THE PENINSULA

DOHA: Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister H E Sheikh Mohamed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani has underlined that the results of the strategic dialogue between Qatar and the United States in the fields of security, defence and politics are a strong response to all the allegations of the siege countries on Qatar for support of terrorism.

In an interview with the Al Jazeera channel program “From Washington”, the Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Min-ister said that Qatar has realised many strategic achievements in various fields.

He was referring to the formation of the political working groups between the two countries to follow up on regional issues, continuous work, mutual cooper-ation and exchange of views.

He said that at the military level, there was a declaration of joint defence, which also addresses the US base and the presence of US forces on the Qatari ter-ritories, as well as the joint military exer-cises and military procurement of Qatar,

noting the talks between the parties in the field of combating terrorism and the memorandum of understanding signed by Qatar, which defines the relationship between Qatar and the US in the fight against terrorism through the exchange of more information and capacity building.

The Foreign Minister stressed that Qatar believes that what have been achieved in this dialogue in general in the areas of security, defence and political fields is a clear statement and a clear

position from the US that Qatar is a strong partner in the fight against terrorism and a strong economic partner.

“This represents a strong response to all the claims of the siege countries that Qatar supports terrorism. This is a clear testimony from the US , which is well aware of the Qatari efforts and regards Qatar as a key partner in its fight against terrorism.”

H E Sheikh Mohamed bin Abdul-rahman Al Thani also said that Qatar’s relationship with the US did not start with

the current administration but with pre-vious administrations. “Our agreements, whether security, military or other eco-nomic agreements, were in different periods, and yet remain.”

He pointed out that the US is a state of institutions that respects its agreements, stressing that Qatar believes that its future partnership with the United States is promising, and there are many opportu-nities to achieve this partnership.

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DOHA: Emir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani sent yesterday a cable of congratulations to President of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, Maithripala Sirisena, on the anniversary of his country’s Independence Day.

Deputy Emir H H Sheikh Abdullah bin Hamad Al Thani also sent a cable the Sri Lankan President. Prime Minister and Interior Minister H E Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani sent a similar cable to Prime Minister of Sri Lanka Ranil Wickremesinghe.

Emir congratulates Sri Lankan President

QNA

DOHA: Primary Health Care Corpo-ration (PHCC) launched an experi-mental exploratory study as part of its preventive programme for oral and dental health in three government schools.

The three-month study aims to check almost 1,530 students from two primary schools and a kinder-garten to be screened for oral hygiene programmes, which were introduced in preparation for the comprehensive implementation of the preventive programme in Sep-tember of this year.

Head of the programme Najat

Al Yafei said in the future the study will cover all kindergartens and all Qatar primary schools without exception. The programme will later cover the rest of the educational stages.

In the meantime the dental staff will visit the primary schools and provide guidance and preventive treatment at the school through mobile dental clinics.

She explained in a press statement issued here yesterday that the programme is aimed at pro-moting the concepts of prevention and awareness of oral and dental health among school students.

The programme will provide

preventive treatment services for students as well as reduce the per-centage of tooth decay among school students through awareness, examination, treatment, devel-opment of methods aimed at mon-itoring the health status of children’s teeth and oral diseases, Al Yafei explained.

The study will be applied to 135 children in one of the kindergartens and two primary schools with 1,398 students.

As many as 45 students will be screened every day and all oral hygiene and dental hygiene instruc-tions will be provided through three fully equipped mobile dental clinics.

Study on oral and dental hygiene in 3 schools launched

Staff of the PHCC at the launch of the experimental exploratory study about preventive programme for oral and dental health in government schools.

THE PENINSULA

DOHA: To assist growing number of clients, the General Directorate of Traffic is working on the establishment of six traffic offices with the insurance companies to complete the procedures at one place.

To overcome many traffic challenges, the General Direc-torate of Traffic used the GIS pro-gramme for the production of maps, drawings and engineering software, said a statement about the achievements of General Directorate of Traffic in 2017. A search and investigation team was formed in 2017 to investigate

serious incidents in addition to the activation of security cameras “Talaa” to control traffic viola-tions and realise the highest rates of traffic safety. Various measures taken by the department were positively reflected in figures. In the Licensing and Permits Section, the works showed an increase of 10.2 percent. The total work amounted to QR89,758 transactions in 2016, while it was recorded to QR98,932 in 2017. The work of the traffic planning section also increased by 9.4 percent in 2017 as compared to the work of 2016.

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6 traffic offices with insurance services to be established

QNA

DOHA: Emir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani sent yesterday a cable of condolences to the Emir of Kuwait H H Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Jaber Al Sabah on the death of Sheikh Abdullah Bader Saud Al Malek Al Sabah.

Deputy Emir H H Sheikh Abdullah bin Hamad Al Thani and Prime Minister and Interior Minister H E Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani also sent similar cables of condolences to the Emir of Kuwait.

Emir condoles with Emir of Kuwait

DOHA: Continuing its winning streak, Hamad International Airport (HIA) has won yet another laurel by making it to the select group of most beau-tiful airports in the world.

The airport has been listed among the 14 most beautiful air-ports in the world by the financial news website ‘Business Insider’. The airports are selected on the basis of their architectural features and amenities.

“Some parts of its interior look like a modern art museum,” noted the website.

Vancouver International Airport, Singapore Changi

Airport, Kuala Lumpur Interna-tional Airport and Marrakesh Menara Airport have also made it to the list of most beautiful airports.

HIA is currently preparing for the launch of a major new art piece by KAWS during the first quarter of 2018.

It is working on new global partnerships to build on HIA’s

best-in-class passenger experience.

The airports was recently recognised for its punctuality, ranking next to first, among the most punctual major airports with a score of 85.41 per cent on-time performance (OTP), as demonstrated in aviation ana-lysts OAG’s 2017 Punctuality Report released recently.

Last year, the airport accom-plished many feats. HIA wel-comed several new airlines which started operations in Qatar in 2017 including Oman’s SalamAir, Kuwait’s Al Wataniya Airlines and Jazeera Airways, Bangladesh’s Regent Airways and US Bangla, and IndiGo, India’s largest and fastest

growing low-cost carrier.HIA is currently a candidate

for the ‘Best Airport in the World’ award by Skytrax, which also classified it as a five-star airport in 2017, making it one among only five other airports in the world to achieve this prestigious status.

Earlier this year, the airport was ranked as the Sixth Best Airport in the World by the 2017 Skytrax World Airport Awards, moving up four places from 2016.

Hamad International Airport has also won the ‘Best Airport in the Middle East’ title for three years in a row and the ‘Best Staff Service in the Middle East’ for two years consecutively.

SACHIN KUMAR

THE PENINSULA

HIA among world’s most beautiful airports The airport has been listed among the 14 most beautiful airports in the world by the financial news website ‘Business Insider’.

US affirms Qatar as strong partner

Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister H E Sheikh Mohamed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani speaking during Al Jazeera’s “From Washington” programme.

The results of the strategic dialogue between Qatar and the United States in the fields of security, defence and politics are a strong response to all the allegations of the siege countries on Qatar for support of terrorism, said Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister.

02 MONDAY 5 FEBRUARY 2018HOME

Award for HMC’s Mental Health Nursing ServiceTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: Hamad Medical Corpo-ration’s (HMC) Mental Health Service has won the 2017 National Database of Nursing Quality Indicators (NDNQI) Award for Outstanding Nursing Quality.

This is the second consec-utive year that HMC’s Mental Health Nursing Service has won the award, which is presented annually by Press Ganey Asso-ciates, Inc. HMC was the only award recipient located outside

of the United States and was up against 200 international NDNQI users. Professor Nicola Ryley, Chief Nursing Officer at HMC, said: “As healthcare becomes

increasingly complex, we rec-ognise the importance of devel-oping our nursing staff who play a pivotal role in driving quality improvement and driving patient

safety standards.” “I am very

proud of our Mental Health Service nursing teams who have worked hard to improve the care being delivered to their patients. Their com-mitment is out-standing and I am pleased this has been recognised for the second consecutive year by an interna-tionally respected and independent organisation,” added Professor Nicola Ryley.

The nursing teams were assessed and scored favourably against key indicators, including patient falls (with and without injury), use of physical restraints, physical assault rates — against staff and other patients, staff survey — staff rated HMC as a good place to work and length of stay — reducing the average length of stay for patients once medically fit for discharge.

Mahmoud Al Raisi, HMC’s Chief of Continuing Care high-lighted the importance of the Mental Health nursing team’s approach, stating: “The engagement and contribution of staff from all levels of the organ-isation has ensured the success of the mental health nursing service. This has happened by

promoting shared values. A strong sense of family creates a happier working environment in which staff feel cared for and supported. This positive working environment promotes resil-ience, healthy working relation-ships, and fosters an envi-ronment that encourages and ensures compassionate nursing care.”

The NDNQI Award for Out-standing Nursing Quality is pre-sented annually to the best per-forming hospital in each of six categories: academic medical centre, teaching hospital, com-munity hospital, paediatric hos-pital, rehabilitation hospital, and psychiatric hospital.

“Our nursing philosophy

continues to be one of support for our nurses who strive to deliver the highest quality of care, using the best evidence-based practice and latest data to make improve-ments at the patient’s bedside,” said Hoda Salam Nakhla, Director of Nursing at HMC’s Mental Health Service.

“This award is an important achievement for HMC and our Mental Health Service teams and demonstrates our commitment to the patients we care for.”

The NDNQI is the only national nursing database that provides quarterly and annual reporting of structure, process, and outcome indicators to evaluate nursing care at the unit level.

Officials with the award.

2nd phase of educational survey beginsTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: The Department of Assessment of Schools at the Ministry of Education and Higher Ed ucat io n w i l l s tar t implementing the second phase of the comprehensive educational questionnaire, which includes parents, students and teachers.

The evaluation questionnaire is aimed at surveying the views of the different stakeholders in the educational process from parents, students and teachers on an annual basis. Its results are used to improve the services provided to them and to use them in issuing different educational reports that give a clear picture of the reality of education in schools, which helps

to improve the educational output.

The parents’ survey is conducted every year on all public and private schools and kindergartens, which is a questionnaire paper distributed to school students to be delivered to their parents to be filled in and returned with their children in a closed envelope to the school in the following day.

It covers 35 percent of the students in each school, and it will also be implemented on all public and private kindergarten students not affiliated with the school.

The survey will be conducted electronically for students of public and private schools from grades 4 through grade 12, as well as on 35 percent of the

students in each school. The survey will also be

carried out electronically by 35 percent of the teachers of each public and private school, as well as to all teachers in the target kindergartens.

The Department urged parents, students and teachers to participate in the survey and to follow accuracy and transparency in answering questions, because it is of great importance to attain the quality of the services provided in schools and work to develop and improve it, as well as to create a clear and comprehensive picture of the reality of education in schools, and to contribute effectively to the advancement of the educational process in the state.

This is the second consecutive year that HMC’s Mental Health Nursing Service has won the award, which is presented annually by Press Ganey Associates, Inc. HMC was the only award recipient located outside of the US and was up against 200 international National Database of Nursing Quality Indicator users.

Sierra Leone President arrives in Doha; visits Museum of Islamic Art

LEFT: Minister of Energy and Industry H E Dr Mohammed bin Saleh Al Sada welcoming President of the Republic of Sierra Leone, Ernest Bai Koroma, and his accompanying delegation at Hamad International Airport on their official visit to Qatar. ABOVE: President Ernest Bai Koroma and the accompanying delegation also visited the Museum of Islamic Art. The President was accompanied by Dr Al Sada. The President acquainted with the collection of antiquities and Islamic artifacts, which includes rare treasures of heritage including books, manuscripts and coins made of silver, copper, and bronze, as well as crafts made of glass, ivory, textiles, wood and precious stones, and collectibles collected from three continents dating back fourteen centuries. The President listened to an explanation of the MIA and its stages of development as well as its role in spreading science, culture and encouraging creativity in addition to communicating with the cultures and arts of the world. After the tour, the guest signed in the museum’s golden record.

03MONDAY 5 FEBRUARY 2018 HOME

Siege kindled spirit of entrepreneurshipRAYNALD C RIVERA

THE PENINSULA

DOHA: Not only did the ongoing blockade help accelerate the growth of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), it also kindled the spirit of entrepreneur-ship among Qataris, an official of Qatar Development Bank (QDB) has said.

“Definitely, the blockade has its impact on the market, not just on SMEs but also on entrepre-neurship. The blockade, itself, was an accelerator for under-standing the importance of entrepreneurship and the pri-vate sector as along with crea-tivity and innovation,” Hamad Mejegheer, Manager of Mar-keting and Communications at QDB said in response to a ques-tion from The Peninsula at a recent media event.

The increasing awareness on the indispensable role the private sector and entrepre-neurship play in the Qatari market amid the current reality is evident in the rise in the number of those availing QDB’s services as well as recent figures released by Qatar Chamber which points to a 13.4 percent increase in the number of new companies registered in 2017 compared to 2016, he explained.

He cited manufacturing as one of the sectors which has seen significant growth recently.

“The manufacturing sector is doing well. There is a big growth in this sector, though we don’t have the figures yet,” he said, adding the ‘Own your Fac-tory in Qatar in 72 Hours’ project launched after the imposition of blockade had contributed to this growth.

Aimed at expediting the establishment of manufacturing units and factories in Qatar, the said project has attracted thou-sands of applications, majority of which were locally-based companies. “The mentality now

has changed. How we see our priorities has changed. The blockade has provided us focal point for the future; that’s what the blockade did for us,” he said.

Mejegheer was speaking on the sidelines of the partnership between Qatar Tourism Authority (QTA) and QDB which helps provide much needed exposure to Qatari SMEs and entrepreneurs through pop-up shops set up as part of the ongoing Shop Qatar 2018 organ-ised by QTA.

Around 30 SMEs and entre-preneurs supported by QDB are showcasing their products through the pop-up shops.

As a development bank, QDB’s main role is to help SMEs and entrepreneurs grow and one of the challenges is pro-viding them access to the market, he added.

“By providing them space to showcase their products gives them the opportunity to enter the market which solves this challenge. This provides them the platform to test the market, understand the situation and improve their products to com-pete with other brands,” he said, adding that it had been life-changing for many SMEs and entrepreneurs who previously took part in pop-ups shops.

Thanking QTA for this important partnership, he said, “We appreciate their efforts. This is not the first time that we have partnered. We enjoy col-laborating with such entity that has the vision and very active role in the community.”

The 30 pop-up shops, which display a wide range of prod-ucts from arts and crafts to chocolates and gifts to perfumes and clothing at Mall of Qatar, are open until Wednesday.

Hamad Mejegheer, Manager of Marketing and Communications of QDB.

HBKU holds Costa Rica eventTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: The Ambassador of Costa Rica, Luis Alberto Guillén Downing, visited Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU) to inaugurate an exhi-bition at the Education City Student Center, showcasing the diverse arts and crafts, pictures, videos, and tradi-tional costumes of Costa Rica. The exhibition is part of a cultural week that ended yesterday.

The event aimed to intro-duce the colourful culture of the most visited nation in all of Central America to the community. The event was co-organised with the Embassy of Costa Rica in Qatar, and saw high-level participation from the Consul and Charge d’Affaires Carlos Beer Arguello, who also attended the opening ceremony.

HBKU’s hosting of the cul-tural week comes as the latest in a series of events that aim to portray a vibrant picture of other customs and traditions. Maryam Hamad Al Mannai, Vice-President of Student Affairs at HBKU, said: “HBKU is a true melting pot and is proud of its community of fac-ulty, researchers and students, who work together with a common goal in mind – to be creative, to pursue excellence in all of their endeavors, and to celebrate their diversity every day. Without its multi-cultural student body, HBKU would not be the centre of academic and innovative excellence that it is today. We believe this is something that truly deserves recognition.”

“Through events such as this one, our role as HBKU Student Affairs is to provide non-academic opportunities for our students, as well as to open doors for other societies to showcase their cultures and traditions. It is also important

to bring forth awareness about HBKU programs to other countries, giving students worldwide an opportunity to join HBKU in their life-long educational journey.”

At the inauguration, Ambassador delivered a short presentation on Costa Rica. He highlighted the distinctive his-toric, cultural, economic, edu-cational, geographic and tour-istic strengths of the Central

American country that is home to 4.5 million people.

The fair held was the most recent amongst the many events that HBKU has organ-ised with diplomatic missions across Doha. Through its col-laboration with embassies, the university actively promotes multiculturalism at the campus and fosters an inclu-sive environment for all mem-bers of its community.

Maryam Hamad Al Mannai, Vice-President of Student Affairs at HBKU, presents a memento to the Ambassador of Costa Rica, Luis Alberto Guillén Downing.

The increasing awareness on the indispensable role the private sector and entrepreneurship play in the Qatari market amid the current reality is evident in the rise in the number of those availing QDB’s services as well as recent figures released by Qatar Chamber which points to a 13.4 percent increase in the number of new companies registered in 2017 compared to 2016.

04 MONDAY 5 FEBRUARY 2018HOME

QU announces elections for Sixth Cycle of Faculty SenateTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: Qatar University (QU) announced the start of elections for the Sixth Cycle of the Faculty Senate. The n o m i n a t i o n f o r membership in the new senate starts from February 11 until February 14.

The Faculty Senate has been designed with the aim to achieve the principles of trans-parency and shared responsibility to realise the vision of trans-forming QU into a model university that offers high-quality learning-centred education in a healthy and constructive learning/teaching environment.

The nominations to run for a seat in the senate will result in the election of members representing the different academic sections at QU. The elected members will conduct an internal election to choose the senate’s pres-ident, vice president and secretary.

Dr Ahmed Al Emadi (pictured), QU College of Education (CED) Dean, said: “The senate

will conduct studies and propose recommenda-tions on issues related to the university’s academic affairs, educational process and research, which will contribute to boosting the organisa-t i o n ’ s a c a d e m i c environment.”

The Faculty Senate is an elected body repre-senting QU faculty. It aims to represent and allow for the maximum and direct contribution of QU faculty. It is one of the means through which information about QU policies and procedures

is debated and disseminated. The senate encourages faculty to submit proposals which are afterwards discussed to come up with rec-ommendations accordingly.

The senate acts as an advisory entity to QU President. It studies and reviews proposed or existing policies and regulations that govern the business of QU’s legislative and adminis-trative authorities. Discussion outcomes and recommendations are reported to the president.

DIFI bags IFFD Family Award at United NationsTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: The Doha International Family Institute (DIFI), a member of Qatar Foundation (QF), has been awarded the 2018 IFFD Family Award by the board of the International Federation for Family Development (IFFD), at the United Nations (UN).

IFFD, is an NGO with general consultative status with the Eco-nomic and Social Council (ECOSOC) at the UN.The IFFD Awards are presented to persons or entities recognized for the promotion of family perspective policies during the past year and

for best appreciation and pro-motion of family values around the world. The 2018 award was also granted to the Hungarian-based National Association of Large Families.

Ignacio Socias, Director, International Relations, IFFD, said: “DIFI has contributed to advocacy on family issues through the organisation of several international confer-ences and through its special consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council, with very specific recommendations to integrate a family perspective into national

policy-making.”H E Sheikha Alia Al Thani,

the Permanent Representative of the State of Qatar to the UN, presented DIFI with the award during the IFFD annual briefing held at UN Headquarters in New York. Noor Al Malki Al Jehani, Executive Director, DIFI, received the award and thanked IFFD for recognising DIFI’s work and for its key role in promoting family perspective.

“We are proud to receive the 2018 IFFD Family Award, which recognizes the work done by NGOs to strengthen families around the world. DIFI is

committed to make families a priority for policy-makers through our advocacy and out-reach at a national, regional, and international level,” Al Jehani said.

The IFFD Family Awards have been celebrated for the last six years.

Previous awardees include the governments of Malta and Malaysia, and the UN High Rep-resentative for the Alliance of Civilizations.

This year, the awards were presented at a special event during the 56th Commission for Social Development held at the

UN Headquarters in New York on February 1.

The International Federation for Family Development is a non-governmental, independent, and non-profit federation. Its primary mission is to support families through training.

DIFI is a global policy and advocacy institute working to advance knowledge on Arab families through research, and the promotion of evidence-based polices at a national, regional, and international level.

The institute has special con-sultative status with the UN ECOSOC.

QA takes delivery of 4th Gulfstream G650ERTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: Qatar Airways has taken delivery of its fourth state-of-the-art Gulfstream G650ER executive aircraft, the fastest ultra-long-range business jet in the world. The latest aircraft delivery makes Qatar Airways the world’s largest owner-operator of Gulfstream G650ERs.

Qatar Executive, the airline’s exclusive private charter service, is a leading provider of jet air-craft charter services around the world, now operating a fleet of 12 ultra-modern Gulfstream and Bombardier executive jets to passengers demanding the very best in privacy, comfort and style.

A further four brand new air-craft are expected to be wel-comed into Qatar Executive’s exclusive fleet later year, when it takes delivery of another Gulf-stream G650ER and three Gulf-stream G500, with five more air-craft deliveries expected during 2019. Qatar Airways was the global launch customer for the Gulfstream G500 executive jet in 2014 and the first operator in the Middle East of the Gulfstream

G650ER. With its incredible 7,500

nautical mile range, industry-leading cabin technology and unparalleled passenger comfort, Qatar Executive’s G650ER can fly passengers in private luxury non-stop between Doha and Cape Town, Tokyo or New York.

Qatar Airways Group Chief Executive, Akbar Al Baker, said: “The demand from our cus-tomers for longer range private air travel continues to grow. Taking delivery of our fourth Gulfstream G650ER Executive Jet — making Qatar Executive the largest single owner-operator of G650ER luxury private jets in the world — means we can continue to meet this demand. With its hugely impressive range, incredible speed and luxurious interior, Gulfstream’s state-of-the-art G650ER offers a superior

flying experience for our most discerning passengers.”

Gulfstream President, Mark Burns, said: “Gulfstream

delivered the first G650ER in the Middle East to Qatar Executive in 2015. At that time, Qatar Air-ways was interested in

introducing a new and enhanced level of service, and determined that Gulfstream aircraft were the ideal choice to do so. We are

proud to continue that rela-tionship with this milestone, and value the confidence Qatar Airways has in Gulfstream and our employees who design, man-ufacture, service and support these aircraft.”

As well as having an impressive flying range of up to 7,500 nautical miles at Mach 0.85, the G650ER also has a top speed of Mach 0.925. Inside, the G650ER cabin features an award-winning quiet and spa-cious interior with wide seats, generous aisles, panoramic windows, Internet and phone access as well as the lowest cabin altitude in the industry.

Qatar Executive’s now 12-strong fleet of technically-advanced private jets includes four Gulfstream G650ERs, three Bombardier Challenger 605s, four Global 5000s and one Global XRS aircraft.

The partnership between Qatar Airways and Gulfstream has seen the airline establish an agreement for up to 30 Gulf-stream aircraft; firm orders and options in-clude the flagship G650ER, the G500 and the G600.

The Gulfstream G650ER executive aircraft.

Ooredoo unveils new free bonus allowance promotionTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: To thank the one million plus customers who downloaded the Ooredoo App, Ooredoo announced yesterday the launch of a new free bonus allowance promotion.

All new and existing Ooredoo App customers can enjoy the offer which will give Ooredoo App users a free bonus every day for seven days.

The promotion started on February 4 and will end on February 10 and bonuses will include free data, local minutes and SMS, and inter-national calling minutes.

The free bonus allowance will be valid until midnight on the day of activation and cus-tomers can redeem the daily bonus by logging into the Ooredoo App daily and clicking the ‘Free Bonus’ tile.

The Ooredoo App, which was first launched in 2013, is available for iOS and Android users and has an average score rating of 4.3 on the iTunes store.

The Ooredoo App was designed to give customers access to their services when they need it the most, and through the app, Ooredoo customers can check their balance, maintain subscrip-tions, resolve issue and much more on the go.

Most importantly, Oore-doo’s customers who use the app receive personalised deals based on their profile and usage. App users also benefit from the company’s free data giveaway, which has seen app usage drastically increase since its launch. To ensure that customers have the latest Ooredoo App version, users should head to Ooredoo.qa/app or SMS ‘App’ to 114.

The latest delivery makes Qatar Airways the world’s largest owner-operator of Gulfstream G650ERs executive aircraft.

Juvenile Police Department holds awareness campaignTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: In line with the awareness strategy of the Awareness and Information Section of the Juvenile Police Department for the year 2018 that aimed at educating children and young people, the department organised an awareness event in collaboration with the management of Villaggio.

The exhibition was held in order to ensure social protection and real care of children within the family and society

shielding them from all forms of deviation. It witnessed a great attraction among the visitors of the complex, who expressed their happiness and optimism of the attention of the Juvenile Police Department to raise the awareness of young people and to confront all that is harmful and contrary to the laws.

The public interacted with the employees of the department, who dis-tributed awareness leaflets and educated their role in protecting young people from the dangers of deviation.Officials at the event.

DOHA: Sri Lankan community in Qatar yesterday celebrated their country’s 70th Independence Day with traditional zeal and fervour.

Despite the cold weather, many Sri Lankans turned up at the Sri Lankan embassy in the Old Air-port area for a flag-hoisting cere-mony. ASP Liyanage, Ambassador of Sri Lanka to Qatar, hoisted Sri Lanka’s national flag as the national anthem was sung.

Two-minute silence was observed in remembrance and honour of freedom fighters of Sri Lanka. Also, religious observ-ances were performed.

The message of Sri Lankan

President Maithripala Sirisena was read out. It said: “As Sri Lanka cel-ebrates seven decades of inde-pendence, it is appropriate to reflect on how far we have come as a nation. In terms of achieving human development and various social, economic and political challenges we were faced with, the progress we have achieved over this period is laudable.

“We must also remember that true freedom does not compro-mise only political freedom. Our independence is not complete until economic and cultural freedom is achieved. In our journey towards economic freedom, this is a crucial one. As a country, our future lie in our com-mitment to achieve long term

goals with firm determination, as we have done in the past.”

The messages of Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wick-remesighe and Foreign Minister Tilak Marapana, also were read out.

Addressing the gathering, Ambassador Liyanage said: “You all have been here for the past years or decades. You have not only benefitted from this country, you all also have been great con-tributors to foreign exchange for our motherland. We are also thankful to the government of Qatar for providing opportuni-ties to Sri Lankans to be part of their development and progress.”

“The Embassy of Sri Lanka in Qatar is committed to provide all assistance and support for the

betterment of our Sri Lankans living here according to all applicable rules and regulations of the law of this

country,” he added. The importance of bilateral ties between Qatar and Sri Lanka as well as the recent steps

taken to enhance bilateral relations in trade, economy and other areas were highlighted during the event.

05MONDAY 5 FEBRUARY 2018 HOME

Sri Lankans mark 70th Independence DayFAZEENA SALEEM

THE PENINSULA

Ambassador ASP Liyanage raising the national flag on the ��th Independence Day of Sri Lanka yesterday at the Sri Lankan Embassy premises in Doha. PIC: BAHER AMIN/THE PENINSULA

QTA marketing team holds meetings with Chinese mediaTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: Qatar Tourism Authori-ty’s (QTA) Marketing and Promo-tions team recently held a series of meetings with more than 65 Chinese media representatives in China.

QTA’s media tour passed through Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou and marked the beginning of an intensive cam-paign which aims to solidify Qatar destination’s presence in the Chinese market in 2018.

China has consistently been the world’s largest tourism export market, with 135 million Chinese citizens recorded to have travelled abroad spending $261bn, in 2016. As such, QTA’s tour follows on a series of developments from late last year that paved the way for Qatar to tap into the market. In September 2017, QTA signed an MoU with the China National Tourism Administration,

which granted Approved Destination Status to Qatar as well as opened its representative offices in China with headquarters in Beijing, and

supporting locations in Shanghai and Guangzhou.

Rashed Al Qurese, Chief Mar-keting & Promotion Officer said,

“QTA’s efforts to diversify visitor source markets calls for growing and solidifying our destination’s presence in Asian and European

markets. Since September of last year, QTA has taken a number of steps to attract Chinese tourists and preliminary visitor arrival numbers indicate we are moving in the right direction.” He added: “Our media trip coincided with the Chinese New Year making it an auspicious time to spread Qatar’s message of welcoming the world.”

In October 2017, QTA organ-ised sessions for professionals from across Qatar’s tourism sector with Welcome Chinese officials to discuss the requirements of Chi-nese visitors, the standards for cer-tification, and the certification process. Industry members were also presented with the training, technical assistance and mar-keting assistance that Welcome Chinese offers to its certified members across the travel and tourism value chain.

Earlier this year, a digital mar-keting campaign promoting Qatar

as an attractive winter tourism des-tination kicked off on Ctrip, China’s leading online travel agent. Partner-ships with five of China’s largest tour operators have also been activated. To boost these efforts, around 20 trade members are expected to visit Qatar on a familiarisation trip later this quarter.

In addition, teams are currently preparing for QTA’s first appearance at the China Outbound Travel and Tourism Market alongside 12 mem-bers of the Qatari tourism industry. The 14th edition of the country’s largest annual trade show will be held in Beijing this April.

This will be followed by a roadshow throughout the country, in which key members of the Qatari tourism and hospi-tality sector will be introduced to Chinese trade agents and tour operators. The national carrier, Qatar Airways flies to six desti-nations in mainland China.

Representatives of QTA and Qatar Airways during the campaign.

06 MONDAY 5 FEBRUARY 2018HOME

NAMA launches 2nd edition of MoqbeleenTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: NAMA, a center under the Qatar Foundation for Social Welfare, launched the second edition “Moqbeleen” awareness campaign in the last week of January. “Moqbeleen” is an oriented awareness and cultural campaign that builds on informing and exposing NAMA’s projects, programs and services, raising awareness of the importance of educational attainment, seizing the right opportunities and chan-nelling specialized platforms in all schools, universities, youth forums, youth academies and all civil society organizations.

Maryam bint Abdullatif Al Mannai, Acting Executive Director of NAMA, said that she is immensely proud of this whole and integrated campaign. She pointed out to the compre-hensive nature of NAMA’s projects, as they respond to the aspirations of the Qatari youth through multiple programs.

The campaign is important because it approaches the youth

in their own communities, where the campaigners go on field trips to all of the targeted youth groups to inform them about NAMA’s activities and services, explain avenues of cooperation, and provide them with data on how to join and benefit from all of NAMA’s projects, courses and workshops.

Moreover, they present ideas and discuss them with the youth and provide answers and solu-tions to all their queries and concerns.

The campaign kicked off at

the “Simaisma Girls Forum”, which was an opportunity to meet with the young girls who welcomed the new projects after learning about NAMA’s goals, activities, and services.

Positive spirit and enthu-siasm were prevailed during the visit, where interesting discus-sions were held with young ladies. A presentation about NAMA projects was given by the campaign leader where leaflets were distributed, gifts were pre-sented and souvenir photos were taken.

Through these visits, the center seeks to attract youth, activate their training and edu-cation, and prepare them to par-ticipate in future campaign projects.

In the following week, ambassadors of the campaign visited Hamad Bin Khalifa Medical City in cooperation with the Carrier Services and Recruitment Departments. The visit included scheduled sessions with the targeted group of high school and university students.

The campaigners praised social work as a means to realize sustainable social development, noting that social work involves the fundamental values of a cooperative individual who has a sense of belonging to the society and is ready to work for social welfare that would take him out of his own interests into the broader social and humani-tarian spheres.

The two visits are followed by many field visits to com-munity societies and educational institutions, and will continue until the month of May.

From his side, Abdul Rahman Al Sayed, Head of Programs of Community Outreach at NAMA, stressed that rapid social, eco-nomic and developmental progress create new conditions and circumstances that call for the collective efforts of all com-ponents of the society.

Therefore, NAMA is keen to highlight the importance of an efficient and effective com-munity awareness plan about proactivity of social work. The center introduces programs aimed at target groups in the dif-ferent fields of training,

entrepreneurship development, and social entrepreneurship. It also develops the capacities of youth and introduces scholar-ships and university programs to students.

Abdul Rahman added: “In this perspective, we launched the “Moqbeleen” campaign projects in partnership with Qatari youth. We hope that these programs will be adequate to most of our youth aspirations and require-ments, address their needs and queries, and provide all means to overcome the obstacles they are facing.”

NAMA officials during one of the events.

The campaign kicked off at the “Simaisma Girls Forum”, which was an opportunity to meet with the young girls who welcomed the new projects after learning about NAMA’s goals, activities, and services.

Ooredoo advertisement promotes 5G Speed ExperienceTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: To celebrate Ooredoo’s launch of one of the first ‘5G Speed Experiences’ available anywhere in the world, the company has produced a special advertisement showcasing the milestones of telecommunica-tions in Qatar.

The video, which is available now via the company’s YouTube

channel in English and Arabic, highlights the history of Ooredoo, from the first telephone line in 1949, the launch of dial up Internet and the 3G network, up to Ooredoo’s 5G experience.

So far, the video has been viewed by more than 150,000 people and has received a host of positive comments on social media and the video platform, with many customers expressing

their excitement for Ooredoo’s upcoming 5G roll-out.

The current ‘5G Speed Expe-rience’ is available in select loca-tions and offers an extremely high speed and low latency network with initial speeds of up to (and in some cases exceeding) 1Gbps.

Access to the ‘5G Speed Expe-rience’ requires a special smart-phone that has been calibrated to

work with the Ooredoo pre-stand-ardised 5G network. The company has announced it plans to roll-out its 5G network as soon as possible.

Ooredoo first launched its Supernet campaign in 2015 and the company has gone on to invest heavily in ensuring the fastest Internet speeds and crystal-clear communications for its customers.

Talking about the investment Ooredoo has made, Waleed Al Sayed, Chief Executive Officer, Ooredoo Qatar, said: “Launching the Supernet was a way for Ooredoo to show our customers our dedication and commitment to making Qatar a truly connected country. We’ve invested heavily in our infrastructure to provide a better customer experience on the Ooredoo network, as well as

contribute to the Qatar National Vision’s aim to boost the knowledge-based economy, by enabling seamless access to the financial, educational, and social services the Internet can provide.”

Ooredoo is Qatar’s leading communications company and continues to enhance Qatar’s mobile, Wi-Fi, and nationwide Ooredoo Fibre networks on the Ooredoo Supernet.

Local farms step up production

DOHA: The campaign of the Ministry of Economy and Commerce to promote local products has started bearing fruits as local farms have stepped up efforts to increase their production.

“My company is producing 60 tonnes of dairy products and juices per day,” Mohammad Al Helou, commercial manager of Gulf Food Production Company told The Peninsula. The Gulf Food Production Company is

running Raw’a brand of dairy farm and juice producing unit.

He said that the company has added new production units to increase production of dairy products and juices from existing capacity of 60 tonnes to 80 tonnes per day.

Meanwhile, the government organisations are promoting local products and facilitating local producers in every possible way to market their products.

“There are many more projects in the pipeline to provide more platforms for marketing of local products,” Yousef Al

Khulaifi, Director of Agricultural Affairs Department told The Peninsula during a recent event of the Ministry.

He said that new marketing platforms will be provided in col-laboration with the Ministry of Economy and Commerce.

Speaking on the quality and demand of local products, Al Helou, Manager of Gulf Food Production Company, said “our products wit-nessed high demand because of the good quality and are available in the market at competitive prices com-pared to imported products.”

He said that the products reached to various com-mercial markets, schools, star hotels, restaurants, super-markets and grocery shops.

He said that Gulf Food Production Company under Raw’a brand is producing wide range of dairy products including fresh milk, fla-voured yogurt, laban and various types of juices.

Under an initiative of the Ministry of Economy and Com-merce to promote local products, major retail outlets in Qatar are displaying Qatari products

prominently setting up special shelves for them. The initiative aims at easing customers’ access to local products by giving them extra importance in marketing.

The Ministry of Municipality and Envi-ronment also joined hands to promote local products in its own innovative way. The Ministry had launched a month-long cam-paign to promote the local products.

Under the initiative, the Ministry in collabo-ration with an adver-tising company “WASEL for Sustainable and Environment-Friendly Advertising Solutions” installed billboards across the country to educate people about Qatari products.

The Ministry of Municipality and Envi-ronment has been pro-viding various plat-forms including three winter farmers markets to sell their agricultural produce directly to the

customers. To promote local products, the Ministry of Munic-ipality and Environment has been organising separate festival for specific products.

Last week from Thursday to Friday, the Agricultural and Fish-eries Affairs Department at the Ministry held a festival at farmers’ winter market at Al Mazrouha to promote locally produced meat, poultry and dairy products.

A total of 150kg chicken including 100kg frozen and 50kg chilled; and 70 cratesof eggs were sold out at the festival, said the Ministry of Municipality and Environment in a statement.

The sale of red meat, dairy products and juices were 806kg, 857 litters and 288 kg respec-tively. Consumers are being urged to support local products by giving them priority in shopping.

“Local traders and investors of agricultural and other sectors are receiving state support from various level but as consumers it is our duty to buy local products to encourage the com-panies to increase their products,” Abdullah Awdi, a local businessman told The Peninsula.

People buying dairy products at a festival held at Al Mazrouah Farmer’s Yard.PIC: SALIM MATRAMKOT/THE PENINSULA

SANAULLAH ATAULLAH

THE PENINSULA

07MONDAY 5 FEBRUARY 2018 HOME

Six traffic offices with insurance services to be establishedContinued from page 1

In a recent interview with Brigadier Mohammed Saad Al Kharji, Director of the General Directorate of Traffic, told The Peninsula that the number of vehicles which registered last year is more than 100,000.

The directorate also opened two traffic offices in the Pearl and a new building in the South to facilitate the public and speed up the response to reports besides it completed the first phase of linking the security system to the traffic system.

In order to increase awareness among people and enhance the media campaigns, the department signed agreements and partnerships with Ministry of Culture and Sports, secondary schools and extended collaboration with Qatar University in the fields of researches and traffic studies.

As part of implementing the strategy of paperless trans-actions, the first phase of the registration of unknown

accidents through Metrash2 was implemented. Mechanical inspection of mechanical vehi-cles was linked to the traffic system, and paper report was stopped. The transfer of own-ership and renewal of driving licenses for all vehicles can be

completed through Metrash 2.

The Support and Operations Section recorded an increase of 257 percent with a total of 348 activities for 2017, while in 2016 there were 97 activities.

The Traffic Awareness Sec-tion at the department indicated increase in the awareness activ-ities by seven percent in 2017 compared to activities in 2016. The total activities of 2016 included awareness to pedes-trians, the ideal driver, and the awareness of school students and in winter camps, commu-nity awareness, external part-nerships, and during the National Day, Ramadan cam-paign. 264 activities were held in 2016 whereas 282 activities were held in 2017.

The Department of Studies and Traffic Information has also achieved a 15 percent increase in the number of studies, monthly reports, statistical indicators, sur-veys and opinion polls.

RC aircraft festival draws over 5,000 visitors

DOHA: The three-day second RC aircraft festival, which concluded on Saturday at the Cultural Village Foundation (Katara), attracted more than 5,000 visi-tors.

The festival was organised under the patronage of the Min-ister of Culture and Sports H E Salah bin Ghanem Al Ali and Qatar Central Bank (QCB) Gov-ernor H E Sheikh Abdulla bin Saoud Al Thani.

Sheikh Mohamed bin Fahad Al Thani, Chairman of Qatar RC Sport Centre, said: “The festival achieved many accomplishments, the most important of which is the large number of visitors which reached more than 5,000 during the three days of the event. Apart from general visitors, experts in the field of RC aircraft also par-

ticipated in the event”.He also stressed that the

organisation of the festival was good and has contributed signif-icantly to the achievement of the goals of the festival.

The Chairman added that the festival is the first of its kind in Qatar and the Middle East for RC aircraft.

It included the latest models of RC aircraft with different sizes and uses, in addition to the latest models manufactured in Qatar.

The festival also included

competitions, cultural and enter-tainment activities for children and families in order to introduce to them this kind of sports.

The visitors enjoyed the experience of flying aircraft on simulators which were available at the festival. Also, they enjoyed RC aircraft air show.

More than 50 types of RC air-craft took part in the second edi-tion of RC Aircraft Festival.

The participants appreciated this initiative and the organisers urged Qatari youth to develop their skills in this regard to par-ticipated in international events.

For his part Jarrah Ali Al Mohanadi, Qatar RC Sport Centre Airport Director, said that the visitors enjoyed the shows made by RC aircraft, boats and vehicles and the time was convenient for people as the event was conducted during the weekend.

He expressed hope that this

sport will attract more people and it will generate more interest among Qatari youth and also hoped that more

centres to groom the skills of youth in this field will come up in the country.

Al Mohanadi added that the

Qatar RC Sport Centre is the main destination for sports prac-titioners and those who wish to learn and train this sport.

Visitors to the second RC aircraft festival which concluded on Saturday at the Cultural Village Foundation (Katara).

SIDI MOHAMED

THE PENINSULAThe festival included the latest models of RC aircraft with different sizes and uses, in addition to the latest models manufactured in Qatar.

US affirms Qatar as strong partner: FMContinued from page 1

On the US position towards the Gulf crisis, the Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister said: “Washington’s position has been clear since the beginning of the crisis, which is still in place.”

He explained that the US wants to see a unified coopera-tion council and appreciates its relationship with Qatar. The State of Qatar is going on its way in strengthening its partnerships with all countries, including the US, he said.

On the announcement of the US Secretary of State on his country’s commitment to the sovereignty and territorial integ-rity of Qatar, the Deputy Prime Minister pointed out the exist-ence of a clear and strong part-nership between the two coun-tries, adding that there is American knowledge and awareness that the accusations against Qatar are false and did not base on any evidence.

“This is the nature of the friendship and partnership rela-tionship,” he said. “As for the state-ments made by the US Secretary of State, which he spoke in public, we see them very different from the past, but we are aware that the United States recognises Qatar’s seriousness in resolving the crisis, that there is a unified cooperation council once again, and also rec-ognises that this crisis has started without foundation.”

As for Qatar’s assessment of

the issue of the US administra-tion’s perception of the complex-ities of the Gulf crisis in the United States, he said: “In gen-eral, there has been an impact at the beginning of the crisis, unfor-tunately, by the propaganda of the siege countries in the US. There has been exploitation of the legal methods in the US to serve their purposes in the demonisation of Qatar. Some intellectual centres and news-papers in the US were provided with information which were not based on facts, but based on lies and charges, but of course with Qatar’s contacts with all the spectrum of political and media institutions in the US to clarify the picture and also the view of these institutions of the behav-iour of Qatar and the behaviour

of the siege countries against Qatar all began to distinguish between what is real and what is only spreading lies and ideas which were baseless.”

About hosting Qatari officials at American institutes known for their right-wing tendencies, the Deputy Prime Minister underlined the openness of Qatar to all insti-tutions in the US, whether from the right, the centre or the left.

Sheikh Mohamed stressed the importance of all institutions and spectra to learn the story of Qatar from the words Qatar and not taken from other parties already have a rivalry with it.

He said, “Qatar has always been calling for dialogue, and there should be an under-standing of the causes of this crisis because today they launch

accusations and abuses against Qatar and its people without any explanation of the causes and motives of this crisis.”

He stressed that the crisis will be in place as long as the other side is still arrogant and in denial that what they did is a mistake against Qatar and its people.

The Deputy Prime Minister praised the Qatari people, saying in this regard, “the people of Qatar stood together in front of all the forces that are trying to attack them and their sovereignty”.

He added that the leadership of Qatar took a position from the first day, which is to stand firm and move forward. “We will not give up our sovereignty and we

will not concede that there will be other states or other forces that control Qatar or its destiny, for us, this is in itself a response to the siege countries and the countries that tried to exercise this political bullying”.

When asked about the winner and loser of the Gulf crisis, he said: “We see that eve-ryone is a loser in this crisis. We see that we have lost so much in the GCC, which was built by our fathers and founded in 1981. It was in the direction of moving from the stage of cooperation to the Union phase. All of this we have lost because of reckless acts”.

The Foreign Minister said that the Gulf crisis has stopped

all forms of collective coopera-tion between the GCC countries in the regional security issues, whether in the Yemen issue or the regional tragedy experienced by the Syrian people and in many issues concerning Iraq as well as Gulf-Iranian differences.

He added: “For us, we clearly explain to the US that there is a product of the accumulation of these reckless policies, whether against Qatar or the policies taken recently with Lebanon or the policies that are taking place today in changing positions, whether in Yemen, Somalia or Syria and other countries, We believe that the region, in gen-eral, lacks a clear and wise policy”.

The Traffic Awareness Section indicated increase in the awareness activities by seven percent in 2017 compared to activities in 2016. The total activities of 2016 included awareness to pedestrians, the ideal driver and the awareness of school students and in winter camps among others

“There has been exploitation of the legal methods in the US to serve their purposes in the demonisation of Qatar. Some intellectual centres and newspapers in the US were provided with information which were not based on facts, but based on lies and charges, but of course with Qatar’s contacts with all the spectrum of political and media institutions in the US to clarify the picture and also the view of these institutions of the behaviour of Qatar and the behaviour of the siege countries against Qatar all began to distinguish between what is real and what is only spreading lies and ideas which were baseless.”

Erdogan on Italian visit

Turkish troops, FSA seize strategic hill in AfrinANATOLIA

IDLIB, SYRIA: Turkish soldiers and Free Syrian Army (FSA) fighters took control of another strategic hill in northwestern Syria yesterday as Turkey’s ongoing Operation Olive Branch in Afrin entered its16th day.

Located in the southern Raju township in western Afrin, Hill 1027 was captured, according to a secu-rity source, who asked not to be named due to restrictions on talking to the media. So far, 33 areas — among them 21 villages, settlements and 10 strategic mountains and hills located around Afrin — have been freed from the terror group. On Jan-uary 20, Turkey launched Opera-tion Olive Branch along with the FSA to clear out PYD/PKK and Daesh terrorists from Afrin.

As the operation entered the 16th day, the Turkish General Staff announced that at least 935 PYD/PKK and Daesh terrorists had been “neutralized” since the beginning of Operation Olive Branch in Syria.

According to the Turkish Gen-eral Staff, the operation aims to establish security and stability along Turkey’s borders and the region as well as to protect Syrians from oppression and cruelty of ter-rorists. The operation is being car-ried out under the framework of Turkey’s rights based on interna-tional law, UN Security Council

resolutions, its self-defense rights under the UN charter, and respect for Syria’s territorial integrity, it said. The military also said only terror targets were being destroyed and that “utmost importance and sen-sitivity” was being given to not harm any civilian.

Afrin has been a major hideout for the PYD/PKK since July 2012, when the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria left the city to the terror group without putting up a fight.

France and Turkey will be working in the coming weeks on a diplomatic road map to resolve the conflict in Syria, the Elysee Palace announced yesterday .

The French and Turkish leaders have agreed to work towards a dip-lomatic road map on Syria in the coming weeks, the Elysee’s state-ment added. The statement noted that the talks between France and Turkey will intensify in the coming days, both of which hope for a polit-ical solution under the auspices of the United Nations.

Israel begins telling African migrants to leaveAFP

JERUSALEM: Israel began warning thousands of African migrants yesterday that they must leave by the end of March, offi-cials said, under a plan that could see them jailed if they refuse.

On January 3, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced implementation of a plan to deport about 38,000 migrants who had entered the country illegally, mainly Eritreans and Sudanese.

The controversial plan gives them until the end of next month to leave voluntarily or face jail and eventual expulsion.

Immigration authority spokeswoman Sabine Haddad said that officials began issuing migrants letters advising them that they had 60 days in which to leave the country voluntarily.

For now, the notices are being given only to men without families, officials said.

Israeli newspaper Haaretz said “anyone recognised as a victim of slavery or human traf-ficking, and those who had requested asylum by the end of 2017 but haven’t gotten a response” would also be exempt for now.

It added that this left the

number subject to near-term deportation at “between 15,000 and 20,000 people”. The authority is offering those who agree to leave a grant of $3,500, a flight ticket and help with obtaining travel documents.

Should they not leave by the deadline, the grant would be reduced and “enforcement measures” would be taken against them and anyone employing them, the authority says. Israel refers to the tens of thousands of African migrants who entered the country illegally from neighbouring Egypt as “infiltrators”.

Israeli officials tacitly

recognise that it is too dangerous to return Sudanese and Eritreans to their troubled homelands, but local media say the notices do not specify where departing migrants would be sent.

Aid workers and media have named Uganda and Rwanda, although both countries deny being a destination for migrants being expelled involuntarily.

Public opposition to the plan has been slow to build, but some Israeli airline pilots have report-edly said they will not fly forced deportees. Academics have pub-lished a petition and Israeli Hol-ocaust survivors wrote an open letter to Netanyahu last month

pleading with him to reconsider.

The UN refugee agency has called on Israel to scrap the plan, calling it incoherent and unsafe.

A 2016 UN commission of inquiry into Eritrea’s regime found “widespread and system-atic” crimes against humanity, and said an estimated 5,000 people flee the country each month. The International Crim-inal Court has indicted Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir on charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide linked to his regime’s counter-insurgency tactics in the Darfur conflict.

Israelis knock down part of West Bank schoolREUTERS

ABU NUWAR, WEST BANK: Israeli authorities yesterday tore down two EU-funded classrooms that were part of a school for Bedouins in the occupied West Bank because they said they were built illegally. Palestinians condemned the move.

Israeli authorities say such demolitions carry out court rul-ings against unauthorized building by Palestinians. Pales-tinians see it as part of a broader move to seize land for potential Jewish settlement expansion.

The two classrooms, which stood separately from the rest of the hilltop school, were demol-ished early in the morning by a work crew while Israeli security officers closed off the area, according to residents of the Pal-estinian village Abu Nuwar.

Tens of thousands of Bedouin, once nomads, live in villages across the desert region of southern Israel and in the West Bank. It was the fifth time the school has been demolished since 2016, Palestinian officials said. Residents, with the help of non-government organi-zations and E.U. funding, recon-struct it each time. Senior Pales-tinian official Saeb Erekat said on Twitter the demolition was “the continuation of Israel’s humilia-tion of international law and only aims to break the Palestinian will for freedom and life.”

Saddam’s daughter among most-wantedAFP

BAGHDAD: Iraqi security services yesterday published the names of 60 people wanted on suspicion of belonging to the Islamic State group, Al-Qaeda or the Baath Party of late dictator Saddam Hussein.

The list includes the name of Saddam’s daughter Raghad, who lives in Jordan.

It also features 28 sus-pected IS jihadists, 12 from Al Qaeda and 20 Baathists, giving details of the roles they allegedly play in their organ-isations, crimes of which they are suspected and in most cases, photographs.

All are Iraqis apart from Maan Bashour, a Lebanese man accused of recruiting fellow citizens to fight in Iraq.

“It’s an old story that dates back to the American invasion of Iraq when we were partisans of the Iraqi resist-ance,” Bashour told AFP. “Yes, we carried out activities against the American occupation.” The name of elusive IS head Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is absent from the list. A senior security official contacted by AFP declined to explain why.

“These are the terrorists most wanted by the judicial authorities and the security services,” the official said. “This is the first time we pub-lish these names which, until now were secret.”

The IS fighters the docu-ment lists are accused of fighting in Iraq’s second city Mosul and the surrounding province of Nineveh, as well as in the provinces of Kirkuk, Diyala and Anbar.

IS seized a third of Iraq’s territory during a lightning advance in 2014, before being beaten back by security forces backed by a United States-led coalition. IS fighters are accused of murders, bomb-ings, attacks on security forces, and the financing and transport of weapons.

Palestinian groups urge UNRWA operations chief to leave West BankANATOLIA

RAMALLAH: Palestinian groups yesterday called for the departure of The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) opera-tions director in the West Bank.

In a statement, several groups, including the Pop-ular Committees in the Ref-ugee Camps and the Pales-tinian National Action Factions, said they would submit a letter to UNRWA Commissioner-General

Pierre Krahenbuhl calling for the departure of Scott Anderson and his American team in protest of recent U.S. funding cuts. “The reduc-tion of aid to the UN agency aims to liquidate the refu-gees issue,” the statement said.

Last month, the U.S. State Department said it was with-holding $65m in aid to the Palestinians “until further consideration”.

The Palestinian groups called on the government “to assume its national respon-sibilities towards the

Palestinian refugee camps and refugee communities and respond quickly to their requirements”.

UNRWA provides serv-ices to some 5.9 million Pal-estinian refugees in the Pal-estinian territories, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.

The total US contribution to the UN refugee agency in 2017 was more than $350m. The US funding cuts came one month after US President Donald Trump sparked a world outcry by officially recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

A Palestinian pushes a food cart in a street in the Rafah refugee camp in the southern Gaza strip, yesterday.

Yemen Islamist party suspends membership of Nobel laureate KarmanREUTERS

DUBAI: Yemeni Nobel Prize winner Tawakkol Karman was suspended from an Islamist party allied with President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi after she accused the Saudi-led coalition that backs him in the country’s civil war of acting as occupiers.

Karman won the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize for her role in Arab Spring protests that ousted authoritarian President Ali Abdullah. More recently she has ramped up public criticism of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, accusing them of backing a campaign to divide Yemen by supporting southern separatists against the interna-t i o n a l l y r e c o g n i s e d government.

Speaking at the Warwick Economics Summit in London over the weekend, Karman said Saudi Arabia and the UAE were driven by a “reckless adven-turism” when they intervened in Yemen in 2015 after Iran-aligned Houthi forces drove Hadi into exile.

In an earlier Twitter mes-sage, she wrote: “Saudi Arabia and UAE took advantage of the

(Houthi) militia coup in Sanaa to launch a very ugly occupa-tion and an uglier influence in Yemen.”

The Islah party, regarded as a branch of the Muslim Brother-hood, which is viewed by Saudi Arabia and the UAE as a terrorist organisation, tried to distance itself from Karman and order her suspended from its ranks.

“Tawakkol Karman’s state-ments do not represent the Islah party and its policies, and are not in line with the party’s positions,” a statement posted on Islah’s website said.

“Therefore, the general sec-retary has decided to freeze her membership according to the party’s status.”

Karman, who left Yemen after Houthi militia seized the capital Sana’a in a series of mil-itary advances that began in late 2014, responded on her Twitter account by describing Islah leaders as “prisoners and slaves” of Riyadh and Abu Dhabi.

Islah, eager to ease the worries of Gulf Arab states about its Islamist leanings, has sought to distance itself from the Muslim Brotherhood.

Iran jails nuclear spy for six yearsREUTERS

DUBAI: Iran has sentenced an unnamed person to six years in jail for selling information about its nuclear programme to the United States and a European country, the Iranian judiciary’s news website reported yesterday.

Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi told judiciary news website Mizan that the convicted person had met nine times with U.S. and European

agents to hand over informa-tion “about sanctions and nuclear matters” and had received unspecified sums of money in return. “This person has been sentenced to six years imprisonment and the return and seizure of funds,” Dolata-badi said.

In December, Dolatabadi said Iran’s Supreme Court had upheld a death sentence against Ahmadreza Djalali, a S w e d e n - based Iranian

academic convicted of providing information to Israel to help it assassinate several senior nuclear scientists.

At least four scientists were killed between 2010 and 2012 in what Tehran said were assas-sinations meant to sabotage its efforts to develop nuclear energy.

Western powers and Israel said Iran aimed to build a nuclear bomb, which Tehran denied.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his wife Emine Erdogan wave ahead of their departure for Italy at the Ataturk International Airport in Istanbul, yesterday.

So far, 33 areas — among them 21 villages, settlements and 10 strategic mountains and hills located around Afrin — have been freed from the terror group.

08 MONDAY 5 FEBRUARY 2018MIDDLE EAST / AFRICA

09MONDAY 5 FEBRUARY 2018 ASIA

Sri Lanka marks 70th Independence Day

Swiss President in BangladeshSwitzerland President Alain Berset (left), receiving a floral wreath as Bangladesh President Abdul Hamid (second left) looks on in Shahjalal International Airport in Dhaka, yesterday. Swiss President is on an official visit to Bangladesh.

Sri Lankan military personnel march with the national flag during the Independence Day celebrations in Colombo, yesterday. Sri Lanka is marking the 70th anniversary of independence from Britain.

Delhi markets reopen after anti-sealing strikeIANS

NEW DELHI: Markets in the national capital reopened yesterday after a two-day strike by thousands of commercial establishments protesting against the recent sealing drive by the Municipal Corporations of Delhi.

The shutdown had been called by the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT).

“After two days of Delhi Trade Bandh called by CAIT against sealing, the markets in Delhi opened today restoring the business activities to normal trade though markets observing Sunday as weekly holiday remained closed,” the traders’ association said in a release here.

“The proposals of DDA (Delhi Development Authority) for amendment in Master Plan 2021 are very confusing since every proposal contain certain riders and conditions which are difficult to follow and as such the basic object of bringing pro-posals to provide relief to traders from sealing will be highly defeated, according to prominent traders,” it said.

CAIT Secretary General Praveen Khandelwal said it appeared that the DDA pro-posals were drafted “in great haste without considering its compliance obligations and impact”.

“It will be more appropriate if the central government sus-pends the sealing, by bringing a law in the Parliament, for at least six months, and during this period after having a detailed and thoughtful study, the

proposals to amend the Master Plan should be drafted to give relief from sealing,” he said in the statement.

CAIT on Saturday said it has sent a “traders’ charter” to the government suggesting that it take necessary steps to mitigate traders’ problems on account of the sealing drive.

“Though appreciating the proposals mooted by DDA for amending the Master Plan to bring relief to traders from sealing, the CAIT has sent a 12 point traders’ charter to Har-deep Puri, Union Minister for Urban Development, urging him to take necessary steps to mitigate the problems of the traders on account of sealing,” it said.

On Friday, the DDA approved changes to the city’s Master Plan — in a move to pro-vide relief to traders hit by the sealing drive — on a day lakhs

of traders pulled down their shutters to protest against the sealing.

The sealing drive was being carried out against business establishments using residen-tial areas for commercial pur-poses without paying conver-sion charges.

DDA’s proposed amend-ments to the Master Plan include increasing Floor Area Ratio (FAR) of local shopping com-plexes from existing 180 per cent to 300 per cent and regularising agricultural warehouses on 12 metre wide roads.

Though the DDA has approved the proposed amend-ments, the traders continued with their shutdown on Saturday.

According to the CAIT, the charter sent to the government includes among other steps keeping status quo in special areas till the time its redevelop-ment plan is prepared and implemented.

“The plot size in LSCs should be increased from 175 metres to 250 metres,” the traders’ body urged the government.

“While regularising and enhancing the FAR, the condi-tion of parking availability should be withdrawn, three col-onies — Greater Kailash, Green Park and South Extension — developed by DLF should be enlisted on the list of rehabili-tation colonies developed by DLF,” the statement added.

CAIT also urged that com-mercial use of basements should be allowed uniformly in any street and the limit of paying conversion charges should be fixed for 10 years.

Three soldiers dead in Pakistan firing on LoCJAMMU: Three Indian soldiers were killed and four other persons were injured yesterday in Pakistani firing on the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir’s Rajouri and Poonch districts, defence officials said.

“Pakistan army resorted to unprovoked shelling and firing on the LoC in Bhimber Gali (BG) sector of Rajouri today (Sunday) evening with small arms, automatics and mortars. Three soldiers were killed and two others injured,” said a defence source.

“Indian positions are retaliating strongly and effec-tively,” said the source, adding that heavy firing exchanges are going on in the area. Earlier yesterday, a 15-year old girl and a soldier were injured in Pakistan ceasefire violation in Shahpur area of the LoC in Poonch district.

According to army offi-cials, the firing started around 11am with Pakistani soldiers using small arms, automatics and mortars. Indian troops retaliated strongly, they added.

Maldives crisis deepens as court orders Yameen to complyAFP

MALE: The Maldivian Supreme Court dealt another blow to beleaguered President Abdulla Yameen yesterday, asking him to comply with its order to release political prisoners and reinstate dissident lawmakers.

The government had expressed “concerns” over the judicial order and resisted com-plying with it, but the court said there can be no excuses.

The government will resist any attempt by the Supreme Court to impeach President Abdulla Yameen for disobeying its order last week to release jailed opposition leaders, the attorney general said.

Dissidents must be released because their trials were politically motivated and flawed, the Supreme Court said in a state-ment. “There is nothing preventing the prosecutor general from seeking a re-trial after the order has been implemented (and

prisoners released),” it added. Thursday’s order to restore the seats of 12 government MPs who defected to the opposition would effectively reduce Yameen’s party to a minority and expose him to the risk of impeachment. Police detained two opposition lawmakers who returned to the country yesterday as the polit-ical crisis in the Indian Ocean archipelago nation deepened with its top court pitted against

the president. The main oppo-sition Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) said its MPs tried to stage a meeting in defiance of a weekend order suspending par-liament, but they were pushed back by armed troops.

Security forces have been deployed inside the national par-liament — known as the People’s Majlis —since March last year when Yameen ordered them to evict dissident lawmakers.

The president’s crackdown on dissent has tarnished the Mal-dives’ image as an upmarket hol-iday paradise and sparked calls from the United Nations and sev-eral countries to restore the rule of law in the fledgling democ-racy. But the Yameen govern-ment has so far refused to comply with the shock ruling, resisting international pressure. In a national television address yesterday, Attorney General Mohamed Anil remained defiant.

“Any Supreme Court order to arrest the president would be unconstitutional and illegal,” Anil said. “So I have asked the police and the army not to implement any unconstitutional order.”

Yameen also sacked two police chiefs after the court’s deci-sion. Atul Keshap, the US ambas-sador to Sri Lanka and the Mal-dives, led international criticism of the Yameen government’s refusal to respect court orders.

“What security risk prevents the #Maldives #Majlis from

meeting tomorrow? Why are MPs pepper sprayed in the streets and arrested on arrival at airport?” he tweeted yesterday. Former president and current opposition leader Mohamed Nasheed described the govern-ment’s refusal to obey the Supreme Court as a “coup”.

Nasheed, who was contro-versially convicted of a terrorism charge and jailed for 13 years in 2015, urged police and troops to uphold the constitution.

“Statements made today by AG Anil... to disobey SC orders is tantamount to a coup. They, and President Yameen must resign immediately,” he tweeted. “Security services must uphold the constitution and serve the Maldivian people.” Nasheed, the country’s first democratically elected leader, was toppled in 2012. He was barred from con-testing elections after his 2015 terrorism conviction, which was internationally criticised as polit-ically motivated.

Maldives President Abdulla Yameen (left) and former president and opposition leader Mohamed Nasheed.

Ship with 22 Indian crew missing in Gulf of Guinea

DAKAR: A merchant marine vessel with 22 Indian crew is missing in the Gulf of Guinea off the coast of West Africa, India’s minister of external affairs, Sushma Swaraj, tweeted yesterday.

The vessel, managed by Hong Kong-based Anglo-Eastern, has been missing since Friday and was last seen in Benin’s waters, Anglo-Eastern said in a tweet.

The sealing drive was being carried out against business establishments using residential areas for commercial purposes without paying conversion charges. The shutdown had been called by the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT).

Bangladeshi loses legs as mine explodes on Myanmar borderDHAKA: A Bangladeshi farmer lost both legs when he stepped on a landmine report-edly planted by Myanmar security forces in a buffer zone between the two countries, officials said yesterday.

The incident happened near the southern Bangladesh border town of Naikhongchari on Saturday when Badiur Rahman crossed into the zone.

“His cow strayed inside the Myanmar border in no-man’s land. He accidently stepped on a mine when he went there to fetch the cow,” said a local government administrator. The 45-year-old was rushed to a local clinic and later moved to hospital in the southern port city of Chittagong.

Indian MP feeling ‘depressed, ashamed’ on being called mad by ChairIANS

NEW DELHI: A Rajya Sabha Member of the Congress said he is feeling “depressed, dejected and ashamed” at being called “mad and a laughing stock” by the Chair on Friday, even though the remarks were later expunged by the Chair.

In a letter to Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairman P J Kurien, dated February 3, and shared with the media on Sunday, Con-gress MP K.V.P. Ramachandra Rao has lashed out at Kurien.

He said the use of those words were “not any humilia-tion for me but... certainly a

great humiliation for the people of my state (Andhra Pradesh), who were agitating for fulfil-ment of their legitimate rights”.

On Friday, after the Upper House of Parliament met for the day, Rao stood near the Chair-man’s podium, displaying a placard to the House.

While a number of opposi-tion members from various par-ties stood to the left of the podium raising the issue of police high-handedness against Muslims in Uttar Pradesh’s Kas-ganj, Rao stood silently on the right side, with his back to the Chair and flaunting a placard.

Rao was apparently

expressing his displeasure at the alleged “continuous apathy” of the Central government towards Andhra Pradesh and the non-implementation of the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act, 2014 in its “true spirit”.

The state, that was bifur-cated in 2014, had been seeking special development packages from the Centre. As Rao stood near the podium, he caught the attention of Kurien who was presiding over the House. Kurien asked Rao to stop but when the latter ignored his instructions, Kurien wondered if Rao had gone “mad” and is thus behaving this way.

The number of American companies operating in Qatar with Qatari partners stands at 505 while the number of companies that were owned 100 percent by Americans and operating in Qatar is around 102.

CHAIRMANSHEIKH THANI BIN ABDULLAH AL THANI

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

editorinchief@pen.com.qa

ACTING MANAGING EDITORMOHAMMED SALIM MOHAMED

m.salim@pen.com.qa

10 MONDAY 5 FEBRUARY 2018VIEWS

EDITORIAL

Stronger Qatar-US ties

QUOTE OF THE DAY

The EU must “keep its promises” to Turkey

The EU is blocking access to negotiations and suggests that lack of progress is because

of us. It’s unfair.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan Turkish President

ESTABLISHED IN 1996

Qatar-US strategic dialogue stresses two countries’ need to remain close allies

The first strategic dialogue held by the governments of the State of Qatar and the United States of America in Washing-

ton, DC, on January 30 has revealed increased the convergence in the stra-tegic visions between the two countries and stressed need to remain close allies and friends both at the level of bilateral and multilateral cooperation.

The strategic dialogue aimed at enhancing the strengthening bilateral relations between the State of Qatar and the United States, and highlighted the common beneficial opportunities for the peoples of the two countries.

The strategic dialogue strengthens the partnership between the State of Qatar and the United States of America and enhances it in the face of chal-lenges in areas of regional security, defense, counter-terrorism, energy, trade and economic cooperation.

On the sidelines of the dialogue, HE Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani held several meetings with US, and international officials.

His Excellency attended a cere-mony hosted by the American Chamber of Commerce in the pres-ence of senior Qatari and American officials participating in the dialogue.

“This year, we are celebrating the 45th anniversary of the beginning of Qatari-US relations,” HE the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs said in a speech during the cer-emony. He pointed out that the holding of the strategic dialogue

between the two coun-tries for the first time illustrates the depth of bilateral relations.

“We are not only talk-ing about a security and defense part-nership but we believe that the busi-ness sector is an important element in this partner-ship,” he said.

His Excellency

expressed the hope that in the next round of strategic dialogue, the two countries would celebrate the progress of the partnership during the current year. He also noted the mutual trust that the US-Qatari partnership has strengthened over the past years.

In this context, HE the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of For-eign Affairs signed a number of agreements on the sidelines of the strategic dialogue including the Joint Declaration for the Establishment of Strategic Dialogue, the Joint Declara-tion on Security Cooperation and a memorandum of understanding (MoU) for cooperation in combating human trafficking.

His Excellency also participated in a number of the dialogue’s sessions including the signing ceremony of the agreements in the presence of HE Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of State for Defence Affairs Dr. Khalid bin Mohammed al-Attiyah, HE US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and HE US Secretary of Defence Jim Mat-tis .

On the sidelines of the strategic dialogue, HE Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister held meetings with a number of senators, the House of Representatives and representatives of various committees in the US Con-gress.

H E Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdul-rahman Al-Thani delivered a lecture at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, in which he expressed the hope that the international com-munity would join in calling for an immediate regional strategic dialogue to agree on common security princi-ples that may be the basis for recovery and ending the existing conflicts of prosperity for the region.

His Excellency also held two televi-sion interviews with the CNN and Al Jazeera channels, highlighting the Qatari-US strategic dialogue and its importance in enhancing relations between the two countries.

He also stressed that the State of Qatar is still committed to the need to resolve the Gulf crisis through dialogue.

HE Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs paid an offi-cial visit to the city of Charleston on February 1 in order to enhance coop-eration and common interests.

During the visit, he witnessed the signing of a Declaration of Under-standing between Charleston and Doha City, which obliges the two cities to promote joint ties in the fields of economic development and culture.

“This week marked the beginning of a historic strategic dialogue between the United States and the

State of Qatar, which aims to highlight the opportunities that benefit the peo-ple of both countries, which is at the heart of our long and solid relation-ship,” His Excellency said.

“Despite the thousands of miles between us, South Carolina shares many similarities with Qatar, but more importantly, we invest in human capi-tal and create jobs that will benefit the American and Qatari people,” he said. which drives the political and eco-nomic commitment that I am happy to join in strengthening. “, His Excellency added.

HE the Governor of South Carolina, Henry McMaster, hosted a dinner in honor of the delegation of the State of Qatar. The banquet was attended by a number of businessmen and commu-nity leaders in the state. HE Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al -Thani held a round table with senior politicians and business leaders from the State to discuss ways to enhance the joint cooperation.

He also toured the headquarters of Boeing, accompanied by Akbar Al Baker, CEO of Qatar Airways Group, and HE Sheikh Abdullah Bin Moham-med Bin Saud Al -Thani, Chief Executive Officer of Qatar Investment Authority (QIA).

Following the visit, HE Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs visited New York, where he met with HE Secretary-General of the United Nations Antonio Guterres, HE Permanent Representative of the United States to the United Nations Nikki Haley, HE Permanent Repre-sentative of the Russian Federation to the United Nations Vasily Nebenzya, HE Permanent Representative of China to the United Nations Ma Zhaoxu, HE Ambassador Francois Delattre, Permanent Representative of France to the United Nations, and HE Ambassador Jonathan Allen, Charge d’ Affaires of the United Kingdom to the United Nations.

The meetings discussed means of enhancing joint cooperation between the State of Qatar and the United Nations in areas of common concern, as well as the latest developments on the regional and international arenas.

His Excellency also briefed them on all illegal measures taken against the State of Qatar and its grave conse-quences for regional and international security and peace, and their impact on human rights.

His Excellency also reviewed the messages of the State of Qatar, for the Security Council and the Secretary-General of the United Nations on violations of Qatar’s airspace by the United Arab Emirates.

The strategic dialogue aimed at enhancing the strengthening bilateral relations between the State of Qatar and the United States, and highlighted the common beneficial opportunities for the peoples of the two countries.

QNA

Yellen’s competent leadership will be missedTHE WASHINGTON POST

AS Janet Yellen’s tenure comes to an end, it’s worth reflecting on

what may be her greatest accomplishment as chair of the Federal Reserve: With calm and dispassionate competence, she kept the central bank at arm’s length from a political system paralyzed by partisan strife. Look at the rest of

Washington to see how valuable to the country that distance from dysfunction has been — and how improbable.

Yellen was an experienced Fed governor before taking the top job, but she wasn’t tested by crisis like her predecessor, Ben Bernanke. The immediate response to the crash that began in 2007 — a setback unlike any since the 1930s — and the subsequent hesitant

recovery demanded fast and radical innovation. That was accomplished under Bernanke’s leadership, so by 2014, when Yellen took over, the Fed’s post-crash monetary strategy was well established. Yellen’s main task was to start unwinding the central bank’s emergency measures without drama.

That process is now smoothly under way. One can argue about whether the pace

of normalising monetary policy has been too fast or too slow. The main thing, though, is that Yellen’s Fed has guided investors to a clear understanding of its approach while shielding monetary policy from political strife. It would be comforting to believe that Yellen managed this because people understand that monetary policy needs to be kept out of day-to-day politics.

The recently concluded Qatar-US Strategic dialogue has taken the bilateral relations between the two countries to the new level. The success of the high-level event, held in

Washington last week, was a shining example strengthening relations between the countries.

Speaking at the event, the Minister of Economy and Commerce H E Sheikh Ahmed bin Jassim bin Mohammed Al Thani said Qatar has been working on increasing its investments in the US for many years, with those investments helping create millions of jobs. Some of those investments involved partnerships with a number of American companies such as Exxon Mobil, Conoco Phillips, and Raytheon. US is Qatar’s sixth largest trading partner with a trade volume of $6bn.

The Minister said that international trade and investment represent a main component of Qatar’s economic diversification policy. The US was Qatar’s biggest source of imports in 2017, representing 16 percent of the country’s total imports. Trade balance was $5bn in favour of US, he said.

The number of American companies operating in Qatar with Qatari partners stands at 505 while the number of companies that were owned 100 percent by Americans and operating in Qatar is around 102.

Around 20 companies are working in the field of oil and gas, with 40 companies licensed by Qatar Financial Center.

There are more than 5,000 American citizens that were currently working in the State of Qatar’s private sector.

Around one million American jobs depend on business with Qatar, and Qatar Airways, the country’s fast growing national carrier, alone provided a $92bn boost to the US economy through the purchase of 332 American aircraft (Boeing), a deal which supports more than 5,27,000 jobs in the US, noted the Minister of Economy and Commerce while speaking during a business lunch organised by the US-Qatar Business Council on the sidelines of

the ‘US-Qatar Strategic Dialogue’.Qatar has invested $35bn in the US, and Qatar

Investment Authority (QIA) is planning to invest an additional $10bn in the near future. Qatar’s foreign trade has also shown remarkable growth in 2017, the Minister said, adding that the total foreign trade volume has increased by 16 percent in 2017 to reached $103.

In 2017, Qatar’s GDP increased to $220bn compared with $218bn in 2016, the Minister said, noting that the country’s annual real GDP growth rate at constant price reached 2 percent in 2017.

As an active trade partner, Qatar has played a crucial role in increasing job and business opportunities in the United States, which is the world largest economy. There is no doubt the bilateral relation between the two countries will strengthen further.

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Beside the Twitter insults, there have been intimidation tactics employed against the regime. Trump has threatened to unleash “fire and fury” on North Korea and has called negotiation a waste of time.

SE-WOONG KOO

AL JAZEERA

Bitcoin is the new gold for the cryptocurrency age

NOAH SMITH

BLOOMBERG

11MONDAY 5 FEBRUARY 2018 OPINION

Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies may never go to zero, even if no one ends up using them for anything. They represent a belief in the theory that fiat money is doomed, and a hedge against the possibility that fiat-based payments systems will one day collapse.

Will North Korea be the next Iraq for US?On January 30, the

Washington Post dropped a bomb-shell: Victor Cha,

widely seen as the incoming US ambassador to South Korea, had been rejected by the White House for the job.

Cha, a hardliner, is well known both in Washington and within the South Korean political establishment for his unwavering faith in sanctions against North Korea. An aca-demic by training, he served as director for Asian affairs on the National Security Council during the Bush administration.

Cha was not an ideal can-didate from the perspective of the centre-left South Korean government, currently busy pursuing rapprochement with North Korea. But the report that Cha’s nomination was cancelled because he didn’t support the so-called “bloody nose” military option — inflicting limited damage as a warning to the regime in Pyongyang — came as a shock. It suggests that US President Donald Trump may be far more reckless than he has been perceived to be.

It’s fair to say that Trump has minced no words regard-ing North Korea since taking office one year ago. He has called North Korean leader Kim Jong-un everything from “a sick puppy” to “Little Rocket Man” to “short and fat”, prompting Pyongyang to unleash its own official diatribe.

Beside the Twitter insults, there have been intimidation tactics employed against the regime. Trump has threatened to unleash “fire and fury” on North Korea and has called negotiation a waste of time. Trump has also mobilised warships and bombers to patrol close to North Korean territory. And South Korea and the US held “huge” joint military exercises in August and December last year.

Washington also success-fully lobbied for much stricter sanctions against Pyongyang at the UN Security Council, rousing Kim Jong-un’s ire.

The Trump administra-tion’s behaviour until now, no matter how unwise, could still be rationalised to a degree given North Korea’s numerous missile launches

and a nuclear experiment throughout 2017. One of those missiles was, according to the North’s own propaganda machine and many experts, an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of reaching the continental US. But now it seems Trump is determined to take the stand-off to the next level.

On January 1, interna-tional media were riveted by Kim Jong-un’s statement sug-gesting interest in sending a North Korean sport delega-tion to the Pyeongchang Olympics in South Korea. The two Koreas held a meeting in the De-Militarized Zone (DMZ) on January 9 and con-firmed North Korean participation in the games. Since then, rounds of dia-logue have helped reduce tensions on the peninsula, albeit causing displeasure in no small segment of the South Korean population over what is seen as excessive accom-modation of an enemy.

Even though Trump is said to have called the resumption of inter-Korean engagement a good thing, the US vice president, Mike Pence, reportedly criticised the development, saying North Korea will “hijack” the Olympics for its own “propa-ganda”. It’s clear Washington wasn’t content with sitting back and watching inter-Korean affairs unfold without having a say.

The same day Cha’s pre-dicament became public, Trump gave his first State of the Union address before Congress, where he discussed the tensions with North Korea at length. What many US commentators have noted is the similarity between that speech and the ones George W Bush gave in the early 2000s to justify the invasion of Iraq. Like Bush, Trump

questioned the credibility and legitimacy of the regime, emphasising the threat it poses to the US and insisting that time for solving the issue may be running out.

Meanwhile, the New York Times reported on February 1 that the White House wants the Pentagon to come up with detailed plans for a military attack against North Korea — something the Department of Defense is reluctant to do for fear that Trump might actu-ally use them.

I have said before that many in Washington think war is inevitable. And now a colleague of mine, Steven Borowiec, says the feeling is shared in his circle: “In Seoul, whenever journalists or dip-lomats gather for drinks after work, the topic of conversa-tion is nearly always, not if, but when and how the Trump administration will initiate war with North Korea.”

Of course, one cannot completely rule out the possi-bility that Trump is warmongering in order to frighten Kim Jong-un into making concessions, but is Trump - a businessman who declared bankruptcy six times - really that good of a deal-maker? Or will his foolhardiness push the Korean Peninsula into war?

Trump is playing Russian roulette with Korean lives, not to mention lives of all others who live here. “[T]here are 230,000 Americans in South Korea,” wrote Victor Cha in a January 31 opinion piece for the Washington Post. “The president would be putting at risk an American population the size of a medium-size US city ... on the assumption that a crazy and undeterrable dictator will be rationally cowed by a dem-onstration of US kinetic power,” he added.

Part of South Korean media appears to be in a state of disbelief, judging by the articles that insist — citing some “high-level American government official” — that Victor Cha’s dismissal was not over differ-ences in policy opinions, or quote the US Department of State spokes-woman as saying Cha had never been nominated for the ambassa-dor post in the first place. And I cannot blame such outlets for want-ing to ignore reality.

Now, the onus is on Korean President Moon Jae-in. Despite largely supporting the US-led pres-sure tactics on North Korea since his election last May, Moon was the one who invited North Korea to join the Olympics so that there would be a reduction in tension. He has also had the common sense to say there can be no war without South Korea’s consent, meaning no war at all. But it is not entirely clear if he actually has the ability to stop the US, should Trump want to launch an attack or to bring both Washing-ton and Pyongyang to the negotiations table — which is what domestic media are saying Moon intends to achieve in the near future.

Trump might be right about one thing: Time is running out. Not for stopping North Korea from having an ICBM with a nuclear warhead, but for stopping the US from possi-bly starting another foolish conflict in the world. “[I]n the meantime, we’ll get through the Olympics and maybe something good can come out of the Olympics. Who knows,” said Trump on February 2.

That’s a narrow window of opportunity. After the games, all bets are off.

The author is co-founder and publisher of Korea Expose, an online magazine.

I hate to say I told you so, but … well, I told you so. Bitcoin, while still a popu-lar financial asset, is

looking less and less like a cur-rency. Online payments company Stripe is ending Bit-coin support. It cites several reasons for doing so:

“[Bitcoin] transaction con-firmation times have risen substantially; this, in turn, has led to an increase in the failure rate of transactions. … By the time the transaction is con-firmed, fluctuations in Bitcoin price mean that it’s for the “wrong” amount. ... Further-more, fees have risen a great deal … making Bitcoin transac-tions about as expensive as bank wires.”

A steady trickle of compa-nies is no longer accepting Bitcoin as payment for goods and services. Such transactions never became very widespread in the first place. Even a Bitcoin conference in Miami refused to accept Bitcoin for its attend-ance fees!

There are essentially three reasons Bitcoin isn’t working out as a currency — two tech-nological, and one economic. Technologically, Bitcoin tends to be slow and laborious to use because it verifies transactions in small blocks. That problem isn’t particularly hard to over-come — just use bigger blocks, or use a form of temporary

credit to ease the burden on the network. More ominously, Bit-coin relies on people known as miners to verify all transac-tions, and compensates them by creating new Bitcoins. But soon, this will stop, since the total number of Bitcoins is capped at 21 million — at that point, transaction fees will be needed to pay miners.

It’s very possible that all of these technological problems will be overcome, either by Bit-coin or by rival cryptocurrencies. Lots of smart people are working feverishly on solutions. But there’s also an economic reason why Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies will never be useful as money. Things that are good financial investments don’t make good currencies, and vice versa. (Disclosure: I own a small amount of Bitcoin.)

In any reasonably efficient financial market, there’s a risk-reward trade-off. Things that make good long-term stores of value, like stocks and real estate, tend to fluctuate in value in the short term. Short-term volatility is bad for payments, especially if it takes time to con-firm a transaction, as in Bitcoin’s case, because you don’t know how much you’re actually pay-ing for things. The guy that bought a pizza for 10,000 bit-coins in 2010, or more than $100 million based on recent prices, certainly regrets it now! Similarly, if you got your pay-check in stock, or real estate, or Bitcoin, you wouldn’t even know at the beginning of each month if you’d be able to afford your rent, food and other neces-sities at the end of the month.

This is why most workers get paid in US dollars, and why nobody buys groceries or pays rent with Apple shares. Instead, they use fiat money, like the dollar. Dollars are terrible long-term stores of value — they

depreciate at the rate of infla-tion, about 2 percent a year. But since that rate is very steady, it’s predictable -- you know how much you’re paying and getting paid.

So cryptocurrencies won’t be actual currencies, except for drug dealers and other people who can’t use normal forms of payment. But will they be good financial investments? Some won’t -- some will be scams, and many will simply fall into disuse and be forgotten. But some may remain good invest-ments, and even go up in price over many decades.

A similar phenomenon has already happened: gold. Legen-dary investor Warren Buffett once ridiculed gold for being an unproductive asset, but the price of the yellow metal has climbed over time.

Why has gold increased in price? One reason is that it’s not quite useless — people use gold for jewelry and some industrial applications, so the metal slowly goes out of circulation, increasing its scarcity.

But another reason is that people simply believe in gold. In the end, the price of an asset is what people believe it’s worth. Many people believe that fiat currencies will eventu-ally collapse, and that gold will reemerge as the global

currency. That narrative has survived over many decades, and the rise of Bitcoin as an alternative hasn’t killed it yet. Maybe there’s a deeply embed-ded collective memory of the Middle Ages, when govern-ments around the world were so unstable that gold and other precious metals were widely used to make payments. Gold bugs, as advocates of gold as an investment are commonly known, may simply be hedging against the perceived possibil-ity that the world will enter a new medieval period.

Similarly, Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies may never go to zero, even if no one ends up using them for anything. They represent a belief in the theory that fiat money is doomed, and a hedge against the possibility that fiat-based payments systems will one day collapse. When looking for a cryptocurrency to invest in, it might be useful to think not about which is the best pay-ments system, but which represents the most enduring expression of skepticism about fiat money itself.

The writer is a Bloomberg view columnist. He was an assistant professor of finance at Stony Brook University, and he blogs at Noahpinion.

12 MONDAY 5 FEBRUARY 2018ASIA

Joint Korean team sparks protestsAFP

INCHEON: Angry demonstra-tors stamped on a picture of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un as a joint North and South Korean women’s ice hockey team came together for the first time, losing 3-1 to Sweden in a practice match.

The unified team for the Pyeongchang Olympics is a product of a landmark deal between the two rivals following a year of high tensions over the nuclear-armed North’s weapons ambitions.

But the addition of North Korean players has provoked controversy in the South, with accusations that Seoul is depriving some of its own players of the chance to compete at a home Olympics for political purposes.

The joint team of North and South Korean female hockey players tested the ice for the first time in a warm-up match against

Sweden, five days before the Winter Games officially open.

The 3,000-capacity crowd roared as the team -- including four North Koreans - glided onto the ice at the Seonhak Interna-tional Ice Rink in Incheon, wearing blue and red uniforms with KOREA emblazoned across their chests.

But outside the arena, secu-rity was tight as protesters faced off with supporters of the joint team, highlighting sharp divi-sions over the initiative.

Those in favour of the North Korean presence chanted “Peace Olympics”, while protesters just across the street shouted “Pyongyang Olympics,” sug-gesting the North had been allowed to hijack the Pyeongchang Games.

Dozens of protesters yelled criticisms of the North into speakers, trampling on a picture of leader Kim and ripping up blue and white unification flags.

“As a coach, it is hard to tell

some of your players that you have been with for quite a long time that they are not going to be able to play, but the whole sit-uation is out of our control. So we are trying to make the best out of it,” said Sarah Murray, South Korea’s Canadian coach.

“There are a lot of challenges with adding players so close to the Olympics.”

“Language is different. The meeting takes three times as long. It’s really hard when you have three different languages in one team,” she added, refer-ring to the marked differences between the North Korean and South Korean dialects.

However, North Korean coach Pak Chol-Ho, was more upbeat. “Through this game, I felt acutely that nothing is impossible if the North and South become one and do it together,” said Pak. “I hope that we can gather our hearts and mind together in the short while and pull out a good outcome.”

People hold US and South Korean flags as they protest against the unified Korea female ice hockey team outside an ice rink before a friendly ice hockey match between the combined team and Sweden yesterday.

Anti-US base mayor loses to ruling party rival in Okinawa’s Nago city pollsREUTERS

TOKYO: A candidate backed by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s ruling coalition defeated an incumbent mayor opposed to a US Marines base on Okinawa in an election yesterday, NHK public TV and other domestic media reported.

The victory could give impetus to a long-stalled, con-troversial plan to relocate the US Marines’ Futenma air base from an urban area in central Okinawa to the less populated Henoko district of the northern city of Nago.

Japan’s central government and authorities on Okinawa - reluctant host to the bulk of US military forces in the country - have bickered for years over the

plan, first agreed between Tokyo and Washington in 1996.

Defeated Nago Mayor Susumu Inamine and Okinawa Governor Takeshi Onaga are among the opponents of the move, who want to have Futen-ma’s functions moved off Okinawa entirely.

Abe’s government wants to forge ahead with the relocation.

Inamine, who was seeking a third four-year term with opposition parties’ support, was defeated by Taketoyo Toguchi, backed by Abe’s Liberal Demo-cratic Party (LDP) and its junior coalition partner, the Komeito party. NHK said that Toguchi - whose platform focused on improving the local economy - won 20,389 votes to Inamine’s

16,931. A win for Toguchi will make it easier for Abe’s govern-ment to carry through the relo-cation. Work is underway for construction of a Futenma replacement facility, but some aspects require approval from the Nago mayor.

Many Okinawa residents have long associated the US mil-itary presence with crime, pol-lution and accidents, and resent-ment was rekindled by a spate of incidents involving US mili-tary aircraft. In December, a window fell from a US heli-copter onto a school sports field, fanning safety concerns.

Toguchi’s victory, however, could bode ill for Okinawa Gov-ernor Onaga, who is up for re-election late this year, media said.

Singapore AirshowA South Korean Air Force Black Eagles aerobatic team performs an aerial display during a media preview for the Singapore Airshow, Asia’s largest aerospace and defence event, in Singapore, yesterday.

Singapore prepares for militant attackREUTERS

SINGAPORE: Armed officers patrol a train station where television screens and giant posters warn of the threat from militants. Nearby, fake gunmen storm a shopping mall in one of many recent terror attack simulations.

But this is not some war-rav-aged country. It is one of the safest in the world, Singapore.

The wealthy island-state has a near-perfect record of keeping its shores free from terror, but as it prepares to host defence min-isters from around Southeast Asia this week, it appears to have good reason to have prioritised stopping the spread of militancy in the region.

The cosmopolitan financial hub, which was second only to Tokyo in The Economist Intelli-gence Unit’s Safe Cities Index in 2017, says it has been the target of militant plots for years, some stemming from its Muslim-majority neighbours, and that it’s a matter of ‘when’ and not ‘if’ militants will strike.

“Singapore continues to face a serious security threat from both homegrown radicalised individuals and foreign terror-ists who continue to see Singa-pore as a prized target,” Singa-pore’s Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) said in response to e-mailed questions from Reuters.

Singapore authorities say they have been a target of Islamic extremism since the 1990s, but efforts to deter terrorism have stepped up markedly in recent years with more frequent attacks on Western countries and after IS militants briefly took over a town in the southern Philippines last year.

Raising further concerns about the threat to the island, a Singaporean soldier has featured

on a number of IS promotional videos, most recently in December where he was filmed executing men alongside other militants.

In its inaugural Terrorism Threat Assessment Report released last year, the MHA said IS has demonstrated that Singa-pore is ‘very much on its radar’ and that the threat to the country remains ‘the highest in recent years’ - claims that are backed up by security experts.

“Singapore, being known as safe and secure, makes it such a risk target,” said Dan Bould, Asia director of crisis manage-ment at professional services firm Aon and a former captain in the British army.

In early 2017, Aon lifted Sin-gapore in the terrorism and polit-ical violence category of its annual risk map from negligible to low risk. The reality is that Sin-gapore has so far escaped the attacks seen in other major world cities like New York, London and Berlin in recent years. That’s why it is at the bottom of the 2017 Global Terror Index, with no reported terror-related attacks post 9/11.

But three in four Singapo-reans believe that it’s only a matter of time before the country experiences a terror attack, a poll by the local newspaper Sunday Times last year showed.

Singapore authorities cer-tainly do not want their citizens to be complacent. Everyone, including school children, is encouraged to download a mobile app that alerts them to emergency situations and allows them to send in videos and photos of suspicious events.

The MHA said that as of the end of last year, more than 1.3 million devices were equipped with the SGSecure app, a large chunk of the population of around 5.6 million.

North Korea’s ceremonial head of state to visit South: SeoulAFP

SEOUL: North Korea’s cere-monial head of state will visit the South this week in connec-tion with the Winter Olympics, Seoul said late yesterday.

The trip by Kim Yong-Nam will be the diplomatic high point of the rapprochement between the two Koreas trig-gered by the Pyeongchang Games in the South, which have their opening ceremony on Friday.

Tensions spiralled last year as the North carried out mul-tiple weapons tests, including intercontinental ballistic mis-siles it says are capable of reaching the mainland United States, and its most powerful nuclear blast to date.

For months, it ignored Seoul’s entreaties to take part in a ‘peace Olympics’, until leader Kim Jong-Un indicated his willingness to do so in his New Year speech.

That set off a rapid series of meetings which saw the two agree to march together in the opening ceremony and form a unified women’s ice hockey team, their first for 27 years.

The North’s Olympic par-ticipation would include a visit by a high-level delegation, they agreed. It will be led by Kim Yong-Nam, who is leader of the Presidium of the Supreme People’s Assembly, the North’s ruling-party-controlled par-liament, Seoul’s unification ministry said in a statement.

Kim -- who is not a close blood relative of leader Kim Jong-Un -- will arrive on Friday for a three-day visit, accompanied by three other officials and 18 support staff, the ministry said it had been told by Pyongyang.

N Korea slams Trump’s State of the Union addressAFP

SEOUL: North Korea hit back at US President Donald Trump yesterday after he slammed rights abuses under the hermit regime in his State of the Union address, with Pyongyang describing the speech as ‘screams of Trump terrified’ by the North’s power.

The comments follow months of fiery rhetoric between the two countries that have seen tensions soar, with Trump drawing criticism at home for repeatedly using highly-menacing language

towards the reclusive state. During Wednesday’s address, he criticised the ‘cruel dictator-ship’ of Kim Jong-Un and the leader’s “reckless pursuit” of atomic weapons while vowing to wage ‘a campaign of max-imum pressure’ to derail the nuclear threat.Kim declared his country a fully-fledged nuclear power last November after testing an intercontinental bal-listic missile Pyongyang claimed is capable of reaching the US mainland.

Trump also lashed out at widespread human rights abuses under the regime and

highlighted the case of Otto Warmbier, an American stu-dent who died last year shortly after being released from a 17-month-long detention in North Korea. A spokesperson of the North’s foreign ministry yesterday said the speech reflected “the height of Trump-style arrogance, arbitrariness and self-conceit,” in a state-ment carried by the state-run KCNA news agency.

“Trump also insisted upon the ‘maximum pressure’ against our country, viciously slandering our most superior people-centered social

system,” the statement added.“However, it is no less than

screams of Trump terrified at the power of the DPRK that has achieved the great historic cause of completing the state nuclear force and rapidly emerged as the strategic state recognized by the world,” it said, using the North’s official name. Also in his address, Trump honoured Ji Seong-Ho, a North Korean defector with only one arm and one leg who made a dramatic, 6,000-mile journey to the South after suf-fering severe discrimination and torture at home.

Technology leads recovery of missing teenINTERNEWS

ISLAMABAD: The Motorway Police of Pakistan used technology to recover an 11-year old missing boy travelling in a passenger bus. Sources said Hammad went missing from Abbottabad. He was accompanied by his neighbour named Usman, who misled him and took him along with him in a bus from Abbottabad.

With the help of CCTV, the Motorway Police got footage of Hammad and Usman. Deputy Super-intendent of Police Asma Naqvi reportedly contacted Babar, the pho-tographer of Motorway Police and asked him to check the pictures shared by her on WhatsApp and have

a look at the recorded movie.She took the passengers’ details

and searched out the name of Usman who was taking Hammad with him.

Finally she managed to find out that a person named Usman was trav-elling in a bus coming from Abbot-tabad. She took the contact details of the bus driver from the history sheet of the passengers and asked him to check the passengers of seat num-bers 5 and 6.

The driver checked the two pas-sengers and told DSP Asma Naqvi the ages and dress of the two boys.

Meanwhile, the Motorway Police photographer Babar found the movie of the boys and provided their screen-shot for identification.

13MONDAY 5 FEBRUARY 2018 ASIA

Afghan parliament polls likely to be delayedREUTERS

KABUL: Afghanistan’s long-delayed parliamentary and local council elections scheduled for July this year may have to be pushed back for another three months, an election commissioner said yesterday citing organisa-tional challenges.

The parliamentary polls, orig-inally scheduled for July 2015, are seen as dry run for a presidential election in mid-2019 and a test of the progress made by Afghani-stan’s Western-backed govern-ment towards establishing durable democratic institutions.

“We are ready to hold the elections with two or three months’ delay, but the security agencies must tell us whether they are ready,” Wasima Badghisi, deputy head of operations at the Independent Election Commis-sion told Reuters. International donor countries have laid heavy

emphasis on the need for suc-cessful elections this year fol-lowing a contentious presidential election in 2014 that was marred by allegations of massive voter fraud on both sides.

Referring to organisational problems, Badghisi said the appointment of a new member of the election commission had taken a lot of time, she also cited budget problems and insecurity.

Afghanistan has held two par-liamentary elections since the end of Taliban rule, the first in 2005

and the second in 2010. The five-year term of the parliament elected in 2010 was meant to expire in June 2015, but elections were postponed because of secu-rity fears and disagreements on how to ensure a fair vote after the bitterly disputed presidential elec-tion in 2014.

The current assembly is oper-ating under a 2015 decree issued by President Ashraf Ghani extending parliament’s mandate until a vote could be held, a deci-sion criticised by many Afghans who questioned whether the extension was legal. District council elections have never been held, despite being mandated in the 2004 constitution. If not ready by autumn this year, Afghanistan’s mountainous terrain, bad roads and lack of security mean that registering voters and setting up balloting stations are likely to face severe delays over the winter, pushing the election into 2019.

Afghanistan has held two parliamentary elections since the end of Taliban rule, the first in 2005 & the second in 2010.

Aftermath of suicide attackPakistan Army soldiers shift a coffin of Captain Jazib before a funeral ceremony in Kohat, yesterday. Some �� soldiers died in a suicide attack in Swat on Saturday.

Over 100 militants killed in Afghanistan in 24 hoursAA

KABUL: More than 100 suspected militants have been killed across the country in the last 24 hours, the Ministry of Defense announced yesterday.

The move comes after President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani declared last Tuesday’s massive Taliban assault in capital Kabul as Afghanistan’s 9/11.

In an official statement, the Ministry said the sus-pected militants were killed in air and ground offensives in Helmand, Nimroz, Uruzgan, Farah and Zabul provinces in the south; Faryab and Baghlan in the north; and Nangarhar, Ghazni and Logar in the east.

In the last 24 hours, 11 operations were conducted by security forces and 12 operations were carried out by the army’s Special Forces, the statement read.

Similar raids were car-ried out a day earlier as well in all these provinces and in Kandahar, Ghazni and Maidan Wardak provinces that left more than 50 sus-pected militants killed.

The January 27 attack in Kabul left more than 100 people killed and over 200 others wounded when a Tal-iban suicide bomber rammed an improvised ambulance loaded with explosives at the entrance of the Ministry of Interior.

The president has since directed countrywide offen-sives against militants not interested in joining the peace process.

Pakistani Minister urges Apex Court to jail MusharrafINTERNEWS

ISLAMABAD: Pakistani Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal has said that he will consider the Supreme Court independent when it will send former pres-ident and military dictator retired Gen Pervez Musharraf to Adiala jail.

Talking to reporters yes-terday, he said that the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) was concerned about the dig-nity of the judiciary. “If the Supreme Court becomes con-troversial, it will be a loss equal to the disqualification of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif,” the minister said. Federal Min-ister for Railways Saad Rafiq advanced Iqbal’s argument by saying that state institutions should avoid interfering in each

other’s domains. While the judi-ciary should be respected, it should also respect other insti-tutions, Rafiq said in his sepa-rate talk with the media. Iqbal said that if the Supreme Court wanted to maintain its honour, it should punish retired Gen Musharraf like it had punished Nehal Hashmi.

“Sending contempt notices to political workers like Talal Chaudhry will not help to restore the dignity of the Supreme Court. Instead it should summon former presi-dent Musharraf and take action against him for damaging the constitution, making the then chief justice and his children hostage and manhandling him,” he said.

The minister said that the PML-N believed that the

decisions against Sharif and the party leadership were not based on justice. “Similarly, people also have reservations over the decision to disqualify Sharif. If raising voice against it is contempt of court, then it should also be applied to people who have been partic-ipating in public gatherings of the PML-N, including the rally on GT Road, to express their concern over the judgement,” he said. He said that not only the PML-N but the entire world had expressed concern over the disqualification of Sharif. “We should avoid controver-sies and the institutions should work within their constitu-tional limits,” Iqbal said. He said that people would think that pre-poll rigging was being committed if the PML-N

continued to be made target. “From Karachi to Gwadar no one is ready to believe that the actions being taken against the PML-N and Nawaz Sharif are based on justice,” the minister said, adding that the judiciary would become controversial by taking such decisions.

Saad Rafique said that the “system of revenge” should come to an end and no hurdle should be created in the working of the institutions, including the parliament.

He said that his party respected the judiciary and he believed that judiciary should not be criticised. “We do not criticise the judiciary rather we respect it. But while the judi-ciary should not be criticised, one could disagree with the decisions of the court,” he said.

He said that elected repre-sentatives should be disquali-fied only by the public.

He advised political parties to avoid levelling allegations against each other and dragging the state institutions into polit-ical affairs. Rafique said that other institutions should realise that it was the parliament and the politician who would run the country.

The minister said that his party had hoped that the situa-tion would change with the change of the chairman of the National Accountability Bureau but there was no such sign yet. “I still have hope that this system of victimisation will come to an end as the newly appointed NAB chairman is an upright and unbiased person,” he said.

Japanese Self-Defence force visits ManilaSailors work on board the JS Amagiri (DD-154), an Asagiri-class destroyer in the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force, as it arrives at port in Manila. The Amagiri, with its crew of over 200 personnel, arrived at port in Manila as part for a two-day goodwill visit.

UK property law problematic for Pakistani politiciansINTERNEWS

ISLAMABAD: The United Kingdom government has intro-duced new rules giving unprec-edented powers to law enforce-ment agencies to crack down on properties and assets amassed through ‘dirty money’.

Under the new rules, which are designed to stop corrupt people from using Britain as a safe haven, individuals can be fined and jailed if they make mis-leading statements.

The order that came into force recently allows authorities to freeze and recover property of more than 50,000 pounds if individuals cannot explain why they own assets worth more than their income and show they have acquired them legally.

It is seen as unprecedented as it - like Pakistan’s National Accountability Bureau laws - shifts the burden of proof to the property holder instead of the state. The new law can also be problematic for some Pakistani politicians as the enforcement authorities don’t need to show that they actually own the prop-erty as properties owned by their “associates” can also be subject to the new powers.

Another thing that goes against Pakistani politicians is lower threshold as “a UWO [Unexplained Wealth Order] made in relation to a non-EEA [European Economic Area] PEP [Politically Exposed Person] would not require suspicion of serious criminality”.

Although the British media is looking at the Unexplained Wealth Order (UWO), which

came into force on Feb 1, as a weapon to fight corruption by Russian oligarchs having assets in the UK, the new law can have serious implications for Pakistani personalities having properties and assets here.

London-based anti-corrup-tion group Transparency Inter-national (TI) says it has identified properties worth £4.4bn in Britain that should be considered as possible candidates for the new legislation. It has already prepared a list of five cases which it thinks could be investigated without any delay, including Avenfield House flats case involving former prime minister Nawaz Sharif.

Describing Sharif as the sus-pected owner of the four Aven-field House flats (16, 16A, 17 and 17A) worth at least £8m, TI noted that the Land Registry documents showed that the four properties were owned by two companies registered in the BVI: Nescoll Limited and Nielsen Limited.

“According to information published as part of Panama Papers, these companies were controlled by the former prime minister of Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif. In 2017, Pakistani author-ities initiated an investigation into these assets, which found that they were purchased without a mortgage between 1993 and 1995, just after Sharif reported a growth in wealth without any plausible declared source of income. In July 2017, Sharif was removed from the office after the investigation found that he had failed to dis-close these properties on his offi-cial asset declaration,” added TI.

Pakistani PM Abbasi’s disqualification soughtINTERNEWS

ISLAMABAD: Awami Muslim League chief Sheikh Rashid Ahmed yesterday asked the Supreme Court to disqualify Prime Minister Shahid Khagan Abbasi under Articles 62 and 63 of the Constitution by declaring the LNG contracts illegal and unlawful.

Moved by senior lawyer Latif Khosa on behalf of Sheikh Rashid, the petition also pleaded before the court to appoint an honest and impartial person as chairman of the Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority (Ogra) to

look after the affairs of the insti-tution so that the incumbent prime minister and his prede-cessor Nawaz Sharif may not interveneinits affairs.

The secretaries of the min-istries of petroleum and natural resources and law and justice, the Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Ltd, Sui Southern Gas Company, Ogra, the Pakistan State Oil and Elengy Terminal Pakistan have been made respondents in the petition.

In 2013, the PML-N govern-ment launched the LNG project and then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in league with then

petroleum minister Shahid Khagan Abbasi decided to handle the import and transmis-sion of LNG at Port Qasim through their blue-eyed per-sons, the petition alleged.

For this purpose, a terminal on rental basis was illegally arranged and Nawaz Sharif‘s business friend Hussain Dawood was selected since he owns a terminal in the chemical zone of Port Qasim, the petition contended.

Hussain Dawood also owns Engro Group which is a subsid-iary of Dawood Group and Elengy Terminal Pakistan.

Turkey condemns terrorist attack in PakistanT U R K E Y y e s t e r d a y condemned Saturday’s terrorist attack in Pakistan which killed several soldiers.

“We strongly condemn this heinous terrorist attack. We wish Allah’s mercy upon those who lost their lives, speedy recovery to the wounded, and convey our condolences to the brotherly Government and people of Pakistan,” Turkish Foreign Ministry said in a written statement.

Cypriot President wins re-election

AFP

NICOSIA: Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades won re-elec-tion at a run-off yesterday, exit polls said, seeing off a leftist challenger with vows to restart talks to unify the island and cement an economic recovery.

An estimate from state broadcaster CyBC said the con-servative incumbent scooped 54.5-59.5 percent of votes in the Greek-majority European Union member, ahead of Communist-backed Stavros Malas on 40.5-45.5 percent.

Two other polls from private broadcasters gave similar figures.

Apathy has been on the rise after a lacklustre campaign - especially among young voters

- and the final official turnout stood at 73 percent.

At one polling station in Nicosia the focus was firmly on reunification efforts and the economy.

“I voted for Anastasiades as I think he is the perfect choice to run the country at this time,” petrol station owner George Souglis, 73, said.

“In the future he will con-tinue to do a lot on the economy and Cyprus problem.”

As ever, the nearly 44-year division of the eastern Mediter-ranean island between the inter-nationally recognised Republic of Cyprus in the south and a Turkish-backed statelet in the north loomed large over the vote.

Anastasiades, 71, has pledged fresh talks with Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci despite the acrimonious collapse last July of UN-backed negotiations that came closer than ever to sealing a deal.

Dovish former health min-ister Malas, 50, had slammed his opponent for not going far enough to achieve a deal - but voters appeared unwilling to take the risk on the challenger.

Despite the promises of a new peace push, there is deep scepticism that any progress can

be made to overcome issues including the presence of 40,000 Turkish troops in the north.

Relations between the Turkish and Greek Cypriot sides remain tense, and there is little sign that a nationalist govern-ment in Ankara will be willing to budge.

This time around the economy was a dominant issue for the roughly 550,000-strong Greek Cypriot electorate as the island recovers from a 2013 financial crisis.

Anastasiades has claimed credit for an impressive recovery since agreeing a more than $12bn

bailout just weeks after taking power. But major challenges remain, despite record numbers of tourists.

The economy is still smaller than before the year 2013, employment remains around 11 percent and banks are awash with bad loans.

Exploration is going on for oil and gas off the island’s shores that the authorities hope could boost their coffers.

AKEL - the left-wing party backing Malas - was in charge ahead of the crisis and is widely held responsible for tanking the economy.

Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades (centre) delivering a speech after casting his ballot at a polling station, in the coastal city of Limassol, yesterday. RIGHT: Presidential candidate Stavros Malas is greeted by a supporter at a polling station, in Nicosia.

Europe must brake mounting N-arms race: GermanyAFP

FRANKFURT AM MAIN: Europe must lead the way in pushing for nuclear disarmament after Washington proposed upgrading and expanding the United States’ nuclear arsenal, German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said yesterday.

“As in the times of the Cold War, we in Europe are especially endangered” by “a renewed nuclear arms race”, Gabriel said.

“That is why precisely we in Europe must begin new initia-tives for arms control and disarmament.”

Gabriel was responding to a so-called Nuclear Posture

Review released Friday by the Pentagon that details the US mil-itary’s vision of nuclear threats and its response in the coming decades.

Upgrading the US arsenal and complementing massive “strategic” bombs with smaller “tactical” weapons was “aimed at making use of nuclear weapons less likely”, President Donald Trump said in a statement.

American nuclear planners believe potential adversaries abroad, especially Russia, assume America would never use its existing arsenal as the effects would be too devastating and provoke globally cata-

strophic retaliation. “The US and Nato require a

wider range of credible low-yield nuclear options” to deter Russia from using its own smaller nuclear weapons, Greg Weaver, the deputy director of strategic capabilities for the mil-itary’s Joint Staff, told reporters Friday.

Gabriel acknowledged that Russia’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine had led to a “dra-matic loss of trust towards Russia” in Europe as well as Washington, and that “signs that Russia is re-arming, not only conventionally but with nuclear weapons, are obvious”.

But instead of developing

new weapons, Germany’s top diplomat called for “existing arms control treaties to be upheld unconditionally”.

Berlin would press “with its allies and partners” for further worldwide disarmament, he said.

“Our long-term aim must continue to be a world without nuclear weapons,” Gabriel con-tinued -- the stated aim of US nuclear policy under former president Barack Obama.

Historically a close US ally and key Nato member, nuclear weapons were a divisive issue in Germany’s Cold War politics.

Berlin does not have its own arsenal, but the Pentagon

maintained nuclear warheads in Germany as part of a gigantic military presence designed to deter Soviet invasion of western Europe.

The issue has been rediscov-ered by frontline politicians in the wake of Trump’s election.

Martin Schulz, a failed chal-lenger to Chancellor Angela Merkel in elections last Sep-tember, called during the cam-paign for remaining American bombs to be removed from Germany.

The German response to the US nuclear review comes on the heels of condemnations from Russia, China, North Korea and Iran.

Spanish ship spots 20 dead migrants off MoroccoAFP

MADRID: Moroccan rescue services have recovered the bodies of around 20 migrants in Mediterranean, a spokes-woman for the Spanish enclave of Melilla said yesterday.

The bodies of the migrants, from sub-Saharan Africa, were spotted on Sat-urday by a Spanish ship, which alerted the rescue services of both countries, the spokeswoman said.

She added that “about 20” bodies were then recovered in Moroccan territorial waters.

Late Saturday, a Spanish police patrol boat found one more body, which was taken to Melilla, a Spanish enclave bordering Morocco.

Migrants are increasingly favouring the so-called western Mediterranean route to reach Europe, which involves making the sea crossing between north Africa and southern mainland Spain.

According to the Interna-tional Organization for Migra-tion, Spain has been the second most popular point of entry for migrants coming to Europe so far this year, with 1,279 arrivals.

It said 243 people have died or are missing in the Med-iterranean after trying to cross the Mediterranean this year.

Switzerland halts bus with tonnes of snow on roofAFP

GENEVA: Swiss police said yesterday they had stopped a Swedish coach due to safety concerns after it was spotted driving on a major highway with 1.6 tonnes of snow piled on the roof.

Police in the northwestern canton of Solothurn said they had stopped the bus Saturday afternoon near Oensingen, as it travelled on the main A1 highway towards Zurich.

“A control of the Swedish coach revealed that the layer of

snow (on the roof) was more than 40 centimetres thick and weighed over 1,600 kilos,” the regional police said in a statement.

Driving with so much snow on the roof poses a “significant risk”, police warned, pointing out that blocks of snow and ice can easily detach while driving and hit other motorists.

The coach driver was reported for recklessness and was required to remove the snow before continuing the journey, the statement released recently said .

Italy’s shooting spree blamed on far-rightREUTERS

ROME: Leftist politicians yesterday pinned blame for a racist shooting spree in central Italy on the far-right League party that looks set to make major gains in a March 4 national election.

Six African migrants were shot and injured on Saturday in the city of Macerata by an Italian man named as Luca Traini, who last year stood as a League can-didate in a local ballot, but failed to win any votes.

Police said Traini admitted to carrying out the drive-by shootings and had shown no remorse.

League party leader Matteo

Salvini, who has forged an elec-toral pact with former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, dis-tanced himself from the attack, but said the violence was the direct result of mass immigra-tion into Italy in recent years.

“If anyone is to blame, it is the government which has allowed hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants to come here without any limits,” Salvini told La Stampa newspaper.

Leftist politicians accused Salvini of stirring dangerous sentiment in a country that struggles to get to grips with the legacy of fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, who ruled Italy from 1922 to 1943.

“Salvini has created fear and

chaos and should apologise before the Italian people,” said Laura Boldrini, speaker of the lower house of parliament and a leading figure in the left-wing Free and Equal party.

Seeking the moral high ground, the ruling centre-left Democratic Party (PD) called for calm. “It would be easy to stir controversy against those who fuel hatred against us every day, but it would be a mistake,” said PD leader Matteo Renzi.

Opinion polls say the PD will lose next month’s parliamentary election, with Berlusconi’s centre-right bloc set to win the most seats, lifted in part by rising support for the League though short of an absolute majority.

The car of the shooter, who opened fire on African migrants, identified as Luca Traini, 28, is seen in Macerata, Italy, yesterday.

Rajoy urges Catalans to choose ‘law abiding’ leaderAFP

MADRID: Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy yesterday called on Catalan separatists to choose a regional leader who respects the law to replace exiled former leader Carles Puigdemont, who faces arrest if he returns to Spain.

Rajoy, addressing conserv-ative Popular Party (PP) faithful in the southern town of Cor-doba, said he hoped the sepa-ratists would choose someone “who sees things another way and who says, ‘I am a political leader and that’s why I am going to respect the law, because it’s my obligation and

that’s what happens in demo-cratic countries’.”

On Tuesday, the Catalan parliament had been due to convene for the first time since regional elections in December that saw separatist parties retain their majority.

Puigdemont had been due for re-appointment as Catalan president, but the session was postponed at the last minute by parliamentary speaker Roger Torrent, also a separa-tist, exposing divisions in the independence camp.

Puigdemont remains in self-imposed exile in Belgium and faces arrest if he returns to Spain.

He headed to Belgium

shortly after being sacked by Madrid over the Catalan par-liament’s independence dec-laration in October, which fol-lowed an unsanctioned regional referendum.

If he returns he faces arrest for leading the secession bid in the northeastern region.

The Catalan separatists had considered renaming Puig-demont as regional president remotely, without the need for him returning to the country.

Catalonia’s jailed former vice-president Oriol Junqueras has suggested that Puigdemont could rule as a “symbolic” pres-ident with a fully functioning executive on site.

An estimate from state broadcaster CyBC said the conservative incumbent scooped 54.5-59.5 percent of votes in the Greek-majority European Union member, ahead of Communist-backed Stavros Malas on 40.5-45.5 percent.

Supporters of the incumbent president celebrate on the street after announcement of exit polls.

14 MONDAY 5 FEBRUARY 2018EUROPE

15MONDAY 5 FEBRUARY 2018 EUROPE

German parties fail to seal coalition dealAFP

BERLIN: Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives and their historic centre-left rivals failed to seal a coalition deal yesterday, as party leaders struggled to overcome final obstacles to forming a government for Germany.

The Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Social Demo-cratic Party (SPD) had met for a final round of negotiations late in the morning, hoping to ink an agreement on repeating the “grand coalition” or “GroKo” that has ruled since 2013.

But by early evening SPD General-Secretary Las Klingbeil said points remained that “divided” the parties, as they parted before a return to the table today.

People familiar with the talks said that topics close to the SPD’s heart, healthcare reform

and temporary work contracts, were holding up a final accord.

SPD and CDU agreed in late January that the final round of coalition talks should come to an end by tomorrow.

Merkel professed her “good will, but also some expectation that there will be tough hours of talks ahead” in the morning as she arrived at the SPD’s Berlin headquarters in the late morning.

Meanwhile, SPD chief Martin Schulz told reporters a “depend-able coalition agreement that achieves consensus” for a stable

government was more impor-tant than speedy progress.

More than four months after September elections -- a delay unprecedented in postwar his-tory -- Germany’s partners abroad are waiting impatiently for Berlin’s paralysis to lift on urgent issues like reform of the European Union.

Both sides are reluctant to compromise too much and risk losing support, but are equally fearful of going back to voters in repeat elections that could see a further rise of the far right.

Nor can they afford to dig in their heels, as a poll for ARD tel-evision showed 71 percent of people do not understand “why forming a government is taking so long”.

At stake for Merkel is whether she leads a stable coa-lition into her fourth term, or risks a fragile minority govern-ment or new elections.

The SPD is a reluctant partner, having initially vowed to go into opposition after plunging to a historic low vote share of 20.5 percent in September.

Social Democrats agreed to talks only after Merkel’s sound-ings with two smaller parties, the ecologist Greens and the pro-business Free Democrats, fell through.

Challenged by rebels within his own ranks, SPD leader Martin Schulz has sought political cover by putting any final coalition deal to a vote by all 440,000 members.

Kevin Kuehnert, leader of the SPD youth wing, has become a standard bearer for opponents of a new deal with Merkel.

“This kind of politics was rewarded with a 14 percentage point drop (for CDU and SPD combined) last year, and I sus-pect things will continue that

way” if the coalition material-ises, he has said.

Others warn the SPD is too weak to face voters again so soon, garnering 18 percent in some polls -- just a few points ahead of the far-right Alterna-tive for Germany (AfD).

Merkel too faces grumbling among her troops, with more conservative voices accusing her of marching her Christian Dem-ocratic Union (CDU) too far into the political centre, giving up ter-rain to the AfD.

Meanwhile, the press has scented the end of an era approaching.

Eight years of GroKo under Merkel -- from 2005 to 2009 and again from 2013 to 2017 -- had shown that “the lowest common denominator achieves nothing as long as there is no overarching idea,” commented Stefan Braun for the Sueddeutsche Zeitung.

Public backbiting between

the parties highlighted how “hesitant, quarrelsome, demor-alising and above all unin-spiring” the whole process was, he wrote.

The German Chancellor and Schulz should offer honest, ambitious answers to the coun-try’s big challenges or “leave the way clear for new leaders or new elections”.

Merkel’s struggles to form a government have had conse-quences abroad with some now looking to Paris and youthful French President Emmanuel Macron for leadership rather than to Berlin.

Germany has been guard-edly open to some of Macron’s grand plans for the bloc.

But Schulz, a former Euro-pean Parliament president, has founded his decision to enter talks with Merkel on determina-tion to seize the hand proffered by France.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel (third left) arrives at the Social Democrats Party (SPD) headquarters as the Chairman of the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU) Horst Seehofer (right) takes the elevator, in Berlin, yesterday. RIGHT: People hold placards outside the headquarters of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) to protest against a new coalition government.

Greeks protest over Macedonia name dealAFP

ATHENS: Tens of thousands of Greeks staged a mass rally in Athens yesterday, urging the government not to compromise in a festering name row with neighbouring Macedonia.

Organisers claimed some 1.5 million people from across Greece and the Greek diaspora turned out to express their opposition to attempts by Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’ govern-ment to broker a deal.

But police put the figure at around 140,000.

“The million protesters that the organisers imagined was wishful thinking,” Tsipras said in a statement. “The crushing majority of Greek people con-clude that foreign policy issues should not be dealt with with fanaticism.”

Earlier in the day, a huge Greek flag flew over central Syntagma Square from atop a crane, and Greeks from all over the country and abroad chanted “Hands off Macedonia”,

“Macedonia is Greek” and “We won’t leave until we are vindicated”.

Among those in the cross-generation crowd were former premier Antonis Samaras -- who was foreign minister when the name row began in 1991 -- in addition to mayors, senior clerics, army officers and monks.

Keynote speaker Mikis The-odorakis, the renowned Zorba the Greek composer and resist-ance icon, called on the govern-ment to hold a referendum before taking a decision.

“Macedonia was, is and will forever be Greek,” Theodorakis told the cheering crowd of pro-testers. “If a government con-siders signing on behalf of our country... there is no doubt it must first ask the Greek people,” he said, calling the northern state “illegitimate”.

Athens objects to Macedo-nia’s name, arguing it suggests that Skopje has claims to the territory and heritage of Greece’s historic northern region of the same name.

People rally against the use of the term “Macedonia” in any settlement to a dispute between Athens and Skopje, in Athens, yesterday.

Heavy snowfall in Moscow; one deadAFP

MOSCOW: At least one person died and several were injured after Moscow experienced its heaviest day of snowfall since records began, the city’s mayor and agencies said yesterday.

Russia’s meteorological service said Moscow had seen more than half its average monthly snowfall in the space of 24 hours, with 43 centimetres blanketing the capital yesterday

morning, agencies reported. “One person died from a

falling tree that hit an electric power line,” Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin said on his VKontakte social media page, adding that 2000 trees had already been brought down by the extreme weather.

“According to the latest information, five have been injured. Be careful. The forecast says the weather will get worse,” he later said via Twitter, warning

of strong winds to come.Nearly 150 flights were

delayed and dozens cancelled at the city’s airports.

“There will be a blizzard, poor visibility... heavy snowfall on the roads,” said meteorolo-gist Evgueni Tichkovets, quoted by news agency Ria Novosti.

Nearly 70,000 City Hall employees have been mobilised to clear snow off the roads and authorities have asked people to avoid driving.

A bulldozer shovels snow off Red Square, in Moscow, yesterday.

People familiar with the talks said that topics close to the SPD’s heart, healthcare reform and temporary work contracts, were holding up a final accord.

Minority groups decry anti-Semitism in PolandAP

WARSAW: Minority group representatives in Poland have written to the president to express concern about what they see as a rising wave of aggression based on nation-ality, race and religion.

The leaders of Ukrainian, Tartar, Jewish and other groups said in a letter published by the Polish Press Agency late Saturday they

especially oppose recent “numerous and loud manifestations of anti-Semitism.”

They attributed the voicing of anti-Semitic remarks to lawmakers’ passage of legislation seeking to outlaw statements blaming Poles as a nation for World War II crimes committed by Nazi Germany.

Israel and international Jewish organi-sations have strongly criticised the proposal.

The leaders of Ukrainian, Tartar, Jewish and other groups said in a letter that they especially oppose recent “numerous and loud manifestations of anti-Semitism.”

Nationalists protest ahead of Macron’s Corsica visitAFP

AJACCIO: Thousands of Corsican nationalists marched demanding greater freedoms for the French island, three days ahead of a visit by President Emmanuel Macron.

Protest organisers said up to 25,000 people attended the demonstration in the island’s capital Ajaccio, but officials gave a far lower estimate of some 6,000.

“This is a mobilisation without precedent in recent years. It’s huge,” said nation-alist leader Gilles Simeoni, who has stopped short of calling for full independence for the island.

“It sends a very strong message by Corsicans. I hope that (the French President) has heard what we have said today.”

The march opened with young girls wearing Corsican flag’s over their shoulders, as the crowd chanted “long live the independence struggle” and “killer French state”.

16 MONDAY 5 FEBRUARY 2018AMERICAS

Disputed memo: Democrats sharpen warning to TrumpAFP

WASHINGTON: Democrats yesterday sharpened their rhet-oric in the clash over the inves-tigation into Trump campaign links to Russia, warning the president that firing top law enforcement officials could “lead to a confrontation we do not need in America.”

The warnings came two days after the Republican-led House intelligence committee released a declassified memo that claims that Democrat-funded research prompted the FBI to spy on a former Trump campaign aide, Carter Page.

Democrats stoutly resisted the memo’s release, saying it was misleading, and possibly intended to lay the groundwork for President Donald Trump to fire senior officials and subvert the Russia meddling investiga-tion led by Robert Mueller.

Dick Durbin, the number two Senate Democrat, warned yesterday against any such move. “The question at that moment is whether or not the majority Republicans in the House and the Senate will stand up for the rule of law and the

Constitution if the president takes that extreme position,” Durbin said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“If the president takes this extreme action, I’m afraid that it could lead to a confrontation we do not need in America.”

Both he and the ranking Democrat on the intelligence committee, Representative Adam Schiff, contested the sug-gestion that the FBI’s request to a special court for authority to surveil Page failed to note that it was based in part on a dossier paid for by Democrats.

“The court was notified

there was a political actor involved,” Schiff said.

“The goal here is to under-mine the FBI, discredit the FBI, discredit the Mueller investiga-tion, do the president’s bidding,” he said on ABC’s “This Week.” He said it was “very possible” committee Republicans had “coordinated the whole effort with the White House.”

Trump tweeted Saturday that the memo “vindicated” his insistence that there was “no collusion and there was no obstruction.”

But some Republicans, while supporting the gist of the memo, took pains to show sup-port for Mueller, deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein and FBI chief Christopher Wray at a time the FBI and Justice Department are facing almost unprece-dented criticism from the president.

“I’ve had my differences with Rod Rosenstein, and I still think that he is fully capable of helping run a Justice Depart-ment that we can all have con-fidence in,” said Representative Trey Gowdy, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

Costa Rica goes to the polls to choose new presidentAFP

SAN JOSÉ: Costa Rica voted yesterday in the first round of the Central American country’s presidential election.

A total of 13 candidates are vying to succeed outgoing Pres-ident Luis Guillermo Solis, who is constitutionally barred from seeking a second consecutive term. If no candidate wins 40 percent of the vote, a second round, runoff election will be held on April 1. As many as 3.3 million voters are eligible to cast ballots.

An evangelical politician, Fabricio Alvarado, has leapt from obscurity to be the front-runner with around 17 percent support, according to surveys, after ferociously opposing a social issue.

Several countries — Argen-tina, Brazil, Colombia and Uru-guay — already do legally rec-ognise such unions and others appear poised to follow. But Costa Rica and other Central American are resisting the growing trend.

However the Inter-Amer-ican Court of Human Rights -- located in Costa Rica’s capital -- last month urged Latin American nations to accept the peculiar marriage. Costa Rica’s outgoing government has indicated its willingness to follow the court’s exhortation, but has butted up against refusal from the nota-ries’ association that conducts marriages.

“This is the first time I’m voting. I’m a bit nervous,” said Nelia Araya, a 20-year-old stu-dent casting her ballot at a school in the capital San Jose.

She said she was worried about one of the candidate’s “discourse” and had urged her family to vote “so that someone who wants to take rights away from people doesn’t win.” Polling in the country took place under a bright blue sky and tropical sunshine. Overseas bal-lots from Costa Rican consulates abroad had been filing in since Saturday, with the biggest number of emigrant voters found in the United States.

Solis said as he voted in San

Jose to choose his successor that he saw the biggest problem facing Costa Rica to be “the fiscal deficit and its combination with the debt. Accompanied by rela-tives and advisors, the outgoing leader called on voters, who were also choosing a new leg-islative assembly, to “elect a government better than mine, a president better than me.”

A country with a costly health and pension system, Costa Rica has seen its deficit inch up to stand at 6.2 percent of gross domestic product.

Public debt is 65 percent of GDP, creating concerns among officials that much-vaunted eco-nomic stability could be threat-ened. The outgoing government -- like the three before it -- was unable to push through tax reforms to counter the growing deficit.

The outcome of Sunday’s election was difficult for surveys to predict. According to the most recent poll, published Wednesday, 36 percent of voters were undecided which presi-dential candidate to back.

Supporters of one of the favourites Costa Rican Presidential candidates, Fabricio Alvarado, of the National Restoration party (PRN), cheer for their candidate during national elections in San Jose, yesterday.

Ecuador decides future of CorreaAFP

QUITO: Ecuadorans went to the polls to decide the political fate of former president Rafael Correa yesterday in a refer-endum called by his successor turned staunch opponent that is expected to prevent the ex-leader from returning to power.

Correa is locked in a battle with President Lenin Moreno for control of their deeply divided leftist ruling Country Alliance party.

Yesterday’s referendum, in which Moreno backs the “yes” vote, features seven questions including reintroducing term limits to prevent presidents from running indefinitely.

If the current head of state gets his way, Correa will not be able to join the 2021 election race. According to initial polls, the “yes” camp — supported by traditional opposition parties -- will win a comfortable majority with between 72 and 84 percent of the vote.

“The decisions we are taking today are going to be transcendental for the future of the country, so that our children are protected, so that corrupt people do not return to mock us... for the care of the environ-ment, for economic reactiva-tion,” Moreno said as he voted in the north of the capital Quito.

Upon entering office last May, Moreno -- Correa’s deputy between 2007 and 2013 -- transformed into a steadfast critic of his predecessor, whom he has called a proponent of “21st century socialism” and accused of leading a corrupt government. Far from keeping

Correa’s presidential seat warm as expected, Moreno’s calling of the referendum instead spells a clear invitation to enter a post-Correa era.

On top of question regarding indefinite re-election — a law approved by Correa in 2015 — Moreno proposes restructuring the body created by his former ally to select senior authority figures such as judges.

In practical terms, removing its current members would rep-resent a total “de-Correazation” of the state.

“The margin (of victory) is what has to be looked at. If Lenin Moreno wins by a big margin, he will achieve the fun-damental objective of the vote: legitimacy,” political expert

Simon Pachano said. Moreno, 64, only narrowly defeated con-servative banker Guillermo Lasso in last April’s election.

“All the ‘no’ votes will be Rafael Correa’s. Suppose you have 40 percent, he can claim that and say we are the first political force in the country,” Pachano added.

Correa, who ruled for a decade from 2007, has branded Moreno a “traitor” and the vote “unconstitutional,” denouncing the president for wanting to achieve “absolute rule.”

He also maintains that with a question over whether those convicted of corruption should be barred from politics, Moreno is trying to erect legal pretexts to prevent Correa re-entering office.

US considers Venezuela oil sale restrictions: TillersonAP

BUENOS AIRES: Secretary of State Rex Tillerson says that the US is still considering restricting the sale of oil from crisis-torn Venezuela.

Tillerson said Sunday in Argentina’s capital that the US wants “free, fair, and verifiable elections” in Venezuela, and wants to apply enough pressure to end the crisis in the South American country.

But he also said that he wants to find ways to mitigate

the negative impact that sanc-tions would have on US oil companies, Venezuelans and other regional countries that rely on Venezuelan oil.

Venezuela sits atop the world’s largest oil reserves and is the third-largest supplier to the US.

International pressure has been increasing on Venezuela over the government’s decision to push up presidential elec-tions to April under conditions that opponents say overwhelm-ingly favor President Nicolas Maduro.

US and Argentina to work together against HezbollahAFP

BUENOS AIRES: The United States and Argentina are to work together more closely to cut off Lebanese Hezbollah’s funding networks in Latin America, both nations’ top diplomats said yesterday.

Argentina has a large Leb-anese expatriate population and US authorities suspect groups within it of raising funds through organised crime to support the Iranian-backed armed movement.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was in Buenos Aires for talks with his Argentinian counterpart Foreign Minister Jorge Faurie, and afterwards they confirmed that the issue had come up.

“With respect to Hezbollah, we also did speak today in our discussion about all of the region about how we must all jointly go after these transna-tional criminal organisations -- narcotics trafficking, human trafficking, smuggling, money laundering — because we see the connections to terrorist financing organisations as well,” Tillerson said.

“And we did specifically discuss the presence of Leba-nese Hezbollah in this hemi-sphere, which is raising funds, obviously, to support its ter-rorist activities.

“So it is something that we jointly agree we need to attack

and eliminate,” Tillerson said. Faurie, standing by Tiller-

son’s side at a joint news con-ference, agreed, saying that South America had become a “zone of peace” and that out-side groups must not be allowed to jeopardise this.

“And, as Secretary Tillerson said, we need to intensify every possible exchange not only in terms of dialogue but also in terms of information on the actions of these groups which take advantage of transnational crime to foster their interests, which Argentina certainly does not agree with,” he said.

In 1992, the violence of the Middle East erupted in Argen-tina, when bombers attacked the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, killing 29 people. Two years later, an attack on a Jewish community center in the city left 85 dead.

None of the bombers were ever convicted, but interna-tional investigators followed a trail that appears to link them to Hezbollah -- a group which Washington has designated a terrorist organisation -- and to senior Iranian officials.

The bombings did not con-tinue, but US experts believe that Hezbollah, working under close Iranian supervision, has built a fund-raising network in Latin America that profits from drug smuggling to fund its political and military activities.

Ecuador’s President Lenin Moreno casts his vote in a referendum on whether to prevent unlimited presidential re-election, in Quito, Ecuador, yesterday.

Colombia rebels call for new ceasefireAFP

QUITO: Colombia’s last rebel group, the ELN, called for a new ceasefire and the resumption of frozen peace talks with the government as the prospect of open conflict flared anew following a string of deadly attacks.

The ELN, or National Lib-eration Army, said it “hopes” the government will attend peace negotiations that had been set for Wednesday in Ecuador’s capital Quito.

It offered “to agree to a new and better bilateral ceasefire,” it said in a state-ment read in Quito by its chief negotiator, Pablo Beltran.

President Juan Manuel Santos on Monday declared the suspension of the peace talks after three bomb attacks on police stations in Colombia killed seven officers and wounded dozens.

He also ordered his secu-rity forces to act with “max-imum determination” against the rebel group.

The developments threat-ened to re-ignite an armed conflict that had been on the path to peaceful resolution following a historic November 2016 peace deal with Colombia’s biggest insurgent group, the FARC.

A similar deal with the smaller ELN -- estimated to number 1,800 fighters -- has remained out of reach, how-ever. A previous ceasefire with the ELN expired on Jan-uary 10 without any break-through, leading the govern-ment to say it was suspending talks.

The ELN then returned to targeting security forces and oil installations, and Colom-bia’s military retaliated with an offensive resulting in dozens of deaths and arrests.

The three weekend bombings targeted police sta-tions in three locations: two in the Caribbean port city of Barranquilla and one in Santa Rosa, in the department of Bolivar. The ELN claimed responsibility for the worst of the attacks, which killed five officers and wounded 41 in Barranquilla on Saturday as police were assembling for roll-call. Santos’ government put the blame for all three on the ELN.

Democrats stoutly resisted the memo’s release, saying it was misleading, and possibly intended to lay the groundwork for President Donald Trump to fire senior officials and subvert the Russia meddling investigation led by Robert Mueller.

17MONDAY 5 FEBRUARY 2018 AMERICAS

Ex-Cuba prisoner criticises US plan to foster Internet on islandREUTERS

HAVANA: When Alan Gross h e a r d t h e T r u m p administration’s renewed US push to expand Internet in Cuba, disbelief washed over the American who spent five years in a Cuban jail for trying to e s t a b l i s h c l a n d e s t i n e communication service on the Communist-run island.

“My first response was ‘Are you kidding me?” Gross said in a telephone interview with Reuters.

Gross worked in Cuba in 2009 for a US-government funded programme to promote political change by increasing Internet access in a country that

has one of the lowest web penetration rates in the world.

In January, the US State Department said it was convening a Cuba Internet Task Force to examine ways of expanding information access and independent media in Cuba.

Havana protested the move that it said attempted to violate its sovereignty, highlighting the military connotation of the expression “task force.”

C u b a v i e w s s u c h programmes as part of longstanding US attempts to topple its government.In 2009, Cuba arrested and later sentenced Gross to 15 years in jail, a move that put on hold a warming in US-Cuban relations

under former US President Barack Obama, a Democrat.

It was only with his early release in 2014 that Obama and Cuban leader Raul Castro could announce a long-negotiated detente, hoping to end five decades of hostility.

That was before Republican Donald Trump became president, vowing to roll back on the normalization of relations.

“We are supposed to learn from our mistakes,” said Gross on Thursday.

“I learned the hard way that it’s illegal to distribute anything in Cuba that’s funded in full or part by the US government,” said the 68-year-old, who lost

five teeth in jail and around 115 pounds (52 kilograms).

“Until the government of Cuba wants the kind of assistance United States is capable of providing, the United States shouldn’t be doing stuff there,” said Gross.

Cuban state-run media has written extensively this week about past US attempts to manipulate telecommunications for political ends. Washington, for example, set up a social media network for Cubans called ZunZuneo even after Gross had been jailed. It ran from 2010 to 2012.

In the case of Gross, he imported banned satellite communications devices and

other high-tech gear in his luggage and helped install it at Jewish centers in Havana, Santiago and Camaguey during five trips to Cuba in 2009.

Gross noted Cuba had vastly expanded internet access of its own volition during his time in jail. The US government should discuss the issue of internet directly with Cuba, providing details for example of how it could boost economic growth, he said.

“There are so many things that could be happening in a positive and constructive way,” he said. Since Obama’s detente for example, various US telecoms companies have reached deals with Cuba to

provide roaming to their customers on the island.

Asked if it had invited Cuban officials to the first public meeting on Feb. 7 of the task force, the US State Department said it was “open to the public as space allows.”

“ F e d e r a l A d v i s o r y Committees, such as this task force, provide objective advice in a transparent manner from a variety of perspectives, and are accessible to the public,” it said.

Gross said he would return on vacation to Cuba “in a heartbeat” if Cuban officials let him, to meet up with the families of his former fellow inmates and explore the country.

Maduro calls for election date soonAFP

CARACAS: Venezuela’s unpop-ular President Nicolas Maduro yesterday urged officials to set a presidential election date in 48 hours’ time for a vote that he’d like to see take place within another week.

“I am urging the Constituent Assembly (a super-legislature stacked with Maduro loyalists) and the Elections Board to set a date hopefully today for the elections,” he told supporters after the small Marxist-Leninist Tupamaro Party endorsed him for re-election in the crisis-hit

South American country. The snap poll is to happen

sometime before the end of April, after the Constituent Assembly announced last week the vote was being brought for-ward from December.

The Supreme Court, which critics say systematically bows to Maduro, has barred the oppo-sition coalition from fielding a candidate under its banner, and banned several prominent opposition figures from participating.

The opposition says the moves are designed to engineer a second term for Maduro.

The ruling Socialist Party, which Maduro leads and was holding a congress, on Friday officially voted to make the president its candidate for the election.

The poll date has been a controversial issue in the dia-logue between government and opposition forces being held in the Dominican Republic since December 1. They may continue to meet today, the host, Domin-ican President Danilo Medina, has said.

The election will be held against a backdrop of financial and political crisis.

Two dead in S Carolina train collisionAFP

CAYCE: Two Amtrak employees were killed and more than 100 others injured yesterday when a passenger train carrying 147 people hit a freight train in the US state of South Carolina, authorities said.

Amtrak train 91 — travelling between New York and Miami — derailed in Cayce, outside the state capital Columbia, when it collided with the CSX freight train at around 2:30am.

It was the third deadly inci-dent involving an Amtrak train since December, raising ques-tions about the safety of the national railway service.

Amtrak said in a statement that the lead engine derailed along with some passenger cars. Eight crew members and 139 passengers were on board.

A total of 116 people were taken to area hospitals for treat-ment, many with “minor inju-ries,” Governor Henry McMaster told reporters. US media reported injuries ranged from cuts and bruises to broken bones.

He identified the dead as Amtrak personnel and said the freight train, which was sta-tionary, appeared to be empty.

“It appears the Amtrak train

was on the wrong track,” the governor said, while cautioning that a full investigation was needed to determine the exact cause.

“We need a conversation around the country” about rail safety, he added, after visiting passengers at a shelter set up by the local Red Cross in a school.

“As you and your loved ones gather at church and other houses of worship today, we ask that you pray for those affected and the families of those who have passed away,” he said on Twitter.

US President Donald Trump, who was in Florida for the weekend, was briefed and was receiving updates, a White House spokeswoman said.

“Our thoughts and prayers are with everyone that has been

affected by this incident,” deputy press secretary Lindsay Walters said. The National Transporta-tion Safety Board (NTSB) said it was investigating the incident. CSX said its personnel were on site to assist law enforcement.

The Lexington County Sher-iff’s Department confirmed all passengers had been evacuated.

Officials added that although 5,000 gallons of fuel spilled fol-lowing the crash, the leak was contained and there was no danger to the public.

“The incident is very near the state farmers’ market and other residential areas but right now, everyone is safe,” said Derrec Becker, public informa-tion officer at the South Carolina Emergency Management Division.

Passenger Derek Pettaway told CNN he was travelling south from Philadelphia to Orlando in a sleeper cabin when he was awoken by the impact of the crash. “Nobody was panicking,” he said. “I’m pretty sure every-body was asleep and I think people were in shock.”

Pettaway added Amtrak staff had evacuated passengers in a “really calm fashion.”

The Lexington County Sheriff

later said four buses had been made available to take Amtrak passengers to their final destinations.

“My prayers are with the families of those killed in the train crash in Lexington County this morning, and hoping for the best for all those injured. South Carolina is with you all!” tweeted

Tim Scott, one of the state’s two US senators.

Congressman Joe Wilson called the incident “heart-breaking.” It comes just days after an Amtrak train carrying several dozen Republican law-makers including House Speaker Paul Ryan hit a garbage truck in Virginia, killing one person and

causing six others, including a congressman, to need hospital treatment.

In December, three people were killed when an Amtrak pas-senger train derailed in Wash-ington state near the city of Tacoma, sending cars flying off a bridge and onto a busy inter-state highway.

A derailed Amtrak car can be seen up the tracks near a crossing after an early morning collusion with a CSX freight train in Cayce, South Carolina, yesterday.

Amtrak train 91 — traveling between New York and Miami — derailed in Cayce, outside the state capital Columbia, when it collided with the CSX freight train at around 2:30am.

Pro-government activists demonstrate their support for Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro during a rally in Caracas, yesterday.

Uma Thurman details Weinstein ‘attack’AFP

LOS ANGELES: Actress Uma Thurman, who is indelibly linked to Harvey Weinstein’s Miramax studio thanks to her iconic roles in “Pulp Fiction” and “Kill Bill,” has broken her silence about the disgraced Hollywood mogul, accusing him of attacking her and threat-ening her career.

Dozens of Hollywood women — including Ashley Judd, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Beckinsale and Salma Hayek -- have accused Weinstein of acts ranging from physical harass-ment to abuse.

The scandal touched off a deluge of allegations bringing down powerful men in enter-tainment, politics and the media, forcing many industries to re-examine workplace har-assment policies.

Thurman, 47, told The New York Times in an interview published on Saturday of two incidents in London that took place after the release of 1994’s Oscar-winning “Pulp Fiction.”

They followed an uncom-fortable episode at a Paris hotel during a meeting about a script.

In the first “attack,” which took place in Weinstein’s suite at London’s Savoy Hotel, “he pushed me down. He did all kinds of unpleasant things,” she said.

Thurman said she took a friend with her to confront Weinstein not long after that

first incident. But his assistants pressured her to meet him alone.

Thurman said she told Weinstein: “If you do what you did to me to other people you will lose your career, your rep-utation and your family, I promise you.”

Weinstein told the paper “she very well could have said this.”Thurman’s friend Ilona Herman, who is Robert De Niro’s longtime makeup artist, recalled in the Times that the actress came out of that one-on-one meeting “very disheveled and so upset and had this blank look.”

Herman said Thurman told her that Weinstein had threat-ened to end her career.

Weinstein denied doing so and “acknowledges making an awkward pass 25 years ago at Ms Thurman in England after misreading her signals, after a flirtatious exchange in Paris, for which he immediately apolo-gised and deeply regrets,” his spokeswoman said.

“However, her claims about being physically assaulted are untrue... Mr Wein-stein is saddened and puzzled as to ‘why’ Ms Thurman, someone he considers a col-league and a friend, waited 25 years to make these allegations public.”

The actress had suggested mistreatment by Weinstein in an Instagram post last November.

Mexico takes US-bound migrants into custody AFP

MEXICO CITY: Mexico has taken into custody more than 300 Central American men, women and children who were being smuggled to the United States without water or food, officials said yesterday.

The largest group — of 198 people crammed into the bottom of a truck — was found in Tamaulipas in the north-east, just below the US state of Texas, Mexican immigration enforcement officials said. The migrants from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador “were travelling in grossly overcrowded conditions without enough ventilation, food or water,” they said.

Among the many child migrants, 55 were with their parents or relatives, while 24 were making the dangerous journey alone. Just a week ago, another 174 Central Americans were caught in operations in the Mexican states of Coahuila and Tam-aulipas. Amnesty Interna-tional recently reported that Mexico deports thousands of Central Americans without taking into account their potential rights to treatment as refugees, such as when they are persecuted by organ-ized crime in their home countries.

18 MONDAY 5 FEBRUARY 2018HOME

Maserati Polo Tour 2018 kicks offST MORITZ: The Maserati Polo Tour 2018 kicked off with a thrilling start at the “Snow Polo World Cup St Moritz”, taking place in the spectacular setting of the frozen lake St Moritz from January 26 to 28 . In a breath-taking final, Team Cartier claimed victory over Team Maserati by a score of 4.5 to 4.

Throughout the three days of the tournament, the four polo teams played entertaining and high-class polo matches to the delight of over 15,000 specta-tors – setting a new tournament record.

Among the guests of the renowned “Snow Polo World Cup St. Moritz” were a number of VIP personalities including

England polo star Malcolm Bor-wick and Slalom World Champion Giorgio Rocca. The Snow Polo World Cup St Moritz is the only high-goal polo tour-nament played on snow.

“We are proud to have kicked off in the breathtaking environment of St. Moritz for this year’s Maserati Polo Tour, a spectacular event presenting both social and sporting high-lights to our guests and spectators”, said Alberto Cavag-gioni, Head of Maserati Europe.

“Today’s match highlighted why we look forward to our annual International Polo Tour. The thrill of the competition and the power together with the agility of the horses are intrin-

sic values of our cars DNA”.Enrico Roselli, CEO of La

Martina, added that “La Martina has been part of the Snow Polo Tournament since its very beginning, over thirty years ago, and our excitement remains unchanged. Our brand is built on a genuine passion for polo and all of the components that make it a uniquely compelling sport: vigour, fair-play, disci-pline, hard work and a level of entertainment that never ceases to amaze us. Like every year, we are delighted to be a part of an unmissable event and to endorse such a passion showing it to the world for what it really is, in the breathtaking frame of St. Moritz”.

Hissam Al Hyder, Raya Sidorenko, Gerardo Mazzini, Zhanna Bandurk and Robert Strom of Maserati during the award ceremony at the Snow Polo World Cup ����, in St Moritz, Switzerland.

Ultimate Elton and The Rocket Band to perform at Radisson Blu Hotel DohaDOHA: The Ultimate Elton and The Rocket Band will perform at the Giwana Ballroom - Radis-son Blu Hotel, Doha on March 1.

‘Ultimate Elton and The Rocket Band’ is the ultimate tribute show to Sir Elton John.

Paul Bacon, the man behind this tribute show, not only looks like his idol but even sounds like him

An engaging show will fea-ture Elton John’s classic hits, including Candle in the Wind, Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me, I’m Still Standing, Your Song, Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting and many more.

Bacon’s strong resemblance to Elton John also stunned John Reid -Elton’s long-time man-ager, and took him by surprise.

“Flabbergasted. . . momen-tarily believing it was Elton himself, and when he started to sing I was even more convinced” John Reid said.

Don’t let the sun go down – before securing your tickets for an ultimate evening of non-stop hits.

Doors will open from 7.30pm.

Tickets are available for QR390 per person (inclusions:

international gourmet buffet and selected beverages for over 21 years old. QID is required to present.)

Special Package with an overnight stay which can be purchased directly at the hotel is QR580 per person (inclu-sions: one ticket + Standard Single Room for one night and one buffet breakfast) and QR1070 (inclusions: two tick-ets, Standard Double Room for one night and two buffet breakfast).

For more details please call 44281555 or avail the tickets online at www.q-tickets.com.

Joyalukkas offers limited edition ‘Be Mine’ collectionDOHA: Jewellery Superbrand Joyalukkas continues to capture hearts all over the globe with a million world-class designs and award-winning service.

For the month of February,

the world’s favourite jeweller shines once again with a glitter-ing new collection of love-inspired diamond, pearl and 18K gold jewellery in time for Valentine’s Day.

Until February 17, shoppers can fall in love with a gorgeous selection of necklaces, earrings, bangles and rings with unique heart designs in the limited edi-tion ‘Be Mine’ Collection.

“The Be Mine Collection is a special line of diamond jewel-lery,” says Joy Alukkas, Joyalukkas Group Chairman & MD.

“But this exclusive collection

for Valentine’s Day 2018 is truly extraordinary. We are sure the shoppers would fall in love with these unique designs and enjoy them as gifts for their loved ones and even themselves.”

Along with the launch of the limited edition Be Mine Collec-tion, shoppers can also enjoy special cashback offers and dis-counts across Joyalukkas over 140 showrooms in 11 countries.

VILLAGGIO & CITY CENTERCROSSWORD NOVO Pearl Qatar

MALL

Note: Programme is subject to change without prior notice.

PROUD MARY

LANDMARK

ROXY

AL KHOR

ASIAN TOWN

Den of Thieves (2D/Action) 10:30, 11:30am, 12:30, 1:00, 2:00, 3:15, 3:30, 4:30, 6:00, 7:00 8:30, 8:45, 9:30, 11:00, 11:30pm & 12:00midnightMaze Runner: The Death Curve (2D/Action) 10:00am, 12:45, 3:30, 6:15, 9:00pm & 11:45pm All The Money In The World (2D/Drama) 10:00am, 12:00noon, 2:00 & 4:00pm Throne of Elves (2D/Animation) 10:00am, 12:00noon, 2:00 & 4:00pm Phantom Thread (2D/Drama) 10:00am, 2:45, 7:30pm & 12:15amThe Post (2D/Biography) 12:30, 5:15 & 10:00pmJumanji: Welcome To The Jungle (2D/Action) 10:15am, 2:45, 7:15&11:45pm The Commuter (2D/Action) 12:30, 5:00 & 9:30pm Proud Mary (2D/Action) 10:00am, 2:00, 6:00 & 10:00pmDay of The Dead: Bloodline (2D/Horror) 12:00noon, 4:00, 8:00pm & 12:00midnight Cops And Robbers (2D/Action) 10:00am, 2:00, 6:00 & 10:00pm Memory Card (Arabic) 12:00noon, 4:00, 8:00pm & 12:00midnight Maze Runner: The Death Cure (2D IMAX/Action) 10:15am, 1:00, 3:45, 6:30, 9:15pm & 12:00midnight

Throne of Elves (2D/Animation) 2:15 & 6:00pm Carbon (2D/Malayalam) 2:30pm Touch Desi Chudu (Telugu) 2:15pm Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle (2D/Action) 4:00pm Oru Nalla Naal Parthu (Tamil) 4:45pmProud Mary (2D/Action) 5:15 & 10:00pm Showdown In Manila (2D/Action) 7:00 & 10:15pmChalo (Telugu) 7:30pm Queen (2D/Malayalam) 11:30pm Den of Thieves (2D/Action) 7:45 & 11:30pm Cops And Robbers (2D/Action) 8:45 & 11:45pmDay of The Dead: Bloodline (2D/Horror) 10:00pm

ROYAL PLAZA

Carbon (2D/Malayalam) 2:15pm Memory Card (2D/Arabic) 6:30pm Throne of Elves (2D/Animation) 2:15 & 4:00pm Yemali (Tamil) 2:30pm Touch Desi Chudu (Telugu) 5:00pm Cops And Robbers (2D/Action) 2:45 & 10:00pmShowdown In Manila (2D/Action) 4:45 & 9:15pmJumanji: Welcome To The Jungle (2D/Action) 5:45pmThe Death of Stalin (2D/Comedy) 7:30pmDen of Thieves (Action) 7:30 & 11:30pm Proud Mary (2D/Action) 8:15 & 9:45pm Queen (2D/Malayalam) 11:00pm Oru Nalla Naal Parthu (Tamil) 11:30pm

Queen (2D/Malayalam) 2:00 & 6:30pmOru Nalla Naal Parthu 2:00pm Carbon (2D/Malayalam) 2:30pm Throne of Elves (2D/Animation) 3:00 & 5:00pmShowdown In Manila (2D/Action) 4:45 & 11:45pmMemory Card (2D/Arabic) 5:00pm Phantom Thread 9:15pmProud Mary (2D/Action) 6:30 & 10:00pm Den of Thieves (2D/Action) 7:00 & 11:00pm Cops And Robbers (2D/Action) 5:00 & 8:15pmThe Death of Stalin (2D/Comedy) 9:15pm Yemali 11:30pm

Queen (Malayalam) 7:00, 10:00 & 10:45pm Touch Desi Chudu (Telugu) 5:30pm Street Light (Malayalam) 8:15pmCarbon (Malayalam) 6:00, 8:45 & 11:30pmOru Nalla Naal (Tamil) 6:00pm Yemali (Tamil) 8:45pm

Proud Mary 12:15, 5:00 & 9:45pm Queen (Malayalam) 2:45 & 8:45pmCarbon (Malayalam) 11:45am, 5:45 & 11:45pm Throne of Elves (2D/Animation) 11:00am & 01:00pm Den of Thieves (Action) 2:15, 7:00 & 11:45pm Touch Desi Chudu (Telugu) 3:00 & 8:30pm Chalo (Telugu) 5:45 & 11:15pm

Throne of Elves (Animation) 10:30am, 12:45, 3:00 & 5:15pm Den of Thieves (Action) 1:20, 4:10, 7:00 & 9:50pm

Maze Runner (Action) 7:30 & 10:00pm Touch Desi Chudu (Telugu) 6:40 & 10:30pm Queen (2D/Drama) 10:30am, 1:30, 4:30 & 7:30pm

Oru Nalla Naal Parthu 10:30am, 1:10, 3:50, 9:30pm & 12:10am

Mary (Taraji P Henson) is a hit woman working for an organiSed crime family in Boston, whose life is completely turned around when she meets a young boy whose path she crosses when a professional hit goes bad.

19MONDAY 5 FEBRUARY 2018 HOME

FAJRSHOROOK

04.57am06.15 am

ZUHRASR

11.48 am02.48 pm

MAGHRIBISHA

05.23pm06.53pm

PRAYER TIMINGS

HIGH TIDE 08:15 – 21:00 LOW TIDE 01:15 – 15:15

Hazy to misty / foggy at places at first, be-

comes moderate temperature daytime

and cold by night.

WEATHER TODAY

COURTESY: Qatar Meteorology Department

Minimum Maximum 14oC 23oC

20 MONDAY 5 FEBRUARY 2018MORNING BREAK

Week-long Sri Lankan Festival opens at Lulu FAZEENA SALEEM

THE PENINSULA

DOHA: A first of its kind Sri Lankan Festival was launched yesterday in Doha coinciding with the country’s 70th Inde-pendence Day.

The event was officially inaugurated by ASP Liyanage, Sri Lankan Ambassador to Qatar, at Lulu Hypermarket, Barwa City branch.

The week-long Festival is being held on a theme “Ras-avat Sri Lanka” (Flavoursome Sri Lanka) at all Lulu outlets across the country. The inau-gural ceremony was also

attended by Mohamed Althaf, Director, Lulu Group Interna-tional, together with several other officials and guests.

Speaking at the event, Liy-anage highlighted the impor-tance of the festival and the recent developments relating to the establishment of Lulu Group in Sri Lanka.

The Festival aims at pro-moting Sri Lankan products, culture and culinary among the local and expatriate com-munities. A wide range of Sri Lankan commodities and agri-cultural produce are on display at discounted prices, and spe-cial counters set for tasting and sampling for customers. Also traditional Sri Lankan food items are on offer.

The inauguration also highlighted the diverse culture and heritage of Sri Lanka. It featured a few traditional Sri Lankan dance and singing per-formances to create the ambi-ence. A group students from

Lasanthi Dancing Academy performed a fusion based on traditional ‘Kandyan’ dance. The festival will continue until February 10.

Lulu Group has organised the Festival in cooperation with their recently inaugurated export unit YAS Lanka in Colombo, Sri Lanka. This unit was set up last year with an aim to boost Lulu Group’s sourcing operations and to bring-in high quality products for their chain of hypermar-kets across the world. The facility is primarily focusing on sourcing, processing, storing, packaging and exporting of

fruits, vegetables and com-modities from Sri Lanka to various Lulu operations around the world.

During the event officials also disclosed that, Lulu Group has expansion plans to venture into the retail sector in the next phase with a world-class shopping mall and modern hypermarket in Colombo and spadework in this regard is underway.

Meanwhile, Independent Television Network Ltd. (ITN), one of the National channels of Sri Lanka - has organised a special telecast of the event through their channel.

LEFT: The Ambassador of Sri Lanka to Qatar, ASP Liyanage (centre) and Director of Lulu Group International, Mohamed Althaf, inaugurate ‘Rasavat Sri Lanka’ at the Barwa City branch of Lulu Hypermarket yesterday. RIGHT: ASP Liyanage (centre) and Mohamed Althaf (right), visiting the festival venue after the inauguration. PICS: SALIM MATRAMKOT / THE PENINSULA

A group of students from Lasanthi Dancing Academy performed a fusion based on traditional ‘Kandyan’ dance.

Box Office: ‘Jumanji’ regains top spot for modest Super Bowl WeekendREUTERS

LOS ANGELES: Sony’s resilient “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle” has returned to the top of the North American box office, leading a modest Super Bowl weekend with $11m at 3,553 sites.

The session caps a remark-able run for the Dwayne Johnson-Kevin Hart action comedy, which also won the box office on its third, fourth and fifth weekends. “Jumanji” has become the 42nd highest domestic grosser of all time with $352.6m, less than $500,000 behind Johnson’s “Furious 7” for the 41st spot.

“Jumanji,” which declined just 32 percent, is only the 11th title to top $11 million in its sev-enth weekend. It’s the lowest total for a first-place film since the second weekend of “The Hit-man’s Bodyguard” won the final frame of August.

Fox’s “Maze Runner: The Death Cure,” which won the box office last weekend, finished second with $10.2 million from 3,793 locations. The weekend’s sole opener, Helen Mirren’s horror-thriller “Winchester,” launched in third with $9.3 mil-lion at 2,480 venues, topping

modest expectations which had been in the $6 million to $8 mil-lion range.

Overall domestic business was typically modest for a Super Bowl weekend with $92 million overall, according to comScore, as studios remain reluctant to open major titles during the frenzy surrounding the pro foot-ball championship. The lowest recent Super Bowl weekend came in at $86 million in 2014, when the third weekend of “Ride Along” led with $12 million.

The 2018 box office has remained close to even with last year thanks to “Jumanji,” with $1.06bn through Sunday, down 0.5 percent from last year at the same point.

“’Jumanji’ gets the MVP box office award for Super Bowl weekend with a stunning late run ascension to the number one spot as ‘Maze Runner’ adds to its total and ‘Winchester’ enjoys a bit of counter programming success amidst a sea of Oscar contenders over what is a typi-cally slow moviegoing weekend,” said Paul Derga-rabedian, senior media analyst with comScore.

“Maze Runner: The Death Cure,” the third and final

installment of the “Maze Runner” series, stars Dylan O’Brien as a young man trying to survive in a dystopian uni-verse. It declined by 58 percent from its $24m opening. The film’s release was delayed for a year due to injuries that O’Brien sustained on the set in 2016.

“Winchester” centers on a real-life house in San Jose, Calif. built by Sarah Winchester (Mirren), the heiress to the Win-chester firearms fortune, over 38 years beginning in 1886. The mansion, which stands seven stories tall, contains hundreds of rooms and is meant to be an asylum for vengeful ghosts.

Fox’s seventh weekend of “The Greatest Showman” fin-ished fourth with $7.8m at 2,588 sites, posting the lowest decline among the top 10 films at 18 per-cent. The Hugh Jackman musical has turned in an impressive $137.5m in 45 days.

Entertainment Studios’ Western drama “Hostiles,” star-ring Christian Bale, followed in fifth with $5.5m at 2,934 loca-tions, giving it $21.2m after two weeks in wide release. Fox’s seventh weekend of “The Post” came in sixth with $5.2m at 2,462 sites for a $67.2m domestic total.

This file photo shows Dwayne Johnson posing with Jack Black and Jake Kasdan (left), Director of the new Jumanji film, on Johnson’s Hollywood Walk of Fame Star after it was unveiled at a ceremony in Hollywood, California.

IANS

NEW YORK: Researchers, including an Indian, carried out a study using equipment to read the minds of participants and find out what song they were listening to by decoding the signals sent by their brains to the machine.

The team of researchers from Brazil, India, Ger-many and Finland conducted the study at Brazil’s D’Or Institute for Research and Education and used a Mag-netic Resonance (MR) machine to read participants’ minds which displayed 85 per cent success.

The study contributed to the improvement of the technique and paved the way for new research on reconstruction of auditory imagination and inner speech. In the experiment, six volunteers heard 40 pieces of classical music, rock, pop, jazz and others.

The neural fingerprint of each song on partici-pants’ brain was captured by the MR machine while a computer was learning to identify the brain patterns elicited by each musical piece. Musical features such as tonality, dynamics, rhythm and timbre were taken into account by the computer.

Mind-reading tool nearing reality

AFP

LOS ANGELES: Guillermo del Toro’s bid for Oscars glory was boosted on Saturday as he took top prize at the Directors Guild of America honors — a key predictor for the Academy Awards.

The Mexican filmmaker was crowned best director for his Cold War-era fantasy romance “The Shape of Water,” a month ahead of the glittering culmina-tion of Hollywood’s annual awards season.

The 53-year-old has already scooped a Golden Globe for directing the movie, starring Sally Hawkins as a janitor in a top secret government labora-tory who falls in love with a mysterious merman-like sea creature. “This movie particu-larly took me to do things I was very afraid of,” Del Toro told fellow filmmakers at the Bev-erly Hilton in Beverly Hills.

“It was a movie that was full of many reasons why it shouldn’t work, and those are the reasons why it works.”

A feature of speeches during the awards season has been defiant rejection of the culture of harassment and gender ine-quality, and the DGAs were no

different. “What Harvey Weinstein

ruined was robes. If I wear one now, my wife says ‘ewww,’” quipped host Judd Apatow — a reference to the mogul’s habit of appearing before young actresses in his hotel room wearing only a bathrobe.

Dozens of Hollywood women — including Ashley Judd, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Beckin-sale and Salma Hayek -- have accused Weinstein and numerous other powerful men of acts ranging from physical

harassment. Comedian Amy Schumer said she was “so grateful and proud” of victims of abuse who had spoken out, singling out “Kill Bill” actress Uma Thurman, who accused Weinstein in an interview pub-lished Saturday of attacking her and threatening her career.

Del Toro, who lives in Los Angeles, has alternated between big-budget Hollywood popcorn fare such as “Blade II” and more personal Spanish-language projects such as “Love Lies” (1989) and “Cronos” (1993).

Del Toro wins top prize at DGA honours

Director Guillermo Del Toro (left) with actress Sally Hawkins (centre) and actor Richard Jenkins in the press room at the 2018 DGA Awards at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, yesterday.