SPORT | 08BUSINESS | 01

Wednesday 12 February 2020

18 Jumada II - 1441

2 Riyals

www.thepeninsula.qa

Volume 24 | Number 8165

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Amir leads National Sport Day celebrations

QNA/THE PENINSULA — DOHA

Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani participated yesterday morning in the activ-ities of the Qatar National Sport Day (NSD) along with citizens and residents of the country.

H H the Amir carried out walking and jogging exercise in Lusail Promenade with a number of world champions, Olympic athletes, a number of Qatari Women’s Sports Com-mittee players and Aspire Academy students.

Father Amir H H Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani also participated in Qatar Sport Day activities. H H the Father Amir carried out a walking exercise in Al Shaqab. His Highness also watched a purebred Arabian horse show.

H H Sheikh Abdullah bin Khalifa Al Thani, H H Sheikh Mohammed bin Khalifa Al Thani, H E Sheikh Jassim bin Khalifa Al Thani, a number of Their Excellencies Sheikhs and Ministers, and horse riding enthusiasts also participated.

H H Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, Chairperson, Qatar Foundation (QF), joined thou-sands of participants from around the country to celebrate NSD in Education City yes-terday. Designed to be enjoyed by the whole community, a series of activities were held by QF at four different venues of the Education City to inspire healthy living and enjoyment of sport.

The activities were also attended by H E Sheikha Hind bint Hamad Al Thani,

Vice-Chairperson and CEO of QF. The NSD activities at QF offi-cially began with H H Sheikha Moza flagging off the Qatar Cyclists Tour, which was joined by hundreds people of all ages. H H Sheikha Moza and H E Sheikha Hind also participated in some events and watched participants enjoy activities.

Prime Minister and Minister of Interior, H E Sheikh Khalid bin Khalifa bin Abdulaziz Al Thani, opened yesterday the 33km Olympic Cycling Track on Al Khor Road as part of National Sport Day activities held by the Public Works Authority (Ashghal).

H E the Prime Minister and Minister of and Interior also participated in the activities of the Ministry of Interior, organised by Qatar Police Sports Federation (QPSF) on the occasion. H E participated in a football match held in the Suhaim Bin Hamad Stadium at Qatar Sport Club, with a number of senior officials and employees of the Ministry of Interior.

The Shura Council also

celebrated the Sport Day, with the participation of Speaker of the Shura Council, H E Ahmed bin Abdullah bin Zaid Al Mahmoud. The activities started with the gathering of members and employees of the Shura Council in front of the council building, then everyone set out in a march that embodied the lofty goals and meanings of the Amiri Decision No. 80 of 2011 which dedicated a national day for practicing sports, giving the importance of sport and its role in the lives of individuals and societies.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs also organised a number of activities on the occasion, with the participation of Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, H E Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, H E Sultan bin Saad Al Muraikhi, Secretary-General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, H E Dr. Ahmed bin Hassan Al Hammadi, and a number of diplomats, heads of diplomatic missions, ministry’s officials and their families.

H E the Deputy Prime

Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs affirmed the great importance attached by the State of Qatar to sports because of its interest in ensuring healthy life for all people living in Qatar.

With the wide participation of Ministries, governmental entities and private establish-ments, and the huge turnout, the Cultural Village Foundation Katara presented yesterday a variety of activities during the NSD celebration along the waterfront and Katara Beach.

The Ministry of Public Health together with Hamad Medical Corporation and the Primary Health Care Corpo-ration organised slew of activ-ities to mark the NSD, including

sports and awareness events empasising the importance of sport, physical activity and its benefits to physical and mental health.

H E Dr Hanan Mohammed Al Kuwari, Minister of Public Health, and senior officials of the health sector participated in a joint at Hamad bin Khalifa Medical City, amid a large par-ticipation of employees.

Qatar Armed Forces cele-brated NSD by organising com-petitions that included football, volleyball, basketball, cricket and other games. The cele-bration was organized under the patronage of Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of State for Defence Affairs, H E Dr. Khalid bin Mohammed Al

Attiyah, and in the presence of Chief of Staff of Qatari Armed Forces, H E Lieutenant General (Pilot) Ghanem bin Shaheen Al Ghanim, Deputy Chief of Staff for Administration and Logistics Affairs, H E Major General (Pilot) Mubarak bin Mohammed Al Kumait Al Khayarin.

Chief Executive Officer of Aspire Zone Foundation (AZF), Mohammed Al Suwaidi, led the sport activities at Aspire Park yesterday. Mohammed Al Suwaidi played volleyball and participated in healthy walk and other sport activities with his staff. Thousands of people (cit-izens and expatriates) with large number of children and women flooded to Aspire Park to mark the day. �P2,3,4,5,6,10,20

RIGHT: Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani during a walking and jogging exercise in Lusail Promenade, yesterday. TOP: Father Amir H H Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani taking part in a walking exercise at Al Shaqab, yesterday. BELOW RIGHT: H H Sheikha Moza bint Nasser during the National Sport Day activities in the Education City, yesterday.

33km-long Olympic Cycling Track opens on Al Khor RoadIRFAN BUKHARI THE PENINSULA

Prime Minister and Minister of Interior, H E Sheikh Khalid bin Khalifa bin Abdulaziz Al Thani, opened yesterday the 33km-long Olympic Cycling Track on Al Khor Road as part of National Sport Day activities held by Public Works Authority (Ashghal).

The Cycling Track extends to 33km with a width of seven metres that will enable international sports competitions, especially since the Olympic path is designed to allow speeds up to 50km per hour, notably with the construction of 29 tunnels and five bridges.

Ashghal has provided five car parking areas stretching along the path near Qatar University, Lusail Station, Lusail Interna-tional Circuit, Semaisma Interchange and Al Bayt Stadium, and the Authority has also installed 1,450 lighting poles dedicated to the vital path to encourage cycling at night. On the other side of Al Khor Road, shared pedestrian and cycle paths are being completed.

Minister of Municipality & Environment, H E Abdulla bin Abdulaziz bin Turki Al Subaie; Minister of Culture and Sport, H E Salah bin

Ghanim Al Ali; Minister of State, H E Dr. Hamad bin Abdul Aziz Al Kawari; President of the Public Works Authority, Dr. Eng. Saad bin Ahmad Al Muhannadi; Second Vice

President of the Qatar Olympic Committee, Dr. Thani Al Kuwari, and other officials were also present at the opening of Olympic Cycling Track. �P2

Prime Minister and Minister of Interior, H E Sheikh Khalid bin Khalifa bin Abdulaziz Al Thani joins others on cycling trip during the opening of the track yesterday.

Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani and Father Amir H H Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani participated in the activities of the Qatar National Sport Day yesterday as H H Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, H E the Speaker of the Shura Council and Their Excellencies Ministers, Sheikhs and high-ranking officials from government departments, private organisations and institutions joined the celebrations across Qatar.

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Amir condoles with President of China on coronavirus victimsQNA — DOHA

Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani held via telephone a conversation with the President of the People’s Republic of China, H E Xi Jinping to express his condolences and sympathy to His Excellency and the friendly Chinese people on the victims of the corona-virus outbreak, wishing the infected people a speedy recovery.

During the call, H H the Amir also voiced confidence in China’s ability to control this epidemic, stressing the State of Qatar’s support and willingness to help in this regard.

For his part, H E the Chinese President extended thanks to H H the Amir for the support, and solidarity of the State of Qatar with China and its assistance in transporting the epidemic control materials via Qatar Airways.

The telephone call also touched on the strategic rela-tions between the two countries, where the two leaders expressed satisfaction with the level they have reached in recent years, and confirmed their determination to develop them in all fields, especially with regard to the Silk Road initiative.

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DOHA: Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, Deputy Amir H H Sheikh Abdullah bin Hamad Al Thani and Prime Minister and Minister of Interior , H E Sheikh Khalid bin Khalifa bin Abdulaziz Al Thani, sent yesterday cables of congratulations to the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, H E Dr. Hassan Rouhani, on the occasion of his country’s National Day. QNA

Amir sends congratulations to President of Iran

02 WEDNESDAY 12 FEBRUARY 2020HOME

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani carrying out walking and jogging exercise in Lusail Promenade with a number of world champions, Olympic athletes, a number of Qatari Women's Sports Committee players and Aspire Academy students. Father Amir H H Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani participating in Sport Day activities. H H the Amir taking part in the activities of the Qatar National Sport Day along with citizens and residents of the country.

33km-long Olympic Cycling Track opens on Al Khor RoadFROM PAGE 1

The event included the par-ticipation of officials and employees from Ashghal, the Qatar Olympic Committee, the Qatar Cycling Federation and Qatar Sports Federation for Special Needs, as well as a more than 500 cyclists.

On the sideline of National Sport Day activities, Ashghal also announced opening two new interchanges; Al Daayen Inter-change which was made available for the public from yes-terday while the interchange of

North Lusail will open on Feb-ruary 14, 2020.

Minister of Municipality & Environment, H E Abdulla bin Abdulaziz bin Turki Al Subaie, stressed that Qatar, in the context of its great interest in sport, is adopting infrastructure projects implemented by ‘Ashghal’ to allocate pedestrian and cycle paths to encourage the public to practice sports.

The Minister of Culture and Sports, H E Salah bin Ghanim Al Ali, said, “I thank Ashghal for this great achievement as opening of a 33km dedicated cycle path

provides safety for the cyclists and allow them to avoid the danger of cycling on public roads”.

“Ashghal seeks to achieve sports infrastructure that con-tributes to changing the lifestyle through the practice of different sports, explaining that Ashghal is scheduled to provide 2,647 km of pedestrian and cycle paths in Qatar by 2022,” said Ashghal President Dr. Eng. Saad bin Ahmad Al Muhannadi.

He also explained that Al Khor Road had been almost completed, as it was scheduled

to be completed in mid-2020, more than two years before the start of the World Cup, especially as it served Lusail Stadium and Al Bayt Stadium.

Dr. Thani Al Kuwari, Second Vice President of the Qatar Olympic Committee said, “Qatar is working to provide an infra-structure to serve the sports sector, which enables Qatar to organize all competitions and sports championships, expressing his happiness with the participation of Ashghal in the opening of the first Olympic cycle path simultaneously with the

country’s celebrations of the National Sports Day and an affir-mation by the Qatar Olympic Committee on the integration of the country’s entities, including Ashghal to achieve a break-through in the sports field in general.”

Dr. Mohamed Jaham Al Kuwari, President of the Qatar Cycling Federation, expressed his happiness in participating with Ashghal and Qatar Olympic Committee in the National Sport Day event, pointing that the cycle path that was opened was appro-priate for all sports competitions,

whether local or international, where its width reaches 7 meters with a length of 33km.

The newly opened inter-change is a vital as it is easy to reach Lusail Stadium on one side and Lusail Station on the other side and it serves Lusail North, Rawdhat Al Hamama, Al Kheesa and Wadi Al Banat.

The interchange consists of four bridges, two exit loops, and four exits, along with four under-passes. The interchange will improve traffic in the area, as it provides a free traffic flow to 28,000 vehicles per hour.

Amir leads National Sport Day celebrations

PM participates in Sport Day activities

QNA — DOHA

Prime Minister and Minister of Interior, H E Sheikh Khalid bin Khalifa bin Abdulaziz Al Thani, participated yesterday morning in the activities of the Ministry of

Interior, organised by Qatar Police Sports Federation (QPSF) on the occasion of the country’s Sport Day.

H E participated in the football sport that was held in the Suhaim Bin Hamad Stadium in Qatar Sport C l u b , w i th a n u mber o f

senior officials and employees of the Ministry of Interior. His Excellency also participated in a number of dif-ferent sport activities that were held in the stadium on this occasion, with a number of people with special needs.

The Prime Minister and Minister of Interior, H E Sheikh Khalid bin Khalifa bin Abdulaziz Al Thani, participating in the activities of the Ministry of Interior, organised by Qatar Police Sports Federation, on the occasion of Sport Day.

The Prime Minister and Minister of Interior, H E Sheikh Khalid bin Khalifa bin Abdulaziz Al Thani, with cyclists with special needs, Their Excellencies the Ministers and other officials after opening the Olympic Cycling Track on Al Khor Road, yesterday.

QA confirms readiness to support Air ItalyQNA — DOHA

Qatar Airways has confirmed its readiness to fully play its part in supporting the troubled airline Air Italy, which investors agreed earlier today to liquidate.

In a statement, Qatar Airways said that since the acquisition on 28 September 2017 of a minority stake in Air Italy, it has strongly believed in the company and its potential, sup-porting management’s proposed business plan with a view to improving Air Italy’s growth and job creation, with the addition of long-haul routes and numerous in-flight service improvements, in line with Qatar Airways’ globally renowned high standards.

“Despite our minority share-holder’s role, Qatar Airways has con-tinuously provided all possible support to Air Italy right from the beginning, from releasing aircraft from our fleet and ordering

new aircraft for Air Italy, to backing management choices and injecting capital and investment as required and permitted.” The statement said, “Even with the changing competitive environment and the increasingly difficult market conditions severely impacting the air transport industry, Qatar Airways has continually reaf-firmed its commitment, as a minority shareholder, to continue investing in the company to create value for Italy and the traveling public and to provide support for Air Italy and its staff because for Qatar Airways the focus on employees is a core priority in its strive for excellence - in addition to supporting local commu-nities and other stakeholders.”

The statement explained, “For this reason, Qatar Airways was ready once again to play its part in sup-porting the growth of the airline, but this would only have been possible with the commitment of all shareholders.”

03WEDNESDAY 12 FEBRUARY 2020 HOME

Sheikha Moza takes part in QF’s NSD celebrations

FAZEENA SALEEM THE PENINSULA

H H Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, Chairperson of Qatar Foun-dation (QF), joined thousands of participants from around the country to celebrate National Sport Day (NSD) at Education City, yesterday.

Designed to be enjoyed by the whole community, a series of activities were held by QF at four different venues of the Education City to inspire healthy living and enjoyment of sport.

The activities were also attended by H E Sheikha Hind bint Hamad Al Thani, Vice-Chairperson and CEO of Qatar Foundation.

The NSD activities at QF officially began with H H Sheikha Moza flagging off the Qatar Cyclists Tour, which was joined by hundreds of all ages. H H Sheikha Moza and H E Sheikha Hind also participated in some events and watched participants enjoy activities.

Some of Qatar’s top names in sport also joined QF’s NSD celebrations, including

high-jumper Mutaz Barshim, footballer Abdulkarim Hassan, swimmer Nada Arakji, hurdler Mariam Farid and taekwondo athlete Kaltham Al Mutawa.

“At QF, our aim is to effect positive change in society, and we believe this can be done through education, sharing knowledge, and providing inclusive opportunities for eve-ryone. This includes the chance to enjoy sport and physical activity, and to join together as a community in building a healthier, more active nation,” said Machaille Al Naimi, Pres-ident of Community Devel-opment, QF.

“Our National Sport Day celebrations reflect this com-mitment. Open to everyone, our activities aim to foster social engagement while showcasing the opportunities within Edu-cation City that people of all ages, cultures, backgrounds, abilities, and interests – can enjoy.

“We are delighted to see how the community of Qatar have again got into the National Sport Day spirit at QF, and we hope that what they have

experienced and enjoyed today will encourage them to make our activities and programs that foster healthy, active lifestyles a regular part of their lives,” said Al Naimi.

Participants at QF’s NSD celebrations had the chance to race through an obstacle course, discover the health benefits of yoga, experience a full-body workout with top US gym Dog-pound, or get a taste of fresh and locally-grown produce during.

Mariam, the young Qatari hurdler and student at QF partner university North-western University in Qatar, said, “It is great to be at Edu-cation City, not only as an athlete but also as a student. “QF is part of my daily life, and it is an honor to be here today. We have huge opportunities and facilities here, and everyone is happy to be part of today’s activities. Sport is a lifestyle for everyone in Qatar, especially for women who include it within their daily routines, and this reflects the status of sport in Qatar and the way it has truly become a lifestyle,” she added.

Bob Kelly from Lincoln, Nebraska said, who participated in QF’s NSD activities with his wife and two children said, “I think more countries should try this. It gets people out doing

physical activity. I would compare Qatar’s NSD to July 4 in America, a day when eve-ryone goes out to the beach or the mountains.”

Visitors to Education City

yesterday also had a chance to explore Torba Farmers Market, at the Ceremonial Court, which offered a variety of organically-grown produce, locally-pre-pared food and beverages.

H H Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, Chairperson of Qatar Foundation, participating in National Sport Day activities at Education City and Msheireb.

The Sport Day activities at Qatar Foundation officially began with the Qatar Cyclists Tour, which was joined by hundreds of people of all ages.

04 WEDNESDAY 12 FEBRUARY 2020HOME

Shura Council Speaker highlights importance of Sport DayQNA — DOHA

The Shura Council celebrated the country’s Sport Day, with the participation of the Speaker of the Shura Council, H E Ahmed bin Abdullah bin Zaid Al Mahmoud.

The activities started with the gathering of members and employees of the Shura Council in front of the council building, then everyone set out in a march that embodied the lofty goals and meanings of the Amiri decision No. 80 of 2011 which dedicated a national day for practicing sports, giving the importance of sport and its role in the lives of individuals and societies.

The celebration ended with a variety of sporting activities which saw the participation of council’s employees.

H E the Speaker of the

Shura Council stressed that the country’s sports day embodies the importance of sport in the lives of people and societies.

Talking to reporters on the sidelines of the Shura Council ceremony, he noted that since 2011 when H H the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani issued a decision to allocate a sport day for the State, this day has become an occasion for everyone to practice sports of all kinds, and a day to con-stantly remind them of its importance that made it a culture and a continuous life-style as exercise and activity are necessary for a healthy life.

He said that everyone should practice sport on a daily basis as possible, pointing out that the importance of sporting day comes from being a tool to encourage and stimulate physical activity and exercise,

because it has many benefits individuals, societies and countries.

He extended his thanks to H H the Amir for issuing the decision to allocate a Sport Day for the State, which confirms His Highness’s interest in sport and his great support for it, and the necessity of exercising it as it is important for human life, which reflects positively on the citizen and resident and the state in general.

He pointed to many and modern sporting facilities that Qatar is constantly con-structing, including the World Cup 2022 facilities, adding that they all are within the framework of Qatar National Vision 2030 and its focus on human development.

He explained that some of these facilities were established in a way that allows them to be

used for other purposes such as hospitals or schools after the World Cup championship ends

in Qatar, while some stadium equipment will be provided as assistance from the State of

Qatar to other countries in need of such assistance in the sport field.

H E the Speaker with the members and employees of the Shura Council during a Sport Day walk.

Education Minister: Exercise must bean individual’s lifestyle and behaviourTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

The Minister of Education and Higher Education, H E Dr. Mohammed bin Abdulwahed Al Hammadi, participated in the activities of the Sports Day held at Tariq Bin Ziyad Secondary School for Boys.

H E the Minister with stu-dents, teachers and staffs par-ticipated in a walk around the school building.

The school witnessed a heavy presence since early morning by senior officials of the Ministry, students and teachers, as the school pre-pared to provide all sports facilities, table tennis, football, equestrian and other games.

About 2,500 participants, guests, students, parents and

employees participated in the activities. Ambassadors and diplomats also participated in the activities

His Excellency said that sport is important in the lives of individuals to build a healthy citizen for better performances.

“We have extracurricular activities and competitions and the school Olympic day. Sports must be a daily routine practice for everyone, whether it is a child, student, teacher or employee,” said the Minister

“With regard to the school schedule, it is difficult to increase the classes of physical education, because there are many subjects, and as you know school time has

decreased and we have added a period for the computer as well.”

The Under-Secretary at the Ministry of Education and Higher Education, Dr. Ibrahim bin Saleh Al Nuaimi, affirmed that the sporting day has become a part of the culture of society and everyone from all age groups is expecting to interact and practice sports.

Regarding directing the Ministry’s employees to exercise and engage in sports programs, he said: We have a weekly scout camp that invites school students and ministry employees to participate in it and we hope that we will have a more effective sports program for employees and involve more of them in it.

The Minister of Education and Higher Education, H E Dr. Mohammed bin Abdulwahed Al Hammadi, participating in a healthy walk to mark the National Sport Day, yesterday.

MME organises 16 sport activitiesTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

The Minister of Municipality and Environment, H E Eng. Abdullah bin Abdulaziz bin Turki Al Subaie, participated in the activities organised by the Ministry of Municipal and Environment at Katara to mark National Sport Day yesterday.

The event which include 16 sport activities was attended by a number of Assistant Undersecretaries at the Ministry, and directors of departments and munic-ipal i t ies and Ministry employees. The venue included a variety of games

for adults and children, including football, bas-ketball, shooting, boxing, exercise, golf, dragon com-petitions, handball, climbing mountain, throwing rings, children’s games, shooting, Japanese wrestling, and more.

A number of Ministry officials participated in the exercise of sports, and expressed their happiness on this day, which is an appro-priate opportuni ty to emphasize the importance of sport and the need to be a lifestyle throughout the year. On the other hand, the Ministry of Municipal and

Environment provided an important infrastructure for practicing sport permanently and continuously through public parks, and the instal-lation of a number of important sports devices along the Doha Corniche, which is witnessing daily turnout from the public.

The Ministry, represented by the Publ ic Parks Department, also provided a number of games for people with special needs in a park in Lattakifia, within its interest and keenness to contribute to the integration of this category with society through public parks.

The Minister of Municipality and Environment, H E Abdullah bin Abdulaziz bin Turki Al Subaie, during the Sport Day activities organised by the Ministry at Katara, yesterday. PIC: SALIM MATRAMKOT/THE PENINSULA

Thousands turn up for NSD events at KataraRAYNALD C RIVERA THE PENINSULACitizens and residents, young and old, put on their best sportswear and flocked to different venues to join in the country’s celebration of National Sport Day (NSD) yesterday.

At Katara Cultural Village, thousands of people braved the cold, windy weather to take part

in sport and fitness activities offered free by more than 70 public and private entities gathered at the Katara Esplanade and Beach for the event which ran from 7am to 5pm.

The participating Ministries and other government organi-zations attracted many visitors with the varied activities they provided in well decked-up

spaces that combined fun and welcoming atmosphere.

Speaking on Katara’s NSD

events, Dr. Khalid bin Ibrahim Al Sulaiti, General Manager of Katara, underscored how Katara has cemented its position as a distinguished des-tination in occasions such as NSD with the excellent facilities and services it provides to the public, ensuring good organi-zation with safety conditions so that visitors spend wonderful time.

“Every year, we are working on introducing new happenings, as the activity list for this year includes innovative sporting activities and new participation of entities from the sports,

educational or recreational field, which makes the Katara Sports Day program a compre-hensive event,” stressed Al Sulaiti.

Abdul Rahman Jassem Al Tamimi, Chairman of the Organizing Committee of Katara’s NSD Events highlighted stressed the committee’s keenness to the organization of the event and the availability of quality services to the public such as providing club carts for visitors, especially for the elderly and people with special needs.

H E Ali bin Ahmed Al Kuwari, Minister of Commerce and Industry and H E Abdullah bin Abdulaziz bin Turki Al Subaie, Minister of Municipality and Environment graced the event with their presence taking part in some of the activities.

With 16 sport activities catered mainly to children set up in a green space, the Min-istry of Municipality and Envi-ronment attracted many young visitors who engaged in dif-ferent activities such as archery, boxing, mini golf, basketball, mini football, Lego game, sumo, darts and climbing.

Air rifle shooting, taek-wondo, boxing, table tennis and basketball were among the crowd-pullers at Qatar Armed Forces and Military Sports Asso-ciation’s area.

“This is the fourth consec-utive year that the Qatar Armed Forces is participating in Katara’s activities on National Sport Day. Today, we have

about 70 trainers present at the site to supervise and provide various sports activities in an enthusiastic atmosphere,” said Lt. Salem Al Dosari, the super-visor of the Qatar Armed Forces website.

A number of national sports federations have participate at Katara’s NSD celebrations, one of which was the Qatar Football Association with its Koora ini-tiative and a number of activ-ities aside from football such as

fitness activities including pilates, zumba, yoga, bootcamp and martial arts.

The event was also marked with a strong presence of the medical sector such as Hamad Medical Corporation with its Kulluna health and safety initi-ative conducting CPR demos and training and fitness activ-ities. Healthy food including bread, fruits, juices and water were distributed free at the venue courtesy of Al Meera.

One of the National Sport Day activities at Katara. PIC: SALIM MATRAMKOT/THE PENINSULA

05WEDNESDAY 12 FEBRUARY 2020 HOME

The Chief of Staff of Qatari Armed Forces H E Lieutenant General (Pilot) Ghanem bin Shaheen Al Ghanim, H E Deputy Chief of Staff for Administration and Logistics Affairs Major General (Pilot) Mubarak bin Mohammed Al Kumait Al Khayarin and other officials during the National Sport Day celebrations.

Deputy PM leads Foreign Ministry's NSD activitiesQNA — DOHA

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday organised a number of activities on the occasion of the National Sport Day.

The event saw the partici-pation of the Deputy Prime Min-ister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, H E Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, H E Sultan bin Saad Al Muraikhi, the Secretary-General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, H E Dr Ahmed bin Hassan Al Hammadi, and a number of diplomats, heads of diplomatic missions, min-istry officials and their families.

H E the Deputy Prime Min-ister and Minister of Foreign Affairs affirmed the great importance attached by Qatar to sports because of its interest in ensuring healthy life for all people living in Qatar.

In a press remarks, His Excellency said that this impor-tance is reflected in Qatar’s hosting of world sports tourna-ments in recent years, as well as its hosting of the 2022 FIFA World Cup.

H E Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani noted that sport is a common lan-guage spoken and communi-cated by all, and it also unites peoples behind a noble mission.

For his part, H E the Min-ister of State for Foreign Affairs said that the Ministry

of Foreign Affairs used to hold several sporting events in the country and abroad through all the Qatari diplomatic mis-sions and consulates around the world.

In press statements, His Excellency explained that sport diplomacy is parallel to official diplomacy, pointing out that it strengthens social and cultural ties between peoples, adding that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs attaches great impor-tance to it, especially on the country’s Sport Day.

H E Sultan bin Saad Al Muraikhi affirmed that all activities organized by the State in recent years have strengthened its role in sport

and this qualifies it to host a distinguished World Cup in 2022.

Held at the Diplomatic Club, the Ministry’s activities included sporting activities such as football, volleyball, basketball and tennis, the use of sports equipment, horse and camel riding, cycling, and popular games as well as activities for children.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ participation in the Sport Day reflects its keenness on raising awareness of the important role of sport in the development of individuals and societies, and in considering it a type of diplomacy that brings people closer.

Ministry of Justice, General Secretariat of Council of Ministers hold joint activitiesQNA — DOHA

The Ministry of Justice and the General Secretariat of the Council of Ministers celebrated Qatar Sport Day with joint activities held in Al Markhiya Sports Club attended by Minister of Justice and Acting Minister of State for Cabinet Affairs, H E Dr. Issa bin Saad Al Jafali Al Nuaimi, Secretary-General of the Council of Ministers, H E Hamad bin Ahmed Al Mohannadi, and a number of employees of the Ministry of Justice and the General Secretariat of the Council of Ministers.

The joint activities of the Ministry of Justice and the General Secretariat of the Council of Ministers included a marathon around the Stadium of Al Markhiya Club, a friendly match

between the Ministry and the General Secretariat to encourage employees to play football, in addition to holding sports activities for children.

Biometrics service was also pro-vided to the employees participating in Sport Day activities, after an agreement was reached with a spe-cialized health center to provide this service during the period of the staff’s presence at the Club for sporting activ-ities. The Ministry of Justice and the General Secretariat of the Council of Ministers have been on organising a joint event to achieve the desired goals for the Sport Day, especially the goals related to raising awareness of the importance of exercising as a daily healthy behavior among dif-ferent age groups in society.

H E Dr. Issa bin Saad Al Jafali Al Nuaimi praised the wise vision of Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani to dedicate a day for prac-ticing sport with the aim of building a healthy society capable of keeping pace with the comprehensive growth attained by Qatar under His Highness leadership in various fields, while praised the sporting facilities pro-vided by the State for all in order to practice various sports that suit dif-ferent tastes and ages.

The event focused on physical, motor, and awareness activities, with a focus on activities aimed at con-solidating exercise as a daily health behavior, and enhancing awareness among participants about the impor-tance of sport and its role in society.

Ministry of Interior celebrates National Sport DayQNA — DOHA

The Ministry of Interior (MoI) celebrated National Sport Day yesterday by holding many events and activities organised by the Qatar Police Sports Federation (QPSF) at the Qatar Sports Club (QSC) Stadium.

The events were attended by H E Director of Public Security Staff Major General Saad bin Jassim Al Khulaif, H E President of QSC Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad bin Nasser Al Thani, President of the Arab and Qatar Police Sports Federations Brigadier Khalid bin Hamad Al Attiyah, and a large number of managers and assistants of MoI departments, Ministry employees, and Qatar Society for the Rehabilitation of Special Needs representatives.

The celebration included sport activ-ities and competitions such as football, volleyball, race, walking, and sports for children in addition to sports activities in different locations held by various depart-ments of the Ministry.

H E the Director of Public Security stressed the importance of exercising sports at all times, indicating that MoI is always interested in sports to maintain the physical strength of the security per-sonnel, officers, and individuals, while wishing everyone to practice sport continuously.

He highlighted the importance attached by Qatar to sports as it supported and encouraged all activities related to sports, established clubs, playgrounds and youth centers, and opened all these venues to the public with the aim of motivating them to practice sport.

Brigadier Khalid bin Hamad Al Attiyah thanked H E the Prime Minister and the Minister of Interior for honoring and par-ticipating in the activities of MoI, praising

the good relationship between QPSF and QSC.

He stressed that sport is of great importance because of its many benefits for all and for MoI in particular as it con-tributes to raising their physical fitness in performing the tasks entrusted to them, appreciating the great effort that the organizers made in creating an appro-priate sporting atmosphere and oppor-tunity for all MoI employees to celebrate Sport Day in 12 locations across the country.

The QPSF President praised the participation of employees of MoI from all departments and their families, who took part in the event at Al Bidda Park, calling for continued practice of sports.

Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad bin Nasser Al Thani expressed his happiness at the gracing of H E the Prime Minister and Min-ister of Interior and all officers of MoI for celebrating Qatar Sport Day at QSC, praising the well-organized event which excelled in diversifying events and mobi-lizing great participation of the ministry’s employees which increases year after year.

Directorate of Passports Department Major General Mohammed Ahmed Al Ateeq said that the Sports Day reflects the great attention given to sport and its important role in promoting health and well-being, pointing out that sports day represents strong boost for everyone who wishes to change his lifestyle for the better.

Director of Juvenile Police Department Brigadier Ibrahim Essa Al Buainain hailed the response of all institutions, bodies, and the public to Qatar Sport Day, which con-firms the extent of the success achieved in order to make sport part of daily activity.

Qatar Armed Forces marks National Sport Day with many eventsQNA — DOHA

Qatar Armed Forces cele-brated National Sport Day by organising competitions that included football, volleyball, basketball, cricket and other games.

The celebration was organised under the patronage of Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of State for Defense Affairs H E Dr. Khalid bin Mohammed Al Attiyah, and in the presence of H E the Chief of Staff of Qatari Armed Forces Lieu-tenant General (Pilot) Ghanem bin Shaheen Al Ghanim, H E Deputy Chief of Staff for Administration and Logistics Affairs Major General (Pilot) Mubarak bin Mohammed Al Kumait Al Khayarin.

The activities were attended by senior officers, non-commissioned officers and individuals from all units of the Qatar Armed Forces and the friendly forces, with the participation of the fam-ilies of members of the Qatar Armed Forces.

H E Staff Brigadier General Yousef Dasma Al Kuwari, President of the Mil-itary Sports Association, said that the main objective of these activities is to consol-idate the sporting mindset of members of the armed forces and urge them to continue practicing sports.

At the end of the events, HE the Chief of Staff of Qatar Armed Forces honored and crowned the winning sports teams in the competitions.

The Minister of Justice and Acting Minister of State for Cabinet Affairs, H E Dr. Issa bin Saad Al Jafali Al Nuaimi attending the National Sport Day celebrations.

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, H E Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, during the National Sport Day celebrations organised by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, yesterday.

US Charge d'Affaires, H E William Grant and Ambassador of Afghanistan to Qatar, H E Abdul Hakim Dalili, during the National Sport Day celebrations organised by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, yesterday. RIGHT: The Special Adviser to the UN Secretary-General, H E Dr Ahmed bin Mohamed Al Muraikhi and Turkish Ambassador to Qatar, H E Fikret Ozer.

06 WEDNESDAY 12 FEBRUARY 2020HOME

Nakilat, JVs mark National Sport DayTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Nakilat and its joint ventures celebrated Qatar National Sport Day 2020 by organizing a wide range of outdoor sporting activities for employees and their families. The events were held at the Al Legtaifiya Park in Doha as well as at the Laffan Global Village in Ras Laffan Indus-trial City for the enjoyment of employees at both loca-tions.

The annual National Sport Day is an excellent avenue for Nakilat to demonstrate its commitment to the health and wellness of its employees. The event is one in a series of many activities that the company organizes throughout the year to encourage its employees to stay fit and healthy, which is essential to enhancing produc-tivity levels and ensuring the creation of a sustainable workforce, in line with Qatar’s National Vision 2030.

QU marks NSD along with Qatar Charity, Planning and Statistics AuthorityTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Qatar University (QU) joined the nation as it celebrated Qatar National Sport Day yesterday, by offering a full day of activ-ities for the local community.

This year the university col-laborated with Qatar Charity and the Planning and Statistics Authority to offer a range of services and activities dealing with health, wellness and sports.

QU President Dr. Hassan Al-Derham participated in the day’s activities alongside a number of university officials including Vice-President for Student Affairs, Dr. Khalid Mohamed Al-Khanji; Vice Pres-ident for Administration and Financial Affairs, Dr. Khalid Al Khater and QU Director of Student Services & Activities, Dr. Abdulla Al Yafei.

Dr. Hassan Al Derham offi-cially inaugurated the day by opening the new gym area in the QU Sports & Events Complex, which was followed by a jog around the perimeters of the complex with university officials, deans and supervisors. The event included a friendly

sports match between QU and Qatar Charity and other com-petitions in several sports such as football, basketball,

volleyball and handball. The event also offered health services and awareness booths, where visitors could check their

blood pressure, pulse, oxygen and blood.

Commenting on this national event, Dr. Hassan Al-Derham said, “I am pleased to see a huge turnout for National Sports Day 2020. Today we opened a new gym at the QU Sports & Events Complex, which encompasses the latest sports standards and methods and is a positive addition to the uni-versity, on its journey to cre-ating an active, effective and

rich students life, as we aim to build a sports generation that combines academics and physical health.”

President of Planning and Statistics Authority, Dr. Saleh bin Mohammed Al-Nabit said: “The Planning and Statistics Authority in collaboration with Qatar University and Qatar Charity recognise the impor-tance of strengthening national commitment in the field of human development,

one of the pillars of Qatar National Vision 2030, which seeks to empower the people of Qatar so that they will be able to sustain and support their country’s growth. There is no doubt that organizing an event such as this one for National Sports Day, for all age groups, is a necessity towards building bridges of communi-cation among all segments of society.”

Dr. Khalid Mohamed Al-Khanji said QU’s interest in celebrating this day comes within the framework of the university’s belief in the importance of sport and its role in building the human, encouraging the community to value sports as it contributes to the academic success of individuals.

Director of QU’s Sports Affairs Department, Asmaa Al-Naemi said, “Our department joins this day by organizing a number of sports activities and programs that combine the goals that sports day seeks to achieve and Qatar University’s efforts to serve society, both from an academic and health standpoint.”

Children took part in the Qatar University National Sport Day events with their families.

Qatar University President Dr. Hassan Al Derham and university officials join visitors in a light jog at the beginning of the day's events.

Health sector celebrates NSD with various activitiesTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

The Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) together with Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) and the Primary Health Care Corpo-ration (PHCC) organised slew of activities to mark the National Sport Day (NSD), including sports and awareness events empasising the impor-tance of sport, physical activity and its benefits to physical and mental health.

H E Dr Hanan Mohammed Al Kuwari, Minister of Public Health and senior officials of the health sector participated in a joint event on the occasion of the Sport Day at Hamad bin Khalifa Medical City, amid a large par-ticipation of employees.

The event included a walking exercise and a number of other activities and medical examinations for the employees. A football match was organized between

employees of the Ministry, HMC and PHCC.

The Minister stressed that the country’s sport day con-tributes to health promotion and emphasises the importance of sport and its role in the lives of individuals and societies. She noted that NSD is being held as Qatar is preparing to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup and that it supports health.

Dr Al Kuwari explained that the NSD demonstrates the great interest of the wise leadership of the country in health and well-being of citizens as a pri-ority, as the Sport Day initiative serves healthy goals through the large participation of social

groups of all ages in sports activities, while increasing awareness to make exercise a daily behavior for individuals.

The participation of the health sector in the NSD comes in implementation of Amiri decision No. 80 of 2011, which stipulates that the second Tuesday of February every year shall be a Sport Day for the State.

The PHCC marked NSD with many health and sport events in the public park adjacent to the Leabaib Health Center with the participation of the Corporation’s leaders, employees, medical and nursing staff and their families.

Supreme Judicial Council participates in NSD eventsQNA — DOHA

The Supreme Judicial Council (SJC) participated in the Sport Day of the State, by organising a number of sporting activities in Lusail Marina with the participation of SJC Chairman and President of the Court of Cassation H E Dr. Hassan bin Lahdan Al Mohannadi, and a number of courts’ presidents, judges, council’s employees and their family.

The Council’s activities focused on walking as one of the most important sports that help in promoting physical and mental health and granting physical activity, which are the messages that are included in the Sport Day.

H E Dr. Al Mohannadi said that the Sport Day is a unique initiative that emphasizes the keenness of the Stat and its wise leadership in promoting a healthy lifestyle and spreading it to all members of society.

HE added that sport is not only important to the person who exercises it, as physical activity plays an important role in promoting a healthy lifestyle

for individuals and contributes in one way or another to making individuals more productive in work and effective among society, pointing out that sport provides a person with physical and psychological health, which are important factors stimulating giving and innovation.

He also noted that organ-izing the Sport Day annually confirms the proper planning that the State of Qatar is adopting in order to build the person who is the true wealth that the country is proud of, especially since physical and mental health are among the most important elements on the path to achieving the goals and aspirations of Qatar National Vision 2030, which made Qatari people a top priority in all of these goals.

He stressed that the coun-try’s Sport Day is coming this year, and Qatar has made many sporting achievements on the road to hosting the 2022 World Cup, which is the soccer event that millions of people around the world are waiting for, as many projects related

this tournament have been completed, including stadiums, facilities and infrastructure, hence, this event reaffirms the country’s readiness to embrace the 2022 World Cup in the best of circumstances.

SJC Chairman spoke about the importance of a healthy culture and the moral message of the Sport Day, as these ele-ments emphasize that the State spares no effort for its citizens and everyone who lives on this good land to enjoy all the capa-bilities that encourage them to practice physical activity, by pro-viding playgrounds, exercise halls, green spaces and parks, and all facilities that enable and encourage them to do sports and follow healthy living behaviour.

He pointed out that the intense community partici-pation in the Sport Day’s activ-ities of all ages each year, con-firms the success of this initiative, especially at the level of societal awareness, which has become noticeable among broad groups, of the importance of following healthy lifestyles for a healthy and vibrant community.

The Supreme Judicial Council (SJC) Chairman and President of the Court of Cassation, H E Dr. Hassan bin Lahdan Al Mohannadi, with other officials celebrating NSD.

H E Dr Hanan Mohammed Al Kuwari, Minister of Public Health, playing table tennis during the National Sport Day celebrations.

The Minister of Public Health H E Dr Hanan Mohammed Al Kuwari stressed that the country’s sport day contributes to health promotion and emphasises the importance of sport and its role in the lives of individuals and societies.

The events were held at the Al Legtaifiya Park in Doha as well as at the Laffan Global Village in Ras Laffan Industrial City.

07WEDNESDAY 12 FEBRUARY 2020 HOME

The deal calls on Palestine to drop any and all international criminal cases not only against Israelis, but against Americans as well.

08 WEDNESDAY 12 FEBRUARY 2020VIEWS

CHAIRMAN

SHEIKH THANI BIN ABDULLAH AL THANI

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

DR. KHALID BIN MUBARAK AL-SHAFIeditorinchief@pen.com.qa

ACTING MANAGING EDITOR

MOHAMMED SALIM MOHAMEDm.salim@pen.com.qa

DEPUTY MANAGING EDITOR

MOHAMMED OSMAN ALI osman@pen.com.qa

EDITORIAL

ENVIRONMENTAL sustainability, whether it is for the current generation or future generation, is a major issue Qatar is concerned with and the state formulates its developmental policies based on this conviction. Qatar has already set its sustainability goals detailing them in the Environmental Sustainability Strategy (NDS-2) 2018-2022. It is based on the Qatar First National Development Strategy (NDS-1) 2011-2016, and developed in line with Qatar National Vision (QNV) 2030, which considers environmental development as one of the main pillars of nation-building.

Recently, Minister of Municipality and Environment, H E Eng Abdullah bin Abdulaziz bin Turki Al Subaie, reiterated that environment, whether its is regarding land or marine environment, is a priority to which Qatar and the Ministry attach great importance. During his opening remarks at the first environmental forum held by the Ministry, H E the Minister said that preservation of the environment should be done through legislations, initiatives and community projects, ensuring cooper-ation of community members, especially because pro-tecting and preserving the environment is a shared responsibility of all individuals and institutions. H E the Minister pointed out a very vital issue, which vexes coun-tries across the world, that is striking a balance between development to meet the ever-increasing needs and demands of the modern world, and the preservation and protection of the environment.

In Qatar, it is a Constitutional duty to protect the envi-ronment as the country’s Permanent Constitution has a separate provision for this which obliges the state to take steps such as provide a healthy environment that ensures the future, address the negative impacts of climate change, minimalise pollution, manage environmental protection, preserve natural equilibrium and nurture biodiversity. Article 33 stipulates that the State shall protect the environment and maintain its natural balance to achieve comprehensive and sustainable development for all generations.

Putting ideas into action, Qatar has already taken several tangible steps. Qatar Foundation’s flagship Edu-cation City is one of the best examples of sustainability and green building practices. The unique Oxygen Park in the City is a 130,000sqm of green space. The Quranic Botanic Garden is a treasure trove of hundreds of rare plant species, including the Sidra tree which is a part of Qatar’s heritage. The State has enacted clear legislations on environment-friendly use of electric appliances, building practices, industrial developments etc. There is a myriad of awareness programmes, some of which run perma-nently such as the energy-conservation effort Tarsheed.

The Environmental Science Center at Qatar Uni-versity and the Qatar Environment and Energy Research Institute (QEERI) at the Hamad Bin Khalifa University give a fillip to these efforts.

Championing environment cause

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Quote of the day

I would like to say to Mr. Donald Trump that his plan cannot achieve peace and security as it cancels international legitimacy.

Mahmoud Abbas, Palestinian President

Demonstrators gather to protest against US President Donald Trump’s Middle East plan, in Gaza City, yesterday.

US President Donald Trump’s plan to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict flagrantly violates inter-national law. But it also confirms Israel’s recognition that it cannot escape all of international law all of the time.

In particular, it demonstrates that the potential reach of the International Criminal Court (ICC) represents a threat to Israel in a way that unenforced UN resolu-tions do not.

Since the creation of the Israeli state in 1948, UN resolutions critical of Israel have made numerous calls ranging from the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes to con-demning Israeli attacks on Pales-tinian civilians.

Trump’s so-called “deal of the century” attempts to reverse such resolutions by legitimising a number of illegal acts, including Israeli annexation of illegally occupied Palestinian land and the continued establishment of Jewish settlements on Palestinian territory.

It stipulates that Jerusalem is the “undivided” capital of Israel, while Palestine would have limited control over scattered neighbourhoods in East Jeru-salem. These neighbourhoods are east and north of the “security barrier”, otherwise known as the Israeli-built “separation wall” that the International Court of Justice (ICJ) deemed illegal over 15 years ago.

There are dozens of UN reso-lutions that reprimand Israel and demand that it reverse its viola-tions against Palestinians. Yet Israel continues to flagrantly violate them and other interna-tional legal decisions without any sanction.

What, then, is the use of inter-national law when it continues to fail Palestinians?

The absence of any real con-sequence for Israel’s unlawful actions is not limitless. Abhorrent as it is, Trump’s plan makes it tacitly clear that Israel recognises the power of international law, especially when used as a tool of resistance.

The deal calls on Palestine to drop any and all international criminal cases not only against Israelis, but against Americans as well. The fear of the plan’s American and Israeli drafters stems in part from what Palestine has managed to achieve with the help of international law, despite its continued subjugation and oppression by the Israeli state, supported by the US.

More than 130 states recog-nised Palestine as a non-member observer state at the United Nations in November 2012. Pal-estine acceded to the Rome Statute of the ICC, after which it requested that the Court inves-tigate crimes committed on its territory.

In December 2019, after lengthy deliberations regarding the ICC’s jurisdiction over the Pal-estine situation (some of which are ongoing), the ICC prosecutor ultimately decided that there are reasonable grounds to investigate crimes committed on Palestinian territory.

Should the current case before the ICC reach a stage where Israeli officials are indicted and arrest warrants issued against them, this

would restrict the mobility of those officials as they try to avoid countries where they may be arrested and transferred to The Hague for trial. They would also be named and shamed.

Of course, the chances of that happening are slim. The ICC does not have its own police force to arrest individuals, and instead relies on state cooperation to do so.

International law cannot and does not operate in a vacuum - political will and political mobili-sation are at once key drivers of and key obstacles to the “promise” of international law: justice.

Even if no Israeli official is indicted or arrested, an important lesson can be drawn from the ICC case. An international legal process is under way and, while it may not lead to any conclusive outcome, Trump’s deal signals that powerful governments - namely the US and Israel - view international criminal law with fear, despite their attempts to dismiss it.

International law represses and liberates. It fails to enforce UN resolutions, particularly in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

As a result, it fails Palestinian victims as it cannot provide pro-tection, nor can it guarantee justice, for them. This repeated failure of enforcement under-mines the essence of the UN Charter.

But international law is also emancipatory. It played an important role in decolonisation following the national liberation movements of the 1950s and 1960s. It, along with state practice, led to Palestine’s recognition as a de facto state by most of the world on that historical November day in 2012.

Noha Aboueldahab is a fellow at the Brookings Doha Centre.

JASON LANGE THE WASHINGTON POST

US President Donald Trump and Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg on Tuesday accused each other of being racist, esca-lating a war of words between the two wealthy businessmen.

Trump fired the first volley, posting a 2015 audio clip via Twitter of Bloomberg defending his use of a contro-versial policing strategy from his time as New York’s mayor between 2002 and 2013 known as “stop and frisk.”

“Wow, Bloomberg is a total racist!” Trump wrote in the since-deleted tweet.

Trump has also backed the policy.

Bloomberg, who is seeking

the Democratic Party nomi-nation to challenge the Repub-lican Trump in the Nov. 3 election, apologized for his use of the policing strategy last November a few days before announcing his candidacy.

In a statement on Tuesday, Bloomberg cited what he called his com-mitment to criminal justice reform and racial equity, adding: “In contrast, President Trump inherited a country marching towards greater equality and divided us with racist appeals and hateful rhetoric.”

The two men - Trump earned his fortune in real estate and Bloomberg earned his billions selling financial information - have been locked in a war of words, with

Trump lobbing insults at Bloomberg in a sign of how seriously he appears to take the former mayor’s candidacy.

Bloomberg is not com-peting in the first four Demo-cratic nomination contests but is mounting an expensive nationwide campaign ahead of the March primaries. He has risen in public opinion polls while spending hun-dreds of millions of dollars on television advertisements.

Stop and friskIn the recording attached

to Trump’s tweet, Bloomberg is heard saying that the way to keep guns out of kids’ hands is to “throw them up against the walls and frisk them.”

The stop-and-frisk policy

encouraged police to stop and search pedestrians and ensnared disproportionate numbers of blacks and Latinos. loomberg had long defended stop and frisk as an effective police tactic that saved lives, even after a federal judge in 2013 found it violated the rights of ethnic minorities.

In his statement on Tuesday, Bloomberg said: “I have taken responsibility for taking too long to understand the impact it had on black and Latino communities.”

Trump backed stop-and-frisk before and after he became president in 2017. In October 2018, then-President Trump called on Chicago to implement stop-and-frisk to fight crime.

Israel cannot escape all of international law all of the time

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Trump, Bloomberg call each other racist

Established in 1996

NOHA ABOUELDAHAB AL JAZEERA

09WEDNESDAY 12 FEBRUARY 2020 OPINION

One approach is for economists to play the part of moral philosophers, telling people what kinds of redistribution they ought to want.

Some two months since the first reports of a new virus in central China, the death toll from the coronavirus has passed 1,000, eclipsing the number who died in the 2003 SARS epidemic. Recent esti-mates are that 40,000 are infected, but that is likely an underestimate and is sure to rise. The Chinese province where the virus originated, with a population greater than South Korea, is under quarantine, while streets are empty and factories sit idle. How this plays out is uncertain, but what is certain is that the virus has the potential to change China in fundamental ways - and even if it does not, it should change the way we think about China.

Beyond the human tragedy, the immediate impact of the virus is mostly economic. The only question is how much it slows China’s economy and for how long. Estimates suggest the dis-ruption could eliminate much if not all of China’s projected

growth for the first quarter or longer, an outcome that would also slow growth glo-bally given how large and integrated China’s economy has become. Few supply chains do not have at least some Chinese components. In this interconnected world, little stays local for long.

The most lasting impact, though, will likely be the effects this virus has on China’s politics. Political legit-imacy in contemporary China is predicated largely on eco-nomic performance. Citizens have been willing to accept constraints on personal and political freedom in exchange for a system that provides an improved standard of living. Chinese economic growth was already slowing before the coronavirus outbreak, which means a less-than-ideal situation is fast getting worse.

China’s leaders mostly have themselves to blame. The response to the initial outbreak in early December is revealing. China suffers from a “shoot the messenger” men-tality: Criticism, regardless of its merits, is taken as a rebuke of the political leadership, and the Communist Party seeks to silence dissent. As a result, Li Wenliang, one of the doctors who first went public with their concerns, was punished.

Precious weeks were lost as local officials would not

assume responsibility lest central authorities subse-quently blame them. This paralysis is a consequence of

President Xi Jinping’s consoli-dation of power, which has left provincial officials unable or unwilling to exercise their authority without the central leadership’s blessing. Xi’s sig-nature anti-corruption cam-paign, arguably more of a political purge, has in many instances replaced capable technocrats with party loy-alists. A hallmark of authori-tarian systems is the difficulty of admitting error and then self-correcting, and China is a textbook case.

The coronavirus puts the contradictions at the heart of modern China in plain sight. There is the need to get word out to the population so that people can take preventive steps and react appropriately if they fall ill, but the gov-ernment is afraid to allow information to be shared widely, as doing so could feed unrest along with the nar-rative that the leadership has failed the people. Policies designed to stem the spread of the virus - quarantine and house arrest - reflect the same dilemma.

It is always a mistake to underestimate China’s ability to rise to challenges, and after its initial stumble, it has shown its unique ability to mobilize resources. But the coronavirus has already emerged as Xi’s biggest chal-lenge. He has concentrated power in his own hands to a degree not seen since Mao Zedong; it is difficult to blame others when you have made yourself first among unequals. It is also the biggest challenge to the Communist Party since the Tiananmen Square pro-tests of 1989. Unless author-ities get the situation under control and restore economic growth soon, it has the potential to become much more significant than Tiananmen, as what is at issue is not thousands of students calling for reform but millions of citizens demanding basic competence. Desperate people can do desperate things.

This chapter should also change the way outsiders think about China. Virtually everything written and said about China is premised on the notion of its continued rise. But to assume China’s growth will continue in a steady fashion ignores Chinese history. China’s eco-nomic ascent now in its fifth decade, began only after Deng Xiaoping reversed many of Mao’s policies. The potential for political instability exists, as China is a brittle system.

The comparison with India is instructive. India has not mobilized or organized itself nearly as well as China, and its growth over the past few decades has averaged only half that of China’s, but India’s democracy and civil society give it a cushion that China lacks.

The US government needs to plan for possible futures in which China’s rise is inter-rupted. We could see a Xi-led China that turns to nation-alism as a distraction in a “wag the dog” scenario in which China would put pressure on Taiwan or Hong Kong. Or we could see a China that turns inward amid political convulsion as Xi is challenged. How long this would take and what would result are unknown. The only thing that is certain is that we cannot assume China’s future will resemble its recent past.

Richard Haass is pres-ident of the Council on Foreign Relations and author of the forthcoming book “The World: A Brief Introduction.”

How the coronavirus could change China

Because so many people’s lives and livelihoods depend on economic policy, there’s a strong tendency to politicize the discipline of economics. In order to resist this tendency and retain their academic credibility, econo-mists generally try to stick to the facts. Instead of telling society what it ought to do, they strive to offer a menu of choices and trade-offs. Econ-omists do occasionally try to quantify how much policies improve welfare, but this analysis tends to be stilted, one-dimensional and based on mathematical assump-tions.

In an era of fast economic growth, economists could usually get away with this neutral approach; as Pres-ident John F. Kennedy liked to say, a rising tide lifts all boats. But growth in developed nations is tapering off, thanks to aging popula-tions, plateauing education levels and a global produc-tivity slowdown. That means

that economists are not going to be able to dodge the hard questions of redistribution for much longer.

One approach is for econ-omists to play the part of moral philosophers, telling people what kinds of redistri-bution they ought to want. Harvard University econ-omist Greg Mankiw took this approach in a 2013 essay titled “Defending the One Percent,” in which he argues that most rich people have earned their fortunes fairly and deserve to keep them. Naturally, many left-leaning economists have pushed back against this idea, with such luminaries as Thomas Piketty calling for billion-aires’ fortunes to be taxed out of existence.

But economists are gen-erally not suited to the task of moral philosophizing. Nor is it clear that they ought to move in this direction, as a few people have demanded. There is already a discipline called philosophy, and it has its own departments and its own specialists.

Instead, economists can help by trying to translate people’s preferences for fairness, equality and other moral goals into actionable policy. This requires getting a handle on what amount and types of redistribution people actually want. Some

researchers now are attempting to do this.

For example, in a new paper, economists Alain Cohn, Lasse Jessen, Marko Klasnja and Paul Smeets, reasoning that richer people have an outsized impact on the political process, use an online survey to measure how wealthy individuals think about redistribution. Their findings were not par-ticularly surprising; people in the top 5% of the income and wealth distributions sup-ported lower taxes and tended to vote Republican.

The authors also per-formed an online experiment in which some people were allowed to choose to redis-tribute winnings among other experimental subjects who completed an online task. No matter whether the winnings were awarded based on merit or luck, rich subjects chose less redistribution.

But not all rich subjects. Cohn and his co-authors found that people who grew up wealthy favored redistri-bution about as much as average Americans. But those with self-made fortunes favored more inequality. Apparently, many people who make it big out of poverty or the middle class believe that everyone should do the same.

This suggests that the U.S. has a dilemma. A dynamic economy creates lots of new companies, which bring great fortunes to the founders. But if Cohn and his co-authors are right, those founders are likely to support less redistri-bution as a result. So if the self-made entrepreneurs wield political power, as the authors believe, there could be a political trade-off between economic dynamism and redistribution.

Another interesting new paper comes from econo-mists Christina Fong and Panu Poutvaara. Studying survey data, they confirmed the long-standing finding that the more people believe that success is due to effort rather than luck, the more tolerant they are of ine-quality. Philosophically, this doesn’t make a lot of sense -- many factors that determine effort, such as mental health, parental influence and the availability of role models are largely due to luck. But moral beliefs don’t have to make logical sense in order to be politically powerful.

Fong and Poutvaara also found that beliefs about welfare spending depend mainly on what people think about the poor, while beliefs about taxes depend mostly on what people think about the rich. And those may not

match up. If people believe that the poor are poor mainly because of circumstances beyond their control, while wealthy people succeeded thanks to their own effort, they’re likely to support more spending without the taxes to match.

That could be a recipe for higher deficits. Conversely, those who believe that the poor have mostly themselves to blame, but that the wealthy succeeded due to luck, will tend to support high taxes but will probably want to spend the revenue on the middle class instead of on welfare.

So economists are con-firming that beliefs about the causes of wealth matter a lot. The next crucial task, therefore, is to determine to what degree economic success is due to which factors -- parental influence, neighborhood environments, personal work ethic, role models, a culture of hard work, mental health, discrimination, willingness to take risks and so on. By untangling the sources of success, economists can help the public to make an informed moral choice about how much to take from the rich and give to the poor.

Noah Smith is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist.

The morality of taking from the rich and giving to the poor

RICHARD HAASS THE WASHINGTON POST

NOAH SMITH BLOOMBERG

This chapter should also change the way outsiders think about China. Virtually everything written and said about China is premised on the notion of its continued rise. But to assume China’s growth will continue in a steady fashion ignores Chinese history. China’s economic ascent now in its fifth decade, began only after Deng Xiaoping reversed many of Mao’s policies.

Beyond the human tragedy, the immediate impact of the virus is mostly economic. The only question is how much it slows China’s economy and for how long.

The US government needs to plan for possible futures in which China’s rise is interrupted. We could see a Xi-led China that turns to nationalism as a distraction in a “wag the dog” scenario in which China would put pressure on Taiwan or Hong Kong. Or we could see a China that turns inward amid political convulsion as Xi is challenged. How long this would take and what would result are unknown. The only thing that is certain is that we cannot assume China’s future will resemble its recent past.

Medical staff members wearing protective clothing to help stop the spread of a deadly virus which began in the city as they walk next to patients waiting for medical attention at the Wuhan Red Cross Hospital in Wuhan.

10 WEDNESDAY 12 FEBRUARY 2020HOME

MoTC and entities mark Qatar National Sport DayTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

The Ministry of Transport and Communications (MoTC) yesterday marked the National Sport Day 2020, which is cele-brated annually across Qatar on the second Tuesday of February.

This year’s celebrations were held at Al Bidda Park under the slogan ‘Be Active’.

The MOTC was joined by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), Communications Regulatory Authority (CRA), Qatar Aeronau-tical College (QAC), Qatar Ports Management Company (Mwani Qatar), Mowasalat (Karwa), Qatar Rail, the Qatar National Broadband Network (Qnbn), Qatar Navigation (Milaha), the New Port Project (NPP) Steering Committee, QTerminals and Mada - Qatar Assistive Tech-nology Centre.

The event opened with walking and some women’s

exercises, followed by several sporting activities like football and basketball, in addition to sporting and entertaining activ-ities for all age groups.

The event also featured several group games like tug of war, mental games and folklore games for kids.

Hassan Al Hail, Advisor to HE the Minister of Transport and Communications, said, “The National Sport Day reflects the wise leadership’s vision for human and society development. The day represents an important message for making sport an integral part of the culture and lifestyle of individuals and society, as well as an investment in the human capital.”

For his part, H E Abdulla bin Nasser Turki Al Subaey, Pres-ident of the CAA, said that this qualitative initiative contributes to the dedication of sports com-munity concepts and reinforce

Qatar’s position as a pioneer in the sports field.

“CRA ensures to annually participates and engages the employees and their families in the related activities by educating them about the importance of healthy eating and exercise for individuals and society and in reducing health risks associated with a low-mobility lifestyle,” said Mohammed Ali Al Mannai, President of CRA.

Sheikh Jabr bin Hamad Al Thani, Director General of QAC, said, “Qatar, under the leadership of Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, paid great attention to sports and physical activity and made it one of the priorities and centre of interest.”

Capt Abdulla Mohamed Al-Khanji, CEO of Mwani Qatar, said, “The wide participation on the National Sport Day shows the increasing awareness of members of the community to the importance of exercise and its positive impact on health.”

“Every year, Milaha cele-brates this special occasion to demonstrate its unwavering commitment to the advancement of our nation’s vision and long-term goals,” said Milaha Pres-ident and CEO Abdulrahman Issa Al Mannai.

Fahad Saad Al Qahtani, Mowasalat (Karwa) CEO, said, “National Sports Day is an oppor-tunity to improve the lifestyle and it represents a strong boost for every citizen and resident who wishes to change their lifestyle for the better.”

“By organizing this exciting day full of entertaining activities for our employees, we encourage them and all members of the community to follow healthy habits and styles as well as help to promote a healthy, vibrant lifestyle in Qatar,” said Neville Bissett, CEO, QTerminals.

NHRC holds various sporting activities to mark Sport DayTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

The National Human Rights Committee (NHRC) celebrated the National Sport Day by organising various events and sports activities, children’s competitions and a lecture on yoga and its importance for human health.

Vice-Chairman of the NHRC, Dr Mohammed bin Saif Al Kuwari, stressed the NHRC’s keenness and interest in partic-ipating in the Sport Day, and said exercising is a basic human right.

Expressing regret, he said, many in the world, especially children, are deprived of the facilities that motivate them to participate in sports.

Dr Kuwari said many coun-tries encourage sports but Qatar

is the only country that has a day dedicated for sports, in which all groups and segments of society participate, and provides arenas and sports stadiums, parks and amusement facilities for sports. He pointed out that many countries have praised this unique Qatari sport initi-ative and that the NHRC is keen to celebrate this occasion as an official annual sporting event to highlight the value of sport and its benefits, which are reflected positively and directly on human behaviour.

Dr Kuwari praised the great attention the state attaches to sports of all kinds, noting that Qatar has repeatedly affirmed its keenness to pay special attention to the need to respect of human rights standards and

laws in organising major sporting events, including the World Cup tournament to be hosted in 2022.

For his part, NHRC Assistant Secretary General Sultan bin Hassan Al Jamali stressed that the Sport Day reflects human, social and cultural values and represents an important mile-stone during the year not only for the purpose of taking part in sports but also for assessing and planning sporting actvities during the New Year.

He described Qatar as the sport front of the world and its focus on all that related to sport as it has hosted international competitions and achieved suc-cesses and won the world’s con-fidence in hosting the World Cup 2022.

Kahramaa celebrates NSD at KataraQNA — DOHA

Qatar General Electricity and Water Corporation (Kahramaa) organised various sporting events at the beach of Katara Cultural Village to celebrate Qatar Sport Day in the presence of President of Kahramaa, Eng Issa bin Hilal Al Kuwari, directors of administration, heads of departments, employees and their families.

This event comes within the framework of the social respon-sibility of Kahramaa and as an expression of its commitment to contribute to advancing the health and welfare of its employees and society in general.

The event aimed to raise awareness of the importance of sport, ensure regular exer-cises and maintaining a healthy lifestyle.

Kahramaa’s celebration of National Sport Day included many sports and leisure activ-ities for different age groups in an atmosphere of enter-tainment and fun.

The activities began with the Kahramaa Beach Volleyball Championship in cooperation with the Qatar Volleyball Fed-eration, and table tennis com-petitions in cooperation with the Qatar Table Tennis Federation.

Kahramaa events also wit-nessed a bicycle march in

cooperation with the Qatar Cycling and Triathlon Feder-ation, with the participation of President of Kahramaa Eng Issa bin Hilal Al Kuwari, directors of affairs and administrations, heads of departments and employees.

The Sport Day activities hosted a set of challenges with the participation of champions of Qatar Strongest Man compe-tition, these included truck pulling, walking with heavy-weights, giant wheel-tyre

f l i p p i n g a n d o t h e r competitions.

Moreover, Kahramaa events witnessed competitive matches in many games, including beach football, basketball, and running, in addition to estab-lishing a free zone to play several games.

Kahramaa dedicated a special area for women that provided them with the privacy to play many sports and partic-ipate in events as well as a special area for kids that

included many games and fun activities for children to partic-ipate with their families and encourage them to take part in sports since childhood.

At the end of the activities, President of Kahramaa Eng Issa bin Hilal Al Kuwari honoured the winning teams in the various competitions and games organised by Kahramaa, in the presence of the officials of the Qatar Volleyball Feder-ation and the Qatar Table Tennis Federation.

Kahramaa organised a bicycle ride to celebrate Qatar National Sport Day.

Alfardan Group celebrates Sport Day with fervourTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

The power of sports, which unites different cultures and promotes healthy lifestyles, was on full display during the 2020 Qatar National Sport Day activities organised by Alfardan Group at the Aspire Ladies Sports Hall.

Home to one of the most diverse workforces in Qatar, more than 1,500 employees of the group participated in the lively set of events which fea-tured some of Qatar’s most popular sporting activities such as football, cricket, volleyball, basketball, billiards, bad-minton, table tennis and golf.

Alfardan provided partici-pants an electrifying start to their day with a series of Zumba

warm-up exercises; while medical specialists representing Alfardan Group’s newest sub-sidiary, Alfardan Medical with Northwestern Medicine (AMNM), were on standby to provide first aid to the attendees.

The board members of the Alfardan Group namely Hussain Ibrahim Alfardan, Chairman, Ali Hussain Alfardan, Vice Chairman, Fahad Hussain Alfardan, Board Director, Omar Hussain Alfardan, President and CEO and Fardan Fahad Alfardan, General Manager of Wahat Shafalahia, were present to welcome the employees and their families and friends who participated. They also handed out awards to winners of sports competitions.

al khaliji organises Ping-Pong event to mark NSDTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Al Khalij Commercial Bank (al khaliji), with the aim of uniting people in the community through the common interest of sport, celebrated the 9th Qatar National Sport Day by organising a Ping-Pong event held on February 10 and 11 at the Doha Festival City.

During the event, partici-pants were cheered on by their colleagues and friends to win.

At the end of each game, winners received exciting prizes.

“al khaliji is a proud supporter of Qatar National Sport Day and is committed to

empowering the community. The bank actively promotes

wellness and healthy lifestyle among its employees and fam-ilies through various initiatives throughout the year, in line with Qatar’s National Vision 2030 for the development of a healthy society,” said Rana Al Asaad, Head of Personal Banking at al khaliji.

The Qatar National Sport Day aims to create awareness on the importance of sport and fitness in achieving a healthy lifestyle, leading to a prosperous and healthy society.

It also provides a social opportunity to spend time with colleagues, family and friends.

Senior officials and employees of Alfardan Group participated in Qatar National Sport Day activities.

The National Human Rights Committee organised sporting events during the National Sport Day.

The Ministry of Transport and Communications celebrated the National Sport Day 2020 with its entities.

Kuwait Amir receives Canadian PMKuwait Amir H H Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Jaber Al Sabah (right), with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at Bayan Palace in Kuwait City, yesterday. Trudeau also met Prime Minister of Kuwait, H H Sheikh Sabah Khaled Al Hamad Al Sabah. The two sides discussed bilateral relations and the overall regional and international situation.

Regime copter downed as Ankara threatens DamascusAFP — QAMINAS, SYRIA

Tensions escalated yesterday between Syria’s regime and Turkey as a Syrian military heli-copter was shot down and Ankara warned of a “heavy price” for any attacks on its forces.

The new flare-up, a day after regime shelling killed five Turkish troops, came as gov-ernment forces battling rebels in northwestern Syria took full control of a key highway linking the country’s four largest cities.

The advance marked another step in President Bashar Al Assad’s campaign to retake Syria’s last rebel-held pocket, where nearly 700,000 civilians have fled violence since December in the largest exodus since the start of the war.

Shortly after the M5 motorway was recaptured, a rocket attack downed a Syrian regime helicopter in Idlib province, killing both pilots.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the helicopter was hit by a rocket fired by Turkish forces, though Ankara did not claim responsibility.

A correspondent saw the bodies of the two pilots and the mangled remains of the heli-copter at the site of the crash near the village of Qaminas, southeast of Idlib city.

Turkey, which has troops deployed in several locations in northern Syria, continues to support rebel groups battling the Assad regime or acting as proxies against Kurdish forces.

Along with regime ally Russia, it is the key foreign

broker in northern Syria, but a 2018 deal aimed at averting a major offensive has failed to take hold. Erdogan said Turkish troops would continue to respond to Syrian regime attacks.

“The more they attack... our soldiers, they will pay a very, very heavy price,” he told a tel-evised ceremony in Ankara.

Ankara said on Monday it had “neutralised” 101 Syria regime troops in response to the deadly artillery attack on its position in Idlib, but that infor-mation could not be verified independently. Neither the Observatory nor Damascus reported any casualties among Syrian troops on Monday.

Erdogan said he would reveal his next steps today. He spoke after Syria regime forces retook full control of the key M5 highway from rebels in the northwest of the country for the first time since 2012, the Observ-atory said. That highway links the capital Damascus to the second city of Aleppo through the cities of Homs and Hama, and has been a key target for the government as it seeks to rekindle a moribund economy.

Its recapture also helps secure Aleppo, the country’s former industrial hub, which still comes under sporadic

rocket fire from holdout rebel groups. In Idlib city, Syrian air force strikes killed at least 12 civilians, the Observatory said.

Half of those killed in the strikes were minors, according to the monitor. Turkey, which already hosts more than three million refugees, fears a massive fresh influx from Syria and has kept its border closed to the newly displaced people in Idlib.

The exodus, which has seen endless convoys of families with their mattresses stacked on trucks criss-cross the war-torn province, is the biggest of the nine-year-old conflict, the UN said on Tuesday.

“In just 10 weeks, since 1 December, some 690,000 people have been displaced from their homes in Idlib and surrounding areas,” a spokesman for the Office for the Coordination of Humani-tarian Affairs said.

“This is, from our initial analysis, the largest number of people displaced in a single period since the Syrian crisis began almost nine years ago,” David Swanson said.

The Idlib region is a dead-end for hundreds of thousands of people who were forced to flee or were evacuated from formerly rebel-held territory elsewhere in Syria.

Smoke rises from the wreckage of a helicopter belonging to Assad regime after it was shot down at the west of Saraqib district in centre in Idlib, Syria, yesterday.

AFP — JISH, ISRAEL

Dozens of cars in an Israeli Arab village were vandalised overnight, police said yesterday, with slogans sprayed on a mosque indi-cating the involvement of Jewish extremists.

The slogans “Jews awaken” and “Stop assimilating” were scrawled on a mosque and another building in Jish, a small village in the Galilee, just south of Israel’s border with Lebanon. Police said they were investigating the incident, which they condemned along with “all nationalistic hate crimes”. Jish council head Elias Elias said that the tyres of more than 150 cars were punctured.

He said it was not the first time the mixed Muslim and Christian village had been tar-geted and asked what the reaction would have been if the place of worship defiled had not been a mosque.

“I can only imagine what would happen if things like this would have been sprayed on a synagogue in the US or Europe,” he said. “The whole world would be in an uproar.”

The incident bore the hallmark of a “price tag” attack — a euphemism for Jewish nationalist-motivated hate crimes targeting Palestinians and Arab Israelis and their property, as well as Muslim and Christian holy sites.

Palestinians rally against Trump plan amid struggle at UNJewish extremists vandalise Arab Israeli village AP — RAMALLAH, WEST BANK

Thousands of Palestinians rallied yesterday in the West Bank to reject President Donald Trump’s Mideast initi-ative and to express support for the Palestinian leadership as it tries to gain support at the United Nations for a reso-lution opposing the plan.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas plans to deliver a speech at the UN later in the day, but members will not be voting on a draft resolution. Palestinian officials denied the resolution had been pulled, but diplomats said many members, including European countries, rejected the language in a draft that had circulated.

Trump’s Mideast plan, announced at the White House on January 28, sides with Israel on virtually all of the most contentious issues of the decades-old conflict. It would allow Israel to annex large parts of the occupied West Bank, including Jewish settlements that are home to hundreds of thousands of people and are considered illegal by most of the international community.

The Palestinians, who cut off ties with the US after Trump recognized dis-puted Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in 2017, have adamantly rejected the plan.

The first public opinion poll to be carried out since the plan was announced found that 94% of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza reject it. It also found cratering support for a two-state solution, with only 39% in favor, and rising support for armed struggle, at 64%.

The poll of 1,270 people was carried out by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research and had a margin of error of 3%. Protesters packed Al-Manara Square in Ramallah, the West Bank headquarters of the Palestinian Authority. They waved Palestinian flags and held banners condemning the plan. An English-language banner read

“Trump is part of the problem not the solution,” while another condemned the “theft of the century.” Arab officials and media refer to the plan sarcastically as the “deal of the century.” “All Palestinian people and all the factions, national and Islamic, are standing behind President Mahmoud Abbas,” Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh told the crowd. “All the streets are full,” he said. “This is the Palestinian response.”

As the rally dispersed, dozens of Pal-estinians clashed with Israeli forces near a settlement just outside Ramallah. The protesters burned tires and hurled stones at Israeli troops, who responded with tear gas. The Palestinian Red Crescent said two people were wounded by small-caliber fire in the clashes and several others were injured by rubber bullets.

A rally in support of Abbas was also held in Gaza, where the Islamic militant

group Hamas seized power from his forces in 2007. The rival factions have both condemned the US plan.

Abbas has tried to rally international support against the Trump plan, with limited success. The Arab League unan-imously sided with the Palestinians against the plan, but key US allies Egypt and Saudi Arabia said they appreciated Trump’s efforts and called for renewed negotiations.

Iran marks 41st anniversary of 1979 revolutionAP — TEHRAN

Hundreds of thousands across Iran marked the 41st anni-versary of its 1979 Islamic Revolution yesterday amid some of the highest tensions ever between Tehran and the US in the past four decades.

While Iranian President Hassan Rouhani gave a speech in Tehran’s iconic Azadi Square denouncing the US, he also focused on encouraging the country to vote in upcoming parliamentary elections, even after officials disqualified thou-sands from running, including 90 current lawmakers.

Iran views high turnout as a vote of confidence in the coun-try’s Shia ideology theocracy, something it wants to show as public anger still simmers over the country accidentally shooting down a Ukrainian jetliner in January that killed all 176 people on board.

The shoot down also marred funeral processions that drew millions of mourners for Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani, killed in a US drone strike in Baghdad. Washington. Tensions have spiked since President Donald Trump withdrew the US from Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers in May 2018. A series of attacks across the Mideast cul-minated with the US launching the drone strike that killed Sole-imani in January.

Nato set for Iraq troop trainer-swap to mollify US demandsAP — BRUSSELS/BAGHDAD

Nato countries are preparing to move more than 200 trainers working with the international force fighting the Islamic State (IS) group in Iraq to the military alliance’s own mission there helping to build up the Iraqi army in response to President Donald Trump’s demand that US allies do more in the Middle East, senior officials said.

The move — essentially a “re-badging” exercise as troops shift from the anti-IS coalition to Nato control — will be high on the agenda Wednesday when Nato defense ministers meet in Brussels to weigh exact troop numbers. “There are several areas where the training is really overlapping,” US Nato envoy Kay Bailey Hutchison told reporters.

Nato agreed in 2018 to launch a training mission in Iraq involving around 500 troops with the aim of building up the country’s armed forces so they could better combat extremist groups. Only the anti-IS coalition fights extremists.

But the Nato operation was put on hold last month after a US missile strike at Baghdad airport killed Iran’s top general, and the Iraqi government and parliament demanded that foreign troops leave its

territory. As tensions mounted, Trump insisted that the alliance should do more in the region.

However, there is little appetite among European allies and Canada to deploy troops, even though the U.S. is by far the biggest and most influential of the 29 Nato member countries.

While she didn’t mention numbers involved in the troop swap, Hutchison said that Nato’s plan is to expand its training operation to more Iraqi bases. But officials said that over “a couple of hundred” troops are likely to shift into the Nato training mission and operate out of bases in central Iraq. Overall, the number of troops from Nato countries working in Iraq would stay the same.

Officials are confident that Iraq will soon let the military alliance resume its training mission, particularly after Nato Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg held a series of talks with Iraqi and regional leaders. “We will only stay in Iraq based on an invitation from Iraq,” Stoltenberg said Tuesday, but he underlined that “one of the weapons we have in the fight against terrorism is to train local forces, enabling them to fight terrorism them-selves. Prevention is better than intervention.”

REUTERS — UNITED NATIONS

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, appearing before the United Nations Security Council, angrily rejected US President Donald Trump’s Middle East peace proposal yesterday as a gift to Israel and unacceptable to Palestinians.

Waving a copy of a map that the US plan envisions for a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine, Abbas said the state carved out for Palestinians looks like a fragmented “Swiss cheese.”

His appearance came as a draft UN Security Council resolution is being cir-culated that would condemn an Israeli plan to annex its settlements in the West Bank, in what would amount to a rebuke of the Trump plan.

The draft text, circulated to council members by Tunisia and Indonesia, would face a certain U.S. veto, but none-theless reflected some members’ dim view of the peace plan that Trump rolled out two weeks ago with great fanfare.

Abbas called on Trump to disavow the plan and seek a return to negotia-tions based on existing UN resolutions that call for a two-state solution based on pre-1967 border lines.

He urged the Security Council to hold an international conference to implement a settlement. “The US cannot

be the sole mediator,” he said. Suggesting violent protests could

break out, Abbas said that “the situation could implode at any moment.... We need hope. Please do not take this hope away from us.” Later he said Pales-tinians would not “resort to terrorism.”

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas holding a map while speaking at a Security Council meeting at the United Nations in New York, in the US, yesterday.

Abbas denounces US peace proposal as gift to Israel

11WEDNESDAY 12 FEBRUARY 2020 GULF / MIDDLE EAST

The new flare-up, a day after regime shelling martyred five Turkish troops, came as government forces battling rebels in northwestern Syria took full control of a key highway linking the country’s four largest cities.

Sudan to hand Bashir to ICC for Darfur crimes: Top officialAFP — KHARTOUM

Sudan has agreed to hand ousted autocrat Omar Al Bashir and others to the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes in Darfur, a member of Khartoum’s ruling body said yesterday.

The Hague-based ICC has charged Bashir and three of his former aides with genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in Sudan’s western region during a brutal conflict from 2003.

“Those who have been indicted by the ICC, they have to go there,” Mohamed Hassan Al Taishay, a member of the ruling sovereign council said, without mentioning their names.

His remarks, quoted in a statement issued by the sov-ereign council in Khartoum, came as a government dele-gation met rebel groups in the

South Sudanese capital of Juba.Taishay said the talks

focused on justice and recon-ciliation in Darfur, where the United Nations says about 300,000 people have been killed and millions displaced since the conflict erupted.

Taishay said they had agreed several mechanisms for achieving peace in the region.

“First, all those who have been indicted by the ICC should appear before the ICC,” he said.

“Second, a special court be set up to investigate crimes committed in Darfur.”

The conflict in Darfur, the size of France, erupted when ethnic minority African rebels took up arms against Bashir’s then Arab-dominated gov-ernment, accusing it of margin-alising the region economically and politically.

The ICC has charged Bashir with genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role in the conflict.

It has also indicted three of his former aides, Ahmed Haroon, Abdulrahim Mohamed Hussain and Ali Kushied.

“We cannot achieve justice unless we treat the suffering of the victims because this is a truth that we can’t escape from,” Taishay said.

“In Darfur, crimes against humanity and war crimes have been committed.” Bashir has denied the charges. Bashir was ousted by the army in a palace coup last April after months of protests against his iron-fisted

rule of three decades.He was detained following

his ouster and has since been jailed on corruption charges.

Anti-Bashir protesters, res-idents of Darfur and rebel groups from the region have consistently demanded that the ousted ruler be handed over to the ICC.

For years before his ouster and despite the ICC indictments, Bashir had regularly visited

regional countries as well as Russia and China.

Days before the protests erupted in December 2018, he visited Syria’s President Bashar Al Assad in Damascus.

In 2018, Bashir helped broker a tentative peace deal in South Sudan after five years of intense conflict in the world’s newest country, which won independence from Khartoum in 2011.

A file photo of former Sudanese president Omar Al Bashir delivering a speech in Parliament in Khartoum, Sudan, on April 1, 2019.

Founder of South Africa’s choral group diesAFP — JOHANNESBURG

Joseph Shabalala, founder of South Africa’s multiple Grammy-winning choral group, the Ladysmith Black Mambazo, has died, the choir said yesterday. He was 78.

Shabalala passed away at a Pretoria hospital following complications from back surgery that left him wheel-chair-bound, according to local media.

“Our Founder, our Teacher and most importantly, our Father left us today for eternal peace,” the choir said on social media.

“We celebrate and honor your kind heart and your extraordinary life. Through your music and the millions who you came in contact with, you shall live forever.” Sha-balala had retired in 2014 and handed control to the all-male choral group to his four sons.

Founded in the south-estern city of Durban in the 1960s, the Ladysmith Black Mambazo

gained iconic status in South Africa. The word “Mambazo” means “axe” in the Zulu lan-guage. The group was popu-larised abroad by Paul Simon’s 1986 “Graceland” album.

Simon was criticised by some at the time for working with musicians while South Africa was still under apartheid rule. But his album opened up a global audience to traditional

Zulu harmony-driven acapella, known as isicathamiya, and an international following for the Ladysmith Black Mambazo.

The group is a decades-old favourite at the Grammys, where it won its fifth award in 2018. It is currently on a US tour.

The chorale performed at the inauguration of South Africa’s first black president

Nelson Mandela in 1994, who was freed from jail exactly 30 years ago yesterday.

The choir also performed at Queen Elizabeth II’s 92nd birthday in 2018 at a star-studded, Commonwealth-themed charity concert that also featured Tom Jones, Kylie Minogue and Shaggy.

President Cyril Ramaphosa described Shabalala as a “veteran choral maestro”.

“Today the spirit of...Sha-balala is united with that of our great leader, Nelson Mandela, whose release from prison we are commemorating,” said Ramaphosa in a tweet.

The opposition Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) said in a statement that the group’s “music spoke to the social real-ities of black cultural norms and traditions, and was able to bring to light the social conditions of black South Africans”.

Fans paid tribute on social media.

“The legend has fallen,” said one fan on Twitter.

A file photo of Joseph Shabalala, founder and music director of Ladysmith Black Mambazo, in Johannesburg on July 10, 2010.

Thousands bid farewell to Kenya’s veteran leader MoiREUTERS — NAIROBI

African leaders in Kenya for the state funeral of Daniel arap Moi, the country’s longest ruling president who died last week at 95, hailed his role as a peace-keeper who tried to mediate conflicts including in Uganda and Ethiopia.

Despite his longevity, Moi was a divisive personality who won admirers for keeping Kenya on an even keel for much of his rule but was hated by others for a legacy of corruption that still haunts the East African nation today.

Tens of thousands of people turned out in the capital Nairobi to watch Moi’s coffin, draped in the Kenyan flag, travel on a gun carriage from the State House, the official presidential seat, to an open air stadium 5km away.

Personnel from the army, air force and navy accompanied the coffin into the stadium, where choirs sang as they awaited the cortege.

“As an avid peacemaker, statesman, Pan Africanist and champion for a more united and just world, Moi spearheaded a number of initiatives that brought peace within our region

and beyond,” Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta told mourners.

The day was declared a public holiday, allowing people to mourn Moi’s passing.

“Moi was a humble man. Anybody who knew him, they

know he was a humble man. President Moi never bragged in any success... instead he attributed it to God,” said long-time friend Silas Yego, a retired bishop of the Africa Inland Church.

Moi came to power in 1978 when he was serving as vice-president, after the nation’s first leader President Jomo Kenyatta died.

Makau Mutua, who as a young law student at the

University of Nairobi was detained by the Moi regime in 1981 and then exiled for the next 10 years, cautioned against for-getting Moi’s excesses.

“We can’t forget, or forgive. If we do, we will continue to repeat our horrible history,” he wrote in his weekly column in the local Sunday Nation newspaper.

During Moi’s rule, thou-sands of activists, students and academics were held without charge in underground cells. Prisoners say they were some-times denied food and water.

Poverty also deepened on his watch and corruption flour-ished. A 2004 report by cor-porate investigations firm group Kroll accused Moi and his inner circle of stealing $2bn of state funds, an accusation the gov-ernment at the time dismissed.

Moi won elections in 1992 and 1997, defeating a divided opposition. But he was booed and heckled into retirement when term limits forced him to step down in 2002 and he lived quietly on his sprawling estate in the Rift Valley.

He will be buried there today.

Military officers escort a gun carriage carrying the coffin of late former Kenyan president, Daniel arap Moi, draped in the Kenya national flag, during a state memorial service in Nairobi, yesterday.

Court upholds 15-year sentence for Bouteflika’s brother in Algeria

AFP — BLIDA, ALGERIA

An Algerian military court on Monday upheld a 15-year prison term for the brother of former president Abdelaziz Bouteflika and two former intelligence chiefs convicted of conspiracy against the state, a lawyer said.

The once mighty Said Bouteflika, 62, was long seen as the real power behind the presidency after his brother suffered a debilitating stroke in 2013.

He had served as a key presidential aide but was detained in May last year, a month after Bouteflika quit office weeks into mass protests against his bid for a fifth pres-idential term.

In September Said Boute-flika, along with several other senior regime officials, was sentenced by a military tri-bunal to 15 years in jail for “conspiring” against the state and undermining the army’s authority.

Their convictions were the most high-profile in a string of prosecutions of prominent politicians and businessmen after Bouteflika was pushed out in April after two decades in power. A court in Blida began hearing an appeal against the sentences on Sunday behind closed doors and amid heavy security.

Algeria’s state prosecutor sought an increased penalty of 20 years in jail, lawyers said, but the court confirmed the original sentences.

“Said Bouteflika, General (Athmane) Tartag and General (Mohamed Lamine) Mediene received 15 years in prison. The initial verdict was con-firmed,” lawyer Boudjemaa Guechir said.

Mediene, known as “Toufik”, headed the powerful Department of Intelligence and Security for 25 years and was sentenced in September alongside the former presi-dent’s brother. Also in court were Mediene’s former right-hand man, Tartag, and Louisa Hanoune.

Mali Presidentsays governmentin contact withextremist leaders

AP — BAMAKO, MALI

Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita has confirmed that his government is in contact with Al Qaeda-linked extremist leaders as the West African country faces some of the worst violence since its crisis began in 2012, according to an interview with French media.

While attending an African Union summit in Ethiopia, Keita also confirmed that Mali’s military would soon be returning to the northern rebel stronghold town of Kidal, where it has not had a presence in six years.

Keita told Radio France Internationale and France 24 that he had a duty “to do eve-rything possible so that, by one means or another, we can achieve some sort of appeasement.”

He added on Monday: “Because the number of deaths in the Sahel today is becoming exponential. And I think it is time that certain paths were explored.” “We in Mali have tried the challenge of an inclusive national dialogue, and among our recommenda-tions is this aspect,” he said. “Why not try contact with those who we know are pulling the strings of the situ-ation in Mali?” Keita was asked about media reports that he had allowed former President Dioncounda Traore to meet with extremist leaders Amadou Koufa and Iyad Ag Ghali.

Both were prominent leaders of the Malian extremist group Ansar Dine before a French-led military inter-vention in 2013. They are now under the banner of an Al Qaeda-linked group known as JNIM.

Keita described Ag Ghali as a “courteous, pleasant man” back in the day when the two had crossed paths in the capital, Bamako.

“I don’t know that he has remained that man after all that I remember today,” Keita told the French media outlets.

The French-led military operation in 2013 ousted extremists from control of the major towns in northern Mali including Kidal. The militants dispersed into the desert where they regrouped and have now expanded their reach significantly into central Mali and beyond.

Mali’s army recently came under an unprecedented number of attacks on its out-posts that killed hundreds of soldiers. The government went so far as to shut down some of its most isolated and vul-nerable military camps as part of a reorganisation aimed at stemming the losses.

Keita said the military was on its way back to Kidal, one of the key stipulations of a 2015 agreement between the government and rebel groups.

Islamic State claims Algeria border attackREUTERS — ALGIERS

Islamic State said yesterday that it was behind Sunday’s attack on an Algerian military barracks near the country’s border with Mali that killed one soldier.

The militant group sent the bomber in a vehicle rigged with explosives, but a sentry stopped him before he could enter the compound and the blast killed both men, according to a Defence Ministry statement.

The group’s Algerian leader is a 47-year-old militant known

as Abu Walid el Sahrawi.“The martyred brother

Omar Al Ansari... entered the base and exploded his car against them,” the group said in a statement.

Algeria, in common with other countries in the Sahel and Sahara regions, is growing increasingly concerned about the risk of militant groups taking advantage of the esca-lating conflict in Libya and chaos in Mali to expand their presence.

In Mali, the government has said it is ready to talk with

militant groups in the hope of ending an insurgency that has made swathes of the country ungovernable and stoked ethnic violence.

In Libya, chaos in parts of the country since the 2011 rev-olution has created space for Islamic State, which launched a cross-border attack against a Tunisian town in 2016, but which is now mostly active in Libya’s south.

“We need to focus on both Libya and Mali,” a former Algerian counter-terrorism officer said.

Nigeria governor pleads for military’s help after 30 killedAP — MAIDUGURI, NIGERIA

The governor of Nigeria’s Borno state has urged the military to better defend a town where militants killed more than 30 people who had been left to sleep in their cars over the weekend after being locked outside the city gate.

Babagana Zulum visited the scene on Monday where some of the cars were still smoking with corpses inside them. The violence on Sunday marked the sixth time since June that the town of Auno had come under attack by suspected Boko Haram militants. While the governor put the death toll at 30, the mil-itary said only 10 people had died and that the motorists had defied a warning that the highway would be closed at 5pm. The governor accused the military of failing to protect the stranded travellers.

The international court has charged Bashir and three of his former aides with genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

12 WEDNESDAY 12 FEBRUARY 2020AFRICA

13WEDNESDAY 12 FEBRUARY 2020 ASIA

Stunning defeat for BJP in key Delhi electionsAGENCIES — NEW DELHI

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s nationalist party was given a stunning defeat by a regional party yesterday in elec-tions in the national capital that were seen as a referendum on his policies, including a new national citizenship law that excludes Muslims.

Saturday’s Delhi legislative elections pit Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party against the incumbent Aam Aadmi Party, or “common man’s” party, whose pro-poor policies focused on fixing state-run schools and pro-viding cheap electricity, free health care and bus transport for women during its five years in power.

Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah appealed to majority Hindus by focusing on national issues such as the citizenship law, which triggered widespread pro-tests, at the expense of problems facing the capital’s millions of

residents. At least 23 people were killed in clashes between police and protesters against the law in December.

The Aam Aadmi Party has won 62 seats and BJP eight seats out of the 70 constituencies.

The defeat was a setback to Modi’s prestige, coming less than eight months after he led the BJP to a resounding victory in national elections. The party won all seven of the capital’s parlia-mentary seats in those polls.

The victory was a major boost for AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal, the 51-year-old incumbent New Delhi chief min-i s t e r a n d

anti-corruption crusader. Kejriwal joined hundreds of his supporters in celebrating the party’s performance. In a brief speech. he said the election “has given birth to a new brand of pol-itics — politics of development’’ to meet people’s basic needs.

Modi in a tweet congratulated Kejriwal for his party’s victory.

“Wishing them the very best in fulfilling the aspirations of the people of Delh,” he said.

Local BJP leader Manoj Tewari denied the AAP accu-sation that his party had tried to create a Hindu-Muslim divide during the elections. Hindus comprise more than 80% of

India’s 1.3 billion people and Muslims about 14 percent.

Kejriwal launched his party in 2012 and campaigned to rid the political system and gov-ernment of corruption and inef-ficiency. The party’s symbol — a broom — and its promise to sweep the administration of graft struck a chord with New Delhi

nearly 20 million people. In the 2015 elections, Kejriwal’s party won 67 seats and the BJP three.

Modi and Home Minister Shah campaigned vigorously in an attempt to unseat the AAP and capture power in New Delhi. The BJP last ruled New Delhi in the 1990s. The new citizenship law fast-tracks naturalisation for

non-Muslim migrants from neighboring Pakistan, Bang-ladesh and Afghanistan who are living in the country illegally.

The BJP also hoped to garner Hindu votes for ending the semi-autonomy of Muslim-majority Kashmir last summer and turning the disputed region into two fed-erally governed territories.

Leader of Aam Aadmi Party, Arvind Kejriwal (centre), gestures towards his supporters during celebrations at the party headquarters in New Delhi, yesterday.

Australian court rules indigenous people can’t be deportedAP — CANBERRA

Australia’s highest court ruled yesterday that the government can’t deport Aboriginal people as part of its policy of ridding the country of foreign criminals.

The High Court ruled in a 4-3 decision that indigenous Australians cannot be deported even if they do not hold Aus-tralian citizenship.

Lawyers welcomed the legal recognition of the original Aus-tralians’ unique place in a country that was claimed by Britain in the 18th century without a treaty. The Australian government was assessing the surprise ruling’s implications on immigration policy.

The court had heard the case of two men who were born overseas but identified as being from indigenous tribes: Brendan Thoms and Daniel Love.

Thoms, 31, was released after 501 days in immigration detention within hours of the court ruling that his indigenous status entitled him to live in Australia.

“Brendan has had 500 sleepless nights worrying he could be deported at any time, and that is now thankfully at an end,” his lawyer Claire Gibbs said. “He is very happy to have been released and to now be reunited with his family at long last,” she added.

Acting Immigration Minister Alan Tudge said the Home Affairs Department would review other cases that might be affected by the precedent.

“The High Court delivered a significant judgment which has implications for our migration programmes,” Tudge said.

The court had “created a new category of persons” that was neither an Australian citizen nor a non-citizen, he added. The

government attempted to deport the men on character grounds in 2018 after they served prison sentences for violent crimes. The government has been criticised for deporting some criminals who have lived in Australia since where were children but had never become citizens.

The court found that Thoms, 31, who was born in New Zealand to an indigenous Aus-tralian mother, was an Abo-riginal Australian.

Thoms had lived in Australia since he was 6, is accepted as a member of the Gunggari tribe and is recognised as a native title holder of their traditional land. But a majority of judges was not convinced that Love, 40, was indigenous and was accepted as a member of the Kamilaroi tribe.

He was born in Papua New Guinea to an indigenous Aus-tralian father and has lived in Australia since he was 5.

His lawyers say he will provide more evidence of his Aboriginality and another trial could be held to decide the issue. Both Love and Thoms were placed in immigration detention and threatened with deportation on their release from prison after serving sen-tences for unrelated crimes.

Love has had his visa restored since his lawyers ini-tiated court action in 2018 and lives on the Gold Coast.

Thoms had been in immi-gration detention in Brisbane for 16 months since he com-pleted a six-month prison sentence.

The court found Aboriginal Australians have a special cul-tural, historic and spiritual con-nection to Australia which is inconsistent with them being considered “aliens” in the meaning of the Australian constitution.

15 refugees drown after boat sinks off BangladeshAP — DHAKA

An overcrowded boat carrying about 138 Rohingya refugees from Bangladeshi camps sank yesterday in the Bay of Bengal, leaving at least 15 confirmed dead, mostly women, Bangla-deshi officials said.

The coast guard, navy divers and other rescuers recovered the bodies after the wooden boat capsized off St. Martin’s Island, the top elected official on the island said.

Noor Ahmed said by phone from the scene that 71 refugees on the boat survived. It was unclear how many remained

missing. The passengers were enticed by traffickers to board the boat from various points as it headed for Malaysia, he said.

Iqbal Hossain, a police superintendent in Cox’s Bazar, said by phone the overcrowding of the boat, which may have also been carrying additional cargo, caused it to capsize.

Hossain said the rescue operation was continuing, but could not say exactly how many people were still missing.

Nojuma Begum, a 26-year-old Rohingya woman, said she wanted to go to Malaysia to see her fiance.

“My marriage has been

fixed with a person named Rafiq in Malaysia. I was being taken to Malaysia because he couldn’t come here. I was sup-posed to go by air. But, several trawlers reached Malaysia by sea, that’s why I boarded one,” she said.

Traffickers usually lure ref-ugees by promising a better life overseas.

Many past attempts to travel illegally by boat were thwarted by the coast guard.

The UN has been working with the government to raise awareness among refugees and local people about the risks they may face at sea. The UN is also

supporting the strengthening of law enforcement capacities to counter smuggling and traf-ficking and protect those most at risk, UN agencies said.

More than 700,000 Rohingya Muslims fled to Bang-ladesh from neighbouring Myanmar since August 2017 to escape a harsh crackdown by Myanmar’s military.

Myanmar maintains that the minority Rohingya migrated illegally from Bangladesh, even though their families have lived in Myanmar for generations. Nearly all have been denied cit-izenship since 1982, effectively rendering them stateless.

Police in protective gear wait to evacuate residents from a public housing building, following the outbreak of the novel coronavirus, in Hong Kong, China, yesterday.

Residents of evacuated Hong Kong apartments test negative for virusREUTERS — HONG KONG

Five Hong Kongers evacuated from a residential building where a man and woman confirmed with coronavirus live tested negative for the virus, health authorities said yesterday, easing concerns of a cluster of the outbreak in the Chinese-ruled city.

The five people were exhib-iting flu-like symptoms earlier. They remain in quarantine together with 200-plus resi-dents who were evacuated from the building in Tsing Yi district in the New Territories in the early hours.

The evacuation occurred after a 62-year-old woman became the second confirmed case in the building on Monday, after a 75-year-old man tested positive on January 30. The two patients, currently receiving treatment, live on different floors.

Initial investigations into the drainage system in the building further reduced con-cerns that the virus may have spread through the pipes, authorities said.

The flat where the latest

infection was discovered had had an alteration to its drainage system, but the pipe network in the public building was in good condition, they said.

Parts of Hong Kong, including restaurants, shopping malls and cafes, are almost deserted as people work from home and schools remain closed, evoking memories of 2003 when Severe Acute Res-piratory Syndrome (SARS) sent panic across the city.

Most of Hong Kong’s pop-ulation of more than 7 million people live in high-rise buildings.

In 2003, initial exposure was blamed on high concen-trations of the virus entering apartment bathrooms through floor drains in a complex called Amoy Gardens.

“The pipe design in the building is very good and even better than in many private properties, and it is definitely not the same situation as Amoy Garden,” Yuen Kwok-yung, chair of Infectious Diseases, Department of Microbiology at the Li Ka Shing Faculty of Med-icine, told reporters.

SARS killed nearly 300

people in Hong Kong.Hong Kong leader Carrie

Lam earlier yesterday appealed for residents to stay indoors as much as possible.

“As part and parcel of enhancing social distancing we are making an appeal to the people of Hong Kong to stay at home as much as possible,” Lam told reporters.

“But at the moment, we’re making this appeal, we’re not going for compulsory closures because Hong Kong is a free society.”

The government has con-firmed 49 cases of coronavirus, which has killed more than 1,000 people, almost all in mainland China.

Embattled Lam is grappling with the health scare even as she faces broader tensions in Hong Kong society where months of often-violent anti-government protests paralysed parts of the global financial centre.

The virus has piled further pressure on Hong Kong’s economy, with retailers, hotels and travel-related businesses among the hardest hit as tourists stay away.

Nepal seeks toreduce migrantdeaths withsafety training

REUTERS — KATHMANDU

In a bid to reduce migrant deaths, millions of Nepalis who work overseas will be given mandatory safety training before departure, offi-cials said yesterday.

About 1,000 out of an esti-mated 4 million Nepali migrants die abroad each year, where most work as domestics and in construction. Migrant remittances makes up a quarter of impoverished Nepal’s GDP.

“The government is very much concerned about the rate of deaths of its migrant workers and is serious about reducing this,” Suman Ghimire, a spokesman for the labour ministry, said.

“We are making orien-tation on how to safely work and live abroad — (like) basic occupational health and safety tips, job specific training, insurance and communication skills — compulsory before the migrants leave.”

Each day, about three coffins containing the remains of dead migrants arrive at the “dead body claim” area in Nepal’s only international airport in its capital Kath-mandu, according to airport officials.

The labour ministry’s Ghimire attributed migrant deaths to workplace hazards, such as machinery, traffic accidents and heat.

Stressed migrants — who are often illiterate and from remote villages in Nepal - also die from exhaustion, activists say.

Ganesh Gurung of Nepal Institute of Development Studies said the government needed to find out why migrants die and do more to support their families.

“In most cases the death certificate, which is required for carrying the body back home, mentions the cause as cardiac arrest without proper postmortem,” he said.

Indian tycoon Mallya appeals against extradition from UKREUTERS — LONDON

Indian businessman Vijay Mallya launched an appeal in Britain’s High Court yesterday against a 2018 decision to extradite him to India to face fraud charges resulting from the collapse of his defunct company Kingfisher Airlines.

India wants to bring back Mallya, 64, over $1.4bn in loans Kingfisher took out from Indian banks which the authorities argue he had no intention of repaying.

Mallya’s lawyer, Clare Montgomery, said that the 2018 extradition ruling by Judge Emma Arbuthnot had “multiple errors” because she did not take into account all the

evidence about the financial status of Kingfisher Airlines.

“This is not a Ponzi scheme - this is an airline,” Mont-gomery said. Mallya, who denies the charges against him and is currently on bail, sat with the public in the courtroom to watch the appeal, which is expected to last two days.

His extradition would be a huge win for Indian Prime Min-ister Narendra Modi, who has faced pressure from political opponents to bring to justice several people who have fled India in recent years to escape prosecution, many for loan defaults.

In 2018, Arbuthnot had rejected Mallya’s argument that the case was motivated.

The Aam Aadmi Party has won 62 seats and BJP eight seats out of the 70 constituencies.The defeat was a setback to Modi’s prestige, coming less than eight months after he led the BJP to a resounding victory in national elections.

14 WEDNESDAY 12 FEBRUARY 2020ASIA

Coronavirus death toll surges past 1,000REUTERS — SHANGHAI

China’s coronavirus outbreak may peak soon, a prominent Chinese expert said yesterday, as the death toll soared past 1,000 and worry grew about the true extent of economic disruption to the world’s second-largest economy.

The government’s top medical adviser on the out-break, Zhong Nanshan, held out hope that the epidemic may peak in February and then plateau before easing.

“The peak time may be reached at the... middle or late this month,” Zhong, an epide-miologist who won fame for his role in combating an outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome in 2003, said an interview.

The number of new cases was already declining in some provinces, he added.

The National Health Com-mission said earlier another 108 people had died yesterday, a daily record, taking to 1,016 the total of those killed in China.

All but five of the deaths were in the central province of Hubei, the epicentre of the outbreak.

There were 2,478 new con-firmed cases on the mainland by Monday, down from 3,062 the previous day, bringing the total to 42,638. It was the second time in two weeks that authorities recorded a daily drop in new cases.

Underlining the danger, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said the outbreak was very much an emergency for China but also posed a “very grave threat for the rest of the world”.

He was speaking at the opening of a two-day meeting of 400 researchers in Geneva aimed at stepping up research

into diagnostics, drugs and vaccines.

Only 319 cases have been confirmed in 24 other countries and territories outside mainland

China, according to WHO and Chinese health officials, with two deaths, one in Hong Kong and the other in the Philippines.

Hubei, where the flu-like virus emerged from a wildlife market in the provincial capital of Wuhan in December, reported 2,097 new cases and

103 new deaths on Feb. 10, its health authority said.

Public anger over the han-dling of the outbreak has been rising and Hubei’s government dismissed the provincial health commission’s Communist Party boss, Zhang Jin, and director Liu Yingzi, state media said.

Hubei remains in virtual lockdown, with its train stations and airports shut and roads blocked.

Government officials said it would be harder to curb the spread of the virus as about 160m people return to their homes across China over the next week, following the end of the holiday.

The virus has caused chaos in Asia, and spread alarm beyond, with many flights sus-pended and entry restrictions imposed by governments trying to ward off its spread.

It has also roiled the world of luxury cruises.

The Diamond Princess cruise ship with 3,700 pas-sengers and crew remained quarantined in Japan’s port of Yokohama, with 65 more cases detected, taking the number of confirmed cases from the Car-nival Corp-owned vessel to 135.

People wearing face masks cross a street in Beijing, yesterday.

Thailand refuses entry to cruise ship despite no infectionsREUTERS — BANGKOK/HANOI

Thailand has barred passengers from Holland America’s cruise ship MS Westerdam from disem-barking, its health minister said yesterday, the latest country to turn it away amid fears of the coronavirus despite no confirmed infections on board.

The Netherlands-flagged ship was sailing in a westerly direction, 96km off the southern coast of Vietnam yesterday morning, according to data from the Marine Traffic ship tracking website.

Holland America, owned by Miami-based Carnival Corp, had said on Monday that passengers would disembark in Bangkok on

February 13 and that there was no reason to believe anybody on board had the virus.

“I have issued orders. Per-mission to dock refused,” Public Health Minister Anutin Charnvi-rakul said in a Facebook post.

Deputy Transport Minister Atirat Ratanasate said in a sep-arate Facebook post that, while the ship would not be allowed to dock, Thailand “will gladly help providing fuel, medicine, and food” to the ship.

The coronavirus that emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan last month has caused chaos in Asia and beyond with many flights suspended, businesses disrupted and entry restrictions imposed by

governments trying to ward off the spread.

It has also roiled the world of luxury cruises.

The World Dream cruise ship was held up in Hong Kong for days after it was linked to three cases but all passengers and crew later tested negative and were allowed to disembark.

The Westerdam had already been turned away from several countries, including Japan and the Philippines, amid fears of the virus. Holland America says no one on board has the virus. Media reports say it carries 1,455 pas-sengers and 802 crew; its original destination was Yokohama, Japan, which refused it per-mission to dock.

“The ship is not in quarantine and we have no reason to believe there are any cases of corona-virus on board despite media reports,” the company said.

It had earlier said the West-erdam was sailing toward Bangkok, and it is not immedi-ately clear whether the ship would change course.

Holland America said it was aware of reports that Thailand planned to refuse permission for the Westerdam to dock there and was “actively working” on the matter.

“We know this is confusing for our guests and their families and we greatly appreciate their patience,” the company said in a statement. The 285 metre long

Westerdam can carry up to 1,964 passengers, according to the Holland America website, and is packed with cafes, restaurants and a Blues club.

The ship had already intro-duced extra health screening measures, including temperature checks and cleaning to defend against the virus, Holland America said in a statement.

Some passengers on board the ship said they had not been told that the ship would be unable to dock in Thailand.

“(We) thought is was all finalised. Everyone has rebooked flights yet again! Now we are back in limbo,” passenger Stephen Hansen told Reuters by email.

Taiwan urges Philippines to lift ban on its citizensREUTERS — TAIPEI/MANILA

Taiwan urged the Philippines yesterday to lift a travel ban on its citizens after Manila included them in curbs on arrivals from China in a bid to control a coro-navirus epidemic, despite Taiwan’s small number of cases.

Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry said it had been in close touch with the Philippines to seek a lifting of Monday’s sudden ban, which stranded some Tai-wanese at Philippine airports.

“We are proactively in com-munication and have lodged representations with the Philip-pines, including the presidential office and foreign ministry, to tell them that we are not a virus area of China’s,” spokeswoman Joanne Ou said in Taipei.

Taiwan has just 18 virus infections, versus more than 42,000 in China. It has com-plained the WHO classification has misled countries into believing it poses the same health risk as China.

Taiwan and the Philippines have close economic and cul-tural ties, but no formal diplo-matic relations, as the Philip-pines, like most countries, only recognises the government in Beijing, and not in Taipei.

More than 115,000 Phil-ippine citizens live and work in Taiwan, mainly in factories and employed as household help.

Tourists wearing protective face masks take a selfie outside the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum in Hanoi, Vietnam, yesterday.

It’s selfie timeNo coronavirus cases detected, says Indonesia

REUTERS — JAKARTA/BOGOR

Indonesia is not hiding anything over the coronavirus, the health minister said yesterday, after some medical researchers expressed concern that cases may have gone undetected in the world’s fourth most populous country.

While the virus has quickly spread from China throughout much of the rest of the region and beyond, the sprawling Southeast Asian country of more than 260 million people has not recorded any cases so far.

“We have the kits to check coronavirus and they’re cer-tified... Nothing is concealed,” Health Minister Terawan Agus Putranto said after a cabinet meeting at the Bogor presi-dential palace outside Jakarta, in response to the concerns.

Indonesia has tested 64 samples from suspected coro-navirus infections - 62 of which were declared negative with two still being tested.

The head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said the outbreak was very much an emergency for China but also posed a ‘very grave threat for the rest of the world’.

Pakistan ignores criticism over not evacuating students in ChinaBLOOMBERG — ISLAMABAD

Pakistan’s government has ignored criticism over the delay in evacuating its students from China and its lawmakers found unanimity in an otherwise divided parliament to praise its key economic partner and ally Beijing’s response to the novel coronavirus outbreak.

The nation’s Parliament on Monday unanimously adopted a resolution appreciating “the leadership of President Xi Jinping, who is a great friend of Pakistan, in strongly leading what will be a very successful operation to combat, contain and finally eliminate the coronavirus.”

The move comes a week after Zafar Mirza, a special assistant to Prime Minister Imran Khan on health, said that Paki-stani students in China won’t be evacuated in the “best interest of

the region.” While Pakistan’s conciliatory attitude is driven by Islamabad’s increased economic dependence on Beijing, which was the country’s biggest source of foreign loans and investment

last year, the stranded students and their relatives have been increasingly vocal in their crit-icism of the government’s delaying evacuation. The gov-ernment says at least five Paki-stani students, out of hundreds studying in the Hubei province, are infected with the virus.

”Our foolish government is showing solidarity with China by sacrificing sons/daughters of others,” said one reply on health official Mirza’s Twitter handle.

“Are you waiting for the infection to the healthy students. All healthy students will be infected due to your delaying tactics,” said another reply.

Pakistan secured 45 percent, or $4.7bn, of its loans up to June last year from China. Islamabad has been one of the largest ben-eficiaries of China’s Belt & Road Initiative with about $60bn of projects under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.

The nation’s Parliament on Monday unanimously adopted a resolution appreciating “the leadership of President Xi Jinping in strongly leading what will be a very successful operation to combat, contain and finally eliminate the coronavirus”.

About 90% of young Pakistanis opting to do freelance work: ReportINTERNEWS — KARACHI

Most Pakistanis under the age of 35, around 90 percent, are opting to go into freelance work more than the global average of 70 percent, according to a report released by the digital payment company Payoneer.

The report titled ‘Freelancer Income Report 2020’ is based on a survey of over 7,000 free-lancers from 150 countries, including emerging markets such as Pakistan.

Payoneer says more people (75 percent) are going freelance full-time due to income satisfaction.

Freelancing’s popularity is attributed to the potential for greater job opportunity, inde-pendence, higher income and a promising move in the direction of wage equality.

Men and women in Pakistan selected web and graphic design as the most popular freelancing field.

In terms of advertising on social media, Pakistani free-lancers are most reliant on Facebook and LinkedIn. However, according to Payoneer, in 2020 advertisements on Facebook declined from pre-vious years with LinkedIn increasing by 1pc from 2018.

The data showed that even with the growth of co-working spaces in the country, 81 percent of Pakistani freelancers prefer to work from home.

“Pakistan has remained in the top 5 freelancing markets in the world consistently. Now is the time our small and midsize busi-nesses (SMBs) grow beyond borders and drive Pakistan’s digital economy,” said Pay-oneer’s country manager Mohsin Muzzafer.

“More people now consider freelancing as a full-time career as opposed to a part-time gig, which is a big shift to positivity.

This also means an increased landscape of opportunity for our youth and the overall impact on digital Pakistan,” he added.

The report said that the gig economy powered by social media, global marketplaces and online payment platforms equipped the global workforce with all the tools needed to chart their own career path, leveraging a freelance work lifestyle to build a full-time career, a “side-hustle” or even just extend their career post-retirement.

“The freelancing economy has grown exponentially over the past decade, and I believe we can now firmly say that the future of work has arrived. Obstacles that could slow or hinder freelancers’ ability to grow, connect and be successful have been removed,” said Scott Galit, Payoneer CEO.

“Freelancers from all walks of life and every corner of the world are empowered to acquire work, set their own wages, market their skills, and get paid how and when they want.”

The report highlighted that the freelance workforce was overall very young, with nearly 70 percent of freelancers sur-veyed being under the age of 35, and 21 percent were under the age of 25. This youth movement was even more pronounced in Asia where 82 percent of respondents were under 35, compared to North America where the number was still high but closer to 47 percent.

While freelancers found value in freedom and flexibility of being their own boss, hap-piness was most tightly corre-lated with income earned.

The worldwide average hourly rate charged by free-lancers was $21, higher than the $19 average rate reported in Pay-oneer’s 2018 survey and signifi-cantly higher than the average salaries in many of the countries surveyed.

15WEDNESDAY 12 FEBRUARY 2020 EUROPE

Ukraine President seeks more independence, ousts top aideAP — KIEV

Ukraine’s President dismissed his chief-of-staff yesterday in a sign of intensifying rivalries in his entourage and a possible move to distance himself from a powerful billionaire.

President Volodymyr Zel-enskiy’s administration released his decree ousting Andriy Bohdan and putting foreign affairs adviser Andriy Yermak in the post instead.

Ukrainian media long have reported about a political tug-of-war between Bohdan and Yermak.

Volodymyr Fesenko, head of the Penta Center think-tank, said Bohdan’s aggressive style “won him a lot of enemies and hampered agreements.”

Observers saw Bohdan’s dismissal as a sign that Zel-enskiy, a former comic actor, wants to distance himself from billionaire tycoon Ihor

Kolomoisky, who previously employed Bohdan as his lawyer.

Some said Kolomoisky, whose assets include a TV station that aired the sitcom fea-turing Zelenskiy, has sought to use his connections to the pres-ident to try to shape Ukrainian government policies and protect his business interests.

“The president wants to dis-tance himself from Kolomoisky, who wasn’t hiding his ambitions to influence both domestic and foreign policies,” said Kiev-based political analyst Vadim Karasev.

Ukraine took the centre stage in the recent US impeachment proceedings against President Donald

Trump. Those were triggered by a July 25 phone call in which Trump asked Zelenskiy to investigate his Democratic rival, former vice-president Joe Biden and Biden’s son Hunter, who was on the board of a Ukrainian energy company. Trump won impeachment acquittal in the US Senate last week.

Zelenskiy, who was elected in April, has sought to distance himself from the US impeachment drama in an effort to retain bipartisan US support. Such backing is crucial for Ukraine, which is has been stuck in a tug-of-war with Russia for years after Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and backed

a separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine that has left 14,000 people dead since then.

Karasev said Kolomoisky was trying to make Zelenskiy take a pro-Trump position.

“Kolomoisky openly took the Trump side, trying to force Kyiv and Zelenskiy to play on just one side,” he said. “He did it in a rude and insolent way, and he paid for that now.”

Karasev noted that Yermak, the new presidential chief of staff, had met with Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani but made sure that Ukraine did not take a side in the impeachment.

“Yermak insisted that Kyiv should take a neutral stance in the impeachment of Trump, and Zelenskiy appproved that course,” Karasev said.

The analyst said the Ukrainian government was sending a signal to Washington and to Trump about its read-iness to resume contacts.

Observers saw Andriy Bohdan’s dismissal as a sign that Zelenskiy wants to distance himself from billionaire tycoon Ihor Kolomoisky, who previously employed Bohdan as his lawyer.

Kosovo’s new PM visits Albania in first official trip abroadAP — TIRANA

The new prime minister of Kosovo traveled to Albania for his first official trip yesterday but while there resisted the idea of participating in a regional cooperation initiative that would improve both countries’ chances of becoming European Union members in the future. .

The leaders of Albania, Serbia, North Macedonia and Montenegro have met regularly in recent months to discuss how cooperation in the Western Balkans could advance separate national efforts to join the EU.

The regional initiative has been dubbed “mini-Schengen,” after Europe’s Schengen Area that allows passport-free travel between more than two dozen countries.

Kosovo declined to take part in the three summits, saying the meetings were “meaningless” as long as Serbia and Bosnia do not recognize Kosovo’s 2008

independence declaration. Kosovo is a former Serbian province.

Kosovar Prime Minister Albin Kurti, who took office one week ago, said he and Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama talked about speeding up implemen-tation of 77 bilateral agreements instead of focusing on the Balkans and the European Union.

Rama responded to Kurti’s resistance by saying their two countries should create “a joint space of free movement for people, goods, capital and services, which was unimagi-nable until yesterday due to the resistance from Serbia and other countries.”

“We should do our best to take this process ahead because no one could say we are creating Greater Albania by abolishing our border,” Rama added.

The six Western Balkan countries are at different

stages on the path to becoming part of the EU. While Mon-tenegro and Serbia have

already opened accession talks, France and some other EU members blocked Albania

and North Macedonia in October from starting the process.

Albania’s Prime Minister Edi Rama (left) and Kosovo’s Prime Minister Albin Kurti inspect a guard of honour during a welcoming ceremony, in Tirana, yesterday

Storm in Europe leaves8 dead; travel disruptedAP — BERLIN

Ferocious winds, with gusts over 200 kph, lashed Corsica and whipped up a forest fire that flared overnight on the French Mediterranean island yesterday, after a storm with hurricane-force winds and heavy rains battered northern Europe for days, killing at least eight people and causing severe travel disruptions.

More than 300 fire officers were involved in fighting the blazes and two ports were closed and flights suspended on Corsica. Power was cut to 2000 homes.

The storm also continued to batter other parts of Europe. Fallen trees blocked roads and train tracks in southern Germany and Austria.

The Austrian city of Salzburg near the German border was hit by the storm Tuesday. Public broadcaster ORF reported that more than 400 firefighters worked for hours to remove downed trees from crushed cars and roads. They also had to remove a huge metal roof that was blown off a building. No one was injured,

ORF reported.German railroad operator

Deutsche Bahn, which had shut down all long-distance trains on Monday, said most of its service resumed Tuesday with the exception of some trains in southern regions that were still being battered by gusty winds. Schools across Germany reopened.

Deaths due to the fierce storm were reported in Poland, Sweden, Britain, Slovenia, Germany and the Czech Republic. Yesterday, Polish offi-cials reported a third storm-related death in the country, saying a relative of two people killed Monday when the roof of the ski rental building collapsed also died.

In northern Bavaria, where a gust of over 160 kph was recorded, the storm produced a record amount of electricity being fed into the German grid from wind turbines, equivalent to almost 44 nuclear power plants.

The German Weather Service said strong winds would keep blasting much of the country yesterday but the brunt of the storm had moved to the

southeast. In northeastern Germany, a new storm was expected to reach the Baltic coast. The German Weather Service also forecast heavy rains for most of the country as well as for France and Belgium.

In England and Scotland, the Met Office national weather agency still had 85 flood warnings in force as torrential rains caused numerous rivers to overflow their banks.

Further north, in Norway, water from the North Sea over-flowed harbors and entered houses along the country’s southern coast, causing damage but no victims. Local airline Wideroe canceled 21 departures because low pressure over northern Norway meant its small planes couldn’t fly, the Norwegian news agency NTB reported. The low pressure was affecting the altitude gauges on

the planes with no possibility to adjust for the low pressure.

In the Czech Republic, more than 40,000 households remained without electricity Tuesday morning, down from some 300,000 on Monday afternoon. Around 20 train routes were still blocked because of fallen trees on the track. Only one flight from Amsterdam was canceled yesterday, Prague’s international airport said.

Six charged as trial over murder of Kosovo Serb policitian opensAFP — PRISTINA

Six people charged with assisting in the murder of a moderate Kosovo Serb poli-tician two years ago pleaded not guilty yesterday at the start of their trial in Pristina.

Oliver Ivanovic, one of the few in Kosovo’s Serb minority to break ranks with Belgrade, was gunned down with six bullets to the back in 2018 just outside his party’s head-quarters in the flashpoint town of Mitrovica.

“The murder was politi-cally motivated,” prosecutor Blerim Isufaj said.

The six suspects, working as a “criminal group” were charged of “helping unknown suspects to commit the murder”, he said.

All six entered a not guilty plea after the prosecutor read the indictment.

Those charged include four Kosovo Serb policemen, detained last year, who attempted “to hide and elim-inate evidence” when they reached the crime scene, the prosecutor said.

One of Ivanovic’s close party associates, Silvana Arsovic, and another ethnic Serb were also indicted.

Three other suspects, including Milan Radoicic, a local Serb businessman and political leader, who was named in the indictment as the group’s mastermind, were not charged as they are on the run.

Radoicic fled to Belgrade last year and Pristina had issued an international arrest warrant for him in connection with the murder.

Vladimir Putin picks new Ukraine negotiator after ties thaw a littleREUTERS — MOSCOW

The Kremlin said that a senior Ukrainian-born Russian official was now in charge of managing Moscow’s relations with Ukraine, a move likely to be seen by some politicians in Kiev as further evidence of a slight thaw in ties.

President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Dmitry Kozak, deputy head of the Russian presidential administration, was now the most senior Kremlin official when it came to Ukraine.

Kozak, a lawyer by edu-cation, was born in what used to be Soviet Ukraine.

Vladislav Surkov, seen as a hardliner by many in Kiev, had previously overseen Russia’s

relations with Ukraine, a role that saw him negotiate and advise Putin on the subject. Peskov said Surkov still worked for the Kremlin, but did not elaborate.

Relations between Moscow and Kiev were derailed after Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimea region in 2014 and Moscow-backed separatists launched an uprising in Donbass, eastern Ukraine, that has killed more than 13,000 people.

Under Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, there has been some movement however with a peace summit held in Paris in December with the leaders of Russia, France and Germany. That was followed by a large-scale prisoner swap.

Smoke from a wildfire billows behind houses in Biguglia, on the French Mediterranean Island of Corsica, as the island is hit by strong winds from storm Ciara, yesterday.

Truck victims ‘died of lack of oxygen and overheating’AP — LONDON

Provisional postmortem exam-inations of 39 bodies found inside a shipping container in southeast England concluded the victims from Vietnam died of a combination of a lack of oxygen and overheating in a closed space, police said yesterday.

The bodies were found in October 23 in the English town of Grays, east of London. Police said the people who died ranged in age from 15 to 44. The 31 men and eight women are believed to have paid people traffickers for their clandestine

transit into England.“Our teams are continuing

to progress hundreds of lines of enquiry and are working with the National Crime Agency and other law enforcement agencies from across the globe to further their lengthy and complex investigation,’’ Essex county police said in a statement.

The revelations came as police made strides to identity suspects in the network believed to be responsible for the smuggling operation.

Gheorghe Nica, of Basildon in eastern England, was detained at Germany’s Frankfurt Airport on January

29. The 43-year-old appeared at Chelmsford Magistrates’ Court on Saturday. He faces 39 counts of manslaughter and one count of conspiracy to assist unlawful immigration.

A second man, who is 22, was arrested in Northern Ireland Sunday on suspicion of manslaughter and facilitating unlawful immigration.

He remains in police custody in southeast England but has not been charged or named yet.

Another suspect from Northern Ireland, Eamonn Har-rison, 23, is being held in Ireland on charges of manslaughter and

conspiracy to traffic people. He has a Dublin High Court hearing scheduled for today.

Prosecutors alleged that Harrison drove the container to the port of Zeebrugge in Belgium, where it was put on a ferry to England and picked up at the other end by Maurice Robinson Robinson, who also is from Northern Ireland and has been charged with manslaughter.

Harrison’s lawyers have argued that Britain should not be able to seek his extradition from Ireland because the alleged offenses took place in Belgium.

Dutch police make record fentanyl seizureAFP — THE HAGUE

Dutch police have made a record seizure of fentanyl, prosecutors said yesterday, as concern grows that the opioid epidemic hitting the United States could cross to Europe.

Police officers found more than 2.2 pounds of what they initially believed to be cocaine hidden in a plastic bag in a garden shed belonging to a 42-year-old man in the southern city of Eindhoven on February 3.

But the Netherlands forensic institute identified the substance as the powerful opioid painkiller fentanyl, the Dutch federal prosecution service said in a statement.

“As far as is known, such a large amount of the extremely dangerous substance has never before been seized in the Netherlands,” it said.

Police also found banned weapons and ammunition, expensive watches and thou-sands of euros in cash in the raid.

The arrested man will be in custody for at least two weeks.

Fifty times stronger than heroin and up to 100 times more potent than morphine, fentanyl can be lethal from as little as two mgs — the equivalent of a few grains of sand.

Until now, Europe has avoided a crisis on the scale of that of the United States, where fentanyl and other syn-thetic opioids killed 32,000 people in 2018, according to the US government.

But seizures are on the rise. Police in Europe intercepted more than 15 kilos in 2017, the last year for which figures were immediately available, according to the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA).

16 WEDNESDAY 12 FEBRUARY 2020EUROPE

Spanish govt renews efforts to legalise euthanasiaAP — LISBON

Spain’s new Socialist-led government has launched another attempt to legalise euthanasia and doctor-assisted suicide.

After early elections twice last year thwarted the govern-ment’s efforts to change the law, the Socialist party thinks this time it has the support needed.

A parliamentary debate took place yesterday in Madrid in which the lower house was being asked to accept the Socialists’ legislative proposal for consideration.

The move would open the way for Spain to become the fourth European Union country — after Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands — to allow euthanasia, which is when a doctor kills patients at their request. As well as those coun-tries, assisted suicide — where patients administer the lethal drug themselves, under medical supervision — is also permitted in Switzerland and some US states.

If the proposal passes in a vote later yesterday, it goes to a parliamentary health com-mittee, then to the Senate, before returning to the lower house for a final vote. There is no fixed timetable for those stages.

Socialist Prime Minister

Pedro Sánchez urged politicians to move forward quickly.

“We know that many people are waiting, that there is no time to lose,” Sánchez wrote on his Twitter account.

Both euthanasia and doctor-assisted suicide are cur-rently illegal in Spain, and carry prison sentences of up to eight years. Left-wing parties have tried on a dozen occasions since

1997 to pass bills to help facil-itate assisted dying.

The parliament in Spain’s neighbour Portugal, where Socialists are also in power, will discuss later this month a similar proposal to allow eutha-nasia and assisted suicide.

Recent Spanish opinion polls have indicated broad public support for the left-of-centre coalition government’s

plans. The issue has met resistance from conservative politicians and the Catholic church.

The Spanish Bishops’ Con-ference says on its website that euthanasia “is always a kind of murder” and proposes improvements to palliative care. That proposal is backed by the conservative Popular Party which, along with far-right party Vox, are the only opposition in parliament to the Socialist party’s proposal.

The proposed law in Spain would apply to people suffering an incurable condition, with the patient waiting no longer than a month for the procedure after requesting it.

The request triggers a consultative process, with the patient’s doctor required to obtain a second opinion from a colleague outside his team. After two weeks, the patient must repeat the initial request, which is then for-warded to a committee for assessment.

A doctor can administer the dose directly or patients can get a prescription and administer it themselves, either at home or at a public or private medical facility.

Doctors unwilling to be involved in the procedure can opt out as conscientious objectors, but a replacement doctor must be found.

UK to end early release of convicted terroristsAFP — LONDON

Britain unveiled emergency laws yesterday to stop convicted terrorists from being automat-ically released part-way through their prison sentences, following two attacks in London.

The government hopes the bill will swiftly pass through parliament and become law by the end of the month.

“No dangerous terrorist should be released automati-cally only to go on to kill and maim innocent people on our streets. Enough is enough,” said Justice Secretary Robert Buckland (pictured).

Prisoners are currently released on licence around half-

way through their sentences.Under the proposed new

law, terror convicts will only be considered for release after serving two-thirds of their sen-tence, and then only after con-

sideration by a parole board.The change will affect

around 50 prisoners currently behind bars.

Usman Khan, 28, stabbed two people to death in November in a knife attack near London Bridge while attending a prisoner

rehabilitation conference. He was wearing a fake

suicide vest and was quickly shot dead by police.

Sudesh Amman, 20, stabbed two people on February 3 in Streatham, south London, within weeks of being released early from prison.

He was also wearing a fake suicide vest and was killed by armed officers.

Amman was freed from prison after serving part of his sentence for 16 terror offences — namely the possession and distribution of terrorist documents.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson questioned why Amman had been released automatically with no

involvement from the parole board and raised concerns about the effectiveness of de-radicalisation programmes in and out of jail.

“We are stepping-up de-radicalisation measures in our prisons, introducing a 14-year minimum for the worst terrorist offenders, and giving more money to the police to deal with these horrific crimes,” said Buckland.

“In addition to the bill, the government will ensure that when a terrorist offender is released they will be subject to robust safeguards, which could include notification require-ments, restrictions on travel and communications, and imposed curfews.”

Boris Johnson plans post-Brexit Cabinet reshuffleAFP — LONDON

Prime Minister Boris Johnson will shake up his top team tomorrow in his first Cabinet reshuffle since taking Britain out of the European Union, his office said.

The Conservative leader had held off from a ministerial revamp in the wake of the December election, preferring instead to wait until Brexit was delivered on January 31.

“On Thursday, the Prime Minister is expected to carry out a reshuffle of his minis-terial team,” his spokesman said yesterday.

After years of political turmoil over Brexit, Johnson wants to focus on domestic issues, including his promise to “level up” the country by creating more opportunities around Britain, not just in London.

After his comfortable election win, Johnson was said to be preparing a major reor-ganisation of government departments and to slash the number of ministers at his top table to try to streamline decision-making.

But something more modest is expected this week, with key figures such as finance minister Sajid Javid and foreign minister Dominic Raab expected to stay.

Johnson is also expected to announce the new president of the COP 26 UN climate summit, which is being held in Glasgow in November, after the incumbent was sacked last month.

The BBC confronted John-son’s top adviser Dominic Cummings about the cabinet reshuffle. He said only: “PJ Masks will do a greater job than all of them put together.”

Under the proposed new law, terror convicts will only be considered for release after serving two-thirds of their sentence, and then only after consideration by a parole board.

Wheelchair basketballBritain’s Prince William, Duke of Cambridge (second right) tries playing wheelchair basketball during his visit to the Defence Medical Rehabilitation Centre (DMRC) in Loughborough, central England, yesterday. The DMRC currently provides services to a small group of veterans in the form of the Complex Prosthetic Assessment Clinic (CPAC), which is a joint MOD and NHS England commissioned outpatient clinic.

A man holding a sign reading in Spanish (Doctors Yes, Executioners No) during a demonstration against euthanasia called by “Derecho a Vivir” (Right to live) group in front of the Parliament in Madrid, yesterday.

Four held over murder of journalist in Northern IrelandANATOLIA — LONDON

Four men have been arrested in connection with the murder of journalist Lyra McKee last year, Northern Ireland police said yesterday. The men, age 20, 27, 29 and 52, were detained in Londonderry and taken to Belfast for questioning.

The New IRA — a splinter dissident group — had claimed responsibility for the “acci-dental” murder of McKee, who was shot dead on April 18, 2019 while police dealing with a riot were shot at.

“I welcome today’s devel-opments in the Lyra McKee murder investigation,” PSNI Chief Constable Simon Byrne said on social media.

“Detectives are working hard in the pursuit of justice. Anyone with information should come forward to police.”

At the time of the murder, tensions in Northern Ireland were high due to the uncer-tainties of Brexit and the lack of devolved government since its collapse in January 2017.

A car bomb which targeted a courthouse in Londonderry (Derry) in January 2019 was blamed by local police on the self-declared “New IRA” — Irish Republican Army.

A plot to blow up a ferry on Brexit day, this January 31, was thwarted by the local police after suspicion was raised with social media messages.

The border between

Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic was one of the thorniest issues in Brexit nego-tiations between the UK and EU.

A Brexit deal reached and ratified now aligns Northern Ireland with the EU, avoiding a hard border for the time being.

Northern Ireland voted to remain in the EU in the 2016 referendum, and it is feared that the Brexit process could trigger enmity in the region.

The Troubles — an era of conflict between the British government and pro-British paramilitaries on one side and Irish republicans and nation-alists on the other — ended in 1998 after the Belfast Agreement put an end to decades of armed struggle in

the divided UK region of Northern Ireland.

The UK and the Republic of Ireland signed the deal, bro-kered by the US and eight political parties in Northern Ireland, on April 10, 1998.

The deal — dubbed the Good Friday Agreement —largely saw the end of the Troubles-era vio-lence, in which some 3,500 people lost their lives. However, splinter IRA groups are still active in the UK region.

Londonderry, where McKee was killed, was one of the loca-tions that saw the fiercest clashes during the Troubles and the scene of the 1972 Bloody Sunday incident, during which British paratroopers killed 14 civil rights movement protesters.

Bruised Irish rivals allow Sinn Fein govt initiativeREUTERS — DUBLIN

Ireland’s Fianna Fail and Fine Gael let Sinn Fein proceed with trying to form a government without them yesterday, a process most acknowledged would ultimately require two of the now three largest parties to work together.

Sinn Fein, a left-wing Irish nationalist party, stunned the establishment by winning the highest number of votes in Sat-urday’s poll but its low number of candidates meant it finished between the two centre-right parties by number of seats.

Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald said her party “won the election” and would try to form a left-wing led gov-ernment with smaller parties and independent lawmakers, technically possible but a task even some of her senior col-leagues said was highly unlikely to succeed.

Prime Minister Leo Varad-kar’s Fine Gael and historical rival Fianna Fail, which have led every previous Irish gov-ernment but fell to their lowest ever combined level of support, were also sceptical but happy to let others talk while they regrouped.

“Mary Lou McDonald is the leader of the party who got the most votes in the election and should now do what she says she’s going to do,” Health Min-ister Simon Harris of Fine Gael told national broadcaster RTE.

“She made a lot of promises, a lot of commitments, let her off now and see if she can try and form a government. If she can’t, I do think there is an obligation on the centre of Irish politics, which still won a hell of a lot of votes by the way.”

Fine Gael has strongly ruled

out governing with Sinn Fein, citing policy differences and the nationalist party’s role as former political wing of the Irish Republican Army (IRA)

The IRA fought against British rule in Northern Ireland for decades in a conflict in which some 3,600 people were killed before a 1998 peace deal.

Harris said a pre-election offer of a first ever full coalition with Fianna Fail still stood.

Fianna Fail insisted it would not enter government with either party during the campaign, although its leader declined to repeat earlier outright refusals to consider Sinn Fein, saying only there were significant incompat-ibilities on policy.

There are open divisions over such a tie-up among Fianna Fail lawmakers, who won 38 seats to Sinn Fein’s 37 in the 160-seat parliament. Fine Gael have 35 seats.

Analysts say it will even-tually come down to whether Fianna Fail is willing to nego-tiate with Sinn Fein and if they can even then agree to a policy programme its members would back. The process could take weeks or months, they say.

“The momentum is with Mary Lou McDonald, there’s no doubt about that, but at some point Fianna Fail will have to make a crucial decision as to which way to go,” said Theresa Reidy, a politics lecturer at Uni-versity College Cork,

“If those kind of refusals continue, we are looking at a second election, although it is very unlikely any of the parties will want that. There are a lot of obstacles on the pathway to an arrangement (between Fianna Fail and Sinn Fein) too and that is why it is really very uncertain where we go from here.”

13 activists held in Paris over storming of BlackRock officesAFP — PARIS

Thirteen people are in custody in France over the storming of the Paris offices of US investment giant BlackRock by activists who spray painted the walls and carpets with environ-mental and anarchist slogans, police said yesterday.

Around 100 climate and anticapitalist activists occupied the central Paris offices of the world’s biggest private investment firm on Monday.

“This intrusion was in no way peaceful. 17 arrests of which 13 are still in custody,” the Paris police department tweeted, along with a video showing the destruction caused.

The footage showed the walls and carpets covered in graffiti and documents strewn on the ground.

“Our planet, your crime,” read a slogan daubed on one wall in big black letters while in a corridor, the anarchist circle-A symbol had been sprayed on the carpet.

In a statement, the Youth for Climate Paris group, which led the protest, accused the fund of investing in companies with environmental ly destructive activities.

But “ in attacking BlackRock, we’re attacking capitalism” as well, they said.

Some of the graffiti referred to France’s controversial pension reforms, in which some critics see the hidden hand of BlackRock.

“Give back the pension,” one slogan read.

The intrusion was the second since the start of the year at BlackRock’s Paris offices.

Last month, dozens of striking rail workers briefly occupied the entrance, chanting slogans and lighting flares in a protest over the gov-ernment’s plan to fuse 42 pension schemes into one.

Critics of the overhaul say it will force people to invest in private US-style pension plans — to the benefit of foreign asset managers like BlackRock, whose French head Jean-Francois Cirelli recently received the Legion of Honour, France’s highest distinction.

BlackRock has denied trying to influence the reforms.

It has also announced plans to clean up its investment port-folio by divesting from com-panies that get over 25 percent of their revenue from thermal coal production.

But the firm, which was also targeted by climate pro-testers in London last year, continues to be viewed with suspicion among many on the French left.

17WEDNESDAY 12 FEBRUARY 2020 AMERICAS

US, German spies plundered global secrets via Swiss encryption firm: ReportAFP — WASHINGTON

US and German intelligence services raked in the top secret communications of govern-ments around the world for decades through their hidden control of a top encryption company, Crypto AG, US, German and Swiss media reported yesterday.

The Swiss company was a top supplier of devices for encoding communications to some 120 countries from after World War II to the beginning of this century, including Iran, South American governments, and India and Pakistan.

Unknown to those govern-ments, Crypto was secretly owned by the US Central Intel-ligence Agency together with Germany’s BND Federal Intel-ligence Service.

Together they rigged Crypto’s equipment to be able to easily break the codes and read the government’s mes-sages, according to reports by the Washington Post, German television ZTE and Swiss state media SRF.

Citing a classified internal CIA history of what was origi-nally called operation “The-saurus” and later “Rubicon,” the reports said that in the 1980s the harvest from the Crypto machines supplied roughly 40 percent of all the foreign com-munications US codebreakers processed for intelligence.

Meanwhile, the company

took in millions of dollars in profits that went to the CIA and BND.

“It was the intelligence coup of the century,” the history says, according to the Washington Post. “Foreign governments were paying good money to the US and West Germany for the privilege of having their most secret communications read by at least two (and possibly as many as five or six) foreign countries.”

The BND had no immediate reaction to the story. CIA spokesperson Timothy Barrett declined to comment on it.

Crypto AG was founded by Russian-born entrepreneur Boris Hagelin who fled Scandi-navia to the United States in 1940 when the Nazis occupied Norway.

He had created a portable mechanical encryption machine that could be used in the field, Some 140,000 were produced for US troops during the war by the Smith Corona typewriter company in New York.

After the war Hagelin moved to Switzerland and began pro-ducing more advanced encryption machines American spies worried would allow

governments everywhere to shield their communications.

But the premier US cryp-tologist, the National Security Agency’s William Friedman, persuaded Hagelin to restrict sales of his most advanced machines to countries approved by Washington, while older machines were sold to others.

When integrated circuits r e p l a c e d m e c h a n i c a l encryption in the 1960s, the NSA helped Hagelin design new machines, which included coding that US cryptologists knew how to crack.

When Hagelin sought to retire, the United States headed off a French government effort to buy his company and arranged its own takeover.

In 1970, the US and Germany reached a deal to take it over for $5.75m —with the stipulation that the French be excluded. They then controlled virtually all Crypto AG’s operation.

The intelligence operation underlying Zug-based Crypto Ag had long been suspected and was alluded to, but never proven, in documents that sur-faced decades ago. The com-pany’s true ownership was masked by front companies in Liechtenstein registries.

Thousands of Valentine cards sent to 104-year-old war veteranREUTERS — STOCKTON

William White, a 104-year-old US Marine veteran who earned a Purple Heart in World War II, is celebrating Valentine’s Day this year like never before, surrounded by a mountain of 70,000 love letters and well-wishes sent from all over the world.

The cards and notes to “Major Bill,” a retired major who lives in an assisted living facility in Stockton, California, began pouring in after a fellow resident launched a social media campaign called “Oper-ation Valentine,” asking friends and strangers alike to send greetings to honor White.

At the outset, the goal was a modest 100 cards — about one for every one of White’s birthdays — but the response has outstripped all expectations.

“It’s just too fantastic,” said White, surrounded by waist-high stacks of postal boxes filled with cards.

On a recent day, White’s great-granddaughter Abigail Sawyer, 9, delivered a bundle of cards from her fourth grade class, many of them decorated with the American flag.

A week before Valentine’s Day, which lands on Friday this year, at least 70,000 pieces of correspondence had arrived from people in every US state and several foreign countries.

So much mail has been delivered that White’s family has had to enlist volunteers to help open the cards and read the warm wishes to White, who retired after 35 years of active service, including time in the Pacific theater of WWII, when he was wounded at Iwo Jima.

For those sending Valen-tines, White represents some-thing bigger than himself. Many of them have conveyed a deep appreciation not only to White for his service, but to all vet-erans who died too soon to hear their gratitude.

A woman identified only as

Jane told White that her late grandfather also fought in World War Two as a US Army paratrooper. Had he lived, she said, he would be turning 100 years old this year.

“I miss him so much,” she wrote. “By sending you this card, I feel as though I am sending my grandfather a card.”

It’s all new to White, who said he never really celebrated

Valentine’s Day, even when his wife of 42 years was alive.

“It’s something I’ve never heard of or seen,” White said. “All of a sudden here, like a ton of bricks. I’m sort of speechless.”

Thousands of Valentine’s Day cards sent to Major Bill White, a 104-year-old Marine veteran hang at the community dining room at his assisted living facility in Stockton, California.

In 2015 audio, Michael Bloomberg advocates targeting minoritiesAP — WASHINGTON

Michael Bloomberg is under fire for resurfaced comments in which he says the way to bring down murder rates is to “put a lot of cops” in minority neigh-borhoods because that’s where “all the crime is.”

The billionaire and former New York mayor made the comments at a 2015 appearance at the Aspen Institute, as part of an overall defense of his support for the controversial “stop and frisk” policing tactic

that has been found to dispro-portionately affect minorities. Bloomberg launched his Dem-ocratic presidential bid late last year with an apology for his support for the policy.

But the audio of his Aspen speech highlights his embrace of the policy just a few years ago, and suggests he was aware of the disproportionate impact of stop-and-frisk on minorities. Bloomberg says that “95 percent” of murders and murder victims are young male minorities and that “you can

just take the description, Xerox it and pass it out to all the cops.” To combat crime, he says, “put a lot of cops where the crime is, which means in minority neighborhoods.”

He acknowledges focusing police forces in minority neigh-borhoods means minorities are disproportionately arrested for marijuana possession, but dis-misses that as a necessary con-sequence of the crime in those neighborhoods. And to “get the guns out of the kids hands,” Bloomberg says, police must

“throw ‘em against the wall and frisk ’em.”

“And they say, ‘oh, I don’t want that, I don’t wanna get caught.’ So they don’t bring the gun,” he says.

According to a report in the Aspen Times that year, Bloomberg blocked the release of video of the Aspen Institute appearance, but the Aspen Times reporter uploaded what appears to be the full audio online, and it drew renewed attention Monday after pod-caster Benjamin Dixon circu-

lated it on twitter.Early yesterday, Bloomberg

faced sharp criticism. Symone Sanders, a top adviser to Joe Biden’s campaign, called the comments “sad and despi-cable,” and said he “will have to answer for these comments.”

President Donald Trump, who himself has supported stop-and-frisk policies, sent out a tweet with a clip of the audio declaring “Bloomberg’s a racist,” which he soon after deleted.

Foreign governments were paying good money to US and West Germany for the privilege of having their most secret communications read by at least two foreign countries: Report

US confirms 13th coronavirus caseANATOLIA — WASHINGTON

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed yesterday the 13th case of coronavirus in the US as President Donald Trump a day earlier sought a massive cut to the agency’s budget.

The newest case is a patient who was placed under federal quarantine after returning from Wuhan, China. The US is requiring all pas-sengers returning from Wuhan submit to mandatory federal quarantine for 14 days — the period thought to be the number the virus incubates in a human host.

The patient, whose identity was not publicly disclosed, had “recently returned” from Wuhan,” the national public health institute said in a statement.

“CDC is conducting a thorough contact investigation of the person who has tested positive to determine contacts and to assess if those contacts had high risk exposures,” it added.

The centre’s new diagnosis comes amid a global push to rein in the disease as it eclipsed 1,000 deaths in China alone.

The CDC has been leading the US’s medical response to the disease as part of a task force Trump established to combat the spread of corona-virus within the country.

But as part of his budget proposal, Trump sought a 9 percent cut to the agency’s overall budget amounting to $678m, but increased its funding for fighting infectious diseases.

Trump wins lawsuit over records of meetingsBLOOMBERG — WASHINGTON

President Donald Trump won dismissal of a lawsuit filed by watchdog groups that accused him and his staff of violating federal law by failing to keep proper records of his interactions with foreign leaders including Russian President Vladimir Putin.

US District Judge Amy Berman Jackson in Washington dismissed the suit, saying she lacks authority “to oversee the president’s day-to-day com-pliance with the statutory pro-visions in this case.”

The suit, filed in May 2019 by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and the National Security Archive, accused Trump of violating the Presidential Records Act on several occasions, including by

confiscating an interpreter’s notes of a meeting with Putin in July 2017.

The complaint also alleged possible violations when Trump met with Putin in Helsinki in July 2018, when the president’s interpreter left a meeting “with pages of notes” that were reportedly never shared with anyone. The plaintiffs claim Trump left policy makers in the dark by attending a crucial nuclear summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un in Hanoi, Vietnam, without appearing to take any notes for the historical record.

In her decision, Berman Jackson said earlier rulings by the federal appeals court in Washington, stemming from a similar allegation against former President George H W

Bush, blocked lawsuits over suspected violations of the records law. Courts can only be used to ascertain what types of documents a president intends to preserve, she wrote.

“There is no factual alle-gation in the complaint that anyone in the White House has actually ‘classified’ a record of a meeting with a foreign leader as a presidential record”.

CREW and the National Security Archive previously sued Trump for allegedly allowing White House per-sonnel to communicate through a messaging application “that automatically deleted messages as soon as they are read,” according to ruling. The federal appeals court in Washington ultimately ruled it didn’t have the power to get involved.

US President Donald J Trump delivering his remarks at a Keep America Great Rally in Manchester, New Hampshire, yesterday.

US Coast Guard officer accused of terror plot appeals sentenceAP — COLLEGE PARK

A Coast Guard lieutenant accused of stockpiling guns and targeting Supreme Court justices, prominent Democrats and TV journalists is appealing his prison sentence of more than 13 years.

Christopher Hasson’s defence attorneys filed a notice of appeal yesterday, less than two weeks after US District Judge George Hazel sentenced the 50-year-old man to 160 months, or a little more than 13

years in prison.The notice says Hasson is

asking the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals to review his con-viction, judgment, sentence and “all other adverse rulings and orders” in the case.

Hasson pleaded guilty in October to possessing unregis-tered and unserialised silencers, being a drug addict in pos-session of firearms and illegal possession of tramadol, an opioid painkiller.

Justice Department prose-cutors didn’t charge him with

any terrorism-related offenses, but the judge agreed to apply a “terrorism enhancement” that significantly increased the rec-ommended range of a prison term under the federal sen-tencing guidelines.

Prosecutors recommended a 25-year prison sentence for Hasson. They called him a domestic terrorist who appeared to be planning attacks inspired by the manifesto of Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian far-right terrorist who killed 77 people in a 2011

bomb-and-shooting rampage.In a 2017 letter he appar-

ently wrote to a neo-Nazi leader, Hasson identified himself as a white nationalist of more than 30 years and “advocated for ‘focused violence’ in order to establish a “ white homeland,” according to prosecutors.

Prosecutors also claimed Hasson drew up what appeared to be a computer spreadsheet hit list naming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and Democratic presidential

hopefuls, including Elizabeth Warren. He also mentioned several network TV journalists.

Defence attorneys urged Hazel to spare Hasson from prison and sentence him to jail time served since his February 2019 arrest. Hasson’s lawyers accused Justice Department prosecutors of fabricating a bogus narrative that the married father of two grown children was planning a ter-rorist attack.

In February 2018, Hasson searched online whether

Supreme Court justices are “protected,” two weeks before he searched for the home addresses of two Supreme Court justices, according to a prose-cutor. During Hasson’s Jan. 31 sentencing hearing, Hazel said he believe d the officer was pre-paring to carry out a “mass cas-ualty assault as a way to act out his white nationalist views.”

Hasson told the judge he has never harmed anybody in his life and wasn’t planning to hurt anyone “in any way, shape or form.”

18 WEDNESDAY 12 FEBRUARY 2020AMERICAS

El Salvador President accused of ‘attempted coup’AFP — SAN SALVADOR

The head of El Salvador’s parliament on Monday accused President Nayib Bukele of an “attempted coup” after soldiers entered the building while Bukele demanded lawmakers approve a military loan.

Bukele had “attempted a coup d’etat” against the legis-lative assembly on Sunday, said Mario Ponce, of the conservative National Coalition Party (PCN), after meeting with fellow political party representatives.

“We cannot respond to the executive branch with a gun to our head,” he said, calling on the government to engage in dialogue.

Bukele cal led an

extraordinary weekend session of parliament to ask it to approve a $109m loan to equip the military and police to fight violent gangs. The loan has pitted the executive against lawmakers in a country with one of the world’s highest murder rates.

Before Bukele’s entry on Sunday, armed police and sol-diers with rifles and wearing body armor entered the chamber and stood guard — a move not seen since the end of the country’s civil war in 1992.

“If these good-for-nothings (lawmakers) do not approve the Territorial Control Plan this week we will call them to hold a session again next Sunday,” Bukele said in a speech to sup-porters outs ide the parliament.

Bukele, who took office last June, has pledged to tackle gang violence and intends using the loan to better equip the military and police, but lawmakers refused to sit for an extra session over the weekend to debate the issue. In response to

the troops, the Speaker of Par-liament indefinitely suspended Monday’s plenary session, whose only agenda item was the loan requested by Bukele.

The president harshly crit-icized the postponement on Twitter, accusing the legislative members of “lying... as always.” “It is not with whims or author-itarianism that things will move forward,” responded opposition MP Jorge Shafick Handal, of the major political party Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN).

The presence of troops prompted international cries of concern. The European Union on Sunday expressed “great concern” over the “con-frontation” between Salva-

doran institutions.Amnesty International said

the deployment of armed police and military personnel in front of the legislature brought back memories of the “darkest moments” in El Salvador’s history. El Salvador is one of the world’s most dangerous nations — excluding those enduring an armed conflict — with an average of 35.6 homicides per 100,000 people last year.

There was no police or mil-itary presence visible around the legislative building on Monday. “It was frightening to see so many soldiers and policemen in Parliament,” Marcos Salguero, a restaurant owner in the center of the capital, said.”

Colombian soldiers stand guard during the presentation of a new urban battalion in Medellin, Antioquia’s department, yesterday.

Colombia puts military on alert after guerrilla threatAFP — BOGOTA

Colombia has put its armed forces on maximum alert following the announcement of a nationwide three-day “armed strike” by left-wing guerrillas, the government said on Monday.

ELN commander Uriel announced on social media the “72-hour armed strike in the national territory” from Friday.

The ELN is the last recog-nized guerrilla movement still fighting authorities in Colombia and can count on around 2,300 fighters.

“All the country’s units are on maximum alert to deal with any requirement to protect the population,” said Defense Min-ister Carlos Holmes Trujillo.

He said the armed forces would “respond with the ade-quate and legitimate firmness, and with all the rigor, in the face of these terrorists’ threats.” The ELN has announced armed strikes before but never on a nationwide level.

The group warned citizens against using roads during the strike, adding that “staying in their homes will avoid unfor-tunate consequences.” The ELN

is the last remaining armed guerrilla group operating in Colombia since the FARC laid down weapons in 2016 and formed a political party after signing a peace deal with the government of then-president Juan Manuel Santos.

Yet Colombia remains wracked by a multi-faceted armed conflict involving left-wing guerrillas, right-wing par-amilitaries, drug-traffickers and security forces.

Over the last 50 years, eight million people have either been killed, disappeared or displaced due to the ongoing conflict.

Bolivia’s Morales given 2 days to save Senate candidacy bidAFP — LA PAZ

Exiled former president Evo Morales has been given until today (Wednesday) to prove he is a permanent resident in Bolivia or risk being thrown off the list of Senate candidates for May’s general election, the country’s supreme electoral court (TSE) said on Monday.

The TSE said both Morales’s candidacy and that of his Movement for Socialism (MAS) party’s presidential candidate, Luis Arce, lack the necessary documentation.

The TSE’s website says both have until Wednesday to submit it.

Morales is currently living in exile in Argentina having fled Bolivia in November after resigning as president fol-lowing three weeks of protests at his controversial re-election.

On Monday he took a flight to Cuba for medical treatment.

The left-wing leader ini-tially fled to Mexico following his resignation under pressure from the military, which came after an Organization of American States audit found clear evidence of vote rigging in the October 20 poll won by Morales.

In December he moved from Mexico to Argentina, via another short stop in Cuba.

Last week, Morales

opponents said they would appeal against his registration as a Senate candidate on the grounds that he “doesn’t live in the country,” conservative senator Oscar Ortiz said.

He said the constitution obliges legislature candidates to be living for at least two years in the region they stand for.

Even before his exile, Morales lived in La Paz, the seat of government, but his party registered him as a candidate in the central Cochabamba department where MAS enjoys massive support.

Presidential candidates must prove permanent resi-dency in Bolivia for five years but Arce also fled to exile in Mexico in December, although he returned in January after he was announced as the top MAS candidate.

For political scientist Carlos Cordero, “Morales’s hope to stand for the Senate is practi-cally frustrated.”

One of the eight presi-dential candidates has been disqualified.

The TSE said Ismael Shabib from the Nationalist Demo-cratic Action party of former dictator Hugo Banzer, failed to meet 11 of the 12 candidate requirements.

The May 3 general election will see the president, 36 sen-ators and 120 deputies elected.

Supporters of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and militia shout slogans at the Miraflores Palace during a protest against the sanctions imposed by the US government, in Caracas, on Monday.

Venezuela makes civilian militia part of armed forcesREUTERS — CARACAS

Venezuela has designated its civilian militia as part of the country’s military, according to the nation’s official gazette, an administrative change that on paper at least will vastly expand the armed forces that have been crucial in keeping President Nicolas Maduro in power.

The militia now stands as a branch of the armed forces alongside the army, navy, air force and national guard. Maduro in January said the militia has 3.7 million members, compared with around 150,000 active members of the other branches.

But the change does not appear to have a significant practical effect because the militia has existed since 2008 and its members do not have the same professional training as active members of the prin-c i p a l a r m e d f o r c e s components.

Videos of militia training sessions routinely become the butt of social media jokes for appearing disorganized and being largely made up of senior citizens.

The militia will be expected to “organize, equip, train and indoctrinate the people in order to contribute to the security of

the nation,” according the gov-ernment’s Official Gazette dated February 1, but not yet officially released.

The military has been crucial in allowing Maduro to retain power despite a hyper-inflationary economic crisis that has led nearly 5 million people to migrate. The militia, created by late socialist leader Hugo Chavez as part of broad

reorganization of the armed forces, has played a signifi-cantly less important role. Its members are often seen working as security guards at government offices such as hos-pitals or metro stations, and fre-quently appear at government rallies.

Maduro says the militia is a crucial element of the country’s security in the face of potential

aggression by the United States, which has imposed a broad sanctions program against his government in efforts to force him from power.

“The militia is the popular and armed wing of the people and the armed forces,” Maduro said in a speech in January. In April, he ordered the militia to get involved in agriculture to boost the country’s food supply.

Honduran policechief accusedof moneylaundering

AP — TEGUCIGALPA, HONDURAS

Honduran authorit ies yesterday arrested the head of the national police, accusing him and his wife of money laundering.

Authorities arrested Leonel Luciano Sauceda and his wife, Patricia Sbeltlana Estrada, on money laundering charges.

They said in a statement that the couple was arrested at a home in Tegucigalpa, the capital, and that authorities seized two cars and financial documents.

Sauceda began his career with the national police in 1992 and was appointed head of police just two weeks ago.

According to officials, there was no accounting for 13 bank accounts and 13.8 million lempiras, or roughly $560,000, that Sauceda had in his name between 2006 and 2017.

They said his wife also had 10 bank accounts with roughly 2.7 million lempiras, or $110,000, for which the origin couldn’t be traced. Authorities said they don’t know where the couple got the cash they used for some of the items that were seized.

Corruption in Honduras is widespread. Several gov-ernment officials have faced accusations of being involved in drug trafficking in the US. Even President Juan Orlando Hernández has been investi-gated in the US in connection with alleged drug trafficking and money laundering; he denies any wrongdoing.

Charges weren't filed against the president, but his brother, Juan Antonio "Tony" Hernández, a former con-gressman, was found guilty in a US court last October of drug conspiracy, weapons charges and lying to the Drug Enforcement Administration.

US prosecutors said drug conspiracy was protected by the Honduran government.

Gastro outbreak forces Caribbean cruise ship to return to US

AP — SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO

A Caribbean Princess cruise was cut short following a gastrointestinal outbreak aboard the ship caused it to be denied entry to at least one island before it headed to its home port in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on Monday.

At least 299 passengers and 22 crew members aboard the ship operated by Cali-fornia-based Princess Cruise Lines Ltd. became sick, according to a statement from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“This is a highly unusual development and we share the disappointment of our guests,” the company said in a statement to The Associated Press, adding that those affected had mild cases of gas-trointestinal illness but that out of caution, it discontinued the cruise.

Meanwhile, the Health Ministry of Trinidad & Tobago said it denied the ship entry as a precautionary measure given the outbreak.

The ship was carrying more than 3,000 passengers and more than 1,100 crew members. It was on a two-week trip that began on Feb-ruary 2 and was scheduled to end February 16.

US appeals court temporarily halts deportation of child with head injuryAP — HOUSTON

A federal appeals court in Cali-fornia temporarily halted the deportation of a five-year-old child who injured his head before immigration agents arrested his family and whose advocates say needs to be seen by a neurologist.

The 9th US Circuit Court of

Appeals issued an order late Monday that prevents the immediate removal of the boy, his one-year-old brother, and their mother, who are being held detained at US Immi-gration and Customs Enforce-ment’s family detention center at Dilley, Texas.

The appeals court asked for more information from both

sides yesterday and today.The child fractured his skull

and suffered bleeding around his brain in a December fall, a month before his family was detained. The boy’s father is at a jail in California.

The family’s advocates say the child still has headaches and trouble hearing normal levels of sound, indicating he

could be suffering from the aftermath of a traumatic brain injury. They have asked that he be taken to a pediatric neurologist.

ICE has defended the care given to the child, saying medical staff at Dilley and at a San Antonio hospital deter-mined he did not need to see a neurologist.

A district judge on Monday sided with ICE, ruling that the family’s lawyers did not prove that deportation would further injure the child.

US government agencies “do not have an obligation to continue... medical care indef-initely,” US District Judge Stephen V. Wilson said.

Before the appeals court

intervened, the mother and two children were told to prepare to leave Dilley overnight in expectation that they would board a deportation flight to Guatemala, said Amy Mal-donado, an attorney for the family.

The US Justice Department declined to comment because the litigation was ongoing.

Doctors find 151 heroin decks on child in Puerto RicoAP — SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO

Doctors treating a 4-year-old shooting victim found that somebody had placed 151 packages of heroin under his clothing, police in Puerto Rico said yesterday.

The boy was hospitalized following a shooting on Monday at the apartment his mother and 2-year-old sister shared with 26-year-old John Hernández at a public housing project, Ponce city police Capt. Joel González said.

He said that gunmen had chased Hernández from a drug distribution point in the housing complex and he had fled into the apartment. The attackers caught him there and opened fire, killing him and injuring the boy, who suffered several bullet wounds.

González said police are investigating who placed the drugs, which were wrapped in foil, underneath the boy’s clothes.

González said a 2-year-old girl and two adults who were in the apartment at the time of the shooting were not injured. He said the children’s mother was not home at the time.

No one has been arrested.

The Parliament's speaker has indefinitely suspended the plenary session after armed troops entered the chamber on Sunday.

19WEDNESDAY 12 FEBRUARY 2020 HOME

CROSSWORD MALL ROYAL PLAZA

Ayyappanum Koshiyum is a 2020 Malayalam-language action thriller film written and directed by Sachy. It was produced by Ranjith and P. M. Sasidharan under the company Gold Coin Motion Picture Company.

AYYAPPANUM KOSHIYUM

Anveshanam (2D/Malayalam) 4:30pm; The Room (2D/Drama) 4:30pm; Birds Of Prey (2D/Action) 6:30pm; Malang (2D/Hindi) 9;00pm; Latte And The Magic Waterstone (2D/Animation) 2:15pm; Frozen II (2D/Comedy) 4:00 & 6:00pm; Vaanam Kottatum (2D/Tamil) 2:00pm; Jaanu (2D/Telugu) 11:30pm; Terra Willy: Unknown Planet (2D/Animation) 2:30pm; Anjaam Pathira (2D/Malayalam) 6:15 & 11:30pm; Varane Avashyamund (2D/Mal) 8:30pmAyyappanum Koshiyum (2D/Malayalam) 7;30, 8:30, 10;30 & 11:00pm

Birds Of Prey (2D/Action) 11:30am, 2:00, 4:30, 7:00, 9:30 & 12:00 midnightVarane Avashyamund (2D/Malayalam) 11:45am, 2:45 & 8:30pm; Jaanu (2D/Telugu) 11:00amAnveshanam (2D/Malayalam) 5:45 & 11:30pmMalang (2D/Hindi) 2:00 & 8:00pmVaanam Kottatum (2D/Tamil) 5:00pm

LANDMARK

AL KHOR

Anjaam Pathira (2D/Malayalam) 3:15pm Shylock (2D/Malayalam) 8;30pm Anveshanam (2D/Malayalam) 12:30, 3:00, 5:30, 8;00, 10;30pm & 1:30amVarane Avashyamund (2D/Malayalam) 12:30, 3:15, 6:00, 8:45, 11:30pm & 2:15amMalang (2D/Hindi) 1:00, 6:00 & 11:00pmJaanu (2D/Telugu) 12:30pmVaanam Kottatum (2D/Tamil) 6:00pm

ASIAN TOWN

ROXY

FLIK Mirqab Mall

Bad Boys For Life (2D/Action) 11:20am, 1:45, 2:55, 4:10, 6:35, 7:10, 8:35, 9:00 & 11:30pmBirds Of Prey (2D/Action) 10:30am, 11:10am, 11:40am, 12:40, 1:20, 1:50, 2:50, 3:35, 4:00, 5:00, 6:10, 7:10, 7:35, 8:20, 9:20, 9:45, 10:30, 11:30pm, 12:00 midnightDolittle (2D/Comedy) 11:10am, 2:30, 1:40, 3:05 & 5:30pmLatte And The Magic Waterstone (2D/Animation) 10:00am, 1:10 & 2:30pmMalang (2D/Hindi) 7:20, 9:35 & 0:20amSpies in Disguise (2D/Animation) 10:30amTerra Willy: Unknown Planet (2D/Animation) 10:50am, 11:50am, 3:40 & 5:20pmThe Room (2D/Drama) 11:00pmThief Of Baghdad (2D/Arabic) 4:20, 5:50, 7:55, 10:00pm & 0:05amThe Gentlemen 12:40, 5:05 & 6:20pmVarane Avashyamund (2D/Malayalam) 10:10pm

Anveshanam (2D/Malayalam) 11:00am, 1:50, 4:45 & 9:10pm; Bad Boys For Life (2D/Action) 11:00am, 1:00, 5:40, 6:00 & 10:30pm; Birds Of Prey (2D/Action) 11:00am, 1:10, 3:20, 3:30, 3:40, 5:50, 6:00, 8:10 & 8:20pm; Dolittle (2D/Comedy) 10:30, 11:00, 12:30, 1:10, 2:20, 3:20 & 5:30pm; Jaanu (2D/Telugu) 6:10, 10;30 & 11:45pm; Latte And The Magic Waterstone (2D/Ani-mation) 12:30, 4:20, 4:30, 6:20 & 6:30pmVarane Avashyamund (2D/Malayalam) 10:10pmMalang (2D/Hindi) 8:10, 8;20 & 11:00pmVaanam Kottatum (2D/Tamil) 1:00, 4:00, 7:00, 7:40, 8:20,8:30 10:00, 10:40, 11:20 & 11:30pm

Anveshanam (2D/Malayalam) 2:00pmBad Boys For Life (2D/Action) 5:00pm,Varane Avashyamund (2D/Malayalam) 7:00pmBirds Of Prey (2D/Action) 9:30pmFrozen II (2D/Comedy) 2:00 & 3:45pmVaanam Kottatum (2D/Tamil) 11:30pmLatte And The Magic Waterstone (2D/Animation) 2:00pmTerra Willy: Unknown Planet (2D/Animation) 3:30pmAyyappanum Koshiyum (2D/Malayalam) 8:00 & 11:15pmMalang (2D/Hindi) 5:30pm

Varane Avashyamund (2D/Malayalam) 5:00pm Anveshanam (2D/Malayalam) 6:45pmThe Room (2D/Drama) 5:00pmMalang (2D/Hindi) 9:00pm; Birds Of Prey (2D/Action) 7:00pm; Latte And The Magic Waterstone (2D/Ani-mation) 5:30pm; Terra Willy: Unknown Planet (2D/Animation) 2:15pm; Vaanam Kottatum (2D/Tamil) 11:30pm; Jaanu (2D/Telugu) 2:00pmAnjaam Pathira (2D/Malayalam) 2:30pmFrozen II (2D/Comedy) 3:45 & 5:00pmAyyappanum Koshiyum (2D/Malayalam) 7:30, 8:30, 10:45 & 11:30pm

CCQ's NSD activities promote healthy lifestyleTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

The Community College of Qatar (CCQ) celebrated National Sport Day with a series of fun and productive activities for the entire community to enjoy. This year, the College Community gathered at Park 65 in Onaiza, where they engaged in different sports activ-ities, medical tests, and other initi-atives that encourage the adoption of a healthy lifestyle.

CCQ’s celebration was char-acterised by its diversity, as its program covered three main cat-egories: sports events for adults and children, lab testing for health, and sports and nutrition consultations.

Safia Saleh Al Sheeb, Head of Public Relations & Communi-cation, CCQ, said: “At CCQ, we believe that a healthy mind resides in a healthy body, and that’s why we are constantly encouraging all our community members to engage in sports activities, eat healthy food, and look after their health in general. Our beloved nation needs more and more educated and healthy generations that work to boost its economy and develop its resources, and there is no doubt that the activities we offered our College Community today con-tribute towards this endeavour.”

The sports celebration

featured a ‘Telematch’ competition for children that included com-mando crawls and obstacle courses, and a five-a-side football tournament, where each team was led by a Qatar Stars League player. In addition, basketball, volleyball, table tennis, javelin throwing, and cycling games were held, along with the ‘CCQ Strongest Man’ contest where Wessam Mokhtar, Finance Department, CCQ, claimed the title.

To encourage fitness and an active lifestyle, CCQ also launched its ‘Be the Biggest

Winner’ competition, where over the span of three months, par-ticipants compete against each other to see who loses the most weight for a special prize. During the event, participants were also given the opportunity to play with professional players from Qatar’s football clubs.

As part of the sports medical tests, participants went through body composition analysis, foot-print analysis to detect birth defects, joint flexibility tests, lower body muscular endurance tests, and metabolic rate analysis

at rest and in motion. State-of-the-art equipment and expert supervision yielded accurate readings that informed partici-pants of their strengths and weak-nesses, to support them in deter-mining which activities to embark on in the future, as well as any additional examinations they should consider in the future.

Sports and nutrition consulta-tions, on the other hand, provided participants with key information on the foundations of optimal nutrition, in addition to tips for making healthy lifestyle changes.

The CCQ community with their prizes during the National Sport Day celebrations.

Qatar Post marks National Sport Day with several eventsTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Qatar Post organised a full day of festivities featuring sports related activities for staff and their families to mark the 9th Qatar National Sport Day at Qatar Sport Club. Activities featured a walkathon, jogging, table tennis, football, and volleyball to name a few. The day also brought to a close an inter-departmental football tournament that has been underway since October 2019. It was an occasion for the final four teams – Connected, Global Mail, EMS, and Direct Mail – to battle it out for the glory. At the end, Global Mail lifted the trophy.

Apart from sports, the 9th Qatar National Sports Day was an opportunity to promote welfare and healthy lifestyle of Qatar Post staff and their family members, who were welcomed by senior officials and led by Chairman and Managing Director Faleh Al Naemi.

Al Naemi said: “The prosperity of any country depends on the health of its people. Although all our events on Qatar National Sports Day were designed to provide light-hearted and fun-filled vibes, the under-lying purpose behind its theme is very serious and imperative for everyone, with the main objective being to promote sports and educate

the population on ways to cut down and reduce health risks that are linked with an inactive lifestyle.”

Qatar Post staff during the National Sport Day celebrations.

20 WEDNESDAY 12 FEBRUARY 2020MORNING BREAK

SC opens three public parks to mark Qatar National Sport DayTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

The Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy (SC) marked Qatar National Sport Day 2020 by opening three public parks.

The parks are located at Al Bayt Stadium, Al Janoub Stadium and the former Al Ersal Station training sites cluster, which is located in Onaiza, near West Bay.

Each park features tennis and basketball courts, chil-dren’s play areas, jogging and cycling tracks, open spaces and workout equipment.

Opening the parks illus-trates Qatar’s legacy com-mitment to harness the power of hosting the FIFA World Cup™ to inspire health and fitness throughout the population.

SC Secretary General Hassan Al Thawadi, said: “We are proud to open three public

parks on our country’s National Sport Day. These facilities will boost local com-munities by providing open spaces for a vast range of leisure activities. We are pleased to be showcasing the legacy of Qatar 2022 almost three years before the tour-nament kicks off.”

Al Bayt Park hosted special National Sport Day activities for the Qatar Football Family, including employees from the SC, Qatar Football Association and Qatar Stars League.

Meanwhile, members of the local community were invited to enjoy the facilities at Al Janoub Park and Al Ersal Park.

The SC’s Yasir Al Jamal, Chairman, Operations Office, and Vice Chairman of the Tech-nical Delivery Office, said: “These parks showcase our commitment to ensuring the tournament infrastructure we are developing will be utilised by the current population, a l o n g w i t h f u t u r e generations.

"The opening of these parks follows initial consultations we held with local communities in an effort to develop the facil-ities they need.”

Al Janoub Stadium became the second tournament-ready venue for Qatar 2022 when it opened in May 2019.

Al Bayt Stadium, which boasts a capacity of 60,000 and will host matches up to and including the semi-finals

stage in 2022, will open later this year. The former Al Ersal Station training sites cluster hosted Saudi Arabian team Al

Hilal SFC during the FIFA Club World Cup Qatar 2019 and will host matches during this year’s Workers’ Cup.

Players take part in a taekwondo competition during the National Sport Day activities at the new Al Bayt Stadium Park, yesterday. The 60,000-capacity FIFA 2022 stadium will open later this year.

Passengers hunt for treasures as HIA celebrates National Sport Day

Hamad International Airport celebrated the National Sport Day with its passengers as they went on thrilling treasure hunts finding clues at different key points of the terminal. Participating passengers went for an energy boosting walk and received some sporty treasures from the airport’s premium sports stores upon completion of the game. The airport also organised rejuvenating Yoga and breathing sessions in line with sports initiatives taking place around the country. The sessions took place near key tourist spots such as the Lamp Bear area, Small Lie and other activity nodes. Participating passengers got to relax before continuing their journey. The airport also hosted kids’ activities under the supervision of licensed trainers at the airport’s activity node, to promote self-confidence, discipline and fitness.

Crowds throng Aspire Park to celebrate Sport Day SANAULLAH ATAULLAH THE PENINSULA

Chief Executive Officer of Aspire Zone Foundation (AZF), Mohammed Al Suwaidi, led the sport activities at Aspire Park to mark the 9th Qatar National Sport Day yesterday.

Mohammed Al Suwaidi played volleyball and partici-pated in healthy walk and other sport activities with his staff.

Thousands of people (cit-izens and expatriates) with large number of children and women flooded the Aspire Park to mark the day.

“Dedicating a day for sport to engage entire nation in sport activities is a very wise decision which was taken by our great leaders,” Al Suwaidi said while speaking to The Peninsula.

He said Qatar has invested a lot for the development of infrastructure to host all kind of sport events.

“Qatar is doing very well to promote professional sports but it is also encouraging entire community to participate in sport activities and physical fitness exercises to keep them healthy and fit,” said Al Suwaidi.

He said that entire com-munity has become more health-conscious and more and more people are taking up sport activities and physical fitness exercises regularly, thanks to the National Sport Day.

Tahani Khalifa Al Suwaidi from AZF said that large number of women and young girls participated in the sport activities dedicated to women and girls in a secure and com-fortable atmosphere.

She said that ladies-only

activities include badminton and basketball in the Multi-purpose Hall (2) at Aspire Dome.

“AZF encourages people to take part in sport throughout the year. National Sport Day is very important for us as the State attaches great importance to promote a healthy life style among the residents of Qatar,” said Al Suwaidi.

She said AZF and its member organisations — Aspire Academy, Aspetar, and Aspire Logistics — organised over 20 unique events for all members of the community to enjoy.

Moreover, AZF also hosted more than 18 entities partici-pating in National Sport Day celebrations at Aspire Park.

AZF focuses on activities that both promote physical activity as part of a healthy life-style and emphasise the impor-

tance of exercise in daily life. This is in line with AZF’s

efforts to promote healthy life-styles among people of all ages across the country, helping Qatar realise the Qatar National Vision 2030.

AZF enables organisations and entities of all shapes and sizes to benefit from world-class venues and capabilities by hosting their own National Sport Day activities in Aspire Zone.

This in turn offers all sectors of the local community in Qatar the opportunity to celebrate the day in their own way, signifi-cantly increasing the number of participants in AZF’s National Sport Day celebrations year after year.

Tahani Khalifa Al Suwaidi, an AZF official

Chief Executive Officer of Aspire Zone Foundation, Mohammed Al Suwaidi, takes part in Qatar National Sports Day activities at Aspire Park, yesterday. PIC: ABDUL BASIT/THE PENINSULA

WCM-Q doctor runs for over 100km for National Sport Day

THE PENINSULA — DOHA

A doctor and cancer expert at Weill Cornell Medicine – Qatar celebrated National Sport Day by running nonstop for 24 hours.

Dr Arash Rafii Tabrizi, professor of genetic medicine in obstetrics and gynaecology, took on the gruelling challenge to raise awareness of the benefits of running and healthy lifestyle in general.

Supported by Sahtak Awalan – Your Health First, WCM-Q’s public health campaign, Dr Tabrizi set off from the Green Spine at Qatar Foundation at 4pm on Monday, finishing at the same spot at 4pm yesterday, having repeatedly run a lengthy route around Education City. He estimated he ran around 140km.

Dr Tabrizi, who is an experienced ultra-runner, said, “Running for this distance and this length of time is never easy, but the course is flat and I’ve had a lot of support from the community which has been great.

“My primary motivation, though, has been to highlight the amazing journey over the last 25 years of Qatar Foundation, a project that is unique in the Middle East. The ideology and goals of QF, launched under the vision of Her Highness Sheikha Moza, have been transformative and have made education a priority, putting it at the forefront of the nation’s development. In this context, National Sport Day is a logical evolution of this, providing a bridge between body and mind," he said.

Dr Arash Rafii Tabrizi ran nonstop for 24 hours from 4pm Monday to 4pm Tuesday, covering an estimated 140 kilometres.

The three new public parks are located at Al Bayt Stadium, Al Janoub Stadium, and the former Al Ersal Station training sites cluster in Onaiza, near West Bay.

FAJR SUNRISE 04.53 am 06.11 am

W A L R U WA I S : 13o↗ 16o W A L K H O R : 12o↗ 16o W D U K H A N : 11o↗ 15o W WA K R A H : 11o↗ 17o W M E S A I E E D 11o↗ 17o W A B U S A M R A 12o↗ 16o

PRAYER TIMINGS WEATHER TODAY

HIGH TIDE 06:40 – 18:15 LOW TIDE 01:06 – 14:21

Relatively cold daytime with some clouds and blowing dust to dusty at some places at times, cold by night.

Minimum Maximum13oC 17oC

ZUHRMAGHRIB

11.48 am05.28 pm

ASR ISHA

03.01 pm06.58 pm