TUESDAY 2 FEBRUARY 2021 www.thepeninsula.qa20 JUMADA II - 1442 VOLUME 25 NUMBER 8521

Give extra data to family or staff

Sport | 12

Qatar supports efforts to

enhance Islamic economic

integration

Qatar's Al Duhail eye special show in maiden Club World Cup appearance

Business | 01

2 RIYALS

World Cup Qatar 2022 hospitality pre-sales reach record-breaking $90mTHE PENINSULA — DOHA/ZURICH

MATCH Hospitality (‘MATCH’), the worldwide exclusive rights holder of the FIFA Hospitality Programme, announced that pre-sales for FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 hospitality reached the unprecedented level of $90m. The hospitality pre-sale purchase period was conducted by MATCH and offered to FIFA’s Commercial Affiliates and select groups.

MATCH is the only company appointed by FIFA to promote and sell exclusively, either directly or via a network of sales agents, official ticket-inclusive commercial hospi-tality packages for the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022.

Also, MATCH announced the conclusion of its worldwide sales agent tender process, where reputable and leading international sports travel and hospitality agencies to sell FIFA World Cup hospitality services around the world. MATCH’s tender process resulted in the appointment of 27 agents across 39 territories, who have collec-tively committed financially to sales targets exceeding $260m.

The amount sets another FIFA World Cup record, far exceeding the sales targets secured by MATCH for the

equivalent sales agent tender processes conducted by MATCH in connection with the 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil and 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia. Official sales agents are authorised by MATCH to sell ticket inclusive official hospitality packages and, on an optional basis, travel packages including accommo-dation, flights, ground

transportation, and other travel services.

“We are delighted to confirm that demand for the FIFA World Cup is stronger than ever. The remarkable global response we have had to our pre-sales and the enthusiasm and professionalism with which our long-standing sales agents have responded to our invi-tation to tender has further

cemented our belief that despite the unprecedented events of recent months due to the global pandemic, there remains unwa-vering enthusiasm and interest in the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 Official Hospitality Pro-gramme,” said Jaime Byrom, Executive Chairman of MATCH Hospitality.

“Qatar promises to deliver an amazing tournament that

will capitalise on its principal attributes; the proximity of its eight stadiums, which are all located in or within a short driving distance of Doha, a fas-cinating region with unique attractions, spectacular state-of-the-art stadiums, and tradi-tional Arabic hospitality. The unique attributes of this FIFA World Cup will enable MATCH to deliver a truly ground-breaking and unprecedented hospitality experience,” Byrom added.

The FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 Hospitality Programme will offer guests hospitality packages which include official match tickets plus a wide range of on-site services at the sta-diums such as gourmet catering, preferential parking, enter-tainment, and gifts, as well as additional ancillary services, including accommodation and air transportation. MATCH has the exclusive right to deliver on-site hospitality services in private suites, lounges, and tem-porary structures located within the security perimeter next to the stadium bowls. MATCH offers a range of hospitality experiences in the luxury, business, and leisure categories, which cater to individual client preferences, needs, and budgets. �P2

High Internet dependence cause of cyber blackmailSIDI MOHAMED THE PENINSULA

The Economic and Cyber Crimes Combating Department at the Ministry of Interior (MoI) has highlighted the huge dependence on the Internet for the recent increase in cyber blackmailing.

Lt. Eng Abdulaziz Mohammad Al Kaabi, while addressing a virtual seminar organised by the Department in collaboration with the Public Relations Department at the MoI yesterday, said: “A jail term of not more than three years and a fine of not more than QR100,000 or either of these penalties, shall be imposed on any person who uses infor-mation network or information technology to threaten or blackmail another person into making him/her do or refrain from doing a certain action.”

According to the Department, cyber blackmailing

is an act involving the unlawful use of information technology technique, information system, or the Internet illegally, in vio-lation of the provision of the law.

The seminar, which was attended by around 400 people, aims to raise awareness on the tricks and means that perpetrators of cybercrime employ. It also aims to ensure public safety by introducing the services provided by the departments of the MoI within the framework of strength-ening partnership and cooper-ation with stakeholders.

Al Kaabi presented a set of critical educational tips that must be followed to protect against falling victim to elec-tronic crimes. These include ignoring fake messages sent to e-mails or SMS claiming the receiver has won a prize or any other message from unknown origins. �P2

MME launches new census targeting agricultural, livestock farmsSANAULLAH ATAULLAH THE PENINSULA

The Ministry of Municipality and Environment (MME) has launched new census of agri-culture, targeting 1,230 agricul-tural farms and 7,200 livestock farms operating across the country.

“In Qatar the last census of agriculture was taken in 2000. Now we need to take a fresh census with major goal to provide a complete census data

for making policies and plans to boost agriculture sector,” said Adel Al Yafei, Head of Technical Committee for Census at MME.

Speaking in Qatar TV pro-gramme, Al Yafei said the census of agriculture will identify the challenges which will contribute greatly in state efforts which target to increase self-sufficiency of Qatar in agri-culture produce to 70 percent by 2023.

“Census of agriculture will be conducted in two phases. In

first phase census data about agricultural farms and live-stock farms will be taken, however, in the second phase survey on cost of the project and produce will be con-ducted,” said Al Yafei.

“We started taking census data under new census of agri-culture which will continue until end of October 2021. After that the results of census will be released.” He said that the survey on cost will continue until May 2022 and results will

come in June 2022.“Under the census, we are

targeting farm operators, farms registered in Qatar, livestock farms (which is called locally Azab) in different types mobile, complexes and those livestock farms annexed with agricultural farms and livestock farms located in Al Nakhsh area,” said Al Yafei.

He said there are 1,230 reg-istered agricultural farms and 7,200 livestock farms are oper-ating across the country.

“We encourage to take census time to time which aims at increasing self-sufficiency of Qatar in agricultural produce to ensure the food security imple-menting Qatar National Vision 2030,” said Al Yafei.

“We called farmers (agricul-tural and livestock) to cooperate in taking census by giving accurate information,” said Al Yafei.

He said census questioners will be issued for farmers to fill it and census taker will also approach to take other infor-

mation in person.“In Qatar agriculture sector

faced challenges, during last three to four years we started work to address these chal-lenges,” said Al Yafei.

He said the challenges include for example marketing of agricultural produce and higher cost of production for some sorts. “We brought about solution to address marketing problems and we are working to make it better,” said Al Yafei. �P2

Qatar ready to stage FIFA Club World CupRIZWAN REHMAT THE PENINSULA

The health and safety protocols are in place to stage the third major football tournament — the 2020 FIFA Club World Cup —in Qatar in the last five months. Three of the six partic-ipating teams have already made touchdown in Doha — first being Korean giants Ulsan Hyundai FC followed by Egyptian powerhouse Al Ahly who arrived at the Hamad Inter-national Airport to a rapturous welcome from their fans residing in Doha. Tigres UANL of Mexico are also in town.

It won’t be long before Bra-zil’s SE Palmeiras fly in alongwith European giants Bayern Munich this week for the six-team continental block-buster that also includes top Qatari side Al Duhail.

Two brand new 2022 FIFA World Cup venues — Ahmad Bin Ali Stadium and the Edu-cation City Stadium— will host the matches where 30 percent

fan attendance is allowed.The Ministry of Public Health

(MoPH)—which also monitored and assisted state authorities in

hosting the East and West Zone matches of the 2020 AFC Cham-pions League —has already created a bubble-to-bubble

environment for the Feb 4-11 event which will be covered by live TV broadcast right around the world. �P2

Qatar's Al Duhail players are seen during a training session in Doha yesterday. Al Duhail are one of the teams which will feature in the 2020 FIFA Club World Cup that also includes Korean giants Ulsan Hyundai FC, Egyptian powerhouse Al Ahly, Tigres UANL of Mexico, Brazil’s SE Palmeiras and European giants Bayern Munich. The Feb 4-11 tournament will be played at two brand new 2022 FIFA World Cup venues — Ahmad Bin Ali Stadium and the Education City Stadium.

The FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 Hospitality Programme will offer guests hospitality packages which include official match tickets plus a wide range of on-site services at the stadiums such as gourmet catering, preferential parking, entertainment, and gifts, as well as additional ancillary services, including accommodation and air transportation.

The amount sets another FIFA

World Cup record, far

exceeding the sales targets

secured by MATCH

Hospitality for the equivalent

sales agent tender processes

conducted in connection with

the 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil

and 2018 FIFA World Cup

Russia.

NSD Committee amends guidelines for activitiesQNA — DOHA

The National Sports Day (NSD)Committee announced the amendments in the conditions and guidelines for the sports activities after coordination with the Ministry of Public Health.

The committee said that this was based on the public health indicators of the coronavirus pandemic in Qatar, in order to prevent its spread. The Com-mittee decided that the sporting activities for this year should be individual and only in the open places, so that the number of players or participants does not exceed four people in one group, while adhering to the safe dis-tance and distance that is not less than three meters during the sports activity.

It is not allowed to organise any sports events inside closed places and to allow only indi-vidual sporting activities, and it is also not allowed to hold group activities such as matches and others that require contact with other players. The National Sports Day Committee called on all authorities in the country not to organise activities or events that would cause gatherings, which violates the preventive protocol set by the Ministry of Public Health.

OFFICIAL NEWS

02 TUESDAY 2 FEBRUARY 2021HOME

Shura Council reviews draft law on endowments QNA — DOHA

The Shura Council held its regular weekly meeting under the chairmanship of the Speaker, H E Ahmed bin Abdullah bin Zaid Al Mahmoud, yesterday.

During the meeting, the Council dis-cussed a draft law on endowment (Waqf) that includes (9) chapters and (58) articles and involves provisions related to the establishment of the endowment, its distributions and conditions, the civil endowment, and the supervision of the endowment, its maintenance, archi-tecture and investment.

The draft will replace Law No. (8) of 1996 regarding endowment, in the framework of updating legislation to keep pace with developments in this regard.

After the discussion, the Council decided to refer the aforementioned draft law to the Legal and Legislative Affairs Committee to study it and submit a report on it to the Council.

H E the Speaker of the Shura Council briefed the Council on his meeting on Sunday with First Vice President of the Transitional Sovereignty Council of the Republic of Sudan H E Lt. Gen. Mohamed

Hamdan Daglo, in which they reviewed the relations between the two brotherly countries and exchanged views on a number of issues of common interest.

The Speaker also briefed the Council on the results of his meeting with Pres-ident of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) H E Duarte Pacheco following the previous session of the Council.

The Speaker described the meeting as fruitful, adding that it opened new horizons for developing and expanding cooperation between the Council and the IPU. H E the Speaker explained that the discussions, in which H E the Deputy Speaker of the Shura Council and a number of members of the Shura Council participated, focused on strengthening the relationship and ways to improve the performance and mechanisms of the IPU’s work and confirm its role as an

expression of people’s aspirations in various countries of the world.

The discussions also included areas of support provided by the IPU to the UNOCT Programme Office on Parlia-mentary Engagement in Preventing and Countering Terrorism, which was agreed to be headquartered in Doha and its

activities will cover the parliaments of the world, as well as the IPU’s support for The Global Organization of Parlia-mentarians Against Corruption (GOPAC), which elected the Speaker of the Shura Council as its chairman, and Doha will be the headquarters of its General Secretariat.

Speaker of the Shura Council H E Ahmed bin Abdullah bin Zaid Al Mahmoud chairing a regular weekly session of the Council, yesterday.

Women’s Emergency Department

temporarily moved to Pediatric

Emergency at Al Wakra Hospital

THE PENINSULA — DOHA

Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) has announced that W o m e n ’ s E m e r g e n c y Department at Al Wakra Hospital will be temporarily transferred to Pediatric Emer-gency Department at the same hospital. The Women’s Emer-gency Department will continue to provide healthcare services to patients at the temporary location until some necessary expansion and reno-vation works are completed.

The intended works, which pertain to security and safety procedures at the hospital, are expected to last for two con-secutive months starting Feb-ruary 8, 2021 after which time services would resume as usual at the original location.

Head of Obstetrics &

Gynecology Department at Al Wakra Hospital, Dr. Lolwa Al Ansari, said that Women’s Emergency Department treats 80-120 patients daily. It pro-vides expectant women with urgent obstetric, gynaecologic, and other medical emergencies healthcare services 24/7. “Starting February 8th, patients seeking care at the Department will have to proceed to Gate No. 6 instead of Gate No.2 to reach the temporary location. Services at the Pediatric Emer-gency Department will not be affected by the temporary transfer of Women’s Emer-gency Department where the PED will be fully operational throughout the expansion and renovation works period. Women’s Emergency Patients will have a separate entrance,” Dr. Al Ansari explained.

QA Cargo to fly endangered animals to their habitats freeTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Qatar Airways Cargo has announced Chapter 2 of its sustainability programme WeQare: Rewild the Planet. The cargo carrier is committed to preserving wildlife and endan-gered animals and has pledged to transport these animals back to their natural habitat free of charge.

Guillaume Halleux, Qatar Airways Chief Officer Cargo, said, “We are concerned about

the legacy we leave for the future generation. As the world’s leading cargo carrier, we strongly believe in giving back to the community and pro-tecting our environment. We all know that animals have an important role in preserving ecological balance, which ensures the existence and sta-bility of the environment. Through Chapter 2 – Rewild the Planet, we want to encourage this preservation, and that is why we are offering free

transport to bring wild animals back to where they belong.”

The airline has released a series of striking advertise-ments and a special video to c o m m e m o r a t e t h e announcement and importance of Chapter 2. Through them, Qatar Airways Cargo aims to raise awareness of such issues among its customers and air cargo stakeholders.

All the chapters of WeQare are based on the core pillars of sustainability - environment,

society, economy, and culture. The programme has the backing and support of Qatar Airways Cargo employees.

The cargo carrier believes that such positive actions will have a ripple effect and inspire people to put sustainability on top of their agenda.

Qatar Airways Cargo will launch more chapters in the coming months, all of which are directly linked to the car-rier’s everyday activities. Through such innovative

programmes, Qatar Airways Cargo leads the way for a more sustainable and socially responsible air cargo industry and plays an active role in building tomorrow’s world.

As an inaugural signatory to the Buckingham Palace Decla-ration in March 2016 and a founding member of the United for Wildlife Transport Task-force, Qatar Airways has a zero tolerance policy towards the illegal trade of endangered wildlife.

MME advises property verification before transactionTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

The Ministry of Municipality and Environment (MME) has advised the public to carry out property transactions only after proper verification from the authorit ies concerned.

The Ministry said it recently observed a growing phenomenon of advertising through various media outlets to promote the sale of properties that are not proven on the pretext that they are land homes or sea chalets and other state-owned properties, said the Ministry in a statement.

Whereas the aforemen-tioned real estate is subjected to the provisions of Law No. 10 of 1987 regarding public and private state property and its amendments and executive decisions since they are state properties.

Therefore it is not allowed for selling, buying, assigning them, claiming their ownership, using them, or arranging any rights In kind, without the official approval by the State Property Department of the Ministry.

According to the provi-sions of Law No. 10 of 1987, the Ministry advised the public not to deal with any advertise-ments related to land houses or chalets without visiting the State Property Department or Livestock Department with regard to the farms to ensure their legal status.

FROM PAGE 1

“We are delighted to see such extraordinary interest in the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 when following challenging times, the world can come together for a global festival of football,” said FIFA Director of Commercial Revenue Nick Brown.

“The FIFA Hospitality Pro-gramme has a proven track record of delivering a fantastic range of products, and in late 2022 we will open the door to world-class services and mem-orable experiences for

hospitality clients.” Nasser Al Khater, CEO of the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 LLC, said: “The launch of the global hospitality packages for the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 brings us another step closer to deliv-ering an extraordinary tour-nament in just under two years’ time. We have always said that Qatar 2022 will set new global benchmarks to deliver mega-events, and hospitality is no exception. Making guests welcome and feel entirely at home is a central tenet of Arab and Middle Eastern culture."

FROM PAGE 1

Internet users are also enjoined to protect personal data and not disclose them to unknown persons. People should also be cautious when dealing with programs and websites, protect e-mail and credit cards, and inform the concerned authorities in case of suspicion of any procedures that may represent an elec-tronic crime.

Responding to how credit cards can be protected from theft, Al Kaabi said personal information should not be dis-closed by e-mail, like name and credit card details. He stressed that transactional PINs should be memorised and not written down for safety.

“Parents should not leave phones or computers with children unattended. Parental control applications can be applied in children’s phones to filter harmful content,” Al Kaabi added.

World Cup Qatar 2022 hospitality

pre-sales reach record $90m

High Internet

dependence

main cause of

cyber blackmail

The draft will replace Law No. (8)

of 1996 regarding endowment, in

the framework of updating

legislation to keep pace with

developments in this regard.

Qatar ready to stage FIFA Club World Cup amid COVID-19 precautionsFROM PAGE 1

Nasser Al Khater, Chief Executive Officer of the LOC, said the event in Qatar will be delivered with health and safety in mind. “We’re very pleased to be hosting the FIFA Club World Cup for the second time in Feb-ruary and will ensure it’s delivered in a way that safe-guards and prioritises the health and safety of fans, players and officials. The tournament offers us a golden opportunity to test our stadiums, training sites and infrastructure as we continue

to gear up for the FIFA World Cup in 2022,” Al Khater said in an official statement.

He added: “During a global pandemic which is affecting everyone, we continue to believe in the power of football to unite people and spread joy during these difficult times. Qatar is committed to playing a role in ensuring the continu-ation of top-level club football while the pandemic continues to affect people’s lives.”

Yesterday, the Local Organ-ising Committee (LOC) of the

2020 FIFA Club World Cup issued guidelines for fans with tickets for the eight-day tour-nament being held during COVID-19 times.

Abdulaziz Al Mawlawi, the LOC’s Host Country Operations Director, yesterday said: “Our main message to fans is to plan ahead before you travel. Check the official channels and social media for any updates in relation to road closures, public transport and COVID-19 pro-tocols.” The state-of-the-art Metro is running smoothly to

ferry fans from the stations — easily accessible with cabs or private cars — to match desti-nations. The venue gates will be thrown open to ticket holders three hours before kick off. Once the fans reach their venues, social distancing would be paramount. According to LOC’s Al Mawlawi, arriving early and leaving late should be the mantra for the event.

“We encourage all spectators to arrive at least one hour before kick-off. Be prepared to follow any social distancing measures

– wear a mask, show your EHTERAZ app when prompted and don’t get too close to anyone who is not from the same household,” Al Mawlawi. “We are also advising people not to be in a rush to leave the stadium after the match ends. Traffic is likely to be heavy and people may need to wait to board the Doha Metro due to social dis-tancing measures. Metro services will be running much later than usual to help ensure fans have a smooth journey back home,” he added.

MME launches new census for agricultural farmsFROM PAGE 1

Al Yafei said that census of agriculture will con-tribute greatly in bringing about appropriate solutions for the problems faced by the agriculture sector.

“To overcome on climate challenge in the country, we started adopting most advanced technologies like greenhouses, cooled shaded farms and hydro-ponics,” said Al Yafei.

“We moved from tradi-tional way of farming to high tech farming. This is one of the solution on which we are working.”

He said that the ministry provided another solution by helping farmers in marketing

their produce.“We opened ‘yards’ winter

vegetable markets and launched programme to market local agricultural produce in major shopping centers. Contracts were also signed with Mahaseel Company for marketing local agricultural produce,” said Al Yafei.

He said taking census of agriculture at this time is very appropriate to evaluate the resources as we have all data

and agricultural infrastructure to identify the problems enabling decision makers in gov-ernment entities to take suitable decision in making policies and plans to solve the problems.

Amir sends condolences to Custodian of the Two Holy MosquesDOHA: Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin

Hamad Al Thani sent yesterday a

cable of condolences to the Cus-

todian of the Two Holy Mosques

King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud

of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia on

the death of H H Princess Noura bint

Fahd bin Mohammed bin Abdur-

rahman Al Saud. — QNA

Prime Minister holds phone call with Kuwait PM

DOHA: Prime Minister and Min-

ister of Interior, H E Sheikh Khalid

bin Khalifa bin Abdulaziz Al Thani

held a telephone call with Prime

Minister of the State of Kuwait, H

H Sheikh Sabah Khalid Al Moham-

mad Al Sabah yesterday. During

the telephone conversation, they

reviewed the strong fraternal rela-

tions between the two brotherly

countries and means of promoting

and developing them, in addition

to the regional and international

developments. — QNA

Adel Al Yafei, Head of Technical Committee for Census at MME

03TUESDAY 2 FEBRUARY 2021 HOME

Secretary-General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs H E Dr. Ahmed bin Hassan Al Hammadi heading the Qatari delegation at the meeting.

Qatar, India hold political consultationsQNA — DOHA

The Foreign Ministries of the State of Qatar and the Republic of India held a session of political consulta-tions through visual commu-nicat ion technology yesterday.

Secretary-General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs H E Dr. Ahmed bin Hassan Al Hammadi headed the Qatari side, while Secretary of the Ministry of External Affairs for Consular Affairs, Pass-ports, Visas and Expatriate Affairs H E Sanjay Bhattach-aryya chaired the Indian side.

During the political con-sultations round, they reviewed the bilateral coop-eration and relations, in addition to issues of common concern.

Public urged to wear face masksproperly to curb spread of virus FAZEENA SALEEM THE PENINSULA

Amid the increase in number of daily COVID-19 cases, the Ministry of Public Health(MoPH) has reminded public that wearing a face mask in public helps prevent the spread of COVID-19 — but only if worn properly, which is mandatory as part of COVID-19 precau-tionary measures.

In a social media campaign the Ministry has highlighted steps to follow to get the maximum protection, saying, “Face masks are a proven way to help prevent the spread of COVID-19.”

The appropriate use, storage and cleaning or disposal of masks is essential to make them as effective as possible.

The steps to follow while wearing a face mask include: washing or sanitising hands before putting on and after removing the mask; ensuring the mask fits to cover nose, mouth and chin; washing hands before and after touching the mask; not allowing the mask to hang around the neck; and changing the mask if its visibly soiled or moist.

Yesterday, the Ministry of Interior (MoI) took action against 263 individuals for not wearing masks in public.

The officials have referred these individuals to the Public Prosecution for not wearing masks.

“In line with the cabinet decision based on Law No. 17 of 1990 regarding infectious diseases, 263 people were referred to the Public Prose-cution for non-compliance with wearing masks,” the Ministry said on Twitter.

Till now 8,431 people have been referred to the Public Prosecution for not wearing masks.

“The competent authorities call on the public to adhere to the precautionary and pre-ventive decisions in force to protect them and others from the spread of the Coronavirus in society,” MoI added.

Masks should be used as part of comprehensive measures to suppress trans-mission and save lives; the use of a mask alone is not sufficient to provide an adequate level of protection against COVID-19.

MoI and health authorities have been continuously warning the public to follow precautionary measures like wearing masks, following social distancing, active use of Ehteraz app and restricting the number of people in vehicles to stop the COVID-19 pandemic from spreading.

The MoPH in its daily COVID-19 update report has said that due to the measures put in place by government and support of the public in fol-lowing preventive steps, Qatar succeeded in suppressing the spread of the virus since its peak in July. However, over the past month in Qatar has seen a gradual and consistent increase in the number of new daily infections. MOPH reported yes-terday 385 new confirmed cases of coronavirus during the last 24 hours, of which 363 were from community cases and 22 from travellers returning from abroad.

Sidra Medicine awarded new ACGME-I accreditations in paediatric specialitiesTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Sidra Medicine, a Qatar Foun-dation entity, has been awarded new accreditations for its fellowship programmes from the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education- International (ACGME-I).

The ACGME-I is a body directly aligned with ACGME, the international best practice standard that accredits the majority of graduate medical training programs for doctors in the United States. The accredi-tation demonstrates that Sidra Medicine’s graduate medical education programs have met ACGME-I’s established

standards for institutional, foun-dational, and advanced specialty education.

The latest ACGME-I accred-itations at Sidra Medicine include paediatric surgery, pae-diatric radiology, paediatric nephrology and neo-natal-perinatal medicine. These are in addition to existing ACGME-I accreditations that Sidra Med-icine already has for pediatric pulmonology, paediatric car-diology, paediatric neurology and child and adolescent mental health. The accredi-tation process for the new fel-lowship programs included a comprehensive evaluation of Sidra Medicine, its academic

and administrative effec-tiveness, with a specific focus on the robustness of its internal quality assurance system. This includes policies, practices and how they impact the quality of all the medical programs offered by the healthcare organization.

Chair of Medical Education at Sidra Medicine, Prof. Ibrahim Janahi said: “The ACGME-I employs a comprehensive, peer-review process not only to evaluate but also to improve and publicly recognize programs and sponsoring institutions in graduate medical education that meet — and often exceed — standards of educational quality."

To date, 8,431 people

have been referred to the

Public Prosecution for

not wearing face masks

in public.

Mowasalat supports FIFA Club World Cup THE PENINSULA — DOHA

Mowasalat (Karwa) will provide its services to the participating clubs’ teams, including players, officials, and the organising committee staff of the FIFA Club World Cup Qatar 2020.

FIFA organises this interna-tional tournament between the six continental champions worldwide and the host coun-try’s champions. Al Duhail will represent Qatar in the compe-tition, which will run from Feb-ruary 4 to 11. In close collabo-ration with the local authorities and committee, Mowasalat will also shuttle the big numbers of football lovers and fans to and from the hosting FIFA World Cup stadiums.

Mowasalat (Karwa) CEO

Fahad Saad Al Qahtani, com-mented, “This event is a prelude on our road to 2022. We are proud that we have the capacity and know-how to service a major international event like

the FIFA Club World Cup in Qatar. Our company owns a diverse fleet of buses, including city buses, luxury coaches, buses equipped with ramps for wheelchair users, and eco-friendly CNG and electrical buses to serve the needs of all of our guests. Highly trained professional drivers and tech-nicians complete our turnkey transport solutions.”

“In the continuous fight of COVID-19 and to ensure safe travels for our passengers, we have also developed an inte-grated plan for the cleaning and sterilisation process of all our vehicles, following the highest international sanitary standards. We look forward to a thrilling and successful tour-nament,” he added.

Six arrested for violating home quarantine rulesQNA — DOHA

The designated authorities arrested yesterday six persons who violated the requirements of the home quarantine, they committed to following, which they are legally accountable for, in accordance with the proce-

dures of the health authorities in the country.

The arrest of the violators came in implementation of the precautionary measures in force in the country, approved by the Ministry of Public Health, to curb the spread of the COVID-19. The violators, who

are currently being referred to the designate prosecution, are: Bassim Sameer Said, Hassan Osama Hussein Abdulaziz, Ahmed Osama Hussein Abdulaziz Al Motawa, Abdullah Thani Bakhit Abdullah Al Sabie, Mohammed Seyafiq bin Nordin Asimi, and Nseetor J R.

Qatar National Library provides insights into pastTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Ancient manuscripts and heritage objects were put under the spotlight when Qatar National Library played host to a special six-day event. The ‘Scientific Applications in Cultural Heritage Forum’, launched online on January 25 and attracted a sold-out audience who enjoyed a series of lectures and practical sessions led by renowned histo-rians and conservation experts from several fields of interest.

The principal focus of the event was on pigments and dyes used in manuscripts and heritage items. Audience members also learned about the most important spectroscopic techniques for non-invasive and non-destructive analysis of precious documents and objects, which has an impact on fundamental knowledge, inter-pretation, and conservation.

The forum also featured lectures on Arabic and Persian pigments and how they were made; the various dyestuffs used for Arabic manuscripts,

extraction methods and dyeing processes; and conservation issues and deterioration proc-esses encountered with pig-ments and dyes found in Islamic manuscripts.

Secretary-General of the Qatari National Commission for Education, Culture and Science, Dr. Hamda Al Sulaiti and Director of Distinctive Collec-tions at Qatar National Library, Stephane Ipert delivered opening day speeches.

Among the experts who gave talks were Amelie Couvrat Desvergnes, paper and book researcher and conservator; Dr. Mandana Barkeshli, conser-vation scientist and principal fellow at the University of Mel-bourne; Dr. Antonino Cosentino, cultural heritage sci-entist; Maxim Nasra, book con-servation specialist at Qatar National Library; and Dr. Sadra Zekrgoo, materials conser-vation scientist at the University of Melbourne.

On what the future holds for the forum and the discus-sions it has started, Dr. Al-Sulaiti said: “Owing to the

significance of the issues and techniques discussed and their impact on heritage conser-vation, the first edition of the forum drew a huge crowd of over 600 specialists and enthusiasts from all around the world, who enjoyed our delivery of the lectures in both English and Arabic. It was an honor to work with Qatar National Library on such a suc-cessful event and I am looking forward to our continued cooperation on other important initiatives that con-tribute to heritage preservation in the Arab region and the Middle East.”

Nasra said: “It was delightful to engage in an immersive intellectual exchange with an enthusiastic audience around such fasci-nating topics, and I believe all of those participating got a great deal out of it. It is a new success for the IFLA PAC regional center at Qatar National Library to organize this remarkable forum, which despite being virtual success-fully attracted a large audience

from all over the world.“The importance of pre-

serving items from the past cannot be overstated, as these documents are simply irre-placeable. I thought the forum was a wonderful event and I’m now looking forward to being part of similar events at our Library over the course of this year – hopefully when our visitors will be able to attend in person.”

The Scientific Applications in Cultural Heritage Forum comes in the framework of the Library’s mission to preserve the nation’s and region’s heritage by developing innovative programs

and services that are delivered in a trusted information

environment and a technologi-cally exceptional setting.

An ancient manuscripts section at Qatar National Library.

Mowasalat (Karwa) CEO Fahad Saad Al Qahtani

04 TUESDAY 2 FEBRUARY 2021HOME

Msheireb Museums awards design competition winnersTHE PENINSULA - DOHA

Msheireb Museums has announced the winners of the Msheireb Museums Design Competition that was launched last September; targeting creative designers in Qatar.

The judging panel com-prised Eng. Ali Al Kuwari, Acting CEO of Msheireb Properties, Dr. Hafez Ali Msheireb Museums Director and Amir Berbić, Dean of VCUarts Qatar.

The submitted designs were evaluated according to specific criteria, such as uniqueness and creativity of the invention, use of Msheireb Museums, and or Msheireb Downtown Doha con-cepts. All submitted projects were required not to have been submitted to other competitions previously.The competition received 207 designs, and after fierce competition Nimrah Kabiruddin won first place for her design that captures the structure of Msheireb mosque using laser-cut plywood

without any adhesive. Coming in second place, Hamzah Al Mujahed presented his design titled “Memories”; reflecting Msheireb Museums using four different candles representing the four heritage houses and releasing different smells that carried their memories. Nima Noorudin came third place for designing an oil diffuser made of wood and marble in gold finish.

Dr. Hafez Ali, Director of Msheireb Museums, handed the awards and gifts to the winners, commenting: “Msheireb Museums congratulates the winners for showcasing profi-ciency and creativity. Their designs will be displayed with their names in Msheireb Museums Gift Shop. We will continue to support and promote youth creativity and innovation.”

He added: “The competition received many entries, and it was challenging to decide the winners. We hope the winners

consider their achievement as a starting point in their future careers. Msheireb Properties are proud of such initiatives that come under our social respon-sibility to support the creative community, especially the youth”.

Msheireb Museums Design competition required all partic-ipants to submit a creative design to create a unique sou-venir product that represents Msheireb Museums or Msheireb Downtown Doha, which can be showcased and sold in the Msheireb Museums gift shop.The invitation was open to all designers, innovators, students, and the general public aged 18 and above who are residents of Qatar. Its main objective is to inspire the creative youth, explore new talents, and pre-serve the Qatari national her-itage and legacy.The gift shop at Msheireb Museums is a perfect space to display and buy tradi-tional gifts representing Qatar’s identity and heritage.

Winners of the Msheireb Museums Design Competition with officials at the awards ceremony held recently.

Awqaf Ministry partners with‘A Flower Each Spring’ programQNA- DOHA

The Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs announced support for ‘A Flower Each Spring’ program of Qatar Foun-dation’s Qur’anic Botanic Garden, to implement its activ-ities and events throughout the year.

Speaking at a press con-ference held on Sunday, Director-General of the General Department of Endowments at the Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs, Dr. Sheikh Khalid bin Mohammed Al Thani expressed pleasure with this environmental partnership with ‘A Flower Each Spring’ program.

He noted that the part-nership includes all activities and events of the program throughout this year, aiming to realise the ‘endowment is a Community Partnership’ slogan and open horizons for cooper-ation to spread environmental awareness, which Islam has been keen on.

For his part, Chairman of A Flower Each Spring program, Dr. Saif Ali Al Hajari, in remarks to Qatar News Agency (QNA), expressed thanks and appreci-ation for the endowment support provided by the General Department of Endow-ments which aims at contrib-uting to the field of the envi-ronment as a heritage that must be preserved, developed and maintain its sustainability for future generations, thus rising the hope for a better environ-mental future, in implemen-tation of Qatar National Vision 2030.

Dr. Al Hajari said that A Flower Each Spring Program is an educational and behavioral

program that targets the entire community, especially the young people and the family, given the health effects of nature for the achievement of sustainable development, indi-cating that the ‘Tribulus ter-restris’ has been chosen for the year 2021.

Dr. Al Hajari noted many programs and activities such as land and sea field trips, beach cleaning activities, and the childhood and environment program which provides envi-ronmental lectures for children via remote visual communi-cation technology in both Arabic and English, in addition to the Green Tent Program and other community events in cooperation with schools, youth centers and cultural institutions to enhance environmental and value awareness.

A Flower Each Spring program celebrates each year one of the plants that grow in Qatar focusing on perennial plants of special importance to the coastal and desert nature of the country.

There are about 350 plants and flowers in Qatar.

This year, the program aims to introduce to the society the contributions of the endow-ments to the 17 United Nations principles in the fields of health, poverty, agriculture and others.

Sponsored by H H Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, A Flower Each Spring program is one of the initiatives of the Qur’anic Botanic Garden at Qatar Foun-dation for Education, Science and Community Development. The program is concerned with environmental education about wildlife in Qatar.

Director-General of the General Department of Endowments at the Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs, Dr. Sheikh Khalid bin Mohammed Al Thani (right), and Chairman of A Flower Each Spring program, Dr. Saif Ali Al Hajari, during the press conference.

Lulu announces ‘Win Half Million’ winnersTHE PENINSULA - DOHA

Mega e-raffle draw of ‘Win Half Million Riyals Shopping Gift Vouchers’ promotion was held at Lulu Hypermarket D-Ring Road branch under the supervision of an inspector from the Consumer Protection Department under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry whereby Lulu gift vouchers for a total sum of half million Qatari riyals were given away to 230 winners.

Lulu Management has advised all winners to contact Lulu Customer Service counter or Accounts Department at Lulu Hypermarket in D-Ring branch to collect their prizes. There are 10 winners of shopping vouchers QR10,000 each, 20 winners of shopping vouchers QR5,000 each, 100 winners of shopping vouchers QR2,000 each and 100 winners of shopping vouchers QR1,000 each.

The list of winners is available at LuLu Hypermarket’s website and at the customer service counters at all 14 Lulu outlets across Qatar. For more details, people can visit website: https://www.luluhypermarket.com/en-qa/winners.

Lulu officials and an inspector from the Consumer Protection Department during the Mega e-raffle draw of ‘Win Half Million’ at Lulu Hypermarket D-ring road branch.

Ooredoo launches Manufacturing Management moduleTHE PENINSULA - DOHA

Ooredoo has launched a new module – Manu-facturing Management – with its WallPost ERP service.

The new Manufacturing Management module is the latest to become available with the service, adding to the many modules already on offer.

Business customers wishing to experience the WallPost ERP service, with core modules including the new Manufacturing Management module, can currently do so on a 30-day free trial basis.

Ooredoo WallPost ERP combines Ooredoo’s communications expertise with software devel-opment from Smart Management IT Solutions and the accounting and business acumen of Moore Stephens.

Businesses can use Ooredoo WallPost ERP to remotely manage key operations such as Human Resources, Sales and Customer Rela-tionship Management and much more.

Adding to the existing modules’ capabilities, the WallPost Manufacturing Management module automates and streamlines business processes for manufacturing industries. It uses integrated, real-time sales and operational and financial information to accurately anticipate, plan and respond to orders and new demand and reduce forecasting errors.

The module enables increased revenue and reduced overall operating costs since it can elim-inate manual processes. Real-time data can be accessed from any device, anywhere in the world, using the solution’s central dash-board tool through intuitive apps available for both iOS and Android devices.

The service also provides real-time per-formance visibility and decision-making across any organisation, project, or employee.

Businesses can enjoy many benefits with Ooredoo WallPost ERP, especially enhanced productivity, efficiency, and cost optimi-sation. The solution is fully scalable and can be tailored to all sizes and verticals of

enterprise, from SMEs to large corporations. The Manufacturing Management module is particu-larly geared towards the needs of industrial pro-ducers in the region.

Enterprises using the service can rely on business continuity and future-proof technology, with Ooredoo’s specialist 24/7 support team guiding digital transformation.

Chief Business Officer, Ooredoo Sheikh Nasser Bin Hamad Bin Nasser Al Thani – said: “We’re committed to supporting our business customers as they adapt to a new working envi-ronment, due to both the ongoing pandemic sit-uation and the organic development of tech-nology and processes within their industries. We work closely with major technology and inno-vation giants to ensure the solutions reflect cus-tomer needs and ensure customers - in turn - can focus on their own business and customers. A trial of the Ooredoo WallPost ERP with the Manufacturing module will let them evaluate just how efficiently they can continue to manage their operations.”

A 30-day trial of WallPost ERP includes one week of service implementation and can be requested until the end of February 2021.

Business customers can leverage the Ooredoo Advantage, making Ooredoo’ Best for Business’ thanks to its breadth and depth of talent, best fixed and mobile networks, broadest portfolio of ICT services and solutions, and trusted partner for 60 years.

Qatari singer Fahad Al Kubaisi wins Hollywood Music in Media AwardMOHAMAD BWARYTHE PENINSULA ONLINE

Qatari singer Fahad Al Kubaisi has won the prestigious Hollywood Music in Media Award (HMMA) for 2020 in Best World Music category.

The 2020 HMMA function was streamed virtually on January 27.

Al Kubaisi is a singer, record producer and model.

He is known for producing a sophisticated genre of Khaliji music. He won the award for the song Yama Qlt Lek.

“I am really happy and grateful to be receiving this award and I would like to thank everyone who helped me to make this dream happen. Thank you very much,” Al Kubaisi said after his name had been picked as the winner during the online event.

“This award is very important to me in my artistic career, and it is very important that you communicate our music to international com-posers and musicians. I was very keen to present Arabic music among the European and international musicians partic-ipating in the award,” he told Qatar TV in an interview.

Al Kubaisi was picked from a list 12 nominees from all over

the world. He won the “Best Male

Khaliji Singer Award” in 2018 during the Golden Panther Music Awards in New York.

“An important aspect of this award is that it sheds light on Gulf and Arab music and its development significantly. The organizing committee of the award was happy that it is the first time an Arab contestant had participated in this award because our music is com-pletely different from European and global,” he added.

HMMA is the first award organization to honor original music (song and score) in all visual media from around the globe including film, TV, video games, trailers, commercial

advertisements, documentaries, and special programmes.

The HMMA nominations have historically been repre-sentative of the nominees of key awards shows that are announced months later.

The HMMA also celebrates emerging, independent artists and music influencers from around the globe for creative a n d i n n o v a t i v e contributions.

The Hollywood Music In Media Academy was created as a statutory voting body of entertainment professionals and journalists to assist in the selection of winners from des-ignated nomination categories within the Hollywood Music in Media Awards.

MOHAMMED OSMANTHE PENINSULA

Civil wars and political turmoil in some Middle Eastern coun-tries during past many years have forced millions of people to become refugees in neigh-bouring countries or Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs).

The wars in Syria and Iraq have thrown millions out of their homelands pushing them to take refuge in neighbouring countries like Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and Egypt depending for years on humanitarian aids which only meet their minimum needs to survive.

The needs of refugees differ from season to season, partic-ularly in winter when they need timely and substantial assistance to shield them from the harsh weather.

Recently heavy storms and floods in North West Syria damaged or destroyed more than 62 camps and 2,558 tents, and tens of thousands of people have been affected by the hard-ships they were already facing for the tenth consecutive year since they have been uprooted from their homes. The COVID-19 pandemic has further devastated the situation of families this year who are facing even greater hardships than before.

Anticipation of such suf-ferings and fear of the critical dangers the refugees may be exposed to in winter season, are the factors which drive inter-national organizations such as UNHCR to launch initiatives every year before the winter season with the aim of securing the basic needs of these refugees.

For better understanding of the situation and support the UNHCR in its endeavors, The Peninsula approached Rula Amin, Senior Communication Advisor/ Spokesperson, UNHCR office of the Director of the Middle East and North Africa Bureau.

Rula Amin pointed out that there are over 10 million Syrian and Iraqi IDPs and refugees in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt. “Many had been dis-placed for years and had spent most of their savings already; the devastating impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is exacer-bating their burdens especially during the winter season,” she said.

The UNHCR has identified an estimated 3.8 million people of the most vulnerable and need timely and substantial help to cope with the hardships antic-ipated during this winter season, she said, adding it will cost $211.3m to ensure that life-saving winterization assistance is in place before the harsh and challenging winter season starts.

Underlining the UNHCR ini-t iat ive “Winter izat ion Assistance Plan 2020-2021”, the UNHCR’s Senior Communi-cation Advisor and Spokes-person Rula Amin pointed out that winterization plan is UNHCR’s winter appeal to support the most vulnerable refugees and internally dis-placed people in the MENA region this winter and covers the period from September 2020 to March 2021.

“The programme aims to

support 3.8 million Syrian and Iraqi IDPs and refugees,” she said, noting that most of the planned interventions will be in the form of seasonal cash assistance, with a small com-ponent of winter items such as blankets, mattresses, winter warm clothes, fuel, upgrading winter related infrastructures and other items.

Asked about what makes different the winter-related sup-ports from the assistance the UNHCR provides during other months of the year, Rula explained, “Most of the refugees are living in urban areas and alike the local communities have access to markets and services what necessitate providing ref-ugees with cash enables them to fulfil their needs in a dignified manner, decide on their prior-ities and contributes to the local economy.”

UNHCR uses cash-based interventions to provide pro-

tection, assistance and services to the most vulnerable. Cash helps the displaced meet a variety of needs, including access to food, water, healthcare, shelter, that allow them to build and support live-lihoods. During the winter, UNHCR provides an additional seasonal cash assistance in the form of a one-off payment in order to help these families cover the extra costs of heating, clothes, home insulation, repairs, and/or medicine that are needed during the cold months.

To a question how the UNHCR managed to raise funds to meet the urgent and essential needs of the refugees, the UNHCR’s Senior Communi-cation Advisor and Spokes-person said, “Funds are raised from donor governments and international institutions as well as from private citizens and businesses. Some funds are raised electronically, and people are welcome to donate safely and securely from the comfort of their homes.”

Furthermore she noted that the UNHCR launched winter campaign, ‘This Winter, Commit to Kindness’, where the public was invited to donate and share their kindness with refugees and IDPs during these harsh cold months, and provide urgent support to help families

warm, through the campaign website https://giving.unhcr.org/winter/.

Additionally, she said there is the newly launched Zakat mobile application “GiveZakat App”, the first official UN Zakat app to harness the power of Islamic finance to transform the lives of those in dire need of assistance. She said that it is another way to give Zakat for winter assistance with peace of mind and simply by a click of the mouse. It can be by done through

GiveZakat App via https://play.g o o g l e . c o m / s t o r e / a p p s /details?id=org.unhcr.zakat&hl=en for Android and for IOS, it can be done via https://apps.apple.com/lb/app/givezakat-refugee-zakat-fund/id1510296509

Regarding situation in Yemen, Rula Amin pointed out that the winter in Yemen is less severe compared to elsewhere in the region. “The Shelter Cluster led by UNHCR released

recommendations for the win-terization response based on a mapping of districts that are susceptible to extreme winter temperatures (nights below 10 C°) and among the governorates where the temperatures get low during winters are Dhamar, Sana’a, Amran and Sa’ada. We have prioritized our response to assist the most vulnerable families among those displaced by the conflict or natural dis-asters and are currently living in camp-like settings.”

Further talking on Yemen, she said: “One-fourth of the four million displaced Yemenis are living in 1,600 camp-like set-tings in very difficult conditions. So, the priority is to provide vul-nerable families without shelter with an emergency shelter to protect them from cold. Addi-tionally, we are providing cash assistance to displaced Yemenis which gives them the freedom of choice to buy what they need the most - blankets, stoves and fuels and warm clothes or perform basic shelter repairs or upgrade to ensure that their shelter is sealed and can protect them from the harsh weather conditions. In some parts of the country, with the support of partners, we are distributing warm clothes and blankets.”

To another question about UNHCR efforts to protect ref-ugees from COVID-19

pandemic, curb outbreak’s spread in refugee camps/areas, provision of vaccine to them, she said the COVID-19 pan-demic is a global health crisis, and it requires a global response.

“According to UNHCR’s latest data, global forced displacement crossed the 80-million-mark midway last year, more than 50 million of whom are forcibly dis-placed within their own coun-try’s borders. Governments’ full inclusion of forcibly displaced people and migrants in the entire spectrum of responses to the

pandemic – from preparedness, to health responses, access to vaccines and social safety nets – is a lifeline for people forced to flee.”

Amin said that UNHCR has

been strongly advocating for the inclusion of refugees, internally displaced people (IDPs) and stateless individuals in the host countries’ health response plans to the virus, while urging world leaders to ensure refugees, IDP’s and stateless individuals have access to vaccinations and are included in national vacci-nation roll out plans. “UNHCR had also been supporting hosting governments to upgrade their national capacities like hospitals, ICU units, supporting with ventilators and PPE, in order to help governments include refugees in all health plans and initiatives to contain the spread of the pandemic.”

The UNHCR official noted that more than half of the Middle East and North Africa countries have indicated that refugees will be included but roll out plans in many of these countries have not started yet.

“In some countries, the national services capacity is not equipped to serve all those who are eligible. Equally, refugees and IDP’s continue to face various challenges including movement restriction and access to livelihood as well as other service provision, which may also become an obstacle to get access to medical services.”

She added: “UNHCR is con-tinuously advocating at country, regional and global levels for refugees and other people we protect to be included in national strategies. To date, out

of 90 countries currently devel-oping national COVID-19 vac-cination strategies, 51 – or 57 per cent – have included ref-ugees in their vaccination plans. We are engaged in discussions and decision-making processes within COVAX, the global initi-ative to ensure rapid and equi-table access to COVID-19 vac-cines for all countries. We are also working with international partners to ensure that ‘leaving no one behind’ and ‘equitable access to vaccines’ are not just phrases, but practice.”

Since the onset of the pan-demic, she said, refugees have been included in the national response plan in Jordan and have been able to access health care and medical treatment on par with Jordanian citizens.

“Jordan has also begun vac-cinating refugees. As part of the national COVID-19 vaccination plan which began mid-January, anyone living on Jordanian soil, including refugees and asylum seekers, is eligible to receive the vaccine free of charge. Over the coming months, Jordan aims to vaccinate 20 per cent of its pop-ulation against the virus and has currently procured three million doses of the vaccine to enable this to happen,” she added.

She said that globally, including refugees in national vaccination roll out plans is not only the moral thing to do but a must if the battle to stop or at least contain the spread of the virus is to succeed.

05TUESDAY 2 FEBRUARY 2021 HOME

The wars in Syria and Iraq have thrown millions out of their homelands pushing them to take refuge in neighbouring countries like Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and Egypt depending for years on humanitarian aids which only meet their minimum needs to survive.

UNHCR winterisation plan to support 3.8 million refugees, IDPs

24-hour 'Pharmacy & More' opens at The Pearl-QatarTHE PENINSULA- DOHA

Pharmacy & More, the leading innovative pharmacy in Qatar, has announced the opening of its newest branch in Medina Centrale at The Pearl-Qatar.

This step comes as part of the pharmacy’s strategy to introduce its products to new markets in Doha and as part of The Pearl-Qatar’s continuous endeavors to introduce inno-vative offerings that serve its residents and visitors.

The new 24-hour branch of Pharmacy & More will be a one-stop-shop for all cus-tomers’ needs and will offer a range of medicine and other products including, beauty products, grocery, gadgets, and stationery, thus bringing to Doha the concept of the innovative and all-inclusive pharmacy, which proved to be beneficial to customers in the US and Europe.

Another branch of

Pharmacy & More is also open on the Island in Porto Arabia. Delivery service will also be offered by both branches and it aims be the fastest 24/7 delivery service in The Pearl.

The Pearl-Qatar is one of the largest real-estate devel-opments in the Middle East and houses Doha’s fastest growing community with

more than 33,000 current res-idents and 15 million annual visitors. More than 350 retail shops are currently opera-tional on the Island and include popular fashion brands, coffee shops, restau-rants and other lifestyle offerings occupying more than 135,000 sqm of leased retail spaces.

Newly opened branch of Pharmacy & More in Medina Centrale at The Pearl-Qatar

Internally displaced children stand in snow near tents at an informal displacement camp in Azaz

The UNHCR has identified an estimated 3.8 million people of the most vulnerable and need timely and substantial help to cope with the hardships anticipated during this winter season and it will cost $211.3m to ensure that life-saving winterisation assistance is in place before the harsh and challenging winter season starts. Rula Amin - Senior Communication Advisor/ Spokesperson, UNHCR office

06 TUESDAY 2 FEBRUARY 2021HOME

07TUESDAY 2 FEBRUARY 2021 GULF / MIDDLE EAST

The statement is a clear

signal to the Biden

administration that Iran

expects relief from

sanctions, and the full

restoration of the United

Nations resolution that

underpins the deal,

before it starts scaling

back its nuclear activities.

It also illustrates the

major gulf between the

longtime rivals. Last

week, new Secretary of

State Anthony Blinken

said Iran needs to act first

and any US return to the

accord may take a while.

Mere signature won’t fix N-deal, Iran tells USBLOOMBERG — TEHRAN

Iran said the US has to remove key economic sanctions and return to full compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal before any talks on resetting the Islamic Republic’s atomic program.

The US “cannot return to the nuclear accord with one signature in the way that they left with one,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said in a press conference in Tehran yesterday.

The statement is a clear signal to the Biden adminis-tration that Iran expects relief from sanctions, and the full res-toration of the United Nations resolution that underpins the deal, before it starts scaling back its nuclear activities. It also illustrates the major gulf between the longtime rivals. Last week, new Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said Iran needs to act first and any US return to the accord may take a while.

“We’re waiting for US action to effectively undo sanctions, give us access to our own funds, permit easy oil exports and allow the transfer of oil revenue, shipping and insurance,” Khatibzadeh told reporters, referring to billions of dollars of payments for oil exports that are trapped

overseas because of banking sanctions.

Iran began enriching uranium to levels that exceed allowed limits after Donald Trump pulled the US from the accord and imposed sanctions in 2018.

Khatibzadeh said there won’t be any direct bilateral talks with the US until it first returns to the original bloc of six powers that brokered the accord. Washington can then join discussions over Iran’s nuclear work but within the

existing mechanism that’s out-lined within the Joint Compre-hensive Plan of Action. “As soon as the US starts to take effective measures, Iran will respond pro-portionately,” Khatibzadeh said.

The stalemate raises ques-tions over whether the crisis can be resolved before the Islamic Republic hits a deadline later this month to secure sanc-tions removal, or else end vol-untary international nuclear inspections. Moderates in Iran are also hoping for a boost from the lifting of some sanctions ahead of presidential elections set for June.

The White House on Friday appointed Robert Malley, who served on the Obama adminis-tration team that negotiated the original deal, to serve as envoy to Iran. Malley has a long back-ground in conflict resolution in the Middle East and his arrival was broadly welcomed by pro-ponents of the accord.

Iranian state TV yesterday aired the launch of the coun-try's newest satellite-carrying rocket, which it said was able to reach a height of 500km, Associated Press reported.

The footage of the solid-liquid-fuelled rocket showed the launch taking place during daytime in a desert envi-ronment. The report did not say when or where the launch happened.

Hezbollah claims downingIsraeli drone near borderAP — BEIRUT

Lebanon’s Hezbollah group said its fighters shot down an Israeli drone yesterday over a southern village near the border with Israel. The Israeli military did not confirm the shootdown but said a drone had crashed on Lebanese territory.

Tensions in the region have been rising over the past months amid Israeli airstrikes on Iran-backed fighters in neighboring Syria. Hezbollah has also vowed to respond for

the killing of one of its fighters in an Israeli strike in Syria last year.

Hezbollah’s Al Manar TV said the drone was shot down after it entered Lebanon’s air space and crashed in the village of Blida, near the border with Israel. Hezbollah fighters now have the unmanned aircraft, the report said. The Israeli military said the drone was on opera-tional activity along the border before it crashed. “There is no risk of breach of information,” the military added.

Israeli warplanes and drones violate Lebanon’s air-space almost daily, sometimes to carry out airstrike in neigh-boring Syria. The frequency of low-flying warplanes over Beirut and other parts of Lebanon has intensified in the past weeks, making residents jittery as tensions run high in the region.

Israel and Hezbollah fought to a draw in a month-long war in Lebanon in 2006. Hezbollah has in the past claimed downing Israeli drones.

Lebanese army arrests 18 people linked to ISREUTERS — BEIRUT

Lebanon’s army said yesterday it had arrested 18 people, some Lebanese and others Syrian, with links to Islamic State.

The arrests came in “field operations” that took place over the past two weeks in the border town of Arsal in the north, an army statement said.

The individuals arrested confessed to belonging to the Islamic State jihadist group and supporting it, and several weapons were also confis-cated, it said.

Juroud Arsal, a barren area in the mountains between Syria and Lebanon, was pre-viously a base of operations for insurgents fighting in the Syrian civil war, including mil-itants from Islamic State and the group formerly known as the Nusra Front.

Another quake

measuring 5.1

strikes Izmir in

western Turkey

QNA — ANKARA

A second earthquake, meas-uring 5.1 on the Richter scale, struck yesterday the coast of Karaburun, in the state of Izmir, in western Turkey.

Turkish Disaster and Emer-gency Management stated that the earthquake occurred at a depth of 3.42 km under the surface of the earth.

So far, no human or material losses has been reported.

Earlier yesterday, an earth-quake with the same mag-nitude hit the same area. No casualties or property damage were reported.

It is noteworthy that a violent earthquake with a magnitude of 6.6 on the Richter scale hit in late in October in the Turkish state of Izmir, leaving more than 44 people dead and 896 injured.

An earthquake measuring 4.9 magnitude on the Richter scale hit Faryab City in the Iranian province of Kerman on Sunday.

The Geophysics Institute of the University of Tehran stated that the quake’s epi-center was at a depth 21 kil-ometer, state news agency Irna reported.

There have been no initial reports of damage or casualties as a result of the earthquake.

Activists chain gates at UK factory of Israeli arms companyAP — LONDON

Protesters have blocked the entrance of an Israeli-owned factory in England where they claim deadly weapons are made.

Activists from Pal-estine Action and Extinction Rebellion chained the gates of the Elbit Ferranti factory in Greater Manchester early yesterday. Two pro-testers climbed onto a ledge in front of the building, daubing red paint over the windows and spraying the words “Shut Elbit Down.”

The two groups said their joint action was meant to show Elbit, Israel’s largest arms firm, that they will “continue to

take direct action until we shut Elbit down and end all complicity in sys-tematic injustice.”

Greater Manchester Police said officers were sent to the scene. Elbit Systems UK, which has 10 sites across the UK, declined to comment.

Elbit recently won a contract with Britain’s Ministry of Defence to provide technology ena-bling frontline soldiers to detect and engage enemy targets in seconds.

The company employs over 500 people in the UK in high-tech and spe-cialist manufacturing, and it also supplies a fleet of 38 aircraft to the UK military flying training school.

Activists lie in sleeping bags as protesters from Palestine Action and Extinction Rebellion occupy the Elbit-Ferranti factory, where they say weapons are being made, in Waterhead, Oldham, Britain, yesterday.

Saudi records four moreCOVID-19 deaths; Kuwaitconfirms 586 new casesAGENCIES — RIYADH/KUWAIT

Saudi Arabia reported four new COVID-19 related deaths yesterday, raising the total number of fatalities to 6,379.

The Ministry of Health con-firmed 255 new confirmed cases reported in the Kingdom in the previous 24 hours, meaning 368,329 people have now contracted the disease.

Of the total number of cases, 2,111 remain active and 371 in critical condition. According to the ministry, the highest number of cases were recorded in the capital Riyadh with 99, followed by the Eastern Province with 58, Makkah with 46, Asir recorded 12 and Qassim confirmed 10 cases. The min-istry also announced that 266 patients had recovered from COVID-19, bringing the total number of recoveries in the Kingdom to 359,839.

Kuwait's Ministry of Health (MoH) yesterday listed 586 new coronavirus (COVID-19) cases bringing caseload of con-taminations with the contagion to 165,843.

MoH official spokesperson Dr. Abdullah Al Sanad said in a statement that no new fatalities with the contagious disease were registered during the same period, thus mortalities’ toll steadied at 959.

Dr. Al Sanad added the number of people who are receiving treatment at intensive

care units amounted to 54, thus the whole count of the con-firmed infection cases and remained under medical care has stood at 6,408.

The Ministry of Health also announced the recovery of 545 people in the past 24 hours, bringing the total number of cases of COVID-19 to 158,476.

Meanwhile, Israel said yes-terday it supplied the Pales-tinians with their first shipment of COVID-19 shots, totalling 2,000 doses of Moderna’s vaccine.

The vaccines were trans-ferred into the occupied West Bank and will be used by Pal-estinian Authority medical teams, according to a statement by COGAT, Israel’s military liaison to the Palestinians.

Palestinian officials declined to confirm or deny the delivery. Israel has earmarked an additional 3,000 doses for the Palestinians, said a COGAT spokesman.

Israel has emerged as a world leader in vaccinating its citizens and the Palestinian Authority has separately been trying to secure its own doses. It has ordered a batch of Rus-sia’s Sputnik V vaccine.

The Palestinians will also be receiving upwards of 35,000 to 40,000 vaccines from the COVAX global vaccine sharing programme in the coming weeks, a World Health Organ-ization official said yesterday.

ANATOLIA — GAZA CITY

Egypt yesterday reopened the Rafah crossing with the blockaded Gaza Strip, according to the Palestinian Interior Ministry.

The border terminal will remain open in both directions for four days to allow stranded Palestinians to enter and exit the blockaded enclave, the Hamas-run ministry said in a statement.

Since the coronavirus out-break in March, the Egyptian

authorities have closed the ter-minal, in cooperation with Hamas, which rules the coastal strip.

Egypt, however, reopens the gate from time to time to allow stranded Palestinians go into and out of the strip.

In another development, a delegation from the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group arrived in Moscow yesterday for talks with Russian officials.

In a statement, the group said the visit of the delegation, led by Secretary-General Zeyad

Al Nakhala, comes upon an invitation from the Russian Foreign Ministry.

The talks will focus on bilateral relations and mobi-lizing international support to the Palestinian rights, the statement read.

It remains unclear for how long the delegation will stay in Moscow.

Russia has invited several Palestinian groups in the past year in an effort to actively con-tribute to achieving inter-Pal-estinian reconciliation.

A woman reads the Holy Quran as she waits to leave Rafah border crossing after it was opened by Egyptian authorities, amid the coronavirus disease outbreak, in the southern Gaza Strip, yesterday.

Egypt reopens Rafah crossing for 4 days

A picture released by Hezbollah media center shows what they said is an Israeli drone at an unspecified location in Lebanon. The Arabic reads: “Military media”.

Six years of raging war has forced 4 million Yemenis out of their homes. The conflict and now COVID has finished destroying the economy. Inflation is soaring. Famine is, looming. And this year, the humanitarian partners did not receive half of the money we needed to save lives.

08 TUESDAY 2 FEBRUARY 2021VIEWS

CHAIRMANDR. KHALID BIN THANI AL THANI

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

editorinchief@pen.com.qa

ACTING MANAGING EDITORMOHAMMED SALIM MOHAMED

m.salim@pen.com.qa

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

EDITORIAL

THE Local Organising Committee (LOC) of the Feb-ruary 4-11 FIFA Club World Cup has turned its attention to fans, urging them to follow strict guide-lines issued on Monday. The six-team tournament will see 30 per cent of fan attendance at the two venues to be used during the popular event - Ahmad Bin Ali Stadium and the Education City Stadium. Fans attending the games involving Qatar’s Al Duhail, Germany’s Bayern Munich, Egypt’s Al Ahly, Brazil’s SE Palmeiras, Korea’s Ulsan Hyundai FC and Mex-ico’s Tigres UANL - will have to make sure they adhere to social distancing rules after they settle into their seats.

But before stepping out of their homes or work place to attend the games, the fans must - according to LOC - arrive at the match venues at least an hour before kick off. With security filters to clear, the fans will need to show patience and have to sport face masks at all times, the LOC said on Monday. The early arrival at match venues has also been under-lined keeping in mind the temporary road restric-tions around the two tournament venues, LOC’s LOC’s Host Country Operations Director Abdulaziz Al Mawlawi said in a statement. Al Mawlawi said: “Our main message to fans is to plan ahead before you travel. Check the official channels and social media for any updates in relation to road closures, public transport and COVID-19 protocols.”

Arriving early at the match venues should not be an issue as fans can use the Doha Metro, hitch hike a car or a taxi ride, Al Mawlawi said. The LOC official said fans wanting to be in their seats early can do so with ease as the match open three hours prior to every kick-off. The LOC’s key message is: “show your EHTERAZ app when prompted and don’t get too close to anyone who is not from the same household.”

Domestic and international fans need not show concern on the timing of the new guidelines. Qatar - in the last four months - has hosted two month-long football tournaments with 32 teams featuring in dozen of matches.

The LOC is well versed on how to keep the event, the players, the officials, the fans and the technical staff safe in these trying times. The best news from a player’s perspective is a number of them will be back with their national team for the 2022 FIFA World Cup. Appearing at the FIFA Club World Cup would be a dress rehearsal for them, the fans reaching the sta-diums and the staff putting together what should be a spectacular football event.

Fans, pay attention!

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Quote of the day

We all have to play our part in the battle against the

coronavirus. We are also calling on the international

community to act together to ensure a level playing

field in relation to access to vaccines, treatments

and diagnostic tests across the globe.

Gianni Infantino, FIFA President

A file photo of Yemeni children standing outside a tent at a makeshift camp for Internally Displaced Persons in Nehm region, west of Marib city.

As the mercury takes a dip, biting cold reels across the Middle East, including some parts of Yemen. For four million war-displaced Yemenis, this is their sixth year anguishing in makeshift shelters and struggling to bring food to their children.

Abdu Ubadi is among them. He paddles across the city of Dhamar, from dawn to dusk, selling belts and sec-ondhand clothes but barely earns enough to afford one meal a day, let alone buying extra blankets or warm clothes for his five children.

I met Abdu inside a cramped room he rents in Dhamar. One single room for the entire family. And he is not even sure he will be able to keep it as he is unable to pay the rent.

This winter is particularly difficult – Abdu and other fathers and mothers - like you and me – will be worried about their kids or their own parents catching COVID-19. The pandemic has made their situation, from dire to deadly.

How will they survive the winter and COVID in one single room? What will happen if they get evicted? What will they eat when Abdu’s earning will not be sufficient?

Six years of raging war has forced 4 million Yemenis out of their homes. The con-flict and now COVID has fin-ished destroying the economy. Inflation is soaring. Famine is, looming. And this year, the humanitarian partners did not receive half of the money we needed to save lives.

I am heartbroken every time I see children shivering in the cold under flimsy tents or in damaged buildings without proper heating, warm clothes and food.

The conditions are equally precarious for those living in urban slums or damaged and abandoned buildings. Like Abdu, most families have exhausted their financial savings on food and rents.

With the generous zakat donation from Sheikh Thani Bin Abdullah Bin Thani Al-Thani Humanitarian Fund, Eid Charity amongst many others who support our work through the UNHCR Refugee Zakat Fund, my organization the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), is helping Abdu and millions of families across Yemen. We deliver shelters to those who just had their houses destroyed by the con-flict. We give blankets and mattresses to those who are

rebuilding their lives in these temporary shelters. We give families cash so that they can buy food for their children or medicines for their elderly parents. Qatar Charity also supported the most vul-nerable families in Yemen through providing cash for burials to ease the burden on families with dignity.

Our cash programme is a lifeline for hundreds of thou-sands displaced Yemeni fam-ilies. With this money, they can choose what to prioritize: some will buy new clothes while others will pay their rent. Many parents like Abdu told me that without this

cash, they would have stopped eating to make sure that their children had enough. I have seen the sac-rifices parents are ready to make to protect their children. Nobody should have to make such dramatic choices. Like you and me, they know better how to protect their loved ones.

In Yemen, this year, we helped more than 1 million Yemenis displaced by the conflict through cash grants.

With more funding, we would save many more lives. This is why I am now making this appeal to you to join us in making a difference for Yemeni families. Your gener-osity is an example to the world and with your help; I know we can support many more of the 196,000 families we have identified as in need of our support to get through the cold season.

I cannot end my appeal without telling you that through your support, Abdu retained his tenancy agreement. One room only but one that will protect him and his family in the coming months. I hope to visit him again and hopefully give him the good news that we can continue to help him until he can stand on his own feet and provide for his beloved family. Your zakat and gen-erous donations are an essential gesture of soli-darity helping millions regain their hopes and dignity.

JAPAN NEWS-YOMIURI

To achieve the government’s goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050, it is essential to attract significant funds. An envi-ronment must be created that encourages corporate behavior through investment and loans.

There is a growing trend to focus not only on corporate profits but also on sustainable growth when selecting investment targets. This is called ESG investment, focusing on environmental, social and governance efforts.

This concept was put forward by the United Nations in 2006, and it spread as it was adopted by institutional investors such as U.S. and European public pensions, which manage large amounts of assets over the long term. The outstanding amount worldwide was about $31 trillion in 2018.

In Japan, too, pension

funds and life insurance com-panies are increasing their investments in ESG fields. The global trend is to demand that companies not only maximize short-term profits, but also contribute to society. In par-ticular, the promotion of decarbonization to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is an urgent task.

Technological innovations such as renewable energy, large-scale storage batteries and the utilization of hydrogen will be necessary if Japan is to meet its goal of net zero emissions. It is important to encourage companies to focus on these areas through investment and loans.

To create a mechanism for this, the Financial Services Agency has said it will hold discussions by an expert panel to map out concrete measures around May.

To make it easier for investors to invest their

money, it is important for the companies receiving invest-ments to actively disclose information, and there are already an increasing number of cases in which companies are voluntarily doing so.

In the manufacturing industry, many companies have set targets for reducing CO2 emissions and are explaining how they are improving the energy-saving performance of their products. Some manufacturers are pro-moting themselves through the disclosure of their development schedule for materials for electric vehicle batteries and the production times for their products. Many companies are participating in an interna-tional framework that aims to utilize renewable energy sources for 100% of the elec-tricity used in their businesses.

However, unlike financial information, disclosure methods on ESG efforts vary

from company to company and are sometimes difficult for investors to understand. The government should consider unifying disclosure standards and fair evaluation methods.

It is also important for financial institutions to encourage the companies they finance to strengthen their environmental measures. The three megabanks in Japan have announced that they will, in principle, suspend new loans for coal-fired power generation.

Furthermore, it is desirable to accurately identify areas where techno-logical innovation can be expected and effectively allocate funds.

Rather than viewing global warming counter-measures as an increasing burden, companies should view them as promising growth projects and develop strategies to attract funds.

Yemen can’t wait: Millions of Yemenis urgently need our help to survive war and winter

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Established in 1996

JEAN-NICOLAS BEUZE UNHCR representative in Yemen

09TUESDAY 2 FEBRUARY 2021 MIDDLE EAST / AFRICA

The 75-member forum

represents the three main

regions of old Libya. The

voting process is taking

place under the mediation

of the UN secretary-

general’s acting special

representative for Libya,

Stephanie Williams. The

interim authority to be

chosen will seek to rebuild

state institutions and lead

Libya to a national

election on December 24.

Libya’s future in balance in UN-backed leadership voteAP — GENEVA

Delegates from Libya’s opposing sides kicked off a five-day meeting yesterday to choose an interim prime minister and a three-person presidency council in a bid to reunite the troubled oil-rich country before an election in December.

The Libyan Political Dia-logue Forum, including envoys from around Libya, was meeting under UN mediation in an undisclosed site outside Geneva in hopes of stabilising the North African country that has been largely lawless since Muammar Gaddafi’s fall and killing in 2011.

The voting process is taking place under the mediation of the UN secretary-general’s acting special representative for Libya, Stephanie Williams. The interim authority to be chosen will seek to rebuild state insti-tutions and lead Libya to a national election on December 24. A list of possible candidates has already been agreed upon.

“Reaching this far and achieving this progress in the political dialogue has been an arduous journey fraught with challenges,” Williams told the gathering. “Indeed, a year ago, this would not have been possible.”

The warring factions also agreed that a national refer-endum would be held on con-stitutional arrangements, laying the legal groundwork for the

December vote.Since Gaddafi’s ouster,

Libya has been in turmoil and split between rival administra-tions in the east and west — each backed by an array of militias and foreign powers.

The 75-member forum rep-resents the three main regions of old Libya: Tripolitania in the west, Cyrenaica in the east, and Fezzan in the southwest — each to be represented on the three-member presidential council. The prime minister is to be chosen by the candidate winning 70% of votes.

Twenty-four candidates are running for the presidential council posts. Those include Aguila Saleh, speaker of the east-based House of Representatives, Khaled Al Meshri, the head of the Tripoli-based government’s

Supreme Council of State.Libya’s top judge Mohammed

Al Hafi’s candidacy for the pres-idential council has stirred up controversy. The country’s Judges’ Association decried the move, saying he should have retired before running,

Twenty-one candidates are running for prime minister, including Fathi Bashaga, the powerful interior minister in Tripoli, and Ahmed Meitig, deputy prime minister of the UN-supported government. Bashaga, a front-runner, said the transitional government should be a national unity one that brings all Libyans together without discrimination.

“We are one kilometer away

from a successful ending of a long hectic process. Failure is definitely not an option,” he tweeted on Sunday.

Given the sheer number of candidates and the high bar needed to declare a winner, the UN mission is likely to resort to lists formed from Libya’s three regions, with each list consisting of four names, nominated for the presidential council and a prime minister position.

This is likely to lead to can-didates working together to form a most-likely-to-win list, said Jalel Harchaoui, a research fellow specialising in Libyan affairs at the Clingendael Neth-erlands Institute of Interna-tional Relations. He said foreign

countries, like Russia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, are likely exerting their sway on the choices too.

“In fact, we don’t even know whether a cabinet can be formed at all, even assuming the four positions are filled thanks to the UN process.

Last week, the United States called on Russia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates to halt their military interventions in Libya, as has been sought under the ceasefire agreement that has largely held in recent months. The ceasefire deal, inked in October, included having foreign forces and mer-cenaries leave Libya within three months but so far no

progress has been made on that.Williams said in December

there were at least 20,000 foreign fighters and merce-naries in Libya, and warned about a “serious crisis” as weapons continue to pour into the country.

Turkey is the main patron of the UN-supported gov-ernment in Tripoli, the capital, while Egypt, Russia and UAE back the forces of military com-mander Khalifa Haftar — who runs most of the east and south.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has said Libyans are making a “remarkable effort to come together” and said it’s crucial for foreign forces to withdraw.

An overview of the first day of the Libyan Political Dialogue Forum at an undisclosed location in Switzerland, yesterday.

Somali military pallbearers carry the body of former Army General Mohamed Nur Galal who was killed during a suicide attack at the Afrik hotel in Mogadishu, Somalia, yesterday.

9 killed in hotel attackin Somalia capitalREUTERS — MOGADISHU

Nine people died after Al Qaeda-linked insurgents stormed a hotel in the Somali capital Mogadishu, battling security forces until the early hours of yesterday, a police spokesman said.

A suicide car bombing on Sunday evening was followed by a shootout between Al Shabaab militants and security forces at the Hotel Afrik.

“The operation is over now. Nine people including four attackers died and over 10 civilians were injured,” Sadik Ali, told reporters from the scene and via Facebook.

The attack on a hotel in the heart of the heavily fortified city comes as Somali politicians wrangle acrimoniously over delayed elections and follows the withdrawal of around 700 US military personnel last month.

The US troops were largely supporting Somali special forces known as Danaab who

are skilled at complex opera-tions against high level al Shabaab targets.

They also enjoyed consid-erable support from the Amer-icans, including air support and medical evacuations, and some Somali politicians have raised fears the pullout ordered by U.S. President Donald Trump could weaken the fight against Al Shabaab.

The insurgency has battled since 2008 to overthrow Soma-lia’s internationally-backed central government and establish its rule, based on its own harsh interpretation of Islamic law.

It carries out regular gun and bomb attacks in Mogadishu and elsewhere in Somalia.

It has also vowed to disrupt national elections, which were scheduled to begin in December but have been delayed after the opposition accused the pres-ident of packing the electoral board with his allies. Newly appointed legislators were

meant to pick a president on February 8, but even the elec-tions for lawmakers have yet to be held. Times of political turmoil have also traditionally provided a boost to the insur-gency, as security chiefs may be

ordered to concentrate on political rivals rather than al Shabaab.

Prime Minister Mohamed Hussein Roble said in a statement that former military general Mohamed Nur Galal

was among those killed in Mon-day’s attack. “I condemn the barbaric attack,” he said. “General Mohamed Nur Galal will be remembered for his over 50 year role in defending the country.”

Erdogan says

some schools to

gradually reopen

from March 1

REUTERS — ANKARA

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said yesterday some schools would begin to gradually reopen from March 1, as Ankara continues a COVID-19 vaccination programme which has so far administered shots to more than 2.1 million people.

Schools had been slated to resume physical education on February. 15, and Erdogan said some in small villages will be able to resume general edu-cation then, while schools would reopen on March 1 for other age groups and grades.

“Paral lel to the improvement in new (COVID-19) case numbers, preparations are underway for education to gradually continue in a provincial basis as of March 1,” Erdogan told a news con-ference after a cabinet meeting.

UK announces

sanctions against

4 security officials

in Zimbabwe

AP — LONDON

The UK has imposed sanctions on four top Zimbabwean security officials blamed for a variety of human rights abuses, including the deaths of 23 anti-government protesters.

The measures, which bar the four men from traveling to the UK or channeling money through the country’s banks, are part of a wider British push for economic and political reform in Zimbabwe.

The sanctions are the first Britain has imposed unilat-erally since it severed ties with the European Union at the beginning of this year.

The sanctions apply to Owen Ncube, minister for state security; Isaac Moyo, director general of the Central Intelligence Organi-zation; Godwin Matanga, commissioner general of the Zimbabwe Republic Police; and Anselem Sanyatwe, com-mander of the Presidential Guard.

“These sanctions send a clear message that we will hold to account those respon-sible for the most egregious human rights violations, including the deaths of innocent Zimbabweans,’’ Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said.

An aircraft carrying South Africa’s first COVID-19 vaccine doses arrives at OR Tambo Airport in Johannesburg, yesterday.

South Africa welcomes first delivery of COVID-19 vaccinesAP — JOHANNESBURG

South Africa gave a hero’s welcome yesterday to the delivery of its first COVID-19 vaccines - 1 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine produced by the Serum Institute of India.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa greeted the crates of vaccine that arrived at Johannesburg’s O.R. Tambo International Airport, which will be followed up later this month by another 500,000 doses of the vaccine.

The vaccine will be effective in preventing severe disease and death from the variant that has become dominant in South Africa, a vaccine expert says.

The AstraZeneca vaccines will be used to inoculate South Africa’s front-line health workers, which will kickstart the country’s vaccination cam-paign. The first jabs are expected to be administered in mid-February, after the vac-cines are tested and approved by South Africa’s drug regu-latory authorities.

“The arrival of the first vac-cines is excellent news and a step in the right direction for South Africa,” Professor Willem Hanekom, director of the Africa Health Research Institute, told The Associated Press.

Although the variant that has become dominant in South Africa is expected to reduce the efficacy of the AstraZeneca and other vaccines, Hanekom said

initial trials indicate that all the various inoculations will still offer good protection.

“The most important point that should be emphasized is that while the vaccines offer variable efficacy in preventing infection with COVID-19, so far severe disease and death are prevented by all the vaccines,” he said from his office in Durban.

“So it doesn’t matter the level of efficacy, the vaccines all seem to work pretty well against severe disease and death, even against this new variant, it appears. And that is very good news,” Hanekom said.

South Africa’s government intends to inoculate 40 million people, representing 67% of the

country’s population of 60 million, by the end of the year.

South Africa has by far the highest number of COVID-19 cases in all of Africa, with 1.45 million confirmed cases, including 44,164 deaths, according to official figures released on Sunday. That repre-sents about 41% of all cases reported by Africa’s 54 countries, according to the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

South Africa’s scramble to acquire adequate vaccines to reach that ambitious target received a substantial boost with the news that it has acquired 20 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine. They are

expected to arrive in the second quarter of the year, the gov-ernment confirmed. Minister of Health Zweli Mkhize will announce the cost of the Pfizer vaccines at a later date, said Lwazi Manzi, spokeswoman for the health ministry.

In the coming months, South Africa is expecting to receive 6 million vaccine doses from the international COVAX facility, 9 million of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine when it is approved, and an additional 20 million from the African Union’s vaccine acquisition task team. Further acquisitions of vaccines will be needed to meet the gov-ernment’s inoculation target.

Most South Africans are

looking forward to getting vac-cinated, according to a recent survey. An impressive 67% of adults said they would definitely or probably take a vaccine if it was available, according to a survey by the University of Johannesburg and the Human Sciences Research Council.

Those who said they would definitely not or probably not take a vaccine were at 18%, according to the survey of more than 10,000 South Africans. About 15% of those surveyed said they had not decided if they would take a jab.

South African health experts are encouraged by the results of the survey, saying many of the undecided would probably get vaccines when many others are. The South African gov-ernment has already launched a social media campaign to build enthusiasm for vaccines.

Hashtags like #VacciNation and #ListenToTheExperts accompanied by attractive graphics are circulating to promote support for vaccines and to counteract rumors and mis information about COVID-19.

“We really need these vac-cines as quickly as possible,” Michael Makhethe, an ambu-lance driver and first aid pro-vider who works in the Soweto area of southern Johannesburg, said. “We front-line health care workers are exposed to the virus in our work. We need protection.”

10 TUESDAY 2 FEBRUARY 2021ASIA

Myanmar military stages coup, detains Suu KyiAP — NAYPYITAW

Myanmar’s military staged a coup yesterday and detained senior politicians including Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi — a sharp reversal of the significant, if uneven, progress toward democracy the Southeast Asian nation has made following five decades of military rule.

An announcement read on military-owned Myawaddy TV said the military would take control of the country for one year. It said the seizure was necessary because the gov-ernment had not acted on the military’s claims of fraud in November’s elections — in which Suu Kyi’s ruling party won a majority of the parlia-mentary seats up for grabs - and because it allowed the election to go ahead despite the corona-virus pandemic.

The takeover came the morning the country’s new par-liamentary session was to begin and follows days of concern that the military was plotting a coup. The military maintains its actions are legally justified —citing a section of the consti-tution it drafted that allows it to take control in times of national emergency — though Suu Kyi’s party spokesman as well as many international observers have said it amounts to a coup.

It was a dramatic backslide for Myanmar, which was emerging from decades of strict military rule and international isolation that began in 1962. It was also a shocking fall from power for Suu Kyi, a Nobel peace laureate who had lived under house arrest for years as she tried to push her country toward democracy and then became its de facto leader after

her National League for Democracy won elections in 2015.

While Suu Kyi had been a fierce antagonist of the army while under house arrest, since her release and return to pol-itics, she has had to work with the country’s generals, who never fully gave up power. While the 75-year-old has remained wildly popular at home, Suu Kyi’s deference to the generals — going so far as to defend their crackdown on Rohingya Muslims that the United States and others have labeled genocide — has left her reputation internationally in tatters.

For some, yesterday’s takeover was seen as confir-mation that the military holds ultimate power despite the veneer of democracy.

The coup presents a test for the international community, which had ostracized Myanmar while it was under military rule and then enthusiastically embraced Suu Kyi’s gov-ernment as a sign the country

was finally on the path to democracy. There will likely be calls for a reintroduction of at least some of the sanctions the country had long faced.

The first signs that the mil-itary was planning to seize power were reports that Suu Kyi and Win Myint, the country’s president, had been detained before dawn.

Myo Nyunt, a spokesman for Suu Kyi’s party, told the online news service The Irrawaddy that in addition to Suu Kyi and the president, members of the party’s Central Executive Com-mittee, many of its lawmakers and other senior leaders had also been taken into custody.

Soldiers stand guard at a Myanmar’s military checkpoint on the way to the Congress compound in Naypyitaw, Myanmar, yesterday.

West condemns move; China’s response more mutedREUTERS — NEW YORK

The United Nations led condemnation of Myanmar’s military yesterday after it seized power, calling for the release of elected leaders, including Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the developments were a “serious blow to democratic reforms” and urged all leaders to refrain from violence and respect human rights, a UN spokesman said.

The United States, Britain, Australia and the European Union condemned the military’s coup and detentions and its declaration of a state of emer-gency. The army said it had taken action in response to “election fraud”.

China’s response, however, was more muted.

“We have noted what has happened in Myanmar and are in the process of further

understanding the situation,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told a daily news briefing in Beijing.

“China is a friendly neighbour of Myanmar’s. We hope that all sides in Myanmar can appropriately handle their differences under the consti-tution and legal framework and safeguard political and social stability,” he added.

US President Joe Biden has been briefed on the situation, the White House said.

“The United States opposes any attempt to alter the outcome of recent elections or impede Myanmar’s democratic transition, and will take action against those responsible if these steps are not reversed,” White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.

Reflecting similar views of several Western governments, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called for the release of Suu Kyi and the others

detained by the military.“We call on Burmese mil-

itary leaders to release all government officials and civil society leaders and respect the will of the people of Burma as expressed in dem-ocratic elections on November 8,” Blinken said in a statement, using another name for Myanmar.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson also condemned the coup. “The vote of the people must be respected and civilian leaders released,” he said on Twitter.

Japan said it opposed any reversal of the democratic process in Myanmar.

“We strongly call on the mil-itary government to restore democracy as soon as possible,” said a Foreign Ministry statement.

That was echoed by the head of the European Com-mission, Ursula von der Leyen, who called for the “immediate

and unconditional release” of all those detained.

Switzerland’s foreign min-istry also called for the release of those detained and, voicing support for “the aspirations of the people of Myanmar for democracy, freedom, peace and development”, it urged the mil-itary to reverse its actions.

Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne called on the mil-itary “to respect the rule of law, to resolve disputes through lawful mechanisms and to release immediately all civilian leaders and others” who had been detained.

Singapore’s Foreign Min-istry urged all parties to exercise restraint and work towards a positive and peaceful outcome in comments that were echoed by Malaysia and Indonesia.

However, other fellow members of regional grouping, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), took a more hands-off approach.

REUTERS — DHAKA

Bangladesh called for “peace and stability” in Myanmar after a military coup yesterday, and said it hoped its neighbour makes genuine efforts to move forward the stalled process of voluntary repatriation of Rohingya Muslim refugees.

Mainly-Muslim Bang-ladesh has sheltered 1 million Rohingya who had fled vio-lence in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, where most of them are denied citizenship.

A UN-backed repatriation process has failed to take off despite multiple attempts from Bangladesh, which has now started sending some refugees to an isolated island in the Bay of Bengal.

“We have been persistent in developing mutually bene-ficial relations with Myanmar and have been working with Myanmar for the voluntary, safe and sustained repatriation of the Rohingya sheltered in Bangladesh,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs told Reuters in a statement.

“We expect these processes to continue in right earnest.” Myanmar’s military seized power on Monday in a coup against the democratically elected government of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who was detained along with other leaders of her National League for Democracy party in early morning raids.

“We hope that the demo-cratic process and constitu-tional arrangements will be upheld in Myanmar,” Bang-ladesh said.

Nevertheless, Rohingya in Bangladesh expressed fears for their people still in Myanmar following the military’s ouster of Suu Kyi.

“She was no good for us but there was still hope that through the democratic process we could achieve our rights. Now it seems Myanmar has no democratic future in the near term,” a 31-year-old Rohingya said by telephone from a refugee camp

Dhaka expects

Myanmar to keep

Rohingya

commitments

India: Budget boosts healthcare spending by 135%REUTERS — NEW DELHI

India boosted healthcare spending by 135 percent and lifted caps on foreign investment in its vast insurance market yesterday to help revive an economy that suffered its deepest recorded slump as a result of the pandemic.

Delivering a budget statement to parliament, Finance Minister Nirmala Sith-araman projected a fiscal deficit of 6.8 percent of gross domestic product for 2021/22, higher than the 5.5 percent forecast by a recent poll of economists.

The current year was expected to end with a deficit of 9.5 percent, she said, well up

from the seven percent expected earlier.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the budget was aimed at creating “wealth and wellness” in a country that is battling the world’s second highest coronavirus caseload after the United States.

India currently spends about one percent of GDP on health, among the lowest for any major economy.

Sitharaman proposed increasing healthcare spending to 2.2 trillion Indian rupees ($30.2bn) to help improve public health systems and fund a huge vaccination drive to immunise 1.3 billion people.

Overall, the government set

capital expenditure for 2021/2022 at Rs5.54 trillion, 35 percent more than the previous year’s budget estimate.

“All of us decided to give impetus to the economy and that impetus, we thought, would be qualitatively spent and give necessary demand push if we choose to spend big on infra-structure,” Sitharaman told reporters after the presentation of the budget in parliament.

Millions of people lost their jobs when the government ordered a lockdown last year to combat the coronavirus. Thousands of small businesses remain shut.

Unlike other countries, India refrained from

announcing a big stimulus, offering greater liquidity to firms instead, and held off using its fiscal firepower until curbs to contain the virus were lifted.

The government estimates the economy will contract 7.7 percent in the current fiscal year ending in March, in what would be the biggest fall ever recorded. However, it foresees a strong recovery in 2021/2022 with growth of 11 percent.

That would make it the world’s fastest growing major economy ahead of China’s pro-jected 8.1 percent growth, but the government said it would take the economy two years to reach pre-pandemic levels.

“In a time of unprecedented

economic stress, the govern-ment’s responsibility was to spend enough to revive the economy or else face enormous human suffering,” said Anand Mahindra, chairman of Mahindra group, an autos to technology conglomerate.

“So I had one expectation from this budget: that we should be very liberal in terms of the targeted fiscal deficit.”

To bridge some of the deficit, the government plans to raise Rs1.75 trillion from selling its stake in the state run companies and banks including IDBI bank, an insurance company and oil companies. It also wants to sell state firms’ surplus land.

People wearing face masks disembark a suburban train at a railway station in Mumbai, yesterday.

Suburban train services restored in MumbaiREUTERS — MUMBAI

One of the world’s busiest urban rail systems situated in India’s financial capital Mumbai was restarted for all commuters yesterday, 11 months after it was shut down to prevent the spread of coronavirus infection in the city.

An average of eight million people were using the train services daily before the pan-demic. Operations were stopped in March last year, as part of a strict lockdown

imposed by the government.Only government workers

in “essential services” were allowed to travel on the train network after it was partially opened in June.

Yesterday, commuters trickled into still empty train coaches, wearing masks and armed with sanitisers.

“From today, regular com-muters will be allowed to travel, but only during non-peak hours,” said Sumit Thakur, a spokesman for Western Railways.

Mumbai has been one of worst affected cities, recording more than 300,000 cases and over 11,000 deaths since March.

“It was really bad when trains were shut. I live far away and to travel to college took a long time,” said Disha Maurya, a 16 year-old student before she boarded a train.

India has recorded the world’s second-highest number of coronavirus cases in the world, but its daily case count has dipped sharply in the last few months.

Bing could replace Google: Australian Prime Minister

AP — CANBERRA

Australia’s Prime Minister said yesterday that Microsoft is confident it can fill the void if Google carries out its threat to remove its search engine from Australia.

A Google executive told a Senate hearing last month that it would likely make its search engine unavailable in Australia if the government goes ahead with a draft law that would make tech giants pay for news content.

Prime Minister Scott Mor-rison said he has spoken to Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella about its search engine, Bing, filling the space.

“I can tell you, Microsoft’s pretty confident” that Aus-tralians would not be worse off, Morrison told the National Press Club of Australia.

“These are big technology companies and what’s important to Australia, I think, is that we set the rules that are right for our people,” Morrison said.

“Having a news environment in this country that is one that is sustainable and is supported com-mercially, then this is vital to how democracies function,” he added.

Although Bing is Australia’s second most popular search engine, it has only a 3.6% market share, according to web

analytics service Statcounter. Google says it has 95 percent. Nadella initiated the Zoom con-versation with Morrison, The Australian newspaper reported.

A Microsoft statement con-firmed that the online meeting had taken place last week but released no details of the conversation.

“We recognise the impor-tance of a vibrant media sector and public interest journalism in a democracy and we rec-ognize the challenges the media sector has faced over many years through changing business models and consumer preferences,” Microsoft said.

“With respect to the current controversy over a potential code of conduct governing Google and Facebook, Microsoft is not directly involved and we wouldn’t want to comment on that ongoing process involving the ACCC and those companies,” the statement added, referring to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, the national regulator that devised the draft law.

The mandatory code of conduct proposed by the gov-ernment aims to make Google and Facebook pay Australian media companies fairly for using news content the tech giants siphon from news sites.

An announcement read on military-owned Myawaddy TV said the military would take control of the country for one year. It said the seizure was necessary because the government had not acted on the military’s claims of fraud in November’s elections.

11TUESDAY 2 FEBRUARY 2021 ASIA

Taliban attacks increase in Kabul: US watchdog AP — KABUL

Taliban attacks in the Afghan capital of Kabul are on the rise, with increasing targeted killings of government officials, civil-society leaders and journalists, a report by a US watchdog said yesterday.

It comes as the Biden administration plans to take a new look at the peace agreement between the US and the Taliban signed last February under President Donald Trump.

The report said Taliban-ini-tiated attacks across Afghan-istan during the last quarter of 2020 were slightly lower than in the previous quarter, but exceeded those of the same period in 2019, according to numbers provided by US forces in Afghanistan.

“Enemy attacks in Kabul were higher than during the previous quarter,” the report quoted US forces. “They were much higher than in the same quarter last year.”

The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Recon-struction, known as SIGAR, monitors the billions of dollars the US spends in war-ravaged

Afghanistan.The Taliban unleashed a

wave of attacks in Afghanistan in December, including strikes in northern Baghlan and southern Uruzgan provinces over a two-day period that killed at least 19 members of the Afghan security forces. In Kabul, a roadside bomb struck a vehicle, wounding two, and a lawyer was shot in a targeted killing.

Resolute Support, the Nato-led mission in Afghanistan, reported 2,586 civilian casu-alties from October 1 to December 31 last year, including 810 killed and 1,776 wounded, according to the SIGAR report.

The report said the pro-portion of casualties caused by improvised explosive

devices increased by nearly 17 percent in this quarter, cor-relating with an increase in magnetically attached IEDs or “sticky bomb” attacks, the report said.

Despite the ongoing vio-lence, casualties across Afghan-istan in the last quarter of 2020 decreased by 14 percent, com-pared to the previous quarter. The quarter saw an excep-tionally high number of casu-alties for the winter months, however, when fighting nor-mally subsides.

The US has been the prime backer of the Afghan gov-ernment since it invaded the country soon after the Sep-tember 11, 2001, attacks and overthrew the Taliban, who were running the country and harboring Al Qaida leader

Osama bin Laden. The US is still spending about $4bn a year to assist Afghan security forces.

The US military said earlier this month that it had met its goal of reducing the number of troops in Afghanistan to about 2,500. Senior US com-manders are sceptical of the Taliban’s stated commitment to peace, though they have said they can accomplish their mission in Afghanistan at that troop level.

“As the footprint of US agencies continues to shrink, it will become more important that the US and other donors perform aggressive and effective oversight of its dollars and programs,” said Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction John F Sopko.

Corruption is rampant among Afghan government ministries, driving a wedge between the government and much of the population, frus-trating international donors, and contributing to a poverty level in the country of more than 72 percent, according to the World Bank.

Also, recent international

aid agency reports said that more than half of Afghans are in dire need of assistance just to survive 2021.

The relentless corruption has alienated most Afghans caught between a war and relentless poverty, despite bil-lions of dollars in international aid. By the end of 2020, Afghan-istan’s unemployment rate was projected to rise to 37.9 percent, up from 23.9 percent in 2019, said the report.

Taliban representatives and the Afghan government earlier this month resumed peace talks in Qatar, the Gulf Arab state where the insurgents maintain an office.

The stop-and-go talks are aimed at ending decades of conflict but frustration and fear have grown over the recent spike in violence, and both sides blame one another.

US airstrikes increased in the last quarter of 2020 as US forces provided defensive support to Afghan security forces, according to the US mil-itary. It reiterated that since the signing of the US-Taliban deal, US forces have ceased offensive strikes against the Taliban.

The White House said that President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, told his Afghan counterpart in a phone call last week that the new administration will “review” the February agreement between the US and the Taliban.

Pentagon chief spokesman John Kirby said last week that the US stands by its com-mitment under the deal for a full troop withdrawal, but the agreement also calls for the Taliban to cut ties with Al Qaida and reduce violence.

The authorized goal strength of Afghan defence forces has been adjusted downward to 208,000 per-sonnel, the SIGAR report said. It had been roughly 227,000 for many years.

Afghan special forces con-ducted the highest number of ground operations in the last quarter of 2020 in more than a year, Nato said.

The 1,152 ground operations were nearly double the number conducted during the same period last year, reflecting a four percent increase compared to the previous quarter.

Pakistan military airliftsvaccines from ChinaREUTERS — ISLAMABAD

A Pakistan military aircraft brought back the country’s first consignment of COVID-19 vaccines from China yesterday, the country’s health adviser, Faisal Sultan, said.

China’s envoy in Islamabad would formally handover the 500,000 doses of vaccine pro-duced by Sinopharm later on Monday, enabling Pakistan to begin its vaccination drive this week, officials said.

“Thank God, the first batch of Sinopharm vaccine has arrived! Grateful to China and everyone who made this happen,” Sultan said in a statement released on Twitter.

“I salute our frontline healthcare workers for their efforts and they’ll be first to get vaccinated,” he said.

Pakistan has asked China

for another one million doses. It has also been pledged 17 million doses of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine under a global scheme to deliver coro-navirus treatments to devel-oping nations.

About six million doses will arrive by the end of March under the COVAX scheme, with the remainder due by mid-year, Sultan announced last week.

Pakistan, a country of 220 million people, reported 1,615 new infections and 26 deaths in the latest 24-hours, taking the total number of cases to 546,428, with 11,683 deaths.

“All eligible citizens as per phases will be informed to reg-ister once the vaccine process will start,” health ministry announced at its website.

Pakistan signed up last year to the vaccine sharing scheme coordinated by the World

Health Organization to support lower-income countries.

Pakistan has approved both the vaccines for emergency use

and will review their approval quarterly, officials said.

\The Russian Sputnik-V vaccine is also set to be

approved for emergency use as the Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan has accepted its data.

A general view of the first consignment of the coronavirus disease vaccines from China, being offloaded from a plane at the Noor Khan Airbase Rawalpindi, Pakistan, yesterday.

Senior Afghan

official survives

bomb attack in

Kabul, say police

REUTERS — KABUL

An Afghan peace ministry official suffered light injuries in a bomb blast in the capital Kabul yesterday, police said, the latest in a recent series of attacks on civilian targets.

Killings by small, mag-netic bombs attached to the undercarriages of vehicles, as well as shootings, are unnerving Afghan officials, activists and journalists, and they are on the rise despite negotiations to end two decades of war.

The latest explosion occurred near an armoured vehicle that was taking Khoshnood Nabizada, a peace ministry official who is also editor in chief of the local Khaama Press agency, to work, Kabul police said.

The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghan-istan (UNAMA) condemned the attack. “Today’s targeted attack in Kabul against a senior official involved in the peace process is another deplorable incident, akin to an attack on the peace process itself,” UNAMA said on Twitter.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack. Government officials generally blame Islamist Taliban insurgents for all tar-geted killings, a tactic senior security officials and Western diplomats say is meant to instil fear while avoiding large-scale civilian casualties.

In a separate attack in Kabul yesterday, a bomb attached to an army vehicle in a western district of the city killed one officer and a civilian, police said.

Vietnam shuts schools due to virus outbreakREUTERS — HANOI

Vietnam has shut schools in 22 provinces ahead of the Lunar New Year “Tet” holiday and ended a ruling Communist Party congress early yesterday following the detection of a new cluster of coronavirus cases in northern areas last week.

Thanks to targeted mass testing and strict quarantining, Vietnam has kept its tally to a low 1,850 cases and 35 deaths, winning plaudits worldwide for one of the most successful national responses to the pandemic.

“We’ll have a difficult and special Tet ahead, but I’m sure we all will overcome this together,” said Vu Duc Dam, the country’s coronavirus taskforce chief, according to state media.

The school closures affect more than a third of Vietnam’s provinces and cities.

Most of the new cases have been recorded in Hai Duong, where 2,340 factory workers have been isolated after a Viet-namese employee came into contact with a person who tested positive for the more contagious B.1.1.7 British variant of the disease in Japan in mid-January.

The outbreak first reported on Thursday has spread to at least nine cities and provinces. On Monday, the health min-istry reported 33 more cases, most in the capital Hanoi.

Long told state media the ministry would support Hanoi to upgrade its capacity to 40,000 tests per day. On Friday, Vietnam’s health min-ister said the outbreak was “basically under control” in the most affected areas.

China slams Pompeo over Xinjiang genocide remarksAP — BEIJING

An official from China’s far west Xinjiang region accused former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo yesterday of trying to undermine Beijing’s relations with new President Joe Biden by declaring that China’s actions against the Uighur ethnic group are “genocide.”

Xu Guixiang, a spokes-person for Xinjiang’s Com-munist Party, spoke at a tightly controlled media briefing, the latest in a Chinese effort to counter Western accusations of rights abuses in the region.

“Why is he putting on such a show, such a farce, telling the lie of the century?” Xu said. “He wants to plant land mines and set up obstacles to dialogue

with the next US administration.”

Since 2016, China has swept a million or more Uighurs and other predominantly Muslim minorities into prisons and indoctrination camps that the state calls training centers, according to estimates by researchers and rights groups.

People have been subjected to torture, sterilisation and political indoctrination in addition to forced labour as part of an assimilation campaign, according to former residents and detainees, as well as experts and leaked government documents. China denies any abuses and says the steps it has taken are necessary to combat terrorism and a separatist movement.

The Biden administration is formulating its policies toward China, which many analysts see as America’s largest geopolitical challenge.

Last week, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken reiterated on his first day in office that he believed genocide was being committed against Xinjiang’s ethnic minorities, signaling that Biden plans to continue some of former President Donald Trump’s tough stances against Beijing.

Over the course of two hours, Xu and others, including an imam and former centre “trainees,” took turns denying forced sterilisation, forced labor, restrictions on religion and other allegations.

They did not name Biden or Trump and instead trained their

ire at Pompeo. Xu called him “hys-terical,” a “rat” and “the worst sec-retary of state in history.”

Pompeo said one of the main reasons for the genocide designation was widespread forced birth control among the Uighurs.

Another reason he cited was forced labour. Reporters found that Uighur workers at OFILM, an Apple supplier nearly 3,200km from Xinjiang in the eastern city of Nanchang, were not allowed to leave their factory compound freely and could only come out on rare, chaperoned trips.

Asked about OFILM, Xin-jiang government spokesperson Elijan Anayat said that workers were employed voluntarily and that their labor rights were protected.

Filipinos protest on anniversary of university uprisingAn activist holds a placard with the text “Junk Terror Law” during a protest in commemoration of an 1971 uprising at the University of the Philippines, in Quezon City, Metro Manila, Philippines, yesterday.

Japan ramps up freezer output for vaccine rolloutREUTERS — TOKYO

Japanese companies are ramping up production of ultra-cold freezers to store and deliver COVID-19 vaccines, as Japan aims to launch vaccina-tions in the country as soon as February.

The government’s vaccine roll-out faces logistical hurdles that could further delay the slow-moving campaign, experts and officials say, com-plicating plans to deliver wide-scale coronavirus inoculations in time for the Olympics.

Japan plans to begin its inoculation push in late Feb-ruary with the Pfizer Inc vaccine for front-line medical workers.

The country trails most major economies in starting inoculations due to its

dependence on overseas makers and a requirement that the vaccines go through domestic trials.

Medical equipment maker PHC Holdings Corporation, which has been tapped by the government for its ultra-low temperature freezers, said the company had doubled output at its factory in Gunma Pre-fecture from January.

Although no specific orders have been made by the gov-ernment yet, PHC said their freezer can store the Pfizer vaccine, which has to be kept at minus 75 degrees Celsius.

“We are determined to fulfil our responsibility to supply our products in order to contain the novel corona-virus,” said PHC’s public rela-tions representative, Chisato Hirata.

The report said Taliban-initiated attacks across Afghanistan during the last quarter of 2020 were slightly lower than in the previous quarter, but exceeded those of the same period in 2019, according to numbers provided by US forces in Afghanistan.

REUTERS — LONDON

Eleven people in different regions of England have tested positive for the South African coronavirus variant without having any links to people who have travelled, prompting mass

testing in the areas to contain the outbreak.

Britain, with the fifth-highest COVID-19 death toll in the world, has moved to tighten its borders out of concern that new variants of the virus will undermine its vaccination drive.

To contain the new out-breaks, residents in eight areas of the country will now be tested whether or not they are showing any symptoms, a process known as "surge testing".

There are about 10,000 people in each area. Three are in London, two in the southeast, one in central England, one in the east and another in the northwest.

The government said yes-terday the 11 cases were self-isolating and contact tracing would help to halt the spread.

Positive tests in the areas will be sequenced to identify any further spread of the South African variant, the government statement said.

All viruses mutate, and sci-entists have identified several variants of the coronavirus found to be more transmissible than the original strain.

Their emergence has raised questions over whether vac-cines will prove as effective in containing them.

Britain said on January 24 it had detected 77 cases of the South African variant and nine cases of the Brazilian variant, but said all were linked to travel. In total, Public Health England said it had now iden-tified 105 cases of the South

African variant since December 22.

Scientists have said the South African variant appears to be more transmissible, but there is no evidence it causes more severe disease. But several laboratory studies have found that it reduces vaccine and antibody therapy efficacy.

Simon Clarke, associate professor in cellular microbi-ology at the University of Reading, said there was emerging evidence to suggest the variant was less susceptible to immunity induced by the current crop of vaccines.

"The discovery of a handful of cases with no links to travel to Africa, indicates that it might be more widespread in the community than previously thought," he said.

"This spread, even if small in scale, needs to be brought

under control quickly, so Public Health England's house-to-house checks, and intensive testing are the right thing to do."

Britain is battling a new wave of COVID-19 turbo-charged by the emergence in September of a more transmit-table variant found in the southeast of England. The coun-try's official death toll passed 100,000 last week. Britain is however making rapid progress in its vaccination programme, with nearly 9 million people receiving the first shot of either the Pfizer-BioNTech or the Oxford-AstraZeneca shot.

12 TUESDAY 2 FEBRUARY 2021EUROPE

Scientists have said the

South African variant

appears to be more

transmissible, but there is

no evidence it causes

more severe disease.

UK detects SA variant strainin people with no travel links

Prime Minister Boris Johnson shows thumbs up to patients after they were given the vaccine during his visit to a COVID-19 vaccination centre in Batley, West Yorkshire, Britain, yesterday.

UK orders more Valneva vaccine to prepare for repeated jabs

AP — LONDON

The UK has ordered another 40 million doses of the coro-navirus vaccine developed by the French company Valneva as the government prepares for the likelihood that repeated vaccinations will be needed to keep the virus in check.

Britain had previously ordered 60 million doses of the vaccine and retains an option for 90 million more. The total value of the 190 million doses is ¤1.4bn ($1.7bn), Valneva said in a statement.

If the UK exercises all of its options, Valneva’s deliv-eries would continue through 2025, the company said. The vaccine, which will be made

in Scotland, is still undergoing clinical trials and hasn’t been approved by regulators.

“The Valneva vaccine showcases the best of Scottish expertise right at the heart of our UK vaccine endeavour, demonstrating the strength of our union and what the UK can achieve when it works together,’’ Health Secretary Matt Hancock said. “If the vaccine is authorised by the health regulator, it will be rolled out across the four nations as quickly as possible.” Britain has seen the deadliest coronavirus outbreak in Europe — with over 106,000 confirmed victims — but it is pushing ahead with one of the world’s quickest vaccine programmes.

Prince Harry accepts apology, damages in UK libel suitAP — LONDON

Prince Harry yesterday accepted an apology and damages from the publisher of British tabloid The Mail on Sunday and its online version, MailOnline, in a libel lawsuit relating to articles about his relationship with the British armed forces.

Harry sued Associated Newspapers for libel over two articles published in October which claimed he had snubbed the Royal Marines after stepping down as a senior royal.

The articles claimed that Harry had “not been in touch” with the force since his last appearance as an honorary Marine in March, and that mil-itary leaders were considering replacing him as Captain General of the Royal Marines.

Harry had served for a decade in the British army.

His lawyers said in court documents that he was “frus-trated and saddened” because the articles would diminish his credibility with veterans.

Harry and his wife, Meghan, stepped down as working royals

and moved to the US in early 2019.

His honorary military titles were put on hold, and they were due to be reviewed in March as part of the monarchy’s review of the couple’s departure arrangements.

Lawyer Jenny Afia, repre-senting Harry, said the pub-lisher has accepted that allega-tions that he had turned his back on the force were false.

The articles were “baseless, false and defamatory” and “constituted not only a personal attack upon the Duke’s

character but also wrongly brought into question his service to this country,” Afia said.

She said Harry was “proud to have served in the British armed forces for 10 years in Her Majesty’s name” and “has main-tained active links with those forces ever since and will con-tinue to do so in the future.”

After the brief remote hearing, a spokesman for Harry said his “commitment to the military community is unquestionable.”

The Mail on Sunday printed

an apology in December but it wasn’t enough to stop the lawsuit. Harry will donate the damages to the Invictus Games Foundation, a charity for wounded or sick servicemen and women that he founded, she added. The amount of the damages was not disclosed.

Separately, Meghan is also suing Associated Newspapers for invasion of privacy and cop-yright infringement over articles that published portions of a letter she wrote to her father, Thomas Markle, after her marriage to Harry in 2018.

Italy scrambles to form new govt with deadline loomingREUTERS — ROME

Italy’s co-ruling Democratic Party (PD) will not let Economy Minister Roberto Gualtieri be shunted aside in any cabinet reshuffle that might arise from the government crisis, political sources said yesterday.

Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte was forced to resign last week when a junior partner, Italia Viva, quit the 17-month-old coalition in a row over its handling of the coronavirus pandemic and subsequent eco-nomic meltdown.

The former government allies are holding talks to try to overcome their differences and revive their alliance.

Political sources say Italia Viva, headed by former premier Matteo Renzi, wants to see a major cabinet shake-up, including the removal of Gual-tieri, a leading PD figure, to signal a clear break with the past. However, PD sources, as well as political sources outside

the party, said they would not let Gualtieri be sacrificed.

“Renzi kicks up four or five dust storms, but then settles back on more achievable goals,” a PD minister told Reuters, declining to be named.

Separately a source who had talked with President Sergio Mattarella — the man tasked with finding a solution to the turmoil — said the head of state wanted “continuity” in the main ministries, including the economy, health and defence portfolios.

The source added that con-tinuity could be provided by another person, but only if they were heavyweight figures.

Renzi has not publicly crit-icised Gualtieri and has repeatedly refused to talk openly about any eventual reshuffle, saying it was important to focus instead on policies, such as how best to spend more than ¤200bn ($243bn) from a European Union fund to help

Italy’s battered economy. In a newsletter to supporters yes-terday, he sounded upbeat about the prospect of finding a deal. “At the end of this week we will have, I hope, a new gov-ernment. It will have to be up to the challenges of this time. And it must be a government of capable and competent people. This is the only way to save Italy,” he wrote.

The speaker of the lower house of parliament, Roberto Fico, is leading mediation

efforts between the coalition parties. He is due to report back to Mattarella on his progress on Tuesday.

Renzi said last week that if a political accord could not be found, he would support the creation of a government of technocrats that would need cross-party support in par-liament. An Italia Viva source said on Sunday that the party would like to former European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi become prime minister.

Italy’s caretaker Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte leaves his house on the second day of political consultations in Rome, on January 28, 2021.

Making way for railway Workers stand near trees that have been felled as Extinction Rebellion activists continue to occupy tunnels under Euston Square Gardens to protest against the HS2 high-speed railway in London, yesterday.

Macron asks EU to help nearby nations get vaccines

AP — PARIS

French President Emmanuel Macron urged the EU to better help its European neighbours in the race to get COVID-19 vaccines, ahead of a meeting in Paris with Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vucic.

Macron, speaking from the Elysee presidential palace, acknowledged France and Europe “could have been more present” by Serbia’s side, in an apparent response to earlier criticism from Vucic, who said last week he had been counting on a lot more support from the EU.

Serbia, which sits at the heart of the Balkans region, received doses of China’s Sinopharm that enable the country to launch its vacci-nation campaign earlier this month. Macron called on the EU to be “even more efficient” and “keep accelerating things” in the coming months to provide vaccines to the popu-lation in the bloc but also to better help its neighbours.

Meanwhile, the Astra-Zeneca COVID-19 vaccine, which was approved by the European Commission last week, will start arriving in France next week at the latest, French European Affairs Min-ister Clement Beaune said yesterday.

"From the end of this week, latest early next week, AstraZeneca vaccine doses will start arriving in France... We will be able to start vaccinating (with it)," Beaune said on France Inter radio.

Woman dies in snowshoeing

accident in Germany

AP — BERLIN

A 27-year-old woman died while snowshoeing in the Black Forest region of south-western Germany after falling into a hole in deep snow and into a stream below, police said yesterday.

Freiburg police said the accident occurred outside nearby Feldberg on Sunday afternoon when the woman was hiking with a 28-year-old friend.

She broke through a top layer of snow and fell into a deep hole and into the stream that flowed below, and was unable to free herself.

Ever more snow fell in on

top of her and rescue teams were not able to dig her out for several hours, police said. She was brought to a hospital but died overnight.

Local broadcaster SWR reported there had been several avalanches after the accident that complicated the rescue efforts, and that the woman had lain under the snow in the water at the bottom of the three-meter (10-foot) deep hole until found.

A rescue helicopter was also unable to fly due to poor weather conditions and the darkness.

The woman’s companion was treated for shock but he was otherwise unharmed.

Madrid relaxes

virus restrictions

despite high

caseloadREUTERS — MADRID The Madrid region will start relaxing its COVID-19 restric-tions this week, officials said yesterday, even as the rest of Spain and Europe are tough-ening up measures to tame a third wave of infection.

From Friday, groups of up to six people will be allowed to gather at outdoor restaurant terraces, up from the current limit of four, while a 10 pm curfew might be pushed to midnight.

People are still allowed to eat and drink inside restau-rants but they have to leave at 9 pm.

“In Madrid, we are doing everything in our power to keep our bars and restaurants and our cultural space open despite political pressure,” said conservative regional leader Isabel Diaz Ayuso, who has repeatedly clashed with the left-wing central government on how to tackle the pandemic.

Her administration has studied accelerating the vac-cination programme for workers in “highly exposed sectors” she said on Monday, adding that this could include teachers, but also waiters and taxi drivers.

Madrid’s 14-day incidence of the virus reached 993 cases per 100,000 people on Friday, slightly above the national average of 887 cases. In the past two weeks, the health department reported over 66,000 new infections, more than any other region.

The total number of infec-tions recorded in Spain is more than 2.7 million, has recorded more than 2.7 million cases. The death toll stands at 58,319 people. Some Spanish regions had to suspend vaccinating new people last week due to vaccine shipment delays.

13TUESDAY 2 FEBRUARY 2021 EUROPE

Yulia Navalnaya, wife of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, enters a court building in Moscow, Russia, yesterday.

Court fines Navalny’s wife after protests AP — MOSCOW

A Moscow court yesterday ordered the wife of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny to pay a fine of 20,000 rubles ($265) for violating protest regu-lations after she attended a demon-stration in the Russian capital to demand his release.

Tens of thousands protested across Russia’s 11 time zones on Sunday, chanting slogans against Russian Pres-ident Vladimir Putin and demanding that authorities free Navalny, who was jailed last month and faces a prison term. Over 5,400 protesters were detained by authorities, one group said.

While Russia’s state-run media dis-missed the demonstrations as small and claimed that they showed the opposition’s failure, Navalny’s team said the turnout on Sunday demon-strated “overwhelming nationwide support” for the Kremlin’s fiercest critic.

Navalny’s allies have called for another demonstration in Moscow today, when a court is scheduled to hear the authorities’ motion to send him to prison for up to 3 1/2 years.

His wife, Yulia Navalnaya, joined a protest in Moscow on Sunday that took place despite unprecedented security measures that city authorities took ahead of the rally. She was quickly detained and charged with partici-pating in an unauthorised rally. A court yesterday ordered Navalnaya to pay a fine, her lawyer Svetlana Davydova told the Interfax, adding that the defence plans to appeal the ruling.

In an effort to quell the protests, the authorities have jailed Navalny’s associates and activists across the country.

A total of 40 criminal probes have been opened in 18 Russian regions in connection to the protests, said Pavel Chikov, head of the human rights organisation Agora.

Poland finds first case of coronavirus in mink: MinistryREUTERS — WARSAW

Poland has found its first case of the new novel coronavirus (COVID-19) in mink, the agri-culture ministry said, raising fears of costly culls in an industry that counts over 350 farms in the country.

With new variants of the COVID-19 threatening global efforts to get the pandemic under control, authorities in several countries have begun mass culls of the animals due to fears of a mutated strain of the illness

being transmitted to humans.Late on Sunday, the ministry

said in a statement it had been informed by veterinary inspectors on Saturday of a case in Kartuzy county in northern Poland.

“I hope this is a single case, although we must take all measures to limit possible transmission of the virus,” Deputy Health Minister Wal-demar Kraska told local broad-caster Radio Gdansk yesterday, adding that all mink at the affected farm would be culled.

Denmark, the world’s top exporter of mink furs, ordered a cull of the country’s entire population of some 17 million mink in 2020, and in January announced it would com-pensate farmers with up to $3.09bn.

In a statement sent to state-run news agency PAP, repre-sentatives of the Polish fur industry said the state was not offering any compensation for culled animals, and that they would launch a class action lawsuit demanding damages.

The agriculture ministry did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.

The General Veterinary Inspectorate said in a statement it was investigating whether the farm had followed sanitary reg-ulations and that possible com-pensation or penalties would depend on its findings.

The Regional Veterinary Inspectorate in Gdansk said four samples from the farm had tested positive on Saturday, and that 5,845 mink were in the area affected by the outbreak.

Moldova expects to receive first COVAX vaccines in mid-FebruaryREUTERS — CHISINAU

Moldova expects to receive the first batch of COVID-19 vaccines under the global COVAX scheme in mid-February, its health ministry said yesterday.

The batch will comprise 24,570 doses of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines and Moldova has received confir-mation of the supply from COVAX, the ministry said in a statement.

Vaccines will be delivered to the National Public Health Agency, which has the nec-essary conditions for its storage.

The ministry said the first batches of another vaccine, from AstraZeneca, would be shipped to Moldova at the end of February and the country hoped to receive 264,000 doses of that vaccine in the first half of this year.

Moldova registered 159,894 virus cases and 3,438 deaths, as of yesterday.

A small ex-Soviet republic sandwiched between Ukraine and EU member state Romania, Moldova has said it plans to receive enough free vaccines through the COVAX scheme to vaccinate 20 percent of its 3.5 million pop-ulation. Later, Chisinau plans to purchase vaccines through COVAX at a reduced price.

In December, Romanian President Klaus Iohannis said Bucharest would donate 200,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to Moldova.

Elderly in Poland won’t be given AstraZeneca shot, says ministerREUTERS — WARSAW

Elderly people in Poland will not be given the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, the minister in charge of the programme said yesterday, but he added that a final decision would be made after recommendations from medical experts.

Europe’s medicines regu-lator on Friday approved Astra-Zeneca and Oxford University’s COVID-19 shot for people over 18, but said there were not yet

enough results for people over 55 to determine how well the vaccine will work.

“If we are talking about the decision of the medical council, we expect it in the coming days or possibly hours, but it is clear that elderly people will not be vaccinated with this shot,” Michal Dworczyk, the prime minister’s top aide, said. “We are waiting for a clear recom-mendation from the medical council and then... we will take a decision,” he added.

Prosecutors seek jail term forNavalny; US told to back offREUTERS — MOSCOW

Russian state prosecutors said they would ask a court today to jail oppo-sition politician Alexei Navalny (pictured) for up to three and a half years, and the Kremlin said it would not listen to US complaints about his case.

Riot police detained more than 5,300 people who took part in protests across Russia on Sunday calling for the release of Navalny, a prominent critic of President Vladimir Putin who was detained last month on his return from Germany.

The political unrest is a headache for Putin, 68, who has dominated Russian politics for over two decades. The case has set off new talk of Western sanctions on Russia and raised tension as US President Joe Biden launches his administration.

Sunday’s rallies prompted US Sec-retary of State Antony Blinken to condemn what he said was the per-sistent use of harsh tactics against peaceful protesters and journalists, and to call for Navalny’s release.

The Kremlin said Moscow would ignore Blinken’s comments about what it said were illegal protests inside Russia and warned against Washington imposing any new sanctions.

“...We are not prepared to accept or heed American statements about this,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

A court is set to consider today a request from Moscow’s prison service to hand Navalny a jail term of up to three and a half years for alleged parole violations which he calls trumped up.

The Prosecutor General’s office said yesterday that the request was legal and justified, and that state pros-ecutors would ask a court to grant the prison service’s request.

Navalny, 44, is serving a 30-day stint in jail after being immediately arrested upon arrival back in Russia after having treatment in Germany fol-lowing a nerve agent attack in Russia.

He says Putin ordered the attack, something the Kremlin denies.

Navalny ally Vladimir Ashurkov published a letter addressed to Biden on Saturday appealing for sanctions against businessmen and officials iden-tified as being close Putin allies.

The Kremlin hit back yesterday,

saying the move showed Navalny’s Anti-corruption Foundation was acting as a “foreign agent”, a designation for-mally given to the group in 2019 under a law that civil society workers in Russia say is often used to harass critics.

Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, also said a large number of “hooligans and provocateurs” had been present at Sunday’s nationwide rallies and accused them of acting aggressively towards the police.

“There can be no conversation with hooligans and provocateurs, the law should be applied with the utmost severity,” Peskov told reporters.

Pavel Chikov, a lawyer and rights advocate, said police had opened 40 criminal cases in 18 different regions related to the two weekends of pro-tests. The OVD-Info protest monitor said at least 82 journalists were detained at Sunday’s rally.

Navalny’s allies have called on sup-porters to gather outside the Moscow court on Tuesday during his hearing.

A court placed his spokeswoman, Kira Yarmysh, under house arrest until March on suspicion of breaching COVID-19 regulations at unsanctioned rallies on January 23. Several others, including Navalny’s brother Oleg, are already under house arrest.

When asked about the mass deten-tions, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov noted that the protest was “unlawful” and charged that “there was a fairly large number of hooligans, pro-vocateurs with more or less aggressive behavior towards law enforcement officers.” In response to provocations, the police act harshly and within the law,” Peskov added.

Russian state media also high-lighted “aggressive actions” of the pro-testers in their coverage of Sunday’s demonstrations.

Sunday’s rallies prompted US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to condemn what he said was the persistent use of harsh tactics against peaceful protesters and journalists, and to call for Navalny’s release.

Ukraine leader’s party expels lawmaker for US election interferenceREUTERS — KIEV

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s party voted yesterday to expel Oleksandr Dubinsky after the lawmaker was put on a US sanctions list for election meddling, fellow legislators said.

Last month Washington slapped sanctions on several Ukrainian individuals and entities, accusing them of

interference in US elections and associating with a pro-Russian Ukrainian lawmaker linked to efforts by then-President Donald Trump’s allies to dig up dirt on his successor, Joe Biden, and his son.

Dubinsky denies the election meddling allegations and in a statement yesterday accused his colleagues of “cow-ardice and meanness”.

“Unfortunately, the events

of the last three weeks have clearly and distinctly demon-strated the true face of the actors on the political stage of Ukraine,” he said.

Daniil Getmantsev, a law-maker with the ruling Servant of the People party, told Interfax Ukraine that Dubinsky had been ejected after a vote that was held over three days.

The party’s parliamentary faction leader David Arakhamia

and another lawmaker, Olha Vasylevska-Smahliuk, said the majority of the its 246 law-makers had voted to expel Dubinsky.

Ukraine has sought to turn the page on relations with Washington after being unwill-ingly sucked into the political batt le over Trump’s impeachment in 2019.

The Trump administration temporarily froze military aid

to Ukraine as Trump pressed Zelenskiy’s administration to investigate Biden.

Washington has been Kiev’s most powerful ally against Russia since Moscow’s annexation of Crimea in year 2014.

Zelenskiy’s administration has said it will hold people to account for meddling in US elections, “regardless of party affiliation”.

Nearly half of virus deaths in Portugal were in JanuaryREUTERS — LISBON

Portugal reported close to half of all its COVID-19 deaths in January, highlighting a severe acceleration in cases that has prompted several European nations to offer help.

Hospitals across the nation of a little more than 10 million appear on the verge of collapse, with ambulances sometimes queuing for hours because of a lack of beds while some health units are struggling to find enough refrigerated space to preserve the bodies of the deceased.

Austria is willing to take intensive-care patients and is waiting for Portuguese author-ities to propose how many they want to transfer, the Austrian embassy in Lisbon said.

Germany will send medical staff and equipment, with a plane carrying 26 doctors, nurses and hygiene experts, as well as 40 mobile and 10 sta-tionary ventilators. The flight is due to leave for Lisbon on Wednesday.

Hard-hit neighbour Spain has offered help, too, but Por-tugal has yet to accept, a Spanish foreign ministry source said.

Foreign Minister Arancha Gonzalez Laya told LaSexta TV that the two countries were in “direct contact every day, at all levels”.

Portugal’s 5,576 COVID-19 fatalities in January represent 44.7 percent of the 12,482 reg-istered since the start of the pandemic.

Portuguese officials have blamed the huge increase in infection and death rates on the more contagious variant of the disease first detected in Britain, while acknowledging that a relaxation of restrictions on movement over the Christmas holidays also played a role.

More than 711,000 infec-tions have been reported since March 2020, with 43 percent of those in January, according to health authority DGS. On Monday, it reported 5,805 cases, with 275 deaths.

Portugal has the world’s

highest seven-day rolling average of new daily cases per million inhabitants, according to data tracker ourworldindata.org.

“We are confident the lockdown will have its (positive)

effects,” Health Secretary Antonio Sales said.

Though case numbers are still on the rise, Sales added that the virus reproduction rate is now falling. “We know we still have a tough two weeks ahead”.

With 865 coronavirus patients in intensive care and 6,869 in hospital wards, hos-pitals in Portugal are running out of beds and there is a shortage of doctors, nurses and health workers.

A health worker gestures next to ambulances carrying patients with the coronavirus disease outside the Santa Maria Hospital, in Lisbon.

New York state Governor Andrew Cuomo declared a state of emergency in the city and 44 other counties. Upwards of 90 percent of flights at New York City-area airports have been cancelled and operations at La Guardia and John F. Kennedy airports have been suspended.

14 TUESDAY 2 FEBRUARY 2021AMERICAS

Winter storm batters US Northeast

REUTERS — NEW YORK

A powerful winter storm engulfed much of the US Northeast yesterday as several inches of snow fell across vast swaths of the region and high winds swept coastal areas, causing widespread disruption in New York City and other major urban centers in the region.

The powerful nor’easter — a storm whose winds blow from the northeast — is forecast to bring 1 to 2 feet (31cm to 61cm) of snow across the United States’ most densely populated region through today, according to the National Weather Service. Snowfall rates could reach 2 to 4 inches (5cm to 10cm) per hour during the storm’s peak.

If it achieves its maximum potential, it would be the first winter storm to generate more than 2 feet of snow in New York City since 2016, when a record-breaking blizzard dumped 27.5 inches (70cm) on the country’s most populous city, according to the weather service.

Winter storm warnings and weather advisories were in place across the Northeast.

New Jersey Governor Phil

Murphy declared a state of emergency on Sunday, sus-pending public bus and com-muter rail service.

In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio imposed restrictions on non-essential travel starting at 6am EST (1100 GMT) due to heavy snowfall and strong winds expected to batter the city. De Blasio also announced the suspension of in-person learning at the city’s public schools through today.

New York state Governor Andrew Cuomo declared a state of emergency in the city and 44 other counties, and warned of possible road closures in the hours ahead. “This is a dan-gerous situation. A life-threat-ening situation,” Cuomo said. “Expect closures. It’s going to get very bad very quickly.”

Outdoor subway service in New York City will be sus-pended as of 1900 GMT, offi-cials said. Upwards of 90 percent of flights at New York City-area airports have been cancelled, according to Rick Cotton, executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and operations at La Guardia and John F. Kennedy

airports in the city have been suspended.

The PATH commuter train service linking Manhattan with New Jersey will also suspend service as of 2000 GMT, Cotton said. The stormy weather affected more than just roads and travel as COVID-19 vacci-nation sites and testing loca-tions were forced to close or change their schedules.

All six vaccine mega-sites across New Jersey were closed yesterday, and vaccine appoint-ments were rescheduled at many New York state-run sites. Vaccinations and testing were

also suspended at New York City public hospitals and health centers. De Blasio said that, with the city facing up to 22 inches (56cm) of snow, vaccinations would be postponed today as well. “The storm is disrupting our vaccination effort, and we need to keep people safe,” he told a news briefing.

In Boston, health officials announced the closure yesterday of a COVID-19 vaccine clinic at the Reggie Lewis Center, a large indoor sports center.

But many Northeasterners greeted the heavy snowfall with excitement, taking to social

media to share photos of streets, parks and backyards blanketed with the white stuff, as well as happy pets playing in the snow.

Even the giant pandas at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo in Washington seemed to enjoy the winter weather when it hit the nation’s capital on Sunday. “Slides, somersaults and pure panda joy. Happy snow day from giant pandas Mei Xiang and Tian Tian!,” the zoo wrote on Twitter, with a video showing the furry black-and-white creatures rolling in the fresh powder and sliding down a snow-covered incline.

A pedestrian walks past snow-covered taxis during a snow storm in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, New York, US, yesterday.

Biden threatens sanctions on Myanmar after military coupREUTERS — WASHINGTON

US President Joe Biden yesterday threatened to reimpose sanctions on Myan-mar’s military leaders and called for a concerted interna-tional response to press them to relinquish power they seized in a coup.

A Biden statement con-demned the military’s takeover from the civilian-led gov-ernment yesterday and its detention of elected leader and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi as “a direct assault on the country’s transition to democracy and the rule of law”.

The Myanmar crisis marks a first major test of Biden’s pledge to collaborate more with allies on international chal-lenges, especially on China’s rising influence, in contrast to former President Donald Trump’s often go-it-alone “America First” approach.

“The international com-munity should come together in one voice to press the Burmese military to immedi-ately relinquish the power they have seized, release the activists and officials they have detained,” Biden said.

“The United States removed sanctions on Burma over the past decade based on progress toward democracy. The reversal of that progress will necessitate an immediate review of our sanction laws and authorities, followed by appropriate action,” he said.

Biden also called on the military in Myanmar, which is also known as Burma, to lift all restrictions on telecommu-nications and to refrain from violence against civilians.

He said the United States was “taking note of those who stand with the people of Burma in this difficult hour”.

Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party won a landslide 83% in a November 8 election. The army said in taking over in the early hours yes-terday that it had responded to what it called election fraud.

Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro leaves the Supreme Court building after the opening ceremony of this year’s judiciary in Brasilia, Brazil, yesterday.

Bolsonaro allies poised to win leadership of Brazil CongressREUTERS — BRASILIA

Allies of Brazil’s right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro are set to win leadership roles in Con-gress, bolstering his standing but not necessarily his eco-nomic team’s reform agenda, analysts and politicians said.

Rodrigo Pacheco of the center-right Democrats party, whom Bolsonaro has endorsed, is expected to easily win election as president of the Senate, with 55-60 votes in the 81-seat chamber, according to risk consultancy Arko Advice.

Pacheco recently said he would not make a priority of privatizing Eletrobras, Latin America’s largest utility and one of the government’s biggest potential asset sales as it works to cut the fiscal deficit. He also

disagrees with Bolsonaro’s pol-icies easing environmental enforcement and gun sales.

For Speaker of the lower house, the right-wing Liberal Party’s candidate, Arthur Lira, has widened his lead over Luiz Felipe Baleia Rossi, of the cen-trist MDB party, who is backed by left-wing lawmakers pushing to spend more on assistance to low-income Brazilians hurt by the coronavirus pandemic.

On Sunday, the center-right Democrats party decided not to back any candidate in the 513-seat chamber, effectively pulling its support for Baleia Rossi and ensuring Lira a majority.

The decision was a defeat for incumbent speaker Rodrigo Maia, a member of the Demo-crats party, who has sought to

keep Congress independent from the Bolsonaro government in setting the legislative agenda.

Lira has some 280-300 votes, according to Congressman Marcelo Ramos who is in line to become his deputy speaker. Bol-sonaro’s growing influence over Congress should dispel for now the growing clamor for impeachment from critics who have filed 57 requests to unseat him, mainly for his handling of the pandemic that has killed some 224,000 Brazilians.

Upset by the news that his party was abandoning his favored candidate, Maia reportedly threatened to authorize the opening of impeachment proceedings on his last day as speaker, according to newspapers Estado de S Paulo and Folha de S.Paulo.

Death threat against 11-year-old activist outrages ColombiaAP — VILLETA, COLOMBIA

A social media death threat aimed at an 11-year-old environmental activist has roused outrage in Colombia, a nation where attacks on social leaders are common and threats are taken seriously.

Colombian officials said they are investigating the death threat against Francisco Vera and President Ivan Duque recently promised in a tele-vision appearance that his government would find “the bandits” behind the Twitter message.

For his part, the boy says he will continue to lead environmental cam-paigns and urged other young people

to use social media to “support causes they believe in”.

Vera, who has drawn comparisons to teenage Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg, got together with six friends from school about two years ago and marched to the main park in his hometown of Villeta carrying card-board signs and chanting slogans about climate change, under the supervision of his grandmother.

His Guardians for Life group now has at least 11 chapters and more than 200 members across Colombia. It planted hundreds of trees last year and petitioned Colombia’s government to ban single-use plastics. He spoke before the country’s congress last year.

On January 15, the boy received a gruesome, profanely worded death threat from a Twitter account using a false name in response to a video he posted urging Duque to improve internet access for children studying from home during the pandemic.

Such threats have weight in Colombia. The United Nations says that at least 53 community leaders were murdered in the South American country last year and it is examining reports of an additional 80 such slayings.

The nation is struggling to achieve peace following decades of guerrilla conflict and clashes involving drug gangs and paramilitary groups.

Twitter suspended the threatening account and the boy received hundreds of messages of support, including a letter that was hand-delivered by United Nations officials. Signed by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, it congrat-ulated Francisco for his work on behalf of the environment.

At home in Villeta, a small town surrounded by mountains, Francisco said he welcomes “constructive crit-icism” and is trying to ignore the threat as well as messages in which critics accuse him of being an instrument of leftist politicians.

He said his group of young activists will campaign against the introduction

of oil fracking technology in Colombia and will also keep up pressure on pol-iticians to ban single-use plastics. Last year, the group collected 24,000 sig-natures in an online petition for such a ban.

His mother, Ana Maria Manzanares, said she hopes the threat is nothing more than a cruel joke.

She said a town official suggested shutting down her son’s social media account, but she prefers to let him decide whether to stop campaigning.

“I want him to be aware that he is doing something that is very valuable,” Manzanares said. “And that it is pos-sible for him and thousands of children around the world to change things.”

Videos show Rochester officers pepper-spraying 9-year-oldAP — ROCHESTER

Police in Rochester released two body-camera videos on Sunday of officers restraining a distraught 9-year-old girl who was handcuffed and sprayed with what police called a chemical “irritant”.

The Democrat and Chronicle reported that prior to the release of the videos, Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren expressed her concern for the “child that was harmed during this incident that happened on Friday”.

“I have a 10-year-old child, so she’s a child, she’s a baby. This video, as a mother, is not anything you want to see,” Warren went on to say.

A total of nine officers and supervisors responded to the report of “family trouble” on Friday. The girl can be heard in the body-camera videos from officers at the scene screaming frantically for her father as the officers try to restrain her.

At a news conference, Deputy Police Chief Andre Anderson described the girl as suicidal. “She indicated she wanted to kill herself and she

wanted to kill her mom,” he said. Officers tried to force the girl into a patrol car but she pulled away and kicked at them. In a statement on Saturday, the police department said this action “required” an officer to take the girl down to the ground.

Then, the department said, “for the minor’s safety and at the request of the custodial parent on scene,” the child was handcuffed and put in the back of a police car as they waited for an ambulance to arrive.

Police said the girl diso-beyed commands to put her feet in the car. An officer was then “required” to spray an “irritant” in the handcuffed girl’s face, the department said.

Police Chief Cynthia Her-riott-Sullivan described the irritant as pepper spray. She declined to defend the officers’ actions. “I’m not going to stand here and tell you that for a 9-year-old to have to be pepper-sprayed is OK. It’s not,” Herriott-Sullivan said. “I don’t see that as who we are as a department, and we’re going to do the work we have to do to ensure that these kinds of things don’t happen.”

A Rochester police officer asks a handcuffed nine-year-old girl to get into a patrol car, prior to the girl being sprayed with a chemical irritant in a still image from bodycam video taken in Rochester, New York, US, on January 29, 2021.

COVAX to send

AstraZeneca shot

to Latin America

REUTERS — GENEVA

The COVAX global vaccine sharing scheme expects to deliver 35.3 million doses of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine to 36 Caribbean and Latin American states from mid-February to the end of June, the World Health Organ-ization’s regional office said.

The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) said the Americas region needed to immunise about 500 million people to control the pandemic. It said WHO would complete its review in a few days of the AstraZeneca vaccine for emer-gency use listing (EUL).

Of the 36 nations receiving AstraZeneca’s shot, it said four countries — Bolivia, Colombia, El Salvador and Peru, would also receive 377,910 doses of the Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine from mid-February.

The 36 nations to receive the AstraZeneca vaccine ranged from regional giants Brazil and Mexico to small islands such as Dominica and Montserrat.

Winning the support of 10 Republicans would be significant for Biden in the 50-50 Senate where Vice-President Kamala Harris is the tie-breaker. If all Democrats were to back an eventual compromise bill, the legislation would reach the 60-vote threshold necessary to overcome potential blocking efforts and pass under regular Senate procedures.

15TUESDAY 2 FEBRUARY 2021 AMERICAS

Biden to meet Republicans proposing $618bn virus aidAP — WASHINGTON

President Joe Biden is set to meet with a group of 10 Repub-lican senators who have pro-posed $618bn in coronavirus relief, about a third of the $1.9 trillion he is seeking as congres-sional Democrats are poised to move ahead without Repub-lican support.

The Republicans propose slimmer benefits, including $1,000 in direct payments to individuals earning up to $40,000 a year, or $80,000 for couples, according to a draft obtained by AP.

The proposal would begin to phase out the benefit after that, with no payments for those individuals earning more than $50,000, or $100,000 for couples. That’s less than Biden’s proposal for $1,400 direct pay-ments at higher incomes levels.

The cornerstone of the GOP plan appears to be $160bn for the health care response — vaccine distribution, a “massive expansion” of testing, protective gear and funds for rural hos-pitals, according to the draft.

Others elements of the package are similar but at far lesser amounts, with $20bn to reopen schools and $40bn for Paycheck Protection Program

business aid.An invitation to the GOP

senators to meet at the White House came hours after the lawmakers sent Biden a letter on Sunday urging him to nego-tiate rather than try to ram through his relief package solely on Democratic votes.

The House and Senate are on track to vote as soon as this week on a budget resolution, which would lay the groundwork for passing an aid package under rules requiring only a simple majority vote in the closely divided Senate.

The goal is for passage by March, when extra unem-ployment assistance and other pandemic aid expires. The meeting to be hosted by Biden would amount to the most public involvement for the Pres-ident in the negotiations for the next round of virus relief.

Democratic and Republican lawmakers are far apart in their proposals for assistance.

White House Press Sec-retary Jen Psaki said on Sunday that Biden had spoken with the leader of the group, Senator Susan Collins, R-Maine. Though Biden wants “a full exchange of views,” Psaki reiterated that the President remains in favour of moving forward with a far-reaching relief package.

Winning the support of 10 Republicans would be significant for Biden in the 50-50 Senate where Vice-President Kamala Harris is the tie-breaker. If all Democrats were to back an eventual compromise bill, the legislation would reach the 60-vote threshold necessary to overcome potential blocking efforts and pass under regular Senate procedures.

The Republicans did not

provide many details of their proposal. One of the signa-tories, Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy, said that it would cost about $600bn. Biden also spoke with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who are facing a growing push from the more liberal Democratic members

to move forward with Biden’s legislation with or without Republican support.

The other GOP senators invited to meet with Biden are Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mitt Romney of Utah, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, Todd Young of Indiana, Jerry Moran of Kansas, Mike Rounds of South Dakota, and Thom

Tillis of North Carolina.Under the Biden plan, fam-

ilies with incomes up to $300,000 could receive some stimulus money.

“I support passing COVID relief with support from Republicans if we can get it. But the COVID relief has to pass — no ifs, ands or buts,” Biden said on Friday.

US President Joe Biden speaks before signing executive orders strengthening access to affordable healthcare at the White House in Washington, DC, in this January 28, 2021 picture.

Republicans grapple with divisions as Trump trial loomsREUTERS — WASHINGTON

US congressional Republicans face a week of reckoning ahead of Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial as the former president contends with a deadline to respond to the charges and his party mulls whether to punish Represent-ative Liz Cheney for backing impeachment.

Trump is due to file a response to the House impeachment charges by today. He named two new lead lawyers to his defense team on Sunday after abruptly parting ways with his lead impeachment counsel the day before.

David Schoen, who operates a criminal defense practice based in Alabama, and Bruce Castor, a former Phila-delphia-area district attorney, will replace lawyers Butch Bowers and Deborah Barberi, Trump’s office said.

The Democratic-led House voted on January 13 to impeach Trump, with 10 Republicans voting in favour, on a charge of inciting a insurrection for his incendiary speech to supporters before the January 6 US Capitol siege. A pro-Trump mob inter-rupted the formal congressional certification of Biden’s election victory in a rampage that left five people dead.

Trump’s Republican Party remained deeply divided between those who supported impeachment and those who have remained loyal to the former president.

Lawmakers on the Repub-lican right flank are aiming to remove Cheney, the daughter of former Vice-President Dick Cheney, as the party’s No. 3 in

the House. House Republicans are expected to address the issue when they meet as a group tomorrow.

House Republican Adam Kinzinger, who also voted to impeach, announced a new political action committee called the Country First PAC, intended to challenge Trump’s ongoing grip on the party.

Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press”, Kinzinger said his party had “lost its moral authority in a lot of areas” and under Trump had pedaled “darkness and division”.

Speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union” program, Senator Rob Portman urged his fellow Republicans in the House not to rebuke Cheney. “I think she is very smart, and she plays a key role in our party, particularly on foreign affairs. So I would hope that they would not go down that road,” Portman said.

During the impeachment debate, Cheney said of Trump’s actions: “There has never been a greater betrayal by a Pres-ident of the United States of his office and his oath to the Con-stitution” - remarks seized upon by Democrats.

There are strong indications that too few Republicans will join the Democrats to achieve the two-thirds majority needed to convict Trump in the Senate.

Forty-five of the 50 Repub-lican senators last Tuesday sup-ported a resolution declaring the trial unconstitutional because Trump is now a private citizen, having left office on Jan. 20. “That sets up a precedent. And I think all former presi-dents, those alive and those not, could be affected in a negative way,” Portman said.

Second dose: Patients in US scramble for appointmentsREUTERS — NEW YORK

As the number of Americans ready for their second COVID-19 vaccine shot grows, some are falling through the cracks of an increasingly complex web of providers and appointment systems.

While many people are getting the required second doses, the process is taking a toll on some of the most vul-nerable — older adults who in many cases rely on family members or friends to navigate complex sign-up systems and inconvenient locations.

Available vaccines need to be given as two separate doses weeks apart, and confusion is further taxing an already chal-lenged system. For example, Houston’s health department on Friday told those seeking a second dose to be patient, saying the volume of calls was

creating long wait times at its call center.

Practices vary. Seminole County in Florida schedules follow-ups during the 15-minute observation period after people get their first shots. New York’s Onondaga County holds off on sched-uling second appointments until days before the shot.

After an online system showed no appointments, Stacey Champion secured a second appointment for her 78-year-old friend Dan Pochoda at Cardinal Stadium in Phoenix, Arizona - at 1:51am on February 9. It took several calls to get even that, Champion said.

“If they had been saving appointments for second doses, would they really need to send people way out to the edges of the city in the middle of the night?” Champion asked.

Many providers expect their

vaccine allocations to fall sharply this week.

“When this started, it was only for hospitals. Now a smaller pot needs to be divided between many more - the pharmacies, the mega sites and everyone else,” said Felipe Osorno, executive administrator of continuum of care operations and value improvement at Keck Medicine of the University of Southern California.

People in recent days have been showing up at USC hos-pitals seeking their second vaccine dose, saying their original vaccine provider could not confirm an appointment, Osorno said.

As of Friday, nearly 23 million people in the United States had received a first vaccine shot, and almost 5 million had the second, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Chicago teachers face work stoppage in COVID-19 safety plan rowREUTERS — CHICAGO

Chicago teachers appeared headed for a strike or lockout over their latest dispute with the third-largest US school district after the two sides failed to reach an deal on a COVID-19 safety plan even as they vowed to keep talking.

The Chicago Public Schools late on Sunday told the parents of 67,000 pre-kindergarten, special education, elementary and middle school students who were scheduled to attend in-person classes yesterday to keep their children at home after it could not reach an agreement with the Chicago Teachers Union.

The district, in a letter to parents, said it hoped to hold in-person classes for those

students today. The union, which represents the city’s 28,000 public school educators, has been locked in negotiations with the district for months over a gradual reopening of schools for the system’s 355,000 stu-dents. The two sides have been at odds on teachers’ demands for stronger safety protocols to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus in classrooms.

During separate news con-ferences on Sunday night, Mayor Lori Lightfoot said talks stalled while union president Jesse Sharkey said it was “disap-pointed” and “frustrated” with the process. Both sides vowed to continue to negotiate.

“I think we can still get a deal done,” Lightfoot told MNSBC yes-terday morning. “A strike would be catastrophic, mostly for our

kids.” Lightfoot added that offi-cials were awaiting a response from the union after the city put forward its latest proposal, saying a few tough issues remained and urging teachers “to meet us

halfway”. Vaccines remained an issue, and Lightfoot said offi-cials were working to get teachers, particularly those working or living in the hardest-hit areas, vaccinated soon.

Tension between the two sides grew in recent days after rank-and-file members voted in favour of staying remote and not going back to their schools until their needs are met.

The union has threatened to stop working altogether, form picket lines and strike if the district retaliates against any members who fail to report to school buildings.

Chicago Public Schools CEO Janice Jackson ordered 10,000 teachers to report to work in-person yesterday and said those who did not have a valid reason for their absence would be con-sidered absent without leave. The school district has been teaching its 355,000 students remotely since the pandemic forced it to close school buildings last spring.

ACLU, for first time, elects Black person as its president

AP — NEW YORK

Deborah Archer, a professor at New York University School of Law with expertise in civil rights and racial justice, has become the first Black person in the 101-year history of the American Civil Liberties Union to be elected its president.

The ACLU announced yes-terday that Archer was elected over the weekend in a virtual meeting of the organization’s 69-member board of directors. She succeeds Susan Herman, a professor at Brooklyn Law School who had served as president since 2008.

As the ACLU’s eighth pres-ident since 1920, Archer will act as chair of its board of the directors, overseeing organiza-tional matters and the setting of civil liberties policies. The fight against racial injustice is expected to be a top priority.

The ACLU’s day-to-day operations are managed by its executive director - a post cur-rently held by Anthony Romero. During former President Donald Trump’s four years in office, the ACLU filed 413 lawsuits and other legal actions against his administration. “The ACLU has proven itself as an invaluable voice in the fight for civil rights in the last four years of the Trump era, and we are better positioned than ever to face the work ahead,” Archer said.

Man stabbed in Tennessee over mask disputeAP — NASHVILLE

A Tennessee man is accused of stabbing another person with whom he got into an argument over not wearing a mask and later swinging two metal baseball bats at police officers.

A Metro Nashville police affidavit says Jerry Cowan, 53, began arguing with another man outside of an apartment complex early Sunday because Cowan was not wearing a mask. Cowan allegedly pulled out a pocket knife and a “long blade with a makeshift wooden handle” and stabbed the other man in his arm and near his chin.

The victim escaped into a nearby residence and called police, the records showed. Investigators wrote that Cowan retreated into his home. Officers busted down the door and found Cowan holding a metal baseball bat in each hand. He swung the bats toward officers and ran away, the documents stated. Officers later used a stun gun on him multiple times and took him into custody.

Supporters of the Chicago Teachers Union participate in a car caravan in Chicago, Illinois, in this January 30, 2021 picture.

A worker takes a break after a vaccination drive in Avondale, Louisiana, in this January 9 picture.

16TUESDAY 2 FEBRUARY 2021

W ALRUWAIS : 19o → 21o W ALKHOR : 11o → 22o W DUKHAN : 19o → 21o W WAKRAH : 12o → 26o W MESAIEED : 12o → 26o W ABUSAMRA : 16o → 21o

Moderate temperature daytime

with some clouds and slight dust at

times, cold by night.

Minimum Maximum16oC 25oC

WEATHER TODAY

LOW TIDE 01:56 – 15:20

HIGH TIDE 07:25 – 19:20

PRAYER TIMINGSPPPPRAYRRRAAAYARA MMMMIINNNNNNNNNGGGGGGMMMMMMMMMIIINNNNNNGGGGNNNNGGGIINNNNGNNNNNNNNN

PRAYERTIMINGS

FAJRSUNRISE

04.57 am 06.17 am

DHUHR 11.48 am

ISHA 06.51 pmMAGHRIBASR 02.56 pm

05.21 pm

QDF partners with Dior to launch exclusive fragranceTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Qatar Duty Free (QDF) announced yesterday the worldwide exclusive launch of Tobacolor at a grand unveiling ceremony at the Dior boutique at Hamad International Airport. Tobacolor — an oud, inspired by notes and tones from the Middle East — marks the first-ever launch of a Maison Christian Dior fragrance within travel retail and will be exclu-sively available at QDF during February before becoming available worldwide.

The official reveal of Toba-color was celebrated at an unveiling ceremony at HIA. The event was attended by VIP guests and officiated by Qatar Airways Group Chief Executive, H E Akbar Al Baker, Hamad International Airport Chief Operating Officer, Engr. Badr Al Meer, Qatar Duty Free Vice-President Operations, Thabet Musleh, Frank Dagher, General Manager Travel Retail, LVMH Perfumes and Cosmetics, and the French Ambassador to Qatar, H E Franck Gellet.

As part of its position within a powerful trinity of a retailer, an award-winning airport, and a global airline, QDF is uniquely positioned to partner with travel retail brands to launch products and services, bringing exclusive experiences to customers.

Akbar Al Baker said: “I am delighted to unveil a worldwide exclusive for our trinity of Qatar Duty Free, Hamad International Airport, and Qatar Airways, in partnership with Dior. Within our enviable trinity, we strive

for excellence and innovation in all areas. Product exclusives are an important part of our world-class retail offer – giving our passengers yet another reason to fly with us via the Best Airport in the Middle East.”

Engr. Al Meer said: “We con-tinue to work with our partners at QDF and Qatar Airways to elevate the passengers experience throughout their entire journey. This exclusive launch speaks to our ever-expanding offerings that bring the finest names in luxury retail together under one roof for our passengers to enjoy. As we expand to accommodate more passengers in the coming years, we will continue to deliver on Qatar’s well-earned reputation as a destination of authentic and diverse experiences.”

HIA and its award-winning partner, QDF, have developed pioneering partnerships with leading luxury brands to bring travellers the world’s best in airport entertainment, leisure,

and attractions.Thabet Musleh said: “We are

proud to once again partner with Maison Christian Dior to launch their latest fragrance, Tobocolor, at Qatar Duty Free as a worldwide exclusive. We are delighted to be uniquely positioned to work with our brand partners to bring amazing and unique personalised expe-riences to our customers at every stage of their journey. It is because of this and the resil-ience of Qatar Airways and HIA — both awarded the 5-Star COVID-19 Airline Safety Rating By Skytrax — that QDF was the preferred partner for Dior and to host the worldwide launch of the amazing Tobacolor. We are delighted to continue to build on our strong brand and

product portfolio to create a world-class shopping expe-rience for our travellers.”

Frank Dagher, General Manager Travel Retail, LVMH Perfumes & Cosmetics, said: “At Christian Dior, we have always been passionate about perfume, and it is part of our history. In addition to our love for fragrances, we have built a unique relationship with the Qatar Airways group for many years now. Today I am delighted to be here with you to launch officially the worldwide exclusivity of Tobacolor, the latest iconic fragrance from Maison Christian Dior, created by François Demachy, our Perfumer-Creator.”

Passengers flying with Qatar Airways in February will receive personalised invites to visit the Dior boutique to discover Toba-color and are offered a

complimentary engraving on the purchase of any 250 ml bottle of the Maison Christian Dior fra-grance. The airline’s Premium Class passengers are also invited to collect a discovery size bottle of Tobacolor from the boutique. For those looking for a unique gift, all travellers passing through HIA can purchase cus-tomised ‘Qatar’ gifting sets fea-turing Arabic calligraphy along with their purchase of the Toba-color fragrance.

Tobacolor can be found at the Dior Boutique inside the Beauty Store of QDF’s South node retail plaza, which includes an impressive selection of global brands such as Dolce & Gabbana, Tom Ford, Estee Lauder, Lancôme, and Yves Saint Laurent.

Qatar Airways Group Chief Executive, H E Akbar Al Baker, and French Ambassador to Qatar, H E Franck Gellet, with other officials during the launch.

Tobacolor — an oud, inspired by notes and tones from the Middle East — marks the first-ever launch of a Maison Christian Dior fragrance within travel retail and will be exclusively available at QDF in February before becoming available worldwide.

Spacewalkers finishing 4 years of station power upgrades

AP — CAPE CANAVERAL

A pair of Nasa astronauts ventured out on their second spacewalk in under a week yesterday to complete a four-year effort to modernize the International Space Station’s power grid.

Over the weekend, flight controllers in Houston used the station’s big robot arm to replace the last pair of old-style batteries with a single better-quality one.

Astronauts Mike Hopkins and Victor Glover needed to put the finishing touches on this newest lithium-ion battery to complete a series of space-walks that began in 2017.

“Beautiful day. Let’s go for a walk outside,” Mission Control radioed as the spacewalk got off to a late start.

The space station is now equipped with 24 lithium-ion batteries to store power col-lected by the solar panels. The big, boxy batteries, surpassing 400 pounds (180 kilograms) each, provide electricity for the orbiting lab when it’s on the night side of Earth. They’re so powerful that only half as many are needed as the old nickel-hydrogen batteries they replaced.

The upgrade took longer than expected after one of the new batteries failed following its installation two years ago and had to be replaced. In all, 14 spacewalks were needed to complete the battery work.

NASA expects these bat-teries to last the rest of the space station’s operating life.

Other spacewalking chores yesterday for Hopkins and Glover include installing a new camera on the US Destiny lab and replacing parts in the camera system outside the sta-tion’s Japanese lab, named Kibo, or Hope in English.

During a spacewalk on Wednesday, the two astro-nauts made improvements to the European lab, Columbus.

Four women set to circumnavigate Qatar on footALEXANDRA EVANGELISTATHE PENINSULA ONLINE

Ahead of the National Sports Day, “The Desert Roses” will attempt to make history as the first women to circumnavigate Qatar, on foot. Starting on Friday, the four female ultra-runners will begin camping by the roadside and take on the 500 kilometre distance by walking, jogging, and running around the periphery of the country in a period of five days (Feb 5-9).

The Desert Roses, composed of Stephanie Innes-Smith and Isobel Bushell from the UK; Heather Lee from Canada; and Ross Ayuro from the Philippines, share a common passion for running. With a shared history on sporting activities and

belonging to the same running community, the four women were able to establish a team that could try the record-breaking adventure in the country.

The group’s goal does not simply end by completing the 500km distance. Much like the team’s name, “The Desert Roses” also wants to highlight and encourage exploration in the country beyond Doha.

The challenge also serves a greater vision to inspire women and girls to engage in challenging, arduous outdoor activities. They also aim to raise the profile of female sporting competence in Qatar as well as to inspire amateur athletes to set ambitious and unconventional personal goals.

In an interview with the Qabayan Radio, teacher and army reservist Stephanie

Innes-Smith shared: “We certainly feel we’re in a position where we’re able to try and I think anyone can start small and build up and be committed to it.”

With two teachers in the same team, Isobel Bushell and Innes-Smith, their passion for sports and running also ties with their vision to lead the students they teach by setting as an example. Educa-tional Psychologist Heather Lee and finance professional Ross Ayuro completes the team.

“Our other message is to children, again you’re never too young to start and you just get involved and get going. You never know, you might really like it,” Innes-Smith added.

Ahead of the journey, preparations and training are underway along with identifying inevitable challenges they might encounter such as food supply, weather conditions and the on-going pandemic.

The quartet received overwhelming support from local sports communities, such as a Filipino cycling community and the Doha Bay Running Club (DBRC), who are willing to accompany the team and be of help along the journey.

Bringing the community spirit ahead of the much-awaited Qatar National Sports Day on February 9, The Desert Roses have a few days to go to gear up and train for the historical record that could mark them as the first women to travel around Qatar, by foot.

Also speaking to Qabayan Radio, Fil-ipina expat Ayuro shared a short message to all amateur athletes and fellow runners ahead of the 500km challenge.

“Do whatever you can with whatever you have and wherever we are, in line with Qatar’s vision 2030, like spreading sporting awareness and get involved in physical activities,” Ayuro concluded.

The Desert Roses members Stephanie Innes-Smith and Isobel Bushell from the UK; Heather Lee from Canada; and Ross Ayuro from the Philippines.

Berlin festival

chooses 6 former

winners as this

year’s jury

AP — BERLIN

A six-member jury of former winners has been chosen to allocate the prizes at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival, which is taking place in a revamped form because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Organisers announced in December that the “Berlinale” will be split into two parts because of coronavirus curbs.

An online event for the industry, with the jury choosing the winners, is to be held March 1-5. Plans call for a “summer special” to follow June 9-20, at which the public will get a chance to see the winners and a selection of other films. The award cer-emony is to take place in June.

The festival said yesterday that it is also taking a new approach to the international jury this year. It will do without a jury president, and instead is having six directors whose films all won the event’s top Golden Bear award judge this year’s entries.

The jury includes the directors of the five most recent winners: Iran’s Mohammad Rasoulof, Nadav Lipid from Israel, Romania’s Adina Pintilie, Hungary’s Ildiko Enyedi and Gianfranco Rosi of Italy.

Angelina Jolie sells painting Churchill gave as gift to FDRAP — LONDON

A painting by Winston Churchill that is a piece of both political and Hollywood history is coming up for auction.

Christie’s auction house said Monday that the Moroccan landscape “Tower of the Kout-oubia Mosque” — a gift from Churchill to US President Franklin D Roosevelt — is being sold by Angelina Jolie (pictured) next month with an estimated price of £1.5m to £2.5m ($2.1 to $3.4m).

The image of the 12th-century mosque in Marrakech at sunset, with the Atlas Moun-tains in the background, is the only painting that Britain’s Second World War leader

completed during the 1939-45 conflict.

He painted it after the January 1943 Casablanca Con-ference, where Churchill and Roosevelt planned the defeat of Nazi Germany. The two leaders visited Marrakech after the con-ference so that Churchill could show Roosevelt the city’s beauty.

“Roosevelt was blown away by it and thought it was incredible,” said Nick Orchard, head of Christie’s modern British art department. He said Churchill captured the view in the “wonderful, evocative painting” and gave it to Roo-sevelt as a memento of the trip.

Churchill was a keen amateur artist who completed some 500 paintings after taking

up painting in his 40s. Orchard said that “the light in Morocco and over Marrakech was some-thing that Churchill was pas-sionate about” and painted again and again.

“He loved the dry air, the light, the sun and the way it played on the landscapes,” he said. “And that’s absolutely visible here in this painting. You can see the long shadows and the turning purple of the moun-tains and the deepening of the sky - classic sunset time.”

The painting was sold by Roosevelt’s son after the pres-ident’s death in 1945, and had several owners before Jolie and partner Brad Pitt bought it in 2011.

The couple separated in

2016 and have spent years enmeshed in divorce pro-ceedings, amid speculation about the division of their extensive art collection. They were declared divorced in 2019 after their lawyers asked for a bifurcated judgment, meaning that two married people can be declared single while other issues, including finances and child custody, remain.

The painting is being sold by the Jolie Family Collection as part of Christie’s March 1 modern British art auction in London.

Orchard said the auction house was hopeful it could set a new record for a Churchill work.

“The record price at auction

for Churchill is about 1.8 million (pounds) for a painting that, in my view, is not as important as this,” he said. “And I think this is probably his most important work.”