Wednesday 1 July 2020

10 Dhul-Qa'da - 1441

2 Riyals

www.thepeninsula.qa

Volume 25 | Number 8305

BUSINESS | 01 PENMAG | 05 SPORT | 11

Stadium’s completion

an important step on

the road to recovery,

Qatar 2022: Xavi

Classifieds

and Services

section

included

QIIB launches

salary cards

to pay workers’

salaries

Qatar pledges $100m for Syrian peopleQNA — DOHA

Upon the directives of Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs H E Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani announced a new pledge of the State of Qatar to provide $100m to alleviate the human suffering of the Syrian people.

In a speech at Brussels IV Conference on Supporting the Future of Syria and the Region, held via video con-ferencing, H E the Foreign Minister underscored that the new pledge comes from the firm belief of the State of Qatar to fulfill its international and humanitarian obligation towards the brotherly Syrian people, pointing out that the actual State of Qatar’s assistance to the brotherly Syrian people has exceeded $2bn.

The State of Qatar — in com-pliance with its humanitarian and moral responsibilities — has spared no effort, since the

beginning of the Syrian crisis, to enhance the rapid humanitarian response and provide effective assistance to the brotherly Syrian people, he said.

H E the Foreign Minister affirmed the steadfast support of the State of Qatar to the international efforts aimed at reaching a political solution to the Syrian crisis based on first Geneva Declaration of 2012 and the relevant Security Council resolutions, especially Resolution No. 2254, and in a way that meets the legitimate aspirations of the Syrian people in security, stability, and the preservation of its ter-ritorial integrity.

At the beginning of his speech, H E Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani

thanked the European Union and the United Nations for the invitation to hold this con-ference and praised the par-ticipating countries for their coordinated efforts to support the brotherly Syrian people despite the economic diffi-culties faced by all countries due to the coronavirus pandemic.

He added that the world is facing a humanitarian crisis that humanity has not known before, during which the Syrian people were deprived of the most basic necessities of living such as water, food, infrastructure, and basic social services such as education and health, in addition to the number of dis-placed people, that reached 12 million people. �P2

Museums, heritage sites reopen todayTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Qatar Museums (QM), under the guidance of its Chairperson H E Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, will reopen a number of its museums and heritage sites to the public today, in accordance with recommendations from Qatar’s Health Protection & Communicable Disease Control office of the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH).

The reopening aligns with the Ministry’s second phase of the general resumption of public activity in Qatar, based on milestones reached

in controlling the COVID-19 pandemic. Qatar Museums plans to reopen the remainder of its museums in phases, while rolling out the new health and safety protocols, following global standards, and carefully moni-toring progress to ensure the well-being of staff and visitors.

Ahmad Al Namla, CEO of Qatar Museums, said: “With gratitude toward the Ministry of Public Health for its guidance throughout these difficult times, we are excited to gradually begin to welcome back the public to a number of our museums and heritage sites. To create a safe and

comfortable environment for staff and visitors, we have put in place a robust set of health and safety measures. While the team at Qatar Museums has done extraordinary work during the pandemic to engage the public through digital initiatives, we now begin to reopen our doors.”

“We are proud of our cul-tural institutions and delighted to welcome back our audiences, offering them not only inspi-ration and knowledge, but also providing a space for creativity and respite, which is needed now more than ever,” con-cluded Al Namla. �P2

Qatar Airways to launch three weekly flights to Toronto from SaturdayTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Qatar Airways announced yesterday it will operate three weekly flights to Toronto Pearson International Airport from July 4, Saturday. The flights will be operated by an Airbus A350-900 offering 36 seats in Business Class and 247 seats in Economy Class.

Qatar Airways Group Chief Executive, H E Akbar Al Baker, said: “In these difficult times, customers are looking for an airline they can rely on and trust. Our unrivalled experience in taking people home safely and reliably continues to provide the assurance people needed. We have built a strong level of confidence with

passengers, governments, trade partners, and airports as a trusted partner during this crisis and we intend to continue delivering on this mission.”

“We have worked closely with the Government of Canada and its embassies around the world during this crisis to bring home safely over 16,000 Cana-dians through our scheduled flights to Montreal and special charter flights to Toronto and Vancouver. Qatar Airways has never stopped operating to Canada throughout this crisis and we are pleased to be able to further strengthen our support to the people of Canada with the addition of these three weekly scheduled flights to Toronto,” said H E Akbar Al

Baker.By maintaining a network

that never fell below 30 desti-nations during this crisis, and the provision of over 300 charter flights globally, Qatar Airways has helped repatriate close to two million during this crisis.

The national carrier of the State of Qatar has received widespread praise and thanks from passengers and govern-ments, including Canadian embassies worldwide, as the airline that can be relied on to take people home.

With the addition of scheduled flights to Toronto, Qatar Airways will operate seven passenger flights per week to Canada. Qatar Airways currently

operates one of the largest global networks with over 550 weekly flights to 49 destinations

worldwide, with more destina-tions planned to resume flights in July. �P2

Sidra Medicine develops second COVID-19 rapid testing method

THE PENINSULA — DOHA

Sidra Medicine, a member of Qatar Foundation, has developed a simplified and rapid, second COVID-19 testing method.The new method uses a pre-treatment of the specimen (swab sample) to replace the ribonucleic acid (RNA) extraction process, currently needed for COVID-19 testing.

Current methods for testing follow a three-step process — starting with obtaining a swab sample from an individual; followed by extraction of viral RNA from the sample; and then detecting the viral RNA specific to COVID-19 by reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). �P2

Traffic violations decline 73% in MaySACHIN KUMAR THE PENINSULA

Traffic violations fell drastically during May, showing disciplined behaviour of motorists in Qatar. A total of 41,421 traffic violations were recorded in May, compared to 154,431 such violations in same month in 2019, showing year-on-year decline of 73 percent, according to the monthly statistical bulletin issued yesterday by the Planning and Statistics Authority.

On monthly basis the decline was

7.5 percent as 44,788 traffic violations were recorded in April, this year.

Qatar’s real estate sector remained buoyant as deals worth QR758m signed during May. In terms value of properties, Al Rayyan municipality came at the top as total deals worth QR291m were signed during May. Al Daayen municipality came second in terms of value of deals as it recorded deals worth QR260m in May. In terms of type of properties, the highest deals were signed involving vacant plot of lands. Vacant plots worth QR494m were sold

during last month. There were 332 traffic accidents in May, recording a monthly increase of 0.9 percent. Of these, 90 percent cases were with light injuries followed by 7 percent of severe injuries and 3 percent deaths.

According to the monthly bulletin, 1,878 vehicles were registered during the month, compared to 2,535 vehicles registered in April, this year, The total population of the country increased to approximately 2.8 million in May, compared to approximately 2.7 million in the same month last year, registering a rise of around 2.5 percent. �P3

The State of Qatar’s assistance

to the brotherly Syrian people

has exceeded $2bn.

In a speech at Brussels IV

Conference on Supporting the

Future of Syria and the Region,

held via video conferencing, the

Foreign Minister H E Sheikh

Mohammed bin Abdulrahman

Al Thani underscored that the

new pledge comes from the

firm belief of Qatar to fulfill its

international and humanitarian

obligation towards the brotherly

Syrian people

The Foreign Minister thanked

the European Union and the

United Nations for the

invitation to hold the

conference and praised the

participating countries for

their coordinated efforts to

support the Syrian people.

Upon the directives of Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs H E Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani announced the new pledge.

Qatar Airways has never stopped operating

to Canada throughout this crisis and we are

pleased to be able to further strengthen our

support to the people of Canada with the

addition of these three weekly scheduled

flights to Toronto.

H E Akbar Al Baker, Qatar Airways Group Chief Executive

A total of 41,421 traffic

violations were recorded

in May, compared to

154,431 such violations

in same month in 2019,

showing year-on-year

decline of 73 percent.

41,421 QR1.20

QR1.10

QR1.10

Price of super gradepetrol for a litre.

Price of premium grade petrol for a litre.

Price of diesel for a litre.

JULY FUEL PRICEQatar Petroleum (QP)

announced yesterday the prices of super and premium grade

petrol and diesel for July.

QNA — DOHA

Within the framework of the implementation of the second phase of the plan to gradually lift the restrictions imposed in the State of Qatar as a result of the coronavirus outbreak, the Permanent Committee for Industrial Area Affairs decided to cancel entry and exit points to and from the Industrial Area starting today (Wednesday)

while continuing to implement preventive measures.

The preventive measures include wearing of masks, reduced bus capacity to half and the download and acti-vation of the Ehteraz appli-cation in order to ensure the health and safety of the areas residents, visitors, and com-munity members.

In a statement issued yes-terday, the Government

Communications Office (GCO) emphasized that the easing of restrictions does not mean the virus has disappeared. All members of society should continue to take precautions and follow recommended guidelines to ensure the suc-cessful implementation of the gradual lifting of the restric-tions imposed in the State of Qatar, with the aim of returning to normal life.

GCO: Entry, exit points to and from Industrial Area cancelled

OFFICIAL NEWS

02 WEDNESDAY 1 JULY 2020HOME

Amir sends congratulations to President of CongoDOHA: Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin

Hamad Al Thani and Deputy Amir

H H Sheikh Abdullah bin Hamad

Al Thani sent yesterday cables

of congratulations to the Presi-

dent of the Democratic Republic

of the Congo,H E Felix Tshisekedi

on the occasion of his country’s

Independence Day. Prime Min-

ister and Minister of Interior H

E Sheikh Khalid bin Khalifa bin

Abdulaziz Al Thani also sent a

cable of congratulations to the

Prime Minister of the Democratic

Republic of the Congo, H E Syl-

vestre Ilunga Ilukamba, on the

occasion of his country’s Inde-

pendence Day. — QNA

Speaker of Shura Council participates in IPU meetQNA — DOHA

Speaker of the Shura Council, H E Ahmed bin Abdullah bin Zaid Al Mahmoud, participated in the five-party meeting that the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) held yesterday via video conferencing.

The participants in the meeting were H E Speaker of the Shura Council as the President of the 140th IPU General Assembly, held in Doha in April 2019; Mladen Grujic, representing H E Maja Gojkovic, President of the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia, President of the 141st IPU General Assembly, held in Belgrade in October 2019; H E Donatille Mukabalisa, Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies of Rwanda and President of the 142nd IPU General Assembly to be held in Kigali in October; H E President of IPU Gabriela Cuevas Barron; and H E Secretary-General of IPU Martin Chungong.

The meeting, which was addressed by Secretary-General of the United Nations H E Antonio Guterres, discussed ways to enhance cooperation between the parliaments of the countries of the world to achieve sustainable devel-opment and maintain international peace and security.

It also discussed the challenges

facing the world today due to the out-break of the coronavirus (COVID-19), and the role of parliaments in addressing this pandemic and limiting its health, economic, and social impacts.

The five-party meeting included the heads of the geopolitical groups of the IPU, including H E Abubakar Hassan Fulata, member of the House of Repre-sentatives of the Republic of Nigeria as representative of the African Group; President of the Senate of the Philip-pines H E Vicente Sotto III as represent-ative of the Asia Pacific Group; H E Kon-stantin Kosachev, member of Russian Federation Council on behalf of the Eurasia Group; H E Blas Llano, Pres-ident of the National Congress of the

Republic of Paraguay as representative of the Latin America and the Caribbean Group; and H E Duarte Pacheco, member of the Assembly of the Portu-guese Republic, on behalf of the Twelve Plus Group representing European countries, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

On the sidelines of the meeting, H E the Speaker of the Shura Council par-ticipated in IPU celebration of the

International Day of Parliamentarism and the celebration of the 131st anni-versary of IPU, as well as the conclusion of celebrations of the 130th anniversary of the founding of the IPU, where IPU launched anniversary book on Inter-national Day of Parliamentarism con-taining an article of H E Speaker of the Shura Council praising the distinguished relations between the Shura Council and the IPU.

Speaker of the Shura Council, H E Ahmed bin Abdullah bin Zaid Al Mahmoud, participating in an Inter-Parliamentary Union meeting held yesterday via video conferencing.

Foreign Minister receives call from ICRC President

DOHA: Deputy Prime Minister

and Minister of Foreign Affairs H E

Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrah-

man Al Thani received yesterday

a video call from President of the

International Committee of the

Red Cross (ICRC) H E Peter Mau-

rer. During the call, they reviewed

bilateral cooperation relations

between the State of Qatar and

the ICRC, in addition to topics

of common concern. — QNA

FM receives call from Mexico's Foreign SecretaryDOHA: Deputy Prime Minister

and Minister of Foreign Affairs

H E Sheikh Mohammed bin

Abdulrahman Al Thani received

yesterday a telephone call from

the Secretary of Foreign Affairs of

Mexico H E Marcelo Luis Ebrard

Casaubon. During the phone call,

they reviewed bilateral coopera-

tion relations and coordination of

efforts to curb the spread of the

coronavirus (COVID-19), besides

topics of common interest. They

also exchanged congratulations

on the occasion of the 45th anni-

versary of the establishment of

diplomatic relations between the

two countries. — QNA

The meeting, addressed by UN Secretary-General H E Antonio Guterres, discussed ways to enhance cooperation between the parliaments around the globe to achieve sustainable development and maintain international peace and security.

Museums and heritage sites reopen today

FROM PAGE 1

The museums and galleries opening today include the Museum of Islamic Art (MIA), Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art and the Garage Gallery at the Fire Station: Artist in Residence, while Her-itage sites will include Al Zubarah, Al Jassasiya and Barzan Towers.

The permanent collections of MIA and Mathaf are open to visitors, as is the special exhi-bition Picasso’s Studios, organized in partnership with the Musée National Picasso-Paris, at the Fire Station. The museums, galleries and her-itage sites are open from Sunday to Thursday, from 9am to 3pm.

Museum gift shops will reopen in MIA, Mathaf and National Museum of Qatar (NMoQ) (although NMoQ gal-leries will remain closed as the museum undergoes mainte-nance work) as well as cafes with limited service from Sat-urday to Thursday.

IDAM restaurant at MIA, will be operating at limited capacity for dinner service

while JIWAN at NMoQ will be open at limited capacity for lunch and afternoon tea. During this initial phase, public programs, group tours and special events remain sus-pended, and QM’s play-grounds, libraries, and parks (including MIA Park) remain closed.

In keeping with the guide-lines set by the MoPH, a limited number of visitors and staff are allowed inside each museum. Visitors are required to reserve tickets in advance on the QM website and the Culture Pass App. Upon arrival at the museum, ticketholders must present a “green” health status on the Ehteraz virus-tracing app. Each person will also be checked for a normal temper-ature reading at the entrance.

Visitors (12 years of age and above) are required to bring and wear a mask and are encouraged to use the hand sanitizer stations placed throughout the location. Signage reminding visitors to keep a safe distance from other visitors has also been installed.

Sidra Medicine develops second COVID-19 rapid testing method

FROM PAGE 1

The whole process can take between four to six hours from the time the swab is received in the lab to the time results are reported.

The new method developed at Sidra Medicine’s pathology laboratory, which is accredited by the College of American Pathologists (CAP), replaces the viral RNA extraction process by simple dilution with nuclease-free1 water and heat treatment. The diluted sample is treated at 65oC for 10 minutes before detection of viral RNA using a specific type of RT-PCR reagent.

Following guidelines from the Clinical Laboratory Improvements Act (CLIA), the alternative test method has been validated in the Pathology Department of Sidra Medicine. It produces a faster result than current methods and demon-strates 98 per cent accuracy, compared to the standard method that requires RNA extraction.

As the RNA extraction process constitutes a significant part of the cost and time

involved in COVID-19 testing, the alternative method, which is significantly cheaper, will be particularly useful for resource-limited countries for expanding their capacity for COVID-19 testing. The new method was developed by Dr. Mohammad Rubayet Hasan, a clinical molecular microbiologist in col-laboration with a team of tech-nologists and research asso-ciates from the Molecular Infec-tious Diseases (MID) Lab at Sidra Medicine. The program is being overseen by Dr. Patrick Tang, the Division Chief of Pathology Sciences.

Dr. Mohammad Rubayet Hasan, Clinical Molecular Micro-biologist at Sidra Medicine said: “Many organizations globally, including Sidra Medicine have invested in ground-breaking technologies and developed advanced protocols to test for COVID-19. Our use of auto-mated RNA extraction platforms and liquid handling robots, have proven their merit for large volume testing. However, we wanted to have an additional alternative should the reagents

for RNA extraction become limited.”

By skipping the RNA extraction step and replacing it with a simple pre-treatment process, the new method will reduce the cost of the test by approximately 75 per cent and will also improve the turn-around time of the test by approximately two hours.

Dr. Patrick Tang, Div. Chief of Pathology Sciences at Sidra Medicine said: “We developed this method as part of a miti-gation and preparation plan against the global shortage of critical reagents needed for COVID-19 testing. It is available as an alternative in case of equipment or supply chain failures. Also it relies on equipment that is readily available in most laboratories - a heating block and nuclease-free water.”

The new method is the second one to be developed in-house at Sidra Medicine, fol-lowing the success of the first method using a different RNA extraction process with alter-native test components.

MoPH: 982 new virus casesTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

The Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) yesterday recorded 982 confirmed new cases of coronavirus (COVID-19), with 1,394 people having recovered from the virus in the last 24 hours, bringing the total number of people recovered from the disease in Qatar to 81564 cases

The Ministry announced the introduction of 9 cases to intensive care due to health complications resulting from infection with the virus, bringing the total number of cases currently receiving medical care in intensive care to 200.

The Ministry pointed to the decrease in the number of daily cases that require intensive care, as the number of daily cases that require hospitalization is decreasing, but warned that infections may rise again if the community’s commitment to precautions and preventive measures decreases.

The new confirmed cases have been completely isolated in the various medical facilities in the country, where they are receiving the necessary health care according to the health status of each case. The Ministry said the coronavirus epi-demic is gradually declining in the State of Qatar due to the precautions and preventive measures implemented by the state and the commitment to them it by members of the com-munity with a recent decrease in the number of infections.

Qatar Airways to launch 3 weekly flights to Toronto

FROM PAGE 1

Passengers travelling to and from Canada will enjoy a seamless connection through the airline’s hub and home, Hamad International Airport, which was recently ranked by the SKYTRAX World Airport Awards 2020 as the ‘Best Airport in the Middle East’ for the sixth year in a row and ‘Third Best Airport in the World’, moving up one position from last year’s ranking.

Qatar Airways has further enhanced its onboard safety measures for passengers and cabin crew. Onboard, all Qatar Airways passengers are now pro-vided with a complimentary protective kit. Inside a ziplock pouch they will find a single-use surgical face mask, large disposable powder-free gloves and an alcohol-based hand sanitiser gel. The airline has also introduced disposable face shields for adults and children. Passengers travelling from HIA will receive their face shields at the check-in counters, whereas at other destinations, the face shields will be dis-tributed at the boarding gates.

Qatar pledges $100m for Syrian people

FROM PAGE 1

H E the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs pointed out that the success in facing of the catastrophic and grave humanitarian repercussions of the Syrian crisis will only come through finding a political solution that radi-cally ends this crisis, and this is the responsibility of the international community, especially the Security Council and the actors concerned.

H E the Foreign Minister asked, what kind of gener-ation do we expect to result from the Syrian war as the children of Syria have grown up watching the pic-tures of artillery, bombings, and massacres with inter-n a t i o n a l l y p r o h i b i t e d weapons that have often affected their cities, villages, and families

The time has come for the international community to work hard to stop the killing machine of the Syrian regime and put an end to its increasing violence, which is no difference between it and violent extremism and terrorism, which reinforce each other and converge in exis tence, goal , and outcome, HE the Minister explained.

At the end of his speech, H E Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs reiterated thanks and appreciation to all countries that have pledged and ful-filled their obligations towards the Syrian people and valued the efforts of the United Nations and the European Union to organize this conference, expressing the hope that the desired results will be achieved.

Qatar, UN to intensify work on establishing UNOCT office in Doha QNA — DOHA

Speaker of the Shura Council H E Ahmed bin Abdullah bin Zaid Al Mahmoud and Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations Office of Counter-Terrorism (UNOCT) H E Vladimir Voronkov agreed to intensify efforts to establish the program office on parlia-mentary engagement on preventing and countering terrorism and violent extremism.

This is in implementation of the Memorandum of Under-standing (MoU) that they signed at the UN Headquarters in New

York on February 17 and stipu-lated that the Shura Council and the UN should enter into direct arrangements to establish the program office on parlia-mentary engagement on pre-venting and countering ter-rorism and violent extremism in the State of Qatar, and its activities shall cover the parlia-ments of the world.

This came during the virtual meeting yesterday between H E Ahmed bin Abdullah bin Zaid Al Mahmoud and H E Vladimir Voronkov, during which they discussed the completion of the procedures for establishing this office as soon as possible, and

providing the requirements for it to play its desired role in empowering parliamentarians from all countries of the world, raising their capabilities, pro-viding them with a full expe-rience to confront the terrorism scourge in all its forms, pro-tecting humanity from its evils, undertaking joint initiatives to enhance the effective com-mitment of parliamentarians, and facilitating a balanced and integrated implementation of the UN Global Counter-Ter-rorism Strategy and relevant Security Council resolutions.

During the meeting, HE Speaker of the Shura Council

underlined that the State of Qatar’s efforts to combat ter-rorism comes within the framework of the wise and rational policy of H H the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani and his continuous support to the UN in general.

At the conclusion of the meeting, a statement was issued from the UN Headquarters in New York, in which H E Ahmed bin Abdullah bin Zaid Al Mahmoud and H E Vladimir Voronkov expressed solidarity with all the parliaments and nations who are collectively confronting the challenges posed the COVID-19

pandemic.Speaker of the Shura

Council expressed appreciation to Vladimir Voronkov for his strong commitment to coun-tering terrorism and for strengthening the UN efforts in this field.

The UN Under-Secretary-General expressed appreciation to Speaker of the Shura Council for his support to UNOCT, stressing that parliamentarians, as community leaders, policy-makers, and legislators, can sig-nificantly contribute to achieving a safer world without terrorism, hate speech and violent extremism.

03WEDNESDAY 1 JULY 2020 HOME

Minister of State for Foreign Affairs bids farewell to Indian Ambassador

Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, H E Sultan bin Saad Al Muraikhi, met yesterday with the Ambassador of the Republic of India to the State of Qatar, H E P Kumaran, on the occasion of the end of his tenure in the country. During the meeting, H E the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs thanked H E the Ambassador for his efforts in supporting and strengthening bilateral relations, wishing him success in his new assignments.

Qatar attends emergency meeting of Council of Arab Ministers for Social AffairsQNA — DOHA

The State of Qatar, represented by the Ministry of Adminis-trative Development, Labor and Social Affairs, participated in the emergency ministerial meeting of Council of Arab Ministers for Social Affairs on the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, which was held remotely.

Assistant Undersecretary for Social Affairs Ghanem Mubarak Al Kuwari reviewed, during the meeting, the measures taken by the State of Qatar in response to COVID-19 outbreak, including the steps taken by the State to reduce the negative effects of the pan-demic and protect women, children, the elderly and people with disabilities.

The meeting, which con-cluded on Monday, focused on

the successful experiences and the best ways to deal with the consequences of the social and humanitarian impacts of the COVID-19 virus on all segments of society.

Jordan, as the head of the current 39th session of Council of Arab Ministers for Social Affairs, had requested an emer-gency meeting of the Council of Arab Ministers for Social Affairs to discuss the social and humanitarian impacts of the coronavirus pandemic.

Assistant Undersecretary for Social Affairs, Ghanem Mubarak Al Kuwari, detailed the steps taken by Qatar to combat COVID-19.

39 projects chosen for DFI’s 2020 Spring GrantsTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

An impressive slate of 39 projects by first-and-second-time filmmakers from around the world and established names from the Arab world have been selected for the Doha Film Institute’s (DFI) Spring 2020 Grants cycle.

With 30 projects from the MENA region, including six helmed by Qatari filmmakers, the programme continues in its mission to nurture a new gen-eration of creative talents and support the development of original and compelling content. Highlighting the central role of women in cinema, 18 of the chosen projects are by talented female directors.

Out of the nine projects from beyond the MENA region, Diane Bouzgarrou and Thomas Jenkoe’s The Last Hillbilly, was one was confirmed at Cannes parallel section France’s Asso-ciation for the Diffusion of Inde-pendent Cinema (ACID) earlier this year for its special 2020 programme. Moreover, four

first-time grantee countries entered the programme this year – Colombia, Haiti, Bang-ladesh, Tanzania – and one Virtual Reality (VR) short project - Razan AlSalah’s The Greatest Wait (After the Last Sky), which masterfully explores a virtual return to Palestine and an aes-thetic of land reclamation within virtual space - was granted for the first time. Underlining the programme’s role as a key contributor to the region’s creative industries, three projects are by established MENA filmmakers: Adil El Fadili’s My Dad Is Not Dead; Shawkat Amin Korki’s The Exam; and Dalila Ennadre’s Jean Genet, Our Father of Flowers.

Fatma Hassan Alremaihi, Chief Executive Officer of DFI, said: “Over the last nine years, the Doha Film Institute’s Grants Programme has supported powerful stories and moving storytelling across a broad spectrum of issues and perspec-tives and has evolved into a key initiative for the next generation of filmmakers from the Arab

world and beyond. The pro-gramme echoes our core mission to amplify important voices of our time and help talent realise their creative aspi-rations, to develop and support world cinema while fostering cultural diversity.

“We proudly look towards past and future grant recipients as an extension of DFI’s ever-lasting commitment to the

development of independent cinema and are delighted to see the inclusion of new countries covered within this cycle. It is a testament to the programme’s growing acclaim among out-standing young filmmakers glo-bally who entrust their creative vision to our funding initia-tives,” she added.

First- and second-time directors from the MENA region

are eligible for DFI’s devel-opment, production and post-production funding for feature-length projects. Production funding is available to short films from the MENA region; development funding for screenwriters from the MENA region for TV series; and pro-duction funding to directors from the MENA region for web series.

A still from the film Oddity Tales from a Strange Land by Ahmad Samara, one of DFI’s 2020 Spring grantees.

Al Sailiya Central Market reopens today

THE PENINSULA — DOHA

Hassad, Qatar’s premier investor in the food sector, announced yesterday the reopening of Al Sailiya Central Market from today (Wednesday) in line with the government plan to gradually lift the restrictions imposed as a result of the COVID-19 epidemic.

In coordination with the Ministry of Public Health, Aswaq for Food Facilities Man-agement, a subsidiary of Hassad, took all the precau-tionary measures to prevent the spread of the virus in the Central Market. Starting with conducting complete sterili-sation of the whole market, to holding briefing sessions with all the traders and suppliers to organise the workflow and to ensure that the health and safety procedures are followed.

Moreover, awareness posters that includes a number of safety instructions, among them the necessity of having Ehteraz app, were placed in the market, in various lan-guages. In addition, thermal cameras were provided to ensure the safety of all workers and consumers.

Al Sailiya Central Market is an integrated marketing platform that includes a tradi-tional market with 52 shops, a retail market with 102 shops, and a wholesale market with 50 shops. Moreover, the central market includes an auction hall for local and imported fresh produce, which spans over 8,000 square meters. The market also includes cold stores that spans over 4600 sq., as well as 10 shops for fish, meat and poultry products, a hyper-market (4800 sq), and a ded-icated space for ration commodities.

Al Sailiya Central Market spans over approx. 100,000 sq and all its sections are air-conditioned.

High-tech traffic control improves road safety THE PENINSULA — DOHA

Colonel Mohammed Radi Al Hajri (pictured), Director of Traffic Awareness Department at the Ministry of Interior (MoI), has said that the Department has paid great attention to improving road safety, through the use of modern technologies for monitoring and controlling traffic.

“To improve the level of traffic safety, the Department relies on speed radars and sur-veillance cameras deployed on all roads, intersections and traffic lights,” he said.

This technological devel-opment, Al hajri said, has con-tributed significantly to estab-lishing respect for the law among drivers, and showed a significant decrease in traffic accidents and severe injuries

during the past years.Al Hajri’ speech came

during his participation yes-terday in a meeting held by the World Health Organization remotely, in the framework of the organisation’s work to doc-ument safety on roads.

Representing the Traffic Department, Al Hajri reviewed the efforts of the General Traffic Department to enhance traffic safety in the state, and indi-cators of implementation and completion of the most prom-inent plans and projects being worked in this regard by the General Traffic Department and reducing traffic accidents and injuries.

Colonel Al Hajri highlighted the Department’s efforts regarding developing driving schools in the country, and the standards followed in the

process of preparing and training drivers, as the Department had previously launched an electronic system for training drivers, to improve the outputs of driving schools.

He also reviewed great development witnessed in the technical inspection of the vehicles, and the technical and legal standards for safety of the

vehicles.Regarding investigation

process in traffic accidents, Al Hajri said that the General Traffic Department relies on a special approach that includes all legal and technical proce-dures, and this approach sup-ports a database that helps in developing the traffic investi-gation process.

Colonel Al Hajri concluded his participation by highlighting the traffic awareness efforts carried out by the Department and the importance that it attaches to media to convey messages to the society.

He also spoke about the work on annual plans of the traffic awareness Department, which aim at reaching all sec-tions of society in order to enhance procedures related to traffic safety .

MME participates

in global meeting

on radiological

and nuclear

emergenciesQNA — DOHA

The Ministry of Municipality and Environment (MME), represented by the Department of the Radiation and Chemicals Protection, participated in the 10th inter-national meeting for repre-sentatives of the regulatory authorities of early notification convention and requesting international assistance with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

The meeting, which was held via video conference, chose Qatar among about 20 countries to deliver a technical presentation on the lessons learned from radiological and nuclear emergencies. Qatar also participated in office exercises with the IAEA.

National Liaison Officer for Radiation and Nuclear Emer-gency Engineer Hamad Salah Ibrahim said that the Qatari technical presentation included lessons learned from the protocols of remote com-munication with the IAEA, and how to deal with radiological and nuclear emergencies in a rapid manner to protect human and the environment.

The IAEA, he said, praised Qatar’s presentation, which also included ways to commu-nicate through the agency with countries providing technical and field assistance.

Traffic violations

decline 73%

in MayFROM PAGE 1

With regard building permits, the total number of licenses issued in May reached 271 compared to 483 permits issued in April, registering a decline of 43 percent.

May witnessed a increase in the total number of mar-riage contracts as 267 mar-riages were registered during the month, showing a monthly increase of 10 percent. In business and trade, South Koreas emerged as the top destination of export from Qatar. Total export to South Korea from Qatar in May stood at QR2.1bn. China came second in terms of exports from Qatar with total exports amounting to QR1.87bn in May. Japan, India and United States of America were other major export destinations from Qatar.

In terms of import, United States of America emerged at the top destinations of imports to Qatar. Total imports from United States of America stood at QR2.1bn in May. United Kingdom, China, Germany and Turkey were another top des-tinations of imports to Qatar.

Ashghal starts roads, infrastructure project in Al Kharaitiyat, IzghawaTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

As part of its efforts to provide integrated infrastructure and an enhanced road network as well as improved service facil-ities across Qatar, the Public Works Authority (Ashghal) has a n n o u n c e d t h e commencement of the Roads and Infrastructure Project in Al Kharaitiyat and Izghawa (Package 2) which is located west of Al Shamal Road.

About the start of works on the project, Eng. Abdulla Ali Al-Naemi, Al Kharaitiyat and Izghawa Projects Manager at Ashghal’s Roads Projects Department, stated that the project provides services for 1386 residential plots in Al Kharaitiyat and Izghawa areas through the provision of developed infrastructure

services and enhanced local streets to improve the traffic flow and provide connectivity to future public facilities that will be established in the area.

Eng. Al-Naemi explained that the newly launched project involves developing a roads network with a total length of 45.4 km equipped with road safety features and street lighting as well as road signs and marking. The project will also feature 6900 car parking bays.

Furthermore, the project scope includes a 35-km surface and groundwater drainage network, 22 km of Treated Sewerage Effluent (TSE) network along with a 12-km potable water network. In addition, new sewage pipe-lines along with a new system to ensure the flow distribution

will be provided and con-nected with Qatar’s main sewage network, to provide proper protection for the entire area against flooding and excess rainfall.

Eng. Abdulla Al-Naemi also pointed out that it has been planned that the project will use local materials and ele-ments that will be supplied by local manufacturers.

These local materials include gabbro, lighting poles and luminaires, directional signs in addition to sewage, surface water and rain water drainage pipes, asphalt, con-crete, rebar and prefabricated manholes. The project is also targeting to achieve 85% of local materials used in the construction works, in line with the Public Works Author-ity’s support to local

manufacturers and Ta’heel initiative which was launched in 2017.

The Roads and Infra-structure in Al Kharaitiyat and

Izghawa Project (Package 2) is being implemented by UrbaCon and InfraRoad Joint Venture, at a cost of approxi-mately QR 499 million.

04 WEDNESDAY 1 JULY 2020HOME

INJAZ Qatar provides learning opportunities for youth, childrenTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

INJAZ Qatar continues to facil-itate learning opportunities for children and youth during this period of sudden and unprece-dented educational disruption.

INJAZ Qatar has successfully implemented several pro-grammes online under its three pillars: Entrepreneurship, Work Readiness, and Financial Lit-eracy, reaching 92,000 students since inception. It was able to prove its capabilities by with-standing and adapting to changes imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. The pro-grammes were delivered online as a new method to enhance students’ involvement and inter-action with several companies.

As a start, INJAZ Qatar par-ticipated in the launch of the first regional virtual Innovation Camp “INJAZ Beyond Borders” initiated by INJAZ Al Arab and sponsored by Citi Foundation. From different countries in the Mena region, around 200 stu-dents worked together with the

help of volunteers and INJAZ team members to find inno-vative solutions on education and healthcare challenges created by the COVID-19 crisis.

Many other programmes were delivered. The “Maharat Min Google” programme with a 3-4 hour workshops to more than 150 high school and uni-versity students; as well as the virtual “Head Start” programme in collaboration with Al Khor Girls Center. These programmes aimed to improve job chances for young people, showed opportunities online to empower them, and prepared them for the workplace.

INJAZ ran its first Virtual Innovation Camp sponsored by Citibank Online. Student teams were provided with the oppor-tunity to work collaboratively over three days to address a spe-cific business challenge related to COVID-19 pandemic.

In partnership with Boeing International, INJAZ Qatar and INJAZ Al Arab worked together to implement a virtual regional Innovation Camp. They

presented a Boeing STEM-based business challenge, fully pre-pared by Boeing and presented to students by the Boeing CSR team. The teams from member nations competed against each other and INJAZ Qatar team won the challenge and got the first award. INJAZ Qatar participated in the HACK-COVID-19, a virtual hackathon designed by QDB to give the brightest thinkers and innovators a platform through which entrepreneurial ideas can be developed to tackle the most pressing challenges caused by the COVID-19 outbreak.

Besides, INJAZ Qatar announced its “Dardashah with INJAZ” career series through its Instagram platform for streaming live sessions. Emad Al Khaja, CEO of INJAZ Qatar, said: “In an unprecedented crisis, INJAZ has succeeded in continuing its programmes and activities that focus on building human capabilities, and it is the cornerstone for building a modern society that keeps pace with the development witnessed by the world. With the

exceptional circumstances that were associated with the emerging corona crisis, and the continued provision and support of programmes in the areas of entrepreneurship, financial lit-eracy, and work readiness, which are important pillars that are not sufficiently focused on in our educational curricula. “

“We would not have been able to provide or contribute to such efforts without the support of our corporate partners as what the organisation has accomplishes is based on the strong partnerships and collab-orations that it has succeeded in building since its foundation in 2007. “

Consequently, INJAZ Qatar is looking forward for its July 2020 virtual summer camp powered by Qatar Financial Center. It starts on July 5 and runs till the July 16 targeting high school and university students. Students who are interested to participate can register through the following link : https://forms.gle/A8JAFyYxHSDeqqzk8 free of charge.

Saleh Al Hamad Al Mana Co delivers 130 Renault Dokker vans to National Car RentalTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Saleh Al Hamad Al Mana Co, Renault’s exclusive agent in Qatar, recently completed

another major fleet delivery, handing over 130 new Renault Dokker vans to National Car Rental. This is a significant mile-stone for both companies and a

testimony to the solid credibility that Renault Dokker vans have built up in the Qatar market.

“The last few months have been life-changing in many ways

for all of us,” said Nassim Mourani, General Manager, Automotive Group, Saleh Al Hamad Mana Co. “During this period of absolute self-isolation, the business of door-to-door deliveries has reached a crescendo. Couriers, pharma companies, grocery stores, food deliveries, mainte-nance services and many others, all depend on versatile vehicles like the Dokker van to keep their business running. We at Saleh Al Hamad Al Mana Co are happy to play a role in making things better,” he affirmed.

With the comfort of a pas-senger car and modularity catering for a wide range of pro-fessional needs, the Renault Dokker van is an LCV with unbeatable quality and price ratio. The competitively priced Renault Dokker van is not only spacious but also versatile, making it ideal for efficient, safe and quick transportation. Reflecting the values of the Renault brand, while offering an unrivalled competitive price.

The Dokker van offers a unique level of functionality in the LCV segment with an uncompro-mising level of comfort and peace-of-mind with its generous load carrying capacity of up to 3.9 cubic metres, a load length of 1.9 meters, and a payload of 750kg. Sliding door functionality and a twin-door

tailgate that open at 180 degrees make for easy loading.

The 1.6L petrol engine offers a torque of 128.5 Nm @ 2,800 rpm, more than enough to pull away with big loads. The fuel- efficient engine delivers 6.7L /100km on the extra-urban cycle and 7.8L /100km overall, saving money and time as well, with longer distance range and lesser fuel stops.

Additionally, the Dokker van is packed with a variety of solu-tions that simplify the day-to-day life of drivers, with ingenious spaces for optimal stowage. Driving is safe with standard audio controls on the steering to help operate the radio and blue-tooth functions, without having to take the eyes off the road.

While a tubular safety par-tition behind the driver’s seat is standard. A clever and practical full-length overhead storage rack above the driver and passenger holds a volume of 12 litres and

can be used to store light personal items or private files and docu-ments. “The new Renault Dokker van is the perfect transportation solution for traders, small or medium enterprises and even large companies seeking a reliable business partner,” declared Madhu Kumar, Country Manager, National Car Rental. “Affordability along with multi-tasking capability is the need of the hour for our clients. We are happy to have chosen Renault Dokker van which scores high on both counts,” he stated.

The distinctively designed Dokker has undergone a range of tests in order to check the robustness and reliability of the vehicle in all possible conditions. Visit Saleh Al Hamad Al Mana Co: Renault showroom, Salwa Road or call 4497 4900 to explore Renault Dokker van that will keep the wheels of your business turning smoothly.

QF conference explores how to build resilience in hard-to-reform schoolsTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

COVID-19’s impact on education has resulted in disruption and changes to academic institutes across the world. While many have adapted to a new normal by either going virtual or trying other innovative learning approaches, others have been unable to transform or cope with the challenges that the pandemic has presented.

The World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE), a global initiative of Qatar Foun-dation (QF), recently convened educational experts from dif-ferent backgrounds and indus-tries for the online event titled ‘Education Disrupted, Education Reimagined Part II’ to discuss the future of education and how schools can prepare for upcoming challenges.

One of the sessions at the event discussed ways of making educational institutions more resilient to crises such as a global pandemic.

Get rid of old schooling processes: School are trying to adapt to virtual learning by keeping their old ways of working intact that are not com-patible with current circum-stances, said Chelsea Waite, Research Fellow at Clayton Christensen and one of the pan-elists. For instance, teachers may try to meet certain number of instructional hours that they have planned for a month or a semester. However, according to Waite, it’s not the number of instructional hours that should

matter, but the learning and growth that students are achieving.

“You can’t do the old thing and the new thing at the same time. Policies need to allow schools to let go or retire old processes in order for the new ones to be able to compete,” said Waite.

Set goals, not plans: Another success factor to achieve resil-ience in education is to design the academic year according to the goals a school wants to achieve, instead of the plans for that year.

According to Waite, many school administrators require teachers and students to follow a certain plan, which often needs to be implemented in its entirety even if it is not working effi-ciently. Having goals instead of plans, she said, would allow edu-cators to “test the plans and assumptions and adjust it” if the initial setup was to prove ineffective.

“This moment seems ripe for change. But lasting change comes

from deep inside schools’ models, not just the circumstances they operate in,” added Waite.

Put students at the centre of teaching: A group of students sitting in a classroom listening to a teacher as a one-way form of knowledge transfer does not work in the modern world, said Daniel Dotse, CEO and Co-Founder of Lead for Ghana.

According to Dotse, edu-cators need to learn about their students outside the classroom so they can adjust their teaching based on individual needs.

“Most of the time, we see teachers as the one individual who is the guardian of knowledge and students are the ones who receive the knowledge,” said Dotse. “That level of education is not helpful, as it doesn’t create a partnership between the students and teachers.”

In what he called a “student-centred approached,” Dotse rec-ommended that education systems be completely over-hauled to make teachers

understand the socio-economic background, lifestyle, and family circumstances of their students, and have teachers know how to reach out to students outside the classroom. Such flexibility would allow learning to continue, such as through home visits, in com-munities where normal schooling is disrupted but access to tech-nology is not an option.

Change the anti-tech-nology mindsets: All the pan-elists stressed the importance of making both students and teachers comfortable with tech-nology, especially in commu-nities where use of technology is not prevalent or where it might be seen as a barrier to education.

According to Dotse, students in Ghana are not allowed to bring mobile devices to schools and that culture needs to change. “Tech devices should be the new textbooks,” stressed Doste, adding that technology-driven learning will also help making education accessible to a larger number of students.

Amira Yahyaoui, CEO and Founder of mos.com, who also spoke at the event, said the future of education will be online — even if that is hard for some to digest.

“If Generation Z and the kids of today have to choose between going to school and YouTube education, they would pick YouTube education,” said Yahyaoui, adding that correct use of technology will make educational institutions more resilient for the future.

A WISE online event discussing the future of education.

National Coordinator of FrenchIntelligence and Fight againstTerrorism meets Qatar’s envoyQNA — PARIS

National Coordinator of French Intelligence and the Fight against Terrorism H E Pierre de Bousquet de Florian met with Qatar’s Ambassador to the French Republic H E Sheikh Ali bin Jassim Al Thani.

During the meeting, they reviewed bilateral relations between the two countrie and the issues of common concern. The meeting touched on

the joint efforts in the field of counter-terrorism within the framework of the strategic dialogue between Doha and Paris, which discusses ways of strengthening cooperation and coordination between the State of Qatar and the French Republic on issues of bilateral cooperation in various fields, especially the security field, with a commitment to combat terrorism in accordance with international agreements.

H E Pierre de Bousquet de Florian (right), with Qatar’s Ambassador to the French Republic, H E Sheikh Ali bin Jassim Al Thani.

Total increases solar testing capabilities at QEERI

THE PENINSULA — DOHA

Total has started expanding its solar research zone at the Outdoor Test Facility of the Qatar Environment and Energy Research Institute (QEERI), part of Hamad Bin Khalifa University.

The construction works, which began in mid-June, is expected to last for two months. This 34kWp extension, con-structed by Total’s Gas, Renew-ables & Power branch, specifi-cally T-Lab, (Technology, Research and Development department based in Paris), will consist of three trackers, bifacial modules, different inverters and power optimisers, as well as

numerous sensors. These new features will

allow the monitoring of its per-formance in real time, and val-idate modelling results obtained from simulation tools.

Such outdoor testing aims to improve performance and relia-bility of Total’s PV components installed in desert climatic condi-tions. It will also support the devel-opment of the Al Kharsaah pho-tovoltaic power plant, a bid which was awarded to Total alongside Marubeni earlier this year.

This solar energy site will be the first step towards the coun-try’s long-term solar energy-sus-tainability objective, in line with Qatar National Vision 2030.

05WEDNESDAY 1 JULY 2020 HOME

QRCS completes a decade of humanitarian operations in West Bank and JerusalemTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Since its inception 10 years ago, the representation office of Qatar Red Crescent Society (QRCS) in the West Bank and Jerusalem has made remarkable achievements that are still bearing fruits.

Many hospitals have received medical equipment and supplies to continue to serve hundreds of patients from the Palestinian villages and towns every day, let alone the numerous livelihood projects to help the Palestinian families to earn their living.

Over the past decade, QRCS conducted seven relief projects for 32,473 beneficiaries at a total cost of $548,602; 18 devel-opment projects for 323,390 beneficiaries at a cost of $3,108,306; six health care projects for 383,706 benefici-aries worth $1,094,485; 12 food security projects for 104,978 beneficiaries worth $792,182; and two economic empow-erment projects for 620 bene-ficiaries at a cost of $355,972.

A plan has been recently announced by QRCS to launch new projects in the West Bank and Jerusalem during 2020. These include purchasing and upgrading medical equipment

for the Makassed Islamic Char-itable Society Hospital, for the benefit of 8,500 patients per year, with a budget of $250,000. Also, $117,000 worth of cancer drugs will be pur-chased for Augusta Victoria Hospital, which serves 4,000 cancer patients per year.

QRCS will purchase two ambulance vehicles for the ambulance and emergency center of Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS). In addition, the costs of equipment and oper-ation for six months will be paid — around $182,950. In normal times, the beneficiaries from these services are estimated at

4,800 persons per month.In order to build the

capacity of its Palestinian coun-terpart, QRCS will procure 13 vital signs monitors, medica-tions, and medical supplies at a cost of $400,000, as a con-tribution to the Coronavirus control efforts across the Pal-estinian territories.

As strategic partners, QRCS and PRCS work together on many projects to ensure optimum results, building on their close relations and unified vision of providing high-quality services that meet the needs of the Palestinian people and alle-viate their suffering.

Many hospitals have benefitted from QRCS projects in Palestine.

‘Made in Qatar Festival’ launched at Lulu HypermarketsTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

The latest edition of ‘Qatari Products Our First Choice’ under the tagline ‘Made in Qatar Festival’ was inaugurated virtually on Sunday by Sheikh Dr. Faleh bin Naser Al Thani, Undersecretary of the Agricul-tural Affairs and Fisheries at the Ministry of Municipality and Environment (MME) and in the presence of Sheikh Jassim bin Jabor bin Hassan Al Thani; Abdulbasit Talib Al Ajji, Director of National Product Support Department of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry; Ramez Al Khayyat, Board Member and Managing Director of Baladna and Group CEO of Power Inter-national Holding; Yasser Al Jaidah, CEO of Qatar Cool; Nasser Al Khalaf, Chairman of Agrico Farm; Dr. Mohamed Althaf, Director of Lulu Hyper-market Qatar; and many distin-

guished Qatari nationals and dignitaries from various public and private sector organisa-tions.

The festival, which started on June 25, has created an opportunity for customers to experience the richness of Qatari food and non-food products and agricultural produce. Lulu Hypermarket has been organising the festival of ‘Qatari Products Our First Choice’ every year since 2010 and the response they received in the past was encouraging. This year it has been organised in a big way as the festival will continue for a week at all Lulu stores.

The support being extended by the Ministry of Municipality and Environment to the private sector farm owners has been invaluable in this context, which encouraged them to make advancement in the agricultural

and other related sectors to ensure food security, self-suf-ficiency and economic effi-ciency by adopting best prac-tices in farming with optimal use of scarce resources and minimum impact on the environment.

Lulu Hypermarkets have always been an ardent pro-moter of Qatari food and non-food products and agricultural produce, and almost all prom-inent Qatari brands including Baladna, Dandy, Ghadeer, Rawa, Al Maha, Al Waha, Maz-zrati, Athba, Al Wayba, Lulu Private Label, Agrico Qatar, Paramount, Agricole, Al Balad, Al Wajba, Qbake, Napoli Bak-eries, Korean Bakeries, Al Arz Bakery, Gourmet, Rosary, Rayan, Lusail, Aqua Gulf, Qatar Pafki, Batatos, qfm, Lipton, Brooke Bond, Yara, Lux, Pearl, Omo and Clara etc. are on display. Lulu Hypermarkets

have long-standing association with the local farmers and remain the focal point in mar-keting local agricultural produce for many years.

The retail giant has, since June 2017, been concentrating more seriously in this regard as a socio-economic commitment to the nation.

Inaugurating the festival, Sheikh Dr. Faleh bin Naser Al Thani said: “I am very happy to inaugurate the Made in Qatar Fes-tival in Lulu Hypermarket as they are always promoting and sup-porting Qatar national products and Qatari farms’ vegetables especially the premium one. I am very happy to indicate that Lulu was the first to promote local farms’ products in cooperation with the Ministry of Municipality and Environment”.

Sheikh Jasim bin Jabor Al Thani, while addressing the inaugural ceremony, said: “My

sincere thanks to the Lulu Hypermarket Management for their continuous support in highlighting Qatari national products and their constant guidance to the customers to purchase Qatari product. In fact, all other hypermarkets should follow this practice to promote our national products as we, at the Ministry of Com-merce and Industry, have always been working to promote Qatari products. Once again thanks to Lulu for their support”.

While expressing gratitude to the dignitaries and farm owners for their excellent support, Dr. Mohamed Althaf said: “I take this opportunity to reiterate our commitment to promote Qatari products in all Lulu stores. We will start increasing our promotions, vis-ibilities, pace, and will make the listing easier.

"You would be happy to know that at least 150 Lulu Private Label products including meat, poultry, water and tissues etc. are being manufactured in Qatar.

"We are now extending our product lines, and we make enormous progress in our efforts for self-reliance. In future, we would like to use our Qatar hub to export our Qatar-made products to other sourcing offices across the world."

The support extended by Lulu Hypermarkets to the local companies and farms helped to energise and green up the local economy.

Farmers are benefitted with maximum return on their investment as buying Qatar national products and agricul-tural produce minimises expenses incurred towards handling and transportation.

Dr. Mohamed Althaf (top row, left), Director of Lulu Hypermarket Qatar, with officials and dignitaries during virtual inauguration ceremony for ‘Made in Qatar Festival’.

HBKU’s QBRI plays key role in quest for Parkinson’s treatmentTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

The long, painstaking battle to develop immunotherapy against Parkinson’s disease has received a positive boost with a team from Qatar Biomedical Research Institute (QBRI), part of Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU), providing the novel diagnostic tech-nology used in a series of promising clinical trials in Europe.

A trio of experts from QBRI — Exec-utive Director Dr. Omar El-Agnaf alongside Research Associates Dr. Nour Majbour and Dr. Nishant Narayanan Vaikath — contributed their extensive knowledge in the field of neurodegen-erative disease to assist work on eval-uating biomarkers for Parkinson’s disease.

Austrian clinical-stage biopharma-ceutical company, AFFiRiS AG, based in Vienna, Austria, subsequently uti-lised QBRI’s technology in their phase 1 clinical trials assessing the impact of Affitope (PD01A), an immunotherapy against the debilitating condition. The findings support the further devel-opment of this therapy through phase

2 clinical trials.Dr. El Agnaf, said: “We are hon-

oured to be playing our part in the

search to find an immunotherapy to treat and eventually end the debili-tating problems of Parkinson’s disease. Millions of people around the world have to deal with this condition every day of their lives and finding an immu-notherapy is so important.

“These results are very encouraging indeed, and we look forward to

continuing our work with AFFiRiS in this crusade. Our dedicated researchers are once again demonstrating how QBRI is committed to paving the way for new breakthroughs in medicine, addressing the key healthcare chal-lenges facing Qatar and the world.”

The data highlighting the tre-mendous potential of QBRI’s

technology has since been published in the July issue of the esteemed journal The Lancet Neurology.

Dr. Lawrence W. Stanton, acting director of QBRI’s Neurological Dis-orders Research Center, said: “QBRI is committed to the discovery of novel biomarkers that can be used to develop specific and sensitive diagnostic, which can play critical roles in the devel-opment of therapies for treating neu-rological disorders, such as Parkinson’s disease. We are grateful for the oppor-tunity to apply our technology in this promising clinical trials being con-ducted by Affiris.”

Günther Staffler, Chief Technology Officer, AFFiRiS AG, said: “Through this long-term collaboration, QBRI has been hugely supportive of our devel-opment of a disease-modifying immu-notherapeutic for Parkinson’s disease. This is particularly important with respect to the development of biomarkers of a disease, which may substantially shorten the time-lines for development and licensure of these much-needed therapies for Parkin-son’s disease”.

The festival, which started on June 25, has created an opportunity for cus-tomers to experience the richness of Qatari food and non-food products and agricultural produce. Lulu Hypermarket have been organising the festival of ‘Qatari Products Our First Choice’ every year since 2010 onwards and the response has benn encouraging.

Some of the locally-produced vegetables and dairy products displayed at a Lulu outlet.

NU-Q professors developing app on contact tracingTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

A research grant to teach how infectious diseases spread and how they can be contained through a mobile gaming platform has been awarded to two Northwestern University in Qatar (NU-Q) professors.

Professors Anto Mohsin and Spencer Striker, are developing the app through a grant awarded by Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU).

The app — Dr. Sara: Disease Detective — will have players exploring an unraveling pan-demic through a character-driven simulation, where a character could be a disease detective. As you play the game you learn more about the science of epidemiology, contact tracing, and the complex world of contagion. According to Mohsin and Spencer, the game will also offer a suspenseful adventure that includes a narrative, puzzles, and an interesting way to understand the challenges of disease control.

Mohsin, whose research focuses on science and tech-nology studies, said that they hope the game will accomplish several things including, “stim-ulating an interest in science, technology, medicine, public health, and other related fields.”

As teachers and gamers,

both professors encourage the interdisciplinary r e l a t i o n s h i p between learning and playing. Spencer, an expert in digital media design, said the project will connect gaming tech-nology to a l e a r n i n g experience.

“Great curricular design and great game design have a lot in common,” he said, “Game-based learning incorporates interactivity, immersion, mean-ingful choices, and emergent, unpredictable outcomes via e x p l o r a t i o n — w h i c h encourages the most important goal of all education: curiosity and drive for lifelong learning.”

With research and devel-opment already underway, Professors Mohsin and Spencer are working alongside immu-nologist, Ali Sultan, of Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar and HBKU, with additional support from the Hamad Medical Corporation.

The game’s demo is expected to be ready for trial in December 2020.

Mohsin is an expert in public understanding and engagement in science and

promoting science literacy. He is the recipient of two QNRF grants and has been exploring scientific culture in Qatar since 2016. Mohsin received his Ph.D. in science and technology studies from Cornell University.

Striker is an expert in digital media production and design, and creator of an award-winning next gen, digital book “History Adventures, World of Characters,” which is available for download in more than 50 countries.

He is the founding creative director of Galxyz, a Silicon Valley games and learning startup, and the recipient of four Webby Awards. Striker holds a Ph.D. in digital media from the University of Wis-consin at Madison, and a Mas-ter’s in new media production and design from Indiana Uni-versity at Bloomington.

A sample design of the upcoming mobile game.

Austrian clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company, AFFiRiS AG, based in Vienna, has utilised QBRI’s technology in their phase 1 clinical trials assessing the impact of Affitope (PD01A), an immunotherapy against the debilitating condition. The findings support the further development of this therapy through phase 2 clinical trials.

06 WEDNESDAY 1 JULY 2020GULF / MIDDLE EAST

Kuwaitis wearing face masks walk inside the reopened Avenues Mall, the country’s largest shopping centre, yesterday, after almost a four-month shutdown to prevent the spread of the coronavirus in the country.

Kuwait to resume commercial flightson August 1 at 30% capacityREUTERS & QNA — KUWAIT

Kuwait will partially resume commercial flights from August, but does not expect to reach full capacity until a year later, the civil aviation authority said, as its aviation sector gradually recovers from a suspension sparked by the COVID-19 crisis.

The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) detailed the three-phase plan late on Monday after the government said commercial flights at Kuwait International Airport, suspended since March, would restart on August 1 at 30 percent capacity.

The DGCA said that would involve a maximum of 100 flights and 10,000 passengers a day. The second stage, starting next February, will see capacity increase to 60 percent to handle a maximum of 20,000 pas-sengers and 200 flights daily.

Full capacity will com-mence on August 1 next year, when Kuwait International, the Gulf Arab state’s only civil airport, could handle 30,000 passengers and 300 flights a day. Kuwait, which has recorded more than 45,520 COVID-19 cases with 350 deaths, initiated a five-phase

plan at the start of June to grad-ually lift restrictions imposed to curb the spread of the virus. A partial curfew remains in place.

Meanwhile, the Kuwaiti Ministry of Health announced yesterday that 671 people were diagnosed with the novel coro-navirus (COVID-19) in the past 24 hours, raising the country’s caseload to 46,195. Four deaths were also recorded during the same period, putting overall count of fatalities due to infection with the pathogen at 354 since its outbreak in the country months ago.

Israeli minister says West Bank annexation move not imminentREUTERS & ANATOLIA OCCUPIED JERUSALEM

An Israeli minister played down yesterday the likelihood of major moves to annex Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank today, the planned starting point for cabinet debate on the issue.

Zeev Elkin, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, said Israel still did not have the green light it seeks from Wash-ington to begin extending its sovereignty to parts of the West Bank, territory Palestinians seek for a state.

Palestinian leaders, the United Nations, European powers and Arab countries

have all denounced any annex-ation of land that Israeli forces captured in a 1967 war.

“Whoever painted a picture of everything happening in one day on July 1, did so at their own risk,” Elkin, minister of higher education, told Army Radio when asked what would happen on Wednesday. “From tomorrow, the clock will start ticking.”

No cabinet session for today has been announced.

US officials are in Israel as

part of the White House’s efforts to win consensus within its gov-ernment for annexation as envi-sioned in an Israeli-Palestinian peace plan announced by Pres-ident Donald Trump in January.

The proposal calls for Israeli sovereignty over about 30% of the West Bank - land on which Israel has built settle-ments for decades - as well as the creation of a Palestinian state under strict conditions.

Netanyahu and his main coalition government partner, Defence Minister Benny Gantz, are at odds over annexation, which the right-wing prime minister has promoted.

In an interview with the YNet news site yesterday, Gantz repeated his call for Israel to try to enlist Palestinian and inter-national support for the Trump plan before proceeding with a unilateral annexation move.

Meanwhile four US pro-gressive congresswomen voiced “deep” concern over Israel’s planned annexation of parts of the occupied West Bank, according to a report.

Jewish Insider reported that a letter on the matter is addressed to State Secretary Mike Pompeo and is signed and being circulated by Represent-atives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Pramila Jayapal and Betty McCollum.

Iran says still in first wave of outbreak amid 147 more deathsAFP — TEHRAN

Iran’s coronavirus epidemic is still in its first wave, the government said yesterday as it announced nearly 150 new deaths a day after reporting a record high daily toll.

The Islamic republic has struggled to contain COVID-19 since it reported its first cases -- two deaths -- in the Shiite holy city of Qom in late Feb-ruary. Official figures have shown a rising trajectory in new confirmed cases since early May, when Iran hit a near

two-month low in daily recorded infections. But offi-cials have repeatedly denied the upward trend amounts to a second wave.

“The coronavirus is cur-rently peaking in border prov-inces or cities which did not experience a peak in the first months of the outbreak,” health ministry spokeswoman Sima Sadat Lari said. “Therefore, we’re still witnessing the first wave in the country,” she said, quoted by state news agency IRNA.

Lari said Iran would only have a second wave if there was

another rise in cases in prov-inces that “had a significant peak” when the first cases were declared.

Iran recorded 162 deaths from the novel coronavirus on Monday, its highest figure for a single day since the start of the outbreak on February 19.

Lari yesterday reported 147 new fatalities, raising overall deaths to 10,817.

She also raised the coun-try’s COVID-19 caseload to 227,662, with 2,457 new infec-tions in the past 24 hours.

Authorities have so far

refrained from enforcing full lockdowns to stop the pan-demic’s spread and the use of masks and protective equipment has been optional in most areas.

Iran closed schools, can-celled public events and banned movement between its 31 prov-inces in March, but the gov-ernment gradually lifted restric-tions from April to try to reopen its sanctions-hit economy.

The increasing virus caseload has seen some previ-ously largely unscathed prov-inces classified as “red” -- the

highest level on Iran’s colour-coded risk scale -- with author-ities allowed to reimpose restrictive measures if required.

They include Bushehr, Hor-mozgan, Kermanshah, Khuz-estan, Khorasan Razavi, Kurdistan, and West and East Azerbaijan, all located along Iran’s borders.

Iran has announced that wearing masks will be made mandatory in covered public spaces as of next week.

Authorities have for weeks been urging citizens to use pro-tective equipment.

Kuwait refinery

fire extinguished

REUTERS — KUWAIT

A fire west of Kuwait’s Mina Abdullah refinery was extin-guished by firefighters yesterday morning and there was no injuries, Kuwait’s fire department announced on twitter.

Late on Monday, the Kuwait port authority said in a Twitter post that a blaze had erupted west of Mina Abdullah, without elaborating.

A view of the Israeli settlement point of Beit Hadasa (front) with Palestinian neighbourhoods in the background, in the city of Hebron in the occupied West Bank, yesterday.

Putin to hold Syria talks with Turkey, Iran leadersAFP — MOSCOW

Russian President Vladimir Putin will discuss the Syrian conflict today with the leaders of Turkey and Iran, the Kremlin said.

Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the video conference will see Putin, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani make “three statements” before dis-cussing Syria in private.

The call will take place around 1100 GMT, Peskov said. The talks will be the first since September in the so-called

Astana format, in which the three powers discuss developments in Syria, where the conflict has entered its 10th year.

Iran and Russia have been staunch supporters of Syrian Pres-ident Bashar al-Assad, while Turkey has called for his ouster and backed opposition fighters.

Iran sentences former journalist to death for fuelling unrest

REUTERS — DUBAI

Iran has sentenced to death Ruhollah Zam, a journalist-turned-activist captured abroad last year, for allegedly fuelling anti-government unrest in late 2017 on social media, Iranian media reported yesterday.

The son of a pro-reform Shia cleric, Zam headed Amadnews, which had more 1 million followers on social media before it was suspended by the messaging app Tel-egram in 2018 after Iran accused it of carrying calls for violence during the protests.

The channel soon re-appeared under a new name.

Last October, Iran’s Revo-lutionary Guards said they had “trapped” Zam, who had been given political asylum in France and was also based in other parts of Europe, in a “complex operation using intelligence deception”. It did not say where the operation took place.

“Zam has been convicted of corruption on Earth by a Revolutionary Court,” judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Esmaili said, according to the Mizan news agency, adding that he could appeal. The charge, used in cases of armed uprising and espionage, is a capital offence under Iran’s Islamic law.

Iranian officials have accused arch-foe the United States as well as Tehran’s regional rival Saudi Arabia and government opponents living in exile of fomenting the unrest, which began as pro-tests about economic hardship and spread nationwide. Offi-cials said 21 people were killed during the unrest and thou-sands were arrested.

Attorney-General rejects Netanyahu’s

request for financial legal aidAP — OCCUPIED JERUSALEM

Israel’s attorney general said yesterday he opposed a request from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to have a wealthy American supporter finance his legal defence against corruption charges.

Netanyahu had asked an Israeli oversight committee to allow a 10m shekel ($2.9m) donation from Spencer Partrich, a Mich-igan-based real estate magnate, to fund his legal team. Because Partrich also happens to be a witness in one of the cases, the committee had asked the country’s attorney general for his opinion on the matter.

In his response, Avichai Mandelblit said there was no reason to grant Netanyahu this “unusual gift,” particularly since Par-trich’s relationship to Netanyahu dates back to his first term in office in the 1990s.

As Lebanon prices soar, mothers barter clothes for baby milkAFP — BEIRUT

An evening dress for milk formula, children’s clothes for cooking oil — as they watch prices soar in crisis-hit Lebanon, parents are taking to bartering online to survive.

Tens of thousands of people across the social spectrum have lost their job or part of their income because of Lebanon’s worst economic crisis in decades.

As the Lebanese pound has plunged to historic lows in the market, many have reverted to non-cash transactions.

On Facebook, a group called “Lebanon barters” has attracted 12,000 users in just two weeks. Among them, Zeinab, 25, is offering a black evening dress in exchange for milk formula and two packets of nappies for her 11-month-old baby boy.

“I’ve never asked for any-thing from anyone, so I thought

bartering would be better,” she said. “I’d feel more comfortable if I swapped something I didn’t need for what I really do.”

Until very recently her family lived a “good” life, said the make-up artist from the northern city of Tripoli.

But then the financial crisis hit, turning their lives upside-down. Her husband’s employer closed shop, and the novel coronavirus pandemic pre-vented her from seeing clients.

As the economy nose-dived, diapers suddenly cost nearly three times as much, and the price tag on milk formula almost doubled.

“We’re now spending the small amount we managed to save, but I don’t know what we’ll do when it runs out,” Zeinab said. Food prices have shot up by 72 percent since the autumn, the non-governmental Consumer Protection Association says. Although Lebanon’s currency

is officially pegged at 1,507 pounds to the dollar, a shortage of hard currency has seen that rate plummet to more than 8,000 on the black market. Aid workers and volunteers say fam-ilies that were once well-off are now struggling to put bread on the table, let alone pay for medication.

Economists are speaking of the disappearance of the middle class. Hassan Hasna, founder of the “Lebanon barter” page, said he and others started the group as a practical solution “because people no longer had money in hand”. “But we were surprised by how sad some cases were.”

On the page, another mother has asked for some-thing to eat in exchange for some of her five-year-old daughter’s clothes. A third woman says she can provide two food parcels in exchange for cleaning products and any-thing useful for her children.

18 killed in clashes between army, Houthis

ANATOLIA — MARIB, YEMEN

At least 18 people were killed, including two soldiers, in clashes Monday between army troops and Houthi rebels and an armed group that supported them in Yemen’s Marib and Al Hudaydah provinces. The Iranian-backed Houthis attacked Hays district in the southern part of Al Hudaydah, the press office of the army’s al-Amalika Brigade said in a statement.

Yemeni forces responded and neutralized nine militia members and wounded many others, it said. According to information from mil-itary sources, a clash also broke out between an armed group supporting the Houthis and army troops in Hashia district of Marib province.

ANATOLIA — GAZA CITY

The head of Hamas said yesterday that the resistance group has proposed creating a new leadership to represent all parties to achieve national unity in Palestine. “As Hamas, we have started work to ensure the national unity of Palestine inside and outside and to eliminate the separation points,” Ismail Haniyah said in talks organised by the Yedi Hilal Foundation.

Haniyah stressed that they had to immediately act to achieve national unity at a time when attempts are being made to purge Palestine through Israeli annexation plans in the West Bank and the Deal of Century. Referring to a meeting in Gaza attended by all parties, especially Fatah, he said they told them that reconcil-iation is necessary to prevent the annexation of the West Bank.

“Israel has several strategic goals related to the annexation of the West Bank. Israel says Palestine is a Jewish state and wants to legalise this thesis,” he said, adding if this plan is inter-nationally accepted, there would be a legal step to completely remove Palestinians from the territories.

‘Hamas working to achieve national unity in Palestine’

Zeev Elkin, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, said Israel still did not have the green light it seeks from Washington to begin extending its sovereignty to parts of the West Bank, territory Palestinians seek for a state.

07WEDNESDAY 1 JULY 2020 MIDDLE EAST / AFRICA

Sudanese demonstrators gesture as they chant during a protest on Sixty street in the east of the capital Khartoum, yesterday.

Thousands of Sudanese rally for faster reformREUTERS — KHARTOUM

Tens of thousands demon-strated yesterday in Sudanese cities despite a coronavirus lockdown to demand greater civilian rule in the transition towards democracy after the ouster of veteran strongman Omar Al Bashir last year.

Waving Sudanese flags, protesters gathered in Khartoum and its twin cities Khartoum North and Omdurman after the gov-ernment closed roads and bridges leading to the centre of the capital.

Similar protests took also place in Kassala in eastern Sudan and in the restive region of Darfur. They chanted “freedom, peace and justice”, the slogan of the anti-Bashir movement. Some protesters blocked streets with burning tyres.

Premier Abdalla Hamdok, a technocrat, governs the country in awkward tandem with the long dominant military that helped remove Bashir after mass protests against his

30-year autocracy.An opposition coalition

agreed to joint governance with the military in a two-year tran-sition towards free elections but key parts of the deal have not been implemented, such as appointing civilian state gov-ernors and establishing a parliament.

Hamdok’s government has been preoccupied with a wors-ening economic crisis that has seen a plunge in Sudan’s pound currency diving and annual inflation topping 100%.

Last week, foreign donor nations pledged $1.8 billion at a conference hosted by Germany to help Sudan overcome the economic crisis hampering its transition. But the pledges were well below the $8 billion in aid Hamdok has said is needed.

The crisis has been com-pounded by the coronavirus pandemic, which has diverted the resources of many donors.

Hamdok sought to appease disgruntled citizens with a speech on Monday night in

which he said he would announce major decisions on the way forward within two weeks. He gave no details, but

added: “The transitional gov-ernment...(is) aiming to achieve the highest levels of consensus and popular approval.”

Hamdok is also pursuing peace talks with rebel groups across the sprawling country but no deal is in sight.

Somalia to delay elections by 13 months AP — NAIROBI

Somalia’s election body says it intends to delay the parlia-mentary and presidential elec-tions scheduled for November by 13 months, citing the coun-try’s security problems.

Announcing that a new date for the elections in Aug. 2021, Halimo Ismail, chair-woman of the electoral com-mission, told lawmakers and journalists on Monday that elec-tions were being postponed for more than a year because of “significant technical and security challenges.”

The announcement by the electoral commission was wel-comed by many in the interna-tional community including the United Nations, the African Union Mission in Somalia, the European Union, the US and Britain.

They issued a joint statement in support of the new election date in which they emphasized the continued need for Somalis to engage in inclusive dialogue to forge the widest possible agreement among Somalia’s political parties over the election.

However, the Forum of National Parties opposition alliance, criticized the delay. They have said that President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed is seeking an unconstitutional term extension by postponing the elections. Some oppo-sition leaders called for the leaders of the electoral com-mission to step down. The president’s term expires on February 8, 2021.

Somalia’s government depends on international support in its long-lasting battle against the Islamic extremist rebels of al-Shabab, who are allied with al-Qaida. Al Shabab controls large parts of southern and central Somalia and often targets the capital with suicide bombings.

Punching through the pandemic: Kenyan boxing club gives kids a breakREUTERS — NAIROBI

Vanessa Wanjera packs a punch. The 14-year-old Kenyan took up boxing two years ago but she already has big dreams.

“I want to be a champion, instead of staying in the slums,” Wanjera said.

Wanjera is one of a group of children who train at the Mathare North Boxing Club in Nairobi, where head coach Bernard Muiruri hopes the pro-gramme will help keep kids out of trouble.

While government restric-tions are in place on public gath-erings and people’s movement, the gym has measures in place to conform to social distancing and hygiene guidelines.

It limits the number of

visitors allowed on the premises at any one time, is cleaned three times a day and gives out hand sanitiser to people who do not bring it.

“We have adhered to all COVID-19 regulations set by the government,” Muiruri said. “The training keeps the children busy, ensuring they don’t engage in evils found in the slums. Also staying fit is a way of fighting the virus.”

Since the club opened its doors in 1985, it has trained several professional boxers and Kenyan champions, including John Kimani, the assistant coach. “Here at Mathare North Boxing Club we don’t charge. What we do is give back to the community,” Kimani said.

Andrew Odhiambo, 18,

epitomises that spirit. A boxer since he was 8 years old, he wants to share what he has learned with other young people in his community.

“I want to help my peers,” said Odhiambo. “I train because I want to be somebody. I want to make Mathare proud of me.”

More children in the neigh-bourhood are training at the gym than usual and it has become a crucial outlet for local kids forced to stay at home because schools remain shut due to the coronavirus pan-demic. And boxing is not the only lesson they learn.

“We tell them there is life outside boxing,” said Kimani. “They don’t just come here for boxing, we give them lessons in life.”

Boxing coach John Kamau trains a child at the Mathare North Boxing Club after the government ordered closure of all schools due to the coronavirus disease outbreak, in Nairobi, Kenya.

4 dead in protests over killing of Ethiopian singerAFP — ADDIS ABABA

At least four people were killed as protests spread across several Ethi-opian cities yesterday after a prom-inent singer from the country’s largest ethnic group was shot dead, according to medical sources and a relative.

The unrest, which prompted the government to switch off the internet in the capital, highlighted ethnic tensions that threaten to derail Ethiopia’s fraught democratic transition, overseen by Prime Min-ister Abiy Ahmed, last year’s Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

The singer Hachalu Hundessa was shot on Monday night in Addis Ababa, the state-affiliated FANA Broadcasting Corporate reported.

With his political lyrics, he was

seen as a voice of the Oromo people during years of anti-government pro-tests that swept Abiy to power in 2018. Yesterday morning, large crowds of protesters poured into the capital Addis Ababa from the surrounding Oromia region, snarling roads with stones and blocking traffic.

Protests were reported in several towns in Oromia, such as central Adama where the injured said they had been shot by security forces, said Desalegn Fekadu, a surgeon at the Adama Hospital.

“There are a lot of casualties, most of them are bullet injuries. Three patients died and there are still critical patients,” he said.

“There are also more than 10 patients with burn injuries. They said their houses were set on fire.”

A resident of Western Hararge,

in Oromia said on condition of ano-nymity that his cousin had been killed by young Oromo nationalists known as Querroo, because he was from the Amhara ethnic group.

“They killed him because of the death of the artist. We grew up together, but they killed him today with knives... he doesn’t know any-thing about politics,” he said.

Federal police commissioner Endeshaw Tassew said there had been “deaths in several areas of Oromia and Addis Ababa.”

“Those who were trying to take advantage of Hachalu’s death to create havoc have thrown grenades in three different places in Addis Ababa. Several were injured while on the side of the perpetrators, several were injured and several others were killed.”

Nigeria, Senegal easesome virus restrictionsANATOLIA — DAKAR/ABUJA

Nigeria and Senegal have eased some restrictions that had been imposed to stem the spread of the novel coro-navirus. In Nigeria, an interstate travel ban has been lifted and domestic flights will be resumed, said Boss Mustapha, Secretary to the Government of the Federation.

Mustapha said universities, high schools and sec-ondary schools will reopen so final-year students can prepare for exams. Primary schools and nurseries will remain closed.

Senegalese President Macky Sall said a state of emergency and curfew which were imposed on March 23 will be lifted as of today. As of July 15, air borders will be reopened to the world and international flights will resume, Sall said, adding land and sea borders will remain closed.

Senegal has confirmed 6,698 cases and 4,341 recoveries. A total of 108 people have died due to the virus.

France, Sahel leaders review their campaign against extremismAFP — NOUAKCHOTT

Leaders from five West African coun-tries and their ally France yesterday took stock of a new strategy to fight insurgents in the Sahel and pledged to build on the successes achieved.

Meeting in the Mauritanian capital Nouakchott, the presidents reviewed a campaign that they rebooted in January after a string of reversals.

Since then, the militants have con-tinued to carry out almost daily attacks, but they are also under pressure, losing a key leader to a French raid and fighting internally, say security sources.

Wearing a mask as he arrived for his first trip outside Europe since the start of the coronavirus epidemic, French President Emmanuel Macron said the summit sought to “consolidate the gains”.

The allies have notched up “real successes over the past six months, neutralising feared leaders,” he said, praising the “upscaling of intervention” by Sahel armies.

Mauritanian President Mohamed Ould Cheikh El Ghazouani said there

had been “significant progress” in the fight against militants but added they were “insufficient in the face of the mounting challanges that we have to meet.

“Violent extremisim in all its forms continues to hit several zones... and is expanding in a worrying manner,” he said. Macron hosted a summit in January to help secure a stronger public com-mitment from Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger at a time of deep-ening concern in France after it lost 13 troops in a helicopter crash.

The insurgency kicked off in northern Mali in 2012, during a rebellion by Tuareg separatists that was later overtaken by the militants .

Despite thousands of UN and French troops, the conflict spread to central Mali, neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger, stirring feuds between ethnic groups and triggering fears for states farther south.

Thousands of soldiers and civilians have been killed, hundreds of thou-sands of people have fled their homes and the economies of the three coun-tries, already among the poorest in the

world, have been grievously damaged. Macron arrived for a one-day

round trip from Europe for the summit, with representatives from the UN, African Union and European Union in attendance.

The leaders of Germany, Spain and Italy were then to join the talks by video link. The meeting marked the first time that Sahel allies have gathered physically since the start of the coronavirus crisis.

One priority was to assess affairs in the “three-border region,” a hotspot of extremism where the frontiers of Burkina, Niger and Mali converge.

France, which added 500 troops

to its Sahel mission after the summit in the French town of Pau, is co-leading the campaign in this region, targeting an Islamic State-affiliated group led by Abou Walid Al Sahraoui.

Earlier this month, French forces in northern Mali, helped by a US drone, killed Abdelmalek Droukdel, the head of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). And in a new development, militants respectively linked to Al Qaeda and Islamic State have clashed several times since the start of the year in Mali and Burkina Faso, after long steering clear of one another, according to security experts. Despite this, problems in the Sahel run deep.

Local armies are poorly equipped and under-funded, rights groups say troops are to blame for hundreds of killings and other abuses of civilians, and in some areas the presence of gov-ernment has evaporated.

Staunch French ally Chad has yet to fulfil a promise to send troops to the three-border region, and a much-trumpeted initiative to create a joint 5,000-man G5 Sahel force is making poor progress.

In Mali, anger at insecurity has fuelled discontent over coronavirus restrictions and the outcome of elec-tions, creating a political crisis for Pres-ident Ibrahim Boubacar Keita.

French President Emmanuel Macron (second left) listens as Mauritania President Mohamed Ould Cheikh El Ghazouani (third right) speaks during the G5 Sahel summit, in Nouakchott, Mauritania, yesterday.

Throughout the years, Mexico and Qatar have undergone profound economic and demographic transforma-tions, both becoming important global players. In the mid-seventies, Mexico sought a wider international projection by establishing diplomatic relations with newly independent countries all over the world. Qatar, meanwhile, was a young state that consolidated its inde-pendence in 1971, and sought to establish its presence in the global stage by joining that same year the United Nations and the Arab League.

It is in this context that Mexico and Qatar established diplomatic relations in 1975. Today’s commemoration of the 45th anniversary of this important step presents a val-uable opportunity to rec-ognize and take stock of the favorable development and intensification of our rela-tions, as well as to set a pathway for the years ahead.

Our early interactions took place mostly within the framework of the United Nations and other multilateral organizations. Our bilateral contacts were managed through concurrent embassies: from Washington DC in the case of Qatar, and from Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and later on Kuwait, in the case of Mexico.

As our economies grew and our societies evolved, our

ties became even stronger. Over the last decade we have deepened and widened our bilateral agenda to include more areas of economic, political and social collabo-ration. Our mutual interest in diversifying our dialogue and trade partners was significant enough that in 2014 we simul-taneously decided to open resident embassies in our respective capitals.

Another important mile-stone was reached when our Heads of State exchanged visits. In November 2015, the Amir His Highness Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, visited Mexico City, which was reciprocated a few months later by the then President of Mexico.

As a result of intensified high-level dialogues, our eco-nomic ties have flourished. Our business communities are increasingly aware of the opportunities offered by our respective markets, as reflected in various trade and investment missions over recent years.

In October 2018, a Mexican business mission to Doha set the foundation for the creation of the Mexico-Qatar Business Council.

Mexico’s exports to Qatar are mainly vehicles and transportation equipment, pipes and iron or steel rafters, automobiles, and yachts and pleasure boats. At the same time, Mexico’s imports from Qatar include raw aluminum, hydrocarbon products, and synthetic fabrics.

In 2019, our bilateral trade reached 134.7 million dollars, a 60.9% increase compared to the previous year. Although this annual double-digit growth may seem impressive, our bilateral trade is well below its potential. We are fully com-mitted to increase the value and diversity of our bilateral trade, and to identify areas of opportunity in each other’s markets. For instance, we are a secure and reliable supplier of high-quality agro-food

products to numerous partners around the world.

Our bilateral investment portfolio has also become more robust and sophisti-cated over time. In January 2018, for example, Qatar Petroleum won an interna-tional tender, together with other companies, for deep water exploration. In May 2020, the company further expanded its presence by acquiring nearly 30% of the participation of another oil company in the Bay of Campeche, turning it into the most prominent Qatari investor in Mexico.

There is much to be done in additional sectors, including tourism and infra-structure. To reach its full potential, we must continue to build relationships of trust among key players, such as private equity funds, banks and global financial institu-tions with longstanding presence in our markets.

Mexican companies have also been expanding their presence in Qatar. Dunn Lightweight Architecture, for instance, was the first Mexican company to win a 2022 World Cup contract to

participate in the design and installation of roofs on the Al-Rayyan Stadium.

Mexico and Qatar have also promoted cultural exchanges. As an example, the renowned Mexican architect Ricardo Legorreta designed and built some of the most emblematic buildings of Edu-cation City, such as the cam-puses of Georgetown Uni-versity, Carnegie Mellon, Texas A&M, and the Student Center.

Qatar is also home to over 600 Mexican nationals who constitute a tightknit com-munity. A significant number of them are pilots and crew members for Qatar Airways, one of the country’s emblematic companies. Others are dedicated profes-sionals such as engineers at Qatar Petroleum, finance and business executives, aca-demics, artists, football players, chefs and hospitality workers, students and entre-preneurs. They all contribute to the development of the Qatari economy and society.

Mexico and Qatar also share a passion for sports. In 2022 thousands of Mexican fans are expected to visit this country to support our beloved National team at the World Cup. Mexico will become the first country to host the tournament for a third time in 2026, this time along with Canada and the United States, when we would be very happy to receive in turn the Qatari team and fans.

As we celebrate this important anniversary, we cherish our ties of friendship and collaboration, reflected in our growing relationship. I am convinced that by working together in the midst of one of the biggest challenges that humanity has encountered -the COVID-19 pandemic-, our commitment and contri-butions will help us overcome current obstacles and to con-tinue to advance towards a more sustainable, resilient and prosperous future.

In January 2018, for example, QP won an international tender, together with other companies, for deep water exploration. In May 2020, the company further expanded its presence by acquiring nearly 30% of the participation of another oil company in the Bay of Campeche, turning it into the most prominent Qatari investor in Mexico.

08 WEDNESDAY 1 JULY 2020VIEWS

CHAIRMANDR. KHALID BIN THANI AL THANI

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

editorinchief@pen.com.qa

ACTING MANAGING EDITORMOHAMMED SALIM MOHAMED

m.salim@pen.com.qa

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

EDITORIAL

QATAR'S record in its services provided to the general public and its corruption-free image on the international dealings and transactions have remained matchless for several years. But Qatar never rested on the laurels, but has been striving to make the country better by imple-menting new regulations and methodologies to make the government services more transparent and hassle-free for the people in the country and at the same time proving its integrity and sincerity in the international arena.

President of the Administrative Control and Trans-parency Authority (ACTA), H E Hamad bin Nasser Al Misned, said on Monday that a code of conduct and integrity for public officials will come into effect soon, after the Cabinet issued its decision number 18 of 2020 on issuing a code of conduct and integrity for public officials. The code will be binding on every civil employee serving different ministries and other government-run bodies and institutions.

The code of conduct is also in line with the com-mitment to the United Nations Convention against Cor-ruption (UNCAC) particularly Article No.8 which was dedicated to codes of conduct for public officials. Qatar ratified the agreement in decree no.17 of 2007. According to the convention countries that sign the convention must assure that public services are subject to safeguards that promote efficiency, transparency and recruitment based on merit. Once recruited, public servants should be bound by codes of conduct, require-ments for financial and other disclosures and appro-priate disciplinary measures. The convention also says that transparency and accountability in the management of public finances must also be promoted and specific requirements are established for the prevention of cor-ruption in the particularly critical area of the public sector, such as the judiciary and public procurement.

Qatar’s code insists that the employ is providing a national service that public interest should be moti-vation behind the employee’s behaviour at work and the public money and property should be protected. Qatar believes that the resources at the disposal of the state belong to the public and it is meant for the devel-opment and progress of all without prejudice or parti-ality and at the same time everybody is bestowed with the duty of protecting the resources.

The temptation for making easy money and wielding influence and dominating others can be interpreted as human nature, but resisting these urges is considered noble and sublime. So being a part of a corruption-free and transparent system should be a matter of pride for every employee. The code of conduct prompts every civil employee to hold the state’s welfare and progress above personal gains and thus be a part of moulding a country which stands tall as a model for the whole world.

Augmenting transparency

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

MANAGING EDITOR: TEL: 4462 7505

DEPUTY MANAGING EDITOR: TEL: 4455 7769

LOCAL NEWS SECTION: TEL: 4455 7743

BUSINESS NEWS SECTION: TEL: 4462 7535

SPORT NEWS SECTION: TEL: 4455 7745

ONLINE SECTION: TEL: 4462 7501email: INFO@PEN.COM.QA

PUBLIC RELATIONS: TEL: 4455 7613email: PR@PEN.COM.QA

ADVERTISING DEPARTMENT: TEL: 4455 7837 / 780FAX: 4455 7870, email: adv@pen.com.qa

CLASSIFIED DEPARTMENT: TEL: 4455 7857email: adv@pen.com.qa

SUBSCRIPTION & DISTRIBUTION: TEL: 4455 7809 / 839 FAX: 44557819, email: info@tawseelqatar.com

D-RING ROAD, POST BOX: 3488, DOHA - QATAREMAIL: editor@pen.com.qa

Quote of the day

This is a government that is wholly committed

not just to defeating coronavirus but to using

this crisis finally to tackle this country’s great

unresolved challenges of the last three decades.

Boris Johnson, British Prime Minister

A file photo of Qatar Chamber’s First Vice-Chairman Mohammed bin Ahmed bin Towar Al Kuwari meeting with the Vice-President of Mexican Business Council, Jorge Lopez, and Mexican Ambassador to Qatar, Graciela Gomez Garcia, on October 10, 2019.

NINA LARSON — AFP

The coronavirus crisis has taken a much heavier toll on jobs than previously feared, the UN said yesterday, warning that the situation in the Americas was particularly dire.

In a fresh study, the Inter-national Labour Organization (ILO) estimated that by the mid-year point, global working hours were down 14 percent compared to last December -- equivalent to some 400 million full-time jobs.

That is more than double the number forecast by the UN organisation back in April, when it expected 6.7 percent of working hours to be lost by the end of the second three-month period of the year.

It is also far higher than the ILO estimate in late May, when it expected 10.7 percent of global working hours to vanish during the period.

“Things are getting worse. The job crisis is deepening,” ILO chief Guy Ryder said.

“We are not through this

yet,” he warned. The ILO said the new figures reflected the worsening situation in many regions in recent weeks, especially in devel-oping economies.

Its report pointed out that 93 percent of the world’s workers live in countries still affected by some sort of work-place closures, with the Americas experiencing the greatest restrictions. The United States and Latin America are currently the areas hardest-hit by the pandemic,

which has killed more than 500,000 people worldwide and infected more than 10m.

Soaring transmission rates in the United States, which alone accounts for a quarter of all infections and deaths glo-bally, and in countries like Brazil, which accounts more than 1.3 million cases, have hit the labour market hard. The crisis is “hitting particularly hard the Americas, where we see the loss of jobs as being the worst in the world,” Ryder said.

Mexico and Qatar: 45 years of friendship and collaboration

/PeninsulaQatar

/ThePeninsulaQatar

/Peninsula_Qatar

/ThePeninsulaNewspaper

+974 6698 6188

www.thepeninsula.qa

Global employment crisis deepening, equivalent of 400m jobs lost: UN

Established in 1996

JULIÁN VENTURA, Deputy Secretary of Foreign Affairs of Mexico

Many parents ponder that what they can do to help their kids with autism disorder nowadays in the school envi-ronment or in the classrooms in regular public schools.

We do understand that autism is a broad range of conditions described by chal-lenges with social skills, repetitive behaviours, speech and non-verbal communi-cation. Of course, such dis-order and its effects on the kid’s age may be painful for both parents, as they discover that the inclusion of their kid in any school does not neces-sarily include him/her in every activity in school!

However, some children can truly succeed in an inclusive environment in regular schools; nevertheless inclusion is not always the best option. The opposite may also be true as many kid with autism spectrum, calling and reminding the society, that they are there looking forward to the opportunity to join and integrate with their healthy peers.

And strikingly, glowing at young age, such kid after completing specialized semesters in an autism center, he/she has matured to the

point where he feels that inclusion in mainstream school is his great choice for his future.

On other hand, often parents may feel neglected because their children are excluded from enrolling in the regular public school and school events, which many kids and those around them enjoy, leading the parents and such autistic kid feel the bit-terness of the situation.

It is evident how parents are trying to obtain the right of their autistic child to edu-cation and equality with other children, yet many people ask, where do we draw the line when it comes to inclusion in mainstream or regular school and children with autism?

What I would like to point out, is that in separate special education classes or autism centers, the main focus can be on things outside of academic edu-cation, as the standards are much lower in educational terms and often children are not challenged properly to unlock their potential. Moreover, many autistic kids behave socially well with their peers who have similar abilities, but unfortunately they struggle socially with other children. Perhaps at this point, I should say that I am with inclusion of children with autism, looking that such main-stream or regular school allows them to socialize with their peers and practice various social features in a relatively safe environment.

Interestingly, it is really important to realize that healthy kids will benefit

from having autistic children and other handicapped kids in their classes. When these children spend more time around children with such disorder, they grow up with a great understanding and high sense of empathy. Wouldn’t it be much simpler if you grew up alongside autistic people as a natural part of your life? If you were taught from the first years of your enrollment in school, that there are some people have brains and bodies that work differently and need different things to support them!

On other hand, the child who spends his day in autism center or separate classes finds it difficult to form the necessary relation-ships to become full and active members of the society. Unfortunately, with their growth, the community does not recognize them well, or even the people around them do not realize how to assimilate them into society. More painful is the difficulty of finding work for them.

Without a doubt, what we see on the ground is com-pletely different reality. As many schools do not accept children with autism disorder easily and the problem really is not with the kids but with society! We must be aware that what is meant by inclusion here is that child is in the regular mainstream class, whether he takes one or two lessons per day or even if he can take the entire school lessons according to his abil-ities. Actually, it is not permis-sible to place children in a center on the basis autism

disorder or with a mental, auditory or visual impairment and we claim that this is inclusion?

Moreover, a child with autism may not be included in a regular school, if he cannot express himself, as he will definitely face mockery in his class. Also, if we look at the size of autistic child’s body, for instance can we imagine a 14 years old child and mix him with students of kindergarten or first primary grade! How will other children react to him? He will definitely be ridiculed which will affect him adversely. What I would like to point out here is that, the develop-mental age is more important than temporal age, therefore children with such disorder should be enrolled with healthy children younger than them, in order to reduce variance and educational dif-ferences, but all of this should be planned carefully. Not to mention that he should not have behaviors like moving the hands or legs that will lead other children to avoid him?

Certainly, the autistic child must be in the autism center between 2-3 years and take special training and care, before the parents think to put him in the regular school, so that he learns skills to play with his peers, in addition to other skills that qualify him to enter the mainstream regular school, otherwise how will we could enroll him?

However, one of the main factors for successful child

inclusion is the presence of a teacher with special edu-cation skills and ready to exert more effort with pos-itive attitude towards autistic children and inspire them toward creativity. It is note-worthy that building a rela-tionship with autistic child is not something that happens overnight as it needs time, dedication and patience. Thus, you will see that many autistic kids and their classroom behavior are much better than their normal peers. Here it must be seen that coordination between the autism center and the regular mainstream school is nec-essary for teacher and admin-istrative team so that they are better prepared to receiving such children.

At last, it is important to realize that inclusion here means different things to dif-ferent people. For the parents of a child with cognitive impairment, it may mean learning to say (Hello) or (can I play with you?) for their healthy peers. As for other parents with their child has a learning disability, this may mean that their child will have access to general cur-riculum and perhaps one day he will have the opportunity to enter college or university. While certainly for some of these children, inclusion simply means that he will learn to adapt many daily changes in a busy classroom and even develop the ability to play with his colleagues.

Dr.Yousuf Ali Al Mulla, physician, medical innovator & writer.

09WEDNESDAY 1 JULY 2020 OPINION

Indeed, the current crisis is exacting a toll on the financial stability of our societies. In the USA alone there are more than 21 million unemployed people (13% of the workforce), while just before the current crisis (January 2020), the unemployment rate was at 3.5%. A similar trend is showing in other major economies, such as the Eurozone.

While the origin of the pandemic is uncertain, as much as its end, the way we react to it and plan the future is in our hands, and that will shape our own future and that of our nations.

Autism spectrum & inclusion!

The COVID-19 pandemic is taking a dramatic toll in terms of human lives, reminding us of the fragility of the human species on this earth. It has also shown us the vulnerability of our economic systems.

Indeed, the current crisis is exacting a toll on the financial stability of our soci-eties. In the USA alone there are more than 21 million unemployed people (13% of the workforce), while just before the current crisis (January 2020), the unem-ployment rate was at 3.5%. A similar trend is showing in other major economies, such as the Eurozone.

As of June 10, 2020, $1.91 trillion worth of Federal Reserve notes were in circu-lation. This amount still reflects the total number of dollars in circulation pre-pandemic. The COVID-19 stimulus package issued by the US government is intended to inject $2 trillion with a set of measures intended to help, among others, small businesses ($350 billion), households - with what is called ‘helicopter money’ or checks sent directly to their snail-mail inboxes, the health sector (mainly hospitals), and

big corporations (think of Boeing Co., which is receiving $500 billion).

In addition to this, the Federal Reserve System has declared an intervention of up to $4 trillion to support the stock market. With these two measures combined, the economy will receive an injection of liquidity worth $6 trillion. To put in perspective the amount of money that has been promised, the 2008 financial crisis was eased with a package of measures totaling ‘just’ $800 billion.

When the amount of money to be injected into the economy surpasses the amount of money that is cur-rently circulating (by three times), this spells one word very loudly: inflation.

Inflation stems from the fact that, the more of a given good, the less its value. Fiat cur-rencies, that is currencies that have legal tender but are not backed up by any collateral except the credibility of the government issuing them - like the US dollar, the British Pound, and the Euro - are no exception to this fundamental law of eco-nomics, and that is why inflation is expected to soar in the coming months/years.

The dollar is inflationaryThis is hardly news. Since

the Bretton-Woods Agreement was discontinued in 1971, cur-rencies are no longer tied to any safe store of value, such as gold has historically been. What is more, the world’s fiat currencies have shown an inflationary nature throughout

history. This process is going to accelerate, given the amount of fiat currency that is going to be injected into economies to support people and business during the current pandemic. As a matter of fact, in addition to the $6 trillion cited above, more than 1 trillion euros is expected to be injected into the Eurozone, and possibly more.

Bitcoin is deflationaryA deflationary asset is an

asset whose supply is below the inflation rate. Bitcoin is more than that. Indeed, the overall number of Bitcoins that can be made available is limited to 21 million by the Bitcoin protocol itself.

Moreover, out of that cap, a number of Bitcoins have been virtually destroyed already. That is, the Bitcoins that are in the blockchain but cannot be accessed for a number of reasons, such as the owners having lost the cryptographic key that is needed to move that money (the number of ‘lost’ Bitcoins is somewhere around 3 million).

This brings the theoretical supply of Bitcoin to around 18 million. The current gener-ation rate of the missing Bit-coins is currently well below the inflationary rate set by the Federal Reserve, and the divide can only increase. Unlike fiat currency, no one can decide or force an increase in the amount of available Bitcoins. This explains why cryptocur-rencies in general, and Bitcoin in particular, are raising

interest from funds that are seeking to hedge against the risk of inflation.

Conclusion and the road ahead

The COVID-19 pandemic has struck a world that was mostly unprepared, and whatever the world will be like once the pandemic is over (and it will be), the world will be quite different from what it was before. Workforces will be spending less time in the office and more will be working remotely. Social dis-tancing will change customer behavior and expenditure habits. Companies that have embraced the digital revo-lution will thrive, while others will slowly die or become irrelevant.

Inflation will soar, pushing retail and institutional investors toward safe havens: gold for sure, but cryptocur-rencies could soon become a competitor. Countries that are dependent on raw material exports, such as oil and gas, will renew their efforts to diversify their economies.

In this context, a safe bet is to invest in education, for both governments and private citizens. Only an educated workforce would be able to exploit the opportunities of a more and more digitalized economy; and only an edu-cated workforce will be able to spur innovation and diversify the economy.

In this context, Qatar enjoys a head start, thanks to its huge investment in education over the last 20 years. In particular,

at Hamad Bin Khalifa Uni-versity - part of Qatar Foun-dation - we have been edu-cating the future generations. For instance, the MS in Cyber-security offered by the College of Science and Engineering touches on the foundations of cryptocurrencies, while the PhD in Computer Science and Engineering prepares future high-level decision makers in the ICT domain - the leaders who will be driving the digitali-zation of the economy.

While the origin of the pandemic is uncertain, as much as its end, the way we react to it and plan the future is in our hands, and that will shape our own future and that of our nations.

Dr. Roberto Di Pietro, ACM Distinguished Scientist, is a Professor in Cybersecurity at the College of Science and Engineering, part of Hamad Bin Khalifa University.

Cryptocurrencies could offer a solution to soaring inflation rates caused by COVID-19

DR. YOUSUF ALI AL MULLA

DR. ROBERTO DI PIETRO

One of the main factors for successful child inclusion is the presence of a teacher with special education skills and ready to exert more effort with positive attitude towards autistic children and inspire them toward creativity.

We do understand that autism is a broad range of conditions described by challenges with social skills, repetitive behaviours, speech and non-verbal communication. Of course, such disorder and its effects on the kid’s age may be painful for both parents, as they discover that the inclusion of their kid in any school does not necessarily include him/her in every activity in school!

Autistic child must be in the autism center between 2-3 years and take special training and care, before the parents think to put him in the regular school, so that he learns skills to play with his peers, in addition to other skills that qualify him to enter the mainstream regular school

10 WEDNESDAY 1 JULY 2020ASIA

India bans Chinese apps amid border standoff

AP — NEW DELHI

Indian TikTok users awoke yesterday to a notice from the popular short-video app saying their data would be transferred to an Irish subsidiary, a response to India’s ban on dozens of Chinese apps amid a military standoff between the two countries.

The quick workaround showed the ban was largely sym-bolic since the apps can’t be auto-matically erased from devices where they are already down-loaded, and is a response to a border clash with China where 20 Indian soldiers died earlier this month, digital experts said.

“They want to send a message. This is a decision based on a geopolitical situ-ation,” said digital rights activist Nikhil Pahwa.

Indian protesters have been calling for a boycott of Chinese goods since the June 15 confron-tation in the remote Karakoram mountain border region.

Late on Monday, the gov-ernment said that it was banning 59 Chinese-owned apps, including TikTok, which is operated by Chinese Internet firm

Bytedance. It cited privacy con-cerns that it said pose a threat to India’s sovereignty and security.

The banned apps include some that enable TikTok users to add visual effects and music to their posts, as well as dating apps, privacy apps and multi-player games.

India’s information tech-nology ministry issued a statement saying it had received reports that mobile apps were “stealing and surreptitiously transmitting users’ data.” The compilation of such data, and its mining and profiling by elements hostile to India is “a matter of very deep and immediate concern which requires emergency measures,” the statement said.

TikTok’s countermove, shifting data to Ireland, shows how integrated the two econ-omies have become. Chinese products are ubiquitous in India, from toys to smartphones to Made-in-China idols. Two-way trade grew from $3bn in 2000 to $95bn in 2018, according to Indian government data, with the balance strongly favoring China.

“There is too much of Chinese presence in the eve-ryday life of the average

Indian,” said Alka Acharya, pro-fessor of Chinese Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. The soldiers’ deaths meant the Indian government had to hit back, Acharya said.

The ban on Chinese apps, signed by India’s powerful Home Minister Amit Shah, asked phone companies to begin blocking the applications Tuesday, as top Army officers from India and China were set to meet for a third time to try to quell tensions and rein back on military build-ups in the disputed border area. Supporters of the ban hailed it as a way to curtail China’s growing influence.

“They are earning from us and then bullying us,” 30-year-old Sonu Mishra said in New Delhi.

Others bemoaned the potential loss of jobs at the app companies’ Indian offices. Some slammed it as an encroachment on free speech.

TikTok “continues to comply with all data privacy and security requirements under Indian law and has not shared any information of our users in India with any foreign government, including the Chinese government,” the com-pany’s India chief, Nikhil Gandhi, said in a statement.

This isn’t the first time TikTok has been banned in India — the Madras High Court in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu banned it last year over hate speech concerns, but quickly vacated its order.

Chinese-owned apps have found a fast-growing market in India, with some companies creating India-specific apps that have exploded in popularity.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has used the country’s 500 million Internet users — second only to China —as a lure in getting tech giants including Twitter to localise Indians’ data.

Members of the Working Journalist of India hold placards urging citizens to remove Chinese apps and stop using Chinese products during a demonstration in New Delhi, yesterday.

Four Philippine army soldiers mistakenly killed by police

ANATOLIA — ANKARA

Four Philippine army soldiers including two officers were killed by police in the Sulu province in the Muslim-majority Bangsamoro region, Philippine state-run media said yesterday.

The soldiers including a major and a captain were killed during an encounter with police who were on a mission to track Abu Sayyaf Group members and bomb makers in the region, the Phil-ippine News Agency (PNA) reported.

On Monday, the Sulu Pro-vincial Police Office appre-hended the four men onboard a sports utility vehicle - pre-sumably in civilian clothing - and told them to proceed to the police station for verification.

However, the four men, who were later identified as members of an intelligence unit of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, allegedly fled towards Barangay San Ray-mundo and were chased by the police officers, PNA quoted a police statement as saying, adding that they were killed in an encounter with the police.

The government ordered the National Bureau of Inves-tigation to investigate the incident, which is said to have angered the army.

“The Commanding General, Philippine Army Lt. Gen. Gilbert Gapay, is enraged and demands that a full-blown investigation must be conducted on the death of four soldiers from the hands of PNP forces,” PNA quoted Army spokesperson Colonel Ramon Zagala as saying in a statement.

The commander said that despite proper identification, the police fired on the soldiers.

“The soldiers were on a mission to identify the location of known terrorists in the area. Based on eyewitness accounts, no altercation transpired between the two parties nor was there any provocation on the part of army personnel to warrant such carnage,” Gapay said.

Nepal offers locust

bounty as swarms

threaten crops

AFP — KATHMANDU

Nepal is offering farmers cash rewards for catching desert locusts to limit the damage caused by the destructive swarms that have ravaged harvests in India and Pakistan.

South Asia is experiencing its worst infestation in decades, with the plague of locusts devastating agricul-tural heartlands and are now entering Nepal.

“Our decision is aimed at encouraging people to catch the insects instead of using pesti-cides which might be harmful to the environment,” agriculture ministry spokesman Khagendra Prasad Sharma, who handles the Far West Province, said.

Farmers and other locals in two provinces that have already been invaded this week will be offered up to 25 rupees (21 US cents) for every kilogramme of the insects.

The locusts are caught using huge mosquito nets that block their flight. They are also more easily caught at night when they are resting.

The migratory pests are then swept into large bags and brought to officials.

In the past three days, some 10kg of locusts have been collected in the southern city of Butwal, province official Yam Narayan Devkota said.

“They are being collected in other areas too. Depending on the volume, they might be used as feed for chicken and livestock,” Devkota added.

Modi warns of virus ‘negligence’; cities extend lockdownREUTERS — CHENNAI/NEW DELHI

India’s prime minister yesterday warned citizens against flouting rules to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus, as he extended a vast social security scheme until November.

Several Indian cities pre-pared to extend their lock-downs to combat the spread of the infection on Tuesday, with daily new cases in the country remaining close to 20,000.

“Ever since (easing of restrictions) started in the

country, negligence in personal and social behaviour has been increasing,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in a tele-vised address, adding citizens were ignoring guidelines on social distancing and hand washing.

Under pressure for leaving the poor to fend for themselves early in a stringent lockdown that began in March, Modi also announced the extension of a scheme providing free food grains to 800 million Indians, at a cost of around $12 billion.

The opposition Congress Party, led by Rahul Gandhi, said the measures were inadequate, calling for direct cash transfers to the poorest in the country.

India reported 18,522 new cases over the previous 24 hours, according to federal health data released on Tuesday, down slightly from Sunday’s record of 19,906.

With more than 550,000 total infections, India lags only the United States, Brazil and Russia in total cases.

More than 16,000 people

have died in India — a low figure when compared with countries with similar numbers of cases — though experts fear its hospitals will be unable to cope with a steep rise in infections.

India today enters what Modi has called “Unlock 2.0”, with many curbs on movement relaxed, though schools, cinemas, gyms and bars will remain shut. But some states have imposed their own lock-downs in cities with significant outbreaks.

A diver is helped out of the water by rescue and fire service personnel as they carry on rescue works the day after a ferry capsized in the Buriganga River in Dhaka, yesterday.

Bangladesh continues search for ferry accident victims

Australia to boost defence spending as China tensions riseAFP — BRISBANE

Australia will announce a substantial increase in defence spending and focus on projecting military power across the Indo-Pacific amid escalating tensions with China, in a major policy speech to be delivered today by Prime Minister Scott Morrison.

The address will set out Australia’s defence policy for the next ten years and earmark A$270bn ($185bn) for new and u p g r a d e d d e f e n c e capabilities.

“We must face the reality that we have moved into a new and less benign strategic era,” Morrison will warn, eyeing the end of unquestioned US hegemony and the rise of an increasingly assertive China.

“Even as we stare down the COVID pandemic at home, we need to also prepare for a post-COVID world that is poorer, more dangerous and more disorderly.”

Australia’s government is committing to spending two percent of GDP on defence —as US President Donald Trump has angrily demanded of allies — and spending almost 40 percent more over the last defence review in 2016.

The country will acquire more powerful strike capabil-ities, including the United States’ AGM-158C Long Range Anti-Ship Missile, as well as invest in hypersonic weapons research.

While acknowledging the nation of 25 million people cannot match its rivals in the region -- China officially plans

to spend $178bn on defence in 2020 alone — Morrison framed Australia as a regional power committed to an “open, sov-ereign Indo-Pacific, free from coercion and hegemony”.

Though Morrison says Aus-tralia remains prepared to send troops further afield “where it is in our national interest to do so”, that cannot come at the cost of its ability to respond to threats from and in its own backyard, he will say.

The Australian Defence Force will focus on building “stronger deterrence capabil-ities” to raise the cost for any would-be aggressor and con-centrate on the immediate region over operations further afield.

Australia has fought alongside the United States in every major war of the last century, sometimes in areas far from its shores or outside its immediate interests.

The announcement marks a significant shift in Australia’s defence posture that will be widely seen as an effort to counter Beijing’s growing influence in the region.

It also follows Morrison’s “Pacific Step-Up” policy —announced in 2018 to rebuild support among regional allies drifting toward Beijing — which has seen his gov-ernment ramp up diplomatic engagement and offer greater financial aid to its developing neighbours.

“We want a region where all countries, large and small, can engage freely with each other, guided by international rules and norms,” he will say.

Myanmar finds soldiers guilty of Rohingya atrocitiesAFP — YANGON

Three Myanmar military officers were found guilty by a court martial investigating atrocities against Rohingya Muslims in conflict-ridden Rakhine state, the army announced yesterday.

The rare action against mil-itary members came as Myanmar faces charges of gen-ocide at the United Nations’ top court over a brutal 2017 crackdown against the Rohingya.

Some 750,000 Rohingya fled to neighbouring Bang-ladesh with accounts of wide-spread murder, rape and arson.

Rights groups accused security forces of committing atrocities in various villages,

including Gu Dar Pyin, where they alleged at least five shallow mass graves had been found.

Estimates from survivors in Bangladesh put the death toll in the hundreds.

After initially denying the allegations, the military started court martial proceedings in September, admitting there had been “weakness in following instructions” in the village.

The commander-in-chief’s office announced Tuesday the court martial had “confirmed the guilty verdict” and sen-tenced three officers.

No details were provided on the perpetrators, their crimes, or sentences.

Rights groups Amnesty Inter-national called the lack of trans-parency on the court martial

“alarming”. “Closed door trials shrouded in secrecy, and marred by a lack of independence in the military judiciary system, are not the way to end military impunity in Myanmar,” said Amnesty’s Ming Yu Hah.

The government has largely supported the army’s justification of the 2017 operations as a means of rooting out insurgents.

Civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi admitted at the International Court of Justice in December, however, that disproportionate force may have been used.

The military has maintained any atrocities were committed by a few maverick individuals.

UN investigators also found evidence of extrajudicial killings in other Rakhine vil-lages, Maung Nu and Chut Pyin.

The army chief’s office said Tuesday a court of inquiry would “continue to investigate” events at both villages.

In 2018 the military sentenced members of the security forces to a decade in prison for the killing of 10 Rohingya in Inn Din village, but they were released after serving less than a year.

Two journalists who exposed the massacre were detained for more than 16 months before they were par-doned following global outcry.

The state remains a flash-point of ethnic and religious tensions, and the military has been locked in battle since January last year with insur-gents fighting for more autonomy for ethnic Rakhine Buddhists.

The Information Technology Ministry issued a statement saying it had received reports that mobile apps were “stealing and surreptitiously transmitting users’ data”. The compilation of such data, and its mining and profiling by elements hostile to India is “a matter of very deep and immediate concern which requires emergency measures”.

11WEDNESDAY 1 JULY 2020 ASIA

Police enter a shopping mall to disperse people attending a lunchtime rally in Hong Kong yeserday, as China passed a sweeping national security law for the city.

EU bans Pakistan

International

Airlines flights

for six months

AGENCIES — ISLAMABAD

The European Union’s aviation safety agency said yesterday that Pakistan’s national airline will not be allowed to fly into Europe for at least six months after the country’s aviation minister revealed that nearly a third of Pakistani pilots had cheated on their pilot’s exams.

Pakistan International Air-lines spokesman Abdullah Hafeez says PIA has not been flying to Europe because of the pandemic. But the airline had hoped to resume its flights to Oslo, Copenhagen, Paris, Bar-celona and Milan within the next two months.

“It is hurting us really bad,” he said of the pilots scandal.

An inquiry into a May 22 PIA crash that killed 97 people at the southern port city of Karachi resulted in the stunning revelation that 260 of 860 pilots in Pakistan had cheated on their pilots exams but were still given licences by the Civil Aviation Authority.

The government has since fired four officials of the reg-ulatory agency and criminal c h a r g e s a r e b e i n g considered.

The European Union Avi-ation Safety Agency “is con-cerned about the validity of the Pakistani pilot licenses and that Pakistan, as the State of operator, is currently not capable to certify and oversee its operators and aircraft in accordance with applicable international standards,” the organization said in its letter announcing the ban.

Meanwhile, the pilots and their union have raised ques-tions about a government list of 262 pilots with “dubious” credentials, saying it is full of discrepancies.

“We don’t have full details of the discrepancies with us,” said Abdul Sattar Khokhar, a spokesman at Pakistan’s civil aviation ministry. “The issue is being sorted out in consul-tation with airlines and civil aviation authorities.” The Pakistan Airlines Pilots Asso-ciation (PALPA) has also raised doubts about the list.

“It contains names of highly educated and qualified pilots who have passed all the tests,” its president, Chaudhry Salman, said. “We want a fair and impartial resolution to this matter.”

The report about the crash found the plane’s pilots failed to follow standard procedures and disregarded alarms.

Taliban reaffirm commitment to US deal in Pompeo callAFP — KABUL

The Taliban reaffirmed their commitment to a February deal to draw down the war in Afghanistan during a call with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the group’s spokesman has said.

The discussion came as US President Donald Trump faces mounting pressure to explain why he did nothing after being reportedly told that Russian spies had offered and paid cash to Taliban-linked militants for killing American soldiers.

The Taliban have denied that their fighters received any Russian bounties, and the

group’s Qatar-based chief negotiator Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar reiterated their pledge not to strike against the US.

Baradar told Pompeo that “according to the agreement, we do not allow anyone to use Afghan soil against the US and other countries”, Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen said on Monday in a statement on Twitter.

The New York Times, citing anonymous officials, had reported last week that Trump had been told about the alleged Russian bounties but he did nothing in response.

Trump denied being informed of the assessment

while the White House said the claim had been kept from him because the intelligence under-pinning it was unverified.

But another report from the Times on Monday said the pres-ident had received a report about the alleged Russian bounties as early as February.

That month, the United States had pledged to withdraw all its troops from Afghanistan by mid-2021 in return for security guarantees in a bid to pave the way for negotiations between warring sides.

Under the landmark agreement, which excluded the Afghan government, Wash-ington and the militants said

they would refrain from attacking each other.

The Taliban spokesman said Baradar and Pompeo discussed concerns about the deal, including intra-Afghan talks and the release of 5,000 imprisoned insurgents.

“We are committed to starting intra-Afghan talks,” Baradar told Pompeo, blaming the hold-up on the delayed release of prisoners, according to Shaheen.

The Afghan government in Kabul has said it has freed nearly 4,000 Taliban prisoners so far in a bid to kickstart the negotiations.

Pompeo acknowledged the

Taliban had refrained from attacking urban centres and military bases under the deal, but called on them to do more to reduce overall violence, according to Shaheen.

Violence had dropped across much of the country after the Taliban offered a brief ceasefire to mark the Islamic Eid al-Fitr festival last month, but officials say the insurgents have stepped up attacks in recent weeks.

Most attacks by the Taliban have targeted Afghan security forces, although there are regular police reports that civilians have been killed in roadside bomb blasts.

Health officials hold medical records collected from residents after taking samples for coronavirus during a door-to-door screening and testing operation at a slum area in Islamabad, yesterday.

Singapore poll campaign begins; Prime Minister’s brother not runningAP — SINGAPORE

Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s estranged brother is not running in next month’s general election but said Tuesday he hopes to be a “catalyst for change” as campaigning began.

Lee Hsien Yang, who brought his family feud into politics by joining an opposition party, said the governing Peo-ple’s Action Party had “lost its way” from when his father, Lee Kuan Yew, was prime minister. Hitting out at his brother, he said empirical evidence showed that dynastic politics causes bad government and that Singapore’s leadership had failed the people.

“I have chosen not to stand for political office because I believe Singapore does not need another Lee,” Lee Hsien Yang said in a statement on Facebook. “I do not seek power, prestige or financial rewards of political office. I hope to be a catalyst for change.”

“We need new ideas to reinvigorate Singapore. We must have genuine discussions and rigorous debate involving a diversity of Singaporean voices as we seek to navigate the challenging waters ahead,” he added, urging Singaporeans to “vote fearlessly” for a better future.

The PAP, which has ruled Singapore since 1959, has been praised for its economic man-agement but also criticized for muzzling the media and dis-senting voices. It won a land-slide victory in 2015 with 69.9% of total votes and swept 83 out of 89 parliamentary seats. This year, it faces contests for all 93

parliamentary seats but the opposition is fragmented.

Prime Minister Lee, 68, told reporters after submitting his candidacy on Tuesday that he wasn’t worried about his brother’s sway over voters.

The elections are expected to be the last for Lee, who has ruled since 2004 and plans to retire.

“As for Lee Hsien Yang, I have no comment. He is entitled to speak, like anybody else. Nowadays on social media we can have five, six million voices on the Internet. The public will assess which ones are worth listening to, which ones make sense,” the prime minister said.

The Lee brothers, whose father Lee Kuan Yew was Sin-gapore’s prime minister for 31 years and turned it into an affluent city-state, have engaged in a public spat since 2017 over the future of the late patriarch’s family home.

Lee Hsien Yang and his sister Lee Wei Ling accused their eldest brother of abusing his power to stop them from demolishing the family home according to the wishes of their father, who died in 2015.

They accused him of seeking to preserve the house to maintain his own political popularity and legitimacy. Lee Hsien Loong said the gov-ernment should be allowed to decide whether to maintain the house as part of the national heritage and that he had no role in the decision.

Analysts said the younger Lee’s presence could help the opposition make gains but won’t seriously threaten the PAP.

Doctors and donors: Pakistanis turn to ‘Corona Warriors’ Facebook groupREUTERS — ISTANBUL

When musician Zoraiz Riaz set up a Facebook group to help coordinate convalescent plasma donations for people fighting COVID-19 in Pakistan, he expected perhaps a few hundred responses.

Within a month, however, the “Corona Recovered War-riors” group had more than 320,000 members, needing a team of 33 volunteers to manage posts from families of patients across Pakistan seeking advice.

“Around 85 percent are looking for plasma,” Riaz, 27, said from his home in the eastern Pakistani metropolis of Lahore, one of the hardest-hit

cities in the South Asian nation, which has recorded nearly 210,000 infections and over 4,300 deaths from the virus.

“The rest are looking for dif-ferent medical supplies, oxygen, ventilators, injections for drugs, or leads on hospitals that have availability,” Riaz added.

The scale of the response highlights the large gap left by a disorganised healthcare system in Pakistan which is ill-equipped to offer systematic guidance as COVID-19 deaths mount.

The group this week fea-tured the country’s top expert giving advice on convalescent plasma treatment.

“There was no clear guidance from the government,

and we had to face this urgent amount of requests for plasma from almost everyone, even people whose medical con-sultants were not recom-mending it were coming to us asking for plasma,” Riaz said.

Plasma treatment, involving the infusion of plasma from a recovered COVID-19 patient to a recovering one as a source of antibodies, is widely sought despite limited information on its effectiveness.

Leading Pakistani haema-tologists warned this month the treatment had become wide-spread and that government guidelines were urgently needed — particularly with a burgeoning black market for plasma.

China passes sweeping Hong Kong security lawREUTERS — HONG KONG/BEIJING

Beijing unveiled its national security law for Hong Kong yesterday, punishing crimes of secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces with up to life in prison, heralding a more authoritarian era for China’s freest city.

China’s parliament passed the tailor-made legislation earlier in the day, giving Beijing sweeping powers over its implementation and setting the stage for the most radical changes in decades to the global financial hub’s way of life.

Beijing had kept full details of the law shrouded in secrecy, giving Hong Kong’s 7.5 million people no time to digest the complex legis-lation before it entered into force at 11pm (1500 GMT).

The timing was seen as a symbolic humiliation for Britain, coming just an hour before the 23rd anniversary of when Hong Kong’s last colonial governor, Chris Patten, a staunch critic of the law, tearfully handed back Hong Kong to Chinese rule.

Amid fears the law will crush the city’s freedoms, prominent activist Joshua Wong’s Demosisto and other pro-democracy groups said they would dissolve.

“It marks the end of Hong Kong that the world knew before,” Wong said on Twitter.

The legislation pushes Beijing further along a collision course with the United States,

Britain and other Western gov-ernments, which have said it erodes the high degree of autonomy the city was granted at its July 1, 1997, handover.

The United States con-demned the legislation as a vio-lation of Beijing’s international commitments and vowed to go on acting “against those who smothered Hong Kong’s freedom and autonomy.” Washington, already in dispute with China over trade, the South China Sea and the coronavirus, began eliminating Hong Kong’s special status under US law on Monday, halting defence exports and restricting technology access.

China said it would retaliate.Hong Kong leader Carrie

Lam, in a video message to the United Nations Human Rights

Council in Geneva, urged the international community to “respect our country’s right to safeguard national security”.

She said the law would not undermine the city’s autonomy or its independent judiciary.

Authorities in Beijing and Hong Kong have repeatedly said the legislation is aimed at a few “troublemakers” and will not affect rights and freedoms, nor investor interests.

As the law was passed in Beijing, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army garrison in Hong Kong held a drill which included exercises to stop sus-picious vessels and arrest fugi-tives, according to the Weibo social media account of state-run CCTV’s military channel.

The security legislation will supersede existing Hong Kong laws where there is a conflict.

Judges for security cases will be appointed by the city’s chief executive. Senior judges nor-mally allocate rosters up through Hong Kong’s inde-pendent judicial system.

According to the law, a new national security agency in Hong Kong will not be under the jurisdiction of the local gov-ernment. Authorities can carry out surveillance of and wire-tap people suspected of endan-gering national security, it said.

Those asking foreign coun-tries to sanction, blockade or take other hostile action against Hong Kong or China could be guilty of colluding foreign forces.

Authorities shall take nec-essary measures “to strengthen the management and servicing of foreign countries’ and international organisations’ branches in Hong Kong, as well as foreign media and NGOs in the city, the law says.

The legislation may get an early test with activists and pro-democracy politicians saying they would defy a police ban, amid coronavirus restrictions, on a rally on the anniversary of the July 1 handover.

At last year’s demonstration, which came amid a series of pro-democracy protests, a crowd stormed and vandalised the city’s legislature. “We will never accept the passing of the law, even though it is so over-powering,” said Democratic Party chairman Wu Chi-wai.

A majority in Hong Kong opposes the legislation, a poll this month showed, but support for the protests has fallen to only a slim majority.

Police dispersed a handful of activists protesting against the law at a shopping mall.

Dozens of supporters of Beijing popped champagne corks and waved Chinese flags in celebration in front of gov-ernment headquarters.

“This will leave anti-China spies and people who brought chaos to Hong Kong with nowhere to go.” Britain, the European Union, Japan, Taiwan and others have criticised the legislation.

According to the law, a new national security agency in Hong Kong will not be under the jurisdiction of the local government. Authorities can carry out surveillance of and wire-tap people suspected of endangering national security.

12 WEDNESDAY 1 JULY 2020EUROPE

British Prime Minister pledges ‘infrastructure revolution’ for virus crisisAFP — DUDLEY, UNITED KINGDOM

Prime Minister Boris Johnson pledged yesterday to deliver an “infrastructure revolution” to help Britain build its way out of the economic devastation of the coronavirus outbreak.

But his optimistic message was thin on detail and remi-niscent of last year’s election pledges.

And it was overshadowed by the first local lockdown since an easing of measures was announced, because of a spike in cases in the city of Leicester, central England.

Shops which only reopened two weeks ago after being shut for more than three months were forced to close again, and travel was restricted to the city.

Johnson tried to harness the can-do spirit that US president Franklin D Roosevelt adopted when he introduced a “New Deal” for tackling the Great Depression 90 years ago.

“This is a programme for jobs, jobs, jobs because it’s by building, building, building... that we will get the jobs this nation needs,” he said after touring a construction site in Dudley, 64km in the West Mid-lands, central England.

“It sounds like a New Deal, and all I can say is, if that is so then that is how it is meant to sound... because that is what the times demand.” He promised £1bn ($1.2bn) for school repairs and a further £4bn for “shovel-ready” projects from road maintenance to public transport in what he said was a new “infrastructure revolution” that would also build new homes.

Johnson’s message was thin

on detail, particularly on jobs, and in part repackaged broad-brush promises his Conserv-ative party made before December’s general election.

He pledged again to spread the wealth more fairly from London to economically strug-gling regions that traditionally supported the opposition Labour party.

“Too many parts of this country have felt left behind, neglected, unloved,” he said.

That pledge helped Johnson secure a record 80-seat parlia-mentary majority that enabled him in January to take Britain out of the European Union after repeated delays.

But Britain is now dealing with Europe’s deadliest virus outbreak and the worst eco-nomic contraction among the Group of Seven (G7) leading industrialised states.

And Johnson’s once soaring approval ratings slipped into negative territory in a YouGov poll this month.

Opposition leaders said the

£5bn announced yesterday was simply bringing forward some of the money promised in a spending plan his government had already unveiled for the coming five years.

“What’s been announced amounts to less than £100 per person, and it’s the re-announcement of many man-ifesto pledges and commit-ments,” opposition Labour party leader Kier Starmer said.

The CBI business lobby’s director Carolyn Fairbairn said “a restorative injection of infra-structure investment” could help the UK economy.

But “the reality is that longer-term plans will falter without continued help for firms”, she warned.

Johnson’s rambunctious style and oratoratorical flour-ishes have appealed to Britons tired of ceaseless battles over Brexit that dragged on for nearly four years.

The 56-year-old former journalist remains popular in his party and has commanding control of Britain’s political agenda.

But he has faced criticism for Britain having the world’s third-highest virus death toll in the outbreak — now officially at 43,730 — and for his handling of the lockdown.

Labour’s Starmer has accused Johnson of falling “asleep at the wheel” — and the Leicester lockdown will be a further test of his strategy to fight the disease.

It will mean the city’s pubs and restaurants will not fully reopen along with those across the rest on England from this weekend.

Traffic signs enforce a new road layout turning Green Lane into a one-way street to allow for widened pavements as a measure to limit the spread of COVID-19 in the North Evington area of Leicester, central England, yesterday.

Britain locks down city of Leicesterafter infection rate flares upREUTERS — LEICESTER

Britain has imposed a stringent lockdown on the English city of Leicester following a local flare-up of the novel coronavirus, overshadowing Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s attempts to nudge the country back to normality.

The United Kingdom has been one of the world’s worst-hit areas, with more than 54,000 suspected deaths, though infections have waned and many restrictions are to be lifted across England from Sat-urday to revive the economy.

However, in Leicester, in the eastern Midlands, that relaxation is in reverse after figures showed its seven-day infection rate was three times higher than the next worst city. Leicester accounted for 10 percent of positive cases in England in the past week, the

government said.“Going back into lockdown

might be a good thing to get rid of the virus. But on the other hand, a lot businesses are going to suffer,” Shane Durrant, who works at a bookmaker that had just begun reopening, said.

The Leicester lockdown drew attention away from a speech by Johnson in Dudley, 50 miles away, to detail plans for rebuilding the economy after the lockdown.

“I thank the people of Leicester for their forbearance,” he said in the speech. “I always said there were going to be local flare-ups and that we would deal with them locally, and that’s what we are doing in Leicester and we’ll do it elsewhere.”

Health Minister Matt Hancock said the government was still analysing the exact

reasons behind the rise in Leicester and added that the local lockdown would require legal changes with new measures enforced by police.

Leicester mayor Peter Soulsby said it had been hard to get details from the gov-ernment including what areas the lockdown would cover.

Schools in the city, where the remains of King Richard III of England were found in 2012, will close from Thursday after an unusually high incidence of infections in children.

Residents said people had been widely flouting social dis-tancing and other measures when the government first began easing rules two weeks ago.

“I think if people listened and stayed at home, then we wouldn’t be here,” said Bob Sharma, a bank manager.

Scottish firm to trial T cells as possible virus treatment

REUTERS — LONDON

A Scottish biotechnology firm said yesterday it would start clinical trials on a possible T cell treatment for COVID-19, aimed at reducing the need for intensive care among hospi-talised patients.

T cells are white blood cells that form a key part of the immune system, along with antibodies, and scientists are hopeful they could play a role in tackling the novel corona-virus pandemic.

TC BioPharm (TCB) said it would conduct the trial at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, using gamma-delta T cells in a technique it has previously used on cancer patients.

“Harnessing the immune system to effectively and safely kill virus-infected cells is an extremely attractive strategy,” said Nik Hirani of the Uni-versity of Edinburgh, the chief investigator for the trial.

The organisers of the trial said that data showed severely affected COVID-19 patients might have a deficiency of T cells.

TCB will manufacture banks of T cells, which can be donated by healthy volunteers, that it is then hoped can be used to treat patients as they develop severe COVID-19 symptoms.

Scottish Government Trade Minister Ivan McKee said in a statement that the devolved administration would support TC Biopharm and others in the attempt to develop treatments for COVID-19.

There is a global need to find safe and effective treat-ments for the disease, which has killed hundreds of thou-sands and severely hit most major economies in the six months since it was first discovered.

Steroid drug dexameth-asone has been shown in a UK trial to reduce mortality in patients who need ventilation or oxygen, but not in those who are not yet severely ill.

Lockdown gave France’s Greens election boostREUTERS — LYON

The coronavirus lockdown persuaded retired speech ther-apist Anne-Marie Arnaud a better future could be had, one with emptier skies, fresher air and quieter streets rid of diesel-belching cars.

And so the pensioner from Lyon switched her vote in last Sunday’s municipal election, among the first worldwide to be held after countries began emerging from lockdown, in favour of the Green party.

The results, which saw the Greens take control of or become an alliance partner in

no fewer than 11 city halls, may point to a broader shift in voting patterns as governments, com-panies, and citizens adjust to the COVID-19 era.

“I realised how clean the air was, how nice it was to walk in a city, and be awoken by birdsong rather than car horns,” Arnaud, 64, said. “I told myself there was good in this crisis and that we had to rethink our city in a different way.” Certainly, support for the party officially known as European Ecology — The Greens (EELV) was already growing.

With no lawmakers in France’s parliament and only

four staff in its Paris head-quarters, the Green party per-formed more better than expected in last year’s European Parliament elections, polling third with 13.5 percent of the vote.

Over the past couple of years, they have made strides elsewhere in Europe too.

In Germany, the Greens are the second most popular political party though have sunk into the background during the pandemic, while they are junior partners in Ireland’s new coa-lition government, as well as in Austria.

But the pandemic is forcing

a rethink of how we live our lives: from the future of global supply chains to how we work in offices, from how we plan our cities to the food we eat, “That played a part,” Julien Bayou, leader of the Greens in France, said of his party’s success in the elections.

In Lyon, Green candidate Gregory Doucet won 52.4 percent of Sunday’s vote, wres-tling control from Gerard Collomb, the veteran socialist mayor of France’s third biggest city who was representing Pres-ident Emmanuel Macron’s ruling party.

He did so on a campaign platform to create a 450

kilometre-long network of cycle highways, widen pave-ments for pedestrians, source 50% of school food locally and build more social housing.

From Bordeaux in the southwest to Strasbourg in the east, Sunday’s green wave engulfed cities large and small across France. In Paris, too, they joined forces with the socialist incumbent re-elected on a promise to cut pollution.

In Lyon, Doucet’s campaign chief Ninon Guinel said the coronavirus crisis had exposed the fragility of Western econ-omies and the need to unwind the excesses of globalisation.

Walk-in testing centre at Frankfurt airportA staff checks samples yesterday at a laboratory of German biotech company Centogene, which opened a walk-in testing centre at the airport in Frankfurt.

Germany to dissolve special forces unit over far-right linksREUTERS — BERLIN

Germany’s defence minister plans to disband a company of its elite KSK special forces in a effort to purge them of a persistent problem of far-right extremism, a ministry document yesterday showed.

Established in 1996, the KSK’s reputation was tarnished in 2003 when its then-com-mander was forced into early retirement after being accused of being close to far-right extremists — links that have continued to dog the unit’s reputation since.

In May, police seized weapons, explosives and ammunition during a raid on the private property of a KSK soldier in the eastern state of Saxony. There have been several recent far-right inci-dents in the unit, the ministry document showed.

“The second company will be disbanded,” Defence State Secretary Peter Tauber wrote in the document.

“An analysis of current events and right-wing extremist cases makes it clear...that the KSK, at least in some areas, has become independent in recent few years, under the influence of an unhealthy understanding of elites by indi-vidual leaders.”

In June, a KSK captain asked Defence Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer to intervene in a 10-page letter in which he accused instructors and senior commandos in the unit of cultivating a “toxic culture of acceptance” under which complaints about far right influence were suppressed.

Germany is trying to stem a rise in violent far-right ideology

France’s oldest nuclear power plant shuts downANATOLIA — PARIS

France’s oldest power plant Fessenheim went offline at midnight on Monday after 40 years of operation, the state-owned energy company EDF announced.

France has 56 nuclear reactors currently in operation which provide 75 percent of the

country’s energy consumption, making the nation the world’s biggest consumer of nuclear energy.

The development of Fes-senheim was welcome news for residents of the region, previously fairly devoid of industry or any commerce. The location was an attractive one for its proximity to Germany: Fessenheim is a

commune located directly on the border, in the Haut-Rhin Department in the Grand Est region. Haut-Rhin translates to “Upper Rhine” for the Rhine River which flows through.

Its opening in 1977 in eastern France meant tre-mendous economic benefits for the very rural area, offering employment at the plant as well

as at subsequent businesses that unfolded. The plant employs approximately 750 people as well as 300 service providers.

But now many of those people will have to be relocated. Approximately 2,500 people in the Alsatian region will be unduly affected by the closure.

Fessenheim Mayor Claude Brender is worried for his town,

saying that he has received no word on formal support from the government, despite plans for the plant’s closure having been in place for years.

“This is not a day of cele-bration,” he declared in an interview with franceinfo TV. “More than six million will be missing from the coffers of the community of municipalities.”

“This is a programme for jobs, jobs, jobs because it’s by building, building, building... that we will get the jobs this nation needs,” Johnson he said after touring a construction site in Dudley, 64km in the West Midlands, central England.

13WEDNESDAY 1 JULY 2020 EUROPE

Putin urges Russians to vote for security, prosperity

AFP — MOSCOW

President Vladimir Putin yesterday urged Russians to take part in a nationwide vote on constitutional reforms to ensure “stability, security and pros-perity”.

In a televised address before the week-long ballot ends today, Putin said Russians should vote for the country “we want to pass on to our children” but made no mention of a controversial amendment that would allow him to potentially stay in power until 2036. Russians began voting last week on the package of con-stitutional changes proposed by Putin, including a reset of presi-dential term limits that would allow him to run twice again after his current six-year term ends in 2024.

Other amendments would strengthen presidential and par-liamentary powers, enshrine tra-ditional values including an

effective ban on gay marriage and guarantee better minimum wages and pensions.

“We are voting for the

country in which we want to live, with modern education and health care, with reliable social protection of citizens, with an

effective government that is accountable to society,” Putin said. “We are voting for the country... we want to pass on to o u r c h i l d r e n a n d grandchildren.”

Russia’s two houses of par-liament have already approved the amendments but Putin reit-erated they would only take effect if supported by a majority of voters.

“We can ensure stability, security, prosperity and a decent life only through development, only together and by ourselves,” he said. Putin, who was first

elected president in 2000, announced the reforms earlier this year, after winning re-election with an overwhelming majority in 2018.

The amendment resetting presidential terms was a last-minute addition before law-makers voted on the reforms, with critics accusing Putin of seeking to become “president for life”. Initially planned for April 22, the vote was postponed by the coronavirus outbreak but rescheduled after Putin said the epidemic had peaked and offi-cials began reporting lower

numbers of new cases.There is little doubt the

reforms will be approved, with a state-run exit poll of more than 163,000 voters this week showing 76 percent in favour.

Kremlin opponents have denounced the vote as a farce and accused the government of risking lives by going ahead with it as Russia continues to record new coronavirus cases.

Government advertisements urging Russians to vote have played up the patriotic and pop-ulist measures but not mentioned the presidential term reset.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko greet veterans during a ceremony unveiling a World War Two memorial near Rzhev in Tver Region, Russia, yesterday.

President unveils monument tofallen Red Army WWII soldiers

AP — MOSCOW

Russian President Vladimir Putin and his counterpart from Belarus yesterday unveiled a monument honouring fallen Red Army soldiers who fought in one of the most bloody battles of World War II.

Putin and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko traveled to the village of Khoroshevo, just outside Rzhev, about 200km northwest of Moscow for a somber ceremony that involved goose-stepping troops laying wreaths to the towering figure of a soldier.

The battle of Rzhev, in which the Red Army launched a series of offensives in 1942-1943 to dislodge the Wermacht from its positions close to Moscow, involved enormous Soviet losses from persistent, poorly prepared attacks against well-fortified Nazi positions. Putin said that 1.3 million Red Army soldiers were killed, wounded in combat or went missing in action during the fighting around Rzhev that raged for more than a year. The battle, which became known as “the Rzhev meat grinder,” was largely neglected by Soviet propaganda and official historians because of the Red Army’s huge losses and its generals’ blunders.

“It’s impossible to think without pain about the colossal losses that the Red Army suffered,” Putin said. He added that “not so long ago, official history didn’t consider it proper to talk too much about the fighting near Rzhev.” The Russian president, who takes a deeply emotional attitude to World War II history, said that “we will always remember the high price the Soviet people paid for the victory.” The Soviet Union lost a staggering 27 million people in what it called the Great Patriotic War. Victory Day, which is celebrated on May 9, is the nation’s most important secular holiday.

The Red Square parade, postponed this year because of the coronavirus pandemic, was held on June 24, marking the day in 1945 when the first parade was held on Red Square after the defeat of Nazi Germany.

Belgian King expresses‘deepest regrets’ over DR Congo colonial pastAFP — BRUSSELS

Belgium’s King Philippe expressed his “deepest regrets” yesterday for the harm done during Belgian colonial rule in DR Congo, in a first for his country.

Philippe made his remarks in a letter to the president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Felix Tshisekedi, on the 60th anniversary of Congo’s independence on June 30, 1960.

The death of African American George Floyd last month as he was being arrested by police in the US city of Min-neapolis has also stoked fresh debate in Belgium over its colonial record.

Belgium’s colonisation of the vast mineral-rich country was reputed to be one of the harshest regimes imposed by European powers that ruled most of Africa in the late 19th and 20th centuries.

The scars of that past remain, with two-thirds of the population in the former Zaire living below the poverty line and the country riven by con-flict and instability.

“I want to express my deepest regrets for these wounds of the past whose pain is reawakened today by the dis-crimination still present in our societies,” Philippe said.

Historians say that millions of Africans from areas in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo were killed, mutilated or died of disease as they worked on rubber plantations belonging to Belgium’s King Leopold II.

Philippe, without men-tioning Leopold by name, said

that during this period “acts of violence and cruelty were com-mitted which weigh on our col-lective memory”.

“The colonial period which followed (1908-60) also caused suffering and humiliation,” he said.

On the day Congo broke away from Belgian colonial rule, the country’s prime min-ister and independence icon Patrice Lumumba delivered a scathing speech about the racist maltreatment and “humiliating slavery” the Congolese people had endured.

“We experienced the slurs, the insults, the beatings that we had to undergo morning, noon and evening, because we were negroes,” he proclaimed.

King Philippe said he would combat all forms of racism and said he wanted to encourage the reflection on the issue begun by the Belgian par-liament so that such memories could be put to rest.

Several statues of Leopold, who ruled between 1865 and 1909, have been daubed with paint or torn down by pro-testers in Belgium in recent weeks, and a petition has been launched for their removal.

Yesterday, the city of Ghent marked the 60th anniversary of Congolese independence by removing a statue of Leopold.

“The time has come for Belgium to embark on a journey of truth,” said Prime Minister Sophie Wilmes in Brussels during a ceremony marking Congo’s independence day.

“All work of truth and memory begins with acknowl-edging the suffering of the other,” she added.

EU to summon Venezuela envoy in response to expulsion orderAP — BRUSSELS

The European Union’s top diplomat said yesterday that the bloc will summon Venezuela’s ambassador in response to the South American country’s decision to expel the EU envoy in Caracas, insisting all options “are on the table.”

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on Monday ordered the EU ambassador to leave the country following stiff financial measures imposed by the 27-nation bloc against 11 Venezuelans, including Luis Parra, who heads a National

Assembly rival to the one headed by opposition leader Juan Guaidó. Maduro gave the ambassador 72 hours to leave Venezuela.

“We believe that the decision to give 72 hours to an ambas-sador with the EU in Caracas to leave the country will require the necessary measures of rec-iprocity but I can not define what it is going to be,” Josep Borrell said during a news conference.

“We will summon the ambassador of Nicolás Maduro to the EU institutions today. Let’s see after this meeting, at that

moment, all options are on the table.” The measures imposed by the EU brought to 36 the total number of Venezuelan officials under European sanctions, which include a travel ban and freezing assets. EU officials said in a statement the sanctions target individuals and don’t affect the population in general.

Venezuela is a once-wealthy oil nation experiencing an eco-nomic and political crisis that’s driven roughly 5 million people from the country amid shortages of basic goods, soaring inflation and broken hospitals.

While the United States has

led the push to oust Maduro with sanctions, leaders in Europe and Canada have also thrown their support behind Guaidó, in a coalition of nearly 60 nations. However, Maduro remains in power with control over the military and interna-tional support from allies including China, Russia, Iran and Cuba.

“We are convinced that any measure that hampers diplo-matic work only contributes to escalate the tensions and undermining a peaceful and political way out of the crisis,” Borrell said.

Voting results in Poland

confirm Duda in

presidential runoff

AP — WARSAW

Official final results issued yesterday from the first round of Poland’s presidential election show incumbent President Andrzej Duda secured 43.5 percent of the vote and needs to go into a runoff July 12 with Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski.

The results announced by the State Electoral Commission were in line with an exit poll taken on Sunday. Voter turnout that day was 64.51 percent, a record in more than 30 years of Poland’s democracy.

The conservative Duda and the centrist Trzaskowski, who received 30.46 percent of the vote, have resumed travelling across Poland to meet with potential voters as part of what is expected to be an aggressive runoff campaign focused on discrediting each other.

However, Duda responded positively to a debate invitation from Trzaskowski, but a final decision on the event has not been made.

The two are also seeking to win the votes of nine other candidates who com-peted in the election’s first round.

Duda has already bowed toward far-right backers of Krzysztof Bosak, who fin-ished fourth with 6.78 percent of the vote. But Bosak said his Confederation party would “keep equal distance” from both

finalists. He called the choice of Trza-skowski or Duda as choosing between “an open enemy and a false friend, and you don’t know which is worse.”

According to the Confederation party’s strategy, it can only grow when the con-servative Law and Justice party that has governed Poland since late 2015 is weakened. Law and Justice is backing Duda’s reelection. A natural source for more votes for Trzaskowski would seem to be supporters of Szymon Holownia, a Catholic

TV personality who founded his own movement and finished third in Sunday’s first round with 13.87 percent of the vote.

But Holownia is making his endorsement of Trzaskowski in the runoff conditional on agreeing on issues that would be key to them both.

The remaining candidates in the first round won less than 3 percent of the vote, including Poland’s presidential candidate, Robert Biedron, who finished with 2.22 percent.

A file photo of Poland President Andrzej Duda gesturing as he speaks after the announcement of the first exit poll results on the first round of presidential elections in Lowicz.

UN agency urges Hungary to repeal tightened asylum rulesREUTERS — BUDAPEST

The United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) has called on Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government to repeal a tight-ening of the Hungarian asylum system, provisions of which it says could violate international laws.

Hungary shut so-called migrant transit zones on its borders last month, freeing about 300 refugees from prison-like conditions, but also hardened rules, in effect barring future asylum applicants.

The new rules require asylum seekers to submit applications at consulates in neighbouring coun-tries rather than at the Hungarian border.

“This may expose asylum-seekers to the risk of refoulement and ill-treatment which would amount to a violation of the 1951 Refugee Convention and other international and regional human rights instruments to which Hungary is a State Party,” the UNHCR said in a statement late on Monday.

“Effective access to territory is an essential pre-condition to

be able to exercise the right to seek asylum.” A government spokesman said the new rules would provide a possibility for asylum seekers to submit their requests in a regulated manner.

“Illegal migration goes against Hungarian and European Union regulations,” the spokesman said in an email. “Therefore, in line with the opinion of the Hungarian people, Hungary will continue to protect the EU’s Schengen (agreement on visa-free travel) borders from illegal migration.” The UNHCR urged Orban’s government to

withdraw the act and bring its asylum system in line with inter-national human rights laws and EU law. During the peak of Europe’s 2015 migration crisis, Orban ordered Hungary’s southern border to be sealed, blocking a route for hundreds of thousands of migrants.

Hungary moved to dismantle the migrant transit zones at its southern border after a European court ruling. But human rights groups say the newly tightened rules will make it even harder for refugees to gain asylum in the EU via Hungary.

COVID-19 cases below 7,000in Russia for fifth day in rowANATOLIA — MOSCOW

The daily growth in coronavirus cases in Russia stayed below 7,000 for a fifth day in a row while recoveries are rising, resulting in a falling share of active cases, according to official figures.

Yesterday another 6,693 coronavirus cases were confirmed in the country, bringing the country’s tally to 647,849, with active cases accounting for about a third of the total number, the country’s emer-gency task force said in a daily report. Meanwhile, the virus claimed 154 lives over the last 24 hours, raising the death toll to 9,320, it added. Over the same period 9,220 patients were discharged from hospitals, pushing recoveries up to 412,650. Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said that although the number of new cases is declining across the country, the government will continue to increase the number of tests, because it helps “identify new cases quickly

Russians began voting last week on the package of constitutional changes proposed by Putin, including a reset of presidential term limits that would allow him to run twice again after his current six-year term ends in 2024.

14 WEDNESDAY 1 JULY 2020AMERICAS

US could hit 100,000 new virus cases a day: FauciAFP — WASHINGTON

A top US health expert warned Congress yesterday that new coronavirus cases could more than double to 100,000 per day if authorities and the public fail to take steps to suppress the pandemic.

Infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci, a leading member of President Donald Trump’s coronavirus task force, said the United States was headed in the “wrong direction” on the pandemic and demanded that Americans wear masks and avoid crowds after lax behaviour propelled new outbreaks.

“I’m very concerned and I’m not satisfied with what’s going on, because we’re going in the wrong direction,” he testified to a Senate panel.

Alarming spikes in new cases in southern hotspots Texas and Florida are driving the daily national total of new cases to over 40,000 per day, and they need to be tamped down quickly to avoid dan-gerous surges elsewhere in the country, Fauci stressed.

“Clearly we are not in total control right now,” he said adding: “I would not be sur-prised if it goes up to 100,000 a day if this does not turn around.” The dire messaging reinforced concerns about the US ability to rein in a pandemic

that has claimed some 126,000 American lives.

The testimony comes as the United States, the world’s hardest-hit nation, with more than 2.6 million infections, was left off the list of 15 countries to which the European Union will open its borders from July 1, and as it grapples with how to assure a safe reopening of schools in the coming months.

Fauci said he believed some states are “skipping over some of the checkpoints” that assure safe reopenings of business and public spaces.

And he also offered a blunt

message to the nation’s young adults who have engaged in “dangerous” behaviour including congregating in clubs, not wearing masks, and not fol-lowing social distancing guidelines.

“I think we need to emphasise the responsibility that we have, both as indi-viduals and as part of a societal effort to end the epidemic, that

we all have to play a part in that,” Fauci said.

The head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Robert Redfield, sounded the alarm about rising trajectories in several jurisdictions, including COVID-19 hospitali-zations rising in 12 states, and said it was “critical” that every American takes personal responsibility and “embraces

the use of face coverings.” But the chairman of the panel, Republican Senator Lamar Alex-ander, also pointed the finger at Trump, saying the president had the power to end politicisation of mask-wearing that suggests “if you’re for Trump, you don’t wear a mask. If you’re against Trump, you do.”

“That’s why I’ve suggested that the president occasionally

wear a mask,” Alexander said.“The president has plenty of

admirers, they would follow his lead,” he added.

“It would help end this political debate.” Trump, who refuses to wear a mask at public events and in the past has mocked his rivals for wearing them, has signalled he wants to move on from the coronavirus crisis and focus on his re-election campaign.

Democrats including his November election rival Joe Biden have savaged the pres-ident for lack of leadership on pandemic mitigation.

Yesterday’s hearing focused in part on whether the United States can adequately prepare for tens of millions of children returning to school in the coming months despite the resilient pandemic raging in some states.

The American Academy of Paediatrics has advocated that the coming school year begin with students physically present in schools, arguing that children are less likely to become symp-tomatic or severely ill with coronavirus than adults.

Fauci himself said he feels “very strongly we need to do whatever we can to get our children back to school.”

He also said he was “cau-tiously optimistic” that a vaccine could be ready by the end of the year or early 2021.

Dr. Anthony Fauci (left), Director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and other top health officials testify before the Senate Health, Education, Labour and Pensions Committee hearing on Capitol Hill, in Washington, DC, yesterday.

White House to brief Democrats on alleged Russian payments to kill US troopsREUTERS — WASHINGTON

The Trump administration has been preparing to react if necessary to intelligence that Russia allegedly paid the Taliban to kill US soldiers in Afghanistan, President Donald Trump’s national security adviser said as the White House prepared on Tuesday to brief Democratic lawmakers on the matter.

“The Administration, including the National Security Council staff, have been pre-paring should the situation warrant action,” National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien said in a statement late on Monday night.

The White House has sought to play down reports that it knew about accusations that Russia paid the Taliban bounties to kill US and other coalition troops but had not briefed Trump or moved on the infor-mation. That raised serious con-cerns among both Republicans and Democrats about not only the safety of American forces but also the administration’s handling of the matter.

White House officials promised to brief Democratic lawmakers only after sharing information with Trump’s fellow Republicans, who were briefed on Monday.

The meeting was set for 8am according to an aide. At least two Republicans said they still had concerns following their meeting.

Four US government sources confirmed following weekend media reports that classified US intelligence reports suggested that a Russian mil-itary intelligence unit had offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants to kill US and allied forces in Afghanistan. The sources indicated US

government agencies and experts on balance believed the intelligence reporting to be credible.

Subsequent reports in the New York Times and Wash-ington Post said several American soldiers were believed to have died as a result of the program, which the Kremlin has denied.

Several news outlets have also reported that information on the bounties was included in a daily written report delivered to the president in February and in a CIA publication in May.

Democratic US Represent-ative Abigail Spanberger, a former CIA officer who was among those invited yesterday’s briefing, said its inclusion in the presidential daily brief showed the information was “credible and that there was sourcing behind it that was deeply con-cerning and vetted to some level.”

That Trump “didn’t take the time to read the document is not an excuse... What comes next? He maybe didn’t know it. He maybe didn’t read the brief, but now he knows it. Now everyone knows it. What are we going to do about it?” she told CNN in an interview ahead of the White House meeting.

Trump administration offi-cials and the White House have said there was no consensus on the underlying intelligence among US agencies and Trump had not been made aware of it, something O’Brien echoed in his statement late on Monday.

O’Brien also said whoever told the media about the intelli-gence reports endangered national security. John Ratcliffe, the director of national intelli-gence, in a statement on Monday said the “unauthorised disclo-sures now jeopardise our ability to ever find out the full story.”

US senators want review of drug supply chainREUTERS — WASHINGTON

Republican and Democratic US senators called for a government analysis of foreign influence in the US pharmaceutical supply chain yesterday, saying the coro-navirus pandemic has exposed an over-reliance on China and other countries for the production of essential drugs.

Republican Senator Marco Rubio and Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren were to introduce the US Pharmaceutical Supply Chain Review Act yesterday.

The bill would require the government to study the effects of relying on foreign companies and foreign investment for the production of pharmaceuticals for the US market, and provide a report within one year, according to a copy of the legislation.

“To defeat the current COVID-19 crisis and better equip the United States against future pandemics, we must take control of our supply chain and rely less on foreign countries for our critical drugs,” Warren said in a statement. China is one of the countries that invests in US

drug companies, but the sen-ators are also interested in getting a view of all foreign investment in the US pharma-ceutical industry, an aide said.

Republican President Donald Trump has long pledged to bring US manufacturing back from overseas, but the coronavirus and concern about dependence on imports, particularly from China, has spurred a flurry of new activity.

China overtook the United States as the world’s top manu-facturing country in 2010 and was responsible for 28 percent

of global output in 2018, according to United Nations data.

Rubio, a leading congres-sional proponent of tougher China policy, said the report required by the bill would provide information necessary to address supply chain vulner-abilities and reduce overreliance on China for pharmaceuticals.

The bill would require the Federal Trade Commission and the Secretary of the Treasury, acting through the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), to conduct the study.

California has record surge in virus cases; Arizona clamps downREUTERS — LOS ANGELES

California marked a record spike in new COVID-19 infections on Monday, a tally showed, as Los Angeles reported an “alarming” one-day surge that put it over 100,000 cases.

Los Angeles has become a new epicentr ein the pandemic as coronavirus cases and hospitalisations surge there despite Cali-fornia Governor Gavin Newsom’s strict orders requiring residents to wear masks in nearly all public spaces.

“The alarming increases in cases, pos-itivity rates and hospitalisations signals that we, as a community, need to take imme-diate action to slow the spread of COVID-19,” Barbara Ferrer, director of public health for Los Angeles County, said in a statement announcing the sharp rise.

“Otherwise, we are quickly moving toward overwhelming our healthcare system and seeing even more devastating illness and death.”

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti announced a “hard pause” on when movie theatres, theme parks and other enter-tainment venues can reopen. Los Angeles County is the biggest movie theatre market in the United States.

Los Angeles County said its beaches will be closed for the Independence Day weekend and fireworks displays will be banned.

Statewide positive tests for COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the virus, rose by at least 7,418 in California on Monday to nearly 223,000, the biggest one-day increase since tracking began. Los

Angeles County, with a population of 10 million, has recorded 100,000 cases.

California is among a number of US states including Florida, Texas and Arizona battling a new wave of infections as the nation emerges from weeks of clamp-downs on residents and businesses.

Arizona Governor Doug Ducey on Monday ordered the closure of clubs, gyms, movie theatres and water parks for at least 30 days. Ducey also delayed the start of public schools until at least August 17.

“Our expectation is that next week our numbers will be worse,” Ducey said at an afternoon news conference. Vice President Mike Pence will travel to Phoenix today to discuss efforts to fight the pandemic’s resurgence.

New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy said

on Monday indoor dining will not resume tomorrow as planned and would be post-poned indefinitely.

In Kansas, Governor Laura Kelly imposed a statewide mandate requiring the wearing of masks in public spaces, which she said was necessary to avoid another shutdown.

Beaches in Florida’s Broward County and Palm Beach County will not open for the July 3-5 holiday weekend, officials said on Sunday, a blow to residents hoping to celebrate Independence Day there. Miami-Dade County has also announced beach closures for the holiday weekend.

AMC, the largest US movie theater chain, on Monday said it was pushing back the reopening of its theatres to July 30 from July 15.

A worker carries a sign asking for participants to join a research study at a drive-in COVID-19 testing site amid the coronavirus pandemic, in Los Angeles, California.

Facebook says will give priority to original news reportingAFP — SAN FRANCISCO

Facebook yesterday said it will give priority to original news reporting as part of an effort to divert attention from spam, click bait and specious articles.

The world’s leading social network said it will also downplay news stories that lack bylines that can be checked or from publishers that don’t clearly share information about their staff.

“We’ve found that publishers who do not include this infor-mation often lack credibility to readers and produce content with clickbait or ad farms, all content people tell us they don’t want to see on Facebook,” Campbell Brown, Facebook’s vice president for global news partnerships, and product manager Jon Levin said in a blog post. The moves come as Facebook tries to diffuse an advertiser boycott that has

morphed into a global digital activist campaign aimed at curbing hateful and toxic content on the social media giant.

The unprecedented move has been joined by major brands like Unilever, Starbucks, Levis and Coca-Cola, with nearly 200 firms pausing advertising on the social network, wiping out billions in Facebook’s market value.

Some companies have signed on to the #StopHateForProfit campaign organised by social

justice activists, while others have simply acted on their own to avoid the toxic atmosphere of Facebook.

The boycott gained momentum amid the latest civil unrest as activists pressed Facebook to be more aggressive about curbing racist and inflam-matory content, including from President Donald Trump.

Michelle Amazeen, a Boston University professor of commu-nication, said the latest action

“suggests that social media need to take this issue seriously or it’s going to affect their bottom line.” Facebook appeared to respond late last week by announcing it would ban a “wider category of hateful content” in ads.

Chief executive Mark Zuck-erberg said Facebook also would add tags to posts that are “news-worthy” but violate platform rules — following the lead of Twitter, which has used such labels on tweets from Trump.

The changes announced yes-terday are aimed at stories dis-played as part of the News Feed at Facebook.

“Original reporting plays an important role in informing people around the world, from breaking a news story, to creating an in-depth investigative report, uncovering new facts and data, sharing critical updates in times of crisis, or broadcasting eye-witness reports,” Brown and Levin said.

Infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci, a leading member of President Donald Trump’s coronavirus task force, said the United States was headed in the “wrong direction” on the pandemic and demanded that Americans wear masks and avoid crowds after lax behaviour propelled new outbreaks.

15WEDNESDAY 1 JULY 2020 AMERICAS

US Supreme Court allows public money for religious schools in major rulingREUTERS — WASHINGTON

The US Supreme Court narrowed the separation of church and state in a major ruling yesterday by endorsing Montana tax credits that helped pay for students to attend reli-gious schools, a decision paving the way for more public funding of faith-based institutions.

In a 5-4 decision with the conservative justices in the majority and the liberal justices dissenting, the court backed a Montana programme that gave tax incentives for people to donate to a scholarship fund that provided money to Christian schools for student tuition expenses.

The ruling, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, repre-sented the court’s latest expansion of religious liberties, a priority of its conservative majority in recent years.

The court sided with three mothers of Christian school stu-dents who appealed after Mon-tana’s top court invalidated the tax credit for violating the state constitution’s ban on public aid to churches and religious entities. Thirty-eight states have such constitutional provisions.

The justices faulted the Montana Supreme Court for voiding a taxpayer programme merely because it can be used to fund religious entities, saying such action violates the US Con-stitution’s First Amendment protection for the free exercise of religion.

“A state need not subsidise private education,” Roberts wrote. “But once a state decides to do so, it cannot disqualify some private schools solely because they are religious.” In the case, free exercise of religion was pitted against another element of the First Amendment - the separation of church and state that prohibits government establishment of

an official religion or favoring one religion over another.

President Donald Trump’s administration supported the plaintiffs in the case. His edu-cation secretary, Betsy DeVos, is a prominent supporter of such “school choice” plans. Christian conservatives are an important voter bloc for Trump, seeking re-election on November 3.

The National Education Association, a union repre-senting public school teachers, said the ruling could open the door to increased taxpayer-funded religious education as sought by DeVos and conserv-ative Christian groups.

Lily Eskelsen Garcia, the association’s president, said “an extreme Supreme Court just joined the far-right effort to undermine one of our country’s most cherished democratic i n s t i t u t i o n s : p u b l i c education.”

The conservative Christian legal group Alliance Defending Freedom welcomed the ruling. Its senior counsel, John Bursch, said a strict interpretation of Montana’s constitutional

provision “put a stranglehold on educational resources des-perately needed by parents and their children.”

In dissent, liberal Justice Stephen Breyer said the ruling risks “entanglement and con-flict” over where to draw the line between allowing free exercise of religion while pro-tecting against government endorsement of religion. Breyer said the ruling could lead to legal fights over whether states have to directly fund religious schools as well as secular public schools.

The decision followed the Supreme Court’s 2017 ruling that churches and other reli-gious entities cannot be flatly denied public money even in states with constitutions explicitly banning such funding.

The Montana tax credit pro-gramme, created in 2015, pro-vided up to $150 as an incentive for donations to groups that fund scholarships for tuition to private schools including reli-gious schools. In practice, most of the money went to Christian schools. The one such schol-arship organisation currently operating provides $500 pay-ments to schools, primarily to help lower-income students attend.

The dispute began when Montana tax officials limited the program to non-religious schools to comport with the state constitution’s prohibition on “direct or indirect” public aid to any church religious educa-tional entity.

Lead plaintiff Kendra Espinoza and two other mothers of students at Still-water Christian School in Kalispell, Montana sued, saying the exclusion violated their reli-gious rights. The top state court struck down the scholarship program in 2018 because it could be used to pay for reli-gious schools.

Pandemic probe: Brazilian governor of Amazonas targeted in police raidAP — RIO DE JANEIRO

The governor of Brazil’s Amazonas state was targeted by a police raid yesterday over allegations of corruption related to COVID-19 spending.

Federal police ordered the preventive detention of eight people and raided more than a dozen addresses of people linked to Gov Wilson Lima as part of an investigation into alleged fraud in the purchase of ventilators for treating COVID-19, the federal prose-cutor’s office said in a statement.

The state in the northern region of the Amazon rainforest has been one of the nation’s hardest-hit. Its capital, Manaus, was devastated by the virus, with patients turned away from full intensive-care units, scores of people dying at home and the city burying coffins in mass graves to keep up with the mounting death toll. Manaus’ mayor was hospitalized with COVID-19 this week.

Lindora Araujo, a deputy

prosecutor-general, said in the statement that there is a “criminal organisation that, installed in the structures of Amazonas state’s government, makes use of the situation of calamity to obtain illicit financial gains.” The statement said Gov Lima was targeted by the searches and an asset freeze.

The state government of Amazonas said it will wait for more information before com-menting and that Gov. Lima was in the capital of Brasilia for work. Lima’s administration had already come under fire for buying ventilators at quadruple the market price from a wine importer and distributor. The breathing machines were deemed inadequate for use on coronavirus patients by the regional council of medicine and the Amazonas’ doctors’ union. Lima previously denied any wrongdoing.

Public prosecutors said the purchase of the ventilators revealed a process by which the wine distributor acted as

intermediary for the purchase from a health equipment sup-plier, adding some $90,000 to the cost and then returning the full amount of the sale to the company.

The judge who ordered the raid froze $500,000 in the accounts of 13 people and com-panies, prosecutors said.

Manaus’ Mayor Arthur Virgílio Neto tested positive for COVID-19 on Monday, and as of Tuesday was receiving non-invasive ventilation in a hos-pital, City Hall said in a statement.

Lima is the third governor to be investigated in relation to suspect medical expenditures during the pandemic.

On May 26, police searched the residence of Rio de Janeiro state Gov Wilson Witzel as part of an investigation into alleged irregularities in contracts awarded for the construction of emergency field hospitals. Rio legislators voted nearly unanimously to begin impeachment proceedings against the governor.

People walk at a popular shopping street amid the coronavirus disease outbreak, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on Monday.

Canada extends COVID-19 international border closuresREUTERS — OTTAWA

Canada is extending a global travel ban and mandatory quar-antine measures that require most travelers to Canada, including citizens returning home, to self-isolate for 14 days upon arrival, the Canadian government said yesterday.

The mandatory quarantine

order is now in effect until at least Auguest 31, while the travel ban for most other foreign travelers is extended to at least July 31, according to federal documents. The measures, designed to slow the spread of the coronavirus, were set to expire on June 30.

Travel by US citizens are covered under a separate

agreement, which was extended earlier this month to keep the US-Canada border closed to all non-essential travel until at least July 21. US citizens who are not deemed essential are still subject to the quarantine.

Failure to comply with the quarantine order can result in a maximum fine of up to C$750,000 and/or impris-

onment for six months.Canada shut its borders to

non-essential foreign travelers who are not Canadian citizens, permanent residents or Amer-icans in March to slow the spread of the coronavirus and it is unclear when they will be reopened.

Canada has also made limited exemptions to its border

measures to allow for imme-diate family reunification. Exemptions are also in place for some individuals including dip-lomats, flight crews and those holding valid work or study permits. As of June 29, Canada had 103,918 cases of COVID-19 of which 67,178 cases had recovered, and had reported 8,566 deaths.

Coronavirus hits entire Venezuelan family in PeruAFP — LIMA

The 14 members of the Hern-andez family arrived in Peru from Venezuela two years ago with hopes high for a better life, but the coronavirus pandemic has cruelly shattered the dream: the grandfather died and now the entire family is struggling with the disease.

“I think that life is slipping away from me,” gasps Wilmer Hernandez, 44, lying in his cramped home in southern Lima, an oxygen mask covering his face.

His 63-year-old father, Wilmer Arcadio Hernandez, lost his battle with COVID-19 on June 21, while Peruvians and Vene-zuelans celebrated Fathers’ Day.

“My husband gave up his oxygen for his dad, but unfortu-nately he had already suffered too much,” said Wilmer’s wife Ruth Delgado, 37.

“We had to cry quietly inside, as they say, to see the old man slip away,” said Delgado, a nurse.

The Hernandezes are among the 800,000 Vene-zuelans who fled their country’s economic collapse in the hope of finding a better life in what, pre-pandemic, was one of Latin America’s fastest-growing economies.

Like most, they arrived overland, after crossing through Colombia and Ecuador.

All 14 travelled to Peru by

bus — Wilmer, his wife, the cou-ple’s nine children, the grand-father and two of the childrens’ uncles.

Back home in the western Venezuelan city of Barquisimeto, Wilmer had earned a living as a singer in a mariachi band, per-forming sets at parties and company events.

Once in Lima, Wilmer found work as a mariachi singer with one of his sons, while the other adults in the family worked as taxi drivers or street vendors.

They rented a rudimentary three-storey brick house in the poor Lima neighbourhood of Villa Maria de Triunfo, near the city’s Nueva Esperanza Cemetery.

They were doing well in their new expatriate life, encouraged they could get ahead — until the pandemic hit.

“According to the tests, there are only six of us who are pos-itive, but if we go by the symptoms we are all positive -- from the youngest of the girls, just six years old, to the oldest, my father-in-law, who has already passed away,” Ruth Delgado said.

Peru is Latin America’s second worst-hit country after Brazil. Some 280,000 people have contracted the virus in the country, with more than 9,000 fatalities to date.

“Little by little the children were falling ill. They got sick one after the other, everything was

changing in the home. Now the one who is most delicate is my husband,” Delgado said.

For the past three weeks the Hernandez family have been in quarantine in their home, where they pray daily to an image of the Virgin of Guadalupe they have painted on one of the walls.

A photo of Wilmer dressed in his mariachi outfit also hangs on the wall. For now his charro, or cowboy suit, and his som-breros have been put aside, as have his musical instruments.

They have no visitors, except for a doctor and a nurse who come every second day to check on their condition.

“The situation is difficult with the pandemic, too difficult because we are a large family. There were 14 of us, now unfor-tunately we are 13,” said Delgado.

Although the Hernandezes can no longer go out to work, they spent $440 to rent an oxygen tank for Wilmer. They had to borrow the money from friends.

“My chest locks up and sometimes I feel as if I’m losing consciousness. The pain in my back is very strong. I’m worried about suffocating. Sometimes I think I won’t be able to bear it,” Wilmer said, the oxygen tank

looming over his bed.He held up his mobile phone

briefly to display a photo of his late father.

“Sometimes I wonder if I’ll wake in the morning or not, if I’ll stop breathing at some point. This is what worries me the most, and the anxiety of running out of oxygen.”

“I already lost my dad because of a lack of oxygen.” A few hours later Wilmer’s con-dition deteriorated. So too did his eldest son, 25-year-old Wilmer Jesus. Doctors trans-ferred them to separate hos-pitals. Wilmer is currently in intensive care.

Members of the Hernandez family remain at their house in Villa Maria del Triunfo on the southern outskirts of Lima, in Peru.

Prosecutors seek

arrests of 46

officials in

Mexico students’

disappearance

REUTERS — MEXICO CITY

Mexican prosecutors have requested 46 arrest orders for public officials over charges of forced disappearance and organised crime as part of a renewed probe into the disap-pearance of 43 student teachers, the attorney general said on Tuesday.

The warrants are for offi-cials from Guerrero state, where the students from the Ayotz-inapa Rural Teachers’ College disappeared in a 2014 case that became a crisis for the admin-istration of then-President Enrique Pena Nieto and trig-gered international outrage.

Authorities under President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador took a renewed push at solving the case, after independent experts picked holes in the official version. Beyond a single bone fragment, the students’ remains were never found.

Attorney General Alejandro Gertz said the new probe, which on Monday led to the arrest of a leader from a Guerrero gang accused of involvement in the disap-pearance, opened up new the-ories overriding what the past administration dubbed the “his-torical truth.”

“All of the proceedings undertaken during this new investigation period... have let us establish a chronology of what happened, as well as the participation of those who committed these crimes,” Gertz told reporters.

“The historical truth is fin-ished.” Remains found during the current administration’s probe have been sent to Aus-tria’s University of Innsbruck for analysis, and Gertz said he hoped to provide more infor-mation at the end of the week.

In a 5-4 decision with the conservative justices in the majority and the liberal justices dissenting, the court backed a Montana programme that gave tax incentives for people to donate to a scholarship fund that provided money to Christian schools for student tuition expenses.

16 WEDNESDAY 1 JULY 2020MORNING BREAK

Cabourg Film FestivalFilm directors and screenwriters Dominik Moll and Gilles Marchand attend the 34th Cabourg Film Festival in Cabourg, France, on Monday.

UK’s National Gallery to reopen after virus lockdownAFP — LONDON

Britain’s National Gallery yesterday said it would reopen next week after being closed for more than three months due to the coronavirus outbreak.

The central London venue will reopen on Wednesday, July 8, becoming the first major art museum in the country to do so, as restrictions imposed in late March are finally eased.

Swathes of the hospitality, tourism and cultural sectors are due to reopen in England from this weekend, including pubs and restaurants, due to a decline in virus cases and deaths.

“We want to be a part of the nation’s recovery story,” gallery director Gabriele Finaldi said.

The government, under pressure over its response to the outbreak that has officially claimed more than 43,000 lives, is hoping the move will help kick-start the economy.

The National Gallery, in Trafalgar Square, was founded in 1824 and has a collection of more than 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to the 1900s.

Some 5.7 million people visited the gallery in 2018, according to the Association of Leading Visitor Attraction, an industry body. The gallery said changes have been made for the reopening — visitors will have to keep two metres (yards) apart and follow three one-way “art routes” to see the col-lection. Face coverings are also

being recommended.The National Gallery has

extended its Titian exhibition, which was forced to close just three days after opening when cultural venues were ordered to shut.

Other cultural venues to reopen in due course include the Tate, which said it plans to open all four of its galleries on July 27. London’s Tate Modern, which in 2018 was Britain’s most popular attraction with nearly 5.9 million visitors, will reopen with its Andy Warhol retrospective. Tate Britain, just along the River Thames in the capital, will have an installation from Steve McQueen.

Online booking and timed slots for visitors are compulsory to avoid crowding.

The New York Times pulls out of Apple NewsAFP — NEW YORK

The New York Times has become the highest-profile media organisation to leave Apple News, saying the tech giant’s service was not helping achieve the newspaper’s subscription and business goals.

The daily’s exit comes as news organisations around the world struggle with declining print readership and an online environment where ad revenue is dominated by Google and Facebook.

“Core to a healthy model between The Times and the platforms is a direct path for sending those readers back into our environments, where we control the presentation of our report, the relationships with our readers and the nature of our business rules,” chief operating officer Meredith Kopit Levien said in a memo to employees on Monday.

“Our relationship with Apple News does not fit within these parameters,” added the memo, which was published by the Times.

Launched in 2015, Apple’s news app helps promote media subscriptions, and in 2019 Apple added a paid service called Apple News+ -- which shares revenue with newspaper and magazine publishers.

It promotes itself as a service with content curated by humans, not algorithms, and boasts a larger roster of titles including The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, National Geographic, Vanity Fair and Sports Illustrated.

But the service did not bring in the kind of revenue news organizations were hoping for, according to the Times, which said in its report on the exit that Apple takes a 30 percent cut of every sub-scription sold through its news app. It also took half of Apple News+ revenues, according to the Times report.

In a statement published in the Times, an Apple spokesman said the paper offered its free Apple News service “only... a few stories a day”. “We are also committed to supporting quality jour-nalism through the proven business models of adver-tising, subscriptions and com-merce,” the spokesman added.

While most news organi-zations globally are struggling, the Times is in relatively healthy shape. It has reported a reduction in ad revenue, but subscriptions surpassed six million last month.

US entertainment legend Carl Reiner dead at 98AFP — LOS ANGELES

Carl Reiner (pictured), a revered and versatile comedy enter-tainer who won nine Emmies and stayed active into the 1990s with roles in movies such as the “Ocean’s Eleven” franchise, has died at the age of 98.

Showbiz friends of the writer, actor, director and pro-ducer confirmed his death, which news reports said came on Monday night of natural causes at his home in Beverly Hills.

For many Americans, the Bronx-born Reiner was perhaps best known for the 1960s TV sitcom “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” which he created and performed in as an irascible comedian. It won five Emmies.

In his early years Reiner worked with comedy legends such as Syd Caesar and Mel Brooks, a close friend. In one hugely popular skit with the latter, Reiner played a straight man interviewer to Brooks’s “2001 Year Old Man.”

In later years his film credits as director include “Oh God,”

starring George Burns, in 1977; “The Jerk,” with Steve Martin in 1979; and “All of Me,” with Martin and Lily Tomlin, in 1984.

The father of director and activist Rob Reiner, Reiner Sr. did other movies with Martin, including “Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid” and “Man with Two Brains.”

In 1995, Reiner received the Writers Guild’s lifetime achievement award for a career in TV writing. In 2000, he won the Mark Twain Prize for Humor, presented by the Kennedy Center.

Just three days before his death, Reiner tweeted a message of gratitude for the full life he had.

“Nothing pleases me more than knowing that I have lived

the best life possible by having met & marrying the gifted Estelle (Stella) Lebost — who partnered with me in bringing Rob, Annie & Lucas Reiner into to this needy & evolving world.” Condolences for Reiner poured in, including a tweet from New York governor Andrew Cuomo.

“Carl Reiner, Bronx born and bred, made TV comedy that endures to this day. He made America laugh — a true gift,” Cuomo wrote.

Another US TV comedy legend, Alan Alda, also paid tribute.

“My friend Carl Reiner died last night. His talent will live on for a long time, but the loss of his kindness and decency leaves a hole in our hearts. We love you, Carl,” Alda tweeted.

Ocean Park exhibitA girl looks at a meerkat sitting on a rock inside a new exhibit at Ocean Park, an animal theme park, in Hong Kong on Monday.

Choreographers relish ‘spontaneity’ unleashed by virus restraintsAFP — PARIS

How do you create dance in the age of coronavirus, when dancers are not supposed to touch each other and stay one or two metres apart? All across the world choreographers are grappling with the challenge of coming up with safe, socially distanced pieces that still set the heart aflutter.

It may be completely counter-intuitive, but the very rigidity of the restrictions has been liberating for some — allowing them to play on the new taboos and the dramatic tension around personal space the virus has brought with it.

“It unleashed spontaneity!” declared the great German cho-reographer John Neumeier, the artistic director of the Hamburg Ballet. “In ballet, we are so used to being free in the way we touch,” he said.

“Sometimes we take this for granted, because we touch eve-rybody almost everywhere in

doing pas de deux, in doing a lift. And now we have a situ-ation where we cannot touch, where there is a distance, which immediately gives a new sense of tension.” With all the usual advance planning thrown to the wind, Neumeier said the virus has allowed him to create without thinking about what the costumes or sets would look like.

“I was working with the purest material — just dancers in an empty space,” he said.

The restrictions have forced him to “concentrate much more on the art of the solo” for his new work, “Ghost Light”, which will premiere — virus per-mitting — on September 6.

Neumeier is using 57 dancers, but he can’t bring them all together for now. “It is a kind of mosaic,” he said.

“I work with six dancers, then I work with eight dancers, then with two — but I don’t know what it will be like when we put it all together.”

Annabelle Ochoa Lopez has become dance’s queen of Zoom over the last few months, making a series of short pieces on the teleconferencing app.

Like so much else in the lockdown, it happened by accident, said the Belgian-Colombian choreographer.

“Two French dancers who were retiring from the Nor-wegian Ballet approached me because they couldn’t do their farewell show. They asked if I could make something for them on Zoom.

“I thought, ‘OK, that will be very awkward but let’s do it,” said the Netherlands-based creator.

“They had three children... and sometimes the children would be there saying hello from the couch.” In the work they made together, “Where do the birds go?”, which is now on YouTube, the couple — Julie Gardette and Francois Rousseau — actually dance on their sofa.

Creating online has changed

the way Ochoa Lopez works.“I have to talk a lot more to

get my ideas across, and I have to direct their eyes more too because the frame is so much more intimate than the stage,” she said.

“I am constantly coming in close to my computer and then going right out again to show the movement... sometimes I even lie on the ground to show them my feet,” she added.

In a second video she made with a dancer from New York’s Ballet Hispanico, she used the windows in her apartment as a framing device, and in another she channelled the French mime legend Marcel Marceau as well as using a live chicken for a piece set around a table with two dancers from the Tulsa Ballet. “Of course I miss the studio,” Ochoa Lopez told AFP. “But I think that I will take something from this expe-rience.” Kader Belarbi, the artistic director of Capitole Ballet of Toulouse in southwest

France, hopes digital direction will not be the end of actually being there with a dancer.

With the screen there are “things that don’t come across anymore as they do in a live performance”, he argued.

Belarbi is now creating a ballet about the artist Toulouse-Lautrec, working with soloists and four couples on “single phrases that will later be combined”.

But for some the biggest thing to come out of the lockdown may be a trend towards shorter works.

“A lot of companies are going to make small pieces which are cheaper and easier to handle in terms of social dis-tancing,” said Martin Harriague, a choreographer with the Malandain Ballet, Biarritz.

He is working on a solo with a dancer from the company in his apartment, separated by the glass of his veranda. “A lot of freedom can come from restraints,” he insisted.

Biotech firm sees

encouraging virus

vaccine resultsAFP — WASHINGTON

The US biotech firm Inovio reported preliminary but encouraging results yesterday from tests of an experimental coronavirus vaccine.

Administered to 40 volun-teers, it triggered an immune system response in 94 percent of those who completed the so-called phase one clinical trial, meaning they received two injections, four weeks apart.

Inovio’s vaccine, called INO-4800, is designed to inject DNA into a person so as to set off a specific immune system response against the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

The medication is injected under the skin with a needle, then activated with a device that resembles a toothbrush, which delivers an electrical impulse for a fraction of a second, allowing the DNA to penetrate the body’s cells and carry out its mission.

Inovio, which is financed by the US Defense Department and the NGO CEPI, also said it has been included in President Donald Trump’s plan to produce hundreds of millions of doses of the vaccine by January as part of Operation Warp Speed.

Inovio’s medication is the only DNA vaccine that is stable at room temperature for more than a year and does not need refrigeration for transport or storage for several years, said Inovio CEO Joseph Kim.

Pioneering woman artist Delaunay’s works to be soldAFP — PARIS

Dozens of works by the pioneering modernist artist Sonia Delaunay will go under the hammer in Paris today.

The Ukrainian-born painter was a co-founder of the Orphism movement, which alongside Cubism shook the art world in the years before World War I.

The 88 drawings and small gouaches trace the devel-opment of the Russian artist’s work from the 1920s to the 1970s, by which time her geo-metric designs had appeared

on fashion catwalks, textiles and costumes for the great ballet impresario Diaghilev.

Delaunay, born Sarah Ilin-itchna Stern, married a German art dealer so she could get hands on her own inheritance before falling in love with the aristocratic French avant-garde artist Robert Delaunay, who she later married.

Between them they helped create Orphism by breaking out of the boundaries of Cubism, making it more colourful and fragmented, and pushing it toward the more abstract art that later became dominant.

FAJR SUNRISE 03.18 am 04.47 am

W A L R U WA I S : 28o↗ 37o W A L K H O R : 29o↗ 40o W D U K H A N : 26o↗ 43o W WA K R A H : 26o↗ 38o W M E S A I E E D 26o↗ 38o W A B U S A M R A 26o↗ 40o

PRAYER TIMINGS WEATHER TODAY

HIGH TIDE 14:52 – 00:00 LOW TIDE 07:42– 20:42

Misty at some places at first becomes, hot daytime with

slight dust at some places at times, relatively hot by night.

Minimum Maximum30oC 40oC

ZUHRMAGHRIB

11.38 am06.30 pm

ASR ISHA

03.01 pm08.00 pm