Donald Trump led the chorus of trib-utes yesterday to the influential Billy Graham (pictured), a spiritual adviser to a dozen Amer-ican leaders who has died at age 99.

“The GREAT Billy Graham is dead,” Trump tweeted. “There was nobody like him! He will be missed by Christians and all reli-gions. A very special man.” Tall and hand-some, Graham, an ordained Southern Bap-tist minister, cut a charismatic figure as an evangelical preacher whose huge tent meet-ings and rallies found audiences on radio and television.

“Billy Graham was America’s pastor,” said former president George H W Bush. “I was privileged to have him as a personal friend,” Bush added. “He was a mentor to several of my children, including the former president of the United States. We will miss our good friend forever.”

While he preached to a long line of US presidents, from Harry Truman to Barack

Obama, according to his biographers Graham found only Carter to match him in dedica-tion to his faith.

In a tribute, the former Democratic pres-ident spoke of Graham’s “enormous influ-ence on my own spiritual life.” “Tirelessly spreading a message of fellowship and hope, he shaped the spiritual lives of tens of mil-lions of people worldwide,” Carter said.

Obama said on Twitter that Graham was “a humble servant who prayed for so

many -- and who, with wisdom and grace, gave hope and guidance to generations of Americans.”

Bill Clinton, the former Arkansas gov-ernor who became president in 1993, said “I will never forget the first time I saw him, 60 years ago in Little Rock, during the school integration struggle. He filled a football sta-dium with a fully integrated audience, reminding them that we all come before God as equals, both in our imperfection and our absolute claim to amazing grace. Later as governor, in the White House, and afterward, I saw him live that faith fully in the constant kindness, encouragement, and counsel he extended to Hillary and me,” Clinton said.

Graham was recently portrayed as a spir-itual adviser to the young Queen Elizabeth II in the recent Netflix television series “The Crown”. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, said Graham “stood as an exemplar to generation upon generation of modern Christians. There are countless num-bers who began their journey of faith because of Dr Graham,” Welby said.

Hundreds of high school and middle school students from the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia staged walkouts and gather in front of the White House in support of gun control in the wake of the Florida shooting, in Washington, DC, yesterday.

Florida students turn up heat for gun actionAFP

TALLAHASSEE: Student survi-vors of the Florida school shooting that saw 17 people killed in a hail of bullets last week descended on the state capital yesterday to ramp up the pressure on lawmakers to enact tougher gun control measures.

Holding signs reading “Never Again” and “Be The Adults, Do Something,” students from Mar-jory Stoneman Douglas High School rallied with thousands of supporters outside the imposing white stone-columned capitol building in Tallahassee.

“I am here to demand change from my government,” student Lorenzo Prado told the crowd. “To let these victims lives be taken without any change in return is an act of treason to our great country.”

“To let our fellow coun-trymen fall beside us without fighting back is to me equal to leaving a soldier to die in the

battlefield.” Rallying in soli-darity, students staged walk-outs from other high schools in Florida and elsewhere vowing to make the tragedy a turning point in America’s deadlocked debate on gun control.

In Washington, hundreds of local high school students gath-ered outside the White House chanting slogans against the National Rifle Association (NRA), the powerful gun lobby, and demanding action from Presi-dent Donald Trump.

Faced with the massive out-pouring of grief and outrage over the Parkland, Florida shooting, Trump was to meet with parents, students and teachers at the White House to discuss school safety.

Trump — who received strong backing from the NRA during his White House run — is also showing a new-found will-ingness to take at least some steps on gun control.

The president threw his

support on Tuesday behind moves to ban “bump stocks” — an accessory that can turn a semi-automatic weapon into an automatic one.

Calls to ban bump stocks have been mounting since Stephen Paddock, a retired accountant, used them on sev-eral of his weapons to kill 58 concertgoers in Las Vegas in October 2017 in the deadliest mass shooting in recent US his-tory. Although the former

student who shot dead 17 people in Florida last week did not have bump stocks on his gun, there has been a renewed focus on the devices because outlawing them is a rare point of agreement between Democrats, some Republicans and the NRA.

In Florida, more than 100 students from Stoneman Douglas travelled eight hours in buses on Tuesday to meet with state leg-islators and demand they action on gun laws.

“My classmates and I are probably the most determined group of people you will ever meet,” said student Sofie Whitney. “People are talking about how we aren’t serious because we’re children, but... we’re serious.”

The students’ push for change hit a hurdle on Tuesday when the Republican-dominated Florida House of Representatives declined to take up a debate on legislation that would have banned assault weapons and

large-capacity magazines.The US Congress is also

deadlocked on the gun debate, accomplishing nothing since the shooting in Las Vegas.

“We must actually make a difference,” Trump said. “We must move past cliches and tired debates and focus on evidence-based solutions and security measures that actually work,” he said. “We must do more to pro-tect our children. This includes implementing common sense security measures and addressing mental health issues including better coordination between federal and state law enforcement to take swift action when there are warning signs.”

Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz, 19, had a history of troubling behavior and a person close to him warned the FBI five weeks before the shooting that he was a threat — but no action was taken. Cruz legally bought the gun he used in the attack — an AR-15-style

semi-automatic rifle — and the White House said Tuesday it would consider raising the age for such purchases. “I think that’s certainly something that’s on the table,” spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said.

Students are planning a march on Washington next month and on Tuesday, they earned $2m in pledges from Hol-lywood A-listers George Clooney and his human rights lawyer wife Amal, Oprah Winfrey, director Steven Spielberg and film pro-ducer Jeffrey Katzenberg.

The “March for Our Lives” is scheduled to take place on March 24, with sister rallies planned across the country.

Americans support stricter gun laws by a 66 to 31 percent margin, according to a poll released by Quinnipiac Univer-sity. It described the margin as “the highest level of support” for stricter gun control since it began surveys on the question in 2008.

US Democrats want $300m to fight possible Russia election tamperingREUTERS

WASHINGTON: US Democratic leaders called on Congress yesterday to give the Federal Bureau of Investigation $300m to fight Russian efforts to inter-fere in congressional and state elections in November.

Citing warnings from intelli-gence agencies that Russia is trying to influence the upcoming vote, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and House of Representatives Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi asked that the additional funds be included in a bill to fund the government through September 30, which Con-gress aims to pass by March 23.

“This additional funding should be targeted to ensure the

resources and manpower to counter the influence of hostile foreign actors operating in the US, especially Russian operatives operating on our social media platforms,” Schumer, Pelosi and the top Democrats on the Senate and House Appropriations Com-mittees wrote in a letter.

They sent the letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan. Aides to Ryan did not immedi-ately respond to a request for comment. McConnell’s office referred a query to the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Leaders of US intelligence agencies warned a Senate com-mittee last week that Russia is trying to interfere in the 2018 midterm elections, when control

of Congress is up for grabs, by using social media to spread propaganda and misleading reports, much as it did during the 2016 U.S. campaign.

And on Friday, the office of Special Counsel Robert Mueller charged 13 Russians and 13 Rus-sian companies with conspiracy to tamper with the 2016 cam-paign. Moscow has denied elec-tion meddling and Republican President Donald Trump rejects suggestions that his associates colluded with Russia.

The Democrats also want a “substantial” increase in funding for the Department of Home-land Security and Election Assistance Commission to help states upgrade their machines and systems.

Venezuelans report big weight losses in 2017 as hunger hitsREUTERS

CARACAS: Venezuelans reported losing on average 11kg in body weight last year and almost 90 percent now live in poverty, according to a new university study on the impact of a devastating economic crisis and food shortages.

The annual survey, pub-lished yesterday by three uni-versities, is one of the most closely-followed assessments of Venezuelans’ well being amid a government informa-tion vacuum and shows a steady rise in poverty and hunger in recent years.

Over 60 percent of Vene-zuelans surveyed said that during previous three months they had woken up hungry because they did not have enough money to buy food. About a quarter of the popu-lation was eating two or less meals a day, the study showed.

Last year, the three univer-sities found that Venezuelans said they had lost an average of 8 kilograms during 2016. This time, the study’s dozen inves-tigators surveyed 6,168 Vene-zuelans between the ages of 20 and 65 across the country of 30 million people.

After winning the presi-dency in 1999, leftist President Hugo Chavez was proud of improving Venezuela’s social indicators due to oil-fuelled welfare policies. But his suc-cessor President Nicolas Madu-ro’s rule since 2013 has coin-cided with a deep recession, due to failed state-led economic policies and the plunge in global oil prices.

The study flagged Venezue-lans’ deteriorating diets, which are deficient in vitamins and protein, as currency controls restrict food imports, hyperin-flation eats into salaries, and people line up for hours to buy basics like flour.

“Income is being pulver-ized,” Maria Ponce, one of the study’s investigators, told a news conference at the Andres Bello Catholic University on Caracas’s outskirts. “This dis-parity between the rise in prices and the population’s salaries is so generalized that there is prac-tically not a single Venezuelan who is not poor,” she said.

The study calculated the poverty rate from 13 different indicators such as income and access to services. If the average of these indicators was above 25 percent, investigators defined a person as poor. Prices in Venezuela rose 4,068 percent in the 12 months to the end of January, according to estimates by the country’s opposition-led National Assembly, broadly in line with independent econo-mists’ figures.

The study showed that 87 percent of people in Venezuela, one of Latin America’s wealth-iest nations back in the 1970s, were living in poverty last year, rising from 82 percent in 2016 and 48 percent in 2014.

The Venezuelan govern-ment has not released data on poverty since the first half of 2015 when the national statis-tics institute reported a poverty rate of 33 percent. The govern-ment did not respond to a request for comments on the study.

Number of US hate groups upWASHINGTON: The number of US hate groups rose again in 2017, during President Donald Trump’s first year in office, and has surged 20 percent since 2014, a US civil rights watchdog said.

The Southern Poverty Law Center’s annual census identified 954 hate groups in 2017, a 4 percent rise from the year before. The increase fol-lowed a 2.8 increase in 2016, and the most recent number represents a jump of one-fifth from 2014.

Among the more than 600 US white supremacist groups, neo-Nazi organizations rose to 121 from 99. Anti-Muslim groups increased for a third year in a row, to 114 from 101 in 2016, the report said.

18 THURSDAY 22 FEBRUARY 2018AMERICAS

Melting snow and heavy rain prompted the National Weather Service to issue flood warnings for parts of northern Illinois and northern Indiana, as well as southern Wisconsin and much of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula.

States face flooding in Midwest amid stormsAP

MATTAWAN: Sandbags were holding back floodwaters in parts of Michigan as a storm system moved across several Midwest and Great Plains states yesterday, bringing heavy rain, snow and ice to the region.

The weather has already been blamed for hundreds of car crashes and several fatalities, including the deaths of four people in a crash along a slip-pery interstate in Nebraska.

Melting snow and heavy rain prompted the National Weather Service to issue flood warnings for parts of northern Illinois and northern Indiana, as well as southern Wisconsin and much of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula. Flood warnings also were issued for parts of Mis-souri and Texas.

Flooded streets in Michigan stranded motorists and a school bus in Flint, while residents in Mattawan, in the southwestern part of the state, used sandbags to protect homes and businesses as the Mattawan Creek rose above its banks.

“We just got to wait for it to go down,” Mattawan resident Terry Teeter, who installed pumps to keep water away from his house, told WOOD-TV.

“It’s going to be a couple of days like this.” In Illinois, the fear of rising water along the Illinois River forced the evacu-ation late Tuesday of the LaSalle County Nursing Home in

Global cybercrime costs $600bn annually: StudyAFP

WASHINGTON: The annual cost of cybercrime has hit $600bn worldwide, fueled by growing sophistication of hackers and proliferation of criminal marketplaces and cryptocurrencies, researchers said yesterday.

A report produced by the security firm McAfee with the Center for Strategic and Inter-national Studies found theft of intellectual property represents about one-fourth of the cost of cybercrime in 2017.

Russia, North Korea and Iran are the main sources of hackers targeting financial institutions, while China is the most active in cyber espionage, the report found.

The researchers said ran-somware is the fastest-growing component of cybercrime, helped by the easy availability of marketplaces offering hacking services.

The global research report comes days after the White House released a report showing cyberattacks cost the United States between $57bn and $109bn in 2016, while warning of a “spillover” effect for the broader economy if cer-tain sectors are hit.

Globally, criminals are using the same tools for data or identity theft, bank hacks, and other cyber mischief, with anonymity preserved by using bitcoin or other cryptocurrency.

“The digital world has transformed almost every aspect of our lives, including risk and crime, so that crime is more efficient, less risky, more profitable and has never been easier to execute,” said Steve Grobman, chief technology officer for McAfee.

CSIS vice-president James Lewis said meanwhile the geo-political risks of cybercrime are a key element in these attacks.

“Our research bore out the fact that Russia is the leader in cybercrime, reflecting the skill of its hacker community and its disdain for western law enforcement,” Lewis said.

“North Korea is second in line, as the nation uses crypto-currency theft to help fund its regime, and we’re now seeing an expanding number of cyber-crime centers, including not only North Korea but also Brazil, India and Vietnam.”

The latest McAfee-CSIS report suggested cybercrime costs were rising from a 2014 estimate of $445bn.

Agonizing subway ride lands NY woman Worst Commute awardREUTERS

NEW YORK: This is one contest no New York City subway rider wants to win.

An advocacy group for city commuters awarded its first “Worst Commute of the Week” award to a librarian from the borough of Queens for her story of an agonizing two-hour wait in a tunnel one stop from her home after skipping a restroom visit before leaving work.

The Riders Alliance awards are aimed at shaming New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo and the state’s Legislature into enacting a long-term plan to fund and fix the city’s declining subway system.

The inaugural winner, City University librarian Jen-nifer Tang, recounted being trapped underground on a train when the last five min-utes of her ride home from Manhattan to the Forest Hills neighborhood in the borough of Queens on Jan. 20 deteri-orated into two hours.

“I hadn’t used the bath-room, figuring I only had a 30-minute commute from Manhattan to Queens,” Tang, 49, said in an interview. Then the train stopped and an announcement warned of signal problems.

“Five minutes became 10 minutes, became 20 minutes, became one hour, became one hour and 50 minutes,” said Tang, who was in pain and urgently hoping the subway would quickly reach her des-tination. “Now, before boarding the subway, even if it’s for one stop, I use the bathroom.”

The Riders Alliance invited commuters to share their stories using the hashtag #WorstCommute. Winners of the contest receive a choco-late replica of the MetroCard, which the subway system’s roughly 6 million daily riders swipe to enter stations.

Brazil’s ‘What a shot’ music video stirs debateREUTERS

RIO DE JANEIRO: A viral music video called “What a shot” is stir-ring debate in Brazil about the glamorization of crime and freedom of expression, as surging crime in Rio de Janeiro has led the government to put troops in charge of security in the tourist city.

The hit by Jordana Gleise de Jesus Menezes — known as JoJo Todynho — has spawned myriad parody videos on YouTube since it was released in December.

The clips often show children

and adults collapsing to the ground as a shot rings out fol-lowing the lyrics “What a shot”, before the person stands up and begins to dance as the music picks up.

The spoofs have revived debate about whether the pop-ular dance music genre from Rio de Janeiro, known as funk, glam-orizes violence. On Friday, Bra-zil’s government ordered the army to take over command of police forces in Rio de Janeiro state to curb violence after kill-ings increased by nearly 8 per-cent last year to 6,731.

A petition to outlaw funk music because of its explicit treatment of violence, sex and drugs gained more than 20,000 signatures last year but has failed to gain traction in Congress. In a population of around 210 mil-lion people, the government recorded 59,080 gun deaths in 2015, putting it in the top 10 World Bank list of the most mur-derous countries.

In a music video featuring images of coffins and the faces of young children killed by stray bullets in Rio, rapper Gabriel O Pensador, also from Rio, Brazil’s

second largest city, objected to the parodies. “What a shot? No, I’m not going to fall to the floor... I’m a joker too, but joking has a time and a place,” he raps.

“The Rio that we love cele-brates carnival and this violence is terrifying.” A city in the north-eastern state of Alagoas tried to ban the song being played during Carnival this month, arguing it incited violence.

Authorities sought to impose a fine of 2,000 reais ($616) for each violation, but a court stopped the city from punishing musicians before a final ruling

is reached, media reports said.Todynho, 21, whose artistic

name refers to a popular brand of chocolate milk, is from Rio’s tough western neighbourhood of Bangu. She said the phrase is used to mean “how cool,” in a song mostly about sambaing with your girlfriends.

The official music video, with over 136 million views, made the rounds as national attention was focused on violence during the Carnival festivities in Rio, with images of gangs robbing tourists en masse repeatedly broadcast on national TV.

Life in prison for US man who shot dead Lebanese neighbourAFP

CHICAGO: An Oklahoma man convicted of the hate-motivated killing of his Lebanese American neighbour was sentenced late on Tuesday to life in prison without parole.

Stanley Majors was con-victed earlier this month of first-degree murder for fatally shooting his next-door neighbor in the city of Tulsa, because of his hatred of the neighbour’s Lebanese descent.

Khalid Jabara, 37, was killed

on the front porch of his family home in August 2016, just min-utes after calling police to report that his threatening neighbor had a gun. Majors had tor-mented the Jabara family for years, according to prosecutors. The Jabaras are Christian and had fled Lebanon’s civil war decades ago to avoid religious persecution. The 63-year-old was also sentenced for the hate crime charge of malicious intim-idation or harassment.

The Jabara family said the hate crime charge sent an

important message. “We believe that as a community we have to pay attention to our thoughts, as they become our words, our words as they become our actions. We must hold each other accountable,” the victim’s sister Victoria Jabara Williams told reporters after Majors’s conviction.

“The rhetoric that’s going on in our community and nation-ally, and globally, I think it’s more important than ever that we say something when we hear something,” she said.

Raul Castro receives US lawmakersAFP

HAVANA: Cuban President Raul Castro received a bipartisan delegation of US lawmakers, who are visiting the island with the alleged “acoustic attacks” against US diplomats on their agenda. “During the meeting they discussed matters of interest to both countries,” the Cuban government said.

The delegation, led by Dem-ocratic Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, arrived in Cuba on Sunday to address various issues

including the mysterious sup-posed attacks in Havana.

The issue has hit US-Cuba relations, with Washington withdrawing half of its diplo-mats from Cuba and expelling 15 officials from the Cuban embassy in the US capital.

The Cuban foreign ministry’s US director, Carlos Fernandez de Cossio, met with the con-gressmen on Monday assuring them that “no evidence that attacks occurred against US dip-lomats in Cuba exists,” according to his deputy Johana Tablada.

Accompanying Leahy on the visit are senators Ron Wyden of Oregon and Michi-gan’s Gary Peters, along with representatives Kathy Castor of Florida, Jim McGovern of Massachusetts and Susan Davis of California.

Leahy has been one of the most active politicians inside the Capitol in advocating the improvement of US-Cuba rela-tions, which defrosted some-what in 2014 under Barack Obama after half a century of tension.

35 dead in Peru bus accidentA bus is seen after running off the road and plunging into a ravine on the Pan-American road in southern Peru yesterday, killing �� people. At least �� passengers were injured when the bus left the Pan-American highway and tumbled �� feet down a jagged slope in the southern region of Arequipa.

Members of the United States Democratic party (from left) Representative Jim McGovern from Massachusetts, Senator Gary Peters from Michigan, Senator Patrick Leahy from Vermont, Senator Ron Wyden from Oregon and Representative Susan Davis from California attend a press conference at the United States Embassy in Havana, yesterday.

Ottawa. In Indiana, homes and streets were flooded in the South Bend area, and forecasters pre-dicted the local St. Joseph River wouldn’t crest until today.

Flood watches were issued for several states, while winter weather advisories were in effect Wednesday for an area stretching from southwestern Illinois to Texas, including parts of Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri and Arkansas.

The weather stretched as far south as Arkansas, where strong winds toppled power lines and damaged some build-ings late on Tuesday and early yesterday.

Two days of rain in southern Wisconsin swelled waterways, prompting road closures. Police and firefighters rescued people from vehicles stranded in high water on Tuesday at two sites in

Janesville. In western Michigan, officials said a washout from heavy rains may have caused two engines from a freight train to derail near Grand Rapids. No injuries were reported.

A 52-year-old woman from Bourbonnais, Illinois, was found dead Tuesday in a submerged car in Peotone, south of Chicago. The woman apparently lost con-trol of her car on southbound Illinois Route 45 and ended up in a rain-filed ditch, Peotone Fire Protection District Deputy Chief Bruce Boyle said.

In eastern Nebraska, speed and slippery pavement caused a crash between a pickup truck and a semitrailer Tuesday that killed four people on Interstate 80, police said. The three men and one woman killed were from Colorado, authorities said.

The Kansas Highway Patrol said a 38-year-old woman died and two other people were injured in a collision on an icy highway late Monday. In Min-nesota, state police said winter weather contributed to 400 crashes and 250 spinouts, including two fatal accidents.

The storm system stretched to Texas, where weather service officials said three tornadoes hit. One struck early on Tuesday in a rural area near Joshua, destroying at least two mobile homes and severely damaging several others. A mother and her disabled daughter were injured when one twister demolished their mobile home.


TNG marks NSD with games, activitiesTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: Dedicated to join Qatar in the efforts of promoting healthy lifestyle and fitness, students from five campuses of The Next Gener-ation School (TNG) participated in the Annual Sports Week. Various sporting activities were conducted among students from all classes.

The sports event began with Oath taking ceremony where stu-dents pledged to respect and abide by the rules and ingrain the true spirit of sportsmanship.

A ceremonial parade was then conducted by the students with discipline followed by an opening speech by the school Head Girl and Head Boy. Sack Race, Hurdle Race, Skipping Race, Relay Race,

Tug of War, Lemon Spoon Race, Skipping Race, Handball game and Flat race were the highlight activities of the day. Students cheered with excitement and fer-vour motivating their respective classes. Teachers and Ancillary staff members also participated in games and activities.

Dressed in bright colours, stu-dents of Kindergarten section looked cheerful and participated in fun exciting games. Ring Bal-ance, Hula Hoop Alley, Spoon Bal-ance, Tunnel Relay, Bursting the Balloon and Crawl Race were some of the activities arranged for the students.

Preparatory grade students at TNG Al Wakra enthusiastically participated in various sport activ-ities involving teachers in

recreational games. Students showcased their sporting skills in Badminton, Handball, Football

matches, Obstacle races and Track events with excitement and energy.

The students of The Next Generation School celebrate Qatar National Sport Day.

Warwick Doha appoints Andrea as Italian Chef de Cuisine of Carisma THE PENINSULA

DOHA: Warwick Doha has warmly announced the appointment of Andrea Guidi as the new Italian Chef de Cuisine of the Italian Restau-rant, Carisma.

In his position, Chef Andrea will be at the helm of the Italian culinary and stewarding team for the restaurant and sup-porting operation in other food and beverage outlets, ban-queting and outdoor catering.

Chef Andrea, an Italian national, has over 7 years of culinary and pastry experience working in fine dining restau-rants in 4 and 5 star hotels in Italy, France and US. Chef Andrea also carries the experi-ence of working in three dif-ferent 1 and 2 star Michelin res-taurants: “La Credenza” Restaurant in Torino (1-star), Les Bacchanales Restaurant in France (1-star) and Devero Res-taurant in Milano (2-star).

It is his first time to work in Middle East; Chef Andrea is enthusiastic of his role at hotel Warwick Doha, and glad to work hand in hand with the culinary and food & beverage teams of Carisma to deliver the best Italian cuisine.

“My expectation is to improve our cuisine, proposing new Italian dishes with a modern yet classical and inter-national touch. I will take inspi-ration to mix the Arabic and the Italian cuisine. It is an honor to be joining hotel Warwick Doha and looking forward to share all my experience and deliver my passion for food to our guests. In my new capacity, I will be overseeing Carisma, our Italian restaurant and will showcase my extensive

knowledge of food preparation, with the best quality ingredi-ents and contemporary Italian cuisines to express my talent and passion in order to enhance the dining experience for all guests. One of my intentions is to continue the promotion “Giro d’Italia”, where each month, an Italian region will be chosen with its best dishes, to show that Italy is not only pasta and pizza.” said Chef Andrea.

“We are pleased to have appointed such a young and tal-ented Italian chef for our Car-isma, Italian Restaurant. He will add the special Italian touch with his rich experience across Italy with some of the finest res-taurants and chefs (such as Chef Enrico Bartolini) he has worked for. Guests will be delighted to talk and share experiences with him and it will be our pleasure to try out and create new dishes and menus.” said Marco Saxer, General Manager of Warwick Doha.

The Carisma Italian Restau-rant is situated at the Ground Floor, open from 6:30pm to 11:30pm daily.

Warwick Doha is a five-star gem that has emerged in the City of Pearls and Lights. War-wick Doha sits amid Doha’s city centre, putting guests in the middle of everything the city has to offer. But it’s not only about the location, as Warwick Doha promises its guest to find a new standard of luxury – starting with the rejuvenating spa and rooftop swimming pool. With a blend of contem-porary and classic styling, an array of elegant rooms and suites, and refined dining, War-wick Doha is designed to create the most memorable Qatar stay imaginable.

Mövenpick Hotel Doha brings back Indian flavours to its Seasons Restaurant this HoliTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: Holi is considered one of the most vibrant and colourful festivals in India. It is celebrated widely across all states and as a treat on this festive occasion Mövenpick Hotel Doha will offer it’s guest a chance to savour the old world opulence of Indian cuisine - to be enjoyed by fami-lies and friends. An Indian buffet dinner with the cuisine’s specialties will be featured on March 2 at Seasons restaurant.

To give the restaurant an authentic feel on this festive day, Seasons Restaurant will put up Indian decorations and the staff will be seen wearing traditional Indian costumes. A wide range of tantalising buffet with some of India’s most well-loved dishes namely – Butter Chicken, Kashmiri Pulao, Chicken Tikka will be

available. General Manager, Sami

Aawar, said, “We know how famous Indian cuisine is world-wide and we are very excited to have people over and enjoy the delicious taste of India during Holi.” Culinary creativity is a signature of Mövenpick Hotel Doha. Just 11km from Hamad International Airport and minutes from the business district, this hotel is centrally located on the prominent Cor-niche Road opposite the iconic Museum of Islamic Arts.

IIS students receive hall tickets THE PENINSULA

DOHA: The students of Ideal Indian School (IIS) appearing for class X and XII examina-tions received their examina-tion hall tickets.

Principal Syed Shoukath Ali distributed hall tickets in a special morning assembly held recently. The outgoing batch of Class XII comprising 211 Students from the Science, Commerce and Humanities streams appearing for All

India Senior School Certificate Examination (CBSE) and 385 students appearing for class X examination received their hall tickets. The exams com-mence from 5th and 6th of March for Class XII and Class X respectively.

In an inspiring speech, Syed Shoukath Ali wished the stu-dents all the best for their exam. He also gave some important tips to students which help them overcome stress before the examination.

Ideal Indian School Principal Syed Shoukath Ali handing hall tickets to students.

VILLAGGIO & CITY CENTERCROSSWORD NOVO Pearl Qatar

MALL

Note: Programme is subject to change without prior notice.

LANDMARK

ROXY

AL KHOR

ASIAN TOWN

Black Panther (2D/Action) 10:00, 10:15am, 12:45, 1:00, 2:30, 3:30, 3:45, 6:15, 6:30, 8:15, 9:00, 9:15, 11:45pm & 12:00midnightGame Night (2D/Action) 10:00, 11:00am, 12:00noon, 1:00, 2:00, 2:30, 3:00, 4:00, 5:00, 6:00, 7:00, 8:00, 8:15, 9:00, 10:00, 11:00pm & 12:00midnight Wolf Warrior 2 10:00am, 2:30, 7:00 & 11:30pm Mom And Dad (2D/Horror) 12:30, 5:00 & 9:30pm Mission Kathmandu: The Adventures of Nelly And Simon 10:00, 11:45am, 1:30, 3:15 & 5:00pm War Commanders China Salesman (2D/Action) 6:45, 9:00 & 11:15pm Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle (2D/Action) 10:00am, 2:45, 7:30pm & 12:15am Den of Thieves (2D/Action) 12:15, 5:00 & 9:45pm Winchester 10:00am, 2:00, 6:00 & 10:00pm Okdat Al Kawja 12:00noon, 4:00, 8:00pm & 12:00midnight Black Panther (3D IMAX/Action) 11:00am, 2:00, 5:00, 8:00 & 11:00pm

Welcome To New York (2D/Hindi) 2:15 & 9:15pm Sonu Ke Titu Ki Sweety (2D/Hindi) 4:30 & 11:30pm Aadhi (Malayalam) 2:15pm Hey Jude (2D/Malayalam) 4:45 & 11:30pm Black Panther (2D/Action) 5:00 & 9:00pm Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2D/Drama) 7:30pm Mom And Dad (2D/Horror) 9:45pm Mission Kathmandu: The Adventures of Nelly And Simon (2D/Animation) 2:00 & 3:30pm Game Night (2D/Action) 7:30pm War Commanders China Salesman (Action) 7:00pm Wolf Warrior 2 (2D/Action) 11:30pm

ROYAL PLAZA

Mission Kathmandu: The Adventures of Nelly And Simon 2:30, 4:00 & 5:30pm Game Night (2D/Action) 2:30 & 7:00pm Aadhi (2D/Malayalam) 2:15pm Hey Jude (2D/Malayalam) 5:00, 7:00 & 8:45pm Black Panther (2D/Action) 4:30 & 11:30pm Welcome To New York (2D/Hindi) 7:30 & 11:30pm War Commanders China Salesman (Action) 9:30pmMom And Dad (2D/Horror) 10:00pm Wolf Warrior 2 (2D/Action) 11:15pm

Welcome To New York (2D/Hindi) 2:30 & 7:00pm Hey Jude (2D/Malayalam) 2:30 & 9:00pm Mission Kathmandu: The Adventures of Nelly And Simon 2:00, 3:30 & 5:00pm Aadhi (2D/Malayalam) 5:00pm War Commanders China Salesman (Action) 5:00 & 9:30pm Black Panther (2D/Action) 6:30pm Game Night (2D/Action) 7:45pm Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2D/Drama) 9:15pm Sonu Ke Titu Ki Sweety (2D/Hindi) 11:15pm Wolf Warrior 2 (2D/Action) 11:30pm

Hey Jude (Malayalam) 12:00noon, 2:30, 3:30, 5:30, 6:30, 8:30, 9:30, 11:30, 12:30 & 02:00am Welcome To New York (Hindi) 1:00 & 6:00pm Aadhi (Malayalam) 1:00, 3:00, 4:00, 7:00, 8:30, 10:00, 11:30pm & 01:00am Awe (Telugu) 12:30pm

Hey Jude (Malayalam) 11:15am, 2:15, 5:15, 8:15 & 11:15pmBlack Panther (Action) 11:30am, 5:30 & 11:30pmAadhi (Malayalam) 2:30 & 8:30pm Mom And Dad (Horror) 1:15, 5:30 & 9:45pm Game Night (Action) 11:00am, 3:15, 7:30 & 11:45pm

Mission Kathmandu: Adventures of Nelly And Simon 10:30am, 12:30, 2:30, 4:30 & 6:30pm Welcome To New York (Hindi) 4:10, 7:30 & 9:30pm Hey Jude (Malayalam) 10:30am, 1:30, 4:30, 9:30pm & 12:30am War Commanders 10:30am, 5:50, 8:10 & 10:30pm Sonu Ke Titu Ki Sweety (Hindi) 10:30am, 1:20, 6:40 & 11:30pm Black Panther (Action) 12:50, 3:10, 8:30 & 11:20pm

Titu is going to marry a perfect woman named Sweety. Titu’s best-friend Sonu doubts Sweety’s character and tries to break the marriage while Sweety tries to do opposite and which leads to war between Bromance and Romace.

SONU KE TITU KI SWEETY

FLIK MirqabBlack Panther (Action) 2D 11:20am, 12:20, 2:00, 4:40, 7:20, 9:30pm & 12:30am 3D 3:00, 5:40, 8:20 & 11:00pmEarly Man (2D/Animation) 10:30am, 2:20, 5:20, 6:30pm Ferdinand (2D/Animation) 11:40am, 1:35 & 4:15pm Game Night (2D/Comedy) 12:15, 2:20, 4:25, 6:30, 7:15, 8:35, 9:20 & 10:40pm Hey Jude (2D/Comedy) 12:00noon, 3:00, 6:15, 9:15pm & 12:15amJumanji: Welcome To The Jungle (2D/Action) 2:00 & 4:30pm Maze Runner: The Death Cure (2D/Action) 10:45am & 4:20pm Mission Kathmandu: The Adventures of Nelly And Simon 12:25 & 3:30pm Mom & Dad (2D/Horror) 8:45 & 11:35pm Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2D/Drama) 7:00 & 11:25pmWar Commanders China Salesman (2D/Action) 1:15, 9:20 & 10:35pm Wolf Warrior 2 (2D/Action) 10:35am, 10:50, 7:05 & 10:05pm

20 THURSDAY 22 FEBRUARY 2018MORNING BREAK

FAJRSHOROOK

04.47 am06.04 am

ZUHRASR

11.47 am03.05 pm

MAGHRIBISHA

05.34 pm07.04 pm

PRAYER TIMINGS

HIGH TIDE 08:45 – 22:15 LOW TIDE 02:30 – 15:30

Hazy to misty at places at first becomes

partly cloudy to cloudy at times with a

chance of scattered rain at places.

WEATHER TODAY

COURTESY: Qatar Meteorology Department

Minimum Maximum 19oC 26oC

Sheeran, Dua Lipa lead Brit Awards nominationAFP

LONDON: Folk-pop hit machine Ed Sheeran (pictured) will go head-to-head with rising R’n’B star Dua Lipa at the Brit Awards in London, the coun-try’s showpiece pop-music ceremony.

The ceremony at the cavernous O2 Arena is expected to have a polit-ical edge, with many stars due to wear small white roses to highlight harass-ment in the industry, and to show sol-idarity with its victims.

Sheeran’s album “Divide”, a global chart-topper, is on the shortlist for the “British Album of the Year”, along with Dua Lipa, grime artist Stormzy, singer Rag’n’Bone Man and hip-hop artist J Hus.

In the “British Male Solo Artist” cat-egory, Sheeran is also up against Stormzy and Rag’n’Bone Man as well as former Oasis frontman Liam Gal-lagher and hip-hop singer Loyle Carner.

He is also running against Dua Lipa for the best video award.

Singer-guitarist Sheeran, 27, has

already been honoured in 2018, win-ning the Grammy Awards for “Best Pop Vocal Album” ahead of Lady Gaga and Coldplay, and “Best Pop Solo Perform-ance” for single “Shape of You”.

His latest album “Divide” has smashed many records, including on streaming App Spotify, where it

received 57 million listens on the day of its release.

Dua Lipa, 22, is the latest artist to break through on YouTube, and her single “New Rules” has surpassed one billion views on the video-sharing platform.

She is nominated in five catego-ries, including “British Female Solo artist”, along with Paloma Faith, who won the award in 2015, Kate Tempest, Jessie Ware and Laura Marling.

Born in London to Kosovo-Alba-nian parents, Dua Lipa tried model-ling as a teenager before launching her musical career with a series of covers published on YouTube.

Her eponymous debut album, released in mid-2017, received rave reviews, with influential magazine NME praising her voice and a sound mature beyond her years.

Other categories include “British Group”, where the nominees are Gorillaz, London Grammar, Royal Blood, Wolf Alice and The xx and “International Group”, which will be fought out between the Foo Fighters,

Haim, The Killers, LCD Soundsystem and Arcade Fire.

Budding soul sensation Sampha, who won the coveted Mercury Prize in 2017, is nominated alongside Dua Lipa, J Hus, Loyle Carner and Dave in the “Breakthrough” category.

Taylor Swift, Lorde, Bjork, Pink and Alicia Keys have all received nomina-tions for the “International Female Solo Artist” award, with Childish Gambino, Beck, DJ Khaled, Drake and Kendrick Lamar all in the running for the male equivalent.

The Brit Awards have recognised the cream of British pop music since they were first held in 1977, but often attract controversy. Pulp singer Jarvis Cocker invaded a performance by Michael Jackson in 1996 and then-deputy prime minister John Prescott was doused by a bucket of ice water in 1998.

This year’s nominations have attracted criticism from the Daily Tel-egraph, which lamented the triumph of the “popular over the interesting, the successful over the plucky, and the beige over the bold.”

‘Black Panther’ items unveiled at NY Toy FairAFP

NEW YORK: Panther claws, masks and action figures are leaping off store shelves after runaway hit “Black Panther” -- the first film in the Marvel universe focused on a black superhero -- shredded box office expectations with a massive opening weekend.

Toys and accessories linked to the movie, which is also making waves for its strong black female leading roles, have the potential to become an enduring presence in stores, like Spider-Man and other iconic figures, company executives say.

Toy tie-ins are a crucial profit driver for movie studios, even if each merchandise opportunity is not mas-sively successful, experts say.

“It is a huge opportunity,” John Frascotti, president of US toy giant Hasbro, said on the sidelines of the giant Toy Fair trade show in New York.

“We’re still in the early days of this, but it certainly has all the indications that it could be over time as successful” as other major franchises in terms of staying power, he said.

The movie pulled in an impressive $242m in its opening weekend, a record for this time of year following strong reviews.

“It’s just surpassed expectations,” said Mark Robben, marketing director for Funko, which sells Black Panther bobble heads, plush dolls and fashion.

“It’s an important movie cultur-ally,” Robben said. “That is then

translated into people wanting to own a piece of it for their desk or for a t-shirt they’re wearing.”

The film has generated huge enthusiasm within the black commu-nity, but also more broadly.

“I think it’s filling a void, it’s serving a need and it will sell accordingly, and not just with African Americans,” said Kimberly Mosley, president of the American Specialty Toy Retailing Association.

People “are looking for a hero,” she said.

“Black Panther” comes less than a year after “Wonder Woman,” another big superhero movie that went against the grain, and upended the long-held idea that a female superhero couldn’t attract a large audience.

But while “Wonder Woman” did well in theatres, the film’s toys -- made by Mattel -- were not especially hot sellers.

“There’s been a trend around movie franchises and not all of them are seeing the uptick in toy sales that they used to see,” said Michelle Chi-doni, vice president of global brand communications at Mattel.

Chidoni said the Wonder Woman

offerings in its “Super Hero Girls” series performed well. The character’s long-term value had been enhanced by the movie and further boosted by the availability of the movie on streaming services.

“The toy doesn’t always perform with the theatrical release like it used to,” she said.

“Sometimes it’s now performing better when it goes on Netflix, or when it streams, when it’s more available to the mass consumer.”

Hasbro came under scrutiny in the most recent quarter after reporting a steep drop in fourth-quarter revenues connected to its movie licensing busi-ness that raised questions about whether the “Star Wars” juggernaut was losing its luster.

But Frascotti said the figures for

merchandise linked to last year’s “The Last Jedi” looked worse by compar-ison because the company launched the tie-in products early.

That strategy had made sense in 2015 with “The Force Awakens,” given the significant anticipation for the first big release in the franchise in many years.

Frascotti said “Star Wars” never-theless remains “very strong,” and the most sought after franchise in enter-tainment, and that the company would release toys with a shorter lead time ahead of future movies.

With “Black Panther,” Hasbro unveiled a significant line of products about six weeks ahead of the movie’s premiere and plans more items, such as a collector’s black mask on display at Toy Fair.

‘Black Panther’ items are displayed for attendees at the Hasbro showroom during the annual New York Toy Fair, yesterday.

The ‘Black Panther’ pulled in an impressive $242m in its opening weekend, a record for this time of year following strong reviews.

Scientists to explore marine ecosystemAFP

LONDON: A team of interna-tional scientists led by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) set off yesterday to explore a myste-rious marine ecosystem that has lain hidden under an ice shelf for up to 120,000 years.

The BAS said that an iceberg known as A68 broke off from the Larsen C Ice Shelf in July 2017, revealing a section of seabed measuring 5,818 sq km -- nearly four times the size of London.

“It is an urgent mission. The ecosystem that’s likely been hidden beneath the ice for thou-sands of years may change as sunlight starts to alter the sur-face layers of the sea,” BAS said in a statement.

The international team left Stanley in the Falkland Islands and will spend three weeks on board the BAS research ship RRS James Clark Ross.

The BAS signalled the start of the mission in a tweet saying: “And they’re off!”, accompanied by a video from the ship leaving the Falklands. The South Atlantic islands, known in Spanish as Malvinas, are disputed between Argentina and Britain.

BAS marine biologist Katrin Linse, who is leading the mis-sion, said it was “a unique opportunity to study marine life as it responds to a dramatic environmental change”.

The team will explore the seabed by collecting seafloor

animals, microbes, plankton, sediments and water samples. They will also record marine mammals and birds who may have moved into the area.

Environmental group Green-peace last month visited the Ant-arctic seafloor in a submarine

and captured alien-like images of the previously unexplored underwater world.

The Greenpeace expedition was part of a campaign to turn a large section of the region into the world’s biggest ocean sanctuary.

Google Pay replaces Android Pay and Google Wallet

SAN FRANCISCO: In a bid to take on Apple Pay, Google has rolled out a new app called “Google Pay” that replaces its two earlier services -- Android Pay and Google Wallet.

Just like Android Pay, Google Pay can be used for paying for public transporta-tion in cities like London, Port-land and Kiev.

“We’re currently working on bringing Google Pay to all Google products, so whether you’re shopping on Chrome or with your Assistant, you’ll have a consistent checkout experience using the cards saved to your Google Account,” Gerardo Capiel, P r o d u c t M a n a g e m e n t Director, Consumer Payments at Google, said in a blog post.

Google also plans to inte-grate “Google Pay Send” into the app in the coming months.

“If you live in the US or the UK, you’ll be able to use it to send and request money within the next few months. In the meantime, the Wallet app is now called “Google Pay Send”,

the post added.With Google Pay, you can

check out in hundreds of apps without having to enter your payment information.

Google Pay’s new Home tab gives users the information they need like recent purchases, nearby stores, easy access to rewards and helpful tips.

Google Pay is available for download in Play Store for Android users.

“Like all Google products, Google Pay comes with strong security protections to safe-guard your account and per-sonal data from security threats,” Capiel said.

A file photo of Larsen C Ice Shelf released by British Antarctic Survey (BAS) taken from the British Antarctic Survey Twin Otter aircraft. The iceberg known as A68 calved off from the Larsen Ice Shelf in July 2017.

Google Product Management Director said that: Like all Google products, Google Pay comes with strong security protections to safeguard your account and personal data from security threats.

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Qatar Airways to go ahead Deputy PM and Foreign Minister ......edition is a Sheikh Ahmed bin Jassim bin special ... Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister H E Sheikh Mohamed bin

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