TUESDAY 26 JANUARY 2021 www.thepeninsula.qa13 JUMADA II - 1442 VOLUME 25 NUMBER 8514

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Business | 01

2 RIYALS

Included withtoday’s edition is a

special supplement

Deputy Amir meets Chairman of Total

Deputy Amir H H Sheikh Abdullah bin Hamad Al Thani met, at the Amiri Diwan office yesterday morning, with the Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Total, Patrick Pouyanne, and the accompanying delegation who called on H H the Deputy Amir to greet him on the occasion of his visit to the country. They reviewed cooperation relations between the State of Qatar and Total and means of enhancing and developing them.

Qatar-India trade volume to soon return to pre-COVID-19 levelSANAULLAH ATAULLAH THE PENINSULA

Ambassador of India to Qatar, H E Dr. Deepak Mittal has said Qatar-India trade volume is expected to return to pre-COVID-19 level by middle of this year.

“Bilateral trade between Qatar and India crossed $11bn in 2019. Despite COVID-19 chal-lenges the trade volume between two countries from April to November in 2020 was about $7bn which was a good growth,” H E Dr. Deepak Mittal told The Peninsula.

The Ambassador said that he hoped that the bilateral trade volume might return to pre-COVID-19 level by the middle of current year. “Now we feel that

we will be able to go back by the middle of 2021 to full pre-COVID-19 time,” said Dr. Mittal.

He said production in India already beaten the slowdown during the pandemic. “India should see its growth rate hitting the pre-pandemic level, which had been about seven to eight percent. We are confident of going towards it which is good for India and Qatar to boost bilateral trade,” said Dr. Mittal.

Speaking about the com-modities which are being traded between two countries, the Ambassador said: “We do exchange energy, electric appli-ances, foods, beverages, chem-icals, textile, pharmaceuticals, construction materials among many more.” He said in 2020, India has been among the top

three destinations for exports from Qatar.

“We have very strong rela-tions with Qatar especially in investment and trade sectors ... we both India and Qatar are looking into how to diversify our trade further.

“We do have a very strong energy partnership. Now we are thinking why the partnership is limited to energy, why not to look into diversification of trade and to complement each other and participate in ensuring food security and healthcare devel-opments,” said Dr. Mittal.

He said 2021 looks good as it began with all positive develop-ments in the region. “We expect the vaccination drive taking place in Qatar and India will bring more strength towards work and

business,” said the Ambassador.Speaking about 72nd

Republic Day of India which falls on January 26 (today), the Ambassador said the event will be celebrated with fun and

fervour following COVID-19 pro-tocol in a safe environment.

“The event will begin with flag hoisting at the premises of Indian Embassy in Doha by 8am. A small reception will be

held for limited number of people,” said Dr. Mittal.

He said the flag hoisting cer-emony will be live streamed on official Facebook account of Indian Embassy enabling maximum members of Indian expatriate community to participate.

To a question about the pro-gramme of the Trade Promotion Council of India (TPCI), the Ambassador said the Council is involved in holding promotional events regularly to promote Indian products in Qatar.

“Last year, because of the pandemic, we could not hold physical exhibitions and events. We have been doing a lot of activities virtually. With gradual lifting of COVID-19 restrictions more activities will be organised,” said Dr. Mittal.

Police College to move to new premises by AprilSIDI MOHAMED THE PENINSULA

Director-General of the Police College, Brigadier Dr. Mohammed Abdullah Al Muhana Al Marri, has said that the Police College will move to new premises with more training and educational facil-ities in April this year.

He added that the Police College will witness many developments in the coming

years adding it will move to new buildings during April or June.

Speaking to Qatar Radio yes-terday, Al Marri said: “When the Police College is transformed into an academy by 2023, it will have under its umbrella Ras Laffan College, College of Graduate Studies, Institute for Women’s Police, Institute for Police Officers, Research Centers, Police Training Institute, and many centers that include various training sectors

in the Ministry of Interior (MoI).”He also pointed out that a

number of new buildings and educational facilities will be added to the new academy. “The Police College provides a pio-neering educational envi-ronment in preparing and qual-ifying officers. The higher-ups of the MioI had made it clear at the time of the college’s foun-dation and had set futures plans for it in terms of its future devel-opment and expansion,” he said.

Dr. Al Marri explained the graduates will be able to com-plete their MA or PhD studies in Police Sciences/Legal Studies. The courses are evaluated every semester.

He said that the college has achieved many of its objectives including development of cadres of police officers who are qualified and scientifically and practically trained in the rel-evant legal and policing fields, in addition to conducting

researches and studies which serve national and regional security needs.

The College provides a learning environment which contributes to the preparation and education of police officers and make use of the available resources at the College.

Recently, 112 candidtes, among them 93 Qatarisgrad-uated from the College. Among them 19 were from Jordan, Pal-estine and Yemen.

Qatar healthcare system ranked best in regionIRFAN BUKHARI THE PENINSULA

Owing to continuous invest-ments and timely chalked-out strategies by the State, Qatar’s healthcare system has become the best in the region.

Qatar has been ranked among top 20 countries in Numbeo Healthcare Index by Country 2021, scoring 73 points. Taiwan is at number one glo-bally among 93 countries covered in the survey.

Other countries in top 20 include South Korea, France, Japan, Denmark, Spain, Austria, Thailand, Australia, Finland, Netherlands, Norway, Czech Republic, Belgium, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Germany, Israel and New Zealand.

The scoring has been done seeing different aspects of healthcare system from skills of medical staff to equipment used in facilities. Qatar’s scores in dif-ferent components, covered in the survey, are as follows: Skill and competency of medical staff, 68.23 (high); speed in completing examination and reports, 69.66 (high); equipment for modern diagnosis and treatment, 88.28 (very high); accuracy and com-pleteness in filling out reports, 69.53 (high); friendliness and courtesy of the staff, 76.16 (high); satisfaction with responsiveness (waiting) in medical institutions, 56.35 (moderate); satisfaction with cost, 75.00 (high); and con-venience of location, 78.82 (high).

Healthcare Index is an esti-mation of the overall quality of

the healthcare system, healthcare professionals, equipment, staff, doctors, cost, etc. To present survey result, Numbeo used the scale (0, 100) for values since it is easier to read for users.

In the survey, Doha has also emerged as first in the GCC scoring 72.94 on Numbeo Healthcare Index by City 2021.

Doha’s scores in different components of the survey are as follows: Skill and competency of medical staff, 68.18 (high); speed in completing exami-nation and reports, 70.00 (high); equipment for modern diagnosis and treatment, 88.19 (very high); accuracy and completeness in filling out reports, 69.49 (high); friendliness and courtesy of the staff, 75.98 (high).

Qatar University plans toopen branches in Asianand African countriesQNA — DOHA

Qatar University President Dr. Hassan Rashid Al Derham told the Shura Council yesterday that there are plans to develop technical research at the university, including estab-lishing the Qatar University technical company.

Dr. Al Derham said the project had reached advanced stages with the Ministry of Commerce and Industry (MoCI). He also disclosed plans to establish the Qatar University knowledge group, a

consultancy office for gov-ernment agencies, and others.

Dr. Derham made this known while honouring an invitation from the Speaker of the Shura Council H E Ahmed bin Abdullah bin Zaid Al Mahmoud. The Shura Council held its regular weekly meeting under the chairmanship of Speaker Al Mahmoud.

During his session with the Council, the QU President also disclosed that the university is working on a university endowment project to enhance its financial sustain-

ability. He said studies on it are close to completion. He also announced plans to establish branches of Qatar University in several Asian and African countries.

Dr. Al Derham explained the univer-sity’s strategy from 2018 to 2022, its goals, and future plans. He highlighted the framework for organising basic and enabling strategies for the university’s t r a n s f o r m a t i v e process and its most prominent initiatives, expressing the uni-versity’s appreciation for the care and attention it has received from the state’s leadership since its estab-lishment. He added: “We have a clear vision and message.”

Meanwhile, the Speaker of the Shura

Council welcomed the QU Pres-ident and extended his thanks and appreciation to the Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani for his interest and spon-sorship of university education in the country.

Speaker Al Mahmoud praised the development and expansion Qatar University is witnessing and the remarkable progress it has made in uni-versity rankings at the Arab and international levels.

The Shura Council focused on increasing the percentage of Qatari professors at the uni-versity and the importance of scrutinising the teaching staff’s selection and paying attention to the Qatari administrative cadres. There were also remarks about the significance of developing Qatari adminis-trative cadres to assume lead-ership positions at the university.

The session also discussed graduating the good and scien-tifically qualified and how the university’s scientific studies and research are linked to Qatar’s strategic development plans and its needs for qualified cadres.

They also talked about the university’s development in establishing faculties of med-icine, pharmacy, dental med-icine, and health sciences and the extent of Qatari students’ interest in joining these col-leges, and the importance of benefiting from retired Qatari cadres in the areas in which the university sees the potential to benefit from their expertise. There were also remarks made on the grades required to accept Qatari stu-dents. �P2

Qatar University is working on a university endowment project to enhance its financial sustainability. Studies on it are close to com-pletion. QU plans to establish branches of Qatar University in several Asian and African countries.

We have very strong relations with Qatar especially in investment and trade sectors ... both India and Qatar are looking into how to diversify our trade further.

Dr. Hassan Rashid Al DerhamQatar University President

Dr. Deepak MittalAmbassador of India to Qatar.

OFFICIAL NEWS

02 TUESDAY 26 JANUARY 2021HOME

Qatar strongly condemns attempt to target Riyadh cityDOHA: The State of Qatar has

expressed its strong condem-

nation and denunciation of the

attempt that targeted the city of

Riyadh in the sisterly Kingdom of

Saudi Arabia, and considered it “a

dangerous act against civilians,

which contradicts all international

norms and laws.” In a statement

issued yesterday, the Ministry of

Foreign Affairs reiterated the State

of Qatar’s firm position of rejecting

violence, terrorism and criminal

acts, regardless of the motives

and reasons. — QNA

Prime Minister meets Chairman of Total

Prime Minister and Minister of Interior H E Sheikh Khalid bin Khalifa bin Abdulaziz Al Thani met yesterday morning with the Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Total, Patrick Pouyanne, and the accompanying delegation. During the meeting, they reviewed areas of existing cooperation between the State of Qatar and Total as well as means of developing it, in addition to a number of issues of mutual interest.

Minister of Administrative Development meets

Somalia’s Minister of Labor and Social AffairsMinister of Administrative Development, Labor and Social Affairs H E Yousuf Mohammed Al Othman Fakhroo met yesterday with Minister of Labor and Social Affairs of the Federal Republic of Somalia H E Duran Ahmed Farah, and the accompanying delegation currently visiting the country. During the meeting, they reviewed aspects of joint cooperation in the field of labor and social affairs, and ways to support and develop them.

QA expands Africa network with over 100 weekly flightsTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Qatar Airways continues to be the leading global carrier connecting Africa, operating one of the largest and most reliable networks in the region.

Having become the largest international carrier during the early stages of the pandemic, the airline has applied its unri-valled knowledge of global pas-senger flows and booking trends to rebuild its Africa network to 23 destinations and more than 100 weekly flights.

Qatar Airways Group Chief Executive H E Akbar Al Baker, said: “We are proud to be the

leading international carrier connecting Africa with Asia-Pacific, Europe, the Middle East and the US, offering more flexible travel options and a global network of flights that passengers, trade and business partners can rely on. Having launched three new destina-tions in Africa with Abuja, Accra and Luanda joining our network in 2020, we continue to dem-onstrate our commitment to the region by adding new routes and steadily increasing fre-quencies across the continent. With the resumption of Alex-andria and Cairo, we will operate over 100 weekly flights

to and from Africa with connec-tions via the Best Airport in the Middle East, Hamad Interna-tional Airport, to our global network of over 120 destina-tions. As global travel recovers in 2021, we look forward to further expanding our network and offering more connections to and from Africa.”

In line with the airline’s steady rebuild of its Africa network, Qatar Airways plans to increase frequencies to the following destinations: Alex-andria (two weekly flights resumed January 25); Cairo (up to 16 weekly flights resumed January 18); Cape Town

(increasing to five weekly flights from February 1); Casablanca (increased to five weekly flights from January 21); Durban (increasing to three weekly flights from February 14); Johannesburg (increasing to 18 weekly flights from January 26); Maputo (increasing to three weekly flights from February 14); and Tunis (increased to five weekly flights from January 24).

The national carrier of the State of Qatar continues to rebuild its network, which cur-rently stands at over 120 desti-nations with plans to increase to over 130 by the end of March 2021. Qatar Airways has

become the first global airline in the world to achieve the pres-tigious 5-Star COVID-19 Airline Safety Rating by international air transport rating organi-sation, Skytrax. This follows HIA’s re-cent success as the first airport in the Middle East and Asia to be awarded a Skytrax 5-Star COVID-19 Airport Safety Rating.

Passengers can book flights with peace of mind, knowing that Qatar Airways offers unlimited date changes and fee-free refunds for all tickets issued before April 30, 2021, for travel completed by December 31, 2021.

QNCECS holds

symposium on

Arabic languageQNA — DOHA

Qatar National Commission for Education, Culture and Science (QNCECS), in cooper-ation with the College of Law at Qatar University, and the Qatari Authors Forum, organized a symposium about ‘The Arabic Language from Legal Protection to Community Empowerment’, via video conference tech-nology.

The symposium discussed two main ideas, the special nature of the language of law, the legal structure of provi-sions, and the scope of legal protection for the language by international law.

Associate Dean for Aca-demic Affairs Dr. Khalid Saleh Al Shammari; Head of the International and Regional Organizations Department at QNCECS Abdullah Khamis Al Kubaisi and Director General of the Qatari Authors Forum Maryam Al Hammadi partici-pated in the symposium.

In a speech, Al Kubaisi referred to the global, regional and local cultural variables that have placed the Arabic language in front of many challenges that threaten its integrity, status, influences and cultural and civilizational role in preserving the nation’s identity and historical heritage.

Amir receives call from President of Guyana

DOHA: Amir H H Sheikh Tamim

bin Hamad Al Thani received a

phone call from President of the

Co-operative Republic of Guyana

H E Dr. Irfaan Ali, during which he

expressed his thanks and appre-

ciation to His Highness for the

medical aid the State of Qatar

provided to Guyana in support of

its efforts to combat the corona-

virus (COVID-19) epidemic. The

call dealt with reviewing bilateral

relations between the two coun-

tries and the means to enhance

and develop them, in addition to

reviewing a number of issues of

joint interest. — QNA

EAA Foundation, partners host global event to mark International Day of EducationTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

To mark the International Day of Education, Education Above All Foundation (EAA) virtually brought together learners, education decision-makers and thought leaders from across the globe to discuss how education should be rebuilt and reshaped globally following the devas-tating impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Sunday.

With the right to education of nearly 1.6 billion learners in over 190 countries impacted by the pandemic, the virtual event — titled “Education, a key to post COVID-19 pandemic

recovery: How can we prevent a generational catastrophe?” — saw the participation of H E Lolwah R M Al Khater, Assistant Foreign Minister and Spokes-person for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; Maria Victoria Angulo Gonzalez, Minister of National Education of Colombia; Robert Jenkins, Global Chief of Education at UNnicef; Dr. Mamadou Dian Balde, Deputy Director, Division of Resilience and Solutions, UNHCR; and Marie-Ange Sar-aka-Yao, Managing Director at Gavi, in addition to key global figures including Shakira, Unicef Goodwill Ambassador

and Founder of The Barefoot Foundation; and Karen Bryson MBE, British Actor and advocate for the rights of women and children, who discussed the global commitment to rebuild education during two subse-quent sessions.

Ahead of the International Day of Education, EAA launched its #BuildBackEducation cam-paign under the umbrella of #UniteToProtect, to raise global awareness for the urgent need to build back education, as a central element to the global COVID-19 recovery process.

Covering key areas such as access, safety, financing,

education technology and the digital divide, the campaign will run for a further three months to urge the international com-munity to join efforts to #BuildBackEducation.

Shakira, UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador and Founder of The Barefoot Foundation, said: “School is a place of safety and of nourishment for children. Even before COVID-19, the world was already in an edu-cation crisis. To now truly recover, we must promote accessible, quality, inclusive, and equitable education for all.”

In her keynote speech, H E Lolwah Al Khater, said: “2020

was an exceptional year for the international community, which saw progress impeded. Through the pandemic, almost 90 percent of students worldwide have been affected by school closures. It also exacerbated the inequalities we have been grap-pling with throughout the last decades.

“Our discussion today should outline a new future for education. By exposing the brittle areas of the sector, we must aim to build back resilient education systems. We are here because we know there is no one-size-fits all solution. Together, we must work to

secure a prosperous future for all students globally.”

Robert Jenkins siad: “The pandemic and subsequent dis-ruptions to learning show how important schools are in a very holistic way. We need to remember that schools provide a wide range of services that must cover all children – and that we need to rebuild stronger.” The virtual event, that was held as part of the Youth-TalkEd series, was concluded with a promise of a list of rec-ommendations for young people across the world, to empower them to pursue education advocacy at a grassroots level.

Authorities bust home car repair workshopTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

The Ministry of Commerce and Industry (MoCI), with the Ministry of the Interior (MoI), carried out an inspection campaign on a car repair workshop operating without a commercial license in a house in Al Aziziyah. This action violates Law No. (25) of 2005 on Commercial Registration and Law No. (5) of 2015 on Commercial, Industrial and Similar Public Shops, and Street Vendors.

The inspection resulted in the seizure and reporting of several violations, including

starting and practicing an activity without a commercial license (a car repair workshop), as well as not following public and private rules. Legal actions were taken against the violators.

The campaign forms part of the Ministry’s efforts to monitor and regulate markets and com-mercial activities across Qatar and assess the degree of com-pliance with laws and regula-tions governing commercial activities to uncover and crackdown on violations.

The Ministry stressed that it would not tolerate any negli-gence in meeting obligations

stipulated in Law No. (25) of 2005 and Law No. (5) of 2015. It would intensify its inspection campaigns to crack down on such practices. Any party that violates laws and Ministerial decisions will be referred to the relevant authorities, who would take appropriate measures to protect consumer rights.

The Ministry has urged all merchants and shopkeepers to comply with applicable laws and regulations governing com-mercial activities. To avoid legal accountability, vendors are advised to review all applicable laws and regulations on the Ministry’s website. The workshop was set up in a home in violation of commercial rules.

MoPH: 277 new virus cases, 123 recoveries THE PENINSULA — DOHA

The Ministry of Public Health yesterday announced the registration of 277 new confirmed cases of COVID-19. Among them 18 are from travellers returning from abroad.

Also 123 people have recovered from the virus bringing the total number of cases recovered in Qatar to 144,981.

All new cases have been introduced to isolation and are receiving necessary

healthcare according to their health status.

The Ministry further said that measures to tackle COVID-19 in Qatar have succeeded in flattening the curve and limiting the spread of the virus and the number of new daily cases and hospital admissions is continuing to decline each week.

Qatar’s proactive and extensive testing of suspected cases has enabled us to identify a high number of pos-itive cases in the community.

Qatar University plans toopen branches in Asianand African countries

FROM PAGE 1

Replying to the Council’s questions and inquiries, the QU President said the university pays attention to the identity, traditions, and customs of the Qatari society, Arab culture, and Islamic values and has ambitious plans to develop the social and human sciences. He disclosed the number of uni-versity students, the per-centage of Qatari students, the number of faculty members, the percentage of Qatari pro-fessors at the university, and the efforts made to attract more Qataris to work in the teaching staff. Dr. Al Derham stressed that the university has a stimulating and encouraging environment to work despite other institutions’ attractive offers.

Dr. Al Derham praised the existing cooperation between

the university represented by its Board of Trustees chaired by the Deputy Amir H H Sheikh Abdullah bin Hamad Al Thani and the Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Com-munity Development (QF) headed by the Chairperson of the QF H H Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, and Vice-Chairperson and CEO of QF H E Sheikha Hind bint Hamad Al Thani.

The QU President praised the fruitful discussions during the sessions and the remarks made by members of the Shura Council, adding that they will be taken under consideration.

The Speaker of the Shura Council thanked the QU Pres-ident and his deputies after the session, wishing the university further progress and devel-opment in serving the country and providing it with capable national cadres.

Qatar healthcare system ranked best in regionFROM PAGE 1

Doha’s score in other components are satisfaction with responsiveness (waiting) in medical institutions, 56.40 (moderate); satisfaction with cost, 74.80 (high); convenience of location, 78.65 (high).

It is to be noted that improved life expectancy, better health outcomes, and investment in health infrastructure had ranked Qatar as 5th in the world for health in Legatum Prosperity Index in 2019. Qatar was the only country in the region to score in the top five on the annual prosperity index.

Amir sends congratulations to President of Uganda

DOHA: Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin

Hamad Al Thani and Deputy Amir

H H Sheikh Abdullah bin Hamad

Al Thani sent yesterday cables

of congratulations to President

of the Republic of Uganda H E

Yoweri Kaguta Museveni on the

occasion of winning a new pres-

idential term. — QNA

03TUESDAY 26 JANUARY 2021 HOME

GAC to celebrate

Customs Day

QNA — DOHA

The General Authority of Customs (GAC) will celebrate International Customs Day today, commemorated on January 26 every year, by organising various events at the Customs Training Center in Hamad Port.

The event aims at enhancing its participation in this day, which is celebrated under the slogan “Customs bolstering Recovery, Renewal, and Resilience for a sus-tainable supply chain.”

During the event, the GAC will honour its distinguished employees, including distin-guished customs inspectors, graduates of customs employees who have a bach-elor’s degree in border man-agement, and graduates with a diploma in customs sciences from the Community College, in addition to government and private partner and cooper-ating agencies.

'Ministry developed effective plans for continuity of education amid pandemic' QNA — DOHA

Qatar National Commission for Education, Culture and Science (QNCECS) celebrated Interna-tional Day of Education 2021 virtually, under the theme ‘Recover and Revitalize Education for the COVID-19 Generation,’ in cooperation with the Unesco Doha Office and the College of the North Atlantic.

The event was held with the participation of the Educational Guidance Department at the Ministry of Education and Higher Education, schools affil-iated with Unesco, the Unicif Doha office, the Tunisian National Committee, the Omani

National Commission, Qatar University, and Education Above All Foundation.

At the beginning of the cer-emony, Secretary-General of QNCECS Dr. Hamda Hassan Al Sulaiti welcomed everyone during her speech to the virtual gathering to celebrate Interna-tional Day of Education.

She pointed out that this year’s celebrations were held under exceptional circum-stances worldwide due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused the largest disruption in the education system in history and disrupted the edu-cational process as it caused the closure of schools,

universities and educational institutions, affecting about 1.6 billion students in more than 190 countries around the world, and the closure of schools and universities affected 94% of students in the world, a percentage that rises to 99% in low-income and middle-income countries.

Al Sulaiti explained that the world has undergone and is now going through challenges in the educational process in particular, due to the many challenges that the pandemic has created, the most important of which was the difficulty of providing direct learning for students.

Therefore, she added, the Ministry of Education and Higher Education has developed several plans and effective alternatives for different levels and classes to ensure that stu-dents continue their education and not fail to complete their school year.

Director of the Unesco Regional Office in Doha, Dr. Anna Pollini, said under the theme ‘Recover and Revitalize Education for the COVID-19 Generation,’ a plan was developed to celebrate Inter-national Education Day along three main segments: learning heroes innovations and financing.

She said the global event will highlight international cooperation and solidarity to bring lifelong education and learning core of disaster recovery.

Dr. Pollini called on states and their officials to provide a properly funded education recovery package to respond to the scale of the crisis, which has been exacerbated by inequality in many countries around the world.

Dr. Muthana Al Kubaisi, from the College of the North Atlantic, spoke about the col-lege’s experience in distance learning in the context of the pandemic, and addressed the

most prominent challenges faced by the College since the beginning of the crisis, in addition to technological support, adding that since the infrastructure was ready a long time ago, they were able to train students and teachers to use the right technology systems quickly.

The International Day of Education, which is marked on January 24, is the culmination of the will of the world to improve education standards and eliminate illiteracy, and it emphasizes the importance of education for sustainable (social and economic) development in the world.

HMC telemedicine service received 197,000 calls in 2020THE PENINSULA — DOHA

Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) held an event at Itqan Clinical Simulation and Inno-vation Center to celebrate the success of the Urgent Consul-tation Service recently.

Present at the event were 30 representatives and heads of departments that contributed to the implementation of the service.

Launched in March 2020 following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and the suspension of face-to-face out-patient appointments, the Urgent Consultation Service offered medical consultations to patients with urgent but non-life-threatening conditions via telemedicine, with options available for video or audio consultations.

HMC’s Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Abdulla Al Ansari, presented certificates of appreciation to the honourees and thanked all staff members who contributed to the implementation of the Urgent Consultation Service. He also confirmed that the service will remain in place in the future.

The Urgent Consultation Service was launched in a record time of 7 days with support of various departments at HMC, including the depart-ments of Health Information and Communication Tech-nology, Engineering, Human Resources, Communications, Health Facilities Development, as well as the support by the Ministry of Public Health and the Ministry of Transport and Communications.

Head of Urology at HMC, Dr. Khalid Al Rumaihi is managing the Urgent Consultation Service. He said the Service has achieved its goals and was very well received by the public as it received 197,000 calls between its launch and 31 December 2020, with a 95% response rate.

A recent customer satis-faction survey involving 1,000 service users showed that 88 percent of the respondents expressed their satisfaction with the service, while 90 percent of those surveyed recommended that the service remain in place in the future even after the end of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The telephone-based Urgent Consultation Service

allows patients to speak to healthcare professionals to obtain appropriate diagnosis for their conditions so that nec-essary actions can be taken without the need to visit the hospital. “The Urgent

Consultation Service is staffed by around 150 physicians and is currently available for 15 dif-ferent specialities, namely: urology, orthopaedics, ENT, general surgery, obstetrics and gynaecology, general medicine,

cardiology, dermatology, pae-diatrics, dentistry, mental health, neurology, pain man-agement, geriatrics, and oncology,” added Dr. Al Rumaihi.

The Urgent Consultation Service offers patients a range of healthcare services, including medical consultations, new pre-scriptions, prescription refills, referrals to OPD clinics, referrals to primary health care centres, referrals to the emer-gency department, issuing health numbers for visitors, and reviewing lab test results and clinical imaging reports when no medical appointments are available soon in the clinic.

Dr. Al Rumaihi said a number of physicians receive patient calls and conduct an initial assessment for the patients and answer their questions and when a specialised consultation is required, the call is put through to the specialist physician. In the event that a call is not answered, the doctors will call the patient back and then transfer the call to the specialist doctor if needed. All calls are recorded for quality control pur-poses and for future reference when required.

An HMC official receives the certificate during a ceremony held to recognise contribution by various HMC departments to the success of the telemedicine service.

Shura Council hosts IPU PresidentQNA — DOHA

The Shura Council hosted the new President of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), H E Daniel Pacheco, yesterday.

Speaker of the Shura Council H E Ahmed bin Abdullah bin Zaid Al Mahmoud welcomed the IPU President and expressed appreciation of his choice to make the State of Qatar his first destination after his election in November 2020.

Speaker Al Mahmoud praised Pacheco’s experience in the parliamentary field and his important role in imple-menting the goals of the IPU when chairing the Portuguese delegation and the IPU’s 12 Plus Geopolitical Group, which includes parliaments from Europe, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand.

Speaker of the Shura Council stressed the council’s commitment to cooperate with Pacheco in all fields related to the union’s future event,

particularly those related to enhancing parliamentary work in establishing peace and security and solving global problems like poverty, ter-rorism, and climate change to help all countries achieve sus-tainable development.

For his part, the President of the Inter-Parliamentary Union expressed his happiness to visit the State of Qatar. He praised the wise policy of the State of Qatar under the lead-ership of the Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani in helping brotherly and friendly countries resolve disputes through diplomatic means.

Pacheco welcomed H H the Amir’s announcement that the Shura Council’s elections will be held in October. He high-lighted Qatar’s renaissance in various fields and the influ-ential role it plays at the regional and international levels for peace and devel-opment in the world and defending peoples’ issues.

He also praised the fruitful efforts of the Speaker of the Shura Council to promote joint international parliamentary work and achieve the goals of the Inter-Parliamentary Union.

He underlined the election of Speaker Al Mahmoud as President of the Global Organ-ization of Parliamentarians Against Corruption, and to the

United Nations choosing Qatar to be the headquarters of the Office of Counter-Terrorism (UNOCT) Program Office, which is concerned with parlia-mentary engagement in pre-

venting and combating ter-rorism as examples.

The IPU President appre-ciated the Shura Council’s role and its distinguished and respected efforts in the

meetings and conferences of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, adding he chose his first official visit to be the State of Qatar to express his thanks and appre-ciation for these efforts.

Speaker of the Shura Council, H E Ahmed bin Abdullah bin Zaid Al Mahmoud, and President of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, H E Daniel Pacheco, attending a Shura Council session yesterday.

The IPU President

welcomed H H the Amir’s

announcement that the

Shura Council’s elections

will be held in October,

and highlighted Qatar’s

renaissance in various

fields and the influential

role it plays at the regional

and international levels

for peace and

development in the world.

QRCS launches ‘Little Hearts’ project in IndonesiaTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Qatar Red Crescent Society (QRCS) has launched a ‘Little Hearts’ project in Indonesia, with the aim of treating 40 children with congenital heart defects.

Hosted by the Harapan Kita National Heart Center in Jakarta, the $90,000 project is co-implemented by QRCS, the Indonesian Red Cross Society, and Indonesia’s Ministry of Health (MOH). The procedures are performed by local medical specialists in cardiac catheter-ization for children.

The launching ceremony was attended by Dr. Azhar Jaya, Health Service General-Director at MOH; Sudirman Said, Secretary General of the Indonesian Red Cross Society and Dr. Iwan Dakota, Director of the Harapan Kita National Heart Center, and the doctors involved in the project.

In his speech, Dr. Dakota thanked QRCS for its the humanitarian initiative of

covering the costs of 40 cardiac catheterizations for children born with heart problems, a main cause of child mortality in Indonesia. He described the initiative as a timely and long-awaited relief for the benefici-aries, whose families could not afford the costs of procedures. “I wish that this will not be the last one. We still have a waiting list of 300 children who need help,” said Dr. Dakota.

Sudirman Said said, “I appreciate QRCS’s important role in Indonesia, by supporting the response and recovery efforts in the aftermath of 2018 and 2019 earthquakes in Sulawesi and Lombok, respec-tively. Now, they are acting to support the cardiac catheteri-zations for children. We hope that such a partnership with QRCS will continue to create opportunities of a better life for those who had ailing hearts since their birth.”

Dr. Jaya welcomed the project, under which QRCS would help 40 children who

have been looking for treatment. He called for further cooperation in the future to cover the remaining children on the cardiac catheterization waiting list, as well as other medical specialties.

Being the first Little Hearts project to be executed in Indo-nesia, it is part of the Medical

Convoys programme, which involves providing treatment for poor patients, performing surgeries in many medical spe-cialisations, supplying the host hospitals with surgical equipment and consumables, and training medical profes-sionals in the latest medical advancements.

A beneficiary child is receiving treatment under the ‘Little Hearts’ project by QRCS in Indonesia.

175 referred to prosecution for not wearing masksQNA — DOHA

The designated authorities yesterday referred 175 people to the Public Prosecution for not wearing masks in places where they are mandatory.

The measure is in line with the Cabinet decision, Decree Law No. 17 of 1990 on infec-tious diseases, and the precau-tionary measures in force in the country to contain the spread of coronavirus (COVID-19).

The designated authorities called on the public to adhere to the precautionary measures in place to ensure their safety and the safety of others.

Seven arrested

for violating

home quarantine

QNA — DOHA The designated authorities arrested yesterday seven people for violating the requirements of home quar-antine, they committed to following, which they are legally accountable for, in accordance with the proce-dures of the health authorities in the country.

The arrest of the violators came in the implementation of the precautionary measures in force in the country, approved by health authorities represented in the Ministry of Public Health and other authorities, to ensure public safety and curb the spread of the Coronavirus.

The violators, who are cur-rently being referred to the designated prosecution, are Jack Kamal Dualibi, Salem Ali Al Alawi, Zebeer Valikat Putia Michael, Salman Mohammed Ibrahim Ahmed Ibrahim, Tamer Salaheldin Awad Abdulaziz, Sabeel Zada, Nahyan Khalid Nahyan Al Muraiziq Al Marri.

The designated authorities called on citizens and residents under home quarantine to fully commit to the Ministry of Public Health’s guidelines.

04 TUESDAY 26 JANUARY 2021HOME

QU begins global conference on religion in constitutions

THE PENINSULA - DOHA

Ibn Khaldon Center for Human-ities and social sciences at Qatar University (QU), in collabo-ration with Hamad bin Khalifa University (HBKU), kicked off a three-day international conference on Religion in Constitutions within a Global Context: Historical, Political, Legal, and Cultural Dimensions on January 24.

The first session of the con-ference covered the topic "The historical and cultural dimen-sions of the religious issue in the constitutions of the nations in the world."

The conference was opened by Prof Mariam Al Maadeed, Vice-President for Research and Postgraduate Studies.

She explained the impor-tance of this conference, noting that it deals with an important

substantive topic, constitutions, and their relationship with peo-ple’s culture and heritage.

This requires significant expertise, knowledge, and commitment of the cultural and social, moving from local to global contexts and pro-ducing clear ideas capable of achieving the center’s objec-tives in preserving the nation’s identity and cultural openness to the other.

She thanked the guests and their efforts in making it a suc-cessful event.

The opening session also included a speech by Dr. Nayef Nahar Al Shamari, Director of Ibn Khaldon Center for Human-ities & Social Sciences.

He welcomed the partici-pants and spoke about the con-ference’s importance, in which the fundamental issues will be discussed.

Dr. Nayef said: “The con-ference is part of the center’s strategy aiming to create a bridge for better under-standing of the phenomena in which the relationship between national, constitu-tional and social issues and their relationship to religion will be discussed.

The conference will also discuss the controversy between religion and power in the tangible reality, the consti-tutional status of the religion according to different practices of some countries shedding light on the issues of external penetration in Islamic constitutions.”

Dr. Muhammad Al-Mukhtar Al-Shinqiti, Representative of the Scientific Committee, said during his speech that the con-ference theme had been his concern for years.

Sidra Medicine welcomes first batchof nursing students from UCQ THE PENINSULA - DOHA

Sidra Medicine has welcomed the first batch of undergraduate nursing students from the University of Calgary in Qatar (UCQ) for clinical placements at its hospital.

Fifteen UCQ students will be working closely with the nursing teams at Sidra Medicine across pediatric specialties such as medical specialty, general surgery and neuroscience for a rotation period of 12 weeks.

Acting Chief Nursing Officer at Sidra Medicine, Judy Dawson-Jones said, “Congrat-ulations and welcome to our undergraduate nursing students from the University of Calgary in Qatar. This is an exciting time for Sidra Medicine as we train the next generation of healthcare professionals. An important part of becoming a

competent nurse is observation and performance in the clinical practice setting in order to apply classroom learning to real life scenarios."

"We are committed to ensuring that the UCQ students will have a comprehensive learning experience that will last a lifetime for their future suc-cessful careers. Nursing is one of the bridges that leads, sup-ports and guides our patients and families to a healthier place. We are happy that the students are joining us in this journey through their commitment to learning," she said.

The students will be trained by nursing teams at Sidra Med-icine where they will learn about evidence-based nursing practice through the application of the nursing process; devel-opmental care in the pediatric

population and incorporating family centered care.

The students placement is part of UCQ’s Bachelor of Nursing Program under the “childbearing/childrearing fam-ilies’ clinical course”.

Nursing Practice Coordinator at the University of Calgary Qatar, Diana White said, “The University of Calgary in Qatar nursing students have been eagerly anticipating the oppor-tunity to practice their nursing skills at Sidra Medicine. Every semester students and faculty ask when they will be able to work with at the hospital. On behalf of UCQ faculty and students thank you for all the time and effort that has gone into preparing this clinical placement opportunity.

We look forward to many more semesters of learning ahead.”

The first batch of undergraduate nursing students from the University of Calgary in Qatar (UCQ) at Sidra Medicine for clinical placements at the hospital.

AAB launches waterborne automotive paint technology in Qatar

THE PENINSULA - DOHA

Abdullah Abdulghani & Bros. Co. (AAB), the exclusive distributor of Toyota and Lexus in Qatar, has launched Water-borne, an innovative and eco-friendly automotive paint tech-nology. This type of paint tech-nology uses water as a soluble liquid in paint mixture instead of toxic solvents.

AAB is the first in Qatar to use this 100 percent water-borne paints tested for all primer, basecoat and clear coat with Kansai Paint.

Abdul Rasak Khalidu, Operation Manager – Qatar (Kansai Paint) together with Kamal Al Hajj Director – Cus-tomer Service Division (AAB); Muthusamy Chinappan, Senior Manager – National Service Department (NSD – AAB) and other senior management team members from AAB and Kansai Paint representatives witnessed the recent launch at the AAB facility in Indus-trial Area.

Waterborne paints are eco-friendly with almost no con-tamination produced in the air nor hazardous effects to the environment.

With the waterborne paint technology, AAB takes the lead in providing a healthier and improved safety option as it is user friendly and has no harmful effects to human.

It has no strong smell during applications making way for a much healthier ambient condition.

Customers will be delighted by the finishing as the metallic orientation and texture of waterborne painted cars are comparable to newly painted units. It allows high-gloss finish without the extra coating.

Committed to contribute towards Qatar National Vision 2030 pillar on the Green Envi-ronment, AAB takes a step forward in choosing envi-ronment friendly automotive paint technology.

Established in 1958 as part of Qatar’s infrastructure development, AAB has grown to be one of Qatar’s leading automobile com-panies with operations spanning heavy equipment, pre-owned vehicles, rental and leasing.

The company operates two Toyota showrooms and 1 Lexus showroom with eight service centers across Qatar.

Abdul Rasak Khalidu, Operation Manager – Qatar (Kansai Paint) together with Kamal Al Hajj Director – Customer Service Division (AAB); Muthusamy Chinappan, Senior Manager – National Service Department (NSD – AAB) and other senior management team members from AAB and Kansai Paint representatives during the launch ceremony of Waterborne at the AAB facility in Industrial Area.

05TUESDAY 26 JANUARY 2021 HOME

The Youth Consultation

brought together youth

leaders, between the

ages of 15 and 29, from

38 countries and five

continents, with

experience in sport,

peacebuilding, and/or

the prevention of violent

extremism (PVE).

QU holds virtual Graduate Orientation Day - Spring 2021THE PENINSULA — DOHA

Qatar University’s Office of Graduate Studies held the Graduate Orientation Day – Spring 2021 for the newly admitted graduate students, via WebEx, with nearly 90 students in attendance.

In his welcome speech, Dr. Ahmed Al-Own, Acting Dean of Graduate Studies at College of Arts and Sciences QU, discussed the nature of the study at the postgraduate level compared to the undergraduate level.

Ghada Al Kuwari, Assistant Dean of Student Affairs at Office of Graduate Studies, made a presentation that included a tour of the Office of Graduate

Studies’ website on Qatar Uni-versity. Besides, it explained some of the essential policies that students must consider during their higher education studies at the university.

Dr. Mary Newsome, Assistant Dean of Graduate Learning Support, talked about the services provided to graduate students, such as workshops for writing a thesis and dissertation and events that the section con-ducts such as TED talks, TED boot camp, and other supporting activities. In addition to this, she discussed the Graduate Students Blackboard Community on the Qatar University website.

Dr. Sandy Rahme, Senior Graduate Programs Review

Specialist, also reviewed the postgraduate programmes offered during the term Spring 2021. She highlighted some academic tips on study plans and supervisions.

Aldana Al Thani, Senior Student Affairs Specialist – Reg-istration, discussed the services available to graduate students, such as copying, printing, copying, and providing the uni-versity card, and an overview on obtaining textbooks in both paper and electronic types.

The event concluded with an open discussion session, during which all students’ ques-tions were answered by the dean and assistant deans of the Office of Graduate Studies.

UNAOC holds virtual youth summit on preventing extremism through sportTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Under the leadership of the United Nations Alliance of Civi-lizations (UNAOC), Save the Dream recently co-hosted a two-day first Online Youth Consultation on Preventing Violent Extremism through Sport, within the framework of the UN Global Programme on Security of Major Sporting Events, and Promotion of Sport and its Values as a Tool to Prevent Violent Extremism.

The implementation of the programme is led by the United Nations Office of Counter-Ter-rorism (UNOCT), in partnership with the United Nations Inter-regional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI), the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC), the International Centre for Sport Security (ICSS), in consultation with the UN Counter-Ter-rorism Committee Executive Directorate (CTED) and with the participation of INTERPOL. The programme is financially supported by the State of Qatar, the United Nations Peace and Development Fund (UNPDF – funded by the Peo-ple’s Republic of China), and the Republic of Korea.

The Youth Consultation brought together youth leaders, between the ages of 15 and 29, from 38 countries and five con-tinents, with experience in sport, peacebuilding, and/or the prevention of violent extremism (PVE).

On the first day, youth par-ticipants provided inputs and suggestions to UN representa-tives on ways to develop various outputs for the Global Programme, such as a global communications campaign to be launched concurrently with Major Sporting Events (MSEs) and involving professional ath-letes scheduled to gain signif-icant exposure during MSEs such as the 2021 Tokyo Olympics and the 2022 FIFA

World Cup in Qatar; a guide for policymakers to support the inclusion of sport-based initi-atives in PVE policies, and a training handbook and app to assist sporting events organ-izers with the provision of PVE tools.

The Youth Consultation featured inspiring keynote speakers such as Nadia Nadim, an Afghan-Danish football player for Paris Saint-Germain and the Danish national team; Thandiwe Abdullah, Black Lives Matter (BLM) activist and co-founder of the BLM Youth Vanguard; and Honey Thaljieh, FIFA Manager, founder of the Female Palestinian National Team, Save the Dream Ambassador.

On the second day of the event, youth participants had fruitful discussions with National Focal Points (NFPs)

on PVE nominated by 15 Member States, assigned within the UN Global Programme framework to represent their respective entities within the global PVE NFP network. They discussed ways to improve youth integration in decision-making processes, both in implementing programme deliverables to maximize efficacy and ensure their long-term success.

CEO, ICSS, and Executive Director Save the Dream Mas-similiano Montanari said, “Sport is a powerful tool in the pre-vention of violent extremism in communities that are at risk. It is a way to empower a gener-ation of future leaders who will be able to build more inclusive and fair societies.”

Afghan-Danish football player for Paris Saint-Germain and the Danish national team Nadia Nadim said; “It is hard to feel like an outsider, and that is why I believe sports in general and football, in particular, can give children and young people that security, the feeling that they belong to a group and have people around them who care. That is what football did for me. Football was of the way for me to become a part of some-thing, to feel included and accepted.”

Netherlands envoy participates in ‘Plant Million Tree’ initiativeAmbassador of the Kingdom of the Netherlands to the State of Qatar, H E Marjan Kamstra; Director of Public Parks Department, Mohamad Ali Al Khori; Business Developer/ Gulf Region at Netherlands Embassy in Qatar, Heba Leith, and other officials during a tree plantation event held under ‘Plant Million Tree’ initiative. The event was organised by Public Parks Department at the Ministry of Municipality and Environment (MME) at Al Mamoura Park yesterday.

Head Girl of Durham School becomes youngest participant in Microsoft Student programme

THE PENINSULA — DOHA

Having the opportunity to work for Microsoft is a dream for many, but for Head Girl of Durham School for Girls, this is a dream come true at the age of just 14.

Shaikha Jassem Al Sulaiti is the youngest student in Qatar to be offered this prestigious opportunity and will be joining a selected handful of college undergraduates in the student programme.

Durham School had partic-ipated in the Microsoft Global Learning Connect Programme in November, in which Lana Khalaf Microsoft Qatar Country manager was the host, Shaikha represented the school and pre-sented how the students at Durham Schools are using Teams and Office 365 and Microsoft education tools to empower their remote learning and unleash their innovation.

This inspired Microsoft to invite Shaikha to the student program and be able to further invest in her development to embrace future digital skills.

As part of a programme designed to engage and empower more girls in the field of Artificial Intelligence, Education, and Infor-mation Technology (IT), Microsoft Qatar has selected the student Shaikha Jassem Al Sulaiti to join

the Microsoft Student Programme this year. Microsoft Student pro-gramme is intended to introduce Students to experts and mentors at Microsoft and begin that journey of collabo-ration and learning.

During this collaboration with Microsoft, students will gain exclusive access to Microsoft resources, such as Microsoft Learn, Visual Studio Code, and Azure credits, will be trained and certified as well as leading projects within Microsoft.

Shaikha will be trained on the topics related to IoT (Internet of Things), AI (Arti-ficial Intelligence) and Data Analytics. This programme will run alongside her normal school studies and both Durham School and Microsoft will ensure that she is sup-

ported during this time. Durham is an all-girls

school and female campus. Its goals of instilling ‘Confidence for Life’ in all its students allows girls to thrive and grow without compromising values or culture. With Durham’s rich 600 years of history, and the MARK values, the school aims to inspire the new generation of female leaders in Qatar and the world, and embrace the Qatar National Vision 2030.

“Shaikha is an amazing role model for the school and for all the girls in Qatar. We are so proud of her and thank Microsoft for this collaboration. We are opening Year 12 next year and are excited about the future of our girls and the opportunities for them,” said the school in a statement.

Head Girl of Durham School for Girls, Shaikha Jassem Al Sulaiti with her certificate.

St. Regis Doha launches outdoor private dining experienceTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

The newly launched St. Regis private beach gazebos, located at the hotel’s pristine beach, offer a unique dining experience curated to take the traditional outings to an unparalleled level for those who are seeking to create timeless memories with their loved ones. St. Regis Doha, the Finest Address in Qatar, continues to make everyday exquisite for its guests.

With views of the exceptional Doha’s iconic skyline and marvelous sea, St. Regis guests can enjoy the menu of the award-winning Al Sultan Brahim restaurant that features signature Leb-anese dishes in their gazebo every day from 5pm. This includes casual or bespoke dinners to cele-brate special occasions in a private outdoor space.

General Manager of the St. Regis Doha, Wissam Suleiman, said: “Our private gazebos provide our guests with an exclusive dining expe-rience to share with their families and friends, or enjoy an evening to unwind and relax while watching the sunset. We have started witnessing a shift in the customers’ behaviours within the hospitality industry. Our guests of 2021 are

looking for personalised experiences in spacious outdoor environments that will allow them to enjoy and explore the simpler pleasures, which were once taken for granted before 2020.”

“At St. Regis Doha, we perfect every aspect of every minute by curating personalized offerings that recognise our guests’ individuality, which is one of the St. Regis brand values. In 2021, we will continue to innovate bespoke experi-ences impeccably crafted to satisfy our guests’ tastes. This and more will contribute to making us not only the finest but also the most sought-after address in Qatar,” Suleiman added.

Participants during the Youth Consultation on Preventing Violent Extremism through Sport event.

06 TUESDAY 26 JANUARY 2021HOME

07TUESDAY 26 JANUARY 2021 MIDDLE EAST / AFRICA

Turkey, Greece resume talks on maritime disputesBLOOMBERG — ISTANBUL

Turkish and Greek officials met to see if they could find any common ground to try to resolve a festering dispute over maritime boundaries that brought their navies to the brink of confrontation.

In the run-up to the meeting in Istanbul yesterday, Turkey and Greece couldn’t even agree on the agenda of “exploratory talks,” whose ultimate aim would be to defuse years of conflict over sovereignty of the areas off their coasts. For the Greeks, they’re not even talks but contacts.

With expectations running so low before, even maintaining dialogue seemed like a success to both sides. A renewal of ten-sions could potentially trigger tougher EU sanctions against Turkey over its unilateral search for energy in contested waters of the eastern Mediterranean Sea.

The sides had last sat down to discuss maritime boundaries in 2016. This 61st round of talks yesterday were decided under pressure from European Union and Nato allies after the tradi-tional rivals mobilised their navies and warplanes against one another in the Mediter-

ranean Sea over the past year.The next round will be in

Athens but the timing wasn’t immediately clear. Going into the talks, the countries staked out different aims for their meetings.

Turkey, wants to expand the scope of the negotiations to other long-running disputes with Greece.

“It’s possible to find a solution to all problems and our will to do that is strong,” said presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin after the latest round of discussions.

Greece “will willingly discuss” with Turkey, “in accordance with international law, the issue that the two coun-tries have disagreed over for decades and that caused the recent tension, namely the delimitation of maritime zones

in the Aegean and east Mediter-ranean,” Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis told law-makers in Athens last week.

The talks were announced earlier this month just weeks after the European Union pledged to expand the number of Turkish officials sanctioned over the country’s energy exploration in the disputed waters.

Competing claims to sover-eignty over waters between the two countries that may be rich in hydrocarbon reserves led to a naval standoff between Greece and Turkey in the summer.

Officials did not disclose the agenda of the talks yesterday. Despite the technical disagree-ments, both sides voiced guarded optimism, though they were still trading barbs in the days leading up to Monday’s meetings.

Analysts have said an immediate breakthrough is unlikely given decades-old policy differences, but that resuming dialogue is an important first step after EU pressure on Ankara.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu held talks in Brussels last week to discuss possible future steps to maintain

what he called the “positive atmosphere” between Ankara and the EU. In December, the bloc postponed the question of sanctions on Turkey until

March.Erdogan has in recently

said his country wants a new chapter in its relations with the EU. His government also

ordered an energy exploration ship to limit its work to an area far from Greek islands through June 15, after the vessel’s oper-ations angered Greece.

Turkish officials (right) and Greek committee members participate in the 61st round of exploratory talks between Turkey and Greece, at Dolmabahce Office in Istanbul, Turkey, yesterday.

Second batch of

COVID-19

vaccines arrives

in Turkey

ANATOLIA — ISTANBUL

A plane carrying the second batch of a COVID-19 vaccine ordered from China’s Sinovac Biotech Ltd arrived early yesterday in Istanbul, Turkey.

The Turkish Airlines Boeing 777 plane, which departed from Beijing, landed at Istanbul Airport at 6.15am local time (0315 GMT).

Containers containing the vaccine were taken from the air-craft after customs procedures and moved to warehouses.

A total of 6.5 million doses of the inactive COVID-19 vaccine were brought in the first part of the second shipment of 10 million doses.

Mass vaccinations began in Turkey on January 14 after the first batch of three million doses of the Sinovac vaccine arrived on December 30. Later, a second consignment of 10 million doses was approved.

Over 1.23 million people, mostly health workers and the elderly, have been inoculated since January 14.

Health Minister Fahrettin Koca and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan were among the first to be vaccinated to boost public confidence in the vaccine.

The government has also introduced nighttime and weekend curfews to stem the spread of COVID-19.

Since December 2019, the pandemic has claimed more than 2.12 million lives in 192 countries and regions.

Over 99 million cases have been reported worldwide, with recoveries now over 54.7 million, according to figures compiled by US-based Johns Hopkins University.

The US, India and Brazil remain the worst-hit countries in terms of cases.

Iran asks Indonesia to explain seizure of tankerREUTERS — DUBAI/JAKARTA

Iran has asked Indonesia to provide details about the seizure of an Iranian-flagged vessel, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said yesterday, a day after Jakarta said it had seized Iran and Panama-flagged tankers in its waters.

Indonesia said on Sunday its coast guard had seized the Iranian-flagged MT Horse and the Panamanian-flagged MT Freya vessels over suspected illegal oil transfer in the coun-try’s waters.

Khatibzadeh said that the seizure was over “a technical issue and it happens in shipping field”.

“Our Ports Organisation and the ship owner company are looking to find the cause of the

issue and resolve it,” Khatib-zadeh told a televised weekly news conference.

Coast guard spokesman Wisnu Pramandita said the tankers, seized in waters off Kalimantan province, will be escorted to Batam island in Riau Island Province for further investigation.

Wisnu said yesterday that the ships were “caught red-handed” transferring oil from MT Horse to MT Freya and that there was an oil spill around the receiving tanker.

He added that 61 crew members onboard the vessels were Iranian and Chinese nationals and had been detained.

Indonesia’s foreign and energy ministries did not immediately comment on the matter.

Both the supertankers, each capable of carrying two million barrels of oil, were last spotted earlier this month off Singapore, shipping data on Refinitiv Eikon showed.

Very Large Crude Carrier (VLCC) MT Horse, owned by the National Iranian Tanker Company (NITC), was almost fully loaded with oil while VLCC MT Freya, managed by Shanghai Future Ship Man-agement Co, was empty, the data showed.

Asked to comment on the seized tanker, Iran’s Oil Min-ister Bijan Zanganeh told reporters: “It was carrying oil... the issue is being followed up by Iran.”

The International Maritime Organization requires vessels to use transponders for safety and transparency. Crews can

turn off the devices if there is a danger of piracy or similar hazards. But transponders are often shut down to conceal a ship’s location during illicit activities.

“The tankers, first detected at 5.30am local time (2130 GMT on January 23) concealed their identity by not showing their national flags, turning off auto-matic identification systems and did not respond to a radio call,” Wisnu said in a statement on Sunday.

A search on a Chinese company directory found that the registered office address of Shanghai Future Ship Management Co came under another firm named Shanghai Chengda Ship Management.

Several calls made to the office went unanswered.

Iran has been accused of concealing the destination of its oil sales by disabling tracking systems on its tankers, making it difficult to assess how much crude Tehran exports as it seeks to counter US sanctions.

Iran sent the MT Horse vessel to Venezuela last year to deliver 2.1 million barrels of Iranian condensate.

Over the past few months, MT Freya has delivered two crude oil cargoes totalling about 4 million barrels into Qingdao port on the east coast of China and northeast Yingkou port, said Emma Li, a senior crude analyst with Refinitiv.

The Qingdao cargo was declared as Upper Zakum crude produced in the United Arab Emirates, said Li, who tracks China-destined crude oil shipments.

Palestinians protest against UNRWA aid cutPeople gather to stage a protest against cuts of aid by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) outside the UNRWA, in Gaza City, Gaza, yesterday.

New round of talks on Syria constitution begins

AP — GENEVA

Delegations from Syria’s government, opposition and civil society began a new round of meetings in Geneva yesterday aimed at revising the constitution of the war-torn country.

The fifth round of the so-called Constitutional Com-mittee came days after UN Special Envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen told the UN Security Council that many subjects have been discussed for more than a year and it’s now time for the committee to ensure that “the meetings are better organized and more focused.”

Syria’s nearly 10-year con-flict has killed more than half a million people and displaced half the country’s pre-war 23 million population, including more than five million refugees

mostly in neighboring countries.

“I believe that we need to ensure that the committee begins to move from `pre-paring’ a constitutional reform to `drafting’ one, as it is man-dated to do,” Pedersen said last week.

The United States and several Western allies have accused Syria’s President Bashar Assad of deliberately delaying the drafting of a new constitution to waste time until presidential elections are held this year and avoid UN-super-vised voting as called for by the UN Security Council.

According to Syria’s elec-tions law, presidential elections are scheduled to take place between April 16 and May 16, at least 90 days before Assad’s seven-year term expires. Assad has been in power since 2000.

Kagame backs proposed global social protection fundREUTERS — NAIROBI

Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame yesterday welcomed the proposed establishment of a global social protection fund, saying it will build resilience among societies to help them navigate the economic impact of future pandemics.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed glaring inequalities among the world’s workers. Nearly half of the globe’s 3.3 billion workforce has been thrust into the risk of losing their livelihoods by the crisis, the World Economic Forum said.

It has particularly hit many of Africa’s workers, who toil in informal sectors without any

rights such as a minimum wage, creating the need for universal social protection, Kagame told a virtual meeting of the World Economic Forum.

“This is a bold idea that merits serious consideration by policymakers,” the president said.

Governments, which are spending trillions of dollars to help economies survive the coronavirus crisis, can start social universal protection funds with a fraction of the cash, said Sharan Burrow, the general secretary of the Inter-national Trade Union Confederation.

“It will go to the G20 this year,” she said of the proposal, which also aims to help the

world’s poorest nations start to bridge an $80bn funding gap for social protections.

Proponents of the global social protection fund, which is part of the United Nation’s sus-tainable aims, want it to be funded by a combination of existing aid assistance from rich nations, increased taxation of firms, and contributions from existing funds. That can be complemented by debt relief or cancellation.

Once set up, it will offer basic income like cash transfers to the poor, pensions for the elderly, disability benefits and unemployment benefits, child benefits and access to the health, education and housing services, the Brussels-based

International Trade Union Con-federation said.

Burrow, speaking on the same panel as Kagame, said governments could boost the fund through ensuring big firms pay their fair share of taxes.

Rwanda, which has seen a surge of COVID-19 cases this year, has been providing food and health insurance to at least two million of its most vul-nerable citizens, Kagame said.

It also set up a $100 million fund to help businesses that have been hit hard by the impact of the pandemic to stay afloat through access to affordable financing.

“Everybody needs to be brought into the fold and engaged,” he said.

Eswatini labour ministerdies of virus infection

ANATOLIA — MANZINI

A senior official in the small southern African nation of Eswatini, formerly known as Swaziland, has died as a result of COVID-19-related compli-cations, the country’s acting prime minister announced Sunday.

“His Majesty’s government notifies the nation of the sad passing of Member of Par-liament Makhosi Vilakati, the Minister of Labour and Social Security,” Themba Masuku said at a press conference.

“Vilakati passed away on Saturday evening at a South

African health facility, where he had been admitted for a spe-cialised treatment procedure arising from a COVID-19 infection. May his soul rest in eternal peace,” Masuku said in a statement.

Vilakati was recently trans-ferred from Lubombo Referral Hospital to a South African health facility for specialised treatment not available domestically.

He becomes the second Cabinet minister to die from COVID-19 after Minister of Public Service Christian Ntshangase, who died last week and was buried on Saturday.

The next round will be in Athens but the timing wasn’t immediately clear. Going into the talks, the countries staked out different aims for their meetings.

08 TUESDAY 26 JANUARY 2021VIEWS

CHAIRMANDR. KHALID BIN THANI AL THANI

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

editorinchief@pen.com.qa

ACTING MANAGING EDITORMOHAMMED SALIM MOHAMED

m.salim@pen.com.qa

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

EDITORIAL

YET another feather in the cap for Qatar. The State has again retained its global distinction in safety as Doha, the capital, has been ranked as the second safest city in the world.

The ranking of Doha at top of safest cities in the world reflects overall security and safety situation in Qatar, thanks to the continuous efforts of the Ministry of Interior in its mission of achieving maximum security and stability in society and protecting people’s lives and property in accordance with Qatar National Vision 2030.

The Ministry of Interior has been working on building an integrated security system, ensuring security throughout the country, as well as enhancing security awareness among the public, which con-tributed to the decrease in the number of crimes.

According to Numbeo’s Crime Index by City 2021, Doha was placed at No. 2 in terms of safety and low crime rate in 431 cities covered in the report. Doha secured 87.96 points in safety index while its crime index is just 12.04 points. According to the classifi-cation rules of the report, cities have been ranked in reverse order that the city that occupies 431st place is the city with the lowest crime rate and ranks first in terms of safety and security. Doha stood at 430th position.

Qatar had also retained its position as the ‘Safest Country’ globally as per the 2020 mid-year Crime Index by Numbeo released in July last year. In the Safety Index, Qatar ranked the first by scoring 88.10 points out of 100, in reverse of the Crime Index.

Qatar’s superiority is considered as an extension of its achievements in the past years, specifically during the period (2015-2019), where it maintained the number one position in the Arab world throughout, as well as achieving first place globally in 2017 and 2019. It reflects the constant and outstanding level enjoyed by the State in the field of security and safety, and the significant decrease in the rates of crimes in the country.

In 2019, Qatar retained its distinction as the Safest Country among Arab countries and globally by winning first place in terms of safety and security among 118 countries. Qatar came in the forefront of the safest countries with a score of 86.74 points in safety index. It is also important to note that Qatar has continued to top the Global Peace Index among the MENA coun-tries during the past couple of years. It also ranked first in the Arab world and the 7th globally out of 118 countries in the Global Finance Safety Index and the 2nd in the Arab World and the 10th globally in the Global Competitiveness Report 2019.

The safest country

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Quote of the dayThere is no question the new variant made this

fight a whole lot tougher. The critical message

is we must be cautious. For all of us, our

response must be extra careful.

Matt Hancock, Britain's Health Minister

Health workers are seen in protective gear inside a locked down portion of the Jordan residential area to contain a new outbreak of the coronavirus disease, in Hong Kong, China, yesterday.

Optimism bias is the belief that the future will be better, much better, than the past or present. And most of us display this bias. That is not a bad thing, of course. However, the negative side of optimism bias is that we underestimate risks and dismiss warnings.

This is, partially, what got us here today, unprepared to face a pandemic about which we have received several warnings since the 1990s. Too many nations ignored science and failed to recognise the interconnected nature of our modern world.

The Ebola epidemic that struck West Africa in 2014 showed us that every second counts when dealing with epidemics and pandemics, and yet many put that crisis behind us like it never hap-pened. Inevitably, our lack of preparedness set us up to fail. Twelve months after the start of the COVID pandemic, we are still counting the dead. And this is not over yet.

No sector was prepared to face the wrath of a rapidly spreading and deadly virus. Now, this should be a wake-up call. Even in the aid sector where we are trained to respond to emergencies, including epidemics, we were not adequately prepared for this pandemic. Most interna-tional organisations faced

major disruptions in their operations and programmes, becoming unable to provide on-the-ground assistance and services to people in need. If the restriction of movements imposed by countries was one of the reasons that caused disruption, aid agencies pulling out their international staff was another one. Many humanitarian and aid organi-sations rely heavily on foreign staff for management and implementation. This archaic approach of heavy dependence on international staff has shown its limitations.

As we continue to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, conducting “business as usual” in the aid sector can no longer be an option. In fact, it would be a betrayal to the people and communities we seek to help. We cannot keep using old tricks for new chal-lenges. We have here a moment to seize and the current pandemic presents significant opportunities to accelerate change – one of them being a genuine investment in local and national capacities.

When responding to emergencies and humani-tarian disasters, time and context are critical. Those nearest to crisis-affected pop-ulations are often the ones best placed to respond quickly and appropriately – and stay the longest. Prox-imity is crucial and we cannot keep waiting for international staff to fly into a crisis scene.

At Project HOPE, the global health and humani-tarian relief organisation that I lead, we know that local aid workers and agencies are typically the first responders

to any disaster. Throughout our interventions, we have found that local health workers are the linchpin of community health systems around the world. By sup-porting local players to lead health and emergency responses, the aid sector will be able to continue its opera-tions without facing severe disruptions caused by future epidemics, pandemics and health crises. Infectious disease outbreaks are already more prevalent and harder to control. Therefore, we can expect more travel restric-tions to come and stringent measures to be imposed by nations to contain the spread of infectious diseases.

Only by investing in local health care workers, building their capacity and giving them the tools they need, and enhancing local health systems, can we strengthen and optimise local and regional disease surveillance and response. This can be done by supporting and working hand in hand with governments, local and regional entities. Besides, strengthening health systems is not only a development pri-ority. It is a security one too, as underscored in the objec-tives of the Global Security Health Agenda. Countries with strong and compre-hensive emergency prepar-edness plans are better equipped to face current and future health emergencies.

With humanitarian needs growing and a record amount of $35bn requested by UN agencies and partner organi-sations to assist 160 million people in 2021, embracing bottom-up-driven responses

could prove more efficient, have a longer-term impact, and minimise the “transac-tional cost” of aid. However, this will require donors to break with their rigid funding mechanisms and pre-defined plans, and allow for solutions to be redesigned – and mod-ified whenever necessary – by those who will benefit from them.

Fortunately, throughout the pandemic, we were able to rely on our national staff, network of local partners and health workers to continue delivering medical aid and support. We have continued to build the capacity of local and regional organisations and trained more health workers to respond to the needs generated by the pan-demic – and to be prepared for the next one. Technology has helped us a lot. More than 87,000 COVID-19 front-line workers accessed our virtual training in 2020 in 52 countries.

The COVID-19 pandemic is likely to generate new and bigger needs, yet we can be optimistic about the future if we reject our biases and learn from our failures. Gov-ernments, non-profits, academia, technology com-panies and the private sector need to come together to plan and prepare for the next pandemic, learning from our current failures and successes. As we seize this opportunity to learn and transform, local stake-holders must have a seat at the table. Their voices will be critical in driving lasting solutions.

Rabih Torbay: President and CEO of Project HOPE.

JENNIFER HASSAN THE WASHINGTON POST

At least 225 million full-time jobs disappeared worldwide last year due to the corona-virus pandemic, according to a report published Monday by the International Labor Organization, losses four times worse than those of the global financial crisis in 2009. But the ultrawealthy have seen their wealth soar.

According to another report released Monday, by antipoverty nonprofit Oxfam, the combined wealth of the world's 10 richest men has risen by more than $500 bil-lions since the crisis began - enough to vaccinate the entire planet and then some, according to the organization.

Both sets of findings identify inequality as one of the pandemic's principal out-comes. "Job destruction has disproportionately affected

low-paid and low-skilled jobs," which "points to the risk of an uneven recovery, leading to still greater ine-quality in the coming years," the ILO found. That une-venness is already apparent: Global poverty could take 14-times longer to return to pre-pandemic levels than the recovery of the world's wealthiest, according to Oxfam.

According to the report by the ILO, a UN agency, 8.8% of global working hours were lost last year, It found "unprecedented disruption" among global labor markets, and that women and young people have been the hardest hit.

Employment loss among 15-24 years old stood at 8.7%. The data "highlights the all too real risk of a lost gener-ation," according to the report.

Guy Ryder, the director

general of the ILO, said during a news briefing that the impact of the coronavirus pandemic had not only been greater than that of the financial crisis but also the Great Depression of the 1930s. Job losses, he said, were likely to continue through 2021 - although he noted that battered econ-omies could begin rebuild once vaccination efforts begin to take effect.

"I am pleased to say that there is some relatively good news in all of this, that we do see tentative signs of recovery - these signs are fragile, they are uncertain and the prospects are notably uneven," he said.

The Oxfam findings also suggest a slow path to eco-nomic recovery: It could take at least a decade for the world's poorest to recover from the impact of the health crisis while the 1,000 richest people have already made

back their losses, and the wealthiest 10 have earned more than $500 billion amid the pandemic.

British lawmaker David Lammy of the Labour Party called the Oxfam findings "truly staggering."

"The wealth of ten of the world's richest men has increased by more than £400bn ( during the pan-demic - more than enough to vaccinate every person in the world," he tweeted

Authors of the report said that the pandemic could trigger a rise simultaneous rise inequality nearly every-where, for the first time since records began.

"The virus has exposed, fed off and increased existing inequalities of wealth, gender and race," the report said.

Jennifer Hassan is the social media editor for the Foreign desk at The Wash-ington Post.

How COVID-19 has changed the rules of the game in the aid sector

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Pandemic destroyed 225 million jobs worldwide, but billionaires got richer

Established in 1996

RABIH TORBAY AL JAZEERA

09TUESDAY 26 JANUARY 2021 AFRICA

Heavy fighting erupts in Somali town near Kenya borderAP — MOGADISHU

Heavy fighting broke out over-night in a Somali town near the Kenyan border between Somali forces and those from the state of Jubbaland, as Somalia’s election troubles spill over into violence.

Somalia’s information min-istry in a statement early yes-terday accused Kenya-funded rebels of crossing into the town of Bulo Hawo and attacking Somali forces. But the Jubbaland Vice-President, Mohamud Sayid Adan, told reporters that Jub-baland forces stationed outside the town were attacked by what he called forces recently deployed to the region by the government in the capital, Mogadishu.

Both sides claimed victory. The information ministry asserted that Somali forces were in control of the town and that nearly 100 of the suspected rebels had surrendered to Somali forces.

But Information Minister Osman Abokor Dubbe later told reporters that five children had

been killed and their mother wounded when a mortar round landed on their house.

“Ordinary militias don’t have mortars and missiles,” the minister said. “This is proof that Kenya is arming those rebels.” He added that some Somali sol-diers had been wounded but none killed. The Jubbaland

vice-president declined to mention any casualties.

Somalia’s accusation of Kenyan involvement comes after Somalia cut diplomatic ties with Kenya in December “to safeguard the unity, sover-eignty, stability of the country.” Somalia’s president has been accused by critics of stirring up such issues to draw support as he seeks a second term.

Kenyan Internal Security Minister Fred Matiangi described yesterday’s fighting as “internal to Somalia and has nothing to do with us (Kenya).

“We are not involved in it and none of our forces has crossed the border to go to Somalia,” he told journalists during a joint press conference with British Defense Secretary

Ben Wallace on renewing security agreements.

Kenya’s foreign affairs min-istry said in a statement that it had raised its concern about the fighting with the African Union continental body.

“Kenya’s primary concern is that the renewed fighting engenders large-scale dis-placement of civilians inside Somalia and increasingly gen-erates large numbers of ref-ugees and asylum seekers to Kenya, therefore aggravating the already dire humanitarian situation in Somalia and in the refugee camps in Kenya,” the statement said.

Somalia faces a troubled national election in the coming weeks. Jubbaland is one of two states, along with Puntland in

the north, that have refused to take part.

In September, President Abdullahi Mohamed Abdullahi in talks between states and the federal government agreed to withdraw Somali forces from the Gedo region of Jubbaland, where Bulo Hawo is located. But that hasn’t happened, and the Somali forces remain after taking over the town mid-last year.

The president also has replaced district commissioners in Gedo who had been appointed by Jubbaland leader Ahmed Madobe, who is seen to have Kenyan support.

Jubbaland also contains the lucrative port city of Kismayo, where Kenyan forces are deployed as part of a multina-tional African Union force.

Uganda court orders authoritiesto free opposition leaderREUTERS — KAMPALA

A Ugandan court has ordered security forces to cease surrounding the home of oppo-sition leader Bobi Wine, whose house arrest since a mid-month presidential election has drawn international pressure, his lawyer said yesterday.

Troops have blocked the 38-year-old pop star-turned-politician from leaving his house in a suburb of the capital Kampala since he voted in the Jan. 14 election where he ran against long-serving incumbent President Yoweri Museveni.

“The judge ordered that the state and its agencies should immediately vacate his property and his right to personal liberty should immediately be rein-stated,” lawyer George Musisi said.

Museveni, 76, who has been in power since 1986, was

declared winner of the poll with 59 percent of votes versus 35 percent for Wine, who had for years denounced corruption and nepotism in his songs. He rejected the result, alleging fraud which the government denies.

Uganda’s military was aware of the court ruling and would comply, said military spokeswoman Brigadier Flavia Byekwaso, without specifying when soldiers would depart.

Barricades were still up by early afternoon.

Pressure has been mounting on the government to free Wine, including from the United States and rights group Amnesty Inter-national which called his incar-ceration arbitrary and politi-cally motivated.

Joel Ssenyonyi, spokesman for Wine’s National Unity Platform (NUP), said lawyers were moving to serve the court

order to security agencies. “Their continued presence there is illegal,” he said.

Last week, US Ambassador Natalie E Brown tried to visit Wine at his home, drawing an accusation of meddling and subversion from the Ugandan government.

Museveni has long been a Western ally, receiving copious aid and sending troops to regional trouble spots including Somalia to fight Islamist militants.

But Western backers have become increasingly frustrated at his reluctance to cede power and crackdowns on opponents.

Wine had channelled the anger of many young Ugandans who view former guerrilla leader Museveni as an out-of-touch autocrat repressing dis-senters and failing to create jobs.

“The Ugandan government continues to use state security in a partisan manner to harass and intimidate its citizens, press, and political opposition,” tweeted U.S. House Majority

Leader Steny Hoyer on Sunday. “Mr. Museveni’s tactics towards those who advocate for an inclusive democracy is dan-gerous and must be addressed by the global community.”

Museveni casts Wine as an upstart backed by foreign powers and says only his administration can guarantee political stability and economic progress.

Ugandan presidential candidate and singer Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu addressing a news conference at his house in Magere neighbourhood of Kampala, Uganda, in this file photo.

Ramaphosa hits

back at critics

over steps to

secure vaccines

BLOOMBERG — JOHANNESBURG

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa defended the government’s approach to secure COVID-19 vaccines, saying it had acted as swiftly as possible in the face of extensive negotiations to get sufficient doses.

Medical professionals, sci-entists and labour unions have criticized the administration’s poor planning and said its hap-hazard process and a lack of transparency led to unnec-essary delays and cost lives. The country has confirmed about 1.4 million infections so far, the most in Africa, and deaths have exceeded 40,000 amid a resurgence of the coronavirus.

“Given the unprecedented global demand for vaccine doses, combined with the far greater buying power of wealthier countries, we had to engage in extensive and pro-tracted negotiations with man-ufacturers to secure enough vaccines,” Ramaphosa said in his weekly newsletter pub-lished on the Presidency’s website.

Earlier this month, the president announced a deal with the Serum Institute of India Ltd that will enable 750,000 health workers to get the AstraZeneca Plc vaccines by the end of February.

As was the case with this agreement “the details of deals with manufacturers will be released as and when negoti-ations are concluded and we are released from the commu-nications terms of the non-dis-closure agreements,” Ram-aphosa said.

The first vaccines would be provided to health-care workers, he said. The second phase of the vaccine rollout would target essential workers, teachers, the elderly and people with co-morbid-ities, and the third phase will include other adults in the population.”

Kenya hosts British Defence MinisterKenya’s Interior Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiangi flanked by British Defence Minister Ben Wallace addresses a news conference in Nairobi, Kenya, yesterday.

SA cops probe officialfor not wearing maskAP — JOHANNESBURG

South African police are inves-tigating the premier of Mpuma-langa province for failing to wear a mask at a public funeral.

Refilwe Mtsweni-Tsipane was seen on a live state tele-vision broadcast violating the country’s COVID-19 regulations by not wearing a mask and hugging a police officer. She was attending the funeral of Cabinet minister Jackson Mthembu, who was buried Sunday after dying of COVID-19 last week.

Photos and video footage of Mtweni-Tsipane attending the burial without a mask have been widely circulated on social media, prompting many to crit-icize government officials for not

barring her from entering the gravesite without a mask and not taking action against her.

South Africa requires masks to be worn in all public spaces and failure to do so is punishable by a fine or imprisonment for up to six months. Several hundred people have been arrested for not wearing masks, according to police reports.

Funerals have been limited to a maximum of 50 people, all of whom must wear masks at all times and keep a distance of 1.5 metres from each other.

Police Minister Bheki Cele said he instructed police to investigate the conduct of Mts-weni-Tsipane, the highest gov-ernment official of Mpuma-langa province.

13 dead, thousands homeless in southern Africa after storm EloiseREUTERS — JOHANNESBURG

The death toll from storm Eloise rose to at least 13 yesterday after heavy winds, rain and flooding destroyed buildings, drowned crops and displaced thousands in parts of southern Africa.

Eloise weakened from a cyclone to a tropical storm after

making landfall in central Mozambique on Saturday, but continued to dump rain on Zim-babwe, eSwatini — formerly known as Swaziland — South Africa and Botswana.

Six people were killed in Mozambique, the country’s National Institute for Disaster Risk Management and

Reduction (INGD) reported, while the number of displaced people rose to more than 8,000, with thousands of homes wrecked or flooded.

A five-year-old child was killed in South Africa’s eastern Mpumalanga province after being swept away, said George M t h e t h w a , h e a d

of communications for the pro-vincial department of cooperative governance and traditional affairs.

In neighbouring Limpopo, fast-flowing rivers destroyed a makeshift bridge, leaving people hoping to cross stranded on either side. Others waded through the knee-high flood waters.

The death toll stood at two in eSwatini, according to police. Three people had been reported killed in Zimbabwe and one in Madagascar.

“Rainfall is starting to ease off slowly,” said Puseletso Mofokeng, senior forecaster at the South African Weather Service.

The information ministry asserted that Somali forces were in control of the town and that nearly 100 of the suspected rebels had surrendered to Somali forces. But Information Minister Osman Abokor Dubbe later told reporters that five children had been killed and their mother wounded when a mortar round landed on their house.

Six Malian soldiers killed in ‘complex’ attacksAL JAZEERA — BAMAKO

At least six Malian soldiers have been killed in two “complex and simultaneous” attacks in Mali’s conflict-wracked centre, according to the military.

The coordinated assault took place at about 3am (03:00 GMT) on Sunday in the villages of Boulkessi and Mondoro in the Mopti region, near the country’s border with Burkina Faso.

“The provisional toll is six dead and 18 wounded” among the soldiers, the army said in a statement, adding that the attacks prompted a military response which left “around 30 dead on the terrorist side”.

Some 40 motorcycles and

a large amount of military gear were seized from the attackers, it added.

Mali’s crisis was triggered in 2012 when ethnic Taureg separatists, allied with fighters from an Al Qaeda offshoot, launched a rebellion that took control of Mali’s north.

But the armed group fighters swiftly pushed over the Tuareg rebels and seized key northern cities until they were driven out in early 2013 by French troops, together with Malian forces and sol-diers from other African coun-tries However, groups with linked to ISIL (ISIS) and Al Qaeda have sprung up in Mali’s central and northern

regions, regularly carrying out raids against the army and civilians as they jockey for control while exploiting poverty and inflaming ten-sions between ethnic tensions.

In September 2019, the same army positions struck on Sunday were targeted in one of the deadliest attacks to hit Mali since 2012, with some 50 sol-diers killed.

That double attack was later claimed by the Support Group for Islam and Muslims, the main alliance in the Sahel region affiliated with Al Qaeda.

On Thursday, three other Malian soldiers were killed in a bomb blast in the Mondoro

area.Mali has received support

in its fight against the armed groups from France’s Barkhane force, which numbers 5,100 troops spread across the arid Sahel region.

In addition to Mali, the French force has been fighting armed groups alongside sol-diers from Mauritania, Chad, Burkina Faso and Niger.

The United Nations has also deployed to Mali its 13,000-strong MINUSMA peacekeeping force, often dubbed as the world body’s “most dangerous” mission, having suffered 146 hostile deaths since it was established in 2013.

The long-running violence

has killed thousands of people and left hundreds of thousands displaced, with the country’s centre having become one of the main flashpoints.

The UN’s High Commis-sioner for Refugees said recently that more than two million people in the wider Sahel had fled their homes due to violence.

The UN Security Council held a meeting earlier this month devoted to Mali’s security crisis, while UN Sec-retary-General Antonio Guterres has expressed concern about the deteriorating security environment, pointing to the situation in central Mali as par-ticularly worrying.

10 TUESDAY 26 JANUARY 2021ASIA

Infections soar in Thailanddespite increased testingAGENCIES — AP

Thailand yesterday discovered a record 914 new cases of the coronavirus, all in Samut Sakhon province near Bangkok where a major outbreak began in December. The new cases shot the national total past 14,000.

The previous high was on January 4, when 745 cases were reported, mostly in Samut Sakhon among migrant workers from Myanmar. The province is a center for fishing and industry. The first case reported in the recent surge was detected there in mid-December at a major seafood market, which has been closed.

Any new cases in other prov-inces will be announced today. National totals are announced the day after test results, but Samut Sakhon health officials released local results yesterday, the same day they began mass proactive testing in the province, targeting up to 10,000 people a day for a week.

They said 844 new cases were detected yesterday through pro-active testing and 70 discovered in hospitals. Thai nationals accounted for 119

cases and migrant workers for 795. Earlier yesterday, Health Ministry officials had announced 187 new cases nationwide, bringing the total to 13,687. Two deaths pushed the death toll to 75. The Samut Sakorn figures were announced in the afternoon and not yet officially added to the national total. Cases linked to the Samut Sakhon outbreak have spread to more than 60 of Thailand’s 78 provinces. A cluster of cases also occurred among itinerant gamblers who gathered at illegal gambling dens.

Restrictions to control the spread of the disease were

reimposed in most provinces, including Bangkok, where schools were closed and res-taurant hours limited, among other measures.

Samut Sakhon Gov Veerasak Vijitsaengsri was hos-pitalized with the coronavirus before the New Year, and remains in critical condition with severe lung damage, according to the Bangkok hos-pital where he was admitted.

VaccinationsThailand said yesterday it

would start its coronavirus inoculation programme next month by administering the AstraZeneca vaccine to high-risk groups, as it faces accusa-tions of being too slow to secure vaccines.

Health workers in Samut Sakhon province, the epi-centre of the latest outbreak, where more than 900 infec-tions were reported yesterday, would be the first to be inoc-ulated with the initial delivery of 50,000 doses. The elderly and people with chronic dis-eases would also be a priority, officials said.

Thailand's food and drug administration last week

approved AstraZeneca's vaccine for emergency use but has yet to grant authorisation for that of Sinovac Biotech, of which Thailand has ordered 2 million doses.

Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul yesterday said AstraZeneca would be sup-plying 50,000 fewer doses of the vaccine than the 200,000 Thailand had ordered.

"With the orders they have

at hand, they just confirmed to us, they would supply 150,000 doses," Anutin told reporters, without elaborating, adding Thailand had initially requested 1 million doses.

The government has been criticised for taking too long to procure vaccines while neighbours in Southeast Asia start vaccinations or race to secure supplies from multiple companies. The government

has rejected the criticism.Thanathorn Juangroongru-

angkit, a prominent politician, has said the strategy relied too much on one company, Siam Bioscience, a firm under the holdings of King Maha Vaji-ralongkorn, which will man-ufacture the AstraZeneca vaccine locally for regional distribution. That deal is sep-arate to the imported doses direct from the company.

A protest leader, Parit “Penguin” Chiwarak, takes part in a demonstration demanding resignation of Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha and against the coronavirus disease vaccinations plans in front of Siam Bioscience company headquarters in Bangkok, Thailand, yesterday.

Indian, Chinese soldiers spar again along disputed frontierAP — SRINAGAR

Indian and Chinese soldiers brawled last week along the countries’ disputed border, Indian officials said yesterday, as a monthslong standoff between the nuclear-armed rivals continued.

The clash in the Naku La area of Sikkim came four days before the countries held a ninth round of talks yesterday on ending tensions in another disputed border area in the remote Ladakh region.

The Indian army described the clash at Naku La as “a minor face off” and said it “was resolved by local commanders as per established protocols.” An army statement did not provide any other details, but

asked media “to refrain from overplaying or exaggerating” the incident.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said he did not have information to provide on the incident but urged India “not to take any unilateral action that may further complicate or exac-erbate the border tension.” Since a deadly clash last year, soldiers from the two sides have brawled occasionally and fired shots for the first time in decades, breaking a long-standing agreement not to use firearms during border confrontations.

Two Indian security officials said at least 18 Chinese soldiers tried to cross into Indian-claimed territory at Naku La last

Wednesday night and were blocked by Indian soldiers, leading to clashes with sticks and stones. The officials, who spoke on condition of ano-nymity because of the sensi-tivity of the issue and in keeping with government regulations, said soldiers on both sides were carrying firearms but did not use them.

The two officials said over a dozen Indian soldiers and at least eight Chinese soldiers received minor injuries.

There was no independent confirmation of the incident.

Both sides rushed more sol-diers to the area in an “aggressive deployment” that swelled the number of personnel to hundreds, the officials said.

India and China have been

locked in a tense military standoff since May high in the Karakoram mountains, with troops settling in for the harsh winter. Both sides have mobi-lized tens of thousands of sol-diers, artillery and fighter air-craft along the fiercely con-tested border known as the Line of Actual Control, or LAC, that separates Chinese and Indian-held territories from Ladakh in the west to India’s eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, which China claims in its entirety.

The frontier is broken in parts where the Himalayan nations of Nepal and Bhutan border China, and where Sikkim, the site of the latest brawl, is sandwiched.

The LAC divides areas of physical control rather than

territorial claims. Despite more than three dozen rounds of talks over the years and multiple meetings between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping, they are nowhere near settling the dispute.

The standoff began last May with a fierce brawl, and exploded into hand-to-hand combat with clubs, stones and fists on June 15 that left 20 Indian soldiers dead. China is believed to also have had cas-ualties, but has not given any details. Indian and Chinese army commanders met for the ninth round of talks after a gap of 2 1/2 months in Ladakh on Sunday but neither side released any details of the outcome.

Nepal: Caretaker

PM ejected from

ruling party

REUTERS — KATHMANDU

Nepal’s caretaker Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli was thrown out of the country’s ruling Communist party yesterday, his opponents said, in protest at his abrupt decision in December to dissolve parliament and call for an early general election.

Oli remains in office despite the expulsion.

Yesterday, dozens of pro-testers who marched near Oli’s residence to oppose the par-liament’s dissolution clashed with police who used water cannons and caned some with rattan sticks to break up the anti-Oli rally.

Witnesses said some pro-testers were injured in the clash but police officials said only “mild force” was used to stop demonstrators from entering the restricted area.

Judges in the Himalayan country’s top court are hearing more than a dozen petitions from independent lawyers and Oli opponents on whether the dissolution of parliament and calling of an early election was legitimate or unconstitutional. The court is expected to deliver its verdict next month.

The ruling Nepal Com-munist Party has split over Oli’s call for a new parliament to be elected more than a year ahead of schedule on the basis that his colleagues were not cooper-ating with the government on policy interventions.

“We have expelled Oli from the party on the grounds that he was not following the party rules and was working against collective decision-making,” said Pampha Bhusal, a senior leader of the faction opposing Oli.

Surya Thapa, an aide to Oli, said the expulsion held no political meaning and that Oli was confident of a legal and political victory.

New Zealand confirms firstvirus case in monthsREUTERS — WELLINGTON

New Zealand yesterday confirmed its first case of COVID-19 in the community in months in a 56-year-old woman, but said close contacts of the recently returned trav-eller had so far tested negative.

The woman, who returned to New Zealand on December 30, had tested positive for the South African strain of the virus after leaving a two-week man-datory quarantine where she had twice tested negative, COVID-19 response minister Chris Hipkins said.

No other community cases had been reported since the woman’s case was disclosed on Sunday and authorities said the source of the infection was probably a fellow returnee at the quarantine facility.

Authorities were looking at whether the virus was spreading through the ventilation and air conditioning systems in these facilities, Hipkins said.

New Zealand Health Chief

Ashley Bloomfield said 15 people had been identified as close contacts of the woman and were being contacted.

However, her closest con-tacts, her husband and hair-dresser, had tested negative, which was encouraging.

Confirmation of the case led Australia to immediately suspend a travel bubble with New Zealand for 72 hours.

Anyone arriving from New Zealand since January 14 will need to isolate and stay home until they test negative for COVID-19. Anyone arriving in the next 72 hours will have to go straight into hotel quarantine.

“This will be done out of an abundance of caution whilst more is learned about the event and the case,” Australian Health Minister Greg Hunt said late yesterday.

He said the case was of concern because of the trans-missibility of the South African variant and because the woman had been in the community.

India: Farmers ride caravan of tractors into capital ahead of Republic DayREUTERS — NEW DELHI

Caravans of tractors clogged a key highway in northern India yesterday as tens of thousands of farmers protesting against agriculture reforms streamed into the capital ahead of Republic Day, and police said they were prepared to deal with the crowds.

India marks its founding as a republic today with a military parade in the historic city centre, but the farmers, who are demanding a rollback of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s dereg-ulation effort, plan their own peaceful show of strength.

Delhi’s police said protesters have been told to use three main routes for the tractor procession, which had been agreed upon after six days of discussion with farmer leaders.

But there are lingering con-cerns that “anti-national people” may seek to foment trouble

during the demonstration, Delhi Police Commissioner SN Shrivastava told reporters.

“We are aware of all this and we are taking whatever action is required,” Shrivastava said, “I have trust that everything will go on peacefully.”

On National Highway 44, loudspeakers blared anti-gov-ernment songs as the lengthy procession of vehicles rolled down, fuelled by dozens of com-munity kitchens that handed out hot meals and beverages in the winter cold.

“We will teach Modi a lesson that he will never forget,” said one of the protesters, from the district of Ludhiana in Punjab, who drove his own tractor. The 35-year-old, who cultivates 10 acres (4 hectares), asked not to be identified.

Farmers mainly drawn from the breadbasket states of Punjab and adjoining Haryana have

blockaded approaches into New Delhi for about two months to protest against three new farm laws they say will hurt their live-lihoods and help big companies.

Their unions are pushing for repeal of the laws, after rejecting a government proposal to suspend the measures it says will usher in much-needed steps to boost farmer incomes.

Several rounds of talks with Modi’s government have made little headway, and protesters now aim to up the ante with the procession set to follow Tues-day’s military parade.

Top leaders and military offi-cials attend the annual high-security parade to mark the day India’s constitution took effect in 1950.

A farmers’ group exhorted its members to refrain from vio-lence in detailed instructions issued for yesterday’s event.

A file photo of farmers participating in a tractor rally to protest against the newly passed farm bills, on a highway on the outskirts of New Delhi, India.

Suu Kyi to receive COVID-19 vaccine this weekBLOOMBERG — YANGON

Myanmar’s de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi alongside health workers will be among the first to receive COVID-19 vaccine this week as the Southeast Asian nation seeks to stem the corona-virus outbreak and further relax containment measures.

Frontline healthcare workers will get the shots from tomorrow, according to Khin Khin Gyi, director of emerging infectious disease at Myanmar’s Ministry of Health and Sports. Suu Kyi, President Win Myint and cabinet members will be inoculated the following day in capital Naypyidaw.

Myanmar, which received 1.5

million doses of vaccine from India last week, will expand the inoculation programme to those older than 65 years in 74 town-ships under stay-at-home orders once healthcare workers are covered, Khin Khin Gyi said.

Myanmar’s stay-at-home orders have covered more than one-fourth of its population of almost 55 million from early Sep-tember to control a second wave of infections that’s seen the nation’s total caseload surge to 137,574 with more than 3,000 fatalities. A vaccine rollout may allow authorities to further ease restrictions in areas including its commercial hub Yangon and in Rakhine state.

Myanmar has signed a

contract with Serum Institute of India to buy 30 million doses of Covishield vaccine developed by AstraZeneca Plc and Oxford Uni-versity and is in talks with Chinese manufacturers including Sinovac Biotech Ltd. and Sinopharm for additional sup-plies. The nation aims to inoc-ulate more than 40% of its pop-ulation by the end of this year, according to the health ministry.

Suu Kyi’s administration also expects supplies from the global Covax facility before April 7 and the government plans to allow the private sector to import vac-cines approved by the World Health Organization later this year, Khin Khin Gyi said.

Health workers in Samut

Sakhon province, the

epicentre of the latest

outbreak, where more

than 900 infections

were reported

yesterday, would be the

first to be inoculated

with the initial delivery

of 50,000 doses.

11TUESDAY 26 JANUARY 2021 ASIA

Xi calls for unity in fighting virus, climate changeBEIJING — AP

Countries must cooperate more closely in fighting the chal-lenges of the pandemic and climate change and in supporting a sustainable global economic recovery, Chinese President Xi Jinping said yesterday in an address to the World Economic Forum.

“Humanity has only Earth and one future,” Xi said in remarks from Beijing to a virtual gathering that is taking place in lieu of the annual in-person meetings in Davos, Swit-zerland, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Fighting the pandemic is the most urgent task facing the international community,” Xi said, in urging that countries cooperate to conquer the disease, which first was reported in the central Chinese city of Wuhan just over a year ago.

“In particular, we should strengthen cooperation in vaccine research and devel-opment, production and dis-tribution, so that vaccines can

truly become a public good that are accessible and affordable to people in all countries,” he said.

Much of what the Chinese leader said was a reiteration of Beijing’s usual stance on issues such as closing the gap between wealthy and devel-oping nations, and warning that countries should not meddle in other countries’ affairs.

While Xi did not mention recent US policies directly, he did call for sticking to rules, embracing diversity and

avoiding confrontations over trade and technology.

Relations between the US and China have sunk to their worst in decades as former President Donald Trump imposed punitive tariffs and other sanctions to try to gain concessions on trade and counter perennial trade deficits.

“We should advocate fair competition, like competing with each other for excellence in a racing field, not beating each other on a wrestling arena,” Xi said.

“To engage in cliques, a new Cold War, exclusion, threats and intimidation against others, to warn of decoupling, cutting off supplies, sanctions at every turn... can only drive the world to division and even conflict,” he said.

“A divided world cannot tackle the common challenges facing humanity, and confron-tation will lead humanity to a dead end,” Xi said.

Just days after his inaugu-ration, President Joe Biden has yet to set out his

administration’s own policies on trade with China, though he

is adopting a more conventional approach than Trump’s

“America First” stance in han-dling global issues such as the pandemic and global warming. Few experts expect Biden to sig-nificantly soften the US stance on trade and technology given longstanding friction over a wide range of issues, including human rights.

Xi said countries need to better coordinate their economic policies, avoid protectionism and other barriers to trade and coop-eration to support a global eco-nomic recovery and ensure the stability of world financial systems.

“Despite trillions of dollars countries around the world rolled out in economic remedies, the momentum of the global eco-nomic recovery remains very unstable, and there is great uncertainty about the outlook,” Xi said. Other leaders expected to address the virtual forum include Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, German Chan-cellor Angela Merkel and South African President Cyril Ram-aphosa. The forum has said it plans to hold its annual meeting in person in May in Singapore.

A photo of Chinese President Xi Jinping attending the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland.

Nine workers found dead in China gold mine explosionsAP — BEIJING

Chinese rescuers have found the bodies of nine workers killed in explosions at a gold mine, raising the death toll to 10, officials said yesterday.

Eleven others were rescued a day earlier after being trapped underground for two weeks at the mine in Shandong province. One person was still missing.

The cause of the accident at

the mine, which was under con-struction, is under investigation. The explosions on January 10 released 70 tonnes of debris that blocked a shaft, disabling ele-vators and trapping workers underground. Rescuers drilled parallel shafts to send down food and nutrients and eventually bring up the survivors on Sunday.

Chen Yumin, director of the rescue group, told reporters that the nine workers recovered

yesterday died more than 400 meters below ground. He said there had been two explosions about an hour and a half apart, with the second explosion causing more damage.

Search efforts will continue for the remaining miner until he is found, said Chen Fei, the mayor of Yantai city, where the mine is located.

“Until this worker is found, we will not give up,” he said at a

news conference.Chen and other officials

involved in the rescue effort held a moment of silence for the victims, bowing their heads.

“Our hearts are deeply grieved. We express our pro-found condolences, and we express deep sympathies to the families of the victim,” he said.

Authorities have detained mine managers for delaying reporting the accident.

Such protracted and expensive rescue efforts are rel-atively new in China’s mining industry, which used to average 5,000 deaths per year. Increased supervision has improved safety, although demand for coal and precious metals continues to prompt corner-cutting. A new crackdown was ordered after two accidents in mountainous southwestern Chongqing last year killed 39 miners.

Pfizer requests South Korea approval of vaccines

REUTERS — SEOUL

Drugmaker Pfizer Inc has filed an application seeking approval of its coronavirus vaccines to be used in South Korea as the country gears up to begin inoculations next month, authorities said yesterday.

The Ministry of Food and Drug Safety said it aims to reach a decision within 40 days after cutting its previous deliberation period of up to 180 days to fast-track the approval and speed up the vaccination process.

“Pfizer submitted the request today for its vaccines produced in Belgium,” the ministry said in a statement.

“We will thoroughly review their safety and effectiveness in cooperation with profes-sional examiners and outside experts so that our people can access safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines.” South Korea has said its first batch of vaccines consisting of 100,000 doses of Pfizer products for 50,000 people could arrive before the Lunar New Year hol-idays, which begin on February 11, via global distribution scheme COVAX.

Japan likely to hit COVID-19 herd immunity in OctoberREUTERS — TOKYO

Japan is likely to achieve herd immunity to COVID-19 through mass inoculations only months after the planned Tokyo Olympics, even though it has locked in the biggest quantity of vaccines in Asia, according to a London-based forecaster.

That would be a blow to Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga who has pledged to have enough shots for the populace by the middle of 2021, as it trails most major economies in s t a r t i n g C O V I D - 1 9 inoculations.

“Japan looks to be quite late in the game,” Rasmus Bech Hansen, the founder of British research firm Airfinity, said.

“They’re dependent on importing many (vaccines) from the US And at the moment, it doesn’t seem very likely they will get very large quantities of for instance, the Pfizer vaccine.” Hansen said Japan will not reach a 75% inoculation rate, a benchmark for herd immunity,

until around October, about two months after the close of the Summer Games.

Japan has arranged to buy 314 million doses from Pfizer, Moderna Inc and AstraZeneca Plc, and that would be more than enough for its population of 126 million.

But problems seen in vaccine rollouts elsewhere stir doubt that Japan will get those supplies on time.

Taro Kono, Japan’s vaccine programme chief, said last week it would begin its first shots in February, starting with 10,000 medical workers, but he walked back on a goal to secure enough vaccine supplies by June. Japan is particularly vulnerable because its initial inoculation plan is dependent on Pfizer doses, which are at risk of being taken back by US authorities to fight the pan-demic there.

“There simply aren’t enough vaccines for all the countries that Pfizer made agreements with,” Hansen said.

Indonesian healthcare workers prepare before treating patients at an emergency hospital for coronavirus disease at Athlete Village in Jakarta, Indonesia.

Frontline workers

China: US military in disputed sea not good for peace

REUTERS — BEIJING

The United States often sends ships and aircraft into the South China Sea to “flex its muscles” and this is not good for peace, China’s Foreign Ministry said yesterday, after a US aircraft carrier group sailed into the disputed waterway.

The strategic South China Sea, through which trillions of dollars in trade flows each year, has long been a focus of con-tention between Beijing and Washington, with China par-ticularly angered by US military activity there.

The US carrier group led by the USS Theodore Roosevelt and accompanied by three warships, entered the waterway on Saturday to promote “freedom of the seas”, the US military said, just days after Joe Biden became US president..

“The United States fre-quently sends aircraft and vessels into the South China Sea to flex its muscles,” the foreign ministry spokesman, Zhao Lijian, told reporters, responding to the US mission.

“This is not conducive to peace and stability in the region.” China has repeatedly complained about US Navy ships getting close to islands it occupies in the South China Sea, where Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, Brunei and Taiwan all have competing claims.

The carrier group entered the South China Sea at the same time as Chinese-claimed Taiwan reported incursions by Chinese air force jets into the southwestern part of its air defence identification zone, prompting concern from Washington.

China has not commented on what its air force was doing, and Zhao referred questions to the defence ministry.

He reiterated China’s position that Taiwan is an inal-ienable part of China and that the United States should abide by the “one China” principle.

Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen visited a radar base in the north of the island yes-terday, and praised its ability to track Chinese forces, her office said.

Pakistan pins big hopes on small dams to help farmers beat droughtREUTERS — ISLAMABAD

For years, Nangji Mal struggled to scrape together a living growing pulses and pearl millet on his farm in Nagarparkar, a desert area in Pakistan’s southeastern Sindh province.

But these days his land is lush and fertile, after the government constructed new water-har-vesting dams nearby.

Using irrigation water from one of the small dams, Mal is growing onions, wheat and other crops on his 40-acre plot and says he has seen his income increase more than 60%.

“It had never occurred to me that I might be able, in my lifetime, to earn a handsome amount from my fields, but this reservoir has made it all possible,” Mal, 59, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Pakistan, a nation of about 220 million people, faces increasing water scarcity driven by worsening climate-related drought and an agriculture industry that is pushing itself to meet the demands of a growing population, say water experts.

Less than 20% of the water the country’s farmers use for irri-gation is captured rainwater, with most coming from ground and surface water, according to a

paper published in 2020 by a group of agricultural and environ-mental researchers.

The Sindh provincial gov-ernment hopes the new rainwater harvesting dams will not only provide farmers with a reliable water supply but also help recharge groundwater levels, as some of the water from the dams sinks into the earth, said Murtaza Wahab, environment adviser to the chief minister of Sindh.

Since construction started six years ago, the provincial gov-ernment has built 60 small rain-water-fed dams - each with an average storage capacity of 100,000 gallons - in the remote drought-hit areas of Nagarparkar and Kohistan, Wahab added.

The plan is to build at least 23 more in the next two or three years, he said.

Wahab noted that because those areas have such scattered populations, there are no reliable figures on how many people are benefiting from the new dams.

Mal said the dam in his area has transformed his farm, as he can now use water from it year-round to irrigate his crops.

In Tharparkar, the district where Mal’s farm is located, the average annual rainfall can be as low as 9mm and the area fre-quently experiences drought,

according to international charity WaterAid.

The State Bank of Pakistan noted in its annual report for 2016-17 that the country’s water supply was both limited and erratic, while demand was rising rapidly due to a growing popu-lation and increasing urbanisation.

“The resulting imbalance is pushing the country towards severe water shortage,” the report stated.

According to its latest eco-nomic survey, Pakistan had about 94 million acre feet of surface water available for agriculture during the financial year 2019-20 - a nearly 10% shortfall compared to how much the sector uses on average every year.

Wahab, the government adviser, said the small dams had been a boon to the farmers using them, noting that last year Nagar-parkar’s onion farmers reported a total yield worth 600 million rupees ($3.75 million), a record for Sindh province.

Besides the Sindh govern-ment’s project, the federal gov-ernment has also allocated 20.4 billion rupees to build more than 500 small dams across the country, said Ghazala Channar, deputy chief of water resources in the Ministry of Planning.

Communist Party

meets to pick

new leadership

in Vietnam

REUTERS — HANOI

Vietnam’s ruling Communist Party gathers for its first national congress since 2016 later yesterday with a mission to select new leaders and shape policy for the next five years.

The event, the 13th congress since the founding of the Com-munist Party of Vietnam in 1930, will bring 1,600 delegates from across the Southeast Asian country to the capital, Hanoi.

In nine days of meetings - mostly behind closed doors - delegates will pick a new lead-ership team aiming to bolster both Vietnam’s ongoing eco-nomic success and the legit-imacy of the Party’s rule.

Vietnam has seen its economy outstrip much of Asia in the past year, keeping the coronavirus pandemic at bay thanks to stringent quarantine measures, testing and tracing: it has reported just over 1,500 COVID-19 infections and 35 deaths in total, much fewer than most other countries.

One of the last five Com-munist-ruled countries in the world besides China, Cuba, Laos and North Korea, Vietnam is already eyeing average annual gross domestic product growth of 7.0% over the next five years.

“Humanity has only

Earth and one future,” Xi

said in remarks from

Beijing to a virtual

gathering that is taking

place in lieu of the

annual in-person

meetings in Davos,

Switzerland, due to the

COVID-19 pandemic.

12 TUESDAY 26 JANUARY 2021EUROPE

Chaos mars over-80s vaccine start in major German stateAP — BERLIN

Thousands of elderly Germans faced online error messages and jammed up hotlines yesterday as technical problems marred the start of the coronavirus vaccine campaign for over-80s in the country’s most populous state.

North Rhine-Westphalia state, whose population of almost 18 million is bigger than those of many European coun-tries, began administering shots

to nursing home residents and staff last month.

But people over 80 who are still living at their homes have been left waiting for appoint-ments to get their first shots at vast vaccine centres, and many will likely have to wait even longer.

“Due to heightened demand, it’s currently not pos-sible to book a vaccination appointment,” the website of the regional doctors’ associ-ation, which is organising the

system, informed users yesterday.

“We’re working hard to restore the online booking service again. Please try again later.”

The technical problems were an embarrassment for state governor Armin Laschet, who was just elected the new head of Chancellor Angela Mer-kel’s centre-right Christian Democratic Union party.

North Rhine-Westphalia, an industrial powerhouse that is

home to cities such as Cologne, Duesseldorf and Dortmund, currently languishes far down the per capita vaccine league tables in Germany, with about 1.6% of the population having received their first shot.

Nationwide, fewer than 1.6 million people or about 1.9 % of the population had received their first shot by Sunday, a rate far lower than in Israel, Britain or the United States — and 228,763 had received their second dose.

Hospital staff in the western German state, which borders with Belgium and the Nether-lands, had already complained bitterly that they hadn’t been offered the excess doses left over from vaccine drives at nursing homes.

Germany’s federal gov-ernment has sought to distance itself from problems with the vaccine rollout, saying it’s the responsibility of individual states to organise those efforts on the ground.

Virus rules make for long lines at German-Czech borderAP — BERLIN

German police say hundreds of cars and pedestrians are lining up at border crossings along the Czech-German border after Germany declared the Czech Republic a high risk area in the pandemic, meaning it requires proof a negative coro-navirus test results before entry.

At the crossings in Waldmuenchen and Fuerth im Wald authorities said hun-dreds of cars lined up on the Czech side trying to get into Germany in the early morning hours. Further backup was expected during the day Monday.

Since Sunday, people from the Czech Republic need to show negative test

results no older than 48 hours every time they enter Germany. The Czechs who commute to work in neighbouring Germany formed long lines at some border crossings, waiting for required tests on the coronavirus.

The Czechs were boosting the capacity of their testing site at the crossings and elsewhere to meet the growing demand.

Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis was scheduled to discuss the situation with his Bavarian counterpart Markus Söder. Other Czechs who don’t work in the neighbouring country on a daily basis have to have a test but also need to isolate for 10 days if they travel to Germany.

Security personnel organise people, after the controls were tightened due to the COVID-19, at the Czech-German border in Folmava, Czech Republic, yesterday.

Spain health minister quits to run for regional electionREUTERS — MADRID

Spanish Health Minister Salvador Illa (pictured)will leave his job today (Tuesday) to run for elections scheduled in Catalonia on February 14 to try and win the regional government away from pro-independence parties.

“Salvador Illa starts today his last 24 hours at the helm of the ministry,” the office of Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said in a statement. “Tomorrow Tuesday will be his last cabinet meeting and his replacement will be disclosed.” A source close to the government pointed to Regional Policy Minister Carolina Darias as the most likely candidate to take over the position.

In her current role, Darias has worked closely with Illa and overseen weekly summits of regional health chiefs to coor-dinate the coronavirus response.

The new minister’s first task will be tackling a rampaging third wave of infection that has sent Spain’s 14-day incidence of the virus spiralling to 829 cases per 100,000 people from 263 cases a month ago.

Desperate to control the spread, some regional authorities have substantially stepped up their response after months of incremental tightening.

Valencia imposed some of the coun-try’s toughest measures yet, limiting people to mixing only with members of their household at home and banning groups of more than two from socialising outdoors.

Even Madrid, whose regional gov-ernment has been staunchly opposed to any measures that hurt business, is bringing forward a night curfew to 10 pm and said it would deploy drones and extra police patrols to enforce compliance.

Opinion polls have been split on the Catalonia election. But some, including one by the Centre for Sociological Studies (CIS), have shown Illa’s Socialists, now the fourth-largest party in the regional parliament, on track to win the biggest share of the vote in the February 14 election.

That would be a major change in a region currently led by pro-independence parties.

Italy PM under pressure to resign and seek fresh coalitionREUTERS — ROME

Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte faced pressure from within his own coalition yesterday to resign and try to put together a new government after lawmakers warned he faced defeat in parliament without an overhaul.

Italy has had 66 govern-ments since World War Two and administrations are regu-larly ripped up and then pieced back together in tortuous, behind-the-scenes talks that open the way for cabinet reshuffles and policy reviews.

However, once a prime minister resigns, there is no

guarantee that a new coalition can form and always a risk that early elections might end up as the only viable solution.

Conte lost his absolute majority in the upper house Senate last week when a junior partner, the Italia Viva party headed by former premier Matteo Renzi, quit in a row over the government's handling of the coronavirus crisis and eco-nomic recession.

The prime minister is resisting resigning for fear that he might not be reappointed, and has instead tried to draw centrist and unaligned senators into his camp with vague promises of a new government

pact and possible ministerial positions.

But his efforts have floun-dered and lawmakers from the centre-left coalition Democratic Party (PD) said he needed to stand down and open formal negotiations to create a new coalition. If he didn't, he faced defeat in a vote on the justice system in the Senate this week, they warned.

Trying to allay his fears of a political imbroglio, PD law-makers said they would support him to lead a new cabinet.

Conte has no direct party affiliation but is close to the largest coalition group, the anti-e s t a b l i s h m e n t 5 - S t a r

Movement. It has reiterated its support for him, and has also made clear that it does want any attempt at reconciling with Renzi.

"He is a problem and cannot be part of the solution," said Stefano Patuanelli, industry minister and a 5-Star politician.

Renzi has indicated he would return to the coalition on the condition that Conte accepts a string of demands.

If the prime minister shuns him, his path to securing a solid parliamentary majority will be much more difficult, with rela-tively few senators seen as open to joining the government.

Looking to put pressure on waverers, the main ruling parties have warned that snap elections, two years ahead of schedule, will be the only way out of the impasse unless a solution is rapidly found.

A recent reform cut by one-third the number of parlia-mentary seats up for grabs at the next national ballot, meaning that many of the current lawmakers are unlikely to win re-election, whatever the result.

This means that there will be no rush in parliament for a vote, putting pressure on party l e a d e r s t o f i n d a compromise.

Discrimination worsens in Spain: MinistryREUTERS — MADRID

Racial and ethnic discrimi-nation in Spain has worsened in the past few years, with a notable drop in access to housing, the Equality Ministry said in its 2020 report yesterday. It also highlighted growing racism in the education sphere. Almost one in three Black or ethnic minority respondents said they had experienced discrimi-nation while house-hunting, starting with real estate and housing agencies and extending to locals and indi-vidual landlords.

That was double over the previous report in 2013.

Discrimination in the edu-cational sector increased by more than 50% from 2013, with one in five respondents saying they had endured insults, assault and racist jokes from fellow students, and been excluded from games and activ-ities. People from sub-Saharan Africa and Spain’s Roma com-munity, known locally as Gitano, experienced the highest levels of racism based on their physical aspect — 82% and 71% for the respective demo-graphics. A United Nations expert said last year that Spain’s discriminated-against commu-nities suffer staggeringly high rates of disease, inequality, and poor access to education and housing.

No move yet on

third lockdown:

French Minister

REUTERS & AP — PARIS

The government has not yet decided whether France will move into a third lockdown to curb the coronavirus epidemic and notably the circulation of new variants of the virus, French European Affairs minister Clement Beaune said yesterday. “Nothing has yet been decided. There are scenarios (on the table) but no decision yet,” Beaune told Radio Classique when asked if a lockdown could be announced as early as this week. France probably needs to move into a third lockdown, perhaps as early as the February school holidays, because of the circulation of the new variants, the govern-ment’s top medical adviser Jean-Francois Delfraissy on COVID-19 policy had said on Sunday.

Meanwhile, France’s Pasteur Institute announced yesterday it was abandoning its main COVID-19 vaccine project after clinical trial tests did not meet expectations.

The decision was made in coordination with its industrial partner, US pharmaceutical company Merck, the statement said. The project was attempting to develop a COVID-19 vaccine based on an existing measles vaccine.

Pasteur’s statement stressed that first human trials showed "the vaccine candidate was well tolerated, but induced immune responses were inferior to those observed amid people who had recovered naturally and to those observed with approved COVID-19 vaccines.” The French institute said it will keep working on two other vaccine projects using dif-ferent methods.

French pharmaceutical company Sanofi said last month its potential vaccine, developed with GlaxoSmith-Kline, won’t be ready until late 2021.

Johnson says working on plan to quarantine arrivals into UKBLOOMBERG

The UK is “actively” working on a plan to quarantine arriving travellers in hotels to guard against coronavirus infections from overseas, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said.

“We want to make sure that we protect our population, protect this country against reinfection from abroad,” Johnson said, adding the UK must consider there’s “at least a theoretical risk” that a new variant of the disease could prove immune to the vaccines his government is rolling out.

“That idea of looking at hotels is certainly one thing that we’re actively now working on.”

In a pooled broadcast interview yesterday, the premier also warned that lifting lockdown rules too quickly risked triggering a new surge of infections in the UK, amid growing pressure from members of his Conservative Party to lay out a time frame for reopening the economy.

Ministers have previously pledged to ease restrictions

once the target to vaccinate almost 15 million people con-sidered most vulnerable to the disease has been met, which Johnson said is still on track to happen by mid-February.

But with the UK’s overall death toll likely to surpass 100,000 this week and infec-tions still high — though falling — there are growing indications the timetable for lifting lockdown is slipping, potentially even into summer.

That has alarmed prominent Tories including Mark Harper and Steve Baker, who have led demands for the government to set out plans for lifting the lockdown, and especially to reopen schools, and the criteria it will use for doing so.

“Once the vulnerable are protected, the first priority should be to start reopening schools,” Harper said on Twitter yesterday. Johnson reiterated that his government’s priority to reopen schools as fast as pos-sible, though he said any lifting of the lockdown must be done in a “responsible, cautious way.”

“There’s nothing I want to

do more than reopen schools,” he said. “We want to do that in a way that is consistent with fighting the epidemic and keeping the infection rate down.” Johnson’s government sees vaccines as the UK’s ticket out of lockdown, and is consid-ering tightening further tight-ening border controls to try to keep out any strains that might undermine the effectiveness of the doses being administered. Ministers are expected to make a decision this week on whether to quarantine arriving travellers in hotels, as countries including Australia and Singapore have done.

So far, the UK has given a

first dose of the vaccine to more than 6.3 million people, leaving about 8.7 million elderly and vulnerable people to inoculate in the next three weeks to meet Johnson’s target.

The UK is using shots developed by Pfizer Inc. in con-junction with BioNTech SE, and by AstraZeneca Plc working

with the University of Oxford. A third vaccine developed

by Moderna Inc. has been approved, but first deliveries aren’t expected until the spring.

“AstraZeneca have com-mitted to delivering 2 million doses a week to the UK and we’re not expecting any changes to that,” Johnson’s

spokesman, Jamie Davies, told reporters when asked about the vaccine rollout.

Work to Pfizer’s factory in Belgium means that “supplies will be lower this month and next” than previously expected, he said, but then ramp up so that total volume “will remain the same for January to March.”

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson carries Oxford/AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine doses for mobile distribution at a vaccination centre, in north London, yesterday.

With the UK’s overall

death toll likely to

surpass 100,000 this

week there are growing

indications the timetable

for lifting lockdown is

slipping, potentially even

into summer.

COVID-19 UPDATE

13TUESDAY 26 JANUARY 2021 EUROPE

Portugal President Sousa wins second term REUTERS — LISBON

Portugal’s centre-right pres-ident, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, won a second term on Sunday in an election marked by record abstention as the country battles a crippling third wave of coro-navirus contagion.

The 72-year-old former leader of the Social Democratic Party, known for his warm persona and habit of taking selfies with supporters, won 61 percent of votes, above his 52 percent win in 2016.

Still, 60 percent of voters abstained — the highest figure in Portuguese history — in part because 1.1 million voters from abroad were added to the elec-toral register for the first time, but also due to hundreds of thousands of people in quarantine.

The president holds a largely ceremonial role but can veto certain laws and decree states of emergency, a power Rebelo de Sousa deployed often during the pandemic, taking parliament’s lead.

“The most urgent of tasks is to combat the pandemic. This

is my priority, in total solidarity with parliament and gov-ernment,” Rebelo de Sousa said in his victory speech.

Andre Ventura, a lawmaker for the far-right Chega party, narrowly lost out to left-wing candidate Ana Gomes in the fight for a distant second place, with 12 percent of the vote to Gomes’ 13 percent.

The result was nevertheless a significant jump for Ventura, a close ally of European far-right parties who dubs himself ‘anti-system’ and has fuelled fears among rights groups for

discriminatory views towards minorities.

His party won just 1.3 percent of votes in the 2019 leg-islative elections.

Rebelo de Sousa, in an apparent dig at Ventura — whose campaign catchphrase was that he would represent the ‘good Portuguese’ and not those who lived off the state — vowed to be a president who “stabilises, unites, who is not only of the ‘good’ against the ‘bad’”.

Masked, socially distanced and using their own pens, voters were subjected to extensive measures by local councils to prevent contagion during the voting process.

Still, almost two-thirds of Portuguese thought the election should have been postponed because of the pandemic, a poll last week by research institute ISC/ISCTE showed.

“Since the date of the elec-tions wasn’t changed, I decided to come early,” said Cristina Queda, 58, who arrived at her polling station in Lisbon as soon as it opened at 8am to “avoid groups and queues”.

The country of 10 million people is reporting the world’s highest seven-day rolling average of new cases and deaths per capita, according to Oxford University data tracker www.ourworldindata.org.

The number of COVID-19

deaths broke records for the seventh day in a row on Sunday at 275, with hospitalisations also at an all-time high and ambu-lances queuing for several hours at Lisbon hospitals full to capacity.

Portugal has posted a total of 10,469 deaths from COVID-19

and 636,190 cases.Casting his vote at a Lisbon

school, centre-left Prime Min-ister Antonio Costa acknowl-edged the grave stage of the pandemic, but said that “eve-rything was done for people to be able to exercise their demo-cratic right to vote”.

Portugal President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa addressing journalists after the announcement of electoral results in Lisbon on Sunday.

Austria stops mantrying to smuggle74 chameleonsAP — BERLIN

Austrian authorities stopped a man at Vienna airport as he tried to smuggle 74 protected chameleons from Africa into the country.

They said in a statement Friday that a 56-year-old man, who was not further identified, had hidden the animals in socks and empty ice-cream boxes when he was caught at customs control in Vienna. He had traveled to Austria from Tanzania via Ethiopia.

The chameleons were taken to Schoenbrunn Zoo, which said that three of the animals did not survive. All the animals were from the Usambara Mountains in Tan-zania and ranged in age from 1 week old to adult animals.

On the black market they would sell for for about $44,9700, officials said.

The man who smuggled the animals into Austria has to pay a fine of up to 6,000 euros, the Austrian finance ministry said in a statement.

The most urgent of tasks

is to combat the

pandemic. This is my

priority, in total solidarity

with parliament and

government,

Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa

President of Portugal

Greece detects 32 cases of UK variantREUTERS — ATHENS

Greece has detected 32 cases of the British variant of COVID-19, health authorities said, with the country’s Network of Genomic Moni-toring planning more intensive checks in the coming weeks for the potentially more deadly virus.

Laboratory tests of 235 samples taken at border entry points, hospitals and people in close contact with a confirmed case of the mutant virus showed that 33 were positive for the 117 mutation of the

SARS-CoV-2 virus. Authorities said 17 of the positive samples were detected in Athens.

Britain has attributed the high transmission rates that led it to impose a recent lockdown partly to a highly contagious variant that was first identified in southeast England and is now prevalent in many areas.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Friday the new variant may be associated with a higher level of mor-tality, although scientists have said the evidence on that remained uncertain.

Poland says Moderna delays coronavirus vaccine supplyREUTERS — WARSAW

Moderna has cancelled its coronavirus vaccines supply to Poland scheduled for today, a government official said, adding the delivery could be supplied during the weekend at the earliest.

“Unfortunately tomorrow’s delivery of Moderna vaccines has been cancelled. We will be modifying the vaccination schedule if needed,” the Polish prime minister’s top aide Michal Dworczyk told a news conference yesterday.

Poland has been receiving coronavirus vaccinations as part of the European Union’s procurement scheme. Warsaw has also ordered vaccines outside the EU agreement, local media reported.

Poland has vaccinated over 700.000 up to date, mostly medics and some elderly. The country planned to vaccinate 3 million people in the first quarter of 2021.

Refugee resettlement hits 20-year low: UNREUTERS — GENEVA

Barely 1.6 percent of 1.44 million people with refugee status who were prioritised for resettlement in another country of asylum last year found new homelands through the UN refugee agency, the lowest number in nearly two decades, it said yesterday.

The drop to 22,770 admis-sions was due to lower quotas set by recipient countries, limited flights and delays in processing during the corona-virus pandemic, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said. In 2019, it resettled 63,696 refugees in

need of transfer from one asylum country to another.

“We can only hope that 2020 will be an extreme anomaly for refugee reset-tlement. We urgently call on governments to boost their pro-grammes this year, offer more places, expedite the processing of cases and help us save lives of those most in need and at greatest risk,” Gillian Triggs, UNHCR’s Assistant High Com-missioner for Protection, said in a statement.

Refugees from Syria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Myanmar were the largest groups resettled in 2020.

The United States resettled the highest number of refugees last year, 6,740, but this was less than one-third of the 21,159 that it admitted in 2019, UNHCR figures show.

Sweden and Canada ranked second and third last year, resettling about 3,543 and 3,496 refugees respectively through UN refugee agency’s programmes.

The vast majority of the world’s total 26.4 million ref-ugees who have fled wars and persecution remain in neigh-bouring countries, but the most vulnerable and those with special needs are given priority for the resettlement.

Netherlands PM condemns riotsREUTERS — AMSTERDAM

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte yesterday condemned riots across the country this weekend in which demon-strators attacked police and set fires to protest against a night-time curfew to slow the spread of the coronavirus, calling them “criminal violence”.

The police said hundreds of people had been detained after incidents that began on Saturday evening and lasted until the early hours of Monday, including some in which rioters threw rocks and

in one case knives at police and burned down a COVID-19 testing station.

“This has nothing to do with protest, this is criminal violence and we will treat it as such,” Rutte said. Schools and non-essential shops in the Nether-lands have been shut since mid-December, following the closure of bars and restaurants two months earlier.

Rutte’s government added the curfew as an additional lockdown measure from Sat-urday over fears that the British variant of COVID-19 may soon lead to an increase in cases.

Greece, France sign $2.8bn fighter jet dealAP — ATHENS

Greece signed a $2.8bn deal with France yesterday to purchase 18 Rafale fighter jets, as tensions remain high with neighbor Turkey.

Florence Parly, the French defence minister, signed the agreement in Athens to deliver 12 used and six new aircraft built by Dassault Aviation over two years, starting July this year.

France has sided with Greece in a dispute over bound-aries in the Aegean Sea and eastern Mediterranean that has brought Nato members Greece and Turkey to the brink of war several times in recent decades.

Tension spiked again last summer when a Turkish explo-ration mission in disputed waters triggered a dangerous military buildup.

Greece and Turkey have

agreed to restart talks aimed at resolving the dispute peace-fully. Senior diplomats from the two countries met in Istanbul yesterday to resume the process that had been interrupted for nearly five years.

But Athens says that it will continue a multibillion-euro program to upgrade its military following years of cuts because of the country’s financial crisis.

France and the United States are in competition to provide the Greek navy with new frigates, while Greece’s government recently approved plans to cooperate with Israeli defense electronics firm Elbit Systems to create a new mil-itary flight academy in southern Greece.

“The upgrade in the capa-bilities of the Hellenic Air Force by means of both the acqui-sition of new fighter aircraft and the new state-of-the-art

training center is critical for Greece to present a credible deterrence,” Michael Tanchum, a senior fellow at the Austrian Institute for European and Security Policy, told The Asso-ciated Press.

“It also provides Athens an enhanced ability to exercise more strategic autonomy when EU and Nato frameworks are deemed inadequate, making Greece more of a player in its own right.”

Starting in May, mandatory national service in the Greek Armed Forces will be increased from nine to 12 months to boost the number of people serving in uniform.

Parly, who also met Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mit-sotakis, announced that France would join two Greek military exercises later this year, partic-ipating with Rafale jets from the French air force.

French Defence Minister Florence Parly and her Greece counterpart Nikos Panagiotopoulos applaud after the signing of an agreement for the purchase of 18 Dassault-made Rafale fighter jets at the Greek Defence Ministry in Athens, yesterday.

EU to hold off on Russia sanctions if Navalny releasedREUTERS — BRUSSELS

The European Union will hold off from imposing fresh sanctions on Russian individuals if the Kremlin releases pro-democracy campaigner Alexei Navalny, EU foreign ministers said yesterday, sending the bloc’s top diplomat to Moscow next week.

Despite calls from Baltic countries, Italy and Romania for sanctions on Russian officials in response to Navalny’s detention as he returned to Russia from Germany on January 17, Germany pushed to give the Kremlin more time.

“We have agreed today to wait for the court’s decision, to wait to see ... whether Alexei Navalny is set free after 30

days,” German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas told reporters fol-lowing a meeting with his EU counterparts. “This is not over.”

Navalny, President Vladimir Putin’s most prominent critic, was detained and jailed for alleged parole violations after flying back to Russia for the first time since being poisoned by what Germany says was a mil-itary-grade nerve agent in August.

He accuses Putin of ordering his murder, which the Kremlin denies. His supporters held nationwide protests on Saturday, leading to more than 3,000 arrests and intensifying interna-tional calls for Navalny’s release.

In central Moscow on Sat-urday, police were seen roughly

detaining people, bundling them into nearby vans.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said he would go to Moscow next week to press the Kremlin to free demonstrators and Navalny. EU leaders could discuss any further steps at a planned summit on March 25 to 26, he said.

Earlier, Lithuania’s foreign minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said the EU needed to send a “very clear and decisive message” to Moscow, pushing for the bloc to agree sanctions under its new human rights sanctions framework, which allows for quicker adoption of asset freezes and travel bans.

The EU already has eco-nomic sanctions on the Russian

energy, financial and arms sectors over its 2014 annexation of the Crimea peninsula. It has imposed sanctions on six Russian officials close to Putin in response to Navalny’s poisoning.

Fellow Baltic countries Latvia and Estonia support more EU sanctions on Russian individuals, and Italy’s foreign minister said on Sunday that Rome was ready to support more travel bans and asset freezes. Romania publicly backed sanctions yesterday.

Germany and France, the EU’s main powers, will be central to deciding if the bloc goes ahead with punitive measures on Russia, a big oil and gas exporter to the bloc.

López Obrador has rarely been seen wearing a mask. He has also resisted locking down the economy, noting the devastating effect it would have on so many Mexicans who live day to day, despite that the country has registered nearly 150,000 COVID-19 deaths and more than 1.7 million infections. A new wave of infections has pushed the health system of the country’s capital city close to saturation.

14 TUESDAY 26 JANUARY 2021AMERICAS

Mexico President tests positive for COVID-19AP — MEXICO CITY

Mexico President Andrés Manuel López Obrador was working from isolation yesterday, a day after announcing that he had tested positive for COVID-19, his interior secretary said.

The President was absent for the first time in his two years in office from his daily news conference. Having shaped an administration so reliant on himself for everything from setting priorities to making public statements, López Obra-dor’s absence felt all the greater. It comes as his country registers its highest levels of infections and deaths to date.

López Obrador spoke by phone yesterday with Russian President Vladimir Putin and his spokesman, Jesus Ramirez, said afterward on Twitter that Mexico would receive 24 million doses of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine against COVID-19, though it has not yet been approved for use in the country.

Foreign Affairs Secretary Marcelo Ebrard, who is also iso-lating and awaiting test results, said via Twitter that López Obrador had appeared “with

resolute spirit, working and looking good”.

López Obrador, who has been criticised for his handling of Mexico’s pandemic and for not setting an example of pre-vention in public, announced the diagnosis on Sunday on his official Twitter account, saying, “The symptoms are mild but I am already under medical treatment.”

José Luis Alomía Zegarra, Mexico’s director of epidemi-ology, said the 67-year-old López Obrador had a “light” case of COVID-19 and was “isolating at home”. Yesterday, Interior Sec-retary Olga Sánchez Cordero said the President had designated her to hold the daily briefings until

his return. She said López Obrador was well and strong.

“He is carrying out his func-tions as President of the republic. He will continue keeping an eye on public affairs,” she said. Sánchez Cordero, who spoke without wearing a mask, said she was awaiting test results of her own.

Despite his age and high blood pressure, López Obrador has not received a vaccine shot, though Mexico has received batches of Pfizer-BioNTech doses. He has said that health workers would be the first to get them. Under the gov-ernment plan, people over 60 will start being vaccinated in February.

López Obrador has rarely been seen wearing a mask and continued to keep up a busy travel schedule, taking com-mercial flights. He spent the weekend in San Luis Potosi and Nuevo Leon states, where he was photographed without a mask.

He has also resisted locking down the economy, noting the devastating effect it would have on so many Mexicans who live day to day, despite that the country has registered nearly 150,000 COVID-19 deaths and more than 1.7 million infections. A new wave of infections has pushed the health system of the country’s capital city close to saturation.

In November, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of the World Health Organization, urged Mexico’s leaders be serious about the coronavirus and set examples for its citizens, saying that “Mexico is in bad shape” with the pandemic. He didn’t name López Obrador, but said: “We would like to ask Mexico to be very serious.” “We have said it in general; wearing a mask is important, hygiene is important and physical distancing is important and we expect leaders to be examples,” he added.

Mexico President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador arrives to attend the inauguration of an installation of the National Guard in San Luis Posoti, Mexico, on Sunday.

EU urges dialogue in Venezuela to set up new electionsAP — BRUSSELS

The European Union called yes-terday for broad political talks in Venezuela to set up new elec-tions, and warned that it stands ready to slap sanctions on more senior Venezuelan officials in the country if they undermine democracy or take part in human rights violations.

EU foreign ministers said in a statement that “the only way out of the crisis in Venezuela is to resume political negotiations promptly and to urgently establish a Venezuelan-led dia-logue and transition process leading to credible, inclusive and transparent local, legislative and presidential elections”.

Once a wealthy oil nation,

Venezuela is mired in a deep economic crisis, which critics blame on two decades of failed socialist policies that have left the nation bankrupt and its crumbling infrastructure.

Describing the December 6 elections as “a missed oppor-tunity for democracy” whose results they cannot endorse, the ministers said the 27-nation bloc stands ready to send an observer mission should new polls take place.

They called for the “freedom and safety” of all political oppo-nents to be ensured, “especially Juan Guaidó, as well as other representatives of the demo-cratic opposition”.

The opposition leader claimed presidential powers in

early 2019 as head of Vene-zuela’s National Assembly.

A coalition of more than 50 nations recognized him, including most of the United States and most EU countries, saying that President Nicolás Maduro had clung to power after undemocratic elections.

In a tweet, Guaidó’s com-munications office welcomed the EU’s move of rejecting the recent election and expressing support for the opposition-led National Assembly, calling for free and fair parliamentary and presidential elections.

The ministers made no ref-erence to the status of Guaido or that of the assembly. A pre-vious EU statement referred to them as “outgoing", and this

angered the Venezuelan oppo-sition, which believed it sent mixed messages about Maduro’s legitimacy.

Yesterday's statement said that the EU considers Guaidó and other opposition officials “to be important actors and privileged interlocutors” and urged them “to take a unified stance with a view to an inclusive process of dialogue and negotiation”.

The ministers also said that given the deteriorating rights situation and problems with the rule of law in Venezuela that “the EU stands ready to adopt additional targeted restrictive measures against those undermining democracy or the rule of law and those

responsible for serious viola-tions of human rights”. They said the measures “are designed not to harm the Ven-ezuelan population and can be reversed”.

The EU has imposed travel bans and asset freezes on dozens of officials until at least November 14. It has also slapped an arms embargo on Venezuela and outlawed the supply of equipment that could be used in any crackdown on civilians.

Last week, the Trump administration announced a sweeping round of stiff financial sanctions that target a network accused of moving oil on behalf of Maduro’s alleged frontman, Alex Saab, a Colombian businessman.

US 'proud to be back' in climate fight, Kerry tells leadersREUTERS — AMSTERDAM

The United States is “proud to be back” in international efforts to tackle global warming, Washing-ton’s new special climate envoy John Kerry told a summit of world leaders yesterday.

US President Joe Biden is this week expected to release more policies to tackle climate change after rejoining the 2015 Paris climate agreement that predecessor Donald Trump quit saying it was too costly to the US economy.

“We’re proud to be back. We come back with humility for the absence over the last four years and we will do everything in our

power to make up for it,” Kerry told the virtual Climate Adap-tation Summit, hosted by the Netherlands, by video link.

Kerry was joined by China’s Deputy Prime Minister Han Zheng, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French Pres-ident Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and others.

“President Biden has made fighting climate change a top pri-ority of his administration. We have a president now, thank God, who leads, tells the truth and is seized by this issue,” Kerry said.

Kerry, who signed the Paris agreement when he was US secretary of state, said

Washington would “make good” on previous global climate finance commitments by investing in climate action domestically and abroad.

Under former President Barack Obama, the United States pledged $3bn to the global Green Climate Fund to help vulnerable countries fight climate change but only delivered $1bn. Leaders at yes-terday's summit, which aims to help countries build resilience against climate change, stressed the importance of having Wash-ington back at the table.

“To tackle this great chal-lenge we need all hands on deck and certainly the US is so critical

for success,” said International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said “the pan-demic has reminded us that we cannot afford to ignore known risks. Climate disruption is a risk we are well aware of”.

Climate change could depress global food pro-duction by up to 30 percent, while rising seas and greater storms could force hundreds of millions of people in coastal cities out of their homes, summit organiser the Global Center on Adaptation said.

Although droughts, fires, heatwaves, floods and other

climate extremes related to global warming have inten-sified, investments to shield people from these risks have remained modest, scientists wrote to leaders taking part.

“Unless we step up and adapt now, the results will be increasing poverty, water shortages, agri-cultural losses and soaring levels of migration with an enormous toll on human life,” the 3,000 sci-entists wrote.

Developing countries alone need to spend around $70bn per year to battle the effects of global warming, a UN report showed this month, and those costs could jump to $140bn to $300bn by 2030.

US top court ends anti-corruption lawsuits against TrumpREUTERS — WASHINGTON

Five days after the end of Donald Trump’s presidency, the US Supreme Court yes-terday halted lawsuits accusing him of violating the US Constitution’s anti-cor-ruption provisions by main-taining ownership of his business empire including a hotel near the White House while in office.

The justices threw out lower court rulings that had allowed the lawsuits — one filed by the District of Columbia and the state of Mar-yland and the other by plain-tiffs including a watchdog group — to proceed, while also declining to hear Trump’s appeals of those decisions. The justices ordered the lower courts to dismiss the cases because they are now moot.

The plaintiffs accused Trump of running afoul of the Constitution’s “emoluments” provisions that bar presidents from accepting gifts or pay-ments from foreign and state governments without congres-sional approval. The plaintiffs had asked the Supreme Court to reject Trump’s appeals because the dispute would dis-appear once he left office last Wednesday.

In one of the cases, plain-tiffs including the nonprofit watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a hotel owner and a restaurant trade group said the former Repub-lican president’s failure to dis-entangle himself from his businesses had made him vul-nerable to inducements by officials seeking to curry favor.

The plaintiffs said that they lost patronage, wages and commissions from clients who chose Trump’s businesses over theirs because of the ability to gain the former president’s favour.

Sanders running for Arkansas governorAP — LITTLE ROCK

Sarah Sanders, Donald Trump’s former chief spokeswoman and one of his closest aides, announced yesterday that she’s running for Arkansas governor, vying for political office even as the former president’s legacy is clouded by an impeachment charge that he incited the deadly siege at the US Capitol.

The former White House press secretary, who left the job in 2019 to return to her home state, launched the bid less than a week after the end of Trump’s time in office and as the ex-president faces an impeachment trial.

But her announcement reflected how much she expected voters in solidly red Arkansas to embrace the former president, if not his rhetoric.

“With the radical left now in control of Washington, your governor is your last line of defense,” Sanders said in a video announcing her bid. “In fact, your governor must be on the front line. So today I announce my candidacy for

governor of Arkansas.” The daughter of former

Governor Mike Huckabee, Sanders had been widely expected to run for the office after leaving the White House — and Trump publicly encouraged her to make a go. She’s been laying the groundwork for a candidacy, speaking to GOP groups around the state.

Sanders joins a Republican primary that already includes two statewide elected leaders, Lt. Gov. Tim Griffin and Attorney General Leslie Rutledge. The three are running to succeed current Governor Asa Hutchinson, a Republican who is unable to run next year due to term limits. No Demo-crats have announced a bid to run for the seat.

Sanders launched her bid weeks after a riot by Trump’s supporters at the US Capitol left five people dead. More than 130 people have been charged in the insurrection, which was aimed at halting the certifi-cation of President Joe Biden’s win over Trump.

Ecuador okays use of AstraZeneca vaccine for virusREUTERS — QUITO

Ecuador has approved the use of the COVID-19 vaccine developed by AstraZeneca Plc and the University of Oxford, the health ministry said.

AstraZeneca’s vaccine is the second that the National Agency for Health Regulation, Control and Surveillance has registered for use. A pilot program that provides the Pfizer Inc vaccine to medical personnel and in nursing homes began last week when the first doses arrived.

“The agency authorized imports of approximately five million doses of the Astra-Zeneca COVID-19 vaccine, which will be applied to 2.5 million Ecuadoreans,” the ministry added.

“It will allow Ecuador to strengthen the process of con-taining the disease to achieve herd immunity.” The health ministry did not say when the AstraZeneca doses will arrive, but has said mass vaccination will start in March.

FARC party changes name to ComunesREUTERS — BOGOTA

Colombia’s FARC political party — which was formed fol-lowing the demobilization of the guerrilla group with the same acronym — will change its name to Comunes, it said.

The decision to change the name was taken at the party’s second national assembly, which ran for three days through Sunday. “Our new name is COMUNES,” the party said on Twitter. “It’s a real and transformative bet on Colom-bia’s peace made by the common people.”

The leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrilla group signed a peace deal with Colombia’s gov-ernment in 2016. The pact ended the FARC guerrillas’ role in a more than 50-year conflict that left more than 260,000 dead and millions displaced.

Dam disaster anniversaryPeople affected by the disaster of the tailings dam owned by Brazilian mining company Vale SA, protest yesterday in front of the company, two years after it collapsed in Brumadinho, Minas Gerais state, Brazil. The signs read: “Stop”. Families of the roughly 270 victims of a Vale SA mining dam collapse held protests and vigils on the disaster's second anniversary, raising pressure on the company as it struggles to settle legal claims.

The US President will impose a ban on most non-US citizens entering the country who have recently been in South Africa starting Saturday in a bid to contain the spread of a new variant of COVID-19. Today, new CDC rules take effect requiring all international air travellers 2 and older to present a negative coronavirus test taken within three calendar days of travel or proof of recovery from COVID-19 to enter the United States.

15TUESDAY 26 JANUARY 2021 AMERICAS

Biden to implementtravel restrictionsREUTERS — WASHINGTON

President Joe Biden will impose a ban on most non-US citizens entering the country who have recently been in South Africa starting Saturday in a bid to contain the spread of a new variant of COVID-19, a senior US public health official said.

Biden is also reimposing an entry ban on nearly all non-US travelers who have been in Brazil, the United Kingdom, Ireland and 26 countries in Europe that allow travel across open borders.

“We are adding South Africa to the restricted list because of the concerning variant present that has already spread beyond South Africa,” said Dr. Anne Schuchat, the CDC’s principal deputy director, in an interview.

She added the agency was “putting in place this suite of measures to protect Americans and also to reduce the risk of these variants spreading and worsening the current pan-demic.” Then-president Donald Trump directed on January 18 those restrictions on Brazil and Europe be lifted effective today but Biden’s proclamation will rescind that decision.

Biden, who took office on Wednesday, is taking an aggressive approach to com-bating the spread of the virus after Trump rejected mandates sought by US health agencies.

Some health officials are concerned that current vac-cines may not be effective against the South Africa variant, which also raises the prospect of re-infection. The South African variant, also known as the 501Y.V2 variant, is 50 percent more infectious and has been detected in at least 20 countries. CDC officials told

Reuters they would be open to adding additional countries to the list if needed.

The South African variant has not yet been found in the United States but at least 20 US states have detected a UK variant known as B.1.1.7. Current vac-cines appear effective against the UK mutations.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director (CDC) head Rochelle Walensky will sign a separate order requiring masks on all airplanes, ferries, trains, subways, buses, taxis, and ride-share vehicles for all travellers two and older, offi-cials said. The new require-ments are set to take effect in the coming days, they said, and masks can be removed for brief periods while eating.

Today, new CDC rules take effect requiring all international air travellers 2 and older to present a negative coronavirus test taken within three calendar days of travel or proof of recovery from COVID-19 to enter the United States.

The CDC will not, as it said on January 12, consider granting temporary waivers to airlines to exempt some travellers from countries with limited testing

capacity. Numerous US airlines last week had asked CDC for waivers, airline officials said.

But CDC officials said they would consider case-by-case humanitarian exemptions for some travellers if needed. CDC officials noted 120 countries currently have mandatory COVID-19 testing requirements for international travel.

The CDC order says trav-ellers should self-quarantine for seven days upon return to the United States and consider getting a new COVID-19 test within three to five days of returning to the United States.

The US restrictions barring most visitors from Europe have been in place since mid-March when Trump signed proclama-tions imposing them, while the Brazilian entry ban was imposed in May. The restriction, along with the new South Africa ones, mean most non-US cit-izens who have been in one of those countries within the last 14 days are not eligible to travel to the United States.

Permanent US residents and family members and some other non-US citizens are per-mitted to return to the United States under the order.

Biden meets Austin, MilleyUS President Joe Biden meets with new Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin (right) and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley as Vice-President Kamala Harris stands by, in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, DC, yesterday.

US Senate aims to pass COVID-19 bill ahead of Trump trial: LawmakerREUTERS — WASHINGTON

The US Senate is aiming to pass COVID-19 relief legislation before former President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial begins in early February, a law-maker said yesterday, amid growing signs of agreement on the need to speed vaccine distribution.

A day after some Republicans pushed back on the size of Pres-ident Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion relief proposal, Senator Angus King said the Senate plans to consider a bill in the next two weeks, while it also moves to confirm Biden’s Cabinet ahead of the Trump trial’s start during the week of February 8.

“We’re going to try to do something between now and the time of the impeachment trial

beginning. That’s a tall order, because we also have to do the confirmations,” King, a Maine independent who caucuses with Democrats who lead the Senate, told National Public Radio.

“Two weeks would be an aggressive schedule but I think that’s where we’re going to be going,” he added.

It was not clear whether the Senate would try to pass the entire Biden proposal before February 8 or focus on legis-lation with a more limited scope. King and Republican Senator Bill Cassidy, who both participated in a call about COVID-19 relief with Biden administration officials on Sunday, said there is broad agreement about the need to move forward on vaccinations.

“We can all agree: We need

to have money out there for vac-cines,” Cassidy told Fox News yesterday. “And testing, we can accept that.” King said there was a general consensus on Sunday’s call to do “whatever we have to do to speed up the vaccination process. I don’t think there’s going to be any debate about that.” He added that the group on Sunday’s call would speak again soon. Although Biden’s Democratic Party narrowly con-trols the House of Representa-tives and the Senate, legislation would need bipartisan support to become law.

In addition to the size of Biden’s plan, Republicans and some Democrats are concerned about a proposal to send $1,400 stimulus choques to most Americans, even some with fairly high incomes.

Moderna believes vaccine will work against new variantsREUTERS — NEW YORK

Moderna said yesterday that it believes its COVID-19 vaccine protects against new variants found in Britain and South Africa, although it will test a new booster shot aimed at the South Africa variant after con-cluding that the antibody response could be diminished.

The company said in a press release that it found no reduction in the antibody response against the variant found in Britain. Against the variant found in South Africa, it found a reduced response but still believed its two-dose regimen would provide protection.

The emergence of new var-iants in Britain, South Africa and Brazil has created some concern that mutations in the virus may make vaccines less effective.

Jefferies analyst Michael Yee said in a research note that it was

encouraging that the Moderna testing showed that even against the variant found in South Africa, the antibody response produced by its mRNA-1273 vaccine was still “above the levels” that provide protection.

Yee also said the speed with which Moderna was able to design a new booster shot can-didate was proof of the flexi-bility of the new mRNA tech-nology upon which it is based.

Dr. Paul Offit, an infectious disease expert at the University of Pennsylvania and a member of the US Food and Drug Administration’s vaccine advisory panel said he was only mildly concerned that the vaccine would not be protective against the variants.

“It is a little worrisome that you see a lesser neutralizing antibody response, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you are unprotected,” he said,

noting that even these lower levels may still be enough to protect against serious infections.

“The goal of this vaccine is to keep you out of the hospital and to keep you out of the morgue. If you get a

symptomatic infection or mildly symptomatic infection that is not a burden to the healthcare system,” Offit said.

Moderna said the new booster shot could be made available in future if evidence were to emerge that protection declined.

Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE have also said tests showed their vaccine is effective against the variant found in Britain, but have not yet disclosed results against the South Africa variant.

That variant first found in Britain has caused a massive surge in cases there and has also been found in more than a dozen US states. US public health officials expect it to be the dominant strain in the United States within 6 weeks.

Moderna said it plans to publish data from its tests against the variants on the website bioRxiv.

Boxes containing the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine are prepared to be shipped at the McKesson distribution center in Olive Branch, Mississippi, US, on December 20, 2020.

Navy SEAL gets 10 years for his role in Green Beret’s deathAP — NORFOLK

A US Navy SEAL has been sen-tenced to 10 years in prison for his role in the hazing death of a US Army Green Beret while the men served together in Africa. The SEAL’s attorney said he plans to appeal the punishment.

Tony DeDolph received the sentence on Saturday from a jury of fellow servicemembers at a Navy base in Norfolk, Vir-ginia, the Navy said in a statement yesterday. He had pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and related counts on January 14.

DeDolph had placed Army Staff Sgt. Logan Melgar into a martial-arts-style chokehold to try to make him temporarily lose consciousness during what the SEAL said was a prank. Melgar died of strangulation.

DeDolph is one of four service members — two SEALs and two Marines — to be charged in Melgar’s 2017 death in the African country of Mali. Charging documents do not

state why the service members were there. But US Special Forces have been in Africa to support and train local troops in their fight against extremists.

DeDolph testified during his court-martial that they were trying to get back at Melgar for perceived slights. The other SEAL, Adam Matthews, testified in 2019 that the perceived slights included an incident in which Melgar was driving his motorcycle to a party at a dip-lomatic embassy in the capital city of Bamako. Two Marines were following in another vehicle before Melgar drove off, Matthews said. Matthews sug-gested that the Marines felt Melgar had abandoned them in an unsafe city that’s been the target of terrorist activity.

The service members plotted to get Melgar back with an elab-orate prank known as as a “tape job”, DeDolph testified earlier this month. The prank included binding Melgar with duct tape, applying the choke hold to tem-porarily knock him out and then

showing Melgar a video of the incident sometime later.

The case has pulled back the curtain on misconduct among some of America’s most elite service members, while offering a brief window into how some have addressed grievances outside the law.

DeDolph is a member of the elite SEAL Team 6. Besides the prison time, his sentence strips him of his pay and his rank of chief petty officer. He’ll also receive a dishonorable dis-charge. The punishment still must receive official approval from an admiral. DeDolph had faced a maximum sentence of 22-and-a-half years in prison.

DeDolph’s attorney, Phillip Stackhouse, said that the sen-tence will be appealed. he expressed concerns about the length of the jury’s delibera-tions. He said it “would have been virtually impossible for them to do more than a cursory review of the significant volume of evidence given to them just when they began”.

Trump lawyer Giuliani faces $1.3bn lawsuitREUTERS — WASHINGTON

A US voting machine company filed a $1.3bn lawsuit against former President Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani, accusing him of defamation in what it called his “big lie” cam-paign about widespread fraud in the presidential election, court documents yesterday showed.

The Denver-based company, Dominion Voting Systems Inc, filed an earlier lawsuit against Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell, whom the company also accused of spreading false con-spiracy theories about the election that Trump lost to Dem-ocrat Joe Biden.

A senior Dominion employee, Eric Coomer, also filed a defa-mation lawsuit against the Trump campaign, saying he had been driven into hiding because of death threats from Trump sup-porters. Giuliani and his lawyer, Robert Costello, did not respond to requests for comment.

Giuliani has stood by his claims about the election,

saying during a radio show last week he is being attacked for “exercising my right of free speech and defending my client”. Trump and his allies spent two months denying his election defeat, and claiming without evidence that it was the result of widespread voter fraud, before his supporters stormed the Capitol on January 6.

Dominion is seeking $1.3bn in damages from the former New York City mayor, alleging in the lawsuit that “he and his allies manufactured and disseminated the ‘Big Lie’, which foreseeably went viral and deceived millions of people into believing that Dominion had stolen their votes and fixed the election.”

A group of prominent attorneys last week asked New York’s judiciary to suspend Giuliani’s law license because he made false claims in post-election lawsuits and for urging Trump’s supporters to engage in “trial by combat” shortly before they stormed the US Capitol on January 6.

Supreme Courtspurns appealby formerlawmakerREUTERS — WASHINGTON

The US Supreme Court yes-terday declined to hear an appeal by Sheldon Silver, the once-powerful New York State Assembly Speaker, of his con-viction on corruption charges that resulted in a 6-1/2-year prison sentence.

Silver, 76, began serving his sentence last August despite being in poor health. He had appealed the portions of his 2018 conviction that were upheld in January 2020 by the Manhattan-based 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals.

Two conservative justices, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas, said they would have taken up Silver’s appeal. Silver, a Democrat, was accused of accepting close to $4m in illegal payments in exchange for taking official actions in two separate schemes.

Prosecutors said Silver arranged for state grants to go to a cancer researcher who referred mesothelioma patients to his law firm, and supported rent regulation interests of two real estate developers that sent business to another law firm.

Silver represented Man-hattan’s Lower East Side, and served as Assembly speaker from 1994 to 2015. Along with Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo and Republican former Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos, Silver was one of the “three men in a room” with effective power to shape New York legislative priorities.

Skelos was convicted on separate corruption charges in 2018. In his appeal, Silver said the 2nd Circuit ignored Supreme Court precedent by upholding his conviction despite the absence of agree-ments that he would perform “official acts” for the researcher and developers in exchange for bribes. Silver was originally convicted in 2015 and sentenced to 12 years in prison.

16TUESDAY 26 JANUARY 2021

W ALRUWAIS : 18o → 20o W ALKHOR : 12o → 25o W DUKHAN : 16o → 20o W WAKRAH : 11o → 26o W MESAIEED : 11o → 26o W ABUSAMRA : 13o → 20o

Misty to foggy at places at first

becomes moderate temperature

daytime with some clouds, cold by

night.

Minimum Maximum16oC 25oC

WEATHER TODAY

LOW TIDE 12:19 – 20:59

HIGH TIDE 03:56 – 13:19

PRAYER TIMINGSPPPPRAYRRRAAAYARA MMMMIINNNNNNNNNGGGGGGMMMMMMMMIIINNNNNNGGGGNNNNGGGIINNNNGNNNNNNNNN

PRAYERTIMINGS

FAJRSUNRISE

04.59 am 06.19 am

DHUHR 11.46 am

ISHA 06.46 pmMAGHRIBASR 02.52 pm

05.16 pm

Earth losing ice faster today than in mid-1990s: StudyREUTERS — ANCHORAGE

Earth’s ice is melting faster today than in the mid-1990s, new research suggests, as climate change nudges global temperatures ever higher.

Altogether, an estimated 28 trillion metric tonnes of ice have melted away from the world’s sea ice, ice sheets and glaciers since the mid-1990s.

Annually, the melt rate is now about 57 percent faster than it was three decades ago, scientists report in a study pub-lished yesterday in the journal The Cryosphere.

“It was a surprise to see such a large increase in just 30 years,” said co-author Thomas Slater, a glaciologist at Leeds University in Britain.

While the situation is clear to those depending on mountain glaciers for drinking water, or relying on winter sea ice to protect coastal homes from storms, the world’s ice melt has begun to grab attention far from frozen regions, Slater noted.

Aside from being captivated by the beauty of polar regions, “people do recognize that, although the ice is far away, the effects of the melting will be felt by them,” he said.

The melting of land ice - on Antarctica, Greenland and mountain glaciers — added enough water to the ocean during the three-decade time period to raise the average

global sea level by 3.5 centim-eters. Ice loss from mountain glaciers accounted for 22 percent of the annual ice loss totals, which is noteworthy con-sidering it accounts for only about 1 percent of all land ice atop land, Slater said.

Across the Arctic, sea ice is also shrinking to new sum-mertime lows. Last year saw the second-lowest sea ice extent in more than 40 years of satellite monitoring.

As sea ice vanishes, it exposes dark water which absorbs solar radiation, rather than reflecting it back out of the atmosphere. This phenomenon, known as Arctic amplification, boosts regional temperatures even further.

The global atmospheric temperature has risen by about 1.1 degrees Celsius since pre-industrial times. But in the Arctic, the warming rate has been more than twice the global

average in the last 30 years.Using 1994-2017 satellite

data, site measurements and some computer simulations, the team of British scientists calcu-lated that the world was losing an average of 0.8 trillion metric tonnes of ice per year in the 1990s, but about 1.2 trillion metric tonnes annually in recent years.

Calculating even an esti-mated ice loss total from the world’s glaciers, ice sheets and polar seas is “a really interesting

approach, and one that’s actually quite needed,” said geologist Gabriel Wolken with the Alaska Division of Geo-logical and Geophysical Surveys. Wolken was a co-author on the 2020 Arctic Report Card released in December, but was not involved with the new study.

In Alaska, people are “keenly aware” of glacial ice loss, Wolken said. “You can see the changes with the human eye.” Research scientist Julienne

Stroeve of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado noted the study had not included snow cover over land, “which also has a strong albedo feedback”, referring to a measure of how reflective a surface is.

The research also did not consider river or lake ice or per-mafrost, except to say that “these elements of the cryo-sphere have also experienced considerable change over recent decades.”

Portage Glacier is seen from Portage Pass, as hikers look on, in Chugach National Forest, in Alaska.

Ooredoo displays artworks from ‘The Art and The Mobile’ initiativeTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Artists taking part in The Art and The Mobile — a unique project intended to enrich Qatar’s cultural and artistic scene and showcase its young and upcoming artists — were given smartphones to use as their canvas, turning the devices into creative masterpieces.

Organisers chose a select group of artists to take part in the challenge, with each artist given two to three devices depending on the technique used.

These works created as part of a cultural initiative organised by Ooredoo and Qatar Museums

are on display at Ooredoo HQ. Chief Consumer Officer at

Ooredoo Fatima Sultan Al Kuwari said: “We were delighted to see the incredible works created by our talented artists as part of this initiative.

“One of the key pillars of our corporate social responsibility is a firm commitment to sup-porting the communities in which we operate, and we’re proud to be working with Qatar Museums on such a worthwhile project to promote arts and culture in our communities. We’re sure everyone will enjoy seeing these unique pieces when they go on display to the public soon.”

The finished masterpieces will be exhibited for the public at the Qatar Fire Station later this month, and part of the col-lection will be donated or auc-tioned for a worthy cause in Qatar.

A select group of artists have been chosen to take part in ‘The Art and The Mobile’ initiative.

AP — NEW YORK

Merck is giving up on two potential COVID-19 vaccines following poor results in early-stage studies.

The drugmaker said yes-terday that it will focus instead on studying two possible treat-ments for the virus that also have yet to be approved by reg-ulators. The company said its potential vaccines were well tol-erated by patients, but they gen-erated an inferior immune system response compared with other vaccines.

Merck entered the race to fight COVID-19 later than other top drugmakers.

It said last fall that it had started early-stage research in volunteers on potential vaccines that require only one dose. Vac-cines developed by Pfizer and Moderna were already in late-stage research at that point.

The Food and Drug Admin-istration allowed emergency use of both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines late last year. Each requires two shots.

Since vaccinations began in December, nearly 22 million doses have been delivered to people nationwide, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

A total of 3.2 million people have received both doses required for those vaccines.

The government is paying Merck about $356m to fast-track production of one of its potential treatments under Operation Warp Speed, a push to develop COVID-19 vaccines and treatments.

The money will allow Kenilworth, New Jersey, company to deliver up to 100,000 doses by June 30, if the FDA clears the treatment for emergency use.

The treatment, known as MK-7110, has the potential to minimise the damaging effects of an overactive immune response to COVID-19. This immune response can com-plicate the life-saving efforts of doctors and nurses.

Merck ends development of two COVID-19 vaccines

The global atmospheric

temperature has risen by

about 1.1 degrees Celsius

since pre-industrial times.

But in the Arctic, the

warming rate has been

more than twice the

global average in the last

30 years.

Chief Consumer Officer at

Ooredoo Fatima Sultan Al

Kuwari said: “We were

delighted to see the

incredible works created

by our talented artists as

part of this initiative.”

China tackles pandemic with mass construction

AP — BEIJING

A sprawling quarantine center with more than 4,000 rooms is being thrown up in northern China in response to a COVID-19 outbreak in Shijiazhuang, a city of more than 10 million people in Hebei province.

Satellite images from the European Space Agency show dramatic changes over 10 days in an area where there had been only flat land before construction started on January 13.

Rows of prefabricated houses can be seen. The official People’s Daily newspaper said more than

600 rooms were ready by January 19. Another 3,600 are to be added by the time of completion.

Construction workers and materials have been sent from all over the country to help build the center, state media reported. It’s common practice for China to mobilize resources nationwide to tackle natural disasters and other crises. Last year, two hospitals, Huoshenshan and Leishenshan, were built within days to treat COVID-19 patients in the city of Wuhan, where the coronavirus was first detected.

China has largely curbed the domestic spread of the virus, but

is battling outbreaks this winter in its frigid north. The National Health Commission on Monday reported 145 new cases in the latest 24-hour period, including 11 in Hubei province. The quar-antine center is designed to house people who have been in contact with COVID-19 patients. Each room, for one person only, is 18sqm and comes with bedding, a desk, an air conditioner, a tele-vision and Wi-Fi, the China News Service reported. It is in Zhengding county, a suburban area in north Shijiazhuang. The city, the capital of Hebei, is about 260 km southwest of Beijing.

Fan Museum in Parisgets time to pay debtsAP — PARIS

Paris City Hall has instructed the landlord seeking to close down the city’s indebted Fan Museum to extend its deadline for payment, the museum said yesterday.

Director Anne Hoguet said her beleaguered museum — a registered historic monument — owed 117,000 euros in rent arrears due to losses incurred during virus lockdowns last year. The money was due Jan. 23 and the landlord had threatened to seize the museum’s priceless artifacts as payment.

In response to AP’s reporting, on Thursday Unesco called on France to do more to

protect the small museum that French officials had placed on an intangible heritage list only last year. Hoguet said that Paris City Hall officials confirmed to her that they had intervened to get the landlord to delay the deadline.

“It’s a huge relief. We hope to live another day,” Hoguet said.

Paris Deputy Mayor Karen Taieb said officials are now meeting with Hoguet on Feb-ruary 5 “in order to think about long-term solutions for this heritage museum which is in a very complicated situation.” Hoguet said that she has been inundated with offers of dona-tions since last week’s media reports.

Day-trippers brought skis,sleds and virus to Czech mountains: MayorREUTERS — MODRAVA

Czechs flocking to escape coronavirus restrictions with a day’s cross-country skiing, sledding or snow-shoeing in a national park have brought a surge of COVID-19 infec-tions to a tiny village, a local official said.

Modrava Mayor Antonin Schubert said tests last week identified 13 positive cases among the 90 people who live there, making the hamlet that sits in central Europe’s largest forest area, the Sumava national park, the most infected in the region.

Ski lifts were closed but, with local pubs allowed to sell take-out food, crowds built up in the village, which became much more popular after Alpine resorts shut their doors.

“At every take-out window, the line of people is much bigger than if they were waiting for the ski lift,” said the mayor of the hamlet surrounded by gently rising peaks near the German and Austrian borders. “No visitor is wearing a mask.” On a recent weekend, skiers, sledders and others — most without masks — congre-gated in small groups as they strapped on their gear to explore the snow-covered trails around

170km from Prague.Mountains areas across

the Czech Republic have experienced similar crushes of people clogging parking lots with cars and camper vans at the weekend and cre-ating headaches for local offi-cials like Modrava’s mayor.

“Once I said that one of the options for lowering the number of visitors is to limit parking in the village, sud-denly a wave of hysteria rose,” said Schubert, who had just left quarantine after con-tracting COVID-19.

The country of 10.7 million has been one of the worst-hit globally, with a high rate of infections and 15,453 deaths so far and many hospitals are filled to capacity. With Czech alpine ski centers shuttered and borders with Austria, where a few resorts are open, difficult to cross, people have increasingly visited the local mountains.

A number of recent visitors to Modrava complained that closing ski lifts would not stop Covid infections and said spending time in nature was better than staying in the city.

“Considering how many people there are, I think it would be better if they opened in some ways,” Josef Novotny said as he loaded his skis into his car.