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Volume 23 | Number 7462 | 2 RiyalsSunday 11 March 2018 | 23 Jumada II I 1439 www.thepeninsula.qa

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Qatar informs UNSC of air violations by UAE, BahrainQNA

NEW YORK: The State of Qatar informed the UN Security Council and the UN Secretary-General of three air violations of Qatar’s sovereignty committed by the United Arab Emirates and the Kingdom of Bahrain.

This came in a message by the Permanent Representative of Qatar to the United Nations H E Sheikha Alya Ahmed bin Saif Al Thani to the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and Security Council president for

March, Karel van Oosterom.The message said that a UAE

military transport aircraft vio-lated the airspace of Qatar on Sunday, 14 January.

Another UAE C-130 military transport aircraft violated Qatari airspace on Sunday, 25 February. On Wednesday, 28 February, a Bahraini military aircraft entered into the exclusive economic zone of the State of Qatar.

It added that the aircraft was flying over Qatar’s exclusive eco-nomic zone without prior diplo-matic authorisation from the

authorities concerned in Qatar. An immediate flight order was issued for a warning aircraft cabin, prompting the Bahraini aircraft to leave the country’s exclusive economic zone.

The message said that the continued air violations by the United Arab Emirates and the Kingdom of Bahrain and their violations of Qatari sovereignty are serious breach and flagrant violations of international law. The State of Qatar warned against the continued attempts by the two countries to ignite

incidents that would increase tension in the region and without regard to Qatar’s security and stability.

The Government of the State of Qatar called upon the Security Council and the United Nations to take the necessary measures under the Charter of the United Nations to maintain international peace and security.

In conclusion, the message said that the Government of the State of Qatar affirms its com-mitment to exercise the highest degree of restraint, abide by the

Charter of the United Nations and promote good-neighbourly rela-tions. It strongly condemns and rejects any breach of its sover-eignty and territorial integrity, and reserves the full right to respond to any violations in line with its sovereign right, in accordance with the provisions of international law. It reaffirms that it will take the necessary measures to defend its borders, airspace and sea and its national security, in accordance with international laws and regulations.

Violation against fruits & vegetables’ supplier registeredTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: The Ministry of Economy and Commerce have registered yesterday a violation against one of the major suppliers of fruits and vegetables for selling Egyptian oranges as Turkish in clear violation to the provision of article (7) of the Law No (8) of 2008 on consumer protection.

The Ministry noted in a statement issued here yes-terday that they discovered that Egyptian orange is exported to Turkey, where it is repackaged and exported to Qatar again on a pretence of being Turkish.

The statement said that such action is in clear viola-tions to consumer protection laws, which obliges the sup-plier to clearly state the origin of the product among other information such as its nutri-tional values.

The Ministry said that the violation was detected during an intensive inspection cam-paigns to monitor the com-pliance of suppliers with their obligations under Law No. (8) of 2008 on consumer protection.

The violation was found in one of the inspection campaigns, which are part of the effort of the Ministry of Economy and Commerce to ensure that the suppliers are committed to their responsibilities according to the consumer protection law.

These efforts are aimed at regulating the prices as well as any violations of consumer rights.

Al Ghannas announces 2nd phase of campaign to set falcons freeTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: Al Ghannas Association yesterday announced the launch of the second phase of a national campaign to release falcons and return them to their natural habitat.

The campaign which is under the theme “ Qatar’s Falconers Cam-paign to Release Falcons” encourages fal-coners to take part in the campaign by submitting their falcons to return them to the wildlife.

The birds will be col-lected on March 25 and will be released in early April, said the society yesterday in statement.

The second phase of the campaign came after the success of the first phase launched on February 25 and

culminated in the release of the falcons on March 6. Al Ghannas Association called on the fal-coners wishing to participate in

the campaign to communicate with the association at its head-quarters in Cultural Village - Katara.

Falcons are being collected as part of the second phase of the national campaign announced by the Al Ghannas Association to free the bird to natural habitat. The campaign would formally be launched on March 25 and continue until early April.

Sheikha Moza: A month away from reaching goal to educate 10m out of school childrenQNA

PARIS: Chairperson of Qatar Foundation, H H Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, has affirmed that the Foundation’s ‘Educate A Child Programme’, is one month away from reaching the goal set six years ago to enable 10 million children around the world to get basic education.

In an interview with Paris Match magazine, H H Sheikha Moza stressed that the ‘Educate A Child Programme’, which was launched in 2012, now has more than 82 partners, through which all the goals set for it have been achieved. She said: “Today, we have 82 partners in this project. On our part, we have achieved our goals. But what we are building, other people are destroying. This means that if we fail to impose strict rules, the problem is likely to be endless.”

Unesco is really working with us a lot, providing us with the technical help and support. I would like it, of course, if there

were more, H H Sheikha Moza added.

The Unesco has just revealed that 63 million children do not receive any form of education. Asked what does this figure tell us about the state of the world, she said: “This figure is deplorable. And unfortunately, it is increasing each year. Before coming to Paris, I had been informed that the figure was 61 million. Now, it reached 63

million. As a personal goal, I pledged to educate 10 million out

of school children in six years. And in a month, well be there.

But the problem is that, in general, education is not the

priority for many leaders. Two thirds of these children live in conflict zones. As long as we do not take drastic measures to protect education, to protect schools, this number will be increasing. This is my fight, which I have begun long ago. I want schools to be considered as sanctuaries, places that cannot, in any way, be targeted by warring parties.

Her Highness said: “At our scale, we work in numerous countries. I will give you two examples. First in Bangladesh, in areas hit by natural disasters like floods, children are unable go to school. We have, therefore, put into place a boat system to bring school to them. I was struck by the strength of these children and their determination to pursue their studies. For instance, you see children sitting on the floors using straws as pencils with charcoal, done at home by their mothers.”

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As a personal goal, I pledged to educate 10 million out of school children in six years. And in a month, well be there. But the problem is that, in general, education is not the priority for many leaders, H H Sheikha Moza said.

Qatar to continue legal efforts against siege countries

DOHA: Qatar will continue its legal efforts against the siege countries in international courts for violation of international laws and human rights against its citizens and residents, Attorney-General H E Dr Ali bin Fetais Al Marri said.

Speaking in a press con-ference held in Geneva recently that was attended by lawyers defending people affected by siege, Al Marri said: “The Com-pensation Claims Committee has received more than 10,000 cases related to compensation, human rights and others”.

He noted, “the procedures related to 4217 cases witnessed more progress in international courts and authorities con-cerned. These cases are divided

among the siege countries - Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain and Egypt.”

About the Compensation Claims Committee, Al Marri said that the committee was estab-lished during the first week of siege. The Committee is assisted by International law firms to follow up on these cases and to prosecute the siege countries for violations of rights of cit-izens. It was inaugurated by the Prime Minister and Interior Minister H E Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani, and is receiving all cases of requests and complaints filed by those persons affected by the siege in the public and private sectors. The Committee is also receiving complaints filed by individuals.

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SIDI MOHAMED THE PENINSULA

In a file photo, H H Sheikha Moza bint Nasser looks at a girl student solving a question on blackboard.

02 SUNDAY 11 MARCH 2018HOME

Meet to discuss impact of blockade on right to health THE PENINSULA

DOHA: Qatar University College of Pharmacy (QU-CPH) hosted the first-ever conference on “Medication Sector in Qatar: Hand in Hand Facing the Blockade” on March 9-10, aimed to provide an in-depth understanding of the unjust blockade’s impact on medication security in Qatar and to identify the various opportu-nities and challenges of achieving an independent medicinal identity in Qatar.

The two-day conference serves as a platform to discuss the impact of the blockade on the right to health under the interna-tional law, covering three main themes represented by medi-cation management and acces-sibility to medication in Qatar, building pharmaceutical industry and innovation in Qatar and building human capacity in Qatar.

The event brought together over 150 experts from QU, Ebn Sina, the Ministry of Economy and Commerce, the Ministry of Public

Health, Hamad Medical Corpo-ration (HMC), Qatar Pharma, Qatar Pharmaceutical Industry, and Qlife. They shared their expertise and experience to address the need of building and preserving medication security in Qatar.

The first day featured a keynote speech by Dr Abdullatif Al Khal. Dr Al Khal highlighted the economic sanctions and their impact, the National Health Strategy, the consumption of medications at the national level, the national formulary, the gov-ernance structure of medications management, the role of pharmacy and therapeutics com-mittees, and the negative impact of the blockade on health care and pharmaceuticals.

The second day featured many discussions focused on three main themes: “Medication Management and Accessibility to Medication in Qatar”, “Building Pharmaceutical Industry and Innovation in Qatar”, and “Building Human Capacity in

Qatar”. It also included two panel discussions titled “Building Phar-maceutical Industry and Inno-vation: Current Challenges and Future Directions” and “Medi-cation Security for Qatar” mod-erated by Dr Feras Alali, as well as a workshop on “Qatar Generic Medicines Policy” delivered by Dr Mohamed Azmi Hassali, Professor at Universiti Sains Malaysia School of Pharmaceutical Sci-ences. In his remarks, Dr Hassan Al Derham said: “The health care sector is an essential pillar to build the society. In this regard, the State of Qatar strives to provide its people with the best level of health care and health services.

Dr Mohamad Dib said: The conference serves as a significant platform to bring together many stakeholders and experts from academic, industrial, govern-mental and pharmaceutical sectors in Qatar to share their expertise and experience to address the need of building and preserving medication security in Qatar.

FROM LEFT: Dr Mohamad Dib, Dr Hassan Al Derham, and Dr Egon Toft at the conference.

Consumers told not to believe rumours on some food itemsSIDI MOHAMED THE PENINSULA

DOHA: Rumours which spread from time to time against some food items may be due to compe-tition between companies and the lack of awareness among consumers, said a senior official at the Ministry of Municipality and Environment.

“There are many reasons behind the rumours against some food items , among these are competition among companies and lack of knowledge which makes people contribute to spreading them”, the senior official told The Peninsula.

“Also another reason is the current crisis and since the siege began we have heard a lot of such rumours not only on food items but other issues as well,” he added.

“Consumers have to know that the food items are controlled and there are many measures undertaken to ensure safety of these food items before they are sold. There are three ministries which are monitoring food, including the Ministry of Public Health, the Ministry of Economy and Commerce and the Ministry of Municipality and Envi-ronment”, he noted. “What we need today is an awareness and for people not believe any rumours because there are authorities concerned, and people can enquire anytime by calling 184 in case they have any doubt. People have to exert effort to confirm whether the rumours are true”, he clarified.

For his part, Mohammed Ahmed Buhashim Al Sayed,

Head of Health Control Section at Doha Municipality, said that “Spreading rumours about some food items through social media and saying that they are unfit for human consumption may cause psychological trauma to consumers.”

“People have to take infor-mation only from official sources, and in case there is any warning about some food items the authorities concerned will announce it to people immedi-ately”, he added during an interview on a local TV channel about the municipalities’ efforts on the monitoring of food and its role in refuting rumours issued against some food items on social media.

“We can’t blame consumers to be afraid whenever they hear such rumours because this is about food safety, about their health, but also consumers should not contribute to spreading them and must take information only from official sources,” he added

Al Sayed said: “The problem today is that production lines are very large and the rumours may refer to food items in another country and that they spread them as if they were in Qatar”.

THE PENINSULA

DOHA: As part of efforts to discourage young people from taking up the habit of tobacco use in Qatar, Hamad Medical Corpo-ration’s (HMC) Tobacco Control Center has launched an anti-smoking campaign in local schools. Recently, students at Khalifa Independent Secondary School for Boys participated in an awareness seminar that covered the physical and psycho-logical damage caused by tobacco use.

Staff from HMC provided students with educational mate-rials and answered questions as part of the awareness event. Stu-dents also participated in an activity to measure the level of carbon monoxide in their system after learning how smoking tobacco increases the level of carbon monoxide in the blood. Smokers, or people exposed to second-hand smoke from tobacco products, have increased levels of carbon monoxide in the blood which can lead to shortness of breath and an increased heart rate, along with numerous other diseases and health conditions.

Dr Ahmad Al Mulla, Head of the HMC Tobacco Control Center, said HMC also hosted an awareness exhibition at Ali Bin Abi Taleb Preparatory School for Boys as part of HMC’s outreach program to educate the com-munity about the dangers of tobacco use. During the exhi-bition, staff distributed educa-tional materials, measured the level of carbon monoxide in the system of visitors, and answered questions about the dangers of smoking.

“When a person smokes a cigarette, poisons from the tar enter their blood and negatively impact their health, for example by raising their blood pressure and heart rate. Smoking can cause narrowing of the arteries, coronary heart disease, and stomach and lung cancer. Smoking can also severely affect the digestive system, contributing to problems like acid reflux, heartburn, and peptic ulcers. It can lead to higher blood sugar levels, chronic headaches, insomnia, and kidney damage. All of this is in addition to the negative psychological effects, including increased anxiety and tension,” said Dr Al Mulla.

Anti-smoking campaign launched in schools

Schoolchildren taking part in HMC’s anti-smoking campaign.

Rumours which spread from time to time against some food items may be due to competition between companies and the lack of awareness among consumers.

QC training on customs clearanceDOHA: Qatar Chamber in cooperation with the General Authority of Customs held the 13th training workshop on customs clearance. A total of 55 trainees participated the workshop. The workshop aimed to help them under-stand the laws and regula-tions, as well as helping them improve their efficiency and productivity. The programme also focused on commerce and customs-related termi-nology among other subjects and skills that the profession needs to limit traffic at customs outlets.

The first training pro-gramme was launched in 2015, providing training to 603 individuals.

Sheikha Moza: A month away from reaching goal to educate 10m out of school children

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1H H Sheikha Moza added: “In Yemen, we

have a programme for education and another for employment. We train young entrepreneurs and seek to place them in the labour market. Unfortunately, the coalition has started an offensive that is supposed to help the coun-try, but, in reality, it is preventing it from going forward. Those who commit such acts must be held accountable. It is necessary that as an international community, we take the issue of education seriously.

Asked in Yemen or in Syria, is it possible to aid children on both sides of a conflict she said: “Our programmes help all Yemenis, but today they are undermined by this con-flict. We were working in Yemen before the change of regime and it worked quite well. When the regime changed, we kept support-ing the country. Yemen is a civilised country, which, in the end, must be capable of man-aging itself. The Yemenis could have settled their affairs by themselves, but because of foreign intervention, the country is divided. It is chaos, H H Sheikha Moza added.

Asked in front of the Unesco, you have announced that you were planning to help 335,000 children across 11 countries by 2021. Is this realistic? H H Sheikha Moza said: “This concerns our partnerships with French NGOs and government. We will succeed. Trust me. It is a realistic objective. In Africa, develop-ment can be achieved through education. President Macron knows that. He has granted €200m. It is enormous. I would like to see others get involved as much as him.”

In her visit to Paris, H H Sheikha Moza said she had met with Brigitte Macron and said: “We spent an hour and a half together at the Elysée Palace. We shared a lot in com-mon, especially in our vision for education.

Asked, who in the world supports you the most she said: “I have 82 partners. Unesco is really working with us a lot, providing us with the technical help and support. I would like it, of course, if there were more.

Asked at first glance, the place of women

in the world has declined particularly with the emergence of radical Islam, H H Sheikha Moza said: “I am not sure. I have no statis-tics in this regard. I travel a lot and I meet women everywhere and in Qatar as well. I seems to me that, on the contrary, they are more present. I think they’ve never had so much power as they do today. They are more aware of their rights and they have more confidence in themselves. Yesterday at the Unesco, I met a young Qatari volun-teer who was speaking about her experience. Ten years ago, it was unimaginable to see a young 18-year old girl, like her, express-ing herself before an audience with such confidence. Women are no longer silent. Now, if you are talking about people under the control of gangs, cartels or radical ide-ologues, it is, of course, not the same thing. But again, it is the lack of education that is partly responsible for these phenomena. Women in these situations have no other choices. So, we must develop their critical sense and give them the means to protect themselves, H H Shiekha Moza said .

Asked whether humanity, therefore, functions at two rates, she said: “It is not just women. Children and all vulnerable people are affected. We need to completely rethink our humanity and go back to our shared principles and values. It is not enough to talk. The world is tired of all this rheto-ric. We need something concrete. People have to see results. They want to be able to go home without fearing that their children

will be kidnapped on their way to school.” On Saudi Arabia has cut off its relations

and is imposing a blockade on Qatar when asked how does she feel about the accusa-tions of supporting terrorism directed at her country, H H Sheikha Moza said: “They are baseless. They are just recycling lies. This is enough. When my children were young, I would tell them, and they still remember it: “Never lie, because a lie never lasts long.” One day or another, the truth will come out.”

As with Saudi Arabia, H H Sheikha Moza said: “We have a long, shared history together. There have been many marriages between us. Our region is based on tribes that are often nomadic. At some point, we did not even have borders. Members of our families live in Saudi Arabia, in Bah-rain and in the Emirates. You cannot get rid of these relations overnight. Even if they impose a blockade on us, they can-not erase our genes. I know many people in these countries who are infuriated by what happened. Yesterday, I saw a sur-vey study done by Qatar University saying 78 percent of Qataris felt that their fam-

ilies have been affected as a result of this blockade, and the same figures, more or less, for the Emiratis. They tried to sepa-rate us, but they have not succeeded. This crisis has made us stronger. It has made us look inwards and question who we are. Qatar is more united than ever under the leadership of Emir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, whose popularity dou-bled, H H Sheikha Moza noted .

This crisis has brought out the best qualities from our leaders. And people are grateful to them. Today opens a new chapter in our history. H H the Emir is at a big juncture now in his political life, H H Sheikha Moza said.

Legal efforts against siege countries onCONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

The Compensation Claims Committee receives all types of complaints, grievances and requests relating to the siege.

The complaints also include loss of properties, live-stock, family investments and cases of divided mixed fami-lies whose children have been separated from their parents. It also included seizure of vehicles and prevention of expatriate workers from entering to Qatar with their deported employers.

Since it was imposed on Qatar, the siege has violated the rights of people to travel, their right to education, work, and residency and also sep-arated families. Hundreds of shipments for individuals and local companies were seized in the siege countries. More than 22,000 camels and other live-stock seized in Saudi Arabia.

This crisis has made us stronger. It has made us look inwards and question who we are. Qatar is more united than ever under the leadership of Emir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, whose popularity doubled, H H Sheikha Moza noted.

Yemen is a civilised country, which, in the end, must be capable of managing itself. The Yemenis could have settled their affairs by themselves, but because of foreign intervention, the country is divided.

This crisis has brought out the best qualities from our leaders. And people are grateful to them. Today opens a new chapter in our history. H H the Emir is at a big juncture now in his political life, H H Sheikha Moza said.

03SUNDAY 11 MARCH 2018 HOME

Oscar-winning Swinton highlights power of cinema RAYNALD C RIVERA THE PENINSULA

DOHA: Oscar-winning actress Tilda Swinton has underscored the inherent power of cinema as a ‘free state’ which enables film-makers and viewers to be what they want to be regardless of gender, race or age.

Swinton was addressing a packed Museum of Islamic Art (MIA) Auditorium on Friday kicking off the series of master-classes for young filmmakers at the fourth edition of Qumra organ-ised by Doha Film Institute (DFI). “I think the wonderful thing about art-cinema in particular-is that it is a free state, for us to be free of gender, nationhood, race or age. I think the glory of filmmaking is that we can all be whatever we want to be,” said Swinton at the two-hour long masterclass mod-erated Cameron Bailey, Artistic Director of the Toronto Interna-tional Film Festival.

Urging filmmakers to make cinema as free as possible, she said the best use of cinema as a free state is “to approach it with abso-lute carte blanche so that we don’t

have to carry our own sense of identity into a frame.”

She was reminded of a poignant and enlightening moment in her life when her son, then nine-year-old, asked, “What were people’s dreams like before cinema?” It was this question that sparked in her the idea of cinema as a free state and enabled her to define her own imprint without pretention. The engaging master-class delved into defining moments in Swinton’s illustrious career as an actor and writer span-ning over three decades, taking the audience on a nostalgic journey

into some of the most important films she made through clips from We Need to Talk About Kevin, The Chronicles of Narnia, Orlando, Only Lovers Left Alive, Michael Clayton, and Okja.

Looking back, she revealed writing was her first love and that it was not her dream to be on screen. “I never intended to be an actor. I still don’t think of myself as an actor. I came from the world of art and writing and went to uni-versity as a writer. I certainly wanted to be a film writer not a film performer,” she said, adding she just found herself drawn into performing with friends in theat-rical productions.

She said performing is one way of writing in collaboration with filmmakers.

“When I write, I write alone, but when I make films it is a con-versation with filmmakers. I want to work with really communica-tive filmmakers. To perform with really communicative filmmakers who are interested in such a dynamic [of working with] the performer has really been a blessing,” she said.

Prior to the masterclass,

Swinton had interacted with the audience following Thursday’s screening of Okja, one of the films she starred in which was directed by Bong Joon-ho.

She said the film “is about human and animal liberation. It is about wise, childish, innocent love, and how Mija’s (the protag-onist) trust is tested and chipped away by everyone. Maybe that

is the kernel of the film.”Swinton is one of the Qumra

Masters this year. She joins Oscar winning British costume designer Sandy Powell, OBE); Oscar nom-inated director Bennett Miller; Venice Golden Lion winning Russian director and writer Andrey Zvyagintsev; Cannes Palme d’Or winning Thai film-maker and visual artist

Apichatpong Weerasethakul; and the only documentary director to win the Berlinale Golden Bear, Italian director Gianfranco Rosi in providing mentoring sessions, one-on-one meetings and mas-terclasses to nurture the talent associated with 34 selected Qumra projects from 25 countries that are in development and post-produc-tion stages.

Oscar-winning actress Tilda Swinton addressing people at the Museum of Islamic Art Auditorium.

Urging filmmakers to make cinema as free as possible, Swinton said the best use of cinema as a free state is “to approach it with absolute carte blanche so that we don’t have to carry our own sense of identity into a frame.”

Study on solar signs to get accurate timing for cultivation

DOHA: The Centre for Environmental and Municipal Studies plans to conduct studies on solar signs to get accurate timing for cultivating vegetables and fish farming to increase production, said Dr Mohammed bin Saif Al Kuwari, Director of the Centre.

Based on the outcomes of the studies, recommendations will be sent to the authorities concerned to enact

laws that suit Qatari environment to protect the strategic reserve of its nat-ural wealth, he said. “Solar signs or sun signs locally known as “Al Abraj Al Shamsiya” help find breeding time of living creatures like fish and animals and pollination of trees,” said Al Kuwari.

He said that with the help of solar signs many countries have made strict laws banning hunting during breeding season to protect the reserve of fish and animals.

Al Kuwari was speaking to the media

persons on the sidelines of a seminar on “the influence of solar signs on the envi-ronment, agriculture and human being in Qatar”.

The seminar was organised by the Centre for Environmental and Munic-ipal Studies run by the Ministry of Municipality and Environment at Cen-tre’s headquarters recently.

He said solar signs have great influ-ence on various sectors including envi-ronment, agriculture and fishery.

The seminar was attended by a total

of 35 employees from agriculture, envi-ronment and municipality sectors at the Ministry of Municipality and Environment.

Eng Isa Sad Al Kuwari, a researcher of solar signs, speaking at the seminar, said: “Solar signs have great influence on the earth as whole that includes cul-tivation, soil, seasons and times of breeding living creatures like fish and animals.”

He said that solar signs help know seasons and timing for planting various

types of plants and trees, adding that scope of this knowledge could be expanded in cooperation with various government authorities as they could benefit from this by making rules and regulation in this regards.

Dr Mohammed bin Saif Al Kuwari, Director of the Centre for Environmental and Municipal Studies has honoured Eng Isa Sad Al Kuwari, for his efforts on the research of solar signs and sharing his knowledge with Ministry employees at the seminar.

SANAULLAH ATAULLAH THE PENINSULA


Former Irish president to be first WISH 2018 keynote speakerTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: The World Innovation Summit for Health (WISH), an initiative of Qatar Foun-dation (QF), has announced that Mary Robinson (pictured) as the first keynote speaker of its fourth global summit, to be held at the QNCC in November.

Robinson is currently a member of the ‘Elders’, a group of independent global leaders, which includes former UN Secretaries-General Kofi Annan and Ban Ki-moon, con-vened by Nelson Mandela in 2007 in order to tackle some of the world’s greatest challenges.

Robinson was the first female President of Ireland, serving between 1990 and 1997. She has led a distin-guished career, which has included serving as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. She is also a recipient of the Amnesty Interna-tional Ambas-sador of Con-science award, given in recognition of her work promoting human rights. As founder of the Mary Robinson Foundation for Climate Justice, which counts H H Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, Chairperson of Qatar Foundation, as a member of its international advisory board, Robinson has a strong interest on the health impact of climate change.

Looking ahead to her visit to Doha, Rob-inson said, “I am honoured to be representing the Elders at WISH 2018 and look forward to discussing with global health leaders how we can accelerate progress towards Universal Health Coverage. The Elders believe that this represents the best strategy to achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goal on good health and well-being.”

WISH Executive Chair, Professor the Lord Darzi of Denham, said, “We are delighted to welcome Mary Robinson to WISH 2018 to give a keynote address. With a long and distin-guished career of championing human rights, social justice, and healthcare issues at the highest level, she perfectly embodies WISH’s vision of bringing about a healthier world through global collaboration.”

WISH 2018 will once again gather global healthcare leaders at QNCC to highlight and address some of the world’s most pressing healthcare challenges. WISH, which hosts its showcase Doha summit biennially, has quickly established itself as a major highlight of the global healthcare calendar for thousands of high-level policy-makers, academics, and professionals who attend. It has also become a key platform for the dissemination of healthcare innovation and best practices.

High-level participation from India at DIMDEXTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: India has deputed a high-level delegation to participate at the Doha Inter-national Maritime Defence Exhibition and Conference (DIMDEX 2018) , which begins tomorrow and ends on March 12.

The visit of the high-level delegation and INS Kolkata for DIMDEX 2018 will further strengthen the historic friendship between India and Qatar, and defence cooperation between the two countries, said a release.

The delegation is led by Vice-Admiral Girish Luthra PVSM, AVSM, VSM, ADC, Flag Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Western Naval Command of the Indian Navy and includes Additional Director General VSR Murthy PTM, TM, Additional Director General Indian Coast Guard and other senior officials. The Government of India has also deputed Indian Naval Ship (INS) Kolkata, the lead ship of the three ‘Kolkata Class’ destroyers, one of the largest

indigenously built destroyers to be operated by the Indian Navy.

The Kolkata class ships have been con-ceived and designed by the Indian Navy’s Directorate of Naval Design and built by Mazagaon Dockyard Shipyard Limited, Mumbai. The vessel has an overall length of 164 metres, displaces about 7500 tonne and is capable of achieving a speed in excess of 30 knots (approximately 55 kmph). INS Kolkata has a compliment of 30 officers and 330 other personnel under the Command of Captain Susheel Menon.

The ship is based at Mumbai, as part of the Western Fleet under the administrative and operational control of the Western Naval Command.

The deployment of INS Kolkata is the second time in the last four months that an Indian ship is visiting Qatar. Indian Coast Guard ship ‘Samarth’ had visited Hamad Port in November 2017 and participated in the first ever India-Qatar Joint Passage Exercise with the Qatari Coast Guard.

INS Kolkata.

Over 300,000 users log on to Ooredoo App daily for free dataTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: Ooredoo said the Ooredoo App free 10 MB (on weekdays) and 100 MB (on weekends) giveaway has seen a huge demand since the offer launch in 2016.

Currently, over 300,000 users log in to the Ooredoo App daily to receive their reward, which is given by the company as a thank you to customers for their loyalty and con-tinued use of its self-service app.

To claim the data, users need to select their service number and then the ‘Deal’ tile in the latest app version. The app can be down-loaded via Ooredoo.qa/app or cus-tomers can SMS ‘App’ to 114. Free data will be valid until midnight on the day of activation. To make the most of the free data offer, which is available until March 31, 2018, Ooredoo advises customers to opt-in to the daily deal early, espe-cially on weekends when the reward is 100 MB per day.

Manar Khalifa Al Muraikhi, Ooredoo Director of PR and Cor-porate Communications, said: “The free data initiative was designed to ensure that our customers stay con-nected even when running out of credit, as well as promote our award-winning app. With the Ooredoo App customers can check their balance, maintain subscriptions, resolve issue and much more on the go.”

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

New showroom of Light Wave Zone opens at Salwa RoadTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: Abdulrahman Mohammed Khalifa Al Attiyah inaugurated the new showroom of Light Wave Zone Company located on Salwa Road in the presence of a number of friends and busi-nessmen.

Al Attiyah said that the new showroom of Light Wave Zone includes a wide range of high-quality European lighting products. The company has adopted in its policy since its estab-lishment by the father, Mohammed bin Khalifa Al Attiyah, the credibility and quality and build confidence between them and their customers and to deal with the latest and the finest international lighting products, which gave it great differen-tiation as a distributor of lighting products in Qatar.

Light Wave Zone is part of the Maghdeem Trading and Contracting Group, which consists of several com-panies and branches in Germany,

Jordan and Qatar and is owned by Mohammed Khalifa Al Attiyah, a company specialised in solar energy, lighting, insulation solutions and general trading. The Group has carried out many projects of lighting, solar and insulation in Qatar, Jordan, Palestine, Lebanon, the Netherlands

and Germany and is in constant expansion.

After the opening of the new showroom of Light Wave Zone, Al Attiyah inaugurated the new head-quarters offices of the Magdim Trading and Contracting Group located in the same building.

Abdulrahman Mohammed Khalifa Al Attiyah opening the showroom on Salwa Road along with Samir Azzam, Abdul Rahman Al Emadi, Osman Al Asmar, Mohammed Al Zuabi, Eng Mohammed Hassan, Hani Al Sayed and other dignitaries.

The app can be downloaded via Ooredoo.qa/app or customers can SMS ‘App’ to 114. Free data will be valid until midnight on the day of activation.

National Science Research Week from todayQNA

DOHA: The National Science Research Week, organised by the Ministry of Education and Higher Education, will be held from today till March 15, with the National Fund for Scientific Research.

Events include the third Qatar National Olympiad of Physics and Astronomy, the “Fame Lab” competition, the National Pro-gramming Competition, the Media Crea-tivity Award and the Action Research Contest, a competition dedicated to teachers, in which 411 teachers from 97 schools participate in 363 procedural research. In addition, the participants, who are entitled to take part in the 10th National Student Research Exhibition, attended

about 1,900 students from 218 public and private schools at different levels of edu-cation. They presented 900 research papers and an innovative project.

The activities aim at enhancing stu-dents’ scientific research skills, developing them and celebrating them, spreading the spirit of cooperation and competition among them, achieving excellence in sci-entific research, highlighting their projects dealing with the problems of the times and providing the necessary support, as well as cooperation and coordination with partners in the State’s institutions con-cerned with student research, by providing opportunity for distinguished research projects to participate in regional and inter-national competitions.


HBKU and Orange Business Services establish new internship programme THE PENINSULA

DOHA: Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU) and Orange Business Services, the B2B branch of the Orange Group, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) at a cere-mony held at Orange headquar-ters in Paris, France on Friday.

The MoU is reciprocal and aims to establish an internship programme, as well as to enable both institutions to benefit mutually from resources, exper-tise and human talent.

The three-year MoU prima-rily revolves around a collabo-rative internship agreement, which includes up to three HBKU students per year par-taking in a three- to six-month placement with Orange Business Services in France, as well as other placements with relevant affiliates within the larger Orange group.

The internship enables stu-dents to gain unique experience

in IT fields, such as network services, big data, internet-of-things (IOT) solutions, and smart services, with the ultimate objective of achieving a greater understanding of the digital realm.

Dr Ahmad M. Hasnah, pres-ident of HBKU, said, “Part of our mandate at HBKU is to foster an environment that encourages innovation among our students. This is even more applicable in the ICT field, as innovation drives the technological advancements we see every day. Working with our partners at Orange means that we are able to capitalize on exceptional real-life opportuni-ties, as well as give our students the chance to learn and grow beyond the classroom.”

As a key global player in the ICT market, and where skills in areas such as data science and analytics, ICT System Integra-tion Programmes or application services have become critical, Orange Business Services is

highly engaged to contribute to the training of future talent through education/training pro-grams and partnerships across the globe.

“We are pleased to welcome students from a high level and world-class university like HBKU and to cooperate with the “Qatar Foundation” which is fully committed to education, science, and community devel-opment in Qatar. This MoU sup-ports the ambition for Orange Business Services to contribute to the development of IT skills,” said Béatrice Felder, CEO of Orange Applications for Busi-ness, the Orange Business Serv-ices entity in charge of IT System Integration and settled in Qatar.

Potential candidates for the internship program will be pre-selected by HBKU and qualified by Orange or the appropriate partner. Additionally, HBKU and Orange plan to leverage their partnership to work across their research groups.

The officials of HBKU and Orange Business Services during the MoU signing ceremony held at Orange headquarters in Paris, France, on Friday.


HMC’s sepsis programme focuses on early detection & preventionTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: In line with the mandate set out in Qatar’s National Patient Safety Collaborative (NPSC) to reduce sepsis-related deaths, Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) will soon roll out a stand-ardised care pathway for patients with suspected sepsis across its network of hospitals.

Established in January, Qatar’s National Patient Safety Collaborative (NPSC) aims to support and encourage a culture of continuous learning, improvement, and safety across the healthcare system in Qatar.

Sepsis is a life-threatening condition that arises when the

body’s response to a severe infection damages its own tissues and organs. If not recognised early and managed promptly, it can lead to septic shock, multiple organ failure, and death.

“Sepsis is a medical emer-gency. It is responsible for between six and nine million deaths worldwide every year, many of which are preventable,” said Dr Ibrahim Fawzy Hassan (pictured), Director, Medical Intensive Care Division, Deputy Medical Director, Ambulance Service, and Chair of the Sepsis Steering Committee at HMC. “Sepsis can be triggered by a bac-terial, viral or fungal infection in any part of the body and the most common causes include pneu-monia, as well as abdominal, kidney, and bloodstream infections.”

According to Dr Hassan, sepsis can be difficult to diagnose

because early symptoms can be confused with other conditions, highlighting the need for greater awareness of its causes, signs, and symptoms. Early symptoms of sepsis in older children and adults can include a high tem-perature (fever) or low body temperature, chills and shiv-ering, confusion, cold or blotchy hands and feet, and not passing as much urine as normal.

The new sepsis care pathway, set to be fully rolled out across HMC this year, aims to improve the prevention, diag-nosis, and clinical management of sepsis; it includes key defini-tions, treatment guidelines, and staff roles and responsibilities

when caring for different patient groups such as neonates (newborn babies), children, and adults. The new care pathway will boost the existing sepsis pre-vention program, which was launched within HMC last year.

Sepsis was a topic of dis-cussion at the World Health Organization’s Assembly (Com-mittee A) meetings, held in Geneva last year, which were chaired by H E Dr Hanan Mohamed Al Kuwari, Minister of Public Health. Delegates at the assembly agreed on a resolution to improve the prevention, diag-nosis, and treatment of sepsis; the resolution encourages gov-ernments around the world to

strengthen policies and care processes in relation to sepsis.

The Ministry of Public Health has mandated that sepsis care forms the foundation of a series of significant health challenges set to be addressed by inter-pro-fessional and multi-disciplinary teams working across the public healthcare sector.

Clinicians at HMC have worked on a range of quality improvement projects over the past few years, but the minis-terial mandate gives rise to a cor-porate focus on sepsis care. The program formulates a stand-ardized approach that clinicians take when suspecting the emer-gence of sepsis in a patient.

Qatar Charity implements several water projects at many places in SudanTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: Qatar Charity has imple-mented various water projects at many places in Sudan to provide clean potable water to poor and needy people. The projects include establishing water plants, drilling artesian and surface water wells, and providing a drilling unit to dig deep wells. Hundreds of thou-sands of people benefited from water projects.

Director of the QC’s Office in Sudan, Hussein Kermas, said, “By providing safe drinking water, Qatar Charity aims to improve the public health of poor communities and to control diseases, which spread through the use of contaminated water”.

Providing safe drinking water is one of the most signif-icant areas of the QC’s work in order to help poor and needy people with safe potable water free of contaminants and dis-eases that harm both human and animal health, Kermas added.

In cooperation and part-nership with Munazzamat Al Da’wa Al Islamiyya and the Qatar Red Crescent, Qatar Charity set up four

water purification plants in many villages scattered along the Nile River, at cost of QR7.5m, to cover the needs of more than 87,000 people for clean drinking water.

These water purification plants have production capacity ranging from 500 to 2,800 cubic meters per day as well as they are equipped with tanks, service and administrative facilities, and laboratories for water analysis.

A water plant project is cur-rently being implemented in Wad Hamid, in the Nile River State at a cost of QR2m, which will have production capacity of 1,800 cubic meter per day,

and will benefit 25,000 people approximately.

There is also a plan to set up 20 water plants with different capacities in six other states, at an estimated cost of about $12m.

As part of its partnership with the Qatar Fund For Devel-opment (QFFD), Qatar Charity has also started the implemen-tation of other water projects in South and Central Darfur at a cost of about QR11m under the framework of Qatar’s Darfur Development Initiative and they are expected to be completed by the end of April 2018 and will provide clean water sources to a number of localities in the region.

The projects include drilling 255 wells equipped with hand pumps, setting up three large water plants with overhead water tanks having a capacity of 50 cubic meters and equipped with an energy source (gen-erator / solar energy), and estab-lishing 11 medium water plants with 30 m3 overhead water tanks equipped with energy sources in addition to the distri-bution of maintenance kits for hand pumps, and the formation of wells and water plants man-agement committees.

A resident gets drinking water from a tap through the water project implemented by Qatar Charity in Sudan.

Centre for Women’s Health Research at University of Aberdeen opens THE PENINSULA

DOHA: H E Dr Sheikha Aisha bint Faleh Al Thani, Chairperson and Founder of Al Faleh Group for Educational and Academic Services, has been in Aberdeen on an official visit to the city, which included a dinner in her honour, given by the Lord Provost of the city, attended by local dignitaries, council members and senior members of the university management and governing body.

During the dinner, the Lord Provost Councillor Barney Crockett and the university Principal Professor Sir Ian Diamond gave speeches wel-coming Dr Sheikha Aisha and her delegation to the city.

Professor Sir Ian Diamond, said, “The University of Aberdeen has a close rela-tionship with our city and I was delighted that the lord provost of Aberdeen hosted a special dinner to welcome Sheikha Aisha and it was a privilege for me to speak about the won-derful partnership between AFG and the University of Aberdeen.”

During the opening of the new centre at the university’s Foresterhill Campus on March 7th, Dr Sheikha Aisha was given a tour of the new world

class facilities, which included explanations on the ground-breaking research being undertaken at the centre into a diverse range of areas that will have direct impact on women’s health.

The University of Aberdeen has been at the forefront of women’s health since Professor Sir Dugald Baird was awarded a fellowship of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecol-ogists in 1935, having cham-pioned pioneering research into women’s health, which included

the formation of the Aberdeen Maternity and Neonatal Databank.

Dr SheikhaAisha, said “It has been a real privilege for me to visit this wonderful city and I was delighted to open this innovative Centre For Women’s Health Research. I believe that the important research that will be undertaken here will be of enormous benefit to future medical developments for women and their families, not just in Aberdeen, but globally.”

H E Dr Sheikha Aisha bint Faleh Al Thani, Chairperson and Founder of Al Faleh Group for Educational and Academic Services, opens the innovative Centre For Women’s Health Research of the University of Aberdeen.

Melehi shares personal experience at Mathaf THE PENINSULA

DOHA: Leading modernist artist Mohammed Melehi recently delivered a lecture on his work as a painter, publisher, educator, and social activist at Mathaf: Museum of Modern Art in Education City.

Melehi’s work is currently on show as one of Mathaf’s Focus exhibitions dedicated to pioneering regional artists. The talk was organised as part of

Mathaf Talks, an ongoing series of public events where invited creative professionals engage in conversations and debates on art history & artistic practices.

Melehi presented a lecture on his personal experiences spanning his 60-year career. It was followed by a conversation

with Mathaf Curator Laura Barlow. The discussion touched on insights from the artist’s work in education, politics and com-munity development that sup-ported the growth of inde-pendent creative expression and critical thinking in artistic com-munities in Morocco.

A leading modernist artist Mohammed Melehi speaks at Mathaf: Museum of Modern Art in Education City.

The Director of the QC’s Office in Sudan, said, “By providing safe drinking water, QC aims to improve the public health of poor communities and to control diseases, which spread through the use of contaminated water”.


QF Triathlon Series winners announced THE PENINSULA

DOHA: The latest results in the Qatar Foundation Triathlon Series, powered by GMC, have been announced after the second event held in January.

Triathletes from Qatar battled against themselves and the clock in three disciplines - swimming, running and cycling - to be on the podium.

The Qatar Foundation Tria-thlon Series, formerly known as the GMC Triathlon Series Doha, is organized by TriClub Doha in association with Qatar Foun-dation, with the event’s primary sponsor and Qatar’s exclusive GMC dealer Mannai Auto Group, and supported by benefactors like Intercontinental Doha, Rasen Adventure Sports and Trinity Talent Qatar.

The event, the second race in the fifth season, occurred on January 19 a t the

Qatar Foundation Education City Recreation Centre, using a 50m indoor pool for the swim, with the bike and run course on internal roads in Education City.

The QF Triathlon caters for all ages and levels of triathlete, from the complete beginner finding their legs to more expe-rienced triathlons wanting to

stretch themselves on the sprint course. The course involved a swim in the 50m pool, a cycle across a 5km bike course and a 1.25km run lap. Distances ranged from kids 7-10 (100m swim, 3km bike, 1.25km run) up to Sprint (500m swim, 20km bike, 5km run) with different distances catering for each age group and level TriDoha LLC(G) is triathlon

club founded to serve triathletes of all abilities in Qatar. The club has about 400 members ranging from complete beginners to world-class triathletes, and aged from seven and adults.

Mr. Ivor D’Cunha, Senior General Manager- Operations, Mannai Auto Group, said: “Mannai has always aimed to be a part of, and central to the com-munity, and our sponsorship of this event really enables people to come together for a common cause. “It is also a fantastic way to keep fit and meet new friends.” Ewan Cameron, race director and representative of Mannai Corporation, com-mented: “Yet again, we had another fantastic event, with all the participants pushing them-selves to the limits.

“It is becoming a popular event in Qatar and one that if you’re a triathlete, you would not want to miss out on.”

The winners of Qatar Foundation Triathlon Series pose during a photo session.

Obaid-Chinoy NU-Q’s graduation speakerTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: Renowned journalist, film-maker and activist, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy (pictured), will address North-western University in Qatar’s (NU-Q) graduating class in May.

Obaid-Chinoy’s documentary films and projects, which focus on ine-quality among women, have received international recog-nition, earning her two Academy Awards, six Emmy Awards, and a Lux Style Award.

“We are honored that Sharmeen, a person of great distinction and achievement will speak at the 2018 gradu-ation,” said Everette E. Dennis, dean and CEO. “Her accom-plishments connect the values and interests of all students at NU-Q, and her life and work will be a source of courage and inspiration for all of us.”

In 2012, TIME Magazine included Obaid-Chinoy in their annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world. In that same year, the Pakistani journalist received the Hilal-i-Imtiaz award, the second highest civilian honor awarded by Pakistan. In 2013, Canada awarded her a Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal for her work in the field of docu-mentary films, and in that same year, the World Economic Forum honored her with a Crystal Award at its annual summit in Davos.

Obaid-Chinoy was selected to speak by a graduation

speaker committee, composed of NU-Q faculty, students, and staff who researched and iden-tified candidates for the 2018 graduation ceremony.

“Sharmeen is a filmmaker and activist who has challenged societal and cultural obstacles to pursue what she believes in,” said Noof Al Sulaiti, a member of the graduation speaker com-mittee and president of the NU-Q Student Union.

In the past 16 years, Obaid-Chinoy made a dozen multi-award winning films in more than 10 countries around the world. Her films include Girl in the River: The Price of For-giveness, Song of Lahore, Saving Face and Peace Keepers. Her work has aired on interna-tional channels including, HBO, CNN, PBS, Channel 4, CBC, Arte, SBS and the Discovery Channel.

NU-Q’s previous graduation speakers have included col-umnist and commentator Rami Khorui, author and filmmaker Sophia Al Maria, filmmaker and Oscar nominee Jehane Noujaim, social entrepreneur Shiza Shahid, award-winning BBC anchor and correspondent Lyse Ducet OBE, and best-selling author and magazine journalist Derek Thompson.

Jaidah Group launches dedicated truck spare parts departmentTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: Jaidah Group’s Inde-pendent Aftermarket (IAM) Division announced the launch of a new dedicated Truck Spare Parts Department, in an event titled Think: Trucks, Parts, Jaidah, which showcased the new and extended truck spare parts portfolio.

The new portfolio aims to provide the best solutions catering to needs of wholesalers, fleets and construction com-panies through some of the world’s most famous and leading automotive suppliers including announced partners; Connect Air Springs (Meklas), Euroricambi, MAHLE as well as long standing partners, OSRAM, Shell and Valeo.

The launch event took place

at the Westin Doha Hotel & Spa, and was attended by Mr. Jamal Mosallam, Chief Operating officer of Jaidah Group, Mr. Zeki Bagran, Director of the Inde-pendent Aftermarket Division at Jaidah Group, and close to 400 loyal customers and represent-atives from the Turkish Embassy in Doha as well as the German Business Council.

Mr. Mohamad Jaidah, Group Executive Director of Jaidah Group said on this occasion, “As a company we believe that now more than ever, it is our duty to invest in new brands, new talent and new partnerships. We are excited to announce these part-nerships today and hope that they reflect our vision of always providing the best to our cus-tomers, and our commitment towards the development of

Qatar’s economy, future and growth.” Jaidah Group’s IAM Division has built partnerships over the years with major inter-national OEM manufacturers and industry leading suppliers to provide customers with the best quality automotive parts available in Qatar, and is now ready to serve Qatar’s Trucks.

Mr. Zeki Bagran, Director of the Independent Aftermarket Division at Jaidah Group said, “Qatar relies on you, and you can rely on us, is a motto that has been embraced by all the stake-holders and is a big part of our vision for the new Truck Spare Parts Department, as well as the Division as a whole.”

Mr. Zeki Bagran added, “The new department is part of the Jaidah Group IAM’s broader strategy to serve Qatar’s truck

spare parts market with 20+ product lines, high service rates, excellent customer care and an in-depth range.” The event

included a mini-exhibition fea-turing new and long-lasting partners, as well as informative sessions and Q&A’s. The

attendees enjoyed a lavish buffet, live entertainment and at the end of the event a raffle draw was held featuring exciting prizes.

Officials during the launch of a new dedicated Truck Spare Parts Department of Jaidah Group’s Independent Aftermarket (IAM) Division in an event titled Think: Trucks, Parts, Jaidah.

NAMA Center officials visit Al Meera branch at Gulf MallTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: As part of the new initi-atives and programmes launched by NAMA Social Devel-opment Center, an affiliated Center of Qatar Foundation for Social Work, and as an expression of the social respon-sibility binding organisations operating in Qatar, NAMA seeks to promote emerging enterprises benefiting from its services in the local market. It also seeks to enhance cooperation with several corporations within the State of Qatar to ensure projects access the local market.

Given its role as a fertile market for emerging enterprises, Al Meera Consumer Goods Company, with whom cooper-ation started in 2013, is very well among those corporations. NAMA Center organised a visit to the Al Meera branch at Gulf Mall.

The aim of the visit which was attended by NAMA Center officials was to check the projects on display at the branch, meet their owners and explore opportunities for Al Meera man-agement to support small and micro enterprises benefiting from the Center’s incubation

services. Nama Center sought to enhance cooperation with Al Meera Consumer Goods Company, highlight the Center’s products on display in Al Meera

and strengthen ties between the Center’s management and the target corporations and benefi-ciaries of entrepreneurship services.

NAMA Center officials during the visit to the Al Meera Branch at Gulf Mall.

Openness of Qumra is what cinema really wants: Expert THE PENINSULA

DOHA: “Be courageous, be daring, be vulnerable and be authentic.” This was the advice of senior leaders of the world’s leading film festivals to young filmmakers at the fourth Qumra, the annual industry event by the Doha Film Institute (DFI).

It was a sentiment shared by Cameron Bailey, Artistic Director of the Toronto International Film Festival; Christophe Leparc, Managing Director of the Direc-tor’s Fortnight at Festival de Cannes; and Bero Beyer, Festival Director of the International Film Festival Rotterdam.

At the preparatory meetings at Qumra, which aims to nurture first and second-time film-makers from around the world, the three industry representa-tives were unequivocal in their observation that Qumra has

evolved significantly in the past three years.

“The taste of Qumra is out-spoken and daring, and that is one thing special about here,” said Beyer. “The shift I am seeing in the quality of films at Qumra too has to do with it being out-spoken and daring. Initially, here in the region, filmmakers were merely trying to make a good film that will connect to the audience, which resulted in middle-of-the-road films. They were trying to be too pleasing and that doesn’t work. If you are true to yourself as a filmmaker and if your story is honest, it becomes relevant to people outside your region too.”

Beyer said it is not easy to develop the courage and vulner-ability to be honest as film-makers. “Being rooted in your milieu and being honest about it, you make yourself vulnerable

as a filmmaker. But then, your film becomes interesting. At Rot-terdam, we focus on the avant-garde and never on anything that is middle-ground. If you want to be a filmmaker, if you want to get into festivals, be vulnerable, be outspoken.”

Leparc said he sees “projects here that deal with subjects that I am looking for. These young filmmakers are very talented, and thanks to Qumra, I know of their works right from the ide-ation stage to how they finally take shape. I follow their projects from script-to-screen.”

He said the quality of the films evolving from Qumra “is improving; these young talents here are not immature anymore – and it is great to see DFI help them make ‘real’ films.” Leparc too said that young talents must focus not on being ‘too exotic’ with their stories but to explore

the ‘deep roots. The universality of cinema always comes from local roots.”

With the qualitative shifts seen, Qatari and Arab cinema can scale the top echelons, he said, “but you must remember that it is very competitive out there; so, focus on telling your story with honesty.”

Bailey said being at Qumra is helpful in learning about the changing landscape of cinema in the region, adding that the openness of Qumra to the world is “what cinema really needs.” He said the opportunity for young talents to access resources as well as networking opportu-nities make the event relevant

and important. Bailey empha-sised the need for young film-makers to tell stories rooted in their milieu because that is what people want to see – real stories of real people. “In today’s inter-connected world, where ideas and information move fast,” it is important more than ever to tell your stories.

A session during the fourth Qumra, the annual industry event by the Doha Film Institute (DFI).

09SUNDAY 11 MARCH 2018 HOME / MIDDLE EAST

Sidra’s IWD event inspires employees THE PENINSULA

DOHA: Sidra Medicine marked International Women’s Day (IWD), celebrated world-wide on March 8, by hosting a high-level panel of inspiring female profes-sionals.

The panelists discussed their careers, aspirations and insights with hundreds of employees. As a specialty children’s, young people and women’s healthcare organization and member of Qatar Foundation for (QF), Sidra Medicine prides itself on serving the community not only by pro-viding specialty pediatric and maternal care, but by being an employer of choice in Qatar.

This year’s IWD theme encouraged participants to ‘Press for Progress.’ Dr Kholode Al-Obaidli, Sidra Medicine’s Chief Learning Officer, shared her thoughts on how organisations can mobilise progress and

empower women. Some of her most poignant advice centred on harnessing personal passion to drive achievement and growth and not being afraid to employ emotional intelligence as a lead-ership tool.

Dr Al Obaidli said, “Our goal is to make Sidra Medicine an employer of choice for women and we have taken a number of steps to reflect this ambition by recognising the importance of working women. With more than 66 percent of the workforce at Sidra Medicine being female, our focus for this year will be on helping our employees achieve a healthy work-life balance. Studies have shown that organ-isations that embrace such pol-icies worldwide are more effec-tive, with improved productivity and retention. We want to lead by example in Qatar, by listening to the needs of our employees and enabling them to perform at

their best in a supportive environment.”

Sidra Medicine has already implemented several policies to gain recognition as an employer of choice for women. These include enhanced maternity leave and the ability to return to work part time on full time pay to encourage retention, among other benefits. Further policies around a flexible working frame-work and special leave policies for domestic emergencies are being developed this year.

Following an inspirational opening presentation by Dr. Al Obaidli, panellists representing a wide range of industries and roles shared their success stories and ways in which they over-came challenges on a path towards maintaining fulling lives and careers. These included key-note speaker, former Minister of Social Development for the Sul-tanate of Oman Dr Sharifa Al

Yhayai, CEO of Qatar Business Incubation Centre, Aysha Al Mudahkha; Supreme Committee

for Delivery and Legacy CSR Manager,Mead Al Emadi, Founder and Jewelry Designer

of Hiraat, Nada Al Sulaiti and Lactation Consultant, Najla Al Kuwari.

Sidra Medicine team discusses opportunities available for women within the organisation during the event to mark IWD.

Tunisians take part in a protest to demand altering religious law concerning inheritance in the capital Tunis, yesterday.

Tunisia women march for same inheritance rightsAFP

TUNIS: Tunisia women led a march by more than 1,000 demonstrators yesterday, including men, to demand equal inheritance rights for both sexes in the North African country.

Tunisia’s inheritance law is based on Islamic jurisprudence stipulating that men inherit double the amount received by women. The demonstrators marched to the seat of parlia-ment in the Tunisian capital chanting equal inheritance rights “are a right, not a favour”.

Last year, President Beji Caid Essebsi announced plans to set up a commission to examine “individual liberties” and “equality in all domains”, including inheritance.

His announcement sparked opposition from Muslim clerics who issued a statement saying the proposals amounted to “a flagrant violation” of Islamic precepts.

Tunisia, which adopted a 1956 Personal Status Code extending several rights to women and abolishing polygamy, is seen as a pioneer

on women’s emancipation in the Arab world, although tensions often surface between conserv-atives and reformists.

The 2011 revolution in Tunisia toppled the regime of autocratic president Zine el Abi-dine Ben Ali and sparked upris-ings across the Arab world, where changes to inheritance rights are considered a taboo.

But activists yesterday stressed the demand for equality among the sexes in Tunisia.

A constitution adopted in 2014 guarantees equality between men and women.

167 migrants held across TurkeyANATOLIA

ANKARA: A total of 167 undocumented migrants were held across Turkey yesterday, according to secu-rity sources.

In eastern Kars province, 50 Afghan nationals were detained when they tried to escape from a minibus they were traveling in after spot-ting a police control point, said the sources who refused to be named due to restric-tions on speaking to the media. Police also arrested the minibus driver, the sources added.

Separately, gendarmerie forces held 48 Afghan nationals, who were left in a village in Kars by human smugglers, the sources added.

In western Izmir prov-ince, coast guards rounded up 37 foreign nationals who were traveling in a boat off Seferihisar district’s coast, the sources said. Most of the migrants are Syrian nationals, they added. Also, 32 undoc-umented migrants in a boat were detained off the coast of Ayvacik district.

18 terrorists neutralised in Turkey, N IraqANATOLIA

ANKARA: A total of 18 PKK terrorists were “neutralised” in Turkey’s southeastern provinces of Diyarbakir, Mardin and northern Iraq this week, the Turkish General Staff said yesterday.

Turkish officials often use the word “neutralised” in their statements to imply the terrorists in question either surrendered or were killed or captured. According to a statement from the military, the operations took place from March 2-9.

One of the neutralized terrorists was from the senior cadre of the PKK, it added.

One soldier was martyred and two were wounded during the operations in the same period. A total of 7,858 people were also detained over the week, while trying to cross the Turkish borders illegally.

The statement said 117 soldiers wounded during Operation Olive Branch returned to their duties after medical treatment. As part of the operation, 3,213 PYD/YPG/PKK and Daesh terror-ists were neutralized.

AFP

NABLUS: A Palestinian man was shot dead by Israeli soldiers yesterday following a clash with Jewish settlers near the West Bank city of Nablus, medics and security sources said.

Palestinian security sources said the clash was started by the settlers, after which the army intervened and fired at a group of Palestinians.

The Palestinian Red Cres-cent identified the dead man as a 22-year-old from the town of Urif, adding that at least one other person was wounded.

The Israeli army said Pales-tinians from Urif had approached Yitzhar settlement, sparking “a confrontation between Palestinian and Israeli civilians”.

As soldiers arrived, “a riot was instigated, during which troops used riot dispersal means and fired live rounds”, a military spokesman said.

On Friday, a Palestinian was killed by Israeli fire in the West

Bank city of Hebron and at least four others were wounded in clashes along Gaza’s border with Israel.

Tensions have risen since US P r e s i d e n t D o n a l d

Trump’s recognition in December of Jerusalem as Isra-el’s capital -- a decision that has infuriated Palestinians.

Israel seized mainly Arab east Jerusalem in the 1967

Six-Day War and later annexed it in a move never recognised by the international community.

At least 31 Palestinians and two Israelis have been killed since Trump’s announcement.

Palestinian protesters burn tyres in response to Israeli forces’ intervention during a demonstration at Israeli border in eastern part of Khan Yunis, Gaza, yesterday.

Israel army shoots dead Palestinian Netanyahu to meet Israel coalition headsAFP

JERUSALEM: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is to meet with Israel’s ruling coalition heads, his office said yesterday, to discuss a polit-ical crisis that could force early elections.

A meeting with leaders of two ultra-Orthodox par-ties was to be held later Sat-urday, to be followed the next day by talks with the other members of his coalition.

The coalition is currently at loggerheads over legisla-tion that would exempt young ultra-Orthodox men from military service. The ultra-Orthodox parties are refusing to approve the state budget unless a draft bill is amended or scrapped, while Defence Minister Avidgor Lieberman is determined to pass the law. Netanyahu could soon face charges in at least two sepa-rate corruption affairs.

Leader of Iranian spiritual movement gets jail on retrialAFP

TEHRAN: The leader of an Iranian spiritual movement, whose repeated death sentences drew UN and US condemnation, has been given a five-year jail term after a second retrial, his lawyer said yesterday.

In June 2015 and again in September last year, the courts found Mohammad Ali Taheri guilty of “corruption on earth” -- the gravest charge in the Islamic republic. But on each occasion the supreme court overturned the death sentence and ordered a retrial.

After the latest retrial, the court convicted Taheri of the lesser charge of “non-aggra-vated corruption” and sen-tenced him to five years in prison, his lawyer Mahmoud Alizadeh Tabatabaie told AFP.

But Tabatabaie said he would appeal the conviction as it was made on the basis of a 2013 law that the court was applying retroactively and his client had already served a five-year jail sentence and longer in prison awaiting retrial.

Taheri founded his Erfan Kayhani (“Cosmic Mysticism”) movement in the early 2000s and quickly became a well-known spiritual leader, appearing on state television

and giving classes at Tehran University. He promoted alter-native medicine and followed what he said were messages from spirits.

But as his popularity grew, he fell foul of Iran’s clerical establishment and the conserv-ative-dominated judiciary launched a crackdown on what they dubbed his “satanic” sect.

He was first detained for a short period in 2010 and was then rearrested in May 2011 and held in solitary confinement before being charged with “insulting Islamic sanctities” and “corruption on earth”.

In July, August and Sep-tember, authorities arrested at least 25 of his followers, some of them for organising protests against his death sentence, Ira-nian media reported.

Both UN human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein and the US State Department have called for his immediate release. Iran recognises the monotheistic religions that came before Islam, such as Christianity, Judaism and Zoro-astrianism, allowing consider-able freedom to their followers. But it has cracked down on new Islamic sects that challenge the authority of Iran’s Shia clerics, particularly the Bahai move-ment that emerged in 19th cen-tury and is now banned.

The Chairman of Qatar National Human Rights Committee (QNHRC) Dr Ali bin Smaikh Al Marri’s assertion that Qatar’s highest priority is to end human rights

violations committed by the siege countries and compensate those innocent people affected by the irresponsible act of the blockading nations shows the resolve of the State of Qatar to stand with the victims.

“There is no loser in this crisis except the people in the Gulf region. People have been suffering for 10 months from the violations of their human rights and their hope is to regain their legitimate rights and return to their normal life as before the siege,” Dr Al Marri said.

The unjust continuation of the siege even after gruelling 10 months does not serve anybody, rather it breaks the social fabric of peaceful coexistence of people in the region.

It’s very clear that the siege imposed on Qatar on June 5 last year lacks international legitimacy and is based on demands that violate conventions and charters of international law, human rights and freedom of opinion and expression. It affected civil, economic, social and cultural rights of people.

The worst case of human rights violations are in the fields of family disintegration as well as the

disruption of education of many students. When the blockading countries cut ties and imposed air, land and sea blockade, they also asked Qatari citizens in their countries and their citizens in Qatar to leave within 14 days, including students, patients, businessmen, mixed family members and owners of livestock.

It’s unfair and a gross violation of human rights that the siege countries have dragged universities and other educational institutions into matters such as this. It’s against all kinds of respect international laws guaranteeing for rights of students. “Education is one of the basic human

rights and these rights are granted by laws to all people regardless of any kind of political, economical, social or cultural differences or disputes,” said the QNHRC in a report. The report reveals that as many as 213 Qatari students were forced to discontinue their education that includes United Arab Emirates (130 students), Saudi Arabia (55 students) and Bahrain (28 students), as well 706 students were forced by their countries to discontinue their education in Qatar University.

As Dr Al Marri correctly put it, the policy of indifference adopted by the siege countries with regard to the crisis and its impact on the lives of people confirms that human value has no place with their other objectives. “We believe that the highest priority is to end these violations and make those responsible for the violations accountable,” he said.

The unjust continuation of the siege even after gruelling 10 months does not serve anybody, rather it breaks the social fabric of peaceful coexistence of people in the region.

CHAIRMANSHEIKH THANI BIN ABDULLAH AL THANI

EDITOR-IN-CHIEFDR. KHALID BIN MUBARAK [email protected]

ACTING MANAGING EDITORMOHAMMED SALIM [email protected]

10 SUNDAY 11 MARCH 2018VIEWS

EDITORIAL

For the siege victims

QUOTE OF THE DAY

Our concern isn’t the land; our concern

is to clear terrorists from there (Syria).

Where there are terrorists, we’ll be

there.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan Turkey’s President

The problem with leftist myths about Syria

LOUBNA MRIE AL JAZEERA

AS the death toll in the Damascus’ suburb of Eastern Ghouta reached nearly 700 in two weeks and continues to

rise, many so-called progressive voices continue to justify the carnage.

Many are dead convinced that the regime is fighting Al Qaeda in Eastern Ghouta, which is using civilians as human shields — hence the hundreds of dead are not really the regime’s fault.

A great number of leftist in the West and the East have been buying into regime propaganda for years now. From Australian academic Tim Anderson, who’s claimed that Bashar Al Assad has not been involved in mass killings of civilians and was simply demonised by the imperial West to British and US journalists Robert Fisk and Seymour Hersh who have claimed the regime did not use chemical weapons in various attacks on civilians, leftist public figures continue to believe that the Assad dictatorship is a bastion of anti-imperialism in the region and needs to be supported.

They refuse to accept that over 500,000 people have been killed in the war, the vast majority by the regime, which, unlike the rebels, possesses, and uses indiscriminately, airpower (including the notoriously destructive barrel bombs dropped from helicopters).

Though there are historical reasons for these misconceptions by large sections of the left, in the middle of the current atrocious destruction and loss of life in Syria, they are simply inexcusable.

For me, it is unfathomable how people who have stood up for social justice and human rights across the world remain in support of a regime that has exploited its population economically and tortured and killed innocent civilians in the most

horrendous ways possible. Or how people who had seen through US imperial war propaganda cannot see through the Russian equivalent of it.

Since I fled Syria in 2014, I have heard two common leftist myths about what is going on in my country. I want to address both of them below.

It’s a regime change plot against a legitimate government.

Many people who didn’t follow Syria back in 2011 and 2012 might not realise that the current conflict started with a true uprising in the country.

In March 2011, Syrians, including myself, joined the Arab Spring, and we had every reason to.

We dreamt of political and socioeconomic change, fair elections, and a state that respects us and our rights. And no one can tell us, especially no one from the “free world”, that our revolt was not justified.

The current president, Bashar Al Assad, came to power in 2000. No, not through elections or even consultations with parties or consensus of community and religious leaders. He simply “inherited the throne” from his father, Hafez, after his death.

Hafez, too, was unelected: He came to power in 1970 in a military coup.

Syrians my age, and the three generations older than me, never voted in their adult lives. The only thing I ever voted in was Arab Idol.

The Syria of my childhood was a repressive police state. I grew up believing that the walls had ears and that you couldn’t criticise the regime, even in your own house.

In schools, we were brainwashed daily. I attended Baathist schools, where

the president’s portrait adorned every wall. During the flag salute every morning, we called for the immortality of Hafez Al Assad before heading to class. We memorised songs praising him and the Baathist Party, we had to recite his speeches. He was our leader and father. When Hafez died in 2000, I was 9 years old. I cried because the person who I’d always been told was immortal had died like a normal human.

The country belonged to the Assad family. You could not do business without going through them. Assad’s relatives and close associates had direct control over all import licenses and government contracts.

Bashar’s cousin, Rami Makhlouf, is the richest man in Syria. Makhlouf controls the major mobile phone company, TV channels, pro-government newspapers and used to control the oil and gas industry of the country before the war.

Before 2011, no political activities were allowed, to the extent that even attending political meetings could get you jailed and tortured for years. After the brief “Damascus spring” in the early 2000s, where we dared to hope things would change under Bashar, and the subsequent crackdown, we realised he will be just like his father.

Only, he turned out to be worse.So in March 2011, when we saw

Tunisians and Egyptians rising up and toppling their dictators, we thought we could also demand change. Despite all the institutionalised repression and propaganda, Syrians still took the risk and went out into the streets. People of all walks of life and background joined the protests — Christian, Druze, Muslim, Sunni, Alawite, Ismaili, Palestinians, Circassians, etc, young and old men and women demanded change.

We knew that the price for change would be high, but we had no idea it would be this high. Protesters were shot dead with live ammunition. I lost many of my friends, I was shot at. I witnessed people getting shot in the back by snipers and the police. People started disappearing en masse, never to come back; some turned up dead after arrests. And it was at that moment that Bashar lost whatever little legitimacy he might have had as a dictator.

So no, this is not a regime change imposed by the West. This is an uprising against an illegitimate dictator. We had and still have every reason to demand change.

We couldn’t care less where the US stood on our struggle. Regime change when it’s demanded by people, who suffered under authoritarianism, is legitimate. That various powers, like the US and its allies in the Gulf and Turkey, have gotten involved in the conflict (and in fact, militarised it) does not delegitimise our struggle. And we expect international leftist movements to support us, not ignore or mock us.

The jihadis are hiding in Ghouta. The Syrian regime is fighting them.

Like in any chaotic conflict, radicalisation found fertile ground in

the Syrian struggle. When people are exposed to tremendous pressure and injustice, tragically some will become radicalised.

The fact that there are some who took a more radical path in the past seven years, doesn’t mean that everyone who is anti-Assad is also a terrorist.

In Syria — in Ghouta in particular — we have armed groups like Jaish Al Islam and Failaq al Rahman, Ahrar Al Sham, Hay’et Tahrir Al Sham (which has a very small presence, despite what Assad might have you believe) and others - all of which have committed violations and human rights abuses.

However, this doesn’t mean that Ghouta is populated by terrorists. Plenty of Syrians, not only in Ghouta but also across rebel-held areas, have stood their ground and resisted extremism and oppression from all sides. A good example are the activists Razan Zeytouneh and Samira Al Khalil, who were documenting violations on all sides in Eastern Ghouta, for which they were threatened both by the regime and armed groups in the area. They were abducted in December 2013 and have not been seen since then; their families have held Jaish Al Islam responsible.

So yes, there have been violations by the armed groups, and yes, they have also shelled civilian areas in Damascus. But by looking at the abuses of only one side, you are missing the point: first, the general population in Eastern Ghouta — which suffers the most — is not fighting; two, the regime is killing on a massive scale. Shelling by rebels killed 64 civilians in February in the whole of Syria, while regime bombardment killed 852. The regime, too, has arrested, forcibly disappeared, tortured and executed tens of thousands of people.

And the Russian accusations that the armed groups are holding civilians back as human shields sound all too familiar. Every time the Israelis bombs Gaza, they slip into the same narrative; those 1,500 civilians who died in the summer of 2014 were also all “human shields victims”. The US, too, said the same about the nearly 1,000 people who lost their lives during the offensive on Raqqa.

Rebel groups have killed civilians, and so has the regime — on a massive scale, too. You cannot condemn the crimes of one side without condemning the crimes of the other and still think you are a proponent of justice.

The writer is a Syrian photojournalist and writer.

Rebel groups have killed civilians, and so has the regime — on a massive scale, too. You cannot condemn the crimes of one side without condemning the crimes of the other and still think you are a proponent of justice.

ESTABLISHED IN 1996

Many people who didn’t follow Syria back in 2011 and 2012 might not realise that the current conflict started with a true uprising in the country.

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Merkel’s CDU, despite her swing to the left, is still by far the country’s strongest party. Her move to occupy more of the political center by giving up ground on the right may yet turn out to be a smart influence-perpetuating tactic.

LEONID BERSHIDSKY BLOOMBERG

NOW that the Social Democratic Party (SPD) membership has voted to form a

coalition with Angela Merkel’s conservative bloc, all the obstacles to the German chancellor’s fourth term in office have been removed. It’s time for Merkel to think about her legacy. Though no chancellor has given up leadership voluntarily, without an electoral defeat or a major scandal, none has served longer than Helmut Kohl’s 16 years and 26 days, and that makes it likely that Merkel, visibly exhausted by her never-ending battles, won’t vie for a fifth term in office in 2021.

Merkel is clearly thinking about an issue she has made a point of putting on a back burner for years: Succession. Some analysis, German and foreign, have suggested that she has set up a duel between Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, or AKK as the party faithful sometimes call her, and Jens Spahn — two of the most popular politicians in the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). Kramp-Karrenbauer, formerly first minister of the

small state of Saarland, was last week elected the party’s secretary general with an unprecedented 99 percent vote. Spahn, the openly gay but outspokenly conservative favorite of the party’s youth wing, was appointed health minister as Merkel shunted aside a trusted ally to make space for him in the cabinet.

This isn’t quite a fair fight, though. Merkel has indeed positioned Kramp-Karrenbauer for succession, putting her in charge of revamping the CDU platform — a great way for her to get up to speed on the entire spectrum of national issues and get a feel for where the party base stands on them. As for Spahn, the chancellor may be setting him up for a fall. Though health is Spahn’s area of expertise, it’s also an area where the CDU will clash with the SPD, which exerts a strong influence on the coalition cabinet and which wants a comprehensive health reform to phase out private insurance. The argumentative right-winger doesn’t appear to be well-suited for navigating this minefield.

This has a direct bearing on how Merkel sees her legacy. Kramp-Karrenbauer closely resembles her: Their political views, including a pro-refugee bent, are practically indistinguishable; both are pragmatic, down-to-earth and compromise-oriented; both have a quiet, quirky sense of humor, though Kramp-Karrenbauer is a better public speaker. Merkel

appears to have chosen a successor for full continuity rather than change. She wants more of the same.

More of what, though? Above all, more inclusiveness.

In a recent op-ed for The Sunday Times, British historian Niall Ferguson called Merkel’s reign “a political disaster,” largely thanks to what he calls, playing on Merkel’s affectionate moniker, “the Mutti of all errors” — the decision to open up Germany’s borders to refugees in 2015. But despite all the political costs of that move, including the switch of some of the most conservative Christian Democrat supporters to the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), it’s been a prominent part of what Merkel consistently did throughout her long tenure. As Joyce Marie Mushaben argued in her recent book, Becoming Madam Chancellor: Angela Merkel and the Berlin Republic, “beyond serving as a role model for young women attracted to politics, Merkel’s ‘intercultural opening’ policies of the last decade have created new windows of opportunity for parliamentarians and administrators of migrant descent.”

In 2009, the newly elected German parliament had just 21 members with a so-called “migration background” — either immigrants or people born to immigrant parents. In 2017, that number was up to 58. That’s still only eight percent, but it’s a veritable revolution in a country that long saw itself as monocultural, and it’s happening on more levels than just parliamentary politics. For example, the share of immigrants among police officers is growing visibly, though it’s still behind their

percentage in the general population.

It’s easy to forget now that Merkel is the first woman to lead Germany. The country’s political culture, once patriarchal and conservative, is now open to women; a Catholic mother of three like Kramp-Karrenbauer likely wouldn’t have stood a chance at the chancellorship pre-Merkel. Under this chancellor, Germany passed laws to increase the number of women among decision makers and now has a higher share of women executives and board members in big business than the European average. Women’s workforce participation has also markedly increased, in part thanks to efforts to make it easier for working women to take care of their children.

Germany’s gradual opening to difference is a typical Merkel-led process: It’s slow, full of compromises and little defeats, but it leads to real change. What’s being simultaneously achieved is a new, guilt-free feeling of comfort about being German. Mushaben mentions it in her book, too — the ease of emotional identification with a nation that is open, non-threatening and playing a decidedly long-term game. Fergusson condemns Merkel for reducing Germany “to a condition of parlous geopolitical and military weakness,” contributing to the “European mishandling of Arab revolutions” and making the financial crisis worse for southern Europe. But, like other post-World War II German politicians, Merkel largely worked with a set of domestic goals — and her staying power proves that Germans like living in a peaceful country that minimises its foreign interference and works to reduce

its foreign debt. It has generally worked well for them economically, and it’s getting harder to accuse Germany of mistreating neighbors as the euro zone leaves its crisis behind.

The combination of openness and a certain homey coziness defines Merkel’s legacy more than her big moves, even the refugee policy or the spur-of-the-moment decision to abandon nuclear power after the Fukushima disaster. One could argue that most Germans haven’t succumbed to this new country’s charms — the election results of centrist parties have worsened significantly under Merkel — but perhaps the public’s desire for more radicalism is natural after 12 years of Merkel’s pointed rejection of the spectacular. Merkel’s CDU, despite her swing to the left, is still by far the country’s strongest party. Her move to occupy more of the political center by giving up ground on the right may yet turn out to be a smart influence-perpetuating tactic.

I have warned about writing off Merkel, as pundits do at the slightest sign of crisis. I wouldn’t denigrate her legacy, either. It may not be flashy, but Merkel has, in her gradual way, changed Germany so that it’ll never go back to any of its old selves — the dark, threatening ones or the reflexive, self-doubting ones. It’s a happier country: While in 2013 Germans’ life satisfaction level was close to the rich country average, it’s significantly higher today. What leader wouldn’t want such a legacy?

The writer is a Bloomberg view columnist. He was the founding editor of the Russian business daily Vedomosti and founded the opinion website Slon.ru.

MASS shootings like the one in Parkland, Florida, are inevitably followed by emotional, heated debate. How

do these massacres happen? Who is at fault? How can we prevent them while upholding the Second Amendment? As often happens, legislation stalls, the conversation cools amid other pressing issues, and the public is left feeling

powerless.One policy idea, though, is being met

with rare consensus by both advocates for gun control and gun rights: gun violence restraining orders (GVRO), in which law enforcement agencies, families and household members can quickly remove firearms from individuals deemed unstable or unfit to own them. Americans interested in preventing gun-related violence should know that this common-sense tool is working in California.

In just the past few months, prosecutors in my office have obtained GVROs against 15 gun owners, each of whom a court determined posed a serious danger to themselves or others. Some of the respondents have a mental illness; others made public threats to kill.

There is no way to know how many lives we may have saved, but here is a recent example of how a GVRO protected the public:

Employees of an automobile dealership in San Diego had become increasingly disturbed by a co-worker’s behavior. After the mass killing in Las Vegas in October, this service adviser praised the shooter for not committing suicide until he had gunned down enough victims to set a modern record.

“If I were him,” the service adviser volunteered, “I would have shot up a mosque and then shot it out with cops.”

Not long after, he boasted that if he were fired by the car dealership — a prospect that seemed likely — he would return with his gun. An alarmed co-worker

notified police and statements were taken. My office obtained a GVRO, and the man surrendered a semiautomatic rifle with significant killing capability.

The California Legislature created the GVRO statute in response to the 2014 mass killings in Isla Vista, a college community abutting the University of California at Santa Barbara. It can be used by a law enforcement agency, a family member or a housemate.

A court-issued GVRO compels an unfit gun owner to sell or surrender his firearms before he can do harm to himself or others while ensuring the gun owner’s right to due process. It provides police and citizens who witness danger signs with a powerful legal resource to save lives.

My office has been aggressively pursuing GVROs on behalf of our communities. Each case was documented and brought to us by the San Diego Police Department; no GVRO is permanent until it is granted by a judge during a hearing in open court.

The idea of approaching potentially violent people and demanding they turn over their firearms might sound like a disaster waiting to happen, but we have not had trouble enforcing the orders, in part because of the involvement of the San Diego Police Department and the California Department of Justice. (Law enforcement officers are present when we serve the restraining orders, and they collect the firearms and ammunition.) Many times, respondents do not contest the order. One told police, upon surrendering his guns, that he shouldn’t be allowed to have them. He had been drunk — intoxicated at three times the legal limit — and shooting at rats and raccoons in his suburban back yard. Terrified neighbors heard bullets whizzing through their trees.

Although each case is different, they share a common thread: The gun owner’s behavior was irresponsible and potentially lethal, echoing countless news reports of similar situations in which shots were fired and lives were lost. Take that drunken target shooter firing away in his densely populated neighborhood: How often have you heard of a recklessly fired bullet penetrating a wall and killing a child?

In one case, my office petitioned the court for a GVRO after a man had texted his fiancee, threatening to shoot her in the head, and visited her ex-boyfriend, vowing to kill him, too. After the order was granted, the California Department of Justice served a search warrant on the man’s mother, with

whom he lived, and seized a handgun and an AR-15, the semiautomatic rifle used by mass shooters in Parkland; Las Vegas; Newtown, Connecticut; Las Vegas, and San Bernardino, California.

Another respondent was an 81-year-old man who, according to his family, is in the early stages of dementia. He threatened to shoot his 75-year-old wife and their neighbor because he erroneously believed they were having an affair. His wife escaped the house, barefoot, by climbing over a fence and running through a cactus garden.

The most armed respondent was a 35-year-old man whom police encountered after he inflicted a deep laceration on his girlfriend’s forehead. He had a long history of domestic violence and an arsenal that included a 9mm pistol, a Mosquito semiautomatic pistol, a Ruger .22, a Springfield .40 caliber pistol, a Ruger rifle, a Mossberg shotgun and an unmarked handgun.

Some respondents have wielded guns while threatening suicide; one did so because he believed strangers were attacking him. A 23-year-old ex-Marine had developed an intense paranoia, which he exhibited first at a 7-Eleven, and then in the waiting room of an auto-parts store. Concerned for his life, he retrieved a 28mm pistol from his car, loaded it, tucked it into his waistband and returned to the waiting room, where he called police to report that he was in a dangerous situation and needed protection. His pistol was a model that fires high-velocity rounds, similar to a rifle.

A “permanent” GVRO expires after 12 months, time in which the gun owner can seek professional counseling or treatment to address underlying problems. Courts can authorise an extension of the GVRO if the gun owner remains unfit. Many Second Amendment advocates recognize that this approach strikes a good balance and that responsible gun owners should have nothing to fear.

Although GVROs are only one tool to combat our nation’s epidemic of senseless killings, they are especially valuable at a time when our federal government seems incapable of addressing the growing problem of gun violence in our schools and communities. The question of how to handle gun violence is a difficult and controversial one, but laws such as California’s GVRO are proving that effective and balanced solutions exist.

The writer is the elected City Attorney of San Diego.

Merkel’s legacy isn’t flashy, but its lasting

A gun-control measure both sides can get behind and it works

MARA W ELLIOTT THE WASHINGTON POST

11SUNDAY 11 MARCH 2018 OPINION

Although GVROs are only one tool to combat our nation’s epidemic of senseless killings, they are especially valuable at a time when our federal government seems incapable of addressing the growing problem of gun violence in our schools and communities.

12 SUNDAY 11 MARCH 2018MIDDLE EAST / AFRICA

Migrants rescuedAfrican migrants rescued from a ship off the coast of Zawiyah, about 45km west of the Libyan capital Tripoli, sit at the dock at the capital’s naval base, yesterday.

Syrian army gains ground in GhoutaREUTERS

BEIRUT: The Syrian army inten-sified its onslaught in eastern Ghouta yesterday with advances that a war monitor and state media said had splintered the enclave, though a rebel official denied this.

Syrian state television broad-cast from inside the town of Mes-raba, a town lying along the road connecting the northern and southern halves of the rebel-held enclave, after reporting that the army had taken it earlier yesterday.

The capture of Mesraba and advances into nearby farmland brought important roads directly under fire by the army, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

That has in effect cut the large towns of Harasta and Douma off from each other and the rest of the enclave, it added.

However Hamza Birqadar, a spokesman for Jaish al Islam, one of the two main insurgent groups in eastern Ghouta, said rebels had repelled the attack on Mes-raba and neither Harasta nor Douma were cut off.

The relentless three-week assault on the last major rebel stronghold near Damascus has captured about half its area and

killed 976 people, according to the Britain-based Observatory.

State television showed a massive plume of dark smoke rising behind houses and trees in eastern Ghouta, with the sound of blasts in the back-ground. Live footage it said was filmed in Mesraba showed bat-tered buildings and bullet-pocked walls.

Syrian President Bashar al Assad and Russia, his main ally, say the campaign is needed to end rebel shelling of Damascus and to end the rule of Islamist insurgents over the area’s civilians.

The offensive follows the pattern of previous assaults on rebel strongholds, deploying massive air power and tight sieges to force insurgents to accept “evacuation” deals.

These involve rebels surren-dering territory in exchange for safe passage to opposition areas in northwest Syria, along with their families and other civilians who do not want to come back under Assad’s rule.

Late on Friday, a small number of fighters and their families from the former al Qaeda affiliate previously known as the Nusra Front left eastern Ghouta under such a deal. But the group represents only a small portion of the insurgent presence in the enclave, and both Jaish al Islam and the other main eastern Ghouta rebel group Failaq al Rahman have said they are not negotiating a similar deal for themselves.

Capturing the enclave would represent Assad’s biggest blow against the rebels since they were driven from Aleppo in December 2016. It would seal a string of military victories for the Syrian leader since the entry of Russian jets into the war on his side in 2015 turned the course of the conflict against the insurgents.

The intensity of the govern-ment’s attack on an enclave that has been besieged since 2013 and suffers acute shortages of food and medical supplies has drawn Western condemnation and

demands by UN aid agencies for a humanitarian halt in fighting.

The United Nations estimates that some 400,000 people are trapped in eastern Ghouta.

“Living conditions are harsh... Shop owners and traders are sending their workers to the shelters to sell food for three times their price before the offensive,” said a man in Saqba who identified himself as Abu Abdo in a voice message.

Aid agencies have tried to deliver aid into eastern Ghouta, but they have only been able to bring in a portion of the amount they wanted. A convoy was unable to finish unloading on Monday because of continued

fighting, bringing in the remaining undelivered food par-cels on Friday despite bombard-ment nearby.

However, UN agencies said most medical supplies had been stripped from the convoy by Syrian government officials and added that the food supplies brought in were insufficient.

Medical charities operating in eastern Ghouta have reported several incidents in recent weeks of what they say was chlorine gas use in government bombard-ments, causing choking symp-toms. Syria’s deputy foreign min-ister, Faisal Mekdad, yesterday rejected those charges and accused the United States of

orchestrating the accusations in order to support militant groups. “We did not deny a single request for investigation,” Mekdad told a news conference. The govern-ment has opened what it says are several safe routes out of eastern Ghouta for civilians, but none are known to have left so far and Damascus and Moscow accuse the rebels of preventing them from fleeing the fighting.

Insurgent groups in eastern Ghouta deny this, saying people have not left for fear of govern-ment persecution, but a Reuters witness on Friday saw gunfire and mortar fire from inside the rebel territory near one of the crossing points.

Syrian regime troops sit inside a tank in the town of Aftris, west of the rebel-held town of Saqba, in the besieged Eastern Ghouta region on the outskirts of the capital Damascus, yesterday.

Erdogan vows to press Syria offensive to key Kurdish-held townsAFP

ISTANBUL: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan yesterday vowed to expand Turkey’s offen-sive in Syria against Kurdish militia to key border towns controlled by the group right up to the Iraqi frontier.

Turkey launched its opera-tion seeking to oust Kurdish Peo-ple’s Protection Units (YPG) militia from the Afrin region of northern Syria on January 20 and Erdogan said Thursday its

forces could now enter Afrin town at “any moment”.

But Ankara has always threatened to expand the oper-ation to the east to oust the YPG from the swathe of territory it controls right up to Iraq.

Speaking to supporters in the city of Mersin, Erdogan said the Turkish army and allied Syrian rebels wanted to oust the YPG from all the towns they con-trol close to the Turkish border.

“Once we have purged the terrorists (from Afrin) we will

then cleanse them from Manbij, Ayn al Arab, Tel Abyad, Ras al Ayn and Qamishli,” he said in tel-evised comments.

Manbij, the next main YPG-held town east of Afrin, is a par-ticular flashpoint as it has an American military presence there.

Ayn al Arab, better known by its Kurdish name Kobane, has huge symbolic importance as it was the epicentre of a struggle with Islamic State (IS) militants which was eventually won by the

Kurds. Qamishli is seen as the main town of the YPG-controlled region.

Turkey regards the YPG as a terror group and a branch of militants in Turkey who have waged an insurgency for dec-ades. The United States however has worked closely with the YPG in the fight against IS and the campaign has raised tensions with Turkey’s Nato ally Washington.

Erdogan questioned why Nato had not come to Turkey’s

aid in its Syria operation when Ankara had backed critical alli-ance campaigns worldwide.

“Hey Nato where are you?” Erdogan asked. “We came in response to the calls on Afghan-istan, Somalia and the Balkans, and now I am making the call, let’s go to Syria. Why don’t you come?”

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said yesterday that the Turkish forces were now four kilometres from Afrin town.

Rights lawyer plans listeria action against SA food producerREUTERS

JOHANNESBURG: A human rights lawyer plans to launch a class action lawsuit against South African food producer Tiger Brands on behalf of the families of people who died and those affected by the worst listeria outbreak in history.

South Africa’s health min-ister said on Thursday the gov-ernment would support anyone intending court action over the outbreak that has killed 180 people out of 967 verified cases since January last year.

Tiger Brands said on Friday it had received a report from the department of health which confirmed the presence of the LST6 listeria strain at its factory in the northern city of Polokwane and it was appointing an expert team to identify the causes.

Spokeswoman Nevashnee Naicker said, yesterday, the company “had not received any notifications of any class action suits” and declined to comment further. The planned class action is being prepared by Richard Spoor, who has spear-headed legal action against gold producers over the fatal lung disease silicosis for which the companies have made $425 million in provisions. “I expect to launch it in two to three weeks,” Spoor said.

US lawyer Bill Marler, who

won $110 million in compensa-tion from fast-food chain Jack in the Box for victims of a 1993 ecoli outbreak in the United States that sickened 700 people and killed four, is consulting on the case. “In the US we would not use a class action because the variety of damages are so different for all of these people,” Marler, currently in Johannes-burg, said.

“There are differences between people who are sick for a week and those who died or have long-term complica-tions. But here you can do that all in one class action,” he said.

A class action typically involves a large number of people who collectively band together to sue a person or company for damages. The source is low-priced processed meats that are mostly con-sumed by the poor and working class, prompting a recall of such products and bans on imports of them from South Africa by several countries in the region.

Tiger Brands Chief Execu-tive Lawrence McDougal said on Monday that there was no direct link between the deaths and its processed cold meat products. In Malawi yesterday, South African processed meats were set alight in large bonfires in several locations. The dis-ease causes flu-like symptoms, nausea, diarrhoea and infection of the blood stream and brain.

Tillerson cancels Kenya events due to illnessAFP

NAIROBI: US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who is on his first-ever Africa tour as Washington’s top diplomat, yesterday cancelled his programme in Kenya because he was feeling unwell, officials said.

“The secretary is not feeling well after a long couple days working on major issues back home such as North Korea and has cancelled his events for the day,” said a brief statement from

Undersecretary of State Steve Goldstein.

The announcement comes little more than 24 hours after US President Donald Trump stunned the world by accepting an invitation to meet North Korea’s Kim Jong Un before the end of May. The audacious dip-lomatic gambit, which was taken before consulting key confidantes including Tillerson - who was in the Ethiopian cap-ital Addis Ababa at the time - left aides scrambling to catch up.

Just hours before the summit announcement, which emerged late on Thursday, Till-erson had said Washington was “a long way” from talking directly to North Korea as he kicked off his five-nation Africa tour. The US diplomat, who arrived in Nairobi on Friday, had been due to visit the Aids-relief programme PEPFAR yesterday and also attend a ceremony marking 20 years since Al-Qaeda bombed the US embas-sies in Kenya and Tanzania,

The relentless three-week assault on the last major rebel stronghold near Damascus has captured about half its area and killed 976 people, according to the Britain-based Observatory.

Five dead in central Nigeria violence: Police

AFP

LAGOS: Gunmen suspected to be herdsmen have killed at least five people in central Nigeria’s Plateau state, police said yesterday, in the latest violence linked to tensions over grazing rights.

Thursday’s attack hap-pened just as President Muhammadu Buhari was rounding up a tour of Plateau and four other flashpoint states.

“The gunmen were believed to be herdsmen. They attacked some commu-nities in Miango district and killed five people,” state police spokesman Terna Tyopev said.

He said dozens of people were injured while many houses and properties were destroyed in the mayhem. Local media said apart from the incident in Miango, six people were also killed at Ganda village in Bokkos local government area of the state. The police could not imme-diately confirm the attack.

Speaking to Nigeria’s Guardian newspaper, com-munity leader, Matawa Mankut put the toll at six dead when cattle rearers invaded the village on Friday. “We are at the burial ground in Ganda village to give the deceased a mass burial,” he said, urging the authorities to end the violence.

Since the start of the year, Nigeria has seen a growing number of clashes between largely nomadic herders and farmers over land, water and grazing rights. Buhari has been under pressure to end the killings.

Plateau state lies in Nigeria’s so-called Middle Belt that separates the pre-dominantly Muslim north from the largely Christian south. It has long been a hotbed of ethnic, sectarian and religious tensions between indigenous farming communities. Tensions have boiled over access to land and resources, escalating into a rift that has deepened.

NEWS BYTES

13SUNDAY 11 MARCH 2018 ASIA

India, France release joint strategic vision for IOR

IANS

NEW DELHI: With China’s increasing presence in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR), India and France yesterday announced broadbasing of their ties through a joint strategic vision for coop-eration in the region that agreed on the need to establish an open, inclusive and transparent cooperation architecture for peace, security and prosperity there.

After talks between visiting French President Emmanuel Macron and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the two sides also signed 14 agreements, including one that prescribes the way forward for the implementation of the Jaitapur nuclear power plant.

In a nine-page joint statement issued after the talks, the two countries reiter-ated their strong condemnation of ter-rorism in all its forms and manifesta-tions, including cross-border terrorism and terror incidents in France and India.

They also called upon all countries to work towards rooting out terrorist safe havens and infrastructure,

disrupting terrorist networks and their financing channels and halting cross-border movement of terrorists like Al Qaeda, Daesh/ISIS, Jaish-e-Mohammed, Hizbul Mujahideen, Lashkar-eTayabba and their affliates as well as terrorist groups threatening peace and security in South Asia and the Sahel region.

With Modi by his side, Macron told media persons that both France and India are giving a new momentum to their strategic partnership against terror. “We will fight together radicalism and terrorism,” he said.

According to the joint strategic vision document, India and France shared con-cerns over the emerging challenges in the Indian Ocean Region that include maritime traffic security in the face of the threats of terrorism and piracy, espe-cially in the Horn of Africa, and respect of international law by all states, in par-ticular freedom of navigation and over-

flight, among others.This can be seen as a strong signal

to China given its attempts to increase its footprint in the region.

“Both of us agree that the Indian Ocean region will play a significant role in the future for the peace, prosperity and development of the world,” Modi said while addressing the media along with Macron after the talks.

“Whether it be environment, mari-time security and resources, freedom of navigation or overflight, we are com-mitted to strengthening our coopera-tion,” he stated.

According to the joint strategic vision document, such cooperation between the two sides will help in harnessing the opportunities and meeting the chal-lenges together in the Indian Ocean Region.

“The two leaders are desirous of associating other strategic partners in

the growing cooperation between India and France, as and when required and, in this regard, would establish trilateral dialogues,” the doc-ument stated.

“They also agreed on the need to establish an open, inclusive and trans-parent cooperation architecture, with the aim of delivering to all associated with the region, peace, security and prosperity.” Modi and Macron decided that both countries would strengthen coordination in existing regional and international bodies to carry out this objective.

“India welcomes the prospect of France’s enhanced participation at the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA). France congratulates India on its lead-ership at IORA and the Indian Ocean Naval Symposium (IONS),” document said.

It stated that both countries will be open to inviting strategic partner countries in the region to participate in Indo-French exercises.

Among the agreements signed was a memorandum of understanding between the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and the National Centre for Space Studies (CNES) of France aimed at co-developing a mar-itime surveillance satellite system focused on the Indian Ocean and related data fusion mechanisms.

This system would significantly strengthen maritime domain aware-ness in the Indian Ocean region.

Earlier, Macron was accorded a ceremonial welcome at Rashtrapati Bhavan here following which he told the assembled media that France should be the best partner for India and the entry point to Europe.

President Ram Nath Kovind (second left) and his wife Savita Kovind (left), French President Emmanuel Macron (centre), his wife Brigitte and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi (right) hold hands during a ceremonial reception at Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi, yesterday. Prime Minister Narendra Modi shakes hands with French President Emmanuel

Macron before a meeting at Hyderabad House in New Delhi, yesterday.

With Modi by his side, Macron told media persons that both France & India are giving a new momentum to their strategic partnership against terror.

Rajasthan MLA Kirodilal Meena joins BJPJAIPUR: NPP MLA from Rajasthan, Kirodilal Meena, has joined the

BJP, informed sources said yesterday. An official confirmation is yet

to come. This will lead to the merger of the National People’s Party

(NPP), formed by former Lok Sabha Speaker P A Sangma, with the

BJP in Rajasthan.

BJP media chief Anand Sharma said that an official announce-

ment in this regard will be made soon. New political equations will

be formed in the state with Meena rejoining the Bharatiya Janata

Party (BJP) after nine years. He will bring four other MLAs with

him, the source said.

The BJP will benefit from Meena joining it as he will bring the

support of the Meena community. Meena’s brother Jagmohan Meena,

sources said, is likely to be the BJP candidate for the Rajya Sabha polls.

Sri Lanka to probe anti-Muslim riotsAFP

COLOMBO: An investigation into anti-Muslim riots that spread in central Sri Lanka prompting the authorities to declare a nationwide state of emergency was announced yesterday by President Maithripala Sirisena. A panel of three retired judges will probe the breakdown in law and order in the picturesque hill resort of Kandy, Sirisena’s office said in a statement.

Three people died, 20 others were wounded and more than 200 Muslim-owned businesses and homes were destroyed in four days of rioting that died down on Thursday. Eleven mosques were also damaged or com-pletely destroyed by Sinhalese mobs, according to police who say the situation has been brought under control after a heavy military deployment.

A curfew in the district, which is 115km east of the cap-ital Colombo, was lifted at dawn yesterday but army sol-diers continued to patrol alongside police, officials said.

Sri Lanka’s Muslim minority held their Friday prayers under military protection across the island amid fears of fresh attacks. However, the weekly religious activity went off without inci-dent, authorities said. Hun-dreds of Buddhist monks and activists staged demonstrations in Colombo on Friday denouncing the anti-Muslim attacks and urging authorities to take strong action against the perpetrators.

Police said nearly 150 people, including the main instigator, have been arrested over the unrest. They named the main suspect as Amith Weerasinghe, a man from the mainly Buddhist Sinhalese majority known for anti-Muslim activism and out-spoken social media posts, and said he was taken into custody on Thursday.

Bangladesh President winds up visit to India’s northeastIANS

GUWAHATI: Bangladesh Pres-ident Md Abdul Hamid yesterday wound up his visit to India’s northeast on a nostalgic note.

Hamid said the three-day visit to Assam and Meghalaya was very nostalgic for him as he came to this part of the north-east during the Bangladesh Lib-eration War. “I have visited Balat, Shillong and Meghalaya

and I was very glad to see these places,” he said.

During the visit, Hamid was accompanied by his wife Rashida Khanam and other family members apart from the official delegation.

He left for New Delhi from the Lokpriya Gopinath Bordoloi International (LGBI) Airport yes-terday afternoon.

Assam Governor Jagdish Mukhi and Chief Minister

Sarbananda Sonowal were present at the airport to see off the President.

Hamid also extended invi-tation to Mukhi and Sonowal to visit Bangladesh.

He said relationship with neighbours is very important for development and their visit would bolster the same. He also observed that peace and tran-quillity in the region would lead to faster development.

A picture released by the Ministry of External Affairs yesterday shows Bangladesh’s President Abdul Hamid arriving in New Delhi.

16kg of gold valued at Rs48.1m seizedKOLKATA: About 16kg of gold, valued at Rs48.1m, being smug-

gled into India through the India-Myanmar border, was seized in

Manipur and one person apprehended, an official said yesterday.

“Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI), in a joint operation

with Assam Rifles, seized the gold. It was sourced from India-Myan-

mar border at Moreh in Manipur,” a DRI official said.

He further said: “A car travelling from Moreh towards Imphal was

stopped for checking at Khudengthabi (in Manipur). While frisking

the passenger and carrying out thorough inspection of the vehicle,

gold biscuits were found hidden inside a secret cavity of the vehi-

cle chassis.” He said the northeastern region including the state

of Assam, having boundaries with Mynamar, Bangladesh, Nepal,

Bhutan and China is particularly sensitive from the perspective of

smuggling activities and cross-border crime.

“There have been significant seizures of gold bars of foreign

origin smuggled from Myanmar through India-Myanmar border

adjacent to Moreh and also from the Zokhawthar in Mizoram, along

India-Myanmar border,” he added.

World Punjabi Conference lays stress on promoting languageIANS

CHANDIGARH: Promotion of Punjabi language to instill a sense of pride among those speaking Punjabi and making the youth more aware about the language were the prime focus of the inau-gural day of the two-day 6th World Punjabi Conference yesterday.

The conference, organised by the Punjab Kala Parishad and World Punjabi Conference, was inaugurated by Punjab assembly Speaker Rana K.P. Singh and Cultural Affairs and Tourism Minister Navjot Singh Sidhu.

In their address, Rana KP Singh and Sidhu called upon

concerted efforts for develop-ment of the Punjabi language so that the new generation could get connected to the rich cul-tural heritage of Punjab besides the Punjabi language.

“Although Punjabi language is spread across the entire world, even now it is ignored from the point of view of job scenario and course curriculum. Many courses such as LLB, Science and IT are not being taught entirely in Pun-jabi,” Rana observed.

He said Punjabi people had spread out all over the world and have carried the Punjabi lan-guage with them. He said Pun-jabi cannot be associated with a particular region or community.

Sidhu exhorted all the institutions and personalities working on dif-ferent platforms for Punjab, Pun-jabi and Punjabiat to work unit-edly and said that if the coming generations remained ignorant of the Punjabi language then who would read great works of Pun-jabi writers and poets.

“We have to make use of new techniques to get the young gen-eration hooked to Punjabi cul-ture and history,” Sidhu said.

Chairman of the Punjab Kala Parishad, Surjit Patar, said it was important for people of the region to have a command over their own (Punjabi) language before learning other languages.

China’s Xi warns against corruption in Chongqing cityREUTERS

BEIJING: Chinese President Xi Jinping offered a strong warning against corruption yesterday while meeting parliament dele-gates from scandal-plagued Chongqing city, saying officials should not let ‘pillow talk’ within families help to foster graft.

The southwestern metrop-olis is one of China’s most impor-tant cities, but it has been at the heart of two dramatic corruption scandals in recent years.

Its charismatic former Com-munist Party chief Bo Xilai, once seen as a contender for the top leadership, was jailed for life in 2013 for bribery, corruption and abuse of power, in a case kicked

off by his wife’s murder of a British businessman.

Last month Chinese prose-cutors charged another party boss in the city, Sun Zhengcai, with bribery. Sun had also once been considered a contender for a national leadership position.

Xi, who has overseen a sweeping war on corruption since coming to power in late 2012, has parachuted in one of his close allies, Chen Miner, to take over Chongqing.

Speaking to Chongqing leg-islators Xi said that ‘political ecology’ was like nature itself.

“If you take your eye off it for a moment then it’s easy to become polluted,” state media cited Xi as saying.

14 SUNDAY 11 MARCH 2018ASIA

Pakistan will not act as proxy in any US-led war: FMINTERNEWS

ISLAMABAD: While giving a policy statement in the National Assembly (the lower house), Paki-stan’s Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif said yesterday that Pakistan would not serve as a proxy for the United States in any war.

Another minister told the house that the government planned to repatriate Afghan ref-ugees in two years.

The foreign minister said people of Afghanistan and other Muslim countries often wanted Pakistan to take part in the wars fought within their borders. “However Pakistan will not act as a proxy in any US-led war,” he said.

Asif was responding to a calling-attention notice of Jamia-tUlema-i-Islam-F chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman who wanted to

know why Pakistan had not voted against the war in Syria during a debate in the UN Human Rights Committee.

Rehman said that of the eight Muslim countries in the com-mittee three Muslim states did not cast their votes, including Pakistan.

The minister said that lack of harmony and unity among the Muslim countries was the main reason behind the various prob-lems they were facing. “No enemy can harm Muslims if they do not become facilitators of the enemy.”

He said everyone knew who had taken the militant IS group from Iraq to Afghanistan. The next target of the militant group could very well be Pakistan.

“Pakistan has always remained a target of others because people of all warring

Muslim states look towards Paki-stan and its armed forces for help,” he said.

In the past Pakistani rulers compromised the country’s sov-ereignty only to protect their own rule and interests, and fought a ‘fake jihad’ for the defence of the US, said Asif. “That was one of the

biggest mistakes that we have committed.

“Pakistan fought a made-in-America jihad against Russia in Afghanistan. We committed the same mistake after 9/11,” he said.

The minister claimed that despite pressures and tempta-tions the present government did not become part of any war being fought in a Muslim country, adding that Pakistani troops were sent to Saudi Arabia only for training purposes and not to take part in Yemeni war.

He discussed various crises in the Middle East and without naming the US appeared to hold the superpower responsible for unrest in the region.

Terming the Syrian conflict a ‘fight for power’, Asif said that although he did not support dic-tatorship ‘at least human lives were safe under dictators’. He

claimed that Iraq, Libya and other Middle Eastern countries had been destabilised under a con-spiracy against the ummah.

“Despite presence of the US with all its military might in Afghanistan, the production of heroin has increased there from 200 tonnes to 9,000 tonnes and Taliban are operating in 43 per-cent of the country; yet they [the US] blame us for facilitating the Haqqani network,” he remarked.

Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) leader Dr Shireen Mazari said it had become difficult for the country to support any of the sides fighting in Syria. “Which side will you support in the Syrian war - Syrian government, the US, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia or Turkey?” she asked.

She also urged the Muslim countries to forge unity in order to defeat the agenda of the West

and protect their people. Earlier, during the question hour, Min-ister for States and Frontier Regions retired Lt Gen Abdul Qadir Baloch revealed that the government was preparing a plan for repatriation of Afghan refu-gees within two years.

“In fact, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani informed us recently that his government is working on a plan to accommo-date the Afghan refugees; there-fore, we are also chalking out a two-year plan for their repatria-tion,” he said.

The minister said a total of 1.4 million Afghans were staying in Pakistan, of which 1m were reg-istered and 400,000 unregis-tered. The refugees who did not possess the proof of registration cards would be treated as aliens and would be sent back to their country as soon as possible.

The Foreign Minister said people of Afghanistan & other Muslim countries often wanted Pakistan to take part in the wars fought within their borders.

DiplomacyPresident of Uzbekistan, Shavkat Mirziyoyev (right) meets with Chairman of Tajikistan’s lower house (Majlisi Namoyandagon) of parliament, Shukurjon Zuhurov, yesterday in Dushanbe, Tajikistan.

Philippines slams UN rights chief for ‘disrespectful’ remarks about DuterteREUTERS

MANILA: The Philippine foreign minister hit back yesterday at the United Nations’ human rights chief for issuing ‘irrespon-sible and disrespectful’ comments about President Rodrigo Duterte, warning such remarks could set a dangerous precedent.

Duterte’s attacks against UN human rights activists suggest he needs to see a psychiatrist, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein told a news conference.

Zeid’s comments came after the Philippine justice ministry filed a petition in a Manila court seeking the declaration of more than 600 alleged communist guerrillas, including a UN spe-cial rapporteur, as ‘terrorists’, a

development first reported by Reuters. The petition included Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, appointed in 2014 as UN special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, who was listed as a senior member of the country’s Maoist rebel group.

Tauli-Corpuz called the complaint ‘baseless, malicious and irresponsible’.

Zeid said Duterte’s attacks against UN special rapporteurs cannot go unanswered and the UN Human Rights Council must take a position. He said the Phil-ippine leader “needs to submit himself to some sort of psychi-atric examination”.

Philippine Foreign Affairs Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano said: “The Philippines takes grave exception to the irrespon-sible and disrespectful com-ments of the United Nations

High Commissioner for Human Rights that cast untoward asper-sions regarding the President of the Republic of the Philippines.” Duterte has also repeatedly insulted the current UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial kill-ings, Agnes Callamard, because of her criticism of his bloody anti-narcotics campaign.

The Philippines welcomed a UN investigation into Duterte’s signature war on drugs but objected to Callamard leading it, saying she was biased and not qualified.

Cayetano said in a strongly worded statement the Philip-pines was bothered by “the manner in which a ranking UN human rights official can over-step his mandate and insult leaders of member-states without first giving them due process”.

Pakistan’s top judge explains term ‘Baba’ used for judiciaryINTERNEWS

LAHORE: Chief Justice of Pakistan Mian Saqib Nisar yesterday explained that the term ‘Baba (the elder) ‘ he had used earlier for the judiciary was a reference from the literary works of intellectual Ashfaq Ahmad.

‘The concept of Baba is not mine. I actually derived it from famous writer Ashfaq Ahmad,‘ the chief justice disclosed.

Once when late Ashfaq Ahmad was asked what the character of Baba signified, Ahmad had replied: “Baba is one who creates facilities for people.”

Referring to the role of the judiciary, the chief justice said: ‘So we are here to facilitate the people without paying atten-tion to criticism.

CJP Nisar vowed to ensure uniform fee structure for all medical and dental institutions in the country, and quality education to produce compe-tent medical practitioners.

Hearing a suo motu notice against the excessive fee structure of private medical colleges, the chief justice observed that the court would not allow institutions to rip off students. The chief justice heads the three-judge bench hearing the case; the other two members are Justice Umar Ata Bandial and Justice Ijazul Ahsan. CJ Nisar pointed out that a senior doctor had once told him that Pakistan‘s med-ical institutions were pro-ducing doctors who did not even know how to check a patient‘s blood pressure.

North Korean state media quiet on Kim Jong Un’s overtures to TrumpREUTERS

SEOUL: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s sudden overtures to Washington are making head-lines around the world. Almost everywhere, it seems, except North Korea.

North Korean media noted a visit by a senior delegation from South Korea earlier this week but it appeared to have had no major coverage of Kim’s invitation to meet US President Donald Trump or South Korean Presi-dent Moon Jae-in to discuss the future of Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons programme.

South Korea’s National Secu-rity Office head Chung Eui-yong told reporters at the White House on Thursday after briefing Trump that Kim had ‘committed to denuclearisation’ and to sus-pending nuclear and missile tests.

Kim’s meeting with South Korean officials made it onto the front page of the Rodong Sinmun, a leading state-run newspaper, but neither his policy conces-sions, as described by the South Korean government, nor his planned summit with Moon in April appeared to have been reported publicly in the secretive North.

Anti-junta rally in Thailand calls for growth in democracyAFP

BANGKOK: Hundreds of pro-democracy Thais rallied in Bangkok yesterday to skewer the ruling junta with T-shirts, signs and speeches, as activists grow bolder in their defiance of a ban on protests.

The military regime has kept a tight rein on dissent since its 2014 power grab by outlawing gatherings of more than five people and pursuing activists in the courts.

But impatience with the generals has been mounting ever since their latest delay of elections, which are now tenta-tively set for February 2019.

In one of the largest showings in a recent string of protests, around 500 people turned up for a festive picnic-style rally held on a university field in Bangkok yesterday.

“Who out there has a fire for democ-racy?” one young activist called out to the crowd from the top of a truck, eliciting loud cheers.

While organisers raged against the military dictatorship over loudspeakers, vendors handed out free meals and sold shirts with sly references to a spate of graft

scandals that have helped fuel the dissent.

One shirt bore the face of a black leopard, an animal that has become a symbol of inequality and corruption ever since a construction tycoon was caught hunting the wild cat in a wildlife sanc-tuary in February.

In reference to another high-profile scandal, veteran activist Ekachai Hong-kangwan showed up in a vest covered with paper watches -- a jab at the junta no. 2, who is facing a graft probe after online sleuths spotted him wearing dozens of undeclared luxury timepieces.

The two dramas strike at the heart of public anguish over an entrenched cul-ture of impunity for the kingdom’s wealthy and well-connected.

In a nod to junta chief Prayut Chan-O-Cha’s repeated poll postponements, another demonstrator donned a mask resembling the general’s face and the character Pinocchio -- whose nose grows longer with each lie.

“This year more people are daring to (come out), especially after the junta gov-ernment has failed to keep (its) promises

on elections,” Ekachai, who helped lead the event said.

Even if a vote is held next year, it will not restore the same level of democracy Thailand enjoyed before the coup.

A new military-drafted charter has turned the upper house into an appointed body and also opens a channel for an une-lected premier to take office -- a set-up analysts say junta chief Prayut is eyeing.

Thai anti-junta activists display placards during a pro-democracy rally at a university field in Bangkok, yesterday.

Taliban attacks Afghan troops in western province; 18 deadREUTERS

LASHKAR GAH: As many as 18 Afghan soldiers and members of the special forces have been killed in fighting in the western province of Farah, local officials said yesterday.

Taliban fighters attacked troops assembled to prepare an attack in Bala Buluk district in the night, setting off a fierce battle, officials said.

D e f e n c e M i n i s t r y spokesman Dawlat Waziri said four members of the special forces had been killed and a

number wounded, but the head of the local provincial council, Farid Bakhtawar, said the death toll had reached at least 18. As the fighting went on, an air strike was called in and killed around 25 insurgents, he said.

In a message posted on Twitter, a Taliban spokesman said 53 commandos had been killed or wounded after arriving in Tapa Sadat, close to the Bala Buluk district centre, and a sizeable quantity of weapons seized.

US and Afghan officials say the Taliban have been under

increasingly heavy pressure from air strikes and army oper-ations but the insurgents have repeatedly demonstrated their ability to inflict severe damage on Afghan security forces.

This week’s incident was the latest in a series to have hit Farah province, between the border with Iran and the Tal-iban heartland of Helmand province, source of much of Afghanistan’s opium crop. It came ahead of an expected increase in fighting with the end of winter and the approach of spring.

15SUNDAY 11 MARCH 2018 EUROPE

No plans to change constitution: Putin AFP

MOSCOW: Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is expected to be reelected for a fourth term in next weekend’s ballot, has said he has no plans to change the constitution to stay in the Kremlin beyond 2024.

Asked by US television net-work NBC whether he would follow in the footsteps of China’s Xi Jinping, who is eyeing a lim-itless tenure, Putin insisted he had no such intentions.

“I never changed the consti-tution, I did not do it to suit myself and I have no such plans to do so today,” he said in an interview whose transcript was released by the Kremlin yesterday.

Critics accuse Putin, who was first elected president in 2000 and is running for a fourth term in March 18 polls, of har-bouring ambitions to stay in power indefinitely.

The constitution bars him from serving more than two presidential terms in a row.

In 2008, Putin became prime minister but maintained his grip on power, with his protege Dmitry Medvedev serving as president until 2012 when Putin returned to the Kremlin in the face of huge opposition

protests.He rejected suggestions that

he could not quit power because it would put him in danger, saying he heard “a lot of ravings on this subject”.

“Why do you think after me power in Russia will be neces-sarily taken over by people who are ready to destroy everything that I have done over the past years?” Putin said.

He said he had been thinking about his potential successor since 2000.

“It never hurts to think but at the end of the day it will be the Russian people who will decide that,” he added.

Putin will run against a motley crew of seven chal-lengers, with his top critic Alexei Navalny barred from contesting the poll because of a criminal

conviction his supporters call punishment for challenging the strongman.

Putin declined to say whether he could pardon Navalny.

“Any man can be pardoned if he deserves this,” said Putin.

The Russian president, who never called Navalny by his name in public, referred to the 41-year-old opposition politician as “certain political forces”.

“What do I like in principle? It’s that they expose problems

and this is good, indeed it’s right,” Putin said.

“But it’s not enough for the country’s positive development. Because concentrating one’s attention on problems, it’s not only insufficient, it’s even dan-gerous because it could lead to certain destruction and we need creation.”

Putin also denied having close ties to businessman and restaurateur Yevgeny Prigozhin, one of 13 Russians indicted by US prosecutors for allegedly

running a secret campaign to tilt the 2016 US vote in favour of Donald Trump.

“He is not my friend,” Putin said. “I know such a man but I don’t count him among my friends.”

Dubbed “Putin’s chef”, Prig-ozhin is thought to be running a Saint Petersburg-based “troll farm” accused by Washington of interfering in the 2016 election.

He has also been linked to a hugely secretive private military company, dubbed Wagner, whose mercenaries fight in Syria and were involved in a direct clash with US troops there in early February.

“We don’t support him in any way, we are not standing in his way or helping him. That’s his personal initiative,” Putin said.

Putin denied that Russia has meddled in the US election, but said he would “not care” even if individual Russians had been involved.

“I could not care less because they do not represent the state,” he said, adding that Russia would not extradite them.

Instead, Putin said, the US should sign a cybersecurity pact with Russia if it wanted Moscow to look into the matter in earnest.

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin shakes hands with US NBC news network anchor Megyn Kelly prior to an interview at the Kremlin, in Moscow.

Nobel prize winner scientist dies at 75AFP

LONDON: Nobel prize-winning British scientist John Sulston, a leading figure in the race to decipher the human genome, has died at the age of 75, the institute he founded said.

Mike Stratton, director of the Wellcome Sanger Insti-tute, described the professor as a “great scientific visionary leader”.

In 2002, he was jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine along with fellow Briton Sydney Brenner and H Robert Horvitz of the United States for their gene research.

Using a lowly earthworm, Caenorhabditis elegans, they laid bare the mechanism by which genes regulate the pro-grammed death of cells, a process vital to understanding cancer.

But Sulston was perhaps best known for leading Brit-ain’s contribution to the inter-national project to map the human genome, and his insistence that the data be placed in the public domain.

Sulston founded what was then the Sanger Centre, near Cambridge, in 1992 and was its director until 2000.

Russian President Vladimir Putin rejected suggestions that he could not quit power because it would put him in danger, saying he heard “a lot of ravings on this subject”.

Austrian spy files lawsuit over HQ raidAP

BERLIN: An Austrian spy’s lawyer has filed a legal complaint over a recent police raid on the country’s domestic intelligence agency, alleging the measure was disproportionate to the alleged crimes.

The February 28 raid on Austria’s BVT spy agency has sparked a public spat in Aus-tria, with opposition parties calling it an attempt by the government to purge polit-ical enemies.

Public broadcaster ORF quoted lawyer Johannes Neu-mayer saying one reported reason for the raid - the handover of blank North Korean passports to South Korea - was a routine intelli-gence measure and shouldn’t have warranted such a drastic response. Neumayer’s client has not been identified.

The Justice Ministry says armed police confiscated com-puter data as part of a corrup-tion probe. Austria’s Chancellor Sebastian Kurz has pledged a “full investigation.”

Greece frees two scribes arrested at Turkish borderAFP

THESSALONIKI: Greece yesterday freed two German journalists who had been arrested at the border with Turkey for allegedly entering a restricted area, a judicial source said.

The pair, a 31-year-old man and a 33-year-old woman, were working for regional German television channel NDR on a documen-tary about refugees, the sta-tion said in a statement.

It said they “accidentally entered the prohibited area” on Friday.

The station said that according to Germany’s embassy in Athens, as well as local authorities, this type of incident occurs frequently as the prohibited area does not have sufficient signage or fencing.

The journalists were cleared by the court, as is often the case in such incidents.

Iceland leader warns against global warmingREUTERS

PLAYA DEL CARMEN: Icelanders have long joked that global warming was something people on the chilly Nordic island could look forward to, but as ice caps and glaciers melt at record speeds, that gag is wearing thin, according to the country’s president.

Warming oceans around the North Pole are harming bio-diversity and fish stocks, and causing acidification in the world’s northern regions, forcing countries like Iceland to adapt to a new reality, said President Gudni Johannesson.

“The common joke in Ice-land is to say that on this cold and windy, rain-swept island, global warming is something we should cheer for - but it’s no longer funny,” Johannesson said in an interview.

“Climate change affects us all on this globe, but you can see the effects in particular in the northern regions - the ice cap around the North Pole is melting at record rates, the oceans there are getting warmer”.

On the flip side, climate change could bring some eco-nomic benefits to the country of just 340,000 people, which would become a natural trade hub if new routes opened up from Asia to the Atlantic due to melting Arctic ice, he said.

“The fact that the ice cap in the north is melting is no source for joy (but) the undeniable fact is that where there was ice, there will be a free waterway,” he said. “Who knows, as the century goes on, maybe we will see increased traffic via the North Pole with Iceland as a hub.”

UK police identify over 200 witnesses in spy attack probeREUTERS

SALISBURY: British police have identified more than 200 witnesses and are looking at more than 240 pieces of evidence in their investigation into a nerve agent attack on a Russian ex-spy and his daughter, interior minister Amber Rudd said yesterday.

Former double agent Sergei Skripal, 66, and his daughter Yulia, 33, have been in hospital in a critical condition since Sunday, when they were found unconscious on a bench in the southern English cathedral city of Salisbury.

“The two victims remain in hospital and they’re critical but stable,” Rudd told reporters after chairing a meeting of the gov-ernment’s Cobra security committee.

Skripal betrayed dozens of Russian agents to British intelli-gence before his arrest in Moscow in 2004. He was sen-tenced to 13 years in prison in 2006, and in 2010 was given refuge in Britain after being

exchanged for Russian spies.Many in British media and

politics have speculated that Russia could have played a part in the attack on Skripal, but Rudd reiterated that it was too early to say who was responsible, and police should be given the time and space to determine the facts.

The Kremlin has denied any involvement in the incident and accused the British media of whipping up anti-Russian hysteria.

In Salisbury, normally a quiet city, military vehicles and troops in protective suits and gas masks were seen working at several of the sites associated with the Skripal investigation.

At an ambulance station a short distance from the city centre, troops in light grey over-alls, purple gloves and gas masks covered ambulances with black tarpaulins as they prepared to remove them.

At the hospital where the Skripals were being treated another team used an army truck to remove a police car.

Rudd said that Nick Bailey, a

police officer who became unwell after taking part in the early response to the attack, remained seriously ill but was talking and engaging with his family.

Wiltshire Police, the local force, issued a statement on Bai-ley’s behalf in which he thanked the public for messages of sup-port he had received.

“He does not consider him-self a ‘hero’, he states he was

merely doing his job,” the state-ment said.

Rudd said over 250 counter-terrorism police, from eight out of Britain’s 11 specialist units, were involved in the investigation, which was proceeding with “speed and professionalism”.

The military have been pro-viding support since Friday and Rudd said the police would con-tinue to be given all the resources they needed to conduct the

investigation.There was also a flurry of

activity at the cemetery in Salis-bury where Skripal’s wife and son are buried, with forensic teams active in several parts of the site.

Skripal’s son, Alexander, died in July last year at the age of 43. British media reported that he died while in St Petersburg, Russia. Skripal’s wife, Liudmila, died of cancer at 60, in 2012.

Personnel in protective overalls and breathing equipment cover an ambulance with a tarpaulin to be taken away by military personnel, in connection with the major incident sparked after a man and a woman were apparently poisoned in a nerve agent attack at the Salisbury District Hospital, southern England, yesterday.

Romania’s PSD votes to join eurozoneREUTERS

BUCHAREST:ROMANIA’S ruling Social Democrats (PSD), in power for a year, voted at an extraordinary congress yesterday to back a 2024 target date to adopt the euro currency.

PSD leader Liviu Dragnea told a 4,000-strong gathering that joining the euro zone was a mandatory and natural step for Romania - one the fastest growing economies in the Euro-pean Union but still one of its poorest and most corrupt members.

“We have to look with courage and understand this is a mandatory step and the only chance for Romania to sit at the table of the rich in Europe,” Dragnea said. “This is a project of national solidarity.”

Romania, a country of about 21 million, had originally set a 2014 target to adopt the single currency, later pushed to 2019. But these dates proved

unrealistic given scant progress meeting EU targets for its economy and institutions to catch up with those of richer countries.

Its economy has grown robustly in recent years, expanding by 6.9 percent in the fourth quarter, with domestic consumption jumping by 9.3 percent, boosted by wage and

pension hikes. Dragnea, who retains a tight

grip over the party and is seen as effectively in charge of the government, said the cabinet will approve “a national com-mission to substantiate the euro adoption plan later in March,” and that nationwide debates on it are expected to begin next month.

Protesters rally outside the building where the ruling Social Democrat Party (PSD) holds its national congress, in Bucharest, yesterday.

16 SUNDAY 11 MARCH 2018EUROPE

Algerian tycoon vows to pay Danish face veil finesANATOLIA COPENHAGEN: An Algerian businessman yesterday said he would pay all the fines faced by women in Denmark who choose to wear full-face veils.

The Danish government on February 6 proposed a ban on full-face veils in public spaces. The measure has yet to be approved.

Speaking in front of the Danish parliament, Rasheed

Nekkaz said that he had already paid 1,538 fines for women facing similar circumstances in six countries, including France, Bel-gium, Switzerland, the Nether-lands, Austria, and Germany.

Nekkaz is famed for paying the fines of women who wear full-face veils or burqas after the garments were banned in many European countries, including France, in 2010.

The Algerian businessman and political activist amassed a

fund of one million euros to pay for these fines.

“Governments in Europe aren’t producing solutions for Muslims to adapt to Europe, which is why Muslim communi-ties in Europe need to be much stronger in order to protect their interests,” he said.

“It is very important for me to be able to give European gov-ernments the message on restricting freedom that they can’t just do whatever they want.”

“If there is a veil ban in a country on those who want to wear them, I will be the one paying their fines,” he added.

Nekkaz said that before Den-mark, he traveled to Iran to sup-port the freedom of 29 women arrested on March 8 for refusing to wear veils on International Women’s Day.

“The reason I’m here isn’t to defend religion, but to defend freedom. The principle of freedom is a universal right.”

“So I defend the freedom of those who want to wear veils in Europe and those who don’t want to wear veils in Iran.”

Nekkaz said that it is impor-tant that the Danish government understands that the women are wearing veils of their own free will.

At yesterday’s protest at the Danish parliament, Sara, a 30-year-old Turkish woman, said that the veil ban would limit her freedom.

As she wears the veil, Sara said that the ban would prevent her from going outside, adding that among Denmark’s 5.7 mil-lion population, only about 50 women wear the veil.

Sara stated that the veil ban is just the beginning of other bans targeting Muslims.

“My question to Danish pol-iticians is: You speak about freedom, but where is our freedom? Where is our freedom of religion?” she asked.

AP

MADRID: The speaker of Cata-lonia’s assembly suspended a vote to elect the northeast Spanish region’s new president, and no new date was sched-uled.

Regional parliament Speaker Roger Torrent (pic-tured) decided to wait for a European Court of Human Rights ruling on whether a jailed leader of the region’s inde-pendence move-ment can be Catalonia’s next president, a state-ment from the Catalan Parlia-ment said.

The decision was announced late Friday and c a m e a f t e r Spain’s Supreme Court turned down the jailed leader’s request to attend a session of parlia-ment previously set for tomorrow. Lawmakers had planned to vote on making him the region’s leader.

Jordi Sanchez, a prominent secessionist who was elected to parliament in December, has been imprisoned near Madrid since October. He is being detained while Spain’s Supreme Court investigates whether he orchestrated protests that

hindered officials trying to stop a court-banned Catalan inde-pendence referendum that month.

The investigating magis-trate, Judge Pablo Llarena, wrote there was a risk that Sanchez would repeat the offenses that landed him in jail. He ordered Sanchez kept in preventive detention without bail.

Sanchez’s lawyers said they planned to take the case to the European court as early as tomorrow morning.

Separatist politi-cians, including Tor-rent, say that if the law allowed Sanchez to run in the regional election when he already was in cus-tody, he deserves full rights as an elected lawmaker.

“In this case, Sanchez’s right to political par-ticipation is at stake,” the speaker’s statement said.

But Spain’s central authori-ties argue that anyone who is facing charges and is unable to be present at the debate and vote in Barcelona can’t be elected by the Catalan parliament.

It isn’t clear whether Sanchez would have enough votes to be elected as Catalan president in a first vote, which requires an absolute majority.

Vote on Catalonia’s new leader put off

German minister to challenge social media giants on news circulation REUTERS

BERLIN: Germany’s incoming minister with responsibility for digital policy says she will push social media giants to make users’ information feeds more diverse and timely to avoid creating “echo cham-bers” for the like-minded.

Companies such as Face-book have come under pres-sure from regulators around the world as evidence has emerged of how the recircu-lation of a particular selection of news and views on their platforms can narrow per-ceptions of the world and voter behaviour.

The minister, Dorothee Baer, said she would open talks with Facebook and Google on the way that posts on social media platforms were sequenced.

“At the moment, the algo-rithms sort according to rel-evance or popularity,” she told the newspaper Die Welt in an interview published yesterday. “That pushes to the top old posts that often have little to do with the truth.

“I want to see real-time timelines again that confront people not with what they want to know, but what they need to know, what is hap-pening at this moment.”

Slovaks march against corruptionBLOOMBERG

BRATISLAVA: Slovakia’s ruling parties prepared to respond after tens of thousands of people took to the streets in the biggest protests since the fall of the Iron curtain, calling on Prime Minister Robert Fico’s govern-ment to step down over a failure to fight corruption.

The biggest crisis faced by the three-time premier’s govern-ment, triggered by the murder of an investigative journalist last month, lurched deeper on Friday after Fico refused to retract accu-sations that the demonstrations

are being organised from abroad. His denouncements have thrust him into a group of populist leaders in the EU’s east that includes Hungary’s illiberal pre-mier, Viktor Orban, who’ve blamed foreigners for trying to oust them.

Protesters marched in more than 40 cities in the country of 5.4 million on Friday evening, according to the organisers, with crowds swelling in size from similar rallies a week earlier. Shouting “Resign!”, anti-govern-ment demonstrators filled the main square in the capital, Bra-tislava, shaking key chains in an

echo of the marches that helped bring down the Communist gov-ernment in the former Czecho-slovakia’s 1989 Velvet Revolution.

Leaders from Fico’s Smer party, and its ruling partners the Slovak Nationalist Party and the ethnic-Hungarian Most, pre-pared to seek a solution on Sat-urday to calm the situation.

The marches started last week following the execution-style murder of journalist Jan Kuciak and his girlfriend after he reported on possible links of government ministers to organ-ised crime figures.

Protesters rally against corruption and to pay tribute to murdered Slovak journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancee Martina Kusnirova at the Slovak National Uprising (SNP) square, in Bratislava, Slovakia.

Le Pen to field new name for far-rightAFP

LILLE: Seeking renewal and a brand change after last year’s bruising election defeats, France’s National Front yesterday opened its party conference where former Donald Trump adviser Steve Bannon was due to make a key address.

Its leader Marine Le Pen, who will wind up the gathering in the northern party stronghold of Lille today, wants to revive a party battered by the electoral failures, not least by ditching the tainted FN brand, seen as a key hurdle to winning power, in favour of an as yet unannounced new name.

Party faithful were eagerly awaiting the appearance of con-troversial former White House advisor Bannon, who has repeat-edly expressed support for Europe’s far-right movements.

Bannon, once a powerful figure in the Trump administra-tion who used to head Breitbart News, was expected to encourage delegates “that vic-tory is possible, and how to obtain it,” FN spokesman Sebastien Chenu said ahead of his address.

His visit raised eyebrows in the government of French Pres-ident Emmanuel Macron.

“The king of fake news and of white supremacists at an FN

summit... why am I not sur-prised? Change of name but not of the political line,” said the head of Macron’s centrist Republic on the Move party, Christophe Castaner.

Bannon’s arrival was also questioned by former party head Jean-Marie Le Pen, from whom Marine took over the leadership in 2011.

Speaking in Paris, he dubbed the American’s visit “paradox-ical” and “not exactly the defini-tion of ‘de-demonisation’” which daughter Marine has sought to give the party.

Marine Le Pen is running unopposed for a third term and her address on Sunday will see her trying to turn a page on the anti-Semitic, openly racist party of her former paratrooper father.

“Without a name change we will not be able to forge alliances. And without alliances we will never be able to take power,” she said last month.

The party is set to strip

89-year-old Jean-Marie Le Pen of his role as honourary presi-dent, severing his last formal link to the movement he led for nearly four decades.

Nine months after Marine was defeated by Macron for president in a bruising battle between nationalists and glo-balists, the FN is struggling to rebound.

She goes into the conference weakened by her poor perform-ance in a final TV debate against Macron, which raised questions about her fitness to lead one of the world’s biggest economies.

Since the presidential cam-paign and June general election in which the FN bagged only eight seats, the party and its leader have appeared deflated.

But she insisted on Friday that “the National Front has reached adulthood... it has passed from being a party of pro-test in its youth and then a party of opposition to a party of government”.

This week Le Pen appeared heartened by the strong gains made by the allied anti-immi-grant League party in Italy’s election.

Even so, her appetite for battle appears dented.

The 49-year-old mother of three told French radio recently she would gladly step aside before the 2022 presidential

election if another candidate was “better placed to unite people and help our ideas triumph”.

All eyes instantly turned to her glamorous niece, 28-year-old former MP Marion Marechal-Le Pen.

Marechal-Le Pen, the darling of the FN old guard, withdrew from politics last year but made a high-profile appearance last month at a conservative jam-boree in the US, fuelling specu-lation about a comeback.

The soap opera squabbles of the Le Pen dynasty have kept French media in thrall.

Jean-Marie Le Pen said that in losing heavily to Macron his daughter had “not been equal to

the challenge” -- a sentiment echoed by many FN members.

Others woes have stacked up since.

Marine has been charged over her party’s alleged misuse of EU expenses, and for tweeting gruesome images of IS atrocities.

She also fell out with her former right-hand man Florian Philippot, who went on to form the rival Patriots party.

One of the FN’s two senators Claudine Kauffmann resigned, denouncing “nepotism” in the party in a letter to Le Pen made public Friday. She had earlier been suspended for comparing migrants to “vermin”.

But party members credit Marine Le Pen with massively expanding the party’s support, doubling its score from 5.5 mil-lion votes in the 2002 presiden-tial election to 10.6 million, or almost 34 percent, in the year 2017.

Le Pen is hoping for a rematch with Macron in next year’s European elections, by forming alliances with other eurosceptic parties around the bloc.

At home, she is banking on divisions between pro-Macron centrists and rightwingers tearing his party apart, making the FN France’s biggest party of the right.

French’s far-right party Front National (FN) president Marine Le Pen prepares to vote during her party’s congress at the Grand Palais, in Lille, north of France, yesterday.

Former Donald Trump adviser Steve Bannon was expected to encourage delegates “that victory is possible, and how to obtain it: FN spokesman

17SUNDAY 11 MARCH 2018 AMERICAS

Gunman shoots three to death in CaliforniaAP

YOUNTVILLE: The gunman who killed three people who work for a California program that treats veterans for post-traumatic stress disorder was kicked out of the program, a relative of one victim said on Friday.

Albert Wong, 36, was iden-tified as the man who went to The Pathway House therapy center on the sprawling campus of the largest veterans homes in the country and took a psychol-ogist and two executives hostage, authorities said.

Wong slipped into a going-away party for two employees of The Pathway Home, authori-ties said.

Gunshots were fired around 10:30am after he arrived at the Veterans Home of California-Yountville but nothing more was heard from him or the women until their bodies were found at about 6pm, authorities said.

Wong’s rental car was found nearby. A bomb-sniffing dog alerted on the car but no bombs were found, only a cellphone, authorities said.

Killed were program Execu-tive Director Christine Loeber, 48; Clinical Director Jennifer Golick, 42; and Jennifer Gonzalez, 29, a clinical psychol-ogist with the San Francisco Department of Veterans Affairs Healthcare System.

“These brave women were accomplished professionals who dedicated their careers to serving our nation’s veterans, working closely with those in the greatest need of attention after deploy-ments in Iraq and Afghanistan,” The Pathway Home said in a statement.

Governor Jerry Brown said flags would be flown at half-staff at the capitol and said that he

and his wife “are deeply sad-dened by the horrible violence.” Golick was the top psychologist at the nonprofit home, which treats combat veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan.

She called her husband, Mark, around 10:30am to say that she had been taken hostage, Bob Golick said. Mark didn’t hear from her again, Malick said.

It was “far too early to say if they were chosen at random” because investigators had not yet determined a motive, California Highway Patrol Assistant Chief Chris Childs said.

However, Golick’s father-in-law said she had recently ordered Wong removed from the program. Wong had been an Army infan-tryman who served a year in Afghanistan from 2011 to 2012. He held a number of service awards, including one for expert marks-manship with a rifle.

Yountville, about 53 miles north of San Francisco, is one of the Napa Valley’s most upscale towns, located in the heart of wine country.

A sheriff’s deputy responding to an emergency call on Friday morning got into a shootout with the gunman but wasn’t injured.

Highway Patrol Sgt. Robert

Nacke said negotiators were unable to make contact with the gunman throughout the day.

Larry Kamer said that his wife, Devereaux Smith, was at a morning staff party and told him by phone that the gunman had entered the room quietly, letting some people leave while taking others hostage.

Smith, a fundraiser for the nonprofit Pathway Home, was still inside the facility’s dining hall and was not allowed to leave, he said.

Police evacuated the prop-erty and closed off nearby roads to the veterans complex, which houses about 1,000 residents.

Army veteran and resident Bob Sloan, 73, was working at the home’s TV station when a co-worker came in and said he had heard four gunshots coming from the Pathway Home. Sloan sent alerts for residents to stay put.

A group of about 80 students who were on the home’s grounds were safely evacuated after being locked down, Napa County Sheriff John Robertson said. The teens from Justin-Siena High School were at a theater rehearsing a play. “They were a distance away from the shooting situation,” Robertson said.

The state Veterans Affairs department said the home that opened in 1884 is the nation’s largest veterans home and cares for eld-erly and disabled residents.

Yvette Bennett, a wound-care supply worker who supplies the veterans center, was turned back when she tried to deliver what she called urgently needed medical supplies for two patients inside.

Of all the medical institutions she has worked with, “this is the most placid, calm, serene place,” she said. Earlier this week, when she last visited, she asked a doctor, “What’s your magic here?” “And then 48 hours later this happens,” Bennett said.

A California Highway Patrol tactical vehicle arrives at the Veterans Home of California during an active shooter situation in Yountville, California, on Friday.

Justice Department proposes banning rapid-fire bump stocksAP

WASHINGTON: The Trump administration said yesterday it has taken the first step in the regulatory process to ban bump stocks, likely setting the stage for long legal battles with gun manufacturers while the trigger devices remain on the market.

The move was expected after President Donald Trump ordered the Justice Department to work toward a ban following the shooting deaths of 17 people at a Florida high school in Feb-ruary. Bump stocks, which enable guns to fire like automatic weapons, were not used in that attack — they were used in last year’s Las Vegas massacre — but have since become a focal point in the gun control debate.

The Justice Department’s regulation would classify the

hardware as a machine gun banned under federal law. That would reverse a 2010 decision by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explo-sives that found bump stocks did not amount to machine guns and could not be regulated unless Congress amended existing fire-arms law or passed a new one.

A reversal of the department’s earlier evaluation could be seen as an admission that it was legally flawed, which manufacturers could seize on in court. Even as the Trump administration moves toward banning the devices, some ATF officials believe it lacks the authority to do so.

But any congressional effort to create new gun control laws would need support from the pro-gun Republican majority. A bid to ban the accessory fizzled last year, even as lawmakers

expressed openness to the idea after nearly 60 people were gunned down in Las Vegas.

Some states have sought their own restrictions in light of the inaction. A ban on bump stocks was part of a far-reaching school safety bill signed by Florida Gov-ernor Rick Scott, a Republican, on Friday that was immediately met with a lawsuit by the National Rifle Association. The powerful group has said it supports ATF regula-tions on the accessory but opposes any legislation that would do that same. The NRA did not immedi-ately return calls for comment yesterday.

Calls mounted for a bump stock ban after the Las Vegas shooting, and the Justice Department said in December it would again review whether they can be prohibited under federal law.

Two men sentenced in Denver train station deathAP

DENVER: A judge sentenced two men to decades in prison for the shooting death of a man at a Denver train station that sparked debate about illegal immigration.

District Court Judge A Bruce Jones ordered 58 years in prison for Nathan Valdez, who pleaded guilty in Feb-ruary to second-degree murder and other charges in the killing of 32-year-old Tim Cruz. Jones sentenced Ever Valles to 29 years.

Prosecutor Adrienne Greene said the two men approached Cruz near a light-rail station early February 7, 2017, and talked casually with him before Valdez pulled out a gun.

Greene said surveillance video shows that both men advanced toward Cruz before Valdez fired, hitting Valles in the buttock.

Valdez then fired twice at Cruz, killing him, she said.

The case drew the atten-tion of Attorney General Jeff Sessions last year as criticized sanctuary city policies.

Valles had been held in the Denver jail months before the shooting on an auto theft charge. Officials gave immigra-tion authorities about 25 min-utes of notice before releasing Valles, a native of Mexico.

Valles’ attorney said Friday that the defendant’s parents brought him to the U S when he was eight months old.

He pleaded guilty in November to aggravated rob-bery and accessory to murder under a plea deal in the case.

Former North Dakota governor George Sinner diesAD

BISMARCK: George Sinner, the farmer-philosopher who served as North Dakota’s governor during one of the state’s roughest economic times, has died. He was 89.

His son, George B Sinner, confirmed the death on Friday. Boulger Funeral Home in Fargo posted on its website that he died at Eventide Senior Living Communities.

The Fargo native studied phi-losophy in college and considered becoming a priest. But family and public service beckoned.

George B Sinner said his father never talked about money and was always focused on helping others.

“My dad picked up hitch-hikers. He cared about immi-grants. When I was a child he brought a young man home from one of the local colleges who was a visiting student from Africa, for Christmas,” his son said.

“That’s who he was and how he lived.” The father of 10 children became a well-known Democrat, serving in the Legislature in the 1960s and early ‘80s before defeating Republican incumbent Allen Olson for governor in 1984. His gubernatorial campaign included a television commercial that showed a farmer pitching cow manure, which Sinner compared to his opponent’s campaign statements.

Looking back a decade later, Sinner told a group of students

in Fargo that he didn’t think about running for governor until 1982, after he had served in the Legislature.

“I wasn’t really needed on the farm anymore,’” he said. “And I suddenly realized I was as qualified as anybody to run the state.” His administration, from 1985 through 1992, spanned one of the roughest periods in North Dakota’s economy. The state was hit hard by drought in the late 1980s, and slumping oil prices turned a western North Dakota boom into a bust. In 1990, Sinner endorsed a special day of prayer on the state Cap-itol grounds to pray for rain.

He also vetoed what would have been the country’s toughest abortion law at the time in 1991,

saying he agreed with the Roman Catholic view that abortion was wrong but believed the issue was the role of law. The proposed law would have banned abortions except in cases of rape, incest or when a woman’s life was in danger.

“Government must not over-step its bounds,” he said in his veto message. “It must not play God.” Sinner was born in Fargo in 1928, and grew up in nearby Casselton. He attended St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota, where he received a bachelor’s degree in philosophy.

Sinner was part of a farm partnership, Sinner Brothers and Bresnahan, in Casselton. He served in the state Senate from 1962 through 1966, as a delegate to North Dakota’s Constitutional

Convention in 1972, and on the State Board of Higher Education before being elected to the state House in 1982. He was elected governor two years later.

His first term as governor began with a state Supreme Court battle over when Sinner could legally take office and fill two court vacancies. The high court ruled in Sinner’s favor, and he became governor on Jan 1, 1985.

During his term, Sinner pushed for higher income, sales and gasoline taxes, as well as plans to restructure the execu-tive branch of state government and reorganize North Dakota’s school districts. But his tax pro-posals were referred and rejected by voters, along with his restructuring plan.

Former Trump campaign aide Sam Nunberg leaves the U S District Courthouse in Washington, DC, yesterday. Nunberg appeared before a grand jury as part of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe.

Trump aide faces grand jury

US narrows travel alert for Mexico’s Playa del CarmenAP

MEXICO CITY: The U S Embassy in Mexico has narrowed its travel warning for the Caribbean resort city of Playa del Carmen amid what it calls an unspecified “ongoing security threat” just as the spring holiday season is kicking into high gear.

In a notice posted on Friday on its website, the embassy also said the U S Consular Agency in the city would reopen and resume normal operations tomorrow after a shutdown of several days — “absent additional changes in the security situation.” The revised restrictions say U S government employees must avoid five neighbourhoods in and around a downtown tourist zone filled with hotels, restaurants,

shops and bars.But they lift a blanket ban

issued this week for the city that had covered several all-inclusive resorts. The embassy said employee travel is now per-mitted “to resort areas in Riviera Maya including those near Playa del Carmen that are outside the restricted neighbourhoods.” After the first travel alert on Wednesday, Mexican officials came out to defend public safety in Playa del Carmen, apparently concerned about a possible hit to tourism.

The Quintana Roo state government noted that Presi-dent Enrique Pena Nieto and dignitaries from around the globe were convening there for the World Ocean Summit on March 7-9.

The victims were program Executive Director Christine Loeber, 48; Clinical Director Jennifer Golick, 42; and Jennifer Gonzalez, 29, a clinical psychologist with the San Francisco Department of Veterans Affairs Healthcare System.

18 SUNDAY 11 MARCH 2018AMERICAS

N Korea not to conduct missile test: TrumpREUTERS

WASHINGTON: U S President Donald Trump said yesterday North Korea had agreed to not conduct another missile test until after proposed meetings with its leader, Kim Jong-Un, had taken place, as he sought to rally inter-national support for a potential summit.

“North Korea has not con-ducted a Missile Test since November 28, 2017 and has promised not to do so through our meetings. I believe they will honour that commitment!” Trump wrote on Twitter.

Trump’s comments aligned with what a South Korean offi-cial had stated on Thursday about the possible talks. Trump made no mention of nuclear tests in his tweet, however.

It was not immediately clear which meetings Trump was

referring to or their exact timing. South Korean officials said ear-lier this week that Trump had agreed to an invitation from Kim to meet by May.

The White House has been under fire for agreeing to talks and responded to the criticism on Friday by warning that no summit would occur unless Pyongyang took “concrete actions” over its nuclear program.

Trump also took to Twitter yesterday to characterize the leaders of China and Japan as supportive of the potential dia-logue, even as he did little to clear up confusion over the timing of any talks and what pre-conditions would be required.

“President XI told me he appreciates that the U S is working to solve the problem diplomatically rather than going with the ominous alternative,”

Trump wrote on Twitter, refer-ring to Chinese President Xi Jin-ping. “China continues to be helpful!” Trump also tweeted yesterday: “Spoke to Prime Min-ister Abe of Japan, who is very enthusiastic about talks with North Korea. Also discussing opening up Japan to much better trade with the U S Currently have

a massive $100bn Trade Deficit. Not fair or sustainable. It will all work out!,” Trump wrote.

Late on Friday Trump wrote that a deal with North Korea “is very much in the making and will be, if completed, a very good one for the World. Time and place to be determined.”

The Twitter posts followed a news briefing by White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders on Friday where she said Trump would not have a meeting “without seeing concrete steps and concrete actions take place by North Korea, so the president will actually be getting something.” Kim had earlier invited Trump to join him for what would be unprecedented talks between leaders of the two nations.

Sanders did not specify what actions North Korea needed to take, and a White House official later said she was not intending

to set new conditions. But the comments were a sign that an end to a standoff between the two countries over North Korea’s nuclear weapon program is not imminent.

The United States has long said it wants any talks to aim at Pyongyang abandoning its nuclear weapons and missile programs. Hopes for a break-through had risen on Thursday when Trump said he was ready to meet with Kim.

The two leaders prompted jitters around the world last year as they exchanged bellicose insults over the North’s attempts to develop a nuclear weapon capable of hitting the United States. Pyongyang has pursued its nuclear program in defiance of United Nations Security Council resolutions.

But tension eased around last month’s Winter Olympics in

South Korea, laying the ground-work for what would be the big-gest foreign policy gamble for Trump since he took office in January 2017.

The head of South Korea’s National Security Office, Chung Eui-yong, speaking in Washington on Thursday after briefing Trump about a meeting South Korean officials held with Kim this week, said the U S president had agreed to meet the North Korean leader by May in response to an invita-tion from Kim.

Kim had “committed to denuclearization” and to sus-pending nuclear and missile tests, Chung said. “I told Presi-dent Trump that, in our meeting, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said he is committed to denu-clearization. Kim pledged that North Korea will refrain from any further nuclear or missile tests”

An archaeologist works at the “Osteoteca” (osteological collection), of the Anthropology National Museum (MNA) in Mexico City. The MNA houses one of the most important osteological collections in the world, with more than 25,000 skeletons, and more than 30 mummies.

Anthropological treasures

Trump to attend Summit of the Americas in PeruAP

LIMA: U S President Donald Trump will attend the upcoming Summit of the Americas, offi-cials said, putting him face-to-face with Western Hemisphere leaders, many of whom are upset by his policies and rhet-oric toward the region.

The regional summit next month in Peru is seen as the leading forum for projecting U S leadership in Latin America and the Caribbean. U S presi-dents have participated in all seven previous gatherings, but with Trump’s anti-immigrant statements, proposal to build a wall on the Mexican border and stance on trade stirring anger throughout the region, many wondered if he would attend.

“There will be some very

uncomfortable meetings there,” said Christopher Sabatini, a lec-turer in international relations at Columbia University.

A high-ranking Peruvian offi-cial confirmed Trump’s visit to Lima for the summit. The official spoke to The Associated Press on condi-tion of anonymity because he was not authorized to publicly discuss details of the April event. White House spokeswoman Sarah Huck-abee Sanders later said Trump will visit Colombia after Peru.

In recent years, U S leaders have faced sharp rebukes from leftist Latin Americans at the peri-odic gathering and this year’s event is likely to be no different. But the upcoming summit is also generating controversy because of a leader at the other end of the political spectrum: Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

Peruvian leaders have repeatedly said Maduro isn’t invited to attend as international criticism grows over Venezuela’s human rights record and the nation’s increasingly autocratic government. But Maduro recently said he is determined to attend, “rain, shine or lightning.” “By air, land or sea - I will get to the Summit of the Americas to tell the truth of this country,” he vowed at a news conference for interna-tional journalists.

Mercedes Araoz, the chief of Peru’s Cabinet of Ministers, later quipped back that Maduro cannot come by “land nor Peru-vian airspace because he is not welcome.” Peru and the United States have emerged as two of the most outspoken nations in voicing their objections to Maduro’s rule.

Venezuela’s main presidential challenger says could pull out of raceAFP

MADRID: The main challenger in Venezuela’s presidential election said in an interview published yesterday he could pull out of the race if incum-bent Nicolas Maduro — who is seeking a second six-year term — does not meet his demands for international observers to monitor the vote.

Henri Falcon, 56, is a member of Venezuela’s opposition coalition, the Democratic Unity Round-table, or MUD, but has defied their call to boycott the May 20 vote, throwing his own hat into the ring instead.

“We hope this election will be placed under international observation that is much more con-sistent” than the vote in 2015, Falcon told the Spanish daily El Pais in an interview.

“I’ll be going to the UN soon to talk with Sec-retary General Antonio Guterres. We’re demanding the presence of a delegation from the European Union to the country’s electoral authorities,” he said.

If his demands were not met, “we will pull out,” the politician said, insisting that “it’s the gov-ernment itself that has most interest in these con-ditions being met.” The interview carried the head-line: “If Maduro doesn’t meet the conditions, I’ll pull out.” In February, Venezuela’s opposition said it would not participate in the vote without guar-antees that it would be free and fair.

“Do not count on the Democratic Unity Round-table (MUD), or the people, to endorse what until now is only a fraudulent and illegitimate simula-tion of the presidential election,” opposition coor-dinator Angel Oropeza said at the time.

The opposition has accused Maduro of engi-neering a second term for himself by bringing for-ward the election from December.

Among the opposition’s main demands is that the election takes place in the “second half of 2018,” that it be held under the auspices of a “bal-anced” National Electoral Council, and in the pres-ence of independent international observers to monitor the polls.

“North Korea has not conducted a Missile Test since November 28, 2017 and has promised not to do so through our meetings. I believe they will honour that commitment!” Trump wrote on Twitter.


VILLAGGIO & CITY CENTERCROSSWORD NOVO Pearl Qatar

MALL

Note: Programme is subject to change without prior notice.

LANDMARK

ROXY

AL KHOR

ASIAN TOWN

Death Wish 10:00, 10:30am, 12:00noon, 12:15, 12:45, 2:30, 2:45, 3:00, 4:45, 5:15, 5:30, 7:00, 7:30, 8:15, 9:15, 9:45, 11:00, 11:30pm & 12:00amBlack Panther (2D/Action) 10:00am, 12:45, 3:30, 6:15, 9:00 & 11:45pm The Oddsockeaters (2D) 10:00am, 2:00, 6:00 & 10:00pmBullet Head (2D) 12:00noon, 4:00, 8:00pm & 12:00midnight Hangman (2D) 10:00am, 2:00, 6:00 & 10:00pm Hostile (2D) 12:00noon, 4:00, 8:00pm & 12:00midnight First Born (2D) 10:00am, 2:10, 6:20 & 10:45pm Borg Vs McEncore (2D) 12:00noon, 4:10 & 8:20pm Gnome Night (2D/Animation) 12:00noon, 4:00, 8:00 & 12:00am Game Night (2D/Action) 10:00am, 12:00noon, 2:00, 4:00, 6:00, 8:00, 10:00pm & 12:00midnight Talq Sena3Y (2D/Arabic) 10:00am, 2:00, 6:00 & 10:00pm Okdat Al Kawja 12:00noon, 4:00, 8:00pm & 12:00amBlack Panther (3D IMAX/Action) 11:00am, 2:00, 5:00, 8:00 & 11:00pm

Black Panther (2D/Action) 2:00 & 5:30pm Kaly (2D/Malayalam) 3:00 & 11:15pm Hate Story 4 (2D/Hindi) 3:00 & 11:30pm The Oddsockeaters (2D/Animation) 4:30 & 6:00pm Bullet Head (2D/Thriller) 6:00 & 9:30pm Hangman (2D/Thriller) 7:45 & 11:30pm 3 Storeys (2D/Hindi) 7:30pm First Born (2D/Horror) 9:30pm Borg Vs McEncore (2D/Drama) 8:00pm Hostile (2D/Horror) 10:00pm

ROYAL PLAZA

Black Panther (2D/Action) 2:30, 9:00 & 11:00pm The Oddsockeaters (2D/Animation) 2:30, 4:00, 5:30 & 7:30pm Kaly (2D/Malayalam) 3:00 & 11:15pm Hostile (2D/Horror) 6:00pm Bullet Head (2D/Thriller) 7:00pmDeath Wish (Action) 5:00pm Hangman (2D/Thriller) 7:00 & 11:30pm First Born (2D/Horror) 9:00pm Borg Vs McEncore (2D/Drama) 9:15pm

The Oddsockeaters (2D/Animation) 2:30, 4:15 & 5:45pmBlack Panther (Action) 2:30pm Kaly (2D/Malayalam) 2:30, 5:00 & 11:15pm Death Wish (Action) 5:30pm Bullet Head (2D/Thriller) 7:15 & 11:30pm Borg Vs McEncore (2D/Drama) 7:30 & 9:30pm Hangman (2D/Thriller) 8:00 & 11:15pm Hostile (2D/Horror) 9:45pm First Born (Horror) 9:30pm

Maya Nadhi (Malayalam) 7:45 & 9:45pm Captain (Malayalam) 7:00 & 10:00pm Kaly (Malayalam) 6:00, 8:30, 8:45, 11:15 & 11:30pm Hate Story 4 (Hindi) 6:00pm

Coco 10:30am, 4:00 & 9:30pmDarkest Hour 10:45am, 3:45 & 8:45pmThe Post 11:45am, 4:30, & 9:15pm Kaly (Malayalam) 12:45, 6:15 & 11:45pm Three Billboards 1:15, 6:15 & 11:15pm Hangman 2:15, 7:00 & 11:45pm

The Oddsockeaters 10:30am, 12:30 & 6:30pm Hangman (Thriller) 10:30am, 12:40, 4:40, 6:50, 9:00 & 11:10pm Gringo (Action) 10:30am, 12:50, 3:10, 5:30 & 10:40pm Gnome Alone (Animation) 2:30 & 4:30pm Black Panther (Action) 2:30 & 4:30pm Dil Jungle (Hindi) 2:50, 7:50 & 10:40pm

Six best friends, all wanted to dress up in branded outfits and look stylish in all manner. The hankering for luxury brands led them to steal. The turn of events starts when they broke into a villa and get stuck inside.

KALY

FLIK MirqabAami 11:50am, 3:10, 6:30 & 9:50pmBlack Panther 11:20am, 12:20, 2:00, 4:40, 6:30, 7:25, 9:10, 10:05pm & 12:00midnight 3D 3:00, 5:40, 8:20 & 11:00pm Bullet Head (Action) 10:35am, 12:35, 2:35, 4:35, 6:35, 8:00, 10:40pm 12:40am Death Wish (Action) 5:25 & 10:00pm Early Man 2:40 & 5:25pm Ferdinand 10:30am & 1:35pm First Born 9:45, 11:45 & 12:15pm Game Night 11:25am, 1:30, 7:20 & 8:35pm Gnome Alone (Animation) 12:45, 3:35, 4:35 & 6:00pm Hang Man 11:30am, 7:40 9:25, 11:30pm Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle 3:05pm Odd Socketers 11:25am, 1:15 & 4:10pm

Orientation for IIS Class XII batchDOHA: Ideal Indian School (IIS) organised an orientation programme for the new batch of Class XII recently.

Syed Shoukath Ali, School Principal, addressed the

students. In his speech, he dwelt upon

the need of facing the challenges to emerge victorious in the present competitive world.

He advised the students to

be goal oriented and a good messenger for humanity. The session was helpful for students as they were given motivation and tips to succeed in the forth-coming exams.

Storytelling activity at DPS-MISDOHA: “Tell me the facts and I will learn. Tell me the truth and I will believe. But tell me a story and it will live in my heart

forever”.True to the above quote, the

DPS-MIS Class Preparatory stu-dents had a “Storytelling”

activity recently, to strengthen their oratory skills and sharpen their memories.

Storytelling activity is an excellent way to engage stu-dent’s interest, help them to communicate and present themselves in public.

It also helps students to develop positive attitudes, con-fidence and perceptions. It is beneficial in today’s challenging world.

The students brought var-ious props of their choice and narrated stories by putting thoughts and feelings into spoken words.

Each child was motivated to speak and listen to what others spoke about.

The activity was an oppor-tunity for both fun as well as for learning.

OIA holds 1-dishparty at MIA ParkDOHA: One India Association (OIA), affiliated to ICC under the aegis of Indian Embassy (Qatar), had organised a 1-dish (family get together) party at MIA Park, Doha recently to welcome the new members and with the motive of socialising the Indian community in one platform.

Welcoming the new mem-bers to the association Shaji Francis, convener of Kerala was ecstatic.

Sports was also the high-light of the event. Prizes were distributed to the kids and to the winners. More than 100 people took part in the event.

MES becomes ISO 9001:2015 certifiedDOHA: MES Indian School has become ISO 9001:2015 certified; an internationally recognised ISO 9001:2015 standard sets out

applicable statutory and regu-latory requirements for a Quality Management System (QMS). It also enables to

improve the level of communi-cations and work efficiency besides advocating a continuous improvement by ensuring effec-

tive application of the system in an organisation.

MES Indian School, an ISO certified school since 2006, obtained certification under ISO 9001:2000 in 2006 and ISO 9001:2008 in 2010, and has been audited and registered annually by Quality Austria since 2011.

MES is also certified by International Certification Net-work (IQNet) and International Workshop Agreement (IWA) 2:2007 as part of its Interna-tional Certifications.

“Upon obtaining this prestig-ious certification, we feel our vision to provide quality educa-tion to our students has strength-ened”, said Aneesh, P A Director, QMS, MES Governing Board. “This accomplishment in updating our quality standards demonstrates our desire to perform at the highest levels of quality and efficiency.

20 SUNDAY 11 MARCH 2018MORNING BREAK

FAJRSHOROOK

04.32 am05.47 am

ZUHRASR

11.44 am03.08 pm

MAGHRIBISHA

05.43 pm07.13 pm

PRAYER TIMINGS

HIGH TIDE 00:45 – 00:00 LOW TIDE 17 :30 – 00:00

Misty at places at first becomes relatively

hot daytime with scattered clouds.

WEATHER TODAY

COURTESY: Qatar Meteorology Department

Minimum Maximum 22oC 35oC

Kite festival attracts over 40,000 visitorsAMNA PERVAIZ RAO THE PENINSULA

DOHA: The Second Aspire International Kite Festival drew to a close attracting more than 40,000 visitors who enjoyed a wide range of technical feats showcased by some of the world’s best professional kite flyers on Friday evening.

For four days, the 2nd Aspire International Kite Fes-tival in Aspire Park proved to be a wonderful and vibrant atmosphere. Visitors were able to enjoy a hugely varied programme of community events and activities, offering something for everyone and people of all ages.

Mohammad Khalifa Al Suwaidi, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Aspire Zone Founda-tion (AZF), Kholoud Al Hail, Chairperson of the Organising Committee of the 2nd Aspire International Kite Festival, Ali Al Mahmoud, Head of Commu-nity Engagement at the Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy, and Abdulla Khalil Al Muhannadi, Events Manager at Ooredoo Qatar, took part in the awarding cer-emony held to recognise the winners and participants from this year’s event.

Mohammad Khalifa Al Suwaidi, said: “We’re very proud of this year’s huge suc-cess. This event has estab-lished the popularity of a new

sport and fixture in Qatar’s annual sporting calendar. Its success provides further proof of AZF’s capabilities and expertise in hosting major international sports and cul-tural activities.”

He added: “I’d also like to congratulate this year’s partic-ipants and winners, and thank

our sponsors Qatar Airways, Ooredoo, the Supreme Com-mittee for Delivery & Legacy, Katara, Virgin Megastores and Salam Stores, as well as our media partner, Al Kass Sports Channel. My thanks also go to the Singapore Kite Association, whose continuous efforts and support contributed to the event’s remarkable success and elevated the experience for our guest teams and visitors.”

Kholoud Al Hail, remarked: “We’re very happy with this year’s turnout and the growing levels of participation from local schools and international kite flyers. This year’s 2nd Aspire International Kite Fes-tival was so popular that people were asking us on social media to extend it for one more day. This is something we’ll take into consideration when planning next year’s third Aspire Inter-national Kite Festival.”

WinnersEastern and Western cul-

tures came together to take part in this year’s festival, rep-resented by 102 professional kite flyers from 23 countries. International teams taking part in the event competed in four award categories: The Best Design and Innovation Award, The Biggest Kite Award, the Longest Kite Award, and the Best National Flag Award. Teams from China, France, Pakistan, and Mexico won each of these

a w a r d c a t e g o r i e s respectively.

Talking to The Peninsula, Iqbal Husain, Representative from Pakistani team said: “I flew kites since I was a child, when I was in Tokyo I started to make kites again which was in the 1980s. I make kites very differently, different from

other people. I use traditional materials to make kites which is, hand-made Japanese paper and bamboo sticks. I like making kites as they involve you completely and you put in all your efforts to make it perfect. My kites normally take an year and half to get completed. The aspect that makes me unique is I am the only person who puts in humour in making kites. I don’t put in abstract designs that kids don’t understand, I make it funny in every way to make it easy to understand for kids and adults as well.

“I feel honoured to be in Qatar for the first time, it’s a beautiful park which has been selected as the venue for this

year. The wind is perfect for me to fly my kites as they are not that strong. We are being treated very nice by our organ-isers. I would love to be a part of this International kite festival every coming year”, he added.

This year marked the first time that a team from Qatar had ever taken part in a kite flying

festival. The team from Qatar was comprised of locals and expatriates and featured the youngest participants in the fes-tival. The Festival’s jury pre-sented the team from Qatar with an Encouragement Award handed to them by Mohammad Khalifa Al Suwaidi.

The Italian Kite Federation also extended an invitation to the team from Qatar to partic-ipate in one of the largest inter-national festivals held in Italy, due to take place this year from April 20 to May 1.

The jury was made up of a number of renowned figures associated with kite flying. These included Italian painter, sculptor and theatre scenogra-pher Claudio Capelli; American kite artist, painter, graphic designer and aerial sculptor George Peters; lifelong German kite artist Franck Shwiemann; painter and former Canadian indoor cycling track champion Robert Trepanier; Japanese garden designer Makoto Ohye who has devoted much of his life to developing a culture of kite art in his country; and French wind fan artist famous for creating enviro nmentally-friendly installations Michel Gressier.

Inter-school contests Another major success for

the festival was the level of involvement of young students from around the country who took part in kite flying workshops that were delivered by experts from the Singapore Kite Associ-ation. More than 550 boys and girls from 16 schools took part.

During the workshops, the students were given the oppor-tunity to design, decorate and build their own kites and sub-mitted entries for an inter-school competition held as part

of the festival, giving them the chance to win valuable prizes.

Oscar Academy won first prize with QR50,000, second-place winner Muaz Bin Jabal Independent School for Boys was awarded QR30,000, while third-place winner Halima Al Saadeia Inde-pendent School for Girls received a QR20,000 prize.

During the closing cere-mony, AZF also awarded the acclaimed Canadian kite flying coach, Robert Trepainer, for providing training workshops for 60 local schoolteachers back in November 2017 to pre-pare them for this year’s event. Singaporean coach Gadis Wid-iyati, from the Singapore Kite Association, was also recog-nised for her efforts in providing training workshops for the team from Qatar last January.

The festival also highlighted AZF’s support for small busi-nesses, with a number of local companies promoting their products and services to festival-goers.

Photography contestA photography competi-

tion running on social media was launched to capture per-spectives of the festival through the eyes of visitors and participants themselves.

Entrants took part by posting their photographs online using the hashtag #AspireKiteFest. A panel of judges including representa-tives from the Qatar Photo-graphic Society will select the winners on March 21.

Several hundred children aged 5-13 took part in a poster competition by cre-ating illustrations of a kite in the skies above Aspire Park. Winners will be announced on March 21.

The Oscar Academy team who won the first prize in school category with their kite.

Mohammad Khalifa Al Suwaidi with the French team.

Actor Copley and the other Black PantherAFP

LOS ANGELES: There’s a new “Black Panther” in town, but this one is not much given to serving humanity, improving racial representation or hollering “Wakanda Forever” whenever his onesie gets creased.

La Pantera Negra, it turns out, is the ruthless, Beatles-loving Mexican cartel kingpin in “Gringo,” a comedy crime caper starring David Oyelowo, Joel Edgerton, Charlize Theron and Sharlto Copley.

“People were saying, ‘Are you worried that you called the villain Black Panther?’ Seriously, we made the movie like two years ago and I was like, ‘Um, no,’” laughs Copley, 44.

“And even if we were, it’s still funny to me. I mean, what? Do we not laugh at anything any-more?” “Gringo” —part comedy, part white-knuckle actioner —follows businessman Harold Soyinka (Oyelowo) as he finds himself crossing the line from law-abiding citizen to wanted criminal.

The mild-mannered phar-maceutical executive takes a business trip from Chicago to Mexico with his cutthroat bosses

Richard (Edgerton) and Elaine, played by a deliciously Cruella de Vil-esque Theron.

There are numerous twists and turns along the way to Harold sounding the alarm that he has been abducted — and coming face-to-face with the Black Panther.

Rather than pay a $5m ransom, Richard dispatches his mercenary-turned-humani-tarian brother Mitch, played by Copley, to extract Harold.

“It seemed to me to be a great set-up for a comedic character — a guy who is a former mercenary and is now trying to turn his life around in Haiti by helping people in need,” Copley said.

“And then he gets drawn into this whole mess, kind of like an alcoholic going back into a bar.” “Gringo” is helmed by Edgerton’s brother Nash, who made his fea-ture-length directorial debut in 2008 with the acclaimed Australian thriller “The Square.” - Rude and despicable - Production began in March 2016 in a subdued, gray Chi-cago before cast and crew pumped up the color palette in Mexico City and Veracruz.

The director pushes Theron and Edgerton to be more rude and despicable than they’ve ever been on screen before — and

bear in mind Theron has an Oscar for playing a serial killer in “Monster” (2003).

“Charlize has some of my favourite lines in the film and it’s kind of fun to see her and Joel, who are such likeable people and actors normally, just have a bit of fun,” says Copley.

The South African actor burst onto the scene with an acclaimed performance as Wikus van de Merwe in 2009 sci-fi thriller “District 9,” before taking on Howling Mad Murdock in “The A-Team” (2010).

He was Agent Kruger in “Ely-sium” (2013) and King Stefan in “Maleficent” (2014), as well as the eponymous CGI robot in “Chappie” (2015).

“I like projects that push the envelope and do something dif-ferent. Those projects may or may not pay off from a financial or audience point of view,” he says.

“But I prefer doing that than something that will just go down the middle, that will just be like people watch it and forget about it.” Copley never bases his many diverse characters on specific individuals, but he borrows —consciously or otherwise, he says — from aspects of acquaint-ances’ personalities.

“In this case I do know a couple of mercenary guys and special forces guys and have a sense of that world, I guess,” he reveals.

Copley also had a starring role in Ilya Naishuller’s low-budget Russian-American sci-fi actioner “Hardcore Henry” (2016), a live-action movie about a cyborg soldier that looks more like a photo-real shoot-’em-up video game.

“It was a grueling, difficult shoot but I certainly bonded with the director incredibly — we’re very close friends now — and made some great friendships with some of the team in Russia and the stunt guys,” he says.

“It was unlike any film I’ve ever done. For everybody, it was difficult. You’re talking about an action film where you have to make the action look good from one camera angle.” Copley began directing and acting in his own short films at the age of 12, going on to study speech and drama at Trinity College, London.

With a talent for the business of entertainment to match his acting prowess, he became one of the youngest senior executives in the history of South African tele-vision as the founder of ETV at 24.

From Left: Brad Fuller, John Kransinski and Andrew Form attend the ‘A Quiet Place’ premiere during 2018 SXSW Conference and Festivals at the Paramount Theater in Austin, Texas.

‘A Quiet Place’ premieres in Texas

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