Dusan named MVP as Hercegovac top scores

BUSINESS | 21 SPORT | 31

SMEs in Qatar switching to

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Volume 21 | Number 6986 | 2 RiyalsSunday 20 November 2016 | 20 Safar 1438

Over $15m raised at Rota charity auction

Tailgating troubles motorists: SurveyIrfan Bukhari The Peninsula

As concerned departments have focused their atten-tion on ensuring road

safety and taken steps from upgrading road infrastructure to installing sophisticated traffic cameras, residents’ perception of driving in Qatar has also con-siderably improved, except for tailgating.

A survey says the overall “positive perception trends of driving in Qatar outweigh the negative ones” in the most recent Qatar Road Safety Mon-itor. “However, the perception

trend for tailgating appears unchanged over the last six months (76percent),” it adds.

Currently, to ease road con-gestion and control accidents through smooth traffic, Ashghal’s five big road infrastructure developments projects are under way including Dukhan Highway East, Lusail Expressway, East West Corridor, Al Rayyan Road Phase 2 and Rawadat Al Khail Street. Some of them will be complete next year while others end in 2018 or 2019.

The bi-annual survey, com-missioned by QIC, sets out to quantify perception trends of Qatar’s motorists about

infrastructure, overall driving enjoyment, commute time, driv-ing behaviour that are often linked to cause of accidents.

The findings of the survey are based on the views of a rep-resentative sample of the residents of Qatar over the last 6 months. According to the sur-vey, majority of the respondents (68percent) state that road infra-structure has improved over the last 6 months, leading to shorter commute time (67percent) and more driving enjoyment (38percent).

Along other measures being taken to achieve goals of National Road Safety Strategy,

the government is likely to deploy vehicle-mounted cam-eras to detect speeding. A pilot project is under way for the past few months on Doha’s roads.

A civilian vehicle with sophis-ticated speed camera is on the roads for the past few months. Sensys Gatso, a leading Swedish provider of solutions in traffic management, is behind the vehi-cle-mounted pilot project. The company has also installed 46 sophisticated static speed cam-eras in Doha. It further states that dangerous driving has reduced over the last six months from 62percent to 57percent.

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Diabetes treatment centre to open at Al Khor HospitalFazeena Saleem The Peninsula

A specialised diabetes treatment unit will be opened at Al Khor Hos-

pital as part of plans to replicate the National Diabe-tes Center across all hospitals within the Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC), said a sen-ior official.

Like its counterparts at Hamad General Hospital and Al Wakra Hospital, the Centre at Al Khor Hospital will take a multi-disciplinary approach to caring for patients and provides a ‘one stop shop’ that offers all specialties and services from initial screening through to treatment, health education and the provision of medication and equipment.

“We planned a diabetes centre at Al Khor Hospital,” Prof Abou Badi Abou Samra, Chair-man of Internal Medicine, Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) told The Peninsula.

The diabetes centre at Al Wakra Hospital was the second in a chain of planned facilities that are designed to provide improved access to specialised diabetic care in Qatar.

“The National Diabetes Center at Hamad General Hos-pital (HGH) was opened in 2013 and receives about 2,000 adult and 700 paediatric patients each month. This number has doubled during 2016. The National Diabetes Center at Al

Wakra Hospital opened a year later, in 2014, and receives approximately 400 patient vis-its each month. Offering a multi-disciplinary approach to patient care, the Centres pro-vide patients with improved access to specialised treat-ment,” said Professor Abou Samra.

National Diabetes Center at the Hamad General Hospi-tal also undertakes diabetes research in which patients are interviewed in order to gener-ate data about the pathos-genesis of the condi-tion. Staffed by senior consultants, nurses, diabetes educators, dietitians and podi-atry technicians, the Center at Al Wakra Hospital provides a range of services for adults from general consultation, foot care, screening for diabetic retinopathy and insulin pump therapy.

In addition to providing patients with specialised treat-ment, HMC is focused on informing the public about the causes, symptoms and compli-cations of Type 2 diabetes and other lifestyle related diseases. “The main risk factors for type 2 diabetes include family his-tory of diabetes, being overweight, old age, a low level of physical activity and a his-tory of gestational diabetes. If you have more than one of these risk factors, it is impor-tant to get tested," said Professor Abou Samra.

MoI medical unit sees 500,000 patients a yearSidi Mohamed The Peninsula

MEDICAL Services Department at the Ministry of Interior (MoI) sees more than 500,000 patients annu-ally, which is 10 percent of the total healthcare services provided in the country, according to last year's statistics.

It provides primary and sec-ondary health care services to the Ministry employees, their families and prisoners at various security departments, in addition to eye tests done at driving schools, Salem Saeed Al Rashdi, Medical Services Department Assistant Director said in an interview with police maga-zine Al Shurta Maak (Police with You).

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Father Emir H H Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, H H Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, H E Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad Al Thani, Chairperson of Rota Board, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia and other dignitaries at the 6th Annual Dinner of Reach Out to Asia held in Al Shaqab, Education City, last evening. Pic: A R Al-Baker

The Peninsula

Medical researcher Sadeem Qdaisat has been named the Arab world’s top innovator in the thrilling finale of

Stars of Science, bringing the eighth season of Qatar Foundation’s hit TV show on MBC4 to a close.

This week, viewers around the world cast their vote online for one of the four Stars of Science finalists. Sevag Babikian, the savvy Lebanese innovator, took an early lead by winning the jury vote, however the combined online and jury vote earned Sadeem a score of 36.8percent, enough to win $300,000 for GenomiQ, his automated slide dropping in genetic testing innovation.

Sadeem dazzled fans and foes alike with encyclopaedic knowledge of the medical field and his unmatched ability to adapt

to challenges thrown his way. With over 8.5 million views on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram this season, Stars of Science broke records for digital engagement. Four million unique users interacted with the show’s online channels this year.

Algerian Abderrahim Bourouis, inven-tor of the smart autism shirt Wonderkit, came in second place with a score of 31.7percent, earning $150,000. Enthusiasts were drawn to Abderrahim’s kind heart and curious mind. Sevag Babikian earned 23.3percent to come in third with his efficient desktop 3D printer, Modifix. With his auto scoring and management in Taekwondo sys-tem, Take One, the dedicated Ghassan Yusuf from Bahrain came in fourth place with a score of 8.2percent. Sevag won $100,000, while Ghassan was awarded $50,000.

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GenomiQ innovator wins Stars of Science finale

Raynald C Rivera The Peninsula

Over $15m was raised at the charity auction during the sixth biennial Reach Out To Asia (Rota) Gala Dinner which marked Rota's tenth

anniversary yesterday at Al Shaqab indoor arena. The exact amount raised at the auction will be revealed later.

Of the diverse items which went under the hammer at the auction con-ducted by Lord Poltimore, Europe Deputy Chairman of world famous auc-tion house Sotheby’s, the most valued was a Qatari natural Jeewan pearl neck-lace. The rare necklace donated by Al Majed Jewellery is made up of 582 of Qatar's finest pearls of the same colour, quality, shape, size and lustre.

Other items which went on sale at the biennial event were a trip to space for two; Patek Philippe’s dome table clock donated by Al Majed Jewellery; a Hermès men’s trunk donated by Wis-sam Al Mana; as well as a 2017 BMW M3 30 Jahre Limited Edition donated by Al Fardan Automobiles, in addition to a Louis Moinet Mecanograph limited edition watch.

The event was held to provide funding to Rota's initiatives in various countries including education projects in support of Syrian refugees which

consist of ‘Longing to Learn’ pro-gramme in Lebanon, the ‘I Had a Dream’ initiative in Jordan and ‘Project Tomorrow’ in Turkey. Other Rota ini-tiatives that will receive funding include the ‘Opportunities for Life’ pro-gramme in Bangladesh, the ‘Bringing Back Hope’ project in Yemen and the ‘1 in 11’ campaign in Indonesia, in part-nership with Unicef and FC Barcelona Foundation. Pledges were received during the auction for the said projects worth $15.4m which will directly ben-efit more than 180,000 children in those countries.

The event was attended by Father Emir H H Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani and H H Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser as well as Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia.

Speaking at the event, H E Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad Al Thani, Chair-person of Rota thanked all the people who supported Rota throughout its ten-year of existence implementing different educational initiatives that have helped thousands of children in 13 countries.

Sheikha Al Mayassa underscored the role of education to putting an end to conflict and providing a better future for millions of children around the world.

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Father Emir and Sheikha Moza attend gala event

02 SUNDAY 20 NOVEMBER 2016 HOME

03SUNDAY 20 NOVEMBER 2016 HOME

Some improvement in distracted driving

Continued from page 1There has been a marginal improvement in the trend for dis-

tracted driving (85percent), and speeding (74percent).Meanwhile, the Ministry of Interior (MoI) is set to equip vehi-

cles of Traffic Department, Lekhwiya and Al Fazaa with 4G-enabled cameras to check traffic violations, address emergency cases and provide more safety to residents.

The Telecommunication Department of the MoI recently dis-played the latest security programme called vehicle tracking and monitoring system. The 4G-enabled system will be able to take and send live video streams through the camera mounted on the vehicles.

This programme is the first of its kind in the GCC and is expected to be implemented early next year after successful trials. The sur-vey further reveals that the trend for abrupt changing of lanes also seems to have dropped to 70percent as stated by the respondents of the survey.

MoI medical services unit treats prisoners

Continued from page 1

“Department offers medical services to imprisoned patients and guarantees their rights more than mentioned in the interna-tional agreements,” he said. Due to the increase in number of vis-itors, the Medical Services Department has introduced emergency services and imple-mented patient classification systems. It has also introduced a bar code system for patients, from which their case history could be easily accessed. A ded-icated clinic for chronic diseases has also opened.

The Medical Services Department at MoI offers train-ing for all practitioners which is approved by the Qatar Coun-cil for Healthcare Professionals for CPD points required at renewing their licences every two years.

In the framework of

spreading health culture, department is providing lec-tures and training on first aid especially to new batches who are joining the Police college and Police Training Institute.

The department has also introduced a new awareness programme in preventive health conducted during events such as Sports Day, World Food Day, and World Nursing Day.

The dental clinic at Police College is open, in addition to similar clinics at the Penal and Correctional Institutions Department which is open five days in a week to meet the increased demand from prisoners.

The Medical Services Department is the first among MoI departments to obtain a ISO certification, in recognition to its commitment and stand-ards of service.

The Peninsula

The World Innovation Summit for Health (WISH) has announced Mustafa

Suleyman (pictured) as one of four keynote speakers at its highly anticipated summit, which takes place in Doha from November 29 to 30.

Mustafa Suleyman is Co-Founder and Head of Applied Artificial Intelligence at Deep-Mind, where he is responsible for integrating the company’s tech-nology across a wide range of Google products. In February 2016, he launched DeepMind Health, which builds clinician-led technology in the UK National

H e a l t h Service. He was C h i e f Product Officer at DeepMind Technologies before the com-pany was bought in 2014 by Google in their largest European acquisition to date.

Suleyman’s address will out-line how health systems are grappling with the challenge of delivering better patient out-comes with fewer resources. He will explain how, while new technologies have changed the way people shop, bank and travel, the same levels of produc-tivity and improvements have not been seen in health care.

Gaza volunteer teacher gets Lifetime Achievement Award

Continued from page 1She also pointed out

Rota's various local pro-grammes that help young citizens and residents in Qatar as well as Rota's par-ticipation internationally.

A highlight of the event was the bestowing of Life-time Achievement Award to Ahmad Al Sawafiri from Gaza who despite losing his limbs from brutal attack, car-ries on his noble work educating children as a vol-unteer teacher.

Another feature of the event was the screening of a video tracing the journey of ROTA Ambassador Ghanim Al Muftah

in helping other children in other coun-tries. The prominent social media celebrity's skull cap was auctioned fetch-ing $500,000 in total.

Hosted by popular Arab media

personality Lojain Omran, the spectacular biennial gala dazzled with perform-ance from 2014 Global Music Humanitarian Awar-dee Malek Jandali. The internationally acclaimed Syrian-American pianist and composer performed some of his compositions along with Laura Metcalf on cello and Abdulrahim Al Saidi on oud.

Qatar's leading youth choir, Siwar Choir capped

the night's programme attended by local and regional celebrities, chief executives and owners of Qatar’s largest companies and senior government officials.

Winners of Stars of Science along with dignitaries.

Continued from page 1“Stars of Science has been

the driving force behind myself, my fellow candidates and many innovators, leading us to serve our communities through sci-ence and technology,” noted Sadeem, winner of Stars of Sci-ence Season 8. “I am overjoyed to win this competition, and determined to bring GenomiQ to market."

To the young people watch-ing – you are the future of our region and our world. Have con-fidence in your abilities, don’t be afraid to take the road less trav-elled, believe in the power of education and seize any opportu-nity you have to make your dream a reality.”

Innovators interested in entering Stars of Science Season 9 still have time, with online applications closing on Decem-ber 1st. Aspiring candidates from around the region are encour-aged to apply via the official Stars of Science website: www.starsofscience.com.

Qdaisat to bring GenomiQ to market

DeepMind co-founder to speak at WISH

The Peninsula

The Qur’anic Botanic Garden (QBG) has launched a ‘Fun & Learn’ educational programme at Oxygen Park, the Green Lung of Education City. The initiative is designed to intro-

duce children to the importance of agriculture, the environment and conservation. The ‘Fun & Learn’ programme invites private and independent primary schools from across the country to par-ticipate in five interactive activity stations every Thursday from November 10 until April 27, 2017.

More than 40 students from Al-Rashad Model Independ-ent Primary School for Boys joined the inaugural session of the ‘Fun & Learn’ programme, and an additional 60 students from Qatar Academy Al Khor participated the following week.

The activities include growing plants in recycled materials at the ‘Green Pipe’ station; creating landscape gardening ornaments from plant pots at the ‘Green Doll’ station; and a treasure hunt to explore the landmarks of Oxygen Park.

QBG launches Fun & Learn at Oxygen Park

04 SUNDAY 20 NOVEMBER 2016 HOME

SJC Chairman meets Chief Justice of Indonesia

Ooredoo launches advanced security services portfolioThe Peninsula

Ooredoo, Qatar’s lead-ing telecoms services provider, yesterday announced the launch of its unified Managed

Security Services portfolio, which offers the most comprehensive suite of security services available in the country, supported by world-class global security partners.

The Managed Security Services portfolio is being made available via the Qatar Data Centre, Oore-doo’s facility that protects companies and organisations in Qatar with round-the-clock pro-tection against breaches and cyber-attacks.

Waleed Mohamed Ebrahim Al Sayed, Chief Executive Officer, Ooredoo Qatar, said: “We have launched the unified Managed Security Services portfolio to offer companies the broadest range of security solutions in Qatar, and make them accessible via a single, comprehensive facility. We have seen a sharp rise in the number of online security incidents affecting companies in Qatar over the past year, and this new portfolio will offer a complete response that will help keep our nation’s data remain secure.”

Companies that deploy Oore-doo’s Managed Security Services portfolio will have access to an incredible range of solutions,

including the Managed Security Operations Centre, Managed Fire-wall, Malware Protection, Vulnerability Management, Cloud Web and Email Security and Dis-tributed Denial of Service mitigation suite.

Ooredoo’s Managed Security Operations Centre provides com-prehensive security monitoring, incident detection and response across 750 supported systems, monitoring firewalls, servers, rout-ers, databases and antivirus systems.

According to a report from ‘The Arab Gulf States Institute’ in Wash-ington, cyber-attacks in the Gulf region cost approximately $1bn (QR3.67bn) last year. The situation is being exacerbated by a lack of skilled security professionals and under-investment in security solutions.

By accessing the facilities of the Qatar Data Centre, companies will be able to deploy the latest and most advanced security solutions without needing to invest in expen-sive hardware or bring in the highly qualified staff necessary to moni-tor and manage the security solutions.

Cyber Security

Cyber-attacks in the Gulf region cost approximately $1bn (QR3.67bn) last year.

NICU helps parents bond with newbornsThe Peninsula

A recent expansion of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at Hamad Medical Corporation’s Women’s Hos-

pital is providing parents the opportunity to become even more involved in the care of their critically ill newborn to ensure their best possible chance of recovery.

“In our Tiny Baby Unit (TBU), we now have the capacity to allocate individual space for our babies that are born before the 28th week of pregnancy,” said Dr Hilal Al Rifai, Women’s Hospital Medical Direc-tor and Director of its Neonatal/Perinatal Services. “This means our nurses have optimal access to each baby and parents have more privacy which gives them a

better chance at bonding with their child.”In the TBU, each baby is assigned a

nurse who administers one to one care for the duration of the baby’s stay in the unit. This allows them to build relationships with

parents spending more time practising bonding techniques such as Kangaroo Care. This is an important practice that encour-ages parents to have skin-to-skin contact with their baby by placing them on their chest which can play an integral role in a baby’s recovery process.

“Having my baby girl born at 24 weeks was the worst thing imaginable. I was shocked, terrified and unprepared for the journey ahead,” said Sally Dandachli whose baby Masa was born at 24 weeks gestation. “Thankfully, the Women’s Hos-pital NICU staff caring for Masa were incredible. The doctors listened attentively to our questions, always considered our feedback and the nurses never left my baby’s bedside, helping me bond with her

each day. I felt at home in my surround-ings among caregivers who felt like family and this was an enormous source of com-fort during the most difficult time of my life.”

Sally also recalls having the ability to express breastmilk for baby Masa in one of the two new dedicated breastfeeding rooms. Since offering this designated space, the unit has been able to increase the number of babies receiving breast-milk. NICU also offers daily support sessions for parents during their HUG (Helping you grasp) days. HUG is a multi-disciplinary parent education programme which organises annual events for staff and parents in recognition of World Pre-maturity Day November 17.

Four-month-old Baby Masa ready for discahrge from Women's Hospital.

ECQ plans coaching sessions for studentsThe Peninsula

Bedaya Centre for Entre-preneurship and Career Development (Bedaya

Center) and Qatar Shell cele-b r a t e d G l o b a l Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) at schools and universities with the launch of the Enterprise Challenge Qatar (ECQ) 2016-2017 Programme.

ECQ is in its fifth year run-ning with the participation of more than 1,200 students from over 40 schools across Qatar.

During the celebration, ECQ mentors delivered special sessions to students about the different GEW activities in Qatar, and the importance of

entrepreneurship for their future career paths.

Mentors also conducted competitions within schools for

the best business ideas with winners being awarded recog-nition prizes. Over the coming weeks, Enterprise Challenge

Qatar volunteer mentors will deliver coaching sessions for the students on ethical busi-ness principles, training them on how to navigate a compu-ter-based business simulation, and how to pitch an entrepre-neurial business idea.

The programme will run until March 2017, with the Grand Final competition tak-ing place in March 2017.

In 2015, Qatar Shell signed a Memorandum of Under-standing with the Ministry of Education and Higher Educa-tion to promote the ‘Enterprise Challenge Qatar’ programme nationwide in all independent and international secondary schools.

QRCS gets newSecretary-GeneralThe Peninsula

AMBASSADOR Ali Bin Has-san Al Hammadi, who has had a rich diplomatic career since 1976, has been selected as the new Secretary-General of Qatar Red Crescent Soci-ety (QRCS).

A graduate of Alexandria University (1976), Al Ham-madi attended many diplomatic, consular, and cer-emonial courses while working at the Qatar's Minis-try of Foreign Affairs and Qatar's Embassy in Egypt.

QCS honours Woqod for supporting Breast Cancer ConferenceThe Peninsula

Qatar Cancer Society (QCS) has honoured Qatar Fuel Company (Woqod) in rec-

ognition of its support for the Breast Cancer Conference that the Society recently officiated on the occasion of Breast Can-cer Awareness Month.

Eng Fahad Abdullah Al Sub-aiey, Chief Marketing officer at Woqod, was recently presented with a commemorative plaque during a visit of a delegation from Qatar Cancer Society to the corporate headquarters of Woqod at Woqod Tower in West Bay.

Woqod was the sponsor of the Breast Cancer Conference that Qatar Cancer Society organ-ised from October 28 to 29 at Sheraton Grand Doha Resort & Convention Hotel under the patronage of Prime Minister and Interior Minister H E Sheikh Abdulla bin Nasser Al Thani.

Al Subaiey praised the efforts of Qatar Cancer Society

in raising awareness of the dis-ease and “stressed that Woqod will continue its support and will collaborate in various initiatives that benefit the people of Qatar.”

Qatar Cancer Society extended their gratitude to Qatar Fuel Company for its charitable endeavours that are a part of the Woqod corporate social respon-sibility programme, which aims to support various social,

cultural and sporting events in Qatar. This programme extends from a mission and vision estab-lished by senior management.

Qatar Fuel Company (Woqod) and Qatar Cancer Soci-ety recently signed an agreement in October to estab-lish a collaboration between the two entities in the field of social awareness and specifically to address cancer-related causes.

Eng Fahad Abdullah Al Subaiey, Chief Marketing Officer at Woqod, being presented with a commemorative plaque by a Qatar Cancer Society official.

QNA

PRESIDENT of the Court of Cassation and chairman of the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC) H E Masood Mohamed Al Amri met in Doha yesterday with Indo-nesia's Chief Justice Muhammad Hatta Ali and t h e a c c o m p a n y i n g delegation.

During the meeting, the two sides discussed means to promote cooperation and coordination between the judicial authorities in the two countries.

Following the meeting,

a memorandum of understand-ing (MoU) on Judicial Cooperation was signed between the two sides. The MoU

dealt with cooperation in the fields of training, exchange of expertise and consultations on the best practices in litigation

management. The meeting was attended by Indonesia's Ambas-sador to Qatar, Mohammed Bassiri Sidihabiy.

Qatar and Indonesia signing a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on Judicial Cooperation yesterday.

Students who participated in Enterprise Challenge Qatar (ECQ) 2016-2017 Programme.

Chairman of DICID meets Pakistani officialQNA

CHAIRMAN of Doha International Centre for Interfaith Dialogue (DICID) Dr Ibrahim Saleh Al Nuaimi met yesterday with the Chairman of Pakistan's Council of Islamic Ideology, Muham-mad Khan Sheerani.

The meeting dealt with several topics including the role of dia-logue in promoting Islam, being the core of the Islamic religion and one of its fundamentals.

During the meeting, Dr Al Nuaimi made a presentation on DICID's activities, including the annual conference, roundtable and training courses in addition to the cultural seminars of dif-ferent communities residing in Qatar.

05SUNDAY 20 NOVEMBER 2016 HOME

Ashghal opens North Canal Crossing BridgeHuda NV The Peninsula

Reducing travel times on northern areas of Doha, the Public Works Authority (Ashghal) opened the

North Canal Crossing (NCC) Bridge, part of Lusail Express-way, to the public on Friday. Major interchanges and under-passes of the project are at the advanced stages of structural construction, with 3 million cubic metres of materials exca-vated, according to authorities.

The partially-opened bridge is a 200-metre-long vital cross-ing between Lusail City and north of the Pearl Interchange, currently under construction. The opened part of the bridge will provide two lanes in each direction and it forms a section of the permanent road. The North Canal Crossing Bridge upgrade is due to be completed in the final quarter of 2017.

The bridge opening will

reduce travel times to residen-t ia l and commercial developments in Legtaifiya area and will provide easy access to Lusail City and north areas of Qatar, according to Ashghal.

Lusail Expressway is one of the Expressway Programmes key projects currently under con-struction. The project involves 5.3km of four-lane highway in

each direction and three major interchanges in Northern Doha. In addition to the upgraded North and South Canal Crossings, it will deliver three major inter-changes at Al Wadha, The Pearl and Onaiza, each as high as four levels, comprising a network of vehicle and Light Rail tunnels, underpasses, flyovers and junctions.

Meanwhile, six major tunnels at The Pearl and Onaiza Inter-changes and the underpass at Al Wadha are at advanced stages of structural construction and utility works.

Over 3,000,000 cubic metres of materials have been excavated to enable works on these sites, to date. Some 38,000 metres of telecommunication, water and electricity utility net-work lines have been laid, while 513,000 cubic metres of concrete and 55,000 cubic metres of rebar steel works have been utilised to deliver the current completion.

The world-class infrastruc-tures have been designed to

meet the future transport needs of Qatar and will facilitate faster, safer and seamless traffic move-ment of people and goods. The expressway will serve local tour-ist attractions such as the Katara Cultural Village, growing resi-dential communities such as The Pearl, as well as key commercial and diplomatic areas. Most nota-bly, it will provide direct, free flowing connection to the

rapidly developing Lusail City Development.

Ashghal has also ensured the preservation of local marine ecology throughout construction of the North and South Canal Crossings. Ashghal has imple-mented a monitoring programme which uses marine conservation techniques to regularly assess environmental conditions and seagrass health.

An overview of the newly-opened North Canal Crossing Bridge.

New bridge

The partially-opened bridge is a 200-metre-long vital crossing between Lusail City and north of the Pearl Interchange.

The bridge will reduce travel times to Legtaifiya area and will provide easy access to Lusail City and north areas of Qatar.

QRCS attends HMC's career & volunteering fairThe Peninsula

Qatar Red Crescent Society (QRCS) has participated in the Seventh Career and

Volunteering Program Fair, held by Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) over three days at Bayt Al-Dhiyafah in Hamad Bin Khalifa Medical City.

The career fair was an informative venue to introduce

secondary school students to the future employment opportuni-ties in the medical sector in Qatar, as well as the require-ments of the local job market. Parents, teachers, administrative staff, and the public were also addressed by the event.

QRCS's Medical Affairs Department and Volunteers Sec-tion set up a corner to communicate with the event's

450 visitors and participants from 35 public and private organisations, including Commu-nity College, Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU), Community Police, Qatar Diabetes Associa-tion (QDA), Qatar Rehabilitation Institute (QRI), and Primary Health Care Corporation (PHCC).

QRCS's corner gave the visi-tors an overview of the organisation's wide range of

activities, particularly medical and health-related services, such as first-aid training, community health education, the state-aux-iliary role in emergency, and partnerships with the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) and HMC.

Among the activities of QRCS publicised during the fair were direct and indirect public health messages and health education campaigns.

Ministry and Kahramaa hold lecture on TarsheedMINISTRY of Public Health in collaboration with utility distributor, Qatar General Elec-tricity and Water (Kahramaa) has organised a lecture to create awareness among its employees about the National Programme for Conservation and Energy Efficiency (Tarsheed).

The move aims at ration-alisation of electricity and water consumption by build-ing an efficient lifestyle of the people. It will support the ongoing drive of Kahramaa to reduce the violations and curb the wastage of utility.

“Energy efficient water taps and bulbs could be used to reduce the consumption of electrify and water,” said Salem Al Marri, from Tarsheed during the lecture. Air-condi-tioners and lights should not be running unnecessarily. The Tarsheed programme helped decrease the consumption 14% of electricity and 17% water by November, 2015. It aims at reducing consumption at 20% power and 35% water.

Participants at the Career and Volunteering Program Fair.

06 SUNDAY 20 NOVEMBER 2016 HOME

RAF sends fresh aid for residents in TaizThe Peninsula

Sheikh Thani bin Abdul-lah Foundation for Humanitarian Services (RAF) has implemented three projects at a cost

of over QR785,000 to provide fresh humanitarian aid to rescue besieged Yemenis in Taiz city.

The aid includes 2,000 bas-kets of basic food items, 600 tankers carrying drinking water and 5,000 cooking gas cylinders. More than 866,000 people ben-efitted from the projects.

First project related to sup-ply foods. At least 1,951 families comprising about 13,651 mem-bers received food baskets. The food baskets include basic foods like rice, flour, edible oil, pasta, tuna and dates among others.

A basket includes enough materials for a family compris-ing five to six members for three months. The move aimed at

reducing the suffering of besieged residents of Taiz city especially poor families that are fighting for survival due to lack of foods.

Second project was about drinking water. RAF mobilised 600 tankers carrying drinking

water. It was distributed to 118,611 families comprising 831,211 members across the Taiz city. There was severe shortage of drinking water due to besiege of the city. It was very difficult to provide clean water to the cit-izens due to dense population. And the families were unable to buy the water due to financial reason. RAF also provided 5,000 cooking gas cylinders to 2,877 families comprising 21,139 mem-bers. They could not afford to buy gas cylinders due to high prices.

These projects provided great relief to the beneficiary families. They were provided foods, drink-ing water and gas cylinders as they were unable to buy due to their poor financial condition. They are leading hard life due to latest development. The unrest increased poverty and unem-ployment rate. The income of the people shrieked. The plights of

orphans and poor went up. The humanitarian aid

reached on right time. It was pro-vide at a time when the humanitarian situation in Taiz city was deteriorating and get-ting more complicated day by day. The starvation was threat-ening to some families. Cases of malnutrition were detected hor-rifically especially among the children due to lack of basic serv-ices and breaking out epidemic and other infectious diseases.

RAF implemented many humanitarian projects in collab-oration of its local partners in Yemen. The projects include dis-tribution of baskets of basic foodstuffs, packets of cooked foods, blankets, home appli-ances, solar system, tents, medicines, medical supplies, food supplements, baby milks, drinking water. Hundreds of thousands of inhabitants of Taiz city benefitted from these projects.

People receiving aid at a distribution point set up by RAF in Taiz, a besieged city of Yemen.

Supporting Yemenis

RAF implemented three projects at a cost of over QR785,000 to provide fresh humanitarian aid to rescue Yemenis.

The aid includes 2,000 baskets of basic food items, 600 tankers carrying drinking water and 5,000 cooking gas cylinders.

Vice-President of Sudan commends QC's projectsTHE Vice-President of Sudan, Hassabo Mohamed Abdel Rahman, appreciated Qatar Charity's (QC) efforts in Sudan, especially the leading human-itarian projects that greatly contributed to the develop-ment field. He assured that QC's humanitarian impact in Sudan is noticeable.

He believed that QC's projects would continue and expand asserting that the Sudanese government is will-ing to facilitate the administrative procedures and to overcome the obstacles fac-ing Qatar Charity. He hoped that QC would continue its humanitarian support, which has positively affected the lives of millions of Sudanese since it started its projects in Sudan.

During his visit to the project of ‘Rufakaa’ Model Vil-lage, the Vice-President stressed that this village is a multi-purpose humanitarian project, especially in terms of creating an integrated envi-ronment for the targeted orphans' families. The objec-tive can be realised through providing sufficient infra-structure in the education, health and vocational train-ing fields.

The Vice-President also praised the strong relations between Qatar and the Repub-lic of Sudan, at both official and non-official levels as well as QC's projects that devel-oped various regions in Sudan.

Visitors at the Diabetes Expo' 16.

Aster marks World Diabetes DayThe Peninsula

In line with World Diabetes Day marked globally on every November 14 and the associated worldwide campaign

against the disease, Aster Medical Centre, a division of Aster DM Healthcare and the largest healthcare provider in the Middle East and India, was organised free, open-to-all events including, Diabetic Expo, interactive sessions and Continuing Med-ical Education (CME) to raise awareness on diabetics among residents in Qatar.

The 10-day long Diabetic Expo began on November 10 and ended on Novem-ber 19 at Aster Medical Centre Platinum, Al Gharafa. Diabetic exhibition along with the free services of monitoring blood pressure levels, free diabetic check-up under the guidance of special-ist doctors got overwhelming response and attended by more than 4,200 people.

The interactive session on Diabetes for family with the support of Friends

Cultural Centre, Madhyamam Newspa-per, Media One and Voice of Kerala was held at Holiday Villa, on November 14 and was led by Dr TPV Saseendranath, Specialist- Ophthalmologist, Aster Med-ical Centre, C Ring Road, Dr Gireesh Kumar B, Specialist - Internal Medicine, Aster Medical Centre, Al Hilal and Dr Jobin Rajan Benjamin, Specialist - Inter-nal Medicine, Aster Hospital and was participated by 90 people.

Commenting on the events, Dr Sameer Moopan, Managing Director, DM Healthcare, said, “These events are organised as a part of Aster Community Good Health Programme and our attempt towards ensuring that the res-idents in Qatar are aware of the preventive measures and the various treatment procedures for diabetes."

"The Diabetes Expo, Interactive and scientific sessions are aimed at provid-ing a wakeup call to the all type of people to maintain a healthy lifestyle and beat diabetes,” Dr Moopan said.

14 films from across the globe competing at Ajyal Youth Film Festival The Peninsula

Fourteen feature films from across the globe are com-peting at the fourth annual

Ajyal Youth Film Festival from November 30 to December 5 at Katara Cultural Village.

These include festival win-ners and Academy Award submissions, that cover themes and issues impacting youth in Qatar and around the world.

Fatma Al Remaihi, Festival Director and CEO of Doha Film Institute, said: “The feature films in-competition at Ajyal are indeed some of the finest works in world cinema today. They are all poignant takes on life that inspire and move you with real-life and fictional tales. Through stories of nature, human

emotions, familial bonding and fantasy takes, these films are sure to engage our Ajyal jurors, and make a positive impact on

their lives.”“The selection also celebrates

excellence in world cinema today and includes films from

acclaimed filmmakers such as Ken Loach, Gianfranco Rosi, Asghar Farhadi and Taika Wai-titi, who are some of the most powerful voices within the inter-national film community,” she added.

Youth participation is at the heart of the Festival and its jury programme, provides young people between the ages of 8 and 21 an opportunity to watch, ana-lyse and discuss films from all over the world, developing crit-ical thinking, self-expression, and an appreciation of cinema.

The Ajyal Competition cate-gories include Mohaq (New Moon in Arabic), Ajyal’s youngest jurors, aged 8 to 12. Ajyal’s jurors aged 13 to 17 comprise the Hilal jury (Crescent Moon in Arabic) and Bader (Arabic for ‘Full

Moon’) jurors are aged 18 to 21. All jurors watch feature and short films specially curated for their age groups, and each of the three juries award a Best Film prize in both categories.

Four films are screening in Mohaq section including Hunt for the Wilderpeople (New Zea-land/2016) directed by Taika Waititi, Kai (South Korea/2016) by Lee Sung-gang,

Listen to the Silence (Geor-gia, Qatar/2016) by Mariam Chachia, and Secret Society of Souptown (Estonia, Fin-land/2015) by Margus Paju.

Five films compete in the Hilal section: Enclave (Serbia, Germany/2015) by Goran Radovanović, Sonita (Iran, Ger-many, Switzerland/2015) by Rokhsareh Ghaem Maghami, The

Eagle Huntress (Mongolia, UK, USA/2016) by Otto Bell, Twice Upon a Time (Lebanon/2016) by Niam Itani, and The World of Us (South Korea/ 2016) by Yoon Ga-eun.

The Bader segment includes five films: Fatima (France/2015) by Philippe Faucon; Fire at Sea (Italy, France/2016) by Gian-franco Rosi; I, Daniel Blake (UK, France, Belgium / 2016) by Ken Loach; Life, Animated (USA, France/2016) by Roger Ross Wil-liams; and The Salesman directed by Asghar Farhadi. Tick-ets priced QR25 are available for purchase 24 hours a day at ajy-alfilm.com or from Ajyal Katara Main Box Office in Katara Build-ing 12 or Ajyal FNAC Ticket Outlet, FNAC Qatar at Lagoona Mall.

A still from Salesman.

Irfan Bukhari The Peninsula

He loves books and he loves help-ing his countrymen and these two things inspired him starting

a campaign to collect old books from the residents of Qatar.

Being a writer of two books, Issa-deen Rilwan (pictured), a Sri Lankan expat, has launched an old-books col-lection campaign to help his country’s “resource-hungry” libraries of school and colleges. “So far I have collected more than 300 books from expats. The first donor hails from UK while the other is from Kerala, India,” he said. To promote his cause of helping libraries in Sri Lanka, Rilwan, an MBA, also recently started using social media platforms to tell people about the good thing he is doing.

The idea of collecting used books and sending them to school libraries of his village came to his mind during his visit to his hometown this summer. “There were only round 1,000 books in my town’s school library though the number of students was greater than the available book,” he said. He said that during his stay in his village, he also organised an essay competition among school students.

Rilwan has authored two books in Tamil language, first on child psychol-ogy and second revolving around three conflict-hit villages of northern Sri Lanka. “I take donations only in forms of books and not cash,” he said.

He said that in case residents donated Arabic books, he used to send them to Islamic seminaries in Sri Lanka. He said that there were as many as 200 Arabic colleges in Sri Lanka. “Mostly I help school library but if the books are related to higher education, they are

dispatched to univer-sities or colleges for their full academic uti-lisation,” he added.

When asked about the response he received after promot-ing his cause using social media tools, Rilwan said that in last one week he had received a dozen

phone calls from various aspiring book donors. “To facilitate donors, I collect the gifted books from their doorstep. One Pakistani expat has promised me giving medical books,” he said. He said the cargo charges on books shipment from Qatar to Sri Lanka were econom-ical which he used to bear himself.

Rilwan said that he would happily facilitate anyone wanting to establish a full-scale library at any educational institution in Sri Lanka without being involved in financial aspects of the project. He said his four books were yet not published.

Collecting old books, for a cause

IBPN elects office-bearers THE election meeting sched-ule to be held today to elect the president and manag-ing committee members for Indian Business and Profes-sionals Network (IBPN) has been called off as the elec-tions were not needed since the candidates were elected unopposed, the letter signed by Dinesh Udenia, the First Sec-retary at the Embassy of India and the election officer, said.

KM Varghese, the incum-bent president was re-elected unopposed, who as reported earlier had the approval of the forum mem-bers to continue to let him finish many initiatives he had under taken in the first term.

“We have taken a number of initiatives, most of which are undertaken are very unique and under taken for the first time by IBPN,” said Varghese, when contacted.

07SUNDAY 20 NOVEMBER 2016 HOME

The sixth edition of Katara Traditional Dhow Festival saw a huge public turnout. The five-day grand maritime event brought in over 230 participants from the GCC and India and more than 100 dhows. The event offered visitors a glimpse of the way of life people used to lead in old-times. The event included traditional maritime tournaments such as rowing, diving, Al Ghazl, Al Hdaq, Al Lufah and Al Nahmah.

Huge turnout at Katara Traditional Dhow FestivalReduced exports push livestock growth by 21%The Peninsula

Livestock witnessed growth by 21% this year due to a policy that reduced the

exports during the Holy Month of Ramadan and Eid Al Adha, which led to decline in the prices, said a senior official from the Ministry of Municipal-ity and Environment (MME).

Qatar has more than a mil-lion head of livestock owned by 12,653 animal breeders, accord-ing to a statistical data of the previous year, said Farhoud Hadi Al Hajri, Director of Live-stock Department in the MME. Al Hajri added that the number of owners increased by 31.9% comparing to the past year.

There are a number of barns that located out of the master plan and these will be transferred to the new com-plexes of barns which consist of nine complexes, Al Hajri said.

The ministry provides direct support to animal breed-ers including veterinary services like medical checkup, treatments and vaccinations, said Al Hajri, pointing out that there are also indirect supports like provision of subsidised fod-ders, drinking waters, green fodders that is subsidised by Hassad Food Company.

This facilitates recruitments of manpower in cooperation with the Ministry of Interior, and allocation of land plots, said Al Hajri during the fourth meet-ing of the Committee for Agriculture and Environment held recently at the headquar-

ter of Qatar Chamber. The meeting was chaired by

Mohammed Ahmed Al Ubaid-ali, member of the board of directors of QC and head of the Agriculture and Environment Committee. In order to reduce the cost of veterinary services, the ministry imports medicines through the GCC unified pur-chasing system from the manufacturing company and companies importing comple-mentary treatments have been directed to import from Latin American countries to reduce cost, Al Hajri said.

Committee members sug-gested provision of cumulative support to animal breeders to encourage breeding and empha-sised the importance of guidance and raising awareness of own-ers. The meeting also discussed issues related to food security projects offered recently in par-ticular poultry, fodders and greenhouse projects. Omer Al Ansari, Secretary of Technical Team for Food Security, said a number of sub-technical teams have been formed to enhance participation of private sector.

Exports of transport & tourism services at QR54.6bnThe Peninsula

Qatar's export of transport and tourism services has grown rapidly over the

past five years. The sales of transport and tourism services to non-residents in Qatar jumped to QR54.6bn in 2015 from QR11bn in 2010, showing average growth rate of about 44.9% per annum, said ‘Qatar Competitive Economic Outlook’ report released yesterday.

The report, released by the Ministry of Economy and Com-merce, stated the large increase in the export of services was driven mainly by the transport sector, which contributed about half of the total service exports. Export of transport services rose from QR6.4bn in 2010 to QR27bn in 2015.

The report explained that the growth of the national exports of transport services volume was driven mainly by air transport

activity, and Qatar Airways, in particular.

The air cargo sector has witnessed significant growth with shipment registering an average growth of 26% in 2014 and 2015.

Similarly, passenger num-bers grew from 12.4 million in 2010 to about 25.3 million pas-sengers in 2015. Qatar Airways is one of the largest growing air-lines in terms of number of passengers in recent years. Its

number of passengers doubled in five years, and about four-fold over the last ten years.

The report also pointed out that tourism exports, which con-stitute an important aspect of service exports, had also wit-nessed a rapid growth over the past five years.

The number of tourist visit-ing Qatar increased from 1.7 million in 2010 to 2.9 million tourists in 2015, a growth rate of 72%.

Masterplan

Qatar has more than a million head of livestock owned by 12,653 animal breeders.

The number of owners increased by 31.9% comparing to the past year.

The Ritz-Carlton Doha management team with the ISO 22000 and HACCP certifications.

The Ritz-Carlton, Doha is 1st Qatar hotel to get ISO 22000 & HACCP certificationsThe Peninsula

The Ritz-Carlton, Doha received the coveted ISO 22000 and Hazard Anal-

ysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) global certifications for complying with the highest level of food safety standards and regulatory and statutory requirements.

The award was presented by Selim Kseib, Country Chief Executive of Bureau Veritas Qatar, leader in Testing, Inspec-tion and Certification (TIC) services. The award ceremony hosted at The Ritz-Carlton, Doha was attended by Mohammed Obeidat, Operational Risk Man-ager of Katara Hospitality, Erden Kendigelen, General Manager of The Ritz-Carlton, Doha, culi-nary leaders of the hotel led by Executive Chef (master chef of France – MCF) Gael Cruchet, and members of the media.

“Being the first and sole hotel in Qatar to acquire

both certifications is a proud accomplishment for our Ritz-Carlton ladies and gentlemen, for consistently upholding uncom-promising standards in food safety, assuring our guests with trust when visiting our restau-rants, banquets and outside catering,” said Cruchet. “Obtain-ing ISO 22000 and HACCP certifications will continue to strengthen the hotel’s credibility and reputation, build customer satisfaction and trust, reduce operating costs and increase operational efficiency.”

Located on its own exclusive private island, The Ritz-Carlton, Doha is the choice destination for food and beverage and renowned for hosting diplo-matic, governmental and international corporate delega-tions at its versatile indoor and outdoor event spaces. The hotel recently celebrated its 15th year anniversary on October 17, 2016.

HACCP is the international platform for legislation and food

manufacturing practices for all sectors of the food industry, developed in the 1960s by a team of scientists and engineers to produce “zero defects” food products for Nasa astronauts. It provides a framework to pro-duce foods safely and to prove they were produced safely based on a systematic approach to the identification, evaluation and control of food safety hazards.

ISO 22000 certification pro-vides a complete Food Safety Management System that can be applied to organisations in the global food supply chain. ISO 22000 integrates the principles of the HACCP system and appli-cation steps developed by the Codex Alimentarius Commis-sion of the WHO.

Bureau Veritas is a govern-ing body that offers innovative solutions that go beyond simple compliance with regulations and standards, reducing risk, improv-ing performance and promoting sustainable development.

08 SUNDAY 20 NOVEMBER 2016 MIDDLE EAST

Aleppo

AFP

Intense government air strikes and artillery fire yesterday shook the rebel-held side of Aleppo City, where multiple hospitals

have been hit and schools forced to close.

The ferocious bombardment saw rockets, mortar shells and barrel bombs pound residential neighbourhoods, shaking build-ings and terrifying residents, an AFP correspondent in east Aleppo said.

“People went to sleep to the sound of bombardment and awoke to the sound of bombard-ment,” said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor of the war.

Syrian government troops unleashed their assault on the rebel side of the city on Tues-day, as they once again press to recapture the opposition-held districts of divided Aleppo.

Once the country’s eco-nomic powerhouse, Aleppo has been ravaged by the war that began in March 2011 with anti-government protests and has since left more than 300,000 people dead.

The city has been divided between government control in the west and rebel control in the east since mid-2012.

More than 250,000 people remain in the opposition-held part of the city, which has been besieged by the regime since July. The intensity of the bom-bardment has forced residents to stay indoors, leaving streets all-but-deserted.

“People don’t dare to leave their homes,” Abdel Rahman said. Schools in east Aleppo, many of which already operate from basements because of gov-ernment attacks, announced in a statement they would close today as well “for the safety of students and teachers, after the

barbarous aerial strikes.”The bombardment has badly

affected rescue and medical facilities in the east, which have already routinely been targeted in government attacks.

On Friday, regime shelling of the Maadi neighbourhood partially destroyed one of the last hospitals serving residents in the east, forcing it to shut.Two patients were killed and medi-cal staff were injured in the attack, a medical source said.

The last pediatric hospital in the east was also forced to close after being damaged in a barrel bomb attack earlier in the week, with medical staff evacuating babies from incubators and transferring them to a new loca-tion. And a centre belonging to the White Helmet rescue group in the Bab al-Nayrab district was totally destroyed in an air strike on Friday, an AFP correspond-ent said.

He reported the building was wiped out in the attack, and the group’s vehicles were also com-pletely destroyed. The White Helmets have struggled to keep up with calls for help since the renewed bombardment began, at times unable to leave their centres because of the intensity of the government fire.

Iraq

Reuters

The first thing Iraqi teenager Afrah did when she escaped Islamic State cap-

tivity near Mosul was to remove her face veil and throw it defi-antly to the ground.

The ultra-hardline militants kidnapped and used Afrah, 16, her older sister Asil and 14 other family members and relatives as human shields when they withdrew from the Iraqi city of Tikrit, her hometown around 200km south, early last year.

For a year and a half the family was trapped in the vil-lage of Bawiza just north of the jihadists’ Iraqi stronghold. The girls tried to keep a low profile and barely ventured outdoors.

When Iraqi forces pushed into the village a few days ago, part of the US-backed campaign to oust Islamic State from Mosul, they were determined not to be taken hostage again, and rushed towards the military’s armoured vehicles.

Having survived the mili-tants’ oppressive rule, Afrah and Asil, 19, want to put the harrow-ing experience behind them, return to Tikrit, resume studies, work and get their lives back.

“I’ve lost two years of my education. I want to get back to school, complete my studies and then qualify to become a den-tist,” Afrah said. Asil, for her part, wanted to go back to her job issuing food hygiene certificates to restaurants and cafes.

The two sisters spoke as they waited in the desert along-side hundreds of other displaced Iraqis trying to cross into Kurd-ish-controlled areas a few kilometres northeast of Mosul.

Explosions could be heard coming from the city, as the campaign to drive IS out con-tinues with fierce street battles between the militants and Iraqi forces.

Islamic State has taken civilians hostage to avoid being targeted by air strikes, has exe-cuted people in Mosul, used women from religious

minorities as slaves and enforced its conservative rules on others using female religious police.

“I hardly went out, I slept, ate, that was it. A few months ago they cut off the Internet, too. It was boring. I didn’t want to go to one of their schools where they teach you only about weap-ons and religion,” she said.

Afrah wore a long brown coat and bright woolly hat. She said she would continue to wear the Muslim headscarf but was relieved to show her face again.

Asil had also shed her niqab. The elder sister narrowly avoided being married off to an Islamic State fighter while they lived in Bawiza, she said. A few months later they learned the fighter had been killed in battle. The family stocked up on blan-kets and warm clothes for winter, anticipating time dis-placed in a camp somewhere. They do not know when they will be allowed into Kurdish-held territory, and how long it will take after that to get home.

Hospitals hit and schools closed as Syria regime pounds Aleppo

Iraqi girls eager to get lives back

A member of the Iraqi Federal Police fires his weapon at an Islamic State (IS) group target on the front line near the village of Tall Adh-Dhahab, south of Mosul, yesterday.

Cairo

AFP

An Egyptian court sen-tenced the head of the journalists’ union and

two members to two years in prison for “harbouring fugi-tives”, allowing them to pay bail pending an appeal.

Journalists Syndicate president Yahiya Kallash, Gamal Abd el-Rahim and Khaled Elbalshy were charged in May with shelter-ing two journalists wanted over protests against the transfer of two Red Sea islands to Saudi Arabia.

The court set bail at 10,000 Egyptian pounds ($615, ¤580), a court official said. Their arrest following a May 1 police raid on the union building to detain two report-ers from an opposition website drew condemnation from rights groups.

The European Union said the indictment of the journal-ists’ syndicate members was “a worrying development”.

“It reflects broader limi-tations on freedom of expression and press freedom in Egypt,” an EU spokesper-son said at the time.

Egypt sentences journalists union head

A wounded man is trapped under the wreckage of collapsed buildings after the war crafts belonging to the Russian forces carried out airstrikes on residential areas at the Yakid al Ades village of Aleppo, Syria, yesterday.

Intense strikes

The intensity of the bombardment has forced residents to stay indoors, leaving streets all-but-deserted.

The bombardment has badly affected rescue and medical facilities in the east.

Cairo

AP

The Saudi-led military coalition declared a 48-hour ceasefire in Yemen yesterday, on the condition that Shia

rebels abide by it and allow humanitarian assistance into besieged cities, particularly the city of Taiz.

However, minutes after it went into effect, activists in Taiz said that rebel shelling contin-ued in the city while a rebel-affiliated military spokes-man said that there was no halt of fighting.

Col. Sharaf Loqman, a mili-tary spokesman, told The Associated Press that the fight-ing hasn't stopped at any of the front-lines. He said that the rebels support a full cessation of hostilities, but that the reality at the moment is, "all parties are engaged in fighting."

The Saudi news agency SPA carried a statement from the coalition that said the truce would take effect at 12pm Yem-eni time yesterday and that it could be renewed. The coalition warned the rebels, known as Houthis, against any sort of mil-itary movement. The ceasefire comes at a time that forces loyal

to the Saudi-backed, interna-tionally-recognised government have made advances in Taiz, which has been besieged by the rebels for the past year.

The coalition has demanded that the Houthis send their rep-resentatives to meet with a de-escalation committee based in a southern Saudi city, in order to make security and military arrangements to end rebel con-trol over several cities in the north — including the capital, Sanaa. While the coalition stressed that the ceasefire is aimed at paving the way for peace, it didn't elaborate on whether it's accepting the UN-brokered peace plan — which sidelines President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi and gives the

rebels a share of power.The truce also comes two

days after an earlier plan for a US-brokered ceasefire faltered. US Secretary of State John Kerry, who met with Houthi represent-atives in Oman this week, set November 17 as the beginning of the ceasefire. The plan was immediately rejected by Hadi's government, which accused Kerry of striking a unilateral

deal. The coalition made no comment on Kerry's announce-ment. The conflict in Yemen has divided the country into rival regions with the northern — pre-dominated by Shia — under rebel control while the south — mostly Sunnis — is under the coalition's control.

The coalition intervened in Yemen in March 2015 at the request of Hadi, who was forced

to flee the country when the Houthis joined ranks with forces loyal to the ousted Yemeni Pres-ident Ali Abdullah Saleh and descended from their northern enclave — seizing the capital and pushing southward. The coali-tion imposed a blockade on Yemen, and the airstrikes along with ground fighting have left over 4,000 civilians dead and tens of thousands wounded.

2-day Yemen truce takes effect

A customer buys sweets at a market in Sanaa as a 48-hour ceasefire, announced by a Saudi-led coalition fighting Iran-backed rebels, began yesterday.

No reprieve

Minutes after it went into effect, activists in Taiz said that rebel shelling continued in the city.

The truce would take effect at 12pm yesterday and that it could be renewed.

Mogadishu

Reuters

Somalia’s prime minister said yesterday he had secured a ceasefire between two war-ring regions in the Horn of Africa nation,

two weeks after a peace deal collapsed leading to fighting that killed at least 29 people. The Gal-mudug and Puntland semi-autonomous regions have a history of clashes and the latest round of fighting between their forces two weeks ago

erupted after a dispute over buildings planned in Galkayo, a city that is divided between the two sides. “Prime Minister (Omar) Sharmarke trav-elled to Galkayo and over (the) last week worked to negotiate an immediate ceasefire and an ini-tiation of preliminary talks for a lasting peace agreement,” a statement from his office said.

“What happened over the last month and weeks in Galkayo is very unfortunate. It is the responsibility of all here and absent to make sure we do not see a repeat,” Sharmarke said.

Somalia PM secures truce between 2 regions

09SUNDAY 20 NOVEMBER 2016 ASIA / AFRICA

Tens of thousands press Park to quit

Seoul

AFP

Tens of thousands of protestors gathered in Seoul yesterday for the fourth in a weekly series of mass protests

aimed at forcing President Park Geun-Hye to resign over a cor-ruption scandal.

The demonstrations -- among the largest seen in South Korea since the pro-democracy protests of the 1980s -- have provided a stark challenge to Park's authority, but the presi-dent has defied calls to step down.

After claiming a turnout of around one million for last week's protest, organisers said they expected some 500,000 people yesterday, while police predicted one-tenth that number.

So far the candlelight pro-tests have been largely peaceful, with many families participat-ing, but there was still a heavy police presence, with buses and trucks blocking access roads to the presidential Blue House.

"We want to have a peace-ful protest," Nam Jeong-Su, spokesman for the Korean Con-federation of Trade Unions,said.

Nam said he expected the ranks of protestors to be swelled by thousands of students who sat the national college entrance exam earlier in the week.

And this being South Korea -- with the world's highest smartphone penetration rate -- many had downloaded a special app showing a burning candle to hold aloft during the rally.

Hours before yesterday's protest was scheduled to start, a crowd of around 50,000 had already gathered along Seoul's ceremonial Gwanghwamun boulevard, south of the presiden-tial Blue House.

"We're here to show my chil-dren the site where history is being made", said Kim Myung-Hee, 30, who came with her

husband and two daughters."Park simply doesn't feel

ashamed of the wrongs she and her friend did. She must go."

The anti-Park rallies have continued despite two televised apologies from the president over a scandal linked to her friendship with long-time con-fidante Choi Soon-Sil, who has been arrested for fraud and abuse of power.

Prosecutors said they would formally indict Choi and two other alleged accomplices tomorrow, prior to trial.

They have been investigat-ing allegations that Choi, 60, leveraged her relationship with Park to coerce donations from large companies like Samsung to non-profit foundations which she set up and used for personal gain.

Fresh from the college entrance exam they spent their entire school lives preparing for, a large number of high-school students were among the early arrivals at yesterday's rally.

"Making this country better is more important than entering a good college", said Park Chai-Un, as he collected donations to buy candles and bottled water for protesters.

"When things go this wrong with the country, it will become even more difficult for us to find jobs. That's why I am here," said one of his classmates, Kim Mi-Sung.

Indonesians hold peaceful rally to promote 'unity'

Guinea-Bissau names new prime ministerGUINEA-BISSAU President Jose Mario Vaz named Umaro Sissoco Embalo as prime min-ister of the troubled west African state, replacing Baciro Dja whose government he dis-solved earlier in the week.

"Mr Umaro El Mokhtar Sissoco Embalo is named prime minister," said a pres-idential decree.

The new premier was sworn in later on Friday in a brief ceremony.

Monday's dissolution by the head of state aimed to solve a succession crisis that has paralysed the tiny west African state.

Guinea-Bissau has been in the throes of a power strug-gle since August 2015, when Vaz sacked then prime min-ister Domingos Simoes Pereira, leader of the ruling African Party for the Inde-pendence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC).

Two factions of the rul-ing PAIGC had failed to resolve their differences over Pereira's successor, Dja, since he was given the job in June, with some law-makers refusing to work with him.

The new 44-year-old pre-mier is not a well-known public figure though he has served as advisor to several heads of state.

Jakarta

AFP

At least 15 people are missing after a speed-boat collided with a

Vietnamese cargo vessel yes-terday and capsized in the Java Sea, according to an official.

The passenger boat was fer-rying 27 people some 50 kilometre off the coast of Tuban, a small town in East Java, when it collided with a

ship transporting tapioca starch from Vietnam.

All 22 Vietnamese crew members aboard the cargo ves-sel were safe but the speetboat carrying mostly Indonesian fishermen sunk after the collision.

"Twelve people have been rescued alive while 15 others are still missing," Frans Supri-adi, a spokesman for the local disaster agency, said.

A rescue team has been deployed by boat and helicop-ter to search for the missing.

Trump's adviser vows to tackle North Korea N-threatSeoul

Reuters

US President-elect Donald Trump's national security adviser says North

Korea's nuclear programme would be given a high priority under the new administration, a South Korean official who held talks with him said yesterday.

Michael Flynn, one of Trump's closest advisers, also said he would work to

strengthen the US alliance with South Korea, calling the relation-ship "vital," the South's deputy presidential national security adviser Cho Tae-yong was quoted as saying by Yonhap news agency.

Cho was leading a South Korean delegation to the US to meet with key advisers to the president-elect to discuss the two countries' response to the North's pursuit of nuclear weap-ons in defiance of international sanctions.

Cho spoke to South Korean reporters in Washington follow-ing the meeting with Flynn, Yonhap said.

The North conducted its fourth and fifth nuclear tests this year under young leader Kim Jong Un, who has vowed to build a nuclear arsenal and ballistic missiles to deliver them.

The UN Security Council has held discussions to adopt a toughened new sanctions reso-lution following the North's September 9 nuclear blast.

The US President Barack Obama has been criticised by Congressional Republicans that his policy of "strategic patience" was a failure and that he must make full use of sanctions authorities given to him by Congress.

Trump pledged his commit-ment to defend South Korea under an existing security alli-ance during a phone call with South Korean President Park Geun-hye, Yonhap said last week.

15 missing as boat collides with cargo vessel: Official

Jakarta

Reuters

Thousands of Indonesians held a peaceful rally yes-terday to promote unity,

saying they were worried by signs of growing racial and reli-gious intolerance in their country.

Dressed in red and white shirts, the colours of the Indo-nesian flag, religious leaders, members of human rights groups, lawmakers and others marched along a central Jakarta street.

Some held posters with the national motto "Bhinneka

Tunggal Ika", which means unity in diversity, while others per-formed traditional dances.

"This is about diversity, but also about unity. We have to separate politics from ethnicity, religion, and race," said 25-year old Iwan Saputra.

"I want Indonesia to stay united."

Concerns about rising hard-line Islamic sentiment in the country of 250 million people have grown since police decided on Wednesday to investigate a blasphemy complaint by Mus-lim groups against the Christian governor of Jakarta.

More than 100,000 Muslims protested against Governor

Basuki Purnama Purnama ear-lier this month.

Police fired tear gas and water cannon to quell the protest.

"The economy is growing, infrastructure is being built eve-rywhere. Don't let this all be destroyed just because of ego," said Saidiman Ahmad, an activ-ist with Liberal Islam Network, recently.

Some analysts have said the police decision to pursue the case was a blow to democracy as well as diversity.

Indonesia recognises six religions and is home to several minority groups that adhere to traditional beliefs.

China govt takes measures to reduce air fumesPROVINCIAL governments across China are taking meas-ures ranging from inspecting outdoor barbecues to halting production at industrial plants to reduce worsening air pollu-tion, the official Xinhua news agency said yesterday.

China has adopted vari-ous measures over the years to reduce the blankets of smog which shroud many of the country's northern cities in the winter, causing hazard-ous traffic conditions and disrupting daily life.

The local government in Hebei province has halted seven major industries in the city including steel, cement and glass, said Xinhua.

The Shijiazhuang city government, also in Hebei province, said that car own-ers with certain number plates can only drive on spe-cific days until the end of the year, following days of acrid smog.

Authorities in Chengdu, a city in the southwestern prov-ince of Sichuan, have sent law enforcement officials to inspect construction sites and barbecues.

Meanwhile, in the north-ern municipality of Tianjin, the municipal government has asked 119 companies to halt production until January.

Congo authorities block oppn protestKinshasa

Reuters

Authorities in Democratic Republic of Congo blocked an opposition

demonstration in the capital yesterday aimed at putting pressure on President Joseph Kabila to step down next month at the end of his man-date, witnesses said.

The rally was banned and security forces maintained a

heavy presence. They also pre-vented activists and the UN peacekeeping mission in Congo from approaching the house of veteran opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi, wit-nesses said.

"The sites where the meet-ing was to have taken place have been isolated," police spokesman Pierre Mwanam-putu said in a statement.

Police shut down a similar protest on November 5.

Kabila named opposition

figure Samy Badibanga as prime minister on Thursday under a power-sharing deal that allows the president to stay in office until at least April 2018.

The main opposition bloc denounced the choice as a provocation but its attempts to stop the government's agenda appear to be struggling to gain traction.

Fifty people died in anti-government street protests in September.

People wave a large Indonesia flag as they take part in a rally against what they see as growing racial and religious intolerance in their country, in Jakarta, yesterday.

Mass protest

So far, the candlelight protests have been largely peaceful, with many families participating, but there was still a heavy police presence, with buses and trucks blocking access roads to the Presidential Blue House.

The crew and passengers of a Vietnamese vessel are rescued some 50km off the coast of Tuban, in East Java, yesterday.

Protestors hold candles and banners calling for the resignation of South Korea's President Park Geun-hye during an anti-government rally in central Seoul, yesterday.

A 48-hour ceasefire declared by the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen, which started at noon yesterday, is the latest bid by the coalition forces to end the conflict in the country. Saudi

Arabia and its Gulf allies took the initiative for the ceasefire to pave the way for a negotiated settlement though the Houthi rebels have been continuing their fight. This is the third truce announced this year. The Saudi Press Agency (SPA) reported that the ceasefire could be extended if the Iran-backed Houthi rebels reciprocate and if they allow humanitarian aid to be delivered into areas under

siege. The Houthis haven’t responded to the coalition move, but the truce risks failing if they violate the ceasefire. “The truce will be renewed if the other party adheres to it, activates the DCC (De-escalation and Coordination Committee) for Dhahran al-Janoub and lifts the siege of Taiz,” the SPA said citing a letter sent from Yemen’s internationally backed President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to the Saudi government. The DCC is a United Nations-sponsored military commission which is responsible for overseeing

ceasefires in Yemen. The war in Yemen has

killed more than 10,000 people, according to the UN estimates, displaced millions and has worsened disease and hunger. The current conflict started when the Iran-backed Houthis overthrew the legitimate government led by Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi in late 2014. Saudi Arabia and its allies were forced to intervene to

restore the government of Hadi. Several rounds of negotiations have been held to bring peace to Yemen, many of them led by the United Nations, but the Houthis have been unwilling to retreat from the territories they captured and allow the Haadi government back in power. The war has destroyed an impoverished country and the spread of diseases is posing another huge threat, with its health services unable to cope with the threat. According to the WTO, Yemen is at risk of a significant cholera outbreak with the number of suspected cases doubling within 12 days to over 4,000 last week.

The latest ceasefire offers a golden opportunity to Houthis and forces loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh to end this conflict. Saleh and Houthis must realise that a continuation of this war will not help them achieve their goals and the only path forward is through the negotiation process. With the Middle East in turmoil and the US electing a new president, whose foreign and Middle East policies are looking unfavourable to our region, there is a need for all parties in Yemen to seize the initiative and work together for peace.

10 SUNDAY 20 NOVEMBER 2016 VIEWS

E S T A B L I S H E D I N 1 9 9 6

CHAIRMANSHEIKH THANI BIN ABDULLAH AL THANI

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

editorinchief@pen.com.qa

ACTING MANAGING EDITORMOHAMMED SALIM MOHAMED

msalim@pen.com.qa

DEPUTY MANAGING EDITORHUSSAIN AHMAD

hussain@pen.com.qa

Yemen truce

QUOTE OF THE DAY

The United States condemns in the strongest terms these horrific attacks against medical infrastructure and humanitarian aid workers. There is no excuse for these heinous actions.

Susan RiceUS National Security Adviser

The latest ceasefire declared by the Saudi-led coalition offers a golden opportunity to end the conflict.

I wasn’t just talk. If there was any doubt about whether Donald Trump meant business with his hard-line campaign pronouncements on immigration, race, terrorism and more, the president-elect

went a long way to dispel them Friday with his first appointments to his national security team and at the Justice Department.

Trump’s trifecta in selecting Sen. Jeff Sessions for attorney general, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn for national security adviser and Rep. Mike Pompeo to lead the CIA sent a strong message that Americans are going to get what they voted for in electing a Republican whose campaign talk about national security matters largely tog-gled between tough and tougher.

There has been ongoing mystery about what to expect in a Trump presidency: Even some of Trump’s own supporters wrote off some of his more provocative campaign comments.

Trump’s own policy statements have zigged and zagged depending on the audi-ence. And his first two appointments to the White House staff — GOP Chairman Reince Priebus as chief of staff and onetime Breit-bart News chief Steve Bannon as a senior adviser — sent a mixed message with the choice of an establishment figure and a flame-throwing outsider.

But Friday’s picks offered a concrete indi-cation that Trump’s presidency may in fact be headed sharply to the right on issues of national security.

“If you believe in personnel as policy, it’s pretty clear where the arrows are pointing,” says Calvin Mackenzie, a presidential scholar at Colby College in Maine.

Princeton historian Julian Zelizer says the three choices all represent conservative fig-ures with track records in government, not “wildly out-of-the-box people who don’t even come from the world of politics.”

“That’s a message not just about him fol-lowing through on his campaign promises, but it’s about partisanship,” says Zelizer. “He’s giving a signal to the Republicans to stick with him because he’ll deliver.”

Trump still has plenty of big appointments yet to make, including secretary of state, that could telegraph other directions. And Con-gress, too, will have a say in setting national security policy.

Trump’s three latest all have sharply dif-fered with Obama administration policy:

—Sessions, the Alabama senator and former federal prosecutor, is known for his tough stance on immigration enforcement. He’s questioned whether terrorism suspects should get the protection of the US court sys-tem, opposes closing the detention center at Guantanamo Bay and has highlighted con-cerns about voting fraud, which the Obama administration sees as a non-issue.

He has said Obama’s counterterrorism policies have “emboldened our enemies” and

Appointments signalnational security hard lineNancy BenacAP

those concerned about warrantless wiretaps have “exaggerated the extent to which this is somehow violative of our Constitution.” His appointment to a fed-eral judgeship in 1986 fell through after he was accused of making racially charged statements while US attorney in Alabama.

—Pompeo, the three-term congress-man from Kansas, is an outspoken opponent of the Iran nuclear deal, has said NSA leaker Edward Snowden is a traitor who deserves the death sentence and has said Muslim leaders are “poten-tially complicit” in terrorist attacks if they do not denounce violence carried out in the name of Islam.

—Flynn stepped down as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency in April 2014 and said he’d been forced out because he disagreed with Obama’s approach to combatting extremism. Critics said he’d mismanaged the agency. Flynn has pressed for a more aggressive US campaign against the Islamic State group, and favors working more closely with Russia.

The three appointments sync up with messages that Trump voters sent in the exit polls on Election Night.

Trump’s backers put a higher pri-ority on addressing terrorism and immigration than did Clinton’s sup-porters. Three-fourths of them said the US was doing very badly or some-what badly at dealing with IS. Just 2 in 10 thought blacks are treated unfairly in the US criminal justice system. Three-fourths backed building a wall on the southern border to control ille-gal immigration.

Trump’s positions, meanwhile, have

gone through different iterations, con-tinue to evolve and still have big gaps.

On immigration, his views have arrived at a policy that sounds much like Washington as usual. The approach he sketched out in a post-election interview on “60 Minutes” would embrace the Obama adminis-tration’s push to deport the most serious criminals who are in the US illegally as well as the call by many Republican lawmakers to secure the border before considering any legal status for those who’ve committed immigration violations but otherwise lived lawfully. He even pulled back a bit on his vaunted southern wall, sug-gesting a fence may be enough for part of it.

Trump the campaigner also moved away from his inflammatory vow to freeze the entry of foreign Muslims into the US, settling late in the race on “extreme” vetting of immigrants from countries and regions plagued by vio-lent radicalism.

He’s vowed to crush the Islamic State group, but won’t say how.

Trump has also said he believes in enhanced interrogation techniques, which can include waterboarding and other types of torture that are against the law and that many experts argue are ineffective.

Republican Rep. Devin Nunes of Cal-ifornia, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, on Friday dis-missed Trump’s comments about waterboarding as the talk of a “first-time neophyte running for office.”

“Water-boarding coming back, I find that hard to believe,” he said.

ED ITOR IAL

Donald Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, campaign CEO Stephen Bannon and Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus celebrate at Trump’s election night rally.

11SUNDAY 20 NOVEMBER 2016 OPINION

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What does Africa need to tackle climate change?

From making jam with cactus fruit, to reviving traditional underground canals to defend against drought, Morocco has a

leading role in the fight against climate change in Africa (PDF). One of its long-standing goals has been transforming agriculture to become more sustainable.

This vital sector, which contributes almost a fifth of the country’s gross domestic product, was the inspiration for the Green Morocco Plan, launched in 2008, to modernise agriculture and make it more productive and efficient. And that need remains as urgent as ever with the rising impact of global warming. Climate-related challenges in agriculture are also common to many of Morocco’s African neighbours. Yet the biggest factor that continues to link experiences across the continent is a lack of investment to adapt and meet the growing demand for food in the face of rising temperatures.

This is why the Moroccan presidency of this year’s COP climate summit has made African agriculture one of its priorities when addressing climate change. For the first time, pan-African experts and officials meet to discuss their best solutions while making a united plea for $30bn to put them into action. Such regional action has become critical, as talks to include agriculture in the

climate negotiations have once again failed, and will now be postponed until May 2017.

In contrast to this lack of action on a global scale, we have seen at COP22 that there is no shortage of willingness to confront climate change in Africa. Every single African country has included adapting agriculture as part of their climate change strategies submitted to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). What is missing is sufficient investment.

Out of the 10 countries most affected by greenhouse gas emissions, six of them are in Africa, yet the continent only receives 5 percent of dedicated climate funding.

And without investment, we cannot move forward. In Morocco, only 18 percent of farmers have access to bank loans, hampering their ability to invest in better, more sustainable methods.

The cost of adapting agriculture to cope with the effects of climate change will cost between $20bn and $30bn a year until 2030, according to the African Development Bank.

Where the money should goAt COP, the International Center for

Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) is joining forces with the Moroccan government and partners, to suggest that there are three key areas for investment that will help safeguard African agriculture in the face of climate change. The first is better soil management. Up to 65 percent of soils in

Africa are estimated to be degraded. Planting legumes such as faba bean, chickpeas and lentils that naturally fix nitrogen to the soil reducing the need for fertiliser, is an important approach to reversing this trend. The production of legumes has been hit hard in Morocco in recent years, due to labour shortages and plant diseases. Improved varieties of chickpeas and lentils have been tested that will not only improve soil health but are resistant to diseases and suitable for harvest with a machine. These lines have been well received by farmers and could now go into national breeding programmes in Morocco and beyond.

The second area is water control. A third of areas growing olives in Morocco are still using traditional flood irrigation methods, consuming water levels that are far beyond what the trees actually require.

ICARDA has been working with the Moroccan government to encourage the uptake of drip irrigation, which applies less water at the base of the tree only. Farmers can receive between 80-100 percent of the funds to install drip irrigation equipment, which can reduce water consumption by up to 70 percent.

Conservation agriculture is another important option to conserve soil-water content, particularly for rain-fed farming which is predominant in Morocco.

Locally manufactured seeders have made it possible for smallholder farmers to use zero-tillage technology at an affordable price. This technological package has great potential to expand if

investments are made available.The third aspect is climate-risk

management. In Morocco, we have happily re-housed part of the ICARDA gene bank since we evacuated Aleppo in Syria in July 2012.

This important resource stores genetic material to help breeders develop drought and climate-tolerant and disease-resilient crops, limiting future risk to food supplies.

Bringing the collection of wheat, barley, chickpea, lentil and faba bean samples to Morocco puts them within easy reach of seed scientists, breeders and farmers, where they can be most effective. So we have the plans, the strategies, the shared knowledge and the examples of best practice. What we really need now is fundingto bring solutions such as these to scale.

Adaptation projects currently account for just 20 percent of climate public funds but need at least 50 percent in order to strike a balance with efforts that seek to mitigate the effects of climate change.

To benefit from the best methods, we need funding to expand capacity building and means of sharing our knowledge so that African countries can learn how to adapt to climate change.

There are many opportunities and solutions for how to feed the world while better coping with the climate change that we collectively work on to tackle at events like COP. But without investment, these plans will just languish on paper.

Aly Abou-Sabaa Al Jazeera

On December 14, 1998, we had a day off at school. As an eight-year-old child, I couldn’t be happier. All the shops were

closed and there were roadblocks eve-rywhere. The streets were filled with Palestinian flags, and white and red striped flags I couldn’t recognise. I asked my father and he explained that those were American flags, and that Bill Clinton, the President of the United States, was going to visit Gaza City later that day.

Little did I know that I would be hear-ing Clinton’s name almost every day for the next 18 years, but it will not be on happy occasions. The late Palestinian President, Yasser Arafat, had invited Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Clinton to inaugurate the Gaza International Airport . Clinton’s heli-copters landed on the airport’s runway in Rafah and then took off to Gaza City, where Clinton addressed the Palestinian National Council in what went down in history as the first visit ever by an American presi-dent to a “sovereign” Palestinian entity.

The following year, my siblings and I joined 65 other students in the newly opened American International School in Gaza, a school fully staffed by American and Canadian teachers, with textbooks that had come all the way from the United States to Gaza.

In the meantime, Senator Hillary Clin-ton joined Elie Wiesel in addressing “anti-Israel” and “anti-Semitic” rhetoric in Palestinian textbooks. In 2001, she sent a letter to President George W Bush urging him to force Yasser Arafat into changing the Palestinian Authority’s “hateful rheto-ric” as a condition for peace.

In 2007, she questioned Mahmoud Abbas’ eligibility as a “partner for peace”, given that textbooks issued under his administration were “inciting hatred”. This came after she co-sponsored a Congress

resolution that supported the building of Israel’s apartheid wall in the West Bank, which she defended by saying: “This is not against the Pal-estinian people, this is

In Gaza, we aren’t mourning Clinton’s lossYasmeen ElkhoudaryAl Jazeera

against terrorists.” Despite Clinton’s passionate interest in Palestinian education, she had little praise for Gaza’s American school; on the con-trary, when two American supplied Israeli F-16 jets razed the school to the ground in 2008/9, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had nothing to say. Her indifference came as no sur-prise, and was no different than her reaction, or lack thereof, to Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s Airport three years after she herself had inaugu-rated it with Arafat and her husband. Driven by a mission from God to spread peace and democracy in the Middle East, Bush pressed for a Pal-estinian National Council against all odds in 2006. But when Hamas, as predicted, won the elections, he approved a plan to overthrow Hamas by igniting a Palestinian civil war with the help of Israel.

In the meantime, Clinton was busy co-sponsoring a Congress res-olution entitled, “The Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act of 2006”. The resolution, which was introduced after Hamas won the elections and taken over Gaza as a result of Bush’s interference, denied Hamas any par-ticipation in the “peace process” unless it recognised Israel, disarmed and renounced violence. The bill was signed into law by Bush in December 2006, and was effectively the approval Israel needed to launch its ongoing siege of Gaza. Effectively, Bush and Clinton tried to change the results of the elections they forced upon us with a violent civil war, and

when that failed, they decided to punish us for making the “wrong democratic choice”.

When Hamas won Bush’s elec-tions, I had just graduated from school and was ready to leave Gaza to study at the American University in Cairo. From that year on, crossing the border out of or into Gaza turned into a fine experience of hell on earth. The US, like any other country on a divinely inspired global peace-promoting mission, had decided to lead an international boycott of Pal-estine due to the failure of both the elections and the civil war it ignited in tipping the balance of power as it wanted it. The boycott entailed vigor-ous US support for Israel’s complete imprisonment of the Gaza Strip’s inhabitants with occasional military assaults — three in less than six years.

As a student activist campaigning for Palestine in the American University in Cairo , my colleagues and I found ourselves engaging in endless conver-sations with American study-abroad students, who had a positive opinion about the Bush administration’s policies towards Palestine, to convince them of the results of the democratic elections that had just brought Hamas to power. After all, these students needed to know the truth before voting in the next US presidential elections in 2008.

Barack Obama was running for office and our hopes were up in the sky, to the extent that a group of Palestinians in Gaza joined his campaign over Skype , hoping that Obama’s victory was going to bring a just solution to their misery. It

didn’t.Stuck in Cairo during the spring break because of the US and Israel’s con-tinuous siege on Gaza, I remember watching Obama’s 2009 speech in Cairo University with mixed feelings.

Despite his attempt to offer a more reconciliatory tone, he had already stated his positions on fundamental Palestinian issues in two speeches to AIPAC — the American Israel Public Affairs Committee — during his cam-paign: He believed that “Jerusalem will remain the undivided capital of Israel” and was opposed to the right of return.

Hope quickly evaporated as Obama’s eight years in office proved to be no different for the Palestinians, especially those besieged in Gaza. With Clinton as secretary of state, things got even worse: in her own words to the AIPAC, Clinton was an outspoken enemy of BDS (the Boycott, Divest-ment, Sanctions movement), a proud opponent of any Palestine-related UN resolutions, a proud condemner of the Goldstone Report, a staunch defender of Israel’s assaults on Gaza, and a major factor behind the US blocking Palestine’s statehood bids at the UN.

When the US announced a plan to provide Israel with $38bn in military aid over the next decade, sealing off Obama’s heroic and peaceful legacy, Clinton expressed her delight in a statement congratulating Obama and Netanyahu on this important “diplo-matic achievement”. She promised that “as president”, she would work to implement this agreement.

Sadly for Clinton, the plan will be implemented without her. She missed

a historic opportunity to reaffirm her unwavering support to Israel. But has anyone in the US asked why this plan is the only one that was passed down from Obama to Trump without question? Is send-ing military aid to Israel more important than Obamacare, for example? Why do the AIPAC and Israel always emerge as victors regardless of who sits in the oval office? As a woman, I’m deeply offended by Trump’s victory. As a Palestinian, however, particularly after watching Trump’s speech to the AIPAC , I couldn’t care less who won. In truth, I stopped caring about American elections once Obama slapped us in the face with stagger-ing indifference to Palestine, which in fact made our lives a living hell. Hereby, I dedicate Trump’s victory to every democracy-loving Ameri-can senator, congressman/woman, and campaigner, who gambled with our lives and futures in order to win more AIPAC votes. In particular, I dedicate it to Hillary Clinton and her establishment, and to everyone who was distraught by the outcome of the democratic elections that led to Trump’s victory.

Will Clinton call for boycotting her own people for “making the wrong democratic choice”, will she impose collective punishment on them like she encouraged Israel to do with us? Will she justify the misery that Ameri-can people will face under Trump like she justified the people of Gaza’s suf-fering under the 2014 Israeli assault by saying , “they’re trapped by their leadership, unfortunately”?

The Gaza airport before being completely destroyed by Israeli bombings in the 2008-2009, Israeli bombardment of Gaza.

Hereby, I dedicate Trump’s victory to every democracy-loving American senator, congressman/woman, and campaigner, who gambled with our lives and futures in order to win more AIPAC votes.

12 SUNDAY 20 NOVEMBER 2016 ASIA / PHILIPPINES

Colombo: Sri Lanka's former ambassador to Washington was arrested on Friday accused of misappropriating more than $350,000, the latest mem-ber of strongman ex-president Mahinda Rajapakse's family to be investigated for corruption in office. Jaliya Wickramasuriya, a cousin of former president, was detained at Sri Lanka's main international airport as he tried to leave the island, an airport official said.

The police had obtained a court order preventing Wick-ramasuriya from leaving the country as the authorities probe financial transactions at Sri Lankan embassy in Washington during his tenure as ambassa-dor from 2008 and 2014.

NEWS BYTES

Ex-US envoy held in Sri Lanka for graft

Refugee resettlement: US officials in AustraliaSydney

Reuters

US officials have arrived in Australia to begin assessing asylum seekers held on Papua New

Guinea's Manus Island and Nauru for resettlement in the United States, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said yesterday.

Australia announced last week it had reached a deal in which the United States would take a substantial number of the 1,200 refugees held at the Aus-tralian-funded offshore processing centres, although the election of Donald Trump has injected uncertainty into the agreement.

Trump started campaigning

for the presidency by advocat-ing a blanket ban on Muslims entering the United States, but

later adjusted his stance to pro-pose that the ban should apply to people from nations that had been "compromised by terrorism".

Many of asylum seekers at the camps are Muslims who have fled conflicts in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

"Officials from Homeland Security are in Australia right now in fact and they will be going to Nauru shortly," Turn-bull said on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Lima, Peru. A transcript of his remarks to jour-nalists was issued by his office.

Resettlement is unlikely to come before Trump's January 20 inauguration, and Turnbull said the timeline would be deter-mined by American officials.

Professor Simon Jackman, chief executive of the United States Studies Centre at Sydney

University, said the deal may require further negotiation once Trump was in office.

"All of the signs from the Trump administration are that deals like this are looked at unfavourably," Jackman said.

Should Trump veto the deal, the detainees would be left with the choice of returning to their home countries or remaining in Nauru or Papua New Guinea.

Turnbull is facing growing outrage both at home and inter-nationally over the treatment of the refugees.

A US veto may force him to search for another country will-ing to take them.

Under Australia's tough bor-der security laws, asylum seekers intercepted trying to reach the country by boat are sent for processing at detention camps Manus island and Nauru.

TOKYO: An earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 5.4 shook western Japan yester-day but there was no immediate reports of damage and a tsu-nami warning was not issued.

The epicentre of the earth-quake, which occurred at 11:48am was in Wakayama pre-fecture, western Japan, the Japan Meteorological Agency said.

Earthquakes are common in Japan, one of the world's most seismically active areas. Japan accounts for about 20 percent of the world's earthquakes of magnitude 6 or greater.

5.4 magnitude quake rocks western Japan

Dhaka

AFP

Bangladesh coast guards prevented 125 Rohingya Muslims from entering

its territory as the group attempted to escape violent unrest in neighbouring Myanmar.

Authorities patrolling the Naf River, which separates Bangladesh's southeastern border from western

Myanmar, pushed back a group of Rohingya trying to enter the country late Friday, local Coast Guard official Nafiur Rahman said.

"There were 125 Myanmar nationals in seven wooden boats. They included 61 women and 36 children. We resisted them from entering our water territory," Rahman said recently.

He added that all of the passengers were Rohingya who tried to enter Bangladesh

amid an uptick of violent clashes in neighbouring Myan-mar's Rakhine state.

Another coast guard officer said he saw two bodies float-ing in the Naf River during a patrol.

Up to 30,000 people have been displaced by violence in Myanmar's Rakhine state, half of which occurred during the last week when dozens of peo-ple died in clashes with the military, the UN office said on Friday.

Troops have poured into a strip of land along the Bang-ladesh border, an area which is largely home to the state-less Muslim Rohingya minority, since coordinated attacks on police posts last month.

The resurgence of violence in Rakhine has deepened a cri-sis that has already threatened to derail the new administra-tion led by Myanmar's democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi.

Manila

AP

Family members and followers of Philippine former president Ferdinand Marcos gathered yes-

terday for a vigil at his tomb, a day after his secrecy-shrouded burial at the country's Heroes' Cemetery trig-gered widespread protests three decades following the strongman's ouster.

Marcos' widow Imelda, clad in black, thanked supporters and local officials who traveled by bus from Marcos' northern home province to pay their respects.

She said they had given her fam-ily strength as they kept the hope for

nearly 30 years to have him buried at the national cemetery, which is reserved for former presidents, national artists and soldiers.

Thousands of pro-democracy activists who rallied in Manila on Fri-day say the decadeslong debate over the ex-president's final resting place was far from over and they were planning more protests in the days and weeks ahead.

President Rodrigo Duterte, who gave the go-ahead for the burial, appealed for calm.

"I know Ferdinand will at last be at rest here at the Heroes' Cemetery," Imelda Marcos said in front of a black tomb surrounded by wreaths of white flowers. "But I know we still have a lot of criticisms to face."

Former Malaysian leader joins rally to oust NajibKuala Lumpur AFP

Former Malaysian leader Mahathir Mohamad called for a sustained push to

topple scandal-plagued Prime Minister Najib Razak as thou-sands rallied yesterday to demand the premier's resigna-tion over the 1MDB corruption saga.

Malaysians clad in the yel-low of the reformist Bersih campaign flooded Kuala Lumpur for the second time in 15 months to vent anger over allegations that billions of dol-lars were looted from state investment fund 1MDB, Najib's brainchild.

Speaking to a crowd of at least 20,000 under the shadow of the capital's giant Petronas Towers twin skyscrapers, Mahathir, 91, accused Najib of stealing public money and said

Malaysia was "controlled by thieves".

"Time has come for us to topple this cruel regime. Najib is no longer suitable to be the prime minister. He is abusing the law," Mahathir said.

Malaysia has been seized since last year by the 1MDB scandal, which has sparked investigations in several countries.

Najib, 63, and 1MDB deny wrongdoing.

But the US Justice Depart-ment -- which has filed lawsuits to seize assets it says were pur-chased with stolen 1MDB money -- says the fund was pil-laged in an audacious campaign of fraud and theft that involved an unnamed top Malaysian official.

A Malaysian Cabinet offi-cial has since admitted that individual was Najib.

Najib last year abruptly shut down Malaysian investigations,

fired the attorney general and purged ruling-party critics.

Few expect him to be top-pled anytime soon.

Najib on Friday condemned

Bersih as an opposition plot "to unseat a democratically-elected government".

Tensions in Malaysia rose in the rally's run-up due to

threats by the "Red Shirts," eth-nic-Malay rightists who support Najib, to disrupt the demonstra-tion, but no clashes were reported.

Kin gather at Marcos' tomb amid protest

Dhaka foils 125 Rohingya from crossing border

Zamboanga City Anatolia

The Philippine President has laid into Western countries for their policy on refugees, accusing them of cherry picking human rights issues for self purpose.

Rodrigo Duterte said western nations appeared to "be very accommodating on (some) human rights (issues), but suddenly change course and say no" when it comes to wel-coming those fleeing conflict.

"You stay there, We will build a wall (and put up) barbed wire (between us and you)," he said of the West. "And now the hypocrite is there, staring at us eyeball to eyeball."

Duterte told the interviewer that the Philippines would accept refugees "until we are filled to the brim", adding that his decision was based on western countries' failure to help.

Duterte accuses West of hypocrisy over refugees

Seismologists warn of more earthquakes in New ZealandSEISMOLOGISTS in New Zea-land said that this week's 7.8 earthquake was one of the most complex ever recorded and warned there was a high likelihood of further power-ful aftershocks.

As a massive clean-up continued following the tremor that claimed two lives early Monday, scientists were coming to grips with the "astonishing" scale of the seismic seizure.

The official GeoNet sci-ence agency said the land moved up to 11 metres along the many faultlines in the South Island disaster zone, permanently changing the region's geography.

GeoNet said recently that the quake ruptured at least four faults and was "clearly... one of the most complex earthquakes that has ever been observed".

There have been well over 2,000 aftershocks since Monday and the agency said statistical analysis showed residents should prepare for more major shakes in the coming weeks.

The current probability of quakes of magnitude 6.0 and above hitting in the next month was "about 100 times larger than what we would normally expect", it said.

Pro-democracy group Bersih stage 1MDB protest, calling for Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak to resign, in Kuala Lumpur, yesterday.

Philippine former first lady Imelda Marcos speaks to supporters at the graveyard of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos at the national heroes' cemetery in Manila, yesterday.

Resettlement deal

Resettlement is unlikely to come before Trump's January 20 inauguration, and Turnbull said the timeline would be determined by American officials.

An official of United States Studies Centre at Sydney University said the deal may require further negotiation once Trump was in office.

People use a public toilet in Lahore yesterday on World Toilet Day. The day is marked on November 19 every year in a global campaign highlighting issues around health and sanitation.

Hygiene concern

Paramilitary troops take part in combat drills during a ceremony in connection with ‘53rd Frontier Corps Week’ in Peshawar, yesterday.

Combat drills

13SUNDAY 20 NOVEMBER 2016 PAKISTAN / AFGHANISTAN

ISLAMABAD

Internews

Pakistan has virtually attained one of the tar-gets of the Sustainable Development Goals

(SDGs) by providing legal iden-tity to its citizens, including birth registration.

The target 9 of Goal 16 calls upon the member states of the United Nations (UN) who have pledged to achieve the SDGs by 2030, that they provide “legal identity for all, including birth registration”.

Since its inception in 2000, the National Database and Reg-istration Authority (Nadra) has been issuing Computerised National Identity Cards (CNICs) to Pakistani citizens and its equivalent to Pakistani diaspora. A CNIC is issued first at the age of 18, after the resident’s biomet-rics have been captured.

Acknowledging Pakistan’s efforts, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in a report said that, “the Nadra system is considered one of the world’s leading inte-grated national identification (ID) systems, and has provided technical assistance to the development of many systems in the developing world.”

The report titled ‘Identity for Development in Asia and the Pacific’ says Pakistan’s

integrated national identifica-tion (ID) system was assessed as being at an advanced stage, as it uses cutting-edge proc-esses and was near universal in its coverage.

“The duplication process uses biometrics and is robust while third-party integration is easy and profuse,” the report said. “The ID system offers a means to fast-track the devel-opment process by providing the most efficient way to iden-tify people in developing countries.”

The report claimed that although there was no one model for providing a legal identity, the SDGs encouraged states to provide people with free or low-cost access to widely accepted, robust ID credentials.

ISLAMABAD

Internews

The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) will start audit of lawmakers’ state-

ments of assets and liabilities by December 1 for the financial year which ended on June 30 this year.

This was decided by the ECP which met here with Chief Elec-tion Commissioner retired Justice Sardar Muhammad Raza in the chair.

Sources said the ECP, which was earlier contemplating ran-dom scrutiny of 25 per cent of statements of assets, now decided that 100pc statements would be examined to see if these contained any discrepan-cies and apparent lies.

The ECP had decided last month to randomly scrutinise annual statements of assets and liabilities submitted to it by

lawmakers and had directed its secretariat to come up with a standard operating procedure for the exercise, including the modus operandi and timeline.

The proposed SOP was approved by the commission yes-terday outlaying the chain of command and modus operandi.

Under the approved proce-dure, the process will start with classification of statements of assets. The statements will be divided into four slabs of value starting from Rs 1m to beyond Rs 1bn.

The type of assets will also be categorised and will include agricultural property, corporate or business, real estate property, industrial establishments and domestic and offshore invest-ments and entities.

The directorate of political finance, if required, will com-pare a statement of a member

with his statements submitted in the past two years.

This simple comparison may indicate the range of variation of information in respect of cost, changing business trends, acqui-sition and utilisation of assets over the past two years and val-ues of expenditure.

The variation beyond the common sense and/or envisaged business trends during these three years may guide the rele-vant section to classify it as a simple case with an acceptable range of increase/decrease in values or needing further evi-dence for justification of the reported variations in different values.

The section may ask for the required evidence from the sub-mitter of the form and if the evidence was still found not appropriate to support the var-iation trends, he may request for

corroboration from the state agencies concerned for an informed decision.

An official of the ECP said that those found guilty of con-cealing their assets or making any other false declarations would be proceeded against under Section 82 of the Repre-sentation of Peoples Act (ROPA).

Section 82 of the ROPA pre-scribes imprisonment of up to three years for a person guilty of corrupt practice, and convic-tion also entails disqualification from being a lawmaker or con-testing polls.

All members of the national and provincial assemblies are bound under Section 42A (1) of the ROPA to submit statements of assets and liabilities of their own, along with those of their spouses and dependents annu-ally to the ECP by September 30 each year.

Pakistan ahead in issuing legal ID to citizens

ISLAMABAD

AP

PAKISTAN'S military says Indian troops have conducted “unprovoked” cross-border firing in Kashmir, triggering an intense exchange of fire, but there was no word on casualties on either side.

A military statement yes-terday said Pakistani troops are returning fire and giving a “befitting response.”

However, an Indian army officer blamed Pakistan for initiating the exchange.

The latest shootout comes after Pakistan’s navy claimed it had detected and stopped Indian submarines from enter-ing country’s territorial waters in Arabian sea. India quickly denied the Pakistani claim.

ISLAMABAD

Internews

THE training of youth for high-tech skills of tomorrow is imperative to support Paki-stan Vision 2025 as digital transformation would drive Pakistan’s knowledge econ-omy growth and citizen well-being.

Pakistan Vision 2025 out-lines goals for country to become world’s top 10 econ-omies by 2047 especially in economic diversification and greater use of Information and Communication Technol-ogies (ICTs) in public and private sectors.

Newly appointed Country Manager of Systems Applica-tions and Products (SAP) in Data Processing Osman Khan said as Pakistan's economy shifts to knowledge economy nationwide digital transforma-tion will modernise government services and infra-structure enhancing businesses and daily lives.

He said using cloud and mobile solutions organisa-tions can have real time visibility on their lines of business while the govern-ment can use dashboards to measure effectiveness of cit-izen services.SAP a global technology company has more than 320, 000 customers in 190 countries including Paki-stan’s innovators in education manufacturing telecommuni-cations and utilities.

ISLAMABAD

Internews

The United Nations wel-comed the recent legislation in Pakistan for

the protection of women rights and said it would continue sup-porting and cooperating with the country in this respect.

The assurance was given by UN Resident Coordinator and UNDP Resident Representative in Pakistan Neil Buhne during a meeting with Federal Minister for Human Rights Senator Kam-

ran Michael here.The visitor remained with

the minister for some time and discussed matters of bilateral interest with special reference to the issues related to the pro-motion and protection of human rights in Pakistan.

The minister acknowledged the UN support and assistance for socio-economic develop-ment in Pakistan.

He highlighted the steps being taken by the government for the protection of human rights, especially women’s and

said special committees at dis-trict level were being formed for the promotion and protection of human rights.

The UN representative con-gratulated the government on the recent legislation for the protection of women and appre-ciated its endeavours for the promotion and protection of human rights including the rights of women, child protec-tion and minorities in the country. He assured the country of his organisation’s full support and cooperation in this regard.

KARACHI

Internews

Rescue operations of the Edhi Foundation have come to a standstill as the

country’s largest charity is wait-ing for government’s approval to sell more than 300 of its heavy-duty vehicles to gener-ate funds that could be utilised for buying new vehicles needed to replace the “obsolete and useless” ones, officials said.

The authorities in Islama-bad have confirmed receiving requests from the Edhi Foun-dation, which is headquartered in Karachi, for immediate per-mission to sell the 300 vehicles that used to take part in its res-cue operations. Because of lack of heavy vehicles the charity has been unable to effectively mount rescue operations.

This emerged recently in the wake of a suicide attack on the shrine of Bilawal Shah Noorani in a remote region of Khuzdar district in which more than 50 people were killed and scores of others injured.

“The situation at the shrine grew worse when the Edhi Foundation couldn’t mobilise its heavy-duty vehicles for sur-vivors of the blast and the injured people,” said a health official when he was asked about delays in rescue and evacuation operations.

“At the time of the attack there were over 1,000 people at the shrine, who reached there from across the country. We all know the government’s resources and it’s the Edhi Foundation which always does the rescue work. But they also were helpless.

They could only send their hi-roof vans [used as ambu-lances] which can never serve

the rescue purpose.”He said that makeshift

ambulances from the Edhi Foundation and vehicles from other charities and government departments proceeded to bring the injured to Karachi, some 250km from the shrine.

As a result, more than 12 people lost their lives, mainly due to excessive bleeding and delay in start of their treatment.

“How can you expect a hi-roof van used as an ambulance to move the critically injured people to Karachi from that mountainous area more than 250m away within a few hours?

It was simply impossible as the distance and the tough ter-rain required heavy-duty rescue vehicles,” said the official.

He said that in the past the foundation had been using stronger and better vehicles.

The situation set off alarm bells at hospitals in Karachi where doctors and paramedics kept receiving the injured till the next morning, more than 12 hours after the suicide attack.

Faisal Edhi echoed the con-cerns but what he described as the reason for the delays proved to be more shocking.

Knocking govt doors

The authorities confirmed receiving requests from the Foundation for immediate permission to sell 300 vehicles that used to take part in its rescue operations. Because of lack of heavy vehicles the charity has been unable to effectively mount rescue operations.

Feather in the cap

Acknowledging Pakistan’s efforts, the Asian Development Bank in a report said, the Nadra system is considered one of the world’s leading integrated national identification (ID) systems.

Youth training for high-tech skills to support Vision 2025

UN hails law on women protection

Heavy vehicles crunch hits Edhi Foundation’s work

ECP to audit lawmakers’ statements of assets

Pakistani and Indian troops exchange fire

14 SUNDAY 20 NOVEMBER 2016 INDIA

Srinagar

IANS

After 132 days of closure, the Kashmir Valley burst into life on Saturday morning

with a large number of vehicles out on the roads, and markets, schools, offices and businesses open for the first time after months of separatist-sponsored shutdown and violent protests.

Shoppers thronged Srinagar markets in large numbers even as demonetisation inconven-ienced people in the Valley where the November 8 surprise announcement had had little or no effect because businesses and other activities were closed since

mid-July.Many buses and other pub-

lic vehicles started plying early in the morning as people came out to attend their offices, open their shops and visit banks to withdraw cash.

Separatist leaders, who had been spearheading the agitation with their weekly protest calen-dars, relaxed the shutdown for two days, asking people to resume normal activities over the weekend.

Authorities also did not impose restrictions anywhere yesterday to facilitate free move-ment of people and traffic.

Many places in Srinagar and other district headquarters in the

Valley witnessed traffic jams as people came out in large num-bers to go about their daily chores or simply to have a feel of normalcy.

Muhammad Maqbool, 42, an electronics appliance store owner in Lal Chowk, is just happy to be at his shop during normal working hours, hoping to stay open till midnight.

"I don't want to talk about my losses because that nobody is going to make good for me. Yet, the feeling that I have opened my shop first time during day hours after so long is great," Maqbool said.

He said he had briefly opened his store earlier when

separatists announced evening relaxations. "Today is different. Everything is just normal."

Some distance away, Ram-zan Sheikh, 54, a shoeshine, said he made Rs 80 -- his "first earn-ing" after all these months of violence. "I had four customers. Each one of them gave me Rs 20 for polishing shoes."

Asked if he worked during the evening relaxation period, Sheikh said: "Who would want a shoe shine when the entire city was closed and on the run?"

In north Kashmir's Gander-bal district, Sooda Mir and his son Muzaffar had a tough time start-ing their mini bus after all these days.

"I had fixed a new battery in the vehicle before the trouble started here. I would also occa-sionally run the engine idle for during the hartal to ensure that the battery did not run down. But, today the vehicle would just not start. I had to get a truck to pull-start my bus," said Muzaffar.

Ironically, pavement ven-dors, wayside fruit sellers and roadside barbecue sellers have been better placed than other shopkeepers during the days of shutdown.

"We have continued some-how with our business for the last two months by risking our lives. But it is better to die earn-ing bread for one's family than

seeing them starve to death," said Abdul Hameed, 42, who sells beddings on a pedestrian mall here.

The stoic statement from Hameed is a terse reminder for those who believe life can be hostaged for too long either by the protest shutdowns or through curfews imposed by the authorities.

Officials said attendance in government offices, banks and post offices was almost full for the first time since the unrest, which left nearly 100 persons dead, started a day after Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani was killed in a gunfight with security forces on July 8.

Kolkata

IANS

Carrying forward her protest against demonetisat ion, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata

Banerjee yesterday marched to the Reserve Bank of India office, summoned bank's officials on the street and sought answers to her volley of questions about currency situation in the state.

"I have the right to seek information about my state. In fact I would have liked to get information about the entire country. But you people only look after this region," Baner-jee told RBI officials, who seemed visibly tense. Banerjee let loose a barrage of questions.

"How many Rs 100, Rs 50 denomination notes have you in stock? How many old and new Rs 500 notes do you have? How much money is there in the ATMs? How much money is there in the branches? How much is the demand? Is the available money adequate to meet the demand?"

"People are not getting money. So I need information."

When an RBI official told her "We will send the informa-tion to you," Banerjee cut her short.

"That will not do. I am wait-ing. Go inside, collate the information and give it to me here," she snapped. When the RBI officials requested her to come inside the office, the Chief Minister flatly refused.

Banerjee, accompanied by her party's Rajya Sabha leader

Cash crunch: RBI faces Mamata's ire

Police detain supporters of Congress party during a protest outside the Reserve Bank of India, in Ahmedabad, yesterday.

New Delhi

IANS

Around 51 per cent of respondnets in a survey have found implementa-

tion of currency demonetisation measure a good step while 24 per cent explicitly termed it poor.

Another 25 per cent called the implementation average. Over 9000 citizens from across

200 cities participated in the survey, conducted by citizen engagement social platform LocalCircles.

While currency demoneti-sation was a drastic step, citizens believe that better planning must have been done by the government to avoid long queues at ATMs and banks for over 10 days now. Also, some of the steps suggested by citizens and taken by the

government later like the use of indelible ink, special provi-sion for weddings, mobile ATMs and cash availability for farmers should have been included early on.

According to the survey, 79 per cent said they 'on't mind the inconvenience while another 18 per cent said its been painful but they still support it. Only 3 per cent said that they were against this step of the government.

'Many don't mind inconvenience'

Normalcy returns to Kashmir after 132 days of closure

NEW DELHI: At least three soldiers were killed when militants fired at an army convoy in Assam's Tinsukia district early yesterday morning.

Union Home Minis-ter Rajnath Singh spoke to Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal after the militant attack at Pengeri around 5.30 am and said his ministry was closely monitoring the situation.

Defence spokesman Lt. Col. Suneet Newton earlier said the militants first triggered an impro-vised explosive device blast and then fired indis-criminately attacked the convoy.

High turnout in Puducherry & TN by-polls CHENNAI: Demonetisa-tion issues did not deter voters in three assembly constituencies of Tamil Nadu and the lone one in uducherry in coming out in large numbers to exercise their constitu-tional right. According to Election Commission officials polling came to an end at 5 p.m. in all the four constituencies. While Thirupparankun-dram saw around 85 per cent polling, Aravakku-richi saw a turnout of around 81 per cent. How-ever, Thanjavur recorded around 69 percent polling. In Puducherry's Nellithope constituency where Chief Minister V Narayanasamy is contesting, the polling percentage was around 85. The figures are provisional as the Election Commission has to collate final figures.

Jayalalithaa shifted to special room from ICU CHENNAI: Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa was yesterday to a special room from the Intensive Care Unit in the Apollo Hospitals here, a senior AIADMK leader said."She has been shifted to a special spacious room just now," AIADMK spokesper-son C Ponnaiyan said. Apollo Hospitals Chairman Pratap C. Reddy had earlier said Jayalalithaa is fine and she can go home whenever she chooses to.Reddy had said Jayalalithaa is breath-ing and sleeping well, and is on ventilator only for 15 minutes daily.

NEWS BYTES

Three soldiers dead in Assam ambush

Derek O'Brien and a posse of mediapersons, waited outside the RBI office in central Kolkata for 40 minutes before the officials came out again with some pieces of paper.

An RBI officer told Banerjee they had Rs 5,586 crore worth notes.

But when Banerjee was told that the new Rs 500 notes had arrived only on Friday and were being despatched to banks yes-terday, the Chief Minister remarked "That means not a sin-gle one of them have been given to the people of my state so far."

"Now you are saying you are sending. But will the notes reach people after there are more deaths?", she questioned.

Banerjee also countered the official, when the latter said peo-ple can deposit old Rs 500 notes in banks and take out upto Rs 24,000 from the branches.

"No, they are not allowing. They are not giving. This is not the correct information."

Banerjee told the officials four people have committed sui-cide in the state over the past 48 hours as they could not withdraw money from banks.

"I have no personal griev-ances against any of you. What will you do if they (the govern-ment) don't give you the notes? The government is only lying."

"Situation is very bad. Please ensure notes are available in banks. Otherwise people will not

accept all this," she said.When the official said "We

will try" -- Banerjee shot back, "Madam, try is a vague word."

Banerjee asked them to give her the details of the information she had sought.

As two officials gave her two chits, she said "First calculate. You're giving two separate chits. This means you are not prepared."

She then asked the officials to go back to their office.

The West Bengal Chief Min-ister has been at the forefront of criticism of the Central govern-ment's November 8 move to demonetise 500 and 1,000 rupee notes, and demanded its with-drawal forthwith.

Mumbai

IANS

Maharashtra Navnirman Sena President Raj Thackeray launched a

blistering attack on Prime Min-ister Narendra Modi for the November 8 demonetisation of high-value currency notes and warned that if it fails, the coun-try will be pushed to anarchy.

Questioning government's assertions that preparations for demonetisation of 500 and 1,000 rupee notes were made 10 months in advance, Thackeray said if so, "then how come it (the new notes) bears the signature of the new (RBI) Governor (Urjit Patel)?"

"The BJP has still not submit-ted its election expenditure for the 2014 polls... If there was so much aversion to black money, how did Modi get elected," he asked, directly targeting the Prime Minister.

Denouncing the new decisions announced daily on money with-drawals or deposits in banks, Thackeray claimed it is evident now such a major policy was "rushed through" without making proper studies or adequate groundwork on the implications.

"I have spoken to people in the BJP, I have discussed it with RSS people, nobody seems to be happy about it, but all are keep-ing silent.. Even Mohan Bhagwat has not yet reacted on it... I won-der what's really going on," Thackeray observed, addressing a large meeting of party leaders and grassroots workers.

He demanded why action has not been taken against those hoarding black money and instead ordinary masses are being pun-ished and made to stand in long queues, and more than 40 people have lost their lives.

"There are few ads in print media and on TV there are only commercials by Patanjali (owned by Baba Ramdev)...we know where these come from," Thack-eray said throwing dark hints.

"There was absolutely no planning or preparedness before Modi implemented the demon-etisation... Everybody says it is good for the nation, but even the PM is not telling how we will ben-efit. We can only pray to God that something good comes out.. Because, it it fails, the country will be pushed behind by 20-25 years and be in severe crisis," Thack-eray declared.

MNS chief flays Modifor poor planning

Senior citizens gather outside a bank as they wait to deposit and exchange 500 and 1000 rupee notes in Amritsar, yesterday.

Seeking answers

The West Bengal Chief Minister volleyed a number of questions on RBI officials asking: "How many Rs 100, Rs 50 denomination notes have you in stock? How many old and new Rs 500 notes do you have? How much money is there in the ATMs?

15SUNDAY 20 NOVEMBER 2016 EUROPE

The first urban cable car during its inauguration in Brest, western Fance, yesterday.

Urban cable car

Visitors walk along illuminated objects during the Christmas Garden event at botanic garden in Berlin, Germany.

Green illumination

Fears of delay

Three prominent members of ruling Conservative Party, Oliver Letwin, former Edward Garnier and Dominic Grieve warned that the Supreme Court appeal could delay the triggering of Article 50 of the EU's Lisbon Treaty.

London

AFP

Three prominent mem-bers of British Prime Minister Theresa May’s Conservative Party yesterday urged her to

drop the government’s appeal against a court ruling that par-liament must approve the process to trigger Brexit.

Oliver Letwin, former head of government’s Brexit prepara-tions, former law officer Edward Garnier and former attorney general Dominic Grieve all warned that the Supreme Court

appeal could delay the trigger-ing of Article 50 of the European Union’s Lisbon Treaty, which begins formal exit talks.

The comments come a day after the court ruled the devolved Scottish and Welsh governments will be allowed to intervene in the appeal that is due to take place next month.

Letwin told BBC Radio 4 that the government should scrap the appeal and instead deliver a “fast and tightly time-tabled and constrained bill” to parliament, avoiding “any risk of the Supreme Court deciding to accord the devolved

administrations some rights or even some veto powers”.

Garnier called on May to “avoid an unnecessary legal row” that could pit judges against the government and involve a “lot of unnecessary expense.” Grieve added that he “can’t see the point in the government continuing with the case and... if they enact primary legislation, they will get it through parliament.”

All three were in favour of Britain remaining in the EU, but pro-Brexit former cabinet min-ister Owen Paterson also urged the government to shelve the appeal.

“I wouldn’t have a bet on the government winning this one,” he told BBC Radio 4. “It is not good to have a confrontation with the courts.”

In response, 60 Conservative MPs backed a statement sent to the Daily Telegraph calling on May to seek a full exit from EU institutions, including the single market.

“The UK must leave the European Economic Area (EEA) and the Customs Union,” said the statement, backed by seven former cabinet ministers includ-ing Michael Gove and Iain Duncan Smith.

May initially wanted to use her executive powers to trigger the start of the process without parliamentary approval by the end of March, but the High Court ruling could delay the process.

The initial ruling prompted outrage among Brexit support-ers and parts of the conservative press, with one tabloid branding the judges “Enemies of the peo-ple”—an attack that sparked a fierce controversy.

The concern among the pro-Brexit camp is that pro-European lawmakers will seek to water down the break with the EU and derail May’s timetable.

Vienna

AFP

SEVERAL top Austrian con-servatives yesterday urged voters to shun far-right can-didate Norbert Hoffer in next month’s presidential election, highlighting fears he could take the country out of EU.

In a manifesto published yesterday, senior conserva-tives including former EU agriculture commissioner Franz Fischler and ex-vice chancellor Wilhelm Molterer, both from People’s Party (OeVP), said the next presi-dent must be “dependable”.

To protect its economic vitality, “Austria must remain a trustworthy European and international partner,” they wrote. The manifesto offered support for Hofer’s liberal rival, the independent ecologist Alexander Van der Bellen.

Hofer, who heads the far-right Freedom Party (FPOe), has not ruled out a referen-dum on Austria’s future in the European Union following Britain’s shock vote in June to quit the EU.

“We do not want to be faced with speculation about Austria leaving the EU,” the declaration said, referring to a recent controversy.

Berlin

AP

German Chancellor Angela Merkel (pictured) declared that she feels a

duty to serve her country and Europe, adding fuel to rampant speculation she’ll seek a fourth term when Germany holds a general election next fall.

After she hosted a meeting of outgoing US President Barack Obama and the leaders of Spain, Italy, France and Brit-ain, Merkel was asked by reporters how she sees her short- and long-term responsibilities.

“I want to perform my task as German Chancellor, which on the one hand is to serve the people of Germany, but it also includes working for the cohe-sion and success of Europe,” she replied.

Merkel, 62, is scheduled to hold a news conference late tonight after meeting with sen-ior members of her Christian Democratic Union party.

So far, she has refused to say if she plans to run again

But with Europe facing an unresolved conflict in Ukraine, tough talks over Britain’s exit from the European Union and a politically sensitive influx of migrants, whether Merkel will remain as leader of Europe’s biggest economy has generated interest.

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, who recently won his country’s Parliament’s backing to head a minority gov-ernment after 10 months of political deadlock, said Germa-ny’s stability was important for Europe as a whole.

“It’s fundamental for Europe that things go well in Germany, as fortunately they are at this moment,” he said.

Rajoy noted the headway that populist political groups on both the left and the right have made in Europe lately. In Ger-many, Merkel faces fierce opposition over her decision to take in hundreds of thousands of refugees last year.

“I’m confident, although next year will be a difficult one from an election point of view in Europe, that things will begin returning to normal,” Rajoy said.

Geneva

AFP

The World Health Organi-sation announced that the Zika virus outbreak, linked

to deformations in babies’ heads and brains, no longer poses a world public health emergency, though it warned the epidemic remains a challenge.

Brazil, the epicentre of the outbreak, has however refused to downgrade the risk, while experts swiftly lashed out

against WHO's decision.“The Zika virus remains a

highly significant and long term problem, but it is not any more a public health emergency of international concern,” WHO's emergency committee chair Dr David Heymann said.

While Zika causes only mild symptoms in most people, preg-nant women with the virus risk giving birth to babies with microcephaly—a deformation that leads to abnormally small brains and heads.

Researchers earlier this year warned that at least 2.6 billion people live in parts of Africa, Asia and the Pacific where Zika could gain a new foothold, with 1.2 billion at risk in India alone.

Brazil said it would continue to treat the outbreak as an emergency.

The WHO was careful not to dismiss the risk still posed by the virus, which has been detected in 73 countries worldwide, mainly in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Paris

Reuters

The race for France’s con-servative presidential nomination looked tighter

than ever yesterday, with vot-ing due to begin within 24 hours and polls suggesting whoever emerges on top will make it all the way to the Elysee Palace.

Ahead of today’s vote, which will select two candidates for the decisive November 27 second round, centrist Alain Juppe had lost most or all of his early poll-ing lead as his fellow former prime minister Francois Fillon enjoyed a late surge.

After Britain’s shock “Brexit” vote in June and last week’s elec-tion of Donald Trump as US President, the French election next spring will be the next test of strength between weakened mainstream political forces and rising populist insurgents.

Opinion polls have for months suggested that far-right National Front leader Marine Le Pen will make it to the decisive run-off in May, but that Juppe would beat her if he won the conservative Les Republicains nomination. His lead, however, has been eroded by two party rivals to his right — ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy and Fillon, who served as Sarkozy’s prime min-ister from 2007-2012.

“I can sense a surprise com-ing,” Fillon told supporters at a rally in Paris. He urged them to “shake up” the primaries, win-ning wide applause and shouts of “Fillon for president” from a crowd of over 3,000.

Long trailing in the polls, Fil-lon has come from behind in the past week, making the race even harder to call. He was judged the winner of Thursday’s final tele-vised debate before the weekend vote, an opinion poll showed.

Anyone can vote in the pri-mary, in which there are seven candidates, which opens an already unpredictable contest to tactical participation by left-leaning and far-right voters.

Lack of confidence in poll-sters, who failed to predict Trump’s win and Britain’s vote to quit the EU, has deepened uncertainty surrounding con-servative and Socialist primaries as well as the election itself.

But Juppe was confident that no such upset will happen. “I am not Hillary Clinton,” he said on public radio, “and France is not America”.

Under unpopular President Francois Hollande, France’s rul-ing Socialists are deeply divided and seen as unlikely to get past the presidential election’s first round next April. That would clear the way for whoever clinches the conservative

nomination to face Le Pen in the deciding vote. Juppe is seeking to draw support from centrists and left-wing voters determined to prevent a Sarkozy comeback or Le Pen’s National Front from winning power.

Sarkozy, whose campaign has emphasised law and order, mocked Juppe at a rally in Nimes, southern France, for being too “soft”. “I will be the president who re-establishes the authority of the state,” he said.

Some market analysts have started taking more seriously the possibility Le Pen could become president, an event some believe could weaken or break up the EU and the euro zone.

May’s partymen urge her to drop Brexit appeal

Merkel hints at seeking fourth term

Call to shun vote against Hofer in Austria polls

Zika no longer a health emergency: WHO

French conservatives rally voters for primaries

FROM LEFT: Former prime minister and member of parliament Francois Fillon, former prime minister and Bordeaux's mayor Alain Juppe, and former French president Nicolas Sarkozy.

16 SUNDAY 20 NOVEMBER 2016 EUROPE

Second-hand model railway locomotives are displayed for sale at the Wakefield Railway Modellers' Society's 55th Annual Exhibition in Wakefield, northern England.

Chugging back to history

A stairwell is seen in an apartment block that one of its residents, 65-year-old Volodymyr Chayka, has spent the last five years decorating by himself in an elaborate, old-fashioned style, in a residential district of Kiev, Ukraine.

Best of the past

Security concern

Dutch counterterrorism coordinator Dick Schoof said IS group has 60-80 operatives planted in Europe to carry out attacks.

The would-be fighters are also heeding messages from the militant group “asking them not to come to Syria and Iraq, but to prepare attacks in Europe, Schoof said.

NEW YORK

AP

Intelligence experts estimate that the Islamic State (IS) extremist group has between 60 and 80 oper-atives planted in Europe to

carry out attacks, the Dutch counterterrorism coordinator said yesterday.

Dick Schoof said in an inter-view with The Associated Press that would-be fighters are also heeding messages from the mil-itant group “asking them not to come to Syria and Iraq, but to prepare attacks in Europe.”

One result is that over the last six months the number of “foreign terrorist fighters” hasn’t grown, he said, but the fact that they’re not traveling “does not mean that the potential threat of those who would have traveled is diminished.”

Schoof said military opera-tions to oust the IS from its self-declared caliphate in Syria

and Iraq are scattering the extremist group’s fighters and supporters.

This will probably lead to a gradual increase of refugees

that will pose a danger to the national security of the Neth-erlands and other European countries, he said.

Schoof said even though the Netherlands hasn’t been hit by a major attack by Islamic extrem-ists such as those in Belgium and France, “the chance of attack in the Netherlands is real.”

“We have seen 294 terror-ist fighters go overseas in Iraq and Syria and there are still 190 over there,” he said. “And what happened in France and Brus-sels and Germany could happen to us.”

There are probably between 4,000 and 5,000 European “for-eign terrorist fighters” in Iraq and Syria, Schoof said.

While the number from the Netherlands, a nation of 17 mil-lion people, may seem low, he said, “whether there’s 190 or 350, I think the number is big enough to worry.”

Schoof said the Nether-lands’ program to deal with the

threat balances “repression and prevention” and relies on strong cooperation between local and national authorities.

On the “repression” side, he said, fighters returning from Syria or Iraq are taken into cus-tody, and courts have recently handed down six-year prison sentences in several cases.

The government also takes away passports, freezes assets, and has beefed up security measures and the police force, he said.

On the prevention side, Schoof said, there’s a lot of family support, with local authorities deciding the best interventions and providing education and psychological help if needed — but there also could be arrests.

Jozias van Aartsen, the mayor of The Hague, said build-ing trust and having close relations with the Muslim com-munity is very important.

“They are Dutch citizens,” he

said. “There are some in the Netherlands who say shut down mosques. That’s absolutely wrong policy.”

But Van Aartsen said there is a need for vigilance. “The appa-ratus of local government can be very important as a watchdog against radicalization,” he said.

Schoof stressed that the Netherlands does not tolerate “anti-democratic behaviour.”

“We try to prevent hate preachers coming in by not giv-ing them a visa,” he said.

The government is also con-cerned about the development of an ultraconservative strain of Islam known as Salafism, he said.

Last week, Schoof said, the Federation of Mosques, without any urging, sent a letter to all mosques in the country saying “the mosques themselves must realise that hate speech should not be accepted in the mosques.”

“Those are important signals that you can build on in your trust relationships,” he said.

IS attack threat looms in Europe: Expert

Copenhagen

Reuters

DENMARK'S Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen has decided to invite two allied political parties to join the government ahead of reform negotiations that could lead to a snap election.

Since last year’s election the government has consisted only of Rasmussen’s Liberal Party, which holds just 34 of 179 seats in parliament, mak-ing it difficult at times for him to gain the majority needed to push through policies.

“It is my assessment that the right thing to do would be to invite the Liberal Alliance and the Conservative Party to join the government with our party,” Rasmussen told the audience at his party’s annual convention yesterday.

The government on Friday clinched an overdue budget deal for 2017, but still faces tough negotiations on a broad 10-year financial reform.

A main hurdle for the reform has been a demand by the Liberal Alliance to cut the top rate of income tax by 5 percentage points.

The Liberal Alliance has threatened to topple the gov-ernment if that demand is not met. However, it seems unlikely that Rasmussen will be able to gain support from a majority in parliament for the tax cut.

Pundits have speculated that an invitation to join the government could soften Lib-eral Alliance’s demand, but the party has not signalled that so far.

Rasmussen did not extend his invitation to Danish Peo-ple’s Party, the largest of three parties supporting his gov-ernment. He had analysed the parliamentary situation and concluded it would be best to invite the two other parties, with which his party shares many values, he said.

Agen, France

AFP

A 32-year-old Frenchman was sentenced to life in prison for abuse and

murder of an 80-year-old Brit-ish woman in southwestern France.

Following the murder, Madi Mahaboudi, who has a previ-ous conviction for a 2005 unlawful killing for which he was sentenced to eight years, cut up the body of Violet Price into seven pieces and discarded them in a field.

The court in Agen heard from a medical examiner who said the attack last year on Price had been particularly violent.

“In 15 years of practice, I had never seen such a degree of bruising on the throat and neck,”

he said after having asked mem-bers of the victim’s family to leave the court before reading out the long list of physical inju-ries suffered by Price.

“He’s not someone who really regrets what he’s done,” said the prosecuting attorney.

Mahaboudi, who was said to be addicted to cannabis, was brother of the victim’s daughter-in- law.

On April 11, 2015, he went to Price’s house hoping to find his ex-girlfriend, who had recently left him. Price let him in and offered a cup of coffee, on which his DNA was found.

Mahaboudi also strangled the woman he killed in 2005.

“It was stronger than me,” he said of the urge to murder Price. “I took hold of her neck and squeezed.”

Skopje, Macedonia

AP

Court authorities in Mace-donia named 10 former and active intelligence service

employees, including a former head of the agency, as suspects in the illegal wiretapping of more than 5,800 phone numbers between 2008 and 2015, a scan-dal that plunged the country into a deep political crisis.

The announcement has stoked tensions ahead of next month’s early elections, with the governing conservative party

accusing the prosecutor’s office of working for the opposition.

The special prosecutor’s office said in a statement that it also believes the illegal eaves-dropping continued even after the scandal broke in early 2015, and unknown persons destroyed key evidence of the wiretaps.

The 10, including an unnamed former head of intel-ligence service, are suspected of abuse of power and authority. The special prosecutor’s office said any charges would be brought after conclusion of an investigation into the case.

The large-scale wiretapping scandal, whose 20,000 alleged victims included politicians, journalists, judges, police and religious leaders, was revealed last year by the country’s leftist opposition leader, Zoran Zaev.

He laid blame on conserva-tive former Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski — who governed from 2006 until earlier this year and is running for re-election next month — and former intelligence chief Saso Mijalkov, who is Gruevski’s cousin.

The conservatives deny the charges — fingering unnamed

foreign spies — and accused Zaev of plotting a coup.

The ensuing political crisis, the deepest since Macedonia declared independence from Yugoslavia in 1991, has resulted in early elections now scheduled for December 11 after being twice postponed earlier this year.

Campaigning starts on Mon-day, and Gruevski’s conservative party issued a press release accusing chief special prosecu-tor Katica Janeva’s office of being Zaev’s “extended arm” and inter-fering with the election campaign.

Zaev had published dozens of allegedly illegally wire-taped conversations last year, claim-ing Gruevski and his aides were involved in multi-million cor-ruption deals, fabricating election results and intimidating political opponents.

Prosecutor Fatime Fetai told reporters in the capital Skopje that the special prosecutor’s office has evidence that the unlawful interception of com-munications continued into this year, albeit on a smaller scale, despite the revelations nearly two years ago.

Warsaw

AFP

TEACHERS from all over Poland were amongst thou-sands protesting in Warsaw yesterday against education reforms proposed by the right-wing government that critics say could see thou-sands of jobs slashed.

The demonstrators are also concerned over proposed changes to the school curric-ulum, including the inclusion of “patriotic values” espoused by the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party.

“I call upon Prime Minis-ter Beata Szydlo and the government not to destroy the assets” of the current edu-cation system, said Slawomir Broniarz, head of the main teachers’ union.

Whistle-blowing demon-strators cheered Broniarz at Warsaw’s central Pilsudski Square. They shouted slogans such as “No to chaos in schools”, “Stop education reforms”, and “No to revolu-tion in schools”.

The reforms envisage changing the three-tier school system to just two levels, which means that many high schools will be closed.

Critics say the proposal was drafted in haste and has many flaws.

PARIS

Reuters

In a battle between ancient arts and modern technology, France’s army is teaching

birds of prey to bring down remote-controlled drones when they enter no-go urban airspace.

Four golden eagles are get-ting military training for combat against battery-charged drones that anybody can buy in a local store, and fly into security-sen-sitive zones such as presidential palaces, wittingly or not.

“These eagles can spot the drones several thousand metres away and neutralise them,” Jean-Christophe Zimmerman, a French air force general, told

reporters. The idea, he says, was inspired by Dutch police trials.

The millennium-old art of falconry has an advantage over gun use, he said, in cases where large crowds are present, such as during annual street parades where thousands turn out to see fireworks shows or the coun-try’s president on July 14, a national holiday.

In theory, the birds can grab or at least halt a drone, many of which are now sold in toy shops or stores for enthusiasts of remote-control objects - or would-be militants looking for a way to drop explosives from afar.

The eagles reduce the risk posed by use of bullets in crowded zone, said Zimmerman.

Denmark PM aims to broaden govt

Frenchman gets life for Briton's murder

Macedonia: 10 intelligence staff suspects in wiretap scandalTeachers in Poland decry education reforms

France trains eagles to down drones

17SUNDAY 20 NOVEMBER 2016 AMERICAS

New York

Reuters

PRESIDENT-ELECT Donald Trump on Saturday demanded an apology from the cast of the Broadway hit “Hamilton” for appealing from the stage to Vice-President-elect Mike Pence to uphold American val-ues, with the conservative in the theatre.

“The Theatre must always be a safe and special place. The cast of Hamilton was very rude last night to a very good man, Mike Pence. Apologise!” Trump wrote on Twitter, tak-ing time out from his search for appointees to his incom-ing administration.

“Our wonderful future VP Mike Pence was harassed last night at the theatre by the cast of Hamilton, cameras blaz-ing. This should not happen!” Trump wrote.

Pence was greeted with a mix of boos and cheers as he entered the Richard Rodgers Theater in New York on Friday night to watch a performance of the highly acclaimed musi-cal about the country’s founding fathers, played by a racially diverse cast.

After the show, Brandon Victor Dixon, who plays America’s third vice-presi-dent Aaron Burr, read a statement directed at Pence while standing in front of the cast in full costume.

“We, sir - we - are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents, or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights,” Dixon said. Pence had already begun to leave his seat as Dixon began his remarks, vid-eos posted on social media showed.

Washington

Reuters

US President-elect Donald Trump’s plan to rapidly deport two to three

million illegal immigrants with criminal records would further tax a system already stretched to its limits, current and former US immigration officials say.

Immigration courts, which issue deportation orders, set bond and grant or deny asylum, currently have a backlog of more than 500,000 cases.

Boosting staff could help address the problem but that could prove difficult. Officials at the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security say they have had trouble quickly finding and vetting enough qualified candidates to fill all the positions for judges and immigration agents that Congress has

authorised.The Executive Office of

Immigration Review, which adjudicates immigration cases, has so far been able to fill only 294 judge positions out of the 374 Congress has authorized because the process is slow by necessity. Candidates for the job “face a rigorous screening process comparable to that of the appointment of a US attorney,” said spokeswoman Kathryn Mattingly.

Trump said last week after his election victory that once he takes office he will move to deport or incarcerate up to three million illegal immigrants who have criminal records.

At the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a force of 6,200 agents responsible for arresting and deporting criminal migrants is already spread thin. While some agents

could be redeployed to other areas, more agents would likely need to be hired if deportations were sharply escalated, said an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official who asked not to named. The agency would probably need to add detention space as well, the official added.

More apprehensions of migrants could also strain the Border Patrol, which has struggled to fill open positions. Congress has mandated a force of more than 21,000 border agents, but it currently stands at just over 19,000.

Former US Border Patrol chief Mike Fisher said the agency ran into problems a decade ago after Congress asked it to double the number of Border Patrol agents from 6,000 to 12,000 between 2004 and 2006.

New York

AFP

US President-elect Donald Trump said Saturday that he would pay $25m to settle lawsuits over

alleged fraud at Trump Univer-sity because he is focused on leading the country, dismissing any hint of guilt.

In a sharp about-turn after years of refusing to settle, the real estate billionaire said the amount was a good deal and insisted he would have won the cases had they gone to trial.

“I settled the Trump Uni-versity lawsuit for a small fraction of the potential award because as President I have to focus on our country,” he tweeted.

“The ONLY bad thing about winning the Presidency is that I did not have the time to go through a long but win-ning trial on Trump U. Too bad!” he added. A trio of suits brought by former students in New York and California alleged that the Trump train-ing programme—which was not an accredited college or university, and operated from 2005 to 2011 — fleeced stu-dents by tricking them with aggressive marketing.

Students paid as much as $35,000 to enroll, wrongly believing they would make it big in real estate after being taught by what the Manhattan mogul described as experts he had hand-picked, the suits said.

Trump’s lawyers had coun-tered for years that many students had given the pro-gramme a thumbs-up and those

who failed to succeed had only themselves to blame.

But with the resident-elect apparently seeking to put the thorny matter to rest as he builds his cabinet, a deal was reached.

“Today’s $25m settlement agreement is a stunning reversal by Donald Trump and a major victory for the over 6,000 victims of his fraudulent university,” New York state Attorney General Eric Schnei-derman said.

A spokesperson for Schnei-derman’s office said the settlement covers all three class-action lawsuits against Trump University: two in Cali-fornia dating to 2010 and one in New York filed in 2013.

Robert Guillo, a 76-year-old New Yorker who spent nearly $40,000 on tuition alongside his son, previously told reporters that the pro-gramme was an “absolute scam.” “I learned absolutely nothing,” he said. “He fooled me for $35,000.”

The agreement came just before a hearing in a San Diego federal court was about to begin deciding on Trump’s request to delay the trial.

Washington

Reuters

Energy Transfer Partners LP Chief Executive Officer Kelcy Warren said the

company will not consider rerouting its Dakota Access oil pipeline despite concerns voiced by US native groups.

President Barack Obama said earlier this month the gov-ernment was examining ways to reroute the pipeline.

Energy Transfer did not immediately respond to calls seeking comment. Warren did say that he would like to meet tribal leaders to ease their con-cerns about the project.

The Dakota Access Pipeline h a s b e e n d e l a y e d

since September, when federal regulators including the Army Corps of Engineers decided to re-review permitting under Lake Oahe, a federally owned parcel of land where the pipeline needs to cross.

The stoppage came after protests from the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, whose reservation is adjacent to the federal land where the pipeline runs.

The US Army Corps of Engineers elected to review their permitting again, and this past week deferred a decision, citing concerns about the tribe having been moved off its lands in the past.

Early yesterday, North Dakota Governor Jack Dalrym-ple asked the Army to resolve

the permitting issues, citing pro-tests that have sometimes turned violent at Cannon Ball, where the Standing Rock Sioux have erected a large camp that they plan to man throughout the winter. He also asked for assist-ance in law enforcement from federal authorities.

“Further delays simply pro-long the risks to public safety, prolong the hardships endured by area residents and increase costs incurred by the state of North Dakota and Morton County,” he said in a statement.

The 1,885-km pipeline is expected to take oil from North Dakota’s Bakken shale region to Patoka, Illinois, en route to the Gulf of Mexico.

Anchorage, Alaska

AP

TWO moose were recently discovered frozen in battle and encased in ice near a remote village on Alaska’s unforgiving western coast.

Brad Webster, a middle school teacher in Unalakleet, captured images of the mas-sive animals poking through the ice as they lay on their sides with antlers apparently locked together.

He had taken a friend who recently moved to the village for a walk on Novem-ber 2 near a frozen slough at Covenant Bible Camp, where Webster volunteers as a camp steward. “That’s when we saw it,” he said in a phone interview. He initially thought it was just one moose that had been shot but when he got a closer look, he saw the second moose.

It took him a moment to realise what he was seeing, he said. It was the end of moose rutting season, and the animals likely were fighting over a female moose. Web-ster speculates that one of the animals was wounded by the other animal’s antlers, and perhaps died as their antlers were caught together, drag-ging the rival down with it.

“It was a very interesting experience,” Webster said of the discovery.

Washington

AFP

US President Barack Obama declared por-tions of the Arctic

off-limits for oil exploration for the next five years, dealing a blow to Republican efforts to expand fossil fuel extraction.

The decision means new oil and gas exploration leas-ing in the Chukchi Sea and Beaufort Sea will not be con-sidered until after 2022.

“Given the unique and challenging Arctic environ-ment and industry’s declining interest in the area, forgoing lease sales in the Arctic is the right path forward,” Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said in a statement.

The US government made a similar announcement in March, when it removed the Atlantic Ocean from the five-year road map.

Environmental groups hailed yesterday's decision as historic and coming at a key moment, as President-elect Donald Trump has promised to expand drilling for oil and to revive the American coal industry. “Today’s news couldn’t come at a better time,” said the Sierra Club. “President Obama has pro-tected the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans from Big Oil.” The decision will protect wildlife

migration routes, crucial feed-ing grounds, seafloor habitats and the larger Arctic marine ecosystem, said the Pew Char-itable Trusts.

Oceana’s senior vice pres-ident for the United States, Jackie Savitz, said she was “hopeful” about charting a new course for protecting the Arctic, rather than trying to exploit it.

“The decades-long push to drill in the Arctic has put this unique and diverse ecosystem at risk, cost tens of billions of dollars and created significant controversy without provid-ing the promised benefits,” she said.

“Companies have been given every opportunity to find oil and have failed at every turn because of the extreme conditions and limited win-dow for operations there.”

The US plans offered 11 potential lease sales -- 10 in the Gulf of Mexico and one off the coast of Alaska in the Cook Inlet area.

“The plan focuses lease sales in the best places—those with the highest resource potential, lowest conflict, and established infrastructure—and removes regions that are simply not right to lease,” said Jewell.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, a Republican from Wisconsin, said lawmakers would work to overturn the plan.

Trump defends settlement in fraud lawsuits

Demonstrators march during a protest against plans to pass the Dakota Access pipeline near the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, near Cannon Ball, North Dakota.

Sharp U-turn

In a sharp about-turn after years of refusing to settle, the real estate billionaire said the amount was a good deal and insisted he would have won the cases had they gone to trial.

US President-elect Donald Trump and Vice-President-elect Mike Pence welcome Mitt Romney as he arrives for a day of meetings at the clubhouse of Trump National Golf Club Bedminster, New Jersey, yesterday.

Surge in US deportations could swamp an overtaxed system

Trump demands apology from ‘very rude’ cast of Hamilton show

Dakota Access 'pipeline not to be rerouted'

2 moose found frozen mid-fight near remote Alaska village

Obama bans parts of Arctic off-limits for oil drilling

18 SUNDAY 20 NOVEMBER 2016 AMERICAS

A demonstrator holding a bucket protests over the ongoing drought in the center of La Paz, Bolivia, early yesterday.

Cry for water

Lima

AFP

US President Barack Obama faced tough questions yesterday about Donald Trump’s victory on

the last foreign visit of his pres-idency, to a summit of Pacific leaders that has been upended by the US election and concerns about China’s rise.

The US president and other top world leaders, including Chi-na’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin, are in Lima, Peru for an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit whose staid agenda has been hijacked by Republican billion-aire’s shock election win. .

Obama is set to meet leaders of the 12 countries negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, a vast US-led trade accord that Trump opposes and now

faces an uncertain future.Although the White House

admits the chances of passing the deal are slim, Obama will urge leaders to give the new president time to formulate his policy.

From Obama down, officials have stressed that the election has not changed US economic and strategic interests, and that Trump may yet recalibrate his views.

But there is little chance Trump’s Republican allies in Congress would ratify TPP any-time soon.

“That is a real blow to US interests, economically and stra-tegically, in terms of our position in Asia, but I think that is the reality, that the US is not going to be participating,” said

Matthew Goodman, an expert on Asian economics with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“But there are 11 other coun-tries in TPP and I think that it is possible that they will agree to go ahead and pass TPP,” he added in an interview, saying the others could “tweak” the agree-ment to keep it alive without US participation.

Some allies are turning their attention to a rival Chinese-backed free-trade agreement.

Japanese leader Shinzo Abe, who took domestic political risks to back TPP, visited Trump in New York on Thursday to hear from the president-elect himself.

The real estate mogul has

prompted concern in Japan and South Korea in particular by questioning decades-old mutual defense obligations that under-pin their security.

National Security Advisor Susan Rice said ahead of Obama’s visit that allies should expect those obligations to hold.

“It is manifestly in the United States’ interests for these alli-ances to endure and to be a source of confidence to our part-ners and for them to understand that they don’t need to come out from under the US umbrella,” she told reporters.

Stressing that she did not want to speculate about Trump’s foreign policy, she sought to reassure key US allies in NATO and the Pacific Rim that they will

not be abandoned.Many Pacific countries are

clamouring for deeper trade ties with the rest of the world.

But in the United States and throughout the West, opposition is growing to deals that many say have contributed to jobs being sent overseas.

Obama is likely to make the case that globalisation is a fact of life, and modern trade deals—with sturdy environmental and labor provisions—help shape that trend in the right direction.

Obama is also set to hold talks with the leaders of Russia, Canada, Australia, Peru and, cru-cially, China’s Xi—the final meeting between the leaders of the world’s two largest economic powers.

San Francisco

AFP

A GIANT moving blob of foam filled a street in Santa Clara, California, pro-viding hours of entertainment after a snafu at a fire-suppression system in an airport hangar.

“It looks like a huge foam party gone bad,” an unnamed witness told ABC affiliate KGO television.

The outlet said the foam was at least 10 feet tall at one point as it spilled out of the building, a new private jet hangar at San Jose airport, and filled the equivalent of an entire city block.

One man biked through it, emerg-ing covered in the white stuff.

“It just feels like soap,” the man said. “Kind of smells like it too.”

The San Jose Fire Department said the foam, a fire retardant usually used to put out blazes, oozed out due to an alarm malfunction.

Bogota

AFP

The deaths of two Colom-bian guerrillas sparked fears this week that the

country’s fragile peace process could be in peril after voters rejected an accord to end the half-century conflict.

Colombian authorities said the two fighters of the Revolu-tionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) died Sunday in a clash with the army.

They were the FARC’s first fatalities since the government joined it in a bilateral ceasefire in August—though the rebels cast doubt on whether fighting had taken place.

“This shows how fragile the bilateral ceasefire is,” said Ariel Avila, an analyst at the Peace and Reconciliation Foundation.

The FARC had gathered its members in special demobili-sation camps to await the final approval of the accord. But the “No” vote on October 2 threw their future into uncertainty.

The government and the FARC announced a new deal on November 12, but the level of support it enjoys remains unclear.

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos himself warned in announcing the new agree-ment that “the ceasefire is fragile.”

“The uncertainty generates fear and increases the risk of this immense effort being thrown away,” he said.

Some sources suggested the FARC members were killed while extorting money from civilians, as the FARC have done

to raise funds in the past.Avila warned the ceasefire

“could break down... because the conditions for the gather-ing of the forces are not clear, or because the FARC in their camps are out of money and are trying to raise funds.”

Senior FARC commander Carlos Antonio Lozada said the force demanded “a forensic investigation to determine whether there was fighting or not,” in a video message released on Thursday.

United Nations observers are in Colombia preparing to monitor the FARC’s demobili-sation under the hoped-for accord.

The monitoring body, grouping UN, Colombian gov-e r n m e n t a n d F A R C representatives, expressed “concern” over the possible impact of Sunday’s deaths.

In a statement, the monitor said it was investigating and would make “the necessary recommendations so that this kind of incident does not occur again.”

The UN High Commission for Human Rights representa-tive in Colombia, Todd Howland, warned that violence was rising in former conflict zones.

Criminal groups are seek-ing to fill the “power vacuum” left by the FARC when it regrouped to disarm, he said.

Sunday’s violence alone was “not enough to break down the ceasefire,” said Frederic Masse, an expert at Bogota’s Externado University.

“But it must not be repeated too often,” he told reporters.

New York

Reuters

Two nephews of Venezue-la’s first lady were found guilty on US charges that

they tried to carry out a multi-million-dollar drug deal to obtain a large amount of cash to help their family stay in power.

Franqui Francisco Flores de Freitas and Efrain Antonio Campo Flores, nephews of Cilia Flores, wife of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, were convicted by a federal jury in Manhattan of conspiring to import cocaine into the United States.

The case has been an embar-rassment for Maduro amid economic and political crises in the South American nation. The case was one of several in which US prosecutors have linked

individuals tied to Venezuelan government to drug trafficking.

They face up to life in prison when they are sentenced. Their lawyers indicated in court they planned to file post-trial motions challenging convictions, though did not specify on what grounds.

“Our client’s obviously disap-pointed, but we want to see what next steps are,” said Randall Jack-son, a lawyer for Campo Flores.

Flores de Freitas, 31, and Campo Flores, 30, were arrested in Haiti in November 2015 and flown to the US following a sting opera-tion orchestrated by US Drug Enforcement Administration.

Prosecutors said the two men plotted to use a Venezue-lan airport’s presidential hangar to send 800 kgs of cocaine to Honduras for shipment into the United States.

Prosecutors said recordings of meetings with two DEA informants showed the nephews wanted cash to counteract money they believed the US was supplying to opposition before Venezuela’s December 2015 National Assembly elections.

Maduro’s Socialist Party lost its parliamentary majority after the election.

Defence lawyers said neither man was sophisticated enough to have carried out such a mas-sive drug transaction, nor did either intend for any drugs to be shipped into the United States.

The government of Venezuela has not commented on the trial and did not respond to a request for comment on the verdict. Last January, the Venezuelan first lady said her nephews were kidnapped by US authorities.

David Rody, a lawyer for Flores de Freitas, told jurors much of the evidence came from a paid DEA informant posing as a Mexican cartel member who later pleaded guilty to lying to the government to engage in drug trafficking himself.

The informant, Jose Santos-Pena, subsequently testified at trial under the terms of a coop-eration agreement with the US government that would have helped him avoid a lengthy prison sentence if he testified truthfully.

But after defence lawyers presented evidence they said showed he was lying on the stand and orchestrating drug deals from prison prosecutors took unusual step of announc-ing Santos-Pena’s cooperation deal would be ripped up.

Obama faces tough questions about Trump TPP deal meet

The US President planned to meet leaders of the 12 countries in Lima, Peru negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a vast US-led trade accord that Trump opposes and now faces an uncertain future.

A TV cameraman films fire retardant foam blowing in the wind after a fire alarm malfunctioned in a hangar, near the San Jose airport in Santa Clara, California.

Giant blob of foam fills California street

New deaths spark fears for fragile Colombia ceasefire

Venezuelan first lady’s kin convicted in drug trial

Acapulco, Mexico AFP

Gunmen have kidnapped at least 12 people, includ-ing two children, in a

southern Mexican region where gangs have perpetrated a series of mass abductions, authorities said early yesterday.

The van that was used to transport the group was found burnt on a road between the hamlets of San Jeronimo and San Cristobal, Guerrero state security spokesman Roberto Alvarez said, citing witnesses.

He spoke of around 30 armed people who abducted “a group of between 12 and 14 people.”

Some of the relatives of the

missing have received phone calls from kidnappers demand-ing ransom money.

The abduction may have been perpetrated by a criminal group known as Los Tequileros, Alvarez said.

The mass kidnapping took place in a region known as Tierra Caliente, or Hot Land, where 21 men were kidnapped in January and found alive days later. That same month, four teachers who had been kid-napped elsewhere were rescued, while another was found dead.

Another 21 people were kid-napped and later rescued by police in a cave in the same region in early 2015, and 13 sus-pects were arrested.

“There has been a phenom-enon in Tierra Caliente, which is a very poor, rural and isolated area, of mass kidnappings by members of organized crime who are doing business with this type of crime,” Alvarez said.

Police have detained kid-nappers, “but this phenomenon continues to defy the authori-ties,” he said.

Such kidnappings show that gangs specialising in kidnap-pings are no longer targeting just wealthy victims in Mexico.

Officials at the state prose-cutor’s office say Los Tequileros are hired guns of the Guerreros Unidos drug cartel, which con-trols much of the opium poppy production and heroin smug-gling in the region.

Gunmen kidnap 12 people in southern Mexico

19SUNDAY 20 NOVEMBER 2016 HOME

FAJRSHOROOK

04.34 am

05.54 am

ZUHRASR

11.19 am

02.23 pm

MAGHRIBISHA

04.46 pm

06.16 pm

PRAYER TIMINGS

www.thepeninsulaqatar.com

LATEST NEWSUPDATE

HIGH TIDE 09:15 - 21:30 LOW TIDE 01:15 - 17:30

Expected strong wind and high

seas. Hazy to misty at places at first

becomes mild daytime with slight

dust and some clouds, relatively

cold by night.

WEATHER TODAY

Minimum Maximum

Courtesy: Qatar Meteorology Department

21oC 30o C

The Peninsula

United Development Com-pany (UDC), a Qatari leading shareholding company and master developer of The Pearl-

Qatar, is continuing its series of successful family entertainment events held during weekends at its iconic Island destination, with a second Kids Fashion Show dedicated to children’s couture which was held last Friday.

Sponsored by Blue Salon Kids, Mimisol and Barcarola boutique for clothing and Trinity Talent Qatar for young models, catwalk training and music, the event featured little fash-ionistas which strutted the runway at the internal shopping arcade in 1 La Croisette, allowing parents and chil-dren to visit Blue Salon Kids and Mimisol’s nearby stores and Barcarola boutique in 18 La Croisette to view the complete winter season’s collections after the show.

While the collections for

the runway, focused on warm winter colours, rich season fabrics and a mix of sporty and elegant fashion picks for boys and girls, the line-up was meant to encourage parents to embrace mix-and-match tips and tricks to dress up their little ones for any occasion.

This fashion show was hosted as part of UDC’s on-going efforts to build synergies with retail tenants at its flag-ship development, while maximising exposure of their offerings to the increasing number of visitors during peak weekend hours.

A stunning showcase of talent staged by little stars of various ages and nationalities – the second Kids Fashion Show was seen by all retail-ers at The Pearl-Qatar as a spectacular treat for shoppers and a magnet for families.

Creative Party offered water, pop corn and cotton candy for the fashion show audience while KobecoConcept created a both elegant and joyful setup for kids and their families. Makeup District extended hair and make up

service for all children models and Hospitality Development Company offered event catering and gift vouch-ers for kid models.

All other children attending the event were treated to goodie bags sponsored by Tickles and Giggles and Cool de Sac at The Pearl-Qatar and Twyla Nursery participated with a table stand showcasing its unique, one-of-a-kind preschool concept in Qatar at The Pearl.

The idea of the show is to give chil-dren confidence and help instill in

them the values of team work and dis-cipline, alongside the opportunity to embrace the limelight within a fash-ion event of this caliber.

The Pearl-Qatar where the fash-ion show event took place is a unique and innovative urban development in Qatar that portrays a glamorous water-front lifestyle for both its residents and visitors. This architectural marvel in the form of an island offers several types of accommodation and residen-tial districts with lavish retail, marinas and entertainment facilities.

Kids take to the ramp at UDC fashion show

Kids showcasing the collection.

20 SUNDAY 20 NOVEMBER 2016 HOME