Volume 23 | Number 7799 | 2 RiyalsMonday 11 February 2019 | 6 Jumada II 1440 www.thepeninsula.qa

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BUSINESS | 01 SPORT | 12

Kerber aims to conquer ‘tough’ field in Qatar

QNB unveils 2019 action

plan at AGM

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of State for Defence Affairs, H E Dr. Khalid bin Mohamed Al Attiyah, met yesterday with French Minister of the Armed Forces, Florence Parly. They reviewed relations between the two friendly countries and ways of enhancing them, as well as the latest developments in the region. The meeting was attended by senior officers of the Armed Forces.

National Sport Day declared official holidayQNA DOHA

The Amiri Diwan announced yesterday that on the occasion of Qatar National Sport Day, which is marked annually on the second Tuesday of February each year, Tuesday, 7 Jumada II, 1440 AH corre-sponding to February 12, 2019, will be an official holiday.

Traffic death rate in Qatar falls below global averageSANAULLAH ATAULLAH THE PENINSULA

The number of deaths in traffic accidents in 2018 declined to 168 in Qatar, figuring 4.9 per every 100,000 persons, while in 2017 a total of 177 deaths occurred at a rate of 5.4 per 100,000 persons, said Brigadier

Ibrahim Saad Al Sulaiti, Head of the Statistical Analysis Office at the Ministry of Interior.

He said that one of the most important indicators recorded was that Qatar’s average of 4.9 road accident deaths per 100,000 persons was a remarkable achievement as it is far below the global average.

“In 2008, 12 deaths per 100,000 people were recorded, which means a steady decline in the mortality rate between 2008 and 2018 by 59.2 percent,” said Brigadier Al Sulaiti.

Al Sulaiti was speaking at a press conference organised by the General Directorate of Traffic at the Traffic Head-quarters in Madinat Khalifa to release the traffic statistics of 2018. Director General of Traffic Major General Muhammad Saad Al Kharji, and Brigadier Muhammad Abdullah Al Maliki, Secretary of National Traffic Safety Committee a t t e n d e d t h e p r e s s conference.

Brigadier Al Sulaiti said that the global average was 17.4 deaths per 100,000 persons, 9.2 per 100,000 persons in high-income coun-tries, 9.3 in European countries and 24.1 deaths in low-income countries. The traffic statistics 2018 showed remarkable progress regarding reduction in the number of traffic acci-dents, deaths and traffic injuries.

Brigadier Al Sulaiti summed up the traffic statistics for 2018 in seven indicators compared to 2017. He pointed out that the number of vehicles increased by 4.3 percent in 2018 and driving licences by six percent in comparison with 2017.

“Despite this growth, the number of accidents with serious injuries declined by 5.8 percent in 2018 and death acci-dents declined by 3.1 percent,” said Brigadier Al Sulaiti. He said that serious injuries decreased by 17 percent and the number of deaths decreased by 5.1 percent.

“The statistics showed that 97.2 percent of the traffic acci-dents were without injuries, while minor accidents declined by 8.5 percent,” he said. �P2

Qatar’s first registered arts brokerage launchedRAYNALD C RIVERA THE PENINSULA

Pallas Arts, Qatar’s first regis-tered arts brokerage which was launched yesterday, is set to boost Qatar’s thriving arts and culture landscape as well as support charitable and human-itarian projects.

Speaking at a press con-ference to announce the launch yesterday at Mondrian Doha, Pallas Arts co-founder Mariame Farqane said the brokerage was founded to help local artists gain international recognition, while bringing exciting new artworks and exhibitions to Qatar through

collaborations.“I have long had a vision of

giving artists greater visibility and using art as a force for good, more than simply as a vehicle for buying and selling pieces. It is important to note that selling art is not all we do. We aim to showcase new artists in Qatar and beyond,” stressed Farqane.

Co-founder Alvaro Meija believes Qatar’s growing arts and culture scene which the world is paying attention to makes the country a perfect fit for Pallas Arts.

“We also believe that Qatar can emulate the like of places such as Paris and New York in

terms of what it can offer art and culture lovers – but done so in a way that it’s authentic to Qatar’s rich history and culture. Just like we have seen the Museum of Islamic Art and the Fire Station do,” said Mejia.

He added: “The talent from local artists and demand from art loving communities across the county is striking. We want to give a platform to people like Yousef Bahzad and Faisal Al Hajri – because we believe that their work deserves to be on the international stage. “

According to co-founder Lewnis Boudaoui, Pallas Arts will be using art, auctions and

exhibitions to support charitable and humanitarian projects in Qatar and overseas, one of which is Bab’El Institute- an education initiative.

“Headquartered out of Qatar, and using proceeds from Pallas Arts, Bab’el is a centre that will promote intercultural exchange and education on the connection between Eastern and Western cul-tures. It will dedicate itself to pro-viding education through exhibi-tions, international conferences, forums and events,” said Bou-daoui, adding they have already started collaborating with Ambas-sadors in Qatar and officials from other countries for the initiative.

To mark the launch, inter-nationally acclaimed urban artist Cyril Kongo, showcased his latest project – a custom painted 1983 Rolls Royce Silver Spur. Kongo’s piece will later go up for auction with proceeds going to charitable courses.

Dana Al Fardan was also revealed as Pallas Arts’ official music partner. She will be com-posing pieces for upcoming events.

It was also announced that Pallas Arts’ first pop-up exhibition will open on February 17 featuring artworks from international and Qatari emerging talents, such as Yousef Bahzad. �P2

MOTC launches new cyber security standards framework SACHIN KUMAR THE PENINSULA

The Ministry of Transport and Communications (MOTC) launched yesterday the National Information Security Standards Framework that will further boost cyber security in the country.

“Most of our government systems are provided by inter-national suppliers with varying levels of sophistication and security. It is our duty as owners and operators of these systems to ensure that our systems have the necessary flexibility against cyber attacks,” said Minister of Transport and Communications H E Jassim bin Saif Al Sulaiti, addressing the ‘National Infor-mation Security Accreditation & Certification’ event held at Sheraton Hotel, yesterday.

“We are pleased to announce the launch of the National

Information Security Standards Framework, which is our approach to aligning ICT pro-grams, systems and services with best practices for the protection of digital information and data in accordance with our laws and regulations, through the issuance of licence certificates, documen-tation and accreditation in accordance with our national standards,” he said.

He said this step will help institutions from all sectors to secure information systems and improve maturity in the imple-mentation of information security policies leading to the creation of a safer and more vibrant cyber environment.

He stressed that this com-pliance mechanism includes the launch of a new standard, designed to ensure the quality and security of government digital services.�P2

Qatar calls for removal of Sudan from terrorism listQNA CAIRO

The State of Qatar affirmed its support and solidarity with the Republic of Sudan and called for its removal from the list of States Sponsoring Terrorism.

This came in the hearing session held yesterday by the Arab Parliament at the head-quarters of League of Arab States, on the removal of Sudan from the list of States sponsoring terrorism.

During the session, Deputy Speaker of the Shura Council H E Mohammed bin Abdullah Al Sulaiti, said that the State of Qatar has never wavered in its support for Sudan, calling on the US administration to remove its name from the list of coun-tries sponsoring terrorism.

H E the Deputy Speaker referred to Doha hosting the Darfur peace negotiations under the auspices of the UN, where Doha has been an essential partner for the peace efforts in Darfur and for the consolidation of peace and development. �P2

Qatar and France review bilateral relations

168

97.2%2.4%0.2%0.1%

683

4.9

Persons died in road accidents in 2018

Road accidents in 2018 were without any injuries

Accidents with minor injuries

Accidents with serious injuries

Fatal accidents that led to the death

persons were seriously injured

Qatar’s average of 4.9 road accident deaths per 100,000 persons is far below global average

02 MONDAY 11 FEBRUARY 2019HOME

Qatar, Madagascar

review relations

ADDIS ABABA: Minister

of State for Foreign Affairs H

E Sultan bin Saad Al Muraikhi

met yesterday with Min-

ister of Foreign Affairs of

the Republic of Madagas-

car Naina Andriantsitohaina,

on the sidelines of the 32nd

Ordinary Session of the

Assembly of the African

Union. During the meeting,

they discussed the bilateral

relations and ways to boost

and develop them, in addi-

tion to a number of topics of

common interest. QNA

Al Muraikhi meets AU

Commissioners

ADDIS ABABA: Minister

of State for Foreign Affairs

H E Sultan bin Saad Al

Muraikhi met yesterday with

African Union (AU) Commis-

sioner for Peace and Security

Ismail Sharqi and AU Com-

missioner for Social Affairs

Amira El Fadil, on the side-

lines of the 32nd Ordinary

Session of the Assem-

bly of the AU. The meeting

discussed enhancing coop-

eration between Qatar and

the AU in the areas of peace

and security, human devel-

opment and humanitarian

assistance. QNA

Amir receives written

message from

Tajikistan President

DOHA: Amir H H Sheikh

Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani

received a written mes-

sage from the President of

the Republic of Tajikistan,

Emomali Rahmon, pertain-

ing to bilateral relations

and the ways to boost and

develop them. The Secre-

tary-General of the Ministry

of Foreign Affairs, H E Dr

Ahmed bin Hassan Al Ham-

madi, received the message

from the Ambassador of

the Republic of Tajikistan to

the State of Qatar, Khisrav

Sohibzoda. QNA

OFFICIAL NEWS Shura Council Speaker appreciates role of CMCQNA DOHA

Shura Council Speaker H E Ahmed bin Abdullah bin Zaid Al Mahmoud met yesterday with Central Municipal Council (CMC) Chairman H E Mohammed bin Hamoud Al Shafi and Vice-Chairman Eng Hamad bin Lahdan Al Mohannadi.

During the meeting, the CMC Chairman addressed the efforts of the Council in its fifth session to serve citizens, meet their needs and improve services in various facilities. For his par, the Shura Council Speaker expressed appreciation for the CMC role, affirming keenness on further development of cooperation between the two councils.

The meeting was attended by Shura Council Secretary-General Fahd bin Mubarak Al Khayareen and a number of the Council’s officials.

Separately, the Speaker of the Shura Council also met with the Ambassador of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam to Qatar Nguyen Dinh Thao. During the meeting, they discussed bilateral relations and means of sup-porting and developing them, especially in the parliamentary field. Arrangements for the 140th General Assembly of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) and associated meetings to be hosted by Doha from April 6 to 10 were also reviewed during the meeting.

Shura Council Speaker H E Ahmed bin Abdullah bin Zaid Al Mahmoud met yesterday with CMC Chairman H E Mohammed bin Hamoud Al Shafi and Vice-Chairman Eng Hamad bin Lahdan Al Mohannadi.

Josoor Institute signs pact with SDA Bocconi School of ManagementTHE PENINSULA DOHA

Josoor Institute, a centre of excel-lence for the sports and events industries that is inspired and developed by the Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy (SC), has signed an academic partnership with SDA Bocconi School of Management, an inter-national top ranked business school, to strengthen the academic background and boost the managerial aptitude of sports and events professionals in Qatar and across the MENA region.

The academic partnership agreement was signed by Hassan Al Thawadi, Secretary General of the SC, and Giuseppe Soda, Dean of SDA Bocconi School of Man-agement, yesterday.

The agreement, which is in effect until 2022, brings SDA Bocconi School of Management into the fold of expert partners who design, deliver and provide academic endorsements for Josoor Institute’s flagship profes-sional diploma programmes in Sports Management and Major Events Management.

Hassan Al Thawadi said: “The agreement marks a significant step in our journey towards the delivery of an amazing 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, which needs world-class talent working together in every area of its oper-ation – matching the world-class talent we will see on the pitch.”

Headded: “The partnership we are building today reinforces our efforts to create a legacy that will support the socio-economic

development of Qatar and the region well after 2022.”

The partnership signing also opened the third cohort of the diploma programmes for regis-tration, which are due to com-mence in March 2019, in Doha. The programmes, each consisting of six modules, will cover in-depth study of the various areas of sports management and major events management including governance, planning, finance, marketing and communications, media and professional practice.

Giuseppe Soda, Dean of SDA Bocconi School of Management, said: “We like to conduct rigorous, relevant and multidisciplinary studies that are able to directly impact people and international organisations. This partnership is in line with our identity and

mission. The industry of Sport is growing, and Qatar is a leading and innovative country that is investing in this direction. Working with Josoor Institute will give us the opportunity to

contribute to the development of individuals and organisations by creating and disseminating inno-vative managerial knowledge about sport and event management.”

Hassan Al Thawadi, Secretary-General of the Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy, and Giuseppe Soda, Dean of SDA Bocconi School of Management, signing the partnership agreement.

The CMC Chairman addressed the efforts of the Council in its fifth session to serve citizens, meet their needs and improve services in various facilities.

Al Hammadi receives

copy of credentials of

Ambassador of Kenya

DOHA: The Secretary-Gen-

eral of the Ministry of Foreign

Affairs, H E Dr Ahmed

bin Hassan Al Hammadi,

received yesterday a copy of

the credentials of Partik Cor-

nell as Ambassador of the

Republic of Kenya to Qatar.

The Secretary-General of the

Ministry of Foreign Affairs

wished the new Ambassa-

dor success in carrying out

his duties. He assured him of

all support for the promo-

tion of bilateral relations and

closer cooperation in various

fields. QNA

Brigadier Ibrahim Saad Al Sulaiti, Head of the Statistical Analysis Office at the Ministry of Interior, giving a presentation at the press conference yesterday at the Traffic Headquarters in Madinat Khalifa.

Traffic death rate in Qatar falls below global averageFROM PAGE 1

He said that the indicators show seven percent decrease in accidents compared to 2017, 3.1 percent decrease in deaths, 17 percent decrease in severity of accidents. “The decrease in traffic mortality was by 5.1 percent and the decrease in the number of serious injuries by 17 percent and in pedestrian mortality by 17.9 percent,” said Brigadier Al Sulaiti.

The Industrial Area witnessed the highest number of traffic accident deaths during 2018 with 14 cases, followed by Fareej Sudan with 13 cases, Leabaib with

11, Al Wakra and Sealine with eight cases each.

“The statistics reviewed the causes of traffic accidents in the Sealine area at four points including parents renting motor cycles for their young children, motor performances that do not meet safety and security require-ments, using quad bikes with high-speed engines by unqual-ified drivers and the absence of panels indicating dangerous places,” said the official.

He also pointed to the measures taken by traffic author-ities to reduce accidents in this

area. “Those include setting up controls and requirements for registering motor cycles and vehicles intended for transporting tourists, conducting patrols in the area around the clock,” said Al Sulaiti.

Major General Mohammed Saad Al Kharji pointed to the growing awareness of young people, who became committed and keen to apply the rules of traffic and thanked the media, whose efforts help reach awareness messages to the public and spread traffic culture among all.

MOTC unveils new cyber security standards framework

FROM PAGE 1It will empower our gov-

ernment institutions to provide more sophisticated services to all citizens and residents.

“Our wise leadership has recognised very early on the need to work to protect this tech-nical system well,” said the Min-ister. “Accordingly, a National Cybersecurity Committee has been set up to promote public-private cooperation and the for-mulation of a clear national strategy for cybersecurity, as well as the development of national policies and standards, the conduct of information security assessments and the provision of relevant programs to help everyone protect infor-mation technology systems and electronic assets in both sectors Public and private sectors,” he

added.Mechanisms for compliance

with national information security standards include the launch of an IT audit certification program that allows any organ-isation wishing to obtain a com-pliance certificate to engage with an accredited control service provider to support it and to ensure that the compliance cer-tificate is obtained quickly and efficiently.

The Ministry of Transport and Communications Assistant Undersecretary Eng Khalid Sadiq al Hashmi, said in a press con-ference held on the sideline of launch ceremony that the min-istry’s new initiative will help institutions from all sectors to secure information systems.

Al Hashmi added that the aim of these standards, in

addition to maintaining the security of government infor-mation, is to stimulate the local

private sector by developing mechanisms and rules, which leads to the development of

services provided to achieve a level of performance equivalent to major global companies.

Minister of Transport and Communications H E Jassim bin Saif Al Sulaiti with other officials, during an event on National Information Security Accreditation & Certification held yesterday. PIC: BAHER AMIN / THE PENINSULA

Qatar calls for removal of Sudan from terrorism list

FROM PAGE 1In order to complete this

effort, Qatar has sought with the Arab and Islamic countries the lifting of the US sanctions imposed on Sudan, he added.

He said Doha is still seeking to help Sudan to meet the conditions set by the US administration to provide security and stability in areas of conflict, calling for enabling Sudan to stabilise, develop and overcome its economic crisis.

Al Sulaiti said its time to stand for the right, and demand the US administration to remove Sudan from the list of states sponsoring terrorism.

The Deputy Speaker said the meeting comes under con-ditions of instability, suc-cessive crises and the great challenges facing the Arab countries.

03MONDAY 11 FEBRUARY 2019 HOME

Katara to mark National Sport Day with 70 activitiesTHE PENINSULA DOHA

The Cultural Village Foundation – Katara has announced it will celebrate National Sports Day with more than 70 different activities.

Katara is also hosting around 50 different institutions from public and private sector in addition to several prominent health centres which will carry out fitness activities for the public.

Commenting on this, Dr Khalid bin Ibrahim Al Sulaiti, General Manager of Katara, said that the preparations are in their final stage and all the facilities are ready to receive visitors for a special day full of fun and sports.

The activities will run from 8am until 6pm on the Katara esplanade and Katara will provide many services for the public and free complementary bottled water and coffee, in addition to opening all its facil-ities to everybody.

Ministry of Education renewsservice pact with College of the North Atlantic in CanadaTHE PENINSULA DOHA

The Ministry of Education and Higher Education and College of the North Atlantic (CNA) in Canada have signed a new three-year service agreement which enables the College of the North Atlantic - Qatar (CNA-Q) to continue its role as Qatar’s premier technical and vocational college.

The agreement was finalised at a formal signing ceremony at CNA-Q campus in Doha, with Minister of Education and Higher Education H E Dr Mohammed Abdul Wahed Ali Al Hammadi and Bernard Davis, Minister of Advanced Education, Skills and Labour, from the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada.

As per the agreement, CNA will continue to provide

academic and vocational pro-grams and services for CNA-Q for three years (2019-2022) in accordance with best technical and vocational practices; as well as providing support services for information systems for the benefit of CNA-Q.

In a press conference, the Minister of Education and Higher Education, expressed his pleasure in signing the agreement with CNA and appre-ciated the pioneering role that the College has played in Qatar

since 2002. Today CNA-Q offers more than 30 academic technical and vocational programs to 2,600 full-time students.

“College of the North Atlantic - Qatar (CNA-Q) has contributed to building the national capabil-ities of Qatar in the technical and vocational fields, especially in the field of engineering tech-nology, business studies, infor-mation technology and health sciences,” said the Minister.

Commenting on the renewal of the agreement, Dr

Mohammed bin Saleh Al Sada, the former Minister of Energy and Industry, and Chair of CNA-Q’s Board of Trustees said: “This partnership has success-fully produced thousands of highly skilled, technically-com-petent graduates for Qatar’s

workforce who make daily con-tributions to the successful real-ization of Qatar National Vision 2030.”

CNA-Q President Dr Khalifa Al Khalifa said: “In our 17th aca-demic year, we take great pride in the achievements of the

College thus far. With the signing of this agreement, we start the next chapter, launching into new programs, building more educa-tional capacity, and evolving with the changing needs of our students and industry stakeholders.”

Minister of Education and Higher Education H E Dr Mohammed Abdul Wahed Ali Al Hammadi (centre) is exchanging documents with Bernard Davis, Minister of Advanced Education, Skills and Labour, from the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, after the signing of the agreement.

As per the agreement, CNA will continue to provide academic and vocational programs and services for CNA-Q for three years (2019-2022) in accordance with best technical and vocational practices; as well as providing support services for information systems for the benefit of CNA-Q.

Sports Minister: NSD coincides with joy of winning Asian CupQNA DOHA

Minister of Culture and Sports H E Salah bin Ghanem Al Ali said that the celebration of 2019 National Sport Day coincides with the continuous atmosphere of joy in the Qatari society because of the national football team’s victory of the Asian Cup.

The Minister said in a statement yesterday that the sports day reinforces the moral foundation on which sport is based as a message that dissem-inates love, brotherhood,

sportsmanship and mutual respect among all members of society.

The Minister added that sport is part of public life and one of the pillars of social change because it is a constant expression of the society’s awareness of its role in the body and mental health.

The Minister also pointed out that the sports day reflects from year to year the com-mitment of the Qatari people to the gains that have been achieved in the State of Qatar and gave it a privileged position

on the map of sports in the world.

The Minister stressed that the interest in community sports reflects the keenness of the wise leadership to transform sports into a social activity that has its distinct place within other social activities, adding that it shows the society’s response to take care of human health to be able to work constructively and to preserve the psychological and mental immunity of the current and future generation.

He pointed out that sports day proves the ability of all

sports facilities, public parks and other facilities to absorb this community activity in the context of the state’s keenness to pay attention to the physical and psychological health of the members of society as well as support the community sports that are not limited to compet-itive sports.

He added that the sports day promote the dissemination of high morals that assure each individual his role in partici-pating in building the nation and realising Qatar National Vision 2030.

Attorney-General meets Chairman of ESCP Europe Foundation

Attorney-General, H E Dr. Ali bin Fetais Al Marri met yesterday with Chairman of the ESCP Europe Foundation, Christian Mouillon. During the meeting, they exchanged views on a number of issues of mutual interest and ways of closer cooperation in the field of training programs and academic work.

04 MONDAY 11 FEBRUARY 2019HOME

Ooredoo wins five honours at Investor Relations Awards

THE PENINSULA DOHA

Ooredoo won the “Best CEO”, “Best CFO”, “Best Investor Rela-tions Officer”, “Best overall IR”, as well as one of the three “Best IR Website” awards at the fourth Qatar Stock Exchange (QSE) Investor Relations Excellence Awards ceremony held on Wednesday. The awards recognise the merits of Ooredoo Group’s

Chief Executive Officer, Sheikh Saud Bin Nasser Al Thani, Group Chief Financial Officer, Ajay Bahri and Investor Relations Director, Andreas Goldau.

Waleed Al Sayed, Deputy Group Chief Executive Officer and CEO of Ooredoo Qatar, said: “We are pleased to have been recog-nized by the Qatar Stock Exchange for our excellence in investor rela-tions for the fourth year in a row and every year since the inception

of these prestigious awards. We remain committed to best practice disclosure, fostering a healthy two-way dialogue between our company and capital market par-ticipants and adhere to the highest governance standards.

I would like to congratulate our fellow award recipients and to thank the Qatar Stock Exchange for promoting best practice dis-closures and overseeing a healthy capital market activity in Qatar.”

Waleed Al Sayed, Deputy Group CEO, Ooredoo, receiving an award.

THE PENINSULA DOHA

In celebration of National Sport Day and to promote the social and personal benefits of sports and recreation, Mall of Qatar is hosting a variety of fun and free fitness activities from February 7 to February 16.

The whole family can improve their tables tennis, basketball and football skills at a fabulous activation located at West Gate 3 and get the chance to win instant prizes in collaboration with numerous brands. Little ones can increase their stamina with an exclusive parkour and daily boxing classes organized by Anytime Fitness at West Gate 1.

Additionally, Mall of Qatar will

showcase from Thursday 7th February to Saturday 16th February a freestyle show combining BMX, skating, football and rollers every day at 6pm and 8pm at the Ooredoo Stage as well as a Zumba show at 6.30pm and 7.30pm in partnership with Anytime Fitness. Also, on Tuesday 12th February the Fencing Federation will organise an activation at East Gate 1 for kids and adults.

This February, Mall of Qatar will have

something fun for every visitor.“At Mall of Qatar, we always aim to

provide our visitors with a memorable experience that goes beyond their expec-tations for a traditional mall,” said Stuart Elder, Mall of Qatar’s CEO. “We take immense pride in our role as the nation’s mall and are delighted to support our country’s celebration of National Sport Day with a full schedule of recreational activities.”

National Sport Day celebrations at Mall of Qatar.

QSTP opens registration for third MENA DojoTHE PENINSULA DOHA

Qatar Science & Technology Park (QSTP), part of Qatar Foun-dation Research, Development, and Innovation (QF RDI), has opened registration for its annual Mena Dojo program, organised in collaboration with global venture capital seed fund, 500 Startups. The third edition of the popular regional accel-erator will once again take place in Kuwait from March 31 to May 2.

The MENA Dojo program is a regional spin-off of the coveted 500 Startups ‘Series A Accelerator Program.’ It targets technology startups from Qatar and the region that have reached a certain level of scale and are likely to raise Series A funding, that enables a startup to progress to the next stage, for example, from just an idea to market research or product development – in the next six to nine months. Participants in the program receive invaluable hands-on training and men-torship focused on instilling a growth mindset, and growth

hacking and marketing techniques.

Yosouf Abdulrahman Saleh, Executive Director, QSTP, said, “We invite budding innovators to apply to the third edition of the popular MENA Dojo series, an accelerator that has seen several previous participants receive large later stage investment and achieve their technology innovation ambitions.

“The program offers startups an opportunity to work under the guidance of seasoned growth mentors and techpre-neurs, whose expertise they will be able to leverage to accelerate their ideas into a tangible and marketable product. Partici-pants can also look forward to networking with a group of like-minded people from across the Middle East, who are driven to address regional challenges through tech innovation.”

Participants in this year’s MENA Dojo will showcase their startups during the Investor Day on May 2. The event will see innovative startups pitch their ideas and business models to an audience of business leaders,

potential investors, tech experts, and members of the community, with the aim of securing follow-on investment.

Dr. Richard O’Kennedy, Vice President for Research, Devel-opment and Innovation at Qatar Foundation, said: “Through pro-grams such as MENA Dojo, QSTP is furthering QF RDI’s com-mitment to nurturing a thriving innovation ecosystem that extends beyond the borders of Qatar.

Our partnership with 500 Startups is also key to expanding our outreach and working towards tackling region-specific challenges, and we are honored to once again offer budding techpreneurs an opportunity to develop innovative solutions to address these needs.”

Several startups from pre-vious MENA Dojo batches have gone on to raise bridge funding, Series A investment, and Series B investment (the second round of funding, such as private equity investors and venture capitalists), including including Souqalmal, Eatapp, Eventtus, At Home Doc, Justmop, Eyewa, Nawah Scientific and more.

The Mena Dojo batch participants pose for a group photo.

HMC invites public to take part in NSD activitiesTHE PENINSULA DOHA

Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) is inviting the public to participate in a number of activ-ities being organised by the healthcare provider in recog-nition of National Sport Day. The activities, which will take place at Katara Cultural Village tomorrow from 8am to 6pm, aim to highlight the importance of sport in building a healthy community, while also raising awareness about the many benefits of physical activity and inspiring the public to adopt a healthy lifestyle.

A variety of activities, including free body mass index (BMI) testing, blood sugar, blood pressure, and other health checks, will be available, with nurses and dietitians from HMC on hand to answer questions.

Representatives from the Kulluna for Health and Safety campaign, Ambulance Service, National Diabetes Center, Tobacco Cessation Center, and Blood Donation Unit will also be on site, raising awareness about the benefits of an active and healthy lifestyle.

The events organized by HMC focus on raising awareness about sport and highlight the

importance of sport in reducing the prevalence of health condi-tions associated with a sedentary lifestyle, such as type 2 diabetes, cancer, obesity, coronary heart disease, and depression.

HMC, as the main provider of secondary and tertiary healthcare in Qatar, is proud to be part of Qatar’s annual National Sport Day celebrations.

The day provides an important opportunity to high-light the benefit of sport in building a healthy community, which aligns with HMC’s vision to provide the safest, most effective, and most compas-sionate care to patients.

Mall of Qatar organises 10 days of sporting celebrations

QA and QDF sponsor Qatar Total Open Women’s Tennis TournamentTHE PENINSULA DOHA

Qatar Airways and Qatar Duty Free (QDF) are once again pleased to sponsor the Qatar Total Open Women’s Tennis Tournament 2019 at the state-of-the-art Khalifa International Tennis and Squash Complex in Doha.

Joining the champions com-peting in this year’s event is three-time Grand Slam champion and 2014 finalist Angelique Kerber and two former world No. 1 players, Karolina Pliskova of the Czech Republic and Simona Halep

from Romania.Both Qatar Airways and

QDF will host special booths at the sponsors’ village, offering tennis fans a taste of their world-renowned five-star service. The Qatar Airways booth will feature an interactive green screen where tennis fans can get their photos printed on virtual backgrounds featuring destinations such as Doha, Da Nang and Gothenburg and an A350-1000 aircraft. The QDF booth will also feature a quiz accompanied by a photo oppor-tunity where visitors will have to guess the number of branded tennis balls and share it on social

media, for a chance to win a hamper filled with exciting prizes offered by Qatar Duty Free.

Qatar Airways Senior Vice President Marketing and Cor-porate Communications, Salam Al Shawa, said: “Qatar Airways is delighted to once again sponsor the Qatar Total Open 2019, which brings many of the world’s most talented female tennis players to Doha to compete for the coveted cham-pionship title. Every year, this exciting tournament is a major highlight on Qatar’s sporting calendar, drawing thousands of spectators and fans of all ages.

05MONDAY 11 FEBRUARY 2019 HOME

QA’s Al Darb Programme & Rolls-Royce hold training course for nationals in UKTHE PENINSULA DOHA

Qatar Airways announced yesterday that it has once again teamed up with Rolls- Royce to co-develop a unique specialised training programme for the future leaders of Qatar Airways, as part of the airline’s Al Darb Qatarisation programme.

The week-long course brought 40 Al Darb participants and 20 participants from Rolls-Royce to the Rolls-Royce training facility in Derby, UK, to take part in a Business Management and Commercial Awareness training programme, designed to enable Al Darb participants to learn from Rolls-Royce’s innovation and leadership. Professional experts from Rolls-Royce introduced airline’s nationals to a variety of topics designed to challenge them, including corporate strategy, financial management, and a business management

simulation, where participants competed in teams to create a profitable airline.

The programme aims to enable Al Darb participants to work collaboratively

with the Rolls-Royce team to create inno-vative solutions that will help further develop their skills by exposing them to new perspectives. This programme is

facilitating courses that are delivered by Qatar Airways’ Talent Development department to further develop and enhance their skills. Nationals are also

provided the opportunity to take aviation courses delivered by IATA.

Qatar Airways Senior Vice President Human Resources, Nabeela Fakhri, said: “Qatar Airways is very pleased to again collaborate with Rolls-Royce on this spe-cialised training programme, designed to provide Qatari Nationals with essential new skills and insights. This programme provides a unique opportunity for Al Darb participants to learn from one of the most innovative teams in the aviation industry.

“The Business Management and Com-mercial Awareness programme is one of the many initiatives the Al Darb Qatari-sation programme is implementing to support Qatar’s talented young Nationals to develop their professional skills to prepare them for a career in the aviation industry, as well as provide them with the opportunity to connect and learn from the airline’s global strategic partners.”

The participants pose for a group picture.

Ashghal, QLC sign MoU on use of QSurveyIRFAN BUKHARI THE PENINSULA

The Public Works Authority ‘Ashghal’ and Qatar Leadership Centre (QLC) yesterday signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for use of world’s first bilingual online survey and research tool — QSurvey.

QSurvey is a highly versatile survey tool that allows organiza-tions to securely draw on data in order to engage with the relevant stakeholders, complement projects and decision-making processes with accurate statistics, package respondent information easily for presentations, as well as export data to licensed enter-prise IT systems. Governmental organizations may rely on its data services for an increasing number of e-government services, while scientific and healthcare organ-izations may utilise the digital

space for enhanced collaboration and original data collection.

Its body of target audiences is wide-ranging and includes media and marketing companies as well as leading academic insti-tutions within the QLC network that benefit from the multi-service platform.

QSurvey, its website www.QSurvey.com and corresponding mobile app were launched in April 2018 under the patronage of H E Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, Chairperson of the QLC Board of Directors, as a free platform for efficient data storage and processing.

Speaking at the signing cer-emony held at Ashghal head-quarters, Dr. Eng. Saad bin Ahmad Al Muhannadi, President of the Public Works Authority, said that through the development of inno-vative platforms such as QSurvey,

QLC was spearheading a national effort of advancement within the spheres of technology and research.

“At Ashghal, our key strategic objective is to develop capabilities and increase the national com-panies’ contribution to Qatar’s supply chain. We seek partnerships with leading national institutions such as Qatar Leadership Centre, to ensure effective and sustainable contribution to the national devel-opment. This MoU is a collabo-rative effort aimed at accelerating the pace of development by building on the capabilities of modern data collection. Through the use of QSurvey, Ashghal’s scope will effectively permeate both the physical and digital infra-structure developments of Qatar.”

Commenting on the benefits of the joint initiative, Dr. Ali Jassim Al Kubaisi, Acting Managing Director at QLC, said: “We are

delighted to enter into a new part-nership with Ashghal – a national body that is at the forefront of leading the development of

Qatar’s infrastructure. As a key player for the future socio-eco-nomic growth of the country, Ashghal shares common

objectives for advancement and responsive adaptability to modern challenges and opportunities.”

Dr. Ali Jassim Al Kubaisi (left), Acting Managing Director of Qatar Leadership Center, and Dr. Eng. Saad bin Ahmad Al Muhannadi, President of Ashghal, during the MoU signing ceremony at Ashghal Tower yesterday. PIC: BAHER AMIN / THE PENINSULA

06 MONDAY 11 FEBRUARY 2019HOME

Over 500 delegates attend QatarInternational Pharmacy ConferenceTHE PENINSULA DOHA

Hamad Medical Corporation’s (HMC) Corporate Pharmacy Executive Office and Office of Pharmacy Professional Devel-opment recently hosted the 5th Qatar International Pharmacy Conference.

The event, which was attended by more than 500 del-egates from various disciplines including pharmacy, medicine, and nursing, was a collaboration between HMC, Qatar Univer-sity’s College of Pharmacy, the US-based Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education, and Scotland’s Robert Gordon University.

More than 25 renowned speakers and subject matter experts from Qatar and across the globe presented during the four-day event, sharing their experience and expertise.

A number of emerging issues, including antimicrobial stewardship, mental health, emergency preparedness, and prescribing by pharmacists were among the topics of discussion.

Dr. Moza Al Hail, Executive Director of HMC’s Pharmacy Department spoke during the event’s opening ceremony and said the conference aimed to address some of the most pressing healthcare issues. In her address, Dr. Al Hail spoke of the recent advancements in HMC’s pharmacy service, saying the three new hospitals in Hamad Bin Khalifa Medical City – Women’s Wellness and Research Center, Ambulatory Care Center, and Qatar Rehabilitation Institute - are home to one of the most technologically-advanced hospital pharmacies in the Middle East. She also spoke

about the Drug Information Center and the Pharmacy Research Center.

“This conference provided an opportunity for pharmacists from Qatar and abroad to network with fellow researchers, to share new and exciting ideas, and to discuss research and innovation in the field of pharmacy.

The conference also show-cased one hundred unique posters covering a variety of topics, including pharmaco-therapy, quality improvements, advances in pharmacy practice, and continuous education,” said Dr. Al Hail. Dr. Al Hail noted that Qatar’s National Health Strategy 2018-2022 aims to shape services around patients and their families and is changing the way the health system works.

She said events like the 5th Qatar International Pharmacy Conference help to advance pharmacy practice here in Qatar, the region, and beyond and will ultimately lead to improved health and well-being for the people of Qatar.

Dr. Rasha Al Anany, Director of Pharmacy and HMC’s Office of Pharmacy Professional Devel-opment, said the conference was designed to encourage profes-sional development and enhance the knowledge, skills, and confidence of pharmacists and pharmacy technicians.

“With a conference program that boasts more than 30 lec-tures and ten workshops delivered by national and inter-national speakers who are experts in their respective field, we are confident that this con-ference has helped to enhance the knowledge, skills, and com-petence of pharmacists and pharmacy technicians across the State of Qatar,” said Dr. Al Anany.

Pharmacists are an integral part of the multidisciplinary healthcare team and play a sig-nificant role in a patient’s healthcare journey.

These highly trained profes-sionals apply evidence-based clinical knowledge and provide essential pharmaceutical care to patients.

Dr. Moza Al Hail, Executive Director of HMC’s Pharmacy Department addressing the opening ceremony of the conference. Qatar Charity sets up computer

laboratory at Kosovo school THE PENINSULA DOHA

Qatar Charity, with the generous support of the people in Qatar, has set up a computer lab at a school in the municipality of Mitrovica to enhance the educa-tional standard of the school’s students.

During his visit to Qatar Charity’s office in Kosovo, Khalid Abdullah Al Yafie, Director of the Project Management at Qatar Charity, handed over 18 com-puters to Agim Bahtiri, mayor of Mitrovica and local officials.

The mayor of Mitrovica, Agim Bahtiri, expressed his sincere gratitude and thanks for the gift given by Qatar Charity with the generous support from the people in Qatar. “It is very essential for the students of this school to put the theories they learn into practice,” he said, appreciating the valuable

support and great humanitarian work carried out by Qatar Charity in Mitrovica.

The mayor honored Khalid Al Yafie with the Municipality’s Shield and a Certificate of Thanks in recognition of the efforts of Qatar Charity in Kosovo.

Students and their parents expressed their great happiness in this project, which will con-tribute to the enhancement of the educational standard of the stu-dents, thanking the people in Qatar for the implementation of this project. Qatar Charity imple-ments many projects in Kosovo to support the needy, especially orphans, persons with special needs, and low-income families. The number of those sponsored by the charity has increased to more than 3,000 persons. Over 4,500 students graduated from the Qatar Training Center.

The number of income-gen-erating projects reached more

than 430 projects, while the number of projects implemented in the field of water and sani-tation is more than 550 projects. Some 40 development projects have been carried out in addition to building homes for the poor.

Last year, QC managed to implement 373 projects in the areas of sustainable devel-opment, education, water, san-itation, relief and home con-struction at a total cost of QR6m in Kosovo. The projects included 74 income-generating projects and 279 water and sanitation projects, in addition to 20 other projects including the con-struction of houses for the poor and educational projects.

Also, a total of 23 agreements have been signed with the various governmental and local authorities in Kosovo during 2018 and the number of munic-ipalities cooperating with QC increased by 30 percent.

Officials cutting a ribbon to mark the opening of the computer lab.

QatarDebate reveals re-branded identityTHE PENINSULA DOHA

QatarDebate - member of Qatar Foundation for Education, Science, and Community Development - has announced the launch of its new corporate re-branded identity, and the new slogan: Dialogue, Debate, and Diplomacy. These changes come at a time when QD is celebrating its 10th year anni-versary and reflects the current and future direction of the center.

“The new rebrand identity marks a very exciting time for QatarDebate,” said Dr. Hayat Maarafi, Executive Director of QatarDebate Center, adding, “Over the past decade, we’ve pioneered by delivering a wide range of top-quality debate learning programs in both languages, Arabic and English, which seek to promote the culture and use of debate, open dialogue, and

discussion as effective aca-demic and personal skills, and the new rebranding and slogan does a great job of cap-turing that”.

“With confident steps, we reach young students of foreign universities and debate ambassadors of their countries, by the art of debates.

The time has come to move beyond the young stage to the stage of maturity and modernity that reflects the evolut ion concept of QatarDebate center.”

“Dialogue is a part of our daily lives in all issues that touch our reality, but when the difference of views comes, the role of the Center is to put through the debate a strategy and a structure to manage the dialogue, and from here we begin to employ diplomacy to resolve the coexistence between the interlocutors instead of the difference in views” she added.

“We’re excited about the rebrand change; it puts us in a better position to grow,” said Abdulrahman Al-Subaie, Head of Outreach Program – QatarDebate, stressing that our aim is to shape the global cit-izens of today and the intel-lectual leaders of tomorrow in Qatar, the region, and internationally.

He pointed out that the motivation for developing the center’s logo is that the target group has expanded and touched a society instead of a specific category.

The scope of aspirations and objectives related to the development of performance commensurate with the center level, it is very important for this initiative to keep its position and employ its activ-ities for the better.

The revised logo will be used as of Monday (today) in all events and communication with internal and external institutions.

Texas A&M at Qatar hosts STEM Fest for employees, graduates and families THE PENINSULA DOHA

Texas A&M University at Qatar recently hosted its annual STEM Fest at the Texas A&M Engineering Building in Education City. STEM Fest brings together the Texas A&M at Qatar community to enjoy a day full of exciting science, technology, engi-neering and math (STEM) activities.

In addition to employees and their families, this year’s event also included graduates of the university and their families. Events included the inter-active Science and Engineering Road Show, 3D scanning, an egg-drop contest, a scavenger hunt and kid-friendly experiments.

THE PENINSULA DOHA

To celebrate National Sport Day tomorrow, Qatar Dragon Boat Association in collaboration w i t h K a t a r a Cultural Village will organise boat race.

The dragon boat race will start at 8am at Katara Beach and the Association has invited people to witness the race on the finest dragon boat teams in Qatar and also try the thrill of the sport themselves during the community paddling which will commence after the race. The event is open to everyone and admission is free.

Dragon boat race at Katara tomorrow

07MONDAY 11 FEBRUARY 2019 MIDDLE EAST / AFRICA

IN THE NEWS

Abbas warns against Israel’s attempts to change character & identity of Jerusalem

QNA ADDIS ABABA

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas warned against Israel’s attempts to change the character and identity of Jerusalem, and its call on some states to transfer their embassies to it, which contravenes international law and Security Council resolutions, specifically resolution 478 of 1980.

At the meeting of the African Union in Addis Ababa, he said those who encourage Israel to act as a state above international law are the American administration, which is no longer competent to

take care of the negotiations alone after it proved its bias to the Israelis, and after the illegal measures it has taken against us, to transfer its embassy and recog-nition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and to cut off its aid to UNRWA. “And because we believe in negotiations as the only way to peace between us and the Israelis, and with the full American alignment of the occupying state, at the expense of our legitimate rights, we call for the convening of an international conference and the formation of a multilateral mechanism to take care of any future negotiations,” he added.

“We look forward to your con-tinued steadfastness in your posi-tions and more support for our Pal-estinian cause in the coming period in order for Palestine to gain a full UN membership, the international protection of our people, the renunciation of the Israeli occu-pation of the land of the State of Palestine, the condemnation of its racist colonial policies and prac-tices, the terror of the settlers and the incursions into the Christian and Islamic holy places, especially the daily attacks and constant threats against Al Aqsa Mosque and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem,” Abbas said.

The President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, offers roasted chestnuts to workers at Taksim Mosque’s construction site in Beyoglu district of Istanbul, yesterday.

Kind gesture

African Union calls for global Libya summitANATOLIA ADDIS ABABA

The chairman of the African Union Commission yesterday called for an international conference on Libya to chart the way forward for the troubled country.

In spite of African efforts over the past several years, the con-flict in Libya still lingers, Moussa Faki Mahamat told the opening of the 32nd Summit of the African Heads of State and Government in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital.

Speaking later, Arab League Secretary-General Abu Ghait cor-roborated the call for interna-tional solidarity on Libya.

“The Arab League sees the sit-uation in Libya as a grave concern for Africa and the Arab world. We

are committed to bringing peace and stability by supporting peaceful dialogue between all factions,” he said.

“The Libyan people need con-sensus, a functioning constitution, and elections. We are ready to support these endeavors.” Faki Mahamat also called for enhanced Arab-African relations, saying current ties fall “below our expec-tations.” He said he hopes to hold an Arab-African summit later this year.

As achievements in 2018, the chairman cited decisions by African leaders for African passport, single African air transport, and free movement of people.

Speaking at the summit, guest speaker Bill Gates urged African countries to give priority to what

he described as human capital development. The Bill and Melinda Foundation over the past decade has been a household name in Africa, as the charity focused on health intervention, investing $15bn. “Human talent I believe is the tool for the African Union to achieving its grandest goals,” he said, referring to Agenda 2063 that envisages a peaceful, prosperous continent.

Meanwhile, African leaders unveiled a life-size statue of Ethi-opia’s last Emperor Haile Selassie I, erected on the premises of the pan-African body’s headquarters. Haile Selassie is seen as being at the forefront of the founding of the Organization of African Union (OAU), a predecessor to the modern-day African Union, founded in 2005.

Fire guts Nigeria election officeJos: A fire gutted an electoral commission office in central Nigeria,

destroying ballot boxes and other materials just a week before poll-

ing, officials said yesterday. The blaze happened at the Independent

National Electoral Commission (INEC) Office in the Qua’an Pan area

of Plateau state late on Saturday. The INEC head of voter education

and publicity in Plateau state, Osaretin Imahiyereobo, said of this

latest incident: “A drunken security man was said to have caused

the fire outbreak.” Imahiyereobo said the office was “completely

burnt with all its contents”, including ballot boxes and uncollected

voter ID cards. Nigeria goes to the polls next Saturday to elect a new

president and parliament. State governorship and local assembly

elections follow on March 2. AFP

‘Heavy clashes’ as US-backed forces make final push against ISAFP OMAR OIL FIELD

US-backed forces were locked in fierce fighting yesterday as they pressed the battle against the last shred of the Islamic State group’s “caliphate” in eastern Syria.

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), supported by a US-led coalition, announced a final push to retake the mil-itants pocket late Saturday, after a pause of more than a week to allow civilians to flee.

SDF spokesman Mustafa Bali yesterday said his fighters had battled their way for-wards against the militants, capturing 41 positions from them.

“Our forces are relying on direct combat with light weapons,” he said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor group said the SDF had advanced across farming land, backed by coalition air strikes and artillery fire. Earlier, an SDF field com-mander reported “heavy clashes” as his fighters gained ground.

The SDF launched an offensive to expel IS from the oil-rich eastern province of Deir Ezzor in September.

The Kurdish-led alliance has since whittled down mil-itant -held territory to a scrap of just 4sqkm between the Euphrates and the Iraqi border.

Up to 600 militants could still remain inside, most of them foreigners, Bali said. Hundreds of civilians are also believed to be inside, he said.

Yemeni conjoined twins die in blockaded Sana’a without aidSana’a: Newborn Yemeni conjoined twins whose plight sparked

a plea for urgent medical treatment overseas died in Sana’a, rebels

in the blockaded capital said. Abdelkhaleq and Abdelrahim were

born outside Sana’a around two weeks ago and shared a kidney

and a pair of legs but had separate hearts and lungs. The head of

paediatrics at Sanaa’s Al-Thawra hospital, Dr Faisal Al Babili, said his

department lacked the facilities to treat or separate the newborn

boys and appealed on Wednesday for help from abroad. Houthi

rebels, who have been fighting the Saudi-backed government since

2014, blamed a Riyadh-led military coalition for the deaths after

“refusing to open Sana’a airport to allow them to get treatment”,

according to the rebels’ media statement. AFP

3 dead in Sudan copter crashKhartoum: Three crew members of an Ethiopian military helicop-

ter were killed when they crashed in the United Nations compound

in Abyei, the disputed region between Sudan and South Sudan. The

United Nations said in a statement yesterday that another 10 pas-

sengers of the helicopter, carrying a total of 23 passengers, were

wounded. The statement pointed out that three of the injured are

in critical condition, without disclosing the nationalities of the vic-

tims. The helicopter, an MI-8, was carrying out a routine operation

to transport Ethiopian soldiers from Kadugli in Sudan to the oil-rich

Abyei. Ethiopia is the sole troop contributing country to UNISFA,

with some 4,500 soldiers on the ground. QNA

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas speaks during the African Union summit in Addis Ababa.

Group of 55 settlers storm Al Aqsa MosqueQNA OCCUPIED JERUSALEM

A group of 55 settlers stormed yesterday Al Aqsa Mosque on the side of the Magharba gate, while it was heavily guarded by Israeli occupation forces. The settlers wandered through separate compounds in the Holy Mosque and were told about the alleged temple. They performed Talmudic rituals before leaving.

On the other hand, the Israeli occupation forces continued the campaign of arrests against Pal-estinian citizens, where the number of detainees from dif-ferent parts of the West Bank rose to nine. A security source

told the Palestinian news agency (WAFA) that the Israeli occu-pation forces arrested two young men in Tekoa town, southeast of Bethlehem, and another one in Al Khader village after raiding and searching their homes.

They also arrested three Pal-estinians in Al Isawiya town in occupied Jerusalem. On the other hand, settlers attacked Pal-estinian houses in Tel Rumeida neighbourhood in the centre of Hebron.

According to sources, dozens of settlers attacked a number of houses with stones, in response to calls by settler leaders over microphones threatening to kill Palestinians.

Jordan sentences 2 to hangAmman: A Jordanian court sentenced two brothers to death yester-

day in connection with a 2016 attack claimed by the Islamic State

group, overturning a life sentence handed to the men last year. The

shooting attack in Karak, home to one of the region’s largest Crusader

castles, killed seven policemen and two Jordanian civilians as well

as a female Canadian tourist, and wounded 34 other people. AFP

Russian and Chinese relations with Latin American countries are often described as simply transactional, and it is true that both Moscow and Beijing can drive hard bargains for their support.

GAMZE TURKOGLU OGUZ ANATOLIA

08 MONDAY 11 FEBRUARY 2019VIEWS

South America is a battlefield in the new cold war

The political crisis in Venezuela has pitted the US against Maduro who refuses to leave office. But the crisis has a

broader significance: It shows that Latin America has again become an arena in which rival great powers struggle for influence and advantage. As the US faces surging geopolitical rivalry around the world, its position is also coming under pressure in its own backyard.

The region has been the focus of global competition before, of course, from the Spanish-Portuguese rivalry of the 15th and 16th centuries to the Cold War between Washington and Moscow. But after the fall of the Soviet Union, Latin America seemed - for a time, at least - to have become a geo-politics-free zone. The retreat and dis-integration of the Soviet Union left the US with no challenger for predom-inant regional influence. Castro’s Cuba turned inward, consumed by a pro-found economic crisis. As countries democratized and embraced free markets, the region became essen-tially unipolar in an ideological sense, as well.

By the early 2000s, however, the climate was shifting. First came a new

generation of leaders who viewed neo-liberal eco-nomics as the source of the region’s per-sistent poverty and inequality. Governments led by the likes of Chávez in Venezuela, Evo Morales in Bolivia and Rafael Correa in Ecuador coupled pop-ulist political appeals and economic programs

with a penchant for illiberalism and, in some cases, outright authoritarianism. They challenged the US diplomatically and rhetorically, while establishing close ties with Cuba. This created a bloc of regional actors that opposed American power - just as outside actors were beginning to assert, or reassert, their own influence in the region.

As China’s economy has boomed

over the last two decades, its presence in Latin America has grown as well. Chinese trade and investment has surged nearly everywhere, not just countries run by radical populists. Chinese commerce and loans have provided a lifeline to illiberal rulers such as Chávez and now Maduro by reducing their vulnerability to US and Western pressure. Chinese military engagement followed, creating fears that Beijing may be trying to establish a strategic foothold in the Western Hemisphere. Although aspects of China’s relationship with Latin American countries remain contro-versial - some Chinese infrastructure projects have been criticized because they often employ Chinese rather than Latin American workers, for instance - Beijing has undoubtedly become a player in the Western Hemisphere.

Russia has provided economic and diplomatic support to Chavez, Maduro and other autocratic rulers such as Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega. It has sold jets, tanks and other weapons to pop-ulist governments, and resumed pro-viding military technology and oil to Cuba. Much to the concern of the US government, the Kremlin has also been working to establish a significant intelligence presence in Nicaragua. As the Carnegie Endowment for Interna-tional Peace observes, “Moscow’s approach to Latin America today echoes Soviet outreach in the 1960s through 1980s.”

Russian and Chinese relations with Latin American countries are often described as simply transactional, and it is true that both Moscow and Beijing can drive hard bargains for their support. One price of Russia’s con-tinued backing of the Maduro regime has been a significant ownership stake in the Venezuelan oil industry. China, too, has seen Venezuela as an energy source, and its economic growth would have driven enhanced involvement in Latin America even in the absence of any geopolitical design.

But for both countries, that involvement also has a deeply com-petitive logic. Reaching into Latin America is a way of keeping the US

off-balance by exerting influence in Washington’s “near abroad.” It helps augment Beijing’s and Moscow’s global influence and stature at a time of intensifying rivalry with Wash-ington. Finally, supporting autocratic regimes such as those in Caracas and Managua - whether quietly, as in China’s case, or more vocally, as in Russia’s - is a way of making sure that the world remains ideologically safe for authoritarianism in Beijing and Moscow, as well.

All this constitutes the backdrop to the Venezuelan crisis. The growth of Russian and Chinese influence in Latin America broadly, and Venezuela spe-cifically, is a key reason the Trump administration has so uncharacteristi-cally taken up the banner of human rights and democracy. By imposing harsh economic sanctions, calling for the military to desert Maduro, and backing the political opposition led by the Juan Guiadó, the Trump adminis-tration is seeking to deprive Moscow, Beijing and Havana of a critical partner in Latin America. And while Russia and China have responded very differently to this crisis, both are working, in their own ways, to protect that partner.

The Chinese government has reg-istered its opposition to the interna-tional campaign against Maduro’s gov-ernment; it has continued to recognize his embattled government even as dozens of democratic countries have thrown their support behind Guiadó. Russia has been far more assertive, denouncing Washington for trying to “engineer a coup d’etat,” in the words of its United Nations representative. It has warned against American military intervention, and symbolically dis-patched two nuclear-capable strategic bombers to Venezuela. More con-cretely, Moscow has reportedly dis-patched 400 mercenaries to reinforce Maduro’s praetorian guard and pledged additional economic support. There is thus a certain Cold War feel to the current crisis, with the US and its rivals lining up on opposite sides of a conflict over who should rule a key Latin American country.

HAL BRANDS BLOOMBERG

QUOTE OF THE DAY

Reforms are painful but it is essential if we have to get

out of our current problems. The

time has come that Pakistan will take off.

Imran Khan Prime Minister of

Pakistan

NY Times: Saudi Khashoggi cover-up falling apart

Saudi Arabia’s efforts to cover up the case of slain journalist Khashoggi case further unraveled this week, according

to The New York Times. The latest demands for a reckoning

“have come from American intelligence agencies, a United Nations investigator and a coalition of nongovernmental organizations, sources that in their diversity and breadth should serve notice on [Saudi Crown] Prince Mohammed [bin Salman] that all his oil wealth and powerful friends will not wash away the blood of the slain jour-nalist,” the paper said in its lead editorial on Friday.

The Oct. 2 killing at the Saudi Con-sulate in Istanbul of Jamal Khashoggi, a contributor to The Washington Post, was met by Saudi denials for weeks before officials admitted he was killed there, but -- they argued -- as the result of a botched extradition.

The Times editorial, “Saudi Arabia’s Threadbare Cover-Up of Khashoggi’s Killing Unravels Further,” said bin

Salman and his friends in the White House “evidently calculated that the outcry over the barbarous murder of Jamal Khashoggi would die over time.”

They were wrong, and also mis-taken to think that bin Salman could freely continue his “autocratic way, repressing critics and dissidents with impunity” once the outcry came to an end, said the Times editorial board.

It laid out newly revealed findings by American spy agencies that bin Salman evidently suggested killing Khashoggi a year before the incident.

According to their findings, bin Salman said in a conversation with a top aide that if self-exiled Khashoggi could not be enticed or brought back by force to Saudi Arabia, he would go after him “with a bullet.” The article also stressed the findings of Agnes Callamard, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, who, after visiting Turkey with a team of experts for an international inquiry into Khashoggi’s murder, concluded that “Khashoggi was the victim of a brutal and premeditated killing, planned and perpetrated by officials of the state of Saudi Arabia.”

A group of NGOs -- including the Committee to Protect Journalists, Human Rights First, Human Rights Watch -- have also accused the Saudi government of “continuing to persecute dissidents, activists, journalists and independent clerics,” said the Times.

“The pressure must continue. Con-gress should continue to demand a full disclosure of CIA records related to Mr. Khashoggi’s murder, with the identities of all those responsible for it,” the edi-torial said. It also urged full support for Callamard’s investigation by the govern-ments of Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the US, and others.

“And all who rue Mr. Khashoggi’s fate should demand that Saudi Arabia cease the repression of those Saudis in whose name he spoke out,” it said.

After producing various contra-dictory explanations for Khashoggi’s disappearance last fall, Riyadh acknowledged he had been killed inside the consulate building, blaming the act on a rogue Saudi team. Turkey has sought the extradition of the Saudi citizens involved in the killing as well as a fuller accounting of the killing from Riyadh.

The measures taken by traffic authorities has played a crucial role in reducing accidents. The steps include setting up controls and requirements for registering motor cycles and vehicles intended for transporting tourists, conducting patrols in the area around the clock.

CHAIRMANSHEIKH THANI BIN ABDULLAH AL THANI

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

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

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

ESTABLISHED IN 1996

EDITORIAL

Qatar top in traffic safety

Qatar’s road have become much safer for com-muters which shows how the country is accom-plishing new feats in the field of infrastructure

development. According to the statistics released by the Traffic Department, Qatar has fared much better than any other country in the world in the field of road accident deaths.

One of the most important indicators recorded was that Qatar’s average of 4.9 road accident deaths per 100,000 persons was a remarkable achievement as it is far below the global average. The global average was 17.4 deaths per 100,000 persons, 9.2 per 100,000 persons in high-income countries, 9.3 in European countries and 24.1 deaths in low-income countries.

The number of deaths in traffic accidents in 2018 declined to 168 in Qatar, figuring 4.9 per every 100,000 persons, while in 2017 a total of 177 deaths occurred at a rate of 5.4 per 100,000 persons.

The measures taken by traffic authorities has played a crucial role in reducing accidents. The steps include setting up controls and requirements for registering motor

cycles and vehicles intended for transporting tourists, con-ducting patrols in the area around the clock. The authority also organise inspection campaigns on shops to comply with safety requirements, awareness campaigns in camps, schools and universities to introduce hazards and works in collab-oration with relevant bodies to locate entertainment areas as well as carry out cam-paigns and road checkpoints to control vehicles and drivers in violation.

Along with these measures, the vast and developed road network has also played in reducing road accidents in Qatar and The Public Works Authority (Ashghal) should be praised for its commendable work.

In 2018, Ashghal was able to execute several regional infrastructure projects. It developed main and internal roads with a total length of about 175 km and the estab-

lishment and development of a sewage network of about 90 km and a network of drainage of surface water and groundwater of about 330 km. More than 5,600 lighting poles and about 14,000 parking spaces were installed.

As for the highway projects, year 2018 saw many new ones. Ashghal finished 100 kilometers of highways, bringing the total to more than 500 kilometers. It also opened 10 intersections that brings the total number to 88 then launching the programme.

With best infrastructure available and strict rule, it is now commuters’ responsibility to drive responsibly and play constructive role in the society.

Sustained economic change in the Middle East requires a wider set of concessions that go beyond domestic and regional political elites. It also requires a candid and constructive geopolitical discourse that reconsiders the trade-off between a narrow, short-term, vision of geostrategic stability and long-run development.

09MONDAY 11 FEBRUARY 2019 OPINION

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Rich or penniless, Venezuelans flock to Madrid

Why are Middle Eastern economies struggling to diversify?

ADEEL MALIK AL JAZEERA

AUGUSTIN CAMPOS

AFP

Fleeing the political, economic and humanitarian crisis in their country, Venezuelans have arrived in Spain in their

thousands, some of them penniless, others so rich they are buying sump-tuous flats. Fran Leal, 36, came to Spain from Maracay in northern Ven-ezuela two months ago with his wife and two children.

“Do you have a small suitcase? I’m going to Toledo, I’ve found a job,” he asks as he enters the Casa Vene-zuela, an association that helps strug-gling Venezuelans in Madrid. An elec-trician, he is going to the city south of Madrid to work illegally for six months.

“I don’t have a choice as I don’t yet have ID papers and I have no more savings,” he says, as the crisis in Venezuela deepens with opposition leader Juan Guaido’s self-procla-mation as interim president.

Unlike Leal, Juan Leonardo Lopez has not found a job since he arrived three months ago.

“Before the crisis, I wasn’t a mil-lionaire but I lived fine, I had a great car and everything I needed,” he says at a Venezuelan opposition protest in Madrid. He says he saw children die of dehydration in the hospital in Maracay where he worked. Spain’s statistics agency says some 255,000 Vene-zuelans have settled in the country.

But that figure is likely to be closer to 300,000 if illegal immigrants are taken into account, according to Tomas Paez, head of the Venezuelan Diaspora Observatory.

Venezuelan asylum requests have nearly doubled in Spain over the year, with close to 20,000 in 2018, according to the interior ministry.

But only 29 were successful last year, the ministry says, as it is hard for those who migrate for economic reasons to get asylum.

As a result, Madrid has started giving some Venezuelans humani-tarian visas. At the other end of the scale, many rich Venezuelans have also emigrated to Spain over the past year to escape the crisis and inse-curity. Cesar, a 42-year-old busi-nessman who declined to give his surname, arrived in Madrid in 2014 with his wife and daughter after an armed group tried to kidnap his brother.

“We lived permanently with bod-yguards, we would move around in armoured cars. We couldn’t go out in

the evenings,” he says. “Here, we’re enjoying what we no longer had in Venezuela: going out, eating out,” says the head of a consultancy in Madrid, which still has an office in Caracas.

Unlike those who are struggling, he was able to get an express resi-dency permit after getting a “golden visa” for which one must invest at least one million euros ($880,000) in Spanish companies or 500,000 euros in real estate. Cesar bought three flats in the district of Salamanca in Madrid for 800,000 euros.

Such has been the affluence of Venezuelans in this upmarket area that it has been named “Little Caracas” by Spanish media.

Controversial due to the difficulty in verifying the origin of the funds used, the “golden visa” is very popular among rich Venezuelans.

Last year, 249 such visas were given to Venezuelans in Spain, nearly 20 percent more than in 2017, according to the foreign ministry.

Angel Garcia Loriente, a real estate agent who specialises in luxury purchases, says he sealed five deals with Venezuelans in 2018 for a total of 9.7 million euros.

They are clients who want flats “in elegant buildings,” he says.

According to Juan Carlos Guti-errez, the Madrid-based lawyer of Venezuelan opposition figure Leopoldo Lopez who also has wealthy Venezuelan clients, they have fled “insecurity.”

Why have Middle East’s oil-rich economies failed to diversify despite their tall

promises and grandiose plans? The answer lies not in the absence of good technical plans or weak implemen-tation, but in political incentives. If many other countries have been suc-cessfully able to diversify their econ-omies it was not merely a result of good policies but the right political incentives of those who were in the driving seat.

An enabling political framework has been a common denominator in all successful diversification experi-ments. Botswana’s experience under-scores the role of stable political coa-litions and favourable initial and external conditions. At its inde-pendence, Botswana inherited mul-tiple constituencies representing divergent economic interests. This was complemented with the presence of political competition and stable coalitions. A third important factor was a favourable external envi-ronment. Botswana’s membership in the South African Customs Union served as a positive inducement for sensible macroeconomic reform. Together, all these factors played a part in protecting the interests of non-resource sectors.

The Malaysian experience rein-forces the same message. At Malay-sia’s independence, the Chinese com-munity represented a powerful de facto economic force by virtue of their control of the Malaysian private sector. Their continued presence counter-balanced any tendencies for the natural resource sectors to grow at the expense of the private sector. In the political domain, the consocia-tional agreement between the ethnic Malay and Chinese communities

fostered a system of power sharing that protected the economic interests of Chinese businessmen. Bad macr-oeconomic policy - especially an overvalued exchange rate - was polit-ically unacceptable to Chinese interests. It was both bad policy and bad politics. If domestic political economy was helpful, so was the country’s insertion into the regional trade circuit, which created positive regional spillovers that supported private sector development.

Clearly, each case is different and must be analysed on its own merit. But politics provides a common thread across these accounts. And, this is where Arab economies are especially challenged. Saving a few cases, most countries in the region did not inherit strong and diverse eco-nomic constituencies that could have gained political voice after inde-pendence, and counterbalanced the dominance of the oil economy. An unfavourable external environment, resulting in negative spillovers from regional conflict and instability, served as another impediment to diversification. The Middle East thus lacked all three factors that facilitated economic diversification in other countries: strong political coalitions, diverse economic constituencies and positive neighbourhood effects. With this adverse legacy, is there any real hope for diversification? In this regard, I have the following three points to make:

Successful diversification requires a new political settlement that allows elites to concede greater space to the private sector;

Diversification is unlikely to succeed without a regional vision that fosters complementarities among Arab economies and creates a shared economic space to deal with

emergent economic challenges common to all states;

Sustained economic change in the Middle East requires a wider set of concessions that go beyond domestic and regional political elites. It also requires a candid and constructive geopolitical discourse that recon-siders the trade-off between a narrow, short-term, vision of geostra-tegic stability and long-run development.

Let me briefly explain these in turn.

Given the primacy of the political, the debate on diversification must begin with a discussion of elite incen-tives and political concessions. If a closure of the economy benefits rent-seeking elites, what will persuade them to concede greater economic space? What concessions are needed from the ruling elite and what will persuade them to surrender their control of the economy and the asso-ciated rents? Perhaps, they need to be compensated for the loss of rents from a levelling of the economic field. After all, new growth strategies in emerging markets are built on a happy (even if fragile) coexistence of economics and politics.

The Chinese example serves to illustrate how economic reform can be aligned with the interests of political elites. The Chinese political experience is decidedly based on centralised authoritarian control. But the system allows a balancing of competing interests. It co-exists with considerable regional decentralisation where local leaders derive strength from patronage - just as in any other developing country - but are equally strongly incentivised to ensure economic growth in their localities. Economic growth yields clear political dividends for local elites. And bureaucrats face strong performance incentives. As a result, growth of the economy has become an integral component of the political objective function.

Beyond the oft-cited example of China, Africa’s recent success stories confirm the importance of elite incen-tives. Consider Ethiopia’s recent eco-nomic transformation, which has placed it in the list of the 10 fastest growing economies of the world. Central to this growth experience has been the role of public investment in infrastructure and public enterprises, and the changing political orientation of state elites. The ruling political party managed to set up its own enterprises supported by specialised endowments geared towards pro-moting investment in underdeveloped regions. Although this model of party capitalism poses serious questions about market competition, it goes to shows that elites can favour an expansion of the economic pie when they are among its lead beneficiaries. This is, after all, a key point of North, Wallis and Weingast’s treatise on

Venezuelan asylum requests have nearly doubled in Spain over the year, with close to 20,000 in 2018, according to the interior ministry.

Violence and Social Orders. Change often begins with small outcomes and processes that are compatible with elite incentives. But, what begin as privileges for insiders can ultimately become universal rights for everyone else.

In short, the idea is not to search for the ideal growth expe-rience that will uniquely fit all Arab contexts. Rather, it is to emphasize that whichever growth strategy the Middle East embarks upon should consider and accommodate political incentives. And, elites have rarely surrendered their economic control unless it became essential for their survival. The so-called “Arab Spring” was a recent tapping on the doors of power. Unfortu-nately, rather than resulting in any genuine economic concession, what we have instead seen, is business as usual. The only conces-sions that came through were financial concessions in the guise of cheap loans, salary hikes and free bonuses. But such temporary appeasement without changing the underlying rules of the game is unlikely to work for too long. And, the rules remain rigged in the favour businessmen in and around the royal circle. In North Africa, crony capitalism is rearing its head again, and insider deals continue to thrive across much of the region. In this backdrop, economic diversifi-cation will be difficult, if not impos-sible, to realise without a new political settlement that caters for a future beyond oil and conflict. At the very minimum, the region needs a new discourse on eco-nomic reform that mobilises public support for two or three funda-mental concessions that elites must surrender for long-term economic revival.

Workers at tawke oil field in Iraq.

10 MONDAY 11 FEBRUARY 2019ASIA

No agenda, no answers: Modi

slams opposition allianceIANS TIRUPPUR

Prime Minister Narendra Modi yesterday hit out at the oppo-sition alliance, questioning why they were combining against him when they claim his government was a failure.

Referring to the coming together of opposition parties of various hues, Modi, addressing a rally in Tamil Nadu’s Tiruppur after inaugurating a slew of projects, termed them an “adul-terated alliance” and a “club of rich people” to promote a dynasty.

Nobody knows the agenda of the opposition alliance and they don’t have worthwhile answers to any question, he alleged. “The only answer they have for all the questions is ‘ask Modi’,” he said.

Citing cases against oppo-sition leaders, he said after the availability of family pack ice creams and mobile telephony packages, it is “now the turn of family pack jail”.

Alleging that the opposition was good at spreading panic and misleading the youth, farmers and other sections of society, the Prime Minister said that for a long time the opposition parties had created tension in society on the issue of social justice.

“For us, social justice is an article of faith and not a math-ematical formula, the way it is for the opposition parties,” he said, adding that it was the NDA government led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee that restored reser-vation in promotions for the SC/STs, a privilege that was

scrapped by the Congress-led UPA government at the Centre earlier.

Referring to his govern-ment’s decision to provide 10 percent reservation to the eco-nomically backward sections, Modi said the move aims at equality of opportunities to all and would not affect the existing reservation for SC/STs and Other Backward Classes.

He criticised the Congress’ farm loan waiver scheme saying that it would not benefit anybody but would result in an extra burden of Rs50,000 crore, while his government, for the first time in India’s history, had announced a Rs6,000 per year income scheme for farmers’ holding less than five acres of land.

When the scheme was announced in Parliament the opposition parties were left shocked, he added.

Modi said the work culture of his government is vastly dif-ferent from that of the earlier

Congress led one.He stressed his government

has zero tolerance against cor-ruption, and is providing “Kamaraj Rule” or corruption-free rule, like freedom fighter and veteran leader K Kamaraj who provided a clean gov-ernment as Tamil Nadu’s Chief Minister.

The Prime Minister said no middleman roam around in the corridors of power now, which was not the case with the earlier Congress-led governments.

He said the government has struck down various bogus com-panies and bogus beneficiaries of various welfare schemes.

Without naming him directly, Modi took a jibe at former Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram as “recounting minister” and said the latter is of the view that all the knowledge in the world resides in him.

In 2009 Lok Sabha polls, Chidambaram was declared a winner after a recount of votes.

Modi accused those who had the opportunity to rule the nation for long of not bothering to modernise the defence forces and being more interested in deals in import of defence equipment.

He also alleged that every middleman had a link with some Congress leader or other.

Modi said his government wanted India to be self-suffi-cient in defence equipment and has set up two defence indus-trial corridors, including one in Tamil Nadu to provide jobs and opportunities for the youth.

Punjab police personnel pay tribute to the Sikh warrior General Sardar Sham Singh Attari on the occasion of his 173rd Martyrdom Day at India Gate on the outskirts of Amritsar, yesterday.

Tribute to Sikh warrior

Goyal for printing currency to finance deficitIANS NEW DELHI

Noting that finance ministers all over the world are perennially in search of revenue to balance government budgets, acting Finance Minister Piyush Goyal yesterday favoured printing currency as a way of deficit financing, citing the example of the US.

Goyal’s remarks follow his presentation of the interim Budget 2019-20 earlier this month, which contained major largesse for the stressed agri-culture sector as well as tax sops for the middle class with impli-

cations for the fiscal deficit.The fiscal deficit estimate for

the current year has been revised upwards to 3.4 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP).

“As finance ministers we are always in need of money,” Goyal said addressing the foundation day anniversary event of the state-run Security Printing and Minting Cor-poration of India (SPMCIL), and recalled that the Fiscal Responsi-bility and Budget Management Act (FRBM), 2003, had been enacted during the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led NDA government.

The FRBM Act aims to institu-tionalise financial discipline, reduce India’s fiscal deficit, improve

macroeconomic management and the overall management of the public funds through a balanced budget. “I have heard that the US does deficit financing only by printing currency,” Goyal said.

He told the gathering in jest that as Finance Minister he would have been happier if he had known of SPMCIL’s recent creditable performance on both the production and profit fronts.

SPMCIL, which supplies bank notes, coins and security docu-ments to the central government and the states, posted a net profit of Rs630 crore last year, of which Rs 200 crore has been handed over to the government as dividend.

CBI questions Kolkata Police chief for second dayIANS SHILLONG

Kolkata Police Commissioner Rajeev Kumar was interro-gated by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for a second day here yesterday in connection with the chit fund scams, an official said.

The probe agency may confront Kumar with former Trinamool Congress MP, Kunal Ghosh, who has also been summoned to the CBI office here in Oakland, in connection with the Rose Valley and Saradha chit fund scams, the official said on the condition of anonymity Ghosh, who was arrested in November 2013 was granted interim bail by the Calcutta High Court in 2016, arrived at the office at 10am, while Kumar reached half an hour later.

“Our investigation team will interrogate both of them,” the official said.

On Saturday, the CBI interrogated Kumar for eight hours for “withholding and tampering important docu-ments” in the scams.

Kumar arrived in Shillong on Friday evening from Kolkata via Guwahati after the Supreme Court, while hearing the matter on Feb-ruary 5, directed him to join the CBI probe in Shillong, a neutral place.

He was accompanied by three other senior Kolkata Police officers — Additional Police Commissioner Javed Shamim, STF chief Murulidhar Sharma and CID Chief Praveen Kumar Tripathi.

“There is no question of not cooperating. He has coop-erated before and is doing now too. We are here because of the Supreme Court order,” Kumar’s legal counsel, Biswajit Deb told the media on Saturday night.

Rafale deal audit report by CAG to be another cover-up: CongressIANS NEW DELHI

A day before submission of the audit report on military procurement, including the Rafale jet deal, by the Comp-troller and Auditor General (CAG) of India to the President, the Congress yesterday citing a “conflict of interest” said the exercise is a cover-up of the “scam”.

Holding Prime Minister Narendra Modi “guilty” of com-promising national security, the Congress also criticised the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led central government for being “opaque, intransigent, obscure

and obstinate to cover up the layers of corruption in the Rafale scam”.

In a memorandum to CAG Rajiv Meharishi, the Congress accused him of committing “gross impropriety” by auditing the Rafale deal, saying as the Finance Secretary he was involved in the deal announced by Modi in April 2015.

“You were the Finance Sec-retary from October 29, 2014 to August 30, 2015, including at the time of unilateral announcement for purchase of 36 Rafale air-craft. Even at the time of cancel-lation of the 126 aircraft MMRCA deal you were the Finance Secretary.

“Consequently, you were directly involved in the Rafale deal on both these occasions as the Finance Secretary. Not only this, you were also involved in negotiations of the deal as a rep-resentatives of the Finance Min-istry,” the Congress said in the memorandum.

It accused Meharishi of being “complicit in the irregularities” in the deal and questioned his propriety to audit the deal as the CAG.

“The irregularities, bungling and corruption were happening at the highest level with your direct or indirect complicity and consent. This reflects your direct collaboration in the

entire matter.“There is no reason or

occasion for you to audit the 36 Rafale aircraft deal as you can neither be a judge in your own cause (case) nor can sit in audit over your own actions to which you were a party.

“This conduct points to a direct conflict of interest, making you a judge in your own cause (case) and rendering you ineli-gible to conduct any audit on the Rafale deal as CAG,” the party said.

Addressing the media later, Congress leader Kapil Sibal said the CAG report was yet another attempt of the Modi government to cover up the “Rafale scam”.

“The CAG in his report, likely to be submitted today, will not only defend his action in deal as then Finance Secretary but also do cover-up for the government. Despite all the irregularities hap-pening before his eyes, the CAG will only come out defending the government and saying there is no corruption in the deal,” said Sibal.

“Being legally not entitled to audit the deal, the CAG should recuse and refrain from sub-mitting a report on the deal,” said Sibal. The Congress has repeatedly demanded a probe by a Joint Parliamentary Com-mittee (JPC) in to the “country’s biggest defence scam”.

Volunteers dance during a One Billion Rising campaign event at Central Park in New Delhi yesterday, urging an end to violence against women and girls.

Campaign for a cause

Bangladesh makes huge drugs seizureAFP DHAKA

Bangladesh seized a record 53 million methamphetamine pills in 2018 — up 33 percent in a year — amid a deadly nationwide crackdown on the trade, officials said yeserday.

Nearly 300 suspected drug dealers were killed last year, according to authorities, who insisted the seizure figure was proof that their campaign was working.

Rights groups said the record haul showed the deaths had failed to make an impact on the trade.

T h e g o v e r n m e n t Department of Narcotics Control said the drug — popularly known as ‘yaba’, a Thai word meaning ‘crazy medicine’ — was seized across the South Asian nation of 165 million people.

“It is the highest amount seized in a year,” Bazlur Rahman, a department deputy director, said.

Masum-e-Rabbani, another senior official at the department, said the record haul was proof

that a crackdown launched in May last year was yielding “pos-itive” results.

He said there has been a significant decline in the use and sale of yaba.

Nearly 300 suspected drug dealers were killed by security forces in the campaign and some 25,000 arrests made, according to Rabbani.

Human rights groups say many of the deaths amount to extrajudicial killings however.

More than 40 were killed in the town of Teknaf, which borders Myanmar’s troubled Rakhine state and is close to the refugee camps housing about one million Rohingya Muslims.

Bangladesh has struggled to control a surge in yaba imports crossing the border from Myanmar, where the pills are manufactured by the millions.

The pills have become an easy source of income for the Rohingya who poured across the border after the Myanmar military launched a clampdown in Rakhine in August 2017.

Referring to the coming together of opposition parties of various hues, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, addressing a rally in Tiruppur after inaugurating several projects, termed them an “adulterated alliance” and a “club of rich people” to promote a dynasty.

11MONDAY 11 FEBRUARY 2019 HOME

12 MONDAY 11 FEBRUARY 2019ASIA

IMF chief says ready to support PakistanAFP DUBAI

International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief Christine Lagarde yesterday met Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan and assured him that IMF stands ready to support his country.

The meeting took place on the sidelines of the World Gov-ernment Summit in Dubai, hosted by the United Arab Emirates, both IMF and Prime Minister Imran Khan’s office said.

“I reiterated that the IMF stands ready to support Pakistan,” Lagarde said in a statement following meeting Khan.

A team from the Interna-tional Monetary Fund visited Pakistan in November to discuss a possible bailout with officials, though the talks ended without agreement, but since then the government official said talks were still ongoing on a possible bailout.

Pakistan — which has gone to the IMF repeatedly since the late 1980s — is facing a balance of payments crisis.

“I also highlighted that decisive policies and a strong package of economic reforms would enable Pakistan to restore the resilience of its economy and lay the foundations for stronger and more inclusive growth,” said Lagarde, calling the meeting “good and constructive”.

Pakistan — a regular bor-rower from the IMF since the 1980s — last received an IMF bailout in 2013 to the tune of $6.6bn.

Forecasts by the IMF and

World Bank suggest the Paki-stani economy is likely to grow between 4.0 and 4.5 percent for the fiscal year ending June 2019, compared to 5.8 percent growth in the last fiscal year.

Addressing the World Gov-ernment Summit, prime min-ister Khan said his government has started a reform programme and was trying to improve its economic policies.

“Reforms are painful but it is essential if we have to get out of our current problems,” Khan told the summit and said his government was making efforts to cut down the fiscal and current account deficit.

Khan hoped that the time has come that “Pakistan will take off”.

Khan has launched a highly publicised austerity drive since being sworn in, including auc-tioning off government-owned luxury vehicles and buffaloes, in addition to seeking loans from “friendly countries” and making overtures to the IMF.

The United Arab Emirates, Pakistan’s largest trading partner in the Middle East and a major investment sources, recently offered $3bn to support Pakistan’s battered economy.

Islamabad also secured $6bn in funding from Saudi Arabia and struck a 12-month deal for a cash lifeline during Khan’s visit to the kingdom in October.

It has also received billions of dollars in Chinese loans to finance ambitious infrastructure projects.

Despite the pledges, the ministry of finance said Pakistan would still seek broader IMF support for the government’s long-term economic planning.

Counter-terror raids leave 75 rebels dead in AfghanistanANATOLIA KABUL

Afghan security forces yesterday claimed to have killed 75 rebels in fresh counter-terrorism offensives amid ambiguity surrounding the proposed peace talks with the Taliban.

Air and ground offensives in the past 24 hours also wounded 20 rebels in the Nangarhar, Kapisa, Parwan, Ghazni, Kandahar, Uruzgan, Badghes, Farah, Balkh, Jawzjan, Takhar, and Helmand provinces, the Defense Min-istry said in a statement.

There was no mention of the casualties sustained by security forces.

The offensives come amid ambiguity over proposed peace talks in the country, with the Taliban unwilling to meet or recognise the gov-ernment based in Kabul.

In a separate devel-opment, the Afghan secret service, NDS, announced it had busted a three-member gang behind the massive truck bombing on the capital’s dip-lomatic enclave in May 2017 that killed close to 100 people and injured more than 400, besides damaging embassies.

The NDS said the alleged terrorists are associated with the Haqqani Network.

Balochistan to plant 1.2 million trees this yearINTERNEWS ISLAMABAD

Pakistani province of Balo-chistan’s Chief Minister Jam Kamal Alyani said that 1.2 million trees would be planted across the province in 2019, Radio Pakistan reported yesterday.

The chief minister, while speaking to journalists in Quetta, announced that a total of 250 million trees would be planted in Balochistan over the next five years.

He said that the new Forest Act would also be imposed soon

to promote reforestation in the province.

The chief minister urged citizens to actively participate in the plantation campaign.

The statement comes a day after Prime Minister Imran Khan launched a spring tree plantation campaign at Balloki, Nankana Sahib, and vowed to protect Pakistan’s forests at all costs.

The premier had noted that forest cover in Pakistan was already very low as compared to the rest of the countries in the region, and said that Paki-stan’s forests should be pro-tected at any cost.

Prime Minister Khan said his government has started a reform programme and was trying to improve its economic policies.

Bilawal alerts Pakistan as US hopes to reach Afghan peace dealINTERNEWS ISLAMABAD

As the United States hopes to reach a peace agreement with the Taliban before the Afghan elections in July, PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari has urged Pakistan to be ready to protect its interests in the region.

In his speech at the US Institute for Peace (USIP), Bilawal noted that President Donald Trump’s recent tweets and statements on Afghanistan

indicated Washington’s desire to leave the war-torn country.

He also quoted from a recent New York Times editorial which interpreted the ongoing US-Taliban talks as “negotiated capitulation by the international forces”.

The possibility of a uni-lateral US withdrawal from Afghanistan has created a new wave of uncertainty in the region, “which poses yet another challenge to Pakistan,” he warned. “It is not difficult to visualise the consequences of

capitulation.”Bilawal addressed this issue

at a meeting with Washington-based Pakistani journalists as well, urging Islamabad to be ready to deal with both positive and negative consequences of a US withdrawal.

Minutes after his press talk, US Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad, also spoke at USIP where he declared that the United States was hoping to reach a peace agreement with various factions, including the

Taliban, before the Afghan pres-idential elections in July this year.

“It will be better for Afghan-istan if we could get a peace agreement before the election, which is scheduled in July,” Kha-lilzad said, adding that there remained “a lot of work” to do.

“We are after a peace agreement, not a withdrawal agreement. A peace agreement can allow withdrawal,” he said. But he also admitted that the “elections make the peace agreement more complicated”.

Khalilzad, who acknowl-edged that Pakistan had released a senior Taliban leader Mullah Baradar on his request to facil-itate the peace talks, said that Pakistan could play a very crucial in the reconciliation process with the Taliban.

Noting that Mullah Baradar, now based in Doha, was already facilitating the US-Taliban talks, the US envoy said that his role had also been recognised by former Afghanistan president Hamid Karzai and his successor President Ashraf Ghani.

US, South Korea sign defence cost-sharing dealSEOUL AP

South Korea and the United States struck a new deal yesterday that increases Seoul’s contribution to the cost of the American military presence on its soil, overcoming previous failed negotiations that caused worries about their decades-long alliance.

The development comes as President Donald Trump is set to hold his second summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un in Vietnam in late February.

South Korea last year pro-vided about $830m, covering roughly 40 percent of the cost of the deployment of 28,500 US soldiers whose presence is meant to deter aggression from North Korea. Trump has pushed for South Korea to pay more.

Yesterday, chief negotiators from the two countries signed a new cost-sharing plan, which requires South Korea to pay about $924m in 2019, Seoul’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

The statement said the two countries reaffirmed the need

for a “stable” US military deployment amid the “rapidly changing situation on the Korean Peninsula.” The ministry said the US assured South Korea that it is committed to the alliance and has no plans to adjust the number of its troops in South Korea.

South Korea began paying for the US military deployment in the early 1990s, after

rebuilding its economy from the devastation of the 1950-1953 Korean War.

About 20 anti-US activists rallied near the Foreign Ministry building in Seoul yesterday, chanting slogans like “No more money for US troops.” No vio-lence was reported.

“The United States gov-ernment realises that Korea does a lot for our alliance and peace

and stability in the region,” chief US negotiator Timothy Betts said yesterday in Seoul. “We are very pleased our consultations resulted in agreement that will strengthen transparency and deepen our cooperation and the alliance.”

The deal, which involves the spending of South Korean tax-payer money, requires parlia-mentary approval in South Korea, but not in the United States, according to Seoul’s Foreign Ministry.

The allies had failed to reach a new cost-sharing plan during some 10 rounds of talks. A five-year 2014 deal that covered South Korea’s payment last year expired at the end of 2018.

Some conservatives in South Korea voiced concerns over a weakening alliance with the United States at the same time as negotiations with North Korea to deprive it of its nuclear weapons hit a stalemate. They said Trump might use the failed military cost-sharing negotia-tions as an excuse to pull back some US troops in South Korea as a bargaining chip in talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un.

South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha (right) and Timothy Betts, acting Deputy Assistant Secretary and Senior Adviser for Security Negotiations and Agreements in the US Department of State, during their meeting at Foreign Ministry, in Seoul, yesterday.

Pashtuns protest in KarachiActivists of Pashtun Protection Movement (PTM) protest against the arrest of their activists and leaders, in Karachi, yesterday. The PTM has rattled the military since it burst onto the scene early last year with a call to end alleged abuses by security forces targeting Pashtuns in the restive northwestern tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan, local media said.

Indonesia police ‘use snake to terrorise man’AP JAKARTA

Indonesian police have acknowledged officers terrorised a Papuan man with a live snake after a video of the incident circulated online showing the man screaming in fear and his interrogator laughing.

Police in Indonesia’s east-ernmost Papua region apolo-gised but also attempted to justify the officers’ actions by saying the snake was not ven-omous and that they hadn’t resorted to beating the man, who was suspected of theft.

Human rights lawyer Veronica Koman said yes-terday that the interrogation methods were torture and vio-lated police policies as well as several laws.

She added that it was only the latest of several reports of police and military using snakes to terrorise Papuan detainees and symptomatic of a culture of racism against indigenous Papuans.

Sam Lokon, a member of the West Papua National

Committee, which advocates for independence from Indo-nesia, was put in a cell with a snake and also beaten after being arrested in January, Koman said.

Police indicated the incident with the alleged thief happened recently, during a crackdown on petty crime in Jayawijaya district.

The spread of the video had forced police into a “very rare” apology, Koman said, while also criticising the attempt to provide a justification.

The one minute and 20 second video shows the dark brown snake, at least two meters long, wrapped around the handcuffed suspect’s neck and waist and an officer pushing its head into the man’s face as he becomes increasingly hysterical.

Officers appear to be asking how many times he’d stolen cellphones.

Jayawijaya police chief Tonny Ananda Swadaya said the officers had been disci-plined by being given ethics training and moved to other locations.

Imran Khan and Christine Lagarde

13MONDAY 11 FEBRUARY 2019 EUROPE

27 children of Russian IS fighters ‘repatriated’ from IraqAFP BAGHDAD

A Russian official said yesterday that Moscow had repatriated a fresh batch of children whose mothers are being held in Iraq for belonging to the IS militant group.

“Twenty-seven Russian children have been repatriated from Baghdad”, a Russian foreign ministry official said.

Thirty other children were sent back to Moscow in late

December last year.The fathers of the children

were killed during three years of fighting between the jihadists and Iraqi troops, the official said.

IS seized large swathes of Iraq in a lightning 2014 offensive, before the government dis-lodged the jihadists from urban centres and eventually declared victory in December 2017.

The Kremlin announced in early January that 115 Russian children aged below ten — along with eight aged between 11 and

17 — were still in Iraq. Iraqi law allows detainees to

be held with their offspring until the age of three, but older children have to live with relatives.

In November, Kheda Saratova — an adviser to Chech-nya’s authoritarian leader Ramzan Kadyrov — estimated “around 2,000” widows and children of Russian IS fighters were still in Iraq and neigh-bouring Syria.

Around one hundred women

and children — mostly from Caucasus republics — have returned to Russia so far.

Nearly 4,500 Russian cit-izens had gone abroad to fight “on the side of terrorists”, Rus-sia’s FSB domestic intelligence agency said last year.

More than 300 people, including around 100 foreign women, have been sentenced to death in Iraq for belonging to the IS militant group, while others have been sentenced to life in prison.

Anti-govt protest in Madrid over Catalonia policy

Bulgaria to probe report on new Russian spy poisoning suspectAFP SOFIA

Bulgaria will investigate reports that a new suspect in the Skripal nerve agent attack in Britain may also have been involved in a 2015 poisoning in Bulgaria, a ruling party lawmaker said.

A parliamentary committee will on Thursday seek

information from the intelligence services following a new inves-tigation into the attempted poi-soning of local businessman Emiliyan Gebrev, said Tsvetan Tsvetanov, the parliamentary leader of the ruling GERB party.

“I am certain that the nec-essary coordination has already been set up between the Bul-garian, British and European

authorities on the case and they are working actively on it.”

The statement was the first official reaction in Bulgaria to a report issued last week by the investigative website Bellingcat.

Their report identified a hitherto unknown third suspect in last year’s attack in Salisbury, England, of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter.

Skripal and his daughter were discovered unconscious on a Salisbury park bench after they had been poisoned by the highly toxic nerve agent Novichok in an attack the British government said was “almost certainly” approved by the Russian state.

Although they both recovered, a British woman died last June after her partner picked

up a discarded perfume bottle that investigators believe was used to carry the Novichok.

British-based group Bell-ingcat has already used open-source techniques to identify two Russian military intelligence officers, Anatoly Chepiga and Alexander Mishkin, accused by Britain of carrying out the attack.

Bellingcat’s latest report

identifies a third man — named by his alias “Sergey Fedotov” —as being involved in the British attack, having arrived in Britain two days before the Skripals were poisoned.

They concluded that the same man may also have been involved in the attempted poisoning in April 2015 of Gebrev, a veteran of Bulgarian arms industry.

Brexit talks: May seeks

more time from MPsAFP LONDON

The British government sought to win more time to secure EU concessions that could pass parliament and avert a chaotic split from the bloc on March 29.

Businesses and governments are on edge because Britain is just weeks away from its scheduled departure from the European project after 46 years and still has no firm arrange-ments in place.

The UK parliament last month roundly rejected a Brexit deal Prime Minister Theresa May had sealed with the remaining 27 EU leaders.

MPs are set to vote on Brit-ain’s Brexit options on February 14. But a member of May’s cabinet pledged yesterday to give parliament a further ballot two weeks later — a measure meant to give the premier more time for talks with the EU.

Her meetings in Brussels on Thursday made no breakthrough and fears of a “no-deal” scenario that gridlocks trade are running high.

May’s Housing Minister James Brokenshire insisted yes-terday that the government had

a clear strategy and timeline aimed at getting an agreement that Britain’s splintered par-liament can pass.

“What gives certainty is a deal, and that’s why we want to see people getting behind us, getting behind this process that we now have,” Brokenshire said.

He pledged to give par-liament a new vote on Britain’s options by February 27 if May does not come back with new concessions before then.

“If the meaningful vote has not happened — in other words, if things have not concluded —(then) parliament would have that further opportunity by no later than the 27th of February,” he said.

In the vote this week law-makers are set to vote on amendments that could limit May’s options and give par-liament a broader say over the Brexit process.

Brokenshire’s promise of another vote two weeks later is designed to discourage law-

makers from binding the gov-ernment’s hands this week.

It is also meant to postpone a revolt by cabinet ministers who want to take a no-deal Brexit off the table for good.

The opposition Labour party has denounced May’s strategy as time wasting aimed at forcing parliament to vote through a deal at the last moment.

“We shouldn’t be put in a position where the clock is run down and the prime minister says it’s either my deal or even worse,” Labour’s Brexit pointman Keir Starmer said.

There are also few signs of concessions coming May’s way from Brussels in the coming days.

May’s Brexit minister Stephen Barkley will meet EU negotiator Michel Barnier on Monday and foreign minister Jeremy Hunt will visit Paris and Warsaw this week.

The British premier is set to meet European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker again

before the end of the month.The sides are stuck on the

issue of how to keep the Irish border open after Britain leaves.

Brexit backers in May’s party think the so-called “backstop” arrangement in the current deal would keep Britain indefinitely tied to EU rules.

May’s Northern Irish coa-lition party also argue that it will

splinter their province from mainland Britain.

But Brussels calls the arrangement essential for both keeping the border open and preserving the EU’s integrity.

May has been trying to win a legal assurance giving Britain the right eventually to drop the backstop and negotiate its own trade deals.

Prime Minister Theresa May and her husband Philip during their church visit, near High Wycombe, Britain, yesterday.

Housing Minister James Brokenshire insisted that the government had a clear strategy and timeline aimed at getting an agreement that Britain’s splintered parliament can pass.

Prince Philip surrenders driver’s licence after crashAP LONDON

Prince Philip has decided to stop driving at the age of 97, less than a month after he was involved in a collision that left two women injured, Buck-ingham Palace said.

Prosecutors said they would consider the decision as they decide whether to charge the husband of Queen Eliz-abeth II over the January 17 crash.

“After careful consideration the Duke of Edinburgh has taken the decision to volun-tarily surrender his driving licence,” the palace said in a statement.

Philip was behind the wheel of a Land Rover near the royal family’s Sandringham estate in eastern England when he smashed into another car on January 17. Philip had to be

helped out of his overturned vehicle but wasn’t injured. Two women in the other car were injured, though not seriously, and a 9-month-old baby boy was unhurt.

Philip was photographed driving again two days later, without a seatbelt. Police said they offered him “suitable words of advice” after that.

Norfolk Police confirmed that the prince had “voluntarily surrendered his licence to officers.”

It said an investigation file on the case had been handed to prosecutors, who will decide whether to press charges.

There is no upper age limit for licensing drivers in Britain, although drivers over 70 are required to renew their licenses every three years and tell authorities about any medical conditions that might raise safety issues.

AFP MADRID

Tens of thousands of people waving Spanish flags joined a rally yesterday in Madrid called by right-wing and far-right parties against Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez over his nego-tiations with Catalan separa-tists.

Under the shadow of a huge Spanish flag that flies above the central Colon Square, the dem-onstrators waved their own smaller red and yellow versions of the same banner and held signs reading “Stop Sanchez. Elections now!”.

Municipal police estimated some 45,000 people had taken part in the protest, which comes just two days before the high-profile trial of Catalan separatist leaders opens in Madrid under the national and foreign spotlight.

The rally was called by

centre-right Ciudadanos, the conservative Popular Party (PP) and far-right Vox, which has only recently burst onto Spain’s political scene, as well as a handful of smaller far-right groups.

They are angered by Sanchez’s decision to take a more conciliatory tone with

pro-independence parties, whose votes are crucial to the legislative agenda of his eight-m o n t h - o l d m i n o r i t y government.

Sanchez came to power in June with the support of Catalan nationalist parties, which voted with him in a no confidence motion against former Prime

Minister Mariano Rajoy, whose PP was embroiled in a cor-ruption scandal.

They called the rally after Sanchez’s government last week accepted the presence — as asked by Catalan separatists —of an independent “rapporteur” in future talks between Catalan parties.

Protesters shout slogans during a demonstration against Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, in Madrid, yesterday.

No tax for Hungarian womenwith four or more childrenAP BUDAPEST

Hungary’s anti-immigration prime minister said the government is greatly increasing financial aid and subsidies for families with several children.

The measures announced yesterday by Prime Minister Viktor Orban during his “state of the nation” speech are meant to encourage women to have more children and to reverse Hun-gary’s population decline.

They include a lifetime income tax exemption for women who give birth to at least four children.

Orban said such policies are “Hungary’s answer” to downward demographic trends, “not immigration.”

He repeated his assertion that European Union leaders in Brussels want to fill Europe with migrants from other continents.

Macedonia to pay compensation to six wrongly convicted peopleAP SKOPJE

Macedonia’s government will reportedly pay a total of $1.36m in compensation to s ix people wrongly convicted on terrorism-related charges.

Local TV station Sitel is reporting the compensation includes $101.40 for each day they spent in prison, plus trial costs.

The six, along with five others on the run, were sen-tenced in 2011 for allegedly planting a mine on a local road in 2003 that killed two Nato soldiers and a Mace-donian national.

The key witness for the prosecution was later found to have been tortured by police.

The six were provisionally released in year 2015. The state prosecutor’s office decided to abandon the case last year.

The five people convicted in absentia will not receive compensation.

In January, two men who were wrongly jailed in UK for a total of 24 years have lost their fight for compensation from the government.

The deadline for an agreement on funding to keep the government open is Friday, raising the specter of a repeat of the 35-day partial shutdown that ended on January 25 — the longest in US history.

14 MONDAY 11 FEBRUARY 2019AMERICAS

New Muslim lawmakers’ criticism of Israel pressures US DemocratsAFP WASHINGTON

The support for a boycott of Israel by the first two Muslim women in the US Congress has opened a breach in the Demo-cratic Party and threatens to create a fissure in the ironclad US-Israeli alliance.

Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib made their debut in the House of Representatives in January openly declaring their support for the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement, or BDS.

The movement, launched more than a decade ago and modeled on the 1960s movement to pressure South Africa over apartheid, calls for people and groups to sever economic, cul-tural and academic ties to Israel,

and to support sanctions against the Jewish state.

But for Israel partisans — including many Democrats and Republicans in Congress — BDS smacks of anti-Semitism and poses a threat to Israel.

Tlaib, 42, has Palestinian roots and represents a district of suburban Detroit, Michigan that is home to thousands of Muslims.

She argues that BDS can draw a focus on “issues like the racism and the international human rights violations by Israel right now.” Omar, 37, is the daughter of Somali refugees who was elected to represent a Min-neapolis, Minnesota district with a large Somali population.

She accuses Israel of dis-crimination against Palestinians akin to apartheid, but denies that she is anti-Semitic.

Her remarks in January to Yahoo News however sparked anger among the large pro-Israel contingent in Congress, the pow-erful, largely Democratic US Jewish community, and Israel itself, where BDS is seen as a national threat.

“When I see Israeli institute laws that recognize it as a Jewish state and does not recognize the other religions that are living in it, and we still hold it as a democracy in the Middle East, I almost chuckle,” she told Yahoo News.

“Because I know that if we see that in another society we would criticize it — we do that to Iran, any other place that sort of upholds its religion.”

Omar and Tlaib sparked the BDS controversy during a period when Donald Trump’s adminis-tration has strengthened

relations with Israel and slashed aid to the Palestinians.

But Republicans saw their support for BDS as both a threat to Jews and an exploitable rift among Democrats.

“Democrats have made it clear that hateful, bigoted rhetoric toward Israel is not con-fined to a few freshman members. This is the mainstream position of today’s Democratic Party and their leadership is ena-bling it,” Republicans said in a statement on January 29.

Republican Congressman Lee Zeldin urged his colleagues “to reject the anti-Israel and anti-Semitic hatred that we are starting to see infiltrating American politics and even the halls of Congress”.

The worry about the still small but growing support for

BDS in the United States predates Tlaib’s and Omar’s political rise.

A number of states have passed or proposed constitu-tionally questionable legislation and policies that would penalize supporters of the boycott movement. But the arrival of Tlaib and Omar in Congress was greeted with the first proposed federal law to fight to that end, in the Senate.

Senator Marco Rubio argues that BDS aims to eliminate the state of Israel, and said his leg-islation would protect states’ rights to exclude from public contracts any supporters of BDS.

Republicans, the majority in the Senate, along with more than half of the Democrats approved the legislation. But a significant number of Democrats opposed it, because, they said, it violates

constitutional guarantees of freedom of expression. That has left Democrats vulnerable to charges of anti-Semitism.

To fight that, in January prominent party members formed the Democratic Majority for Israel, touting themselves as “The Voice of Pro-Israel Democrats,” which for some came across as a rebuke of Omar and Tlaib.

After Omar joined the influ-ential House Foreign Affairs Committee, according to The New York Times, Jewish com-mittee Chairman Eliot Engel pri-vately made it clear that he would not ignore any “particu-larly hurtful” remarks she might make. “You hope that when people are elected to Congress, they continue to grow,” he reportedly told her.

New shutdown threat as US budget talks stallAFP WASHINGTON

US budget talks have hit another impasse over immi-gration, a key Republican nego-tiator said yesterday, raising the prospect of a second gov-ernment shutdown if no agreement is reached by this week’s deadline.

“I think the talks are stalled right now,” Richard Shelby, the chairman of the Senate Appro-priations Committee, said on Fox News Sunday.

The deadline for an agreement on funding to keep the government open is Friday, raising the specter of a repeat of the 35-day partial shutdown that ended on January 25 — the longest in US history.

Negotiators had been opti-mistic on Friday that an agreement would be reached that includes some funds for a border “barrier,” although less than the $5.6bn US President Donald Trump has demanded.

Shelby blamed Democrats for the latest snag, saying they wanted to cap the number of beds at immigration detention centers. “Time is ticking away but we got some problems with the Democrats dealing with ICE,” he said, referring to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Trump himself, who today hosts a rally of supporters on the Texas border at El Paso, said Democratic negotiators were being hamstrung by their party leadership.

“They are offering very little money for the desperately needed Border Wall & now, out

of the blue, want a cap on con-victed violent felons to be held in detention!,” he tweeted.

He went on to suggest Democrats were ready to let talks collapse to distract from unfavorable headlines including a racism scandal engulfing the party leadership in Virginia.

“I actually believe they want a Shutdown. They want a new subject!,” Trump said.

Senator Jon Tester, a Dem-ocrat, expressed cautious optimism that a government shutdown would be averted.

“We need to keep our eyes on this but I’m very hopeful, not positive, but very hopeful we can come to an agreement,” he said.

White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, meanwhile, said a government shutdown is “still technically on the table.” “There’s going to be a lot of dif-ferent moving pieces so I’m not in a position to say the pres-ident will absolutely sign or will not sign,” he said.

Trump “cannot sign every-thing they put in front of him, if there will be some things that simply we couldn’t agree to,” he said.

US Senator Klobuchar to join Democratic presidential fieldREUTERS NEW YORK

US Senator Amy Klobuchar is expected to join the 2020 pres-idential race, becoming the first moderate in an increasingly crowded field of Democrats vying to challenge Republican President Donald Trump.

Klobuchar, 58, now in her third six-year term as a senator for Minnesota, will seek to position herself as a contrast to Trump, who is expected to be the Republican candidate in the November 2020 election, focusing on both policy differ-ences but also style and tact.

“I’m asking you to join us on this campaign. It’s a homegrown

one. I don’t have a political machine. I don’t come from money. But what I do have is this. I have grit. I have family. I have friends,” Klobuchar said in prepared remarks for a rally in Minnesota.

“I will look you in the eye. I will tell you what I think. I will focus on getting things done. That’s what I’ve done my whole life. And no matter what, I’ll lead from the heart.” A former pros-ecutor and corporate attorney, Klobuchar joins a list of Demo-cratic hopefuls that includes fellow Senators Cory Booker of New Jersey, Kamala Harris of California and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.

Warren heads to Iowa to

campaign on Sunday after for-mally launching her bid on Sat-urday. Booker is also spending the weekend in the Midwestern farm state. Klobuchar’s cam-paign announcement comes amid several news reports that staff in her Senate office were asked to do menial tasks, including some personal in nature like laundry, making it difficult for her to hire high-level campaign strategists.

Klobuchar gained attention in 2018 when she sparred with Brett Kavanaugh during Senate hearings on his Supreme Court nomination. Her questions earned her recognition in Dem-ocratic circles for working to advance the #MeToo movement

against sexual harassment and assault. But the senator will have work to do to build a national profile. She barely registers in early opinion polls of potential Democratic candidates.

Klobuchar hopes her mod-erate policies and strong electoral record in Minnesota will help her win back states Trump took from Democrats in the 2016 White House contest, including nearby Iowa, Wisconsin and Michigan, as well as Pennsylvania.

Klobuchar won her most recent Senate race in November with more than 60 percent of the vote. But she raised only about $7.4m, a relatively small amount compared with Senate candi-dates in more competitive races.

Venezuelan military official backs GuaidoAFP CARACAS

An active-duty Venezuelan army colonel who is a military doctor has dropped his allegiance to President Nicolas Maduro, backing opposition leader Juan Guaido instead.

“Ninety percent of us in the armed forces are really unhappy,” said Colonel Ruben Paz Jimenez said in a video released on Saturday. “We are being used to keep them in power.” He urged his fellow sol-diers to help allow humanitarian aid into Venezuela. The shipment of US aid is cur-rently in Cucuta, Colombia, on the border.

Maduro has vowed to prevent the aid from entering, labeling it a precursor of a US invasion. A week ago, Air Force General Francisco Yanez also dropped his allegiance to Maduro. The military’s backing is critical to the sway of power in Venezuela. Guaido on Friday refused to rule out the possibility of authorizing United States intervention to help force Maduro from power and alleviate a humanitarian crisis.

Modest praise for US reform of visa program for skilled workersAFP WASHINGTON

The Trump administration’s new rules for a US visa program widely used for technology workers are getting cautious praise from Silicon Valley amid surging demand for high-skill employees.

The H-1B visa program, which admits some 85,000 foreign nationals each year, will give higher priority to people with post-graduate degrees from US universities, under a final rule published in January by the Department of Homeland Security.

“US employers seeking to employ foreign workers with a US master’s or higher degree will have a greater chance of selection in the H-1B lottery”

under the new rule, said Francis Cissna, director of US Citi-zenship and Immigration Services, in announcing the change on January 30.

The changes come with the tech industry pleading for more immigrants to fill key skilled positions, and responds in part of concerns that the program has been exploited by some tech giants and outsourcing firms to depress wages and displace US employees.

“The changes are, on the whole, a positive step in the right direction,” said Todd Schulte of the immigration reform group FWD.us backed by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and others in the industry.

Ed Black of the Computer & Communications Industry

Association, which represents several major tech firms, said the program has not always been administered as well as it could have been.

“We are hopeful something in the newly announced revi-sions will improve efficiency, but it’s too soon to say what the impact will be in practice,” Black said.

The H-1B program, in place since 1990, has been used for a variety of skilled occupations including nurses and pastry chefs, but in recent years two-thirds have been for computer-related jobs and three-fourths of the employees have come from India. Because visa-holders can stay up to six years, the number currently living in the United States is estimated at more than half a million.

Venezuela’s National Assembly head and self-proclaimed acting president Juan Guaido waves next to his wife Fabian Rosales and their daughter Miranda as they leave after attending a mass at the Nuestra Senora Guadalupe church in Caracas, yesterday.

Playing on snowPeople play on a hill in the Phinney Ridge neighbourhood after a large storm blanketed the city with snow, in Seattle, Washington. Seattle almost reached its yearly amount of snowfall in a day.

15MONDAY 11 FEBRUARY 2019 HOME

NIGERIA

Closely connected communityFAZEENA SALEEM THE PENINSULA

One in every five African is Nigerian; Nigeria is not just Africa’s most populous nation,

but also Africa’s most popular nation. Nigerians are all around the globe,

inscribing their names on the map of every continent. Nigeria is often referred to as the ‘Giant of Africa’, owing to its large population and economy. In Qatar, they are more than 10,000 and work in different sectors including, construction, media, energy, hospitality and health.

The Nigerian in Diaspora Organ-isation (NIDO-Qatar), an association of Nigerian residents in Qatar who are willing to associate with one another socially, is one of the most active expatriates’ body here. It is an umbrella body of all Nigerians, asso-ciations and professional groups in Qatar. The Government of Nigeria rec-ognises the NIDO-Qatar as an official platform through which individual Nigerian diaspora, their community organisations and corporate bodies can channel their developmental efforts to Nigeria. “The

name NIDO-Qatar was given to the organization following a directive by the government of Nigeria to establish a Diaspora Commission responsible for all diaspora matters of Nigerians worldwide,” said Jelili Opadijo, public relations officer at NIDO-Qatar.

“The aims and objectives of NIDO-Qatar include to promote, support and encourage global trade awareness and moral consciousness that promote positive business climate between Nigeria and Qatar,” he added.

It also aims at promoting the spirit of patriotism among Nigerians living in Qatar and encourage their partic-ipation in the affairs of Nigeria and

encourage Nigerians living in Qatar to be good and law-abiding residents of Qatar.

NIDO-Qatar is a networking platform for Nigerians living in Qatar, as well as with other community groups, voluntary organisations, gov-ernment departments, businesses, individuals and all other organiza-tions. It also helps Nigerians in Qatar by creating opportunities in different ways including assisting the investment plans of Nigerian expa-triates in Qatar, who wish to invest in the Nigerian economy. NIDO-Qatar also organizes socio-cultural events, economic and investment seminars

sporting events and town hall meetings. NIDO-Qatar has played a major role in advocating the estab-lishment of the Nigerian embassy in Qatar in 2015. “NIDO-Qatar has part-nered with government departments in Qatar such as Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy, National Human Rights Committee and Qatar Red Crescent Society,” said Opadijo.

Nigerians in diaspora across the globe, including Qatar, are remitting over $21billion into the country annually. The remittances inflow con-tributes substantially to foreign exchange earnings and household finances in the country.

NIDO-Qatar brings two nations closer to each otherSIDI MOHAMED THE PENINSULA

Nigerians in Diaspora Organization, Qatar Chapter (NIDO-Qatar) in collaboration with

Nigerian embassy organized recently an ‘Economic Enhancement Program’ forum.

“The event aims to encourage Nigerians for two things: first is to show community members existing opportunity of business and investment in Qatar, and second inform them about oppor-tunities of investment in Nigeria,” Victor Ikoli, NIDO- Qatar pres-ident said.

He also said that the organ-isation makes community members think about investing back home in Nigeria as there are many opportunities in services, agriculture and real estate sectors. “This forum also con-tributes in the development of

the Qatar as it discusses ways of supporting the community to contribute in Qatar’s economy.”

The forum was held at La Cigale Hotel on Friday in the presence of over 200 people. NIDO-Qatar also invited guests form the Ministry of Interior, Qatar Financial Center, Qatar Chamber and NIDO Europe who highlighted a number of facts and figures which encouraged Nigerian businessmen to invest in Qatar and also highlighted the facilities Qatar is offering to expats and foreign investors.

Ikoli thanked Qatar Financial Centre to make this initiative possible. “We requested officials from these government entities to explain to businessmen how to invest and to do business in Qatar like business registration, license for business and other related procedures.”

In his speech, Ikoli asked Qatar Nigerian Business Council

(QNBC) to do more and guide Nigerian companies for opening businesses in Qatar. “QNBC should bring people from Nigeria to Qatar and take people from Qatar to Nigeria because there are many investment opportu-nities in Nigeria and there are many people interested to invest in Nigeria. NIDO is playing its due role but the Council is more qualified to perform this job,” he added.

“It is the first time that we organized such an event but hope that now it will be held on annual basis. It is being organised to help businessmen from both countries and bridge the gap. The purpose of holding the forum is to share information on how to do business in Qatar and Nigeria,” said Oladayo Olayiwola, vice president of NIDO-Qatar while talking to The Peninsula.

He added: “We were planning to invite some guests from

Nigerian but due to current situ-ation in Nigerian we could not do that. Elections are being held in Nigeria next week and all gov-ernment departments are busy in them. We also planning to organize another activity for Nigerian community but I can not share more information about it

before all plans get finalised.” About Nigerian community

life in Qatar, Omogiate Precious Osagiemoangbon, NIDO’s Social Secretary said: “The Nigerian community is very active with over 10,000 people according to the last statistics. It is very vibrant, socially active, and has presence

in different professions,” he added.

“They are working in dif-ferent sectors especially safety sector, engineering sector, medical sector, aviation and many other sectors”, he said.

About the events they organise for the community, Osagiemoangbon said: “Annually, we are organizing many activities in sports, culture and other aca-demic events. Whenever there is any cultural activity being organized by the embassy we participate in it. We also keenly participate in all festivities in Qatar in order to show Nigerian traditions, heritage, fashion, music and food.”

On life in Qatar, he said he always felt like living in his home country. “The diversity of the country is somehow similar to the diversity in Nigeria because in Nigeria there are 50 languages and we live together.”

The ‘Economic Enhancement Program Forum’ organised by Nigerians in Diaspora Organization at the La Cigale Hotel in Doha on Friday. PICS BY: SALIM MATRAMKOT/THE PENINSULA

Victor Ikoli Omogiate Precious Osagiemoangbon

QNBC should bring people from Nigeria to Qatar and take people from Qatar to Nigeria because there are many investment opportunities in Nigeria and there are many people interested to invest in Nigeria.

Lending a helping hand

The Nigerian community contribute their knowledge and experience for the development of different sectors

in Qatar. Their contribution is widespread to sectors including media, health and energy.

Abdulrahman Olukade (pic-tured), who is residing here for nine years is one among the many. He works as a Senior Exploration Geologist at Qatar Petroleum. His work is research based and con-tributes to the development of the oil and gas industry. His job requires to invest intimate knowledge and advanced tech-nology to make educated guesses about the probable locations of energy deposits.

“As an Exploration Geologist, I apply the knowledge and technology to unlock the remaining potentials in fields of oil and gas for the benefit of the country,” he said. Olukade also an active member of the Nigerian community in Qatar and plays a role in the welfare of his fellow countrymen here. He takes a special interest in Islamic activities and other related events.

“I work with the community organiza-tions especially with the Nigerian Muslims here. We help organizing events and activ-ities for the betterment of our community living in Qatar,” he said.

Olukade, living here with his spouse and children lauds the facilities and opportu-nities Qatar has provided to residents. “Life in Qatar is good, me and my family enjoy living here. Qatar provides a safe, calm and family oriented environment. The life standards are high here. Qatar has given good education opportunities to my children,” said Olukade.

THE PENINSULA

THE PENINSULA

The relationship between Nigeria and the State of Qatar spans over decades. Both countries are active members of various International Organizations

such as the United Nations (UN), Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) among many more.

The two countries hold similar views on interna-tional and regional issues and believe as well as advocate for peaceful means of resolving international disputes. So, there is a very good basis for the establishment and sustenance of solid and warm relationship that is ben-eficial to the peoples of both nations.

The Diplomatic relations between the two countries were established in 2010. The Embassy of the State of Qatar in Abuja was opened on December 16, 2013. Nigeria as well opened its diplomatic mission in Qatar with the arrival of Ambassador Shuaibu Ahmed in 2013.

Thousands of the Nigerian community living in the state of Qatar. They contribute positively to the devel-opment and improvement of the bilateral relationship between the two countries.

An air transport agreement signed in 2005 and renewed in 2008.

In addition to further boost relations on the eco-nomic front, the Qatar Chamber established the Qatar-Nigerian Business Council by end of 2013, while Qatar-Nigeria Business and Investment Forum was held in early 2014.

Qatar-Nigeria relations are strengthening

16 MONDAY 11 FEBRUARY 2019MORNING BREAK

FAJRSHOROOK

04. 54 AM

06. 12 AM

11. 48 AM

03. 01 PM

05. 27 PM

06. 57 PM

ZUHRASR

MAGHRIBISHA

PRAYER TIMINGS

HIGH TIDE 07:46 – 21:43 LOW TIDE 02:42 –15:54

Partly cloudy to cloudy with chance of

scattered rain at some places maybe thun-

dery at times.

WEATHER TODAY

Courtesy: Qatar Meteorology Department

Minimum Maximum20oC 24oC

Blueair unveils intelligent rangeof car air purifiers in Qatar

Following research that in-car air quality contains up to 100 percent more PM2.5, ultrafine particles harmful to human health, than the roadside air, Blueair, a world-leader in air purifi-cation solutions, yesterday unveiled a state-of-the art air purifier for cars, trucks and other road vehicles.

With air pollution being on the top of everyone’s minds, Blueair’s new intelligent, in-car air purifiers are now available in Qatar as well.

“Commuters spend, on average, about 10 hours a week in vehicles, this is particularly true for Qatar, where walking and cycling are less common ways of transport,” said Sajed Jassim Mohammed Sulaiman, Vice-Chairman & Managing Director, Video Home & Electronic Centre/ Jumbo Electronics, at the launch event in Doha.

He said to meet the consumer needs for clean air in cars, “Blueair has expanded their air purification expertise and best-in-class technology to a new segment, which I’m proud to launch in our country here today (Sunday).”

Last year, US scientists found that levels of soot and chemicals inside cars were twice as high as those measured by roadside detectors. A few months ago, scientists at London Met-ropolitan University revealed that car air-conditioning systems can function as breeding grounds for bacteria. While air quality defers from region to region, air pollution remains one of the biggest public health concerns in any country.

Compact and easy to install, Cabin car air purifiers are equipped with Blueair’s pioneering HEPASilent™ technology, which filters out at least 99.97 percent of airborne pollutants, bacteria, viruses, allergens, micro-plastics, smoke, dust, soot, sand, and pollen as small as 0.1 micron in size.

With its sustainable Swedish design and whisper-silent technology, the new range upgrades consumers’ lives in more ways than one. The Qatar launched during this winter driving season is just in time, when residents head off on long drives across the country.

Air levels of these harmful sub-stances rises in disagreeable weather: sandstorms are typically made up of silica crystals and contain viruses, bac-teria and dust mites.

The United Nations warned earlier this year that over 80 percent of people living in urban areas are exposed to air quality levels that exceed World Health Organization guidelines and are at risk

of respiratory diseases and other long-term health problems.

“Air quality inside cars can be much worse than on the street, thanks to a combination of exhaust emis-sions from one’s own vehicle as well as from other vehicles, as well as par-ticles from tires and road wear products that enter through ventilation and air-conditioning systems,” said TR Ganesh, General Manager, Blueair Middle East.

He said that with its high-per-formance technology, Cabin car air purifier will offer Qatar resident’s peace of mind that 99.97 percent of these impurities are being filtered out.

Given the long hours spent driving, a staggering 72 percent of consumers are worried about the impact the air circulating inside their cars may have on themselves and their families. The same number, 72 percent of people asked, also said that they are aware of

the negative health effects of breathing polluted air, reveals a survey carried out for Blueair by independent UK research firm Bonamy Finch.

The Cabin car air purifier range will be available in Qatar across all Jumbo Electronics showrooms, leading hyper-markets, retailers and select car dealers.

As per the specification the product is best-in-class: 360-degree air intake, based on HEPASilent™ technology which removes 99.97% of airborne pol-lutants such as car exhausts, road wear,

PM2.5, pollen, dust and smoke as small as 0.1 micron in size. Best CADR (Clean Air Delivery Rate) of 38 cubic metres per hour, 5ACH (Air Changes/Hour); Cleans air in a mid-sized car in 5-6 minutes and Designed for Safety

Blueair is a world leading producer of air purification solutions for home and professional use. Founded in Sweden, Blueair delivers innovative, best-in-class, energy efficient products and services sold in over 60 countries around the world. Blueair is part of the Unilever family of brands.

Sajed Jassim Mohammed Sulaiman (third right), Vice-Chairman and Managing Director, Video Home and Electronics Centre (Video Home); C V Rappai (third left), Director and CEO, Video Home and Electronics Centre; T R Ganesh (second right), General Manager, Blueair Middle East; with (from left) Mohammad Anis, General Manager, Video Home; Rohit Pandit, COO, Video Home; and Nidhi Goyal, Sales and Marketing Manager, Blueair Middle East; during the launch of Blueair products at the Crown Plaza Hotel yesterday. BELOW: Mohammad Anis addressing the event. PICS: SALIM MATRAMKOT / THE PENINSULA

THE PENINSULA DOHA

Celebrating Women in Science at HBKUIn Qatar women are coming up showing interest in science and researches; thanks to the various organisations like Qatar Foun-dation and the homegrown Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU) working relentlessly for the empowerment of them and also the enormous support Qatar government provides for a cause.

As today marks the United Nations’ International Day of Women and Girls in Science – which is celebrated on February 11 each year, The Peninsula spoke to three female scientists from HBKU who are making great strides in their specific areas of scientific interest. They discuss the role of women in science, and how HBKU is sup-porting them on their academic and career journey.

“HBKU fully supports and encourages women to pursue science at a high level in both academia and within a decision-making structure. The univer-sity’s extensive programmes in various branches of science guide women towards full par-ticipation in higher education, nurturing them on their aca-demic journey towards

becoming experienced and con-fident scientists,” said Sara Al Tamimi, a Master of Science in Biological and Biomedical Sci-ences student at HBKU’s College of Health and Life Sciences (CHLS).

“Working as a woman in the field of science these past few years has been an extremely rewarding experience. I believe women have started to gain far greater confidence to pursue academic and career paths in science. The field of science is incredibly important as it drives progress and plays an integral part in shaping our future for the better,” she added.

Dr Eman A. Fituri, Senior Program Manager at HBKU’s Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI) said that there is an abundance of opportunities for young women to pursue careers in science in Qatar, and the rate of enrolment of young women in science-related fields in universities in Qatar is high.

“If you are interested in the field and choose to pursue a degree in science, I encourage you to persistently work towards your interests and dreams. A career in science is fun and exciting because it’s dynamic, and the knowledge and skills you

gain can lead you in a direction you never anticipated. You get to come up with new ideas and test them. When you succeed, you celebrate pushing the limits of knowledge a little further; and when you fail, you celebrate learning new skills,” she said.

Talking about what sparked her initial passion for the field of research and science Dr Eman said, “Since childhood, I have always had a genuine curiosity to know how things work, how they can be improved, and how we can make the world around us a better place. I also grew up

in a family that cherishes science and technology, and has encouraged us to expose our-selves to different experiences and to try our hand at new things. We learned that science is fun and believed we can achieve anything if we are willing to learn and put in the effort.”

“Therefore, my interest in research was natural, and then working with wonderful super-visors at university furthered my passion for science. As I grew older and had my own children, I developed a keen interest in

kindling youth’s curiosity and interest in technology in general, and in computing and engi-neering in particular.”

Nour Majbour, is a research associate at the Neurological Dis-orders Research Center at HBKU’s Qatar Biomedical Research Institute (QBRI). She recently secured second place in Stars of Science for her Parkin-son’s disease Early Detection Kit.

“I have always had a fasci-nation with neuroscience and psychics. I did a bachelor’s degree in pharmacy, but I felt in a way I was drifting away from

my passion. Thus, I decided to do my master’s in biomedical sciences, and it was at that point I decided to go into the field of neuroscience research and developed a fascination with Parkinson’s disease.”

“I wanted to understand and help people who are living with neurodegenerative diseases and try to determine why certain people are predisposed to the illness. There are several aspects to Parkinson’s disease, including diagnostics and therapeutics. I decided to pursue the diagnostics field as I believe diagnostics is the “power of knowing” – if we are able to provide an early diag-nosis, we have a far greater window for therapeutic inter-vention,” she said.

Highlighting the key benefits of working as a researcher at HBKU, Nour said that there is a lot of flexibility, which enables us to juggle both our personal and professional lives.

“There’s also a great deal of room to be creative and inno-vative. Your work and input are valuable and recognised accord-ingly. Furthermore, since working at HBKU, I have been introduced to and work among an incredible research com-munity,” she added.

FROM LEFT: Dr Eman A Fituri, Sara Al Tamimi and Nour Majbour

FAZEENA SALEEM THE PENINSULA