THE PENINSULA — DOHA

Qatar has passed the peak of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak as new cases have gradually declined due to precautionary measures taken by the authorities, said Dr. Abdullatif Al Khal, Chair of the National Strategy Group of COVID-19 and Head of Infec-tious Diseases at Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC). He, however, said there has been an increase in new cases among professionals such as engineers, doctors and teachers.

“The number of daily cases infected by the virus is about 1,000 to 1,200 cases, and the number is gradually declining, but this does not mean the end of the pandemic,” said Al Khal, while speaking at a press con-ference on Qatar TV yesterday.

“There has been an increase in positive cases among Qatari

nationals and expat profes-sionals such as engineers, doctors and teachers despite the overall decrease in cases in Qatar. The risk of spread of the virus in this category is that through them it may spread to elderly people and their fam-ilies,” he said.

Everyone should adhere to the precautionary measures because easing of restrictions does not mean end of the pan-demic, he added.

“Indicators of the decline in positive cases in the State of Qatar are reassuring, but they do not mean the end of the pan-demic, as the virus is still in the society. There is a decrease in the number of patients who need hospitalisation, and these numbers may increase again if people do not respect precau-tionary measures,” he said, adding: “There is also a decrease in the number of cases that need to enter intensive care, as

currently the number is 225, of which 110 are on ventilators.”

The average age of people entering intensive care is about 50 years and above.

He said there have been a total of 99 deaths from COVID-19 in the country so far, but this number may increase because complications increase in the last phase of the disease. In general, the death rate in Qatar is low compared to the global death rate, he said.

The risk of infection is more serious for people aged 50 and above, in addition to people with chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, and others.

Regarding family visits, he said that it is best for people to postpone family visits at present, but if the visit is nec-essary, people should take pre-cautionary measures and keep the visit short.

The fall in new cases in

recent weeks, he said, is due to the measures taken by the State, as well as the commitment of citizens. Dr. Al Khal believes the new cases will continue falling if people continue taking more care.

Director of Health Pro-tection and Communicable Disease Control at the Public Health Department and Co-chair of the National Pandemic Preparation Committee, Dr. Hamad Al Romaihi, also urged the public to suspend the family visits to avoid COVID-19 infection.

“At the Ministry of Public Health, our surveillance team continues to track and trace all cases to identify potential new cases and gain understanding of the virus transmission,” said Al Romaihi. “We continue to see examples of people ignoring the preventive measures, resulting in one or even multiple positive cases within families and

contacts. Our tracing system has shown on many occasions how young and healthy people have ignored social and physical dis-tancing and this has led to them contracting the virus and passing it on to family members.”

He said that no member of society should be complacent and though the risk of serious symptoms is low for young and healthy people, they can easily be carriers of the virus and pass it on to contacts who are elderly or have chronic conditions.

He said a total of 66,218 contacts of infected individuals were screened for COVID-19 between April 4 to June 20, 2020; and of them, 20,101 people were found positive, showing a rate of 30 percent. While under the screening of active cases, 17,282 people were screened --- 3,371 individuals were found positive and 13,911 negative. �P2

Wednesday 24 June 2020

3 Dhul-Qa'da - 1441

2 Riyals

www.thepeninsula.qa

Volume 25 | Number 8298

BUSINESS | 01 PENMAG | 03 SPORT | 08

Djokovic tests

positive for virus,

apologises to

other players

Classifieds

and Services

section

included

QIIB awarded

prestigious

Certificate on

Information Security

E-commerce market witnessing boom in Qatar amid COVID-19SACHIN KUMAR THE PENINSULA

E-commerce in Qatar is booming as an increasing number of companies are vying to tap into the country’s growing online retail market. Currently, over 350 e-commerce websites are registered with e-commerce directory of the Ministry of Transport and Communications (MoTC).

Qatar’s e-commerce space has a mix of big and small players as some websites are run by well known hyper-markets and retailers, while others are owned by start-ups which are jostling for their share of online shoppers.

Most of the e-commerce websites are related to delivery of food items, electronic and home appliances, apparels, transport and travel services.

The potential for further rapid expansion of the online retail market in Qatar is

enormous due to ever-improving high speed Internet technologies and widespread mobile and fixed connectivity in the country.

Also, high level of dis-posable income among its cit-izens and expatriates offers enormous room for growth in the e-commerce space.

According to Impact Survey Report-2019 by MoTC, the

e-commerce penetration rate in Qatar in 2019 was 37 percent compared to 15 percent in 2018.

Due to growing awareness of Internet technologies and efforts by government depart-ments concerned, the number of people opting for online shopping is expected to grow manifold in near future.

The online shopping has also received a big push with

the outbreak of COVID-19 out-break. The pandemic has forced retailers to boost their online sales. Customers have also moved to online shopping as they remain at home due to COVID-19 related restrictions.

“We have seen a surge in online shopping in the past three months. Due to high demand, we had to increase the number of home delivery

vehicles,” a senior official of a hypermarket told The Peninsula.

Last year, MoTC, in associ-ation with MoCI, launched ‘Theqa’ programme, which is aimed at stimulating Qatar’s e-commerce sector and devel-oping local online retail sales by encouraging citizens and residents to trust the country’s e-commerce ecosystem. �P2

Cash disbursement to Gazafamilies early next weekQNA — GAZA

Chairman of the Qatar Committee for the Recon-struction of Gaza, H E Ambassador Mohammed Al Emadi, has affirmed that the Committee, in cooper-ation with the Qatar Fund for Development (QFFD), will begin the process of disbursing cash assistance to needy families in the Gaza Strip, early next week.

Ambassador Al Emadi said that the distribution process will take place

through the post offices in the governorates of the Gaza Strip for 100,000 families, at $100 per family.

He noted that the cash disbursing process will be carried out in cooperation with the competent gov-ernment departments, and while ensuring the safety of the beneficiaries and maintaining sufficient dis-tance between them, as part of the preventive measures to confront the outbreak of the corona-virus (COVID-19).

Ministry: Results

of secondary

certificate exams

out tomorrow QNA — DOHA

The Ministry of Education and Higher Education will announce the results of the general secondary certificate exams for the 2019/2020 academic year tomorrow (Thursday).

The exams of the second semester of the general sec-ondary certificate for the 2019/2020 academic year were held from June 1 to 13, where 11,500 students took the tests in 149 centres.

The Ministry assigned some 6,100 employees to serve as observers and on committees for the conduct of tests.

According to the minis-terial decision issued by the Minister of Education and Higher Education, H E Dr. Mohammed Abdulwahed Ali Al Hammadi, recently regarding amending some provisions of the annual cal-endar of schools for the 2019/2020 academic year, the dates of the second round exams for all grades from first to 12th (day and adult edu-cation) will start on August 23, 2020, and will continue until August 31, 2020.

The Ministry of Education and Higher Education has also recently published calendar for the academic year 2020-21 for government schools.

School staff will return to schools for the academic year 2020-21 on August 19 and the first day of the 2020-21 aca-demic year will be on Sep-tember 1, according to the cal-endar announced by the Ministry.

Katara launches heritage collection contestTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

As part of Katara Summer Events 2020, the Cultural Village Foundation has launched the Heritage Collection Competition which will see participants shoot videos that tell stories of tradi-tional antique items.

Participation is open to Qataris and residents over 18 years of age. Each participant can submit three videos, each of which shouldn’t exceed three minutes and should be of high quality and in horizontal format shot using a mobile phone only.

Any video containing cop-yrighted (music, image) or inap-propriate content will be

excluded. Katara has the right to publish videos on social net-working sites or to use them for any purpose deemed appropriate.

The top three winners will receive QR15,000; QR12,000 and QR10,000 respectively. Participants can send videos via WhatsApp on mobile number 33302040 not later than July 30. The contest is part of the Katara Summer 2020 events, which include a series of com-petitions, presentations, and activities that the foundation will offer remotely through its social media platforms. It will also launch a series of virtual exhibitions, weekly theatre events, and a variety of lectures,

seminars and workshops in various fields of culture, liter-ature and art.

Other competitions are the Katara Handicrafts Compe-tition, the Katara Competition for Novel and Fine Arts, the Meshwar and Novel Compe-tition, as well as the Al-Dhad channel competition and Katara Prize for Cartoon. Val-uable prizes have been allo-cated to the winners in each category of the competitions.

Katara seeks to stimulate the various groups of society and encourage them to enhance their creative abilities and develop them within the inno-vative and targeted activities during the pandemic.

COVID-19 cases gradually declining in Qatar: Official

There has been an increase in positive cases among Qatari nationals and expat profes-sionals such as engineers, doctors and teachers despite the overall decrease in cases in Qatar. The risk of spread in this category is that through them it may spread to elderly people and their families.

Dr. Abdullatif Al Khal

At MoPH our surveillance team continues to track and trace all cases to identify potential new cases and gain understanding of how the virus was transmitted. We continue to see examples of people ignoring the preventive measures, resulting in one or even multiple positive cases within families and contacts.

Dr. Hamad Al Romaihi

Number of people requiring hospitalisation and

intensive care has also fallen. Currently 225

patients are in intensive care, with 110 of them

on ventilators.

The average age of people entering intensive

care is about 50 years and above.

Death rate in Qatar is low compared to the global

death rate from COVID-19.

Currently, over 350 e-commerce websites are registered

with e-commerce directory of the Ministry of Transport

and Communications.

According to Impact Survey Report-2019 by MoTC,

the e-commerce penetration rate in Qatar in 2019

was 37 percent compared to 15 percent in 2018.

Potential for further expansion of the online retail market

in Qatar is enormous due to ever-improving high speed

Internet technologies and connectivity, and high level of

disposable income among Qatari citizens and residents.

E-commerce

OFFICIAL NEWS

Doha: Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin

Hamad Al Thani and Deputy Amir

H H Sheikh Abdullah bin Hamad Al

Thani sent yesterday cables of con-

gratulations to HRH Grand Duke Henri

of Luxembourg on the occasion of

his country’s National Day.

Prime Minister and Minister of Inte-

rior H E Sheikh Khalid bin Khalifa

bin Abdulaziz Al Thani sent a cable

of congratulations to the Prime

Minister of Luxembourg,H E Xavier

Bettel, on the occasion of his coun-

try’s National Day.-QNA

Doha: The Joint Committee, which

is composed of the Shura Council’s

Legal and Legislative Affairs Commit-

tee and the Cultural and Information

Affairs Committee, held a meeting

yesterday chaired by its rapporteur

H E Nasser bin Rashid bin Saree Al

Kaabi. During the meeting, the Com-

mittee continued to examine a draft

law regulating the press, publica-

tion, publishing, media activities,

and arts, in the presence of Minis-

ter of Culture and Sports H E Salah

bin Ghanem Al Ali. The Committee

decided to resume studying the draft

law at its next meeting.-QNA

Doha: Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin

Hamad Al Thani held yesterday

via telephone a conversation with

H E President of the Republic of

Cote d’Ivoire, Alassane Ouat-

tara, during which they reviewed

the bilateral relations between

the two countries and ways

of enhancing them in various

fields, especially in the invest-

ment and health fields. During

the call, they discussed the lat-

est developments related to the

novel coronavirus (COVID-19)

pandemic and areas of cooper-

ation in this regard.-QNA

Amir sends greetings to Grand Duke of Luxembourg

Shura Council’s Joint Committee holds meeting

Amir holds telephone talk with President of Cote d’Ivoire

02 WEDNESDAY 24 JUNE 2020HOME

THE PENINSULA — DOHA

Ministry of Public Health yesterday announces the registration of 1,176 new confirmed cases of corona-virus (COVID-19), with 1,545 recoveries from the virus in the last 24 hours, bringing the total number of recovered cases in the State of Qatar to 71,501 cases

The Ministry stated that, in the last 24 hours, there were 17 new cases admitted to intensive care due to health complica-tions resulting from infection with the virus, bringing the total number of critical cases that are currently in critical care to 225 cases.

The Ministry explained that the new cases had the virus transmitted to them from people who had been previ-ously infected, as the Ministry of Public Health continues to conduct investigative and proactive testing, which con-tributes to early detection of cases.

The new confirmed cases of infection have been intro-duced to complete isolation in the various medical facilities in the country, where they receive the necessary healthcare according to the health status of each case.

The Ministry also confirmed

that efforts to tackle the COVID-19 virus in the State of Qatar have succeeded in flattening the curve and reducing the impact of the virus by a large percentage thanks to the decisions of the ban, the preventive measures taken, and the awareness and cooperation of all members of society, and that there are relatively low average numbers in relation to the recorded cases of new hospital admissions.

Ministry of Public Health stated that Qatar has now started to overcome the peak stage of the virus outbreak with the spread of the virus, thanks to the measures and measures taken by the state to address it, in addition to the commitment of the com-munity members to the rec-ommendations and pre-ventive instructions, the most important of which are social separation, staying at home, not going out except for necessity and not mixing.

The Ministry reaffirmed the necessity for the elderly or those suffering from chronic diseases and their family members to follow strict methods and precau-tions to reduce the risk of infection with them and work

to protect them from infection by refraining from social visits, wearing the mask and cleansing the hands when near them.

The Ministry states that since June 15, the State of Qatar has started gradually lifting restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic in four stages that will last until Sep-tember 1, based on the extensive data and studies conducted by the concerned authorities in the country as well as international experi-ences where other countries have succeeded in limiting the spread of the virus while gradually lifting the restric-tions imposed by it.

The Ministry has warned that lifting the restrictions grad-ually does not mean the disap-pearance of the COVID-19 pan-demic, but that during the development of the gradual lifting plan, priorities were taken into consideration, while taking full care to avoid the risks that may arise from the process of lifting, stressing that each stage will be subject to evaluation and review based on the curve of the spread of the virus, as the success of each stage that depends on everyone’s com-mitment to implementing the required precautions.

Qatar stresses need to respect sovereignty of states

QNA — DOHA

Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, H E Sultan bin Saad Al Muraikhi, said yesterday that Qatar stresses the need to respect the sovereignty of States and non-interference in their internal affairs.

Participating in an extraor-dinary meeting of Arab League’s council at the ministerial level, which was held via video con-ferencing, H E Sultan bin Saad Al Muraikhi said Qatar stresses the need to avoid standing with one party against another for personal goals and interests, and the need to seek serious collective work to make the political process in Libya suc-cessful, in a way that leads to a comprehensive settlement to enable Libya to achieve the desired stability and ensure its sovereignty and territorial integrity and the security and safety of its citizens.

He commended the

internationally-recognised Government of National Accord (GNA) for its efforts to uncover the perpetrators of the torture incident against a number of Egyptian citizens in the city of Tarhuna as well as its efforts to secure their safe return to their homeland and take legal measures to punish the perpe-trators of this crime.

“The unity, stability and sovereignty of Libya along with the integrity of its lands and independence as well as stopping the bloodshed and preserving its capabilities and wealth are a goal we all aspire to and we strive to achieve it,” Al Muraikhi added.

In this context, Minister of State renewed Qatar’s support to the Government of National Accord in Libya, and its call on all Libyans to implement the Skhirat Agreement and its outputs along with return to negotiations and national dia-logue and the completion of the

transitional phase in order to preserve Libya’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and achieve the aspirations of the Libyan people.

H E the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs said that the State of Qatar affirms its support for all efforts aimed at ending the conflict in Libya and moving forward towards building state institutions and protecting and promoting human rights. It stressed its

steadfast position to reject all forms of external interference in the Libyan internal affairs in all its kinds and sources.

He added: “We are all sure that the continuation of the con-flict in Libya is being paid for by the brotherly Libyan people and is draining the resources of their country, instead of using them to rebuild and achieve sus-tainable development.”

He stressed the State of Qatar’s call on all parties to

assume their legal and moral responsibility and respect and implement international laws and agreements to ensure the protection of civilians and civilian facilities, in addition to holding accountable all those responsible for crimes and human rights violations, espe-cially systematic and extraju-dicial killings proven by mass graves recently discovered in areas controlled by rogue militias.

Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, H E Sultan bin Saad Al Muraikhi, participating in the extraordinary meeting of Arab League’s council via video conferencing.

Doha renews support to Government of National Accord in Libya and called on all Libyans to implement the Skhirat Agreement in order to pre-serve Libya’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Qatar stresses its steadfast position to reject all forms of external interference in Libya, while affirming its support to all efforts aimed at ending the conflict .

MoPH reports 1,176 new cases;1,545 more patients recover

Qatar attends extraordinary virtual pledging conference of UNRWAQNA — DOHA

The State of Qatar participated in the work of the extraordinary virtual conference to announce the pledges of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).Minister of State for Foreign Affairs H E Sultan bin Saad Al Muraikhi represented the State of Qatar during the conference held yesterday via video conferencing.

In a speech before the conference, H E Sultan bin Saad Al Muraikhi stressed that the State of Qatar will continue to provide support to UNRWA within the

framework of enabling it to carry out its mandate, adding that the State of Qatar has been and remains at the forefront of the countries supporting it, as it has provided through the Qatar Fund For Development more than $100 million since 2015.

He explained that the support pro-vided by the State of Qatar to UNRWA in 2020, which was announced in 2019, amounts to a total of $11.2m, according to the agreement signed in Dec. 2019 on the sidelines of the Doha Forum between the State of Qatar and UNRWA, along with an amount of $1.5m provided by the Education Above All foundation in the State of Qatar to support of the

Palestinian government represented by the Ministry of Education to ensure the right to education for Palestinian children.

HE Al Muraikhi underscored that the State of Qatar will remain at the fore-front of the effective countries to enhance UNRWA’s ability to continue to perform its mandate and carry out its activities effectively in line with its prin-ciples and firm commitment in sup-porting the brotherly Palestinian people.

He said that the State of Qatar is today the first in the Arab world in pro-viding support to UNRWA’s core resources for 2019-2020. H E the

Minister of State for Foreign Affairs stated that this conference is taking place in light of the increasing financial crisis facing the UNRWA and the additional burden imposed by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic on its work.

He reiterated the support of the State of Qatar for the efforts of the new Com-missioner-General of UNRWA and thanked the Secretary-General of the United Nations, H E Antonio Guterres, for his efforts to mobilise support for the Agency. His Excellency also thanked the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and the Kingdom of Sweden for organising this conference.

COVID-19 cases graduallydeclining in Qatar

FROM PAGE 1

“Everyone has a role to play in the l i f t i n g o f r e s t r i c t i o n s a n d protecting the elderly and people with chronic conditions,” said Al Romaihi.

According to information provided by the World Health Organization, the number of positive cases in the world is accelerating, with the daily count exceeding 150,000 cases.

The number of total cases worldwide has reached more than 8.8 million, with about 465,000 deaths globally.

E-commerce market witnessing

boom in Qatar amid COVID-19

FROM PAGE 1

Theqa is an active programme that certifies local online merchants based on a set of identified criteria and monitor its members’ adherence to the code of conduct.

To obtain Theqa’s trust mark, local companies or e-commerce businesses must fulfil a set of standards. The portal helps evaluate participating company’s website to check if it meets Theqa’s security and safety requirements and also ensure that services on offer are according to specifications before it is granted a certificate and a trust mark, which is subject to annual renewal on Theqa’s website.

03WEDNESDAY 24 JUNE 2020 HOME

Ashghal partially opens Al Jabal IntersectionTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

The Public Works Authority (Ashghal) has partially opened the junction known as “Al Jabal Inter-section” on Al Wakra Main Road after turning the old roundabout into a signalised intersection.

The new intersection to connect Al Wakra Road and Mesaieed Road, Ras Al Jabal

Street and Wadi Al Afja Street, as part of Al Wakra Main Road Upgrade Project, in coordi-nation with the General Direc-torate of Traffic.

The opening included three lanes in each direction on Al Wakra Road, Mesaieed Road, and two lanes in each direction between Wadi Al Afja Street and Ras Al Jabal Street, where Al

Wakra Road was expanded from two lanes in each direction to three lanes in each direction.

The junction known as Al Jabal is a major link where it is located at the southern entrance of Al Wakra to connect the traffic coming from Mesaieed Road and the southern part of the Doha Expressway in the direction of Al Wakra Road to facilitate access to west Al Wakra via Wadi Al Afja Street or to the east of Al Wakra via Ras Al Jabal Street.

The new intersection will facilitate access to many vital facilities such as Al Wakra Family Beach, Al Wakra Old Souq, Government service complex, as well as a large number of residential and com-mercial complexes on each side of Al Wakra Main Road, the intersection will enhance traffic to Al Janoub Stadium through its closeness to the southern part of the Doha Express Highway leading to the World Cup Stadium.

Al Jabal Intersection is also

an extension to Al Wakra Main Road connected to Al Wakra station, where Al Wakra Road integrates with the Redline of Qatar Rail on its median, to tie Al Wakra and Doha through the two major stations of Al Wakra and Ras Bu Fontas.

By the end of 2020, the Public Works Authority will complete the conversion of the remaining major roundabouts, namely the Pearl and Ooredoo Roundabout to signalised intersections, addi-tionally; two new signalised intersections will be constructed in Al Wakra Road, Al Razi Street and Al Wukair Road. Engineer Nouh Al Joof confirmed that 66 percent of Al Wakra Main Road Upgrade Project has been com-pleted which upon completion will improve traffic between Doha, Al Wakra and the southern areas.

Al Joof explained that the old roundabout has been con-verted into a signalised inter-section to connect AlWakra and Mesaieed, which will distribute traffic movement in all directions coming and leading to Al Wakra, Mesaieed and Al Wukair. He added: “The intersection will facil-itate traffic between the cities of Al Wakra and Mesaieed and provide different routes for road users coming from Mesaieed towards Al Wakra and Doha, the intersection will also facilitate traffic for those coming from Al Wakra towards Al Wukair and Al Janoub Stadium.”

Ashghal has completed the implementation of many parts of Upgrade Al Wakra main road project, where the intersection between Al Wakra Road and Ras Bu Fontas Street was recently opened partially to traffic, which is located on Al Wakra Tunnel,

which also opened in the fourth quarter of 2018. The openings are integrated with Al Wakra Metro Station, one of Qatar Rail’s main stations.

The opening of the inter-section and Al Wakra Tunnel improved traffic between Doha and Al Wakra and provided a free traffic flow for road users from Ras Bu Fontas station towards Pearl Roundabout. Ashghal also moved the iconic Pearl structure to Al Wakra Souq and reinstalled it near Al Farda Roundabout, within Ashghal’s strategy to develop and construct infrastructures while preserving the country’s cultural heritage within the purview of Qatar National Vision 2030. This was also to ease completion of work of at Pearl Intersection, trans-forming it from a roundabout to signalised intersection.

Katara completes collection of first 10,000 words of Qatar Cultural DictionaryQNA — DOHA

The Cultural Village Foundation (Katara) completed collecting the first 10,000 words of the Qatar Cultural Dictionary, which its first phase of work began earlier.

The Qatar Cultural Dictionary project aims to protect the Qatari dialect with its old vocab-ulary for subsequent generations and to pre-serve the valuable inventory of the Qatari dialect, which carries all prevailing values and customs of society, based on the promotion of vernacular dialect that is not inconsistent with the preser-vation of classical native Arabic language, the mother of this dialect.

The Qatar Cultural Dictionary includes lin-guistic information that explains the linguistic origin and development in the local dialect of this origin. It also includes pictures, graphs, indexes and other complementary components.

General Manager of Katara Dr. Khalid bin Ibrahim Al Sulaiti said that the aim of the Qatar Cultural Dictionary project and its related research and study is to develop national awareness of the importance of cultural heritage

by establishing an integrated culture that links each Qatari landmark and vocabulary to their linguistic, heritage and cultural significance. He added that the project connects all the Qatari landmarks and designations with their fluent linguistic origins and their dialectic and cultural dimensions, and provides a scientific cultural asset that highlights the originality and roots of the Qatari vocabulary.

The Qatar Cultural Dictionary also includes language information that delves further into the linguistic origin and evolution of the names of places, locations and vocabulary used all in Qatari society by referring to the origin of the word in ancient Arabic dictionaries, Arabic poetry, and dictionaries of ancient countries and places. It also includes dialectical investigation of local pronunciation of names of places and locations, tracking the development of eloquent origin and tracking the cultural civilization of the authentic Qatari dialect.

The project started as an idea of a survey col-lection of the names of country places and sites, from cities and villages, fountains, castles and wells, and collecting vocabulary for daily life, past and present from Qatari dialect,

Winter vegetable

markets to close on

July 1 for this season

THE PENINSULA — DOHA

The Ministry of Municipality and Envi-ronment represented by the Agricultural Affairs Department has announced to close all winter vegetable markets from July 1, 2020 for this season. The announcement was made on twitter account of the Ministry yesterday.

To recall, after Eid Al Fitr break, only three winter vegetable markets out of five — Al Mazrouha, Al Wakra and Al Khor-and-Al Zakhira — resumed operation which will be also closed on July 1.

The winter vegetable markets, located in Al Sheehaniya, Al Mazrouha, Al Wakrah, Al Khor-Al Zakhira and Al Shamal emerged as one of the largest platform for marketing local vegetables in huge quantity directly from farms to the customers.

Amid growing demands of the services of the winter vegetable markets, the Agricultural Affairs Department allowed the markets to operate daily in place of three day in a week from the middle of this season.

According to an earlier figures released by the MME, a total of 135 local farms were participating in the winter vegetable markets for this season, 15 farms more compared to the previous season.

The highest number of farms 39 par-ticipated in Al Khor-Al Zakhira winter vegetable market followed by Al Maz-rouha at 34. The winter vegetable markets in Al Wakrah, Al Sheehaniya and Al Shamal run with the participation of 27, 20 and 15 farms respectively.

The increase in participation this season shows the confidence of farm owners in winter vegetable markets pro-vided by the Ministry of Municipality and Environment as platform for marketing their products.

The markets provide options to the consumers and help reduce the prices of agricultural products in local market.

According to the Ministry over 31 percent of total local agricultural products were sold out through the mar-keting platforms and winter vegetable markets shared 11 percent of the total sales.

Al Jabal Intersection on Al Wakra main road.

Education can save the future, Unesco official tells global conference by QF’s WISETHE PENINSULA — DOHA

A United Nations leader has described the world as being at a turning point where society has a unique opportunity to decide what kind of education will strengthen global inclusion, resilience, and peace, while speaking at an inter-national online conference organised by Qatar Foundation’s education think-tank.

During WISE’s Education Dis-rupted, Education Reimagined Part II – a three-day virtual gathering addressing the impact of COVID-19 and the future of education systems around the world –Stefania Giannini, Assistant Director-General for Edu-cation, Unesco, focused on the impor-tance of building a better future through learning, said a press release.

The crisis caused by the pandemic, she said, has exposed the conse-quences “of digital inequality that deprived millions from learning, of gender inequality that exposed girls – more than boys – to violence, of social inequalities that left the poorest behind, and geographical inequity.”

Approximately 500 million children and learners do not have access to education, partly due to lack of connectivity. And, according to a recent survey, 60 percent of teachers in 60 countries lack the digital skills to facilitate online platform learning.

Giannini asked participants to con-sider what “building back better” after COVID-19 means, saying: “The global pandemic will not be defeated by health measures alone. Public health

and public education are intercon-nected; they are two main pillars for a better society. We cannot allow them to be set in opposition.

“Secondly, the crisis has revealed the importance of digital connectivity and online platforms. Governments are already planning for the future along the lines of hybrid learning solu-tions and models that can combine traditional face-to-face learning and teaching with new technologies.

“These require not only the appro-priate infrastructure, but access to dig-italised curricular, digitalised training, and measure to protect privacies. This

is why education needs more resources, not less than before.

“And let’s recognize that the center of an educational process is the human relationship, between a student and a teacher. The education systems best prepared to respond to crises will be those that are capable of valuing their teachers, granting them more freedom and autonomy, and giving them the conditions to work collaboratively.”

Giannini concluded by saying: “Education can save the future, and empower every child and young person, for a more resilient, inclusive, and sustainable world. “We need

everyone on board to steer the future in the right course. We need political leadership, we need an unprecedented commitment to this mission. Public education, common good, and global solidarity – these commitments should be our compass for recovery.”

Eddie Dutton, Emergency Manager for Education at the non-profit organ-ization Education Cannot Wait, stressed the importance of teachers. In a session titled The Impact of COVID-19 on Education Systems Now and in the Future, he said: “Teachers can’t be replaced.”

“They play an important role in not just delivering education, but also in understanding the learning needs and -needs of children, and whether there’s something at home or in the community environment that may be preventing children from engaging in learning.”

Dr. Hassan Al Derham, President, Qatar University, was also among the conference panelists, and highlighted how moving education systems forward will require the involvement of many different stakeholders. “Communication is vital during this uncertainty,” he said. “It is very important to keep faculty, staff, students, and parents connected, as long as it is clear and transparent. We also have to be realistic and show why we are taking this direction. Leaders cannot do it alone and without the engagement of faculty, teachers, parents.”

In his opening address, Stavros NYiannouka, CEO, WISE, spoke of the dedication of teachers, parents, and stu-dents to learning. “They are amongst our most essential workers,” he said. “I sincerely hope that our appreciation of these everyday heroes outlast the pan-demic.” With nearly 5,000 registered participants, the three-day conference – a follow up to the first Education Dis-rupted, Education Reimagined event that took place in April 2020, and held in partnership with Salzburg Global Seminar and HolonIQ – is seeing more than 50 contributors, including politi-cians, school principals, TV personal-ities, teachers, social entrepreneurs, and learners lead discussions and debates.

Dr. Hassan Al Derham, President, Qatar University

Stefania Giannini, Assistant Director-General for Education, Unesco.

Music Affairs Center to organise inaugural music competitionRAYNALD C RIVERA THE PENINSULA

Aspiring musicians in Qatar has the chance to shine in the first edition of Nagham Competition being organised by the Music Affairs Center under the Ministry of Culture and Sports.

Open to all amateur musi-cians of any age living in Qatar, the contest is divided into two categories namely singing and playing musical instruments such as oud, piano and violin, the Center has announced via social media. To enter the competition, partici-pants must record a video of them performing a contest piece of their choice not exceeding two minutes and upload it along with their full name, phone number, and email address at the Center’s website: www.qmusic.qa not later than 2pm on June 30.

From among the entries

submitted, a total of 16 finalists - eight for each of the two cat-egories - will be chosen by the jury to advance for the final selection stage.The 16 finalists will then record a music video of their performance in the Music Affairs Center production studio which will be uploaded on the Center’s channel for online voting which will be from July 19 to September 3.

A total of six winners will be chosen. One winner from each category will be selected by the jury and two winners from each category via online voting. The winners will be invited to perform in a final event.Under the Department of Culture and Arts at the Ministry of Culture and Sports, the Music Affairs Centre continues to play an active role in supporting music activities in Qatar, developing talents and

spreading the culture of music to citizens and residents.

It has been organising events for the community such as music festivals which focus on reflecting the importance of cultural diversity of the com-munities residing in Qatar and reflect the ministry’s vision of stressing the importance of opening up to other cultures.

The Center has also pre-sented shows and concerts such as the unforgettable performance of “The Holy Trilogy”, a monu-mental musical masterpiece by the late celebrated Egyptian com-poser Riad Al Sunbati which was performed by the Qatar Philhar-monic Orchestra as a fitting tribute to the composer who took the classical Arabic music to new heights and inspired millions of people around the world during his lifetime.

The global pandemic will not be defeated by health measures alone. Public health and public education are interconnected; they are two main pillars for a better society. We cannot allow them to be set in opposition, says Stefania Giannini, a top Unesco official.

04 WEDNESDAY 24 JUNE 2020HOME

AAB celebrates digital launch of Toyota C-HR 2020 Hybrid modelTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

In line with the efforts of Qatar to limit the spread of the COVID-19 virus, and a commitment from Abdullah Abdulghani & Bros. Co. (AAB) to ensure the protection of the health and safety of its customers, the company initiated first digital launch in Qatar with the intro-duction of the all-new Toyota C-HR, a new member to the Toyota Hybrid Vehicle (HEV) family.

Announcing the launch of the all new Toyota C-HR, R K Murugan, AAB Acting CEO said that the daringly innovative crossover combines adventurous design with a responsive drive and class-leading eco-friendly technology to bring the future of the crossover to customers in the region.

Firas Mufti, Senior Marketing Manager added that the intro-duction of C-HR Hybrid Electric Vehicle further demonstrates Toyota Motor Corporation’s com-mitment to introduce more class leading eco-friendly technology models in addition to the existing 3 HEV models.

Awwad Mohamed, Senior Manager, Toyota National Sales commented “The introduction of new C-HR gives our customers more options of HEV vehicles to choose from and also further strengthens Toyota’s strong SUV line-up. AAB offers 8 years/160,000kms warranty for Hybrid Battery in Qatar thereby giving peace of mind to the HEV

vehicle owners in addition to the fabulous performance in accel-eration and quietness.

Designed to stand out both within the Toyota line-up and the crossover segment, the all-new C-HR – or Coupé High-Rider – embodies company President Akio Toyoda’s commitment to promoting stylistic freedom and engineering creativity. Offering the lowest fuel consumption value in its category at 23.9 km/L, the class-leading C-HR enables customers to contribute to a greener future while enjoying the increased driving satisfaction provided by its advanced technologies.

The all-new C-HR is built on the Toyota New Global Archi-tecture (TNGA) platform, which guarantees a more rewarding driving experience. The vehicle comes with a 1.8-liter VVT-i full-hybrid powertrain and automatic

E-CVT transmission, meeting all the requirements of daily com-mutes and weekend leisure journeys while offering peace of mind through its comprehensive array of safety features.

Viewed from any angle, the combination of faceted gem-stone-like shapes and fluid sur-faces of the 2020 Toyota C-HR creates a delicate balance of pre-cision and elegance.

The Daytime Running Lights (DRL) form a singular illuminated element located above the main beam projectors, while the indi-cator lights are fully integrated within the same unit. The position of the front fog lights at the extreme edges of the lower bumper allows for a very wide lower air intake, underlining the car’s powerful stance. Equipped with LED lamp technology, the rear light clusters stand proud of the bodywork and are connected

by a sleek, glossy spoiler, giving the back view of the 2020 Toyota C-HR an expressive visual signature.

The all-new C-HR’s airy and high-quality interior is designed to delight the most discerning of customers. Exuding a genuine sense of luxury and refinement, the cabin offers an elegant con-trast between curving surfaces and crisp lines to deliver a fresh, yet comfortable environment. The sleek control panel features a 4.2-inch color LCD Multi-Infor-mation Display with an onboard multimedia system and full smartphone integration through both Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.

The all-new C-HR HEV comes with all the benefits expected of the world’s most proven and advanced hybrid-electric technology, yet drives like any other conventional car, offering remarkable fuel effi-ciency at 23.9 km/L with zero compromise on performance. The hybrid-electric powertrain is equipped with a small, light, and powerful lithium-ion battery

pack that can efficiently absorb and deliver current, enhancing the electric motive force delivery.

Toyota has more than two decades of technical leadership in electrified vehicles and has amassed over 15 million environ-mentally friendly vehicle sales globally since 1997. Its hybrid-electric batteries are continuously charged by the petrol engine and when decelerating and braking, meaning there is no need to plug in a power cord.

As with any Toyota model, the safety of occupants is para-mount and is assured through several superior technologies. The TNGA-based chassis has been optimized for outstanding impact performance and is com-plemented by an impressive array of active and passive safety features.

A choice of 10 exciting exterior hues add to the all-new C-HR’s striking visual appeal, including Super White 2, White Pearl CS, Celestite Gray ME, Gray ME, Metal Stream ME, Black MC, Emotion Red 2, Orange ME,

Oxide Bronze ME, and Nebula Blue ME. With the launch of the new model, Toyota’s Hybrid Electric Model line-up in Qatar includes Corolla, Camry, RAV4 and the all new C-HR.

Customers wishing to pur-chase the new model can visit any of the two showrooms located at Al Abdulghani Tower (C-Ring Road) and City Center (basement) at their convenient time or can speak to their Sales Team directly at 50099188. Toyota main showroom is open from Sunday to Thursday from 8 am till 8 pm. City Center Showroom is opened from Sunday to Thursday from 9 am till 8 pm. AAB also offers excellent after sales support with a network of 10 service centers located across the country.

Toyota main showroom is open from Sunday to Thursday from 8 am till 8 pm. City Center Showroom is opened from Sunday to Thursday from 9 am till 8 pm.

R K Murugan (right), Acting CEO, and Firas Mufti, Senior Marketing Manager, with the new Toyota C-HR.

Viewed from any angle, the

combination of faceted

gemstone-like shapes and fluid

surfaces of the 2020 Toyota

C-HR creates a delicate balance

of precision and elegance.

Jassim and Hamad Bin Jassim Charitable Foundation supports Qatar Cancer Society with QR500,000QNA — DOHA

The Jassim and Hamad Bin Jassim Chari-table Foundation has signed a joint coop-eration agreement with the Qatar Cancer Society, in which the Foundation provides the Society with QR500,000, as a contri-bution to support the treatment of cancer patients unable to afford the costs of treatment to alleviate the disease on them.

The agreement was signed for the Jassim and Hamad bin Jassim Charitable Foun-dation by Saeed Mathkar Al-Hajri, Member of the Board of Directors and CEO of Foun-dation, and for the Qatar Cancer Society by Sheikh Dr. Khalid bin Jabor Al Thani, the Society’s Board Chairman.

Saeed Al-Hajri, Member of the Board of Directors and CEO, stressed on this occasion that the Foundation always seeks to serve the local community in all its categories, with its own capabilities and self-resources.

The support provided to the Qatar Cancer Society, which amounts to QR500,000, comes within the framework of the existing cooperation between the Foundation and the Qatar Cancer Society to finance the treatment of cancer patients in the State of Qatar and provide them with the necessary health services.

Al-Hajri added that the agreement aims

to provide a mechanism and framework for joint cooperation with the Qatar Cancer Society, which deals with community awareness to prevent cancer and works to support people with this disease.

The support provided is the first in light of the existing joint cooperation between the two parties, as the Foundation was keen to enhance its efforts in applying the prin-ciples of social responsibility, he added.

Al-Hajri noted that the agreement between the two parties provided an oppor-tunity to build close partnerships within the framework of joint work to provide health and humanitarian services for cancer patients, and look forward to more joint cooperation in the future in order to activate the Founda-tion’s vision of “health and education for a better life”, and to translate these efforts within the framework of social responsibility and achieving goals humanity and patriotism.

For his part, Sheikh Dr. Khalid bin Jabor Al Thani, Chairman of the Board of Directors of “Qatar Cancer Society” praised the efforts of the Jassim and Hamad bin Jassim Foun-dation in charitable and humanitarian work, especially in the health sector, and supporting the awareness-raising efforts carried out by the Society, especially in the field of supporting the treatment of cancer patients. The therapeutic cost of the disease remained high, which affected the health

and psychological well-being of those living with it, he added.

He affirmed that “Qatar Cancer Society” puts the responsibility of treating patients and sought not to have one patient on the waiting list of support since its establishment in 1997, as it bore the treatment of 1200 patients at a cost of approximately QR16.5m during 2019. The first quarter of this year witnessed treating 900 patients, at a total cost of approximately QR4.9m.

He noted that the agreement is part of the role played by the two parties in com-munity service and effective partnership that contributes to achieving the goals that are in the interest of society members and raising awareness and all that would serve their target groups, especially since the issue of cancer control needs to unite efforts and continue them in order to face the disease.

He added that the two sides are linked by permanent and joint cooperation before the agreement, and each of them will strive to consolidate and strengthen this rela-tionship by benefiting from their experi-ences and unifying efforts in the interest and benefit of all members of society, which we are keen to work on by signing this agreement that we hope it would achieve our target groups, which is at the heart of our strategies and efforts to achieve Qatar’s vision.

Slavery museum’s mission more vital than everTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

As protests against racism and police violence continue around the world following the death in the US of George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, the mission of a slavery museum located 7,000 miles away in Doha has become all the more important.

“It’s very important to under-stand the history of racism, because history repeats itself,” said Dr. Hafiz Ali Abdulla, Director of Msheireb Museums, adding that for anyone around the world to empathize with the Black Lives Matter movement, it’s important to understand the root of the racism, which began with slavery but continued well beyond the official abolishment of slavery.

Founded in 2015 on the site of a former slave trader’s house where slaves from across the Indian Ocean were traded as recently as the early 20th century, the museum aims to raise awareness about the Arab world’s buried history of slavery. Named Bin Jelmood House, the museum is one of the four historic houses turned into exhibition spaces by

Msheireb Museums, a project of Qatar Foundation’s subsidiary Msheireb Properties.

“It’s important to understand how racism works as a result of slavery, not just in the US, but also in other places,” said Fahad Al Turky, Exhibitions Manager at Msheireb Museums. “The museum is an opportunity to understand that there is global anti-blackness that is connected to slavery, as well as various other complex historical proc-esses, such as colonialism and capitalism.”

The museum shines a rare light on the subject of slavery in the Middle East, which is often missing from public discourse because of the extreme sensitivity

of the topic. However, according to Turky, recognizing a problem is the first step to finding a solution for it. “It’s important to look within our own commu-nities,” he said. “At the end of the day, if you don’t address the his-torical injustices and other ills within societies, like racism, it only makes it more entrenched within a society, and makes it more difficult to achieve justice.”

The United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on Contem-porary Forms of Racism also lauded the museum during her visit to the country last year.

“I wish to commend the museum for the powerful and crucial contribution to Qatar and the world more broadly. As is the case in all nations, Qatar’s past is vital for understanding its present and shaping its future,” read the rapporteur’s report to the UN, praising the country’s use of “arts, culture and sports to shift societal

values, beliefs and perceptions fundamental to equality and non-discrimination.”

One of the exhibitions within the museum, titled Journey to the Heart of Life, looks at the DNA and genetics of a diverse group of people in Qatar to highlight how, biologically, all humans are similar to one another and come from the same origins.

“Race is a social construct, not necessarily a genetic or a scien-tific concept. The DNA exhibition shows that we have much more in common than we are different. So how is it possible that we can we exercise racism or slavery on each other?” said Turky.

Turky noted that while race is not a scientific phenomenon, racism is real and oppresses the lives of so many people around the world because of the society’s perceived notions of race.

“Museums such as the Bin Jelmood become a site of

learning, and we give a different kind of narrative that is often-times not talked about,” added Turky. “And this is really important for awareness because once you understand this nar-rative or alternative history, you become more aware of the inter-section of slavery, institutions, race, gender, and so on.

“Museums play a vital role in informing these discussions, and they are often the first step in starting those discussions.”

Msheireb Museums regularly work with educational institutes across the country to ensure important conversations about discrimination, slavery, and human exploitation also get dis-cussed within classrooms. The museum has established the Msheireb Museums Friends program, which trains teachers and leaders from educational organizations and youth associ-ations to become cultural

ambassadors of its message and engage with its content both within and outside the museum.

In 2018, the International Council of Museums (ICOM) awarded Msheireb Museums with the Best Educational Practice award for their educa-tional and cultural activities.

“This museum is a live doc-ument of what is happening around us and we are always working on enhancing the content and outreach of the museum that can help us improve any aspect of the society or the future,” said Dr. Abdallah.

As educational institutions start opening up after the COVID-19 lockdown is lifted, the museum’s team plans to collaborate more actively with schools and univer-sities to continue the conversations on race and discrimination that have become all the more important in light of the protests starting from the United States.

Msheireb Museums’ Director Dr. Hafiz Ali Abdulla. RIGHT: An exhibition at Bin Jelmood House, one of the four historic houses turned into exhibition spaces by Msheireb Museums.

The museum shines a rare light on the subject of slavery in the Middle East, which is often missing from public discourse because of the extreme sensitivity of topic.

SIS organises Off-Stage Creative Fest Award Ceremony 2020-2021

THE PENINSULA — DOHA

Shantiniketan Indian School (SIS) organised the Off-Stage Creative Fest Award Ceremony 2020-2021 through remote platform which was telecast through L i v e S t r e a m i n g o n Youtube.

More than 1,450 students participated in a variety of events that included Pencil Drawing, Colouring, Collage Making, Artificial Flower Making, Web Designing, Digital Painting, PowerPoint Presentation, Essay Writing and Poem Writing (in English, Malayalam, Arabic and Hindi), English Story Wri t ing and Quran Recitation.

These competitions were held in six categories with participants from classes I – XII.

While Felicitating the stu-dents, President of the School Management Committee, K. C Abdul Latheef, showered huge praises for the massive

participation of the students and was delighted to see a large variety of creative works produced by students from all categories and in all the events.

Principal Dr. Subhash Nair expressed his happiness at the spirit shown by the students as well as the teachers in organising the event in a grand way.

Svetlana Mary Shibu from the Junior Section and Aliya Eyash from the Middle Section also shared their feedback and expressed joy and pride for being a part of the school that is a centre of excellence where children are given ample opportunities to exhibit their potent talents leading to their holistic development.

The event which was anchored remotely by Umm Fatima and Ganga Chekky Veettil, was professionally managed and executed by the students who carried the entire session with tremendous ease and panache.

05WEDNESDAY 24 JUNE 2020 HOME

QBG webinar highlights Arabian Peninsulawildlife conservation efforts amid COVID-19THE PENINSULA — DOHA

Qur’anic Botanic Garden (QBG), in collaboration with the Inter-national Union for Conservation of Nature Regional Office for West Asia (IUCN ROWA), hosted a webinar titled 'Wildlife Conservation Efforts after Corona; Challenges and Oppor-tunities in the Arabian Peninsula'. The session shed light on the efforts, opportu-nities, challenges, and projects implemented in the region with regards to protecting plant and animal wildlife.

Moderated by QBG Assistant Researcher Mr. Ahmed ElGharib, the interactive webinar brought together experts from the Ministry of Municipality and Environment, ASTAD Project Management, the IUCN, Royal Botanic Garden of Jordan, and QBG to discuss various topics and exchange expertise in the field of nature conservation.

Among the topics discussed

were: the potential impact of COVID-19 on protected areas and nature conservation efforts both in the Arab and greater West Asia regions, the sus-tainable management of natural resources in the light of climate change and other environ-mental challenges, nature res-toration programmes in Qatar

as well as plant species studies and methods of plant and seed propagation for ecosystem preservation.

Dr. Hany El Shaer, Regional Director, IUCN ROWA, who was among the webinar speakers, said: “The webinar was an excellent opportunity to exchange knowledge and plan

together for better conservation strategies in the region. It also shed light on both the positive and negative impacts of the coronavirus on the envi-ronment. With relation to this, the IUCN’s programmes reported that as a result of social distancing, air, beach, and noise pollution levels have sig-nificantly fallen in many countries.”

Dr. Sheikh Soud Al Thani, Sustainability Director, ASTAD Project Management, and also one of the speakers at the webinar, said: “Around the world, and during this period in par-ticular, consideration for the environment is becoming an increasingly important and rel-evant topic, and the QBG has taken a proactive stance with this webinar.

Considering the rapid rate of development in Qatar and around the world, it is imperative that we begin implementing sus-tainable methods of development and nature conservation to take

better care of our environment.”

Commenting on the webinar, Fatima Al Khulaifi, Director, QBG, said: “Earlier this month, we marked World Environment Day by highlighting the necessity of protecting our ecosystems, which, in light of the many envi-ronmental challenges that the world is facing, has become a major priority. QBG is pleased to have brought together experts from across the Arab region to exchange their expertise and explore sustainable solutions that will provide a better tomorrow for our planet. We look forward to engaging the

public further on such important topics in the future.”

QBG has previously collab-orated with the IUCN’s Com-mission on Ecosystem Man-agement to host a forum titled 'Islamic Perspectives on Eco-system Management', which brought together local and international ecologists, eco-system managers, scholars from botanic gardens, religious experts, and other relevant stakeholders to share their expertise and experiences in preserving the environment as well as exploring Islamic prin-ciples, values, and ethics that promote plant conservation.

Dr. Hany El Shaer, Regional Director, IUCN ROWA, speaking during a webinar by Qur’anic Botanic Garden.

CPP hosts e-workshop on governance in Mena regionTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

The College of Public Policy (CPP), part of Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU), in collaboration with Brookings Doha Center (BDC) hosted an e-workshop on 'Governance in the Mena Region: What Can we Learn from Responses to COVID19?'. The e-workshop addressed the institutional and governance challenges facing countries of the Mena region that have been exacerbated and exposed as a result of the global coronavirus pandemic.

The online sessions sought to tackle topics related to Mena pandemic responses, insights into governance chal-lenges gained as a result of the pandemic, and future pathways to ensure a just and well-governed post-pandemic world.

Among the areas of dis-cussion was an examination of gaps in public service delivery as well as deficits in governance, which include the rule of law, quality of regu-lation accountability, or citizen participation.

Participants included aca-demic scholars and policy experts, including from UNDP’s Regional Bureau for Arab States, the United Nations Economic and Social

Commission for West Asia (ESCWA), the World Bank, the Arab Barometer, Harvard Uni-versity, University of Waterloo, University of Administrative Sciences Speyer, CPP and BDC.

Speaking about the webi-nar’s outcomes, Dr. Leslie Pal, Founding Dean of CPP, said: “It has been a pleasure to partner with BDC to host this pertinent webinar, which was highly informative with excellent con-tributions from participants. This online conversation provided an opportunity to examine the Mena’s reactionary approach to the pandemic and take stock of the invaluable lessons learned. The region’s response to the

pandemic will undoubtedly help us understand how to better improve public service delivery.”

At the conclusion of the webinar, Dr Tarik Yousef, Director of the BDC, said: “It has been a privilege to co-host this timely workshop with our col-leagues at HBKU’s College of Public Policy. The event has brought together leading experts involved in studying institutional responses to the pandemic across the region. The insights that have been shared will help improve the policy relevance of this work and, we hope, will lead to better policy outcomes. We look forward to co-organising future events with our colleagues at

CPP that can take the discussion forward.”

Dr. Anis Ben Brik, Associate Professor at CPP and co-chair of the event, said: “Such discus-sions are invaluable given the perilous state of the world today, and the Mena region is not exempt. The better informed we are, the better the chance of solving the problems this unprecedented crisis has presented. Cooperation between nations in the Mena region would go a long way in helping in that cause, and I look forward to more discussions on this issue of immense impor-tance, not least what our world will and should look like once the pandemic is over.”

Dr. Nader Kabbani, Director of Research at BDC and co-chair of the event, said: “The pandemic has caught many countries off balance. For those countries that are willing to learn and grow, the pandemic has created a “stress test” that will allow them to gauge the ability of their public health systems and other institutions to respond to such a crisis and to identify governance deficits that should be addressed. This is what this workshop aimed to do in the context of the Mena region. The main conclusion from this event is that there is much work to be done.”

Participants during a discussion on governance in the Mena region.

The session shed light on the efforts, opportunities, challenges, and projects implemented in the region with regards to protecting plant and animal wildlife.

GU-Q alumnus leads Qatar’s WTO claim win against piracy

THE PENINSULA — DOHA

In a message to Georgetown University in Qatar (GU-Q) students, Saleh Abdullah Al Mana, the Director of the Office of the State of Qatar to the World Trade Organi-sation (WTO) and a 2013 GU-Q graduate, encouraged young people impacted by the pandemic to embrace uncertainty and remain opti-mistic in the face of adversity.

As the head of Qatar’s WTO office in Geneva, Saleh led the team that success-fully pursued an interna-tional trade dispute in Qatar’s beIN Media Group’s intellectual property rights claim against Saudi Arabia.

The landmark case resulted in a recent WTO ruling that has been hailed globally as a victory for the State of Qatar.

The International Politics graduate of GU-Q, one of Qatar Foundation’s partner institutions, explained that the guiding wisdom he received from professors while a student remains meaningful to him even today. “I will never forget hearing the phrase ‘uncer-tainty is always certain’. That’s why my advice to my fellow GU-Q graduates and current and incoming stu-dents is to think about a career path and future that inspires you, and inspires your commitment despite the challenges.”

Qatar filed the official request to establish a panel to adjudicate the dispute through the WTO’s Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) in December of 2018, only two months after Saleh was appointed in his new role as head of Qatar’s WTO office in Geneva.

Saleh was part of the team that presented evi-dence of commercial-scale piracy of Qatar’s intellectual property. The proceedings

took place throughout tense oral hearings and written submissions by both parties. Third party member states, who were concerned about the wide scale unchecked piracy perpetuated by the broadcast pirate “beoutQ,” also participated in this landmark case.

The WTO panel last week determined that Saudi Arabia had breached global rules on intellectual property rights by failing to prosecute the pirate broad-caster and is now requested to conform with its obliga-tions as a signatory of WTO’s Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intel-lectual Property Rights.

The ruling will be legally binding once it is formally adopted, which is significant in two ways, according to Saleh. “This is one of the first rulings by an international dispute settlement mech-anism that has found one of the blockading countries in clear violation of interna-tional rules when it comes to the illegal measures imposed on the State of Qatar since 5th June 2017,” he said.

“And secondly, this landmark ruling sends a message to the world that members states cannot violate international trade agreements by masking them to be unfounded and baseless national security concerns as the blockading countries are attempting to do.” The DSB is responsible for overseeing the entire dispute settlement process and has the authority to enforce measures to resolve violations committed by member states. Noting that the stakes go beyond Qatar’s trade rights, Saleh said: “The WTO made it clear that every country is bound by the same rules. This was a win for the international rule of law.”

Saleh Abdullah Al Mana (left in the back row) during a World Trade Organisation WTO meeting.

NU-Q prepares for new DeanTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Marwan M. Kraidy, an authority on Arab media and a global communi-cation scholar, will be joining North-western University in Qatar as its new Dean and CEO on July 1.

Earlier this month, Kraidy spoke at a webinar hosted by Northwestern’s Buffett Institute for Global Affairs on the effect of COVID-19 on global media and geopolitics.

Kraidy’s research centers around the relationship between culture and geopolitics, theories of identity and modernity, and global media systems and industries. He is also an expert on the Middle East and fluent in Arabic. He has published 13 books and edited volumes, authored 130 essays and chapters, and was the recipient of more than 50 awards for teaching and scholarship.

His latest project, which received a grant from the prestigious Andrew Carnegie Fellows Program, is a book that will explore the rise of the Islamic State through the implementation of “war machine” communication and digital media tactics that spread fear, hostility, and global insecurity.

During his webinar with the Buffet Institute, Kraidy synthesized the media disruptions and changes resulting from COVID-19 into three main themes: “the tug of war” between the capabilities of democratic and autocratic systems, the tension between global solidarity and “national retrenchment,” and the resurgence of traditional transnational issues.

In the discussion of democratic versus autocratic systems of gov-ernment, Kraidy said that the question that dominated these discussions was whether “the political system is a factor in how well a country handles the epidemic.”

These debates, Kraidy observed, soon “evolved into a more direct nar-rative confrontation” as people noticed that countries with leaders who exhibit “authoritarian tendencies,” and have shown “disdain for science,” seem to be doing worse, while those with female leadership and a science-driven approach, such as New Zealand and Germany, are doing much better.

Regarding the tension between global solidarity and “national retrenchment noted he how “the talk of borders suddenly emerged in full force.” He went on to say that the resurgence of border paranoia in the US is what happens when a pan-demic like COVID-19 adds fuel to an administration that has already exhibited behavior of “national retrenchment.”

The resurgence of transnational issues, Kraidy said was another effect of the pandemic. “US activists for social justice and equality are leading the world,” he said, “in the places where the US government has failed.”

Commenting on the protests that have occurred in the wake of the death of George Floyd, he said that they not only ignited “a full awakening of injustice and inequality in the US,” but also “triggered global actions all over the world.” These actions are, he said, “reviving the embers into flames of all the…struggles…whether they are against local dictators or the memory and history of imperialism and colonialism.”

Kraidy is joining NU-Q from the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania where he has served as associate dean for administration and Anthony Shadid Chair in Global Media, Politics and Culture. In 2013, he founded the Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication.

Temporary closure of access to Ibn Mahmoud Street from Al Rayyan RoadTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

The Public Works Authority (Ashghal) has announced the closure of the access to Ibn Mahmoud Street from Al Rayyan Road. In coordi-nation with the General Directorate of Traffic, this change will be implemented from today for a period of one month to enable completion of infra-structure works as part of the B Ring Road Devel-opment Project.

During this time, road users coming from the White Palace Intersection and heading towards Ibn Mahmoud Street, will be required to turn right towards Al Reem Street then left to Aseer Street to reach Ibn Mahmoud Street.

Likewise, road users can continue straight then turn right at Al Khaleej Interchange to get to Al Khaleej Street then turn right towards Al Ikha Street to reach Ibn Mahmoud Street.

The Public Works Authority will install road signs informing motorists of the temporary closure. Ashghal has requested all road users to abide by the speed limit, and follow the road signs to ensure their safety.

The change will be implemented from today for a period of one month to enable completion of infrastructure works as part of the B Ring Road Development Project.

06 WEDNESDAY 24 JUNE 2020MIDDLE EAST / AFRICA

Yemeni army, separatists clash despite ceasefireANATOLIA & BLOOMBERG ADEN

A new round of clashes erupted between government forces and the separatist Southern Transitional Council (STC) in Yemen’s southern Abyan province yesterday, according to a Yemeni military source.

The violence came hours after the Saudi-led coalition said the Yemeni government and STC, which is backed by the United Arab Emirates (UAE), agreed to maintain a cease-fire in the southern island of Socotra.

The military source said government forces launched attacks on STC sites east of Zin-jibar, the provincial capital of Abyan.

He said dozens of STC fighters were killed and injured in the attacks, but without giving an exact toll. Violence has flared between the STC and government forces since the UAE-backed group declared self-rule over Aden other southern provinces in April.

Yemen has been devastated by a conflict that escalated in March 2015 after Iran-backed Houthi rebels seized the capital

Sana’a and forced President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi to flee the country.

Efforts to propel peace-making in Yemen have been complicated in recent months by infighting between forces loyal to Hadi’s internationally recognized government and the separatist Southern Transitional Council backed by the United Arab Emirates.

The Saudi-led coalition has called on the sides to cease fire and implement a planned power-sharing deal that unraveled amid the fighting, a move that would not only ease

the bloodshed in Yemen but also mend a rift between the kingdom and its top Gulf ally, the UAE. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia came under a missile and drone attack from Iran-backed Yemen rebels that tar-geted the capital and other cities, as international efforts to end their five-year war have floundered.

Saudi air defenses inter-cepted at least four ballistic missiles launched by Houthi rebels at Riyadh, Najran and Jazan, and also destroyed eight explosives-laden drones, state-run Saudi Press Agency

reported early yesterday.Houthi military spokesman

Yahya Saree said the attacks targeted the Defense Ministry, a military base and intelligence and other locations in the three cities. The rebels also vowed to carry out more powerful strikes, according to their Al Masirah news channel.

A Saudi-led coalition has been fighting the Houthis since 2015 to restore the government of Yemeni President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, and the rebels have attacked the kingdom with missiles and drones multiple times.

Iran reports highest virus deaths since AprilAFP & QNA — TEHRAN/KUWAIT

Iran yesterday reported 121 new coronavirus deaths, its highest daily toll in over two months, as it battles to contain the Middle East’s deadliest COVID-19 outbreak.

Health ministry spokes-woman Sima Sadat Lari told a news conference that the new fatalities brought the overall virus death toll to 9,863.

That is Iran’s highest single-day fatality rate since April 11, when 125 deaths were recorded.

Lari also announced another 2,445 people had tested positive for COVID in the past 24 hours, raising the country’s caseload to 209,970.

The Islamic republic recorded a drop in its daily fatalities in early May, but there has been a rise in recent weeks.

There has been scepticism at home and abroad about the country’s official COVID figures,

with concerns the actual toll could be much higher.

Iran has not imposed a mandatory lockdown on people to stop the virus’s spread, but it closed schools, cancelled public events and banned movement between the country’s 31 prov-inces in March.

The government progres-sively lifted restrictions from April in order to reopen its sanctions-hit economy.

Meanwhile, the Kuwaiti Ministry of Health yesterday reported 742 more cases of the novel Coronavirus (COVID-19), raising the count of confirmed cases to 41,033.

Four additional fatalities due to the viral illness were also reported in the last 24 hours, taking the death toll to 334, the Kuwaiti Ministry of Health Spokesman Dr. Abdullah Al Sanad told a press conference yesterday.

Al Sanad added that all the 742 cases that have been diag-nosed with the disease were in contact with other persons that have been confirmed previously.

Earlier in the day, the Kuwaiti Ministry of Health said that 534 more Coronavirus patients had recovered in the past 24 hours, raising to 32,304

A customer, wearing a protective mask due to the COVID-19 pandemic, stands inside an automatic disinfection booth before entering a supermarket in the Iraqi capital Baghdad, yesterday.

the total number of recoveries so far.

The Omani Ministry of Health announced on Tuesday 1318 new cases of coronavirus (Covid-19), including 853 for

Omanis, and 465 for non-Omanis, bringing the total number of cases registered in the Sultanate of Oman to 32394 and 17,279 recovered cases.

The ministry said, in a

statement reported by the Oman News Agency, that the total tests that were conducted during the past 24 hours reached 3940, while the number of cases in ICU reached 97.

Lebanon’s crisis, pandemic hit American University in BeirutAP — BEIRUT

One of the Arab world’s oldest and most prestigious universities, which endured civil war, kidnappings and various economic crises, is preparing for what may be the biggest challenge in its 154-year history.

The American University of Beirut is confronting a global pandemic, a severe recession and the collapse of Lebanon’s currency— all at the same time— and is planning a series of sweeping layoffs and salary cuts in response.

AUB president Fadlo Khuri said the university, which ranks among the top 150 in the world, will lay off up to 25% of its workforce, close administrative departments and shelve an ambitious project for a major new medical center.

“The layoffs are very painful,” Khuri said in an interview at the sprawling campus on the Mediter-ranean Sea. “AUB has never had to do this before, we’ve never been forced to have layoffs.”

The American University of Beirut, which operates under a charter from the state of New York, was the first to introduce American education to the Middle East. For generations, it has educated the Arab world’s elite, pro-duced three presidents, around a dozen prime ministers — including Lebanon’s current premier, Hassan Diab — and countless Cabinet ministers and ambassadors.

Its vibrant campus has also been a pillar of Beirut’s cultural and intel-lectual life, with a diverse student body and a history of activism.

The announcement has come as a shock to members of the 6,500-strong workforce of AUB and the American Uni-versity Medical Center. Tens of thousands of Lebanese have already lost their jobs in a worsening economic crisis exacerbated by the coronavirus outbreak.

The crisis is rooted in decades of institutionalised corruption and misman-agement that came to a head last October, igniting mass protests. The economic meltdown has plunged the fragile country into deep uncertainty and threatens to unleash further unrest and chaos.

Unemployment has skyrocketed to 35%, and nearly half the population lives below the poverty line, according to the World Bank. The crisis has also squeezed the middle class. Lebanese, who have long used the dollar and the Lebanese pound interchangeably, have

seen the local currency lose nearly 70% of its value. With incomes and savings evaporating, many parents have been unable to afford school, and university fees charged in dollars.

Khuri first laid out the painful reality in a memo to staff on May 5, describing the situation as a “confluence of calamities” that he said together amount to the “greatest crisis since the university’s foundation in 1866.”

He said the university had expected to raise $609m in revenue for 2019 and 2020, but instead faces real losses of $30m, an amount that would almost totally wipe out contingency funds it has built up since 2015.

In a June 15 memo, he announced there would be a series of unprece-dented layoffs to help cope with the crisis. Khuri said the decision was “very

difficult personally” but aims at making AUB more sustainable.

The university remained open throughout much of the 1975-1990 Lebanese civil war, providing an oasis of calm and greenery even as a number of foreign staff members were kid-napped or killed, including president Malcom Kerr who was assassinated in 1984 and David Dodge who was acting university president when he was kid-napped by pro-Iranian gunmen in 1982. He was released a year later in Iran. International and local faculty and students joined waves of Lebanese who fled the country’s recurring con-flicts. The university closed down when the coronavirus pandemic hit in March, but it has partially reopened for summer classes. It currently enrolls around 9,250 students.

US wants Security Council to extend Iran arms embargoAFP — UNITED NATIONS

The US has proposed a UN Security Council resolution condemning a 2019 attack on Saudi oil facilities it blames on Iran and proposing an extension of an arms embargo against the Islamic republic, sources said.

The embargo, put in place as part of a nuclear accord signed with Tehran in 2015, is set to expire in October, but Washington has been working to extend the ban as tensions with its arch-rival remain high.

On Friday, France, the UK and Germany — all signatories to the deal — issued a joint statement arguing against lifting the ban as scheduled, saying it could have “major implications for regional security and stability.” The US resolution“condemns the attacks of September 2019 against Saudi Arabia”.

It also calls for the body to “prohibit the supply, sale or transfer, direct or indirect... of weapons and related mate-rials,” excluding those that are approved with 30 days’ notice.

No date has been scheduled for a vote on the resolution and it is unlikely to pass, as veto-wielding China and Russia have already spoken out against extending the embargo.

Palestinian protesters taking part in a demonstration against Israel’s plans to annex parts of the occupied West Bank, in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip, yesterday. Israel aims to begin a process of annexing West Bank settlements and the Jordan Valley from July 1, as part of a US peace initiative.

Gaza infant dies, unable totravel to Israel for surgeryAFP — OCCUPIED JERUSALEM

Baby Omar Yaghi was eight months old when he died, unable to travel from Gaza to Israel for life-saving heart surgery after Palestinian offi-cials cut coordination.

The baby’s mother Raneen has been unable to speak or eat since losing her son last week, his uncle Mohammed Yaghi said. They are one of a number of families caught up in a high-level dispute, after the Palestinian Authority last month ended security coordination with Israel over its plans to annex parts of the occupied West Bank.

The move has had a dra-matic impact on scores of Pal-estinians in both the West Bank and Gaza who need Israeli paperwork to access treatment which is not available closer to home. “Omar was supposed to undergo major surgery on May 24, but they told us that our travel to Israel was prevented because coordination was stopped,” said the infant’s uncle.

Several human rights organisations lobbied success-fully for a new date, but Yaghi died on June 18 just three days before the planned operation.

Gaza’s two million residents have lived under a crippling Israeli blockade since 2007, with Palestinians having to apply for exit permits to leave

the enclave.Israel’s military branch

responsible for civilian affairs in the Palestinian territories, COGAT, said the Erez crossing with Gaza is “ready and well prepared” to facilitate transfers.

COGAT “keeps allowing, also at these times, an entrance of residents from the Gaza Strip for life-saving medical treatment and in other human-itarian cases,” a spokesperson said in an English statement.

Yaghi was born with complex heart problems and he started treatment at Israel’s Sheba Medical Center when he was just one month old.

Having been unable to return for the surgery, Yaghi suffered heart failure on Wednesday and was resusci-tated at a Gaza hospital.

“They told us that the situ-ation was very serious,” said Mohammed Yaghi, who tried desperately to arrange an emergency transfer to Israel while his nephew was put on a ventilator. “At 10:00 am, the hospital management called and told us he had died.”

The boy’s father, also named Omar, found out his son had not survived while he was on the way to hospital. “My brother was completely destroyed, especially when he received the child’s body,” said Mohammed Yaghi.

Palestinian shot dead at checkpointAFP — ABU DIS, WEST BANK

A Palestinian man was shot dead yesterday at a checkpoint in the occupied West Bank after driving his car “quickly” towards a border officer, Israeli police said.

The Palestinian was “shot and killed” at a checkpoint in Abu Dis, close to Jerusalem, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said. The man “drove

his vehicle quickly towards the direction of a female border police officer who was injured lightly,” Rosenfeld added.

The Palestinian killed was named by family and security sources as Ahmad Erakat, in his 20s. The incident comes nearly a month after a Palestinian man was killed in similar circum-stances near the West Bank city of Ramallah.

He was shot dead on May

29 after trying to ram a car into Israeli soldiers, none of whom were injured, police said at the time. Yesterday’s incident comes ahead of plans by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to annex parts of the West Bank. Netanyahu said the government would take steps towards annexing Israeli set-tlements and the Jordan Valley from July 1, as part of a broader US peace plan.

Yesterday's death toll of 121 is Iran’s highest single-day coronavirus fatality rate since April 11, when 125 deaths were recorded. The Health ministry spokeswoman told a news conference that the new fatalities brought the overall virus death toll to 9,863.

Rocket hits near

Baghdad airport

AP — BAGHDAD

One katyusha rocket landed in the vicinity of Baghdad airport without causing any casualties, the Iraqi military said. It was the most recent in a spate of rocket attacks targeting the American presence in the country since the US launched talks with Iraq earlier this month.

The rocket was launched from a village west of the capital near the Abu Ghraib district, according to a military statement. There were no cas-ualties or significant damages.

07WEDNESDAY 24 JUNE 2020 AFRICA

Malawi holds election re-run as President decries 'unrest'REUTERS — BLANTYRE

Malawians voted yesterday in a re-run of a discredited pres-idential election seen as a test of Africa’s ability to tackle ballot fraud, but the country’s President said reports of violence called the integrity of the contest into question.

Malawi’s judiciary infu-riated President Peter Muth-arika, in power since 2014, when it overturned his narrow victory in February over “sys-t e m a t i c a n d g r a v e ” irregularities.

His disputed win also sparked months of anti-gov-ernment protests, a rare sight in Malawi. Last week hundreds of lawyers also protested when Mutharika tried to retire Chief Justice Andrew Nyirenda, forcing the President to back down.

The supreme court upheld the annulment of the election win last month, a decision that Mutharika, 79, called a “coup” in a campaign rally on Sat-urday in the northern district of Rumphi.

After voting at a school in the tea farming district of Thyolo, southern Malawi, Mutharika decried what he described as violence in oppo-sition strongholds in central Malawi.

“It is very sad. Our sec-retary general has been beaten up,” he said. “Those causing the violence are desperate. How then will the election be credible?” There was no inde-pendent confirmation of the alleged unrest, although the electoral commission said it had received reports of violence.

After voting in the capital, Lilongwe, opposition leader Lazarus Chakwera told his supporters: “There is no reason really to resort to vio-lence... The vote itself is the fight we need.” He added that he believed the election would be fair this time.

The judiciary’s ruling echoed one by a Kenyan court in 2017, which cancelled Pres-ident Uhuru Kenyatta’s election win. Both were remarkable on a continent in which judges often serve as a rubber stamp to executive power.

The vote looks too close to call. Malawi has since ditched its “first-past-the-post” system so the winner has to get more than 50%.

About half of Malawi’s pre-dominantly farming popu-lation live in poverty. Lying on a lake at the southern tip of the Great Rift Valley, Malawi mostly exports tobacco and tea. In the May 2019 poll, Mutharika got 38.57%, 3 per-centage points more than Chakwera, and less than 10 points ahead of a third can-didate, Deputy President Saulos Chilima.

The 47-year-old Chilima has now backed Chakwera, 64, which would give them a majority if they can combine their previous votes.

Mutharika’s Democratic Progressive Party is in an alliance with the southern African nation’s ex-ruling party, the United Democratic Front, which got less than 5% last time.

“I’m glad to vote again.

This I pray, that my vote will count,” said Bernado Simbi, 36, a domestic security guard after voting for Mutharika in a school near Chileka Airport, north of the commercial capital Blantyre.

Mutharika, a former law professor, has revamped Malawi’s roads and boosted electricity while also taming inflation. Yet critics accuse him of doing little to tackle

corruption. “The government has lost the anti-corruption fight (and) the opposition has taken advantage,” said Happy Kayuni, political science lec-turer at Malawi University.

Chakwera has made graft a central pillar of his campaigns.

COVID-19 restrictions will make it tricky for foreign observers, who did not detect fraud last time.

Electoral officials check the voters roll while people queue to vote at the Malembo polling station during the presidential elections in Lilongwe, Malawi, yesterday.

Blast near Turkish military academy in Somalia kills twoAFP — MOGADISHU

Two people were killed yesterday by an Al Shabaab suicide bomb outside Turkey’s military training base in Somalia, according to the army chief.

The army chief Brigadier General Odowaa Yusuf Rageh told state media that the attacker had tried to conceal himself among young recruits who had gathered to enlist in the academy, which trains Somali troops in Mogadishu.

“Someone wearing an explosive device tried to sneak into a crowd of university

students who wanted to join the armed forces, but he was shot by the security forces and det-onated before he got to the area of the students,” said Rageh.

A civilian and one of the prospective students were killed, he said.

The Al Qaeda linked militant group Al Shabaab claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement carried by the SITE intelligence agency, saying they had targeted “Somali militia officers”.

Turkey’s defence ministry confirmed the attack in a statement on Twitter, saying the blast had taken place 200

metres (yards) from the military facility.

“We condemn in the firmest manner the terrorist group which carried out this attack... we will not leave our Somali brothers alone in their fight against terrorist groups,” read the statement.

Turkey’s military academy was opened in 2017. It is the largest foreign-run military centre in Somalia, where several nations are training sol-diers to take over from African peacekeeping force AMISOM, whose troops are set to leave the country next year after 14 years.

Somalia plunged into chaos after the 1991 overthrow of president Siad Barre’s military regime, leading to years of clan warfare followed by the rise of Al Shabaab which once con-trolled large parts of the country and capital.

After being pushed out of their main bastions by AMISOM in 2011, Al Shabaab has con-tinued to wage war against the government, with regular attacks in Mogadishu and against neighbouring countries which have contributed to the force.

Turkey is one of Somalia’s closest foreign partners,

offering humanitarian assistance and scholarships, and recently sending planeloads of medical equipment to help the country deal with the coro-navirus pandemic.

During some of the worst attacks in Mogadishu, Turkey has often flown the wounded to its country for treatment.

According to the Turkish foreign ministry website, the country’s largest embassy complex abroad is in Mogadishu and investments in the country total $100m (¤88m).

Turkish companies also run the Mogadishu international airport and seaport.

Sudan nears deal with US for 1998 embassy bombingsAFP — KHARTOUM

Sudan is close to finalising a deal with the United States to compensate the victims of 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people, Foreign Minister Asma Abdalla said yesterday.

“The final touches of a set-tlement with victims of embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam are being finalised,” Abdalla told AFP in an interview.

“We now have a delegation in Washington negotiating with

the victims’ lawyers and offi-cials at the US Department of State.” The twin bombings took place in August 1998 when a massive blast hit the US embassy in downtown Nairobi, shortly followed by an explosion in Dar es Salaam.

The attacks claimed by Al Qaeda killed a total of 224 people and injured around 5,000 — almost all of them Africans.

The US has accused Sudan of aiding militants linked to the bombings and demanded com-pensation for victims’ families.

Sudan has since August been led by a transitional adminis-tration following the military ouster of president Omar Al Bashir in the wake of mass pro-tests against his rule.

Under Bashir’s 30-year rule, the country also hosted Al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden between 1992 and 1996.

This strained ties with the US, which blacklisted Sudan as a state sponsor of terrorism.

The post-Bashir gov-ernment has sought to boost the country’s international standing and rebuild ties with the US.

In February, Sudan had to compensate families of victims of the USS Cole bombing in 2000 in Yemen’s Aden harbour, for which Al Qaeda also claimed responsibility.

Khartoum had always denied any involvement but agreed to the settlement to fulfil a key US condition to remove it from Washington’s terrorism blacklist. After the deal on the embassy bombings, Sudan “will have fulfilled all the require-ments” to be removed from the US blacklist of state sponsors of terrorism, Abdalla said.

A general view of beds at a field hospital in Korsten, Port Elizabeth, South Africa, on Monday.

South Africa to start first virus vaccine trialAFP — JOHANNESBURG

South Africa will roll out the continent’s first coronavirus vaccine trial this week, the university leading the pilot said yesterday, as the country grapples with the highest number of cases in Africa.

The vaccine, developed by the Oxford Jenner Institute, is already being evaluated in Britain, where 4,000 partici-pants have signed up for the trial.

South Africa has set out to vaccinate 2,000 people with

the vaccine known as ChAdOx1 nCoV-19. Fifty of the candidates have HIV.

“We began screening par-ticipants for the South African Oxford 1 COVID-19 vaccine trial last week, and the first partic-ipants will be vaccinated this week,” University of Witwa-tersrand (Wits) vaccinology professor Shabir Madhi told a virtual press conference.

Brazil is planning its own pilot, while the United States is preparing to test another vaccine in a mass trial of up to 30,000 participants. Wits is

collaborating with the Uni-versity of Oxford and the Oxford Jenner Institute on the South African trial.

South Africa’s coronavirus cases jumped to more than 100,000 on Monday, while the number of deaths inched towards 2,000. Officials imple-mented a strict nationwide lockdown on March 27, just weeks after the virus first hit South Africa. But confinement measures are being gradually phased out to allow business to pick up and limit damage to an already ailing economy.

UN warns against

intervention in

Libya after Egypt

military threat

AFP — UNITED NATIONS

The UN said on Monday the “last thing” Libya needs is more conflict on its territory, after Egypt warned of military intervention in the neigh-bouring country.

“It is clear that the last thing Libya needs right now is more fighting, more military mobilisation, more transfer of weapons, more presence of either foreign fighters or mer-cenaries on its soil,” said UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric during his daily press conference.

“We’re alarmed by the continued military mobili-sation in central Libya, partic-ularly in Sirte,” and by the “fla-grant violations of the arms embargo,” Dujarric said.

He added it was “important for none of the parties to do anything that would make the situation worse.”

Oil-rich Libya has been torn by violence, drawing in tribal militias, militants and mercenaries since the 2011 toppling and killing of longtime dictator Moamer Khadafi in a Western-backed uprising. Since 2015, a power struggle has pitted the UN-rec-ognised, Tripoli-based Gov-ernment of National Accord (GNA) against strongman Khalifa Haftar, who claims legitimacy from an eastern-based elected parliament.

Haftar has been trying unsuccessfully to seize the capital since April 2019, with support from neighbouring Egypt, Russia and the United Arab Emirates.

On Saturday, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi warned that if pro-GNA forces advanced on the strategic city of Sirte — some 450 km (280 miles) east of Tripoli — it could provoke a “direct” inter-vention by Cairo. `The GNA on Sunday denounced the warning, labelling it a “decla-ration of war.”

Five jailed after banned Algeria demonstrationAFP — ALGIERS

Five people were sentenced yesterday in Algeria to between six months and a year behind bars after taking part in a banned demonstration, pris-oners’ rights group CNLD said.

Fourteen people — the youngest aged 19 — appeared in court after being taken in for questioning in Tizi Ouzou, in the country’s northeast, fol-lowing an anti-government demonstration on Friday.

All were accused of taking part in an “unarmed gathering”. Two other charges, including destruction of property, were dropped.

One of the accused was sentenced to a year in prison, effective immediately, for car-rying a knife, the CNLD said.

Two others were sentenced to six months in prison and two more to a year behind bars pending appeal, while nine others were released.

The prosecutor had sought five years’ prison for all the accused. The regime “continues its repression of peaceful pro-testers”, Aissa Rahmoune from the defence team told AFP before the verdict.

Videos shared on social media showed demonstrations in support of the accused near the court in Tizi Ouzo ahead of

the hearing. Algeria’s anti-gov-ernment protest movement known as the Hirak began in February 2019.

After obtaining the resig-nation of longtime president Abdelaziz Bouteflika in April that year, protests have con-tinued, demanding an overhaul of the political system in place since Algeria’s independence from France in 1962.

Algerian authorities have recently been arresting and prosecuting activists in an apparent bid to prevent pro-tests from resuming when the country’s coronavirus lockdown is lifted.

They have also targeted journalists and social media users. Almost 500 pro-Hirak protesters were taken in for questioning on Friday across the country after demon-strating despite a ban due to the pandemic. Most were subse-quently released. Some human rights activists say that with the recent arrests and prosecu-tions, the rights situation in Algeria is now worse than during Bouteflika’s rule, par-ticularly with regard to freedom of the press.

Abdelkrim Zeghileche, a journalist, was called in for questioning in the northeastern city of Constantine and taken to court yesterday, the CNLD said.

Sudan says it repulsed attack by Ethiopian forcesAGENCIES — KHARTOUM

Sudan’s army announced on Monday that it had repulsed an attack by Ethiopian forces.

In a statement, the army said Ethiopian forces attacked Anfal military camp in eastern Al Qadarif state.

“The Sudanese armed forces on Sunday afternoon repulsed an attack by Ethi-opian forces and inflicted wide losses among them,” it said, stressing that it has the right to defend Sudanese territory from any attack.

At least three Sudanese soldiers were killed in May, but the two countries have agreed to work toward reducing tensions.

Sudan and Ethiopia have engaged in continuous talks over the demarcation of the borders between the two countries.

Meanwhile, the UN has urged Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan to “work together” to resolve differences over Addis Ababa’s Nile River mega-dam after recent talks failed to produce a deal on the filling and operation of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.

The vote looks too close to call. Malawi has ditched its “first-past-the-post” system so the winner has to get more than 50%.

These greetings are what linguists call “formulaic expressions”: idiomatic phrases people say in certain circumstances without a thought to their literal meaning.

08 WEDNESDAY 24 JUNE 2020VIEWS

CHAIRMANDR. KHALID BIN THANI AL THANI

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

editorinchief@pen.com.qa

ACTING MANAGING EDITORMOHAMMED SALIM MOHAMED

m.salim@pen.com.qa

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

EDITORIAL

QATAR’S healthcare system has been lauded for its effi-ciency and excellent service extended to citizens and residents alike. Even during the current period of COVID-19 pandemic, the system under the Ministry of Public Health and the Supreme Council for Crisis Man-agement, is doing an exemplary service to the state by working round the clock tirelessly to mitigate and prevent the spread of coronavirus, which has overwhelmed almost every country’s healthcare sector. While healthcare workers, even in developed countries are struggling under the burden of the virus impact, Qatar’s healthcare system is running in full steam with its world-class experts and state-of-the art equipment and facilities.

The country has been successful in setting up addi-tional facilities to meet the increasing demand during the pandemic by dedicating several hospitals exclu-sively for the service of COVID-19 patients, establishing new hospitals and refurbishing and expanding the existing service. Qatar has even started producing some medical supplies locally, for which the country had been dependent on imports.

Recently, the Head of the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology at the Hamad Medical Corpo-ration, Dr. Einas Al Kuwari, said that the daily laboratory capacity for COVID-19 tests will reach a whopping 30,000 Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) tests by the end of July, while the current laboratory capacity amounts to 20,000 daily.

Hamad Medical Laboratories, a wing of Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC), conducts various test to diagnose COVID-19, including PCR and serological tests. Such tests are the only way to detect the virus infection so the quicker the results, the faster the patient gets the needed care. As Dr. Al Kuwari said the testing facilities work round the clock, beginning with 16 percent com-pared the current operating capacity of 100 percent of male and female employees who were trained from various department of medical laboratories and some other state institutions. From the beginning of the pandemic daily checks to detect COVID-19 using PCR tests, which is the most fool-proof test for the disease, increased 75 times.

For a country like Qatar, with a population of less than three million, the 30,000 test capacity is huge and it will go a long way in testing a large portion of the pop-ulation. At the beginning of the pandemic, the World Health Organisation said the most efficient way to stem the spread of the virus is to test, test and test. Hence the 30,000 testing capacity for Qatar by the end of next month will go a long way in containing the contagion. This is the latest example of the farsightedness of Qatar’s leadership and as usual this time also the country is taking a great leap ahead.

Another great leap

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

MANAGING EDITOR: TEL: 4462 7505

DEPUTY MANAGING EDITOR: TEL: 4455 7769

LOCAL NEWS SECTION: TEL: 4455 7743

BUSINESS NEWS SECTION: TEL: 4462 7535

SPORT NEWS SECTION: TEL: 4455 7745

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

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

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

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

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

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

Quote of the day

...Macron’s categorisation of our country’s support

for Libya’s legitimate government based on UN

resolutions and upon their request as a ‘dangerous

game’ can only be explained through an eclipse of

the mind.

Hami Aksoy, Turkey’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu (right) and Foreign Minister of Italy, Luigi Di Maio, greeting each other from a distance as a precaution amid the COVID-19 pandemic, as they meet at Foreign Ministry office in Ankara on Friday.

French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson greeted each other with waves and thumbs-up this week. Even the elbow bump with which Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders opened their mid-March debate is a thing of the past. Forget hand-shakes or hugs. And gestures aren’t the only rituals learned over a lifetime that have been adapted in mere months since the novel coronavirus began changing the world. Verbal greetings and leave-takings have evolved, too.

Until recently, we could begin a conversation with “How are you?” or “How are you doing?” and expect a per-functory “Fine” or “Good” in

response. We could start an email with “I hope this finds you well,” never expecting a comment on that hope, regardless of how well or unwell the recipient happened to be. These greetings are what linguists call “formulaic expres-sions”: idiomatic phrases people say in certain circum-stances without a thought to their literal meaning.

We might still be using these routinized openers if they didn’t happen to refer to health. In Myanmar, Cam-bodia and China, the typical greeting is “Have you eaten?” (literally, “Have you eaten rice?”); the expected reply is “Yes, I’ve eaten.” In Java and the Philippines, the standard opener is “Where are you going?” to which the reply is “Over there.” No one (except visitors unfamiliar with the culture) interprets these greetings as literal questions, any more than Americans used to expect a medical update in response to the opening “How are you?”

The literal meaning of our usual openers could be cas-ually ignored when most peo-ple’s health was likely to be fine. If we knew that someone was sick or going through a tough time, we could change our tone and emphasis when saying “How are you?” or say something else. Now, no one takes health for granted, and everyone is going through at best a tough time and possibly an awful one. That forces us to notice the meaning of the words in these greetings - and to change them. Now it’s much more common to hear

“I hope you’re managing” or “doing OK” or “hanging in there” - or any of myriad other ways of implying what a fellow linguist used paren-theses to convey while pre-serving this familiar formulaic expression: “I hope you’re doing (as) well (as one could expect under the present circumstances).”

Changes in the ways emails open and close have been downright inspiring. The range of variations is testament to how wonderfully adaptable words can be - and how cre-ative humans can be in adapting them. Some, for example, use synonyms to emphasize what they wish without sounding repetitive: “I hope you’re staying healthy and well.” Others indicate that they know the usual opening won’t apply - and why: “I hope you’re doing well despite these terrible times.” I received one that acknowledged that eve-ryone is less than well but sought to reassure both receiver and sender that we’re in this together: “I hope you’re doing better than just ‘hanging in there,’ but if, like me, you aren’t, I suppose that’s OK too.”

Just as greetings have taken new forms, leave-takings have too. The varia-tions in both can be occasions for verbal play, like saying words by saying you won’t say them, as my sister recently did: “and I won’t say ‘stay healthy,’ but hope you do.” Even the common closing “Take care” has morphed into “Stay safe” or “Stay safe and healthy.”

Noticing how the phrase “Take care” has been adapted to reflect our

changed circumstances got me wondering whether the power of words might be har-nessed to inspire change too. “Take care” and its reincarna-tions focus on one person’s safety and health. In March, when New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern declared a state of national emergency under which non-essential workers would have to self-isolate, she explained: “Your job is to save lives, and you can do that by staying home.” New Zealanders did, with the result that their country is virus-free. Adopting the closing “save lives, stay home” would reframe the reason for staying home: not so the home-bound can stay healthy and safe but to help keep others that way. People willing to risk their own health by going out might hesitate to put others at risk.

Greetings and farewells will no doubt continue to adapt as circumstances evolve because that’s the nature of language - and the way people use it. Maybe as more of us go out more often, and take part in more activities, conversa-tions and emails will end with “Save lives, wear a mask” or “Stay safe and six feet apart.” Or we could keep it simple and say, as a colleague recently closed an email to me, “Wash hands.”

Deborah Tannen is pro-fessor of linguistics at Geor-getown University and author, most recently, of “You’re the Only One I Can Tell: Inside the Language of Women’s Friendships”, from which this essay is adapted.

SARAH HALZACK BLOOMBERG

When it comes to responding to the current reckoning on racial injustice, a trio of outdoorsy retailers are blazing a trail their industry peers should follow.

Patagonia, REI and VF Corp.’s North Face have in recent days committed to temporarily yanking adver-tising from Facebook and Instagram as part of a cam-paign to pressure the Silicon Valley social-media titan to do more to curb hate speech and language promoting vio-lence on its platform. A coa-lition of civil rights groups, including the NAACP and the Anti-Defamation League, are behind the effort, which aims to get businesses to pause their spending on Facebook ads for the month of July.

If companies are serious about finding ways to champion the Black Lives Matter movement, then surely they know earnest tweets and carefully-worded corporate statements are not enough. Flexing their corporate muscle to give Facebook a much-needed nudge, though, takes things a step further.

After recent events, Facebook has said it is actively considering revising a number of its policies and products, including reviewing how it handles content that violates or partially violates its rules. To this point, though, moral overtures from law-makers and activists haven’t dramatically changed the compass by which Facebook navigates these issues, even though staying its course, at this point, is itself something of a political

act. But maybe it would feel more urgency to change if the pressure were financial, not philosophical.

Plus, I like that this par-ticular approach to sup-porting the Black Lives Matter movement encourages con-sumer companies to take an action that would be felt outside the walls of their own corporate headquarters. One of the more common ways of responding to the recent social unrest is for companies to make new commitments around diversifying their workforces, with the likes of PepsiCo Inc., Gap Inc. and Adidas AG among the com-panies that have done so. This is absolutely the right thing to do; maybe making such over-hauls earlier would have led Pepsi to dump the obvi-ously offensive Aunt Jemima brand long before last week.

With a campaign of financial pressure on Facebook, corporate partici-pants are extending their influence outside in a push for key business partners to embrace the same values. In that way, this effort has some-thing in common with the 15 Percent Pledge, a nascent effort to get retailers to commit to ensuring that 15% of products on their shelves come from Black-owned businesses.

I suppose consumer brands might resist a tem-porary flight from Facebook because they believe that, whatever the politics of the moment, it is irresponsible not to do everything they can to win customers’ dollars right now after Covid-19-re-lated closures have just dealt their revenues a devastating blow.

How the pandemic has changed the way we greet each other

/PeninsulaQatar

/ThePeninsulaQatar

/Peninsula_Qatar

/ThePeninsulaNewspaper

+974 6698 6188

www.thepeninsula.qa

Facebook ad boycott is a worthy use of brand power

Established in 1996

DEBORAH TANNEN THE WASHINGTON POST

09WEDNESDAY 24 JUNE 2020 OPINION

Last week, senior House Republicans urged the Trump administration to reconsider its decision to terminate US relations with the World Health Organization. While there is no strong evidence substantiating President Donald Trump’s claim that the WHO has become “China-centric,” the US pullout may actually push the organization in that direction.

How does China engage with the WHO? Here’s what you need to know.

Beijing isn’t a top con-tributor of WHO funding or personnel

The WHO has 40 Chinese staff members, less than 1% of the organization’s employees. The headquarters leadership team has only one member from China, com-pared with two from the United States. Based on financial contributions and earmarks, the US gov-ernment has had more lev-erage than China in setting WHO program priorities - China contributes 1.5% of the

total WHO budget, compared with 16% from the United States.

About those earmarks - the WHO’s program budget portal shows that nearly three-quarters of US gov-ernment contributions are voluntary, and earmarked for programs that reflect US global health funding prior-ities, such as polio eradi-cation, health and nutrition services, and vaccine-pre-ventable diseases.

To some extent, US vol-untary contributions have a heavy influence on the WHO agenda. Polio eradication accounts for 27% of WHO program funding, and contri-butions from the US gov-ernment and organizations have supported this effort for three decades. Numbers-wise, there have been 68 cases worldwide of wild poliovirus Type 1 to date in 2020, and other strains appear to have been eradi-cated. Tuberculosis control received 2.3% of the funding, despite 1.5 million TB deaths in 2018.

China’s influence within the WHO has grown

But the WHO still has concrete reasons to take China’s priorities into account in its decision-making. China has been the origin point of several major disease outbreaks, for instance. The WHO stepped

up its China presence after the 2002-2003 SARS out-break and has been working closely with Beijing on pan-demic response in recent years. Also, China’s huge population and position as a manufacturing giant in the global supply chain suggest the country plays a central role in addressing complex global health, development and security dynamics.

As China broadens its capacity and procedures in disease prevention and control, it becomes even more imperative for the WHO to seek China’s cooper-ation to effectively coor-dinate the global response to public health emergencies of international concern, like

covid-19. Organizations such as the Gates Foundation and the World Bank have increasingly challenged the WHO’s role as a guardian of global health. This suggests that vocal support from a major power means a lot to the WHO.

During the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, the WHO refused to chastise Beijing for insti-tuting travel restrictions on Mexican citizens and banning North American pork products, in defiance of WHO recommendations. The Chinese government then referenced WHO support in justifying its aggressive outbreak response. Two years later, in 2011, Beijing hosted the first BRICS Health Ministers’ Meeting, which pledged to “improve the leading and coordinating role” of the WHO in international health cooperation.

China has important - but not decisive - influence over the WHO leadership

In 2006, Beijing mobi-lized its diplomatic resources to help Margaret Chan, the director of health in Hong Kong, beat out the other 12 candidates and become the WHO director-general. In 2012, Chan ran unopposed for reelection - potential con-testants realized that with China throwing its support to Chan, they had little chance of winning.

Five years later, with the change to a more trans-parent, one country/one vote election procedure, China was no longer the dominant influence in the WHO director-general selection. Tedros Adhanom Ghe-breyesus, Ethiopia’s public health minister, in June 2017 became the new WHO head largely because of the strong support of the African coun-tries as a bloc.

But Tedros has also sought Beijing’s cooperation and support. The day after his WHO electoral victory, Tedros reiterated his adherence to the “One China” principle - this is “code” for a reassurance to Beijing that the WHO will not invite Taiwan to formally partic-ipate without China’s approval.

In July 2018, Tedros went to Beijing to discuss with senior Chinese officials how to build “stronger and more strategic WHO-China collab-orations.” These discussions involved improving the

health of people in countries covered by China’s Belt and Road Initiative and an agreement to “further expand the number of Chinese health professionals seconded to WHO.”

Trump’s pullout will help, not hinder, China’s influence

China’s influence over the WHO became clearer during the novel-coronavirus out-break. In exchange for China’s compliance on infor-mation sharing as stipulated in the International Health Regulations - the widely adopted global agreement on ways to prevent the interna-tional spread of disease - the WHO not only used China’s rhetoric on the nature of the virus spread but also was reluctant to criticize how Beijing initially mishandled the crisis. Despite its frus-tration over China’s failure to provide complete infor-mation, the WHO praised China for “setting a new standard for outbreak control.”

Since all the conditions that allow Beijing to influence WHO decision-making remain in place, US withdrawal won’t make the organization less subject to China’s influence. On the contrary, the US move is likely to mean the WHO will increasingly look toward China for leadership and support. After Trump’s initial April announcement that the United States would suspend WHO funding, China pledged a $30 million donation for the WHO’s coronavirus effort.

What happens now? Some experts suggest that the United States could work with other stakeholders to push for crucial WHO reforms, such as ensuring member state compliance with WHO norms, to make the WHO stronger and more responsive. Indeed, on Sunday, Tedros gave the commencement speech for the Tsinghua University school of economics and management. Instead of lav-ishly praising Beijing’s approach to the virus, he emphasized that the pan-demic taught us “the best” and “only” way forward is to “be together.”

Huang is a professor at Seton Hall University’s school of diplomacy and interna-tional relations and a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Trump’s decision to pull US out of WHO may boost China’s influence

YANZHONG HUANG

THE WASHINGTON POST

Since all the conditions that allow Beijing to influence WHO decision-making remain in place, US withdrawal won’t make the organization less subject to China’s influence.

The WHO stepped up its China presence after the 2002-2003 SARS outbreak and has been working closely with Beijing on pandemic response in recent years. Also, China’s huge population and position as a manufacturing giant in the global supply chain suggest the country plays a central role in addressing complex global health, development and security dynamics.

US President Donald Trump and WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

Industry has been quick to highlight plastic’s versatility. In March, one French plastics group stated that “without single use plastic you will no longer have wrapping to protect your food against germs.” In the United States, the Plastics Industry Association was from March 20 urging that its activities be considered “essential” during lockdown.

Virus crisis gives throwaway plastic a new lease on lifeCATHERINE HOURS &

SIMON BOEHM — AFP

Just when you thought it was beyond the social and envi-ronmental pale, single-use plastic is making a comeback, be it for throwaway face-masks, gloves or shrink-wrapped vegetables.

Largely to blame is the coronavirus and the response to ward it off -- the masks, gloves and other plastic-based items, many of which are now ending up in our oceans -- already strewn with the slow-to-degrade detritus of a constantly growing industry. Masks, visors, gloves or screens ... all are crucial accessories to keep COVID-19 at bay.

Other uses are manifold -- from hairdressers using throwaway aprons to UN rec-ommendations that airline food be distributed in blister packs to the bubble tents that allow some relatives to visit elderly and sick loved ones, touching them through a transparent plastic film.

Even California has had partially to lay aside its green credentials by dropping for two months a ban on single use plastic bags. In Saudi Arabia, some retail centres

insist customers don wear-and-throw gloves.

Industry has been quick to highlight plastic’s versatility. In March, one French plastics group stated that “without single use plastic you will no longer have wrapping to protect your food against germs.”

In the United States, the Plastics Industry Association was from March 20 urging that its activities be con-sidered “essential” during lockdown.

“Single-use plastics can literally be the difference between life and death,” opined the lobby group’s president Tony Radoszewski, noting that items such as ven-tilator machines have compo-nents made of single-use plastics.

He added that “sanitary and convenient” single use plastic bags help protect supermarket employees “from whatever is lurking on reusable bags.”

According to a Opin-ionWay-Sodastream poll, 66 percent of French people say they prefer to get packaged food right now.

France’s Naturalia organic food retail chain says it has seen recent sales of

unpackaged items.“Our customers turned to

packaged produce,” says the chain’s general director Allon Zeitoun. “We have yet to get back to pre-crisis levels” of demand for unpackaged goods.

Yet plastic does not guar-antee hygienic protection. For the World Health Organi-zation, washing one’s hands is more effective than wearing gloves.

According to a study in the US journal NEJM, coronavirus can remain for up to three days on plastic and for 24 hours on cardboard.

“For medical uses we don’t have anything better than single use,” says Raphael Guastavi, from France’s environmental and energy management agency Ademe.

But he adds that for con-sumers, reusable packaging “does not pose a sanitary problem” and says to say oth-erwise is simply “lobbying”.

Guastavi says he is “reas-sured to see European law-makers not wanting to give ground” on the argument. Kenya is also standing firm after in June banning all single use plastic, including water bottles, in protected areas.

Waste: What is unarguable is that countless pavements and beaches are strewn with masks and gloves from Hong Kong to Gaza and beyond.

The World Wildlife Fund, which estimated last year there are 600,000 tonnes of plastic waste polluting the Mediterranean, has warned about changing views about plastic.

“The cultural battle against single-use plastic seemed to have been won. Today, a breach has been opened and we shall have to respond,” says Pierre Cannet of WWF France.

And many of the safety products whose use has boomed thanks to the health crisis are hard to recycle.

“A mask is not easy to recycle. Public authorities’ general approach is to put it with household rubbish for incineration, which in our view is the best situation,” says Arnaud Brunet of the Bureau of International Recycling.

In the future “perhaps we shall be able to imagine a special collection (for plastic goods) or in pharmacies. But we aren’t there yet,” he adds.

Overall, the recycling industry is in something of a

rut not least because of cheap oil -- which is what plastic is made from -- making new plastic cheap. The European Union wants to see 25 percent of material used in plastic bottles recycled by 2025 and lift that to at least 30 percent by 2030. The dumped remainder will go on taking centuries to degrade.

“COVID-19 does not cast doubt on the strategy of moving towards a circular economy and more recycla-bility,” says Eric Quenet, from the PlasticsEurope federation.

Some 350 million tonnes of plastic are produced annually -- about half in Asia, 19 percent in North America and 16 percent in Europe.

Overall production is rising at a moderate yet regular pace and demand is surging for personal pro-tective gear even if volume in that sphere is modest compared with that for the auto or construction industries.

What is certain is that, for the first time since 2008, the plastics sector is expecting to endure a worse year than the previous one amid the eco-nomic fallout from confinement.

10 WEDNESDAY 24 JUNE 2020ASIA

China and India agree tode-escalate tensions,promote peace at borderAFP — NEW DELHI

China and India have agreed to reduce tensions a week after their deadliest clashes in over 50 years on the disputed Hima-layan border left 20 Indian troops dead in brutal hand-to-hand fighting.

The June 15 battle, reportedly fought with fists, clubs and rocks, was the first time troops have been killed on their frontier since 1975 and marked a major deterioration in ties between the two Asian giants.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said that after talks between the top regional military commanders on Monday, both sides “agreed to take necessary measures to promote a cooling of the situation”.

The Press Trust of India said the meeting was between Lieu-tenant General Harinder Singh, commander of the 14 Corps, and Major General Liu Lin, com-mander of the Tibet Military District.

“The holding of this meeting shows that both sides want to

deal with their disagreement, manage the situation and de-escalate the situation through dialogue and consultations,” Zhao told a regular news conference.

The two sides “exchanged frank and in-depth views” and “agreed to maintain dialogue and jointly committed to pro-moting peace and tranquillity in the border areas”, Zhao added.

There was no official comment from New Delhi but an Indian army source said that after the meeting, reportedly lasting almost 11 hours, that there was a “mutual consensus to disengage”.

He added that ways to reduce frictions in the Ladakh region opposite Tibet “were dis-cussed and will be taken forward by both the sides”.

The meeting came ahead of virtual talks between the foreign ministers of India, China and Russia later Tuesday, ostensibly to discuss the coronavirus and commemorate the end of the Second World War.

While Indian Foreign Min-ister S Jaishankar made no direct mention of the clashes in his opening remarks, Russia’s Sergei Lavrov said that Moscow saw no need to mediate between the two countries.

“I don’t think China or India need any help whatsoever,” Lavrov said.

Russia is a major supplier of arms to both countries.

The Times of India reported that Indian Defence Minister

Rajnath Singh, in Moscow this week, would press Russia to fast-track delivery of its S-400 missile defence system as well as spares for fighter planes, tanks and submarines.

China has said it suffered casualties but has not given more details. Indian media reports suggested more than 40 Chinese soldiers were killed or seriously injured.

India has since sent huge reinforcements of soldiers, mil-itary equipment and fighter jets into the already highly

militarised region. China is reportedly following suit.

In India there have been growing calls for a boycott of Chinese goods.

The clashes followed an earlier agreement to disengage struck in early June after weeks of rising tensions on the border, known as the Line of Actual Control, that included several brawls.

The June 15 violence took place around 4,500M above sea level in the Galwan river valley, where both sides accuse each

other of encroaching on their respective territory.

China is claiming all of the valley as its own, which Indian analysts and officials say is a new demand. China now reportedly controls more of the northern shore of the Pangong Tso lake.

Harsh Pant from the Observer Research Foundation think-tank in New Delhi said he was sceptical that anything con-crete had been resolved so far in the talks between the military commanders.

An Indian fighter jet flies over a mountain range near Leh, the joint capital of the union territory of Ladakh, yesterday.

Virus: Another

Rohingya dies

in refugee camp

in Bangladesh

ANATOLIA — DHAKA

One more Rohingya refugee in the crammed camps of Bangladesh’s southern district of Cox’s Bazar has died of coronavirus, officials said yesterday.

With the latest fatality, the number of virus-linked deaths among the persecuted com-munity in the South Asian country reached five, the office of the Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commissioner said.

“Until Monday we tested samples of 474 Rohingya, including 14 in the last 24 hours, and confirmed 46 pos-itive cases and five deaths,” Dr. Abu Toha MR Bhuiyan of the commissioner’s office said.

Meanwhile, as many as 32 Rohingya have recovered from the disease, including three in the last 24 hours.

Some 39 members of the community who contracted the virus were quarantined in isolation centers within the camps, the RRRC said.

A total of 2,088 virus cases, including 30 virus-related deaths have been registered in Cox’s Bazar, home to more than a million Rohingya ref-ugees, most of whom fled a 2017 military crackdown in Myanmar’s Rakhine state.

India could see V-shaped recovery if virus contained: OfficialBLOOMBERG — NEW DELHI

India’s top economic adviser said a V-shaped recovery for the economy is possible this year, provided a vaccine is found to contain the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The recovery will happen after that uncertainty from the health side is taken care of,” Krishnamurthy Subramanian, the chief economic adviser to the finance minister, said in an interview with Haslinda Amin at the Bloomberg Invest Global virtual conference.

“If it so happens that in the latter half of the year we have the vaccine, then one can antic-ipate V-shape recovery starting in the second half.” In the absence of a vaccine, the eco-nomic recovery will have to wait until next year, although that too is likely to be V-shaped given the experience after the Spanish flu of 1918, he said.

With a coronavirus vaccine still months or may be even years away, economists outside the government don’t see a sus-tained recovery anytime soon.

“We expect the economy to

recover in the next fiscal year to 8.5 percent, which is largely due to base effect,” Dharmakirti Joshi, chief economist at Crisil Ltd, said. “Vaccine is not coming this year. Our assumption is it will only be available in mid of 2021.”

India’s manufacturing and services activity took a heavy knock in the quarter started April owing to a nationwide lockdown to stem the corona-virus pandemic. That’s put Asia’s third-largest economy on course for its first annual con-traction in more than four

decades this year, with some economists seeing a return to eight percent-plus growth rates taking as long as a decade.

But Subramanian is con-fident that support measures unveiled by the government, in addition to a low-base effect, will help lift economic growth next year.

“The extended lockdown, cratering production, still-rising COVID-19 cases, inadequate fiscal policy support and limited space for further conventional monetary easing mean the recession will be more

pronounced than anticipated and a V-shaped recovery out of reach” sai Abhishek Gupta, an Indian economist

India’s government unveiled a 21 trillion-rupee ($276bn) package to support the economy, including easing access to credit for small busi-nesses and offering cheap loans to workers and farmers.

“Because of the measures we have taken on productivity, we do anticipate growth to be back actually to the high level of seven percent and eight percent for sure,” Subramanian said.

Sri Lankan supermarkets open with COVID-19 precautionsA staff official wearing protective mask prepares the bill for a customer from behind a protective screen at a Keels super market, amid concerns about the spread of COVID-19, in Colombo, Sri Lanka, yesterday.

North Korea reinstallsborder loudspeakers;liaison office damagedREUTERS — SEOUL

North Korea is reinstalling loudspeakers blaring propa-ganda across the border in its latest step away from inter-Korean peace agreements, prompting the South’s military to explore similar moves, a South Korean military source said yesterday.

Tension between the two Koreas has risen in recent weeks after the North blew up a joint liaison office on its side of the border, declared an end to dialogue and threatened mil-itary action.

North Korea’s military was seen putting up loudspeakers near the demilitarised zone (DMZ). Such systems were taken down after the two Koreas signed an accord in 2018 to cease “all hostile acts,” the military official said.

“We’re also considering reinstalling our own loud-speakers,” he said. “But the North hasn’t begun any broadcast yet, and we’re just getting ready to be able to counteract at any time.”

A spokeswoman at Seoul’s defence ministry declined to confirm North Korea’s moves but reiterated at a regular briefing that Pyongyang would “have to pay for the conse-quences” if it continues to defy joint efforts to foster peace.

The two countries have for decades pumped out propa-ganda from huge banks of speakers as a form of psycho-logical warfare.

The South aired a blend of news, Korean pop songs and criticism of the northern regime, while the North blasted the South and praised its own socialist system.

Commercial satellite imagery of the liaison office site on Monday showed that the building remained standing, but had been heavily damaged.

Analysts at US-based 38 North, which tracks North Korea, said last week that the explosion “was clearly not a controlled detonation, as the building was not levelled and there was significant collateral damage to the adjacent buildings.”

The North began taking its recent actions as it denounced North Korean defectors in the South sending propaganda leaflets across the border.

Several defector-led groups have regularly sent flyers, food, $1 bills, mini radios and USB sticks containing South Korean dramas and news, usually by balloon or in bottles in rivers.

One group, led by Park Sang-hak, who fled the isolated state in 2000, said on Tuesday it flew 20 balloons containing 500,000 leaflets, 500 booklets on South Korea and 2,000 $1 bills.

South Korea’s government has pursued legal action to stop such activities, citing safety concerns for residents in border towns, but controversy remains over whether it vio-lates the country’s protections for freedom of expression.

Seoul’s Unification Ministry handling inter-Korean affairs issued a statement vowing a stern response to the leaflet launches by Park’s group.

Meanwhile, a South Korean group launched hundreds of thousands of leaflets by balloon across the border into North Korea overnight, an activist said yesterday, despite repeated warnings from the North that it will retaliate against such actions.

Activist Park Sang-hak said his organisation floated 20 huge balloons carrying 500,000 leaflets, 2,000 one-dollar bills and small books on North Korea from the border town of Paju on Monday night.

Japanese island marks 75 years since Battle of OkinawaAP — TOKYO

Residents on Okinawa prayed for peace and remembered lost loved ones yesterday on the 75th anniversary of the end of one of WWII’s deadliest conflicts, the Battle of Okinawa.

At the ceremony held on the southern Japanese island to honor the more than 200,000 who died in the fighting near the war’s end, Okinawa Governor Denny Tamaki said accounts of the tragedy must be remem-bered accurately and handed down to younger generations.

Many people live in places of conflict, or face poverty, dis-crimination and environmental pollution. Fear and economic devastation from the corona-virus pandemic have further divided societies, Tamaki said.

That makes tolerance, mutual trust and cooperation more important than ever, he said.

“We must gather our wisdom and push forward to achieve nuclear weapons ban, war renouncement and lasting peace,” Tamaki said.

Okinawa was Japan’s only home battleground in WWII, and the island remained under US occupation for 20 years longer than the rest of Japan, until 1972.

Resentment over a con-tinued heavy presence of US troops runs deep, with more than half of the roughly 50,000 US troops in Japan based there under a bilateral security treaty.

Many Okinawans believe the post-World War II Japan-US security alliance was built on their sacrifices during the war and then after Japan’s 1945 surrender, when

American troops confiscated Okinawan land for their bases.

Okinawa has asked the central government to do more to reduce the burden from numerous US military facilities, but changes have come slowly. Many Okinawans also want a revision to the Status of Forces Agreement with the United States.

Okinawans have suffered from American base-related crime, pollution and noise over the 75 years since the end of the war, Tamaki said. “Since the end of the war, even when Okinawa was deprived of human rights and self-governance under the US occupation, we have steadily walked on the path of recon-struction and development while protecting our culture and the sincerity we inherited from our ancestors,” Tamaki said.

Taiwan raps

China for

military drills

REUTERS — TAIPEI

China should focus on fighting the resurgent coronavirus in Beijing rather than “disturbing” Taiwan with military drills near the Chinese-claimed island, Taiwan Premier Su Tseng-chang said yesterday.

China’s air force has buzzed Taiwan at least eight times in the past two weeks, Taiwan’s military says, sending fighters and bombers into Taiwan’s air defence identification zone where they have been warned off by patrolling Taiwanese jets.

“China is very big, and has never given up the use of force to deal with Taiwan. China has always, with such a serious epi-demic, sent their aircraft and ships around Taiwan, really dis-turbing Taiwan,” Su said, adding that Taiwan only wants to be a “contributor to regional peace”.

“China, as a large country, should put its national strength into looking after people, reducing the impact of the epi-demic and safeguarding regional peace."

“The holding of this meeting shows that both sides want to deal with their disagreement, manage the situation and de-escalate the situation through dialogue and consultations,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said.

11WEDNESDAY 24 JUNE 2020 ASIA

Virus: 323 die during self-isolation at home in PakistanINTERNEWS — ISLAMABAD

More than 300 COVID-19 patients have passed away in their homes during self-isolation over the past three months, said federal health authorities.

According to the authorities, of the 89 COVID-19 patients who died during 24 hours between June 21 and 22, at least six patients lost their lives at their homes, including four in Sindh and one each in Punjab and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP).

“So far, 3,590 people have lost their lives due to COVID-19 in Pakistan, of whom 323 or 9 percent died at homes. These were the people who were staying at homes after testing positive. A majority of them were either asymptomatic or with mild symptoms.

"When the authorities checked about their well-being on phone, their families reported them dead,” an official of the National Health Services, Regulations and Coordination (NHSR and C) said.

The health authorities explained that of the 3,590 COVID-19 victims in Pakistan, 3,267 died at various hospitals. They added that despite all the problems, the case fatality rate (CFR) of COVID-19 in Pakistan has been 1.98 per cent com-pared to 5.20 percent globally.

Among those patients who

fell prey to viral disease at their homes, 182 belonged to Sindh, which is the highest number of deaths in home isolation. A total of 141 people died at home in the rest of the country, including Punjab, KP, Balochistan, Islamabad, Gilgit-Baltistan and Azad Kashmir.

According to the authorities, of the 3,590 deaths in Pakistan due to the novel coronavirus, 2,589 were men who consti-tuted 72 percent of the total deaths, which suggests that men are more prone to contract the disease compared to women as the mortality among the male COVID-19 patients is around three times higher compared to the female patients.

“At the same time, 72 percent of all the deceased had chronic comorbidities such as diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular diseases, renal issues, asthma and other chronic medical ill-nesses,” an official said.

“Of the 89 people who died [of COVID-19] during the last 24 hours [between June 21 and 22], 83 died at hospitals, of whom 64 were on ventilators. Of them, 67 percent or 60 were men.

Those who died in this period were between 30 and 92 years old and 66 percent of them had comorbidities or underlying health conditions,” the official added.

So far, 53 healthcare pro-viders have lost their lives in the country, including 37 doctors, one medical student, two nurses and 10 paramedics while the details of the remaining three have been sought from Punjab, an official said.

“We have lost two doctors during the last 24 hours, including one from District Sujawal in Sindh and the other from District Sahiwal in Punjab,” the official added.

Officials said that men between 50 and 70 years with comorbidities were three times more likely to die due to COVID-19 in Pakistan as com-pared to women, adding that around 75 percent of the deaths occurred in the age group of 51 years and above in the country.

“Around 76 percent of the total confirmed cases are in the age group of up to 50 years but fortunately but only 25 percent of the 3,590 COVID-19 deaths occurred in this age group. We have 1,051 deaths in the age group of 51-60 years followed by 992 deaths in the age group of 61-70 years,” the official added.

Sharing the gender-wise data of deaths, the official said that a total of 2,589 men, 1,000

women and one transgender person had so far lost their lives due to the viral illness in Pakistan.

According to him, there had been only nine deaths among children up to 10 years of age, 31 among youngsters between 11 and 20 years of age, 97 among people of the 21-30 age group, 547 among people of the 41-50 age group, 1,051 among the age group of 51-60, 992 among the age group of 61-70, 492 among

the age group of 71-80, 138 among people between 81 and 90 years and only 12 deaths were recorded among people above 91 years of age.

Punjab is the most affected province of the country where 40 per cent of the 3,590 deaths have occurred during the last three months, officials said, adding that Sindh recorded 30 per cent of the deaths, followed by KP where 23 percent of the deaths occurred.

A woman reacts as a paramedic takes a swab sample at a glass booth, to be tested for the coronavirus disease, in Karachi, Pakistan, yesterday.

Pakistani police

kill 4 in raid on

militant hideout

AFP — PESHAWAR

Pakistani police said yesterday their counter-terrorism forces, acting on intelligence, raided a suspected militant hideout in the country’s northwest, triggering an intense shootout in which four suspects were killed.

Police also seized assault rifles and other weapons in the overnight operation. The sus-pects had gathered at a home in the city of Peshawar, the c a p i t a l o f K h y b e r Pakhtunkhwa province, to plan attacks, said Sannaullah Abbasi, the province’s police chief.

The operation was suc-cessful and “saved many innocent people from possible attacks,” he said. Abbasi pro-vided no further details, but other officials said the slain militants apparently belonged to a banned group.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province borders Afghanistan and has witnessed dozens of militant attacks in recent years, most of them claimed by the Pakistani Taliban.

Nine missing

after Indonesia

boat accident

AFP — MEDAN

Nine fishermen are missing in Indonesia after their boat capsized off Sumatra island, an official said yesterday, as poor conditions hamper the search for them.

Their vessel sank on Monday after it was hit by bad weather and high waves off the island’s northwestern coast. “The search has not been fruitful,” local search and rescue agency official Benteng Telambuana said.

“We haven’t found any trace of the fishermen’s whereabouts so far.”

The accident happened several days after a boat car-rying 16 fishermen capsized near the Anak Krakatau volcano in Sunda Strait, which separates Sumatra and Java islands.

Nine of the fishermen have since been found alive while seven more are still missing.

Maritime accidents are common in Indonesia, a Southeast Asian archipelago of around 17,000 islands, due to lax safety standards.

In January, 10 people went missing after a boat carrying 20 migrant workers to neigh-bouring Malaysia capsized off the coast of Sumatra island.

Singapore leader calls early polls despite pandemicAP — SINGAPORE

Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong called yesterday for early general elections despite the coronavirus, saying the outbreak has stabilised and there is no assurance it will be over by next April, when the current government’s term ends.

Parliament was dissolved to pave the way for the polls, which the Elections Department said would be held on July 10.

The announcement came just four days after the city-state lifted most coronavirus restric-tions, and appeared to be an

attempt to take advantage of a quiet window before a possible worsening of the pandemic’s impact.

Lee said the country must prepare for ups and downs, noting there has been a resur-gence in cases in some coun-tries that have reopened. He also said Singapore hasn’t felt the full brunt of the economic fallout yet, so there will be more business closures and higher unemployment.

“A long struggle lies ahead,” he said in a televised speech. “An election now when things are relatively stable will clear the decks and give the

new government a fresh full five-year mandate. It can then focus on this national agenda and the difficult decisions it will have to make and to carry.”

Singapore was initially hailed as a model for containing the virus, but cases in the country of only 5.8 million people then soared to more than 42,000, one of the highest infection rates in Asia, with most linked to dormitories used to house foreign migrant workers. Lee said infections in the dorms have declined, while cases outside the dorms have stabilized.

He said he decided to hold

elections now because there is “no assurance” the pandemic will end by next April. Despite a ban on rallies, he said political parties can still campaign effec-tively and voters can cast ballots safely, citing examples in recent elections held in South Korea, Taiwan and several European countries.

Lee said more polling sta-tions will be set up, voters will be allocated time slots to cast their ballots to prevent crowds, senior citizens will be given pri-ority, and safe distancing rules will be observed.

Nur Azlinda, a 38-year-old telecommunications worker,

said she is worried about having an election during the pandemic.

“Of course we have to do our parts as Singaporeans, but the negative part is that because of COVID, we are not supposed to be gathering, and I’m afraid that there will be another wave of COVID,” she said.

Lee’s People’s Action Party, in power since 1959, is widely expected to keep its over-whelming majority in Par-liament, where it currently holds 83 out of the 89 seats. The test will be whether it can retain the 69.9 percent share of the vote it received in 2015.

Taliban kill at least 8 Afghan forces in raids on checkpostsAFP — KUNDUZ

Dozens of Taliban fighters stormed three checkposts in pre-dawn raids in northern Afghanistan yesterday, killing at least eight security personnel, in the latest attack on government forces ahead of expected peace talks.

It comes after authorities this week accused the Taliban of increasing attacks on Afghan forces at a time when both sides are preparing to start delayed negotiations. The simultaneous raids on one army and two police checkpoints in Kunduz province led to fierce gunfights that lasted for hours, officials said.

Eight members of Afghan security forces were killed and seven more were wounded in the fighting, district head Nasruddin Saadi said. Kunduz provincial governor spokesman Esmatullah Muradi confirmed the coordinated attack but said nine security personnel were killed in the night-time battle.

The Taliban have so far not commented.Taliban fighters have repeatedly attacked security forces in

and around Kunduz province. The city itself has briefly fallen twice to the insurgents in recent years.

Taliban fighters also raided an army checkpost in Balkh province and another in Ghazni province during the night, the defence ministry said, adding that several insurgents had been killed in ensuing clashes. On Monday, the National Security Council said the Taliban had killed at least 291 Afghan security personnel over the past week, saying it was the “deadliest” week in the 19-year conflict.

China warns risk of naval incident with US on the riseAFP — BEIJING

The US military is deploying “unprecedented” numbers to the Asia-Pacific region, raising the risk of an incident with China’s navy, a senior Chinese official said yesterday.

Tensions between the two superpowers have soared on mul-tiple fronts since President Donald Trump took office in 2017, with both countries flexing their diplomatic and military muscle.

The United States’ regular “freedom of navigation” operations in the South China Sea — where China and neighbouring coun-tries have competing claims — angers Beijing, and China’s navy usually warns off the US ships.

For its part, Beijing has infuriated other nations by building artificial islands with military installations in parts of the sea.

“The US military deployment in the Asia-Pacific region is unprec-edented,” said Wu Shicun, president of the National Institute of South China Sea Studies, a government think tank. “The possibility of a military incident or an accidental shot fired is rising,” Wu said.

“If a crisis were to erupt, the repercussions on bilateral rela-tions would be catastrophic.” Wu spoke at the presentation of a report by his institute on the US military presence in the region.

The report said the US has deployed 375,000 soldiers and 60 percent of its warships in the Indo-Pacific region. Three US air-craft carriers have been sent to the region.

Social distancing in classroomKindergarten students from the Wichuthit school wearing face masks and face shields attend a class during a rehearsal social distancing and measures to prevent the spread of the coronavirus disease ahead of nationwide school reopening in Bangkok, Thailand, yesterday.

Coronavirus testing in Beijingto gather pace as cases mountREUTERS — BEIJING

Beijing’s mass testing for the new coronavirus will soon enter a “fast track”, a senior municipal health official said yesterday, suggesting that COVID-19 screening in China’s capital is about to gather pace in efforts to curb the latest outbreak.

The city of more than 20 million residents reported its first case in the latest outbreak on June 11. The infections were linked to Beijing’s sprawling Xinfadi wholesale food centre.

Since then, 249 people have been infected in Beijing’s worst outbreak since the novel corona-virus was identified at a seafood market in the central Chinese city of Wuhan late last year.

Beijing can now administer more than 300,000 nucleic acid tests per day compared with 40,000 in March, Zhang Hua, deputy director at the Beijing Municipal Health Com-mission, told reporters.

Beijing took samples from 2.95 million people between June 12 and June 22, Zhang said.

Residents in so-called high and medium-risk neighbour-hoods have been told to take tests. Beijing has designated five neighbourhoods as high-risk and 39 as medium-risk, as of yesterday.

People can leave and enter medium-risk neighbourhoods, but apartment blocks with two confirmed cases or more will be locked down. In high-risk neigh-bourhoods, an entire residential

compound is locked down if there is even one infection.

“The strategy of Beijing’s nucleic acid screening is mainly based on the level of risk and on severity,” Zhang said, when asked if everyone in Beijing would be tested.

Testing will be done in batches and according to the profile of individuals, he said.

Beijing has also been expanding its testing regime to other parts of the city, amid concern the virus may have spread.

A few people who were not among the close contacts of the confirmed cases have tested positive for COVID-19 even though they had not visited Xinfadi, according to official reports.

So far, 3,590 people have lost their lives due to COVID-19 in Pakistan, of whom 323 or 9 percent died at homes. These were the people who were staying at homes after testing positive. A majority of them were either asymptomatic or with mild symptoms.

12 WEDNESDAY 24 JUNE 2020EUROPE

German region in newlockdown after infectionsat slaughterhouseAP — BERLIN

German authorities slapped new lockdown measures yesterday on a western region that has seen hundreds of coro-navirus infections linked to a slaughterhouse, trying to make sure the cluster doesn’t race into the wider community.

Authorities initially said more than 1,550 people had tested positive for coronavirus at the Toennies slaughterhouse in Rheda-Wiedenbrueck, but by yesterday afternoon they said the exact number was still being verified.

Thousands of workers, many of them migrants from Eastern Europe, and family members have been put under a quarantine to try to halt the outbreak.

The governor of North Rhine-Westphalia state, Armin Laschet, said people in Guetersloh and parts of a neigh-bouring county for the next week will face some of the same restrictions that existed across Germany during the early stages of the pandemic in March.

These include limiting the number of people who can meet in public to those from a single household or two people from separate households, Laschet said.

“We will order a lockdown for the whole of Guetersloh county,” he told reporters yes-terday. “The purpose is to calm the situation, to expand testing to establish whether or not the virus has spread beyond the employees of Toennies.”

“We will get a better picture of the situation through

intensive testing, and can then see more clearly within seven days what the situation is,” Laschet said.

Cinemas, fitness studios and clubs will be closed, but stores will remain open and restau-rants can still serve customers from the same household. Pre-viously, the western county had only closed schools and daycare centers, sparking anger from parents who said their children were being punished for failings at the slaughterhouse.

Prior to the Toennies out-break, Germany had been widely praised for its handling of the pandemic. Intensive testing, tracing and hospital preparation measures kept Germany’s death toll five times smaller than Britain’s. Germany has seen over 8,900 confirmed virus deaths and about 192,000 cases.

Toennies Group, a family-owned company, has been crit-icized for using subcontractors

for parts of its operation. The practice, which is common in the German meat industry and which the government now wants to ban, often involves migrant workers living in cramped communal housing and being transported to abat-toirs in minibuses, heightening the risk of infection.

A video circulating on social media also showed workers at the plant seated close together during break times, although the company has disputed how recent the video is.

Laschet expressed his frus-tration yesterday at the com-pany’s handling of the out-break, saying authorities had to order Toennies — Germany’s biggest meat processing company — to release the names of its employees.

“The readiness to cooperate could have been greater,” he said.

Laschet said the measures will be lifted June 30 if the sit-uation has improved, but declined to provide specific parameters for success. He also urged other regions in Germany not to discriminate against people from Guetersloh.

The German news agency dpa reported that 14 people on vacation, some of them from Guetersloh, were told on Monday to leave the north-eastern island of Usedom, a popular Baltic Sea resort. And Bavaria issued a ban on hotels renting rooms to people from Guetersloh or other counties with more than 50 new cases per 100,000 inhabitants. Exceptions will be made for people who can present a neg-ative coronavirus test.

Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson speaks during a daily briefing to update on the coronavirus disease outbreak, at 10 Downing Street in London, yesterday.

Johnson eases social distancingrule, more businesses to reopenREUTERS — LONDON

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said yesterday, restaurants and hotels could reopen in England early next month, easing the coronavirus lockdown that has all but shut the economy.

In other signs of a gradual return to normal life, hair-dressers will open again along with tourist attractions like theme parks, but clubs, indoor gyms and swimming pools will stay closed.

Johnson has been under pressure from businesses, espe-cially in the hospitality sector, and from members of his gov-erning Conservative Party to relax the lockdown, but until now he had resisted for fear of prompting a second wave.

Yesterday, he said with infection rates falling and little current threat of a second wave

of COVID-19 cases, he could reopen swathes of the economy.

By relaxing the rule on social distancing from two metres to one metre-plus, with the ‘plus’ meaning measures like wearing masks and using protective screens, Johnson said many businesses could reopen from July 4.

“Today we can say that our long, national hibernation is beginning to come to an end,” he told parliament. “All hospi-tality indoors will be limited to table service and our guidance will encourage minimal staff and customer contact.”

He encouraged people to return to England’s clubs, but said they should act responsibly and that those enjoying the British tradition should give their names on arrival.

The changes will allow two

households to meet in any setting and all schools will reopen in September, he said, adding that laws specifying social contact would be replaced with the new guidance.

Business cautiously wel-comed the measures. Adam Marshall, Director-General of the British Chambers of Com-merce, said: “We are still a long way from business as usual. Broader efforts to boost business and consumer confi-dence will still be needed.” Britain has one of the highest death toll in the world from COVID-19, but the number of cases has been steadily falling. Health officials on Monday reported just 15 new deaths, the lowest rise since mid-March.

The daily tally of deaths peaked in April, when the toll exceeded 1,000 on nine days.

Families pay tribute to three men slain in English parkAP — LONDON

The families of the three victims of a stabbing rampage in a English park paid tribute to their loved ones yesterday, saying how their hearts have been broken at losing them in what is being treated as a terror attack.

Police named the dead as James Furlong, David Wails and Joseph Ritchie-Bennett. The three friends were enjoying a warm Saturday evening when they were attacked at Forbury Gardens park in Reading, a town of 200,000 people some

40 miles west of London. A 25-year-old suspect is in custody but officials say the motive for the carnage is unclear.

In a joint statement, the families each offered a reck-oning of their grief.

The parents of David Wails described him as a much-loved son, brother and uncle who never hurt anyone in his life.

“We are broken-hearted at losing him and in such a terrible way,’’ his parents said in a statement released by the police. “We will treasure our wonderful memories of him

and he will always be with us in our hearts.”

The family of Joseph Ritchie-Bennett, who was orig-inally from Philadelphia, also expressed their sadness.

“I was absolutely blessed and proud to be Joe’s father for 39 years and we are heart-broken by what has happened,” his father said.

The tributes came just a day after the community gathered for a moment of silence. More than 100 students lit candles and laid flowers in memory of Furlong, a history teacher.

“James was a wonderful

man. He was beautiful, intel-ligent, honest and fun,’’ said his parents, Gary and Janet. “He was the best son, brother, uncle and partner you could wish for. We are thankful for the mem-ories he gave us all. We will never forget him and he will live in our hearts forever.”

Police have not identified the suspect, but Britain’s national news agency, Press Association, and other media outlets named the alleged attacker as Khairi Saadallah, a Libyan asylum-seeker living in Reading.

Three other people were wounded in the attack.

French policeman gets suspended sentence for ‘yellow vest’ violenceAFP — STRASBOURG

A French court yesterday handed a suspended 18-month prison sentence to a police officer who struck a 62-year-old woman during a “yellow vest” anti-government protest last year, a scene captured by surveillance video.

The ruling comes as France grapples with renewed claims of alleged police violence, including several mass rallies inspired in part by the death in custody of George Floyd in the US.

The officer was among riot police deployed at a demon-stration in Strasbourg, eastern France, in January 2019, at the height of the yellow vest pro-tests that often spiralled into vandalism and clashes with security forces.

An internal police report found that the 47-year-old officer “was not threatened directly or personally by any demonstrator or the victim.” The woman was struck with a baton twice, resulting in wounds that required 12 stitches on the back of her head, and video also showed the officer kicking her as she lay on the ground.

During the trial the officer acknowledged his actions were “unauthorised” but said he remembered only striking her once.

He will not be allowed to carry any weapon for five years, and the conviction will

likely lead to his dismissal, according to the victim’s lawyer.

Also on Tuesday, four riot police were brought before a judge after being questioned over alleged violence against protesters in a fast food res-taurant during a yellow vest demo near the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, a judicial source said.

Several journalists were in the restaurant as well, and filmed some officers striking people even as they lay immobile on the ground.

France’s police watchdog said this month that it had received almost 1,500 com-plaints against officers last year, of which roughly half were for alleged violence against civilians.

According to an official count, about 2,500 demon-strators and 1,800 law enforcement agents were injured in yellow vest protests.

But critics accused police of excessive force in several cases, including the use of rubber bullets that caused around two-dozen people to lose an eye, and explosive stun grenades to disperse protesters.

Only a handful of officers have faced trial over the claims.

The controversy flared anew this week after it emerged that four French police were taken in for ques-tioning recently over the death of a delivery man after his arrest last January.

Police probing ‘White Lives Matter’ banner

AP — BURNLEY

Police are looking into an incident in which a plane pulled a banner with the words “White Lives Matter Burnley” on it over Manchester City’s Etihad Stadium at the start of a Premier League match between the teams.

The aircraft came into view moments after players and coaches from both clubs took a knee at kickoff on Monday in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. It circled the stadium for several minutes.

Police in Lancashire said on Twitter they will be “fully investigating” the incident yes-terday. The banner was quickly condemned by Burnley, which has vowed to “work fully with the authorities to identify those responsible and issue lifetime bans.” It comes at a time when the Premier League and its clubs are throwing their weight behind the Black Lives Matter movement.

When the league season resumed last week amid the coronavirus outbreak, “Black Lives Matter” replaced player names on the backs of shirts. Players, coaches and match officials have taken a knee for about 10 seconds before kickoff in the first 12 matches of the resumption.

Drive-through test in FranceEmployees of the Institut Pasteur de Guyane conduct a coronavirus test with a patient in his vehicle in Cayenne, in the French overseas department of Guyane, yesterday. The Institut Pasteur de Guyane offers COVID-19 drive-through tests for people living in Cayenne and in Guyane.

Kin demand answers over French driver’s death during police checkREUTERS — PARIS

The family of Cedric Chouviat, a French delivery driver who died in January after being stopped by police, yesterday demanded answers about his death from President Emmanuel Macron.

The 42-year-old died after being pinned to the ground during a traffic check. Questions

over his death have resurfaced after the killing of George Floyd in the United States ignited global protests against alleged police brutality.

Chouviat’s father said his son had said he could not breathe based on video footage of his arrest in January that was subsequently leaked to French media such as Le

Monde and Mediapart. “He was shouting out, ‘I

can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe’,” Christian Chouviat told reporters at a news conference organised by the family.

“I am addressing myself directly to President Macron,” added Chouviat’s daughter Sofia. “We want answers.”

Family members have said autopsy results showed a fracture to Chouviat’s larynx, and they urged Macron to change some methods used by the police when making arrests, to make them less violent.

Officials at the French Interior Ministry did not immediately respond to a

request for a comment. A judicial source said Paris

prosecutors had opened a man-slaughter inquiry into Chou-viat’s death. The four police officers involved in Chouviat’s arrest are due to be questioned over the incident.

Chouviat’s family expressed anger that the officers had not been suspended.

The governor of North Rhine-Westphalia state, Armin Laschet, said people in Guetersloh and parts of a neighbouring county for the next week will face some of the same restrictions that existed across Germany during the early stages of the pandemic in March.

13WEDNESDAY 24 JUNE 2020 EUROPE

US seeks to widen nuclear arms deal with RussiaREUTERS — VIENNA

The United States wants to broaden its main nuclear arms control agreement with Russia to include all their atomic weapons, a US envoy said yesterday after talks with Moscow on a new accord.

US Special Presidential Envoy for Arms Control, Marshall Bill-ingslea, also said Washington would keep pressing China to join the talks on replacing the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) which expires in February.

The two sides, who were rivals in the Cold War, agreed to set up technical working groups and to hold further talks, possibly in late July or early August, he said, but gave no details of the working groups. Washington wants Beijing involved because it says China is secretly racing to increase the size and reach of its nuclear arsenal, but Moscow

favours a multilateral accord, possibly including France and Britain, Billingslea said.

“We, the United States, intend and believe... that the next arms control agreement must cover all nuclear weapons, not just so-called strategic nuclear weapons,” he told a news con-ference in Vienna that followed the talks there yesterday.

New START caps the coun-tries’ deployed strategic nuclear weapons warheads at 1,550 each, far fewer than the thousands of atomic weapons they possess.

Last year Washington

withdrew from the 1987 Inter-mediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), with senior officials saying Moscow had deployed “multiple battalions” of a cruise missile throughout Russia in vio-lation of the pact and that some had “the ability to strike critical European targets”.

Russia denied that, saying the missile’s range puts it outside the treaty. A more comprehensive agreement would be intended to overcome such disputes and avoid further erosion of the global arms control architecture. China, whose nuclear arsenal is a fraction the size of the United States’ or Russia’s, has rejected US attempts to involve them in the negotiations. Billingslea posted a picture of Chinese flags at empty seats around the nego-tiating table before talks began, a move Beijing dismissed as an act of “performance art”.

Russia said China joining was unrealistic.

Marshall Billingslea (right), US Special Presidential Envoy for Arms Control, and US Air Force Lieutenant General, Thomas Bussiere, at a press conference in Vienna yesterday.

Former US marine jailed by Russia on spying charges hopes for prisoner swap REUTERS — MOSCOW

Former US marine Paul Whelan (pictured), who was sentenced to 16 years in a Russian prison last week on spying charges, hopes to be freed as part of a prisoner swap with the United States, his lawyer said yesterday, Interfax news agency reported.

Whelan will therefore not appeal his espionage conviction but will instead hold consulta-tions with Western diplomats about the merits of asking Pres-ident Vladimir Putin to pardon

him, the lawyer, Vladimir Zher-ebenkov, was quoted as saying.

Whelan, who holds US, British, Canadian and Irish passports, was detained by agents from Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) in a Moscow hotel room on December 28, 2018.

Russia says Whelan, 50, was caught with a computer flash drive containing classified information.

Whelan, who pleaded not guilty, said he was set up in a sting operation and had thought the drive, given to him by a

Russian acquaintance, con-tained holiday photos.

“Today we met him (Whelan) in the detention facility and after a discussion it was decided not to appeal the verdict because he doesn’t believe in Russian justice,” Interfax quoted Zherebenkov as saying.

“He hopes that he will be swapped for Russians in the near future who have been con-victed in the United States.”

Zherebenkov has previously said he believes Moscow wants to exchange Whelan for two Russians held in US prisons — arms dealer Viktor Bout and a

pilot named Konstantin Yaro-shenko, who was convicted of conspiracy to smuggle cocaine.

Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said yesterday the Kremlin had noted Whelan’s decision not to appeal his con-viction, but declined to comment further.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said last week after the court sentenced Whelan to 16 years in jail that the verdict had caused outrage in Washington. The US ambassador to Moscow, John Sullivan, called his trial “a mockery of justice”.

Russians throng river cruises as Moscow lockdown easesREUTERS — MOSCOW

Russians soaked up the sun on boat cruises on the river Moskva yesterday for the first time in three months after authorities lifted many of the city’s last remaining restrictions aimed at halting the novel coronavirus.

Officials in the city of 12.7 million, the epicentre of Rus-sia’s outbreak, say new infec-tions have been falling from a peak in May and stood at just over 1,000 yesterday. Russia’s national case load, the world’s third highest, is nearly 600,000.

The city, which began rapidly relaxing an array of lockdown restrictions earlier this month, yesterday allowed restaurants, cafes, libraries, playgrounds and gyms to open properly and for river cruises to resume.

Moscow’s mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, said late on Monday that life in the capital had already largely returned to its normal rhythm, but warned that some restrictions remained in force including a ban on mass public events such as protests.

Sobyanin’s critics accuse him of rushing to ease the lockdown in time to allow a Red Square military parade today and a July 1 nationwide vote that could extend President Vladimir Putin’s rule until 2036.

A brass band played on the roof of one boat cruise passing near the Kremlin’s terra-cotta walls, while on another pas-sengers — mostly in medical masks and gloves — waved their hats at people watching from the embankment.

“It’s a beautiful sunny day today,” said Olga Kacheva, the

Radisson Flotilla’s deputy mar-keting director. “We’re starting up again after three months on standby.” Authorities have

urged residents to continue wearing masks and gloves and to observe social distancing rules.

But yesterday the streets were bustling and many people were ignoring those guidelines.

3 lawmakers acquitted of defamation in Denmark AP — COPENHAGEN

A Danish court acquitted three lawmakers yesterday of defa-mation for writing an email in which they said public funds should not be granted to an organisation helping women exposed to psychological violence because the woman behind it didn’t distance herself from Islam’s Sharia law.

In 2017, Naser Khader, Martin Henriksen and Marcus Knuth — all members of centre-right parties in Den-mark’s Parliament — wrote an email to three centre-left law-makers urging them not to back a $102,000 public grant to the organisation headed by Shirin Khankan.

Their attempt failed and the money was allocated.

The three writers said Khankan was “a controversial figure” because she didn’t want to distance herself from Islam’s Sharia law, among others. Khankan is also a female imam running a mosque for mainly women.

In acquitting the men, the Eastern High Court said their statements were “made as part of a public debate on issues of significant social interest,” and within the limits of the freedom of speech.

State of emergency in Serbia,Bosnia after rain and floodingREUTERS — BELGRADE

Torrential rain and flooding in Serbia and Bosnia forced authorities to declare a state of emergency yesterday, as swollen rivers damaged bridges, roads and power lines.

Serbia, which is also bat-tling a rising number of coro-navirus cases, declared an emergency situation in nine municipalities in the coun-try’s west and southwest.

In the city of Kraljevo, the Ibar river tore two floating restaurants from their moorings, smashing them against a bridge.

“The city... declared an emergency situation... all Civil Defense units have been deployed,” the Tanjug news agency quoted Kraljevo mayor Predrag Terzic as saying. In other places, smaller rivers burst their banks, cutting off roads and power lines.

“Members of the Department for Emergency Situations... are providing assistance to the population

and evacuating,” the Interior Ministry said in a statement.

More rain is forecast for later in the day.

In 2014 dozens of people died in Serbia in massive floods which also pushed the European Union candidate country into recession.

In Bosnia’s northeast, heavy rains caused flooding and landslides, prompting authorities in towns in the Tuzla region to declare a state of natural disaster.

Traffic was blocked on the main road connecting Tuzla and the capital Sarajevo, and hundreds of buildings and homes were badly damaged. Several fam-ilies were evacuated on Monday, local authorities said.

Rivers also flooded large areas of agricultural land and washed away bridges. Many local roads and houses were flooded in eastern Bosnian towns bordering Serbia.

A view of a submerged house after heavy rains hit Srebrenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina, yesterday.

WMO seeks to verify 'worrying' reports of Arctic heat recordREUTERS — GENEVA

The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) said yesterday it was seeking to confirm reports of a record temperature reading of more than 100 degrees Fahrenheit in Siberia, saying they were “worrying” but appeared to be consistent with warming trends.

The WMO has asked Russian authorities to confirm the reading of 38 degrees Celsius (100.4 Fahrenheit) reported in the Russian town of Verkhoyansk, north of the Arctic Circle, on June 21.

“We’ve seen satellite images this morning and it’s just one mass of red. It’s striking and wor-rying,” WMO spokeswoman Clare Nullis told a Geneva briefing.

The Arctic is warming at twice the speed of the global average and this year an unu-sually hot Siberian spring has melted ground snow and broken up river ice early.

Professor Randall Cerveny, WMO Rapporteur on Weather and Climate Extremes, said that

a team had “given tentative acceptance of this observation as a legitimate observation”, which he said was consistent with other regional data.

Siberia has experienced “exceptional heat” in recent weeks, the WMO added.

The Geneva-based UN agency expects to hear back from Russia’s meteorological agency within days and will then start its own verification process to check whether the reading, which is more typical of the tropics, i s an all-time record.

In February, the WMO said a research base in the Antarctic had recorded the hottest tem-perature ever for that continent.

“Month after month we are surprised, concerned by tem-perature readings that we see,” Nullis said.

US Special Presidential

Envoy for Arms

Control, Marshall

Billingslea, said

Washington would

keep pressing China to

join the talks.

Russia to hiketaxes on highearners fromnext year

AFP — MOSCOW

President Vladimir Putin said yesterday that Russia will from next year increase taxes on high earners, the first hike in decades, as he laid out measures to tackle the economic fallout of the coro-navirus.

He said that from January 1, 2021 the tax rate will rise from 13 percent to 15 percent on income over five million rubles ($73,000), in Russia’s first move away from a flat tax rate introduced in 2001.

Addressing Russians in a lengthy televised speech, Putin said the country is facing huge economic chal-lenges after the coronavirus epidemic and associated restrictions on business.

“Since 2001 we have had a flat tax. Its introduction at the time allowed us to take incomes out of the shadows, to make taxation easier,” he said.

“But now with a better quality of administration and the introduction of digital technologies, we can spread the tax burden in a differ-ential way and direct the additional funds towards solving specif ic and important issues,” he said

The Arctic is warming at twice the speed of the global average.

Citizens line up observing social distance rules, in Moscow, yesterday, as coronavirus curbs have been relaxed further and restaurants and cafes reopened in the capital.

14 WEDNESDAY 24 JUNE 2020AMERICAS

Fauci hopeful for a vaccine by late 2020, early 2021

AP — WASHINGTON

The government’s top infectious disease expert said yesterday he is cautiously optimistic that there will be a COVID-19 vaccine by the end of the year or early 2021, but warned that the next few weeks will be critical to tamping down coronavirus hot spots around the country.

Dr. Anthony Fauci and other top health officials also said they have not been asked to slow down testing for coronavirus, an issue that became controversial after President Donald Trump said last weekend that he had asked them to do just that because it was uncovering too many infections. Trump said on Wednesday that he wasn’t kidding when he said that.

“We will be doing more testing,” Fauci told a House committee.

The US has tested more than 27 million people, with about 2.3 million — or 8.4 percent — testing positive.

The health officials returned to Capitol Hill at a fraught moment in the nation’s pandemic response, with coronavirus cases rising in about half the states and political polarisation competing for attention with public health recommendations.

“We’ve been hit badly,” said Fauci, infectious diseases chief at the National Institutes of Health. He said he was “really quite concerned” about rising community spread in some states.

“The next couple of weeks are going to be critical in our ability to address those surges,” he said.

Fauci, who heads the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was testi-fying along with Centres for Disease Control director Dr. Robert Redfield, Federal Drug Administration chief Dr. Stephen Hahn and the head of the US Public Health Service, Adm Brett Giroir.

Since Fauci’s last appearance at a high-profile hearing more than a month ago, the US has begun emerging from weeks of stay-at-home orders and business shutdowns. But it’s being done in an uneven way, with some states far less cautious than others. A trio of states with Republican governors who are bullish on reopening — Arizona, Florida and Texas — are among those seeing worrisome increases in cases.

Last week, Vice President Mike Pence published an opinion article in The Wall Street Journal saying the administration’s efforts have strengthened the nation’s ability to counter the virus and should be “a cause for celebration.” Then at Trump’s weekend rally in Tulsa, many of

his supporters didn’t wear masks, which for some was an act of defiance against what they see as government intrusion. White House officials later tried to walk back Trump’s comment there on slowing down testing, suggesting it wasn’t meant to be taken literally.

Rep Frank Pallone of New Jersey, who chairs the Energy and Commerce Committee, said during yesterday’s hearing that Trump’s testing comment at the rally “was an extremely reckless action, and unfortunately it con-tinues the president’s pattern of ignoring the advice of his own public health experts.” Trump, departing the White House for a visit to Arizona yesterday, played down those comments, saying under his administration the US is doing more testing than any other country. Trump’s trip includes a rally at a megachurch.

Fauci has recently warned that the US is still in the first wave of the pandemic and has con-tinued to urge the American public to practice social

distancing. And, in a recent ABC News interview, he said political demonstrations such as protests against racial injustice are “risky” to all involved. Asked if that applied to Trump rallies, he said it did. Fauci continues to rec-ognise widespread testing as critical for catching clusters of COVID-19 cases before they turn into full outbreaks in a given community.

About 2.3 million Americans have been sickened in the pan-demic, and some 120,000 have died, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

Giroir was tapped by the White House to oversee the expansion of coronavirus testing. But he gained notoriety after a whistleblower complaint flagged him for trying to push a malaria drug touted by Trump to treat COVID-19 without conclusive scientific evidence. The FDA has since withdrawn its emergency use authorisation for hydroxychloroquine.

“There have been a lot of unfortunate missteps in the Trump administration’s response

to the COVID-19 pandemic,” Pallone said.

“As communities across the country ease social distancing guidance and reopen their econ-omies, it is critically important that both the administration and Congress remain focused on con-taining the spread of the corona-virus and providing the resources and support Americans need during this time of crisis.”

There is still no vaccine for COVID-19, and there are no treatments specifically developed for the disease, although the anti-viral drug remdesivir has been shown to help some patients, as well as a steroid called dexame-thasone, and plasma from patients who have recovered.

Since Fauci last testified, hos-pital physicians have become more skilled in treating corona-virus patients with the techniques and medications at their disposal.

The US continues to ramp up testing, with some 27.5 million Americans, or more than 8 percent of the population, tested thus far.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director, National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, arrives for a House Committee hearing on the Trump Administration’s Response to the COVID-19 pandemic, in Washington, DC, yesterday.

Trump accuses

Obama of

treason without

evidenceREUTERS — WASHINGTON

US President Donald Trump, trailing in opinion polls at a time of anti-racism protests and a surge in coronavirus cases, lashed out at the admin-istration of Barack Obama, the country’s first Black president, with a baseless accusation of treason.

The accusation, offered without evidence in an interview on Monday, was the Republican president’s latest effort to tarnish Obama, a popular Democrat whom Trump has targeted for years, including falsely suggesting he was not US-born.

Trump trails the pre-sumptive Democratic nominee, Joe Biden, who was Obama’s vice president, by 13 percentage points ahead of the November 3 presidential election.

Under Trump, the US Justice Department is reviewing a probe that found foreign interference in the 2016 election he won. He previously accused Obama of spying on his campaign but not treason.

Asked what crime might have been committed by spying, Trump told the Christian Broadcasting Network: “It’s treason. Look, when I came out a long time ago, I said they’ve been spying on our campaign... Let’s see what happens to them now.” “(William) Barr is doing a great job as attorney general, let’s see what they come up with,” he said. Barr has said he does not expect Obama or Biden to be charged.

Representatives for Obama, who was scheduled to appear at a virtual fund-raiser with Biden yesterday, said he had no comment on Trump’s accusation.

Trump to extend US work visa freeze to year-end: White HouseAFP — WASHINGTON

US President Donald Trump will prolong a ban on US employment permits to year-end and broaden it to include H-1B visas used widely in the tech industry, the White House said Monday.

A senior administration official told journalists the move would affect 525,000 jobs in the US, which is currently reeling from a high unemployment rate caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

Trump had repeatedly touted a strong economy, but now finds himself desperate for a political boost ahead of the November election.

The executive order, signed

on Monday afternoon, will extend and widen the 60-day freeze Trump placed on new work permits for non-US citizens two months ago.

The administration official said the new order would extend to the end of 2020 and include H-1B visas provided to 85,000 workers each year with special skills, many of them joining the US technology industry.

It will also cover most J visas, common for academics and researchers, and L visas used by companies to shift workers based overseas to their US offices.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai — whose company has been a leading beneficiary of the H1-B visa system — said he was

“disappointed” by the announcement.

“Immigration has con-tributed immensely to America’s economic success, making it a global leader in tech,” he wrote on Twitter.

The move comes as Trump feuds with Silicon Valley after tech titans Twitter and Snapchat censored or hid posts by the pres-ident they claimed incited vio-lence or were misleading.

Last month Trump signed an order seeking to strip social media giants of legal immunity for content on their platforms in a move slammed by his critics as a legally dubious act of political revenge.

The official said the order

was necessary to respond to soaring unemployment that resulted from the COVID-19 shutdown.

The official also stressed the H-1B visa freeze was temporary while the programme is restruc-tured, shifting from an annual lottery that feeds coders and other specialists to Silicon Valley to a system that gives priority to those foreign workers with the most value.

Trump “is going to prioritize those workers who are offered the highest wages,” as an indi-cator that they can add more value to the US economy, the official said.

“It will eliminate competition with Americans... in these

industries at the entry level, and will do more to get the best and the brightest.” The move also freezes most H-2B visas — used each year for about 66,000 short-term, low-skilled jobs in landscaping, food and hospitality industries — and H-4 visas, which allow spouses of other visa holders to work.

Exemptions will apply to seafood processing plants and to au pairs, who offer families household help like childcare.

In addition, the official said the government is issuing new regulations that will mak e it much harder for tens of thou-sands of asylum seekers waiting for their court hearings to work legally in the meanwhile.

US House panel calls Trump broadcasting chief to testifyREUTERS — WASHINGTON

The US House of Representa-tives Foreign Affairs Committee yesterday called the new head of US government broadcasting operations to testify next month, citing concern about editorial independence under President Donald Trump’s appointee after a spate of dismissals.

Representative Eliot Engel, chairman of the Democratic-led committee, called on Michael Pack, the newly appointed chief executive of the US Agency for Global Media, to testify at a hearing on July 8.

The press office at the agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the announcement or whether Pack would appear.

Pack, a conservative film-maker, last week removed the heads of four of the organisa-tions under the AGM umbrella — Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, the Middle East Broadcasting Network and the Open Tech-nology Fund — and replaced the bi-partisan boards that govern and advise the services mostly with political appointees from Trump’s administration.

US law requires the gov-ernment-funded broadcasters to operate independently and remain free from interference by any presidential administration.

Democrats had objected to Trump’s appointment of Pack for years, saying they feared he would see his role as forcing favourable coverage of Trump’s administration. Pack is a close ally of conservative political activists including Steve Bannon, once a top aide to Trump.

Trump has criticised Voice of America (VOA) as he has blamed China for worsening the coronavirus outbreak.

His administration accused VOA of amplifying Chinese propaganda after a segment on a light show marking the reo-pening of the Chinese city of Wuhan.

Mourners bid farewell to Rayshard BrooksAP — ATLANTA

Scores of mourners, some dressed all in white and others wearing Black Lives Matter shirts, filed into the historic Atlanta church that was once the Rev Martin Luther King Jr’s pulpit for a funeral yesterday for the Black man whose killing by police in a fast-food parking lot stoked protests across the US against racial injustice.

King’s daughter, the Rev Bernice King, planned to deliver remarks at the private service, along with a friend of Brooks, his mother-in-law and the senior pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church, the Rev. Raphael Warnock.

“Rayshard Brooks wasn’t just running from the police. He was running from a system that makes slaves out of people. A system that doesn’t give ordinary people who’ve made mistakes a second chance, a real shot at redemption,” Warnock, a Dem-ocratic candidate for Senate, said in an excerpt of his eulogy released ahead of the service.

Among those arriving was Stacey Abrams, the former state lawmaker who has been men-tioned as a potential running mate for Democratic

presidential candidate Joe Biden. Jon Ossoff, a young Georgia media executive who broke fun-draising records during an unsuccessful 2017 run for Con-gress, was also seen. Some mourners wore T-shirts with Brooks’ picture.

Brooks, 27, was shot twice in the back June 12 by Officer Garrett Rolfe after a struggle that erupted when police tried to handcuff him for being intoxi-cated behind the wheel of his car at a Wendy’s drive-thru. Video showed Brooks snatching a police Taser and firing it at the white officer while running away.

Rolfe, 27, was charged with murder and jailed without bail. A second officer, Devin Brosnan, 26, was charged with aggravated assault, accused of stepping on Brooks’ shoulder as he lay dying on the pavement. Lawyers for both men said their clients’ actions were justified.

The killing unfolded amid protests and scattered violence set off around the country by the case of George Floyd, the Black man who was pronounced dead May 25 after a white Minne-apolis put his knee on Floyd’s neck for nearly eight minutes.

Atlanta’s police chief stepped

down less than 24 hours after Brooks’ death, and the Wendy’s was burned by protesters.

While Brooks was not a member of Ebenezer Baptist, the church where King preached is a “sanctuary for those who suffer,” Warnock said in a statement announcing the funeral plans. Actor and film-maker Tyler Perry offered financial help for the service, according to the statement.

An afternoon bail hearing for Rolfe that would have conflicted with the funeral was cancelled by a judge. Under the law, crime victims and their families are entitled to be heard at such proceedings.

Meanwhile, a new poll that finds nearly all Americans favour at least some change to the nation’s criminal justice system, and they overwhelm-ingly want to see clear standards

on when police officers may use force and consequences for those who cross the line.

The poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research said 29 percent think the criminal justice system needs “a complete overhaul,” 40 percent say it needs “major changes,” and 25 percent say it needs “minor changes.” Just 5 percent believe no changes are necessary.

Mourners arrive for the funeral service of Rayshard Brooks, who was killed by the Atlanta police on June 12, at a church in Atlanta, Georgia, yesterday.

There is still no vaccine for COVID-19, and there are no treatments specifically developed for the disease, although the antiviral drug remdesivir has been shown to help some patients, as well as a steroid called dexamethasone, and plasma from patients who have recovered.

15WEDNESDAY 24 JUNE 2020 AMERICAS

Trump credits new borderwall with stoppingmigrants, coronavirus

AP — YUMA, ARIZONA

President Donald Trump visited the US-Mexico border yesterday to celebrate construction of more than 200 miles of wall, hoping it will remind voters of progress he’s made toward one his 2016 campaign promises.

Trump credited the wall with stopping not just illegal immi-gration but also the coronavirus, saying “It stopped COVID, it stopped everything.”

But his visit played out as top public health officials in Wash-ington were testifying about the

ongoing threat posed by the coronavirus and singling out Arizona as one of the states now experiencing a surge in cases.

Trump was looking to regain campaign momentum after his weekend rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which was supposed to be a sign of the nation’s reo-pening and a show of political force but instead generated thousands of empty seats and swirling questions about the president’s campaign leadership and his case for another four years in office. The low turnout sharpened the focus on Trump’s visit to Arizona, which doubles as both a 2020 battleground state and a surging coronavirus hot spot.

By visiting the border, Trump sought to change the subject to an issue he believes will help electrify his base in November.

“Our border has never been more secure,” Trump declared as he met with Republican Gov. Doug Ducey and federal Border Patrol officials.

Later, he was to address a group of young Republicans at a Phoenix megachurch, where event organisers have pledged thousands will attend.

Throughout the trip, the COVID-19 pandemic is shad-owing Trump. The Democratic mayor of Phoenix made clear she does not believe the speech

can be safely held in her city - and urged the president to wear a face mask.

Trump has refused to wear a mask in public, instead turning it into a red-vs-blue cultural issue. Polling suggests Repub-licans are far less likely to wear face coverings than Democrats despite health experts’ warnings that it dramatically reduces the risk of transmitting the virus.

The “Students for Trump” event will be held at the Dream City Church and broadcast to groups across the nation. Stu-dents for Trump is a special project of Turning Point Action, a grouped chaired by Trump ally Charlie Kirk, which is hosting the president for his address. Organ-isers said health and safety measures still were being finalised and it was unclear if attendees would be asked to wear masks or keep socially distant. Since late May, Arizona has emerged as one of the nation’s most active hot spots for the spread of COVID-19.

Photos of restaurants and bars crowded with unmasked patrons ignited controversy. Ducey, a Trump supporter, reversed himself last week and allowed cities and counties to require people to wear masks in public places. Most have, including Phoenix and Yuma and the counties that surround

them. Arizona is seeing dis-turbing trends in several bench-marks, including the percentage of tests that prove positive for the virus, which is the highest in the nation.

The state reported a new daily record of nearly 3,600 additional coronavirus cases yesterday as Arizona continued to set records for the number of people hospitalised, in intensive care and on ventilators for COVID-19. Arizona’s total caseload in the pandemic stands at at least 58,179, with 42 more deaths reported yesterday, raising the death toll to 1,384.

“Right now, the next couple of weeks are going to be critical in our ability to address those surgings that we are seeing in Florida, in Texas, in Arizona and other states,” Dr. Anthony Fauci,

the federal government’s top infectious disease expert, told a House committee yesterday.

“They are not the only ones that are having a difficulty. Bottom line... it’s a mixed bag.”

Campaign officials stressed that rallies would remain a staple of the president’s ree-lection strategy but allowed that they may, in certain states, need to change slightly. Discussions were under way about having them in more modest venues or outdoors, perhaps in airplane hangars and amphitheaters, or in smaller cities away from likely protesters.

But officials believe Trump’s ability to draw thousands of sup-porters out during a pandemic sets up a favorable contrasting image with Democratic rival Joe Biden. Still, the campaign has

struggled to find effective attack lines on Biden.

Biden, like Trump, has had struggles with young voters but the former vice president’s cam-paign has expressed hope that the national protests against racial injustice may change that.

Trump’s visit to the Phoenix megachurch comes on the same day that Vice President Mike Pence kicks off a faith-centred tour, highlighting the central position that religious conservatives — particularly white evangelicals, but also right-leaning Catholics — con-tinue to occupy in the presi-dent’s base. Yet even as Trump’s campaign overtly courts religious voters, there are signs of softening support among voting blocs the pres-ident can’t afford to lose.

US President Donald Trump stands up to leave and visit the US-Mexico border wall after participating in a roundtable briefing on border security in Yuma, Arizona, yesterday.

Trudeau slams ‘political’ detentions, after China spy chargesAFP — OTTAWA

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Monday blasted China’s detention of two Canadians for “political ends,” following charges against them for spying.

His comments came after China’s Supreme People’s Proc-uratorate on Friday said it had begun the prosecution of ex-dip-lomat Michael Kovrig and busi-nessman Michael Spavor, who were “suspected of foreign espi-onage” and “providing state secrets.” The move, 18 months after their arrest, came just weeks after a Canadian judge ruled that proceedings to extradite Chinese

Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou to the United States will go ahead.

Relations between Canada and China have hit rock bottom over the arrests.

At his daily briefing on Monday, Trudeau said, “This arbitrary detention of Canadian citizens is unacceptable and deeply concerning, not just to Canadians but to people around the world who see China using arbitrary detentions as a means to political ends.” Trudeau said “we deplore... a political decision made by the Chinese gov-ernment,” which continues to pressure Canada.

Beijing has also blocked bil-lions of dollars’ worth of Canadian agricultural exports.

A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said yesterday that Beijing was working on the case of the detained Canadians “according to the rule of law in China.” Wang Lutong told reporters at a briefing that the pair were guaranteed “every right during their detention.”

Trudeau last week said he was “disappointed” that the Canadians were formally charged with spying, and his deputy, Chrystia Freeland, said she was “heartbroken and really angry” over Beijing’s action.

Former ambassador to China, Guy Saint-Jacques, had urged Ottawa to take a more aggressive stance, “not just soft diplomatic talk anymore.” In an interview with public broad-caster CBC, Kovrig’s wife Vina Nadjibulla agreed more pressure on China was needed, as “words are no longer enough.”

But, she said, “I’m interested in us being strong, but not antag-onistic. We cannot win a race to the bottom with China, we cannot become aggressive and confrontational because con-frontation is not a strategy.” Nad-jibulla insisted that both her husband and Spavor are innocent

and “pawns in a bigger geopo-litical game.” It is “heart-breaking,” she said, knowing that Kovrig is languishing in a cell he described in letters to her and other family as a “concrete jungle.”

“Basically he has been con-fined to a single cell this entire time. He has not gone outside. He has not seen a tree or had fresh air to breathe for 560 days,” she said. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo demanded that China free the two Canadians, and said in a statement that his country “rejects the use of these unjus-tified detentions to coerce Canada.”

Judge orders

Brazil President

to use face

mask in public

AP — SAO PAULO

A Brazilian federal judge yesterday ordered President Jair Bolsonaro to comply with local rules to wear a face mask whenever he is outdoors in the capital of Brasilia.

In recent weekends, a sometimes unmasked Bol-sonaro has joined throngs of people protesting against Bra-zil’s Congress and Supreme Court and he has visited bak-eries and outdoor food stalls, drawing crowds around him.

Since the end of April, Bra-zil’s federal district requires people to wear face masks in public to help control the spread of the new coronavirus. Failure to comply carries a possible daily fine of $390.

Judge Renato Coelho Borelli said in his ruling that Bolsonaro “has exposed other people to the contagion of a disease that has caused national commotion.”

The Brazilian presidentdid not immediately comment on the decision. An earlier court ruling required him to publish the results of three COVID-19 tests he took early March, and all were negative for the virus. He has not disclosed any tests since then.

Bolsonaro sometimes appears in public events with a mask, unlike some other heads of state, including US President Donald Trump, Mex-ico’s Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Argentina’s Alberto Fernandez, who has often hugged supporters and taken selfies with them while not wearing a mask. The Bra-zilian president has down-played the risk of COVID-19 and insisted the negative eco-nomic impacts of social iso-lation will be worse than the harm caused by the virus.

Texas children’s hospitaladmitting adult patientsas virus cases surgeREUTERS — HOUSTON

A Texas children’s hospital is admitting adult coronavirus patients due to a spike in serious COVID-19 cases in the Houston area, while a dozen other states from Florida to California grapple with a surge in infections.

“We know COVID-19 has not gone away. We implore you to take responsible actions - practice appropriate social dis-tancing, wear a mask or face cov-ering anytime you leave your home,” the Texas Children’s Hos-pital said in a statement, without specifying how many corona-virus patients they admitted.

Texas reported over 5,000 new infections on Monday, a single-day record for the state. It has also seen COVID-19 hospi-talizations hit record highs for 11 days in a row.

Arizona and Nevada reported record increases in new cases yesterday after recording all-time highs last week, according to a Reuters tally.

The United States recorded a 25 percent increase in new cases of COVID-19 in the week ended June 21, compared to the previous seven days, as Arizona and Florida joined Texas with record surges in new infections, a Reuters analysis found.

Ten states, including Texas, reported weekly new infection increases of more than 50 percent, according to the analysis of data from The COVID Tracking Project, a volunteer-run effort to track the outbreak.

While most states are increasing testing, the number of tests coming back positive is rising. At least four states are averaging double-digit rates in the percentage of tests that are positive for the virus: Arizona at 20 percent, Florida and Utah both at 11 percent, and Texas at 10 percent. By contrast, New York, formerly the epicenter of the US outbreak, has been reporting positive test rates of around 1 percent.

The World Health

Organisation considers positivity rates above 5 percent to be espe-cially concerning. President Donald Trump yesterday held fast to his claim that the spike in US cases in multiple states was due to testing, not increased spread of the disease.

“Cases are going up in the U.S. because we are testing far more than any other country, and

ever expanding. With smaller testing we would show fewer cases!” he tweeted.

Many of these states are also seeing record hospitalizations — a metric not affected by increased testing.

The president will speak with students in Phoenix on yesterday after holding his first campaign rally in months in Oklahoma over

the weekend.Former Vice President Joe

Biden, who is expected to chal-lenge Trump in the November 3 election, called the president’s plans to speak to thousands of supporters in Phoenix “reckless and irresponsible” at a time when the number of people hospi-talised with the coronavirus in Arizona is continuing to rise.

A medical worker administers a test for the coronavirus at a hospital, in Houston, Texas, yesterday.

Powerful quake shakes southern Mexico, triggers local Pacific tsunamiREUTERS — MEXICO CITY

A powerful earthquake of magnitude 7.4 struck the coast of southern Mexico yesterday, killing at least one person, buckling paved roads, and setting off a tsunami in nearby Pacific coastal areas.

One person died in the state of Oaxaca, Governor Alejandro Murat said, after the quake hit the Pacific coastal state

mid-morning. The country’s seismological service said a tsunami on the Oaxaca coast was ongoing, with the sea level having risen 60 centimeters at Huatulco beach, a popular des-tination for US and Canadian tourists.

Mexico’s civil protection agency recommended that res-idents move away from the coastline. Videos on social media had earlier shown the ocean’s

water receding in Oaxaca, a mountainous state that is also home to coffee plantations and Spanish colonial architecture.

Miguel Candelaria, 30, was working at his computer in his family home in the Oaxaca town of Juchitan when the ground began to tremble. He ran outside with relatives, but they had to stop in the middle of the street as the pavement buckled and rocked.

“We couldn’t walk... the street was like chewing gum,” said Candelaria, 30.

Neighbors screamed in terror and some shouted out warnings to run from the elec-tricity poles that looked poised to fall, said Candelaria, who works in telecommunications marketing.

Quakes of magnitudes over 7 are major earthquakes capable of widespread, heavy damage.

A 7.1 magnitude earthquake that struck central Mexico in 2017 killed 355 people in the capital and the surrounding states.

Yesterday’s quake set off a tsunami warning for the Pacific coasts of Mexico and Central and South America. Waves of up to one metre were possible on the Mexican coast, the US National Oceanic and Atmos-pheric Administration warned.

Buildings shook in Mexico

City, hundreds of miles away.Helicopters flew low over

the Roma and Condesa districts of the capital, apparently looking for damage in streets where many buildings still show the scars of the 2017 quake.

The city’s mayor said there were two people injured but no major damage from the quake, which hit as millions of people were at home in lockdown due to the coronavirus.

US President Donald Trump visited the US-Mexico border yesterday to celebrate construction of more than 200 miles of wall. “Our border has never been more secure,” Trump declared as he met with Republican Gov. Doug Ducey and federal Border Patrol officials.

16 WEDNESDAY 24 JUNE 2020MORNING BREAK

A quarter-billion children getting no education: UNAFP — PARIS

Nearly 260 million children had no access to schooling in 2018, a United Nations agency said in a report yesterday that blamed poverty and discrimination for educational inequalities that are being exacerbated by the coro-navirus outbreak.

Children from poorer com-munities as well as girls, the dis-abled, immigrants and ethnic minorities were at a distinct educational disadvantage in many countries, the UN’s Paris-based education body Unesco said.

In 2018, “258 million children and youth were entirely excluded from edu-cation, with poverty as the main obstacle to access,” the report

found. This represented 17 percent of all school-age children, most of them in south and central Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

The disparities worsened with the arrival of the corona-virus crisis, which saw over 90 percent of the global student population affected by school closures, the report said.

And while children from families with means could con-tinue schooling from home using laptops, mobile phones and the Internet, millions of others were cut off entirely.

“Lessons from the past — such as with Ebola — have shown that health crises can leave many behind, in par-ticular the poorest girls, many of whom may never return to

school,” Unesco’s Director General Audrey Azoulay wrote in a foreword.

The report noted that in low- and middle-income coun-tries, adolescents from the richest 20 percent of house-holds were three times more likely to complete the first portion of secondary school — up to age 15 — than those from poor homes.

Children with disabilities were 19 percent less likely to achieve minimum reading pro-ficiency in 10 of these nations.

In 20 poor countries, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa, hardly any rural girls complete sec-ondary school, Unesco said.

And in richer nations, 10-year-olds taught in a lan-guage other than their mother tongue scored 34 percent lower than native speakers in reading tests.

“Unfortunately, disadvan-taged groups are kept out or pushed out of education systems through more or less subtle decisions leading to exclusion from curricula,

irrelevant learning objectives, stereotyping in textbooks, dis-crimination in resource allo-cation and assessments, tol-erance of violence and neglect of needs,” the report said.

Two African countries still ban pregnant girls from school, 117 countries allow child mar-riages, and 20 have yet to ratify an international convention that bans child labour.

Some 335 million girls attended schools that did not provide them with the water, sanitation and hygiene services they need to stay in class while menstruating.

In several central and eastern European countries, Roma children are segregated in mainstream schools.

And in Asia, displaced

people such as the Rohingya are taught in separate systems.

“Many countries still practice education segregation, which reinforces stereotyping, discrimination and alienation,” the report said.

“Just 41 countries worldwide officially recognised sign lan-guage and, globally, schools were more eager to get Internet access than to cater for learners with disabilities,” it said.

Unesco urged countries to focus on disadvantaged children when schools reopen after coronavirus lockdowns.

“To rise to the challenges of our time, a move towards more inclusive education is imper-ative,” Azoulay said. “Failure to act will hinder the progress of societies.”

Beidou: China launches finalsatellite to rival GPS systemAFP — BEIJING

China yesterday launched the final satellite in its homegrown geolocation system, completing a network designed to rival American GPS as it jostles for market share in the lucrative sector.

Footage broadcast live on television showed a rocket blasting off with the satellite from a mountainous region of southwest China, which state media hailed as another mile-stone in the country’s space programme.

The Beidou system — named after the Chinese term for the Big Dipper constellation — works on a network of about 30 satellites and competes with the US’s Global Positioning System (GPS), Russia’s GLONASS and the European Union’s Galileo.

“I think the Beidou-3 system being operational is a big event,” Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astro-physics, said.

“This is a big investment

from China and makes China independent of US and European systems.” The final satellite, the Beidou-3GEO3, will help improve the network’s accuracy.

China started building the system in the early 1990s to help cars, fishing boats and mil-itary tankers navigate using mapping data from the coun-try’s own satellites.

Now the service can be used on millions of mobile phones to find nearby restaurants, petrol stations or cinemas, and to guide taxis.

In 2012, Beidou’s coverage entered commercial use in the Asia-Pacific region, becoming available worldwide in 2018.

Around 120 countries, including Pakistan and Thailand, use the services for port traffic monitoring, guiding post-disaster rescue operations and other uses, according to Chinese state media.

Beijing is counting on its trillion-dollar Belt and Road global infrastructure project to convince other countries to use its technology as it attempts to

grab market share from GPS.China’s geolocation services

market is expected to be worth 400 billion yuan ($56.4bn) in this year, a senior official told state media.

The global geolocation services market will be worth $146.4bn by 2025, according to San Francisco-based Grand View Research.

Analysts said Beidou was already outperforming GPS in terms of accuracy, but it still had a long way to go before over-taking its American rival as the world’s dominant geolocation system. McDowell said he did not think Beidou would be able to “supplant GPS in the next 10 or even 20 years”. Carter Palmer, a space systems analyst at US-based consultancy Forecast International, said there were still questions over Beidou’s reliability but its accuracy was a big selling point.

“What I do see is (users) using multiple systems, including Beidou, to have more accurate satellite navigation,” he said.

The completion of the

Beidou network will also be of benefit to China’s military.

China has poured about $10bn into the Beidou system, to keep the communication net-works of the country’s military secure and avoid the risk of dis-ruption. “Technically, Beidou is

capable of replacing GPS, for example in wartime if the United States cuts off access to GPS in China,” said Chen Lan, an analyst specialising in the Chinese space programme.

China’s military also uses it to guide missiles and fly drones.

A Long March 3B rocket carrying the Beidou-3GEO3 satellite lifts off from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Xichang in China’s southwestern Sichuan province, yesterday.

A Swedish eatery that serves just one guestAFP — STOCKHOLM

With the coronavirus making social distancing de rigueur, a Swedish couple have opened a restaurant that serves one diner in an empty field, and the meal swoops to the table by zipline.

Aptly named “Bord for en”, or “Table for One”, the unique al fresco eatery allows patrons to “let their worries go”, long enough to enjoy a meal, the restaurateurs told AFP.

“It’s nice to just for once not think about ‘Oh, am I going to catch the virus now?’ ‘Am I being a risk to anyone else?’”, says Linda Karlsson, 36, who hatched the idea with husband Rasmus Persson in Sweden’s

western Varmland province.At a table set with a white

linen tablecloth, David Nord-strom — who came by bicycle from Karlstad, 50 km away — savours his three-course meal in the wide-open wilderness.

On the menu: Seaweed caviar on Swedish-style hash browns with smetana, yellow carrot ginger puree and sweet corn croquettes, and ginned blueberries with iced but-termilk for dessert.

All delivered on a zipline that runs from the couple’s kitchen window.

“I hadn’t eaten food outside my apartment since early March. I wanted to get out of my voluntary quarantine and leave the city,” Nordstrom, the

spot’s first customer, told AFP.As he dined, a butterfly

circled the table and a hawk soared high above.

The idea was born when Linda’s parents, who are in a risk group, came for a visit.

“It was a windy day” in March, she recalled. “They came by and we said ‘You need to go around the house’, and we had put this nice table up with nice tableware, a nice linen cloth and two chairs.”

“We served them through the kitchen window and they really enjoyed it. We were able to... spend time with them and it was safe, and we thought that maybe we should make this available for everybody.” The couple opened their

establishment on May 10 and are fully booked through August 1 when they will close.

They offer a set menu, but guests decide how much they want to pay for it.

Rasmus, a former chef turned freelance radio host, and Linda, a former waitress who is now a production company executive, work their normal jobs during the day before opening the restaurant at the end of the afternoon.

In Sweden, which has made headlines for its softer approach to the new corona-virus and has reported more than 5,100 COVID-19 deaths, most restaurants have remained open throughout the pandemic.

Two African countries still ban pregnant girls from school, 117 countries allow child marriages, and 20 have yet to ratify an international convention that bans child labour.

A view of the red carpet set up at the Golden Globes 2020 at The Beverly Hilton, California.

Golden Globes awards on Feb 28REUTERS — LOS ANGELES

The Golden Globes on Monday postponed its 2021 ceremony for film and television, after a two-month delay to the Oscars, in Hollywood’s latest awards calendar shuffle caused by the coronavirus epidemic.

The Golden Globes cer-emony, which kicks off Holly-wood’s awards season, will take place on February 28 instead of its usual slot on the first Sunday in January, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA), which hands out the trophies, said in a statement.

Last week the Oscars, the

highest honours in the film industry, were postponed to April 25 from February 28. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences said the delay would allow filmmakers more time to finish their movies after production was shut down worldwide in mid-March and movie theatres were closed.

The HFPA said it would give details on a new date for Golden Globe nominations and eligi-bility criteria in the coming weeks.

The Golden Globes, handed out at a dinner in Beverly Hills, will be hosted by comedians Tina Fey and Amy Poehler.

Netflix to screen

Kristen Stewart’s

lockdown short

AFP — PARIS

Netflix said yesterday that it challenged some of the world’s hottest directors to make a short film when they were cooked up at home during the coronavirus lockdown.

The results, made with whatever equipment and family members were close at hand, will be streamed next week.

Hollywood stars Kristen Stewart and Maggie Gyllenhaal were among 17 of those who rose to the challenge, with Stewart shooting hers in Los Angeles while Gyllenhaal shel-tered in Vermont.

“Jackie” director Pablo Larrain made his film at home in Santiago, Chile — which had been battered by months of civil unrest before the virus struck — while French-Malian film-maker Ladj Ly shot around the tough Paris suburb where his Oscar-nominated movie “Les Miserables” is set.

David Mackenzie of “Hell or High Water” fame got to grips with his hometown Glasgow, while Nadine Labaki used the backdrop of Beirut.

The shorts will be streamed on Netflix from June 30, with the US giant saying a donation is being made to its hardship fund for cast and crew who have lost their jobs in the crisis.

TikTok joins EU

code of conduct

on disinformation

AFP — BRUSSELS

The social media phenomenon TikTok joined the EU’s disin-formation code of conduct on Monday as tech giants seek to persuade Europe to back away from setting laws against harmful content online.

“We’re proud to sign up to the (code of conduct), to play our part,” said Theo Bertram, TikTok’s director of gov-ernment relations for Europe.

The EU created the code of conduct in 2018 in which com-panies such as Facebook, Twitter and Google pledged to a series of actions, including closing fake accounts and committing to more trans-parency in polit ical advertising.

The tech giants are eager to demonstrate the success of voluntarily taking action against harmful activity as they fear far more direct over-sight by Brussels on the eve-ryday operations of their platforms.

TikTok has become a global sensation with users sharing 15 to 60-second video clips on everything from hair-dye tutorials to dance routines and gags about daily life.

Chinese-owned TikTok joined the disinformation group just as the EU published the latest of its regular reports monitoring the implemen-tation of code of conduct for hate speech. It showed that 90 percent of flagged content was assessed by the participants within 24 hours, a major improvement from just 40 percent in 2016.

It said that 71 percent of content confirmed as illegal hate speech was successfully removed, whereas only 26 percent was taken down in 2016. The European Com-mission is currently preparing a Digital Services Act that could make inadequate han-dling of illegal or harmful content punishable by law.

FAJR SUNRISE 03.15 am 04.45 am

W A L R U WA I S : 27o↗ 35o W A L K H O R : 27o↗ 38o W D U K H A N : 30o↗ 35o W WA K R A H : 25o↗ 39o W M E S A I E E D 25o↗ 39o W A B U S A M R A 27o↗ 37o

PRAYER TIMINGS WEATHER TODAY

HIGH TIDE 01:29 – 18:28 LOW TIDE 01:29– 11:52

Misty at some places at first becomes hot daytime with

slight dust at times, relatively hot by night.

Minimum Maximum31oC 40oC

ZUHRMAGHRIB

11.36 am06.30 pm

ASR ISHA

02.59 pm08.00 pm