Qatar is a perfect winter sun destination for many travellers across Europe, Ukraine and Russia.

H E Sheikh Joaan bin Hamad Al Thani, President of the Qatar Olympic Committee (QOC), honoured the winners of the 8th day’s Competition of the Founder Sheikh Jassim bin Mohammed bin Thani’s Camel Festival for local pure Arabian camels race 2017-2018 season.

Sheikh Joaan awards winners of camel race

Tsonga to miss Qatar ExxonMobil Open due to injury

China halts oil product exports

to North Korea

BUSINESS | 22 SPORT | 27

Volume 22 | Number 7388 | 2 RiyalsWednesday 27 December 2017 | 9 Rabia II I 1439 www.thepeninsulaqatar.com

3rd Best News Website in the Middle East

SPECIAL SUPPLEMENTWEDNESDAY 27 DECEMBER 2017

New-look Toyota Prado imwith superior driving perf

Mazda's Vision Coupe, Kamake a mark at Tokyo Mo

PAGE 02

PAGE 08

ACTING MANAGING EDITOR ADVERTISING MANAGER

CHAIRMANSheikh Thani bin Abdullah Al Thani

EDITOR-IN-CHIEFDr. Khalid M Al-Shafi

ADVERTISING COORDINATOR DESIGN IMAGE PROCE

AFP

It’s November 22, 2028 and Sarah, a young mother, gives her two chil-dren a kiss goodbye before buckling them into the driverless car that will bring them to school.

Sarah doesn’t have a car and has no plans to buy one. Living in a suburb, she has run the numbers and the result is clear: It’s much cheaper to order a car only when she needs one.

The “robo-taxi” has also made her life easier, but only after such vehicles upended the business models which car-makers had relied on for decades.

The revolution is already under way, with every major brand racing to cre-ate autonomous electric cars and trucks that will always be just a few clicks of a smartphone away.

Fully electric cars are expected to make up 12 percent of the global mar-ket in 2025, before jumping to 34 percent in 2030 and 90 percent by 2050, analysts at Bank of America Merrill Lynch forecast last month.

The motivations are clear: Smog is becoming a serious menace in cities around the world, with China in partic-ular demanding cleaner vehicles for its rapidly growing market.

Traffic jams are also eating up hours of commuters’ time, meaning car own-ership is already no longer a given for many city dwellers.

And carmakers have nimble new

rivals: Apple, Google and Tesla — which recently unveiled an all-electric semi truck — see a chance to dominate a mar-ket that will soon depend as much on software as on engineering.

Industry chiefs aren’t waiting: France’s PSA is betting on car-sharing and other “services” with its Free2Move division, which it hopes will let it get back into the huge US market.

In Germany, Daimler is working with Bosch to develop self-driving elec-tric cars that could be on the road by the early 2020s, and has already launched its own car-sharing service, Car2Go, in some two dozen cities worldwide.

Its German rival Volkswagen has created Moia, a “social movement” unit exploring e-shuttles, ride pooling and car hailing. “Even if in the future not

everyone is going to own a car, with Moia we’re trying to make sure everyone will be a client of ours one way or another,” VW chief Matthias Mueller said.

Robo-taxis could generate 40 per-cent of auto industry profits by 2030, according to German consulting firm Roland Berger, which expects demand for private vehicles to drop 30 percent in the period. And industry experts warn

that the automakers whito the shift risk might no

But that means invesbatteries, charging infraautonomous driving techlittle prospect of seeingtime soon. For now, soemission” vehicles remaRenault’s Zoe range ofwhich is has offered sinup just 1 percent of its sa

Its chief, Carlos Ghosnfigure will reach 5 percencontest will be costly foers, with PriceWaterhestimating that productionext generation of elect20 percent higher than trels, while warning of “serfor returns on investmen

“The speed” of the selectric future “will haveby all automotive compchief executive Carlos Tthe Frankfurt auto showYet Western carmakers aofficials already fear thbehind Asian rivals, withticular making headwamotors and batteries. TCommission to urge the“Airbus for batteries”, with panies joining forces fbattery production. “Thitoo important to import it the commission’s vice prof energy, Maros Sefcovic

Carmakers gear up for ‘robo-taxi’ revolution

Volkswagen's SEDRIC Robo-Taxi concept car at Frankfurt Auto Show 2017.

Included with today’s edition is

an 8-page special supplement on

Sachin Kumar The Peninsula

Tourism sector is set to get boost in this win-ter season. Many sun-seeking tourists, from countries under

the grip of harsh winter, look-ing for warmer climates will head to Qatar this season, say travel agents. Many initiatives taken by the concerned author-ities to encourage tourism has also made it easier for tourists to visit Qatar.

“This winter will definitely be better than previous winters for Qatar tourism sector as many positive steps were taken by the concerned authorities this year. I am expecting more number of tourists coming to Qatar this season compared to previous years. I have received many queries from groups from Czech Republic and Russia,” James De Silva, Sales and Hol-iday In-charge, NBK Travel and Tourism told The Peninsula.

“Qatar is a very good des-tinations for tourists from countries that are currently under the grip of harsh winter. Beautiful beaches, traditional places and activities like desert safari which will make their trip memorable,” he added.

Tourism will get a further boost by the aggressive expan-sion by Qatar Airways which

The Peninsula

Qatar Chamber (QC) announced yesterday that over half a million visited

the website of Made in Qatar exhibition during the exhibition period, which was organised by the QC in cooperation with the Ministry of Energy and Industry under the patronage of Emir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani.

A statement issued by QC said that the exhibition has received great deal of attention, especially

by businessmen and investors from many countries. The web-site of the exhibition received a large number of messages which included questions about coop-eration in establishing industries in Qatar, opportunities and tar-get sectors in this the field.

The statement said ‘Made in Qatar’ recorded a significant presence on the social network-ing platforms and media. The hashtag #Made_in_Qatar was the most tweeted hashtag on Twitter during the four days of the exhibition. Visitors and

exhibitors exchanged views on the exhibition, which was vis-ited by more than 17,000 visitors at the Doha Convention and Exhibition Center.

Director General of Qatar Chamber and Chairman of the Organising Technical Committee of the expo, Saleh bin Hamad Al Sharqi, said the exhibition was a huge success both in terms of the wide participation of companies as well as the transactions and agreements made during it.

→ Continued on page 8

The Peninsula

Sidra Medicine, a specialty children’s, young people and women’s healthcare

organization and member of Qatar Foundation, is preparing for the phased opening of its main hospital building on Jan-uary 14, 2018, and has announced details on how patients can access care.

As an organisation focus-ing on high-risk and specialty cases, Sidra Medicine will con-tinue to see patients via referrals and by appointment only. Children, young people and women coming to Sidra Medicine must be referred by a physician from HMC clinics and PHCC centers. No walk-in or emergency services will be available at opening.

The first inpatients for both children’s and women’s serv-ices for the main hospital have already been registered and scheduled. Admissions in the first few months will be through the Sidra Medicine Outpatient Clinic and in collaboration with HMC. Sidra Medicine will offer more inpatient services during the course of 2018.

On January 14 and during the

first weeks of opening, Sidra Medicine’s inpatient services include pediatric medicine (gas-troenterology, endocrinology and adolescent medicine) and elec-tive general surgery for children and young people while its wom-en’s service will only be doing elective caesarian deliveries. All other deliveries (even for patients currently registered and receiv-ing their antenatal care at Sidra Medicine) will be at HMC until the women’s services is fully opera-tional by mid-2018.

→ Continued on page 8

The Peninsula

Minister of Transport and Communications H E Jassim bin Saif Al Sulaiti,

inaugurated yesterday the new website of Civil Aviation Author-ity (CAA) in the presence of Abdulla Nasser Turki Al Subaey, Chairman, CAA and a number of CAA heads of Sections and Units.

The new website represents a comprehensive interactive dig-ital platform of all CAA related news, information in addition to the latest updates regarding air transport sector and the avia-tion industry. Such initiative emphasises CAA’s continuous approach to develop the content for the public and constant endeavors to keep up with the modern technologies and most recent layouts applied to inter-national websites.

The new CAA website is characterised by a unique lay-out of colours and clear images which facilitate access to infor-mation enabling visitors to utilise browsing and search options for further familiarisa-tion with news and events organised or attended by CAA, including Air Services Agree-ments (ASA) and all civil aviation news in Qatar and around the

world. The website also includes various electronic services pro-vided by CAA departments such as air safety, air navigation and meteorology, besides the publi-cations section containing “Qatar Sky Magazine” issues and other CAA publications. There is also a section dedicated to the

announcement of tenders and auctions issued by CAA on a reg-ular basis.

CAA new website has been launched in parallel with the mobile application ‘CAA Qatar’ as an additional method of smooth communication between CAA and individuals, companies,

government entities at a local, regional and international scale.

CAA Qatar is available on Android and IOS to provide the public with more than five elec-tronic services including weather forecast as well as a new service to be subsequently supplemented to the application at the end of this year, which could be accessed by creating an account into the application.

The CAA Chairman said the launch of the new website and mobile application is within the framework of our continuous endeavours to further develop our communication policy to facilitate CAA interaction with the public both individuals and entities. He added that such ini-tiative also reflects CAA’s commitment to provide its serv-ices by means of the best and most rapid ways, deploying its utmost persistent efforts to max-imise the benefits of utilizing the latest technologies to achieve the optimal results and its vigorous pursuit of updating the local and international public about CAA latest news and events.

CAA new website is can be visited via the link- http://www.caa.gov.qa, the CAA Qatar mobile application is downlodable from Android and IOS app stores.

CAA launches new website and mobile app

Winter tourism to bring more visitors to Qatar

Minister of Transport and Communications H E Jassim bin Saif Al Sulaiti inaugurating the new website of Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) in the presence of Abdulla Nasser Turki Al Subaey, Chairman, CAA.

Sidra Medicine to open main hospital on January 14

has connected many cities in Europe and other continents to Doha. The national carrier of Qatar currently operates 42 flights from Italy, 15 flights from Russia, seven flights from the Czech Republic and seven flights from Ukraine per week. The award-winning airline had launched direct flights to Rus-sia’s St Petersburg recently.

“Qatar is a perfect winter sun destination for many trave-lers across Europe, Ukraine and Russia. The tourist friendly steps by the authorities has made Qatar more attractive to tourists,” a senior official of Tour and Travel company told The Peninsula.

In August this year, Minis-try of Interior, Qatar Tourism Authority and Qatar Airways allowed nationals from more than 80 countries the visa-free entry to the country making it the most open coun-try in the region.

→ Continued on page 8

Over half a million visit website of Made in Qatar exhibition

QNA

The Ministry of Defence’s Directorate of Moral Guidance yesterday

announced the arrival of a new batch of reinforcement troops from the fraternal Turkish Armed Forces at Al Udeid Air Base, including ele-ments of the Turkish Joint Forces Command. The new reinforcement batch is set to join the Turkish forces cur-rently based at Tariq bin Ziyad battalion, which comes within the joint defence agreement between the State of Qatar and the Republic of Turkey.

This cooperation between the Qatari Armed Forces and the Turkish forces comes within the framework of com-bating terrorism and violent extremism, and maintaining security in the region. The joint defence cooperation between the two countries is an impor-tant part of the international efforts to combat terrorism. The newly joined forces will begin military exercises with the Qatari Armed Forces to increase joint military capabilities.

More Turkish troops arrive in Doha

Qatar denounced yester-day the announcement by President of Guate-

mala of his country’s intention to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

→ Report on page 8

Qatar denounces Guatemala decision

02 WEDNESDAY 27 DECEMBER 2017HOME

Talented students national wealth, says Al HammadiThe Peninsula

Minister of Educa-tion and Higher Education H E Dr Mohammed Abdul Wahed Ali Al

Hammadi confirmed the Minis-try’s keenness to honour the outstanding and talented stu-dents as they are a national wealth that the country gives integrated care to.

The Ministry also guides them the right direction in order to serve their country in the future, and achieve their aspira-tions and hopes of their families.

The Minister honoured stu-dent Abdullah Khaled Al Kaabi from Tariq bin Ziad Secondary School for winning a bronze in the 14th International Junior Sci-ence Olympiad which took place in the Netherlands. The Minister

also honoured the student at an event held in the school in coop-eration with the Ministry on Tuesday.

The Minister praised the win-ner for his achievement and scientific and moral excellence. He said he represents a model and a good example of his fellow

students in schools and consid-ered his achievement a result of his hard work, efforts and desire to excel, in addition to the role of his school and family for this excellence. He explained that the positive and integrated cooper-ation between the family and school is reflected on the student in terms of his personality and the development of his capabil-ities and skills. The Minister added that this honour is not the end of the road, however it is a step in a long, successful and dis-tinctive path.

On his part, Al Kaabi said this recognition encourages him to continue his path of excellence and confirmed that the State of Qatar deserves the best from its youth. He added that everyone should work hard in their field to elevate the country and con-tinue the path of excellence to rank Qatar highly in the science

f ie ld , regional ly and internationally.

The State of Qatar partici-pated for the first time in the 14th International Junior Science Olympiad, which is one of the biggest scientific events with

many talented students from 50 countries and that are not less than 16 years of age. The Olym-piad aims to encourage skilled students to develop their talent in the natural sciences’ branches and promote friendship and

relationships among students from all over the world from an early age. It also gives the oppor-tunity to compare between syllabi and educational direc-tions of the participating countries in science education.

Minister of Education and Higher Education H E Dr Mohammed Abdul Wahed Ali Al Hammadi with student Abdullah Khaled Al Kaabi in the presence of his guardian and the head of the school.

The Minister honoured student Abdullah Khaled Al Kaabi from Tariq bin Ziad Secondary School for winning a bronze in the 14th International Junior Science Olympiad which took place in the Netherlands.

Economy Minister gets message from Indian counterpartQNA

Minister of Economy and Commerce H E Sheikh Ahmed bin Jassim Al

Thani received a written mes-sage from Minister of Commerce and Industry of the Republic of India, Suresh Pra-bhu, concerning bilateral relations and means of boost-ing them, especially in the economic, trade and investment fields.

The message was delivered by India’s Ambassador to Qatar, P. Kumaran, during his meet-ing with the Minister of Economy and Commerce, yesterday.

Qatar and India have a number of bilateral trade and investment agreements, includ-ing: an agreement on economic

and technical cooperation signed on April 19, 1984 in New Delhi and the agreement on the protection and promotion of

mutual investments, signed on April 7, 1999 in New Delhi.

The trade exchange between Qatar and India in

2016 amounted to approxi-mately QR31.2bn, India is the third biggest trading partner of Qatar.

Minister of Economy and Commerce H E Sheikh Ahmed bin Jassim Al Thani with India’s Ambassador to Qatar, P. Kumaran, yesterday.

Inspection campaign held in Souq Al Ali QNA

The Ministry of Economy and Commerce carried out a surprise inspection cam-

paign on tailor shops in Souq Al Ali, in order to monitor the com-pliance of their owners to their obligations under Law No. 8 of 2008 on consumer protection.

The campaign, which cov-ered 30 shops, resulted in the seizure and issuance of 3 viola-tions related to the failure to advertise prices, which is con-trary to the provisions of Article 8 of Law No. 8 of 2008 on con-sumer protection. The Ministry confirmed it will be firm against all those not complying to the consumer protection law and its executive regulations. It also con-firmed it will intensify its inspection campaigns to control

such practiced and refer all vio-lators to the concerned entities to take the appropriate measures against them.

The campaign comes within the framework of the Ministry’s keenness to regulate and moni-tor the markets and commercial activities in the country with the aim of controlling prices and detecting violations in order to protect the rights of consumers.

Ashghal signs deal with QFFD for foreign projectsMohammed Osman The Peninsula

Qatar Fund for Development (QFFD) and the Public Works Authority ‘Ashghal’,

yesterday signed a Memoran-dum of Understanding (MoU) stating that the Public Works Authority will provide technical support related to infrastructure projects and constructions that QFFD is financing in different countries.

The MoU was signed by Kha-lifa bin Jassim Al Kuwari, the Director General of Qatar Fund for Development, and Dr. Eng. Saad bin Ahmad Al Muhannadi, President of the Public Works Authority ‘Ashghal’ during a cer-emony held at Ashghal’s building yesterday.

Throughout past weeks we held discussions with QFFD and we managed to set up the mech-anisms and the suitable frameworks through which both parties will parties will coordi-nate to exchange expertise to contribute to the implementa-tion of projects funded by QFFD in a more efficient ways and higher quality, said Dr. Eng. Saad Al Muhannadi.

Speaking at the signing cer-emony Dr. Al Muhannadi expressed his happiness for the first cooperation between Ash-ghal and QFFD in implementing projects.

“It is our honour in the Pub-lic Works Authority to provide all the support for the great

mission QFFD implementing infrastructure projects in the countries the Fund cooperate with. “We are also glad to pro-vide all available expertise at Ashghal to contribute to achiev-ing the mission of the Fund to implement these projects with the best quality and efficiency.”

This is the first project we are implementing is in Somalia and include construction of two roads with length of around 130km and this is pilot project for Ashghal Al Muhannadi told The Peninsula.

Ashghal has no projects abroad but we want to introduce the support in infrastructure projects and services with Qatari designs and architecture Al Muhannadi added. We are keen to open further opportunities for Qatari companies in implemen-tation of projects funded by QFFD, he stressed.

For his part the Director General of QFFD Khalifa Al Kuwari, said “signing this mem-orandum comes within the framework of the government

orientation to achieve integra-tion between different government entities in imple-menting projects”, adding this MoU is the outcome of joint and close cooperation between the Fund and the Public Works Authority, which contributes to achieve the Fund’s development objectives, as part of Qatar’s commitment towards sisterly and friendly countries to imple-ment different projects, that contribute directly to the devel-

opment of these countries.” Part of this MoU is to encour-

age private companies which have experience and capable to implement projects in the coun-tries Qatar is cooperating he added.

The implementation of the project in Somalia began this week, Al Kuwari said, noting that this is part of the total 200 mil-lion allocated for the country.

He also stated that this MoU will include important

development projects in the fields of infrastructure, buildings, project management and provi-sion of technical support adding that “we are glad to announce today the beginning of imple-menting this memorandum through cooperation between QFFD and the Ashghal in devel-oping infrastructure in Somalia, through the preparation of tech-nical designs for the 90 km long Mogadishu – Jawhar Road and the 30 km long Mogadishu – Afgoye Road and and rehabilitation of government buildings.

He pointed out that these projects are very important for Somalia as they will enable the people to build the infrastruc-ture systems which is essential for the economic development and achieving sustainable development.

“We look for more cooper-ation and partnership in the future between QFFD and the Ashghal Authority in the field of infrastructure and buildings in many developing countries, to strengthen Qatar’s role in devel-opment on the regional and international levels.”

Meanwhile, QFFD was pledged to support the Somali economy through a package of $200m worth of projects in the fields of infrastructure, educa-tion, economic empowerment, By signing a partnership agree-ment with the Somali Government end of the past November.

Khalifa bin Jassim Al Kuwari, the Director General of Qatar Fund for Development, and Dr. Eng. Saad bin Ahmad Al Muhannadi, President of ‘Ashghal’ during the ceremony held at Ashghal’s building yesterday. Pic: Abdul Basit / The Peninsula

Mazda BT-50 Pick UP models of 2011-2015 recalledThe Peninsula

The Ministry of Economy and Commerce, in col-l a b o r a t i o n w i t h

National Car Company, dealer of Mazda vehicles in Qatar, has announced the recall of Mazda BT-50 Pick UP mod-els of 2011-2015 due to rear seat belt latch malfunction.

The ministry said the recall campaign falls within the framework of its ongoing efforts to protect consumers and ensure that car dealers follow up on vehicle defects and repairs. The Ministry said that it will coordinate with the dealer to follow up on the maintenance and repair works and will communicate with customers to ensure that the necessary repairs are car-ried out.

The Ministry urges all customers to report any vio-lations to its Consumer Protection and Anti-Com-mercial Fraud Department through the following chan-nels: Call Center: 16001; Email: info@mec.gov.qa; Social media accounts: Twit-ter: @MEC_Qatar; Instagram: MEC_Qatar; Ministry of Econ-omy and Commerce mobile app for Android and IOS: MEC_Qatar.

The campaign, which covered 30 tailor shops, resulted in the seizure and issuance of three violations related to the failure to advertise prices.

Authority will provide technical support related to infrastructure projects and constructions that QFFD is financing in different countries.

03WEDNESDAY 27 DECEMBER 2017 HOME

Siege impact among topics discussed at QU-CAS event

Sidi Mohamed The Peninsula

The Mass Communica-tion Department at Qatar University College of Arts and Sciences (QU-CAS) concluded

yesterday the three-day event for students’ graduation projects for Fall 2017.

The event highlighted 13 grad-uation projects presented by female students, who showcased their projects in front of academ-ics, media professionals and the full staff of the Mass Communica-tion Department, as well as faculty members from the College of Arts and Sciences.

Most of the topics of the grad-uation projects dealt with the blockade and its impact and how Qatar had benefited from it eco-nomically, the media of siege countries and how it fabricated news. Also, social topics like domestic violence against children were among the topics of projects. The presentation was held at Ibn Khaldoon Hall at QU.

College of Arts and Sciences

(CAS) Assistant Dean for Student Affairs, Munira Al Subaie, said: “I’m delighted to witness this event and see this significant number of stu-dent projects that show a promising generation equipped with skills, qualifications and knowledge.”

She also added that most of the projects discussed issues we were living in like the blockade and the projects were excellent. “I hope that they benefit from eval-uation of the jury and to continue with these projects.”

Regarding the selection of the projects, she said that there are directives from professors to stu-dents to choose such topics, but also students had developed the ideas. “This event is one of the major events in the department; it is an opportunity for students to showcase their skills and the result of their academic achievements.

The projects vary in quality in terms of content and production. The jury consists of professors from the department as well as media professionals from outside the university, which achieves great transparency and credibil-ity in evaluating these projects,” Head of Mass Communication Department, Dr. Noureldien El-Miladi, said.

Replying a question about why students had chosen those topics, El-Miladi said that the students were observing the suffering of society, pressure of the siege and that was why the topics were ini-tiatives from them and also instructions from their professors. “Some of them also have social relations in the siege countries and some are inspired from the topics related to experiences they were exposed to.”

“We are happy to see that stu-dents are interested to discuss social issues. Some of the projects are about what Qatar has achieved in economic field to achieve self-sufficiency. If the graduation projects do not talk about the pains of the society then they lack mean-ing,” El-Miladi added.

The session was attended by Dr. Khalid bin Mubarak Al-Shafi, Editor-in-Chief of The Peninsula.

Dr. Al-Shafi appreciated the students’ efforts and advised them on the importance of accurate facts and statistics.

Commenting on one of the project about Qatar’s economy after the blockade, Dr. Al-Shafi

said that such topics were very important and the government, by the first quarter of next year, is making efforts to achieve eighty percent of self-sufficiency in dairy products.

Dr. Al-Shafi said that the stu-dents were supposed to highlight the economic efforts made by the government during the blockade.

The session was also attended by Mohamed El Amine Moussa, Assistant Professor and Dr. Abdul Muttalib Siddiq Mekki, Managing Editor of Al Sharq daily among others.

In the “Journalism” track, the projects, which were under the supervision of Associate Prof of Journalism, Dr. Nishan Rafi, included the magazine titled “Vic-tory Despite the Siege” developed by students Najlaa Al-Mohanadi and Hessa Al-Hatmi.

“We chose this topic which is about blockade because we lived with this experience, and have

witnessed how their media fabri-cate and give fake news against Qatar. Such media outlets are not respecting ethics of the profession; they are saying that Qatar supports terrorism without provide any evi-dence,” Al-Mohanadi said.

Another project was also of a

magazine titled “Al-Olia” devel-oped by students Sheikha Al Khiareen, Noura Al Emadi and Eman Nouh, and talked about the hate discourse which is directed against Qatar in social media. This discourse aims to divide the GCC home by shattering its unity.

In the “Broadcast/Documen-tary” track, the projects included TV shows and documentaries, such as the film “Qatar Bldna”, directed by student Fatima Eissa Hamadi under the supervision of lecturer of broadcast and docu-mentary, Dr Njoud Al Ebrahim and the film “Gahwechi” directed by student Hind Al Nema, under the supervision of Associate Profes-sor of Video, Audio, and TV productions Dr Shaker Aiadi.

For his part, Dr. Abdul Muttalib said that the students were keen to keep their projects only about current issues as every one expressed interest in such topics. “They also showed their desire to deal with social issues not dis-

cussed very well in the society.”The total number of gradua-

tion projects discussed during last three days are 35.

Head of Mass Communication Department, Dr Noureldien El-Miladi, honoured Dr. Khalid bin Mubarak Al-Shafi, and Dr. Abdul Muttalib Siddiq Mekki, saying that their evaluation and pieces of advice were valuable for students and they must benefit from them.

Most of the topics of the graduation projects dealt with the blockade and its impact and how Qatar had benefited from it economically, the media of siege countries and how it fabricated news.

LEFT: Dr. Khalid bin Mubarak Al-Shafi, Editor-in-Chief of The Peninsula, receiving a memento from Head of Mass Communication Department, Dr Noureldien El-Miladi at the event. RIGHT: One of the students at the presentation of Graduation Project at Ibn Khaldon Hall at Qatar University, yesterday. Pics: Baher Amin / The Peninsula

Supplements on display. Pics: Salim Matramkot / The Peninsula

Dr. Khalid bin Mubarak Al-Shafi, Editor-in-Chief of The Peninsula, appreciated the students’ efforts and advised them on the importance of accurate facts and statistics.

Head of Mass Communication Department, Dr Noureldien El-Miladi, honoured Dr. Khalid bin Mubarak Al-Shafi, saying that his evaluation and pieces of advice were valuable for students.

Dr. Khalid bin Mubarak Al-Shafi addressing the gathering.

Head of Mass Communication Department, Dr. Noureldien El-Miladi

College of Arts and Sciences Assistant Dean for Student Affairs, Munira Al Subaie, said: “I’m delighted to witness this event and see this significant number of student projects that show a promising generation equipped with skills, qualifications and knowledge.”

04 WEDNESDAY 27 DECEMBER 2017HOME

Lusail Stadium workers hail SC’s cooling systemQNA

Workers con-s t r u c t i n g Lusail Sta-dium, which will host the

2022 FIFA World Cup final, have hailed as success the innovative cooling technology provided by the Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy.

Evaporative cooling vests, wrist-wraps, cooled towels and neck covers were recently tested by 150 workers at the Lusail Sta-dium project site. Made from state-of-the-art evaporative and phase change materials, the technology cooled the body temperatures of workers by up to 10 degree C. Every worker who took part in the recent pilot described the technology as beneficial, while more than three-quarters said the cooling effect was “very good.”

Following the success of the pilot, SC will now assess the results of the report before exploring ways to utilise the technology which will benefit workers in the short, medium and long-term.

The pilot was conducted by US-based Techniche in collab-oration with the SC and HBK Contracting, Lusail Stadium’s main contractor.

Temperatures on-site reached 40 C during the pilot. Workers tested the technology for a full day, during which they were regularly monitored. Ther-mal images were taken throughout the test to measure the body temperature of the workers and measure the effec-tiveness of the technology.

Kalyan Viswanathan, HBK Contracting’s workers’ welfare manager, said the workers

welcomed the trial. “The initial response was positive the work-ers like the comfort. It enables them to work better and increases productivity.”

Meanwhile, Techniche Man-aging Director James Russell said the trial gave them “a foun-dation to test our technologies and let us understand how we can fight heat stress in these conditions.”

Russell went on to explain how the technology keeps a worker cool. “The vests are made from an evaporative fab-ric called HyperKewl, which is a super-absorbent polymer fiber which you place directly into water to activate. It reduces a workers body temperature and lasts for around ten hours.”

“This technology is at the forefront of the industry. Going forward, there will be research and development into how we take this technology forward, to enable the SC and Qatar to become leaders in heat stress management and workers’ wel-

fare,” Russell added.For his part, Mahmoud

Qutub, senior advisor of special projects office and the execu-tive director of workers’ welfare, said the pilot has been very ben-eficial. “The metrics captured by Techniche demonstrated in real time the positive impact on both the mental and physical state of workers.”

“Our aim is to find solutions right now using existing tech-nology, however there is an opportunity to develop a prod-uct that leaves a legacy for workers not only in Qatar but in any country with a similar cli-mate. That is something we are already exploring,” Qutub said.

The Techniche pilot is one of many uses of cooling prod-ucts by the SC in 2017. Earlier this year, the Workers’ Welfare Department deployed 10,000 cooled towels across all projects in parallel with a separate cooled vest trial on Al Wakrah Stadium.

In addition, SC also devel-oped an innovative cooled helmet capable of reducing tem-peratures by up to 10 C. Following an extensive research and development phase, these helmets are expected to be rolled out next summer.

The use of cooled products on SC sites complements a host of initiatives that have been introduced across SC projects designed to enhance the living and working conditions of workers, including a health and nutrition program with Weill-Cornell Medicine-Qatar, an extensive training and up-skill-ing program, a dedicated grievance hotline, and a wide-spread program of health checks and assessment of emergency medical facilities across all sites.

Visitors enjoy the Octopus Ride, one of the amusement rides on offer at Souq Waqif Spring Festival which launched on Monday. The festival, which comprises over 60 attractions spread across the souq, runs for four months making it the longest festival of its kind organized by Souq Waqif. Pic: Abdul Basit / The Peninsula

Souq Waqif Spring Festival

Advisory Council team takes part in Arab Parliament SessionThe Peninsula

Advisory Council Delegation is participating in the sec-ond legislative session of

the Arab Parliament in Cairo. The meetings of the four permanent committees and sub-committees of the Arab Parliament, started yesterday to discuss the topics on the agenda of the general session of the second session of the sec-ond legislative session of the Arab Par l iament scheduled tomorrow.

During its meetings, the Com-mittee on Foreign and Political Affairs and Arab National Secu-rity will discuss its first qualitative report on the political situation in the Arab world, while the Com-mittee on Economic and Financial Affairs will discuss issues of Arab

economic integration and unified Arab economic legislations and laws. The Committee on Legisla-tive, Legal and Human Rights Affairs will review the methodol-ogy of preparing the Human Rights Report in the Arab World and the Status of Arab Commu-nities in Western Countries and its Report on Migration in the Arab World. On the sidelines of meet-ings of the Arab Parliament meeting, Several committees are scheduled to hold their meetings, namely the Committee of Pales-tine, the Committee on developing a plan of action to remove the name of the Republic of the Sudan from the list of States sponsoring terrorism, the Committee on the Preparation of the Report on the Political Situation in the Arab World, the Committee on the

Development of a Concept for Assistance and Support to Arab Refugees and Displaced Women and Children, the committee on Human Rights in the Arab World, the Committee on the Prepara-tion of the Draft Higher Education Document in the Arab World, and the Committee on Less developed Arab countries.

The plenary session of the parliament will focus on discuss-ing the current Arab situation in light of the serious challenges fac-ing the Arab world, especially the follow-up on the plan of action of the Arab Parliament adopted at its emergency session held ear-lier this month on the repercussions of US President Donald Trump’s decision regard-ing the occupied city of Jerusalem.

Katara offers training courses on handicraft MoPH provides training on ‘Asthma Friendly School’ programThe Peninsula

The Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) trained more the 150 nurses and

employees in a number of pri-mary schools on the methods to apply the Asthma Friendly School Program 2017/2018.

The Asthma Friendly School program targets students with asthma between six and 12 years of age and is being applied in 122 health-promot-ing schools.

This takes place in partner-ship with the Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) and Primary Health Care Corporation (PHCC).

Head of Non-Communica-ble Diseases department at MoPH Dr. Kholoud Al Mutawa said despite that asthma is non-curable, however, it can be controlled by receiving medi-cal services and improving the living conditions of the sick child.

She added that the program aims to activate six important strategic goals for asthma, which includes establishing and supporting the Asthma Friendly School in Qatar Program.

It also aims to provide men-tal and general health services for students with the disease, focuses on raising health awareness by providing health education programs for stu-dents and school staff, provides a safe and healthy school envi-ronment by reducing the irritants of an asthma attack, provides asthmatic students

with enjoyable and safe activ-ities in the field of physical education and stimulates inter-action between school, family and society, she added.

Dr. Al Mutawa said that in order to achieve those goals, the Non-Communicable Diseases department works with a number of partners in the Min-istry of Education and Higher Education, HMC and PHCC, to reduce the number of patients and improve the lives of sick students, in coordination with the efforts of schools, families and the society to improve the students’ situation and reduce the absence rates for asthmatic students.

Head of Asthma Friendly School in Qatar Program Dr. Maya Al Sheiba said the pro-gram is a unique learning experience designed to allow asthmatic students to make the most of the available medical potential and live in a support-ive natural environment that helps them develop their skills and improve their quality of life.

She said it also helps to pre-pare all students and staff to respond to asthma emergen-cies as they occur. The program involves training school staff and teachers on the basics of asthma, asthma management and follow-up of chronic con-ditions. It also includes activities to educate parents, teach stu-dents about the basics of asthma, how to control the con-dition, identify signs of attack, and how to help a person with an attack, she added.

The Peninsula

The Cultural Village Foun-dation-Katara is offering training courses on tradi-

tional handicraft aimed at developing a generation of skillful craftsmen in the country.

The first traditional handi-craft training program is still going on at Katara Building 6. It includes training courses on

Al-Sadu, gypsum decoration and embroidery held between 4pm to 8pm from Sunday to Tuesday and will continue until the end of April.

“The first training program on traditional handicraft aims at reviving the popular heritage and attracting Qatari youth, residents and children of Qatar to engage in traditional crafts in order to create a generation of craftsmen aware of the importance of the

popular professions and their artistic and creative value, and possess the culture of quality, mastery and excellence,” said Salma Al Nuaimi, Cultural Coun-selor and Head of Heritage Committee at Katara. She added: “We have divided the crafts in terms of practitioners (female and male) and common crafts such as leather tanning and wicker wool; women’s crafts such as sewing, Al-sadu, perfumery and cosmetics, and men’s crafts, such as carpentry, goldsmith, sea craft, gypsum, pottery and blacksmith.”

“The Cultural Village Katara oversees the program and pro-vides all forms of material and moral support to these crafts-men, to practice their traditional crafts permanently to the pub-lic through the possibility of allocating various places in Katara, activating tourism and preserving the cultural heritage,” she explained.

Evaporative cooling vests, wrist-wraps, cooled towels and neck covers were recently tested by 150 workers at the Lusail Stadium project site. Made from state-of-the-art evaporative and phase change materials, the technology cooled the body temperatures of workers by up to 10 degree C.

The first traditional handicraft training programme going on at Katara Building 6. It includes training courses on Al-Sadu, gypsum decoration and embroidery held between 4pm to 8pm from Sunday to Tuesday.

People taking part in the training courses on traditional handicraft.

05WEDNESDAY 27 DECEMBER 2017 HOME

Ooredoo opens new shop in Industrial AreaThe Peninsula

Ooredoo announced yesterday the launch of a new Ooredoo Shop in Industrial Area, as

the company continues to invest in providing convenience for customers and a better shopping experience.

Thanks to the new shop opening, which is located oppo-site the Al Attya market, Ooredoo services are now more accessi-ble than ever to customers working or living in Industrial Area.

The new Ooredoo Shop offers services for Shahry and Hala, as well as Fibre, data,

Ooredoo tv and more. The Oore-doo Shop will be open Saturday - Thursday from 8am to 10pm, and on Friday from 2pm to 10pm.

The Ooredoo Shop also has three Self-Service Machines on offer, which are accessible 24/7 to enable customers to enjoy instant Ooredoo services any-time of the day.

During the opening cere-mony, Ooredoo gave away surprise gifts for visitors pur-chasing selected products.

Talking about the event, Manar Khalifa Al Muraikhi, Director of PR and Corporate Communications, Ooredoo Qatar, said: “By opening this Ooredoo Shop, we are meeting the needs of our many

customers who live and work in the Industrial Area. We will con-tinue our ambitious nationwide expansion strategy of Ooredoo Shops, providing neighbour-hood-level convenience for our customers to experience our wide range of products and serv-ices, and our leading customer support service.”

Customers can find nearest Ooredoo Shop by visiting Oore-doo website at www.ooredoo.qa or via the Ooredoo App.

Officials and other well-wishers at the opening of the new Ooredoo Shop in Industrial Area.

06 WEDNESDAY 27 DECEMBER 2017HOME

HMC’s LifeFlight service marks 10 years of launchThe Peninsula

Hamad Medical Cor-poration’s (HMC) air ambulance service, LifeFlight, recently celebrated its ten-

year anniversary.“Since its launch in 2007, our

LifeFlight Service has grown exponentially and today responds to more than 2,000 emergencies a year, providing a vital service for the people of Qatar,’’ said Dr Robert Owen, Chief Executive Officer of HMC’s Ambulance Service. “For most emergency cases, our ambulances and other road-based vehicles are the best method of transport for getting our teams to the scene.

However, when speed is the highest priority, or when patients need emergency care in the more remote areas of Qatar, the Life-Flight Service is called into

action,’’ said Owen.The LifeFlight Service was

launched in 2007 as part of a six-month pilot project.

The pilot was such a success

that the service was rolled out permanently. In LifeFlight’s early years, the service was opera-tional only during daylight hours, but in 2011 the hours of opera-tion were expanded and today the service responds to emergen-cies 24 hours a day.

In September 2013, the Ambu-lance Service introduced three new, highly-advanced helicopters to its LifeFlight fleet; the Agusta Westland AW139 helicopters are flown by highly trained pilots from the Qatar Emiri Air Force.

“Each of the new helicopters can carry two patients, two med-ical crew, and two pilots, and is equipped with the latest advanced life support medical equipment,’’ said Ali Darwish, Assistant Executive Director of the Ambulance Service.

“We have a strong partner-ship with the Qatar Emiri Air Force which enables us to

operate an efficient and effec-tive LifeFlight Service.

On behalf of the Ambulance Service I would like to extend my thanks to the Qatar Emiri Air Force’s leadership and to the high-skilled pilots who work hand-in-hand with our medical

teams to deliver the very best care to our patients,’’ Darwish added.

The LifeFlight Service received accreditation by the European Aeromedical Institute (EURAMI) in 2015 for both adult and pediatric critical care.

The accreditation was awarded following a rigorous evaluation of the LifeFlight Serv-ice against quality, management, and performance measures.

EURAMI accredited aero-medical services are recognized as amongst the best in the world.

Rotating market: Bedaya Center hails role of entrepreneursThe Peninsula

Bedaya Center for Entrepre-neurship and Career, a joint initiative by Qatar

Development Bank and Silatech, in line with the celebrations for the National Day held the “Souq Maqtoora: National Day Edi-tion”- the first rotating market in the country.

Souq Maqtoura began on December 12, 2017 and will run till March 2018, between 4 pm to 9 pm at Katara with the objec-tive to support entrepreneurs.

With the participation of more than 30 projects,”Souq Maqtoora: National Day Edition” is an exceptional initiative show-casing products that focus and highlights the spirit of the National Day celebrations.

It also demonstrates the efforts of entrepreneurs in responding to the unjust blockade

imposed on the country. The event received overwhelming response from locals and expats.

On this occasion, Reem Al-Suwaidi, General Manager of Bedaya Center said: “Souq Maq-toura, one of Bedaya’s prime initiatives has earned a wide popularity as the first rotating market in the country aiming to support local projects and startups.

This initiative provides the necessary platform for entrepre-neurs to leave a distinct footprint

in the local market.” “Our participation in the

National Day Celebrations with the special version of the Souq

Maqtoura, was to show our sup-port for local businesses and this was aptly demonstrated with the participation of entrepreneurs from diverse sectors such as tex-tiles, accessories, and fragrance etc.

Through this event, we were able to inform visitors at Katara about the participating compa-nies, startups and projects and present their products.”

“We at Bedaya, strive to pro-vide a wide range of solutions and services that support entre-preneurs by providing the best ways and programs that enable them to introduce their projects and businesses to help them achieve their desired goals.

Through Souq Maqtoura, we have been able support many companies and startups to show-case their distinctive products that coincide with National Day celebrations,” she added.

HMC’s LifeFlight Service responds to more than 2,000 emergencies a year, providing a vital service for the people of Qatar.

Bedaya Center for Entrepreneurship and Career held the “Souq Maqtoora: National Day Edition”- the first rotating market in the country in connection with National Day celebrations. The event began on December 12, 2017 and will run till March 2018 at Katara.

Qatar’s professor honoured in IndiaThe Peninsula

Prof Syed Javaid Zaidi, Chair Professor of Chemical Engineering and QAFAC

Chair in the Center for Advanced Materials at Qatar University, has been honoured with the life-time achievement award for his performance in the field of Chemical Engineering by Venus Internation Foundation in a cer-emony held in Chennai, India.

The award was given to Prof Zaidi for his contribution, research excellence and accom-plishments in the area of Chemical Engineering in a grand ceremony attended by delegates from 15 countries held in November in Chennai, India.

Prof Zaidi holds fifteen pat-ents and patent applications for the new discoveries and inven-tions to his credit. His achievements include the inven-tion of new process for the removal of heavy metals from waste-water, which are toxic

and health hazard. He patented new technol-

ogy for clean energy device fuel cells for automobiles and backup power applications, which results in the clean environment. He has published over 200 research articles in international journals and conferences. He has been invited to serve in the Advi-sory Council of Arab Water Desalination, a prestigious organization of the Middle East.

In addition, Prof Zaidi has delivered more than 120 pres-entations and talks at various international forums, confer-ences and symposiums and institutions in more than twenty countries. He is the first and only scientist living in Qatar to receive this prestigious award. Prof Zaidi appreciates the sup-port provided by Qatar University for advancing his career and giving the opportu-nity and resources to pursue this kind of innovative and scientific work.

“Since its launch in 2007, our LifeFlight Service has grown exponentially and today responds to more than 2,000 emergencies a year, providing a vital service for the people of Qatar,’’ said Dr Robert Owen, Chief Executive Officer of HMC’s Ambulance Service.

QC launches winter campaign for needyThe Peninsula

As winter is getting tougher, Qatar Charity launched its campaign “Winter for The

Needy” to reach out to vulnera-ble people in areas of conflict.

The campaign is targeting ref-ugees and needy people in Syria, Iraq, Palestine, and Rohingyans through providing essential liv-ing items, food, and fuel. Upon the start of the campaign, hundreds of thousands of people have already received help in the afore-mentioned countries.

The campaign was launched in a press conference at Qatar Charity’s headquarters and led by Projects Executive Manager Khaled Abulla Al Yafei and Media Department Manager in Qatar Charity Ahmed Saleh Al Ali. Alyafei stated that under the slogan “Warm Their Winter” and with a total budget of QR65,000,000, our campaign targets 1,770,500 vulnerable people whose countries are going through conflicts and exceptional circumstances.

The campaign aims at pro-viding essential living items such as food, tents, winter clothes, blankets, heaters, and fuel. “With the support of our Qatari people and our expatriates in the state of Qatar, we aspire to reach out to as many vulnerable people as possible.” Facing extreme tem-perature in winter time, Al Wafei sent a shootout to Qatari and expatriate benefactors to pro-tect the refugees and vulnerable

people from freezing to death and contribute to providing sup-port to help them survive the blistering cold. Through a dona-tion of QR50 up to QR3000, Qatar Charity will manage to provide food, fuel, and shelter to refugees and people in need.

The products of the cam-paign for Syrian refugees include: QR100 hygiene kit, QR500 family clothing bag, QR200 diesel heater, QR200 food basket, QR100 blanket, QR100 school backpacks. For those escaping persecution in Bangladesh, the products include: QR50 meal for ten peo-ple, a blanket and clothing bag for QR100 each, QR200 food basket, QR2000 equipped

wooden cottage to accommo-date eight Rohingyan families.

The products dedicated to needy people in Palestine consist of QR100 clothing bag and QR200 food basket, while the Iraqi refu-gees will receive QR200 heater and QR3000 equipped tent. Due to the staggering numbers of Syr-ian refugees, the campaign aims at targeting 582,000 people, 65% of them are located inside Syria. While it covers 445,000 Rohy-gians, 102,000 Iraqis, and 50,000 Palestinians.

Few days ago, Qatar Charity started “Winter for The Needy” through distributing food bas-kets, tents, blankets, winter clothes inside Syria (In Reef Halab, Idlib, and Al Ghouta)

reaching out to a number of 127,000 refugees, while it suc-cessfully managed to distribute the same items for 20,400 Rohi-gyans in the city of Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh.

Through the campaign, Qatar Charity has provided 200 Syrian families in Lebanon with basic items that support their survival during winter and their need for fuel, food, and medical assistance. Those interested to contribute may donate for the campaign via qcharity.org, or by calling hotline 44667711. They may also donate at Qatar Char-ity’s headquarters or any of its collection outlets that can be found in major commercial centers and malls.

Qatar Charity’s Projects Executive Manager Khaled Abulla Al Yafei and Media Department Manager Ahmed Saleh Al Ali addressing a press conference to launch the “Winter for the Needy” campaign at the headquarters of the Qatar Charity, yesterday.

Professor Syed Javaid Zaidi receiving the award.

Souq Maqtoura began on December 12, 2017 and will run till March 2018, between 4 pm to 9 pm at Katara with the objective to support entrepreneurs.

07WEDNESDAY 27 DECEMBER 2017 HOME

Second Awareness & Supported Elements expo in February Sanaullah Ataullah The Peninsula

To raise awareness among the community at various levels, Ministry of Culture

and Sports yesterday announced Second Awareness and Sup-ported Elements Exhibition, which would be held from Feb-ruary 20 to 23 next year at Qatar National Convention Centre (QNCC).

The event will provide a plat-form for governmental, semi governmental and private sec-tors and youth initiatives to interact with community mem-bers to raise social, cultural, religious, security, economic, health and environment related awareness. The exhibition, a four-day event entitled “Aware-ness for Qatar” and “Awareness improves Life” will be organized by Final Vision Event Manage-ment in partnership with QNCC. “The exhibition aims to attract the largest number of aware-ness-raising entities in the country in all its categories and sectors to meet under one roof

to present their programmes and awareness campaigns directly to the public,” said Heider Mohammed, Final Vision Chair-man in a press conference at QNCC yesterday.

He said that results of the previous awareness campaigns and programmes presented by some governmental bodies will be revealed at the exhibition to evaluate these initiatives. The exhibition will witness the launch of Awareness Prize for the first time in Qatar, which will evalu-ate a number of campaigns and awareness programs for three

sectors - government, private and youth initiatives.

Speaking to The Peninsula on the sidelines of the press confer-ence, Ammar Anabtawi, CEO, Final Vision Qatar said that within the exhibition workshops and sessions will be held on daily basis during four day of the event. “We will give chance to all exhibitors and participants to present their awareness pro-grammes,” he added. He said that the exhibition is expecting more than 100 participants from all sectors.

“We are targeting everybody not any particular audience; we are targeting all community therefore we are having massive media campaign,” he said. “As soon as the exhibitors confirmed their participation, we sat with them in a meeting getting full information about their targeted audience so we will focus to bring them to the exhibition.”

He said: “For example, we have some programmes with the Ministry of Education and Higher Education targeting students and parents. So we are preparing to provide daily shuttle buses from

school to the exhibition and we will be sending invitation to par-ents.” Registration for exhibitors and visitors are open online. “Entities can register and book spaces online or they can con-tact directly we have our sales team that will approach them immediately once they receive the call.”

There are fees for participa-tion and the exhibitors will have to book spaces. “We are selling spaces at per square meter. We

will be charging about $400 per sqm for four days,” he said. Saud Al Dulaimi, Head of Public Rela-tions and communication Department at Ministry of Cul-ture and Sports said that the Ministry’s support for this exhi-bition comes within the framework of the directives of H E Salah bin Ghanem Al Ali, Min-ister of Culture and Sports, to support and sponsor outstand-ing National events.

Al Dulaimi said that the

opportunity will be open to var-ious youth initiatives to present their initiatives through the exhibition.

Abdul Aziz Al Emadi, CEO of Qatar National Convention Center, said that QNCC announced its partnership with Final Vision to organise the event in its second edition in order to play an important role in organ-ising important national events and not only as a hosting venue for events.

MoU signed to hold Al-Andalus Garden exhibition in AprilThe Peninsula

Quranic Botanic Garden (QBG), a member of Qatar Foundation (QF), and the

Islamic Culture Foundation (FUNCI) of Spain have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to collaborate in bringing the AI-Andalus Garden Exhibi-tion to Qatar.

The exhibition will be held at Katara Cultural Village in April 2018.

Created by FUNCI, AI-Anda-lus Garden Exhibition is an expression of the peaceful coex-istence among different cultures and of the respect for environ-mental and historical heritage through one of the closest aspects to the everyday life of people: Nature and gardens.

The exhibition previously toured with great success across several countries, including, among others, Spain, Morocco, Lebanon, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

Encarna Gutierrez, Secretary General, of the Islamic Culture Foundation, met with Fatima Saleh Al Khulaifi, Manager of the Quranic Botanic Garden, recently in Doha and to sign the MOU, strengthening mutual coopera-tion between both parties. Al

Khulaifi said, “It’s a pleasure for me to sign an MOU with FUNCI, as it’s a great benefit to both sides to join hands and to cooperate in caring for our Islamic culture.

This exhibition highlights the importance of gardens in Islam and the extent of Muslim inter-est in this area. This is achieved through presenting some of the tools that were used by Muslims in Andalusia for agriculture, and in motivating audiences to take care of the environment to pro-tect our culture.”

Al-Khulaifi, accompanied Gutierrez in visiting the Qatar Foundation Plant Nursery, Qatar National Library, HBKU’s Col-lege of Islamic Studies, the Museum of Islamic Art, and Katara.

“Qatar has achieved great progress and has become one of the world’s leading countries in the field of education. Together we aspire to show the depth of Islamic civilization and culture and the development of Muslims in Andalusia,” said Gutierrez. QBG is an active member, since August 2015, of the Med-O-Med international development coop-eration network of the Islamic Culture Foundation (FUNCI), which was established in 2009

by FUNCI in Spain. Med-O-Med, aims to conserve biodiversity as well as natural and cultural her-itage in the Muslim majority countries of the Mediterranean and the Middle East.

FUNCI is a Spanish,

nonprofit, scientific and cultural NGO, and part of the Spanish Ministry of Culture’s Register for the Protection of Cultural Foun-dations. FUNCI seeks to show the achievements of Islamic cul-ture and civilization not only

from a historical viewpoint but also as tools that can help meet present and future challenges. Throughout its history, FUNCI has worked hand in hand with a large number of Spanish and international institutions.

Fatima Saleh Al-Khulaifi, Manager, Quranic Botanic Garden; and Encarna Gutierrez, Secretary-General, Islamic Culture Foundation, signing an MoU covering services related to bringing the AI-Andalus Garden Exhibition to Qatar in April 2018.

Mahaseel Festival pulls more crowdThe Peninsula

The second edition of Mahaseel Festival has been attracting more visitors

with a combination of shopping, education and entertainment as well as the diverse local quality products and cultural activities that are on offer daily.

Yesterday, Bulgarian Ambas-sador Metin Kazak and Italian Ambassador Pasquale Salzano visited the festival and were received by Katara General Manager Dr. Khalid bin Ibrahim Al Sulaiti. The Ambassadors praised the festival for offering quality and diverse variety of products. Some of the the most popular Qatari farms and com-panies have brought their products to the festival.

The Qatari company for poultry production (Oasis)and the Adba poultry and quail farm are participating with their high quality products.

The two companies are offering varieties of chicken and quail, which are slaughtered daily, cleaned, packaged and brought directly from the farm,

Mohammed Maher, supervisor at Adba farm, said: “Poultry farming takes place in farms located in Umm Al Qarn, with innovative methods and an open and natural atmosphere, away f r o m a n y h o r m o n a l treatments.”

Maher noted that the festi-val is witnessing successive

developments to contribute to the needs of the local market for white meat and eggs, and under the control of the Ministry of Municipality and Environment.

The original Qatari honey shops are well received by visi-tors at the festival, given the natural Qatari honey produced by the Qatari farms.

The Boseif beekeeping dis-plays a variety of natural Qatari honey extracts of Sidr, which is known for its high quality, taste and variety of flavours. Mahaseel Festival is open until Saturday from 9am to 10pm. From next month until end of March the festival will be open from Thursday to Saturday.

Visitors at the second edition of Mahaseel Festival

QRCS donates QR1m to storm victims in the Philippines QNA

Qatar Red Crescent Soci-ety (QRCS) has allocated QR1m as an initial and

urgent response to support families affected by Vinta storm in the Philippines in fields including health care, food and non-food items.

The support comes in response to the call for relief launched by the Philippine Red Cross due to the emergency conditions resulting from the tropical storm, which struck several areas of the southern Philippines on December 23, QRCS said Tuesday in a press release. QRCS pointed out that immediately after the disaster, they coordinated with the Phil-ippine Red Cross and a joint operations room was activated to follow up the latest develop-ments and limit the damage.

QRCS also coordinated with its team in Marawi city to

follow up and assess the most important needs at this stage. The flooding caused by Vinta led to the displacement of some people living in the affected areas due to the destruction of 12,041 houses.

The latest tropical storm has killed 203 people, injured more than 171, while 100 persons are still missing. The storm also cut water, electricity and roads. QRCS has recently distributed emergency aid to 14,000 fami-lies in Marawi, where the relief team managed to reach the city after the Philippine government announced the end of violence that has been going on for more than five months.

QRCS is the first international organization to provide human-itarian assistance to those affected by the storm. The aid included 14,000 food parcels, 2,000 personal hygiene kits, as well as psychological support for children in shelters.

Renovation of 16 mosques completedQNA

The Ministry of Endow-ments and Islamic Affairs has concluded the reno-

vation of 16 mosques across the country from January to October at a cost exceeding QR6.5m, the ministry said in a press release.

Maintenance works at 60 houses of imams and prayer callers besides renovating another seven mosques with expenses paid by donors were also carried out.

Moreover, 15,600 water dis-pensers were replaced at mosques. The renovations took place in the areas of Al Aziziya, Al Wukair, Al Mamoura, Salata, Mehairja, Al Nuaija, Al Muraikh, Al Matar, Al Ghuwariyah and Abal Heeran. Additionally, seven manufactured mosques were installed in Rawdat Ekdeem, Julaiah, Rawdat Al Hamam, Al Thumaid, Al Kheesa and Al Wakrah. The ministry has a plan in place to double the number of mosques and main-tain and expand the old ones in the different areas to cope with the urban growth.

The exhibition, a four-day event entitled “Awareness for Qatar” and “Awareness improves Life” will be organised by Final Vision Event Management in partnership with QNCC.

Fahad Abdullah Al Hajri (second left), Director of Events and Marketing at QNCC; Ammar Anabtawi (centre), CEO, Final Vision Qatar; and other officials (from left) Dr Hamad Al Fayyad, Heider Mohammed, and Saud Abdullah Al Dulaimi, at a press conference. Pic: Kammutty VP/The Peninsula

08 WEDNESDAY 27 DECEMBER 2017MIDDLE EAST

Rabat

AFP

Unable to reach Europe in search of a better life, Aliou Ndiaye settled in Morocco instead,

giving up on his original goal like thousands of other sub-Saharan African migrants.

“Everyone has the right to go to another country to try their luck,” the 31-year-old former fish exporter from Senegal said.

“Lots of people are trying to reach Europe, but some end up staying to make a living.”

Seven out of 10 West Africa-born migrants stay on the continent, according to a Decem-ber study by the Moroccan think tank OCP Policy Center.

Discouraged by the danger of passing through countries such as Libya and by harsh pol-icies aimed at preventing migrants going to Europe, many settle in “transit” countries including Morocco.

Ndiaye said he gave up after he realised reaching Spain was “too hard”.

He took on several informal jobs and finally set himself up as a street vendor in Rabat, where he expects to remain.

His story illustrates a trend that has gained increasing atten-tion from Moroccan politicians, civil society and researchers.

Morocco has turned from a transit country into a host coun-try for immigrants, according to the government’s High

Commission for Planning. “The Moroccan authorities have switched from a security approach, which criminalised illegal immigration, to a dis-course of integration,” said Mehdi Alioua, former head of a group that helped migrants.

He said the new approach involves moving migrants from border regions to the country’s big cities, taking them further from their ultimate goal -- reaching Europe.

That has meant that many stay on in Morocco.

Rabat has become home to many sub-Saharan Africans who work at informal markets in the capital, while others, still hoping to make it to Europe, live in informal camps near bus stations and eke out a living by begging. But their growing numbers have created tensions. In November, residents clashed with sub-Saha-ran youths living in a camp in Casablanca.

“You can’t be welcomed with

open arms everywhere you go,” said Olivier Foutou, a 34-year-old Congolese.

But he called Morocco “the most welcoming country in Africa” and criticised fellow migrants “who think only of Europe and do not want to inte-grate”. Like many West Africans, he originally headed to Morocco for study, attracted by the qual-ity of the education system and the possibility of scholarships.

He has stayed ever since, and sings in the choir at Rabat’s cathedral, a meeting point for the city’s small Catholic com-munity. Another choir member, Jean Baptiste Dago-Gnahou, fled

war-ravaged Ivory Coast years ago and ended up in Rabat by “destiny”. In his 40s, he is teach-ing French and currently has no plans to return to his homeland.

Papa Demba Mbaye left his job as a teacher in Senegal seven years ago to “live the adventure in Morocco”.

He was attracted by prom-ises of work at a call centre, a growing sector in need of French-speakers. He soon dis-covered that it was a “job with no future”, and has since estab-lished himself as a French teacher. He has written two books -- “The life of a

Senegalese in Morocco” and “Seven reasons why I love Morocco”. Keen to build links between sub-Saharan Africans and Moroccans, he also runs a theatre troupe on the outskirts of Rabat. Despite Morocco’s new migration policies and the king-dom’s efforts to re-integrate with the African Union after decades outside the bloc, it is hard to gain permanent residency.

The authorities are currently processing some 25,000 resi-dency applications. A similar “regularisation” campaign in 2014 saw around 23,000 peo-ple gain renewable residency.

Blocked from Europe, migrants settle in Morocco

Migrant vendors selling cellphones on a sidewalk in the Moroccan capital Rabat.

N’Djamena

AFP

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan arrived in Chad yesterday, his first

visit to what is one of the poor-est and most corrupt countries in the world, national media reported.

Erdogan landed at the

airport in the capital N’Djamena, where upon descending the air-craft’s steps he was met by his counterpart Idriss Deby.

The trip “opens a new page in the deepening of relations between the two countries”, the Chadian presidency said.

Erdogan is heading a dele-gation of a dozen ministers, including defence and foreign

affairs, as well as 100 Turkish businessmen.

The trip is part of the Turk-ish president’s three-country African tour and follows a visit to Sudan on Sunday, where he signed military and economic deals, aimed at boosting two-way trade from the current level of $500 million a year to $1-billion.

Turkish President arrives in Chad Benghazi

Reuters

Authorities in eastern Libya have announced a conference in March to

drum up support to rebuild the country’s second-largest city Benghazi heavily damaged dur-ing three years of fighting between military forces and Islamist fighters.

The announcement signals a desire to demonstrate a return

to normality in the port, where top military commander Kha-lifa Haftar declared the end of a campaign to oust Islamist fighters. Clashes have contin-ued in some areas, while life has returned in the rest of the city, though some districts were almost completely destroyed by shelling and air strikes. A forum titled “International Conference and Exhibition for rebuilding Benghazi city” will be held from March 19-21.

Conference convened in March to plan Benghazi activities

President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his wife Emine Erdogan are welcomed by President of Chad Idriss Deby upon their arrival at N’Djamena International Airport in N’Djamena, Chad, yesterday.

Discouraged by the danger of passing through countries such as Libya and by harsh policies aimed at preventing migrants going to Europe, many settle in “transit” countries including Morocco.

QNA

Qatar denounced yester-day the announcement by President of Guate-

mala of his country’s intention to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

The Foreign Ministry said in a statement that Guatema-la’s decision is null, devoid of legal effect and a deviation from the international consen-sus which was reflected in the UN General Assembly’s rejec-tion by a two-thirds majority to recognize Jerusalem as the

capital of Israel.The Ministry expressed

hope that Guatemala would review its decision and support the Palestinian right. The state-ment reaffirmed Qatar’s firm and long-standing stance in supporting the Palestinian cause and the steadfastness of the brotherly Palestinian peo-ple based on the resolutions of international legitimacy and the two-state solution, ensur-ing the establishment of an independent Palestinian state on the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital.

Continued from page 1The emergency department at Sidra

Medicine will become operational towards mid-2018. In the meantime, in the event of an emergency, parents and mothers-to-be should visit their nearest Pediatric Emergency Center (PEC) or the Emer-gency Department at HMC.

Dr. John Ferguson, Chief Medical Officer, said, “Sidra Medicine has been setting new standards in care since the opening of our Outpatient Clinic in May 2016. We look forward to caring for the children, young people and women of Qatar in the new state-of-the art hospi-tal. As we gear up to welcome our first inpatients on January 14, their continued safety and comfort is of utmost impor-tance to us. Inpatient services at the main

hospital are being phased over the course of 2018. We are working very closely with our part-ners at HMC and PHCC to ensure that the care and services patients receive are transitioned as s m o o t h l y a s possible.”

Dr. Abdulla Al Kaabi, Executive Chair of the Chil-dren’s Services Clinical Management Group, Executive Vice Chief Medical Officer and Member of the Board of

Governors, said, “We are less than three weeks out from taking one of the biggest

steps in helping to advance the special-ist care of children and adolescents and maternity services in Qatar. Our team is focused on ensuring all patients receive individualized care that addresses their specific needs. A cru-cial part of that is working with our community and partners by giving them all the information necessary to make informed healthcare choices and decisions.”

Physicians who have referred patients to Sidra Medicine are encour-aged to continue doing so using the referral guidelines posted on the Sidra Medicine website. The guidelines are being updated on an ongoing basis as

new services come onboard and the refer-ral network continues to expand.

Winter tourism to bring more visitors to Qatar

Continued from page 1

Citizens of these 80 coun-tries wishing to visit Qatar will no longer need to apply or pay for a visa; instead, a multi-entry waiver will be issued free-of-charge at the port of entry, upon presentation of a valid passport with a mini-mum validity of six months and a confirmed onward or return ticket.

Discover Qatar, the desti-nation management company arm of Qatar Airways, had signed exclusive partnership agreements with four of the world’s major tour operators in Russia, Italy, Czech Repub-lic and Ukraine, last month in order to promote Qatar as a major tourist destination, which will further increase flow of tourist in the country.

“Alongside lovely winter weather, there are some superb beach hotels to cater for the Russian sun-seeker. Additionally there are many unique cultural experiences. We believe the destination will be a great attraction for Rus-sian visitors,” Chief Executive of Russian tour operator Space Travel, Artur Muradyan had commented earlier. In May, QA had launched a stopover pack-age for transit passengers which includes free luxury hotel stays and complimentary transit visas.

Qatar denounces Guatemala decisionto move embassy to Jerusalem

Continued from page 1

He pointed out that the great success achieved by the exhibition reflects the success of the Qatari industry in breaking the unjust siege on the state and the great confi-dence that citizens and residents attach to the national industry and the local product.

Al Sharqi pointed out that the number of exhibitors reached 320 companies in five industrial sectors petro-chemicals, furniture, food, small and medium industries, and various other industries. The exhibition also registered the participation of 138 pro-ductive families that provided micro-industries that could become small and medium industries in the future. The total number of exhibitors about 460 exhibitors.

Al Sharqi pointed out that the exhibition witnessed the signing of cooperation and partnership agreements between several national companies participating in the exhibition and others wishing to enter the Qatari market and benefit from the national industry available. He noted that among the agreements signed during the exhibition is a cooperation agreement between QC and Kazakhstan Chamber.

He revealed that a coop-eration agreement was signed between Qatar Development Bank (QDB) and Qatar Stock Exchange (QSE) for coopera-tion in encouraging SMEs to be listed on the Qatar Exchange for emerging companies.

Director General of QC pointed out that the Chamber is in contact with the exhib-iting companies to record the results of the exhibition at the level of deals and under-standings that took place during it, as many companies concluded preliminary understandings of partner-ship and alliance with foreign companies.

Half a million visit website of Made in Qatar exhibition

Sidra Medicine to open main hospital on January 14

09WEDNESDAY 27 DECEMBER 2017 MIDDLE EAST / AFRICA

Syria rebels, opposition reject Sochi initiativeBeirut

AP

Syrian rebel fighters and opposition groups yes-terday rejected Russia’s proposed peace talks, accusing Moscow of

failing to pressure its ally, Pres-ident Bashar Assad, to end the conflict.

In a series of statements, 40 rebel groups, including some of Syria’s most prominent, as well as political opposition umbrella groups, said the talks expected next month are an attempt to “circumvent” the UN-led proc-ess, which has made virtually no progress since it began in 2014.

The rebel groups said Mos-cow has asked them to give up their demand for Assad to step down. “We reject this, and we affirm that Russia is an aggres-sor that has committed war crimes against Syrians,” the statement signed by 40 rebel groups said.

“Russia has not contributed with a single move to alleviate the suffering of the Syrian peo-ple and it has not pressured the regime it claims it guarantees to move an inch toward any real path toward a resolution.”

The rebel groups, including Ahrar al-Sham, Army of Islam, and a number of Free Syrian Army groups, said they are com-mitted to the UN-led Geneva process, and called on the

international community to end the bloodshed, now in its sev-enth year. Political opposition groups and governing bodies in rebel-held areas have also rejected Russia’s proposed talks.

The talks are scheduled for January 29-30 in Sochi, and were announced after talks among Russia and Iran, which back the government, and Tur-key, which supports the opposition.

Syria’s government said it would attend the talks. Assad told reporters recently that the Sochi talks have a clear agenda of discussing new elections and possibly amending the constitution.

The fate of Assad has been the main point of contention in all previous rounds of talks. The opposition has long called for a transitional period in which Assad would have no role, something the government refuses to even consider.

The Sochi talks would open up a fourth track of talks between parties to the complex conflict. The UN’s own Geneva programme has been supple-mented by “technical” talks in Astana brokered by Russia, Iran and Turkey.

Russia periodically opens a third track through Cairo. Egypt has provided a base for Syrian reformists seen as acceptable to the Damascus government.

Highlighting its close ties to the Syrian government, Russia moved ahead with plans to lease a naval base in Syria for an addi-tional 49 years.

The upper chamber of the Russian parliament voted to extend Russia’s lease of the Mediterranean base at Tartus, the last step before President Vladimir Putin’s expected signature.

Russia’s air campaign in Syria, which began in Septem-ber 2015, helped turn the tide of the civil war in favour of Assad. Earlier this month, Putin announced a partial pullout of troops from Syria, but Russia is determined to maintain its mil-itary presence there.

Yahya Sinwar (centre left), leader of Hamas movement in the Gaza Strip, speaks during a meeting with the heads of families in Gaza City yesterday to discuss recent developments on talks, also attended by the movement’s political bureau head Ismail Haniyeh (centre right).

Hamas chief warns against US moveGaza City

Anatolia

Hamas chief Ismail Hani-yeh yesterday said US President Donald

Trump’s recent decision to rec-ognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital was aimed at “terminat-ing” the Palestinian national cause.

“The recent US decision on Jerusalem is part of ongoing efforts to terminate the Pales-tinian cause within the context of a so-called ‘deal of the cen-tury’,” Haniyeh said at a meeting in Gaza City with Pal-estinian tribal leaders. On December 6, Trump announced his decision to recognise

Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, drawing condemnation and pro-test from across the Arab and Muslim world.

The controversial US move, Haniyeh said, “has implications for the reconfiguration of the entire region and the [Arab and Muslim] nation… which will come at the expense of Jerusa-lem and Palestinian rights.”

Hamas, he added, had received information of a US plan to offer Palestinian leaders a state with its capital in Abu Dis, a Palestinian village near East Jerusalem. “The plan involves building a bridge linking Abu Dis to the Al-Aqsa Mosque com-pound [in East Jerusalem] with the ostensible aim of ensuring

[Palestinians] access to the mosque,” Haniyeh asserted.

He added: “There is also a talk of dividing the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound into three separate parts.”

The Hamas leader went on to say there was “movement afoot in the region” aimed at creating a “political entity in the Gaza Strip endowed with cer-tain privileges”.

He did not elaborate further.

Jerusalem remains at the heart of the Middle East conflict, with Palestinians hoping that East Jerusalem — occupied by Israel since 1967 — might even-tually serve as the capital of an independent Palestinian state.

In a series of statements, 40 rebel groups, including some of Syria’s most prominent, as well as political opposition umbrella groups, said the talks expected next month are an attempt to “circumvent” the UN-led process, which has made virtually no progress since it began in 2014.

Turkey to revive ruined port city in Sudan’s Red Sea coastIstanbul/Khartoum

Reuters

Turkey will rebuild a ruined Otto-man port city on Sudan’s Red Sea coast and construct a naval dock

to maintain civilian and military vessels, Sudan’s Foreign Minister said yesterday, as Ankara expands military and eco-nomic ties in Africa.

The restoration at Suakin was agreed during a visit to the ancient port by Turk-ish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Foreign Minister Ibrahim Ghandour said.

Making the first trip by a Turkish President to Sudan, Erdogan said Tur-key had been temporarily granted part of Suakin so it could rebuild the area as a tourist site and a transit point for pil-grims crossing the Red Sea to Makkah.

He said the Suakin deal was one of several, worth $650m in total, agreed with Sudan, which emerged from two decades of US sanctions in October and is seeking to attract international investment.

The countries also agreed “to build a dock to maintain civilian and military v e s s e l s , ” G h a n d o u r t o l d

reporters, adding that they had signed an agreement “that could result in any

kind of military cooperation”.The agreements come three months

after Turkey formally opened a $50m military training base in Somalia as it excerts increasing influence in the region.

Suakin was Sudan’s major port when it was ruled by the Ottoman Empire, but fell into disuse over the last century after the construction of Port Sudan, 60 km to the north.

Erdogan said the refurbished port city would attract Makkah-bound pilgrims who would want to see the island’s his-tory, helping Sudan’s tourism sector.

“Imagine, people from Turkey wish-ing to go on pilgrimage will come and visit the historical areas on Suakin Island,” Erdogan said. “From there ... they will cross to Jeddah by boat.”

The other agreements signed during Erdogan’s visit include Turkish invest-ment to build Khartoum’s planned new airport and private sector investments in cotton production, electricity gener-ation and building grain silos and meat slaughterhouses.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s wife Emine Erdogan (third right) applauses during her visit at The Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency’s Sudan Midwife Training Center in Khartoum, Sudan, yesterday.

Attacks by gunmen leave 10 dead in north NigeriaKano

Agencies

Gunmen have killed 10 people in attacks on two Christian-domi-

nated villages in the northern Nigerian state of Kaduna, a hotbed of ethnic and religous strife, officials said yesterday. On Christmas Eve, six people were killed when gunmen suspected to be ethnic Fulani Muslims stormed Ungwan Mailafiya, they said.

The killings followed an attack in nearby Nindem late Friday where gunmen opened fire on a congregation, killing four and injuring 10, said a local lawmaker.

“While we were mourn-ing the deaths at Nindem ... the security personnel received distress calls of another attack at Ungwan Mailafiya”, parliamentarian Shehu Nicholas Garba said in a statement. “By daybreak on Christmas, six persons had been confirmed killed, including a child of about six years old, and many others injured,” he said.

A spokesman from the state government said troops had been deployed to prevent further violence.

Southern Kaduna has for three decades been locked in tit-for-tat killings between indigenous Christian farming communities and Muslim Hausa and Fulani settlers.

Meanwhile, four civilians were killed in an attack by sus-pected Boko Haram militants on Monday in the Nigerian city at the centre of a conflict with the Islamists, a resident and two officials said. Nigeria’s army said it had repelled the assault on the outskirts of Mai-duguri, the spiritual birthplace of Boko Haram. It was the first major attack on the northeast city since June.

Tunisian schoolgirls defy wearing uniformBizerte

AFP

In Tunisian high schools, the dress code is not uniform. Actually, it is: but only for

girls. Boys can wear what they like, and now the girls are up in arms.

One morning, instead of turning up for class wearing the regulation navy blue smock, a defiant group of adolescent girls came to school in white T-shirts instead, demanding an “end to discrimination”.

At the elite Bizerte public school in the north, as is the case in most high schools in the North African country, pupils have to sign a school rule stipulating that wearing a uniform applies to girls only.

One day in September, supervisors reminded senior female students who did not abide by this rule that if they did not wear the smock, a loose-fit-ting, long gilet, they would be sent home.

Ironically, the warning was passed on during a philosophy class — about the human body.

This “injustice” inspired many of the girls to take to social networks and vent their feelings, 18-year-old Siwar Tebourbi said.

She said the girls agreed to take collective action from the following day “to demand that

this discrimination must cease”.So dozens duly turned up for

class, wearing white. Several boys did the same, in solidarity with their classmates.

How did the school author-ities react? By saying nothing. Thus was born the “Manish Lab-setha” (“I won’t wear it”) campaign, referring to the

offending garment.It was the culmination of a

dispute that had been brewing for years.

Outraged that the navy blue was imposed on everyone in pri-mary and secondary school but was compulsory in high school only for girls, pupils regularly appeared without it, risking expulsion or seeing their parents summoned.

Monia Ben Jemia, head of the Association of Democratic Women of Tunisia, an independ-ent feminist group, called the smock rule “a terrible message” because it implies that young girls’ bodies can have a disrup-tive effect on their peers.

She called it a complete aberration, especially since the country’s new constitution of 2014 says that men and women are equal.

The high school students who launched the campaign, both male and female, are also against what they perceive as a wider “hypocrisy”.

Kuwait seeks political solution to Yemen crisisKuwait

QNA

Kuwaiti Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Sabah

Khaled Al-Hamad Al-Sabah said yesterday that Kuwait advocates a political solution to Yemen in accordance with Security Council Resolution 2216 and the GCC initiative and its executive mechanism through the national dialogue in which all Yemenis have participated.

“We and our brothers in the Gulf Cooperation Coun-cil countries have tried since the first day of the Yemeni crisis to find a Gulf initiative and its mechanisms,” Sheikh Sabah Al-Khaled said in response to a parliamentary question.

Siwar Tebourbi (centre), an 18-year-old Tunisian schoolgirl, walks with colleagues as they leave school in Bizerte.

Qatar has successfully defeated the unjust siege and the nefarious designs of blockading countries meant to harm Qatar’s development and growth and the country under wise leadership of Emir H H Sheikh

Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani is fast moving towards its glorious future. The blockading countries by cutting land, air and sea routes desired to hamper Qatar’s march towards glory but all their plans have ended in fiasco.

Qatar’s trade with the world is flourishing and the siege has also failed to create any kind of shortage of goods in the country whether household items or construction material needed for 2022 FIFA World Cup.

According to fresh figures, Qatar has increased its direct imports of strategic goods from around the world to 97 percent in November compared to 82.8 percent in May, thus the state has managed to access the global markets to meet the demand of local market of high quality goods at competitive prices. Chairman of the General Customs Authority, Ahmed Abdullah Al Gammal, said that this performance reflects the high ability of the State to protect the Qatari economy from the shortage of supply of goods and meet the market requirements in full coordination with importers, by diversifying sources of high quality imports and at suitable prices from other countries.

The General Customs Authority has also confirmed that during the past months it has strengthened qualified personnel at seaport and airport to ensure the rapid release of various goods, especially perishable items while at the same time maintaining the safety of society.

Last month, Emir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani in his address to the Advisory Council had said: “The Qatari society knows how to lead a normal life, flourish and develop, whether the blockade is prolonged or not … we do not fear the boycott of these countries against us, we are a thousand times better off without them.”

Meanwhile, the State of Qatar’s merchandise trade balance, which represents the difference between total exports and imports, in November 2017 showed a surplus of QR12.8bn almost, an increase of about QR3.2bn or 32.9% compared to November 2016, and increase by nearly QR4.5bn or 54.8% compared to October 2017.

The report released by Ministry of Development Planning and Statistics further showed that in November 2017, the total exports of goods (including exports of goods of domestic origin and re-exports) amounted to around QR21.8bn, showing an increase of 15.9% compared to November 2016, and increase by 3.8% compared to October 2017.

The successes of the State of Qatar on all fronts especially the economic one with the recent mega achievements speak volume of the country’s ability to overcome the challenges posed by the unjustified blockade. The economic achievements show that the state would continue its journey towards self-reliance and development for the well-being of its people unabated.

10 WEDNESDAY 27 DECEMBER 2017VIEWS

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

CHAIRMANSHEIKH THANI BIN ABDULLAH AL THANI

EDITOR-IN-CHIEFDR. KHALID BIN MUBARAK AL-SHAFIeditorinchief@pen.com.qa

ACTING MANAGING EDITORMOHAMMED SALIM MOHAMEDm.salim@pen.com.qa

Towards self-reliance

QUOTE OF THE DAY

I am aware that the results of my government were well received on one side, but I admit that I have let down other compatriots, and I ask them to forgive me with all my heart.

Alberto FujimoriFormer Peru President

The successes of the State of Qatar on all fronts especially the economic one with the recent mega achievements speak volume of the country’s ability to overcome the challenges posed by the unjustified blockade.

This year, efforts to resolve the most serious crisis to date within the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) have failed, and it will be carried into 2018. What will happen next year is diffi-

cult to predict because, as we witnessed in 2017, a lot of the key developments did not follow the standard rules of international diplomacy.

This is because decision-making in some GCC countries is not necessarily institutional-ised and is, in fact, highly dependent on unstable and unpredictable personal attitudes and ambitions of a handful of people. Strate-gic planning, rules of diplomacy and the risks that regional instability holds are not neces-sarily priority considerations for these individuals. In this sense, just as the crisis erupted out of the blue, it could easily end in the same way, without a good reason.

Although unpredictability will mark developments in the Gulf in 2018 as well, there are at least two possible scenarios that could emerge out of the current situation. The first one is the crisis becoming the status quo and the GCC transforming into another Arab League-like organisation, with much formal-ity and little substance. Saudi Arabia and the UAE seem to be pushing in this direction.

The second scenario is the crisis being resolved. This would allow the GCC to recover slowly but not completely, as a lot of damage has already been done and trust has been broken.

Scenario one: A GCC in permanent crisisIf the crisis continues down the same path

in 2018, the GCC as an organisation will become greatly marginalised, dysfunctional, and irrelevant.

The Saudi-UAE-Bahrain axis would solid-ify, and these countries are likely to push forward with bilateral and trilateral agree-ments at the expense of GCC mechanisms. Unrestrained, Riyadh is likely to continue with its destabilising diplomacy in the Middle East. It would not be surprising to see more regional gambles coming from this axis. Detentions of foreign officials and business-men might stop, but Riyadh would continue to apply political and economic pressure on countries in the region, especially as Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman con-tinues to use foreign policy to solidify his power domestically.

Meanwhile, Qatar would continue to seek guarantees for its security and economic development outside the Gulf. This year saw the deployment of Turkish troops to Qatar. Next year, military cooperation between the two states is expected to deepen, with more bilateral defence and security agreements, and more deployment of Turkish troops and equipment to Doha. Economic cooperation and trade would likely intensify even more between the two countries.

Qatari-Iranian relations would remain stable, with priority given to their economic aspect. However, the more Doha is forced to rely on Iran, the more Tehran is likely

Will the GCC crisis be resolved in 2018?Dr Ali Bakeer Al Jazeera

to utilise it politically to portray Saudi Arabia as a source of threat to small countries in the Gulf and the region. This would help Tehran rebuild its image in the Arab world, shield itself from regional isolation, and increase its multi-lateral cooperation with other countries in defiance of the Saudi axis.

Kuwait and Oman would continue trying to mend relations within the GCC. However, realising their limited capacity to convince the Saudi-led bloc to back off, both Kuwaitand Muscat are likely to continue to maintain relations with Saudi while also increasing cooperation with Turkey and Iran.

A continuing crisis in the Gulf could have detrimental effects on the rest of the Middle East. In this sense, more Arab states would be destabilised as they are pressured to choose sides. Iran’s influ-ence would certainly increase, and Israel would intensify attacks on Palestinians, feeling less pressed to accept a real peace process. All of this is likely to fuel radicalisation in the region and possibly produce ISIL successors.

Scenario two: A united GCC counter-ing Iranian influence

For the crisis to be resolved next year, two things have to happen: The anti-Qatar axis would need to believe that it has reached a dead end, and the Trump administration would need to put pressure on Saudi Arabia and the UAE to change course.

The first would depend on Qatar’s ability to withstand mounting political and economic pressure from the Saudi-led bloc. The second would depend on the Trump administration resolving internal disagreements and pursuing a clear and unified strategy on containing Iran.

Is this possible in 2018? There are a few indications that it is.

The goal of the Saudi-led bloc pro-longing the crisis was to raise the costs of the blockade politically and economi-cally and to push Doha to give up and submit to Riyadh. Now that Doha has been able to absorb the initial shock, overcome logistical problems the siege brought about, and re-orient itself to accommodate the new facts on the ground, the blockade is gradually losing

its intended effect.The more Doha feels

comfortable in 2018, the more useless the siege imposed by the Saudi axis would seem. In this

sense, unless there is further escalation against Qatar, the Saudi-led bloc would have to de-escalate.

Yet, the decision to dismantle the blockade will not come voluntarily from Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Pressure on both countries is needed and it will have to come from the Trump administration. And there are signs that this could be possible in 2018.

First, in at least two, recent cases, the Saudi led-bloc had to retract its reckless decisions after failing to achieve any results and facing international pressure: in Lebanon and in Yemen.

In November, Saudi Arabia forced Lebanon’s Prime Minister Saad Hariri to declare his resignation from Riyadh after detaining him there. However, things dramatically changed when Paris and Washington sent strong messages to Saudi Arabia, which allowed Hariri to go back and resume his duties as prime minister.

In Yemen, after the death of former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh and the pressure exerted by the Trump administration on Saudi Arabia, both Riyadh and Abu Dhabi held talks with Yemen’s Muslim Brotherhood-linked Islah Party. And that was despite the fact that both countries have spent a consid-erable amount of energy demonising the Muslim Brotherhood in recent years.

Of course, Saudi Arabia and the UAE had to spin the retractions on Yemen and Lebanon domestically in order to save face. They could do the same if they step back from their position on Qatar as well. The Emir of Kuwait already laid the ground for such an option, when he vowed to continue the mediation, and proposed a mechanism for settling dis-putes within the GCC at the opening of its summit in Kuwait, in early December.

Second, if the Trump administration is serious about containing Iran in the Middle East, it would need a united GCC as an ally. To curb Iranian influence, the US would have to isolate Iran regionally and block the growth of its influence. Right now, with Riyadh on the loose and Washington sending conflicting mes-sages to various actors in the region, Iran only stands to gain.

The US needs the GCC to work as a united bloc, at least in terms of regional politics and collective defence. There are already indications that Washington will have to push for de-escalation in the Gulf. The newly-released US National Security Strategy calls for GCC cohesion: “We remain committed to helping our partners achieve a stable and prosperous region, including through a strong and integrated Gulf Cooperation Council.

As the US military wraps up its anti-ISIL operation in the region, the Trump administration will have to soon unroll its strategy on Iran. And that will have to involve a firm decision on the GCC crisis.

The writer is an Ankara-based political ana-

lyst and researcher.

The US needs the GCC to work as a united bloc, at least in terms of regional politics and collective defence. There are already indications that Washington will have to push for de-escalation in the Gulf.

ED ITOR IAL

11WEDNESDAY 27 DECEMBER 2017 OPINION

negotiating table. In fact, the breadth of sanctions we have placed on North Korea to date are far less than what was applied in earlier crises on Russia, Syria and Iran. While our sanctions on North Korea have clearly escalated, we still have the option to penalise and seize the assets of North Korea’s enablers in other countries that enable Pyongyang to evade the full brunt of financial measures.

We can expand our focus on shipping and work with our allies to deny maritime insurance to the vessels heading to or from North Korea. Last month, we targeted sanctions on 20 such vessels. Many more North Korean vessels are active and engaged in illicit activities beyond the small number designated by the Treasury Department.

We also can do more to expose those who use North Korean slave labor and to block any remit-tances back to Kim Jong-Un’s regime.

Second, none of this will work without more pressure to hold the reluctant Chinese government

With tensions continuing to build between the United States and North Korea, there’s growing talk by politicians and

TV pundits that we are on the brink of war. In truth, we shouldn’t be anywhere close.

This increasingly hot war of words — including loose talk about the probability of war — does nothing to bring us closer to where we need to be on North Korea, especially when military options short of war remain on the table.

In fact, with millions of lives at stake, waging a war of words is a distraction from the serious task at hand. Any kind of war — especially nuclear war — should not be an option until all other options are exhausted. And, in the case of North Korea, there are several roads not yet taken.

First, North Korea is not, as some claim, “sanctioned-out.” We are nowhere near to applying the same type of restraints on North Korea that were successful in bringing Iran to the

We are not out of options on North Koreaaccountable for the com-mitments it has made and to target more Chinese enti-ties that support the North Korean government. The overwhelming majority of North Korea’s trade — 90 percent — is with or facili-tated by China, and despite agreed-upon UN sanctions, much of this economic activity continues. Actions should include targeting a greater number of Chinese banks that deal with North Korea, fining their US sub-sidiaries and freezing their US assets.

This year, the interna-tional banking transaction network, known as Swift, moved to prevent North Korean banks from using the global messaging sys-tem to facilitate international transactions, but that doesn’t impact Chi-nese banks that transact for the North Koreans. We should consider expanding this ban to include Chinese

banks with any North Korean connections.Finally, we need to ask: Where are our allies on all of

this? Instead of threatening a bilateral war between the United States and the North Korea, we should be working with allies — including South Korea and Japan — to threaten increased multilateral pressure to choke the North Korean regime.

While economic sanctions have not proved to be effec-tive yet, they have not been fully exhausted and tested. Part of the reason the previous administration succeeded in bringing Iran to the table — regardless of the flaws of their final deal — was due to internationally coordinated sanctions. Thankfully, the UN Security Council has adopted three rounds of such sanctions this year, including signifi-cant measures last week.

With millions of lives hanging in the balance, the last thing we need is to have politicians and pundits predicting odds on the probability of war. It’s neither an accurate nor a helpful way to treat a complex international challenge.

The writer a Republican, is governor of Ohio.

Maybe the free world doesn’t need a leader

Who is the leader of the free world? Important as the question sounds, I’m beginning to wonder if it’s bet-ter left unanswered.

The US president is no longer the obvious choice. Even the new US National Secu-rity Strategy, filled with bombastic statements such as “the whole world is lifted by America’s renewal and the reemergence of American leadership,” acknowledges growing competition among powers. And of course “America first” is the slogan of a national, not a global, leader.

So who, if not Donald Trump, qualifies for the job? Let’s first consider its history.

The origin of the term “leader of the free world” is somewhat uncertain. Dominic Tierney of the Atlantic tracked it back to a 1948 New York Times article, in which British economist Barbara Ward called upon the US to lead the West in fighting the Communist threat. But a Google Books search sug-gests the title was first used during World War I and has made regular appearances in English-language books since the late 1930s. In any case, its use surged at the peak of the Cold War in the early 1960s (when Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev began referring to “the free world” with heavy irony), declined toward the detente of the mid-1970s, then gained again through the Soviet Union’s collapse and up until its last peak in 2007, just before the global financial crisis.

Typically applied to the US president, the title has acquired a bitterly ironic flavor since the elec-tion of Trump, who studies suggest is broadly

mistrusted in democratic countries.

As a result, some pundits have been discussing whether a more globally respected politician, such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel, could take over the role. As recently as September, Hillary Clinton called her “the most important leader in the free world right now.”

Merkel, however, probably doesn’t fit the bill. Weakened by the last election, she has found her-self embroiled in the longest coalition talks in Germany’s post-World War II history. Even if she’s back on top by Easter, global leadership will be pretty far from her mind as she settles into what’s likely to be her last term in power. She doesn’t even have an obvious successor in her party. Besides, she has always shown much more interest in shaping the European Union to Germany’s benefit than in leading the world, free or otherwise.

Other European leaders don’t qualify, either. Almost all lead precarious, painstakingly built coa-litions with domestically-focused agendas, while others — mostly in Eastern Europe — aren’t inter-ested in being part of any liberal order. The only notable exception is French President Emmanuel Macron, mockingly called “Jupiter” and compared to the Sun King by his compatriots. But, at 40 and in his first year as an elected official, he’s unproven. Also, France has been in the doldrums for too long

and has too many institutional and economic prob-lems to be a credible global leader.

Top EU officials could take a shot. The European project unites most established democracies, is the world’s biggest trade bloc and has a consistent track record of defending liberal values. But European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and European Council President Donald Tusk, besides being something of a comical pair, have proven powerless even to bring the EU closer together. They’re negotiators and compromise makers, not leaders. And the EU, for all its economic power, is a peace project, so its role in resolving global conflicts will remain minimal.

One could make a case for Canadian Prime Min-ister Justin Trudeau. He’s a liberal favorite, branded “the free world’s best hope” by Rolling Stone. He acts the part, stressing his differences with Trump on immigration, climate change and gender equal-ity. He has also boosted Canada’s military spending. But it wouldn’t be easy for Canada to emerge from the US shadow, and Trudeau isn’t particularly pop-ular with Canadians (his approval rating just slipped below 50 percent).

There still is a free world, in which citizens elect political leaders rather than tolerate authoritarian succession like in China or Russia. It

US President Donald Trump meets with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC.

doesn’t, however, appear to have a credible leader — one who would be both powerful and committed to clear, attractive values.

Moreover, it’s hard to see where one would come from. The US will be eyed with mistrust after Trump. Its values are in flux and hard for outsiders to understand, and its military power is not nec-essarily relevant to modern conflicts, as Europe’s Middle East-ern refugee crisis has demonstrated. Germany, for its part, is weighed down by its his-tory and held together by a rebuilt communitarian tradition, in which leadership-hungry politicians are unlikely to flourish.

The question, then, is whether the free world needs a leader. Per-haps the path forward requires collective decisions and compro-mises, inclusiveness and consensus, negotiation and civi-lised debate.

It sounds boring, even weak, and the outcomes may often appear suboptimal, but freedom and strong leadership have always been a little at odds. Quiet, soft power as practiced by European nations, Canada and Japan might work better as an advertisement for democracy than US assertive-ness has since the end of the Cold War.

The writer is a Bloomberg view col-

umnist. He was the founding editor of

the Russian business daily Vedomosti

and founded the opinion website.

Leonid Bershidsky Bloomberg

The question is whether the free world needs a leader. Perhaps the path forward requires collective decisions and compromises, inclusiveness and consensus, negotiation and civilised debate.

John R Kasich The Washington Post

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

MANAGING EDITORTEL: 4462 7505

DEPUTY MANAGING EDITORTEL: 4455 7769

LOCAL NEWS SECTION TEL: 4455 7743

BUSINESS NEWS SECTION TEL: 4462 7535

SPORT NEWS SECTION TEL: 4455 7745

ONLINE SECTION TEL: 4462 7501info@pen.com.qa

PUBLIC RELATIONSTEL: 4455 7613pr@pen.com.qa

ADVERTISING DEPARTMENTTEL: 4455 7837 / 780FAX: 4455 7870 adv@pen.com.qa

CLASSIFIED DEPARTMENTTEL: 4455 7857adv@pen.com.qa

SUBSCRIPTION & DISTRIBUTIONTEL: 4455 7809 / 839FAX: 44557819info@tawseelqatar.com

D-RING ROADPOST BOX: 3488DOHA - QATAReditor@pen.com.qa

All thoughts and views expressed in these columns are those of the writers, not of the newspaper.

All correspondence regarding Views and Opinion pages should be send to editor-in-chief office or mailed to the editorinchief@pen.com.qa

The United Nations Security Council meeting to discuss imposing new sanctions on North Korea, in New York.

With millions of lives at stake, waging a war of words is a distraction from the serious task at hand. Any kind of war — especially nuclear war — should not be an option until all other options are exhausted.

12 WEDNESDAY 27 DECEMBER 2017ASIA

Jhadav’s meeting with

kin intimidating: IndiaNew Delhi

IANS

Before being let in for meeting Kulbhushan Jadhav at the Foreign Office building in Islamabad, Pakistani

authorities made his wife and mother remove their mangal-sutra, bangles and bindi and also made them change their attire, India said yesterday, slamming the meeting conducted across a glass panel as “lacking in cred-ibility” and “intimidating”.

Jadhav, who is on death row on charges of alleged spying and terrorism, met his mother Avanti and wife Chetankul on Monday after 22 months, since his arrest by Pakistan on charges of spying.

The face-to-face meeting was conducted across a glass wall and the two sides spoke via a telephone speaker.

Avanti, who is in her 70s, was also prevented from speak-ing to her son in her mother tongue. Every time she lapsed into Marathi, she was stopped and made to speak in Hindi or English, as a senior Pakistani official of the India Desk mon-itored the interaction.

“Under the pretext of secu-rity precautions, the cultural and religious sensibilities of family members were disregarded. This included removal of mangal-sutra, bangles and bindi, as well as a change in attire that was not warranted by security.

“The mother of Shri Jadhav was prevented from talking in their mother tongue, although this was clearly the natural medium of com-munication. She was repeatedly interrupted while doing so and eventually prevented from pro-ceeding further in this regard,”

India said in a statement. The footwear of Jadhav’s

wife was also taken away and not returned. “For some inex-plicable reason, despite her repeated requests, the shoes of the wife of Shri Jadhav were not returned to her after the meet-ing,” India said, and warned “We would caution against any mis-chievous intent in this regard”.

The Pakistani media also hurled invectives at the two women outside the Foreign Office building.

“The Pakistani press was allowed on multiple occasions to approach family members closely, harass and hector them and hurl false and motivated accusations about Shri Jadhav. This was despite a clear agreement that the media would not be allowed close access,” the statement said.

Indian Deputy High Commis-sioner J P Singh, who was allowed to accompany the two women, was kept in a separate glass cubi-cle from the two women, and could watch the proceedings from a distance. He was initially not allowed into the meeting venue.

“Deputy High Commissioner was initially separated from fam-ily members who were taken to the meeting without informing him. The meeting was started without his presence and he could join only after pressing the mat-ter with concerned officials. Even then, he was kept behind an addi-tional partition that did not allow him access to the meeting as agreed,” the statement said.

India also voiced concern at the appearance of Jadhav and his well being, remarking that he looked as though he was “under considerable stress” and was “speaking in an atmosphere of coercion” and that his statements “were clearly tutored” and designed to “perpetuate” Paki-stan’s allegation that he was a spy and involved in terrorism.

“From the feedback we have received of the meeting, it appears that Shri Jadhav was under considerable stress and speaking in an atmosphere of coercion. Most of his remarks were clearly tutored and designed to perpetuate the false narrative of his alleged activi-ties in Pakistan. His appearance also raises questions of his health and well being.

“We also regret that contrary to assurances, the overall atmos-phere of the meeting was intimidating insofar as family members were concerned. Fam-ily members, however, handled the situation with great courage and fortitude.

“The manner in which the meeting was conducted and its aftermath was clearly an attempt to bolster a false and unsubstan-tiated narrative of Shri Jadhav’s alleged activities. You would all agree that this exercise lacked any credibility,” India said.

Vijay Rupani (right) shakes hands with Om Prakash Kohli, Governor of Gujarat, after taking oath as the Chief Minister during a swearing-in ceremony in Gandhinagar yesterday .

Rupani takes oath as Gujarat CM, Nitin Patel as deputy CMGandhinagar

IANS

Vijay Rupani yesterday took oath as Chief Minis-ter of Gujarat for a second

stint along with his deputy Nitin Patel, eight cabinet Ministers and 10 Ministers of State.

The new council of minis-ters was sworn in at a grand ceremony here at the new sec-retariat helipad ground in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) President Amit Shah, Union Ministers Rajnath Singh, Nitin Gadkari, Ram Vilas Pas-wan, Chief Ministers of the BJP ruled states and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar.

It was also a sea of saffron with a score of spiritual leaders from whom Modi took blessings before the ceremony started.

The Cabinet Ministers who took oath were Bhupendrasinh Chudasama, R C Faldu, Kaushik Patel, Saurabh Patel, Vestabhai Vasava, Vithalbhai Radadiya, Dilipkumar Thakor and Ishwar-bhai Parmar.

The Ministers of State, who were administered the oath of office and secrecy by Governor O P Kohli, were Pradipsinh Jadeja, Parthabhai Patel, Jaydrathsinh Parmar, Nanubhai Patkar, Ram-anlal Nanubhai Patkar, Parsottambhai Solanki, Ishwars-inh Patel, Gopalbhai Ahir, Kishore Khanani, Bachubhai Maganbhai Khabad and Vibhavari Dave.

After the oath ceremony, Modi took to Twitter assuring the people of Gujarat that the BJP government will leave no stone unturned in further devel-oping the state, which the party has ruled since 1995.

“Congratulations to Vijay Rupani, Nitin Patel and all those who took oath as Ministers. My best wishes to this team in their endeavour to take Gujarat to new heights of progress,” Modi said.

“People from all walks of life joined the oath taking ceremony in Gandhinagar to bless the team that took oath today. We cher-ish these blessings and their affection,” he said.

“Political leaders, Chief Min-isters of various states, our esteemed NDA allies and respected former Chief Minis-ters of Gujarat joined the occasion, making it even more special,” the Prime Minister said.

Modi, who was Gujarat’s Chief Minister between 2001 and 2014, went nostalgic and shared pictures of the ceremo-nies when he took oath in the past.

Geelani’s younger son ignores NIA summons New Delhi

IANS

Hurriyat separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani’s younger son Naseem

Geelani yesterday ignored the National Investigation Agency (NIA) summons in connection with its probe into alleged ter-ror funding by Pakistan-based terrorist groups to stoke unrest in Kashmir valley.

“He did not depose before the agency investigators today,” an NIA official said.

The official declined to say if any new summons had been issued to the younger Geelani.

However, Naseem took to Facebook to say that his sum-mons was cancelled by the NIA. “NIA cancelled my appearing at its New Delhi headquarters which was scheduled today,” Nassem said.

The counter-terror probe agency had summoned Naseem, a professor in Sher-e-Kashmir Agriculture University in Srina-gar, last week to appear before the agency on Tuesday at its headquarters in south Delhi’s Lodhi Road area.

Earlier, the NIA has grilled Naseem twice in the case. The agency has also grilled his elder brother Naeem, a doc-tor by profession, twice over a span of a fortnight.

The agency, which has been probing terror funding by Kashmiri separatists and has so far arrested half a dozen separatists including SAS Geelani’s son-in-law Altaf Ahmad Shah.

3 Pakistani soldiers die as commandos cross LoC in tit-for-tat raidSrinagar/New Delhi

IANS

In a “tit-for-tat” operation, five highly-trained Indian Army commandos went some 300

metres across the LoC and killed at least three Pakistani soldiers, two days after four Indian Army men, including a Major, were shot dead in a surprise attack by Pakistan, sources said yesterday.

Defence sources called it a “tactical retaliatory strike”, decided at a local level by the bri-gade commander. But the sources did not name the battalion that carried out the operation. “It was

a short-distance and short-dura-tion operation unlike the surgical strike (last year),” said a defence official, who did not want to be named.

The sources said four to five Ghatak Commandos were involved in the operation. Ghatak Commandos are drawn from infantry and trained to carry out covert special operations.

“It was a tit-for-tat action... Whatever Pakistan does to us, we will do the same,” the official said, warning that more such operations would be conducted if Pakistani forces continue tar-geting Indian troops.

The sources said the action

was taken around 6pm on Mon-day after some Pakistani military personnel tried to cross over apparently to plant IEDs on the Indian side of the border.

They said Pakistani forces belonging to 59 Baloch Regiment had set up a temporary post close to the LoC in Rukh Chakri sector of Rawalakot and “at least three Pakistani soldiers were killed while one was injured”. They said it was possible that the casualty figure may be higher.

The incident took place along the LoC in Pooch.

The sources, however, didn’t term the action a surgical strike — like the one conducted on

September 29, 2016, when Indian army commandos crossed the Line of Control (LoC) to target terror launch pads inside Pakistan-controlled ter-ritory, killing dozens of terrorists and their sympathisers.

Since the 2016 Surgical Strike, this is the first publicised incident of Indian soldiers cross-ing the LoC, though sources said from time to time Indian troops do cross the de facto border to target Pakistani forces.

Pakistan Army confirmed the death of three soldiers in an “unprovoked heavy cross-bor-der shelling by Indian forces” at Rukh Chakri sector.

The incident took place two days after four Indian soldiers, who were part of a patrol party, were killed by Pakistan troops in heavy cross-border targeted firing in the Rajouri sector.

On Sunday, two Pakistani snipers, who were trying to tar-get Indian soldiers on the LoC, were killed in Indian firing on the LoC in Poonch and Rajouri districts. The Monday deaths take the Pakistani casualty toll to five in two days.

India claims that Pakistan violated the 2003 ceasefire accord along the LoC between the two countries at least 820 times this year.

W omen offer prayers during a ceremony for the victims of the 2004 tsunami at Pattinapakkam Beach in Chennai yesterday. The earthquake and tsunami on December 26, 2004 killed over 230,000 people and devastated coastal communities.

Homage to tsunami victims Central team assesses Ockhi damage in KeralaThiruvananthapuram

IANS

A central team landed here yesterday to assess dam-ages caused by Cyclone

Ockhi, which struck the south-ern districts of Kerala and Tamil Nadu on November 30.

A total of 74 persons have been killed and according to the Latin Diocese, more than 250 continued to remain missing

The team, consisting of dis-aster management experts, was led by Vipin Mallik, a top offi-cial in the Home Department.

While Malik would visit the southern districts, another team would be in Kochi to assess the damages caused in other places like Ernakulam, Thrissur, Malappuram districts.

“We will be going around to

make our assessment and then we will prepare our report,” said Malik to reporters here, at the airport.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi last week during his visit to the state had assured both the beleaguered fishing com-munity and the Kerala government of prompt relief and rehabilitation assistance.

Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has sought a Rs 7,340-crore relief package to mitigate the fisher folks’ sufferings.

It included compensation for the dead; assistance to the permanently disabled and those who suffered injuries; also for construction of homes; educa-tional assistance; writing off loans and other programmes meant for the overall relief for the fisher folks in the state.

“Under the pretext of security precautions, the cultural and religious sensibilities of family members were disregarded. This included removal of mangalsutra, bangles and bindi, as well as a change in attire that was not warranted by security.

13WEDNESDAY 27 DECEMBER 2017 ASIA

People play mahjong in the old quarters of Shanghai yesterday.

Seoul

Reuters

South Korea predicted yes-terday that North Korea would look to open nego-tiations with the United States over its weapons

programmes next year and pur-sue at least some rapprochement with Seoul in an optimistic gov-ernment outlook for 2018.

The UN Security Council unanimously imposed new, tougher sanctions on North Korea on Friday for its recent intercon-tinental ballistic missile test, a move the North branded an eco-nomic blockade and act of war.

“North Korea will seek negoti-ation with United States, while continuing to pursue its effort to be recognised as a de facto nuclear-possessing country,” South Korea’s Unification Ministry said in a report, without offering any reasons for its conclusion.

Tensions have risen over

North Korea’s nuclear and mis-sile programmes, which it pursues in defiance of years of U N Security Council resolutions, with bellicose rhetoric coming from both Pyongyang and the White House.

U S diplomats have made clear they are seeking a diplo-matic solution but President Donald Trump has derided talks

as useless and said Pyongyang must commit to giving up its nuclear weapons before any talks can begin.

In a statement carried by the official KCNA news agency, North Korea’s foreign ministry said the United States was terri-fied by its nuclear force and was getting “more and more frenzied in the moves to impose the harshest-ever sanctions and pressure on our country”.

China, the North’s lone major ally, and Russia both supported the latest U N sanctions, while on Monday Chinese Foreign Min-istry spokeswoman Hua Chunying called for all countries to make constructive efforts to ease tension.

In its 2018 forecast, South Korea’s Unification Ministry said it believed the North would eventually find ways to blunt the effects of the sanctions, which seek to limit its access to refined petroleum products and crude

oil and its earnings from work-ers abroad.

“Countermeasures will be orchestrated to deal with the effects, including cuts in trade volume and foreign currency inflow, lack of supplies, and reduced production in each part of the economy,” the report said.

The latest round of sanctions was prompted by the November 29 test of what North Korea said was an intercontinental ballistic

missile that put the U S mainland within range of its nuclear weapons.

The Joongang Ilbo Daily newspaper, citing an unnamed South Korean government offi-cial, reported on Tuesday that North Korea could also be pre-paring to launch a satellite into space.

Experts have said such launches are likely aimed at fur-ther developing the North’s

ballistic missile technology, and as such would be prohibited under U N resolutions.

The North Korean Rodong Sinmun newspaper said on Mon-day saying that “peaceful space development is a legitimate right of a sovereign state”.

North Korea regularly threatens to destroy South Korea, the United States and Japan, and says its weapons are necessary to counter U S aggression.

North Korea likely to pursue talks: South

Attendants of the 5th Conference of Cell Chairpersons of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) hold a meeting to accept a pledge for North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Pyongyang yesterday.

Storm spares Vietnam after a trail of death in PhilippinesHanoi

AP

A powerful storm that left a trail of death and destruction in the Phil-

ippines was downgraded to a tropical depression yester-day and failed to make landfall in Vietnam.

Hundreds of thousands of people in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta had been evacuated as the region braced for the arrival of Typhoon Tembin after the storm left more than 160 people dead in the Philippines.

Weather forecasters had expected the delta’s southern tip to be in Tembin’s path, and said heavy rain and strong winds starting Monday night could cause serious damage in the vulnerable region, where facilities are not built to cope with such severe weather. By yesterday morn-ing, the storm was downgraded to a tropical depression and forecasters said it would it not make landfall in Vietnam.

The storm was expected to dissipate over the Gulf of Thailand later yesterday.

Over the weekend, Tem-bin unleashed landslides and flash floods that killed at least 164 people and left 171 others missing in the Philippines, according to Romina Marasi-gan of the government’s main disaster-response agency.

Initial reports from offi-cials in different provinces placed the overall death toll at more than 230.

Pyongyang preparing to launch satellite: ReportSeoul

AFP

North Korea is preparing to launch a satellite, a Seoul newspaper said yester-

day, as outside observers warn that the nuclear-armed regime’s space programme is a fig leaf for weapons tests.

Pyongyang is under multi-ple UN sanctions over its nuclear and missile tests and is prohib-ited from carrying out any launch using ballistic missile technology including satellites.

“Through various channels, we’ve recently learned that the North has completed a new sat-ell i te and named it

Kwangmyongsong-5”, the Joon-gang Ilbo daily reported, quoting a South Korean government source.

“Their plan is to put a satel-lite equipped with cameras and telecommunication devices into orbit”, he said.

Pyongyang launched their Kwangmyongsong-4 satellite in February 2016, which most in the international community viewed as a disguised ballistic missile test.

A spokesman for the South Korean military joint chiefs of staff said there was “nothing out of ordinary at this moment” but added that Seoul was watching out for any provocative acts

“including the test of a long-range missile disguised as a satellite launch”.

The report came as the North’s ruling party newspaper Rodong Sinmun reasserted the regime’s right to launch satellites and develop its space technology.

In a commentary published on Monday and titled “peaceful space programmes are sovereign coun-tries’ legitimate rights”, the daily said Pyongyang’s satellite launches “absolutely correspond” with international laws concern-ing space development.

At a UN General Assembly committee meeting in October, North Korea’s deputy UN

ambassador Kim In-Ryong said his country has a 2016-2020 plan to develop “practical satellites that can contribute to the economic development and improvement of the people’s living”.

He stressed North Korea’s right to produce and launch sat-ellites “will not be changed just because the US denies it”.

North Korea is believed to have successfully put a satellite into orbit in December 2012 after years of failures dating back to 1998 when it launched a pilot satellite and named it Kwangmyongsong-1.

Earlier this month, the Russian newspaper Rossiyskaia Gazeta quoted a Russian military expert,

Vladimir Khrustalev, as saying that North Korea was expected to launch two satellites — an Earth exploration satellite and a com-munications satellite — in the near future.

Khrustalev made the remark after returning from his week-long trip to North Korea in mid-November when he met with representatives of the coun-try’s National Aerospace Development Administration (NADA), the Russian daily said.

Tensions have soared as the isolated regime has staged a series of atomic and interconti-nental ballistic missile (ICBM) tests — most recently on Novem-ber 29.

Chinese activist jailed for 8 yearsTianjin

AFP

China sentenced an activist known by the online pseu-donym “Super Vulgar

Butcher” to eight years in prison yesterday, one of the harshest punishments meted out to the group of lawyers and activists swept up in a major crackdown on civil society two years ago.

The punishment handed to Wu Gan, who refused to plead guilty to charges of “subverting state power”, was intended as an unmistakable signal to anyone who would dare to challenge the state’s authority, his lawyer said.

Wu was taken into custody in May 2015 just weeks before authorities unleashed a ruth-less campaign later dubbed the “709” crackdown, rounding up over 200 people involved in activities considered sensitive by the ruling Communist Party.

The outspoken social media figure had attracted authorities’ attention with performance art and caustic commentary on Chinese society and politics that he published online.

Explaining its verdict, a court in Tianjin said Wu was “dissatisfied with the current system of governance, and that gradually produced thoughts of subverting state power”.

By “hyping up hot inci-dents”, Wu “attacked the national system that is the basis for state authority and the con-stitution”, the court said.

Wu also “spread fake infor-mation” and “insulted others online”, the statement said.

The prominent activist, with his recognisable bald head and glasses, became the subject of the state’s ire for using his larger-than-life online persona to draw public attention to human rights cases.

He called himself “butcher” because he saw himself as tak-ing the fight to authorities, promising to “slaughter the p***”. He later added “super vulgar” to his handle in response to com-plaints about his use of crude language to make his case.

His bold approach to seek-ing justice for those he saw as wronged by the government attracted praise from rights defenders, but was unpopular with the authorities, who saw him as a thorn in their side.

His family life became the subject of intense scrutiny by state media in May 2015 in what many activists saw as a sign of a looming crackdown on rights defenders.

He was “a representative fig-ure in leading actions to support other human rights defenders and significant human rights cases out-side court,” according to Patrick Poon, a China researcher at Amnesty International.

Wu’s lawyer Yan Xin said the sentence was aimed at set-ting “an example so other activists will say they are guilty when accused of crimes against the state”.

Duterte vows to get to truth of mall blazeDavao

AFP

Philippine President Rod-rigo Duterte vowed yesterday to get to the

truth about a blaze in his home city that killed 37 call centre workers.

He said he made the prom-ise during a meeting on Monday night with the families of those killed in a shopping mall fire in the southern city of Davao.

“I assured them... that the truth will — let the truth come

out,” Duterte said. “That is what they are asking for. Just the truth of what happened.”

The justice and labour departments have ordered sep-arate investigations into Saturday’s blaze.

Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre has said his office would investigate with a view to bring-ing criminal charges.

A spokesman for Davao City mayor Sara Duterte, the daughter of the president, also quoted her as promising to press charges if warranted by

t h e r e s u l t s o f t h e investigation.

The fire broke out in the four-storey NCCC Mall shortly before it opened to shoppers. But it killed 37 people working in a 24-hour call centre for US-based market research firm SSI on the top floor.

At a Davao hospital Tuesday families of the dead waited in a silence broken only by occa-sional sobs as government workers tried to identify the charred remains before releas-ing them to relatives.

Social welfare officers said that so far, five bodies had been turned over.

Rhen Muyco recalled the last words his 25-year-old daughter Renzi Nova spoke to her family as the fire raged Saturday.

“Ma, there is a fire here. If something happens to me, I love you all,” she said by mobile phone.

Labour Secretary Silvestre Bello said Tuesday his office was launching an inquiry separate from the justice department’s investigation.

“North Korea will seek negotiation with United States, while continuing to pursue its effort to be recognised as a de facto nuclear-possessing country,” South Korea’s Unification Ministry said in a report.

Daily life

Afghan villagers sit with their weapons in the Pachir Wa Agham district of Nangarhar province. Over 500 residents of Pachir Aw Agam district have gathered to pledge to fight against Islamic State (IS) militants.

Anti-IS fighters

14 WEDNESDAY 27 DECEMBER 2017ASIA

Taliban urged to join peace talksBeijing

AP

The foreign ministers of Pakistan and Afghan-istan appealed to Taliban militants to join peace talks fol-

lowing a meeting yesterday organised by China to mend strained relations between the two governments.

In a joint statement, the three governments called for a “broad-based and inclusive peace and reconciliation process” following near-daily Taliban attacks in areas across Afghanistan. The three gov-ernments said they “call on the Afghan Taliban to join the peace process at an early date.”

Afghanistan and Pakistan are at odds over American and Afghan accusations that Islamabad is har-bouring some of the fiercest factions of the Taliban, which was over-thrown as the Afghan government in 2001 by a U S invasion. Those include the Haqqani group, which the U S government has declared a terrorist organidation.

“Pakistan and Afghanistan agreed to improve their relations as soon as possible,” said the Chi-nese Foreign Minister, Wang Yi. “The two sides unanimously expressed the point that they will not allow any party or force to use their territories to engage in the activities that would undermine the security of the other side.”

The talks reflected Beijing’s efforts to expand its political and diplomatic role in the region. Chi-nese leaders also are uneasy about the potential for militant activity in Afghanistan and elsewhere in Cen-tral Asia to spill across the border into China’s Muslim northwest.

The Taliban have stepped up attacks across Afghanistan since the United States and its Nato allies concluded their combat mission at the end of 2014. The insurgents have gained ground across several provinces and increasingly launch attacks in urban centres.

On Sunday, a roadside bomb killed seven civilians in Afghan-istan’s southern Helmand province. No group immediately

claimed responsibility, but the Taliban have a strong and grow-ing presence in the area.

Also on Sunday, a mortar shell struck a market and killed three civilians during a battle between Afghan security forces and the Taliban in Logar prov-ince in the east, according to the provincial government. Seven people were wounded.

Taliban leaders have refused

to talk to the Afghan government but have travelled several times to China, held talks with Russia and Iran, and attended confer-ences in Japan and Europe.

At the Beijing meeting, Paki-stan’s foreign minister, Khawaja Asif, expressed hope for progress on proposals to improve trade and cooperation in securing their border areas.

“Pakistan emphasised the

importance of border manage-ment, the return of Afghan refugees and intelligence shar-ing for effective counterterrorism cooperation,” said Asif.

Pakistan was host of talks between Kabul and the Taliban in July 2015. Since then, diplo-mats from Afghanistan, Pakistan, China and the United States have tried without success to organ-ize another meeting.

China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi (centre), Afghanistan’s Foreign Minister Salahuddin Rabbani (left) and Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif at a press conference in Beijing yesterday.

Landmine blast claims lives of six Afghan copsKabul

Anatolia

At least six personnel of the Afghan border police have been killed

in a landmine blast in the res-tive Helmand province, an official said yesterday.

Omar Zwak, spokesman for the provincial governor of Helmand, told Anadolu Agency the incident took place in Marja district, where the security forces are engaged in fierce clashes with the Taliban since Saturday.

He said the personnel were killed late on Monday when their vehicle hit an anti-vehicle improvised explosive device on a road.

On Sunday, a similar land-mine in the Taliban-controlled area in the same district killed seven civilians.

According to the Afghan Landmine Survivors’ Organiza-tion (ALSO), the deadly mines claimed 1943 lives, mostly civil-ians, in the past year alone. Afghanistan is world’s worst affected country of the land-mines after Yemen.

Helmand remains one of the most insecure provinces in Afghanistan, with the mil-itants controlling large swaths of land.

Myanmar police to free scribes in drone caseYangon

Reuters

Myanmar police said yes-terday they would drop pending charges against

two journalists working for Tur-key’s state broadcaster, their interpreter and driver, who were jailed in November for violating an aircraft law by filming with a drone.

Cameraman Lau Hon Meng from Singapore, reporter Mok Choy Lin from Malaysia, Aung Naing Soe — a local journalist who was interpreting for the pair — and driver Hla Tin were detained by police on October 27 near Myan-mar’s parliament building in the capital Naypyitaw.

They are currently each serv-ing a two-month prison sentence under a colonial-era aircraft law, but all four still face further charges for importing the drone. The two foreign nationals have also been charged with an immi-gration offence.

Police Lieutenant Tun Tun Win and an immigration officer — the complainants — yester-day appeared in a Naypyitaw courtroom and asked that the court drop the charges.

Tun Tun Win said higher police officials had ordered the case dropped because the four did not mean to endanger national security by flying the drone.

Additionally, he said, the decision was intended “to for-ward the relationship between countries”, referring to the two journalists’ home countries,

Singapore and Malaysia.A law officer — the govern-

ment’s prosecutor in the case — was expected to tell the court the charges were formally dropped in another hearing set for Thursday, defence lawyer Khin Maung Zaw told Reuters.

“The higher authorities already instructed to terminate with good intention, but the procedure can only be accom-plished on that day (Thursday),” the lawyer said.

The four are set to complete their sentences under the air-craft act on Jan. 9, but may be released earlier for good behav-iour, he added.

The case had raised con-cerns over freedom of the press in Myanmar, where a civilian government led by Nobel lau-reate Aung San Suu Kyi took power last year but the military retains control of security mat-ters, including the police.

Two Reuters journalists were arrested on Dec. 12 after they went to meet police offic-ers for dinner on the outskirts of Myanmar’s largest city Yangon.

Wa Lone, 31, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 27, had covered the crisis in western Rakhine state that has driven 655,000 stateless Rohingya Muslims across the border to Bangladesh since August.

The reporters are being investigated under the colonial-era Official Secrets Act, and have not had contact with their families, lawyers or Reuters for the past two weeks.

Militants die in US drone strike on Afghan borderParachinar

Reuters

A suspected US drone attack along the Paki-stani-Afghan border

killed an Islamist militant com-mander from the Taliban-allied Haqqani Network, a Pakistani official and two members of the Haqqani group said.

The Pakistani official said it was not immediately clear whether the missile struck on the Afghan or Pakistani side of the border. The members of the network and an eyewitness said the incident took

place inside Pakistan.There have been multiple

suspected US drone strikes in the mountainous border region sep-arating Pakistan’s Kurram Agency from Afghanistan since US President Donald Trump took office in January.

Trump has taken a hardline stance on Pakistan, which he says provides safe haven to terrorists including the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani Network carrying out attacks in Afghanistan.

Yesterday’s suspected drone attack targeted the vehi-cle of a militant commander

named Jamiuddin, said the Pakistani official, who is based in the area, speaking on con-dition of anonymity, added that it also killed an associate of the commander.

A senior member of the Haqqani network told Reuters: “Maulvi Jamiuddin was our trusted man. He was part of our organisation and used to facili-tate our fighters during their m o v e m e n t i n s i d e Afghanistan.”

He added that Jamiuddin was travelling in his car in

Pakistan’s Kurram region

and that none of his associates were killed in the attack.

“Jamiuddin stopped the car ... for conversation on his cellu-lar phone when the drone fired two missiles and killed him on the spot,” another Haqqani member said.

Rehmanullah, a resident of the area who uses only one name, said he saw the strike near the Mata Sanghar area of Kur-ram agency, across from the Afghan province of Paktia.

“I saw two missiles hit the vehicle and the people inside were killed,” he said by telephone.

Bangladesh activist held on ‘anti-Islam’ chargesDhaka

AFP

Bangladesh police arrested a 25-year-old social media activist as

he tried to leave the country on charges that he defamed Islam, authorities said yesterday.

Immigration police detained Asaduzzaman Noor, known as Asad Noor on his Youtube channel, at Dhaka airport on Monday evening, inspector Mohammad Sha-hidullah said.

“The charge against him is that he hurt religious feel-ing by mocking Prophet Mohammed (Peace Be Upon Him) and made bad com-ments against Islam, the Prophet (PBUH) and the Quran on Facebook and Youtube,” he said.

Shahidullah said hun-dreds of Muslims staged demonstrations against Noor this year in the south-ern coastal town of Amtali after the head of an Islamic seminary filed a case against him.

Noor was charged under Bangladesh’s strict Internet laws and could face up to 14 years in jail if found guilty.

Tribal areas to be merged with Khyber PakhtunkhwaPeshawar

Internews

Pakistan’s high-powered National Implementation Committee (NIC) on Fata

[federally administered tribal areas] Reforms has endorsed the merger of tribal regions with n o r t h w e s t e r n K h y b e r Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and agreed

that Islamabad will make a pol-icy statement in this regard, official sources involved in the deliberations say.

The NIC, which met last week and was chaired by Prime Minister Shahid Abbasi, also decided and agreed to let Fata elect 23 members to the KP Assembly in the general elections scheduled to be held in July 2018.

Besides Abbasi the meet-ing was attended by Chief of the Army Staff Gen Qamar Bajwa, federal Minister for States and Frontier Regions retired Qadir Baloch, KP Gov-ernor Iqbal Jhagra, Chief Minister Pervez Khattak, chairman of the Cabinet Com-mittee on Fata Reforms Sartaj Aziz and the federal law

secretary, who deputised for special assistant to the prime minister on law, Barrister Zafarullah Khan.

The meeting which took the landmark decisions on Decem-ber 18, but did not make them public, also decided to do away with the controversial sections of the Frontier Crimes Regula-tions (FCR) and allow the

colonial-era regulation to con-tinue as a supplementary dispute and conflict resolution mecha-nism with a sunset clause to repeal it in its entirety once a proper judicial system was in place in the tribal region.

Significantly enough, neither was the meeting publicised nor any statement issued at the end of it.

In a joint statement after a meeting in Beijing, the governments of Pakistan, Afghanistan and China called for a “broad-based and inclusive peace and reconciliation process” following near-daily Taliban attacks in areas across Afghanistan.

15WEDNESDAY 27 DECEMBER 2017 EUROPE

London

AFP

A Royal Navy frigate escorted a Russian warship on Christmas

Day as it passed close to Brit-ish territorial waters, the ministry of defence said yes-terday at a time of strained relations between London and Moscow.

The HMS St Albans mon-itored the Russian frigate Admiral Gorshkov in the North Sea, “keeping track of its activity in areas of national interest,” it said.

The St Albans, a Type 23 frigate, was deployed on Sat-urday to track the Russian vessel and would return to its Portsmouth base soon. “I will not hesitate in defending our waters or tolerate any form of aggression,” defence min-ister Gavin Williamson said after the incident. “Britain will never be intimidated when it comes to protecting our country, our people, and our national interests.”

The defence ministry said there had been a recent “upsurge in Russian units transiting UK waters”.

It said the patrol ship HMS Tyne also escorted “a Russian intelligence-gathering ship” through the North Sea and the Channel on Sunday.

A navy helicopter was sent to monitor two other Russian vessels.

HMS St Albans was also involved in escorting a Rus-sian aircraft carrier and missile cruiser through the Channel in January this year.

Relations between Lon-don and Moscow have been hostile for years, with allega-tions of Russian meddling in Britain’s referendum on leav-ing the European Union and Moscow’s intervention in Syria on the side of the Damascus regime further straining already tense ties.

Paris

AP

It’s getting colder, the clock is ticking and regional authorities are scrambling to meet President Emmanuel Macron’s dead-

line: Get migrants off France’s streets and out of forest hideouts by year’s end.

That won’t likely happen, and Macron’s government is now tightening the screws: Ramping up expulsions, raising pressure on economic migrants and allow-ing divisive ID checks in emergency shelters. Critics con-tend that Macron’s increasingly tough policy on migrants — though wrapped in a cloak of goodwill — contradicts his image as a humanist who defeated an anti-immigrant populist for the presidency, and has crossed a line passed by no other president in the land that prides itself as the cradle of human rights.

From snowy Alpine passes to the borders with Spain or Ger-many, migrants keep making their way to France. In Paris alone, police have evacuated around 30,000 people camping on sidewalks in the last two years. No one doubts that France’s sys-tem of dealing with migrants needs fixing, with a perennial housing shortage and long wait times in applying for asylum.

“Living in the street. Living in a tent. Sometimes you get food. Sometimes you not get food,” said Samsoor Rasooli, a 25-year-old Afghan standing in line since 6am

to apply for asylum at a Paris facil-ity, where some spend the night on the sidewalk, strewn with filth, to keep their place. “It’s winter. I can’t sleep in the street,” Rasooli said. Asylum opens the way for temporary housing, but only one-third of the 95,000 applicants this year were accepted, government officials say.

The huge makeshift camp in the English Channel port city of Calais, dismantled last year, was emblematic of the problems. Its residents were dispersed around France, but others keep coming in hopes of reaching Britain, and are finding a rude welcome.

France’s highest adminis-trative body said the migrants have been subjected to inhu-man and degrading conditions, and an investigation ordered by the interior minister found that it was “plausible” that police used excessive force against migrants, as Human

Rights Watch maintained.A bill overhauling asylum and

immigration policy will be debated in the spring, notably expediting asylum demands but also doubling to 90 days the time a person without papers can be held in a holding center, the last step before expulsion — an approach the government says is “balanced” and “efficient.”

Macron said in a speech in July in Orleans before a group of new citizens that he wanted peo-ple “off the streets, out of the woods” by the end of 2017. “I want emergency lodgings every-where.” While his words conveyed humanity, the under-lying message bites.

Macron has made clear he wouldn’t accept economic migrants in France, wants those who don’t qualify for asylum expelled and doesn’t want them even trying to come to France.

The French President has been rolling out a multi-pronged approach that stretches to Africa, with points set up in Chad and Niger to pre-select those certain of gaining asylum — and weed out potential economic migrants.

At home, Interior Minister Gerard Collomb has ordered pre-fects, regional representatives of the state, to crack down on ille-gal immigration, “act quickly” to expel those who fail to gain asy-lum and report results within weeks, according to a November order cited by the newspaper Le Monde.

A newer set of orders in December rang alarm bells.

Collomb told regional authorities to set up “mobile teams” to run checks in emergency housing to ascertain the status of migrants. Emergency shelters are consid-ered bedrocks of the French tradition of open arms to those in need and have long been consid-ered untouchable, even by security authorities.

The accent on security in dealing with immigration has appalled even some who support the centrist Macron. In a first, a lawmaker from Macron’s young party broke ranks last week with critical remarks about the direc-tion the country is taking on the immigration issue.

“All foreigners in France are not terrorists. All foreigners in France are not indelicate social aid fraudsters,” said Sonia Krimi, to the applause of the opposition. Far-right leader Marine Le Pen, defeated by Macron in the May presidential race, sees the direc-tion the government is taking as a “political victory” for her anti-immigration National Front party.

“What the government wants is more expulsions” and “more quickly,” Jacques Toubon, the state-appointed national rights defender, told France-Inter radio. But “the situation of vulnerable people isn’t taken into account.”

Feeling the heat, Prime

Minister Edouard Philippe has announced consultations start-ing January 11 with mayors, lawmakers and aid groups that play a major role in helping to feed and house migrants.

On the ground, authorities are scrambling to show they are fol-lowing the president’s clear-the-streets orders. A camp of about 40 Afghan migrants was dismantled last week in the Pas-de-Calais region in northern France, and another was taken down in Macon in the east. On Thursday, a camp on the banks of the Seine river was the latest in Paris to be bulldozed, with 131 migrants taken to shelters.

Migrants’ belongings and tents are seen, settled near the Canal Saint-Martin, Jaures and Stalingrad metro stations in northern Paris, France.

France struggles to deal with migrants

Pristina

AFP

Angry Kosovans hung hun-dreds of neckties on the fence outside the govern-

ment’s headquarters yesterday in protest after its leader justi-fied doubling his own salary by saying that wearing smart clothes was part of his job.

Protesters hung some 300 ties of various colours and pat-terns and even the odd shirt in a gesture of scorn aimed at premier Ramush Haradinaj. He sparked outrage by passing a measure

raising his salary from €1,500 to €3,000 ($3,500) a month. Ordi-nary Kosovans scrape by on a fraction of that. Kosovo’s unem-ployment and poverty rates are about 30 percent.

Defending the move in an interview last week, Haradinaj said: “I am obliged to wear a tie. I cannot go out dressed any old how. I must have a shirt.” For Tuesday’s protest, campaign group Beyond The Wall col-lected ties to hang on the fence.

Haradinaj “must not forget that he represents people who do not have a tie problem, but

who do have a problem with being poor,” said one of the group’s leaders, Kushtrim Meh-meti. One of the protesters who came to hang a tie, 67-year-old retiree Halil Xani, said he earned just €75 a month.

He would have to work about three and half years to earn what the prime minister earns in a month. Haradinaj’s move “makes no sense. We also need money, not just the leaders,” Xani said. Kosovo unilaterally declared independence from Serbia in 2008, a move that Belgrade does not recognise.

Ties hanged on the fence of the Kosovo government headquarters in Pristina yesterday.

Kosovans hang neckties in protest

Berlin

Reuters

An EU agreement with Brit-ain on relations after Brexit could serve as a

model for ties with other coun-tries that want to be as close as possible to the bloc but are not yet ready to join, such as Ukraine and Turkey, Germany’s foreign minister said.

Britain secured the go-ahead

from Brussels to start talks on its future relationship with the EU earlier this month, with London saying it aspires to a closer rela-tionship as a former member than that of any other third country.

In an interview with Funke newspaper group published yes-terday, German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said such a deal could offer a solution to the puz-zle of how the bloc of 27 can

manage its ties with two other large non-members.

“I can’t imagine Turkey or Ukraine becoming EU members in the next few years,” he said. “If we get a smart agreement with Britain regulating relations with Europe after Brexit, that could be a model for other countries - Ukraine and also Turkey.”

Turkey, a candidate for EU membership for decades, already has a customs union with

the EU which allows the trade of most goods without tariffs.

One possibility would be to offer Ankara a “new, closer form of the customs union”, Gabriel said, although he also said such a project would have to wait for changes in Turkey’s political environment.

An agreement between the EU and Ukraine on a “deep and comprehensive free trade area” formally came into force in

September, aimed at allowing free trade of goods, services and capital, and visa-free travel for people for short stays.

Ukraine’s desire for closer ties with the EU was one of the driv-ing forces behind a popular revolt that toppled a pro-Russian pres-ident in 2014, leading Moscow to seize Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula and back pro-Russian separatists in a still-unresolved conflict in the east of the country.

Moscow

AFP

The Kremlin yesterday rejected concerns that its decision to ban opposition

leader Alexei Navalny from running against President Vladimir Putin in a March elec-tion could undermine the vote’s legitimacy.

The European Union weighed in to the controversy meanwhile, warning that the ban cast “serious doubt” on the election. Russia’s Central Elec-tion Commission on Monday rejected Navalny’s bid to take on Putin in the March presiden-tial poll, citing a controversial embezzlement conviction.

The 41-year-old lawyer maintains that the case against him is politically motivated. He urged his supporters to stage a “vote strike” instead.

Navalny is seen by many as the only Russian opposition leader who stands a fighting chance of challenging Putin.

Observers have expressed concern that barring Navalny from running would affect the legitimacy of the March poll and could affect voter turnout.

“We cannot agree with this point of view,” Putin’s spokes-man Dmitry Peskov told reporters yesterday.

He insisted that barring Navalny from running “can in

no way affect the legitimacy of the election”. Peskov also said any calls to boycott the election should be “rigorously studied”— a thinly veiled threat of punishment.

EU external services spokeswoman Maja Kocijancic said the ban on Navalny “casts a serious doubt on political plu-ralism in Russia and the prospect of democratic elec-tions next year”, in a statement on Tuesday.

“Politically-motivated charges should not be used against political participation,” she said. “We expect the Rus-sian authorities to ensure that there is a level playing field, including in the presidential elections that will take place on 18 March.”

Navalny has built a robust protest movement in the face of persistent harassment and jumped through multiple hoops as he stumped for votes across the country. On Sunday, more than 15,000 supporters from 20 cities formally endorsed his nomination bid.

Earlier this month, Putin clearly indicated that Navalny would not be allowed to run.

Asked why, Putin — who has refused to mention Nav-alny by name in public — said the opposition was hoping for a “coup” but would not succeed.

Russia defends oppn leader’s election ban

Brexit deal could be template for EU ties to Ukraine, Turkey: German FM

British navy frigate escorts Russian warship in North Sea

From snowy Alpine passes to the borders with Spain or Germany, migrants keep making their way to France. In Paris alone, police have evacuated around 30,000 people camping on sidewalks in the last two years.

The damage after a car ploughed through the window of a store in the Bad Cannstat district of Stuttgart. The driver lost the control of the vehicle for unknown reasons.

Car ploughs through store in Stuttgart

An aerial view shows men mooring their floating sauna on the bank of the Yenisei River outside Krasnoyarsk, Russia.

Floating sauna

16 WEDNESDAY 27 DECEMBER 2017EUROPE

London

AFP

Britain’s long-running debate over fox hunting has resurfaced over Christ-

mas after a report that the government will ditch an elec-tion pledge to give MPs a free vote on the issue.

The subject received extra attention yesterday (Boxing Day) when hundreds of British hunts met across the country on the busiest day in the hunting calendar.

Organisers claim up to 300,000 people participated, while anti-hunting activists con-tinue to target the gatherings.

According to a December 24 Sunday Times report, British Prime Minister Theresa May will next year announce plans to drop the commitment to a House of Commons vote on fox hunt-ing “as she seeks to rebrand the Conservatives as a “caring” party.

Such a vote could overturn a ban in 2004 outlawing the use of dogs to hunt foxes and other wild mammals in England and Wales.

Britain, however, still allows trail hunts, which let packs fol-low a route rather than an animal, and drag hunting, which permit hounds to track artificial scents. Critics argue dogs still chase and kill live animals on these hunts, with organisers then claiming it was accidental.

Hunts claim they comply

with the law. The Sunday Times said a U-turn on a new vote by May would be “certain to infu-riate many of the party’s rural supporters — and split its MPs”.

The Conservatives pledged in their election manifesto to hold a free vote allowing parlia-ment to decide the future of the ban on fox hunting, passed by

Tony Bla ir ’ s Labour government.

May vocally supported the position during the election, in which her government lost its majority. “Personally I have always been in favour of fox hunting, and we maintain our commitment — we have had a commitment previously as a

Conservative Party — to allow a free vote,” she said.

Downing Street declined to comment on Tuesday, referring questions to other government offices. A rural affairs depart-ment spokeswoman said there were no plans for a vote in this parliamentary session, which runs until spring 2019.

“With the EU negotiations ongoing, this is clearly not a top priority for the first session,” she added. The prime minister’s apparent coming climbdown has already ri led hunting proponents.

Ann Mallalieu, president of the Countryside Alliance — a rural life lobby group which claims to have around 100,000 supporters — wrote in the Daily Telegraph yesterday that some lawmakers had admitted their opposition to fox hunting was “class war”.

Opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn added his voice to calls for continuity — and clar-ity from May. “Fox hunting is cruel and barbaric. The govern-ment must permanently rule out any plans for a vote on overturn-ing the ban,” he tweeted.

The Hague AFP

Dutch police have arrested four men including a Swedish citizen sus-

pected of being involved in terror-related activities, prose-cutors said yesterday.

“Rotterdam police detained four men early on Sunday evening on suspicion of being involved in terrorism,” the pub-lic prosecution’s office said in a statement.

One of the men, aged 29, arrived on a flight from Stock-holm earlier Sunday while the

other three aged 21, 23 and 30 come from the cities of Vlaardingen, Delft and Gouda in southwest Netherlands.

Dutch police raided three homes in the three cities and seized data but found no weap-ons or explosives, the statement said. Although “there is no con-crete information to indicate a terror attack, police and the public prosecution’s office are not taking any chances,” pros-ecutors said without giving further information.

The suspects remain in cus-tody pending a court appearance. A Dutch citizen was sentenced to

four years in November for pre-paring a terror attack following his arrest in Rotterdam last year, when police discovered an assault rifle and a large amount of fireworks.

In another scare, Dutch mil-itary police shot and wounded a man armed with a knife at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport earlier this month, but authori-ties said the incident was not terror-related.

The Netherlands has so far been spared from the slew of terror attacks to have rocked its closest European neighbours in recent years.

Vienna

Anatolia

Recent remarks by Aus-tria’s newly appointed Education Minister

Heinz Fassmann against the headscarf have raised con-cerns for Muslims living in the country. Fassmann’s inter-view published in local Kurier newspaper on Friday quoted him saying “teachers should not wear a headscarf”.

When asked about his opinion on the headscarf ban, Fassmann said: “Yes, I have a sympathy for the secular state and find that teachers should not wear a headscarf, except religious and private school teachers.”

Reacting to the interview, President of Islamic Religious Authority in Austria Ibrahim Olgun told Anadolu Agency: “Headscarf is our red line.”

“For this reason, we will never allow such an attempt. We will do all we can to pre-vent the headscarf ban to commence, and we will carry the issue to the constitutional court if necessary,” he added. “We think that behind the desire to ban the headscarf lies anti-Islamism,” he said.

Islamic Federation of Vienna (IFW) General Secre-tary Harun Erciyas said: “Claiming that teachers with headscarves are contrary to the principle of impartiality actually means insulting their [the teachers’] education and labor. We certainly do not approve of this.

“The Islamic Community, an official institution of the country, describes the head-scarf as part of Islam. For this reason, if you remove the people with headscarves from the government, you also remove all the members of this religion from the public and, naturally, it will be discriminating.”

Paris

AFP

French prosecutors have opened a probe into salmonella con-tamination and a major international

recall of baby milk produced by dairy giant Lactalis, a legal source said yesterday.

The investigation will focus on possible charges of causing involuntary injuries and endan-gering the lives of others but also possible cheating and fail-ures in carrying out a product recall, the source said.

Reports of some 20 children falling sick after consuming Lactalis powdered milk — sold under several different brand names in France and abroad, including Picot and Milumel — first emerged in early December.

The company, one of the world’s largest producers of dairy products, ordered a first major recall on December 10 of nearly 7,000 tonnes of pack-ets produced by a contaminated factory in Craon, northwest France.

At the time, it said it did not know how much of the poten-tially dangerous powder had been consumed or was in shops around the world and it announced a second, wider recall on December 21.

The group has now recalled all of its production from the Craon factory since February

15, blaming the contamination on renovation work carried out earlier this year. Lactalis could not be reached for comment yesterday.

The product withdrawals have affected consumers in countries as far afield as China, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Britain and Sudan, underlining the company’s global reach and the difficulty in tracing all the potentially at-risk powder.

Salmonella symptoms include severe diarrhoea, stom-ach cramps and vomiting. The illness — caused by intestinal bacteria from farm animals — is especially dangerous for the very young and elderly because it can cause severe dehydration. The baby milk industry was shaken by a huge scare in China in 2008 when local manufac-turers were found to be bulking their product with an industrial

chemical. Six babies died and around 300,000 others were made ill.

The scare in the vast and growing Chinese market ben-efited rival companies such as Lactalis and fellow French giant Danone, which were more expensive but were seen by consumers as safe and high quality.

A total of 35 infants have fallen sick with salmonella poi-soning in France since August including 16 who were hospi-talised, an unusually high number that sparked fears of an epidemic.Of these, 31 were found to have consumed Lac-talis products from its factory in Craon, which was shut down on December 8 for a major cleaning.

The company believes the salmonella outbreak can be traced to an evaporation tower used to dry out the milk at the factory it acquired in 2006.

The plant had suffered sal-monella contamination the previous year. Quentin Guille-main, the father of a three-month-old baby who drank the milk but did not fall ill, has filed a complaint against Lactalis and the UFC Que Choi-sir consumer association announced plans to do so.

Guillemain has set up a sup-port group for the families of infants sickened by the milk. The legal probe was opened by prosecutors in Paris specialised in public health issues.

France to probe baby milk salmonella scare

Dutch police arrest four for ‘terrorism’: Prosecutors

Fox hunting resurfaces as political issue in UK

A member of the Old Surrey Burstow and West Kent Hunt crashes as she jumps a fence during the annual Boxing Day hunt in Chiddingstone, Britain, yesterday.

Stockholm

Anatolia

Police are investigating an attack on a mosque with a homemade bomb as a hate crime, officers said.

The attack on the Islamic Cultural Center in Saffle, a town 45km southwest of Karsltad, left ball-bearings lodged in the walls of the center’s prayer room.

Broadcaster SVT reported that police had completed a preliminary investiga-tion and were treating the attack as a hate crime. “Windows were broken and the walls were hit by explosives reinforced with BB pellets,” center Chairman Abdi-hakem Adan said.

“An average of 100 people come to the mosque and pray every day.” Swe-den is a strong draw for many migrants and about 15 percent of its population was born abroad.

An estimated 100,000 ethnic Turks live in the Nordic country. Later, a “rac-ist attack” on a mosque in Sodermalm district of Stockholm took place on Tues-day, the imam of the mosque said.

“In the morning, some unidentified people attached the cross, a symbol of Christians, on the entrance door. They do not want us to be here. They want us to close the mosque,” Khaled Abdel, imam of the Stockholm Mosque, told Anadolu Agency.

Police investigate Swedish mosque attack as hate crime

Austrian minister’s headscarf remark worry Muslims

Reports of some 20 children falling sick after consuming Lactalis powdered milk — sold under several different brand names in France and abroad, including Picot and Milumel — first emerged in early December.

17WEDNESDAY 27 DECEMBER 2017 AMERICAS

Washington

Reuters

A US appeals court in Wash-ington yesterday upheld a lower court’s decision to

allow President Donald Trump’s commission investigating voter fraud to request data on voter rolls from US states.

The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said the Electronic Privacy

Information Center (EPIC) watchdog group, which filed the lawsuit, did not have legal standing to seek to force the presidential commission to review privacy concerns before collecting individuals’ voter data.

EPIC had argued that under federal law, the commission was required to conduct a pri-vacy-impact assessment before gathering personal data. But the

three-judge appeals court panel ruled unanimously that the pri-vacy law at issue was intended to protect individuals, not groups like EPIC.

“EPIC is not a voter,” Judge Karen Henderson wrote in the ruling. Washington-based US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly first denied EPIC’s injunction request in July, in part because the collection of data by the commission was not

technically an action by a gov-ernment agency so was not bound by laws that govern what such entities can do.

Kollar-Kotelly noted that the commission, headed by Vice President Mike Pence, was an advisory body that lacks legal authority to compel states to hand over the data. Most state officials who oversee elections and election law experts say that voter fraud is rare in US.

Court rejects challenge to Trump voter fraud panel

New York

Reuters

The cities of New York, San Francisco and Philadel-phia have sued the US

Department of Defence to make it fix its system for reporting conviction records to a data-base used for background checks on gun buyers.

The lawsuit was filed on Friday in federal court in Alex-andria, Virginia and came after the US Air Force revealed it failed to report the criminal record of the man who in November killed 26 people and wounded 20 others in a shoot-ing at a Texas church.

The complaint, announced yesterday, said it sought an injunction to prevent future “senseless carnage” by requir-ing the Defense Department to locate all records in its posses-sion that should be reported in order to fix “deadly gaps” in the background check database.

“New York City is joining Philadelphia and San Francisco to stand up to the Department of Defense and demand they comply with the law and repair their drastically flawed system,” New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a statement.

The three cities are led by Democrats, some of whom have advocated stricter gun controls.

The Defence Department said that it did not comment on pending litigation. Former Air-man Devin Kelley - who opened fire in the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, on November 5 - was convicted five years ago by a general court-martial on two charges of domestic assault against his wife and stepson.

The Air Force said that information was not entered into the National Criminal Information Center database, which the Federal Bureau of Investigation oversees and uses to run required background check requests from gun deal-ers before a sale.

Attorney General Jeff Ses-sions has since ordered the Justice Department to under-take a review of the system to help plug potential reporting gaps. The Department of Defense Inspector General ear-lier this month released a report that found that all military serv-ices “consistently” failed to submit fingerprint data for 24 percent of the convicted offenders reviewed.

US defence department sued to fix its system

Havana

Reuters

A fireworks explosion injured 39 people, including six children

between the ages of 11 and 15, during a popular Cuban car-nival on Christmas Eve, state-run media reported.

The centuries-old Parran-das festival in the central town of Remedios takes place every Dec. 24 and draws thousands of Cubans and some tourists.

“An unfortunate accident with fireworks occurred last night in Remedios,” the gov-ernment’s Cubadebate internet news service reported.

Among the more than 20 seriously injured, according to Cubadebate, health author-ities said some were in “very grave, some less grave, and others in critical and very critical condition.”

All the injured appeared to be local residents, and the report did not mention that any tourists were hurt.

Remedios is located in Villa Clara province on the northern coast of the island.

Two of the town’s neigh-borhoods compete on Christmas Eve each year to put on the most spectacular show with floats and fire-works amidst a carnival atmosphere.

The cause of the explo-sion was under investigation, according to official media.

39 injured in explosion at Cuban fest

Bogota

AFP

Colombia recorded its lowest murder rate in four decades this year

in the wake of a peace deal with the leftwing FARC rebel group, the government said yesterday.

There were “a little over 11,000 homicides” in 2017, Defence Minister Luis Carlos Villegas said, equating to a rate of 23 murders per 100,000 inhabitants.

That signified 320 fewer violent deaths this year than in 2016, he said, stating: “This year will go down in history as the safest in four decades.”

The government’s Foren-sic Medicine Institute has not yet released its data on recorded deaths for 2017. It said that in 2016 there were 11,532 homicides.

By way of comparison, the United States has a mur-der rate of 4.9 per 100,000 inhabitants, according to recent FBI data. Much of Latin America suffers homicide rates higher than the world average of 5.3 per 100,000 inhabitants given by the World Bank. In 2015, Colom-bia was classed as the third most deadly country in the region, after Venezuela and Brazil. But, while Colombia still struggles with violence.

Colombia records lowest murder rate in 4 decades

Los Angeles

AP

The US Secret Service says it has interviewed someone claiming

responsibility for delivering a gift-wrapped package of horse manure addressed to Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin (mih-NOO’-shin).

The box was found Sat-urday at the home of Mnuchin’s neighbor in the wealthy Bel Air neighborhood in Los Angeles. The LAPD bomb squad responded to the package, which police say was marked as being from “the American people.”

Secret Service spokesman Cody Starken said that the agency was contacted by Los Angeles police and inter-viewed a person who claimed responsibility. He declined to identify the person.

Starken says the Secret Service takes all confirmed and alleged threats seriously. He says the agency typically doesn’t comment on possible criminal investigations or interviewing practices.

Person interviewed over manure sent to Mnuchin

Washington

AFP

The United States sanctioned two North Korean officials yesterday over their coun-

try’s ballistic missile programme, in Washington’s latest effort to punish Pyongyang for its weap-ons development drive.

Tensions have escalated after the isolated but nuclear-armed regime staged a series of atomic and intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) tests, most recently on November 28, while US President Donald Trump and

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un have traded insults.

“Treasury is targeting lead-ers of North Korea’s ballistic missile programs, as part of our

maximum pressure campaign to isolate the DPRK and achieve a fully denuclearized Korean Peninsula,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a state-ment, referring to North Korea by its formal initials.

The two officials were listed last Friday in a new United Nations Security Council resolu-tion sanctioning North Korea, it said. n“Kim Jong-Sik reportedly is a key figure in North Korea’s ballistic missile development, including efforts to switch from liquid to solid fuel, and Ri Pyong-Chol is reported to be a key

official involved in North Korea’s intercontinental ballistic missile development,” the Treasury statement said.

“As a result of today’s actions, any property or interests in prop-erty of those designated by OFAC within US jurisdiction are blocked, and transactions by US persons involving the designated person are generally prohibited,” Treasury said, referring to its Office of Foreign Assets Control.

On Friday, the UN Security Council unanimously passed new, US-drafted sanctions that

will restrict oil supplies vital for North Korea’s missile and nuclear programmes.

The third raft of sanctions imposed on the North this year, sparked by last month’s ICBM test, also received the backing of China -- the North’s sole major ally and economic lifeline.

The sanctions also order the repatriation of North Korean workers sent abroad to earn much-needed revenue for Kim’s regime. North Korea slammed the fresh UN sanctions as an “act of war.” “We fully reject the lat-est UN sanctions... as a violent

breach of our republic’s sover-eignty and an act of war that destroys the peace and stability of the Korean peninsula and a wider region,” Pyongyang’s for-eign ministry said in a statement carried by the state-run KCNA news agency.

The latest launch of the Hwa-song-15 ICBM, theoretically capable of hitting all major US cities, further heightened global alarm over the rapid advance in the country’s weapons technol-ogy, which has made significant progress since Kim took power in 2011.

US sanctions two N Koreans over missile programme“Kim Jong-Sik and Ri Pyong-Chol reportedly are key figures in North Korea’s ballistic missile development,” the Treasury statement said.

The tail of a Cessna 340 plane that crashed at the Bartow Municipal Airport in Bartow, Florida, killing all five people aboard.

Miami

AFP

An American family’s hol-iday reunion ended in tragedy when their light

plane crashed in Florida, killing all five people aboard, the local sheriff’s office said.

The crash killed the pilot John Shannon, 70, his two adult daughters, his son-in-law and a family friend, the Polk County Sheriff said. “This is a tragedy any time, but it is so much worse because it happened on Christ-mas Eve,” Sheriff Grady Judge

said in a news release. Investi-gators said the twin-engine Cessna 340 took off from Bar-tow Airbase, near Tampa, about 7:15 am (12:15 GMT) bound for Key West, but it went down near the end of the Bartow runway.

While the cause of the inci-dent is under investigation, “it was very foggy at the time,” the sheriff’s office said, adding that a fire followed the crash.

“All of the victims perished upon or immediately after impact,” it said. In addition to Shannon, the statement said the victims are believed to be Olivia

Shannon, 24, a university stu-dent; Victoria Shannon Worthington, 26, a school teacher; her husband Peter Worthington, Jr, a law student; and family friend Krista Clay-ton, 32, a teacher.

The Worthington couple had “arrived in town yesterday for the holidays, from Baltimore, where they live. Krista joined the family on the trip,” the news release said. On his website, Shannon said he began practis-ing law in 1975, and had focused on “personal injury and death” cases.

Five dead in US plane crash

Puerto Ordaz, Venezuela,

Reuters

Venezuelan authorities said yesterday they had arrested 28 people in

southern Bolivar state for loot-ing and disorder over Christmas in the latest unrest during a severe economic crisis.

There have been scattered protests and roadblocks around the South American OPEC nation in recent days over food short-ages, power-cuts, high prices and fuel rationing.

Local chamber of commerce head Florenzo Schettino told Reuters 10 businesses - mostly liquor stores - were looted as dark fell on Christmas Day in Bolivar, which has seen unrest at various points over the last four years of brutal recession.

In the western Andean states, police and soldiers were

guarding gas stations, where there were large lines and cus-tomers were only allowed to fill up 35 liters per vehicle.

“We’re wasting so much time ... The government is testing peo-ple’s patience,” said bus driver

Pedro Pina, waiting for hours to buy fuel in Barinas state.

Critics blame President Nicolas Maduro and the ruling Socialist Party for Venezuela’s economic mess, saying they have persisted with failed statist

policies for too long, while turn-ing a blind eye to rampant corruption and inefficiency.

The government says it is the victim of an “economic war” by political opponents and right-wing foreign powers, intent on bringing down Maduro in a coup.

“This can only be reversed with deep economic reforms,” said opposition legislator and economist Angel Alvarado.

In western Zulia state, sev-eral hundred thousand people were plunged into darkness on Christmas Eve, sparking fury among those who had scraped together money and hunted for products throughout the day to prepare a traditional family din-ner. “I spent the whole day stressed out - and then the lights went off. What a pathetic Christ-mas,” said Lilibeth Rodriguez, 40, whose family gathering was ruined.

Venezuela arrests 28 in new unrest

Bolivar notes a seen hanging in a tree at a street in Maracaibo, Venezuela.

Tourists get off a vintage car after a ride in Havana, Cuba, yesterday.

Vintage ride

18 WEDNESDAY 27 DECEMBER 2017AMERICAS

Lima

AFP

Thousands of Peruvians marched in Lima to protest the pardon of ailing ex-

president Alberto Fujimori, who was serving a 25-year sentence for human rights abuses.

Current President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski ordered the pardon of Fujimori and seven other prisoners on Sunday on humanitarian grounds, once again placing himself in the mid-dle of a political crisis just days after he avoided impeachment.

On Monday, protesters called for Kuczynski’s departure from office.

“Out, out PPK! Out, out PPK!” angry demonstrators chanted in reference to the president, who had promised during his elec-toral campaign the previous year that he would not free Fujimori. “Fujimori, murderer and thief. No to the pardon!” read one of the signs held by the protesters, some of whom also carried a giant Peruvian flag.

Relatives of victims of Fuji-mori’s brutal rule took part in the march. “We are here as relatives to reject this illegal pardon,

because it does not correspond to the gravity of the crimes,” Gisella Ortiz, representative of a group of relatives of victims, said.

A strong force of anti-riot police moved through the streets of Lima with the protesters and sought to prevent them from heading to the clinic where Fuji-mori is hospitalized.

Kuczynski said his decision to grant the pardon relied on a medical evaluation that Fujimori suffered a progressive and incur-able illness and that conditions in prison “represent a grave risk to his life”. But the move came after Fujimori’s son Kenji drained votes away from a

parliamentary bid Thursday to impeach Kuczynski on suspicion of corruption, sparking specula-tion the pardon was political payback.

The condition of Alberto Fujimori, 79, was “delicate” and “a decision will be made” based on how he responds to treatment at the Centenario Clinic, a doc-tor at the facility, Alejandro Aguinaga, told reporters.

He said there was no pros-pect of Fujimori leaving soon.

Fujimori was transferred from his cell to a clinic Saturday suffering from low blood pres-sure and an irregular heartbeat. “He remains in intensive care. His condition is favorable but other tests are necessary,” Aguinaga said.

He said the ex-president had already undergone scans of his brain and heart, and stated that the cardiac problem was accen-tuating “various degenerative pathologies.”

Kenji Fujimori posted an online video of his father in intensive care. Alberto Fujimori has been hospitalized on several previous occasions, the last time in September, and has had heart, back and stomach trouble as well

as several operations to remove cancerous growths from his tongue. The former leader has spent more than a decade imprisoned for ruthlessly crack-ing down on political rivals and for ordering dozens of murders and overseeing other brutal tactics.

Despite his conviction for human rights abuses, however, Fujimori retains a level of pop-ularity in Peru for having defeated leftwing guerillas and for stabilizing the economy after

a period of crisis. That dichot-omy has come to the fore with the pardon: dozens of support-ers gathered in front of the hospital looking after him, while opponents later demonstrated in Lima against him.

Fujimori, of Japanese descent, ruled Peru between 1990 and 2000. His reign quickly became autocratic after a 1992 internal coup in which he dis-solved the legislature.

The pardon was Kuczynski’s first major act after surviving the

impeachment bid that was spearheaded by Kenji Fujimori’s sister, Keiko, who is also a legis-lator and who narrowly lost the last presidential election.

Kuczynski, a former Wall Street Banker, was accused of lying to cover up $5 million in payments received from dis-graced Brazilian construction firm Odebrecht.

He faces a struggle to influ-e n c e P e r u ’ s opposition-dominated Congress, where his party has just 18 seats.

Fujimori’s pardon triggers widespread protests in Peru

Lima

AFP

Peru’s ailing former leader Alberto Fujimori yesterday asked the public for for-

giveness, two days after receiving a presidential pardon that sparked street protests.

“I am aware that the results of my government were well received on one side, but I admit that I have let down other com-patriots, and I ask them to forgive me with all my heart,” Fujimori said in a Facebook video filmed

from his hospital bed.The 79-year-old had been

serving a 25-year sentence for corruption and human rights abuses committed during his time in office from 1990 to 2000.

He was transferred from prison to a hospital on Saturday after suffering from low blood pressure and an irregular heart-beat, the latest in a string of hospitalizations.

President Pedro Pablo Kuc-zynski ordered the pardon of Fujimori and seven other pris-oners Sunday on humanitarian

grounds, placing himself in the middle of a political crisis just days after he avoided impeach-ment. On Monday Peruvian police fired tear gas and clashed with protesters marching against the pardon.

They called for the departure from office of Kuczynski, who later defended his decision in a televised message to the nation.

“I am convinced that those of us who feel democratic should not allow Alberto Fujimori to die in prison, because justice is not revenge,” Kuczynski said in his

address Monday night. “It is about the health and chances of life of a former president of Peru who, having committed excesses and grave errors, was sentenced and has already completed 12 years” in prison, he said.

Anti-riot police moved through the streets of Lima on Monday to prevent demonstra-tors from heading to the clinic where Fujimori is hospitalized, firing tear gas canisters and erecting barricades to disperse them. “Out, out PPK! Out, out PPK!” demonstrators chanted in

reference to the current presi-dent, who had promised during his electoral campaign the pre-vious year that he would not free Fujimori.

“Fujimori, murderer and thief. No to the pardon!” read one of the signs held by the protest-ers, some of whom also carried a giant Peruvian flag. Relatives of victims of Fujimori’s brutal rule took part in the march. “We are here as relatives to reject this illegal pardon, because it does not correspond to the gravity of the crimes,” Gisella Ortiz,

representative of a group of fam-ilies of victims, told reporters.

Kuczynski had earlier said his decision to grant the pardon relied on a medical evaluation that Fujimori suffered a progres-sive and incurable illness and that conditions in prison “repre-sent a grave risk to his life.”

But the move came after Fujimori’s son Kenji drained votes away from a parliamen-tary bid Thursday to impeach Kuczynski on suspicion of cor-ruption, sparking speculation the pardon was political.

Former Peru leader seeks forgiveness from public after pardon

“Out, out PPK! Out, out PPK!” angry demonstrators chanted in reference to the president, who had promised during his electoral campaign the previous year that he would not free Fujimori.

Mexico City Reuters

A man alleged to be behind the murder this year of a crime

reporter in northern Mexico has been arrested by federal police, Chihuahua state Gov-ernor Javier Corral said in a statement on Monday.

The suspect, identified as Juan Carlos Moreno Ochoa, alias “El Larry”, was detained in the neighbouring border state of Sonora on Monday and was allegedly the “intel-lectual author” of the murder of journalist Miroslava Breach, the statement said.

Breach was shot several times as she drove out of her garage on March 23. One of her children was with her in the car, but was not hurt.

A man alleged to be the gunman in Breach’s murder, Ramon Andres Zavala, was assassinated last week in Son-ora, Corral’s statement said.

Moreno Ochoa was scheduled to be brought before a judge later on Mon-day to begin proceedings against him, the statement said. Reuters was unable to locate Moreno Ochoa’s lawyer.

At least 16 journalists have been killed in Mexico in the last three years, and 43 since 1992, making Mexico one of the world’s most dangerous countries for reporters, according to the Committee to Project Journalists.

Los Angeles AFP

Heather Menzies-Urich, a star of “The Sound of Music,” which continues

to win hearts worldwide after more than half a century, died at age 68, an industry source said.

“We... mourn the passing of Heather Menzies-Urich,” the Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization, which holds the rights to the musical, said on its website. “We are all lucky to have known her, and she will happily live on in that beautiful

movie. We will miss her.”Menzies-Urich, then a teen-

ager, had the role of Louisa von Trapp, one of the children of Captain von Trapp played by Canadian actor Christopher Plummer, who starred with English actress Julie Andrews.

Menzies-Urich’s son, Ryan Urich, said she had been diag-nosed with brain cancer and died on Christmas Eve sur-rounded by family, according to celebrity website TMZ, as well as Variety magazine’s website.

Menzies-Urich was born in Toronto, Canada. Her husband Robert Urich died from cancer

in 2002. He was a US television star who shot to fame in the 1970s through his series “Vegas” and “Spenser: For Hire.”

After his death, Menzies-Urich founded The Robert Urich Foundation to support cancer research and patient care. On the group’s website, she wrote that she tried to live by her late husband’s motto: “Never give up -- never, ever give up.” “The Sound of Music” opened on Broadway in 1959 and was made into a movie in 1965 with mem-orable hit songs including “My Favorite Things,” “Edelweiss,” and the title track itself.

Caracas

AFP

Venezuela’s government released another eight political opponents

from jail, bringing to 44 the number freed since Saturday in a goodwill gesture timed to happen over Christmas.

But they are only a frac-tion of the number of political prisoners being held, the head of the rights group Foro Penal, Alfredo Romero, said.

“The government is inter-ested in reducing the number of political prisoners to reduce the cost they represent. There are still 227 political prison-ers -- the highest number for any Christmas,” Romero said.

The Venezuelan regime had promised to release 80 inmates for Christmas. Delcy Rodriguez, head of a Truth Commission investigating protests against President Nicolas Maduro’s regime, had called the move a sign of “reconciliation.”

Those jailed had been arrested during demonstra-tions demanding that Maduro step down. Mass street pro-tests began in 2014, when 43 people were killed in clashes, and have continued sporadi-cally ever since with 125 dead earlier this year.

The government rejects the label “political prisoners” for the opposition inmates, preferring to characterize them as common criminals.

Venezuela’s opposition Democratic Unity Roundta-ble coalition welcomed the release of the inmates. But it said on Twitter that “they should never have been deprived of their freedom” as “striving to reconstruct a country ruined by the regime is not a crime.”

Among those freed in the first wave was Alfredo Ramos, mayor of the northwestern municipality of Irribarren, who was arrested in late July and handed a 15-month sentence.

The jailed political oppo-nents were among the issues discussed in talks, held in the Dominican Republic, between the government and the opposition.

The dialogue is aimed at trying to find a political solu-tion to the dire crisis engulfing Venezuela, a once-rich oil-producing nation that is now partially in default on its debts, with scarcities of food and medicine.

A third round of talks is due to take place January 11-12.

Venezuela releases another eight political opponents

‘Sound of Music’ star Menzies-Urich dead

Mexican police arrest suspect in scribe’s murder

Protesters clash with police during march after Peruvian President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski pardoned former President Alberto Fujimori in Lima, Peru, yesterday.

19WEDNESDAY 27 DECEMBER 2017 MORNING BREAK

FAJRSHOROOK

04.56am

06.17 am

ZUHRASR

11.35 am

02.32 pm

MAGHRIBISHA

04.54 pm

06.24pm

PRAYER TIMINGS

HIGH TIDE 00:00 – 10:45 LOW TIDE 03:15 – 18:30

Moderate temperature with some

clouds and slight dust, cold by night.

WEATHER TODAY

Minimum Maximum

Courtesy: Qatar Meteorology Department

17oC 26oC

The Peninsula

The giant planet Jupiter will be approaching the red planet Mars on December 31, where the angular distance between the two plan-ets will be less than two degrees in dawn sky, according to Qatar

Calendar House (QCH).Qatar residents will be able to observe Mars very close to Jupiter

over eastern horizon with naked eye from time rise of Jupiter until sun-rise time; where Jupiter will rise over Qatar sky at 2:24am. Sunrise time will be 6:19am, said astronomer expert at QCH Dr. Beshir Marzouk.

On the other side, “Mercury”, the nearest planet of the Sun, will be close to Jupiter and Mars over eastern horizon of Qatar dawn sky after time rise of Mercury; where it will rise over Qatar sky at 4:40am. The planet with beautiful rings “Saturn” will complete the beautiful astronomical view on Sunday.

Qatar residents will have a good chance to see and observe the beautiful astronomical view for four plan-ets “Mars, Jupiter, Mercury and Saturn” with naked eye and astronomical instrumentations from time rise of Saturn over east horizon of Qatar dawn sky at 5:43am until Sunrise time, Dr. Marzouk added.

This astronomical phenomenon is very important because it’s a good chance to see and observe four plan-ets together with naked eyes and with recent digital cameras, with wide angel, to get nice pictures.

Jupiter & Mars to come closer

The Peninsula

Since its launch earlier this month, more than 65,000 people have visited the newly launched web-

site for the new Medical City hospitals to take a tour of the state-of-the-art facilities.

Videos showcasing the new facil-ities and their innovative approach to care have been viewed nearly 500,000 times across Hamad Medical Corpo-ration’s (HMC) social media channels.

“This level of engagement demon-strates the community’s widespread interest and pride in these ground breaking hospitals,” said Ali Abdullah Al Khater (pictured), HMC’s Chief Communications Officer.

“The new website’s functionalities include the popular 360-degree vir-tual tours of the facilities so people experience the state-of-the-art envi-ronment in which care will be offered. The virtual tours have proven to be

especially popular, as it gives people a unique and holistic view of some of our services including the operating theaters in the Ambulatory Care Center, private patient rooms in the Women’s Wellness and Research Center and the Qatar Rehabilitation Institute’s unique Sensory Simulation Room,” he said.

Visitors to www.newhmchospitals.qa can also register to attend site tours of the new hospitals, which are sched-uled to commence in January 2018. In addition, they can receive up-to-the minute updates on patient numbers and read the latest news about new services on offer.

“We have used our popular social media channels to showcase the facil-ities and services at the new Medical

City hospitals to great effect,” Al Khater said. “People can really get a “behind the scenes” look at the workings of the new hospitals as well as find out more about the innovative services they offer.”

HMC’s new Medical City complex, which was opened recently by the Emir HH Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, and it represents the biggest health-care facility expansion in the region and is bringing new services and care options to the people of Qatar.

Once fully operational, the three new hospitals – Qatar Rehabilitation Institute, Women’s Wellness and Research Center, and the Ambulatory Care Center – will house 500 new hos-pital beds and 3,000 highly trained clinical and support staff.

Over 65,000 visit website of Medical City hospitals

The Peninsula

Malabar Gold & Diamonds, one among the BIG 5 jew-ellery retailers globally

with a strong retail network of over 195 retail outlets spread across nine countries has unveiled the details of their 7th edition of ‘Mal-abar Gold & Diamonds Festival’ in Qatar commencing from today. This season, Malabar Gold & Dia-monds showcases the latest collection of gold, diamond & pre-cious gems jewellery in their outlets, to celebrate this festive period.

This much-awaited festival is one of the biggest jewellery events in GCC and the customers get unprecedented opportunities to win up to 1.5 kilos of gold and 100%

cash back. A true shopper’s delight, Malabar Gold & Diamonds Festival will captivate the custom-ers by exhibiting eye catching designs in gold, diamonds, plati-num, and precious gems from different parts of the world to flaunt any occasion or event and are well priced too.

With every purchase of gold & diamond jewelry worth QAR 500, customers get a chance to enter raffle draws to win 1/4 (Quarter) kg of gold each in 6 raffle draws. With every diamond jewellery pur-chase, the customers get a ‘Scratch & Win’ coupon for guaranteed cash back and get a chance to win up to 100% cash back.

The customers also get a fab-ulous chance to buy 8 gm gold coins with absolutely no making

charges from any of Malabar Gold & Diamonds outlets in Oman dur-ing this period. Furthermore, customers can avail the zero deduction offer on 22K (GCC) gold jewellery exchange as well.

To add more glitter to this season, they have also unveiled the latest collection of jewellery in gold, diamonds and precious gems to suit the tastes of their multicultural and multinational customers. Malabar Gold & Diamonds has incorporated these designs as a part of various brands presented at Malabar Gold & Diamonds’ namely Ethnix - Handcrafted Designer Jewellery, Era - Uncut Diamond Jewellery, Mine - Diamonds Unlimited, Divine- Indian Heritage Jewellery and Precia - Gem Jewellery

Malabar Gold & Diamonds offers chance to win up to 1.5kg of gold

Seattle

AP

In perhaps an unexpected twist, historically conserv-ative strongholds like

Oklahoma and West Virginia are leading efforts to bring preschool to all.

“They have in common a low-wage workforce, rela-tively low education levels and the desire to change that,” said Steven Barnett of the National Institute for Early Education Research. “Whatever they say, politicians in West Virginia know the future of their state is not coal miners.”

Other red states that have

notable programs include Ala-bama and Georgia. But some liberal-leaning cities like Seat-tle and New York also are running public pre-K programs.

Advocates say more uni-versal programs are needed to address what they call an alarming increase in child care costs. Studies have shown that children who attend a high-quality preschool are more adjusted for the rest of their academic lives and have bet-ter outcomes as adults, from higher incomes to healthier lifestyles. Around the country, some budding programs say there are not enough seats to

meet demand and not enough money to make it happen.

Programs in Seattle and New York enjoy overwhelm-ing support locally, which in turn puts pressure on their state lawmakers to act as they face growing inequity in pub-lic education and research that touts the benefits of high-qual-ity education in the critical early years.

“Clearly, a statewide pro-gram would be so much better, and it should be available to all 3- and 4-year-olds. It’s the best investment we can make to right the wrongs of gener-ations,” said Tim Burgess, a retired Seattle mayor and city

councilman credited with cre-ating the Seattle Preschool Program.

It is now in its third year, serving 979 children with a sliding scale tuition model. About 80 percent of them go for free. Burgess is now push-ing for a universal statewide offering in Washington, beyond its program for low-income children.

Aanchal Mehrotra’s 4-year-old son is one of 300 kids now on the waiting list for the Seattle Preschool Program, but she says she doesn’t have much hope that he’ll get in. The Seattle preschool class would cost the family just $365 a

month. She’s paying almost four times that much for a month at a private day care franchise.

“It’s so expensive and become so difficult to afford,” said Mehrotra, a research sci-entist. “I’m just waiting for him to turn 5 so he can get into kindergarten.”

The universal preschool movement hit peak momen-tum under the Obama administration but has been virtually unaddressed by Pres-ident Donald Trump. Instead, Trump’s daughter and adviser Ivanka Trump has dabbled with policies aimed at tackling child care costs.

Some states struggle to make preschool available to everyone

London

IANS

Chemotherapy for one type of leukae-mia could be improved by giving patients a drug currently used in the

treatment of iron overload, new research has showed.

Acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) is an aggressive cancer that stops healthy blood cell production. Chemotherapy is the standard treatment, but improvements are needed as the five-year survival rate in patients older than 60 is only 5-15 per cent.

The findings, from Imperial College London, showed that special regions of blood vessels where blood stem cells -- that generate billions of new cells every day of our life -- reside are the hardest hit by leukaemia.

When these are overtaken by leukae-mia cells, the stem cells are lost and production of healthy blood is significantly reduced, causing anaemia, infection, and bleeding in patients. It allows the disease to progress as well as affects the success of chemotherapy.

In the study, published in the journal Cell Stem Cell, the team tested a drug called deferoxamine -- used to treat iron over-load, which can happen for example when a person receives multiple blood transfusions.

Deferoxamine, which is already approved to treat iron overload, was found to have a protective effect on the blood vessels in AML patients, allowing the res-cue of healthy blood stem cells.

Moreover, the enhanced vessels also improved the efficiency of chemotherapy. “Since the drug is already approved for human use for a different condition, we already know that it is safe,” said lead author Cristina Lo Celso from the varsity.

“We still need to test it in the context of leukaemia and chemotherapy, but because it is already in use we can progress to clinical trials much quicker than we could with a brand new drug,” Celso added.

For the study, the team filmed the inva-sion of leukaemia cells into bone marrow in mice, which allowed them to see details of the bone marrow, revealing phenom-ena happening deep inside the bone marrow.

The researchers are now hoping to begin human trials of the drug for AML.

Iron overload drug good for leukaemia care

20 WEDNESDAY 27 DECEMBER 2017HOME