Wednesday 13 May 2020

20 Ramadan - 1441

2 Riyals

www.thepeninsula.qa

Volume 25 | Number 8256

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BUSINESS | 01 PENMAG | 06 SPORT | 12

Eto’o to go live on

Instagram with

Generation

Amazing

Classifieds

and Services

section

included

Growth forecast

cuts ‘very likely’

as virus hits

economies hard

Ramadan Timing

Today's Iftar:6:13pm

Tomorrow's Imsak:03:16am

Amir issues

directives to send

medical assistance

to Albania, Congo

and Angola

QNA — DOHA

Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani issued yesterday a directive to send medical assistance to the Republic of Albania, the Demo-cratic Republic of the Congo, and the Republic of Angola, in support from the State of Qatar for the efforts of the friendly countries in combating the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) epidemic.

Deputy PM and Minister of State for Defence meets Commander of US Air Forces Central CommandThe Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of State for Defence Affairs, H E Dr. Khalid bin Mohammed Al Attiyah met yesterday with the Commander of the US Air Forces Central Command, Lieutenant General H E Joseph Gustella. The meeting dealt with reviewing bilateral cooperation, and ways to enhance and develop them. The meeting was attended by a number of senior officers of the Armed Forces.

Qatar launches ‘Group of Friends of Solidarity for Global Health Security’ to combat COVID-19

QNA — DOHA

Qatar, South Korea, Canada, Denmark and Sierra Leone launched yesterday the Group of Friends of Solidarity for Global Health Security to combat the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19), in a virtual event to launch the group at the United Nations headquarters in New York.

The Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, H E Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani expressed in a video message the delight of the State of Qatar to participate with the Republic of Korea, Canada, Sierra Leone and Denmark, in launching this initiative, which he considered

very important.His Excellency affirmed the

commitment of the State of Qatar to work with the Group of Friends of Solidarity for Global Health Security to become a major platform for exchanging views on how to effectively respond to COVID-19 through various forms of multilateral cooperation.

His Excellency said that the COVID-19 pandemic high-lighted the importance of pre-paring for epidemics as soon as possible, stressing in this context the need to enhance multilateral cooperation. His Excellency added that the group will examine emerging health issues of global importance, innovative ways and work

towards a targeted strategy among UN member states.

His Excellency stressed the commitment of the State of Qatar to the exchange of best practices and lessons learned, expressing his hope that the State of Qatar will help in strengthening the collective response and encouraging sol-idarity among member states.

At the end of the message, H E the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs stressed that the battle with the COVID-19 pandemic is one the world cannot afford to lose, and will not win unless everyone work together and rebuild better. His Excellency stressed that the group has an oppor-tunity to benefit from the clear lessons and from what can be done to respond to global health emergencies in the future.

Foreign ministers of South Korea, Canada, Denmark and Sierra Leone participated in launching the initiative.

The group aims to provide an unofficial platform for inter-ested UN member states to exchange views on how to effec-tively respond to COVID-19 and other challenges to global health security through various forms of multilateral cooperation as it

seeks to highlight social and eco-nomic problems caused by the coronavirus pandemic that has caused and exacerbated many problems in the field of human rights, in addition to the global economic downturn, which poses an unprecedented chal-lenge to the development efforts of the international community.

The group works towards

focusing on the major threats posed by the epidemic to inter-national peace and security, and calls on the United Nations to play a central role in stimulating and coordinating a strong global response to the epidemic while emphasizing the urgent need for action-oriented interna-tional cooperation among all member states of the United Nations.

EU welcomes Qatar Airways’

initiative to offer 100,000 free

tickets to health professionals

QNA — DOHA

The European Union (EU) has welcomed the initiative announced by Qatar Airways to offer 100,000 free tickets to health professionals.

In a statement to Qatar News Agency, the Ambassador of the European Union to Qatar, H E Dr. Cristian Tudor said:

“The EU welcomes the ini-tiative announced by Qatar Airways to offer 100,000 free tickets to health professionals worldwide. Health professional are making the difference in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic and they deserve our wholehearted, unreserved praise.”

He added: “EU efforts to repatriate stranded citizens could not have achieved the same impressive results without support from interna-tional airlines, notably Qatar

Airways, which have continued to operate flights to Europe during the most difficult weeks of the pandemic, often incurring economic losses.”

Zakat Al Fitr is

QR15 for each

individual this year

QNA — DOHA

The Zakat Fund of the Ministry of Endowment and Islamic Affairs has urged the public to pay Zakat Al Fitr on time, pointing out that it is a duty required of every Muslim, whether male or female, minor or adult as long as he/she has the means to do so.

This came in a statement issued by the Fund in this regard, in which it specifies the amount of Zakat Al Fitr for this Ramadan season 1441 H (equivalent to QR15) and that it should be given before the Eid Al Fitr prayer, so that the Fund can deliver it to the poor who deserve it.

The Fund indicated that the basic principle of Zakat Al Fitr is to take it out from most of the people’s food, which is rice, and the amount is 2.5kg, with the possibility of paying it in cash at a value of QR15 as previously mentioned, and the Zakat Fund receives the value of Zakat Al Fitr from the generous public in cash and distributes it to those who are entitled to it as appointed according to the Sunnah of the Prophet (Peace Be Upon Him). �P2

QA Cargo boosts capacity for Scandinavian citiesSACHIN KUMAR THE PENINSULA

Qatar Airways Cargo continues to support global trade and facilitate supply chains across the world amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The cargo carrier has boosted its capacity to Scandinavian countries to meet the high demand for exports. The airline has introduced additional flights to and from Scan-dinavian cities Copenhagen, Oslo and Stockholm, offering freight capacity for local exports amidst the coronavirus pandemic.

Five additional Airbus A350 freight only passenger aircraft have been introduced each week to the carrier’s existing thrice-weekly belly-hold passenger flights in Copenhagen, Denmark, bringing the total weekly cargo capacity to more than 500 tonnes each way, said the airline in a

statement posted on its website.With approximately 140 cubic

metres volumetric weight on every A350 flight, the cargo carrier is helping exporters in Denmark to ship their cargo to Kuala Lumpur, Sydney, Seoul, Johannesburg and other destinations on its global network. Temperature sensitive

cargo such as insulin and perish-ables as well as mail and general cargo are the main exports on these flights.

“Solidarity and support are paramount during such times and we are proud to support the Scan-dinavian countries with additional cargo capacity to meet the high

demand for exports. The entire team at Qatar Airways Cargo is working hard in ensuring conti-nuity of global trade,” said Guil-laume Halleux, Chief Officer Cargo.

In Oslo, Norway, the airline has introduced two additional fre-quencies of Boeing 777 and Airbus A330 freighters to its existing six weekly freighter flights and three freight only passenger flights. Recently, the carrier announced it will operate its Boeing 747-8F every Thursday in May, supporting the demand for imports and exports.

The airline also operated one Boeing 777 freighter from Stockholm, Sweden last week, with 103 tonnes of freight con-sisting of automotive cargo, general cargo and pharmaceu-ticals destined to China, Australia, Japan and other countries within the Qatar Airways network. �P3

EU efforts to repatriate

stranded citizens could

not have achieved

the same impressive

results without support

from international

airlines, notably Qatar

Airways.

H E Dr. Cristian Tudor,

Ambassador of the

European Union

to Qatar

QNTC offers online tourism certification program to residentsTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Qatar National Tourism Council (QNTC) is offering residents the chance to participate in the country’s tourism sector by sponsoring a limited number of scholarships to the IE University|UNWTO Tourism Online Academy.

As a founding sponsor of the Academy, QNTC will be awarding 10 scholarships to the Academy’s Certification Program, enabling participants to obtain high quality education and training in the historically resilient tourism sector.

With one in 10 jobs related to tourism globally, the Academy provides individuals with the skills and know-how to work in the dynamic and ever-evolving tourism sector.

The Certification Program is aimed at profes-sionals, managers and anyone else seeking to deepen their learning or update their knowledge in tourism sector management. Focused on Travel and Tourism, Hospitality and Destination Management fields, QNTC has previously made scholarships available to professionals in the tourism industry exclusively. �P4

The Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, H E Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, affirmed the commitment of the State of Qatar to work with the Group of Friends of Solidarity for Global Health Security to become a major platform for exchanging views on how to effectively respond to COVID-19 through various forms of multilateral cooperation.

Qatar, South Korea,

Canada, Denmark

and Sierra Leone

jointly launched

the new initiative.

Foreign ministers of South

Korea, Canada, Denmark

and Sierra Leone partici-

pated in launching the

initiative in a virtual event.

The group aims to provide an unofficial

platform for interested UN member states to

exchange views on how to effectively respond

to COVID-19 and other challenges to global

health security.

The airline has introduced additional flights

to and from Scandinavian cities

Copenhagen, Oslo and Stockholm, offering

freight capacity for local exports amidst the

coronavirus pandemic.

OFFICIAL NEWS

02 WEDNESDAY 13 MAY 2020HOME

Qatar partakes in telemeeting of Arab culture ministersDoha: The State of Qatar par-

ticipated on Monday in the

extraordinary meeting of the Min-

isters of Cultural Affairs in the

Arab World organised by ALECSO

through video conferencing.

During the meeting, Qatar's Min-

ister of Culture and Sports, H E

Salah bin Ghanem Al Ali, touched

on the experience of the State of

Qatar in the cultural, youth and

sports fields to face the chal-

lenges posed by the coronavirus

(COVID-19) crisis. The meeting

dealt with the direct effects of

the emerging crisis of the coro-

navirus outbreak on the cultural

sector, the most important pre-

cautionary measures taken by

the Arab countries to confront

this crisis and plans for the post-

epidemic stage. - QNA

Qatar conducts over 135,000 COVID-19 testsTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

The Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) yesterday announced 1,526 new confirmed cases of COVID-19, and 179 new recovered cases, bringing the total number of recoveries in Qatar to 3,019.

The total number of positive COVID-19 cases recorded in Qatar to date stands at 25,149. There are 22,116 active cases under treatment. So far, 14 people have died from the coro-navirus in Qatar.

The Ministry conducted 4,250 tests yesterday, taking the total number of tests done so far to 135,294.

The Ministry clarified that the new cases are due to persons from the expatriate labour force who were infected with the virus as a result of contact with individuals who

were previously infected, in addition to recording new cases of infection among groups of workers in different regions, during investigations con-ducted by the research and investigation teams of the Min-istry, which contributed to early detection of cases.

Cases of infection with the virus have also increased

among citizens and residents, as a result of contact with infected family members, who had been infected with their roles in the workplace or through visits and family gath-erings .

The Ministry said high number of infections among cit-izens and residents is due to lack of compliance by some

with precautionary measures, the most important of which is physical distancing by staying at home and avoiding social visits. All the new infected cases have been quarantined where they are receiving the necessary medical care.

The Ministry of Public Health recently launched a community study to learn more about how the COVID-19 is transmitted within the com-munity and cases of infection that do not show symptoms.

The reasons for the high numbers of new cases are due to the Ministry’s redoubling of its efforts in tracking the transitional chains of the virus and expanding the circle of searching for infected people through intensive and proactive investigations of large numbers of contacts with people who have been confirmed with the virus recently.

4,215,514

287,809

1,471,496

TOTAL POSITIVE

TOTAL DEATHS

TOTAL RECOVERED

GLOBALLY

COVID-19 QATAR UPDATES ON 12 MAY 2020

1,526

17922,116

3,01914

NEW CASES

ANNOUNCED

NEW

RECOVERIES

ACTIVE

CASES

TOTAL

RECOVERIES

TOTAL

DEATHS

Telecom sector successfully met COVID-19 challenges: CRA PresidentQNA — DOHA

President of the Communica-tions Regulatory Authority (CRA), H E Mohammed Ali Al Mannai, has affirmed that the telecommunications sector in Qatar has demonstrated great technical and business capacity in dealing with the repercus-sions of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis. He added that the sector, with all its components, was able to successfully deal with the changes imposed by the current situation.

In an interview with QNA, he said that since the outbreak of the coronavirus crisis in Qatar, CRAs first priority was ensuring telecom networks technical and business conti-nuity. This was crucial to keep essential services running without affecting the quality of service provided to the con-sumers, which continued to benefit from the best possible quality of service and price. In addition, measures were intro-duced to guarantee that the employees relevant for ensuring the technical and business continuity are pro-tected and stay healthy.

He added that the CRA con-tinues to engage with the service providers, the Ministry

of Transport and Communica-tions (MoTC), the Ministry of the Interior (MOI), and the Per-manent Committee for Emer-gency, to develop appropriate plans and processes to antic-ipate disasters, he added. Thanks to these constant efforts, the service providers are handling additional traffic without affecting the quality of the services provided to consumers.

The CRA is also continu-ously communicating with the service providers to monitor the status of their networks, he said.

The President of CRA noted that service providers were highly cooperative and have demonstrated a strong com-mitment to the provision of

high-quality telecom services during these exceptional cir-cumstances. He pointed out that, the service providers have doubled the speed of the fixed internet connections, as part of CRAs initiative to help cus-tomers to cope with more con-gested networks.

This measure was bene-ficial, so that in March the average download speed was 95 Mbits, which is well above the global average (75 Mbits). The speed of the mobile Internet connections which reached 78 Mbits, is also well above the global average (30 Mbits), he said adding that this information demonstrates the quality of the networks in Qatar which are coping well with t h e s e e x c e p t i o n a l circumstances.

He noted that both service providers, Ooredoo Qatar and Vodafone Qatar, have doubled the speed of fixed Internet for existing residential customers and doubled the mobile data for residential and business cus-tomers, free of additional charges, in addition to having made an effort to connect more customers to the Internet services, either waiving the connection fees or introducing new affordable mobile broadband services.

Qatar's envoy supports Paris hospitals in COVID-19 fight

QNA — PARIS

Ambassador of the State of Qatar to the French Republic, H E Sheikh Ali bin Jassim Al Thani has provided support to the “Paris Hospital Authority” Association (APHP), and its medical staff in their difficult battle against the COVID-19.

The move comes as a con-tinuation of the solidarity cam-paign launched by the Embassy of the State of Qatar to the French Republic, and an encouragement of the efforts of the medical sector to fight the spread of the virus in French society and care for the infected.

The support comes within the framework of the contin-uation of the existing cooper-ation between the State of Qatar and the Parisian Hos-pital Authority, which includes for several years assistance programs, cooperation, training of doctors, and exchange of expertise.

The Qatari Embassy in Paris provided daily meals for the front lines of medical cadres, doctors, nurses and paramedics for several days in a row, where the Paris Hos-pital Authority Association dis-tributed meals to the medical staff at Bicetre Hopital Hospital.

The meals that have been distributed carried the solidarity slogan launched by H E the Ambassador, titled “Solidarity” of the State of Qatar with the French Republic, as an expression of solidarity with all healthcare workers who are sacrificing to fight the pandemic.

Qatar’s envoy

participates in

Maduro's press

briefing virtually

QNA — CARACAS

Ambassador of the State of Qatar to the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, H E Rashid bin Mohsen Fetais, has participated in a video press conference of H E President Nicolas Maduro of the Boli-varian Republic of Venezuela, during which he presented new matters regarding the failed maritime incursion.

The press conference was attended by ambassadors accredited to Venezuela, and a number of Venezuelan ambas-sadors around the world.

Ministries provide computers to quarantined Mekaines Labor City

THE PENINSULA — DOHA

The Ministry of Administrative Development, Labor and Social Affairs and Ministry of Transport and Communica-tions in cooperation with Qatar Red Crescent Society (QRCS) have provided 1,136 computers to quarantined Mekaines Labor City under ‘Better Connections’ initiative.

The computers will enable the workers in quarantine to

communicate with their fam-ilies and friends in their countries.

Pamphlets about the awareness of coronavirus in a number of languages were also distributed among the workers and they were educated about the State's preventive and pre-cautionary measures to curb the spread of COVID-19.

Better Connections is a social integration initiative for migrant workers in Qatar.

CRA President, H E Mohammed Ali Al Mannai

Zakat Al Fitr is QR15 for each individual

FROM PAGE 1

According to Islamic tra-dition (Sunnah), Ibn ‘Umar said that the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) made Zakat Al Fitr compulsory on every slave, freeman, male, female, young and old among the Muslims; one Saa of dried dates or one Saa of barley.

Those wishing to pay Zakat Al Fitr can proceed to the main collection offices.

MoCI eases restrictions on restaurants, cafésTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

The Ministry of Commerce and Industry (MoCI) has issued Circular No. 22 of 2020 on easing restrictions on the activ-ities of restaurants and cafés.

This came, in line with the previously adopted decisions and measures to curb the spread of COVID-19, and in order to protect the health and safety of citizens and residents.

Restaurants and cafés (coffee shops) have been allowed to resume delivering or handing over orders to cus-tomers outside the business place.

Restaurants and cafés

located in malls are exempted from this decision and are allowed to only process delivery orders. The exempted outlets are prohibited from handing over orders to customers both inside and outside the workplace.

All restaurants and cafés shall fully comply with the pol-icies and the measures that should be taken in the work-place and staff housing, in order to protect employees and limit the spread of the coronavirus.

Violators of the decision will face legal accountability. The Ministry will intensify inspection campaign to ensure compliance with this decision and to crack down on any violations.

FAJR SUNRISE 03.26 am 04.50 am

W A L R U WA I S : 28o↗ 30o W A L K H O R : 26o↗ 36o W D U K H A N : 28o↗ 32o W WA K R A H : 27o↗ 36o W M E S A I E E D 27o↗ 36o W A B U S A M R A 26o↗ 34o

PRAYER TIMINGS WEATHER TODAY

HIGH TIDE 07:35–21:48 LOW TIDE 04:56 – 14:45

Hot daytime with slight dust to blowing dust at some places

at times mild by night.

Minimum Maximum28oC 37oC

ZUHRMAGHRIB

11.30 am06.13 pm

ASR ISHA

02.57 pm07.43 pm

03WEDNESDAY 13 MAY 2020 HOME

Ooredoo delivers Ramadan gifts to Ehsan Centre

THE PENINSULA — DOHA

Qatar’s leading telecommuni-cations operator announced yesterday that it has delivered Ramadan gifts to the Ehsan Centre as part of its CSR programme, in spite of the logistical challenges presented by the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak.

Ooredoo arranged delivery of the gifts to the Ehsan Centre, the Centre for Elderly empow-erment and Care, in order to continue its longstanding tra-dition of carrying out CSR activ-ities in the community during Ramadan. All necessary pre-cautions were taken to ensure the safety of delivery staff and gift recipients.

Sabah Rabiah Al Kuwari, Director PR at Ooredoo, said of

the event: “This visit was the ideal way for us to show our gratitude to, and appreciation and respect for, our elders. We would also like to thank all Ehsan Centre staff for their hard

work, not just during Ramadan, but also throughout the year. We are proud to do what we can to continue our CSR pro-gramme in these difficult times. Our corporate social

responsibility strategy is at the heart of our operations, and we are determined to continue to support our local communities during the Holy Month of Ramadan in any way we can.”

Officials of Ooredoo and Ehsan Centre during the event.

Sheikh Hamad Award extends deadline to August 15QNA — DOHA

The Steering Committee of Sheikh Hamad Award for Translation and International Understanding (SHATIU) has extended deadline for submis-sions for the sixth edition of the award until August 15, 2020.

In a statement yesterday, the Committee noted that its decision considered the condi-tions the world is going through as a result of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in order

to give an opportunity for trans-lators from around the world to compete in the award categories.

For this year, SHATIU chose the Persian language as a second major language alongside English, and chose five new languages in the achievement category, which are: Pashto, Bengali, Swedish, Korean and Hausa.

Sheikh Hamad Award for Translation and International Understanding was founded in

Doha in 2015. It is an interna-tional prize run by a board of trustees, a steering committee and independent panels of judges.

The total value of the award is $2m. The Award seeks to honour translators and acknowledge their role in strengthening the bonds of friendship and cooperation amongst peoples and nations of the world.

It hopes to reward merit and excellence, encourage

creativity, uphold the highest moral and ethical standards, and spread the values of diversity, pluralism and openness.

The Award also aspires to inculcate a culture of knowledge and dialogue, promote Arab and Islamic culture, develop international understanding, and encourage mature cross-cultural inter-action between Arabic and other world languages through the medium of translation.

MME urges adherence to law prohibitingworkers’ camps in family residential areasQNA — DOHA

The Ministry of Municipality and Envi-ronment (MME) called yesterday on owners and tenants of real estate, citizens and residents, to adhere to the provisions of the Law prohibiting workers housing camps within family residential areas, and the ministerial decision defining family residential areas and to clear all violating workers’ housing in order to avoid legal accountability.

The Ministry stated that in case of any inquiries or comments, people can contact the unified call center on 184 or via its website or Aoun application.

In a related context, and based on

Ministerial Decision No. (105) of 2020 defining family residential areas and what is considered workers camps within those areas, in addition to determining those excluded from this decision. Al Khor and Al Dhakhira Municipality represented by the Tech-nical Control Section of the Municipal Control Department implemented intensive inspection campaigns on

workers' gatherings in families' resi-dential areas in the city of Al Khor.

These campaigns resulted in the issuance of 72 violation tickets and 72 warnings in accordance with the provisions of law No. (15) of 2010 on the prohibition of workers camps within family residential areas amended by Law No 22 of 2019.

The Ministry said these inspection campaigns will continue on a daily basis to restrict and evacuate the workers’ housing gatherings within the geo-graphical range of Al Khor and Al Dha-khira Municipality, noting that 20 houses were vacated by the tenants and owners after the issuance of the recent minis-terial decision defining the areas of fam-ilies housing in the municipalities.

Cuba proud to contribute 730 health workers to COVID-19 fight in QatarSIDI MOHAMED THE PENINSULA

The Ambassador of Cuba to Qatar, H E Eumelio Caballero Rodríguez, has said that Cuba is proud to contribute 730 health professionals to Qatar’s fight against COVID-19 outbreak.

“Cuba, whose historical relations of friendship and cooperation with the State of Qatar are well known, is proud to be able to contribute 730 health professionals to the fight that the government of Qatar is carrying out against the pan-demic, including all the per-sonnel of the Cuban Hospital of Dukhan, which was converted into a hospital center for the assistance of COVID-19 p a t i e n t s , ” s a i d t h e Ambassador.

In a statement to The Peninsula, Eumelio Caballero said that the Holy month of Ramadan is special this year due to necessary social

distancing in all over the world due to COVID-19 pandemic.

“In our case, for the officials of the Embassy of Cuba in Qatar, the situation will not be dif-ferent from that of Qatari cit-izens and Muslim expatriates, since all of us should strictly respect the protocols in force to protect our health,” the Ambas-sador said.

Speaking about how pre-vious Ramadan was different compared to this year, he said, “Last year, we received many invitations from Qatari friends

to share with them the familiar and friendly gatherings of Iftar and Suhoor, either in hotels, other social places or in their majlises, thus allowing me to appreciate the spiritual life and great human values of the Muslim religion.”

“Although this year I am not participating in these nice and sensible traditional Ramadan gatherings, we are going through a very unique expe-rience which allows us to draw out conclusion that it is not nec-essary to be in physical contacts

with your friends and beloved ones to enjoy friendship and spiritual atmosphere that char-acterise the Holy Month of Ramadan,” he said.

In this regard, “I take the opportunity to make a fervent appeal to all Qatari citizens and expatriates residing here to fully support the successful measures

being taken by the Qatari authorities to protect all of us,” the Ambassador said.

He further said that, “We must have a sense of responsi-bility and enough conscience to understand that we are facing an invisible enemy and we all have to contribute to its defeat as soon as possible.

"What is at stake is not only the individual health of each one of us, but also that of our family members and of society as a whole.

"The longer this situation continues, the more we will suffer and the more the eco-nomic and social life of the country will be affected.”

The Ambassador empha-sised that the Qataris, like the Cubans, are very lucky to have a responsible government, which spares no effort and resources, when it comes to taking care of the people’s health.

"Special thanks to the Min-istry of Public Health, for the seriousness with which they have been handling this epi-demic and the quality of the medical assistance that is being offered to the infected people, which is reflected, among other things, in the high number of patients recovered and the low number of deaths reported."

Ambassador of Cuba to Qatar, H E Eumelio Caballero Rodríguez

Night-time vegetable markets popular with customersTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

The winter vegetable markets which are operating at night during the holy month of Ramadan, have attracted a large number of customers.

Over 3,556 tonnes of vegetables were sold out at the winter vegetable markets located in Al Sheehaniya, Al Mazrouha, Al Wakrah, Al Khor-Al Zakhira and Al Shamal in April, said the Ministry of Municipality and Environment in a statement.

The markets open from 7:30pm to 12 midnight seven days a week throughout the holy month of Ramadan. As much as 847 tonnes of fruits and 16.5 tonnes of local fish were also sold at the markets in the last month.

The markets also sold 1,516 country chickens and 2,396 carats eggs. As much as 310 kg honey also sold out at the markets. The winter vegetable market at Al Mazrouah sold 2,396 head of goats and sheep in April.

Special thanks to the Ministry of Public Health, for the seriousness with which they have been handling this epidemic and the quality of the medical

assistance that is being offered to the infected people, which is reflected, among other things, in the high number of patients recovered and the low number of deaths reported."

Municipalities

continue food

inspection drive

THE PENINSULA — DOHA

The municipal inspectors have recorded a number of viola-tions of some provisions of health rules at the food outlets during ongoing inspection campaigns for the holy month of Ramadan.

The Health Monitoring Section of Al Sheehaniya Municipality took action against 15 food outlets including groceries and eateries for running without licenses in labour camps at Al Zabra, said the Ministry of Municipality and Environment (MME) in release.

The legal action was taken against the violators. The municipal inspectors at Al Sheehaniya Municipality are conducting inspection cam-paigns on a daily basis to ensure the outlets are com-plying with the law.

The Health Monitoring Section of Doha Municipality conducted 220 inspection campaigns on food outlets across the municipality during past two days.

The municipal inspectors recorded 16 violations most of them were related to carrying activities which were not allowed under outlets' com-mercial registration.

Other violations include operating workers without health certificates and taking food items without details of the products.

The Municipality issued administrative decisions to close three food outlets — two restaurants in Bin Mahmoud and a grocery in Industrial Area. The Health Monitoring Section of Al Shamal Munici-pality conducted 22 inspection campaigns on shops and food outlets across the municipality according to the action plan for the holy month of Ramadan.

The municipal inspectors checked 47 slaughtered animals at Al Shamal Slaugh-terhouse and 3,150kg fish at fish market. The inspectors also ensured the implemen-tation of health rules and pre-ventive and precautionary measures at food outlets.

The Ministry said in case of any inquiries or comments, people can contact the unified call center on 184.

QA Cargo boosts

capacity for

Scandinavian

cities

FROM PAGE 1

On Sunday, the cargo carrier announced to introduce an air bridge between Vietnam and France. Through this arrangement, eleven Boeing 777 freighters will operate from Hanoi in the month of May and four weekly freight-only Boeing 777 pas-senger aircraft will operate from Ho Chi Minh City until June for its customer, Bollore Logistics.

In April, Qatar Airways Cargo had introduced freighter flights to Australia that brought the combined weekly capacity in and out of Australia to more than 550 tonnes.

With global air freight capacity declining, Qatar Airways Cargo has increased operations to ensure the con-tinuity of global trade and movement of essential medical and aid supplies. The airline continues to operate a signif-icant cargo schedule with almost 175 flights per day.

It has worked closely with governments and NGOs to transport over 100,000 tonnes of medical and aid supplies to impacted regions around the world on both scheduled and charter services. To continue to fulfil demand the Group’s cargo division is also utilising passenger aircraft to carry freight-only to destinations in China, Europe, India and the Middle East.

04 WEDNESDAY 13 MAY 2020HOME

CAM-QU conducts e-seminar to discuss material sciences and COVID-19 crisisTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Qatar University’s Center for Advanced Materials (CAM-QU) organized an e-seminar to discuss the materials sciences, engineering and the novel COVID-19 crisis via WebEx on Sunday.

Dr. Nasser bin Abdullah Al Juffali Al Nuaimi, Director of (CAM-QU), started the opening session with remarks on mate-rials sciences and their impor-tance in various areas. He also shed light on the role of the Center in building a sustainable community through con-fronting the challenges brought by this pandemic. Whether in terms of advice, education, training and guidance for the Qatari community or the planning and implementation at the academic and research l e v e l s l o c a l l y a n d internationally.

Dr. Al Nuaimi detailed the

most important challenges facing modern societies in general in confronting similar circumstances such as this pan-demic. He appreciated the col-laboration with various institu-tions and companies within Qatar and beyond including international universities and

companies.He also commented on the

current collaboration with the Qatar Electricity and Water Company, represented by its General Manager and Man-aging Director Eng. Fahd Al Muhannadi. The Center has established a water tech-nology unit to mutually benefit from the Center’s research potentials and the Company’s capabilities and support in areas of water desalination.

Cooperation would be through the currently applied technologies, or by introducing new water desalination methods which are cost-effective and more efficient. It would also ensure the efficiency of the methods currently used to produce, store drinking water and their compliance with local and international quality spec-ifications by conducting

periodic measurements at the Center.

Dr. Kamel Eid, a researcher at the Center, shed light on col-laboration with Dr. Abu Bakr Abdullah, another researcher at Center, to desalinate drinking water using capacitive tech-nology to remove different salt ions. The method uses new carbon nanomaterials inlaid with ultra-fine materials to desalinate seawater by using electricity produced at the Center.

The patent right has been registered in the United States. Dr. Abdullah also gave a short brief clarifying the effectiveness of scientific research in general and the importance of materials science in the prevention and protection from the novel COVID-19.

He also pointed to the latest research proposals and efforts addressing coronavirus detection and treatment, as well as the expected timeframe for developing a vaccine or treatment for COVID-19.

Prof. Syed Zaidi, QAFAC Chair and Professor of Chemical Engineering at the Center, discussed the role and importance of technology in dealing with COVID-19 for water treatment.

Dr. Zaidi also discussed the new initiative of the Center for the establishment of Water Technology Unit, which will help build capacity and local expertise to support water desalination and treatment industry in Qatar.A file photo of Qatar University building.

Dr. Nasser bin Abdullah Al Juffali Al Nuaimi, Director of CAM– QU

QRCS, QFFD sign MoU to support displaced Syrians in IdlibTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Qatar Red Crescent Society (QRCS) and Qatar Fund for Development (QFFD) have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to provide lifesaving medical support for Syrian children and women under the Quest Health Initiative.

The $4m MoU was signed by Khalifa bin Jassem Al Kuwari. Director General of QFFD, and Ali bin Hassan Al Hammadi, Sec-retary-General of QRCS. The signing ceremony was attended by officials from both parties.

In his remarks, Al Kuwari said, “We value the ongoing efforts by our strategic partner, QRCS, to make these projects possible in spite of the compli-cated situation on the ground. We at QFFD are proud of our partnership with QRCS in pro-viding aid across the board, towards the Sustainable Devel-opment Goals (SDGs) and com-prehensive development of needy countries”.

“This support falls under the Quest Health Initiative, a program launched by QFFD to help our affected Syrian brothers and sisters both in Syria and in the host neigh-boring countries,” said Mr.

Al-Kuwari. “We seek to build their capacity to withstand the impact of the crisis, establish peace and justice, and ensure a better future for them”.

He noted that the project is related to the health sector, a main focus of QFFD. It is important not only because it provides primary health care services, but also because it focuses on medical support and capacity-building to save the lives of Syrian children and women.

Al Hammadi commended the strategic partnership between QRCS and QFFD, which grew over the years and trans-lated into numerous humani-tarian interventions in countries affected by disasters and con-flicts. These operations helped millions of affected and dis-placed persons and made a dif-ference in their lives, particularly in Middle East countries like Syria, Yemen, Libya, and Iraq.

“This project is inspired by the State of Qatar’s firm com-mitment towards our Syrian brothers and sisters,” said Al Hammadi. “It builds on QRCS’s humanitarian contributions for the benefit of displaced Syrians and the Syrian refugees in neighboring countries."

Dr. Al Nuaimi detailed the most important challenges facing modern societies in general in confronting similar circumstances such as COVID-19 pandemic.

GMC Qatar offers brand’s freshest 2020 lineup with starting price of QR89,900 THE PENINSULA — DOHA

GMC Middle East alongside its local partners in Qatar, Mannai Autos, are celebrating the holy month of Ramadan by re-opening and offering the diverse range of the GMC premium vehicles with starting price of only QR89,900.

This Ramadan, customers looking to take home the new 2020 Terrain, Acadia, the imposing Yukon or the leg-endary Sierra pick-up truck can now easily celebrate the ease and comfortable online shopping experience through various channels.

To further support

customers and encourage social distancing during these unprec-edented times, GMC is offering shoppers a fully virtual buying experience complete with mul-tiple digital touchpoints — such as digital communication through a number of messaging, voice calls and video confer-encing applications with sales

personnel for all customer queries. In addition, customers can request test drives, and have the vehicle delivered to their home to try it out before making the purchase.

Daniella D’Souza, Head of Brand GMC Middle East, said: “The Holy Month of Ramadan, is an occasion for us to get closer to the Qatari community and celebrate together the month of generosity. More than ever, this year, the safety of our customers and staff is our biggest priority. With the support of our long-standing dealer in Qatar, Mannai Autos, this Ramadan we are providing our customers a fresh 2020 line-up that they can virtually purchase to limit unnecessary face-to-face contact, thanks to o u r d i g i t a l b u y i n g experience.”

Customers can also benefit from a free service and maintenance for up to 5 years or 100,000 KMs (whichever is reached first) on Denali trims. Not just that, customers can take advantage of the 4 years’ roadside assistance. To further facil-itate the purchase, customers can benefit from the in-house finance and flexible payment plans too.

Pick-up truck lovers will be happier than ever as Mannai has now made available the full range of the most iconic pick-up trucks.

Last but not least, the bold

and All-New 2020 GMC Acadia is equipped with the latest tech-nologies and GMC’s top of the range infotainment system with

a mind-blowing starting from price of QAR 119,900 plus available in-house financing. Customers who will now own this incredible SUV can also benefit from 4 years’ roadside assistance and 3 years or 60,000 km (whichever comes first) free service and maintenance.

In compliance with Qatar Government’s directives on safety and social distancing, strict hygiene measures and contactless procedures are carefully being followed to ensure the safety of customers and the dealers’ staff.

For more information, cus-tomers can reach out to Mannai A u t o m o t i v e h o t l i n e 800-1808.

This Ramadan, customers looking to take home the new 2020 Terrain, Acadia, the imposing Yukon or the legendary Sierra pick-up truck can now easily celebrate the ease and comfortable online shopping experience through various channels.

Ashghal completes construction works on roads surrounding new Umm Al Juwashin petrol stationTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

The Public Works Authority (Ashghal) has announced the completion of the construction of the roads surrounding the recently-opened Umm Al Juwashin petrol station, located on the intersection of Al Majd Road with Dukhan Road and between Umm Al Juwashin and Umm Al Afaei Interchanges. The recently-completed 4km of roads will provide safe access to the petrol station for motorists.

Eng. Rashed Al Marri, Project Engineer in the Roads Projects Department, pointed out Ash-ghal’s keenness to accelerate the delivery of the roads surrounding Umm Al Juwashin petrol station and the completion of works ahead of the petrol station’s

opening. The completed works serve roads users in Umm Al Juwashin area, as well as the areas in close proximity such as: Umm Al Afaei area, Rawdat Al

Jeehaniya area, Jery Al Daby area, Al Duhailiyat area and Leh-sainiya area, and accommodate the traffic of those heading to Mall of Qatar and to Al Rayyan

Stadium, which is one of the sta-diums hosting 2022 FIFA World Cup.

Eng. Al Marri added that the completion of construction works on the roads surrounding Umm Al Juwashin petrol station has gained more importance after the opening of the petrol station, since the new roads cater to the needs of the increasing number of vehicles on Al Majd Road and Dukhan Road, as well as provide safe access to the station.

Furthermore, Ashghal has installed 93 street lighting poles, and conducted road markings and road signs work, in addition to interlock works. The project has also included the con-struction of roadside ditches for surface water drainage and a water lagoon.

QNTC offers online tourism certification program to residents

FROM PAGE 1

The initiative is part of a coordinated effort by the Council to launch a series of programs and workshops to build local capacity in the tourism sector during the COVID-19 pandemic.

QNTC Secretary General and Qatar Airways Group Chief Exec-utive, H E Akbar Al Baker, said: “As Qatar continues to develop its tourism industry, we are seeking the best and brightest indi-viduals to join us on this remarkable journey. In the coming years, we will require a constant stream of talented professionals that are trained and up to date with the latest industry practices. We are therefore very pleased to offer this unique opportunity to pro-fessionals from any career background who wish to enhance their skills, advance their careers, and join a field that showcases our country to the world.”

Launched in September 2019, UNWTO Online Academy is the world’s first online tourism academy, meeting a mounting demand for flexible career development programs.

To qualify for the Certification Program, interested individuals must first complete the Academy’s free introductory program.

QNTC will then select the top 10 candidates from the intro-ductory program to be eligible for certification, a more compre-hensive program including a course on Fundamentals of Tourism Industry Management.

Scholars will learn about the latest trends in tourism industry management, including Strategy, Digital Marketing, Operations, Finance and Innovation and Digital Transformation—amounting to approximately 48 hours of online education that can be com-pleted at an enrollee’s chosen pace.

To be eligible for one the scholarships offered by QNTC, inter-ested individuals should enroll in Introduction to Tourism Industry Management by May 31, 2020. Selected scholars will be announced in mid-June.

05WEDNESDAY 13 MAY 2020 MIDDLE EAST

Turkey accuses 5 nations of forming ‘alliance of evil’AGENCIES — ANKARA

Turkey yesterday accused Greece, Cyprus, Egypt, France and the United Arab Emirates of seeking to form an “alliance of evil” after these countries issued a joint declaration denouncing Ankara’s policies in the eastern Mediterranean and Libya.

In a strongly-worded statement, Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Hami Aksoy said the five countries were pursuing “regional chaos and instability” in the eastern Mediterranean and sacrificing Libyans’ “hope for democracy for the reckless aggression of dictators.”

The foreign ministers of the five countries held a telecon-ference on Monday to discuss the situation in the eastern

Mediterranean, as well as the situation in Libya.

The five nations denounced what they said was Turkey’s sixth attempt in less than a year to “illegally conduct drilling operations in Cyprus’ maritime zones.”

Turkey has dispatched warship-escorted vessels off Cyprus to drill for gas, insisting that it’s acting to protect its interests.

Foreign Minister Mevlut

Cavusoglu told Turkish broad-caster Akit TV that the United Arab Emirates, along with Egypt and other countries he did not name, were "trying to desta-bilise the whole region", but he singled out Abu Dhabi for par-ticular criticism.

"If you are asking who is destabilising this region, who is bringing chaos, then we would say Abu Dhabi without any hes-itation," he said. "It is a reality that they are the force that

unsettled Libya and destroyed Yemen."

The UAE did not immedi-ately respond to Cavusoglu's criticism.

Ties between Turkey and the United Arab Emirates have been strained by Ankara's support for Qatar after four Arab countries including the UAE imposed sanctions on Doha in 2017 over its alleged support for Islamist militants, which Qatar denies.

In Libya, where the UN says it has supplied aircraft and mil-itary vehicles to Haftar, the UAE called on all parties last month to commit to a UN-supervised political process to end the war.

The United Arab Emirates was also a leading power in an alliance which intervened in Yemen five years ago against

the Iran-aligned Houthi movement. It reduced its presence in Yemen last year but remains a member of that alliance.

Cavusoglu also accused the UAE of supporting Al Shabab militants in Somalia, where Turkey has a military base and is training Somali troops.

The UAE had trained hun-dreds of Somali troops since 2014 as part of an effort boosted by an African Union military mission to defeat an Islamist insurgency until Somalia disbanded the pro-gramme in 2018.

He made his comments after the foreign ministry in Ankara condemned Monday's statement by the five countries, and accused France of "attempting to be the patron of this axis of malice".

Iran holds funeral

for 19 sailors

martyred in

navy accident

AP — TEHRAN

Iran held a funeral yesterday for 19 sailors killed when a missile fired during an Iranian military training exercise this week mistakenly struck a naval vessel, the state TV reported.

The ceremony took place at a naval base in the south-western port city of Chah-bahar, about 1,400km southeast of the capital, Tehran.

Mourning families and rel-atives of the killed soldiers, along with military and gov-ernment officials, attended the ceremony, the report said.

The bungled training exer-cises took place on Sunday in the waters near the strategic Strait of Hormuz. The missile hit the navy vessel Konarak off the port of Jask in the Gulf of Oman. The Konarak, a Hend-ijan-class support ship taking part in the exercise, came too close to a target and the missile struck it, state TV had said. The Konarak had been putting targets out for other ships to attack.

Fifteen Iranian sailors were also wounded in the incident, which raised new questions about the readiness of the Islamic Republic’s armed forces amid heightened tensions with US, just months after they acci-dentally shot down a Ukrainian jetliner near Tehran, killing all 176 people onboard.

Iran regularly holds exer-cises in the Gulf of Oman, which is close to the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which 20 percent of the world’s oil trade passes.

President Donald Trump withdrew the US from Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers two years ago, launching a maximum pressure campaign against Iran that has recently pushed the two countries to the brink of an all-out conflict.

Turkey sends medical supplies to Balkan countries and PeruANATOLIA — ANKARA

A Turkish military plane carrying medical supplies arrived in North Macedonia yesterday to support the coun-try’s battle against the corona-virus pandemic.

“Turkish Armed Forces air-craft carrying medical supplies for use against COVID-19 has arrived at Republic of North Macedonia,” the Turkish Defence Ministry said on Twitter.

Earlier in the day, the air-craft left from the capital Ankara to carry medical equipment to North Macedonia and Albania.

“Turkish Armed Forces air-craft, carrying the medical sup-plies prepared at the direction of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan by Turkish Red Crescent (Kizilay) for use against the COVID-19 outbreak, took off from Ankara Etimesgut

Airbase for Republic of North Macedonia and Albania,” the ministry had said on Twitter.

Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu last week said some two-thirds of the nations of the world requested medical sup-plies from Turkey to fight coro-navirus, and nearly half of these requests were met.

The countries included the worst-hit ones such as the US, Italy, Spain, and the UK, while Turkey remains the world’s third-largest provider of humanitarian aid during the pandemic.

North Macedonia has reported 1,664 cases and 91 deaths so far, according to data compiled by John Hopkins Uni-versity in the US. In Albania, there are 872 cases of virus, with 31 deaths.

Meanwhile, Turkey’s state-run aid agency also sent medical supplies to Peru yes-terday to help the South American country as the world

is battling the coronavirus pandemic.

The Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TIKA) in cooperation with Peruvian International Coop-eration Agency (APCI) sent medical supplies to the Regional Hospital of Tumbes.

TIKA in a statement said Peru’s Foreign Minister Gustavo Meza-Cuadra and Tumbes Regional Governor Wilmer Florentino Dios Benites attended the handover ceremony of the medical supplies.

Speaking at the ceremony, Meza-Cuadra stressed the

significance of cooperation while combating the outbreak and expressed his gratitude to Turkey for its support. The medical sup-plies are to be used to provide necessary health care for the people living in the region, espe-cially patients admitted to intensive care units

Turkish Ambassador to Skopje, Hasan Mehmet Sekizkok; North Macedonia Deputy Minister of Labor and Social Policies, Gonul Bayraktar, and other officials welcome Turkish military cargo plane carrying medical aid at Skopje International Airport in Skopje, North Macedonia, yesterday.

Lebanon to shutdown againfor anotherfour days

REUTERS — BEIRUT

Lebanon’s government has ordered most of the country to shut down again for four days, effective yesterday, as it seeks to ward off a corona-virus resurgence after easing some restrictions.

The country has been under lockdown since mid-March to rein in an outbreak that has infected 870 people and killed 26. Lebanon started lifting restrictions last week as part of a longer-term plan, letting restaurants, hair salons, construction sites and others re-open at lower capacity.

But the Cabinet agreed yesterday on the “full closure” for four days to curb a rise in new infections in recent days, after a drop in cases which the government had hailed as a success.

“This achievement is at risk of collapsing” because some people did not comply with the guidelines, Prime Minister Hassan Diab was quoted as saying during the meeting.

Information Minister Manal Abdel Samad said the four-day closure, which excludes supermarkets and pharmacies, would also allow teams from the health ministry to conduct more testing.

She added that the gov-ernment would re-evaluate its original five-stage plan for gradually reopening the econaomy.

Beirut airport has been closed for nearly two months, except for flights bringing thousands of expatriates home, adding to the rise in infections.

The lockdown already includes an overnight curfew, with security forces patrolling some streets.

Turkish nurse defiant after beating coronavirusANATOLIA — ANKARA

The struggle of health personnel often goes unnoticed by many, who see it as part of their job. But it is perhaps high time that we paid more attention to the sacrifices and commitment they demonstrate amid the corona-virus pandemic.

The medical labour force working at the frontlines and risking infection deserve nothing less than respect, including Serife Tabak, a 24-year-old Turkish nurse who caught the virus and upon recovering asked her superiors to be reassigned to the virus duty.

On April 12, following a tiresome shift, Serife returned home with pain in her back and legs and went to bed to prepare for the next day.

But that morning was daifferent than usual as she still felt tired and experienced a loss of smell and taste — symptoms common among coronavirus patients.

“I requested a coronavirus test on April 14 and it was positive,” she said, adding it was likely that she caught the coronavirus while working on virus duty as she lived alone and had almost no contact with other people.

Upon learning of her con-dition, health authorities quickly moved to provide essential medical care.

“I was referred to a hospital right away and stayed there for four days. Then I was told to self-isolate at home. I got discharged and went straight home,” she said.“Thank God my colleagues provided me with food and

beverages, while family members were vigilant as well,” she said. “They would leave the items at the door and leave. Then I’d take them inside.”

Although not suffering from any major health problems, Serife had nightmares about death for a brief period. She said she was aware that she was unlikely to die from the virus but could not help questioning the possibility for a while.

Her constant contact with family members and passion for drawing kept her mind busy and eased the recovery process, which was assisted by a primary care physician on call 24/7.

“I was not in a terrible situ-ation and had seen much worse cases (on duty),” she said.

After completing her iso-lation period and testing

negative twice for the virus, she rushed back to her employer, urging her superiors to re-assign her to coronavirus patients.

But she was turned down as coronavirus cases had signifi-cantly declined in Turkey and her efforts were no longer required in that field and she was transferred to another department of the hospital.

Serife explained her moti-vation to return to virus duty with a single word: “empathy.” “Our job requires one to have an occupational conscience and to adopt an understanding based on empathy. After all, the person in intensive care could be me or somebody I love.” She went on to say that she was inspired by the courage of her colleagues who do not hesitate to rush to the frontlines and

help patients in need.Turkey’s Health Ministry has

registered nearly 140,000 coro-navirus cases so far, with recov-eries nearing 96,000. The authorities have eased corona-virus measures while travel bans in many major cities continue along with weekend curfews.

Serife called on people to remain committed to adhering to the measures suggested by the Health Ministry such as social isolation and stay-at-home pol-icies while paying extra attention to wearing gloves and masks when going outside.

“Let us not think this disease is done,” she warned, adding collective irresponsibility could trigger a second wave of infection among the people - an issue recently raised by author-ities across the globe.

Iraq sterilises coronavirus treatment centre

A medical staffer wearing full personal protective equipment performs a sterilisation at the entrance of an isolated section for coronavirus disease treatment, while a man wearing a face mask stands behind the glass pane, at a hotel in the sports city of Iraq’s southern city of Basra.

Israeli soldier killed during West Bank raidAP — JERUSALEM

An Israeli soldier was killed yesterday morning during a West Bank arrest raid when a rock thrown off a rooftop struck him in the head, the military said, capping a surge in violence ahead of a visit to the region by the US secretary of state.

The military typically carries out such predawn raids in the West Bank, occasionally encountering local resistance, but the killing of a soldier is rare and this marked the first military casualty of the year.

The military said 21-year-old Staff Seargeant Amit Ben-Yigal was on routine “opera-tional activity” near the West Bank city of Jenin when a large rock was thrown off a rooftop and struck him on the head. A search was on for the attacker.

Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus, a military spokesman, said the forces had

completed their mission and were leaving the village of Yaabed when the soldier was struck. He said the soldier was wearing a protective helmet and was quickly evacuated for medical treatment but later died of his wounds.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sent condolences to the soldier’s family and vowed that “Israel’s long arm would reach the terrorist” behind the attack.

Yesterday’s raid was aimed at arresting four Palestinians wanted for stone-throwing at Israeli vehicles and other recent attacks. It comes a day after Israeli forces demolished the home of a Palestinian accused of being behind a deadly blast in the West Bank last year.

The uptick comes as US Sec-retary of State Mike Pompeo is expected to arrive today for a quick visit to discuss Israeli plans to annex large parts of the West Bank as early as this summer.

Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Hami Aksoy said the five countries were pursuing “regional chaos and instability” in the eastern Mediterranean and sacrificing Libyans’ “hope for democracy for the reckless aggression of dictators.”

06 WEDNESDAY 13 MAY 2020AFRICA

42,000 flee violence in northwestern NigeriaAFP — ABIDJAN

Over 40,000 people have fled violence in recent weeks by armed groups in northwestern Nigeria near the border with Niger, a region prone to communal clashes between herders and farmers, the UN refugee agency said yesterday.

The UN agency said the ref-ugees, “mainly desperate women and children”, were being allowed to seek pro-tection in Niger despite border closures as a result of the new coronavirus pandemic.

“Ongoing violence in parts of northwestern Nigeria forced an estimated 23,000 people to seek safety and security in Niger last month,” the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said in a statement.

“Fearing and fleeing the same insecurity in the border areas, an additional 19,000 Niger nationals have become displaced inside their own country,” it added.

“Those fleeing speak of extreme violence unleashed against civilians, murders, kid-nappings for ransom and pil-laging and looting of villages,” the statement said.

Gangs of mainly Fulani herders, in frequent conflict with farmers over land and water rights, started cattle rus-tling and small-scale crimi-nality decades back.

Lately, they have exploited a security vacuum to become

essentially an insurgent army of thousands.

The flight to Niger takes the total number of refugees fleeing that part of Nigeria to more than 60,000 since the first influx in April last year, it said.

The latest influx follows bloodshed in the Nigerian states of Katsina, Sokoto and Zamfara, the agency said.

In the worst single day of violence, on April 18, bandits riding more than 100 motor-bikes killed 47 people in coor-dinated pre-dawn raids on several farming villages in Katsina State.

The bandits were thought to be members of criminal gangs specialising in cattle theft and kidnap for ransom in the area.

Niger is also beset by jihadist violence, notably

around Lake Chad, where the borders of Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria converge.

The area around Diffa, a city of around 200,000 people located near the Nigerian border, has been repeatedly attacked by fighters of Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), a Boko Haram splinter group.

The Diffa region shelters more than 300,000 Nigerian refugees and internally dis-placed people.

Overall, Niger hosts more than half a million refugees, from Mali and Burkina Faso as well as Nigeria, according to a recent UN report.

Boko Haram’s insurgency has claimed more than 36,000 lives since it began in north-eastern Nigeria in 2009 and displaced nearly two million from their homes.

Around 4,000 people were killed in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso last year in jihadist violence, which is often intertwined with inter-com-munity tensions, according to a UN estimate.

Niger, Nigeria, Benin, Cam-eroon and Chad, have set up a multinational joint task force aimed at rolling back jihadists in the region with the help of local self-defence units.

But Chad, considered the best fighting force in the region, said last month it would fight jihadists only within its own borders after suffering heavy troop losses.

Migrants in Libya get food aidMigrants walk between food packages distributed by UNHCR, following the coronavirus disease outbreak, during the holy month of Ramadan in Tripoli, Libya, yesterday.

EU renews call for end to Libya violenceAFP — BRUSSELS

The EU yesterday demanded an end to fighting in Libya and said it was “determined” to enforce a UN arms embargo on the oil-rich but wartorn state.

As defence ministers from the 27 EU countries held video talks on the coronavirus pan-demic’s impact on European security, the bloc’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell renewed a call to halt the civil war raging in Libya.

The EU’s new naval mission to block the flow of arms to Libya by sea got under way last

week and Borrell — in a statement issued in the name of all 27 countries — vowed to make it work. “The European Union remains determined to see the UN arms embargo in Libya fully respected,” he said.

He said further efforts were needed to “ensure the full and effective implementation” of the embargo, particularly through Libya’s land and air borders.

Libya has been mired in chaos since the ouster and killing of long-time dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, with rival administrations in the east and west vying for power.

Operation Irini aims to halt the flow of arms into Libya, where the UN-recognised Gov-ernment of National Accord (GNA) in Tripoli is under attack from the forces of strongman Khalifa Haftar, who controls swathes of the country’s east.

Operation Irini now has a French frigate patrolling the eastern Mediterranean to look for arms shipments, backed up by aerial and satellite surveillance.

But critics have warned that by focusing on sea shipments, the new EU mission may deprive the Tripoli government of weapons but not Haftar.

Angola police

‘accidentally’ kill

man in social

gathering dispersal

AFP — LUANDA

An Angolan citizen has been shot dead by police enforcing social distancing measures against the coronavirus in the capital Luanda, the government and a witness said.

Antonio Domingos Vulola, 21, was gunned down on Sat-urday after police clashed with a group of people caught flouting a nationwide curfew and a ban on social gatherings in Luanda’s impoverished Huambo neighbourhood.

“The citizens showed resistance and set out to attack the forces of law, throwing sticks stones and bottles,” an interior ministry statement said late on Monday.

“In defence of their own physical integrity, law enforcement officers fired shots that accidentally hit the citizens in question.” The vic-tim’s brother said that Vulola was shot in the head while fleeing the scuffle. “The police arrived and started hitting (even) those with masks,” Joao Antonio Vulola recalled.

“My brother had no mask... so he decided to flee and it was from there that the agent shot three bullets: one in the air and two at my brother’s head, who died on the spot.” The interior ministry has opened an investi-gation into the incident. Angola has recorded 43 cases of corona-virus, including two deaths.

President Joao Lourenco declared a state of emergency in March, banning public gath-erings and restricting movement to limit the spread of COVID-19.

Zimbabwe, with China’s help, managing pandemic betterANATOLIA — HARARE

The Zimbabwean government is managing the COVID-19 pandemic better than other regional countries owing to the assistance from China, according to officials.

“We have a good rela-tionship with China and the moment we heard about the pandemic, we started moni-toring closely.

“We got medical expert advise and some Chinese handbook, that’s why we seem to be doing better than other regional countries,” Deputy Health Minister Dr.

John Mangwiro said.South Africa is the worst

virus-hit country in the Southern African Development Community region with 10,652 confirmed cases, 4,357 recov-eries and 206 deaths.

Zambia confirmed 267 cases, 117 recovered and seven deaths and their graph keeps pointing upwards, while Zim-babwe registered 37 confirmed cases, 12 recoveries and four deaths so far.

Zimbabwe maintained a clean sheet for an entire week on April 30-May 7, before new COVID-19 cases were recorded again.

The Democratic Republic of Congo and Tanzania are some of the countries in the region with high number of COVID-19 cases, according to the WHO.

But despite its health delivery system battling with shortages of medical supplies, personal protective equipment for health professionals, and even salaries for doctors and nurses, Zimbabwe is doing much better.

Referring to the reason of the country’s low numbers, Mangwiro said: “All we are doing is to follow the World Health Organizations (WHO)

guidelines, taking from what the Chinese did in Wuhan and other regions.”

He added: “As the gov-ernment, it’s our duty to let people know the truth, our figures are coming from proper tests and the results are there for all to see.”

Zimbabwe closed its borders and airports on March 30 when it announced its first 21-day lockdown with restricted movements and a ban of church, sports, and leisure gatherings.

The lockdown was later extended for another 14 days with a relaxed approach to

allow businesses to start oper-ating, but testing of all workers is mandatory while a new law that criminalise non-wearing of a mask is now in place.

After originating in China last December, COVID-19 has spread to at least 187 countries and regions. Europe and the US are currently the worst-hit regions.

The pandemic has killed over 286,300 worldwide, with total infections more than 4.17 million, while recoveries exceeded 1.46 million, according to figures compiled by the US’ Johns Hopkins University.

One-of-a-kind volunteer nurse in Nairobi

Volunteer nurse, Anita Thumbi (left), who is also an elected Member of County Assembly in the Nairobi County Government, looks on as a nurse tends to a patient at a facility used to train the public on infection prevention and management at a local health centre in Waithaka, a Nairobi suburb yesterday, on International Nurses Day.

COVID-19 confirmed in UN-run camp in South SudanAP — JUBA

For the first time, COVID-19 has been confirmed in a crowded civilian protection camp in South Sudan’s capital, the United Nations said yesterday, a worrying development in a country that’s one of the world’s least prepared for the virus’ spread.

The UN is aware that the health ministry and World Health Organization have con-firmed the two cases in the camp in Juba, said Francesca Mold, a spokeswoman with the UN mission in South Sudan.

The health ministry’s emer-gency preparedness manager, Dr. Mathew Tut, said the two infected people were South Sudanese and in their 20s. South Sudan was one of the last countries in Africa to confirm a case of the disease and now has 174.

As of mid-April more than 190,000 people were still shel-tering in several UN-run civilian protection camps acraoss South Sudan, more than a year after a peace deal ended a five-year civil war. Nearly 30,000 are sheltering in Juba.

The prospect of the

coronavirus’ spread to refugee and displaced persons’ camps in Africa, the Middle East and Asia has alarmed health and other aid officials as often remote locations, travel restrictions and shortages of medical supplies make any containment and treatment extremely challenging.

As of late April, almost none of the 10 million people packed into such camps around the world had been tested for the virus.

Aid workers in South Sudan have warned there is little more than isolation centres in place to treat people if the virus begins to spread in the crowded

camps. The country’s health system relies on NGOs for almost all health services.

Most of the infected people so far have been treated at home instead of being isolated at the Dr. John Garang Infec-tious Diseases Unit, which the WHO has said is being expanded from 24 beds to 80.

Last week the South Sudan Doctors’ Union expressed concern over the government’s decision to partly relax virus lockdown measures, saying it “does not see urgency” in doing so as the number of cases are rising.

Ethiopia’s only ventilator expert races to train others as virus spreadsREUTERS — ADDIS ABABA

As the coronavirus epidemic gains a foothold in Ethiopia, Habtamu Kehali’s skills in operating a ventilator may, for increasing numbers of patients, mean the difference between life and death.

As the country’s only respi-ratory therapist, Kehali is rushing to train others to run the machines used to keep severely ill COVID-19 patients breathing.

“We only have few patients who are under intensive (coro-navirus) care but if the number is going to increase there is a risk that we might see misman-agement of ventilators,” he told Reuters.

“The patient might be exposed to side-effects such as infection and die.” Ethiopia has 250 confirmed cases of the disease, a tally that has almost doubled over the past eight days, with five fatalities.

The World Health Organi-sation says around five percent of COVID-19 infections are severe enough to require intensive care and mechanical ventilation.

Health Minister Lia Tadesse said that Ethiopia had 435 ven-tilators and planned to buy more, and that around 800 health professionals could operate them.

However, Habtamu said only very few had the nec-essary specialist skills. Ethiopia had only 12 students on the country’s first course for the entry-level qualification of

respiratory technician being supervised by him, he added.

Dr Jannicke Mellin-Olsen, president of the London-based World Federation of Societies of Anaesthesiologists, said doctors and nurses could easily give oxygen to patients using masks or nasal tubes.

But sedating and intubating them — putting tubes into their windpipes to push air from a ventilator into their lungs — was far trickier, “particularly for COVID patients because they have so many pathological changes in their lungs,” she told Reuters.

“This is advanced and spe-cialised medicine — you can easily risk doing more harm than good.” Habtamu has toured Ethiopian hospitals to review their preparedness for operating ventilators and, since the end of March, put 78 other health workers through two days of training, condensed from an original one-week course.

“We can see that there is a significant gap in the clinical application of these machines...We are trying to narrow that gap,” he said.

His trainees can now serve as support staff, but could not operate ventilators with full confidence on their own, he said, and coronavirus-related travel restrictions mean health workers from outside the capital Addis Ababa can no longer attend training.

“The training is not suffi-cient and we often get this feedback,” he said.

Ongoing violence in parts of northwestern Nigeria forced an estimated 23,000 people to seek safety and security in Niger last month,” the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said in a statement.

07WEDNESDAY 13 MAY 2020 ASIA

India’s PM announces $270bn stimulus package

AFP — NEW DELHI

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi unveiled yesterday a $270bn stimulus package for labourers and small businesses to boost flagging growth as the country grapples with the impact of the coronavirus and weeks-long lockdown.

The package — worth about 10 percent of India’s GDP — came as the country was set to mark its 50th day in the world’s biggest lockdown as the number of virus cases topped 70,000 with 2,200 deaths.

“This economic package is for India’s self-reliant movement. It is for the cottage, small and medium scale indus-tries,” Modi said in a televised address. The funding includes a $2bn relief package announced at the start of the lockdown in late March and stimulus efforts by the central

bank, Modi said.Finance Minister Nirmala

Sitharaman would unveil further details in the next few days, he added. The gov-ernment credits its strict shutdown of almost all activity in the country of 1.3 billion people for limiting the number of virus cases and deaths.

But the livelihoods of tens of millions of people have been badly hit, particularly the poor and migrant workers, many of whom have lost their jobs.

“Day labourers, migrant workers have suffered much in this period. It is our duty now to do something for them,” the prime minister said.

Modi said the next stage of the lockdown, which is due to be lifted on May 18 after being extended twice, “will be dif-ferent in many ways”.

“It will be based on sugges-tions received from states,” he

said, adding that an announcement would be also made in coming days.

Meanwhi le , India ’s enormous railway network ten-tatively ground back to life yes-terday as a gradual lifting of the world’s biggest coronavirus lockdown gathered pace even as new cases surged.

The country of 1.3 billion imposed a strict shutdown in

late March, which Prime Min-ister Narendra Modi’s gov-ernment has credited with keeping cases to a modest 70,000, with around 2,300 deaths.

But the lockdown, which enters its 50th day today, has torpedoed the economy, snatching the livelihoods of tens of millions of people and hitting the poor the hardest.

Whole industries have been devastated from tea plantations to diamond-polishing and there are fears of food shortages, while a ban on flights has left hundreds of thousands of Indians stranded abroad.

Restrictions have been steadily eased, however, par-ticularly in rural areas, and some Indian trains — on a network which normally carries

over 20 million passengers a day—resumed yesterday.

More than 54,000 tickets for an initial 30 services sold out online within three hours on Monday, reports said.

Two trains left New Delhi on Tuesday afternoon with 2,300 people on board. Others left different cities including Mumbai.

The government has not set out a programme for a time-table beyond May 20, but Modi was due to address to the nation later Tuesday when he might announce a further relaxation of lockdown restrictions.

There were limited special train services laid on after the lockdown was imposed to ferry home some of the millions of poor migrant workers left jobless and destitute by the shutdown.

Many people, however, were forced to walk hundreds of kilometres to get home. Some died on the way, including 14 workers crushed by a goods train in Maharashtra last week.

Passengers in face masks or handkerchiefs over their mouths queued outside New Delhi station yesterday, waiting to be screened for coronavirus symptoms.

Ajay Dewani, a photog-rapher stranded in Ghaziabad with a ticket for Chattisgarh state said he walked for four hours to get to the station.

Fire damages 674 shanties in Bangladesh Rohingya campANATOLIA — DHAKA

More than 670 makeshift dwellings for Rohingya refugees in a camp across Bangladesh’s southern district of Cox’s Bazar were damaged in a fire last morning, according to officials.

“We’ve been confirmed about the fire incident and are now assessing the extent of damages officially,” Bangladesh’s Refugee Relief and Repatriation

Commissioner (RRRC) Mahbub Alam Talukder said.

No casualties were reported so far, he said. “The UNHCR [UN refugee agency] will repair the damaged tents soon.”

Speaking to Anadolu Agency, UNHCR communi-cation officer in Bangladesh Louise Donovan said that a total of 312 shelters were destroyed, with 362 more partially damaged, as well as small shops

and businesses. “The UNHCR mobilized emergency response teams and coordinated with our partners,” she said, adding that Rohingya refugees themselves had been the first responders. “Thankfully, no loss of life has been reported.”

Rahmat Karim, a Rohingya victim whose house was also damaged in the incident, told Anadolu Agency that more than 500 houses had been damaged.

“Above 500 of our houses were fully damaged and some other houses were partially damaged,” Karim added.

He said: “Five people of us have been wounded during the rescue works. Two or three people are still missing.”

Meanwhile, local media reports said that at least 100 makeshift tents were damaged in a fire at the Kutupalong Rohingya camp in Ukhia

Upazila at around 9 am local.Four firefighting units from

Ukhia, Rampu, Teknaf and Cox’s Bazar rushed to the scene and were able to bring the blaze under control after two hours, the Daily Star newspaper reported, citing local fire department offi-cials. The fire might have orig-inated from a gas cylinder, it said, adding that the extent of losses could not be assessed immediately.

Internet restored in majority of Kashmir after four days

ANATOLIA — SRINAGAR

Indian authorities restored low speed internet in majority of Kashmir on Monday midnight.

Mobile telephones and internet were shut immedi-ately after the killing of Riyaz Naikoo, operational head of militant outfit Hizbul Muja-hideen, in southern Kashmir on Wednesday.

During the next two days, a civilian was killed and several others suffered bullet and gun pellet wounds when government forces fired on protesters agitating against Naikoo’s killing in his native Beighpora village, police and health officials said.

Stalls are seen at a market along a pedestrian area during a government-imposed lockdown as a preventative measure against the spread of COVID-19, in Dhaka, Bangladesh, yesterday.

Migrant workers returning from China sit at the Myanmar border gate in Muse in Shan state, yesterday. Hundreds of migrant workers, who had been trapped in China as a result of the novel coronavirus pandemic, have been steadily returning to Myanmar.

Malaysia seizes hundreds of migrants in latest lockdown raidREUTERS — KUALA LUMPUR

Malaysia has detained 1,368 undocumented migrants in an area under lockdown in the latest such raid despite fears the crackdown could push vulnerable people into hiding and increase the risk of coro-navirus infection in over-crowded detention centres.

The people from Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Myanmar and Bangladesh were rounded up in an area near a large market just outside the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur, the Immigration Department said in a statement.

The raid on Monday, which included 261 women and 98 children, followed a similar roundup last week, which alarmed the United Nations and rights groups.

The migrants’ offences included lacking proper iden-tification, overstaying, and holding false papers, author-ities said. They have defended

the arrests as necessary to pre-serve law and prevent the migrants from travelling.

With 6,742 cases and 109 deaths, Malaysia eased movement curbs earlier this month but has kept tight restrictions on several areas where there have been new outbreaks of the COVID-19 disease. The Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network (APRRN) said many of those arrested on Monday were asylum-seekers not formally registered by the United Nations’ refugee agency UNHCR.

“It really puts them in a precarious situation because they are simply categorised as undocumented migrants when they are fleeing from imminent danger,” APRRN programme officer Rachel Tan said.

Around the world, migrants have been particularly vul-nerable during the pandemic. In neighbouring Singapore, thousands of infections have been linked to migrant worker

dormitories. Last week, the United

Nations urged Malaysia to avoid detaining migrants and release all children and their car-egivers, warning that packed detention centres heightened infection risks.

The Immigration Depart-ment’s director general Khairul Dzaimee Daud said in the statement that all of those screened and detained after Monday’s raid tested negative. The area round the Selayang Wholesalers’ Market, where many migrants work, has been under lockdown since April 20, with businesses closed and res-idents confined to home, after a new cluster of cases was reported there.

Malaysia has about two million registered foreign workers, but authorities say many more are there without proper documents. Malaysia does not formally recognise ref-ugees, regarding them as illegal migrants.

UNSC to discuss violence, coronavirus in MyanmarAFP — UNITED NATIONS

The UN Security Council (UNSC) will hold a videocon-ference to discuss the esca-lation of violence in Myanmar’s Rakhine state and the effect of the coronavirus pandemic in the country, diplomatic sources said.

The closed-door meeting, planned for tomorrow, was requested by the UK. The UN envoy for Myanmar, Switzer-land’s Christine Schraner Bur-gener, is scheduled to give comments.

At the end of April, a Myanmar government health worker was injured and his driver — who worked for the World Health Organization (WHO) — was killed when their United Nations-marked vehicle was ambushed as they carried COVID-19 test samples in conflict-ridden Rakhine state.

The country’s northwest has been embroiled in an increasingly brutal civil war between Myanmar’s military

and Arakan Army rebels demanding more autonomy for the state’s ethnic Rakhine population.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres strongly condemned the attack. He called for “a full and trans-parent investigation” and for the perpetrators to be brought to justice, his spokesman said in a statement.

The attack came amid increasing calls for a global ceasefire and protection for civilians displaced by the pandemic.

The last Security Council meeting on Myanmar was in February. China, which backs Myanmar and regularly opposes UN intervention in the country, prevented the adoption of a joint statement by the 15 Council members.

Scores have been killed in Myanmar, hundreds injured and tens of thousands displaced since fighting erupted at the beginning of last year, with both sides trading allegations of abuses committed.

Migrant workers travelling atop a truck as they return to their hometowns after the government eased a nationwide lockdown as a preventive measure against the COVID-19, on the outskirts of Allahabad, yesterday.

American pilot

dies after light

plane crashesAP — JAYAPURA, INDONESIA

An American pilot died after her light plane crashed into a lake yesterday while deliv-ering humanitarian supplies in Indonesia’s easternmost province of Papua, police said.

The pilot, Joyce Chaisin Lin, 40, apparently had technical problems two minutes after takeoff from Sentani airport in the provincial capital of Jayapura, Papua police spokesman Ahmad Musthofa Kamal said.

He said she sent a distress call and requested to return to the airport, but the control tower then lost contact with her. The cause of the crash was not immediately clear.

Lockdown scene

Migrant workers return to Myanmar

The package — worth about 10 percent of India’s GDP — came as the country was set to mark its 50th day in the world’s biggest lockdown as the number of virus cases topped 70,000 with 2,200 deaths. Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the next stage of the lockdown, which is due to be lifted on May 18 after being extended twice, “will be different in many ways”.

During the 1918-1919 pandemic, upward of 500 million people were infected (about 30 percent of the global population), and conservative estimates count 50 million deaths.

08 WEDNESDAY 13 MAY 2020VIEWS

CHAIRMANDR. KHALID BIN THANI AL THANI

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

editorinchief@pen.com.qa

ACTING MANAGING EDITORMOHAMMED SALIM MOHAMED

m.salim@pen.com.qa

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

EDITORIAL

QATAR is writing history yet again. Fighting COVID-19 has been an unprecedented challenge for every country in the world. Qatar has been extending much needed help to every part of the globe through supplying essential medical supplies and other relief material to the needy nations. The country has been instrumental in repatriating hundreds of thousands of people stranded in different countries to their home countries, which attracted wide-spread appreciation from every corner of the world.

On Monday, Qatar Airways, the flag carrier of the country, announced that it will give away 100,000 free tickets to frontline healthcare professionals as token of extending thanks to their selfless service during this debil-itating pandemic. This came as a surprise to most of the airlines in the world as the industry is passing through the most difficult period since the beginning of the avi-ation industry. While all of them are trying their level best to shore up their fast slipping revenue, the award-winning Qatar Airways offering 100,000 free tickets is not only a real surprise but something which is worth imitating by other giants in the industry.

This is not the first time that the Qatari flag carrier is grabbing headline since the pandemic began. The airline has been at the frontline of global efforts to repatriate stranded passengers by maintaining 24/7 operations in recent months, including the provision of over 100 charter flights to repatriate over one million people from every part of the globe. While the aviation industry is faced with chal-lenge of risk in keeping the airlines flying during the pan-demic, Qatar Airways has been more bothered about the humanitarian aspect which it considered as a duty to the world. Hence the airline was brave enough to take the plunge and help out its valued travellers held up in far-flung areas of the globe, whether it is in Asia or Africa.

In addition to transporting travellers, the airline has been ensuring the vital food and medical supply chain works without disruption by establishing air bridges between countries, operating exclusive cargo service between exporting and importing countries and car-rying vital supplies in bellyhold, which offered a much needed breather to countries across the world.

People around the world are fast-recognising the selfless and brave service the medical professionals right from doctors to hospital attendants are rendering. Different countries were adopting different measures to appreciate their contribution in diverse ways, some by arranging flypasts by military air-craft, some others by showering hospitals and healthcare workers with flower petals from the sky etc. But the gesture by Qatar Airways is a unique one which salutes the valour of the real COVID-19 soldiers across the world. The healthcare professionals around the world will consider it as a moti-vation and they will definitely cherish this offer with gratitude.

Unique gesture by Qatar Airways

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Quote of the day

There are few words that can do justice to the

horrors we have witnessed in Afghanistan. To target

and kill mothers, newly born babies and nurses, as

well as bereaved and mourning families, are acts of

evil and show an appalling degree of inhumanity.

Josep Borrell, EU Foreign Policy Chief

Belgian nurses with trays of pastries that they received to celebrate the International Nurses Day, amid the coronavirus disease outbreak, at the Erasme Hospital in Brussels, Belgium, yesterday.

Scientists and scholars have spent the last few months scouring the past for prece-dents to offer suggestions for how to safely and successfully respond to the COVID-19 crisis. The result has been almost daily references to the global influenza pandemic of 1918-1919, with its massive ramifications across the globe, including in the United States. While we can draw many useful lessons from the 1918-1919 experience in terms of how to minimize cases, we must be cautious about an imperfect analogy.

During the 1918-1919 pan-demic, upward of 500 million

people were infected (about 30 percent of the global pop-ulation), and conservative estimates count 50 million deaths. While our data on the number of cases and deaths from COVID-19 are very likely too low because of con-tinued limited testing, it is still unlikely that we will reach such catastrophic levels of loss today.

Why? Because unlike the influenza pandemic a century ago, the world is not at war.

The first cases of the 1918 flu pandemic most probably occurred in early March 1918 at Camp Funston in Kansas, where 54,000 US soldiers were gathered for basic training before their deployment to Europe. Within the month, 1,100 of these sol-diers were admitted to the hospital with influenza. The pandemic then followed the movement of these and many other soldiers around the globe as the Allies rushed to deploy American troops to Europe to stop the last German offensive in the spring of 1918. While the number of soldiers who contracted an “offseason” summer flu was considerable, most patients recovered quickly, leading doctors to describe this as nothing more than a “three-day fever” worthy of little cause for concern amid the ongoing war.

In late August, however, the flu came back, beginning its far more deadly second wave almost simultaneously in Brest, France (August 22); Freetown, Sierra Leone (August 24); and Boston

(August 27) - all major mil-itary port cities. The Great War kept soldiers in close, infectious quarters and con-stant movement around the globe, carrying the pandemic with them.

Hospitals were over-whelmed and operating with very limited medical personnel thanks to the many deployed in the military medical services. The remaining civilian doctors and nurses could not keep pace with the volume of influenza patients. Permelia Murnan Doty, the executive secretary of the New York Nurses Emer-gency Council, described in late 1919 how nurses had been responsible for at least double their usual number of patients, many of whom were fighting off the flu.

Pulmonary complications appeared more frequently, contributing to a mortality rate 25 times as high as during a normal influenza outbreak. Influenza fatalities peaked in November 1918 just as the war was coming to its end - and this timing had major ramifications for the outbreak.

The war shaped public health responses, which varied nationally or even regionally. Sir Arthur News-holme, the foremost public health expert in Britain, told Britons to simply “carry on.” A quarantine, the only tried and true method to contain past flu pandemics, would have been too detrimental to the war economy. The war neces-sitated tremendous domestic efforts to keep factories and supply lines operational,

supplying those soldiers on the front lines. “Social dis-tancing” was impossible to properly enact while fighting a world war, and postwar cel-ebrations of peace further exacerbated these problems.

In Britain, therefore, large public gatherings were not banned until late November, as the pandemic was already peaking. The United States, an ocean away from the immediate threats of the war, was more proactive in enacting some social distancing measures, beginning in September, but these varied by region.

Cities that were proactive in introducing social dis-tancing measures, such as New York City, where quar-antine measures were imple-mented before “the surge” in influenza deaths, kept their death rates (452 per 100,000) low. Here, too, however, the war played a role in what hap-pened. A two-mile parade on Sept. 28 to boost morale and funds for the war attended by 200,000 citizens in Phila-delphia left the city with the unenviable record of one of the highest death tolls among US cities (748 per 100,000).

Like influenza in 1918, COVID-19 has spread across the globe, with disastrous consequences.

As of May 10, more than 4.07 million people worldwide have been infected and 281,287 have died.

Jim Harris is a historian of modern Britain and the history of science, medicine and the environment, with a focus on the history of public health and infectious disease.

JOE BROCK REUTERS

Coal power plant construction will push ahead in Asia despite falling electricity demand and environmental concerns as policymakers prioritise boosting economies crippled by the coronavirus pandemic, analysts say.

Fossil fuel demand will plummet this year as lock-downs sap electricity use, the International Energy Agency said in a report last month.

The European Union, International Monetary Fund and the United Nations have said that marks a once-in-a-generation opportunity to launch a ‘green recovery’, which includes Asia joining the global trend of ending support for coal power.

But there are already signs that China and other Asian giants like South Korea and

Japan will steer recovery funds into struggling coal-focused state financers, equipment suppliers and construction firms. That could create a short-term jolt at the cost of efficiency and environmental damage, analysts say. “China and other governments may be tempted to invest in coal power to help their economies recover after the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Matt Gray, co-head of power and utilities at Carbon Tracker, a climate think tank. “This risks locking in high-cost coal power that will undermine global climate targets.”

China, which produces and consumes about half of the world’s coal, has in recent weeks said it would allow more provinces to start building coal power plants starting in 2023. It also accel-erated the construction of five plants and committed billions

of dollars to cross-country electricity transmission lines.

China’s coal imports in April surged 22% from a year earlier, as traders jumped on low prices to build stockpiles and prepare for a recovery in domestic demand.

Coal power infrastructure in Asia relies heavily on state-backed financing from China, South Korea and Japan.

Japan and South Korea are expected to continue to fund coal plants in developing countries like Vietnam and Indonesia to support state-backed industries hurt as domestic coal operations wind down to meet carbon-emission commitments, ana-lysts said.

Many planned coal-fired plants are not economically viable and will burden gov-ernments with stranded assets and billions of dollars of debt, analysts said.

The global long-term outlook for coal power is gloomy. Governments, banks and energy companies - under public and investor pressure - are dropping the fossil fuel, which is seen as the greatest risk to the 2015 Paris agreement to cap global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius.

That goal already looks out of reach, environmental experts say, partly because of new coal plants being built in Asia, the biggest energy-con-suming region and largest growth market.

About 500 gigawatts of coal power capacity is planned or under con-struction around the world, with an investment cost of $638 billion, according to Global Energy Monitor, an NGO supporting fossil fuel phase-out. More than 80% of that is in Asia.

The crucial difference between the 1918 flu and COVID-19

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Asia’s pandemic stimulus may slow the demise of coal

Established in 1996

JIM HARRIS THE WASHINGTON POST

09WEDNESDAY 13 MAY 2020 ASIA

Newborns among 16 dead in Kabul hospital attack; 24 killed in funeral bombingREUTERS — KABUL

Gunmen disguised as police attacked a hospital in the Afghan capital, Kabul, yesterday, killing 16 people including two newborn babies from a maternity clinic run by the international humanitarian organisation Doctors Without Borders.

In a separate attack the same day, a suicide bomber struck the funeral of a police commander, attended by gov-ernment officials and a member of parliament, in the eastern province of Nangahar, killing at least 24 people and injuring 68. Authorities said that toll could rise.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for either attack. The Taliban, Afghani-stan’s main insurgency group which says it has halted attacks on cities under a UStroop with-drawal deal , denied involvement in both.

The IS militant group operates in Nangahar and has carried out a number of high-profile attacks in Kabul in recent months. On Monday, security forces arrested its

regional leader in the capital.The violence, as the country

battles the coronavirus pan-demic, risks derailing momentum towards US-brokered peace talks between the Taliban and an Afghan government long scep-tical of the insurgents’ renunci-ation of attacks.

“If the Taliban cannot control the violence, or their sponsors have now subcon-tracted their terror to other entities — which was one of our primary concerns from the beginning — then there seems little point in continuing to engage Taliban in ‘peace talks,” tweeted Hamdullah Mohib, the government’s national security advisor.

The Kabul attack began in the morning when at least three gunmen wearing police uni-forms entered the Dasht-e-B a r c h i h o s p i t a l ,

throwing grenades and shooting, government officials said. Security forces had killed the attackers by the afternoon.

The 100-bed government-run hospital hosted a maternity clinic run by Doctors Without Borders, also known by its French name Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).

MSF confirmed in a tweet that the hospital had been attacked. Just hours before it had tweeted a photo of a newborn at the clinic in his mother’s arms after being delivered safely by emergency caesarean section.

Interior and health ministry officials said that mothers, nurses and children were among the dead and wounded.

Photos from the Ministry of Interior showed two young children lying dead inside the hospital. Soldiers ferried infants

out of the compound, some wrapped in blood-stained blankets. Officials said 100 people in total were rescued, including three foreign nationals.

The neighbourhood is home to many members of Afghani-stan’s Hazara community, a mostly Shia Muslim minority that has been attacked by Sunni militants from IS in the past, including at a Kabul ceremony commemorating the death of one of its leaders in March.

Rights group Amnesty Inter-national condemned both attacks.

“The unconscionable war crimes in Afghanistan today, targeting a maternity hospital and a funeral, must awaken the world to the horrors civilians continue to face,” the group tweeted. “There must be accountability for these grave crimes.”

Foreign powers including the United Kingdom, Germany, Turkey and Pakistan released statements condemning the violence.

Last week, security forces killed and arrested several members of an Islamic State cell that authorities said was

responsible for several attacks in Kabul including one on a Sikh temple in March. A roadside blast in the capital on Monday, which wounded four civilians, was claimed by the group.

Afghanistan is also facing violence around the country from the Taliban, even as the United States tries to usher in peace talks after signing a troop withdrawal agreement in Feb-ruary with the militants. The Taliban say they are holding back from attacking urban centres and their operations are aimed at government security forces.

Afghan security forces stand guard outside a hospital which came under attack in Kabul, yesterday.

China urges France to scrap Taiwan arms dealAFP — BEIJING

China called on France yesterday to cancel a weapons contract with Taiwan, warning that the deal with the self-ruled island could harm diplo-matic relations between Paris and Beijing.

Taiwan’s navy said last month it would upgrade the 25-year-old missile inter-ference system of French-built Lafayette frigates, whose sale three decades ago had raised diplomatic tensions.

Taiwanese media said the deal was worth over $26.8m to buy the Dagaie MK2 decoy launcher from a unit of French group DCI.

A source close to the matter said that the Taiwanese defence ministry has a con-tract to modernise its six French-made frigates.

“China has expressed deep concern to France,” the foreign ministry in Beijing said. “We oppose all weapons sales or military and security exchanges with the Taiwan region”.

“We urge France to cancel this planned weapons sale to Taiwan in order to avoid harming Sino-French rela-tions,” it added.

France sold the six frigates to Taiwan for $2.8bn in 1991, causing a freeze in diplomatic relations between Paris and Beijing.

Beijing still claims the self-governing island as part of its territory awaiting reunifi-cation, by force if necessary, even though the two sides have been ruled separately for more than seven decades.

Wuhan to restart mass COVID-19 test efforts ANATOLIA — ANKARA

Chinese authorities in Wuhan are poised to launch a mass novel coronavirus testing effort after the city reported six new cases over the weekend, state-run media reported yesterday.

According to Global Times, the city’s officials have asked districts to submit a plan to carry out city-wide testing of all their residents.

The decision came after Wuhan reported six new local cases after remaining infection-free for weeks due to strict lockdown.

Wuhan, a city of over 11 million people, had already tested around three to five million in the city after the

COVID-19 break was first reported there in December 2019.

“About three to five million residents have been tested and proved healthy, and thus Wuhan is capable to test the remaining 6 to 8 million in 10 days,” the Global Times quoted Yang Zhanqiu, deputy director of the pathogen biology department at Wuhan Uni-versity, as saying.

However, Yang did not support the mass testing move and said it was unnecessary.

“You’ll never know if people were infected after testing neg-ative [...] It’s essentially an epi-demiological investigation to determine the current situ-ation,” he added

On Monday, an official was

also sacked in Wuhan over the recent new infections.

Zhang Yuxin was removed from his posts for poor man-agement over the closing-off and control of the local com-munity, Xinhua News Agency reported

Life in Wuhan, the pro-vincial capital of Hubei and the initial epicenter of the virus, gradually returned to normal after the government lifted months-long restrictions in April.

Yesterday, the Chinese mainland reported a single new case.So far, 4,633 people in China died after contracting the virus among nearly 82,919 who tested positive, while 78,171 recovered, according to the commission.

US working on more funds forPakistan to fight pandemic

INTERNEWS — LAHORE

The United States will contribute $15m to new funding in its joint efforts with Pakistan to fight COVID-19 and its economic impacts.

“The US has now com-mitted nearly $15m in new funding to our joint efforts to fight coronavirus and its eco-nomic impacts,” says US Ambassador to Pakistan Paul Jones in a letter to PML-N Pres-ident and National Assembly Opposition Leader Shahbaz Sharif.

“We are actively working with Pakistani authorities on additional contributions to meet urgent needs.”

Jones said President Trump and Prime Minister Imran Khan recently discussed a coordinated response to coronavirus.

“The United States and Pakistan are actively collabo-rating to mitigate the economic fallout, while expanding our

health partnership to stop the spread of virus. We are taking new steps together to protect those most vulnerable.”

He said first, the US was making a new contribution of $5m to support Pakistan’s Ehsaas Emergency Cash Pro-gramme, which would provide almost 70,000 eligible families extra support to buy food and essentials.

Besides, the US had delivered 336 metric tonnes of ready-to-use therapeutic food for children diagnosed with acute malnutrition, and equipment for 50 health facil-ities to treat malnutrition, in collaboration with Unicef and the government of Pakistan.

“Our previously announced joint efforts include mobile labs for coronavirus hotspots, training for health care workers, upgrades of provincial emergency operations centers, and support for refugee and host communities.

If the Taliban cannot control the violence, or their sponsors have now subcontracted their terror to other entities then there seems little point in continuing to engage Taliban in ‘peace talks’, tweeted Hamdullah Mohib.

Nurses pose for pictures during an event held to mark the International Nurses Day, at Wuhan Tongji Hospital in Wuhan, in Hubei province, yesterday.

People sit while maintaining social distancing for food distribution after the government eased a nationwide lockdown imposed as a preventive measure against COVID-19, in Quetta yesterday.

Malaysian vessel leaves South China Sea after standoffREUTERS — KUALA LUMPUR

An oil exploration vessel contracted by Malaysian state energy company Petronas that was involved in a standoff with a Chinese survey vessel in the South China Sea left the disputed waters yesterday, three security sources and the vessel operator said.

Petronas has been conducting exploration activities near an area claimed by Malaysia and Vietnam as well as by China since late last year. In mid-April, the Haiyang Dizhi 8 - the Chinese government survey vessel — started operating in the area, escorted by coast guard and China Maritime Militia vessels.

Three American warships and an Australian frigate conducted a joint exercise near the site of Pet-ronas’ operations amid the standoff last month.

The West Capella, the vessel contracted by Petronas, left the waters as it has finished its

exploration activities in the area, the sources said. They did not want to be named as they were not authorised to speak to the media.

Petronas’ contract for the vessel with offshore drilling company Seadrill was scheduled to end this month.

Malaysia’s foreign ministry and Petronas did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Seadrill’s communications director Iain Cracknell confirmed that the West Capella has left the area after completing its planned work.

The Chinese government vessel, the Haiyang Dizhi 8, was still in the area — about 371 km offshore Malaysian Borneo, data from ship tracking website Marine Traffic showed.

The data showed the vessel has been moving within Malaysia’s exclusive economic zone in a hash-shaped pattern consistent with car-rying out a survey, as it did during

a tense standoff in Vietnamese waters last year.

The Washington-based Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative (AMTI) has said the China-Malaysia standoff has been going on for months.

China has denied reports of a standoff, saying that the Haiyang Dizhi 8 was conducting normal activities.

The incident prompted the United States to call on China to stop its “bullying behaviour” in the dis-puted waters.

China claims almost all of the energy-rich South China Sea, also a major trade route each year. The Philippines, Brunei, Vietnam, Malaysia and Taiwan have over-lapping claims.

The US has also accused China of taking advantage of the dis-traction of the coronavirus pan-demic to advance its presence in the South China Sea.

Some areas in Philippines to remain under lockdown, says DuterteBLOOMBERG — MANILA

President Rodrigo Duterte said some areas in the Philippines will remain on lockdown as the nation can’t afford to have a second nor third wave of corona-virus infections.

Duterte, at a briefing aired yesterday, said areas with high infection rate will be kept under a stay-at-home order known locally as enhanced community quar-antine after it’s scheduled to end on May 15. He didn’t identify the areas. His spokesman Harry Roque said he will give more details at his briefing.

The nation’s capital region of 13 million people and nearby central and south Luzon areas have been on a lockdown since mid-March, an order that was already extended twice.

The government will gradually ease curbs as the nation can’t afford to be on a quarantine for a long period, said Carlito Galvez, the chief implementer of

measures to stem the outbreak. “It has to balance between health and economy,” Galvez said.

Gross domestic product fell 0.2 percent in the first quarter compared to a year ago, its first contraction since 1998 amid the lockdown that shut businesses and sapped consumption in the Philip-pines’ key economic engine

Metro Manila, as the capital region is known, makes up about 36 percent of the country’s economy. Given its density, it also has the concentration of COVID-19 infections, accounting for 64% of the country’s 11,086 cases as of May 11, and 72 percent of the 726 fatalities.

The government will revive its infra-structure push as part of an economic recovery program to stimulate con-sumption, Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez said at the briefing. More than 2 million employees have been displaced by the virus outbreak, the labor department said.

10 WEDNESDAY 13 MAY 2020EUROPE

Deaths from virus top 40,000 in UK

REUTERS — LONDON

The death toll from COVID-19 in the United Kingdom now exceeds 40,000, by far the worst yet reported in Europe, raising more questions about Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s handling of the coronavirus crisis.

Figures published by the Office for National Statistics for England and Wales brought the United Kingdom’s official death toll to 38,289 as of May 3, according to a tally of death reg-istrations that also includes Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Since then, at least 2,251 people have died from COVID-19 in English hospitals, according to the latest daily data, bringing the true death toll as of yesterday to just over 40,000.

While different ways of counting make comparisons with other countries difficult, the figure confirmed Britain was among those hit worst by a pan-demic that has killed more than 285,000 people worldwide.

The data came a day after Johnson set out a gradual plan to get Britain back to work, including advice on wearing home-made face coverings - though his attempt to lift the coronavirus lockdown prompted confusion.

The leaders of the devolved nations — Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland — said that advice given by Johnson only applied to England. They told people to stay at home still.

Such a high UK death toll increases the pressure on Johnson. Opposition parties say he was too slow to impose a lockdown, too slow to introduce mass testing and too slow to get enough protective equipment to hospitals.

The data painted a grim picture in care homes, which have been especially hard hit by the virus.

“Care homes (are) showing the slowest decline, sadly,” ONS statistician Nick Stripe told BBC TV.

“For the first time that I can remember, there were more deaths in total in care homes than there were in hospitals in that week.” Care homes now account for a third of all COVID-19 deaths in England and Wales.

“It is a relief to see the number of deaths in care homes falling, but they sadly they con-tinue to make up a significant proportion of coronavirus related deaths and our work is not done,” minister for care Helen Whately said in a statement.

“Supporting the social care

sector through this pandemic has always been a priority, and we are doing everything in our power to ensure they have all they need to look after those in their care.”

A report published last week showed care homes bore the brunt of policy designed to shield its hospitals from COVID-19, leaving many of the weakest exposed.

Unlike the daily death toll announced by the government, yesterday’s ONS figures include suspected deaths from COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus.

In March, Britain’s chief sci-entific adviser said keeping deaths below 20,000 would be a “good outcome”. In April, the government’s worst case

scenario was a death toll of 50,000.

Even after adjusting for population, Britain still ranks among the countries worst affected by the pandemic, a list that includes Belgium, Spain and Italy.

In Italy, the next worst-hit country in Europe and whose population is about 90 percent of Britain’s, the death toll stood at 30,739 as of Monday, according to a measure based solely on confirmed cases rather than suspected cases.

Broadly comparable British data yesterday showed 32,692 deaths.

Ministers dislike compar-isons of the headline death toll because Britain’s performance in part reflects the fact that it

has been quicker to publish comprehensive data on COVID-19 deaths than other European countries.

They say excess mortality — the number of deaths from all causes that exceed the average for the time of year — is more meaningful because it is internationally comparable.

Early evidence, though, sug-gests Britain is faring badly on that front too.

So far this year, there have been more than 50,000 excess deaths compared to a five-year average, ONS statistician Stripe said. The ONS said deaths from all causes decreased for a second week running as of May 1, but 8,012 more people than average died in the 18th week of 2020.

UK royals pay tribute to nurses across the worldREUTERS — LONDON

Queen Elizabeth and other senior members of Britain’s royal family joined together yesterday to thank nurses around the world for their efforts in the COVID-19 pandemic.

In calls to mark Interna-tional Nurses Day, the royals posted videos and chatted to healthcare workers from Aus-tralia and India to Africa and the Caribbean.

“This is rather an important day,” the 94-year-old queen told Professor Kathleen McCourt, President of the Com-monwealth Nurses and Mid-wives Federation, saying nurses have “obviously had a very important part to play recently”.

Royal commentators said it was the first time during her 68-year reign that audio of a tel-ephone call involving the queen had ever been released.

Buckingham Palace said the royals had spoken to nurses and healthcare workers in Britain, Australia, India, Malawi, Sierra Leone, Bahamas, Cyprus, and Tanzania.

“You’re a huge inspiration to everybody. A huge thank you from us all here,” said Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge, during one of seven calls she made with Sophie, the Countess of Wessex, wife of the queen’s youngest son Prince Edward.

Other royals who took part included heir to the throne Prince Charles and his wife Camilla, the queen’s daughter Princess Anne and the queen’s cousin, Princess Alexandra.

“From the bottom of my heart thank you for everything you’re doing,” said Kate’s husband Prince William in a call to staff at a hospital in London.

“I hope you know how appreciative everyone is of what you’re all doing.” On Monday night, a giant image of Florence Nightingale was projected onto the buildings of Guys and St Thomas’ hospitals in central London to mark 200 years since her birth and her legacy to modern nursing.

Northern Ireland reveals five-stage lockdown exit planREUTERS — DUBLIN

Northern Ireland laid out a five-stage roadmap for the easing of its coronavirus lockdown similar to Ireland’s, but its omission of any dates for action raised the chances of different parts of the island reopening at different times.

Like leaders in Scotland

and Wales, Northern Ireland’s regional government said now is not the time to lift stay-home restrictions, contrary to Johnson encouraging some people to return to work this week.

The Northern Irish plan bores closer resemblance to Ireland’s five-stage approach than Johnson’s three-step

roadmap and, like in Dublin, the Belfast executive will decide on whether to move from one stage to the next every three weeks.

However, Ireland intends to enter phase one next week with its final phase set for August 18, meaning con-struction sites will likely open on the south side of the open

500km border with Northern Ireland on Monday but not in the north.

Northern Ireland operates under a devolved power-sharing government, mainly made up of pro-British politi-cians who wish to remain part of the UK and Irish nationalists seeking a united Ireland.

The pro-Irish Sinn Fein and

pro-British Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) displayed a united front yesterday.

“Now we know some will want us to set a date for lifting restrictions, but we will not be driven by a timetable and we know that some will be disap-pointed by that,” First Minister Arlene Foster of the DUP told the regional assembly.

Nurses who work at central London hospitals protest with placards outside Downing Street in central London, yesterday, calling for improved conditions and pay for nursing staff on the occasion of International Nurses Day 2020.

London honours

Tom Moore, 100,

who raised $40m

for health service

REUTERS — LONDON

British World War Two veteran Tom Moore (pictured), who has become a national hero after raising more than $40m for the health service, was awarded the ancient honour of the Freedom of the City of London yesterday.

Moore, 100, struck a chord with locked-down Britain by walking around his garden with the help of a walking frame to raise almost 33 million pounds for the National Health Service. His endeavour spread joy amid the grim news of the coronavirus outbreak.

In a bizarre online cer-emony, Moore, wearing his war medals, was awarded the freedom of the City of London by the chamberlain, wearing a ermine-trimmed gown, and the Lord Mayor, who wore a tricorne hat trimmed with black ostrich feathers.

“Today we are paying tribute to a very special man,” said Peter Kane, who occupies the ancient office of Cham-berlain of the City of London.

“Just an incredible achievement — we could run out of adjectives trying to describe this.”

Spain orders two-week quarantine for incoming travellers from FridayREUTERS — MADRID

Spain ordered a two-week quar-antine for all travellers arriving from abroad from this Friday in a bid to curb the coronavirus as the country emerges from a national lockdown, a move that will further harm a tourist industry already reeling from the epidemic.

Health ministry data showed the daily death toll rising to 176 yesterday from Monday’s seven-week low of 123 and bringing the total to 26,920. But the number of diagnosed cases rose by just 594 overnight to 228,030 — its smallest daily rise in about two months.

Health emergency coordi-nator Fernando Simon said now that Spain had managed to bring the outbreak under control and was relaxing its internal restric-tions on movements, it was time to control people coming from other countries.

“In many countries globally transmission will continue, the greatest risk will be the

importation of cases. We would be back in the situation we had in February. We have to do pre-vention efforts until other coun-tries reach the level of control that we have achieved,” he said.

One official order published yesterday said incoming trav-ellers would have to remain locked in and will only be allowed to go out for grocery shopping, to visit health centres, or in case of “situation of need”.

Prior to the new rules, arriving travellers had to abide by the general restrictions, which kept people largely con-fined to their homes.

The quarantine will be enforced for all people coming to Spain between May 15 and at least May 24, when the state of emergency is due to end.

The order can be extended jointly with possible state of emergency extensions. Spain, which is just emerging from one of Europe’s strictest coronavirus lockdowns, has so far extended its restrictions four times since mid-March.

An extension of the order would severely hurt Spain’s tourism industry which repre-sents about 12 percent of gross domestic product.

About 80 million tourists visit every year, enjoying a range of attractions from beach hol-idays on coastal resorts to exploring historic cities such as

Toledo and Granada.The measures applies to all

travellers, including Spanish cit-izens returning to the country. Only truck drivers, airplane and ship crews, cross-border workers and health staff who are entering Spain to work are exempt from the quarantine.

The government had

imposed restrictions on trav-elling from outside the open-border Schengen Area which includes most of the European Union countries and other European states such as Norway. Prior to the new rules, travellers had to abide by the general restrictions, which kept people largely confined to their homes.

Passengers pick up protective face masks from a police officer upon arriving at Adolfo Suarez Barajas Airport, in Madrid, yesterday.

Government rejects Paris mayor’s bid to open parksAFP — PARIS

The French government shot down a request by the Paris mayor yesterday to reopen parks and public gardens, a day after merrymakers in the capital flouted strict distancing rules to celebrate the beginning of the end of the coronavirus lockdown.

Mayor Anne Hidalgo said on Twitter she had renewed a request to open parks and gardens closed since mid-March, “taking into account the

needs of Parisians, because Paris is a very dense city”.

Access would be conditional on everyone wearing a face mask, which the mayor said should also become compulsory on the streets of Paris.

Her request came a day after Parisians were seen gath-ering in droves in public spaces laughing, hugging and sharing meals despite the government urging people to maintain social distancing to limit the spread of the virus.

On the banks of the Canal

Saint-Martin, police had to intervene to break up groups of people violating the rules with celebratory gatherings.

France started cautiously lifting a strict two-month home confinement on Monday, but remains on high alert with heightened precautions in place in so-called “red zones” of the country — including Paris and the wider Ile-de-France region — where the virus remains active.

These measures include keeping cafes, restaurants,

many schools, parks and gardens shuttered, and a ban on gatherings of more than 10 people. Masks are compulsory on public transport nationwide, and for teachers, but not in other public spaces.

Health Minister Olivier Veran rejected Hidalgo’s request to reopen parks, without referring to her bid to make masks compulsory.

“No, we will not open parks and gardens in Paris and in Ile-de-France, nor in the other regions classified as red” zones,

the minister said.“It can be all to tempting

with the sun out, for people to gather in groups that are too large... and to not respect the social-distancing measures,” he said.

France has recorded over 26,000 deaths due to the coro-navirus outbreak so far, with 263 new fatalities reported Monday.

And the country fears a second infection wave as busi-nesses start reopening and people return to work.

Figures published by the Office for National Statistics for England and Wales brought the United Kingdom’s official death toll to 38,289 as of May 3, according to a tally of death registrations that also includes Scotland and Northern Ireland. Since then, at least 2,251 people have died from COVID-19 in English hospitals, bringing the true death toll as of yesterday to just over 40,000.

11WEDNESDAY 13 MAY 2020 EUROPE / AMERICAS

WHO sees ‘positive data’ in treating virusREUTERS — GENEVA

The World Health Organisation (WHO) said yesterday that some treatments appear to be limiting the severity or length of the COVID-19 disease and that it was focusing on learning more about four or five of the most promising ones.

The Geneva-based WHO is leading a global initiative to develop safe and effective vac-cines, tests and drugs to prevent, diagnose and treat COVID-19. The respiratory illness has infected 4.19 million people around the world, according to a Reuters tally.

“We do have some treat-ments that seem to be in very early studies limiting the severity or the length of the illness but we do not have anything that can kill or stop the virus,” spokeswoman Margaret Harris told a briefing, referring to the body’s so-called

Solidarity Trial of drugs against the disease.

“We do have potentially pos-itive data coming out but we need to see more data to be 100 percent confident that we can say this treatment over that one,” she added, saying more research was needed and planned.

Harris did not name the treatments. Gilead Science Inc says its antiviral drug remdesivir has helped improve outcomes for COVID-19 patients.

Clinical data released last month on remdesivir raised hopes it might be an effective treatment. Several studies looking at combinations of anti-viral medicines have also sug-gested they may help patients fight off the virus.

Results of a trial in Hong Kong released this month showed a triple drug combination of antiviral medicines helped relieve symptoms in patients with

mild to moderate COVID-19 infection and swiftly reduced the amount of virus in their bodies.

The trial, which involved 127 patients, compared those given the combination drug, made up of the HIV medicine

lopinavir-ritonavir, the hepatitis drug ribavirin, and the multiple sclerosis treatment interferon beta, with a control group given just the HIV drug.

A malaria treatment cham-pioned by US President Donald Trump as a “game changer” in the fight against the coronavirus again failed to show a benefit in patients hospitalised with COVID-19, a study this month found.

While the study had certain limitations, doctors reported that the use of hydroxycholoquine neither lessened the need for patients requiring breathing assistance nor the risk of death.

In Geneva, the WHO official sounded a note of caution around expectations for a vaccine, saying coronaviruses in general are “very tricky viruses” that are “dif-ficult to produce vaccines against”.

More than 100 potential

COVID-19 vaccines are being developed, including several in clinical trials. The WHO said in April a vaccine would take at least 12 months.

Harris said that the Americas were the current “centre” of the pandemic, although she also noted rising cases in Africa. However, she said the continent had a “big advantage” over other countries with little experience of infectious disease outbreaks.

“They often have very good contact tracing infrastructure and a deep, deep, deep memory and understanding of why we take a new pathogen very, very seri-ously,” she said, singling out South Africa for its effective testing and contact tracing.

Asked about the reasons for high case loads in the United States and Brazil, Harris said: “Around the world we have seen that the warnings we put out right from the start, very, very

early on, were not seen as warnings about a very serious, lethal disease.”

She restated that the WHO, which has come under criticism especially from the United States for its handling of the pandemic, would conduct an “after-action” review that would include a “free and frank” discussion on its performance.

US President Donald Trump is working to reopen the economy quickly against recom-mendations from health experts to move cautiously to avoid a resurgence of the virus that has so far killed more than 80,000 people in the United States, the highest death toll in the world. He said he acted early to prevent the spread of the disease.

Brazil has registered a total of 168,331 confirmed cases of the virus and 11,519 deaths, the most deadly outbreak in an emerging market nation.

Clinical data released last month on remdesivir raised hopes it might be an effective treatment. Several studies looking at combinations of antiviral medicines have also suggested they may help patients fight off the virus.

Five die in fire at Russian hospitalAFP — SAINT PETERSBURG

Five people died in a fire in a hospital for coronavirus patients in Russia’s second city of Saint Petersburg yesterday, with some victims attached to venti-lators, officials said.

Another 150 people were evacuated after the blaze broke out on the sixth floor of the Saint George hospital, the emer-gencies ministry said, one of a string of fires in care facilities and clinics in Russia in recent days.

The hospital had been repurposed to treat coronavirus patients and some of the dead patients had been connected to ventilators when the fire began.

Windows near the top floor of the hospital were blackened with soot as firefighters worked outside. Four patients died in an intensive care ward, the city’s Vyborg district attorney Pavel Danilov said, adding that the cause of death of the fifth person was being clarified.

“Everyone is shocked by what happened,” said Svetlana Stepanova, a pensioner receiving treatment at the hospital.

“A fire in the hospital is a nightmare,” she said.

Saint Petersburg governor Alexander Beglov, citing prelim-inary information, said a short circuit was believed to be the cause of the fire.

“A ventilator has caught fire,” his office said in a statement.

Russia’s Investigative Com-mittee, which examines serious crimes, said it had launched a probe into the incident.

A fire at a Moscow hospital treating coronavirus patients last week killed one person and forced hundreds of others to evacuate.

On Monday, a fire broke out in a retirement home in the Moscow region, killing nine people. Two more people died in hospital later, officials said-yesterday, bringing the total death toll to 11.

Polish oppn threatens to block plans for rescheduled pollREUTERS — WARSAW

Poland’s main opposition grouping threatened yesterday to block planning for a delayed presidential election after the ruling coalition proposed a bill to allow both voting in-person and by postal ballot in a drive to organise the vote quickly.

The presidential election had been due to take place on May 10 but planning for it collapsed at the last minute over rifts within the coalition and with its

opponents over how to hold the vote amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The ruling nationalist Law and Justice party (PiS) wants to hold the election as soon as pos-sible, fearing that its ally, Pres-ident Andrzej Duda, risks losing his leading position in opinion polls as the economic fallout from the pandemic worsens.

The new legislation is uncon-stitutional as it gives too much power to the PiS-nominated speaker of parliament, Elzbieta

Witek, to set the electoral cal-endar, Jan Grabiec, a spokesman for centrist opposition party Civic Platform (PO), said.

PiS blames the opposition-controlled Senate, the upper house, for scuppering the May 10 vote as it chose to take the full 30 days permitted to analyse legis-lation that would have allowed the election to go ahead by postal ballot only.

PO threatened to use the same delaying tactic again in the Senate if the new proposal were

not amended to hand more power to the electoral com-mission to organise the electoral calendar.

PiS needs opposition support to ensure the electoral com-mission has enough time to organise the vote safely.

“If these changes run counter to the constitution, then I doubt the Senate will accept it at lightning speed, just like with the last proposal... which eventually led to the ruling party’s need to cancel the election,” Grabiec said.

Deaths from virus in Canada top 5,000ANATOLIA — TRENTON

Canadian deaths from COVID-19 reached the grim figure of 5,000 on Monday, the same day individual provinces relaxed some restrictions on retail businesses and Quebec reopened elementary schools.

Meanwhile, Finance Min-ister Bill Morneau introduced new federal aid for Canada’s largest employers.

During his daily press con-ference on Monday, Prime Min-ister Justin Trudeau commented on the new corporate finance aid and stressed the funds are loans only and “not bailouts.”

The pandemic has now infected 70,895 Canadians, with 32,486 recovered and 5,000 deaths, according to a running tally by US-based Johns Hopkins University.

While the number of virus cases and deaths continues to rise, the 10 provinces have each

introduced their own schedules to slowly ease restrictions designed to reopen the economy.

In Ontario, Canada’s most populated province, retail outlets that have entrances facing streets to allow curbside delivery of merchandise were allowed to open, and the province also lifted the ban on visiting parks but during day-light hours only.

In Quebec, thousands of elementary schoolchildren were allowed to return to school except in Montreal where the city has been hard hit by the virus.

But attendance is not man-datory and strict rules set the class size at a maximum of 15 students and the desks are set so that an individual is six feet from classmates.

Quebec also opened day-cares and many retail busi-nesses outside of Montreal.

Virus kills 111 medical staff, infects 8,544in Mexico

AP — MEXICO CITY

The death toll from the novel coronavirus among medical personnel in Mexico has reached 111, and the virus has infected between 8,500 and 15,000 hospital staffers, offi-cials said Monday.

Assistant Health Secretary Hugo López-Gatell said the dead included 66 doctors, 16 nurses and 29 other hospital staff, including support per-sonnel, dentists and lab techs.

There are 8,544 confirmed COVID-19 cases among health professionals in Mexico, and another 6,747 suspected cases, many of which are awaiting test results.

The country’s total coro-navirus case load has increased to 36,327 cases, with 3,573 deaths, though officials have acknowledged the true number is probably much higher.

Some cities in Mexico have seen a lot of cases but are tapering off. Others like Mexico City appear to be at their peak. And still other cities have not seen many cases at all.

For that reason, López-Gatell said the plan for a partial re-opening of Mexico expected later this week would be different in each region, noting “it no longer makes sense to have a safe-distancing policy on a national level.” Anti-lockdown protesters march through the streets of Vancouver, in Canada.

Migration issue opens rift in Italy’s coalition amid COVID-19 crisisAGENCIES — ROME

Italy’s coalition parties quar-relled yesterday over a move to grant permits to irregular migrants working in farms and as carers, in a row that delayed the approval of a stimulus package for the coronavirus-hit economy.

The anti-establishment 5-Star Movement is against giving temporary work papers to migrants, saying it will benefit unscrupulous bosses. Its centrist and leftist allies, the Democratic Party (PD), Italia Viva and LeU, support the measure.

The scheme is aimed at helping key sectors after the COVID-19 epidemic cut the flow of cheap labour from abroad. It also looks to protect workers by giving them easier access to healthcare should they catch the disease.

Migration is a politically sen-sitive issue in Italy where rightist parties, including Matteo Sal-vini’s League, have surged in popularity because of their hardline policies aimed at pre-venting an influx of migrants from northern Africa.

The 5-Star governed with the League until last August and embraced Salvini’s anti-migrant stance. It subsequently forged an alliance with the centre-left,

but has appeared reluctant to adopt the more moderate approach of its new partners.

“The latest draft of the decree still includes an amnesty for those who admit to previous illegal employment practices... We won’t back down on this,” said 5-Star leader Vito Crimi, adding this would help those who had exploited poor workers.

Farmers have said crops will rot in the ground unless they can attract more labourers.

Some 560,000 of the 6.2 million migrants living in Italy in 2019 did not have any work or residency papers, according to the Ismu Foundation, a think tank which specialises in migration issues.

Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte’s office said yesterday that ministers had reached a deal on the migrant permits on Sunday. However, it said 5-Star law-makers had reservations about the accord and wanted more time to review it. The delay infu-riated the PD, with party sen-ators issuing denouncing the 5-Star position as “absurd”.

Last week, Agriculture Min-ister Teresa Bellanova, a member of former prime minister Matteo Renzi’s small Italia Viva party, threatened to resign if the permit proposal was rejected. COVID-19 has killed almost 31,000 people

in Italy. The government imposed a shutdown on most businesses and the country could face its worst recession since World War Two.

The government has promised to approve a $59.82bn package to bolster the economy and wanted to include the new permit rules in the decree.

Meanwhile, Italian police have arrested 91 suspected mobsters in a probe of money-laundering and extortion in a bid to thwart Sicily’s Cosa Nostra from exploiting eco-nomic woes triggered by the pandemic.

Hundreds of Financial Guard police officers fanned out

early yesterday through Palermo, the alleged crime clans’ power power base, as well as in several regions in northern Italy.

Investigators contend mob-sters were laundering extortion and drug trafficking revenue and were preparing to use ill-gained cash to buy struggling businesses which have been shuttered during the COVID-19 containment lockdown.

“’Look, we pay cash’” for ailing businesses, Palermo Chief Prosecutor Lo Voi said suspects were heard saying in inter-cepted conversations.

While loan-sharking is still an activity of organized crime

in Italy, increasingly mobsters have sought to buy up hotels, restaurants, pharmacies, car dealerships and other busi-nesses for years now. They were doing this in an Italian economy that was stagnant even before lockdown measures caused tens of thousands of business owners to shut down for weeks.

The crime clans targeted in yesterday’s raids had moved some of their crime bosses into Milan years ago, where, among other businesses, they con-vinced cafes in Italy’s financial capital to buy coffee from a company controlled by the Sicilian Mafia, investigators said.

Healthcare workers applaud as they attend a performance by Italian violinist Fiamma Flavia Paolucci at Tor Vergata Hospital, in Rome, yesterday.

12 WEDNESDAY 13 MAY 2020AMERICAS

Early end to US lockdowns could cause needless ‘suffering and death’: Fauci

REUTERS — WASHINGTON

Leading US infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci yesterday warned Congress that a premature lifting of lockdowns could lead to additional outbreaks of the deadly corona-virus, which has killed 80,000 Americans and brought the economy to its knees.

Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told a US Senate panel that the virus epi-demic is not yet under control in areas of the nation.

“I think we’re going in the right direction, but the right direction does not mean we have by any means total control of this outbreak,” Fauci said during the 3-1/2-hour hearing.

He urged states to follow health experts’ recommendations to wait for signs, including a declining number of new infec-tions, before reopening.

President Donald Trump has been encouraging states to end a weeks-long shuttering of major components of their economies. But senators heard a sobering assessment from Fauci, when asked by Democrats about a pre-mature opening of the economy.

“There is a real risk that you will trigger an outbreak that you may not be able to control and, in fact paradoxically, will set you back, not only leading to some suffering and death that could be avoided, but could even set you back on the road to try to get eco-nomic recovery,” Fauci said of premature steps.

The veteran doctor, who has worked under Republican and Democratic administrations and is a coronavirus adviser to the current White House, noted progress some in the fight against a virus that the medical world is still trying to understand.

He mentioned a slowing in the growth of cases in hotspots such as New York, even as other areas of the country were seeing spikes.

Some states already have begun reopening their economies and others have announced plans to phase that in beginning in mid-May, even as opinion polls show most Americans are concerned about resuming such operations too soon.

The hearing was more cordial than many of Congress’s undertakings have been in recent years, with members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee addressing the non-partisan health experts politely.

Democrats on the committee

largely concentrated on the risks of opening the US economy now, while Republicans downplayed that notion, saying a prolonged shutdown could have serious negative impacts on people’s health and the health of the economy.

Asked whether college stu-dents can feel safe if classes resume on campuses in late August or early September, Fauci said that expecting a treatment or vaccine to be in place by then would be “a bridge too far.”

Instead, schools and stu-dents would have to depend upon expanded testing for coro-navirus, tracing of those who have been in contact with infected people and safe hygiene practices, witnesses said.

The COVID-19 respiratory disease caused by the new coro-navirus has infected more than 1.3 million Americans and killed more than 80,600.

Fauci, 79, testified remotely in a room lined with books as he self-quarantines after he may

have come into contact with either of two members of the White House staff who were diagnosed with COVID-19. He noted that he may go to the White House if needed.

Medical researchers have been scrambling to find not only an effective vaccine for corona-virus but also drugs to treat it until a vaccine comes to market.

Fauci noted only “modest” results in tests of Gilead Sciences Inc’s remdesivir drug on hospi-talised patients.

“All roads back to work and back to school run through testing and that what our country has done so far on testing is impressive, but not nearly enough,” Lamar Alexander, the Republican chairman of the Senate committee, told the hearing.

Alexander, who is self-quar-antining in his home state of Tennessee for 14 days after a member of his staff tested pos-itive, chaired the hearing virtually.

Dr Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases is seen in a frame grab from a video feed as he testifies remotely from his home during a US Senate Committee for Health, Education, Labour, and Pensions hearing on the coronavirus, in Washington, DC, yesterday.

US Apex Court judgesappear divided onTrump’s quest to shieldfinancial recordsREUTERS — WASHINGTON

US Supreme Court justices yesterday appeared divided over President Donald Trump’s bid to prevent Democratic-led congressional panels from obtaining his financial records but seemed more sympathetic toward a New York prosecu-tor’s attempt to access similar records.

In a major showdown over presidential powers, the court’s conservative majority signalled concern about improper har-assment of the Republican president by Democratic law-makers in the House of Repre-sentatives seeking Trump’s records. But questions asked by the conservative justices indi-cated skepticism toward argu-ments by Trump’s lawyers in the New York case.

The justices asked tough questions of an attorney for Trump and a Justice Department lawyer who both sought to justify the president’s quest to block subpoenas by three House for financial records held by third parties.

But several justices also pressed a lawyer for the House to explain why the subpoenas were not simply presidential harassment and whether Con-gress should be limited in issuing subpoenas so as to not distract a president or frustrate the carrying out of his official duties.

The nine justices heard an oral argument lasting more than 90 minutes by telecon-ference in two cases involving the House subpoenas seeking Trump’s financial records from Mazars LLP, his long-time accounting firm, and two banks, Deutsche Bank and Capital One.

The justices then held an oral argument in a third case in which Trump is seeking to block a subpoena issued to

Mazars for similar information, including tax returns, as part of a grand jury investigation into Trump being conducted by the office of Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, a Democrat.

The court has a 5-4 con-servative majority, including two justices appointed by Trump. Lower courts in Wash-ington and New York ruled against Trump in all three cases.

Liberal Justice Elena Kagan told Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow that a “fundamental precept of our constitutional order is that the president is not above the law.”

Conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch, a Trump appointee, questioned why the court would give Trump immunity in a criminal investigation when it did not give Democratic former President Bill Clinton immunity in a harassment lawsuit in the 1990s.

In that instance, lawyers for the plaintiff wanted Clinton to be questioned while in the Trump case the information is sought from third parties, Gorsuch noted.

Sekulow responded that criminal cases result in a loss of liberty and are very different from civil lawsuits that could lead to monetary damages.

Conservative Justice Samuel Alito challenged Seku-low’s assertion that a grand jury’s subpoena cannot be enforced against a sitting president in a case in which waiting for a president to leave office would undermine a criminal prosecution.

Liberal justices seemed more sympathetic toward the House position, although they also raised concerns about the potential lack of limits on law-makers’ ability to subpoena the president’s personal records.

A view of the US Supreme Court in Washington, DC.

Over 5,000 deaths from virus in NYC uncounted: ReportANATOLIA — WASHINGTON

The novel coronavirus’s true death toll in New York City may be far higher than official counts from the state and city currently indicate, according to a report released on Monday that suggests thousands of deaths may have gone uncounted.

The city is already the known epicentre of the US out-break with the highest number of deaths and infections nationwide, but the Centres for Disease Control and

Prevention’s report found over five thousand “excess deaths” that could have been caused by the outbreak.

From March 11 through May 2 a total of 32,107 deaths were reported in the city, 24,172 more than what researchers would expect for the season. That figure is nearly 5,300 higher than the official coronavirus tally that counts both lab con-firmed and probable COVID-19 deaths.

Official data from the city’s health department that was

updated on Sunday afternoon found 14,753 confirmed COVID-19-related fatalities and nearly 5,200 probable deaths.

In explaining the disparity, the public health body listed a number of factors that could make up the difference, including faulty tests and a lack of testing.

“The counting of confirmed and probable COVID-19-asso-ciated deaths might not include deaths among persons with SARS-CoV-2 infection who did not access diagnostic testing,

tested falsely negative, or became infected after testing negative, died out- side of a health care setting, or for whom COVID-19 was not suspected by a health care provider as a cause of death,” the CDC said.

SARS-CoV-2 is the scientific name for the coronavirus.

Most people who contract the virus will display only mild symptoms, but it can be partic-ularly fatal for the elderly and for individuals with pre-existing conditions such as hypertension, diabetes and asthma.

Georgia A-G seeksprobe of prosecutorsin Arbery death caseAP— ATLANTA

Georgia’s attorney general has asked state law officers to inves-tigate allegations of misconduct by local prosecutors in the killing of a black man who was chased by a white father and son, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation announced yesterday.

The GBI said Attorney General Chris Carr requested the investigation of how the district attorney offices in Brunswick and Waycross handled the Feb-ruary 23 killing of 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery. More than two months passed before the arrests of Gregory and Travis McMichael. They were charged with felony murder and aggra-vated assault after video of the shooting appeared online and prompted outrage.

“Unfortunately, many ques-tions and concerns have arisen regarding, among other things, the communications between and actions taken by the District Attorneys of the Brunswick and Waycross Circuits. As a result, we have requested the GBI to review in order to determine whether the process was under-mined in any way,” Carr said in

a statement yesterday.Carr also appointed a black

district attorney from suburban Atlanta on Monday to take over the case, making her the fourth prosecutor in charge of a case that’s prompted a national outcry over suspicions that race played a role in delaying arrests.

Carr also has asked federal authorities to investigate how local police and prosecutors handled the case. Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said in a statement that Carr has been asked to “forward to federal authorities any information that he has.” Federal prosecutors are also considering hate crimes charges, Kupec said. This would allow for a separate federal case against the gunmen.

Cobb County District Attorney Joyette M Holmes takes over the case from prosecutor Tom Durden, who the state’s attorney general said asked to be replaced by a prosecutor with a large staff as “this case has grown in size and magnitude.” Holmes is based in metro Atlanta, more than 300 miles from the coastal Georgia com-munity in Glynn County where the shooting happened.

US govt officials worry about return of dual citizens if Mexico’s pandemic worsensREUTERS — WASHINGTON

US government officials are concerned that dual US-Mexico citizens may flee to the United States if the coronavirus outbreak in Mexico gets worse, putting more stress on US hospitals, especially near the border, three officials familiar with the matter said.

The worries, which have not been previously reported, come as hospitals in the San Diego area in southern California have pressed the Trump adminis-tration to do more to limit the threat of the virus crossing into the United States.

W h i le sen i or US Department of Homeland Security officials have expressed their concerns about dual nationals in daily depart-mental calls, there are no plans at present to bar entry to them or make other changes to border operations, according to a senior DHS official, who like others requested anonymity to discuss the matter.

“I don’t think there is any interest in telling American cit-izens that they can’t come in,” the official said.

The issue has come up in discussions about a potential surge of migrants if Mexico’s economy worsens or the

outbreak overwhelms health facilities there, according to the sources.

President Donald Trump has suspended non-essential travel across the US land borders with Canada and Mexico, saying the restrictions are necessary to protect the United States.

So far, fears of a deluge have not been realized. The United States has the highest number of coronavirus deaths worldwide and the U.S. economy has gone into a tailspin, with the unem-ployment rate at the highest

level since the Great Depression.

Trump’s opponents accuse him of exploiting the pandemic to expand his drive to restrict legal and illegal immigration to the United States in an election year.

Leon Rodriguez, a former director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services under President Barack Obama, said that any move to prevent US cit-izens from entering the country would raise “serious constitu-tional issues,” a sentiment echoed by several experts.

About 1.5 million US citizens

live in Mexico, according to a US Department of State estimate, many of them retirees.

Mexico’s foreign ministry did not immediately have comment on whether the issue of dual nationals had been raised by the United States. The DHS did not respond to a request for comment.

Carlos González Gutiérrez, the Mexican consul general in San Diego, said some public officials in the United States “mischaracterise the situation at the border with regards to the foreign-born population for s h o r t - t e r m , e l e c t o r a l purposes.”

In the Trump administration discussions, US officials have detailed several scenarios that could trigger a flood of people trying to cross the southern border.

One could be an improvement in the US economy as Mexico confronts worsening economic fallout from the pandemic and the col-lapse of world oil prices, according to two US officials.

Another could be the suc-cessful development in the United States of a vaccine or therapeutic to treat COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, one of the officials said.

Volunteers load groceries into a vehicle during a drive-through food bank, in Syracuse, New York, yesterday.

Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told a US Senate panel that the virus epidemic is not yet under control in areas of the nation.