GAC receives fi rst truck operating under TIR

At least 25 die in illegalrefi nery blast in Nigeria

Lebanon’s talks with IMF likely to start in Nov

Art festival to openat Katara today

The General Authority of Customs (GAC) has received the first truck operating under the international road transport system (TIR) through the Abu Samra border port, in the context of activating the international land transport agreement signed between the Ministry of Transport, the General Authority of Customs and the International Road Transport Union (IRU). The TIR is the only international customs transit system that allows the goods to transit from a country of origin to a country of destination in sealed load compartments with customs control along the supply chain. Through this system, transport operators, shipping companies and commercial beneficiaries will enjoy several advantages, including the availability of faster, less expensive and safer trade corridors between Qatar and its trading partners in the region and the world. Page 8

At least 25 people, including some minors, were killed in an explosion and fire at an illegal oil refinery in Nigeria’s Rivers state on Friday, a local leader and a resident told Reuters yesterday. “The casualties involved are very high ... we are counting 25 bodies,” Ifeanyi Omano, a community leader, said, adding: “We aren’t certain of their identities yet.” The explosion took place in the early hours of Friday. Illegal refining is common in the oil-rich Delta region of Nigeria as impoverished locals tap pipelines to make fuel to sell for a profit.

Lebanon’s foreign minister said yesterday negotiations with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) were likely to start in November. Economy Minister Amin Salam had said on Friday, in an interview with Reuters, that the new government aimed to make progress towards starting full negotiations for an IMF deal by the end of this year or early next, but was not expecting funds to be dispersed before elections in March.

The third edition of Qatar International Art Festival (QIAF) opens at Katara Cultural Village today. The five-day festival, which runs until Oct 28, features eight events like painting and sculpture exhibition, Live Painting Symposium, Artistic Fashion Show, Master classes, Cultural Talks & Panel discussion, Qatar Cultural Tour and Cultural Dinner night. More than 300 artists from 65 countries will take part in the festival which offers them a chance to promote their work, interact with invited art collectors, art investors and potential buyers. (QNA)

GULF TIMES

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Football: FIFA Arab Cup last-minute ticket sales from today

SPORT | Page 1BUSINESS | Page 1

Commercial Bank Group nine-month net profi t jumps 84.7% to QR2.13bn

Over 260 Yemen rebelskilled in MaribThe Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen said yesterday its air strikes had killed more than 260 Houthi rebels in the past three days, but a rebel spokesman said the bombing campaign will not stop them. The deaths are the latest among roughly 1,600 rebels the coalition claims it has killed in strikes over the past two weeks around Marib, the internationally recognised government’s last bastion in oil-rich northern Yemen. The Houthis rarely comment on losses, and AFP could not independently verify the toll. The strikes are the most recent in a nearly seven-year coalition military campaign to support Yemen’s internationally recognised government against the Houthis. Page 8

HE the Prime Minister and Minister of Interior Sheikh Khalid bin Khalifa bin Abdulaziz al-Thani met yesterday with the visiting Turkish Minister of Culture and Tourism Mehmet Nuri Ersoy and the accompanying delegation. During the meeting, they reviewed co-operation relations between the two countries and ways to support them, especially in the cultural and tourism field. (QNA) Page 2

PM meets Turkish minister of culture

The Qatar Olympic Committee (QOC) was bestowed the National Olympic Committees’ (NOC) Breakthrough Award by the Association of National Olympic Committees (ANOC) yesterday. QOC President HE Sheikh Joaan bin Hamad al-Thani received the award at the ANOC Awards 2021 held on the sidelines of the ANOC General Assembly in Crete, Greece. The NOC Breakthrough Award is presented to the NOCs who won their first-ever Olympic medal or first-ever Olympic gold medal. Qatar clinched two gold medals at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, with team Qatar’s weightlifter Fares Ibrahim winning the gold medal at the 96kg event and Mutaz Barshim claiming the gold medal of the men’s high jump event. Moreover, Qatar’s beach volleyball duo won Arab’s first-ever Olympic medal in team sports in Tokyo. Sport Page 4

Qatar Olympic Committee winsNOC Breakthrough Award

Kahramaa makes bigprogress in installingsmart meters systemQNADoha

Qatar General Electricity & Wa-ter Corporation (Kahramaa) has made major strides in the

implementation of the smart me-ters system and the communication network for electricity meters in the country.

The project is a qualitative leap in the process of comprehensive digital transformation, in line with the objec-tives of Qatar National Vision 2030.

The project’s strategic plan aims to install 600,000 smart meters powered by the Internet of Things (IoT) technol-ogy, in co-operation with Vodafone, in terms of securing the network neces-sary for the system’s operation and in co-ordination with Siemens to provide the project with an infrastructure that includes the latest technologies, de-vices and advanced software used to connect and integrate intelligent con-trol systems with the basic system for

billing, monitoring and instant reading from a distance throughout Qatar.

The corporation has achieved sever-al important and advanced steps in the process of completing this integrated project, as the rate of installing smart meters has reached 42% so far, and the completion rate will reach 49% by 2021-end. To Page 8

Children to be taughtQatari culture, values

QNADoha

The Ministry of Education and Higher Education, through the Private Education Aff airs Sec-

tor, has launched a project to enhance the national identity and Qatari cul-ture in private schools and kinder-gartens under the slogan “My Values Draw My Identity” in academic 2021-2022.

Assistant Undersecretary for Pri-vate Education Aff airs Omar Ab-dulaziz al-Naama said that the im-plementation of the project comes within the ministry’s strategic plan for 2018-2022 in the axis of citizen-ship and values, noting that the stra-tegic objectives of this axis are to in-crease the programmes and activities that enhance Qatari values, heritage and identity, and the respect for other peoples and cultures in all stages of

private education, as well as to raise the level of awareness and interest among students’ parents about the values and heritage of Qatari society.

Al-Naama indicated that private schools and kindergartens implement various activities and programmes in this aspect, stressing that the project places the activities within an inte-grated educational framework.

He pointed out that the last aca-demic year the general guidelines for school activities and trips in private schools and kindergartens were is-sued, explaining that these activities (mandatory and optional) achieve the objectives of the ministry’s strategy, especially those related to promoting the values of citizenship and pride in local culture, as well as the respect of other peoples and cultures.

Director of the Private Schools Af-fairs Department Rashid Ahmed al-Ameri said in a circular sent to all pri-vate schools and kindergartens that

the programme comes in light of the ministry’s keenness on developing patriotism among students, focusing on the Arabic language and the adher-ence to Islamic values, and preserving cultural and national heritage.

He also underlined that the project aims to enhance the national iden-tity through educational integration among members of the educational community, and instil it by serious means to build role models who are proud of their identity, values and culture.

“My Values Draw My Identity” project targets students, teachers, school leadership, supervisors and parents, and is based on strengthen-ing the spirit of belonging and loy-alty to preserve the principles and authentic values of Qatar, and en-lightening the school community groups about the importance of the Arabic language as an identity for in-dividuals of the Qatari society.

Private schools and kindergartens to carry out various activities in implementation of education ministry’s ‘My Values Draw My Identity’ project

Vaccines for kids between 5-11likely in November: FauciReuters Washington

Vaccines for kids between the ages of 5 and 11 will likely be available in the fi rst half of November, top US infectious disease ex-

pert Anthony Fauci said yesterday, predicting a timetable that could see many kids getting fully vaccinated before the end of the year.

“If all goes well, and we get the regulatory ap-proval and the recommendation from the CDC, it’s entirely possible if not very likely that vac-cines will be available for children from 5-11 within the fi rst week or two of November,” Fauci said in an interview with ABC’s This Week.

US Food and Drug Administration offi cials are reviewing the Pfi zer/BioNTech application seeking authorisation of its 2-dose vaccine for

younger children, with its panel of outside ad-visers scheduled to weigh in on October 26.

The FDA typically follows the advice of its panel but is not required to do so.

Advisers to the US Centers for Disease Con-trol and Prevention (CDC) will weigh in on rec-ommendations for the vaccine at a meeting on November 2 and November 3, helping to inform a fi nal decision by its director. CDC Director Ro-chelle Walensky, speaking at Fox News , also said the agency wanted to act swiftly.

“After they (FDA) are able to review all the sci-ence and conduct the regulatory action and the CDC will meet, and if all of that goes smoothly... we will act quickly,” she said.

“We know how many parents are interested in getting their children between 5 and 11 vacci-nated and we intend to act as quickly as we can,” she added.

The picture shows a view of carvings discovered on the walls of an ancient irrigation canal by a team of Kurdish and Italian archaeologists near Faydeh in the Nineveh area of northern Iraq. Italian and Kurdish archaeologists announced the discovery of remains dating from the time of the Assyrian kings Sargon II and his son Sennacherib, including the 2,700-year-old carvings.

Ancient wall carvings discovered in Iraq

HE the Prime Minister and Minister of Interior Sheikh Khalid bin Khalifa bin Abdulaziz al-Thani met yesterday with the visiting Korean Minister of Trade, Industry and Energy Moon Sung-wook, and the accompanying delegation. During the meeting, they reviewed co-operation ties and ways to develop and strengthen them in various fields, in addition to discussing issues of common interest. (QNA)

HE the Minister of State for Foreign Aff airs Sultan bin Saad al-Muraikhi met yesterday with Egyptian ambassador to Qatar Amr Kamal El-Din El-Sherbiny. During the meeting, bilateral relations were reviewed. (QNA)

His Highness the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani has received a written message from Paraguay President Mario Abdo Benitez, on bilateral relations and ways to support and develop them. HE the Prime Minister and Minister of Interior Sheikh Khalid bin Khalifa bin Abdulaziz al-Thani received the message during his meeting yesterday with Paraguay Minister of Industry and Commerce Luis Alberto Castiglioni and the accompanying delegation. During the meeting, they reviewed the existing relations between the two countries and aspects of development in various fields, especially in trade and investment exchange, in addition to some issues of mutual interest. (QNA)

PM meets Korean minister

Al-Muraikhi meets Egyptian envoy

Amir gets message from Paraguay president

HE the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Aff airs Sheikh Mohamed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani met yesterday with the visiting Turkish Minister of Culture and Tourism Mehmet Nuri Ersoy. During the meeting, they reviewed bilateral relations and ways to develop them in various fields. (QNA)

HE the Minister of Culture Sheikh Abdulrahman bin Hamad bin Jassim bin Hamad al-Thani met yesterday with the visiting Turkish Minister of Culture and Tourism Mehmet Nuri Ersoy and his accompanying delegation. The meeting reviewed cultural co-operation between the two countries and ways to develop it. (QNA)

Paraguay’s Speaker of Parliament and President of Congress Oscar Salomon met with the Acting Charge d’Aff aires at the Qatari embassy in Asuncion Saeed bin Hamad al-Marri. During the meeting, bilateral relations were reviewed. (QNA)

FM meets Turkish minister

Culture minister meets Turkish counterpart

Paraguay Speaker meets Qatari diplomat

QNL receives book donation from TurkeyBy Joseph VargheseStaff Reporter

Qatar National Library (QNL) received a book donation from the Na-

tion’s Library of the Presiden-cy, Turkey yesterday at a spe-cial event held at the library.

HE Dr Hamad bin Abdulaziz al-Kawari, Minister of State and President of QNL, wel-comed the Turkish delegation led by Mehmet Nuri Ersoy, Minister of Culture and Tour-ism.

Other members of the Turk-ish delegation included M Mustafa Goksu, ambassador of Turkey; Batuhan Mumcu, chief of cabinet; Selim Terzi, adviser to the minister; Gokhan Yazgi, director-general; Nese Cildik, adviser to the minister; Burcu Kuyucu, fi rst secretary; Fatih Gurkan, chief of protocol and Kadir Serdar Zengin, protocol offi cer.

The delegation also included a number of businessmen.

Speaking to Gulf Times, HE al-Kawari said: “Turkey is an important partner for Qatar economically, politically and culturally. The minister has come with a great collection of books as a gift to Qatar Na-tional Library.

The books are in diff erent languages including Arabic, Turkish and English. Moreover the library is an important stop for every visitor to the coun-try.”

HE al-Kawari said that QNL has received book collections from embassies of several countries.

“During the visit of the Turkish delegation, we dis-cussed many topics to enhance

the relationship with our li-brary and Turkish libraries in general. This Wednesday, we are going to sign an agreement between QNL and Uma Library in Ankara,” said the QNL presi-dent.

“Uma Library is one of the newest libraries and a very important one which opened a few years ago. The library is planning to open its doors for other libraries around the

world for collaboration and our agreement signing will be followed by a visit to the Turkish library soon.”

The Turkish minister highlighted the histori-cal relations between Qatar and Turkey.

“We want to provide ad-ditional value through the establishment of these events and collaborations,” he added.

HE Dr Hamad bin Abdulaziz al-Kawari with the Turkish delegation and QNL off icials.

His Highness the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, His Highness the Deputy Amir Sheikh Abdul-lah bin Hamad al-Thani and HE the Prime Minister and Minister of Interior Sheikh Khalid bin Khalifa bin Abdulaziz al-Thani sent yesterday cables of congratulations to Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema on the anniversary of his country’s Independence Day. (QNA)

Amir congratulates Zambian president

Mada Centre approves 11 ATMs for access by people with disabilities, elderlyQNADoha

Qatar Assistive Technol-ogy Centre (Mada), in partnership with the

Qatar Central Bank, has ap-proved 11 ATMs for various banks in the country as usable devices for people with dis-abilities and the elderly.

The approved ATMs pro-vide a screen reader that allows blind people to access all serv-ices independently and enables them to read currencies and ar-range and collect cash denomi-nations, taking into account screen dimming for privacy of the reader, and providing a screen with colours with great contrast that enables visually impaired and elderly people to access content easily.

This accreditation comes within the framework of the strategic partnership between Mada Centre and QCB, as all identifi ed machines were au-dited and 11 machines passed the evaluation conducted by the representatives of the bank and the digital access team at Mada Centre.

This accreditation is an im-portant step towards laying the foundation for the independ-ent living of people with dis-abilities, integrating them into the digital society, and ensur-ing their privacy, especially in banking transactions.

It is also a result of the eff orts made by Mada Centre, which consisted in holding train-ing workshops for a number of QCB employees and various banks to raise awareness about the concept of access, as well as consultative and audit ses-sions with the participation of people with disabilities to en-sure the readiness of ATMs for accreditation, and to fi nd out their opinions and the chal-lenges they face in complet-ing their banking transactions, such as withdrawals and de-posits, and so on.

This accreditation takes into account all the criteria that help people with disabili-ties and achieves safe banking transactions for them, based on the ADA and WCAG 2.1 stand-ards that combine the digital accessibility of the ATM and its location with appropriate measurements for all segments of society, especially people with mobility disabilities.

After it is confi rmed that the accessibility standards are applied to the ATM, the ac-creditation logo is placed by Mada Centre to guide people with disabilities about the ma-chine’s accessibility.

On this occasion, CEO of Mada Centre Maha al-Man-souri emphasised the right of people with disabilities to ac-cess all information, applica-tions, electronic services, and digital content on the same ba-

sis as others, pointing out the centre’s keenness to empower people with disabilities and the elderly, and to integrate them fully into society through in-formation technology and dig-ital access, as well as raising the percentage of digital access to various digital platforms to the highest possible degree.

Al-Mansouri highly valued the partnership with QCB and their interest in creating ATMs to facilitate access for people with disabilities and to help them perform their banking transactions with suffi cient privacy.

In 2019, a memorandum of understanding was signed be-tween Mada and QCB during the Qatar Information Tech-nology Conference and Ex-hibition (Qitcom) to build a partnership for co-operation and co-ordination between the two parties to increase the rate of adoption and implementa-tion of digital access policies, to ensure improved digital ac-cess for people with disabilities to all digital platforms affi liated to QCB.

The launch of the new ver-sion of the “Qatari Currency Reader” application was one of the most prominent stra-tegic achievements between Mada and QCB, which contrib-utes to a qualitative leap in the lives of people with visual im-pairments and the elderly, for banking transactions.

QATAR

Gulf Times Monday, October 25, 20212

QATAR3Gulf Times

Monday, October 25, 2021

HE the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Aff airs Sheikh Mohamed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani met yesterday with the visiting Prime Minister of Bosnia and Herzegovina Fadil Novalic and Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Dr Bisera Turkovic. During the meeting, they reviewed the distinguished bilateral relations and ways to develop them in various fields. (QNA)

FM meets Bosnian PM

HE the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Aff airs Sheikh Mohamed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani met yesterday with Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Achim Steiner, who is currently visiting the country. During the meeting, they reviewed co-operation ties between Qatar and UNDP. The meeting witnessed the signing of a core contribution agreement to support UNDP’s regular resources for 2021-2022 between Qatar represented by QFFD and UNDP. (QNA)

Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel received the credentials of Jamal Nasser al-Bader as Qatar’s ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary in Havana. The ambassador conveyed His Highness the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani’s wishes of health and happiness to the Cuban president, and to the government and people of Cuba further progress and prosperity. The president entrusted the ambassador to convey his wishes of health and happiness to His Highness the Amir, and to Qatar further development and prosperity. (QNA)

HE the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Aff airs Sheikh Mohamed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani met yesterday with the visiting Secretary-General of the International Organisation of La Francophonie (OIF) Louise Mushikiwabo. During the meeting, they reviewed co-operation ties between Qatar and the OIF and discussed issues of common interest. (QNA)

Qatar to support UNDP resources

Cuban president receives credentials of Qatar’s envoy

FM meets OIF secretary-general

Ooredoo inaugurates three new retail outlets

Ooredoo has simultane-ously launched three new Ooredoo Express

outlets across Doha. The new shops were opened at Gulf Mall, Asia Town Mall and Doha Jadeed – Metro.

Senior executives from Oore-doo recently spent time visiting the new Express shop locations to check out the services on of-fer, a statement said.

While in recent months there has been a greater shift towards the use of the Ooredoo eShop and in-app purchases, some customers continue to prefer face-to-face transactions, it was explained.

The three new outlets im-prove provision of physical re-tail coverage, further extending customer choice.

The new shops will also en-able customers to access all standard Ooredoo services and

a team of Ooredoo’s advisers will be waiting to help them with all their telecommunica-tions needs.

Khalid al-Hamadi, Senior Director Consumer Sales at

Ooredoo – said: “Ooredoo is delighted to see the opening of these venues, which embody in concrete and glass our contin-uing commitment to customer service. With opportunities

to meet the consumer directly returning and growing, in a safe retail ecosystem, we hope these new stores allow for con-tinuing engagement and the further fulfi lment of the pub-

lic’s 5G aspirations. The pres-ence of so many senior Oore-doo fi gures at the inauguration of each shop speaks volumes of our devotion to this enter-prise.”

People are key to making green cities work: QGBCThe message that sustain-

ability is for everyone has been emphasised to

the community of Qatar at the opening of Qatar Sustainability Week 2021 in Msheireb Down-town Doha which hosts 300 events.

Qatar Sustainability Week, an initiative of Qatar Green Build-ing Council (QGBC) – a member of Qatar Foundation (QF) – is now in its sixth year. The event, which opened on Saturday, aims to encourage people to live more sustainable lives and create a movement of change by rais-ing awareness of the impact of climate change, the eff ects of which are being seen all over the world.

Speaking at the opening, Meshal al-Shamari, director, QGBC, said that with more than 7bn people on this planet – a fi g-ure which is expected to top 9bn in 30 years, when around 75% of the world’s population will be living in cities – our behaviour matters.

“They will consume energy, they will consume water, they will produce waste, and they will have a direct impact on the environment,” he said. “If you have a very sustainable building or a very sustainable city, with-out having the right behaviours from the users and consumers, you will achieve nothing.”

Throughout the year, QGBC’s awareness programmes – which

include conferences and techni-cal initiatives, for academia and the hospitality and well-being industries – also focus on rais-ing awareness within the com-munity.

“All these programmes sup-port very important segments of the industry,” al-Shamari said. “But the most important part is awareness – our knowledge of tools and techniques, and our contribution towards the envi-ronment.”

Jason Twill, director of the World Cup Master Programme at QF, delivered a talk titled,

Moving beyond Sustainability, highlighting how people should be shifting past the concept of sustainability, and moving to-wards restorative and regenera-tive approaches.

Speaking about the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022, he said: “We have the world’s largest event coming here next year, and we’ve had an incredible 11 years of transformation happening to get ready for this event. The Supreme Committee for De-livery & Legacy has embraced sustainability at the core of this tournament, and it will be the most sustainable World Cup in history.“Sport is a powerful mechanism – Qatar is host-ing the entire world here next year, and showcasing its values to the world: its heritage, its culture, the progressive vision for the country. It’s an incred-ible platform for change, not just an event to watch football matches.”

QC appeals for urgent winter aid for internally displaced Syrians, Iraqis and refugees

As the predictions indi-cate that the 2021-2022 winter season will be

diffi cult for the Syrian and Iraqi internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugees, especially due to the repercussions of the Covid-19 pandemic, support from donors, companies, and philanthropists is more urgent-ly needed, Qatar Charity (QC) said yesterday.

The early support will con-tribute to avoiding many risks facing them, especially in times of severe cold, heavy rains and snowfall, which are expected within the next three months, a QC statement explained.

“There are over 10mn Syr-ian and Iraqi IDPs and refugees in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt. UNHCR estimates that 3.3mn people are in need of critical assistance to help them prepare for and cope during the forthcoming winter,” according to UNHCR Regional Winteri-sation Assistance Plan 2021-2022: Syria and Iraq Situations.

“This will be the 11th consec-utive winter in displacement for some, and many continue to face increased hardships due to the economic situation and

the Covid-19 pandemic.”“UNHCR requires $193.4mn

to provide life-saving winteri-sation assistance for people in need before the onset of the harsh and challenging winter season. As of August 2021, and thanks to timely and gener-ous contributions from do-nors, these requirements are 56% funded, leaving a gap of $84.2mn,” said the report.

The displaced and refugees

live in substandard accommo-dations and are unable to af-ford the additional costs of fuel and warm clothes, and they, therefore, have to make very challenging decisions like cut-ting back on spending on basic necessities like food and medi-cines.

The worsening situation of the displaced and refugees requires everyone to support them by delivering quick aid to

them and meeting their basic needs through winter cam-paigns, which are launched by humanitarian organisations to protect these people from any imminent dangers.

The winter needs of the refu-gees, who often fl ee home with just the clothes they wear, in-clude adequate shelters, tents, warm clothes, blankets, fuel, food, medicines, and medical supplies.

The QC statement also re-ferred to the 2018-winter trag-edy in which six members of a Syrian refugee family froze to death in the snow on the Leba-nese border. Besides, another 16 displaced Syrians froze to death in the same year while trying to enter Lebanon.

“This painful memory au-tomatically leads to the im-portance of early reminders of meeting the basic needs of the displaced and refugees global-ly, who have to face extremely cold months in winter, due to temperatures dropping be-low zero, as well as storms and heavy rains that engulf their tents and damage their modest homes and camps,” the state-ment added.

The winter needs of the refugees, who often flee home with just the clothes they wear, include adequate shelters, tents, warm clothes, blankets, fuel, food, medicines, and medical supplies.

QRCS attends medical conference at IUGQNADoha

The Qatar Red Crescent Society (QRCS) partici-pated in the 9th Medical

Conference of the Faculty of Medicine at the Islamic Uni-versity of Gaza (IUG), entitled “Conference on Medical Edu-cation in Palestine — A Holistic Approach.”

In a working paper presented at one of the conference ses-sions, head of QRCS’ represen-tation offi ce in Gaza Dr Akram Nassar reviewed the results of the specialised medical grants programme for Palestinian doctors, which has been sup-ported by the Qatari Red Cres-cent since 2003.

He explained that the QRCS

adopts this programme for its contribution to building the ca-pabilities of local medical staff , improving the quality of health services provided to patients, in addition to reducing the need to treat patients outside the Gaza Strip, by providing qual-ity medical services inside the Strip.

He noted that the programme benefi ted 81 doctors from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank who received their studies in Qatar, while 31 doctors benefi t-ed from their studies in Jordan, with 28 of them having already returned to work in the hospi-tals of the Strip, after complet-ing their specialised training.

The conference touched on the medical successes achieved by the doctors who benefi t-ed from the programme, and

pointed out that the QRCS con-tinues to implement its projects and health interventions that will alleviate the diffi cult con-ditions experienced by resi-dents of Gaza, and ensure their access to high-quality health services.

The specialised medical grants programme for Pales-tinian doctors includes stud-

ies in about 20 medical and surgical disciplines, focusing on the most needy speciali-ties in beneficiary areas with shortages of hospitals under the Palestinian Ministry of Health.The programme quali-fies its graduates to obtain the accreditation of the Arab Board for Health Specialisa-tions (ABHS).

Some of the participants in the medical conference.

QNB extends support to Qatar Sustainability WeekQNB Group, the largest financial institution in the Middle East and Africa, has announced its support as a strategic partner for the Qatar Green Building Council’s sixth edition of Qatar Sustainability Week (QSW), taking place until October 30.The support to this event emphasises the group’s continuous eff orts towards supporting the initiatives of its sustainability agenda, along with raising awareness in the community and showcasing the progress that Qatar has made in the areas of sustainability.The bank’s role as strategic partner, and its continuous support towards national and community initiatives, is a core part of QNB’s sustainability approach and framework.The continued action and focus on sustainability initiatives have enabled the group’s lead in regional rankings, where it received an “AA” ESG

(environment social and governance) rating from MSCI.Additionally, the group was recognised by the Climate Bonds Initiative (CBI) as a “Green Pioneer in Qatar”, and has received the Global Finance Sustainable Finance Awards for “Outstanding Sustainable Financing in Emerging Markets” and “Outstanding Leadership in Green Bonds”.The QSW serves as a unique platform to promote Qatar’s sustainability vision as well as community engagement with relevant stakeholders under an overarching umbrella to achieve the state’s sustainable development goals.QNB Group, currently ranked as the most valuable bank brand in the Middle East and Africa, is the off icial Middle East and Africa supporter of the 2022 FIFA World Cup and the off icial Qatari bank of the FIFA Club World Cup Qatar 2020.

Meshal al-Shamari speaking at the event.

Jason Twill

QATARGulf Times Monday, October 25, 20214

The Central Municipal Council (CMC) chairman Mohamed bin Hammoud al-Shafi and vice-chairman Mohamed bin Hamad al-Attan honoured long serving member Sheikha bint Yousef al-Jufairi, currently nominated to the Shura Council.

CMC honours Sheikha al-Jufairi Safe work environment fi rst step to better mental health: QF workshopPrioritising and speaking openly about mental health is

all the more important, particularly in the aftermath of the global pandemic of Covid-19, noted a psycho-

logical therapist at a forum organised by World Innovation Summit for Health (WISH), Qatar Foundation’s (QF) global health initiative.

Nimo Omer, a psychological therapist at the Doha-based The International Medical Centre (IMC) said: “Creating an environment where people feel safe to do so is pivotal be-cause when we do, it is easier to speak about concerns with-out fear, which in turn increases access to support. This is supported by strong evidence that clearly shows workplaces with higher levels of mental well-being are more productive - by as much as 12%.”

Omer was speaking at the fi rst of three workshops that comprise a new series on ‘Cultivating Emotional Wellness’, developed specifi cally for all QF staff . The series is designed to raise awareness and promote psychological well-being, build resilience, and improve quality of life both in and out of the workplace.

The initial session focused on explaining and un-derstanding the concept of emotional hygiene: being mindful of one’s psychological health and adopting simple daily habits to monitor and address psychologi-cal wounds.

Omer stressed the importance of adopting good emo-tional hygiene practices and said “we truly fl ourish psycho-logically once we understand and manage uncomfortable emotions using compassion, openness, and curiosity.”

The workshop discussed many ways of cultivating emotion-al and psychological resilience to strengthen emotional agility.

“Acknowledging your inner experiences and connecting with your body in the moment is key when going through a diffi cult time. Just taking three minutes to do a deep breath-ing exercise can help to ground us so we can deal with a stressful situation, without letting negative emotions build up,” noted Omer.

Omer has extensive experience in treating trauma and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. She also works with indi-viduals and couples with other emotional and behavioural challenges including depression, anxiety, phobias and eat-ing disorders.

Nimo Omer

Difi shares QF success in implementing policies to empower women

Global evidence confi rms that empowering women and improving the values of family-work balance are closely linked, according to a Qatar Foundation (QF)

expert on family policy who added that devising family-friendly policies and programmes positively aff ects the life expectancy of women, their economic status, mental health, well-being, and the career prospects available to them.

Dr Sharifa Noaman al-Emadi, executive director at Doha International Family Institute (Difi ), demonstrated at an in-ternational panel discussion that applying policies support-ive of the family enhance female empowerment at the eco-nomic, social and health levels, as well as strengthens their presence in the labour market system.

“At Difi we are aware that women’s empowerment starts from within the family, and that the family, in fact, supports women’s advocacy,” said al-Emadi. “Therefore, we dedicate our eff orts to research that advocates for devising family-friendly policies, which support the interest and welfare of the family in general, and women in particular.

“We are in the process of completing a study on do-mestic violence, which will produce a proposal for a draft law on domestic violence, and a tool to measure it in Qatar.”

The virtual session was organised by Southern Method-ist University Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences, while the panel discussion was moderated by Robert Jordan, former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia.

The main speaker in the panel, al-Emadi stressed that Qatar provided an exemplary model in family well-being.

Among Arab countries, Qatar has the highest rate of fe-male participation in the labour force, standing at 57%, including in the judiciary, public prosecution and diplo-matic corps where women judges represent 13% of the total number of Qatari judges, 30% of leading and mid-level cad-res in the Supreme Judicial Council, and 42% in administra-tive judicial jobs.

Dr al-Emadi also shone a spotlight on QF’s eff orts to bring about change in family-work balance in Qatar.

Several policies supporting family welfare and women’s empowerment have been introduced, such as adopting the internationally acclaimed 98 days of maternity leave, intro-ducing fi ve days of paternity leave and putting in place fl ex-ible work arrangements.

Dr al-Emadi also highlighted the role of the Qatari Minis-ter of Public Health as a female leader, who led the national eff orts to make Qatar ranked # 15 internationally and 1st at the Arab level in Covid-19 response.

Sultana Afdhal, CEO, WISH, commented: “Whilst we celebrate that the prioritisation of mental health is continu-ing to gain global recognition, we’ve all seen the toll that the events of the last couple of years have taken on our collec-tive well-being.

“At WISH, we have a strong focus on mental health re-search, and we wanted to extend this to make a positive im-pact on the wider QF team. As a community, we have a spe-cifi c set of challenges and experiences, and so we wanted to provide a tailored programme that sought to address these for the benefi t of our colleagues, and therefore our work-place.”

Taking place over the coming weeks, the second work-shop will focus on building awareness and understanding of challenges faced by parents or individuals in a caring role. The third will look at how to build emotional and psycho-logical well-being, manage stress and anxiety, support col-leagues and build stronger relationships at work.

Creating an environment where people feel safe to do so is pivotal because when we do, it is easier to speak about concerns without fear, which in turn increases access to support

“At Difi we are aware that women’s empowerment starts from within the family, and that the family, in fact, supports women’s advocacy”

QATAR5Gulf Times

Monday, October 25, 2021

Submission deadline for Qatar Tourism’s ‘Iconic Limousine Design’ competition to close soon

Qatar Tourism in partnership with Mowasalat (Karwa) has announced the impending closure of submissions for its “Iconic Limousine Design” competition. Participants still have the chance to submit up to two unique designs to adorn the new limou-sines until October 28.Part of Qatar Tourism’s Service Excellence pro-gramme, the Iconic Limousine Design contest invites citizens and residents of Qatar who are 18 years of age or older, to submit designs that reflect Qatar’s: culture and heritage, progressive future, or sustainability and eco-friendly vision. Participants can view details at www.iconiclimou-sinedesign.qa, with design specifications. Please note that designs should cover the entire vehicle,

making the new limousines easily identifiable when on the street. A panel at Qatar Tourism will shortlist designs, which will be put to a public vote. This will occur at the same time as a jury panel assesses the designs, with winning designs to be announced once both voting cycles end.Through this contest, Qatar’s citizenry and residents will share their take on the country’s cultural identity and heritage, helping create a novel tourist experience through vehicles that reflect Qatar through the eyes of its people.This first-of-its-kind contest is part of Qatar Tourism’s Service Excellence programme, which works with stakeholders across sectors to enhance the visitor experience at every touch-point along their journey.

QRI approach leads to signifi cant cut in wait times at clinicsQNADoha

Through a collaborative approach delivered by clinical and administra-

tive teams at Hamad Medical Corporation’s Qatar Rehabilita-tion Institute (QRI), wait times for a range of outpatient clinics have been signifi cantly reduced at the specialist rehabilitation facility.

Evidence show longer wait times can not only aff ect patient care and patients willingness to seek healthcare services but also their experience and satisfaction.

Since January 2020, wait times have fallen at the QRI’s Paediat-ric Speech Therapy Clinic, Neuro and Geriatric Physical Therapy Clinic, Pediatric Rehab Feed-ing and Swallowing Clinic, as well as the Prosthetic Unit, giv-ing patients faster access to the specialist rehabilitation services they require.

The medical director of the QRI and Rumailah Hospital, Dr Hanadi al-Hamad, explained the importance of reducing wait times in improving patient care and experience. “Since the opening of the QRI in 2016, we have seen an increasing number of patients year-on-year. Our dedicated therapy teams provide

a wide range of specialist reha-bilitation services within our state-of-the-art facility. En-suring patients are seen quickly, without delay, is crucial to en-suring good patient outcomes. By addressing the needs of our patients early on, our therapy teams are able to begin treating their conditions early, before they develop into more complex conditions.”

Between January 2020 and July 2021, outpatient wait times have fallen by 76% at the Pediatric Speech Therapy Clinic; 75% at the Neuro and Geriatric Physi-cal Therapy; 65% at the Pediatric Rehab Feeding and Swallowing Clinic; and 39% at the Prosthetic Unit.

“A number of key interven-tions have been crucial in reduc-ing wait times, including work-ing with our patients to decrease the number of missed booked appointments, thereby maxim-ising appointment utilisation; increasing the number of new

patients on therapists schedules; improving the fl ow process for patients from initial assessment through to treatment interven-tion and follow up; and estab-lishing eff ective and convenient virtual clinics for eligible pa-tients,” said Dr al-Hamad.

Eman Yousef al-Mulla, chief of the Speech Therapy Depart-ment at Hamad Medical Corpo-ration, explained the importance of timely treatment for children with speech developmental im-pairments.

“If a child has a speech im-pediment they are less likely to be able to communicate well with others and this can aff ect their overall development, including self-esteem and independence. The earlier we can assess a child and tailor the treatment to their needs, the better their chance of improvement and recovery. Therefore this initiative has been excellent for the children and their families who seek our help,” she added. (QNA)

Dr Hanadi al-Hamad

PHCC celebrates International Infection Prevention WeekThe Primary Health Care

Corporation (PHCC) cel-ebrated the Internation-

al Infection Prevention Week (IIPW), which highlighted sci-entifi cally based measures to prevent infection. The PHCC organised various informative events and activities like aware-

ness lectures on Covid-19 and its prevention, seasonal infl uenza vaccinations, hand hygiene, and other topics for health provid-ers in the healthcare centres, through the corporation’s offi cial e-platforms, in Arabic and Eng-lish.

Infection control co-ordinator

at PHCC’s Communicable Dis-ease and Infection Prevention Department, Dr Ahmad Hashem, said the Covid-19 pandemic showed the vital role of infection prevention and control practi-tioners in fi ghting the pandemic.

He stressed that those in charge of infection control must

continue to work diligently to prevent healthcare-associated infections, as well as outbreaks of measles, infl uenza, and other daily challenges to prevent the spread of communicable diseases among members of the commu-nity.

Launched in 1986, the IIPW is

celebrated from October 17 to 23. This year’s theme is “Make Your Intention Infection Prevention.”

The activities and events of the week come as a reminder and aim to focus on the importance of infection prevention and control as well as its role in the health and safety of pa-tients and healthcare workers.

In co-operation with PHCC and Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC), the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) organised the Qatar Infection Control Week of 2021 under the slogan “Breaking the Infection Chain.”

Qatar Infection Control Week is a national initiative launched

by the MoPH through its De-partment of Strategic Planning and Performance, as part of the International Infection Preven-tion Week, to raise awareness and spread infection control concepts among all healthcare providers as well as the public in Qatar. (QNA)

WCM-Q webinar addresses chronic heart failure management

The guidelines for managing pa-tients with chronic heart failure were discussed at the latest in-

stalment of Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar’s (WCM-Q) cardiology webinar series.

The series, titled ‘What Does the Non-Cardiologist Need to Know About Cardiology?’ is aimed at phy-sicians, particularly those in primary care roles, who treat patients with common cardiac conditions in their clinics but who are not specialist car-diology consultants themselves.

The series is presented by Dr Islam Elgendy, assistant professor of medi-cine at WCM-Q, an interventional cardiologist and outcomes researcher.

Outlining the scope of the problem, Dr Elgendy noted that more than 6mn people in the US and more than 23mn worldwide have heart failure. There are approximately 1mn hospitalisations each year in the US for heart failure and the risk increases with age, he said.

Risk factors for heart failure are coronary heart disease, cigarette smoking, hypertension, low physical activity, being male, low educational attainment, being overweight, diabe-tes, and valvular heart disease, in that order.

Participants who joined the we-binar learned how to summarise the guidelines for management of a range of common cardiac conditions in the outpatient setting. They also learned the indications of a number of common cardiac medications commonly prescribed by primary care physicians.

In addition, the webinar featured a precis of the diagnosis and classi-fication of different stages of heart failure and how to treat them. Dr Elgendy then guided the partici-pants through a detailed case study of a 68-year-old man with heart failure before concluding the ses-sion by taking questions from the audience.

The event was accredited locally by the Ministry of Public Health’s De-partment of Healthcare Professions – Accreditation Section and interna-tionally by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education.

Dr Islam Elgendy.

Total Covid recoveries reach 236,906

The Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) yesterday reported 63 new confi rmed cases of

Covid-19 among the community and 19 among travellers.

The MoPH recorded 66 recov-eries from the virus during the past 24 hours, bringing the total number of recovered cases in Qatar to 236,906.

The ministry also recorded the death of a 41-year-old patient who had chronic diseases and received the necessary medical care.

As per the National Covid-19 Vaccination Programme Data: 4,811,693 Covid-19 vaccine

doses have been administered since the start of the programme. 4,400 Covid-19 vaccine doses

have been administered in the past 24 hours. 83.7% of the total population

are now fully vaccinated with two doses.

In recent weeks the combined impact of Covid-19 restrictions and increasing vaccination rates, and the overwhelming support of the community, has resulted in a consistent reduction in the number of new daily infections in the coun-try.

6 Gulf TimesMonday, October 25, 2021

QATAR

Katara holds dazzling Korean art show

Luxury hospitality segment witnessing huge local demand

Katara — the Cultural Village Foundation organised, in co-oper-ation with the South Korean embassy in Qatar, an artistic show titled ‘The Dynamic of Korea’.

At the Katara Opera House, an audience of diff erent nationalities attended the show taking precautionary Covid measures.

Korean ambassador Lee Joon Ho delivered a speech at the opening of the ceremony, praising the strong relations between Qatar and Korea.

He hailed the co-operation with Katara for displaying the rich and diverse Korean culture through various artistic and cultural activities and events.

The show featured a number of amazing exhibition paintings that combined music with performances, as well as taekwondo show, which are part of Korea’s cultural and folklore heritage, and are con-sidered one of Korea’s national sports.

Katara has organised several cultural and artistic events in co-op-eration with the Korean embassy on a number of occasions, including artistic performances and concerts, the Korean Cultural Week and an evening of the wonderful voices of Korea presented by the famous Ko-rean fusion Band Queen and others. (QNA)

By Joey AguilarStaff Reporter

Qatar’s luxury hospitality indus-try witnessed a huge local demand amid the Covid-19 pandemic as

most guests sought curated experiences and unique off erings, Ritz-Carlton, Doha general manager Carlo Javakhia has said.

“In luxury hospitality, the negative im-pact was only for the few months when travel wasn’t allowed for international markets. However, the local market de-mand was very strong, very high, this al-lowed us to run on weekends (and) we were sold out,” he told a recent media briefi ng at the hotel’s Sel & Miel restaurant to mark the hotel’s 20th anniversary on October 27.

The global health crisis, Javakhia said, created a positive impact “in the way peo-ple became more conscious when it comes to health and safety measures”.

“They (guests) are now more brand con-scious than they would be in the past be-cause they trust certain brands and they trust certain companies and they feel more secured, safer,” he stressed, adding that people are willing to pay higher rates for luxury than in the past since not every hotel could off er such product.

A Katara Hospitality-owned property, Ritz-Carlton, Doha completed the renova-tion of its Grand Amiri suites in 2020. The hotel has 374 rooms, including 42 Club-level rooms and 61 suites (four of them named as Grand Amiri suites), of the luxury hotel fuse contemporary styling with clas-sic Arabic and European design.

Three distinctive restaurants compile the hotel’s culinary journey; The French restau-rant Sel & Miel, the American Steakhouse STK Doha, and the Pan Asian restaurant B-Lounge.

“The products are launched in such a way that they can cater to the international

The Ministry of Municipality General Cleanliness Department carried out all the cleaning works at Al Thumama Stadium from October 18 to 22 in connection with the Amir Cup finals. This included the cleaning and sweeping of the roads leading to the stadium entry gates, the outer and internal parking lots and the roads to the metro stations that serve the stadium. Besides, a complete team was dedicated to manage the operations of cleaning for finals. Accordingly, around 97 tonnes of trash were removed and the various facilities of the stadium cleaned through the night after the final match.

Al Thumama Stadium cleaning

Korean ambassador Lee Joon Ho speaking at the opening ceremony.

Ritz-Carlton, Doha general manager Carlo Javakhia. PICTURE: Shaji Kayamkulam

Ritz-Carlton, Doha completed the renovation of its Grand Amiri suites in 2020.

traveller and can meet the local client as well,” Ja-vakhia said. He pointed out that Covid-19 aff ected more the middle class and entry-level products than the luxury as demand grew for “more person-alised, more private experiences than it was in the past”.

Javakhia said the hotel also brought curated men-us from the lounge to guests’ suites as people be-came extra conscious to dine at restaurants.

He noted that the fi ve-star hotel – featuring more than 2,000sqm of meeting space – also saw a “double-digit increase” for leisure business not only from the local but also from the international market.

Besides launching various off erings from the best brands across the globe, the general manager added that Ritz-Carlton, Doha’s chefs also introduced new menu items to cater to diff erent segments.

“Then we launched the beach which was one of the main components for the leisure market,” he added.

QATAR/REGION/ARAB WORLDGulf Times Monday, October 25, 20218

First truck enters Qatar under TIR global transit systemThe General Authority of

Customs (GAC) has seen the entry of the fi rst truck se-

cured by the TIR system through the Abu Samra border crossing.

This comes as part of the ac-tivation of the Convention on the International Transport of Goods signed by the Ministry of Transport, GAC and the Inter-national Road Transport Union (IRU).

TIR is the only global transit system that allows goods to be shipped from one country to an-other in sealed load compartments that are controlled by Customs via a multilateral, mutually recognised and United Nations-backed sys-tem.

The Customs clearance proce-dures for entry of the truck, which is being implemented in Qatar for the fi rst time, were fi nalised in the presence of Ahmed Yousef al-Sa-hel, director of Land Customs, and other offi cials.

The application of the TIR sys-tem in Qatar will contribute to-wards reducing the cost of imports and eventually bring down retail prices in the country. In addition, it can reduce the time of arrival of imports by 92% and secure the arrival of goods at the fi nal des-tination according to the highest standards of safety. There is also constant co-ordination between GAC and Qatar Chamber in this regard.

Anger over plan to build 1,300 new West Bank settler homesAFPJerusalem

Israel yesterday announced plans to build more residenc-es for Jewish settlers in the

occupied West Bank, drawing immediate condemnation from Palestinians, peace activists and neighbouring Jordan.

The announcement from the housing and construction min-istry in right-wing Prime Minis-ter Naftali Bennett’s government said tenders had been published for 1,355 homes in the West Bank, which has been occupied by Is-rael since the 1967 Six-Day War.

Those new homes add to the more than 2,000 residences which defence sources have said in August would be authorised for West Bank settlers.

Final approval is expected from the defence ministry this week for those homes.

Palestinian prime minister Mohamed Shtayyeh, speaking at a weekly cabinet meeting, called

on world nations, and especially the United States, to “confront” Israel over the “aggression” that settlement construction poses for the Palestinian people.

The Palestinian Authority will be keenly watching for a re-sponse from US President Joe Biden’s administration, which has said it opposes unilateral Is-raeli settlement construction as an obstacle to the two-state so-lution to the confl ict.

About 475,000 Israeli Jews live in settlements in the West Bank, which are considered il-legal under international law, on land Palestinians claim as part of their future state.

Jordan, a key Israeli security partner with whom Bennett has sought to improve ties since tak-ing offi ce in June, condemned the announcement as “a viola-tion of international law.”

Jordanian foreign ministry spokesman Haitham Abu al-Ful blasted settlement construction and general “confi scation” of Palestinian land as “illegitimate.”

Anti-occupation group Peace Now said yesterday’s announce-ment proved that Bennett’s ideologically diverse coalition, which ousted ex-premier Ben-jamin Netanyahu’s pro-settle-ment government in June, was not “a government of change.”

“This government clearly continues Netanyahu’s policy of de facto annexation,” Peace Now said, calling on Bennett’s left-wing governing partners, the Labor and Meretz parties, to “wake up and demand the wild building in settlements cease immediately.”

Bennett, the former head of a settler lobby group, opposes Pal-estinian statehood. He has ruled out formal peace talks with the Palestinian Authority during his tenure, saying he prefers to focus on economic improvements.

The tenders come after Is-rael last week gave approval for 4,000 Palestinians to register as residents of the West Bank, the fi rst such move in the Israeli-occupied territory in 12 years.

Coalition says killed over 260 Yemen rebelsAFPRiyadh

The coalition fi ghting in Yemen said yesterday its air strikes had killed more than 260 Houthi rebels in

the past three days, but a rebel spokes-man said the bombing campaign will not stop them.

The deaths are the latest among roughly 1,600 rebels the coalition claims it has killed in strikes over the past two weeks around Marib, the internationally recognised government’s last bastion in oil-rich northern Yemen.

The Houthis rarely comment on loss-es, and AFP could not independently verify the toll.

The strikes are the most recent in a nearly seven-year coalition military campaign to support Yemen’s interna-tionally recognised government against the Houthis.

“Thirty-six military vehicles were de-stroyed and more than 264” rebel fi ght-ers were killed in the past 72 hours, the coalition said, quoted by the offi cial Sau-di Press Agency.

The strikes were carried out in Al-Jawba, about 50 kilometres south of Marib, and Al-Kassara, 30 kilometres to the northwest.

“If the enemy thought that their warplanes could limit the progress of

our forces or break the determination of our soldiers they are mistaken,” Houthi spokesman Yahya Saree said on the rebel’s Al-Masirah TV chan-nel.

He claimed that during an operation the rebels had killed 550 pro-govern-ment fi ghters, wounded 1,200, and taken 90 prisoners, without specifying a time frame.

AFP could not independently verify

the fi gures given by the rebels.The coalition has for the past two

weeks reported almost daily air strikes around Marib.

The Houthis began a major push to seize Marib in February, and have re-newed their off ensive since September after a lull.

The Yemeni civil war began in 2014 when the Houthis seized the capital Sanaa, 120 kilometres west of Marib,

prompting Saudi-led forces to intervene to prop up the government the following year.

Tens of thousands of people have died and millions have been displaced in the war, which the United Nations describes as the world’s worst humani-tarian crisis.

The UN Security Council called on Wednesday for “de-escalation” in Yem-en, in a unanimously adopted statement to counter the risk of “large-scale fam-ine” in the country.

The 15 council members demanded an immediate nationwide ceasefi re, and sought an end to the Marib escalation.

“The members of the Security Coun-cil expressed grave concern for the dire humanitarian situation, including pro-longed starvation and the growing risk of large-scale famine,” according to a state-ment.

They also “condemned the recruit-ment and use of children, and sexual violence, in confl ict”.The UN children’s agency Unicef last week said that seven years of confl ict in Yemen had killed or wounded at least 10,000 children.

The fi gure only included child victims whose fates were known to the organi-sation, and there were countless others, Unicef spokesman James Elder said in Geneva.

“The war must come to an end,” he said.

Fighters loyal to Yemen’s government man a position at the frontline facing Houthi rebels in the country’s northeastern province of Marib.

Khamenei urges reversal of Israeli normalisationsArab nations that normalised ties with Israel last year have “sinned” and should reverse such moves, Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei said yesterday, AFP reported from Tehran. The United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco all agreed to normalise ties with Israel in 2020, as Washington under the administration of then US president Donald Trump made Arab-Israeli rapprochement a foreign policy priority.“Some governments have unfortunately made errors - have made big errors and have sinned in normalising (their relations) with the usurping and oppressive Zionist regime,” Khamenei said, referring to Israel. “It is an act against unity, they must return from this path and make up

for this big mistake,” Khamenei added, in a speech marking a public holiday honouring the birth of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). Iran has in the four decades since the 1979 Islamic revolution positioned itself as a strong defender of the Palestinian cause. “If the unity of Muslims is achieved, the Palestinian question would definitely be resolved in the best fashion,” Khamenei said. In May, Khamenei characterised Israel as a “terrorist base” and “not a country”. Shortly after Khamenei’s speech, Iran’s top security official, Ali Shamkhani, vowed to inflict many “billions of dollars” worth of damage in a “shocking response” if Israel strikes Tehran’s nuclear programme.

Qatar Insurance Group donates QR1mn for those hit by Cyclone Shaheen

In solidarity with national relief ef-forts, Oman Qatar Insurance Com-pany (OQIC), a subsidiary of Qatar

Insurance Group (QIC), has donated OR100,000 (about QR1mn) – to those aff ected by Cyclone Shaheen.

“As a global company, QIC Group al-ways ensures to give back to the com-munities it operates in. We would like to express our sincere condolences to the families of those aff ected by this storm and pray that the Almighty bless them with peace and strength to over-come their losses. We hope our contri-bution helps support and rebuild the areas battered by cyclone Shaheen,” said Salem al-Mannai, Group CEO of

QIC Group. “It’s a duty to help the af-fected rebuild their lives.”

The initiative by QIC Group is, without a doubt an important one, as Tropical Cyclone Shaheen made land-fall in Oman early October, damaging infrastructure and causing fl ash fl ood-ing with 14 recorded deaths until now, a press statement noted.

“In line with QIC Group’s leading role in corporate social responsibility and as an integral part of the commu-nity OQIC stands in solidarity with the people of the Sultanate of Oman during this time. In view of the intensity and the damage caused, mobilisation of all possible support and contribution be-

comes necessary,” said Hasan al-Lawa-ti, CEO of OQIC.

OQIC regularly participates in na-tional and community-oriented initia-

tives and believes in strong governance, transparency and community commit-ment. The QIC Group subsidiary has been operational in Oman for over 15 years engaging in business, life, medi-cal and general insurance.

Qatar Insurance Group is the fl agship

insurer in Qatar and the Mena region with a global expansion and proven success of over 50 years.

“Founded in 1964, QIC was the fi rst domestic insurance company in Qatar. Today, QIC is the market leader in Qatar and a dominant insurer in the GCC and Mena regions. QIC is one of the high-est rated insurers in the Gulf region with a rating of A/Stable from Standard & Poor’s and A (Excellent) from A.M. Best. In terms of profi tability and market capi-talisation, QIC is also the largest insur-ance company in the Mena region. It is listed on the Qatar Stock Exchange and has a market capitalisation of more than $4bn,” the statement added.Salem al-Mannai

Kahramaa makes big progress in installing smart meters system

From Page 1

According to the project plan, which is based on scientifi c and statistical foundations, 420,000 smart electricity meters will be installed by the end of the second quarter of 2022, and the project will be fi nally completed by the end of 2023.

This level of achievement in the project had a positive im-pact on the processes of obtain-ing monthly billing readings at a high rate, reaching 97%, in addi-tion to the possibility of obtain-ing immediate readings for the fi nal liquidation of the meter in any property within about 10 minutes.

The system allows to cut off and reconnect the electricity service remotely. A connection can be restored in about fi ve minutes after the subscriber pays the dues.

The project smart meters project will allow to read con-sumption with extreme accu-racy, and the prepayment feature will also be available.

Subscribers can track the status of their balance and the

amount due according to the monthly consumption via the mobile application to avoid any interruption in the service.

Smart meters will enable the corporation to reconnect the subscriber’s service within a short period.

The meters will operate through an independent internet network dedicated for this pur-pose linked to the central system under the supervision of Kah-ramaa.

Subscribers will not incur any cost for replacing their tradi-tional meters with smart meters.

The adoption of the fully au-tomated system will contribute to saving energy consumption, through the huge database and information that will be available to Kahramaa, which will enable it to accurately identify consump-tion patterns in the country, and use this valuable information in planning and management ,which in turn will reduce carbon emissions and protect the envi-ronment.

In addition it reduces op-erational costs related to meter reading.

Gaza fi sh restaurants thrive far from foodie trailAFPGaza City

The Gaza Strip might be off -limits for foreign foodies but the coastal

Palestinian enclave is brim-ming with seafood restaurants, many owned by one local fam-ily whose culinary hook is their matriarch’s spicy fi sh tajine.

Munir Abu Hasira arrives

at the Gaza port’s fi sh market at daybreak, but holds back as traders snatch up sardines and other fi sh caught during the night. He is angling for more discerning catches like grouper, sea bream and large shrimp, which can go for around 70 shekels ($22) a kilo — a small fortune in the impoverished enclave, under Israeli blockade since 2007.

“It’s expensive because of the

economic situation, but we buy the fi sh to supply restaurants and to export” to the occupied West Bank, he says, as workers pile fresh fi sh into a van.

For decades, the Abu Hasira family were fi shermen, but since opening their fi rst restaurant in the 1970s, they have gradually traded their fi shing kit for chef’s tools.

Gaza fi shermen say they struggle to eke out a living,

snared by Israeli restrictions on the enclave’s fi shing zone and on importing equipment into the enclave, from boat motors to sonar devices for fi nding shoals.

Problems like overfi shing and pollution blight the local indus-try. Some 4,200 tonnes of fi sh and seafood were netted from Gaza’s waters last year, accord-ing to the Israeli authorities.

Just 300 tonnes were export-ed to the West Bank.

Bollywood stars,Indian celebrities launch NFTsamid global crazeReutersMumbai

Indian celebrities from the world of Bollywood and cricket are increasingly

launching digital memorabilia through non-fungible tokens (NFT), hoping to rake in thou-sands of dollars by cashing in on growing interest in such assets.

NFTs are a type of digital asset which use blockchain to record the ownership of items such as images, videos and other col-lectibles.

Their roaring popularity has baffl ed many but the explosive growth shows no sign of abat-ing.

Bollywood superstars such as Amitabh Bachchan and Salman Khan are planning to launch NFTs soon.

While Bachchan’s NFTs will include autographed post-ers of his movies, Khan has been building excitement on his Twitter account by telling his 43mn followers about the planned NFT launch.

“NFTs are right now alien to Bollywood but I am sure they (fi lm stars) will see this as an-other platform where they can use their existing content and

generate revenue,” said Ayaan Agnihotri of Bollycoin, an NFT marketplace for Bollywood as-sets. Agnihotri said that within days of launch this month, his platform sold 8mn of the 20mn available so-called “Bolly-Coins”, crypto tokens that can be used to buy NFTs when they are launched.

One BollyCoin is worth 10 US cents.

But its still early days for ce-lebrity NFTs in India. Indian cricketer Dinesh Karthik is auc-tioning a digital art reel from a cricket match where he hit a match-winning six on the last ball for around 5 ethereums, a digital currency, worth around $20,000.

But he has yet to receive any bids.

“NFT has picked up a lot in the West in the last one year with now iconic moments from basketball being bought by fans digitally, which gave us the idea,” Karthik said.

Others have had success.One of India’s top fashion

designers, Manish Malhotra, recently sold NFTs of digital sketches of some of his most famous creations for $4,000 a piece.

Malhotra’s website shows one can purchase some of his bridal wear outfi ts at a lower price range of $2,500-3,500.

The rise of NFTs has baf-fl ed many who say it makes lit-tle sense to spend large sums of money on items that don’t physically exist and can simply be viewed online.

Still, global sales volumes of NFTs have galloped to $10.7bn in the third quarter of 2021, making an eightfold increase from the previous quarter, data from market tracker DappRadar showed.. Vishakha Singh, vice president for NFTs at Indian crypto exchange WazirX, said celebrity participation in the segment is set to create excite-ment in the space.

This, she said, “is great for the ecosystem. This will help us in garnering more awareness to-wards this new game changing world of digital assets.”

Labour hits out at Sunak’sinfrastructure project plansGuardian News and MediaLondon

Labour has criticised Ri-shi Sunak for “lots of an-nouncements and not

much delivery” on infrastruc-ture projects, as the chancellor conceded that of £7bn in this week’s budget for expanding regional transport links, only £1.5bn is new money.

Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, said she welcomed moves to improve transport in cities such as her own, Leeds, but she was deeply sceptical about what would happen, cit-ing long delays and uncertainty surrounding projects such as

Northern Powerhouse Rail and HS2.

Asked if infrastructure an-nouncements in Wednesday’s budget would help, Reeves told Sky’s Trevor Phillips yesterday: “Let’s hope so. But what we see from this government is lots of announcements and not much delivery.

“Northern Powerhouse Rail, that would benefi t Leeds – and Bradford, and Manchester, and towns and cities across York-shire – was fi rst announced seven years ago. It’s been an-nounced 60 times since then, and there’s still not a single spade in the ground, or train on the rails.

“It’s not good enough.

They’re going to make more announcement this week, but what we’re sick of in the north is having announcements without the delivery on the ground.”

Interviewed earlier on the same programme, Sunak re-fused to say whether HS2 would be built in fully to Leeds, or whether Bradford would be connected to Northern Power-house Rail.

The chancellor said the metro mayors Andy Street and Andy Burnham had welcomed the announcements.“So what the money announced was about is about what we call intrac-ity transportation, that’s about how do we get people who live

in and around a city to be able to get into the middle of it and out again easily,” he said.

Challenged on how much of the £7bn for this was new, Sunak said he had already announced £4.2bn for the “overall enve-lope to improve how people get around our big cities … What we’ve actually done is top that up, as you said, by £1.5bn, but then crucially give out the allo-cations in that envelope – where all the bits are going to go.”

Asked about another budget announcement unveiled in ad-vance for £500mn to help early years provision, Sunak denied this was tacit acceptance that it had been wrong for Conserva-tive-led governments from 2010

to cut Sure Start centres.The new investment was

based on work done by col-leagues such as the former busi-ness secretary Andrea Leadsom on early intervention, he said.

“So what we’re announcing is funding to create a network of family hubs which are broader than the Sure Start centres, and they bring together lots of dif-ferent services for new parents, and for the fi rst time, we’re go-ing to roll those out.”

Questioned about the plan, Reeves rejected this argument.

She said: “I would say to the chancellor: have you ever heard of Sure Start? Because that is what your governments, over the last 11 years, have cut.”

Surging onion prices leaveIndia’s consumers in tearsReutersMumbai

Buying vegetables at a small market on the outskirts of Mumbai, Shubhangi Patil

laments the recent rapid rise in the cost of everyday essentials, from cooking oil to sugar and now onions, a basic ingredient in most Indian food.

After the cost of fuel and ed-ible oils hit record highs, Indian consumers like Patil are likely to be further squeezed by a rally in onion prices after heavy rain-fall in the country’s key growing regions damaged the summer-sown crop and delayed winter crop planting.

Onions are also a politically-sensitive commodity, with price spikes contributing to the fall of more than one state government in the past.

“The price of every essential commodity has gone up. Edible oil, sugar prices rose earlier and

now onions and tomato prices have more than doubled in a fortnight, how one can manage a monthly budget when incomes are not rising?” Patil said.

India is also the world’s big-gest onion exporter and the price rise could prompt New Delhi to restrict shipments, po-tentially lifting prices further afi eld, especially in Bangladesh, Nepal, Malaysia and Sri Lanka, traders said.

“Too much rainfall in Sep-tember led to disease attack and stunted growth of onion bulbs,” says Samadhan Bagul, a farm-er from Dhule district, nearly 325km north of Mumbai, who expects to harvest just one tonne of onions from an acre of land in-stead of his usual fi ve tonnes.

Key onion producing states such as Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Karnataka received as much as 268% more rainfall than normal in Septem-ber, according to the weather de-partment.

The crop damage limited sup-plies, more than doubling whole-sale prices at India’s largest onion trading hub, Lasalgaon in Ma-harashtra, to Rs33,400 ($444.82) per tonne in just a month.

Retail prices in metro areas such as Mumbai have jumped above Rs50 a kilogram.

Onion prices are likely to re-main fi rm during the current festive season before starting to moderate from mid-January when supplies rise from the new season crop, said a Mumbai-based dealer, who declined to be named.

The higher Indian prices have prompted importing countries to shift to other suppliers such as Turkey and Egypt, said Ajit Shah, president of the Mumbai-based Onion Exporters’ Association.

India banned onion exports in 2019 and 2020 for a few months to calm local prices, creating a shortage in neighbouring coun-tries such as Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

An Indian paramilitary trooper stands guard at a market in Srinagar yesterday.

The US yesterday urged North Korea to stop “counterproductive” missile tests, but expressed hope Pyongyang would respond positively to Washing-ton’s call for dialogue. It comes after North Korea fired a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) on Tuesday, prompting an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council. US special representative on North Korea Sung Kim met his southern counterpart Noh Kyu-duk after a meeting with their Japanese counterpart in Washington. He labelled Tuesday’s launch a “provocation”, and urged Pyongyang to stop “concerning and counterproductive” missile tests. “We hope the DPRK will respond positively to our outreach,” Kim said in Seoul.

China has passed a law to strengthen border protection amid a protracted standoff with India, worries about spillover eff ects from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan and the spread of Covid-19 from southeast Asia. The Land Borders Law will not necessarily change how border security is handled when the measure takes eff ect on January 1, but it reflects China’s growing confidence in its capabil-ity to manage its frontiers. The country will “take eff ective measures to resolutely protect territorial sovereignty and land border security”, the law says. Chinese military and military police The law stipu-lates that China can close its border if a war or other armed conflict nearby threatens border security.

China’s latest Covid-19 outbreak is increasingly likely to spread further, a health off icial said yesterday, as authorities urged all regions to step up monitoring and called for a reduction in travel across provinces. China has largely contained the virus but it is deter-mined to stamp out any sporadic local outbreaks, particularly in the run-up to the 2022 Winter Olym-pics in February. More than 100 locally transmitted cases have been confirmed over the last week across 11 provincial areas, with most linked to 13 dif-ferent tour groups. There is increasing risk that the outbreak might spread further, helped by “seasonal factors”, Mi Feng, spokesman at the National Health Commission, told reporters yesterday.

A strong earthquake struck northeastern Taiwan yesterday, with residents reporting violent shaking in the capital Taipei but there were no immediate reports of widespread damage. Taiwan’s central weather bureau said the quake was of magnitude 6.5, the biggest on the island this year, while the US Geological Survey gave a lower figure of 6.2. It hit northeastern Yilan county at 1.11pm (0511GMT) at a depth of 67km. An AFP reporter who lives in Yilan said the shaking seemed to last about 30 seconds. “The walls of the house were shaking, both sideways and up and down, it felt quite strong,” the reporter said. There was no damage in his neighbourhood.

Sri Lanka has barred a Chinese ship carrying des-perately needed organic fertiliser that experts have found to be tainted with harmful bacteria, off icials said yesterday. The action comes as Sri Lanka battles food shortages caused by a currency crisis while farmers have said a government ban on chemical fertiliser could ruin their crops this year. President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s off ice said the National Plant Quarantine Services had tested a sample from the unnamed Chinese vessel and “confirmed the pres-ence of organisms, including certain types of harmful bacteria”. A Commercial High Court has banned any payment to Qingdao Seawin Biotech Group for the 96,000 tonnes of fertiliser, a statement added.

US envoy urges N Koreato stop missile tests

New law beefs up Chinaland border protection

China warns of furtherspread in Covid flare-up

Strong quake strikesnorthern Taiwan

Lanka bans contaminatedChinese fertiliser

APPEAL POLICYPANDEMIC DISASTER DECISION

MCM ComicCon event

A person wears a costume during the MCM Comic Con event outside ExCeL in London, Britain, yesterday.

Bollywood superstars such as Amitabh Bachchan and Salman Khan are planning to launch NFTs soon

WORLD9Gulf Times

Monday, October 25, 2021

AFPSrinagar, India

Indian paramilitaries shot dead a civilian in Kashmir yesterday, residents said, as

authorities tightened security across the territory for a visit by a top Indian minister.

The victim, a milk seller in the southern Kashmir Valley, is the 12th civilian killed by militants or security forces this month as attacks increase in the region.

New Delhi has about 500,000 troops and paramilitaries in Kashmir seeking to contain a rebel movement agitating for independence or the region’s merger with Pakistan.

Police said the man was hit in “crossfi re” during “militant ac-tion” near a police paramilitary camp in the village of Zainapora and that the incident was being investigated.

Villagers said the man had been fatally shot without provo-cation.

Amit Shah, India’s home

minister and eff ective deputy to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has been in Kashmir since Satur-day, adding to security concerns.

It is Shah’s fi rst trip to the re-gion since New Delhi cancelled Kashmir’s semi-autonomy in August 2019 and placed it under direct rule.

His visit follows a series of targeted killings by militants, with minority Hindus and Sikhs as well as migrant workers from elsewhere in India the main tar-gets.

Sandbag bunkers have been erected across Kashmir’s main city of Srinagar and snipers po-sitioned on rooftops around the building where Shah is staying.

Police have in recent days impounded hundreds of motor-bikes in the city and intensifi ed checks on pedestrians including women and children.

Motorbikes have been used for drive-by killings.

India’s chief of defence staff General Bipin Rawat said secu-rity monitoring was being inten-sifi ed to thwart attacks by rebels.

Man shot dead bytroops in Kashmir

By Jean Pisani-FerryParis

From the Huawei aff air to the Aukus spat and beyond, a new reality is shaking up the global economy:

the takeover, usually hostile, of international economics by geopolitics. This process is probably only just beginning, and the challenge now is learning how to live with it.

Of course, economics and geopolitics have never been completely separate domains. The post-World War II liberal economic order was designed by economists, but on the basis of a master plan conceived by foreign-policy strategists. Postwar US policymakers knew what they wanted: what a 1950 National Security Council report called a “world environment in which the American system can survive and fl ourish.” From their perspective, the free world’s prosperity was the (ultimately successful) conduit to containing and possibly defeating Soviet communism, and the liberal order was the conduit to that prosperity.

But although the ultimate objective was geopolitical, international economic relations were shaped for 70 years by their own rules. On occasion, concrete decisions were skewed by geopolitics: for the United States, providing International Monetary Fund fi nancial assistance to Mexico was never equivalent to providing it to Indonesia. The principles governing trade or exchange-rate policy, however, were strictly economic.

The end of the Cold War temporarily put economists on top. For three decades afterward, fi nance ministers and central bankers thought they were

running the world. As Jake Sullivan (now the national security adviser to US President Joe Biden) and Jennifer Harris pointed out in 2020, management of globalisation had been deferred to “a small community of experts.” Again, there was an underlying geopolitical aim: in the same way that economic openness had contributed to the Soviet Union’s collapse, it was expected to bring about China’s convergence toward the Western model. But for the rest, interference remained limited.

The rise of China and its growing rivalry with the US brought this era to an end. With the failure of convergence through economic integration, geopolitics has returned to the fore. Biden’s focus on the Chinese challenge and his decision not to dismantle the trade restrictions put in place by his predecessor, Donald Trump, confi rm that the US has entered a new era in which foreign policy has taken over from economics.

In China, there was no need for such a takeover. Although the country’s leaders routinely pay lip service to multilateralism, both its historical tradition and governance philosophy emphasise political control of domestic and especially foreign economic relations. The transnational Belt and Road Initiative embodies this model: as Georgetown University’s Anna Gelpern and co-authors recently documented, Chinese loan contracts to fi nance infrastructure projects in developing countries are opaque, involve political conditionality, and explicitly rule out debt restructuring through multilateral procedures.

Even in Europe, where belief in the primacy of economics was most entrenched, things have begun to

change. “The beating heart of the globalist project is in Brussels,” US populist agitateur Steve Bannon declared contemptuously in 2018. This was in fact true: the primacy of common rules over state discretion is part of Europe’s DNA. But the European Union, too, is now waking up to the new reality. Already in 2019, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen spoke of leading a “geopolitical commission.”

The question is what this renewed geopolitical focus actually implies. Most foreign-policy experts envision international relations as a power game. Their implicit models often assume that one country’s gain is another’s loss. Economists, on the other hand, are more interested in promoting the gains that cross-border transactions or joint action yield to all parties. Their benchmark concept of international economic relations envisions independent actors voluntarily entering into mutually benefi cial arrangements.

In a 2019 article, Sullivan and Kurt Campbell (who now directs Asia policy at Biden’s National Security Council) outlined a plan for “competition without catastrophe” between the US and China. Their scheme combined across-the-board trade reciprocity with China, the formation of a club of deeply integrated market democracies (access to which would be conditional on economic alignment), and a policy sequencing in which competition with China would be the default option, with co-operation conditional on China’s good behaviour. They also rejected any linkage between US concessions and co-operation in the management of global commons such as climate.

This would be a clear strategy, but the Biden administration has not yet

indicated whether it intends to pursue it. US middle-class economic woes and the resulting enduring domestic reluctance to open up trade contradict geopolitical aims and make America’s intentions hard to read. Foreign-policy types may have prevailed over economists, but domestic politics reigns supreme, and clear-mindedness is not what is guiding action.

China, meanwhile, has fl atly refused to carve out climate co-operation from the wider US-Chinese discussion, and recently wrong-footed the US by applying to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacifi c Partnership, a regional trade pact that President Barack Obama designed to isolate China but that Trump chose to quit. Instead of being isolated, China is trying to outmanoeuvre the US.

Paradoxically, Europe is getting closer to defi ning its stance. It still believes in global rules, and gives priority to persuading partners to negotiate and enforce them, but it stands ready to act on its own. “Open strategic autonomy” – its new buzzword – seemed to be an oxymoron. But the EU now seems to know what it means: in the words of senior EU trade offi cial Sabine Weyand, “work with others wherever we can, and work autonomously wherever we must.” In a more geopolitical world, this may well become Europe’s credo. – Project Syndicate

Jean Pisani-Ferry, a senior fellow at Brussels-based think tank Bruegel and a senior non-resident fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, holds the Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa chair at the European University Institute.

Gulf Times Monday, October 25, 2021

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EDITOR-IN-CHIEFFaisal Abdulhameed al-Mudahka

Deputy Managing Editor

K T Chacko

Fictional drama that is too close for comfort

Life has undergone a total change ever since Covid-19 cases were fi rst identifi ed in China’s Wuhan city in late 2019 and subsequently spread across the world, causing at least 4.93mn deaths and 242mn cases over the past 22 months and shifting many activities online. When outdoor access got restricted and people had to stay indoors, television and Over-the-Top (OTT) video content became the most preferred entertainment options. Though life has entered a hybrid phase of late with Covid-19 cases dropping in several countries, online entertainment avenues continue to occupy the prime slots.

It is in this context that a letter – sent recently by a private school in Doha to parents warning children not to watch a TV series, Squid Game, as it could cause them psychological damage – gains relevance. The nine-episode horror series on Netfl ix has hit No. 1 in 90 of the streaming service’s markets around the world, including South Korea, where it was made. The fi ctional drama portrays contestants who are deeply in debt play children’s games in order to win a bounty. The Parents Television and Media Council in the US recently cautioned that the "incredibly violent" series Squid Game should be on parents's radar because children are fi nding ways to watch it and are also being exposed to violent memes. But although kids tend to be most aff ected by violent TV programmes, and are often the focus of concern when it comes to such shows, violent content

can also aff ect adults.“The research

shows that exposure to violent media increases aggressive thoughts,” says Brad J Bushman, a professor of communication at Ohio State University who studies the causes, consequences and solutions to human aggression and violence. “It increases angry feelings and physiological arousal, like heart rate and blood pressure.” Plus, he says, watching violent TV “decreases feelings of empathy and compassion

for others. It makes people numb to the pain and suff ering of others, which researchers call desensitisation, and it decreases pro-social behaviours like helping others, co-operation and sharing things.” Even brief exposure to media violence can increase aggressive thinking and behaviour, Bushman says, but the consequences worsen with duration. “It’s kind of like smoking cigarettes,” he says.

Of course, not everyone who watches such a programme will become violent, but their upset feelings might linger. This could lead to long-term anxiety, depression or nightmares, says Beverly Hills-based psychiatrist Carole Lieberman. “At the same time, it has an addictive quality to it that makes you come back for more.” Lieberman notes that Squid Game is “very disturbing — more for its grotesque close-ups of dying people who are desperate for money than for the actual violence we see in the games.” She worries that the show could have particularly troubling ripple eff ects now, as the society is already on edge after a tumultuous couple of years. “Not everyone becomes a serial killer, but the aggression can show itself in road rage, air rage, domestic violence and so on,” she says. Plus, “the more hours of violent media we watch, the more we become convinced that we live in a mean world.”

Dr Sandra Wheatley, a British social psychologist specialising in parenting, has warned parents may be teaching their children to be bullies by letting them watch the ultra-violent series. Last week, John Bramston Primary School in Ilford, east London, wrote to parents warning them pupils were copying scenes in the playground. Viewers in South Korea say the show is all the more disturbing because it injects death and violence into playground games like Red Light, Green Light and tug of war.

The Parents Television and Media Council in the US recently cautioned that the “incredibly violent” series Squid Game should be on parents’ radar

Geopolitical conquest of economics

The port of Long Beach is shown as a record number of cargo container ships wait to unload in Long Beach, California last month. (Reuters)

WORLD11Gulf Times

Monday, October 25, 2021

Mexico hunts for missing children of ‘Dirty War’AFPMexico City

Decades after his sister disappeared during the political repression of

Mexico’s “Dirty War,” Roberto Martinez hopes to fi nally meet the child he believes she gave birth to while held captive.

The creation of a government commission to search for at least 14 children thought to have been born to alleged victims of forced disappearance has given relatives newfound optimism.

The alleged perpetrators were now-defunct police and military groups accused of serious human rights violations.

Martinez’s sister Lourdes was detained at the age of 23 in Culia-can in northwest Mexico in 1974, during a dark chapter in Mexican history.

She was a member of the Sep-tember 23 Communist League, a guerrilla group that fought the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which ruled the country as a one-party state for seven dec-ades.

“I hope my nephew or niece

was born and is out there,” Mar-tinez told AFP by telephone from Culiacan.

“Two people from our fam-ily disappeared,” the 65-year-old retired teacher said, fi ghting back tears.

It is the fi rst time that the Mex-ican government has searched for people thought to have been given up for adoption after the forced disappearance of their mothers.

A specialised search unit was formed in mid-2019, but its work is just beginning.

Around 500 political dissi-dents and students were subject-ed to forced disappearance from the 1960s to the 1980s, according to the National Human Rights Commission.

“I hope with all my soul that the authorities help me to fi nd my nephew or niece and their mother,” Martinez said.

“I’d like to tell everyone who was possibly born in the same circumstances how much their mothers gave for this country,” he added.

The commission will review offi cial fi les and testimonies of survivors in an attempt to lo-

cate the missing.Forcing women to undergo

“clandestine births, possibly to

take away the children, must be one of the cruellest things that one human can do to another,”

said the search unit’s head, Javier Yankelevich.

He urged anyone with doubts about their origins to “explore the possibility that the story they were told is not theirs and approach the institutions to go through the process to discover their identity.”

According to Camilo Vicente, who wrote a book on forced dis-appearances, there are indica-tions that irregular adoptions did happen in Mexico, though not as many as in some other countries like Argentina and Chile.

“Even if there are one or two cases, it’s the state’s obligation to look for them,” Vicente said.

The authorities must reveal “how many children have died in military operations or suff ered torture, another of the hidden stories of that long-denied coun-terinsurgency in Mexico,” he said.

Roberto Antonio Gallangos and his wife Carmen Vargas, also members of the Communist League, were detained in sepa-rate operations in 1975 and then disappeared.

Their four-year-old son Lu-cio Antonio and two-year-old daughter Aleida were separated

and looked after by friends of the couple.

The boy was abducted by agents during another operation in which he was injured.

Aleida was given to a family by the man who was taking care of her and who died without reveal-ing her history.

Lucio Antonio was sent to an orphanage. He was later adopted and baptised Juan Carlos Her-nandez. With support from her adoptive father, Aleida discov-ered her true identity in 2001.

A few years later, after over-coming obstacles thrown up by authorities who refused to open offi cial fi les, she managed to lo-cate her brother in Washington, where they both now live.

“People said that I seemed to be losing my mind,” Aleida said.

The siblings hope that the Inter-American Court of Hu-man Rights will compel Mexico to locate their parents, incorpo-rate the Dirty War into the offi cial history books and compensate them.

“I’m a victim twice over. I’m a relative of a disappeared person and a disappeared person my-self,” Hernandez said.

Roberto Martinez poses holding the portrait of his sister Lourdes, who disappeared in 1974, in Culiacan, state of Sinaloa, Mexico. (AFP)

Colombia’s most-wanted drug lord captured

AFPBogota

Colombia’s most-wanted drug traffi cker “Otoniel” has been captured, offi cials said yesterday,

a major victory for the government of the world’s top cocaine exporter.

Dairo Antonio Usuga, who headed the country’s largest narco-traffi cking gang known as the Gulf Clan, was captured near one of his main outposts in Necocli, near the border with Panama.

Images released by the government showed the 50-year-old Otoniel in handcuff s and surrounded by soldiers.

“This is the hardest strike to drug traffi cking in our country this century,” president Ivan Duque said in a message, adding that the arrest was “only com-parable to the fall of Pablo Escobar,” the notorious Colombian narco-traffi cking kingpin.

Some 500 soldiers backed by 22 heli-copters were deployed in the Necocli municipality to carry out the operation, which left one police offi cer dead.

It was “the biggest penetration of the jungle ever seen in the military history of our country”, Duque said.

A live broadcast by the police later showed a handcuff ed Otoniel landing in Bogota before being taken into custody under heavy security.

Colombia’s police chief Jorge Var-gas said during a press conference that authorities carried out “an important satellite operation with agencies of the United States and the United Kingdom.”

According to police, Otoniel was hid-ing in the jungle in the Uraba region, where he is from, and did not use a tel-

ephone, relying on couriers to commu-nicate.

Fearful of authorities, he “slept there in the rain, never approaching inhabited areas,” Vargas said.

The United States had offered a $5mn bounty for information lead-ing to the arrest of Otoniel, one of the

most feared men in Colombia.He was indicted in the United States

in 2009, and faces extradition proceed-ings to the country, where he would appear in the Southern District of New York federal court.

The Colombian government blames the group — fi nanced mainly through drug traffi cking, illegal mining and ex-tortion — for being one of the main driv-ers of the worst bout of nationwide vio-lence since the signing of a peace pact with Farc guerillas in 2016.

The Gulf Clan is present in almost 300 municipalities in the country, ac-cording to the independent think tank Indepaz. However, recent government eff orts have seen the organisation deci-mated.

Although Otoniel announced in 2017 he intended to reach an agreement to participate with the Colombian justice system, the government responded by deploying at least 1,000 soldiers to hunt him down.

He took over the leadership of the Gulf Clan — previously known as the Usuga Clan — from his brother Juan de Dios, who was killed by police in 2012.

Born to a poor family, Otoniel joined the Popular Liberation Army (EPL), a Marxist guerrilla group that demo-bilised in 1991. After laying down his arms, he later returned to fi ghting, join-ing far-right paramilitary groups.

President Shavkat Mirziyoyev casts a ballot at a polling station during a presidential election in Tashkent yesterday. (Reuters)

Central Asian Uzbekistan staged a presidential election yesterday, with leader Shavkat Mirziyoyev facing no real opposition but plenty of challenges as he bids to reform the ex-Soviet country and still maintain its authoritarian foundations.Mirziyoyev has been credited for launching what he calls a “New Uzbekistan”, ending a decades-old system of forced labour and introducing limited media freedom.He came to power in 2016 after the death of his mentor, dictator Islam Karimov, who ruled Uzbekistan for 27 years.Mirziyoyev presided over an unprecedented boom in foreign tourism in the country that borders Taliban-controlled Afghanistan and counts China and Russia among its partners.But as his first term ends, the 64-year-old is struggling to counter impressions that his government is sliding back towards the habits of his long-reigning predecessor.The eff ects of the pandemic have also blunted his initial economic achievements, with unemployment rife amid sharp rises in living costs.“We expect changes. For instance, salary increases — our salaries are small and we don’t always get them,” said 20-year-old student Urazali Ergashev. He added that his mother, a teacher, often faced salary delays.Voting across the landlocked country of 34 million people was to start at 8am local time (0300 GMT) and last until 8pm (1500 GMT).Prolonged isolation under Karimov meant that commodity-rich Uzbekistan fell well short of its economic potential for most of independence.It is against the founding president’s brutal rule that the successes of Mirziyoyev’s reforms have been judged.His public disavowal of torture and campaign to clean up mass forced labour in cotton fields — where thousands of schoolchildren once toiled alongside their teachers — gained international praise. But the last two years have seen a crackdown on dissent, rights groups said, particularly in internet freedoms that bloomed after 2016.

Uzbek reformist strongman justa shoo-in as nation votes

Eleven Picasso paintings and other works that helped turn Las Vegas into an unlikely destination for art were sold at auction on Saturday for more than $100mn.The Sotheby’s auction was held at the Bellagio hotel in Las Vegas, where the works had been on display for years, and took place two days before the 140th birthday of the Spanish artist on October 25.Five of the paintings had hung on the walls of the Bellagio’s fine dining restaurant, Picasso. The restaurant will continue to display 12 other Picasso works.The highest price was fetched by the 1938 painting “Femme au beret rouge-orange” of Picasso’s lover and muse Marie-Therese Walter, which sold for $40.5mn, some $10mn over the high pre-sale estimate.The large-scale portraits “Homme et Enfant” and “Buste d’homme” sold for $24.4mn and $9.5mn respectively, while smaller works on ceramic, like “Le Dejeuner sur l’herbe” which sold for $2.1mn, went for three or four times their pre-sale estimate.The buyers’ names were not disclosed.Saturday’s sale was part of a bid by casino and hotel group MGM Resorts to further diversify its vast collection to include more art from women, people of colour and emerging nations as well as from artists with disabilities.

Picasso artworks fetch over $100mn

Halyna remembered as police probe Baldwin shootingThe crew was setting up a diff icult shot during filming on the New Mexico set of Rust, and the movie’s cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, wasn’t quite satisfied.She turned to Lane Luper, a member of the camera crew, who suggested some adjustments that she found worked perfectly. That kind of collaborative spirit, Luper said at a candlelight vigil yesterday, was what made Hutchins such a joy to work with.“Her photography was beautiful, and every day, everybody on the camera team was proud to be there for her, because we were proud of what we were creating — what she was creating,” he told the crowd, two days after Hutchins was killed in an accident when actor Alec Baldwin fired a prop gun on set.Luper said he would have been lucky to work with her again. “And I don’t get to. And it sucks,” he said, breaking into tears.While organisers emphasised that the vigil in Albuquerque, New Mexico, was to honour Hutchins’ memory, rather than focus on her death, some in the crowd held signs that read Safety on Set, a reminder that the circumstances surrounding Thursday’s shooting remain murky.Details have emerged suggesting the production was troubled before the accident. Several crew members walked off the set at the Bonanza Creek Ranch, south of Santa Fe, just

hours before the incident, protesting what they saw as poor working conditions, several media outlets reported.Last week, Baldwin’s stunt double accidentally fired two rounds with a prop firearm after being told it was “cold,” an industry term meaning a weapon is not loaded with ammunition, the Los Angeles Times said. At least one employee complained to a production manager about gun safety on set, the newspaper reported, citing unnamed crew members.The same mistake may have occurred on Thursday, according to court records. An assistant director, Dave Halls, handed Baldwin the prop gun and told him it was a “cold gun”,

according to an aff idavit from the Santa Fe County Sheriff ’s Off ice.When Baldwin fired the gun, Hutchins was fatally struck in the chest, according to the sheriff ’s off ice.It is unclear why the gun contained a projectile. The person in charge of weapons on set is known as an armorer. The armorer for Rust, Hannah Gutierrez, had set up the gun and two others, according to the aff idavit.Halls and Gutierrez could not be reached for comment on Saturday.Rust Movie Productions said in a statement on Friday it had not been aware of any safety concerns but was investigating the incident.

“Though we were not made aware of any off icial complaints concerning weapon or prop safety on set, we will be conducting an internal review of our procedures while production is shut down,” the company said. Baldwin is among the film’s producers.About 200 mourners attended Saturday’s vigil, including set decorators, prop masters and costume designers. The actors Jon Hamm and John Slattery, who co-starred in the television hit Mad Men and are working on a movie in nearby Belen, also joined.Slattery, who is directing the movie starring Hamm, told Reuters members of his crew were friends with Hutchins, and Hamm said the pair “came to support our community”.A speaker at the vigil also read aloud a statement from Hutchins’ husband, Matt.“Halyna inspired us all with her passion and vision, and her legacy is too meaningful to encapsulate in words,” he wrote. “Please take time to remember her, and we will all work together to honour her memory and emulate her determination and her creativity.”Baldwin, 63, best known for his roles in TV comedy 30 Rock and his Saturday Night Live impersonations of former US president Donald Trump, said on Friday he was shocked and heartbroken at Hutchins’ death and was fully co-operating with authorities.

Dairo Antonio Usuga David, alias ‘Otoniel’, top leader of the Gulf clan, poses for a photo escorted by Colombian military soldiers after being captured, in Necocli, Colombia. (Reuters)

Members of the local film community mourn the loss of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, who died after being shot by Alec Baldwin on the set of his movie Rust at a vigil in Albuquerque, New Mexico. (Reuters)

State-of-art French military satellite goes into orbit

AFPKourou

France has successfully launched a state-of-the-art satellite into orbit, designed to allow all of France’s armed forces across the globe to com-

municate swiftly and securely.Paris created a space force command in July 2019,

amongst concerns that rival countries were heavily investing in space technology, seen as a new military frontier.

The satellite “is designed to resist military aggres-sion from the ground and in space, as well as interfer-ence,” French air and space force spokesman Colonel Stephane Spet told AFP.

The Ariane 5 rocket carrying the Syracuse 4A satel-lite took off from Kourou, in French Guiana late Satur-day, with the mission accomplished 38 minutes and 41 seconds after takeoff .

The satellite can survey its close surroundings and move itself to escape an attack.

“Thanks to its state-of-the-art equipment (anti-jamming antenna and digital transparent processor on board), Syracuse 4A will guarantee a high resistance to extreme jamming methods,” launch provider Ariane-space wrote in its mission description.

Marc Finaud, an expert in weapons proliferation at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy, told AFP the satellite was also protected against the electro-mag-netic pulses which would result from a nuclear explo-sion.

“This is the fi nal warning scenario, if deterrence fails,” he added.

In March France began its fi rst military exercises in space to test its ability to defend its satellites, calling them “a fi rst for the French army and even a fi rst in Eu-rope”.

Taliban forces fought a three-hour gun battle with a group of alleged Islamic State kidnappers yesterday, killing three of them, off icials said.The clash erupted in the western Afghan city of Herat when the new Taliban government’s fighters cornered the gang in a high-rise building, Herat Police Command said in a statement.Local residents said they heard light and heavier weapons used in the fighting. Police said three Islamic State members were killed and two Taliban were wounded in the clash.Videos circulating on social media appeared to show that at least one suspect was shot dead after he had been detained and disarmed, during a scuff le with his captors. The footage also showed victorious Taliban forces driving through town with three corpses exposed on the back of a pick-up truck, as cheering supporters followed on scooters.Interior ministry spokesman Qari Sayed Khosti tweeted the three Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K) members were involved in major kidnappings across Herat province.“Special forces surrounded them, and they started firing. The men were killed in a shootout with security forces.”The Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in mid-August, overthrowing the previous US-backed government, and have vowed to restore stability after a 20-year war.

Taliban kill three ‘IS kidnappers’ in shootout