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www.thepeninsula.qaVolume 24 | Number 8129

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Drones give a fillip to HMC’s Ambulance ServiceTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Hamad Medical Corporation’s (HMC) Ambulance Service has begun using drones to enhance its surveillance capability of incident scenes.

The drones help the Ambu-lance Service teams undertake a thorough assessment of the surrounding areas, providing the information needed to ensure the very best medical response can be delivered.

The drones were used for the first time at the end of the September during the IAAF World Athletics Championships in Doha and are now being used on an as-needed basis.

“The introduction of the drones is another step forward for the Ambulance Service and further enhances our ability to provide high-quality emergency services to Qatar’s population,” said Thomas Reimann, Executive Director of Healthcare Coordi-nation and Support Services at HMC’s Ambulance Service.

“The drones provide a detailed overview of a complex scene to help us better under-stand a wide range of elements, including the number of causal-ities involved, what hazards are on site, the exact location of ambulance units, and access and egress routes,” added Reimann.

The drones are controlled by Ambulance Service staff close to the incident scene. However, the drones can fly long distances from the

operator by pre-programming a determined flight path.

Rashid Andaila, Senior Manager of Communication Technologies at HMC’s Ambu-lance Service said that the drones have already proved to be a val-uable addition to the service.

“We are still in the early stages of using the drones, but it is already clear that our ability to fully assess incident scenes is being enhanced. The most common utilisation of the drones so far has been tethering the drones one hundred metres directly above the scene, ena-bling a birds-eye view of the incident,” said Andaila.

“The images can be viewed locally through a bespoke viewing case or streamed to the Mobile Command and Control vehicle, or any predefined HMC computer. The drones also improve our ability to assess incident scenes in difficult to reach areas, such as the Sealine area. Through rapid assessment of the scene via the drone, we can quickly and accurately determine which response units are best suited to the sit-uation,’’ added Andaila.

Foreign Minister holds phone talks with British and Indian counterparts

QNA — DOHA

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, H E Sheikh Mohamed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, held yesterday a telephone conver-sation with the United King-dom’s Foreign Secretary, H E Dominic Raab.

During the phone call, they discussed the latest develop-ments on the regional arena, especially the latest develop-ments in Iraq, and ways to resolve the controversial issues in the region.

H E the Deputy Prime Min-ister and Minister of Foreign Affairs received yesterday a phone call from the Minister of External Affairs of the Republic of India, H E Dr S Jaishankar.

They reviewed the latest developments in the region, in addition to a number of i ssues of common concern.

Eventful year for Generation Amazing as it reaches 500,000 beneficiariesTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

The Generation Amazing programme is entering the 10th year of an inspiring journey as the Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy’s human and social legacy project, celebrating several accomplishments this year, including reaching 500,000 people across the Middle East and Asia with its football for development programmes, the Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy reported on website.

Commenting on the achievements in 2019,

Generation Amazing Executive Director Mushtaq Al Waeli said: “As we enter the tenth year in our journey, in alignment with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the Qatar National Vision 2030, Generation Amazing has and will continue to use sport and football as a transformative tool to achieve socio-economic and wider development outcomes for youth, refugee communities and disadvantaged commu-nities across the globe.”

In June, Generation Amazing teamed up with the United Nations Office on Drugs

and Crime (UNODC) and Fla-mengo FC to deliver a football for development session to impoverished youth in Rio de Janeiro on the sidelines of the 2019 Copa America in Brazil.

In the Middle East region, Generation Amazing began working with the Jordan Hashemite Charity Organisation for Arab and Islamic Relief, Development and Cooperation (JHCO) to bring the football for development programme to refugees and vulnerable com-munities in Jordan and beyond.

On top of the programme being currently active in eight

countries across Asia and the Middle East, Generation Amazing has deepened its roots in these regions by developing a new concept of community clubs alongside 30 pitches built to date, giving communities with espe-cially limited resources access to a safe place to learn and play.

Also, this year, Generation Amazing inaugurated new football pitches in India with local partner OSCAR Foun-dation and Slum Soccer. The new pitches – which are the 29th and 30th Generation Amazing has launched worldwide – are located in

Colaba Causeway, Mumbai, and the Dr. Ambedkar School in Kamptee, Nagpur.

Umesh Rathod, a 15-year-old Generation Amazing participant and beneficiary spoke fondly about his experience, having been inspired by the visit of Xavi Hernandez to play football with him in Mumbai in March: “In our community we don’t have enough space for football; we find it difficult to play. We are thankful to Generation Amazing that they have given us this pitch to play on. I cannot wait to go and play football on it.”

In Qatar, with support from

the Ministry of Education and Higher Education and the Qatar National Commission for Edu-cation, Culture and Science, the Generation Amazing programme was launched in more than 50 schools. Thousands of children aged 8-12 have benefited from the initiative, which teaches life skills and values such as teamwork, communication, respect and leadership through football.

Generation Amazing’s Pro-gramme Director, Nasser Al Khori, pledged the programme’s ongoing commitment to the development of youth in Qatar. �P3

Kahraman exhibition opens tomorrowTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

More than 90 exhibitors from 13 Arab and foreign countries are participating in the second edition of Katara International Exhibition for Kahraman which opens tomorrow at Katara Hall Building 12.

The four-day exhibition will also see representatives of international amber bodies take part in the exhibition.

The event is the first exhi-bition dedicated to amber in Qatar and the second largest international exhibition on amber after the international exhibition, which is held in Poland.

Dr. Khalid bin Ibrahim Al

Sulaiti, General Manager of Katara Cultural Village, said: “Since the launch of the first edition in January 2019, Katara International Amber Exhibition has held its rightful place as a permanent international forum for amateurs and traders in the amber industry.

"We have opened a per-manent headquarters for amber at one of our buildings at the Cultural Village and have also signed a set of agreements to establish training and educa-tional workshops about the amber industry under the supervision of international experts and to review specifi-cations and standards in coop-eration with international insti-

tutions specialising in amber.”“This enhances the position

of Qatar as an international destination for trade and acqui-sition of amber in the world, in addition to making the exhi-bition an ideal global platform to promote this industry and spread knowledge about the latest developments in the sector,” Dr. Al Sulaiti added.

The second edition of the exhibition is expected to see a significant jump in the sales and in the number of visitors from inside and outside Qatar, con-sidering the success of the first edition and the increasing number of companies partici-pating in the second exhibition. �P2

Qatari ports wrap up successful yearSACHIN KUMAR THE PENINSULA

Qatar’s maritime sector has wrapped up a successful year by setting new volume and produc-tivity benchmarks in 2019. Hamad Port, Ruwais Port and Doha Port received 4,082 vessels and handled 1.34 million Twenty-Foot Equivalent Units (TEUs) containers during the year.

“Our ports’ performance in December 2019 ended on a positive note and Mwani Qatar looks forward to 2020 focusing on the projected 2.5 percent increase in Qatar’s economic growth,” said Qatar Ports Man-agement Company (Mwani Qatar) in a tweet.

Hamad Port, Ruwais Port and Doha Port handled 108,546 TEUs containers, 40,836 tonnes general cargo, 63,010 livestock heads, 18,081 tonnes building materials and 6,238 units of vehicles during last month. The ports had handled 63,413 tonnes of general cargo; 8,467 units of vehicles and 62,260 livestock heads in November last year.

The container traffic at Hamad Port, Ruwais Port and Doha Port had crossed 1.2 million mark during Janua ry- November this year.

Qatar’s maritime sector is expected to witness another year of strong growth as various steps have been taken by the concerned authorities to

boost goods traffic at the ports. One of the major steps include expansions of Hamad Port.

The development works of Phase II of the Hamad Port, which consist of second container ter-minal (CT-2), has already begun. As part of the development of CT-2, QTerminals announced last month that it had placed an order for 24 Terminal Trailers.

Mwani Qatar had also signed a container services agreement in November last year, with the Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) to use Hamad Port as a regional hub to manage transshipments for up to 150,000 TEUs per year, growing to one million TEUs by 2023. �P3

Amir holds phoneconversationwith Iraq PMQNA — DOHA

Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani held last evening a telephone conver-sation with the Prime Minister of the sisterly Republic of Iraq, H E Adel Abdul Mahdi.

During the phone call, they discussed the developments of events on the Iraqi arena, and efforts being made to reduce tension to maintain security and stability in Iraq and the entire region.

The drones help the Ambulance Service teams undertake a thorough assessment of the surrounding areas.

Deputy PM meets Head of French Space SystemsDeputy Prime Minister and Minister of State for Defence Affairs, H E Dr. Khalid bin Mohamed Al Attiyah, met yesterday with Jean-Marc Nasr, Head of the French Space Systems within Airbus Defence and Space, President of Airbus Defence and Space (SAS). They discussed topics of mutual interest and means of enhancing them.

1.4 millionContainers handled by ports in 2019

4,082Vessels receivedby ports in 2019

108,546Containers handled by ports in December

40,836 tonnesGeneral cargo handled by ports in December

Growing maritime sector Qatar’s maritime sector is

expected to witness another year of strong

growth as various steps have been taken

by the concerned authorities to boost goods traffic at the

ports.

OFFICIAL NEWS

DOHA: Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani held on Sunday evening a telephone conversation with President H E Recep Tayyip Erdogan of the sisterly Republic of Turkey. During the phone call, they reviewed the developments of events in the region, especially in Syria and Libya, besides what happened recently in Iraq, and discussed ways of calm in order to maintain the security and sta-bility of the region.The conversation also dealt with the strategic relations between the two brotherly countries and pros-pects for developing them. QNA

Amir holds talks with Turkey’s President

02 TUESDAY 7 JANUARY 2020HOME

Shura Council discusses draft law on protection of industrial designs QNA — DOHA

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

At the outset of the meeting, the Shura Council discussed a draft law amending some pro-visions of Decree No. (17) of 2010 organising the National Human Rights Committee.

After discussion, the Council decided to approve the above mentioned draft law and referred its recommendations thereon to the Cabinet.

The Shura Council also dis-cussed a draft law on the pro-tection of industrial designs. The draft law includes (38)

articles, and stipulates that a special record shall be estab-lished in the Industrial Property Protection Office at the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, to register industrial designs and their ownership, notifications of assignment or transfer of ownership, licenses issued thereon, and all other matters

related to industrial designs, in accordance with the rules and procedures determined by the executive regulations.

The Shura Council referred the above mentioned draft law to the Financial and Economic Affairs Committee to study it and submit a report thereon to the Council.

The Speaker of the Shura Council, H E Ahmed bin Abdullah bin Zaid Al Mahmoud, during the Council’s regular weekly meeting, yesterday.

FM holds phone call with Australian counterpart

DOHA: The Deputy Prime Minis-ter and Minister of Foreign Affairs, H E Sheikh Mohamed bin Abdul-rahman Al Thani, held yesterday a telephone conversation with the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Aus-tralia, H E Marise Payne. Bilateral relations and issues of common concern were reviewed during the phone call.HE the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs offered the condolences of the State of Qatar to H E the Minister of For-eign Affairs of Australia and to the families of the victims of the ongoing bushfires in Australia. His Excellency also expressed Qatar’s full solidarity with the Australian government and support for its efforts to recover the country from the impact of the devastat-ing fires. QNA

Qatar Airways and QDF welcome top tennis players to Qatar for ExxonMobil Men’s OpenTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Qatar Airways and Qatar Duty Free (QDF) are proud sponsors of the 29th edition of the Qatar ExxonMobil Open, that began yesterday and will run until January 11 at the Khalifa Inter-national Tennis and Squash Complex in Doha.

The Qatar ExxonMobil Open 2020 will feature several of the world’s top tennis players including Stan Wawrinka and Milos Raonic. The tournament is one of two Association for Tennis Professionals (ATP) World Tour events held in the Middle East. Past tournaments have been praised for their level of organisation with last year’s competition winning the Best ATP tournament 250 category Award voted by the players, for the third time after 2015 and 2018.

Qatar Airways Senior Vice-President Marketing and Cor-porate Communications, Salam Al Shawa, said: “Qatar Airways is delighted to welcome some of the world’s best tennis players to the Qatar ExxonMobil Tennis Open 2020. It is an exciting time of the year to be in Doha, witnessing top class athletes compete in the state-of-the-art Khalifa International Tennis & Squash Complex.

“Being the national airline sponsor of this major ATP tour-nament emphasises our com-mitment to Qatar’s vision of being the region’s premier sports hub. Our long-estab-lished sponsorship of the Qatar ExxonMobil Open tournament displays our commitment to serving world-class hospitality and we wish every player the best of luck.”

Qatar Duty Free Vice

President Operations, Thabet Musleh, said: “QDF is very proud to support the Exxon-Mobil tennis open for more than a decade, as we believe in the power of sports in uniting people of all ages and back-grounds. We are delighted to participate in hosting this major global sporting event and are excited to support the Qatar Tennis Federation by contrib-uting to pushing the nation’s sports vision forward. QDF looks forward to welcoming both local and international vis-itors to the tournament here in Doha at our booth located at the public village for some enter-tainment before the matches.

“We are also pleased to welcome players and visitors to enjoy our award-winning retail and dining outlets as they travel out of Qatar through Hamad International Airport after the

matches. We look forward to the games and wish the Qatar Tennis Federation and all the players a successful and enjoyable tournament.”

Qatar Airways and Qatar Duty Free will mark their presence at the tournament by hosting special booths, offering visitors a taste of their award-winning services. The Qatar Airways booth will feature an interactive green screen where tennis fans can get their photos printed on virtual backgrounds such as upcoming destinations and onboard an aircraft. The QDF booth will feature a photo opportunity along with a game where visitors can guess the number of tennis balls in the giant QDF logo-shaped con-tainer and share it on social media for a chance to win a hamper of Qatar Duty Free products. Qatar Airways will also be represented by our cabin crew at the finals cer-emony to congratulate the

winner and runner-up on 11th January, 2020.

Qatar Airways holds an extensive global sports spon-sorship portfolio, sponsoring top-level sporting events and some of the biggest football clubs which include AS Roma, Boca Juniors and FC Bayern München.

As official FIFA partner, Qatar Airways recently spon-sored the FIFA Club World Cup Qatar 2019 and will sponsor the FIFA Club World Cup 2020 edition ahead of the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022.

As an award-winning travel retailer, QDF boasts more than 90 affordable and luxury brands as well as over 30 restaurants and cafés covering an area of 40,000 square metres at HIA and providing travellers with a world-class shopping expe-rience under one roof. Luxury brands also available at the five-star airport include Tiffany & Co., Gucci, Bulgari, Hermès,

Hugo Boss, Moncler, Kenzo, Rolex and Harrods.

In October 2019, QDF co-sponsored the Trinity Forum, the world’s leading airport com-mercial revenues conference, organised by The Moodie Davitt Report and held in Doha for the first time.

Qatar Airways currently operates a modern fleet of more than 250 aircraft via its hub, Hamad International Airport (HIA), to more than 160 desti-nations worldwide. The world’s fastest-growing airline has added several exciting new des-tinations to its growing network this year, including Rabat, Morocco; Izmir, Turkey; Malta; Davao, Philippines; Lisbon, Por-tugal; Mogadishu, Somalia; Langkawi, Malaysia and Gaborone, Botswana. The airline will add Luanda, Angola; Osaka, Japan; Dubrovnik, Croatia and Santorini, Greece to its extensive route network in 2020.Entrance to the Khalifa International Tennis and Squash Complex.

Spectators enjoying a game as part of the 29th edition of the Qatar ExxonMobil Open at the Khalifa International Tennis and Squash Complex.

MME distributes 3,200 pamphlets on food safetyTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Doha Municipality has distributed over 3,200 pamphlets about food safety during the past four weeks, since the beginning of awareness programmer on food safety.

The programme on food safety is continuing on its fourth week to educate people about their health by distrib-uting pamphlets and leaflets to visitors at malls and shopping complexes, said the Ministry of Municipality and Environment (MME) in a statement.

The pamphlets contain information on food safety in Arabic and English. The pro-gramme received over-whelming response from public, with all their different age groups, from shopping malls to get to know the food safety programme.

A number of Doha Munic-ipality inspectors and doctors have distributed pamphlets and educational publications to the public at the Carrefour in Landmark and City Center Complex, and familiarised them with the correct methods of food safety. Over 3,200 bro-chures were distributed to the public during the past four weeks since the programme was launched on December 13.

The food safety is one of the prerogatives of the Ministry of Municipality and the Envi-ronment entrusted to the health

control departments that operate under the umbrella of the Municipal Control Department.

A number of inspectors with specialised scientific knowledge from the Ministry of Public Health, veterinary medicine experts, science and agricultural engineering experts, were trained by the state to advance these works in order to ensure the safety of both the citizen and resident consumers.

The programme includes awareness about food safety while shopping, proper han-dling of meat, poultry and eggs, safety of handling fresh fruits and vegetables and juices and food safety in homes. The awareness programme shows the keenness of the Ministry in ensuring clean and healthy food for the public.

At the outset of the meeting, the Shura Council discussed a draft law amending some provisions of Decree No. (17) of 2010 organising the National Human Rights Committee. The Council decided to approve the draft law and referred its recommendations thereon to the Cabinet.

The programme on food safety is continuing on its fourth week to educate people about their health by distributing pamphlets and leaflets to visitors at malls and shopping complexes.

Kahraman exhibition opens tomorrowFROM PAGE 1

Attractive events were held as part of the first exhi-bition, including technical and craft workshops about meas-urements, quality, and quality

tests, in addition to platforms for displaying rare amber stones. There were also lec-tures and presentations about the culture and acquisition of amber.

Khalid Abdul Rahim Al Sayed, the general supervisor of the Katara International Amber Exhibition, said the second edition will witness the functioning of a special

headquarters for amber at Katara.

“Headquarters for amber will allow for exchange of experiences between pro-ducers, amateurs and

customers. The exhibition is held in the morning and evening and enjoys wide media coverage, which will help take the message to all amber lovers and those inter-ested in this trade around the world,” said Al Sayed.

He pointed out that the

exhibition includes several activities, including lectures and seminars dealing with the culture and acquisition of amber, and display of amber lamps, and opportunities for exhibitors, traders and cus-tomers for interactions and meetings.

03TUESDAY 7 JANUARY 2020 HOME

Chief of Staff meets Ethiopian counterpart

The Chief of Staff of Qatari Armed Forces, H E Lieutenant General (Pilot) Ghanem bin Shaheen Al Ghanim, met yesterday with the Chief of the General Staff of Ethiopia, General Adem Mohammed, in Addis Ababa. During the meeting, they reviewed bilateral military relations, in addition to issues of common concern. The meeting was attended by a number of senior officers of the Qatari and Ethiopian Armed Forces.

9 million enquiries made through Metrash2 last yearSIDI MOHAMED THE PENINSULA

In order to promote digital transformation, more than 40 e-services have been added to Metrash2 application last year and work is under way to develop existing services and add more, said an official at the General Directorate of Infor-mation Systems of the Ministry of Interior.

“Currently, there are 625,000 subscribers on Metrash2, as well the number of enquires that were made through the service last year stand around 9 million, com-pared to the 3 million enquiries in 2013,” said Major Ali Ahmed Al Binali, Head of e-Services Section of the Information Systems Department at the Ministry of Interior (MoI).

Speaking to Qatar Radio, yesterday, he clarified that the subscribers on Metrash2 are not just using Metrash2 services for themselves but

rather for their families as well. “The main feature of the e-services in the Ministry of Interior is that they are always subject to development and modernisation, especially Metrash2, which currently offers more than 180 e-services,” Al Binali said.

“Metrash2 covers all the

services which people usually need and it saves people’s time and efforts and they can use various cards for payment, such as Visa Card, Mastercard, Debit Card and direct transfer from the companies’ accounts to the account of the Ministry.

The Information Systems

Department last year launched a new version for Metrash2 for phones and smart devices, which is the fastest way to attain the Ministry’s services from any place and at any time.

The new version included a number of new services offered for the first time to the public like payment receipts for all services done through Metrash2. It also allows users to request a copy of the payment receipt be sent to the e-mail for each successful

transaction.Among the services, which

have been added last year, one allows owners of impounded vehicles to delegate someone to receive it on their behalf when it is released by the police.

Al Binali clarifies that before adding any service to Metrash2, all the feedback and the public’s satisfaction should be taken into account in order to improve the quality and diversification of these services.

On the age groups of people who are allowed to use Metrash2, he pointed that one of the conditions for using Metrash2 is that the user must be 18 years and should hold a valid ID and smart device, and also the mobile number should be in the person’s name.

All MoI e-services offered through Metrash2 are available in six languages, including Arabic, English, French, Spanish, Urdu and Malayalam.

Among the services, which have been added last year, one allows owners of impounded vehicles to delegate someone to receive it on their behalf when it is released by the police.

The gathering during the inauguration of new football pitches opened by Generation Amazing in India. (RIGHT:) A match organised by Generation Amazing in association with Leeds United as both entered into a key partnership.

Eventful year for Generation Amazing as it reaches 500,000 beneficiariesFROM PAGE 1

He said: “We are proud to be delivering these important learning initiatives through football for the next generation. When we teach values like inclusion, tolerance, respect and communication, these c r e a t e a n i n c l u s i v e generation.”

The programme has also trained 50 PE teachers and 45 coaches from GA’s strategic partner, the Qatar Football Association. This marks an

important step in the ongoing plan to further establish its Football for Development Coaching Certification, which is also being implemented for the Generation Amazing Workers Programme in Qatar.

Workers enrolled in the programme are trained by Generation Amazing volunteers through the train the trainer/peer education model and, in turn, progress through its ranks to learn new skills, become Generation Amazing coaches and then deliver the pro-

gramme to others. In addition to Qatar, the

Generation Amazing pro-gramme was officially launched in 20 schools in Oman, with the train the trainer sessions organised by our strategic partner Sabco Sports.

Focusing on the theme of using football as an educational tool, Generation Amazing offered a range of football for development sessions for Qatar schools and the public at WISE 2019, as well as hosting

sessions for the public, talks and a special panel on the topic. In efforts to expand its educational curriculum and ahead of the programme’s first annual festival for youth held in Doha, Generation Amazing made some key partnerships in the footballing world, extending its partner club list to prestigious names including AS Roma, KAS Eupen, Leeds United and Sheffield FC.

In its most recent club part-nership, AS Roma and Gener-ation Amazing signed

a four-year agreement to col-laborate across legacy, edu-cation, digital media and CSR.

Generation Amazing announced its first festival, the Generation Amazing Festival 2019, in the last quarter of the year, which was attended by all partner clubs. The occasion kicked off a series of festivals leading up to the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022. More than 170 youth participants from the international and local ambas-sador programmes, future Qatari leaders and local youth

were in attendance, broad-ening the reach of the social legacy initiative and building new outreach within Qatar and globally.

With half a million benefi-ciaries having been reached to date through Generation Amazing, across eight countries (Qatar, Oman, Nepal, Pakistan, Jordan, Lebanon, the Philip-pines and India), the pro-gramme plans to extend its outreach in the next few years by impacting the lives of 1 million beneficiaries by 2022.

Rwandan President meets Chief of StaffPresident H E Paul Kagame of the Republic of Rwanda met in Kigali, yesterday, with the Chief of Staff of Qatari Armed Forces, H E Lieutenant General (Pilot) Ghanem bin Shaheen Al Ghanim, during his official visit to the friendly Republic of Rwanda. During the meeting, they discussed topics of common interest, and ways of enhancing them. The meeting was attended by the Chief of Defence Staff of the Rwanda Defence Force, H E Lt.General Jean Bosco Kazura; Ambassador of the State of Qatar to Rwanda, H E Abdullah Mohammed Al Sayed, as well as a number of senior officers from the Qatari and Rwandan Armed Forces.

Qatari ports wrap up successful year

FROM PAGE 1

The agreement will play important role in transforming Qatar into a vibrant regional trading hub in the region. The agreement will also help in attracting more trans-shipment containers and encourage more international shipping lines to add Hamad Port to their regional routes and sign similar agreements in the future.

Hamad Port, one of the largest ports in the Middle East, has led from the front in boosting Qatar maritime sector as it occupied the lion’s share in the overall port traffic.

Mwani Qatar has inked agreements with a number of local, regional and interna-tional players to strengthen Hamad Port’s status in the region. Hamad Port is already making a paradigm shift in Qatar’s economic diversifi-cation and competitiveness, import and re-export of goods.

MME runs blood donation campaign at headquarters of municipalitiesTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

The activities of the blood donation campaign continue at the headquarters of the Municipality of Al Khor and Al Zakhira on its second day, said the Ministry of Municipality and Environment (MME) in a statement.

Organised by the Public Relations Department at MME,

in cooperation with the Blood Donation Center at Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC), the blood donation campaign will continue for a period of five days from 8am tp 1pm.

The campaign activities will continue today at Umm Salal Municipality head-quarters and on Wednesday (January 8) at Al Sheehaniya Municipality headquarters. Al

Wakra Municipality will have it on Thursday (January 9).

The Public Relations Department also urged the employees of the Ministry of Municipality and Environment (males and females) to partic-ipate in the blood donation campaign to support the needs of the Blood Donation Center HMC as a national and human-itarian duty.

A person donating blood under the MME blood donation campaign.

04 TUESDAY 7 JANUARY 2020HOME

Katara honours winners of photography competitionTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

The Cultural Village Foun-dation — Katara yesterday honoured the winners and participants of the photog-raphy competition in the ninth edition of Katara Traditional Dhow Festival held from December 3 to 16, 2019.

The photography compe-tition witnessed around 60 entries.

S a e e d M o h a m m e d Fayrouz won first place taking home QR20,000 while Imad Muhammad Ahmad Al-Hajj placed second winning QR15,000 followed by Youssef Loulidi in the third place receiving QR10,000.

The competition jury members including Abdulaziz Rashid Al-Kubaisi and Jassim

Ahmed Al-Buainain, were also honored at the

ceremony.Katara also honored the 11

fine art artists, including seven Qataris who took part in the

ninth edition of the Katara Traditional Dhow Festival for

performing live painting at the festival site.

The winners of the photography competition at the ninth edition of Katara Traditional Dhow Festival. Saeed Mohammed Fayrouz won first place taking home QR20,000, while Imad Muhammad Ahmad Al Hajj placed second winning QR15,000, followed by Youssef Loulidi with third place receiving QR10,000.

QYH concludes Spain trip under ‘Discover the World’ programme

QNA — DOHA

Qatar Youth Hostels (QYH) concluded its annual trip under Discover the World programme with a visit to Andalusia to discover its civilization on a week-long trip.

This trip came within the framework of QYH’s vision to encourage young people to dis-cover the world and to have a high degree of awareness and ability to interact positively with all civilizations.

Participants were able to see the major cultural monu-ments in Andalusia, most notably the city of Toledo, the Mosque of Cordoba, Medina Azahara, the house of Almanzor bin Abi Amer and the Anda-lusian house, as well as visiting the city of Ronda, Granada, the Albaicin neighborhood, the Alhambra and Madrid.

The intellectual program

was presented by the Director of the Ministry of Culture and Sports’ Wijdan Center Dr. Jassim Sultan, where he gave a detailed explanation of the various monuments and areas visited during the trip program.

QYH stated that the trip enabled the participants to familiarise themselves with the history and civilization of Andalusia and its close

relationship with Islamic history in various fields, the most important of which are the humanities, music, liter-ature, poetry, arts in general and architecture in particular, in addition to philosophy and religious sciences of all kinds. In addition to the civilization development, which was rep-resented in providing all the facilities needed by the resi-dents at that time.

It is noteworthy that QYH organises specific trips to various countries out of their belief that one of the most important goals of the youth hostilities movement is to enable young people to dis-cover the world and learn about the cultures, customs and traditions of other peoples and to introduce their customs, traditions and cultures to them.

Participants during their trip to a week-long trip to Andalusia.

Woqod opens expanded Al Hilal Petrol StationTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Qatar Fuel “Woqod” opened expanded Al Hilal Petrol Station yesterday, that has raised its network of various petrol stations to 98.

Woqod’s Managing Director & CEO, Saad Rashid Al Muhannadi, said: “We are pleased to open Expansion of petrol station in Al Hilal. Woqod aspires to expand its petrol station network in the country to meet the rising demand for petroleum products and achieve the goal of providing customers with access to best-in-class products and services at their convenience and comfort. Woqod has recently accelerated the process for the construction of new petrol sta-tions to meet the fuel and energy needs of the country. Woqod team would like to extend their gratitude to all concerned governmental and

private entities that contributed to the completion of this project.”

Al Hilal Petrol Station is spread after expansion over an area of 28700 square meters and has 4 lanes with 12 dis-pensers for light vehicles, addi-tional to the existing 6 dis-pensers within 3 lanes, which will serve Al Hilal area and their neighborhood.

Al Hilal Petrol Stations offer round-the-clock services to residents, and include Sidra convenience store, Manual Car Wash, Oil Change and Tire Repair, and sale of LPG cyl-inders “Shafaf”, in addition to sale of gasoline and diesel products for light vehicles.

Further, Al Muhannadi added that Woqod is currently overseeing the implementation of 14 new petrol stations, which most of them will be opera-tional in the first quarter of year 2020.

A view of the expanded Al Hilal Petrol Station.

This trip came within the framework of QYH’s vision to encourage young people to discover the world and to have a high degree of awareness and ability to interact positively with all civilizations.

Gang arrested for attempt to smuggle drugsTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

As part of its efforts to protect the society from drug hazards, the General Directorate of Drug Enforcement at the Ministry of Interior, thwarted an attempt to smuggle a quantity of cocaine into the country.

The Ministry said in a statement on its official website that the the General Directorate of Drug Enforcement (GDDE), in coor-dination with the Airport Security Department, arrested a gang consisting of two women and a man, who attempted to smuggle 10

kilograms cocaine into the country.

Immediately after holding the gang the GDDE has taken the necessary measures and the gang has been referred to the competent authorities to complete the procedures in such cases.

Recently, the Ministry had also succeeded in thwarting an attempt to smuggle a large amount of drugs into the country.

Authorities had arrested a gang of five people from an Asian country, who tried to smuggle one hundred kilo-grams of hashish for the purpose of trafficking.

The members of the gang after the arrest.

Qatari Forum For Authors organises symposiumTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Qatari Forum For Authors organised a seminar titled “The Role of Book Fairs in Promoting the Cultural Movement” with the participation of a number of intellectuals, Qatari publishers and other officials. The seminar came in the framework of prep-aration for participating of Qatari Forum in the 30th edition of Doha International Book Fair.

The event was attended by Bachar Chebaro, Executive Director of HBKU Press and the Secretary-General of the Arab Publishers Association; Aisha Jassim Al Kuwari, CEO of Rosa Publishing House; Radi Al Hajri, Executive Director of Dar Zakrit and Ibrahim Al Sayed Director of Qatari Publishers Forum.

The speakers during the seminar highlighted the impor-tance of the role of book fairs in

stimulating and promoting culture.

Chebaro spoke about his experience in publishing and his participation in various book fairs around the world for 34 years, considering that the number of publications does not match the numbers of the population of the Arab world.

He said that book fairs in Arab countries play a different role from the main role of exhi-bitions, which is building rela-tionships with literary rights agents and he also spoke at length about many difficulties that confront publishers in mar-keting and selling books in exhi-bitions. For Doha Book Fair, he said over 400 cultural activities are expected to be organized at the Fair, and called for more attention to cultural activities in the exhibition.

“This edition of the Doha

Book Fair is distinct and different from previous editions due to its rich program and new initiatives. This year the exhibition is set to host 40 Arab and Western pub-lishers within the framework of the fellowship initiative in order to confront the cultural blockade and exchange cultural and lit-erary rights.’ He also expresses his hope that that the number of publishers in the coming year to reach 100 publishers.

For his part, Radi Al Hajri noted that most of the exhibitions in the world had become similar, because in most cases the same people would move from one exhibition to another carrying their books, therefore to do something different the man-agement had to keep focus on cultural activities.

He also said that the cultural identity of the exhibition should be linked to cultural activities and

not only to commercial opera-tions, considering that what dis-tinguishes some exhibitions from the rest is its unique identity, adding that the main task of such cultural events is to publish cul-tural content that develops the personal knowledge and person-ality of the reader.

Aisha Al Kuwari, CEO of Rosa Publishing House, said that book fairs had great importance on the economic level.

“There are also two basic visions related to exhibitions; the first of which is that such cultural activities are sufficient to narrow the geographical area of the book’s researcher, and from the publisher side, they facilitate the task of communication with the readers. However, building cultural rela-tions and encouraging reading as a way of life, not a seasonal activity, remains the basis for organizing book fairs,” she added.

The participants pose for a group photo after the seminar organised by Qatari Forum For Authors.

05TUESDAY 7 JANUARY 2020 HOME

Hilton Doha The Pearl Residences opensTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

One of Qatar’s most highly anticipated and sought-after residential facilities — the contemporary designed Hilton Doha The Pearl Residences - was officially declared open yesterday.

Owned by the Kuwaiti-backed First Qatar Real Estate Development Company (1st Qatar), the property, the largest Hilton in Qatar and the com-pany’s first serviced residence in the country, has been hailed by 1st Qatar’s Chairman and CEO, Fahad Khalid Al Ghunaim, as a watershed moment for his organisation.

“This is our first hospitality development and one which demonstrates our confidence in the Qatari market and its sus-tainability while sending a clear signal of our commitment to the very highest of quality build and outfitting,” he said.

The opening represents a milestone for Hilton, strength-ening its presence and its com-mitment to sustainable travel across Qatar, according to Etienne Gailliez, Hilton Country General Manager, Qatar. “The moment that we’ve all been waiting for has finally arrived,” he said.

“Hilton has fantastic prop-erties in Qatar across three brands, and Hilton Doha The Pearl Residences is an exciting addition to our portfolio in the country. This opening will play a key role in Qatar’s growing tourism proposition and we

look forward to welcoming res-idents and international trav-ellers to this exciting new hotel.”

The stunning 38-storey, world-class property is just 30 minutes away from Hamad International Airport and stands within The Pearl Qatar’s Qanat Quartier at the gateway to the island. A smart building, where guests have digital keyless access features 414 stylish, fully furnished accommodation choices and comprises a series of high-end fine dining options, a temperature-controlled outdoor pool, soon-to-open private beach, and a kids’ club.

It also houses the Signature eforea spa & health club using Elemis & Sothys Spa products, a 24–hour business centre and six hi-tech meeting rooms.

The residential unit fea-tures signature studios, 1-2-3-bedroom serviced apartments and duplex townhouses, all beautifully outfitted with the optimum in-home comforts, including modern kitchens, living rooms with a sofa, des-ignated dining areas, and private bathrooms in every suite. Sun-drenched openable windows, stylish gold accents and sophisticated lighting fix-tures fill the vast open spaces with light, and with balconies and sea views in every room, all guests can enjoy amazing orange-red sunsets over the sparkling waters of this magical island.

The residences’ appeal will go well beyond the hardware structure, according to Hassan

El Wahidi, General Manager, Hilton Doha The Pearl Resi-dences. “We intend to establish a strong reputation for superior and uncompromising products and services across Qatar’s leisure and business tourism offerings. We aim to make this breakthrough property a pre-ferred choice for long and short stay guests by offering every-thing you could want in a hotel filled with everything you need in a home, as well as a local social hub and an exceptional business and events option,” he explained.

The residences are comple-mented by a range of restau-rants which feature innovative dining options including The Kitchen for exquisite interna-tional cuisine, the warm

Mulberry Tavern for more casual fare, and the culturally authentic Levantine Restaurant with the menu featuring popular and creative Lebanese dishes curated by the Lebanese Terroir Culinary Artist and international Master Celebrity Chef, Joe Barza.

El Wahidi has confirmed that the residences will be committed to sustainability. “We are striving to ensure these are eco-conscious resi-dences through the implemen-tation of fully biodegradable and plastic-free policies. As a company, Hilton is committed to sustainable travel and tourism. This commitment is evident at Hilton Doha The Pearl Residences which will avoid plastic bottles and pens;

while using take away cups with compostable lids, biode-gradable coffee capsules and linen napkins in lieu of paper napkins and much more all in line with Hilton’s goal to cut its environmental footprint in half and double its social impact investment by 2030,” he explained.

El Wahidi also emphasised the property’s commitment to a diverse and inclusive work-force. “We are committed to total workplace inclusivity and gender diversity. Our staff will represent numerous different cultures and backgrounds from over 46 countries, of which 50% are women. All these efforts are in line with Hilton’s Travel with Purpose corporate responsi-bility strategy.”

The stunning 38-storey, world-class property is just 30 minutes away from Hamad International Airport and stands within The Pearl-Qatar’s Qanat Quartier at the gateway to the island.

Gear up for The Color Run presented by Sahtak Awalan: Your Health FirstTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

The Color Run presented by Sahtak Awalan: Your Health First, an initiative of Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar, is taking place on January 25, from 7am to 12pm, at the Qatar National Convention Center.

The sixth edition returns under the theme ‘Love Tour’ to celebrate the bond that ties us together, and to raise awareness on the health ben-efits of keeping an active lifestyle.

The Color Run is a five-kil-ometer, untimed event. Color Runners are doused from head to toe in a different colored powder at each kilometer mark.

Participants wear white at the starting line and finish the race plastered in color. Once

the 5k is over, the fun continues at the Finish Festival, a larger-than-life party equipped with music, dancing, photo oppor-tunities, activity booths,

vendors, and more massive color throws. The vivid color combinations give runners the best post-run party on the planet.

The sixth edition returns under the theme ‘Love Tour’ to celebrate the bond that ties us together, and to raise awareness on the health benefits of keeping an active lifestyle.

Ooredoo completes first phase of network upgrade programme to enhance gaming experience

THE PENINSULA — DOHA

Qatar’s leading telecommu-nications operator yesterday announced the completion of the first phase of its n e t w o r k u p g r a d e p r o g r a m m e , o f f e r i n g enhancements to the gaming experience available with Ooredoo ONE.

Ooredoo is working with

global gaming providers to optimise the ping times for the most popular games in Qatar. Online multiplayer games require very low ping times for a superior gaming expe-rience, and rely on optimised connectivity with the gaming servers.

Ooredoo ONE customers can now experience the lowest ping times in Qatar for the most popular games including Fortnite, Call of Duty, Battlefield, The Division 2, Battlefront, Rocket League, Miscreated, Dota2 and various FIFA games. Ooredoo is now working with gaming pro-viders for the next phase of its gaming enhancement which will see improvements for several other games.

Ooredoo ONE gamers are reporting ping times of less

than 10ms for some of the games, which is the lowest in Qatar.

Speaking of the network upgrade, Manar Khalifa Al Muraikhi, Director PR and Corporate Communications at Ooredoo, said: “Gaming is incredibly popular among our customers, who are technology-savvy and know what they want. They expect us to provide a superior gaming service, working with the best gaming pro-viders, and have extremely high standards. We’re proud to say the initial phase of our network upgrade has vastly improved the gaming experience on Ooredoo ONE, and we look forward to yet more positive changes in the coming weeks as we reach completion of the upgrade.”

Harvesting season of leafy vegetables begins at schoolsTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Harvesting season of leafy vegetables which were cultivated by the school students under the initiative ‘Farm Your Country’ has begun.

The initiative was launched in schools by the Ministry of Munici-pality and Environment represent-ative by Public Parks Department in collaboration with Al Faisal Without Borders Foundation (ALF) to educate students about the importance of agriculture and environment.

The project aims to implement plans and programs in the field of agricultural awareness for school stu-dents and to achieve the desired goals for protecting the environment from pollution and preserving natural resources.

The ‘Farm Your Country’ initi-ative is the result of a bilateral agreement between the Ministry of Municipality and the Environment and Al Faisal Without Borders Foun-dation as community engagement through schools to raise awareness of the importance of agriculture and afforestation.

Under the initiative school garden are used to build national capability

among students since childhood in a bid to boost national food security

program.The initiative also aims at building

skills among the students enabling them to meet the their food needs

and giving them the opportunity to cultivate by their own hands for self-reliance.

The Public Parks Department provide supports to the project of farming your homeland in an inte-grated technical support.Under the initiative, the school students compete in cultivating vegetables at the premises of their schools.

Last year, 34 public, private and international schools participated in the initiative.

Agricultural engineers from the of Public Parks Department were assigned to provide agricultural guidance and instructions directly with the assistance of supervisors from each school at the rate of 10 stu-dents from each school.

The season run for four months from November to February. Each school planted in 30 thermocol boxes to reduce the operation cost of the project, especially in schools that do not have a school garden, and the use of alternative means in the lack of fertile land for agri-culture. According to the experts, the initiative helps educate the stu-dents about the importance of farming and agriculture in their life.

Students harvesting leafy vegetables in a school which they cultivated themselves under ‘Farm Your Country’ initiative. The project aims to implement plans and programmes in the field of agricultural awareness for school students and to achieve the desired goals for protecting the environment from pollution and preserving natural resources.

Ooredoo is working with global gaming providers to optimise the ping times for the most popular games in Qatar. Online multiplayer games require very low ping times for a superior gaming experience, and rely on optimised connectivity with the gaming servers.

THE PENINSULA — DOHA

Indian Cultural Centre is organ-ising the yearly Dance Festival this year on Friday, January 10 from 6pm onwards at Birla Public School Auditorium. The

Chief Guest will be P Kumaran, Ambassador of India to Qatar & Patron of ICC.

ICC Dance students will par-ticipate in this festival who are under the tutelage of ICC dance teacher. Metilda Solomon.

Bharathanatyam and Kuchipudi will be performed in various forms with total of 16 Dance performance like Bharat-natyam, Kuchupudi, Mohiniy-attam & Semi Classical dance forms.

ICC to organise annual Dance Festival on Friday

06 TUESDAY 7 JANUARY 2020HOME

HBKU College of Islamic Studies hosts Madrasa winter schoolTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

The College of Islamic Studies (CIS), part of Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU), hosted a Winter Intensive School as part of the Madrasa Discourses Project in collaboration with the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, United States. The Winter Intensive, open to Madrasa graduates from India and Pakistan, recently in Doha.

The Madrasa Discourses Project aims to equip future religious leaders with the tools to confidently debate and con-tribute to Islamic thought within the contemporary global context. The collaborative has a direct impact on how Islam is taught in the Indian subcon-tinent. Forty-four students took part in the School, which is one of two yearly meetings of the group. Throughout the rest of the year, students also attend intensive training through vid-eoconferencing. The full program extends over a

three-year period and provides students an opportunity to engage in guided readings and open debate on contemporary societal and global issues.

This year’s theme was ‘An Encounter of Western and Muslim Humanities: Science, Hermeneutics, Tolerance’. Over the five-day workshop, faculty members for the program, Dr

Ebrahim Moosa, University of Notre Dame, USA; Dr SherAli Tareen, Franklin and Marshall College, USA; Dr Waris Mazhari, Jamia Hamdard, India; Dr. Ammar Khan Nasir, Al Shairia Academy, Pakistan; and Dr. Josh Lupo, University of Notre Dame and guest lecturers Dr Sohaira Siddiqui, Georgetown Uni-versity School of Foreign Service in Qatar; Dr. Rana Dajani, Hashemite University, Jordan; and Dr. Idrees Azad, International Islamic University, Pakistan presented and dis-cussed topics such as the history of science, tolerance, episte-mology, evolution, and more. Participants had the chance to engage in discussions following lectures, posing critical ques-tions about the past and future of Islam in South Asia. In addition, students had the opportunity to visit the National Library of Qatar, the Slavery Museum and the Museum of Islamic Art.

On the impact of the

program, Ebrahim Moosa said: “We have witnessed a vast transformation in the two pre-vious cohorts of Madrasa Dis-courses. This means that after two years the participants ask deeper and more complex questions. Many find the return to tradition both exhilarating

and challenging since it also involves engaging with contem-porary knowledge in Muslim religious thought. This is part of some of the most gratifying work I am doing in my career. On the ground in both India and Pakistan, participants are con-fidently posing new questions

to solve difficult matters such as blasphemy, along with other issues.”

CIS continues to support transformative programs such as the Madrasa Dis-courses Project that con-tribute real-time change in the field.

The Madrasa Discourses Project aims to equip future religious leaders with the tools to confidently debate and contribute to Islamic thought.

The Madrasa Discourses Project aims to equip future religious leaders with the tools to confidently debate and contribute to Islamic thought within the contemporary global context.

HEC Paris in Qatar announces appointment of new DeanTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

HEC Paris in Qatar, has announced the appointment of its new Dean Dr. Pablo Martin De Holan. He also joins the HEC Paris Strategy and Business Policy Department as a Full professor.

Dr. Pablo Martin De Holan obtained his PhD from McGill University in Canada and has served at various institutions like IE Business School in Spain, INCAE Business School - Costa Rica, EMLYON Business School in France and in the Middle East. He has been a visiting professor at Krannert School of Management (Purdue Uni-versity), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sun Yat Sen College (China), and over 30 other institutions in five continents.

Dr Martin De Holan is also co-editor of the Journal of Man-agement Inquiry, a scientific journal in the field of Organi-zation and Management Theory. He is an accomplished researcher, and his work has been published in journals like Management Science, Journal

of Management Studies, Human Relations, Sloan Management Review, Journal of Management Inquiry, Strategic Organization, and Frontiers of Entrepre-neurship Research, and reviewed by the Financial Times and The Economist.

The arrival of Dr Martin De Holan marks the start of an exciting and ambitious era for HEC Paris in Qatar, marked by two central goals: impact and excellence, with the core objective of making significant contributions to the realizations of the objectives of Vision2030 and the creation and devel-opment of a knowledge economy in Qatar.

Commenting on his new role, Dr Martin De Holan said, “I am honored to take over as Dean of a world class insti-tution like HEC Paris in Qatar,

a member of the Qatar Foun-dation family. Our Executive MBA is ranked among the best in the world, and so is HEC Paris in a wide variety of rankings. My goal is to help set new standards of excel-lence in the field of education in Qatar, by conducting a wide range of programs on topics that are of relevance to man-agers, helping maximise our impact”

“In my new role, I hope to carry on from where Dr Nils Plambeck has left and continue with the growth of this remarkable organization. Along with the whole team, I hope to support the transformation of Qatar into a competitive, knowledge-based economy that shows the path to other Nations around the world, along the lines of Vision 2030.”

Dr. Pablo Martin De Holan

QRCS implements food security project for poor families in NepalTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

The representation mission of Qatar Red Crescent Society (QRCS) in Nepal has completed a project to support food security and livelihood for rural families in southern parts of the country, in coop-eration with Nepal Red Cross Society (NRCS).

With $133,781 funding from Eid Charity, the project covered a total of 21,840 beneficiaries in Chitwan District, Province No. 3. The purpose of the project is to improve food security services, by enhancing agricultural and livestock breeding activities for the poorest families.

The project has 700 families (3,640 persons) as direct beneficiaries, in addition to 3,500 families (18,200 persons) as indirect beneficiaries in

Mangalpur, Jagatpur Bazaar (Bharatpur Metropolitan City), Madi Gardi, Madi

Bagauda, Madi Kalyanpur, Ayodhyapuri, and Rapti Piple.

Under the project, local farmers and small landlords received equal supplies of basic agricultural resources such as seeds and fertilizers, to enable them to work in spite of the abject poverty, low standard of living, and lack of gov-ernment subsidies.

Also, heads of sheep were dis-tributed, whether to be used in agricul-tural activities or as a source of milk. Pri-ority was given to the families with female breadwinners.

According to the progress reports, the project distributed 3,000 kg agricul-tural seeds (5kg per family) and 9,000 kg of fertilizers (5kg Diammonium phos-phate [DAP] and 10kg urea per family) to 600 families (3,000 persons).

Other achievements included mar-keting training for 700 families, livestock breeding and dairy farming training for

100 families, distribution of 100 cows to 100 families to produce dairy milk, and networking with dairy product manu-facturers in Chitwan.

Nepal is one of the poorest Asian countries, with a long history of unrest and recurrent disasters. Under its strategy of empowering the vulnerable and building safe and resilient commu-nities, QRCS began operating in Nepal in 2013, with water and sanitation projects. In the aftermath of the 2015 earthquake, a representation mission was established to undertake emergency response.

The scope of work was expanded to include livelihood, food security, health care, shelter, and emergency relief. So far, these operations have benefited around 1.7 million persons, with a total value of $2.9m.

Representatives of QRCS with the beneficiaries of the food security project in Nepal.

PISQ holds in-house teachers training workshop 2019-20 THE PENINSULA — DOHA

Pakistan International School Qatar (PISQ) has held an in-house training workshop to enhance the capacity of teachers at its primary wing facility.

Held under the supervision of Vice Principal, Fauzia Tahir, four-day training workshop aimed at upgrading the capacity of teachers to secure a bright future for the students.

The first session began with a motivational lecture by the Vice Principal, Primary Wing to enhance teachers’ training.Tips were given for advice and coun-selling of students. The speaker mentioned the necessity of proper classroom management and the strategies to handle the discipline issues according to age level of students.

They were given a compre-hensive lecture on the charac-teristics of young children; their

strengths and weaknesses. This was suggested that the activ-ities should be planned to enhance not only their physical and intellectual growth but social and emotional as well.

She also emphasised the importance of appropriate classroom arrangement. The teachers were also encouraged and motivated to do their job effectively by observing professionalism.

The second session was conducted by the Heads Aca-demics of Primary Wing. The first half of the session was hosted by Fameeza Nawaz. The session was related to language skills. Several activities were introduced and the teachers were guided to launch these activities in the classroom.

Teachers were also guided to plan effective learning objec-tives and their implementation in the class room. A question-naire was distributed among the

teachers and they were asked to make learning objectives through a group activity.

The second half of the session was hosted by Uzma. She delivered an informative lecture about pedagogy and language skills integration. She gave useful information about problem solving skills. She emphasized to promote content -based learning and gave few activities to teachers to polish their skills.

Her classroom activity of ‘Harf kahani’ was enjoyed by

the participants.The third session was again

full of knowledge. Vice Prin-cipal, Primary Wing started the day by highlighting the different learning approaches by various educationists starting from Pavlov to Simens and Downes. She emphasised the need for lesson planning by commem-orating various methods of teaching.

At the end of this session teachers of all disciplines such as Science, English, mathe-matics, social studies,

Computer, and Urdu were meant to plan and present their lessons in the light of given information. The group members from each subject used a variety of approaches—presentations, games, role plays, videos, discussions.

The best part of the course was how amazing the tutors were. They were extremely knowledgeable and pleasant. It was an opportunity for the teachers themselves to expe-rience and try out the activities taught in the class room.

Teachers of Pakistan International School Qatar during the training workshop.

Farah Qatar prepares to launch ‘Shabab Zone’ THE PENINSULA — DOHA

After the successful launch of Farah entertainment centers in Qatari market (with 3 loca-tions at 01&02&03 Malls), Farah Qatar is preparing to launch first ‘Shabab Zone’ concept.

The concept will combine the traditional bowling & bil-liards alleys with the state-of-the-art PC gaming & virtual reality games.

The first location is positioned in the heart of Doha, the concept will hold a billiards lobby, pool tables, pinball lounge, table tennis, fuss ball, arcade arena, PC gaming & VR games merged together in

new facility that defies cat-egories and labels.

The concept will combine the traditional bowling & billiards alleys with the state-of-the-art PC gaming & virtual reality games.

MoCI recalls Chevrolet Silverado LD models of 2014-2018THE PENINSULA — DOHA

The Ministry of Commerce and Industry, in cooperation with Jaidah Automotive, dealer of Chevrolet in Qatar, has announced the recall of Chev-rolet Silverado LD models of 2014-2018 due to faulty programming of the Electronic Brake Control Module (EBCM).

The recall campaign comes within the framework of the Ministry’s continuous efforts to protect consumers and ensure that car dealers follow up on vehicle defects and repairs.

The Ministry said that it will coordinate with the dealer to follow up on the maintenance and repair works and will communicate with customers to ensure that the necessary repairs are carried out.

07TUESDAY 7 JANUARY 2020 GULF/MIDDLE EAST

27 civilians massacred in Syria’s Raqqah provinceANATOLIA — RAQQAH, SYRIA

At least 27 civilians have been found dead in Syria’s Raqqah province, local sources said yesterday. According to the sources, the victims, who were local sheep herders, were beheaded and left in Madan and Sapha districts. The wherea-bouts of ten more people was still unknown, the sources said.

For its part, Raqqah is Being Slaughtered Silently, a local news network, shared on its Twitter account a video of the victims and identified 21 of them.

The civil war in Syria began in early 2011 when the Assad regime cracked down on protestors with unexpected ferocity, which led to hundreds of thousands of deaths and the displacement of millions.

A Turkish aid group has provided tents to 135 internally displaced families in Syria.

Istanbul-based Humani-tarian Relief Foundation (IHH) responded to the needs of ref-ugees near the Turkish border who escaped bombings in Idlib and are suffering severe winter conditions.

The Syrian regime con-tinued launching air strikes and artillery fire on civilian settle-ments in the Idlib de-escalation zone, where acts of aggression are expressly prohibited.

“Recently, there has been a mass influx of refugees from Idlib to Azaz and Al Bab towns due to the intense attacks,” said Hasan Aksoy, a logistics per-sonnel of the aid group.

In the last one month, at least 20,000 people have fled Idlib to the border towns, he added, underlining that the families often have no

belongings. The aid group also dispatched carpets, stoves, mat-tresses, coal, food packages and hygiene products.

On December 20, the regime and its allies launched a military campaign mainly in the cities of Maarat Al Numan and Saraqib as well as the sur-rounding rural areas, capturing 35 residential areas.

Airstrikes on the region were halted following a visit to Moscow by a Turkish delegation led by Deputy Foreign Minister Sedat Onal on December 23.

Turkey and Russia agreed

in September 2018 to turn Idlib into a de-escalation zone in which acts of aggression are expressly prohibited. Since then, more than 1,300 civilians have been killed in attacks by the regime and Russian forces in the de-escalation zone as the cease-fire continues to be vio-lated. Over 1 million Syrians have moved near the Turkish border due to the intense attacks last year.

According to the National Coalition for Syrian Revolu-tionary and Opposition Forces, Idlib province is home to

around 3 million civilians, 75% of them women and children.

Since the start of the Syrian crisis, Turkey’s National Intel-ligence Organization (MIT) has played a major role in the success of the nation’s cross-border operations, Turkey’s President said yesterday.

Since 2016, Turkey has launched a trio of successful anti-terrorist operations across its border into northern Syria, to prevent the formation of a terrorist corridor there: Operations Euphrates Shield (2016), Olive Branch (2018), and Peace Spring (last October).

KUNA — KUWAIT

The Ministry of Commerce and Industry said yesterday that the department for combating money laundering and terrorism funding issued in December a total of 128 precautionary measures against offending companies, in accordance with Law 106/2013.

The Ministry said in a press release that the measures included the address of written warnings to 14 realty com-panies, nine jewels companies, a single insurance firm and a money exchange company.

Up to 49 property com-panies, 23 jewellery com-panies and two money exchange ones were compelled to abide by specific measures compatible with the laws.

Kuwait takes measures against offending companies

Supporters of the Houthis rally to denounce the US killing of Iranian Major-General Qassem Soleimani, head of the elite Quds Force, and Iraqi militia commander, Abu Mahdi Al Muhandis, in Saada, Yemen, yesterday.

Yemenis protest in Houthi-held Sana'a over killing of SoleimaniAFP – SANA'A

Hundreds of Yemenis took part yesterday in a protest in Sana'a called by Tehran-backed Houthi rebels to vent anger over the US assassination of Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani.

“We come together with free men around the world to face down the American Satan,” an announcer told the crowd at the Bab Al Yaman entrance to the capital’s Old City.

The demonstrators cried “Death to America” and waved banners calling for a boycott of US and Israeli products, in

images broadcast by the Houthis’ Al Masirah television. Houthi official Dhaifallah Al Shami addressed the crowd under giant portraits of Sole-imani and top Iraqi military figure Mahdi Al Muhandis, both killed in a US drone strike in Baghdad last Friday.

“The blood of the martyrs Soleimani and Muhandis is not just Iranian or Iraqi but belongs to the Muslim community and to free men around the world,” he said. The Houthis have called for swift reprisals for the killings. A statement from Houthi authorities read out to the crowd said it was “time for

the Americans and Zionists to pack their bags” and leave the region. The rebels are locked in a five-year conflict with a Saudi-led military coalition.

It was unclear if the Houthi call for reprisals was also directed at Riyadh, which has stepped up efforts to end Yemen’s conflict amid a lull in Houthi attacks on the kingdom.

Last September, the Houthis claimed responsibility for strikes against two major oil sites in eastern Saudi Arabia. Riyadh and Washington accused Iran of being behind the attacks, despite Tehran’s denials.

IAEA to report any relevant developments after Iran deal announcementREUTERS — VIENNA

The UN atomic watchdog yesterday acknowledged Iran’s latest announcement on walking away, though reversibly, from its nuclear containment deal with major powers and said it would report any developments promptly to its member states.

The International Atomic Energy Agency is policing the landmark 2015 pact that placed restrictions on Tehran’s nuclear activities in exchange for lifting international sanc-tions against the Islamic Republic.

That deal has, however, been fraying since President Donald Trump pulled out the

United States in 2018 and reim-posed crippling economic sanctions on Tehran.

The Islamic Republic has been responding since then by breaching the deal’s restric-tions step by step. Its latest announcement came on Sunday.

“IAEA inspectors continue to carry out verification and monitoring activities in the country,” the Vienna-based agency said in a statement. “The IAEA will keep its member states informed of any devel-opments in this regard in a t i m e l y m a n n e r a s appropriate.”

Iran announced on Sunday that it would abandon limita-tions on enriching uranium but would continue to cooperate

with the UN nuclear watchdog. Iran has already breached many of the deal’s restrictions, including on the fissile purity

to which it enriches uranium, its stock of enriched uranium, which models of centrifuge it enriches uranium with and

where it enriches uranium. It has, however, not gone far over the level of purity allowed — the deal sets a limit of 3.67% and Iran has stayed around 4.5% in recent months, well below the 20% it reached before the deal and the roughly 90% that is bomb-grade.

“The IAEA is aware of Iran’s announcement regarding a fifth step in reducing its com-mitments under the Joint Com-prehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA),” the IAEA statement said, referring to the deal by its official name.

“The IAEA notes that the ( I r a n i a n ) g o v e r n m e n t statement also said that Iran’s cooperation with the agency will continue as before.”

UN resumes grain milling for starving population in YemenREUTERS — DUBAI

The UN World Food Programme has resumed the milling of grain for food aid to a starving population in Yemen after a halt in late December due to shelling damage, the agency said yesterday.

Artillery fire on December 26 damaged WFP grain stores at the Red Sea Mills located on the front line in the Yemeni port city of Hodeidah. Milling resumed on December 30, the WFP said in a statement.

The mill and silos have become a focal point of the conflict in Hodeidah, where the United Nations is trying to enforce a ceasefire and troop withdrawal agreed a year ago at peace talks in Stockholm.

The Red Sea Mills lie on a front line between forces loyal to President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi’s internationally recognised government and those of the Iran-aligned Houthi militia.

The stores were off limits for around six months from late 2018 and at risk of rotting until the WFP negotiated access in February and began cleaning and milling what had been enough grain to feed 3.7 million people for a month.

So far just over 4,500 tonnes have been milled into flour and dispatched, the statement said.

The war has severely hit food supplies in Yemen and millions of people are at risk of starvation in what aid agencies describe as one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

Yemen has been mired in almost five years of conflict since the Houthi movement ousted Hadi’s government from power in the capital Sana'a in late 2014, prompting inter-vention in 2015 by a Saudi-led military coalition in a bid to restore his government.

The United Nations has been trying to re-launch political negotiations to end a war which has killed tens of thousands of people and pushed millions to the brink of famine. A year on from the Stockholm deal, UN-mediated talks between warring parties in the Hodeidah have so far failed to achieve a full troop withdrawal and ceasefire.

An Iranian flag flutters among other flags in front of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) headquarters in Vienna, Austria.

Turkey mayearn $119bntourism revenueANATOLIA — ISTANBUL

Turkey may host 104m tourists and earn $119bn as of 2033, according to a new report.

The report — prepared by the Turkish Tourism Investors Association (TTYD) and the Turkish Industry and Business Association (TUSIAD) — included scenarios of tourism diversification and increasing tourism revenue per person.

Oya Narin, the head of TTYD, said tourism has the potential to be a driving force f o r t h e c o u n t r y ’ s development.

Turkey’s tourism revenue can reach $119bn and the unemployment rate would drop to 7.6 percent, Narin said, adding the additional tourism revenue can raise the coun-try’s GDP by 1.6 percentage points by 2033.

Simone Kaslowski, the chairman of the TUSIAD, said tourism plays a critical role in reducing foreign trade deficit.

“Our natural and cultural richness, and geographical position create so significant o p p o r t u n i t i e s , ” h e underlined.

Turkey hosted 42.9 million tourists in January-November 2019 period and 39.5 million in 2018.

The war has severely hit food supplies in Yemen and millions of people are at risk of starvation in what aid agencies describe as one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

Never threaten Iran, Rouhani tells TrumpAGENCIES — TEHRAN

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani yesterday warned his American counterpart Donald Trump to “never threaten the Iranian nation”, after he issued a US strike list of 52 targets in the Islamic republic.

“Those who refer to the number 52 should also remember the number 290. #IR655 Never threaten the Iranian nation,” he tweeted, referring to the 290 lives lost in July 1988 when a US warship shot down passenger plane Iran Air 655 in the Gulf.

Meanwhile, mourners packed the streets of Tehran yesterday as the world braced for Iran’s response to the US killing in Baghdad of Qassem

Soleimani, who ran Iran’s foreign military operations and expanded its influence across the Middle East. Iraq’s par-liament reacted by asking the government to work to expel U.S. troops from Iraqi soil, potentially ending a chapter that began with the 2003 invasion. United Nations-Sec-retary-General Antonio Guterres urged all sides to exercise restraint following the US strike that killed Soleimani.

“I have been following the recent rise in global tensions with great concern,” Guterres said at the UN. “My message is simple and clear: stop esca-lation, exercise maximum restrain, re-start dialogue.”

Guterres spoke after

officials at Nato’s headquarters in Brussels declined to spec-ulate on whether an Iranian retaliation against U.S targets would trigger the alliance’s “collective defense” clause, which obliges all 29 members to respond in solidarity if one is attacked.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif hasn’t received a visa to travel to the US to attend meetings later this week at the United Nations, according to a person familiar with the situation.

Prior to last week’s strike on Soleimani, Zarif had planned to take part in a debate on Thursday at the UN Security Council on the topic of multi-lateralism. Even before Solei-mani’s killing, the Trump

administration often waited until the last moment to approve visas for Zarif and his aides, usually with severe travel restrictions included.

As part of its agreement to host the UN headquarters, the US is obligated to approve visas for official travel to the global body. The US and Iranian mis-sions to the UN didn’t immedi-ately reply to questions about the status of the visa request.

The US mission slammed Russia and China for blocking a Security Council statement supported by 27 countries speaking out against the “Iran-orchestrated attack on the U.S. embassy in Baghdad” late last year, a move it said undermined “the inviolability of diplomatic and consular premises.”

The potential trend of Africa as the “next big thing” has not (yet?) been crystallized into a consistent series of economic growth numbers.

08 TUESDAY 7 JANUARY 2020VIEWS

CHAIRMAN

SHEIKH THANI BIN ABDULLAH AL THANI

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

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

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MOHAMMED OSMAN ALI osman@pen.com.qa

EDITORIAL

IN A qualitative shift aimed at providing high-quality services to its customers, Qatar General Electricity and Water Corporation (Kahramaa) on Sunday launched the smart registration service. The smart registration will be completed automatically by linking and inte-grating systems with both the Ministry of Municipality and Environment and the Ministry of Justice without the need to submit requests or documents.

Linking and integrating systems with different author-ities in the country enhances the ease of receiving infor-mation effectively and efficiently, which is reflected in the level and quality of services provided to the public. Also, customers are no more needed to submit a request for shifting to a new residence or pay security money. The landlord will also receive the notice about a transfer request to a house on his property for the new tenant based on the rent contract, and registering the tenant as a customer to Kahramaa.

The new service contributes to the speedy com-pletion of subscriber transactions, saving time and effort, and reducing the number of customers going to the service centers. The service provides automatic regis-tration of owners with Kahramaa by linking and inte-grating systems with the Ministry of Justice through the SAK system.

Though the service was officially launched on Sunday, it started almost a month ago on experimental basis to ensure the effectiveness of the service. These services come within the framework of Kahramaa’s transformation into a smart institution and the integration of its system with several stakeholders in the country according to Qatar National Vision 2030 and the national development strategies.

It is worth mentioning that the performance indi-cators of the power network of Kahramaa are considered the best in Arab countries and the world in terms of reli-ability. The peak electricity demand in Qatar reached 8,475 megawatts in 2019 whereas the power production reached 10,578 megawatts showing a reserve power surplus about 2,000 megawatts, which is the highest in the Arab region. The excellent performance of Kah-ramaa aims at keeping pace with urban development.

Last year, Kahramaa ensured the supply of elec-tricity on all official occasions and sporting events that the country witnessed. Kahramaa provided 8,116 elec-tricity connections to new users and connected 1,500 farms with its network in 2019. Kahramaa launched many innovative initiatives and solutions which pro-vided fast track services to its clients including investors, contractors and other users reducing the time to obtain the service significantly.

A smart initiative

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Quote of the day

It is important now... to use diplomatic channels and to make clear that it is also in the interest of Iran and in particular in the interest of Iraq to take the path of sobriety and not the path of escalation.

Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission

A billboard advertising jobs that are available.

My main prediction for 2020, if it can be called a prediction, is trend exhaustion: For the first time in a long while, several important trends have come to an end.

What do I mean by that? Trends ebb and flow, of course, but at any given moment many of them embody one of two dis-tinct states: momentum, or reversion to the mean. The first is a continuation of past progress, either upward or downward. The second is a movement back toward “normal,” however that may be defined.

Now, in an especially wide variety of areas, neither of these conditions is prevalent. Start with the U.S. job market. Since the end of the recession, employment has been improving quite steadily. That has been great for the country, but with unemployment now at 3.5%, does that trend have much further to run? I am not pessi-mistic about the U.S. economy, but I would say that the direction of the next jobs report is now harder to predict than it used to be.

How about relations with China? For the last few years, it has been fairly easy to predict that U.S.-China relations will continue to get worse. But with a new U.S.-China trade deal due to be signed later this month, this is no longer such a sure bet. I tend

to think the deal will not stick, and perhaps could create new terms for intensified conflict, but there is a decent chance the neg-ative momentum has been reversed. Whatever your view, recent trends are not necessarily helpful in making predictions.

Chinese economic growth is yet another major issue where past trends seem to have been drained of their informative value. For a long time, a good and indeed continually verified prediction was this: “The Chinese economy will continue to grow at a rapid clip.” After that, “Chinese economic growth will slow down” did well for a number of years.

Today there are mixed signals. On one hand, corporate debt problems seem to be getting worse. On the other, there are signs the Chinese economy may be stabilizing. You could argue this one either way, but looking at recent trends isn’t going to settle it.

Or you might have thought that India was the obvious new candidate for economy on the rise. And maybe it still is. But it turns out a lot of Indian eco-nomic data was falsified or exaggerated, and the true Indian growth rate may be closer to 4% than 6% or 8%. Once again, the (ostensible) past trend turns out not to be so informative.

Similarly, the potential trend of Africa as the “next big thing” has not (yet?) been crys-tallized into a consistent series of economic growth numbers. The economies of Ghana and Ethiopia are doing quite well, but elsewhere on the continent growth rates have disappointed; the largest African economy,

Nigeria, grew at only about 2% last year.

Another big trend has been the rise of right-wing populist parties in many countries. That has been a pretty solid prediction for a few years, but now there is evidence that those parties are no longer growing more popular. Will they retreat, as mainstream parties adopt their agendas, or is this just a slight pause? Again, I would say the previous trend has been exhausted and this is a new and hard-to-predict moment.

Another recent trend, the proliferation of new #MeToo cases and an accompanying rise in publicity, may also be losing momentum. Figures such as Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein have receded from the news. Could this issue come back with another major celebrity-linked scandal? Absolutely - but it also might have cooled off for a while. The prediction that there will be more #MeToo cases is no longer so easy.

Are there examples of con-trary cases, where an important preexisting trend still seems very much in force? Well, carbon emissions will almost certainly get worse before they get better. When it comes to temperatures, however, the global data have exhibited periodic flat periods or even declines before renewed rises. So at least in the short run, predictability there is not so great either.

One implication is that the coming year may hold an espe-cially large number of surprises. Alternatively, rational people (and readers of Philip Tetlock, who has studied the difficulty of forecasting the future) might discard their hubris and not be very surprised at all.

US manufacturers and freight hauliers were hit last year by the sharpest slowdown since the 2008/09 recession and it filtered through into a noticeable dip in energy consumption. Use of elec-tricity, natural gas and diesel by industrial customers all showed large declines, or at least sharp slowdowns, in the nine months ending in September 2019.

In July to September, industrial users’ total energy consumption fell 1% com-pared with the same period a year earlier, according to sta-tistics from the US Energy Information Administration.

That was the biggest decline since the mid-cycle

manufacturing slowdown in 2015/16 and before that the recession of 2008/09. Within the total, industrial con-sumers’ electricity con-sumption fell by almost 5% in the third quarter from a year earlier, easily the biggest decline since the recession.

Power consumption exhibits a lot of short-term variability based on both the weather and the state of the economy, so the data must be interpreted with care.

But industrial users’ con-sumption showed a much more pronounced third-quarter slowdown than for residential customers, which suggests most of the weakness was economic rather than weather-related.

In contrast to electricity, industrial users’ gas

consumption continued to grow, mostly because of the strong increase in demand from petrochemical pro-ducers. Even so, gas con-sumption rose by just 0.75% in July-September compared with a year earlier, down from a growth rate of 7% year on year in early 2018.

The manufacturing and freight slowdown has also hit petroleum demand, especially consumption of the middle distillate fuel oils such as diesel used by manufacturers, railroads and trucking firms.

Economy-wide distillate consumption was down almost 3.4% in August-October compared with a year earlier. Like electricity use, distillate consumption closely tracks industrial output and manu-facturing surveys, so the slump

in fuel use confirms the severe hit to manufacturing activity in the middle of last year. Slack-ening distillate demand has been reflected in a slowdown in refining activity and reduced profitability for many refining firms, including some of the oil majors.

US oil refineries processed 17.0 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil and other inputs during 2019, down 300,000 bpd (1.8%) compared with the previous year. US refinery processing was below year-ago levels for 41 out of 52 weeks in 2019, a sign of tepid consumption . The manufac-turing and freight recession was even worse across Europe and Asia, as rising tariffs and intensifying business uncer-tainty have taken their toll on investment and activity.

Why 2020 is harder to predict than 2019 was

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09TUESDAY 7 JANUARY 2020 OPINION

“In the air I feel it’s this we’re all breathing. This is why I want to leave from here,” Nieto said of the Manchester area. “I want to go somewhere that is far from the refineries so that I can repair my life, repair my health and live better.”

On Thursday, an American drone killed Iran’s roving fixer in the Middle East, Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, sparking intense, but largely partisan, reactions in the United States. While Republicans lauded President Donald Trump, many Democrats worried that the action might spark a war with Iran. But while it is easy to criticize Trump for stirring up conflict in the Middle East, Iran has helped to create the conditions of this current conflict.

In fact, opposition to the United States has been a key component of the theocratic regime’s identity since 1979. The founder of that regime, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, labeled the United States as the “Great Satan.” This moniker was no mere slur.

According to Khomeini, Western colonizers had infected societies like Iran with secular values that served to undermine the more stable and independent religious-based order of the past. As the most powerful Western nation, and an ally of the brutal shah of Iran before he was deposed, the United States was a convenient target to embody the “Great Satan” label.

For the nascent Islamic Republic of Iran, this nar-rative had multiple benefits. It could appease the Soviet empire, with which Iran shared a border. Shared antipathy toward the United States neutralized the threat of a Soviet invasion. But, this narrative also helped Kho-meini rebrand Iran, and assert its influence in the Middle

East in direct contrast to the American presence in the region. And this is the battle in which we are embroiled today. Relations weren’t always this strained between Iran and the United States, despite Khomeini’s attempts to portray America as an exis-tential enemy.

In 1946, President Harry S. Truman actually delivered an ultimatum demanding that the Soviet troops leave Iran. At the time the Soviets were pressuring Iran to gain favo-rable oil rights. The United States was vocal at the new United Nations Security Council about Soviet inten-tions in Iran and about the importance of Iranian sover-eignty, and in 1946, Soviet troops finally departed.

In the early 1950s, the United States continued to support Iranian nationalism by serving as a broker between Britain and Iran during a struggle over oil rights. Truman, in fact, blocked British plans for a takeover of certain oil fields and a refinery in Iran.

This history of positive relations, however, often gets forgotten because the United States is blamed for the 1953 overthrow of Iranian Prime Minister, Mohammad Mossadeq.

To be sure, after years of back-and-forth between the British and Mossadeq, Truman came to believe that Mossadeq’s extreme positions were bringing Iran to the brink of collapse. This view was shared by his successor, Dwight Eisenhower. As the secretary of state told his British counterpart: “If Iran did not occupy its peculiar geographic location, the problem would be much easier. It is not as though we [are] dealing with a country remote from the Soviet Union. It is in a bad spot.”

But while America played

a role in the coup, the story is actually more complicated. The once-popular prime min-ister had become politically weak after two years of failure to reach a compromise with the British. Mossadeq increas-ingly appeared vulnerable to pro-Soviet political elements - a threat he made clear in a letter to Eisenhower in June 1953. Mossadeq’s vulnerabil-ities alienated the middle class, stirred up unrest in the officer corps and, most importantly, turned off the clerics (a crucial part of the story that the mullahs today conveniently overlook). The crisis peaked when Mossadeq made a des-perate grab for power by dis-solving parliament and trying to rule by decree.

Britain and the United States convinced the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, legally the ultimate authority in Iran, to dismiss Mossadeq in the face of this direct chal-lenge to the shah’s authority. But Mossadeq got word of his impending dismissal and arrested the officer tasked with delivering the official letter. With no official request, the shah temporarily fled the country out of fear that Mos-sadeq would overthrow him.

But, in the following days, a string of protests managed to topple the embattled leader. Mossadeq and his sup-porters bitterly claimed that the United States was respon-sible and had financially sup-ported the protests. But while the CIA provided a small amount of funding that was used to stir up anti-Mossadeq crowds, the protests spread organically because of the dire state of Iran’s economy. As noted by the US ambas-sador to Iran, the protesters “seemed to come from all classes of people including workers, clerks, shopkeepers, students, et cetera.”

While Mossadeq’s fall actually owed primarily to his flaws as a leader, it later became convenient fuel for Khomeini’s distortions about America’s intentions toward Iran. Most Iranians believed the United States had engi-neered it to save the shah and therefore held the United States responsible for the shah’s brutality.

In reality, during the inter-vening decades the United States tried - and largely failed - to convince the shah to democratize Iran and broaden his support. Instead, the autocrat suppressed all political groups, apart from clerics (whom he mistakenly viewed as an ally against nationalists and communists), thus paving the way for his own demise when Khomeini capitalized on the clerical network promoted himself as a democratizer in 1979.

Khomeini didn’t bring democracy to Iran, but he did bring an imperial vision and an antagonism toward the United States that manipu-lated this history for political gain. Significantly, the theo-cratic government that Kho-meini imposed saw itself as the protector of Shiite Muslims worldwide - which resulted in engagements far beyond its own borders. This idea of an Islamic papacy based in Iran owed itself to the doctrine of Velayat-e Fagih (rule of the juris-prudent), which Khomeini reinterpreted to establish himself as the highest reli-gious authority.

After Khomeini’s death in 1989, that role fell to his suc-cessor, Ali Khamenei, who continued to paint the United States as the “Great Satan.” This mythology, coinciding with American interventions in the Middle East since 2001, has served Khamenei with a convenient pretext for expanding Iran’s influence throughout the Middle East and for picking fights against America and its allies. Like his predecessor, Khamenei sees Iran engaged in an epic struggle against the United States. As he recently told a group of Iranian students: “Do you think our battle with estekar (arrogance) [meaning the United States] will ever rest? This is an essence of the revolution. It’s one of our

Are the US and Iran headed toward war?

REUTERS — HOUSTON

On the east side of Houston, the white plumes of the Texas oil and chemical refineries are a constant backdrop for resi-dents of the Manchester neighborhood.

Late at night or early in the morning when plants burn off excess gases, the flames light up the whole sky in the neighbourhood.

Some residents say the air has a chemical-based smell that they find hard to describe but disappears once they drive a few miles away from the homes that stretch along the Houston Ship Channel, a waterway connecting the plants to the ocean. They claim that the pollution is taking a toll on their health, although the scientific evi-dence does not prove that.

“I want to get out of here and go to the country and find some cleaner air,” said Eugene Barragan, a

56-year-old electrician who has lived most of his life by the refineries. “It would be better for me and the kids.”

Doctors have found four lumps in his lungs and now more growths, according to the chest X-rays and medical records he showed Reuters. The first ones were not can-cerous. Barragan says he has not been able to afford imaging of the new growths. He hopes they are benign so he can watch his children grow up.

“When I work hard, I start coughing and coughing and can’t stop,” he said. “I know a lot of people who have problems like that.”

Pollution reducedLillian Riojas, Valero

Energy Corp’s chief spokes-woman, said the company has worked to reduce pollution at its refinery since purchasing it in 1997.

In the 22 years since Valero took over the refinery,

ambient benzene levels have dropped 63% to 0.34 parts per billion, according to data from 1997 to 2019 from Texas Com-mission on Environmental Quality.

“There’s a narrative that air quality is getting worse, but that’s not what the emission data is showing,” Riojas said.

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, which enforces federal and state environmental laws, gives Valero’s refinery the top com-pliance level possible, said Andrew Keese, a spokesman for the agency. The other nearby refineries and chemical plants earned a compliance rating of satisfactory.

Of the other plants bor-dering Manchester, Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co has the second highest-rating for compliance with environ-mental regulations, Keese said.

Goodyear “implemented several changes that resulted in lower emissions from our facility,” said Connie Deibel, a company spokeswoman.

LyondellBasell Industries, TPC Group and Flint Hills Resources, which operate facilities near Manchester, did not reply to requests for comment about pollution in the area.

No money to moveA 2007 study, the most

recent available, of nearly 1,000 childhood cancer cases by the University of Texas found children living within 2 miles (3 km) of the Houston Ship Channel had a 56% higher risk of contracting acute lymphocytic leukemia than children living within 10 miles (16 km) of the Ship Channel. Researchers’ analysis suggests an associ-ation between childhood leukemia and air pollution. However the study, funded by Houston’s health department

and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, could not prove the pollutants caused the illnesses.

For years, Dennys Nieto wanted to leave the neigh-borhood but was only recently able to afford to move her and her family to a different part of Texas.

“I suffer from asthma and pain in my lungs. It feels like I’m being hit in the lungs,” Nieto said of her old neigh-borhood. “Headaches, inflam-mation and pain in my throat. And also I have erratic blood pressure and heartbeat.”

She checks her blood pressure and listens to her heart beat regularly.

“In the air I feel it’s this we’re all breathing. This is why I want to leave from here,” Nieto said of the Man-chester area. “I want to go somewhere that is far from the refineries so that I can repair my life, repair my health and live better.”

These Houston residents dream of moving to where the air is clear

GABRIEL GLICKMAN THE WASHINGTON POST

Britain and the United States convinced the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, legally the ultimate authority in Iran, to dismiss Mossadeq in the face of this direct challenge to the Shah’s authority.

It could appease the Soviet empire, with which Iran shared a border. Shared antipathy toward the United States neutralized the threat of a Soviet invasion. But, this narrative also helped Khomeini rebrand Iran, and assert its influence in the Middle East in direct contrast to the American presence in the region. And this is the battle in which we are embroiled today.

Contemporary relations between Iran and the United States exist within a web of historical myths. But that doesn’t mean war between the two countries is inevitable. Rather, it is the decisions of the leaders of both countries that will determine the outcome of the current crisis. Nevertheless, so long as Iran continues to see the United States as the Great Satan, similar crises, if not necessarily all-out war, will continue to occur.

Iranian mourners taking part in a funeral procession in Tehran for slain Iranian general Qasem Soleimani.

principled tasks.”Since 2012, Iranian fin-

gerprints have been found propping up the brutal dicta-torship in Syria, the Houthi radicals in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Pales-tinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) in the Palestinian territories. Not least, Iran engineered a long con in Iraq, where it used Shiite militias to rid the country of ISIS and then establish de facto gov-ernance in the liberated ter-ritories. Soleimani was a key architect of these actions.

As news of the assassi-nation broke late Thursday evening, analysts were quick to fret that the situation could easily spiral into war, implying that Trump’s action had been irresponsible because of this risk. But these arguments overlook Iran’s shared responsibility for the current tensions and both the Islamic Republic’s stubborn insistence that it is locked into struggle with the United States and its imperial actions.

Contemporary relations between Iran and the United States exist within a web of historical myths. But that doesn’t mean war between the two countries is inevi-table. Rather, it is the deci-sions of the leaders of both countries that will determine the outcome of the current crisis.

Nevertheless, so long as Iran continues to see the United States as the Great Satan, similar crises, if not necessarily all-out war, will continue to occur.

10 TUESDAY 7 JANUARY 2020MIDDLE EAST

Trump warns of sanctions if Iraq expels US troopsAFP & AP — BAGHDAD

President Donald Trump (pictured), warned Iraq that he would levy punishing sanctions if it expelled American troops in retaliation for a US airstrike in Baghdad that killed a top Iranian official.

Trump said the US wouldn’t leave without being paid for its military investments in Iraq over the years - then said if the troops do have to withdraw, he would hit Baghdad with economic penalties.

“We will charge them sanctions like they’ve never seen before ever. It’ll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame,” he said. “If there’s any hostility, that they do anything we think is inap-propriate, we are going to put sanctions on Iraq, very big sanctions on Iraq.”

He added: “We’re not leaving until they pay us back for it.” Trump’s threat to sanction Iraqis “like they’ve never seen before” if Baghdad kicks out American troops has brought back haunting memories of a decade under international embargo.

“If the US imposes sanctions on Iraq, the dinar will plummet and we’ll

be sent back to the past, to the days of the economic embargo,” said Hisham Abbas, an Iraqi shopping in a com-mercial district of the capital.

On Sunday, Iraq’s parliament voted to urge the government to oust foreign troops from its soil, among them some 5,200 US troops helping local forces beat back jihadists.

Under ex-dictator Saddam Hussein, Iraq was put under crippling global sanctions and an oil embargo seen as the toughest in history, cutting off trade and financial interactions with the outside world. Its GDP was slashed in half, the Iraqi dinar collapsed and dozens of factories shuttered, leaving

families relying on ration cards and slim salaries.

The measures were lifted in the years following the US-led invasion in 2003 and Iraq’s economy has slowly tried to reintegrate with the rest of the world. It is now Opec’s second-biggest crude producer and living standards have risen — most Iraqis own imported clothes, phones, cars and computers.

But after Trump’s comments, bitter memories of shortages and collapsed currencies came rushing back.

“Everything the Iraqi people suf-fered in the 1990s will come back. The economic embargo will come back,”

worried Saleh, a middle-aged Iraqi. “It’ll be like the era of Saddam

Hussein, and worse. There won’t be any cash left,” said Samer, another shopper.

The US has been particularly angered in recent months by repeated rocket attacks targeting the US embassy and American troops.

In response to those attacks, a senior US official at the Baghdad embassy said months ago that Wash-ington was considering a range of ways to ramp up pressure on Iraq.

“One possibility is sanctions, and limiting the cash that comes into Iraq. That would be the nuclear option,” the official said.

The US has already blacklisted Iraqi nationals, armed groups and even banks for their ties to Tehran and has hinted more sanctions are coming.

But they have so far left alone Iraq’s oil revenues, which make up more than 90 percent of the state’s budget.

US and Iraqi officials previously said that an oil embargo, like the one imposed now on Iran, would be too hurtful to a country considered an ally by Washington.

The US has so far sought to shield

Iraq from the impact of its energy sanc-tions on Tehran by granting Baghdad a waiver to keep importing Iranian electricity.-

But Sunday’s vote could change all that. “One of the steps the interna-tional community could take would be halting financial interactions with Iraq,” speaker Mohammad Halbusi told MPs during the session.

“We would no longer be able to keep up our commitments to Iraqi cit-izens,” he warned.

In his comments on Sunday, Trump went further than just sanctions, threatening to make Iraq reimburse Washington for a “very extraordinarily expensive” base hosting US troops.

“We’re not leaving unless they pay us back for it,” he said.

The president did not specify which base but he visited US troops in late 2018 at Ain al-Assad, built in the 1980s. “Iraqis feel humiliated, and rightly so, by the latest claims by Donald Trump on reimbursement,” said Karim Bitar of the Paris-based Institute of International and Strategic Relations.

“It’s delusional. It is reminiscent of Trump wanting to make Mexico pay for building the wall.”

AP — DUBAI

In a rare display of emotion from the typically reserved and measured supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei cried openly yesterday at the funeral of slain Gen. Qassem Soleimani, his most important military commander with whom he shared a deep bond.

“Oh Allah, they are in need of your mercy, and you are exalted above pun-ishing your servants,” Khamenei said during a mass prayer as he stood over a flag-draped casket with the remains of Soleimani, who was killed in a US drone strike in Iraq on Friday.

Khamenei’s voice cracked under the weight of the moment during a funeral procession unlike any in Iran’s recent history. Police said attendees numbered into the millions.

The funeral showcased the depth of the bond Khamenei had with the slain general and gave insight into how Sole-imani’s death is being felt personally by the supreme leader. It could also impact how Khamenei responds to the United States. The US killed Soleimani, other Revolutionary Guard members and a senior Iraqi militia leader in a stunning attack on their convoy, shortly after Soleimani had arrived at Baghdad’s international airport. The killing,

ordered by President Donald Trump, has dramatically heightened the risk of war as senior Iranian figures vow to strike US military targets in response.

In Iran, Soleimani was a lionised figure who embodied Iran’s lethal reach in the face of crushing US pressure. He was a powerful commander in charge of the Revolutionary Guard’s Quds Force, overseeing Iran’s proxy militias abroad, ranging from Hezbollah in Lebanon to armed factions in Iraq, Syria and Yemen. In Iraq, that meant directing

the country’s mostly Shia paramilitaries, including in the fight alongside the US against extremists like the Islamic State group.

To Iran’s supreme leader, Soleimani was a loyal aide who conferred with him often and cemented Tehran’s footprint far beyond the country’s borders, helping to preserve and advance the principles of the 1979 revolution that brought Iran’s Shia leadership to power.

Their relationship was so close that Khamenei was photographed more than once embracing Soleimani in ways that are customary in Iran for fathers and their beloved sons.

In one such photograph from 2018, Khamenei, seated on an elevated platform, leans down and kisses Sole-imani’s forehead. In another image from 2017, Khamenei is seen kissing Solei-mani’s cheek during Ashoura, a religious day of mourning among Shias.

Unlike other military commanders in the Revolutionary Guard Corps., the 62-year-old general answered only to the 80-year-old Khamenei.

So revered was he by Khamenei, that the supreme leader awarded the general Iran’s highest military order in March. Iran’s Tasnim News Agency reported that Soleimani is the only Iranian military official to receive the Order of Zulfaqar since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. When pinning the medal on Soleimani, the Iranian leader said he hoped God would reward the general and help him live a blissful life that ends with martyrdom.

“Of course not any time soon,” Khamenei said, adding the “Islamic Republic needs him for years to come.”

To Soleimani, Khamenei was a ven-erated spiritual figure whom he referred to as his “dear and honorable leader.” In 2015, Soleimani was quoted saying: “I ask God to sacrifice my life for you.”

So close were they that Iranian media is describing the slain general as Khamenei’s own Malik Al Ashtar, a ref-erence to the most loyal companions of the first Shiite leader, Imam Ali.

And in death, Soleimani has received what no man before him has in modern Iran. His funeral processions have been spread over several days and cities, marking the first time Iran has ever honoured a single man with a multi-city ceremony. Not even Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who founded the Islamic Republic, received such a pro-cessional with his death in 1989.

Khamenei vowed that the Quds Force’s strategy would be unchanged and he quickly named a successor to Soleimani, but the slain general’s standing and relationship with Khamenei is not as easy to replace.

That’s in part because their rela-tionship extended beyond the war room. Soleimani was also close with Khame-nei’s children and had been photo-graphed kissing one of the sons on the forehead. In a deeply personal and sym-bolically weighty gesture, Iran’s supreme leader made a rare visit to Soleimani’s home the day he was killed to offer condolences to his grieving widow and grown children.

Rather than calling him by his last name as is customary, Khamenei referred to him as Hajj Qassem—another indication of how close the two were.

An emotional Khamenei shows Soleimani’s death is personal

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei weeping as he recites prayer in front of the coffin of slain Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani duing a funeral procession in the capital Tehran, yesterday.

Killing of Soleimani serious risk for peace, says Turkey

ANATOLIA — ANKARA

The US killing of a top Iranian general last week threatens peace throughout the region, Turkey’s foreign minister said yesterday. “The killing of Qassem Soleimani poses a serious risk to peace in the region,” Mevlut Cavusoglu told reporters at the Foreign Minis-try’s Directorate for EU Affairs in the capital Ankara.

“We will work with other countries to reduce tensions between the US and Iran,” Cavusoglu added.

To this end, Cavusoglu said, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has made phone calls with Qatar's Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, French counterpart Emmanuel Macron, Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani and Iraqi counterpart Barham Salih and is set to speak with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

Noting that Russian Pres-ident Vladimir Putin will pay an official visit to Turkey tomorrow, Cavusoglu said: “Our president and Putin will address these issues per-sonally. We all have a common concern that Iraq should not turn into a conflict zone for other countries.”

Soleimani, the head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards’ elite Quds force, was killed along with Abu Mahdi Al Muhandis, the senior com-mander of Iraq’s Hashd Al Shaabi force, and eight others on January 3.

Zeinab Soleimani, daughter of slain Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani, speaking during his funeral procession at Tehran University in the Iranian capital, yesterday.

Trump said the US wouldn’t leave without being paid for its military investments in Iraq over the years - then said if the troops do have to withdraw, he would hit Baghdad with economic penalties.

EU foreign ministers to hold emergency Iran talksAFP — BRUSSELS

EU foreign ministers will hold emergency talks on the Iran crisis on Friday, diplomats said, as tensions rise after US forces killed an Iranian general in a drone strike.

The announcement came after the EU’s diplomatic chief voiced regret at Iran announcing another step away from the fragile 2015 nuclear deal, as Tehran seethes over the killing of Qasem Soleimani, head of the Revolutionary Guards’ covert Quds Force.

Josep Borrell, the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs, tweeted that the accord, which has been teetering on the

brink of collapse since US Pres-ident Donald Trump withdrew support, was “now more important than ever”.

European-led efforts to keep Iran in the deal — which curbed its nuclear programme in return for sanctions relief -- have borne little fruit since Trump’s decision in May 2018 to pull out and reimpose sanctions.

Borrell will lead a meeting of foreign ministers at 2pm (1300 GMT) on Friday, three diplomats said, to discuss the fallout from the Soleimani killing and the future of the nuclear deal.

Borrell said the bloc would wait for further details of

Iranian breaches from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) before deciding how to respond.

“Deeply regret Iran’s latest announcement on #JCPOA. As ever we will rely on @iaeaorg verification,” Borrell tweeted, using an abbreviation for the deal’s formal name.

“Full implementation of #NuclearDeal by all is now more important than ever, for regional stability & global security. I will continue working with all participants on way forward.”

On Sunday, Iran said it would forego the “limit on the number of centrifuges” it had pledged to honour in the 2015

agreement, casting doubt on an EU push for talks to salvage the deal.

Borrell spoke to Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif at the weekend and issued a personal invitation to come to Brussels, but so far Iran has not given a public response.

EU spokesman Peter Stano said there was “a lot of activity going on” from the bloc as it seeks to help defuse tensions that heightened dramatically on Friday when a US drone strike killed Soleimani at Baghdad airport.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is expected to make a statement on the situation, while Nato has

convened an extraordinary meeting of its ruling North Atlantic Council to discuss the crisis — in particular on the future of its training mission in Iraq.

Iran’s 2015 nuclear accord with the United Nations Security Council’s five permanent members — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — plus Germany has been hanging by a thread since Trump unilaterally withdrew from it.

Tehran said it would con-tinue cooperating “as before” with IAEA inspectors but the leaders of Germany, France and Britain reacted by urging Iran to rethink its announcement.

REUTERS — DUBAI

The daughter of the slain commander of Iran’s Quds Force told a huge crowd yesterday at his funeral ceremony in Tehran that the United States and its ally Israel faced a “dark day” for his death.

“Crazy Trump, don’t think that everything is over with my father’s martyrdom,” Zeinab Sole-imani said in an address broadcast on state tele-vision, after US President Donald Trump ordered an air strike on Friday that killed General Qassem Soleimani.

Slain commander’s daughter says US faces 'dark day'

Israel embassies on high alert ANATOLIA — OCCUPIED JERUSALEM

Israel has put its embassies and consulates on high alert in the wake of the killing of top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani in a US drone airstrike, according to an Israeli daily.

Israel Hayom newspaper said diplomats have been warned to take extra precau-tionary measures and “watch their every step”.

Israel’s security cabinet is set to meet today to discuss possible Iranian threats fol-lowing Soleimani’s killing.

“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu still expects from government officials and min-isters not to comment on Sole-imani’s assassination,” the newspaper said.

Yet at several occasions, Netanyahu expressed support for US President Donald Trump’s actions, saying Sole-imani “was responsible for the deaths of US citizens and many other innocents”.

Following Soleimani’s death, the Israeli army put its forces near border with the Gaza Strip and Lebanon on alert as a precautionary measure against any threats or retaliation.

11TUESDAY 7 JANUARY 2020 AFRICA

Haftar's forces say they have taken SirteREUTERS — BENGHAZI

Libyan forces loyal to eastern-based commander Khalifa Haftar said yesterday they had taken control of the strategic coastal city of Sirte in a rapid advance preceded by air strikes.

Holding Sirte would be an important gain for Haftar, who since April has been waging a military offensive on the capital, Tripoli, home to Libya’s inter-nationally recognised Gov-ernment of National Accord (GNA).

Sirte lies in the centre of Libya’s Mediterranean coast, and has been controlled by GNA-aligned forces since they ejected Islamic State (IS) from the city with the help of US air strikes in late 2016.

Haftar’s self-styled Libyan National Army (LNA) said they had taken areas surrounding Sirte including Al Qardabiya air base, before moving towards

the city centre.“The commander-in-chief

decided on a well-planned, pre-emptive strike and within less than three hours we were in the heart of Sirte,” said LNA spokesman Ahmed Al Mismari.

“It was a sudden, swift operation,” he said, adding that the advance had been preceded by several hours of air strikes.

An LNA military source said forces from the city of Misrata had retreated. Misrata led the campaign against Islamic State

and is a key source of military power for the GNA.

Earlier, a resident in Sirte city centre said by phone: “We can see convoys of LNA inside Sirte city... they control large parts of the city now. We also hear gunfire.”

There was no immediate comment from GNA forces.

The LNA advance comes as Turkey prepares to send mil-itary advisers and experts to Libya to help shore up the GNA, part of a trend of rising inter-national involvement in Libya’s

Algeria’s Prime Minister Abdelaziz Djerad (centre) receives Libya’s UN-recognised Prime Minister Fayez Al Sarraj (left), upon his arrival in Algiers for talks on the Libyan crisis, yesterday.

conflict. Haftar’s LNA has received material and military support from countries including the United Arab Emirates, Jordan and Egypt, according UN experts and diplomats.

In recent weeks there has been an escalation of fighting, shelling and air strikes around Tripoli.

On Saturday evening a mil-itary college in the capital was hit, killing at least 30 people, a day after the only functioning airport in Tripoli faced its latest closure due to shelling and rocket fire.

Sirte, the birthplace of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, was taken over by

Islamic State in early 2015, becoming the militant group’s most important base outside the Middle East.

The city is just to the west of Libya’s oil crescent, a strip of coastline along which several key oil export terminals are located. Haftar’s forces seized the oil ports in 2016.

Uganda police detain activist, foil meeting with supportersAP — KAMPALA

Ugandan police yesterday detained the singer and political activist known as Bobi Wine, who was prevented from holding his first public meeting with supporters as a presi-dential aspirant.

Police fired tear gas as they dispersed a crowd of supporters outside the capital, Kampala. Gunfire was heard but it was not clear if live rounds or rubber bullets were fired.

The foiled meeting had been authorised by electoral author-ities. It was the first of several planned by Wine, an opposition lawmaker whose real name is Kyagulanyi Ssentamu.

A police spokesman did not immediately respond to ques-tions concerning Bobi Wine’s whereabouts. In a Twitter update, Wine said he and some colleagues in custody had been transferred from a police post in his constituency to one further outside Kampala.

Robert Amsterdam, a lawyer for the activist, said on Twitter that his client and others had been “arrested without reason” and he denounced “this violation of basic rights.”

Police have repeatedly pre-vented him from addressing rallies or even organising musical concerts in recent months, saying the events pose a danger to the public.

Presidential elections are

scheduled for 2021. There are growing concerns that cam-paigns could turn violent as security forces tighten the space available for opposition activists to interact with supporters.

The singer and activist has

called for the retirement of longtime President Yoweri Museveni, saying young people must prepare to take over lead-ership of the East African nation. Museveni, who has indi-cated he will run again, accuses

Wine of trying to lure his sup-porters into rioting.

Wine came to political prominence nationally in 2017 when, as an independent can-didate, he won election as a lawmaker representing a con-stituency near Kampala. He has since successfully campaigned for other opposition candidates, raising his profile and attracting encouragement to run for president.

But he faces challenges including treason charges related to his alleged role in a 2018 incident in which the pres-ident’s convoy was attacked with stones at a campaign event. Prosecutors have added charges of annoying the pres-ident over that incident. He also is charged with disobeying stat-utory authority after he led a demonstration against a tax tar-geting social media. He denies all the charges. A criminal con-viction would prevent him from seeking the presidency.

The 75-year-old Museveni is eligible to run again after law-makers passed legislation removing a clause in the con-stitution that prevented anyone over 75 from holding the pres-idency. Wine was among those who opposed the move.

Riot policemen use tear gas to disperse supporters of Ugandan musician-turned-politician Robert Kyagulanyi, also known as Bobi Wine, who were demonstrating after he was detained in Kasangati town in Uganda, yesterday.

Kenya police arrest 3 trying to enter British Army campAGENCIES — NAIROBI

Kenyan police say they arrested three “terrorist suspects” who tried to force their way into a British Army training camp on the same day Al Shabaab extremists attacked a military base and killed three US military personnel.

An internal police report says the three men were arrested Sunday after trying to enter the British Army Training Unit in Laikipia county. The British army said in a statement that Kenyan police were inves-tigating “suspicious activity” and that “we do not believe there was a direct threat to UK personnel or assets.”

Meanwhile new details emerged in the Al Shabaab

attack, the Al Qaeda-linked group’s first assault against US forces inside Kenya.

The attack at Manda Bay Airfield killed 23-year-old US Army Specialist Henry Mayfield Jr., the NBC affiliate in Chicago reported, citing a family statement. Two other Amer-icans, contractors with the US Department of Defence, were killed but their names have not been released. No Kenyans were killed, Kenya’s military spokesman Paul Njuguna said yesterday. Al Shabaab has vowed retribution for Kenyan troops fighting it in neighboring Somalia, where it is based.

Five US aircraft, including fixed-wing and helicopters, were destroyed and one damaged in the hours-long

assault at the airfield in coastal Lamu county, the US Africa Command said.

An attempt was made to breach security at Manda air-strip early Sunday but was “suc-cessfully repulsed,” Kenya Defence Forces said on its Facebook page

Photos showed the five dead Al Shabaab attackers wearing military uniforms. It was not clear whether the uni-forms were Kenyan or Somali. Some Al Shabaab fighters have worn military uniforms in past attacks. The photos also showed an Al Shabaab flag.

Also yesterday, the US Africa Command asserted that several unverified social media sites, “some with links to Iran,” posted false claims of the death

of its commander, Gen. Stephen Townsend, in the al-Shabab attack. Al Shabaab is linked to Al Qaeda and has no known links to Iran or its proxies. “Our thoughts and prayers are with the families and friends of our teammates who lost their lives today,” US Army General S t e p h e n T o w n s e n d , commander, US Africa Command, said in a statement.

The Manda Bay raid comes less than a week after a US air-strike killed three members of Al Shabaab, which is based in neigbouring Somalia and claimed responsibility for Sun-day’s attack.

Senator Bob Menendez, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he’s hopeful the attack will

lead the panel to convene a hearing to examining the Trump administration’s policy in the region later this month.

“As we await further infor-mation on the specifics of this latest attack, it is clear that despite US and international efforts to contain al-Shabaab, this terror organization remains a significant and active threat,” Menendez said in a statement. “Although this attack shows a clear intent to continue targeting the United States’ presence in the region, the United States continues to stand in strong partnership with Kenya,” Representative Eliot Engel, a New York Democrat and chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement.

Wife of Zimbabwe Vice-President freed on bailREUTERS — HARARE

The wife of Vice-President Constantino Chiwenga was granted bail by Zimbabwe’s High Court yesterday after spending three weeks in detention for allegedly trying to kill her husband.

Prosecutors say Marry Mubaiwa, who denies all charges, tried to unplug Chi-wenga’s life support tubes in a South African hospital in June. She was initially arrested on December 14 on separate charges including fraud and money laundering. A High Court judgment seen by Reuters showed Judge Pisirai Kwenda has granted Mubaiwa bail for 50,000 Zimbabwe dollar and ordered her to surrender her diplomatic passport and report to a local police station once every two weeks.

Mubaiwa is also required to hand over the title deeds of her parents’ house with the court, the document showed.

Her lawyer, Taona Nya-makura, said Mubaiwa could be released from prison today.

Her arrest has sparked accusations against Chiwenga and the anti-corruption agency that initially arrested her. Opposition politicians say the vice-president is using his position to influence a divorce settlement with Mubaiwa, while the Zimbabwe Anti-Cor-ruption Commission (ZACC), which says she illegally trans-ferred $900m to South Africa, is conflicted.

Ethiopian party seeks new alliances after rejecting PM's unity partyBLOOMBERG — ADDIS ABABA

A leading member of Ethio-pia’s former ruling coalition is seeking fresh alliances after it rejected Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s new unity party ahead of elections this year.

The Tigray People’s Liber-ation Front, TPLF, said the Prosperity Party, which set out to merge members of the now defunct Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front, poses a “clear difference of purpose.” The new for-mation has eight parties including three members of the EPRDF, formerly a TPLF-controlled rebel group that governed Ethiopia since Mengistu Haile Mariam’s Marxist regime was over-thrown in 1991.

The unity party as part of Abiy-led reforms in Ethiopia envisions fair representation of the Horn of Africa country’s ethnic groups. The TPLF lead-ership is considering strategic relationships with other “fed-eralist forces as a forum, coa-lition or a front,” it said in a statement on its Facebook page after a meeting on Sunday.

Chad withdraws forces from Boko Haram missionQNA — N'DJAMENA

Chad has ended a mission spanning several months fighting Boko Haram in neighbouring Nigeria and withdrawn its 1,200-strong force across their common border.

“It’s our troops who went to aid Nigerian sol-diers months ago returning home. They have fin-ished their mission,” Chad spokesman Colonel Azem Bermandoa said. “None of our soldiers remains in Nigeria,” he added, without specifying whether they might be replaced following Friday’s pullout.

“Those who have come back will return to their sector at Lake Chad,” Bermandoa added.

Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria formed a multinational force to fight Boko Haram in 2015.

Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria formed a multinational force to fight Boko Haram in 2015.

AP — LISBON

Angola’s foreign minister says a court order freezing the assets of a former president’s billionaire daughter is part of a legal effort to recoup money owed to the Southwest African country.

Foreign Minister Manuel Augusto said during a visit to Lisbon, Portugal, that there is no political motivation behind the government’s demand for more than $1bn from Isabel dos Santos, her husband and a Portuguese business partner. Isabel dos Santos has complained that the legal action targets her because of her family links.

A court in the former Portuguese colony last week froze their per-sonal assets and their stakes in com-panies in Angola’s telecoms, banking and retail distribution sectors, as well as their extensive holdings abroad.

Isabel dos Santos is a daughter of Jose Eduardo dos Santos, who ruled the oil- and diamond-rich nation for 38 years until 2017. Human rights groups have long accused the former president of stealing state money during his allegedly corrupt rule.

Angolan President Joao Lourenco, who replaced Dos Santos, has launched a crackdown on cor-ruption. The government said last

November it has so far recouped around $5bn.

Isabel dos Santos, reputedly Africa’s richest woman, is the most high-profile target so far of the crackdown. Her father’s wherea-bouts are unknown.

Augusto, the foreign minister, said the government initially requested for money identified as being owed to the state to be returned.

The government is now moving to a phase where it is using the law to ensure the return of funds that allegedly were taken illegally.

His comments to Portuguese news agency Lusa were published by online newspaper Observador.

Angola: Ex-president’s daughter must repay money

Sirte lies in the centre of Libya’s Mediterranean coast, and has been controlled by forces loyal to Libya’s internationally recognised Government of National Accord (GNA) since they ejected Islamic State (IS) from the city with the help of US air strikes in late 2016.

12 TUESDAY 7 JANUARY 2020ASIA

Protests across India after masked men go on rampage at JNUAFP/IANS — NEW DELHI

Protests were held across India yesterday after masked assailants wielding batons and iron rods went on a rampage at a top Delhi university, leaving more than two dozen injured.

Controversy over Sunday’s violence at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) comes as a new challenge to the gov-ernment as it confronts major nationwide protests against a new citizenship bill that critics say is anti-Muslim.

Some students blamed the university attack on right-wing activists, but they also accused police of doing nothing to stop the violence.

At least 28 students and teachers were injured, while doctors and nurses from a nearby hospital who went to treat them were also attacked, their union said.

Scores of riot police yes-terday patrolled the university — the alma mater of several key ministers in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Cabinet —picking their way past shattered glass and broken doors and furniture.

They made no immediate arrests, but blamed the violence on “rival student groups”.

As condemnation of the attacks spread, more than 1,000 people held a vigil in Mumbai. Other demonstrations were held in Bangalore, Kolkata and other major cities.

Nobel economy prize winner Abhijeet Banerjee, a former JNU student, said the attacks had “echoes of the years when Germany was moving towards Nazi rule”.

Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party denied claims by the opposition Congress that it was responsible, and in turn blamed left-leaning student groups which dominate the university’s politics.

The government has promised an investigation, while Home Minister Amit Shah — a close Modi aide —- told university administrators and police to maintain order at the campus, which has been tense since protests in November over fee increases.

The Jawaharlal Nehru Uni-versity Teachers' Federation (JNUTF) yesterday said it is extremely concerned about the environment of fear and bru-tality created by some violently agitating students and said it condemns the violent acts of the agitators.

In a statement, it said a group of masked agitators barged into various hostels and mercilessly beat up the inmates with iron rods and stick on Sunday night.

"For the past many days, entry to school buildings was blocked by placing heavy fur-niture, flowerpots and ladders. Such a blockade has caused great academic loss as well as financial loss to the University and its stakeholders," the teachers' body said.

They said teachers, staff and students, who try to enter their offices or schools, are being subject to verbal abuse, heckling, threats and physical assaults.

"The entire registration process has been taken hostage by the agitators as they destroyed the server room twice, on Saturday and Sunday," the statement said.

On Saturday, the Dean and a faculty members of the School of International Studies were humiliated, abused and physi-cally assaulted by a group of vicious agitators when they tried to enter into their offices, it added.

According to the associ-ation, "in another incident, another faculty member of the School of Social Sciences was heckled, assaulted and his mobile phone was snatched away by the nasty agitators in front of the School of Languages."

Students and supporters hold placards as they shout slogans during a protest against an attack on the students and teachers at the Jawaharlal Nehru University campus in New Delhi a day before, at Osmania University campus in Hyderabad, yesterday.

Contempt plea in Supreme Court against police inaction at JNUIANS — NEW DELHI

A contempt plea was moved in the Supreme Court yesterday, in connection with the violence in the JNU campus on Sunday, against the Delhi Police for wilfully disobeying the top court’s direction in a lynching case pertaining to taking preventive and remedial measures to deal with mob violence.

Activist Tehseen Poon-awala, in the plea, sought initi-ation of contempt proceedings against Delhi Police for wilfully disobeying the specific direc-tions of the top court issued an order on July 17, 2018, in con-nection with Tehseen S Poon-awala Vs Union of India &

others.The plea contended the

apex court had laid down pre-ventive and remedial guidelines for the government and police authorities to curb and handle mob violence, and then the court came to a conclusion that no individual in his/her own capacity or as a part of a group, which within no time assumes the character of a mob, can take the law into hands and deal with others as guilty.

“The alleged contemnor/respondent (Delhi Police and its officials) herein, the Gov-ernment of India, has failed to take action against the masked miscreant mob who entered the JNU Campus on January 5,

2020, and no FIR has been reg-istered yet against the offenders,” said the plea.

The plea also contended that Delhi Police deployed on the campus neither stopped nor deterred the large number of masked miscreants, who entered JNU armed with sticks, hammers and other weapons. “An injured student who is admitted in the Trauma Centre of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences claimed to have been kicked by police personnel in the head several times. The incident that transpired in JNU reflects the Central government’s non-com-pliance with the above cited judgement of the Supreme Court of India,” added the plea.

Delhi goes to polls on February 8, counting on February 14

IANS — NEW DELHI

The Election Commission yesterday announced February 8 as the date for the Delhi assembly elections with the Model Code of Conduct coming into effect with the announcement, the EC said.

The date of notification is January 14, while January 21 will be the last date for filing nominations. Counting of votes will take place on Feb-ruary 14.

There are a total of seventy seats in the Delhi Assembly out of which the Aam Aadmi Party won sixty seven the last time.

Mainly three political parties are in the fray — the Aam Aadmi Party, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress.

Chief Election Commis-sioner Sunil Arora said that he held a meeting with the Chief Secretary and senior officials last month about holding elections.

Ninety thousand officials are to be deployed for poll duty, he said. Additional sec-retaries will look after the deployment of the officers.

Arora announced pick and drop facilities for senior cit-izens who would like to vote. Postal ballot facility for people with disabilities and senior citizens above the age of eighty is also available.

Researchers develop mechanism for hydrogen productionIANS — MANDI

Indian Institute of Technology Mandi yesterday said its researchers have developed new materials that can use sunlight for the production of hydrogen from water.

This collaborative research work by IIT Mandi and Yogi Vemana University in Andhra Pradesh has been published in American Chemical Society (ACS) Applied Energy Materials journal.

“With concerns of dwin-dling fossil fuel reserves and environmental issues associated

with their use, there has been an impetus to develop alter-native, safe fuels. Hydrogen gas, with its high energy yield and eco-friendliness has been iden-tified as a potential energy vector that can herald a new hydrogen-based economy,” said Venkata Krishnan, Asso-ciate Professor, School of Basic Sciences, IIT Mandi.

“The catch with hydrogen economy is that the gas is now largely obtained from fossil fuels by petroleum and natural gas steam reforming processes, which does not help with the problem we set out solving

— finding alternatives to fossil fuels,” Krishnan said in a statement.

Water, the simplest chemical compound known to man, is made of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom and is logically a good source of hydrogen.

However, splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen is not easy and is energy intensive. It has been known for decades that light can assist in the splitting of water into its con-stituent hydrogen and oxygen atoms.

Nature already uses light

from the sun to bring about all kinds of chemical conversions that provide us today with the air we breathe and the food we eat.

Mimicking photosynthesis — the use of light for chemical reactions — has been one of the Holy Grails of applied chemistry and there has been a constant quest for specialised chemicals, called catalysts, that can take the energy of the light to the water to split it, much like the chlorophyll that does it effort-lessly in nature.

For a long time, platinum has been used as catalyst for

photochemical water splitting, but given the cost of platinum, solar hydrogen generation has been out of practical reach.

The researchers have developed a novel multicom-ponent catalyst comprising nitrogen doped zinc oxide nanorods coated with molyb-denum sulphide nanosheets.

“Our optimised heter-ostructure, made of 15 weight per cent of defect-rich molyb-denum sulphide nanosheets-coated on the zinc oxide, showed the highest H evolution of 17.3 mmol h-1g-1 under solar light irradiation,” said Krishnan.

Selling yogurt on Nepal streetsA man carrying yogurt in earthen pots for sale walks through the premises of Bhaktapur Durbar Square in Bhaktapur, Nepal, yesterday.

Family of dead Franco-Irish teen sues Malaysian resortAFP — KUALA LUMPUR

The family of a Franco-Irish teenager whose body was found in the Malaysian jungle is suing the resort from where she disap-peared for allegedly failing to provide adequate security.

The unclothed body of 15-year-old Nora Quoirin was dis-covered in August after a massive hunt through dense rainforest, not far from the resort where the London-based family had been on holiday.

Her parents say they believe there was a “criminal element” in the case as the teen had learning difficulties and would not have wandered off alone, but Malaysian police insist there was no sign of foul play.

The family’s lawyers have filed a civil suit against the Dusun Resort, not far from the capital Kuala Lumpur, seeking at least 182,000 ringgit ($45,000) in damages, according to court docu-ments. The couple, Meabh and Sebastian Quoirin, claim the entrance gate to their jungle cottage was left open at all times, no guards were stationed outside and there was no CCTV installed at the premises.

Pneumonia case not linked to Wuhan: SingaporeBLOOMBERG — SINGAPORE CITY

A case of pneumonia in Singapore in a three-year-old girl with a history of travel to Wuhan is not linked to the outbreak in the Chinese city, Singaporean officials said.

The cause of the girl’s pneumonia is Respiratory Syncytial Virus, a common cause for childhood respiratory infection, according to a statement from Singapore’s Ministry of Health. The case has also tested negative for SARS and MERS-CoV, the ministry said.

The World Health Organisation is monitoring the outbreak of a mysterious lung infection in Wuhan and is in active communi-cation with its counterparts in China, where an investigation is underway to determine the cause of a pneumonia outbreak. As of Friday, 44 people had been diagnosed with pneumonia, the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission said.

The girl in the suspected case had not visited the Huanan seafood wholesale market associated with the Wuhan cluster, the Health Ministry had earlier said. “As medical practitioners are on the lookout for cases with pneumonia who have recently returned from Wuhan, Singapore is likely to see more suspect cases that will need to be investigated for possible links to the Wuhan cluster,” the MOH said.

Coincidence that fake news law applied to politicians, says Singapore MinisterREUTERS — SINGAPORE

Singapore’s Communications Minister said yesterday it was a coincidence that the first few cases brought under a new fake news law were against political figures and parties.

The law came into effect in October amid concern among rights groups and opposition pol-iticians it could be used to silence criticism of the government ahead of a general election expected within months.

The government has denied such suggestions saying the law, the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (POFMA), only tackles false-hoods and that legitimate crit-icism and free speech would not be affected.

“The first few POFMA actions appear to have been issued against individuals that are either politicians or affiliated with political parties, or political parties. I would say that that is a convergence, some might say

an unfortunate convergence, or coincidence,” S Iswaran, Min-ister of Communications and Information, told parliament.

“But whatever the case may be, that is the situation today but it does not mean that is going to be the situation going forward.

The Minister was replying to a question from a nominated member of parliament on per-ceptions of partisan political bias over recent applications of the law.

Six die in Sri Lanka bus accidentAP — COLOMBO

A passenger bus plunged off the road in Sri Lanka’s tea-growing hill country yesterday, killing six people and injuring more than 30.

Police said a bus belonging to the state-run bus company fell into a precipice near the small mountain town of Madulsima, about 250km east of Colombo, the capital, leaving six people dead.

State television said the dead included two children and that more than 30 people were injured and being treated at hospitals.

The government has promised an investigation, while Home Minister Amit Shah told university administrators and police to maintain order at the campus.

13TUESDAY 7 JANUARY 2020 ASIA

Pakistan won’t take sides in Iran-US confrontation: FMREUTERS — ISLAMABAD

Pakistan will not take sides in the escalating confrontation between neighbouring Iran and the United States, its foreign minister said yesterday, following the killing of Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani in a US drone strike.

The killing puts Pakistan, which is majority Sunni Muslim but has a large Shi’ite minority and is anxious to avoid any regional upheaval, in a sensitive position.

An ally of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan has a complex rela-tionship with Iran, with which it shares a long border.

Thousands of Shia pro-testers marched in several Pakistani cities on Sunday to

show solidarity with Iran. Some clashed with police in the southern city of Karachi when they attempted to march on the US consulate.

“We’re clear that Paki-stan’s soil will not be used against any other state, and nor will Pakistan become a part of this regional conflict,” Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi told the upper house of parliament in a policy statement.

“Pakistan has taken a clear stance that Pakistan doesn’t endorse any unilateral action,” he said, in the government’s first official response to the killing of Soleimani, architect of efforts to extend Iran’s influence across the region.

The killing has spurred fears o f a

major regional conflagration. Yesterday hundreds of thou-sands of Iranians thronged

Tehran’s streets for Soleimani’s funeral and his daughter said his death would bring a “dark day” for the United States.

“The Middle East was and is volatile and this region can’t afford another war. We are part

of this region and when a fire erupts there, Pakistan can’t escape,” said Qureshi.

Pakistan is grappling with a severe economic crisis and facing heightened tensions with neighbouring India. Its long land frontier with Iran is rife with cross-border militant activity.

Islamabad has also long had a tense relationship with the United States over the war in neighbouring Afghanistan, where US officials have fre-quently accused it of supporting the Taliban, a charge Pakistan denies.

But it badly needs US support, both in handling its severe balance of payments problems and in dealing with its nuclear armed neighbour India after the two came close

to war last year.Qureshi said he had dis-

cussed the regional situation with the foreign ministers of Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and others.

Pakistan receives aid and buys much of its oil from Saudi Arabia, which is locked in a power struggle with Iran across a region where they back opposing sides in conflicts ranging from Syria to Yemen.

Qureshi said he feared Sole-imani’s death could trigger an upsurge in sectarian tensions, including in Afghanistan.

“We believe this could have a negative impact on Afghan-istan, and that its peace process — where Pakistan has played an important role — could be affected and exploited by the spoilers,” Qureshi said.

Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi.

People wearing face mask to protect themselves from air pollution in Kabul as the Afghan capital is covered with heavy smog.

No respite from air pollution

US Ambassador leaves Kabul, ends 2-year Afghan tenureAP — KABUL

US Ambassador John Bass left Kabul yesterday as his two-year tenure as America’s top diplomat in war-torn Afghanistan ended. His departure comes as US tensions with neighbouring Iran have soared following a US airstrike in Baghdad that killed Iran’s top general.

Until Bass’ replacement is decided, Washington is appointing a chargé d’affaires to the post, according to a statement from the US State Department. Ross Wilson, who has served as America’s ambas-sador to Turkey and Azerbaijan, is expected in the Afghan capital in the coming weeks.

The statement said Bass “skillfully advanced the Trump Administration’s goal of reaching a political settlement in Afghan-istan that ensures terrorists can never again threaten the United States from Afghan soil while leading a large diplomatic mission in the face of numerous security threats.’’

In a tweet bidding Afghan-istan farewell, Bass said: “My earnest hope is for leaders and citizens across this country to find strength in unity, put aside their differences, and work together to negotiate a political settlement with the Taliban. Afghans and this beautiful country deserve nothing less.”

The on-again off-again talks between the United States and the Taliban appear to have again stalled. The negotiations are a key pillar in Washington’s goal of reaching a political settlement in Afghanistan.

The latest hiccup in the talks appears to be the issue of what a cease-fire or reduction of vio-lence might look like if the insur-gents agree on a truce.The

Taliban’s ruling council earlier announced that it would agree to a temporary lull in fighting to allow a peace agreement to be signed, according to Taliban offi-cials. They have said that a reduction in violence is on the table as a topic. But the fighting continues unabated as the insur-gents stage near-daily attacks targeting Afghan security forces and their allies, while the US and Afghan forces conduct airstrikes and anti-Taliban operations.

Washington’s peace envoy Zalmay Khalilzad has been working for more than one year to get a deal signed with the Taliban that would allow Wash-ington to withdraw an estimated 13,000 US troops from Afghan-istan. The deal would also include negotiations between the Taliban and representatives of the Afghan government, oppo-sition figures and other prom-inent Afghans. The Taliban however, refuse to negotiate with the Kabul government.

But the government side is hampered by its own unclear future, as definitive results of the Afghan presidential election in September have still to be announced, although Afghan President Ashraf Ghani claims to be the winner, according to preliminary results.

Also, the Afghan government and opposition politicians, as well as some prominent Afghan figures, have so far been unable to agree on a negotiating team.

The negotiations, according to Khalilzad, will decide the future face of a post-war Afghanistan and would tackle thorny issues such as constitu-tional reform, women’s rights, free speech and the fate of thou-sands of Taliban fighters as well as militias loyal to Kabul’s pow-erful warlords.

Pakistan releases Indian fishermen

INTERNEWS — ISLAMABAD

Pakistan has released 20 Indian fishermen who had been arrested for entering Pakistani territorial waters.

Arrested by the Maritime Security Agency, the fishermen had been incarcerated in the District Jail, Malir. After their release, they were handed over to the Edhi Foundation.

The Indian fishermen will travel to Lahore from the Can-tonment Station and will be handed over to the Indian authorities at the Wagah border.

They were arrested in November 2018 after they allegedly entered the Pakistani territorial waters for fishing.

According to District Jail Malir Superintendent Aurangzaib Kango, the released fishermen were sen-tenced to six-month impris-onment but their release was delayed because of the process of the completion of their doc-uments and nationality confirmation.

He said some 200 Indian fishermen were stil l imprisoned in Pakistan.

The released fishermen were happy over their release. They said they were treated by the Pakistani authorities with kindness. A total of 360 Indian fishermen were released by Pakistan in 2018.

Bangladesh to ban use of single-use plastic in hotels and restaurantsREUTERS — DHAKA

Bangladesh’s High Court yesterday ordered the government to ban single-use plastics in coastal areas and in hotels and restaurants in one year to combat pollution.

In 2002 the south Asian nation was among the first countries to ban the use of plastic and polythene bags in an effort to stop them collecting in waterways and on land - although the ban has had little success.

The court also ordered the government to strictly enforce

the ban on polythene under the existing law, Syeda Rizwana Hasan, chief executive of the Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers Association, told reporters.

“We must curb the use of plastics,” the lawyer said, adding it caused serious health hazards and environmental pollution.

Concerns are growing worldwide about plastic pol-lution, especially in oceans, where nearly 50 percent of single-use plastic products end up, killing marine life and entering the human food chain.

Worldwide, around 100 million tonnes of plastic are dumped into the ocean every year, according to the United Nations.

Scientists have found large amounts of micro plastic in the intestines of deep-dwelling ocean mammals such as whales.

Annually 87,000 tonnes of single-use plastics, including plastic bags, bottles, cups, plates and straws are thrown away in Bangladesh, according to a study by the Environment and S o c i a l D e v e l o p m e n t Organisation.

Ghosn ‘fled by bullet train’; Japan vows to bolster bordersAFP — TOKYO

New reports emerged yesterday on how fugitive former Nissan boss Carlos Ghosn jumped bail in Japan, as the country’s justice minister said border controls would be bolstered after the escape.

The 65-year-old executive skipped bail nearly a week ago, fleeing Japan where he was awaiting trial on multiple counts of financial misconduct that he denies.

The details of his escape remain spotty, with Japan saying it is still investigating how he slipped past strict security measures imposed as part of his bail conditions.

Citing people involved in the investigation, Nippon Television Network (NTV) said yesterday that Ghosn boarded a “shinkansen” bullet train from Tokyo’s Shinagawa station on December 29.

He got off at a station in western Osaka, arriving around 7.30pm and taking a taxi to a hotel near Kansai Airport, NTV said. He is thought to have taken a private jet the same day from the airport, bound for Istanbul, where he switched planes and continued to Beirut.

Last week, local media reported Ghosn was caught on security camera leaving his Tokyo home by himself around noon on December 29.

But the exact circumstances of his departure from Japan are still shrouded in mystery.

The justice ministry said it did not have records of Ghosn departing Japan.

Assault of top university student triggers protests in BangladeshAFP — DHAKA The indecent assault of a student at a top university in Bangladesh triggered angry protests in Bangladesh yesterday, with demonstrators urging the death penalty for convicted rapists.

The South Asian nation has seen a doubling of reported rape cases in the last year, according to activists, triggering spasms of public anger directed at the glacial response of police and the justice system.

“Rape is an unforgivable offence. In Bangladesh, the pun-ishment for rape is very slow,” said demonstrator Shahela, who like the 21-year-old victim of Sunday’s attack is a student at the prestigious Dhaka University in the capital.

“We want quick executions for the perpetrators so that others are deterred from com-mitting such crimes.”

Demonstrators linked arms and marched along key roads in Dhaka, halting traffic to

demand the perpetrator’s arrest within 24 hours.

“We are working to arrest him,” senior police official Saz-zadur Rahman said.

Police said around 1,500 students joined the protests, which remained peaceful.

Twice as many people joined the rally. The victim in Sunday’s attack was travelling to a friend’s home when she was gagged, taken to a remote area in Dhaka’s outskirts and assaulted.

Dhaka University students hold placards as they take part in a rally, in Dhaka, yesterday.

17 million Pakistani children vulnerable to worm infectionINTERNEWS — KARACHI

Health authorities have called for school-based deworming across Pakistan.

According to an official document, around 17 million children aged between five and 15 years are at a risk of catching soil-transmitted helminth infections (STH) in 40 districts across the country. These infec-tions are caused by intestinal worms.

The figure of 17 million children was arrived at by the Ministry of National Health Services after conducting the first nationwide STH survey in col-laboration with the World Health Organisation (WHO).

The survey revealed that of the 17 million children, 4.6 million are in need of annual treatment in Karachi alone.

Soil-transmitted helminth infections are caused by para-sitic worms (“helminth” means parasitic worm) like roundworm, hookworm and whipworm. Adult worms live in intestines where they produce thousands of eggs every day.

In areas that lack adequate sanitation, these eggs contam-inate the soil.

STH infections can cause problems like abdominal pain, diarrhoea, blood and protein

loss, rectal prolapse, and physical and cognitive growth retardation.

“The Directorate of Inspection and Registration of Private Institutions of the Sindh Education Department has ini-tiated a deworming programme in Karachi,” the document stated.

“The directorate has asked private schools to provide details of teaching staff and number of students before January 10 so that a comprehensive campaign is launched in the city by the end of the month,” it added.

Apart from school-based programmes, health experts have suggested launch of an awareness campaign for parents.

“The deworming pro-gramme is a good initiative, but for a long-term sustainable solution we need to make parents aware about pre-vention and remedies,” said Dr Shahid Ahmed, a Karachi-based gastroenterologist.

He also pointed out that STH infections mainly cause anaemia and it should be tackled on a long-term basis.

“The Aga Khan University identified iron-deficiency anaemia among women of reproductive age after research a couple of years ago, saying it was an important public health problem,” he added.w

Thousands of Shia protesters marched in several Pakistani cities on Sunday to show solidarity with Iran. Some clashed with police in the southern city of Karachi when they attempted to march on the US consulate.

14 TUESDAY 7 JANUARY 2020ASIA

Asian countries brace to evacuate thousands of workers in Iraq and IranAP — MANILA

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte ordered the military to prepare to deploy its aircraft and ships “at any moment’s notice” to evacuate thousands of Filipino workers in Iraq and Iran should violence break out, reflecting Asia’s growing fears for its citizens in the increas-ingly volatile Middle East.

Other Asian nations with large populations of expatriate labour may face similar deci-sions amid the rapidly escalating tensions between the United States and Iran following last week’s US airstrike that killed Iranian General Qassem Sole-imani in Baghdad.

South Korean government ministries have discussed strengthening protections for the nearly 1,900 South Koreans in Iraq and Iran. Indian foreign ministry spokesman Raveesh Kumar said India wasn’t planning to evacuate any cit-izens from the volatile region “yet.”

Duterte held an emergency meeting with his defence sec-retary and top military and police officials Sunday to discuss the evacuation plans.

“President Duterte ordered the Armed Forces of the

Philippines to be prepared to deploy military assets to repat-riate overseas Filipinos in the Middle East, particularly from Iran and Iraq, at any moment’s notice,” said Senator Christopher Lawrence Go, a close ally of the Duterte, who was at the meeting.

Duterte expressed fears yes-terday that the Philippines may have to carry out massive evac-uations if violence hits Middle Eastern countries like Saudi Arabia that host large numbers of Filipino workers.

“I’m nervous. Iran seems to be hell-bent on a retaliation, which I think will come. It’s a matter of time ... the cry for blood is there,” Duterte said in a speech. He urged Congress to hold a special session on the

impact of a possible crisis in the Middle East and set aside con-tingency funds.

Iran has vowed to retaliate and President Donald Trump warned that US forces would hit back at 52 Iranian targets if Americans come under attack.

Iraq’s Parliament has also called for the expulsion of all American troops from Iraqi soil, which could revive the Islamic State group in Iraq, making the Middle East a far more dan-gerous and unstable place.

Compounding contingency plans is the uncertainty where hostilities could possibly break out.

Military chief of staff Lt Gen Felimon Santos Jr said Phil-ippine forces have identified possible evacuation routes not only in Iraq and Iran but other hotspots, like Israel.

“There are probabilities like that and we are improving our plans just to cover everything just in case something happens,” Santos told reporters in Manila.

Other countries face similar dilemmas. Asians make up 40 percent of the world’s migrants, and Middle Eastern countries are a common destination. African migrants are also employed around the Middle East, though the possibility of

their home countries arranging evacuations is uncertain.

Gulf Arab states are home to more than 7 million Indian expatriates who help drive the region’s economy and keep its cities teeming with doctors, engineers, teachers, drivers, construction workers and other laborers. In United Arab Emirates, Indians outnumber Emiratis three to one.

South Korea’s Foreign Min-istry yesterday that government agencies had discussed prepa-rations for an escalating crisis in the Middle East but had no immediate plans for evacua-tions. The ministry said about

1,600 South Koreans are in Iraq, mostly working in construction, while another 280 who live in Iran are businesspeople, stu-dents or spouses of Iranians.

On past occasions, China has evacuated its citizens from other countries during times of conflict, political tension or natural disaster. In 2015, the navy transported nearly 500 Chinese out of war-torn Yemen. It evacuated 3,000 from Vietnam in 2014, after the deployment of a Chinese oil rig in disputed waters elicited a wave of anti-China riots.

There are more than 7,000 Filipino workers and their

dependents in Iraq and Iran, including many who work in US and other foreign facilities and commercial establishments in Baghdad, the Department of National Defence said.

The workers in Iran and Iraq are a small fraction of the hundreds of thousands of Fili-pinos who are employed in countries lining the Persian Gulf.

The Philippines is a leading source of labour worldwide, with about a tenth of its more than 100 million people working mostly as household help, construction workers, seamen and professionals.

Protesters take part in a rally in front of the US embassy, in Manila yesterday.

China’s Xi meets leader of Kiribati after it severed ties with TaiwanAP — BEIJING Chinese President Xi Jinping lauded Kiribati yesterday for “standing on the right side of history” during his first meeting with the Pacific island nation’s leader since it severed ties with Taiwan.

Kiribati switched allegiances to Communist Party-ruled China in September, leaving Taiwan with just 15 allies as Beijing has steadily siphoned them off through billions of dollars in aid since Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen took office in 2016.

Tsai is favoured to win a second term in this Saturday’s election, an outcome that would likely intensify China’s economic, diplomatic and military pressure over her refusal to accept its

insistence that Taiwan is a part of China. Since her election, China has increasingly sought to isolate Taiwan diplomatically while ramping up its threat to use force to annex the self-governing island republic.

Speaking to Xi, Kiribati Pres-ident Taneti Maamau reaffirmed his administration’s commitment to the “One China” principle and expressed his “deepest respect” for the Chinese government’s sovereignty.

According to China’s official Xinhua News Agency, Xi praised Maamau’s strategic vision and political boldness, as demon-strated by his “standing on the right side of history.”

China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and wants the island to reunite with the

mainland, from which it split during a civil war in 1949. Beijing resents Tsai for rejecting its pre-condition for dialogue that both belong to a single China. It has flown military aircraft near the island and pared back Taiwan-bound tourism to add pressure on her government.

Taiwan has responded by seeking to purchase arms from the US, including advanced fighter jets. Despite the absence of formal diplomatic ties, US law requires Washington to ensure Taiwan has the means to defend itself.

Last month, less than two weeks before this weekend’s presidential and legislative elec-tions, Taiwan’s legislature passed a law aimed at blocking political interference from China.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and Kiribati President Taneti Maamau (right) inspect a guard of honour in Beijing, yesterday.

Fire-hit Australia gets $1.4bn recovery fund as troops deployedAFP — SYDNEY

Reserve troops fanned out across fire-ravaged regions in three Australian states yesterday after a horror weekend, as the government pledged $1.4bn over two years to help recover from the devas-tating months-long crisis.

Catastrophic bushfires have turned swathes of land into smouldering, blackened hells-capes and destroyed an area about the size of the island of Ireland, according to official figures, with authorities warning the disaster still has weeks or months to run.

Prime Minister Scott Mor-rison, whose government has been criticised for its slow response to the emergency, pledged Aus$bn ($1.4bn) of tax-payer money for a national recovery fund.

“It’s a long road ahead and we will be with these commu-nities every step of the way as they rebuild,” Morrison said.

Firefighters joined by fresh teams from the US and Canada were taking advantage of rainy and cooler conditions to tackle out-of-control blazes ahead of rising temperatures forecast later this week.

In the biggest-ever call up

of reserves, military teams were deployed across eastern Aus-tralia to help emergency services assess the damage, restore power and deliver sup-plies of food, water and fuel to cut-off communities.

For the first time in Aus-tralian history the government also deployed its medical assistance team — normally sent to other nations to lend support in the aftermath of their disasters — to help evacuees.

“There is no room for com-placency, especially as we have over 130 fires burning across (New South Wales) state still,” Premier of New South Wales

state Gladys Berejiklian said on Monday.

Almost five million hectares (50,000 square kilometres) have been razed across New South Wales and more than 1.2 million hectares in Victoria since late September, officials said. That took the total amount of land burnt close to eight million hectares — around the size of the island of Ireland or South Carolina.

Twenty-four people have lost their lives so far, with over 1,800 homes damaged.

Two people are missing in New South Wales, the nation’s most populous state.

More rains expected in Indonesia as flood toll reaches 66AFP — JAKARTA

Indonesians were told yesterday to brace for more heavy down-pours after record rains triggered flooding and landslides that authorities said had killed at least 66 people in and around Jakarta.

Whole neighbourhoods in the capital — a megalopolis home to around 30 million people — were submerged last week by floodwaters that forced tens of thousands into temporary shelters.

Authorities have warned res-idents to take precautions and safeguard their possessions ahead of more pounding storms over the coming weeks.

“There is still potential for mid to heavy rainfall with lightning, thunder and strong winds” in greater Jakarta, Indo-nesia’s weather bureau said in a statement yesterday.

Last week’s deluge was the heaviest in the capital since record keeping began in the 19th century, the agency said, leading to the city’s deadliest

flood disaster in years. Some 377 millimetres (14.8 inches) of rain pounded sections of the vast city, with floodwaters reaching up to the second floor of some buildings after rivers overflowed.

At least two people in Jakarta’s west were hospi-talised yesterday after the col-lapse of a five-storey building, which Indonesia’s search and rescue agency said may have been caused by a build-up of rainwater.

Authorities said yesterday the death toll had climbed to 66 with two more reportedly missing in Lebak, west of the capital.

Flash flooding killed more than half a dozen people in Lebak, including a seven-year-old boy who was reportedly swept away by the water.

Thousands remained in cramped Jakarta shelters yes-terday as authorities pushed to reach isolated communities outside the city affected by the disaster.

2 injured in Jakarta building collapseAFP — JAKARTA

A five-storey building in Jakarta partly collapsed yesterday morning, injuring at least two people who were taken to hospital, authorities said.

TV images showed about half the building on Jakarta’s western side had caved in with concrete and other debris lying on the road.

Rescue officials were seen

carrying people out on stretchers.

The structure is a mixed residential-commercial space with a convenience store on the ground floor and small rental units on the upper floors.

“The upper floors of the building were empty, while the second floor was a warehouse and a place for employees to rest,” West Jakarta police chief Audie Latuheru told reporters.

A Royal Australian Navy MRH-90 helicopter crew member observes the fires on approach to Cann River in Gippsland, Victoria, Australia.

Australian gallery shuts to protect Matisse, Picasso works from smoke

REUTERS — SYDNEY

The quality of air in Australia’s capital was the worst of any major city in the world yesterday as smoke drifted in from fires, prompting shops and offices to tell staff to stay home and the national gallery to close its doors to protect its art.

While not in any imminent danger from fire, Canberra sits between blazes ravaging the east coast and others inland, and its skies have been darkened by smoke this week.

The National Gallery of Australia said it would not open yesterday in part to protect works being shown in its Matisse and Picasso exhi-bition, including some bor-rowed from the Musée Picasso in Paris.

“Closing our doors allows us to mitigate any risk to the public, staff and works of art on display,” the gallery said.

The exhibition includes Picasso’s portraits of his wife, Olga, and lover, Marie-Therese, both on loan from Paris, it said.

Southern-summer fires have devastated more than 8 million hectares of Australia’s bushland and killed at least 24 people and countless animals.

Acrid, yellowish smoke has blanketed towns and cities, raising concern about public health.

Canberra health author-ities warned the city’s 400,000 residents to avoid outside physical activity. Many busi-nesses and government departments, including the Department of Home Affairs, ordered non-essential staff to stay home, media reported.

President Rodrigo Duterte has expressed fears that Philippines may have to carry out massive evacuations if violence hits Middle Eastern countries that host large numbers of Filipino workers.

15TUESDAY 7 JANUARY 2020 EUROPE

Croatia’s former premier wins presidential pollsAFP — ZAGREB

Leftist former prime minister Zoran Milanovic, who has pledged to make Croatia a tolerant country turning the page on its wartime past, won Sunday’s presidential run-off vote, defeating the incumbent conservative leader.

Milanovic took 52.7 percent of the vote while Pres-ident Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic, who had tried to unite a fractured right-wing, garnered 47.3 percent, according to results based on vote count at nearly all polling stations released by the elec-toral commission.

The second-round election was held just days after Croatia took over the European Union’s helm for a six-month period, which will be dominated by Brexit and the bloc’s enlargement.

At the same time, the EU’s newest member is struggling with a mass exodus of its people, corruption and a lack-lustre economy at home.

Grabar-Kitarovic cam-paigned on a slogan promoting “real Croatia”, hinting she believes the ruling conservative HDZ party that backed her was the only one who can truly

represent the country. Milanovic, a Social Democratic, called such statements “very dangerous”, and advocated for a “normal Croatia” as a liberal democracy which promotes equality for all citizens.

“Four million of us... are looking for our place in Europe which is, despite all the problems, the nicest place to live, the most peaceful project in which Croatia must find its place and interest,” Milanovic told supporters in Zagreb after his victory.

“Let’s be united in (our) dif-ferences,” the 53-year-old said.

In the campaign Milanovic stressed that the “wars are over”, referring to Croatia’s 1990s independence war that remains an emotive issue.

Grabar-Kitarovic, 51, the country’s first female president, had tried but failed to lure back hardliners who had voted for a nationalist folk singer in the

presidential election’s first round in December.

She stressed unity, patri-otism and references to the 1990s war in her re-election bid.

Conceding defeat on Sunday evening, Grabar-Kitarovic promised a “civilised transfer” of power to Milanovic.

She stressed that “Croatia needs stability” and unity as “we are the strongest when we are together.” Analysts say that Milanovic, who dominated in the cities, also won thanks in

part to the split among the right-wingers.

The election was viewed as a key test for the ruling HDZ party of moderate Prime Min-ister Andrej Plenkovic ahead of parliamentary elections later this year and Grabar-Kitar-ovic’s loss was seen as a heavy blow.

“It will weaken the (HDZ) party” and harms Plenkovic’s reputation, political analyst Tihomir Cipek said.

The prime minister is also facing the discontent of

hardliners within the HDZ over his moderate policies.

Grabar-Kitarovic presented herself as the “woman of the people” with humble farming roots, and is well known for stunts such as singing in public which her critics deride as embarrassing.

Milanovic, premier from 2011 until 2016 whose gov-ernment failed to push through much-needed reforms, will now take office during Croatia’s EU presidency. The Adriatic country joined the EU in 2013.

Presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party of Croatia, Zoran Milanovic, speaks while being flanked by his wife Sanja Music Milanovic (left), after winning presidential election, in Zagreb.

Indonesian student jailed for life in UKAFP — LONDON

An Indonesian student in Britain was jailed for life yesterday for a catalogue of sex offences.

Manchester Crown Court in northwest England was told Reynhard Sinaga may have attacked as many as 195 men, luring them into his flat with the offer of a place to stay.

The 36-year-old from Indo-nesia’s Jambi province is thought to have used sedatives to render his victims unconscious before filming the attacks. Most knew nothing about the assaults. He was caught only when one victim woke up.

“One of your victims described you as a monster,” Judge Suzanne Goddard said. “The scale and enormity of your offending confirms this as an accurate description.” She rec-ommended he serve at least 30 years behind bars.

Sinaga was convicted of 159 offences, including 136 rapes

and eight attempted rapes, at four separate trials, according to the Crown Prosecution Service.

The first trial began in June 2018. The last ended last December. None could be reported until restrictions imposed to avoid prejudicing juries were lifted yesterday.

The CPS said Sinaga was suspected of attacking “scores” more men since he moved to Britain in 2007, calling him “the worst-known sex offender in the country’s history”.

The deputy chief crown prosecutor for northwest England, Ian Rushton, said: “His extreme sense of sexual enti-tlement almost defies belief and he would no doubt still be adding to his staggering tally had he not been caught. “Sinaga’s unthreatening demeanour duped these young men — many of whom thanked him for his kindness in offering them a place to stay — into

thinking this monster was a Good Samaritan.

“But once back at his flat he used victims as objects purely for his own gratification — then appears to have derived further twisted pleasure from re-watching his films in court and putting victims through the trauma of giving evidence.” Sinaga, a slightly built, young-looking doctorate student, had claimed his victims were acting out his sexual fantasy to play dead during intercourse.

But four trial juries rejected his defence and a character tes-timony from a local church he had attended in Manchester.

He was arrested in 2017 after the victim who woke up managed to snatch his mobile phone and took it to police.

The CPS said detectives dis-covered 3.29 terabytes of graphic material of the sexual assaults equivalent to 250 DVDs or 300,000 photos. One of the assaults lasted for eight hours.

Germany charges Syrian accused of IS linksAP — BERLIN

German prosecutors have filed terror charges against a Syrian man accused of commanding a unit of Islamic State group fighters in his homeland.

Prosecutors in Frankfurt said yesterday that the 33-year-old, whose name they didn’t release, was charged with membership in a foreign terrorist group and violating weapons laws.

They said that the suspect entered Germany in June 2015 and was initially granted refugee status, which was revoked in June last year.

He was arrested in the central city of Kassel in November 2018 and has been in custody since then.

The man was a member of IS from 2013 to 2015 and allegedly commanded a unit of at least 20 men, prose-cutors said in a statement.

He also is alleged to have been the commander of one or two city districts in Raqqa for at least part of the time.

Prosecutors said the man is also accused of capturing two men and holding them as hostages before handing them over to a high-ranking IS commander.

It is not known what hap-pened to the men.

German farmers protestTractors are parked on a field as German farmers stage demonstration outside “Kloster Seeon” where a Christian Social Union (CSU) party meeting was held in Seeon, Germany, yesterday.

Driver in deadly Alpine crash ‘suicidal’: MediaAFP — ROME

A drunk driver who smashed into a group of German tourists, leaving six people dead and 11 injured in an Italian Alpine village has been admitted for psychiatric care, Italian media reported yesterday.

Prosecutors said the 27-year-old man was suicidal after realising what he had done fol-lowing Sunday’s crash in the northern Italian village of Lutago, the daily Corriere della Sera newspaper reported.

The accident happened just after the group of German tourists had got off a shuttle bus taking them back to their hotel in the early hours of Sunday morning.

Witnesses said the car was travelling so fast that the force of the impact threw some of the victims several yards into the air.

The prosecutor’s office said the driver had between 1.9 and 2.0 grammes of alcohol per litre in his blood — about four times the legal maximum. Police said the driver, a local man who lived in Chiennes, about 30 kilometres away, had been charged with manslaughter.

The dead were three men and three women, emergency services said. Two of the most seri-

ously injured people were being treated at Inns-bruck hospital over the border in Austria.

Candles and notes are pictured at the site of the accident in South Tyrol, Italy, yesterday.

Knifeman attack:German policedoubt terror linkAFP — BERLIN

German police yesterday said they had found no indication yet that a knife-wielding Turkish man shot dead after trying to attack officers had a terrorist motive, adding that he had psychological problems.

The 37-year-old struck a parked patrol car with a bat in the city of Gelsenkirchen on Sunday and threatened two officers standing by the vehicle with a knife, local police said in a statement.

One of the officers fired his gun four times, killing the assailant.

While police so far cannot definitively rule out an extremist link, a search of the man’s home has “not con-firmed initial suspicions of a terrorist motive”.

Investigators also have evidence that the attacker suf-fered from “a psychological illness” and was known to police for previous acts of vio-lence including against law enforcement officials.

The inquiry is ongoing, the statement added.

Germany remains on alert following a series of terror attacks, the deadliest of which was a truck rampage at a Berlin Christmas market in 2016 that killed 12 people.

Dozens of suspects have been arrested or charged over alleged terror plots in recent years.

Race starts to replace UK Labour Party leader Jeremy CorbynAFP — LONDON

Britain’s Labour Party yesterday began the formal contest to replace its leader, with centrists set to battle left-wingers in a fight for its ideological soul.

Veteran socialist Jeremy Corbyn announced he would step down following last month’s crushing defeat to Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservatives.

Labour, a traditionally centre-left party, had moved further left under Corbyn, and haemorrhaged support across its former heartlands to hand

Johnson a landslide victory.The party’s National Exec-

utive Committee (NEC) met to thrash out a timetable and pro-cedures for the leadership contest — its fourth since Labour last held power in 2010.

Nominations open today and close in a week. Voting will take place from February 21 to April 2, with the winner announced two days later.

An unofficial campaign has been under way for weeks, with several so-called moderate can-didates already declared.

They include the early favourite Keir Starmer, the

party’s Brexit spokesman; foreign affairs spokeswoman Emily Thornberry; shadow finance minister Clive Lewis; and backbenchers Lisa Nandy and Jess Phillips.

They are likely to face off in a highly-charged contest against Corbyn loyalists Rebecca Long Bailey, and party chairman Ian Lavery, a former trade union leader.

Both have signalled their intent to stand.

“They could hardly fail to be an improvement on Corbyn,” said historian Kenneth O Morgan, who has written

several books on Labour and its leaders. “The party will have to do something quite funda-mental and the first important thing is to get a decent leader,” he added. Under current rules, contenders need the backing of 21 Labour MPs as well as at least five percent of local constit-uency parties or three affiliated bodies, such as trade unions.

A separate election for deputy leader is being held at the same time.

The battle to succeed Corbyn is seen as a critical moment for the party to determine whether it steers

towards a more centrist course or sticks with his socialist agenda.

Corbyn unexpectedly won a longshot leadership bid in 2015 amid a flood of new members, and set about remaking Labour with an agenda of nationalisations and higher taxes for big earners.

He also instituted internal reforms widely seen as trying to cement left-wingers’ control of the party, installing loyalists on the ruling NEC.

But his hardline policies have twice failed to win a majority at the ballot box.

‘Win a Picasso’ charity draw postponed until March AFP — PARIS

A charity raffle for a Picasso painting worth more than ¤1m ($1.1m) has been postponed until March, the organisers said yesterday.

The winner of the still-life by the Spanish master was meant to be drawn in Paris yes-terday, but the organisers said not enough ¤100 tickets had so far been sold.

“The goal is to raise the maximum amount of money possible” to finance clean water projects for the charity CARE in Africa, said the organisers in a statement.

“The postponement has been approved by the Paris police and will now take place before the end of March,” they added.

Anyone buying a ticket in the international draw had a

one-in-200,000 chance of winning the canvass of a stylised glass and a newspaper Picasso created in 1921.

The painting comes from the billionaire Lebanese-born collector David Nahmad, who has one of the biggest private collections of Picassos in the world. He will get ¤1m from the draw with the rest going to the charity.

Picasso Museum director Laurent Le Bon said the painting comes from a period when Picasso “synthesised the realist and cubist currents” of his work.

It is a painting “that makes people think and dream”, he said. A 25-year-old Pittsburgh fire safety official, Jeffrey Gonano, won Picasso’s “Man with Opera Hat” the last time a similar draw was organised six years ago.

Milanovic took 52.7% votes while the incumbent President, Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic, polled 47.3% votes.

16 TUESDAY 7 JANUARY 2020EUROPE

France enters crucial week of talks with unions on pensionsAP — PARIS

French President Emmanuel Macron is preparing to launch a crucial week of negotiations with labour unions amid nationwide protests and transport strikes against the government’s plans to overhaul the pension system.

French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire told France Inter radio that “a compromise has never been so close,” as talks between the prime min-ister and worker unions are to resume Tuesday.

Macron held a Cabinet meeting yesterday ahead of the talks.

The government is “not inflexible,” Le Maire said, sug-gesting there is room for nego-tiation including on the financing of the pension system.

Several unions called for nationwide protests on Thursday and Saturday. The hard-left union CGT union also called for workers to disrupt the

country’s oil depots and refin-eries later this week.

The national rail company, SNCF, said train traffic was

improving yesterday across the country, with 8 out of 10 high-

speed trains running.Yet the Paris metro was still

severely disrupted, with most of lines open only for a limited amount of time and several sta-tions closed.

In his televised New Year’s address, Macron vowed to carry out the overhaul of the pension system but called on his gov-ernment to find a “quick com-promise” with unions.

Macron wants to unify France’s 42 different pension schemes, some of which grant early retirement, into a single one.

Plans include raising the eli-gibility age for full pensions from 62 to 64, the most criti-cized measure.

Macron says the new system will be fairer and financially sustainable.

Unions fear it will make people work longer for lower pensions.

Recent polls show a majority of French people still support the protest movement.

Commuters wait to take a train at Gare de Lyon train station in Paris, yesterday, as a strike by all unions of the Paris transport network (RATP) and French SNCF workers entered its 33rd consecutive day.

Merkel, Putin to holdtalks on Mideastcrisis on Saturday AP — BERLIN

German Chancellor Angela Merkel will travel to Moscow on Saturday to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin amid growing tensions in the Middle East and elsewhere, officials said yesterday.

Merkel and Putin will discuss “current international questions,” said Steffen Seibert, the chancellor’s spokesman.

Those will include Syria, Libya, Iran, Iraq, Ukraine and bilateral ties.

“Russia is an important player on the world stage and as a permanent member of the (UN) Security Council it’s also indispensable when it comes to solving political conflicts,” Seibert said. Germany is cur-rently a non-permanent member of the Security Council.

Germany and Russia are among the world powers that have been trying to salvage the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran after the US withdrew from the agreement unilaterally in 2018.

Merkel has already spoken with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday about the situation in the Middle East, Seibert said.

Germany has offered to mediate between all parties fol-lowing the killing of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani in a US air strike in Iraq last week.

Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, who will accompany Merkel to Moscow, spent “all weekend on the phone” with his European and American coun-terparts, his spokesman Rainer Breul told reporters.

He added that talks with the Iranian foreign minister were

planned “soon.” Germany may struggle to portray itself as an honest broker between Wash-ington and Tehran, however.

Iran summoned Germany’s charge d’affaires in Tehran to the foreign ministry on Sunday to express annoyance over comments by German officials

that suggested Berlin con-sidered Soleimani’s killing to be justified.

Asked to elaborate about Germany’s stance, Merkel’s spokesman said that the killing of Soleimani “was preceded by Iranian actions,” citing attacks on tankers in the Strait of

Hormuz and the US Embassy in Baghdad. “We have always stressed, and perhaps this is an opportunity to do so once more, that we see these regional activ-ities by (Iran) in particular in a very critical way and that they play a negative role in this region,” Seibert said.

An August 18, 2018 file picture shows German Chancellor Angela Merkel (left) and Russian President Vladimir Putin chatting after a meeting at Schloss Meseberg Palace in Meseberg, Germany.

Armenian man held for ‘false information’ over Iran general

AFP — YEREVAN

An Armenian man has been arrested for releasing “false information” on Facebook claiming the country’s prime minister had congratulated Donald Trump for killing Iran’s top general, the security service said yesterday.

“On January 2, the Facebook page ‘Diana Aruty-unyan’ published information according to which Prime Min-ister Nikol Pashinyan congrat-ulated the United States for its actions against a senior Iranian military official,” Armenia’s SNB security service said in a statement.

This “false information” was picked up by Azerbaijani and Iranian media, causing “major damage to the national security interests of Armenia”, it said.

Pashinyan, who came to power after a 2018 revolution, himself denied on his Facebook page on Sunday that he had congratulated Trump.

He also urged the United States and Iran to exercise restraint while the foreign minister called his Iranian counterpart to express condo-l e n c e s o v e r t h e assassination.

General Qassem Sole-imani, Iran’s top military com-mander, died in a US drone attack at Baghdad airport on Friday, raising tensions in the Middle East.

“Diana Arutyunyan” is the pseudonym for a man whose identity has not been revealed.

In a video released with the SNB statement, the man explained that he had created the Facebook page in 2018 to “write political publications” and admitted being the author of the article in question.

“I did it because I have political opinions and I believe that it is unjust to keep Robert Kocharyan in prison,” he said in the video, referring to the former president who is being held for a “breach of constitu-tional order”. Landlocked Armenia has strained relations with neighbours Azerbaijan and Turkey. Maintaining strong ties with Iran is therefore crucial for Yerevan.

UK protesters rally against teen’s conviction in CyprusAFP — LONDON

Dozens of people demonstrated in London yesterday to call on the government to help a young British woman convicted in Cyprus of fabricating assault charges against Israeli tourists.

The 19-year-old was con-victed by a court in Cyprus in late December of lying about being attacked by 12 young Israeli tourists at a hotel in the resort town of Ayia Napa in July.

She is due to be sentenced today, amid concern about whether she was forced to retract her allegations under police pressure and the fairness of her trial.

“She is being punished for something awful that happened to her,” said Lucy Nevitt, rally organiser and co-founder of The Gemini Project, which sup-ports victims of sexual assault.

“We have seen this happen too often, it happened to other

people in Cyprus,” she said. “This is why we are calling on the government to intervene.”

The convicted teenager, whose identity has not been released, says she was forced to withdraw her complaint under pressure from the Cypriot police.

The accused Israelis were then released while she was charged and later convicted of “public mischief”.

Some 60 protesters, most of them women, gathered in front of the Cyprus High Commission before marching towards Downing Street and Parliament Square.

They held signs reading “We believe her” and “Boycott Cyprus”. “I want to send a message to the Cyprus author-ities that I would like them to carry out a proper investigation, to apologise to the young lady for not allowing her access to her full rights,” said accountant

Kirsty Oliver, 49. “It’s a really tragic case of violation of human rights,” added Ella Benami, a filmmaker. The teenager faces up to a year in

prison and a fine of ¤1,700 ($1,900). She urged Prime Min-ister Boris Johnson on Friday to intervene. “Time is running out for me. Please, please help,” she

said, according to The Sun. Britain’s Foreign Office said

last week it was “seriously con-cerned” about whether she had received a fair trial.

Three arrested over Bulgarian fan’s death in GreeceAP — THESSALONIKI, GREECE

Three people were arrested on suspicion of involvement in the killing of a Bulgarian football fan during an attack by PAOK Thessaloniki supporters, Greek police said yesterday.

A police statement said that two Greek men, one 26-year-old and the other 24-year-old, were taken into custody late on Sunday and were accused of participation in the attack a few hours earlier.

A 26-year-old Greek woman was also arrested on suspicion of having run over the fallen victim with her car and having abandoned the scene, an incident police believe was not linked with the earlier attack.

It was still unclear if the 28-year-old Botev Plovdiv fan was already dead when he was run over by the car.

Another two Bulgarian men were injured in the attack by more than a dozen PAOK fans.

Botev Plovdiv supporters are linked with Thessaloniki-based team Aris — PAOK’s biggest rival in the city.

On Saturday, the three had attended the Aris-PAOK derby in which Aris beat league-leading PAOK 4-2.

Police said that the three Bulgarians were among a group of people suddenly attacked by the PAOK fans. The others were able to run away. Authorities are investi-gating the incident.

France to strip special pension from writer being probed for assault AFP — PARIS

France’s culture minister said yesterday that a writer accused of assaulting children should be stripped of a special state pension.

Award-winning essayist Gabriel Matzneff is being inves-tigated by French police after the publication of a book detailing his relationship with a girl of 14 over three decades ago.

Matzneff, 83, won the pres-tigious Renaudot prize in 2013.

Culture minister Franck Riester said Matzneff should be deprived of cash from a

hardship fund from the National Books Centre (CNL) for elderly writers in financial straits.

In a statement, he said the author should not be granted the annual allowance if he applies for it again.

Matzneff is reported to have received around ¤8,000 ($8,900) from the fund last year, and up to ¤160,000 since 2002, according to a French Sunday newspaper, Journal du Dimanche.

The case has again shone a light on what many see as an overly permissive attitude towards sexual harassment and assaults in France.

The French film estab-lishment has been rocked by assault accusations against directors Roman Polanski and Luc Besson, while star Adele Haenel said she was harassed by the director of her first film when she was 12.

All three men deny the claims. The head of the CNL, Vincent Monade, said it had resisted Matzneff being awarded the allowance when he first applied for it, but bowed to the request under pressure from politicians and other famous authors who lobbied for him.

He said they had

recommended to the minister that the grant now be with-drawn. Police opened a formal investigation into Matzneff last week after leading publisher Vanessa Springora described her tortured relationship with writer in a book called “Consent”.

Prosecutors said their inquiry would focus on “rapes committed against a minor” aged under 15.

Matzneff has denied any wrongdoing. He claimed her book tried to portray him as “a pervert, a manipulator and a predator”.

Ahead of the book’s

publication, Riester turned on Matzneff, saying “having a lit-erary aura is not a guarantee of impunity”.

MP Aurore Berge, from President Emmanuel Macron’s ruling LREM party, said French society had to work to do, having looked the other way for years on sex crimes.

“Raping a child of 12 is still a crime whether it was com-mitted in 1968 or 2019,” she said in an article published at the weekend. “To deny that children in the 1970s were victims is to try to wipe away the crimes and the trauma that they caused,” she added.

Germany and Russia are among the powers that have been trying to salvage the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran after the US withdrew from the agreement.

Demonstrators hold placards in support of a British teenager convicted of lying about being assaulted by Israeli tourists in Cyprus, as they protest in London, yesterday.

17TUESDAY 7 JANUARY 2020 AMERICAS

Call to declassify reason for US attack on SoleimaniAP — WASHINGTON

President Donald Trump insists that Iranian cultural sites are fair game for the US military, dismissing concerns within his own administration that doing so could constitute a war crime under international law. He also warned Iraq that he would levy punishing sanctions if it expelled American troops in retaliation for a US airstrike in Baghdad that killed a top Iranian official.

But Congress is pushing back, in what’s expected to be a pivotal week as lawmakers return from a holiday recess. Yesterday, two top Senate Dem-ocrats called on Trump to imme-diately declassify the adminis-tration’s reasoning for the strike on the Iranian official, Gen Qassem Soleimani, saying there is “no legitimate justification” for keeping the information from the public.

In a letter to House Demo-crats, Speaker Nancy Pelosi called the airstrike “provocative and disproportionate” and said it had “endangered our service-members, diplomats and others by risking a serious escalation of tensions with Iran.” A similar resolution was introduced in the Senate.

Congress, which has the sole power to declare war, has com-plained that Trump did not provide advance notice of his airstrike on Soleimani in Baghdad. Trump did meet the

48-hour deadline required by the War Powers Act to notify Congress after the deadly drone strike, though the document was classified and no public version was released.

In their letter to Trump, Senate Minority Leader Chuck and the Senate Foreign Relation Committee’s Sen Robert Menendez said the White House’s classified notification sent to Congress late Saturday under the War Powers Act was insufficient and inappropriate.

“It is critical that national security matters of such import be shared with the American people in a timely manner, they wrote. “An entirely classified notification is simply not appro-priate in a democratic society.” They asked that the notification be declassified “in full.”

White House counselor Kel-lyanne Conway, speaking yes-terday on “Fox & Friends,” dis-missed the letter as a “partisan action.”

Pelosi said the notification “raises more questions than it answers. This document

prompts serious and urgent questions about the timing, manner and justification of the Administration’s decision to engage in hostilities against Iran.”

Iran has vowed to retaliate for Trump’s targeted killing of Soleimani, the head of Iran’s elite Quds force. It has sparked outrage in the Middle East, including in Iraq.

Iraq’s parliament voted on Sunday in favour of a non-binding resolution calling for the expulsion of the American forces.

Trump first raised the prospect of targeting Iranian cultural sites on Saturday in a tweet. Speaking with reporters Sunday as he flew back to Washington from his holiday in Florida, he refused to back down, despite international prohibitions.

“They’re allowed to kill our people. They’re allowed to torture and maim our people. They’re allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And we’re not allowed to touch their cultural sites? It doesn’t work that way,” Trump said.

On Iraq, Trump said the US wouldn’t leave Iraq without being paid for its military invest-ments there over the years — then said if the troops do have to withdraw, he would hit Baghdad with economic penalties.

Julian Castro endorses Warren for PresidentREUTERS — WASHINGTON

Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren won the backing of former rival Julian Castro, putting the only Latino candidate in a once historically diverse 2020 pres-idential field in her corner just weeks ahead of the first nomi-nating contest.

Castro last week became the latest Democratic candidate to end a White House bid. There are now 14 candidates vying to take on President Donald Trump in November 2020.

Castro’s endorsement of Warren comes as the US senator from Massachusetts is entering the final critical weeks before the nominating contests kick off on February 3 in Iowa.

He could become a high-profile campaigner on Warren’s behalf as the contest moves on to states such as Nevada, the first with a sizable bloc of Hispanic voters.

“Elizabeth and I share a vision of America where eve-ryone counts. An America where people — not the wealthy or well-connected — are put first. I’m proud to join her in the fight for big, structural change,” Castro wrote on Twitter.

Castro, 45, will make his debut with Warren at an event in Brooklyn, New York today.

When Castro left the 2020 race, the former mayor of San Antonio, Texas, and former Housing Department chief during the Obama adminis-tration said in a video message

to supporters that he had “determined that it simply isn’t our time.”

Though Warren, 70, remains in the top tier of con-tenders, she trails former vice-president Joe Biden and fellow US Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont in national opinion polls. Her fundraising also dipped in the final quarter of 2019, when she brought in mil-lions less than Sanders and Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana.

In a video, Castro posted along with his endorsement announcement, he and Warren discuss the 2020 race over tea in her kitchen. “You did so many things in this campaign, and it continues to matter,” Warren told him.

Democratic US presidential candidate Senator Elizabeth Warren during a town hall event in Davenport, Iowa, yesterday.

Lawmakers to vote on curbing Trump war powersAFP — WASHINGTON

US lawmakers will vote in coming days on a war powers resolution aimed at putting a check on President Donald Trump’s military actions after he ordered the killing of top Iranian general, a senior Democrat said.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the plan to introduce and vote on the res-olution “to limit the president’s military actions regarding Iran,” in a letter to colleagues.

The measure, she explained, “reasserts Congress’s long-established oversight respon-sibilities by mandating that if

no further congressional action is taken, the administration’s military hostilities with regard to Iran cease within 30 days.”

Trump last week ordered the shock killing of Qasem Sole-imani, the head of Iran’s elite Quds Force and one of the country’s most influential leaders, who was slain Friday in a US drone strike in Baghdad.

Pelosi said the move put US troops and civilians in danger by “risking a serious escalation of tensions with Iran.”

Democrats have com-plained that Trump took the action without first consulting with the so-called Gang of Eight top lawmakers in Congress,

including Pelosi, and have insisted that only Congress can declare war.

“As members of Congress, our first responsibility is to keep the American people safe,” Pelosi said in her letter.

“For this reason, we are concerned that the adminis-tration took this action without the consultation of Congress and without respect for Con-gress’s war powers granted to it by the Constitution.”

Pelosi said the resolution will be introduced by Elissa Slotkin, a member of Congress from Michigan and a former CIA analyst who served three tours in Iraq.

Homeland Security to share citizenship data with CensusAP — ORLANDO

The Department of Homeland Security is agreeing to share citizenship information with the US Census Bureau as part of President Donald Trump’s order to collect data on who is a citizen following the Supreme Court’s rejection of a citi-zenship question on the 2020 Census form.

Trump’s order is being challenged in federal court, but meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security two weeks ago announced the agreement in a report. It said the agency would share administrative records to help the Census Bureau determine the number of citizens and non-citizens in the US, as well as the number of illegal immigrants.

Information that will be shared includes personally-identifiable data, the Homeland Security document said. Federal law prohibits the Census Bureau from releasing personally identifiable data, and the bureau says in its fact-sheet on privacy, “Your answers can only be used to produce statistics - they cannot be used against you in any way.”

Trump ordered the Census Bureau to collect citizenship information through adminis-trative records from federal agencies and the 50 states after the Supreme Court ruled against his administration last summer by deciding that a cit-izenship question wouldn’t be allowed on this spring’s 2020 Census questionnaire.

The administration had said

the question was being added to aid in enforcement of the Voting Rights Act, which pro-tects minority voters’ access to the ballot box. But Chief Justice John Roberts joined the court’s four more liberal members in saying the administration’s current justification for the question “seems to have been contrived.”

Opponents of the citi-zenship question had argued it would scare off immigrants, Hispanics and others from par-ticipating in the once-a-decade head count. The 2020 Census will help determine how many congressional seats each state gets as well as the distribution of $1.5 trillion in federal funds.

As part of the order, the US Census Bureau has asked state drivers’ license bureaus for records, but so far only Nebraska has agreed to cooperate.

Gathering the citizenship data would give the states the option to design state and leg-islative districts using voter-age citizen numbers instead of the total population, Trump said in the order. Opponents fear that would make legislative districts more Republican-leaning and less diverse.

“Whether that approach is permissible will be resolved when a state actually proposes a districting plan based on the voter-eligible population,” Trump’s order said.

“But because eligibility to vote depends in part on citi-zenship, states could more effectively exercise this option with a more accurate and com-plete count of the citizen population.”

The airstrike had “endangered our service-members, diplomats and others by risking a serious escalation of tensions with Iran: Nancy Pelosi

John Bolton ready to testify in impeachment trialAFP — WASHINGTON

Former White House national security advisor John Bolton (pictured) said yesterday that he is willing to testify if subpoenaed in the Senate impeachment trial of President Donald Trump.

Democrats believe Bolton has direct knowledge sup-porting charges of abuse of power and obstruction by the president. But so far Republican Senate chief Mitch McConnell has indicated he does not want to call witnesses in the trial, expected this month.

“Based on careful consider-ation and study,” Bolton said in a statement, “I have concluded that, if the Senate issues a

subpoena for my testimony, I am prepared to testify.”

Bolton is one of four Trump administration officials that Democrats want to testify in the trial, expected this month.

The House of Representa-tives has accused Trump of

using military aid and other incentives as leverage to get Ukraine to investigate his political rivals, notably possible 2020 White House opponent Joe Biden.

The White House claimed executive privilege to prevent the four — Bolton, White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, Trump assistant Robert Blair, and budget official Michael Duffey — from testifying to the House impeachment investigation.

If forced to testify in the Senate trial, Republicans fear they could provide deeply dam-aging evidence against Trump, raising the risk that he will be convicted and removed from office.

Bolton’s willingness aside,

his subpoena and testimony is not a given.

Republicans hold a 53-47 majority in the Senate and most are expected to support Trump in the trial.

Issuing a subpoena would require majority support from the senators, meaning several Republicans would have to cross over and join Democrats to vote in favour.

Bolton also noted that the constitutional issue of Trump’s ability to block his testimony was not resolved in court before the House voted to impeach Trump on December 18.

Even without a court ruling on the issue, suggested Bolton, he would be ready to come forward.

Investigator says teen admits to shooting sheriffAP — HAYNEVILLE

A teenager admitted to fatally shooting an Alabama sheriff who was attempting to disperse loiterers at a gas station, a state investigator testified yesterday.

Lt. Shawn Loughridge of the State Bureau of Investi-gation testified in a prelim-inary hearing that 18-year-old William Chase Johnson admitted after being arrested that he shot Lowndes County Sheriff John Williams Sr.

Johnson is charged with capital murder in the sheriff’s death.

Store security video showed the sheriff arriving at a gas station and attempting to disperse a noisy crowd that was blocking gas pumps, the investigator said. The sheriff was shot after approaching Johnson’s black Silverado truck, Loughridge testified.

“You see the sheriff fall to the ground,”he testified.

The sheriff was shot once in face, with the bullet entering between his lip and chin, the investigator said.

Williams was shot and killed on November 23 in the county where he served as sheriff.

During the brief hearing, defense lawyers appeared to raise the possibility that Johnson did not know Wil-liams was sheriff.

District Judge Adrian Johnson ruled there was enough evidence to send the case to grand jury. He denied a defence request for bond.

Peru traffic accident leaves 14 people dead, 40 injuredAFP — LIMA

At least 14 people were killed and 40 others injured after a bus crashed into parked cars in the south of Peru, police said yesterday.

The accident happened early yesterday on the main coastal highway used by many tour bus companies and linking the capital Lima with Arequipa in the south.

Police and firefighters took the injured to hospitals in Arequipa and Nazca, two cities that attract large numbers of tourists.

“We’re working at the accident site” in the Arequipa region, said traffic police colonel Erlyn Silva.

“It’s possible it was provoked by speeding.” The bus had left Lima and was heading to Arequipa, a journey

of around 16 hours. Deadly traffic accidents are frequent in Peru, particularly

during the rainy season at this time of year, but also due to poor road surfaces, insufficient signage and a lack of control by authorities.

In 2019, at least 1,123 people died in traffic accidents in Peru, the interior ministry said.

Members of Progressive Democrats of America holding a rally to urge action to “impeach” US President Trump outside the Hart Senate office building, in Washington, DC, yesterday.

18 TUESDAY 7 JANUARY 2020AMERICAS

Guaido, rival both claim to be Parliament SpeakerAFP — CARACAS

Opposition leader Juan Guaido and a rival lawmaker, Luis Parra, both claimed to be Vene-zuela’s parliament speaker yesterday following two separate votes and accusations of a “parliamentary coup.”

Guaido was re-elected speaker by opposition law-makers in a session held at a newspaper office after police blocked him from entering the National Assembly legislature.

In his absence, corruption-tainted Parra proclaimed himself speaker after claiming to have been elected with 81 votes in the 167-member chamber.

Guaido, who a year ago declared himself acting pres-ident in a direct challenge to the authority of socialist leader Nicolas Maduro, received the votes of around 100 lawmakers, including several forced last year into exile or to take shelter in foreign diplomatic missions due to a regime crackdown.

The 36-year-old Guaido vowed to “enforce” the consti-tution in his dual role as par-liament speaker and “acting president.”

But in a televised address, President Maduro gave his backing to Parra as the new speaker, adding that “Guaido was kicked out of the National Assembly by the votes of his own opposition.”

Venezuela’s opposition earlier denounced Parra’s move as a “parliamentary coup.”

“Without votes, nor a quorum PSUV (socialist party) deputies are trying to swear in a false leadership,” said the

National Assembly, the only government branch in oppo-sition hands, on its Twitter account.

Guaido and around a dozen lawmakers had been prevented from entering the assembly by police claiming to be carrying out a security operation, but deputies from Maduro’s party and opposition ones that have rejected Guaido were allowed in.

Guaido, wearing a blue suit, attempted to climb over the railing around the National Assembly premises to gain entry to its compound, only to be pushed back by police with riot shields.

Images of Parra declaring

himself head of the chamber by megaphone were shown on state television channel VTV.

After spending four hours outside parliament, Guaido and allied lawmakers went to the offices of El Nacional news-paper where they held their own session.

“This is unprecedented!” Guaido told a member of the security forces with whom he had a heated exchange. “What operation? Who ordered it?”

“Those who help to prevent the legitimate installation of the Venezuelan parliament are con-verting themselves into accom-plices of the dictatorship,” Guaido wrote on Twitter.

Guaido has led the National

Assembly for the last year and used that role to declare himself acting president on January 23, 2019 after parliament had branded Maduro a “usurper.”

Colombia’s foreign office described Parra’s election as “fraudulent, without trans-parency or guarantees” and said it wouldn’t recognise it.

US senator for Florida Marco Rubio called it a “sham,” while US State Department official Michael Kozak described

it as “a farce.”Ahead of Parra’s self-proc-

lamation, opposition deputy Jose Brito spoke to journalists, addressing Guaido: “You could have been the future — now you are and will be the past.”

Both Parra and Brito fell out with Guaido last year after being accused of corruption related to the over-pricing of food imported for the Maduro regime.

In comments posted on the National Assembly Twitter account, Guaido said several lawmakers were “brutally beaten” by police.

Parra told reporters 140 lawmakers were present in the session and that his candidacy was approved with 81 votes.

But regime deputy, Pedro Carreno, said that the vote took place with 150 deputies present and that Parra received the simple majority of 84 needed to win.

The National Assembly has 167 seats, 112 of which are in opposition hands.

On Twitter, the National Assembly descried Parra’s claims as “a violation of the constitution.”

Brazil’s Foreign Minister Ernesto Araujo said his country “does not recognise” Parra’s claims.

Guaido sprang to promi-nence a year ago when he declared himself acting pres-ident — a move quickly sup-ported by more than 50 countries.

The National Assembly has been effectively sidelined since 2017, when the Supreme Court, made up of Maduro loyalists, declared it in contempt. The court has since annulled its every decision.

Maduro has said he expects to “regain the National Assembly” in elections later this year.

Venezuela’s opposition lawmaker Luis Parra (centre) with the new first and second vice-president of the National Assembly, Franklyn Duarte (right) and Jose Gregorio Goyo Noriega, respectively, after swearing in as Parliament Speaker, at the National Assembly in Caracas, yesterday. LEFT: Venezuelan opposition leader and self-proclaimed acting President Juan Guaido (centre) delivers a speech after being re-elected Venezuela’s Parliament Speaker during a parliamentary session with allied lawmakers at the offices of the El Nacional newspaper, yesterday

5.8 magnitude quake rocks Puerto RicoAP — SAN JUAN

A 5.8-magnitude quake hit Puerto Rico before dawn yesterday, unleashing small landslides, causing power outages and severely cracking some homes. It was one of the strongest quakes yet to hit the US territory that has been shaking for the past week.

There were no immediate reports of casualties.

The quake struck at 6:32am (1032 GMT) just south of the island at a relatively shallow depth of 10km, according to the US Geological Service. There was no tsunami threat, officials said.

Power outages were reported in some parts of Puerto Rico following the quake, Angel Vazquez, emer-gency management director for the southern coastal city of Ponce, said.

“This is one of the strongest quakes to date since it started shaking on December 28,” he added. “It lasted a long time.”

Residents in southern coastal towns began posting pictures of partially collapsed homes and large boulders blocking roads as officials urged people to remain calm.

The flurry of quakes in Puerto Rico’s southern region began the night of December

28, with quakes ranging in magnitude from 4.7 to 5.1. Pre-vious quakes of lesser magni-tudes in recent days have cracked homes and led to goods falling off supermarket shelves.

Victor Huerfano, director of Puerto Rico’s Seismic Network, said that shallow quakes were occurring along three faults in Puerto Rico’s southwest region: Lajas Valley, Montalva Point and the Guayanilla Canyon. He said the quakes overall come as the North American plate and the Caribbean plate squeezes Puerto Rico, and that it was unclear when they would stop or if bigger quakes would occur.

A house is seen collapsed on its foundation after an earthquake in Guanica, Puerto Rico, yesterday.

President Maduro gave his backing to Luis Parra as the new Speaker, adding that “Guaido was kicked out of the National Assembly by the votes of his own opposition”.

Amazon's Fire TV crosses 40 million users globallyREUTERS — SEATTLE

Amazon.com Inc said yesterday that its streaming device, Fire TV, has surpassed 40 million active users globally, maintaining its lead over rival Roku Inc.

Roku in November said it had 32.3 million active accounts.

Streaming devices such as Apple TV, Chromecast and Fire TV that bundle together content from different streaming platforms have gained popularity as more people shift away from cable TV.

Amazon in 2014 launched its Fire TV stick, which features content from Netflix Inc and Hulu among others and casts video directly to television.

The newly disclosed figure is up 8% from 37 million users the device recorded in September.

US family attacked on stretch of Mexican highwayAP — CIUDAD VICTORIA

Mexican authorities continued searching for the gunmen responsible for an attack on a sparsely traveled stretch of highway near the Texas border that left a 13-year-old US citizen dead and four relatives wounded.

On Saturday night, a family traveling in two vehicles was attacked on a two-lane highway paralleling the US-Mexico border in the township of

Ciudad Mier.One SUV of attackers passed

the family and then cut them off causing them to collide and come to a halt. Gunmen then opened fire, according to a statement from the state of Tamaulipas security coordi-nating group. All of the wounded came from one of the family’s vehicles, both of which had Oklahoma license plates. The gunmen escaped in another vehicle.

A 10-year-old relative was

among those wounded. On Sunday, authorities listed the wounded as in stable condition.

The family was returning to the US after spending the holidays in the central Mexico state of San Luis Potosi. What remained unclear was why the family was on such a dan-gerous stretch of highway after dark.

The area where the attack occurred is contested by drug cartels.

For years Ciudad Mier was the uppermost edge of the Gulf cartel’s control and Nueva Ciudad Guerrero was the limit for the Nuevo Laredo-based Zetas’. Between them sit unin-habited scrub land.

In 2010, after the Zetas split from the Gulf cartel and estab-lished themselves as an organized criminal power through prominent displays of graphic violence, Mier became a battleground for the two cartels and most of its residents

abandoned the quaint colonial town.

More recently, however, the Zetas’ splinter group known as the Northeast cartel has been as far downriver as Mier, Miguel Aleman and Camargo, well into what was traditionally the Gulf cartel’s territory.

Photographs from Saturday night’s crime scene showed the Northeast cartel’s Spanish ini-tials — “CDN” — scrawled on the back window of one of the vehicles.

Milwaukee acid attack suspect fit for trial: DoctorAP — MILWAUKEE

A 61-year-old Wisconsin man accused of throwing acid in a Latino man’s face during a racist attack is competent to stand trial, according to a doctor’s report released to court yesterday.

Clifton Blackwell, who is white, is charged with first-degree reckless injury in a case that’s being prosecuted as a hate crime. He’s accused in the attack on Mahud Villalaz in Milwaukee in November after accusing him of being in the country illegally and invading the US. Villalaz suffered second-degree burns.

Blackwell said he wouldn’t contest the findings during a brief court appearance in Mil-waukee County District Court yesterday. Blackwell had pre-viously said he didn’t think an evaluation was needed.

If he’s convicted on the reckless injury charge, Blackwell could face a sen-tence of up to 25 years in prison.

US implements plan to send Mexican asylum seekers to GuatemalaREUTERS — NEW YORK

Mexicans seeking asylum in the United States could be sent to Guatemala under a bilateral agreement signed by the Central American nation last year, according to documents sent to US asylum officers in recent days.

In a January 4 e-mail, field office staff at the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) were told Mexican nationals will be included in the populations “amenable” to the agreement with Guatemala.

The agreement, brokered last July between the adminis-tration of Republican President Donald Trump and the outgoing Guatemalan government, allows US immigration officials to force migrants requesting asylum at the US-Mexican border to apply for protection there.

Trump has made clamping down on unlawful migration a top priority of his presidency and a major theme of his 2020 re-election campaign. His administration penned similar deals with Honduras and El Salvador last year.

Democrats and pro-migrant groups have opposed the move and contend asylum seekers will face danger in Guatemala, where the murder rate is five times that of the United States, according to 2017 data compiled by the World Bank. The country’s asylum office is tiny and thinly staffed

and critics have argued it does not have the capacity to properly vet a significant increase in cases.

Guatemalan President-elect Alejandro Giammattei has said he will review the agreement.

Acting Deputy US Department of Homeland Security Secretary Ken said in a tweet in September that Mex-icans were being considered for inclusion under the agreement.

USCIS referred to Cuc-cinelli’s tweet, and US Customs and Border Protection and Mexico’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Unaccompanied minors cannot be sent to Guatemala under the agreement, which currently applies only to migrants from Honduras, El Salvador and Mexico who entered the US after November 19, 2019, according to the guidance documents. Excep-tions are made only if the migrants can establish that they are “more likely than not” to be persecuted or tortured in Gua-temala based on their race, religion, nationality, mem-bership in a particular social group or political opinion.

Numbers of Central American migrants appre-hended at the border fell sharply in the second part of 2019 after Mexico deployed National Guard troops to stem the flow, under pressure from Trump.

19TUESDAY 7 JANUARY 2020 HOME

QU hosts appreciation ceremony to honour students and facultyTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Qatar University’s (QU) Foun-dation Program (FP), under the Deanship of General Studies, hosted an appreciation ceremony in collaboration with the QU Inclusion and Special Needs Support Center (ISNSC) where students with special needs and disabilities honoured faculty, student helpers, and peer trainers in order to high-light their dedication and efforts in facilitating their learning experience.

The event, organised by FP Student Support Committee (FPSSC), aimed to promote inclusion and encourage students with special needs and disabilities to exercise their leadership skills by organising the event them-selves and communicating with relevant stakeholders.

The lead organisers were 13 students with special needs and disabilities. Having decided on the format of the event, small groups of students were responsible for different tasks including arriving at a criteria for and selecting ‘bright star’ teachers, planning the presentations, creating the program, preparing a presen-tation, setting up the venue and meeting and greeting guests.

During the event, 17 teachers were honoured for their out-standing commitment and support for students with special needs and disabilities inside and outside the classroom. In addition, certificates of attendance were presented to students who participated in the Special Needs Helper Training workshops, while special needs student helpers who facilitated training workshops as peer trainers were awarded certifi-cates of recognition.

To help students achieve their full academic potential, the lead of Special Needs team within FPSSC, Dr. Enita Barret, intro-duced this initiative to promote general student involvement and communities of learning and to

hone students’ leadership skills. The FPSSC also awarded cer-

tificates of recognition to the students who organised the event. In closing the event, selected students and faculty members shared their thoughts, reflections and words of encouragement.

Director of the FP Dr. Hezam Al Awah said, “FP is committed to providing all students with necessary resources, in par-ticular, special needs and disa-bility students to enable

students to develop their skills and achieve their full academic potential. This event creates opportunities for students to develop independence and self-advocacy, and FP will continue with collaborative projects with ISNSC to assist students in their university journey.”

Assistant Director for Student Affairs in the FP Hayat El Samad, emphasized the goal of this social event and said, “Foundation Program Student Affairs Office is dedicated to

providing students with oppor-tunities to contribute to the QU community, and the appreci-ation ceremony is one of them. The integration of students with special needs and disabilities into the university community is achieved by enhancing the communication channels among students, faculty and management, to ensure a pos-itive university experience. The students with special needs felt strongly about honoring their instructors and showcasing their commitment and keenness on enhancing the success of all students.”

The number of special needs students registered in courses offered by FP has increased from 23 in 2015 to 68 students in 2019. The increase in the student number requires special accom-modations like extra time and separate rooms, scribes and/or helpers, especially for assessments.

Accordingly, FP is working to insure there are enough rooms and qualified invigilators are available for proper assessment administration, while ISNSC pro-vides the helpers.

During the event, 17 teachers were honoured for their outstanding commitment and support for students with special needs and disabilities inside and outside the classroom. In addition, certificates of attendance were presented to students who participated in the Special Needs Helper Training workshops, while special needs student helpers who facilitated training workshops as peer trainers were awarded certificates of recognition.

FP faculty honoured at an appreciation ceremony by special needs students.

CROSSWORD

Pappu Mishra is the creator and host of a reality show called Musibat Odh Li Maine. Baba Bhandari, a big name in politics and crime, is offended with his reportage.

SAB KUSHAL MANGAL

MALL ROYAL PLAZA

Driving License (2D/Malayalam) 2:00, 7:30 & 10:00pm; Spies In Disguise (2D/Amination) 2:00 & 4:15pm; Kattyolanu Ente Maalakha (2D/Malayalam) 6:00 & 8:30pm; The Grudge (2D/Horror) 5:30pm; Disturbing the Peace (2D/Horror) 3:45pm; Thrissur Pooram (2D/Malayalam) 11:15pmDriving License (2D/Malayalam) 7:30 & 10:00pmFrozen II (2D/Animation) 2:30pm; Jumanji: The Next Level (2D/Action) 4:15 & 6:30pm;Good Newwz 8:45 & 11:00pm

Thrissur Pooram (2D/Malayalam) 10:30am & 3:45, 9:00pm; Spies In Disguise (2D/Amination) 11:45am, 2:00 & 4:15pm; Sab Kushal Mangal (2D/Hindi) 12:45, 6:15 & 11:45pmThe Grudge (2D/Horror) 1:30, 6:45 & 12:00pmDriving License (2D/Malayalam) 6:30, 9:15 & 12:00pmMunthiri Monchan (2D/Malayalam) 3:30 & 9:00pm

LANDMARK

AL KHOR

Thambi (2D/Tamil) 1:00pmMunthiri Monchan (2D/Malayalam) 4:00 & 11:45pmGood Newwz 3 (2D/Hindi) 6:30pmValiya Perunnal (2D/Malayalam) 12:30, 8:45pmDriving Licence (2D/Malayalam) 12:30, 3:00, 5:30, 8:00, 10:30pmMy Santa (2D/Malayalam) 3:30, 6:00 & 11:30pmThrissur Pooram (2D/Malayalam) 12:15, 3:00, 5:45, 8;30, 11:15amSab Kushal Mangal (2D/Hindi) 2:00 & 11:30pm;

ASIAN TOWN

ROXY

FLIK Mirqab Mall

Cats (2D/Comedy) 10:50am, 1:00, 3:10, 5:20, 7:30, 9:40 & 11:50pmEl Folous A.K.A The Money (2D/Arabic) 8:15 & 10:35pmFrozen II (2D/Animation) 1:05 & 3:15pmJumanji: The Next Level (2D/Action) 10:20am, 11:15am, 12:45, 1:40, 3:10, 4:05, 5:35, 6:30, 8:00, 10:25 & 11:05pmMiracle in Cell No.7 (2D/Action) 11:30am, 2:00, 4:25, 6:50, 9:10 & 11:35pm; Norm Of The North 3: King Sized Adventure (2D/Ani-mation) 10:00 & 11:10amSpies In Disguise (2D/Amination) 10;15, 12:15, 2:15, 4:15 & 6:15pmStar Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker (2D/Action) 11;50, 2:40, 5:30, 8;20& 11:10pm; The Grudge (2D/Horror) 10;45, 12:40, 2:35, 4:30, 5:25, 6:25, 7:20, 8:25, 9:20, 10;20, 11:15pm & 0:15am

Driving License (2D/Malayalam) 10:30am, 12:30, 1:00, 3:10, 3:40, 6:20, 8:20, 9:00 & 11:40pm; Frozen II (2D/Animation) 11:00, 4:00, 3:15 & 6:00pm; Good Newwz 3 (2D/Hindi) 12:30, 3:15, 6:00 & 11:45pm; Ip Man 4: The Finale 6:00, 9:20, 10:45 & 11:30pm; Jumanji: The Next Level (3D/Action) 110:30am,11:00am, 12:30, 3:30, 6:15, 8;15 & 8:45pmSpies in Disguise (2D/Animation) 2:00, 5:00 & 8:45pm; Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker (2D/Action) 1:00, 1:20, 2:45, 3:00, 10;45 & 11:15pmThambi (2D/Tamil) 11:00pm; El Folous A.K.A The Money (2D/Arabic) 4:20, 5:50, 6:20, 7:45, 8:00, 8;15, 10:15, 10:30 & 11:10pm

Spies In Disguise (2D/Amination) 2:00pm

Frozen II (2D/Animation) 2:00pm;

Jumanji: The Next Level (2D/Action) 4:15 & 6:15pm;

Good Newwz 6:30, 8:30 & 11:00pm

The Grudge (2D/Horror) 5:45 & 9:00pm;

Thrissur Pooram (2D/Malayalam) 11:15pm

El Folous A.K.A The Money (2D/Arabic) 4:00pm

Spies In Disguise (2D/Amination) 2:15 & 4:00pm

Driving License (2D/Malayalam) 7:30 & 10:00pm

Munthiri Monchan (2D/Malayalam) 2:00pm; Thrissur Pooram (2D/Malayalam) 2:00, 8:45 & 11:30pm; Sab Kushal Mangal (2D/Hindi) 4:45pm; The Grudge (2D/Horror) 7:00pm; Norm Of The North 3: King Sized Adventure (2D/Animation) 2:30pm; Frozen II (2D/Animation) 4:15pm; Spies In Disguise (2D/Amination) 6:00pm; Cats (2D/Comedy) 7:45pm; Disturbing the Peace (2D/Horror) 9:45pm; Good Newwz 3 (2D/Hindi) 9:00pm; Jumanji: The Next Level (2D/Action) 4:15 & 6:45pm; Good Newwz 9:00 & 11:30pm; Driving License 11:30pm

20 TUESDAY 7 JANUARY 2020MORNING BREAK

FAJR SUNRISE 05.00 am 06.21 am

W A L R U WA I S : 17o↗ 21o W A L K H O R : 13o↗ 22o W D U K H A N : 15o↗ 20o W D O H A : 15o↗ 22o W M E S A I E E D 13o↗ 23o W A B U S A M R A 15o↗ 20o

PRAYER TIMINGS WEATHER TODAY

HIGH TIDE 03:21 – 11:51 LOW TIDE 09:29 – 19:50

Relatively cold daytime with some clouds, cold by night.

Minimum Maximum15oC 22oC

ZUHRMAGHRIB

11.40 am05.01 pm

ASR ISHA

02.40 pm06.31 pm

War film ‘1917’ stuns Golden Globes as Tarantino bags most prizesAFP — LOS ANGELES

War epic “1917” shocked the Golden Globes on Sunday by claiming the top prize for best drama film, while Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood” won the most honours, massively boosting their prospects for next month’s Oscars.

“Once Upon a Time...” — a homage to 1960s Tinseltown —won three prizes including best comedy, but Martin Scorsese’s much-vaunted Netflix crime saga “The Irishman” went home empty-handed.

The Globes are the first major awards gala of the year, in a packed season that ends with the Academy Awards in just over a month’s time, so Sunday’s winners will hope to capitalise on some much-needed momentum.

“1917” follows two British soldiers through the trenches in World War I, and is filmed to look like one continuous, two-hour-long shot.

“Goodness me, that is a big surprise,” said stunned film-maker Sam Mendes, who bested Scorsese and Tarantino in the crowded best director category.

Dedicating the film to his grandfather who signed up to fight aged just 17, Mendes added: “I hope he’s looking down on us and I fervently hope it never happens again.” The film’s lead actor George MacKay — a 27-year-old relative unknown in Hollywood — said

he was “just thrilled, proper t h r i l l e d ” w h e n t h e announcement was made.

“It’s a wonderful thing. It’s truly just so brilliant for the film and everyone involved. It’s the biggest team effort ever.”

Tarantino won the best screenplay award, and Brad Pitt took home best supporting actor honours for his role as a loyal stuntman to Leonardo DiCaprio’s character in “Once Upon a Time...” “I also have to thank my partner in crime, LDC,” said Pitt.

“I wouldn’t be here without you, man... I would have shared the raft, though,” he added, referring to the closing scene of “Titanic.”

“Rocketman,” the Elton John musical biopic, was the other big winner on the night, scooping best actor for Taron Egerton and best original song for John, who was heavily involved in the movie.

“I’m overjoyed — it’s incredible,” Egerton said. “It’s been the best experience of my life, and winning this is just such a lovely crystallisation of all of that.” The top films clearly res-onated with the 90-odd members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA), which doles out the prizes, but frontrunners in the acting categories also made their mark.

Joaquin Phoenix cemented his Oscar favourite status by winning the best drama actor prize for his radical turn in “Joker,” a dark and

controversial take on the comic book super-villain.

He thanked director Todd Phillips, saying: “You convinced me to do this movie and you encouraged me to give every-thing and to be sincere. And I’m such a pain in the ass.” Like several A-listers, Phoenix also used his speech to address climate change and the Aus-tralian wildfires.

Renee Zellweger burnished her Oscar credentials with an expected win for biopic “Judy,” portraying Judy Garland in her later years.

South Korean black comedy “Parasite” bagged the award for best foreign language film, as widely expected, while Awk-wafina became the first actress of Asian descent to win the best comedy actress prize for “The Farewell.” Oscar nominations voting is already under way, but does not close until today — meaning the Globes results could be a factor.

British comic Ricky Gervais greeted the stars at the banquet with his signature cutting one-liners.

“Let’s go out with a bang, let’s have a laugh at your expense, shall we?” joked Gervais, hosting the awards for the fifth and final time.

Gervais unleashed a no-holds-barred monologue that touched on topics haunting the industry including #MeToo, lack of diversity and the effect streaming giants are having on traditional film studios.

An off-colour joke about

British actress Judi Dench and the critically slammed film “Cats” was bleeped out by censors.

Among the Globes handed out on the TV side, HBO hit “Succession” won best drama, fending off Netflix’s flagship “The Crown.” Its star Brian Cox won for best actor, as HBO won the TV battle with four wins overall. But “Crown” star Olivia Colman scooped best actress for her turn as Queen Elizabeth II.

Phoebe Waller-Bridge

added a best comedy actress Globe to her Emmy win for her show “Fleabag,” which also won overall top comedy honours.

Netflix — which has dis-rupted the film industry in recent years — began the night far ahead of the traditional Hol-lywood studios with 17 Globe movie nominations.

“This show should just be me coming out, (saying) ‘You win everything, Netflix, good night,” joked Gervais.

But the streaming giant,

which has spent billions to lure the industry’s top filmmaking talent, flopped to end with just one movie win.

Laura Dern won for her supporting turn in “Marriage Story,” a heart-wrenching divorce saga starring Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver, which began the night with the most nods at six. “The Irishman,” a favourite to win best picture that cost Netflix $160m to make, did not convert any of its five nominations.

Galaxy UGC 2885 A handout photo released yesterday by the European Space Agency shows the Galaxy UGC 2885 which may be the largest one in the local universe. The galaxy is 2.5 times wider than our Milky Way, contains 10 times as many stars and is 232 million light-years away, located in the northern constellation of Perseus.

Mass snow wedding and crystal towers at China’s ice festAFP — HARBIN, CHINA

China’s annual ice festival in Harbin has kicked off with couples lining up for a snow-themed mass wedding, swimmers braving frigid waters and frozen palaces rising from the ground.

Fireworks marked the fes-tival’s opening on Sunday night as tourists wandered between colourfully illuminated ice towers and monuments in the northeastern city.

Earlier in the day, 43 brides in lace wedding gowns and down jackets waited in line with grooms to take part in a “mass ice and snow wedding”.

A few brave swimmers plunged into a pool carved from the frozen Songhua River on a day when temperatures stayed below minus seven degrees Celsius (19 Fahrenheit) even in the afternoon.

This year’s Harbin Interna-tional Ice and Snow Festival in the province of Heilongjiang required 170,000 cubic metres (six million cubic feet) of ice

harvested from the Songhua River by more than 100 workers.

The workers toiled for hours on the ice each day in the weeks before the festival, cutting out thousands of pieces of ice every 12-hour shift.

The Harbin festival, fea-turing glittering palaces and fantastical scenes sculpted out of ice, has drawn millions of people over the years to one of China’s coldest cities.

This year’s festivities will coincide with the city’s first skiing marathon this week, according to the official Xinhua news agency.

China has ramped up its promotion of snow and ice tourism ahead of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.

An expressway is under construction linking Beijing and Zhangjiakou, a city in northern Hebei province that will co-host the Olympics, while a high-speed railway line connecting the two cities opened on December 30.

China expects 340 million people to visit snow and ice attractions in the 2021-2022

winter season, up from 224 million in the 2018-2019

season, Xinhua reported yesterday.

A worker clears some snow before tourists arrive at the Harbin International Ice and Snow Festival in Harbin, in China’s northeast Heilongjiang province, yesterday.

Counting whales from space pitched as key to saving them

AP — PORTLAND, US

An aquarium and an engi-neering firm in Massachusetts are partnering on a project to better protect whales by moni-toring them from space.

New England Aquarium of Boston and Draper of Cam-bridge say whale conservation needs new, higher-tech solu-tions to protect whales from extinction. So, the pair is working together using data from sources such as satellites, sonar and radar to keep a closer eye on how many whales are in the ocean.

The effort has an easy to understand name for a project involving complex data and surveillance - the aquarium and firm are calling the project “Counting Whales From Space.” That’s about the only simple thing about the project, said John Irvine, chief scientist for data analytics with Draper.

The work will involve gathering data from sources ranging from European space agencies to amateur radio operators to create a proba-bility map of where in the ocean the whales might be, Irvine said. Conservation groups will then be able to monitor whales and their movements, he said.

“If whales are moving out of one area and into another, what’s the reason for that? Is it due to ocean warming,” Irvine said. “Is it changes in commercial shipping lanes? These are all questions we’ll be able to start answering once we have the data.” The partners have committed a combined $1m to the effort. The project is expected to develop over several years.

Aerial surveys are cur-rently the most frequently used method to count whales, partners on the project said. However, that approach is expensive, subject to bad weather conditions and can be dangerous, they said.

Project members said the goal of their work is to develop new technology that uses spe-cially designed algorithms to process all the data they acquire and use it to monitor whales.

Watching TV in 2020s: More streaming and mobile phoneAP — NEW YORK

What will watching TV be like in the 2020s? Amid new gadgets and glitz, the CES tech show in Las Vegas aims to offer some answers, many of which boil down to more streaming and more efforts to glue you to your phone.

The show’s keynote addresses, once dominated by computer and chip makers, will this year feature executives from TV networks NBC and CBS and upstart video services like mobile-focused Quibi and free streamer Tubi. Topic one will be the streaming wars — not to mention mounting costs for consumers who want access to everything — as giants NBC Universal and WarnerMedia prepare to join the clash with Netflix later this year.

Some companies also promise a big new push into “bite-sized” video designed to draw mobile viewers from YouTube, despite the fact that a similar effort several years ago foundered.

CES, formerly known as the

Consumer Electronics Show, started on Sunday in Las Vegas with two days of media pre-views. The show floor opens today through Friday. More than 170,000 people are expected, with 4,500 com-panies exhibiting, according to its organizers. The show takes place across a sprawling set of hotels and convention centres equivalent to more than 50 football fields.

Beyond streaming, expect to see artificial intelligence-infused home appliances, security cameras and cars, new gadgets that show what faster 5G cellular service can offer and, as always, the newest in robots and souped-up TVs. Speakers this week include Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter and senior adviser, and Hyunsuk Kim, Samsung head of consumer electronics. As technology increasingly infuses our lives, more tradi-tional companies are showing up for the Las Vegas event. There’s a new travel section with Delta Air Lines its largest exhibitor.

Director Sam Mendes (second left) poses with cast and crew in the press room with the awards for Best Motion Picture - Drama and Best Director - Motion Picture during the 77th annual Golden Globe Awards, at The Beverly Hilton hotel in Beverly Hills, California, on January 5, 2020.