China, US discuss Afghanistan issue

1,143 referred to prosecution for Covid violations

Grim homecoming for troops killed in Kabul

Greek protest againstCovid vaccination

30 killed in strikes on Yemen air base

Chinese State Councillor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken discussed Afghanistan and US-China relations in a phone call yesterday, Chinese state media said, amid tensions between the world’s two largest economies. Wang said it is necessary for all sides to engage with the Taliban and “positively guide” them, according to Chinese state television. Wang said that Washington should work with the international community to provide economic and humanitarian aid to Afghanistan, help the new regime run governmental functions normally, maintain social stability, stop the currency from depreciating and the cost of living from rising.

In line with the Cabinet decision based on Law No 17 /1990 regarding infectious diseases, the competent authorities referred 1,143 persons to the Public Prosecution for violating the Covid-19 preventive and precautionary measures in force. While 789 persons were booked for not wearing a mask, 342 did not maintain a safe physical distance, 12 did not install Ehteraz app, the Ministry of Interior (MoI) tweeted yesterday. The competent authorities urged the public to adhere to the precautionary and preventive measures in force to protect them and others from the spread of coronavirus.

US President Joe Biden shut his eyes and tilted his head back as the flag-draped cases carrying the remains of 11 American service members killed in a suicide bomb attack in Afghanistan emerged yesterday from a military plane at a base in Delaware. Biden, his wife, Jill, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and senior military off icials stood sombrely as US troops carried the cases down the ramp of an Air Force C-17 aircraft at Dover Air Force Base. The 11 service members were among 13 US troops killed in an Islamic State suicide attack on Thursday outside Kabul’s airport. Page 7

Greek police used tear gas and water cannon to disperse a group of people who threw flares and other objects during a protest in central Athens yesterday against mandatory Covid-19 vaccinations. More than 7,000 people rallied outside the Greek parliament to protest against the inoculations. Similar protests in Athens last month also saw violence. About 5.7mn people out of a total population of 11mn have been fully vaccinated, and polls have shown that most Greeks favour mandatory vaccination for certain groups such as healthcare workers and nursing home staff .

Strikes on Yemen’s largest air base yesterday killed at least 30 pro-government troops and wounded scores more, medical and loyalist sources said, blaming Houthi rebels for the attack. The strikes were carried out on Al-Anad air base, some 60km north of Yemen’s second city Aden in the south of the conflict-riven country. The air base served as the headquarters for US troops overseeing a long-running drone war against Al Qaeda until they pulled out in March 2015, shortly before the Houthis overran the area. “More than 30 have been killed and at least 56 were injured” at the military facility in the government-held southern province of Lahij, armed forces spokesman Mohamed al-Naqib said. Page 5

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Over 75 prominent fi rms confi rm participation at Qatar Travel Mart 2021

New academic year starts with Covid protocolsNew academic year starts with Covid protocolsBy Joseph VargheseStaff Reporter

Schools in Qatar opened yesterday for the new academic year 2021-22 following blended learning system with 50% of the students attending the classes physically on campus, on a rotation basis. Each student has to attend campus classes for five days in two weeks.Strict Covid-19 preventive and precautionary measures are in place at all schools to prevent the spread of the virus. All government and private schools received students at their campuses yesterday. Most schools reported a good number of students on the campus on the first day of the academic year.

Both the Ministry of Education and Higher Education as well as the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) have adopted a number of measures to protect the children from Covid-19 and for the smooth conduct of the teaching and learning process.MoPH has also issued a number of guidelines highlighting the need to enhance the eff orts to fight the pandemic, especially on the occasion of the beginning of the new academic year.In a video message on social media channels, Dr Layla al-Dahnaim, community medicine consultant and the manager of School Health, said that several precautionary measures have been taken to ensure the safe return of students to schools which will enhance the eff orts to combat Covid-19. To Page 12A class in session yesterday. PICTURE: Ram Chand

40 women submitnominations for Shura electionsA considerable number of Qatari candi-

dates, including 40 women, have submit-ted their nominations for the upcoming

Shura Council elections, a senior offi cial told Qa-tar TV yesterday.

“There will be no exemptions to the campaign spending limit of QR2mn,” explained Brigadier Majid Abdulrahman al-Sulaiti, director of Plan-ning and Quality at the Ministry of Interior and a member of the Election Supervisory Committee.

The candidates are not allowed to hold gather-ings at private lounges (Majlis) or tents as alter-natives have been provided by the supervisory committee and Qatar Media Corporation (QMC), he pointed out.

“This would avert any potential chance to spread Covid-19 infections. So no one will be granted permission to hold special and private meetings during the Shura Council elections.

“Candidates have the right to visit the voting centres on the voting day to ensure that the bal-lot boxes are empty and subsequently sealed. The candidate can delegate one or two representa-tives from the constituency to monitor these voting procedures.

“Candidates or representatives can attend the counting of the votes on the designated day,” Brigadier al-Sulaiti added.

As announced earlier, the preliminary list of candidates is to be released today. Grievances and objections can be submitted from Tuesday to

Thursday. The fi nal list of candidates will be an-nounced on September 15.

Brigadier Majid Abdulrahman al-Sulaiti speaking to Qatar TV yesterday.

Ida hits Louisiana as mostintense hurricane in yearsReutersNew Orleans

Hurricane Ida made landfall in Louisiana yesterday as an ex-

tremely dangerous Category 4 storm, forcing those who did not fl ee to brace themselves for the toughest test yet of the bil-lions of dollars spent on levee upgrades following Hurricane Katrina 16 years ago.

Ida came ashore near Port Fourchon, Louisiana, at 11.55am CDT (16:55 GMT), the National Hurricane Center (NHC) said.

Hurricane-strength winds extended 80km out from Ida’s eye, forcing New Orleans to suspend emergency medical services as the storm crawled northwest at 21kph.

Hundreds of miles of new levees were built around New Orleans after the devastation of Katrina, which made land-fall 16 years ago to the day, inundating historically Black neighbourhoods and killing more than 1,800 people.

“This is one of the strongest storms to make landfall here in modern times,” Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards said at a news briefi ng.

The state “has never been more prepared,” he said, pre-dicting that no levees in the Hurricane & Storm Dam-age Risk Reduction System protecting the greater New Orleans area would be over-topped.

“Will it be tested? Yes. But it was built for this moment,” he said.

Edwards said some levees in the state’s southeast not built by the federal government were predicted to overtop.

More than 300,000 Louisi-ana homes and businesses had already lost electricity, mostly

in the state’s southeast, ac-cording to the tracking site PowerOutage.

“As soon the storm passes, we’re going to put the coun-try’s full might behind the res-cue and recovery,” President Joe Biden said after a briefi ng at the headquarters of the Fed-eral Emergency Management Agency in Washington.

Just three days after emerg-ing as a tropical storm in the Caribbean Sea, Ida had swelled into a Category 4 hurricane on the fi ve-step Saffi r-Simpson scale with top sustained winds of 240kph, the NHC said.

Waves crash against the New Canal Lighthouse on Lake Pontchartrain as the eff ects of Hurricane Ida begin to be felt in New Orleans, Louisiana, US, yesterday.

US destroys car bomb in Kabul after terror warningAFPKabul

The United States said it de-stroyed an explosive-laden ve-hicle with an air strike in Kabul

yesterday, hours after President Joe Bi-den warned of another terror attack in the capital as a massive airlift of tens of thousands of Afghans entered its last days.

A Taliban spokesman confi rmed the incident, saying a car bomb destined for the airport had been destroyed — and that a possible second strike had hit a nearby house.

The US said it had only struck the vehicle, but added that secondary blasts indicated “a substantial amount of explosive material”.

Local media reported possible civil-

ian casualties, which the US said it was assessing.

The US air strike came after a suicide bomber from the Islamic State group on Thursday targeted US troops stopping huge crowds of people from entering Kabul’s air-port. About 114,000 people have been evacuated since August 15, when the Taliban swept back into power.

More than 100 people died in the at-tack, including 13 US service person-nel, slowing the airlift ahead of Biden’s deadline for evacuations to end by Tuesday (tomorrow).

US Secretary of State Antony Blink-en said yesterday that some 300 Amer-icans still in Afghanistan were seeking to leave the country.

“They are not going to be stuck in Afghanistan,” National Security Advi-

sor Jake Sullivan said on the Fox net-work, adding that the US had “a mech-anism to get them out”.

The Pentagon said Saturday that re-taliation drone strikes had killed two “high-level” IS jihadists in eastern Af-ghanistan, but Biden warned of more attacks from the group.

“Our commanders informed me that an attack is highly likely in the next 24-36 hours,” Biden had said.

The US embassy in Kabul later re-leased a warning of credible threats at specifi c areas of the airport, including access gates.

In recent years, the Islamic State’s Afghanistan-Pakistan chapter has been responsible for some of the dead-liest attacks in those countries.

They have massacred civilians at mosques, public squares, schools, and even hospitals. Page 11A view of a car and a house destroyed after a rocket attack in Kabul, yesterday.

2 Gulf TimesMonday, August 30, 2021

QATAR

Director reviews Protection and Wildlife Department achievements, projectsQNADoha

The Director of the Pro-tection and Wild-life Department at the

Ministry of Municipality and En-vironment (MME) Talib bin Kha-lid al-Shahwani reviewed the na-tional projects and strategies that the department is implement-ing. This includes the biodiver-sity database project in Qatar, the project to restore and rehabilitate the Qatari land, and the project to monitor and protect sea turtles as well as the eff ects of the decision to ban grazing on the vegetation cover and productivity of camels in the country.

The strategy and national ac-tion plan to combat desertifi ca-tion, and the strategy for preserv-ing wildlife in Qatar were also discussed.

In a news conference yesterday, al-Shahwani spoke about the lists of future projects for the Depart-ment of Protection and Wildlife, including the draft national plan for the conservation of non-fl y-ing wild mammals in the Qatari environment, and the integrated management project to control the invading myna bird in the Qatari environment, and issuing the national list of the country’s wildlife, and a database of stone natural resources, and others.

In addition to the strategies and action plans undertaken by the department, he also ad-dressed its executive tasks and achievements in this regard dur-ing the period from April 1, 2020 to March 31, 2021 and its vision in terms of contributing to the de-velopment and activation of the national framework for integrated environmental management of natural resources for conserva-

tion and sustainable exploitation of elements of biodiversity, com-bating desertifi cation, rehabili-tating degraded environmental systems, and preserving the qual-ity of wildlife and natural stone resources.

The Director of the Protec-tion and Wildlife Department at the Ministry of Municipality and Environment referred to the de-partments’ role in implementing national commitments to inter-national co-operation as the na-tional important point for each of the international biodiversity conservation conventions, the CITES (the Convention on In-

ternational Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora), and the agreement to preserve wildlife and its natural habitats for the GCC countries.

Al-Shahwani said that the de-partment is implementing these agreements through strategic plans, regulations and laws for the purpose of sustainable manage-ment to exploit the elements of biodiversity and natural resourc-es. In the news conference, the Head of the Wildlife Protection Section Hadef Saif al-Mansoori, the Head of the Natural Resources Section, Ghanem Abdul Rah-man al-Ghanim, and the Head of the Wildlife Section Ali Saleh al-Marri, spoke about the tasks and competencies of their sections and what they accomplished dur-ing the mentioned period as well as the main operational perform-ance indicators related to wildlife and biodiversity services.

“The department is implementing these agreements through strategic plans, regulations and laws for the purpose of sustainable management” — Talib bin Khalid al-Shahwani

HE the Minister of State for Foreign Aff airs Sultan bin Saad al-Muraikhi met yesterday with Algerian ambassador to Qatar Dr Mustafa Boutoura. They reviewed bilateral relations. (QNA)

Al-Muraikhi meets Algerian envoyDefence minister, FM hold video call with Turkish counterparts

HE the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of State for Defence Aff airs

Dr Khalid bin Mohamed al-At-tiyah, and HE the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Aff airs Sheikh Mohamed bin Ab-dulrahman al-Thani held sepa-rately yesterday video call with Turkish Defence Minister Hulusi Akar, and Minister of Foreign Aff airs Mevlut Cavusoglu.

During the call, bilateral rela-tions were reviewed as well as the latest security and political developments in Afghanistan. (QNA)

Maritime Transport Aff airs marks record number of services during 2nd quarterBy Shafeeq AlingalStaff Reporter

The Maritime Transport Aff airs recorded a total of 4,382 transactions during

the second quarter of 2021 with an increase by 845 transactions of the fi rst quarter.

The Ministry of Transport and Communications (MoTC) tweeted that these covered Maritime Vessel’s main services, Maritime Licenses’ services, Sailor Aff airs’ main services and Maritime System services. Dur-ing the fi rst quarter of 2021, a total of 3,537 transactions were carried out by the department.

A total of 3,848 services were rendered in Maritime Vessel’s main services section while Maritime Licenses’ services, Sailor Aff airs’ main services and Maritime System services marked 22,217 and 295 services, respectively. During the fi rst quarter, the fi gures stood at 3,111, 24,172 and 228, respectively.

Maritime Vessel’s main serv-ices include registration, re-newal, ownership transfer, duplicate of loss and deletion while Maritime Licenses’ serv-

ices provide renewal and data modifying services to foreign

vessels engaged in operations in Qatari waters. Sailor Aff airs’

main services give issuance and accreditation of certifi cates of competency for marine offi c-ers, naval architects and safe manning while Maritime Sys-tem services feature ownership transfer and certifi cate of sea-worthiness. These services are provided to big vessels.

MoTC is providing vari-ous services to small and large vessels in order to develop the maritime transport sector. They are also designed to facilitate operations and procedures and keep pace with technological advancements through the au-tomation of all ships services.

The various services are pro-vided through integration with the ministry’s national docu-mentation and archiving system to ensure business procedures are facilitated and completed through the mobile app applica-tion or portal.

The electronic services are part of MoTC’s eff orts to im-plement the standards of the government system. E-Qatar, achieving the objectives of the Qatar Digital Government 2020 strategy to upgrade the level of government services provided to individuals and companies.

Global Aff air Canada hosts reception in honour of outgoing Qatar’s envoy

Global Aff air Canada held a reception in honour for Qatari ambassador

to Canada Saud bin Abdullah al-Mahmoud at the end of his tenure.

In a speech during the cer-emony, Canadian Assistant Deputy Minister for Europe, Arctic, Middle East and Magh-reb Sandra McCardell praised the distinguished relations be-tween Qatar and Canada.

She commended the role of ambassador al-Mahmoud during his term to consolidate these relations and enhance multi-fi eld co-operation be-tween the two countries.

Ambassador al-Mahmoud expressed his satisfaction with the developments in bilateral

relations and the contacts that were achieved between the leaderships of the two coun-tries during his time in Ot-tawa, most notably the recent signing of an arrangement for defence co-operation between Qatar and Canada and the con-vening of the fi rst round of bi-lateral talks.

In addition, he pointed out the expansion of the air trans-port agreement and the surge in the rate of trade exchange after Qatar became Canada’s third trading partner in the Gulf region and 11th in the Middle East and Maghreb re-gion.

He affi rmed Qatar’s commit-ment to strengthening bilateral relations, which was clearly

demonstrated by the support provided to the return of tens of thousands of Canadians from around the world during the Covid-19 pandemic as well as Qatar’s current eff orts to evacuate civilians in Afghani-stan and reach an intra-Afghan peace agreement.

The reception was attended by a number of ambassadors accredited to Canada, includ-ing the Dean of Arab Ambassa-dors and Ambassadors of Iraq, Sudan, Tunisia, Turkey and Russia as well as the President of the Canada Arab Business Council and Permanent Repre-sentative of Qatar to the Inter-national Civil Aviation Organi-sation (ICAO) Essa Abdullah al-Malki.

The Center of Empowerment and Elderly Care (Ehsan), aff iliated to the Qatar Social Work Foundation, celebrates the World Alzheimer’s Day, which falls on September 21 of each year, by organising several events and awareness workshops in co-operation with diff erent parties.This time around, the centre is organising an awareness campaign on social networking sites under the slogan “Know about Alzheimer’s disease” with the aim of translating the vision and mission of the centre through which it seeks to contribute to human and social development in the country, and enhance recognition of the role of the elderly and support their active contributions in the society. The idea is to raise awareness of the

seriousness of this disease as well as highlight the importance of early detection of it in the elderly and its role in delaying the stages of disease development besides identifying the most appropriate mechanisms to deal with the disease in the elderly in social terms.

The centre will also organise, during the coming period, awareness workshops in co-operation with Hamad Medical Corporation, including a special workshop for its employees who deal directly with the elderly to help them find ways to detect Alzheimer’s disease in the elderly. (QNA)

Ehsan Center celebrates World Alzheimer’s Day

‘Transforming food systems’ marks Youth Day celebrationQNADoha

Qatar National Commission for Education, Culture and Sci-ence celebrated the International

Youth Day for 2021, which came this year under the slogan “Transforming Food Systems: Youth Innovation for Human and Planetary Health”, through video conference technology, in co-operation with the Offi ce of the United Nations Educational, Scientifi c and Cultural Or-ganisation (Unesco) in Doha, and with the participation of the Arab Education-al, Cultural and Scientifi c Organisation (Alecso), the Ministry of Municipality and Environment, and the Ministry of

Culture and Sports, and one of the win-ners of the Scientifi c Excellence Award.

In her speech on the occasion, the Secretary-General of Qatar National Commission for Education, Culture and Science Dr Hamada Hasan al-Sulaiti, stated that the goals behind this celebra-tion are to discuss a number of important issues embodied in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and the role of youth in confronting and dealing with these issues at the individual and col-lective levels in the interest of restoring the health of the planet and humans, and integrating biodiversity in transforming food systems.

Al-Sulaiti highlighted the role of youth in developing and building societies, and at the same time called on all community

institutions to study how to transform the energies and creativity of youth into positive production elements that serve and develop society culturally, socially, economically and environmentally.

For her part, Guimar Bayo, on behalf of the Director of the Unesco Regional Offi ce in Doha, Dr Anna Pollini, said that the celebration of the International Youth Day aims to draw the attention of the international community towards the

issues of this group of society, noting that the 2021 International Youth Day cel-ebration is based on innovative solutions by young people to meet the challenges facing our food systems, as transform-ing food systems for human and planet health requires addressing threats to our environment, such as biodiversity loss and environmental protection, which is at the core of Unesco’s mission.

The conference included presenta-tions on climate change and its adverse eff ects, adaptation and mitigation, na-tional policies, global eff orts — national eff orts, Qatari eff orts in education and awareness about climate change and food security, and some important initiatives to adapt to climate change and mitigate its adverse eff ects.

The goals behind this celebration are to discuss a number of important issues embodied in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and the role of youth in confronting and dealing with these issues

Qatar Railways Company (Qatar Rail) has announced that the Al Wakra Park & Ride facility, which off ers 300 parking spots, will be relocated to the East side of Doha Metro’s Al Wakra station.

Relocation announcement

QATAR3Gulf Times

Monday, August 30, 2021

Qatar Green Build-ing Council (QGBC) is continuing its national

campaign to build sustainable, healthy, and resilient communi-ties with the sixth edition of Qa-tar Sustainability Week (QSW).

The event will run from Oc-tober 23-30, and both corporate organisations and individuals are invited to participate.

The QSW is a unique platform for promoting the nation’s sus-tainability vision and engaging relevant stakeholders under an overarching umbrella to achieve Qatar’s sustainable develop-ment goals.

The week plays a major role in raising awareness about the importance of preserving the environment and implement-ing business practices that can be maintained in the long term.

Since its inception in 2016, the QSW has witnessed the par-ticipation of more than 160,000 people in 920 activities through the support of 600 partners, and reached more than 3mn users on traditional and social media.

To build on this collaborative success, the QGBC (a member of Qatar Foundation) is en-

couraging all public and private sector organisations, including schools, universities, and com-munity groups to take part and register their sustainability-oriented activities, initiatives, and events for the 2021 edition.

Similar to last year, there is an opportunity for corporates and individuals to make a spe-cial pledge to support their own community in its drive to pro-mote sustainable living.

The pledge is a commitment to protect the environment and combat the real and present danger of climate change by taking bold actions, such as banning single-use plastics, minimising waste by consum-ing responsibly, reusing and

recycling products, promot-ing healthy spaces, conserving water and energy, choosing a greener method to travel, and living a healthy lifestyle.

The pledge also encourages organisations to join the UN Global Compact, certify their assets, issue sustainability re-ports, and promote carbon-neutral operations.

It also challenges individuals to attempt to reduce their own carbon footprint.

QGBC director Meshal al-Shamari said: “We are very much looking forward to hold-ing the QSW once again.”

“The event is going from strength to strength, and with climate change, very much in

the news headlines across the globe it’s the perfect opportuni-ty for corporates and individuals to come together to be a part of the movement here in Qatar,” he said. “We encourage local or-ganisations to participate in any environmental and sustainable activities and events that they have planned for this week.”

“We all know about the im-portance of sustainability, and in a lot of ways, it dovetails beautifully with the slogan for this year’s Qatar National Day – Ancestral Meadows: A Matter of Trust,” al-Shamari added. “The message that the slogan is con-veying is a call to all of us to con-sider our environment as a core issue because environmental development is one of the four pillars of the Qatar National Vi-sion 2030.”

Environmental issues will remain fi rmly in focus just two days after the QSW concludes, when the Scottish city of Glas-gow plays host to the 2021 UN Climate Change Conference – COP26 – from November 1-12.

For information on the QSW 2021 and registration of activi-ties and pledges, visit www.qa-tarsustainabilityweek.com

Qatar Sustainability Week set to return in October

Qatar Red Crescent So-ciety (QRCS) continues to provide emergency

relief operations in Afghani-stan to help its citizens who have been suff ering from se-vere living conditions due to poverty, confl ict, and natural disasters.

The QRCS activated its Dis-aster Information Manage-ment Centre (DIMC) in Doha on August 22 when the latest crisis erupted, providing an update about the situation in Afghanistan and co-ordinating with the Afghan Red Crescent Society (ARCS) on the fi eld.

The QRCS allocated QR1mn from its contingency fund for an urgent two-month inter-vention that involves the pro-vision of food parcels and basic health services.

At the same time, a fundrais-ing campaign was launched to meet the most pressing needs, mainly healthcare, food, and makeshift shelter, based on the status updates reported by in-ternational organisations.

All benevolent companies, institutions, and individuals in Qatar are invited to lend a hand to their Afghan sisters and brothers, by donating to this campaign through the website (www.qrcs.qa), the mobile app (Google Play or App Store), the call centre (44027777), the donor service (66666364), or the home donation collection service (33998898).

To donate via SMS, send the

code “” (heart symbol) as follows: 92092 (QR500 dona-tion for shelter), 92552 (QR250 donation for food), or 92216 (QR100 donation for health).

All over the country, the situation remains volatile amid challenges due to a food crisis, unstable weather conditions, and ongoing unrest.

Until the fi rst week of Au-gust, there have been 550,780 displaced persons.

Around 14.5mn would need emergency health services, and almost 18.4mn need hu-manitarian aid in 2021 alone, according to UN reports.

There are concerns of a wid-er spread of the coronavirus (Covid-19), as a result of the failing health sector and short-age in health supplies nation-wide.

In August alone, more than 9,000 infections were report-ed, in addition to 697 deaths.

The QRCS has been work-ing in Afghanistan since April 2014, under a framework agreement with the ARCS, with a view to reaching out to the provinces worst aff ected by emergencies.

Over the past seven years, the QRCS provided QR36,231,736 worth of humanitarian aid for the vulnerable communities in Afghanistan, addressing the fi elds of emergency relief, shelter, water and sanitation, healthcare, livelihoods, food security, and winterisation as-sistance.

QRCS moves on

emergency relief

for Afghanistan

The QRCS has activated its Disaster Information Management Centre, and is reaching out to the provinces in Afghanistan that are worst aff ected by emergencies.

Generation Amazing and Maktaba have teamed up to donate books to Qatar

Foundation International (QFI), a member of Qatar Foundation.

The books, which feature in-spiring sports-related stories, will be distributed across QFI’s network of schools, which pri-oritise the teaching of Arabic.

The donation was made to mark the Qatar-USA Year of Cul-ture and follows the Qatar na-tional team’s participation in the 2021 CONCACAF Gold Cup.

The bilingual books were de-veloped for schoolchildren by Generation Amazing and Makta-ba to encourage engagement in sport and promote positive values around social inclusion, healthy living and sustainability.

The fi rst batch of books were donated to the Arabic Immersion Magnet School (AIMS) in Hou-ston, Texas – a long-standing partner of the QFI – during the CONCACAF Gold Cup.

Generation Amazing pro-grammes director Nasser al-

Khori said: “This initiative means the legacy of the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 will live on through future generations, and we are proud to be able to make a meaningful impact in the United States, on the occasion of the

Qatar-USA Year of Culture.”“Our bilingual books, pro-

duced in collaboration with Maktaba, are written by six tal-ented authors, both nationals and current or former residents of Qatar,” he said. “We believe

they will help children get active and learn about all the wonder-ful lessons we can gain through sport.”

Maktaba founder Sarah Champa said: “Collaborating with Generation Amazing on this

series of children’s books that use football as an inspiration to teach powerful lessons about healthy living, developing more sustain-able behaviours and social inclu-sion, has been inspirational.”

“We are so thrilled to see these

books getting into the hands of emerging Arabic speakers in Houston through Qatar Founda-tion International’s programme to support Arabic language learning in the United States,” she said.

The QFI programmes direc-tor, Julia Sylla, said: “The QFI is grateful to Generation Amazing for the donation of these high-quality bilingual Arabic-English books.”

“We are excited to share them with Arabic educators and stu-dents in the US,” she added. “We need more resources like these to help further the mission of schools like AIMS, who work to prepare the next generation of global leaders with bilingual backgrounds.”

A number of AIMS students received their books during a special event organised by Gen-eration Amazing in Houston dur-ing the CONCACAF Gold Cup.

Each student received an Ara-bic-English football vocabulary poster created by Generation Amazing and the QFI.

The books donated were writ-ten by Qatar-based authors Mar-yam Ahmed Alsubaiey, Shaima al-Kuwari, Fatima Bakro, Mary Francis, Basma Khatib, and Jo-hanna Handley.

Generation Amazing and Maktaba donate bilingual books to QFI

The donated books, which feature inspiring sports-related stories, were written by Doha-based authors and would be distributed across the QFI’s network of schools, which prioritise the teaching of Arabic.

The Stroke Service at Ha-mad Medical Corporation (HMC) has recently suc-

cessfully achieved Joint Com-mission International (JCI) reac-creditation as the primary stroke centre.

This achievement across the whole spectrum of the service was recognised recently in April 2021 during the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic.

This reaccreditation is also important as it was the fi rst of its kind to be done virtually at the HMC.

The Stroke Service at the HMC

was fi rst accredited by the JCI in November 2014 as the fi rst Pri-mary Stroke Centre in the Middle East, and the service was reac-credited in 2018.

Dr Ahmed Own, acting direc-tor of HMC’s Neurosciences In-stitute, said he is proud of how teams across the entire Stroke Service have not only developed in recent times, but also how they responded to the Covid-19 pandemic.

“The service now encom-passes patient care right from the Ambulance Service through Emergency Department to the

inpatient Stroke Unit, Medical Units, Intensive Care Units, and an outpatient Stroke Clinic at Hamad General Hospital (HGH),” he said. “The Neuroradiology, Interventional Radiology, Ther-apy Services, Dietary Services, and Acute Rehabilitation Servic-es are also an integral part of the stroke team.”

“Within the last year, more than 2,500 patients have been admitted, of which more than 1,500 of these were a confi rmed stroke,” he added.

HGH medical director Dr Yousef al-Maslamani com-

mented: “This is an exceptional achievement by the stroke team at a time of unprecedented chal-lenge.”

“It is testimony to their out-standing multi-disciplinary team working and dedication to stroke patients, and we are proud to host such an excellent service,” he said.

Due to the imposed pandemic restrictions, the JCI process had to be virtual for the fi rst time in the history of the HMC.

The teams, led by HMC Stroke Service head Dr Naveed Akhtar, and including staff from Neuro-

science, Nursing, RACS (Regu-latory, Accreditation and Com-pliance Services), Quality and Patient Safety, and Health In-formation and Communication Technology, worked together to achieve completion of the two-day accreditation process.

The JCI team interviewed se-lect members of the staff during the process in diff erent areas, and was impressed by the profes-sional attitude and the level of care provided at the HGH.

The JCI consultant also per-formed thorough assessments in every category.

HMC’s Stroke Service achieves prestigious reaccreditation

Doha International Family Institute (Difi ), a member of Qatar Foundation (QF),

participated in an international teleconference on How Strong Families Around the World En-dure the Global Pandemic.

The Difi was represented by family policy offi cer Heba al-Farra and researcher Aisha Sultan at the event that saw researchers from Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, North America, Oce-ania, and the Middle East taking part to discuss the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic and how it is impacting families in their countries.

Topics discussed included how families are using their inherent strengths to endure the eff ects of the pandemic, and how to further reinforce the family unit through the global crisis.

The event, held over three days, saw presentations from 12 groups of speakers followed by Q&A sessions attended by around 2,000 participants from across the globe.

During the session al-Farra and Sultan presented the fi nd-ings of two Difi studies on the family during Covid-19.

Sultan’s presentation, titled The Strengths and Challenges of Families during Covid-19 in Qatar, explored the impact of

Covid-19 on family cohesion in Qatar.

The study aims to identify the eff ects of pandemic-associated challenges on families and gain a better understanding of the at-titudes, coping strategies, and resources used by family mem-bers, as well as recommended suitable intervention policies, programmes, and services to aid families in similar crises.

The study showed that more than 60% of participants feel the pandemic positively impacted their family cohesion, strength-ened family bonds, and brought them closer to immediate family members.

It also identifi ed that love, support, communication, and respect between family members were magnifi ed, and that through discussions and problem solving,

family members’ resilience or ability to cope improved.

The Role of the Family on Ado-lescent Well-being during Cov-id-19, presented by al-Farra, fo-cused on family factors that have infl uenced adolescent health – before and during Covid-19.

The project suggests that se-cure attachments between par-ents and children maximises protective factors and lowers risk elements.

The primary protective factors included strict and continuous rule setting, conscious surveil-lance, open and healthy commu-nication, emotional support, and role model behaviour, whereas learned negative social behav-iour, dysfunctional parenting methods, limited surveillance, frequent fi ghts, and lack of fam-ily cohesion were risk issues.

Difi discusses factors infl uencing family well-being during Covid-19

Al-Fara speaking at the event.

Orthopaedic and sports medicine hospital Aspetar is organising a workshop called Emotional Intelligence for Healthcare Practitioners on September 4 and 11.The resource persons will be Aspetar experts from diff erent backgrounds and fields.The workshop is designed to support healthcare professionals in developing a healthy and compassionate work environment, thereby further improving patient experience.The interactive event features Q&A sessions, problem-solving activities, and analysis of scenarios requiring real-life decision-making.The aim of the workshop is to enhance and improve healthcare professionals’ self-awareness and self-regulation in high stress environments.Khalid Ali al-Mawlawi (pictured), chief administrative off icer in Aspetar and chair of Scientific Committee, said: “Healthcare professionals aim to increase patient happiness, a critical part of that is dealing with patients with empathy, and handling issues with a good balance of fairness, compassion, and emotional awareness.“Research shows that EQ education is needed in the medical sector as it helps enhance interpersonal and social communication skills and achieves a range of benefits including increased job satisfaction, improved performance, and better patient-doctor relationships,” he said. “This is what we are looking to achieve at Aspetar.”

Aspetar plans workshop to enhance EQ in healthcare practitioners

4 Gulf TimesMonday, August 30, 2021

QATAR

Hospitality sector continues to look upBy Joey AguilarStaff Reporter

Qatar’s hospitality sector, including the food and beverage (F&B) indus-try, will continue to be on an upward

trend up to the 2022 FIFA World Cup as more people get vaccinated and the current situa-tion continues to improve further, a hotelier has said.

“The drop in room rates since their last peak in 2019 for 4- and 5-star hotels/resort properties has attracted high volumes of lo-cal guests,” Movenpick Hotel Doha’s Public Relations and Communications assistant manager Ritika Ramani told Gulf Times.

“The aspect of being able to an aff ordable local vacation in a safe and hygienic environ-ment has been an added attraction,” she said.

It is learnt that the summer season this year is witnessing a demand surge for local hotel bookings particularly during the week-end, mostly families who fi nd staycations practical than travelling abroad.

Qatar remains to be one of the safest countries in the world for visitors and resi-dents, Ramani said while citing that it re-

tained its position as number one globally in terms of safety on the Numbeo Global Index.

Qatar government’s eff orts to prevent the spread of Covid-19, and in vaccinating the population also play a signifi cant role in boosting customer confi dence to dine at res-taurants and other food outlets.

Ramani noted that several hotel restau-rants in Doha, which off er seafood buff ets,

have enticed residents to dine and spend their evenings or weekends at hotels.

“A lot of hotels on the stretch, includ-ing ourselves do a seafood night and I guess people like it because the variety that you get with something like that is extensive at a very valuable price.

Many hotels in Qatar, including Moven-pick Hotel Doha – locally owned and oper-

Ritika Ramani Movenpick Hotel Doha

ated by Katara Hospitality – have either ren-ovated or currently making some structural changes as they prepare for the 2022 FIFA World Cup.

“Closer to this prestigious tournament, there will be other changes. We want to make sure we are supporting team Qatar and we just want to showcase the Qatari fl ag across the hotel.

“We want to make sure we are up to date when it comes to next year specifi cally for the World Cup,” said Ramani, adding that Mov-enpick now has 148 rooms. It introduced a spa last year and has recently opened a men’s barbershop.

Total Covid recoveries at 229,046QNADoha

The Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) reported yesterday 119 new confi rmed cases of Covid-19

among the community and 60 among travellers.

The MoPH recorded 306 recoveries from the virus during the past 24 hours, bringing the total number of cases re-covered in Qatar to 229,046.

National Covid-19 Vaccination Pro-gramme Data:4,392,745 Covid-19 vaccine doses

have been administered since the start of the programme.23,161 Covid-19 vaccine doses have

been administered in the past 24 hours.93.9% of the eligible population (12

years and over) have now received at least one dose of the vaccine.81.5% of the total population have

now received at least one dose of the vaccine.

With Covid-19 still a health threat in Qatar, it is important for everyone to play their role in controlling the virus by following precautionary measures:Adherence to physical distancing.Avoiding close contact with oth-

ers, crowded places and confi ned closed spaces where other people congregate.Wearing a face mask.Washing hands regularly.People should take the Covid-19

vaccine at the earliest opportunity when their turn comes.

Anyone suff ering from Covid-19 symptoms should contact 16000 hel-pline immediately.

This is important as the earlier the disease is detected the easier it will be to receive the right treatment and recover from it.

MoPH to launch oral and dental health campaign

The Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) will launch the national

oral and dental health cam-paign in co-operation with the Ministry of Education and Higher Education, the Primary Health Care Cor-poration (PHCC) and the Police Hospital at the Min-istry of Interior, starting September 1.

The one-month cam-paign is part of the out-comes of the National Oral and Dental Health Com-mittee aims at increasing awareness on the impor-tance of oral and dental health and promoting com-munication between den-tal services and prevention sections in various health institutions and the various sectors in the society.

The campaign targets preparatory and second-ary students in nearly 18 public and private schools by giving virtual awareness lectures on the importance of oral and dental health, during the second week of the campaign launch. All primary schools will also

participate in the campaign by publishing educational materials on their websites in the third week of the campaign.

The fourth and fi nal week of the campaign will be de-voted to educating smokers and diabetics through clin-ics specialised in diabetes patients and combating smoking. The campaign also targets all segments of the society such as children, adolescents and adults. It also encourages a healthy diet and reducing sugar in food and beverages.

As part of the campaign, educational awareness publications about oral and dental health will be pub-lished on social media and on display screens at public entrances to government and private hospitals and waiting areas. Free medical consultations will be pro-vided by dentists who will answer all questions that will be asked by the pub-lic via the Twitter account of the Ministry of Public Health, throughout Sep-tember. (QNA)

The Public Works Authority (Ashghal) has announced a three night closure from today on the tunnel at Al Gassar Interchange on Lusail Expressway, from 1am-5pm. Traff ic movement from 5/6 Interchange to Al Khafji Street will be closed during the four-hour window, until Wednesday 5am. The closure in co-ordination with the General Directorate of Traff ic is to enable some maintenance works. Road users coming from 5/6 Interchange towards Al Khafji Street via Al Qassar Interchange tunnel can take the right turn, then take a U-turn and go straight on the flyover to reach their destinations. Ashghal will install road signs advising motorists of the temporary closure and requested all to follow them and abide by the speed limit to ensure safety.

Tunnel closure

QATAR/REGION/ARAB WORLD5Gulf Times

Monday, August 30, 2021

HBKU to highlight climate change governance innovation in Mena

QU-CPH pharmacy students win awards

An upcoming online col-loquium organised by the College of Law at Hamad

Bin Khalifa University (HBKU) will gather the authors of the new book Climate Change Law and Policy in the Middle East and North Africa Region to dis-cuss its key topics.

Taking place on September1, the discussion will tie in with the book’s comparative approach in covering key legal and insti-tutional innovation in climate change governance. The collo-quium will refl ect on how Mena countries can advance existing national strategies around cli-mate change, the green econ-omy, and low carbon futures through clear and comprehen-sive legislation.

The event will be chaired by the book’s editor, Dr Damilola S Olawuyi, associate professor, College of Law, HBKU, and chair of the Association for Environ-mental Law Lecturers in Mid-dle East Universities. Four con-tributing authors will draw on their in-depth research: Eliza-

beth Maruma Mrema, executive secretary of the UN Secretariat of the Convention on Biologi-cal Diversity; Dr Riyad Fahkri, professor of law and director, Research Laboratory on Law at Université Hassan 1er de Set-tat, Morocco; Dr Cameron Kelly, general counsel, Australian Re-newable Energy Agency; and HBKU College of Law’s Hilary Bell, assistant professor.

The panel will also refl ect on the guiding principles of a sus-

tainable, integrated and rights-based approach to the design, application, and enforcement of climate change law and policy in the Mena region. Speakers will consider how legal innovation relating to blockchain technol-ogy, artifi cial intelligence, dis-ruptive legal education, climate-smart infrastructure, climate disaster response, and Islamic climate fi nancing among others are shaping climate regulation and governance across the Mena region.

Susan L Karamanian, dean of HBKU’s College of Law, said: “Recent scientific findings re-mind us how close mankind is to a climate tipping point. The situation calls for focused na-tional strategies. Through this College of Law colloquium, leading scholars will expand on the in-depth research in the book to encourage a dialogue on how to achieve greater co-herence in implementing ef-fective and equitable climate change response projects in the region.”

Qatar University College of Pharmacy (QU-CPH) students have won in-

ternational awards at two major events, it was announced yester-day.

The fi rst event was the In-ternational Pharmaceutical Students’ Federation-Eastern Mediterranean Regional Offi ce Eastern Mediterranean Pharma-ceutical Symposium 2021 held online by Alexandria Scientifi c Pharmaceutical Student’s As-sociation, during July. A total of 14 countries and 20 member or-ganisations participated.

Fourth year pharmacy stu-dents from QU, Taimaa Hejazi

and Dana Mustafa were part of the team that was awarded fi rst place in the patient counselling event. A total of seven teams participated in this event, where each team was given a diff erent case, and had an opportunity to show their patient-counselling skills.

The second event was the 66th IPSF World Congress 2021, held in Seoul, South Korea, and was hosted by Korean National Association for Pharmaceuti-cal students, from July 27 to August 5. The Congress hosted more than 600 pharmacy stu-dents and recent graduates from 90 countries worldwide. There

were several educational events held under diff erent portfolios. These included Patient Coun-selling Event (junior and sen-ior) Category and Clinical Skills Event. Fourth professional year pharmacy student Fatima Nazar won fi rst place in the junior cat-egory.

CPH dean Dr Mohamed Diab said: “We are extremely proud of our students and of their diligent work and commitment. This certainly manifests the quality of teaching and research that the College adopts with its students as well the excellence we have achieved together as working in one harmonious entity.”

Dr Damilola Olawuyi

Taimaa HejaziDana MustafaFatima Nazar

30 loyalists killed in strikes on Yemen’s biggest air base

AFPDubai

Strikes on Yemen’s largest air base yesterday killed at least 30 pro-govern-

ment troops and wounded scores more, medical and loyal-ist sources said, blaming Iran-backed Houthi rebels for the attack.

The strikes were carried out on Al-Anad airbase, some 60km (40 miles) north of Yemen’s sec-ond city Aden in the south of the confl ict-riven country.

The air base served as the headquarters for US troops overseeing a long-running drone war against Al Qaeda until they pulled out in March 2015, shortly before the Houthis overran the area.

“More than 30 have been killed and at least 56 were in-jured” at the military facility in the government-held southern province of Lahij, armed forces spokesman Mohamed al-Naqib said.

He said the Shia Houthi rebels fi red missiles and carried out a drone attack at the base.

Yemeni President Abedrab-bo Mansour Hadi expressed condolences for the dead and vowed that the “Houthis will pay heavily for all the crimes they have committed against the people of Yemen”, the state news agency Saba reported.

There was no immediate comment from the rebel side.

Video footage from the scene showed dozens of people gath-ered in front of Lahij hospital, where one ambulance after an-other was pulling up to drop off

casualties.An offi cial from the hospital

said it was all hands on deck.“We have called on the entire

staff , surgeons and nurses, to come in,” Mohsen Murshid told AFP.

“We also know that there are still bodies under the rubble.”

Doctors Without Borders (MSF) tweeted that one of its hospitals in Aden received 11 wounded after the attack.

“They were provided with the necessary medical and sur-gical assistance and they were discharged from the hospital,” MSF said.

Yemen’s internationally rec-ognised government and the Houthis have been locked in war since 2014, when the insur-gents seized the capital Sanaa.

In 2019, the Houthis said they launched a drone strike on Al-Anad during a military parade, with medics and gov-ernment sources saying that at least six loyalists were killed — including a high-ranking intel-ligence offi cial.

Eleven people were wounded in that attack, including Yem-en’s deputy chief of staff Major General Saleh al-Zandani, who later died of his injuries.

Al-Anad was recaptured by government forces in August 2015 as they recovered terri-tory from the rebels across the south.

Yesterday’s incident is one of the deadliest since Decem-ber, when blasts targeting cabinet members rocked Aden airport.

At the time, at least 26 peo-ple, including three members of the International Committee of the Red Cross and a journalist, were killed and scores wounded in the explosions as ministers disembarked from an aircraft in the southern city.

People gather as ambulances transport casualties of strikes on Al-Anad air base to the Ibn Khaldun hospital in the government-held southern province of Lahij yesterday.

Kuwait to transform ‘tyre graveyard’ into new cityAFPKuwait City

Kuwait yesterday an-nounced plans to trans-form what was once a

mammoth “tyre graveyard” to a new residential city.

The 2sq km (0.7sq mile) dump in the north of the oil-rich Gulf country was where tyres went to die - a total of more than 40mn at the end.

Seventeen years of tyre dumping and three massive

fi res between 2012 and 2020 sparked environmental con-cerns, prompting the authori-ties to shut it down for good.

“We have moved from a dif-fi cult stage that was charac-terised by great environmental risk,” Oil Minister Mohamed al-Fares said at the now empty landfi ll some 5km (three miles) from Al-Jahra province.

“Today the area is clean and all tyres have been removed to begin the launch of the project of Saad Al-Abdullah city.”

In past months, trucks loaded

with tyres had made more than 44,000 trips from the landfi ll to Al-Salmi region, near Kuwait’s industrial area, where Fares said they will be temporarily stored.

He said the tyres will be cut or repurposed for local use or for export, adding that stor-age would meet “international standards... in case of fi re”.

According to Sheikh Abdul-lah al-Sabah, director general of the Environment Public Au-thority, Kuwait plans to recycle all the tyres and avoid the need for another landfi ll.

“There is already a factory today that repurposes them, and we hope to fi nd other man-ufacturer to contribute to help end the tyres issue,” he told AFP.

Alaa Hassan, head of EPSCO Global General Contracting, told AFP her fi rm extracts raw materials from tyres, includ-ing elements used to pave roads and sidewalks.

She said EPSCO has the ca-pacity to cut or repurpose about 2mn tyres a year, in co-opera-tion with other factories.

Director general and chairman of the board of Kuwait’s environment public authority (EPA) Sheikh Abdullah al-Ahmad al-Sabah speaks during a ceremony in Kuwait City yesterday, announcing the total transfer of hundreds of tonnes of discarded tyres from the Rahiya area, one of the world’s biggest tyre dumps, 35km west of the capital, to the Salmi border area, ahead of recycling.

Israeli planes attack targets in GazaQNAGaza

Israeli occupation fi ghter jets attacked two locations in Gaza late last night, resulting

in physical damages but no hu-man casualties.

The occupation fi ghter jets at-tacked with four missiles a loca-tion at Shuhada Street south of Gaza City, causing fi re to erupt at the site.

No injuries were reported, Pal-estine’s News Agency (WAFA) said.

Israeli occupation warplanes also struck a farming land near

the town of Beit Hanoun, in the north of the Gaza Strip, causing physical damages but no inju-ries.

Witnesses said they saw fl ames of fi re and black smoke com-ing out from the targeted posts, adding that they heard the buzz of the drones and the fi ghter jets hovering over the Gaza Strip, which was followed by several explosions.

The attacks came after an Is-raeli occupation crackdown on hundreds of Palestinians who demonstrated in Gaza Strip.

At least fi ve Palestinians were injured during the protest.

Meanwhile, a Palestinian

young man sustained injuries last night as clashes broke out with the Israeli occupation forces during a military raid of Husan village, near the city of Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank, according to Palestinian security sources.

The Israeli occupation raided Lemtaina neighbourhood, on the outskirts of the village, in the late night hours, provoking clashes with the local residents.

The occupation soldiers fi red live shots and tear gas at the pro-testers, injuring a Palestinian young man.

He was rushed to a nearby hospital for treatment.

A Palestinian woman looks out of her house damaged in a nearby Israel bombing in Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip yesterday.

WORLDGulf Times Monday, August 30, 20216

Rebel forces from Ethiopia’s war-torn region of Tigray have accused the African

Union (AU) of bias, days after the bloc appointed former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo as a mediator in the confl ict.

The spokesman for the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), Getachew Reda, accused the AU of “partiality” towards the Ethiopian government and said it would be “naive to expect this mission to work”.

Northern Ethiopia has been wracked by violence since No-

vember, when Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed sent troops into Tigray to topple the TPLF, the regional ruling party, saying the move came in response to attacks on army camps.

The 2019 Nobel Peace Prize winner promised a swift victory, but the war has instead dragged on for months, triggering a hu-manitarian crisis in Tigray, while the rebels have pushed into the neighbouring Afar and Amhara regions.

Abiy rejected early appeals from high-level envoys from the AU for talks with Tigrayan lead-ers, sticking to his line that the confl ict is a limited “law and or-der” operation.

On Thursday, the bloc an-nounced Obasanjo’s appoint-ment as a high representative for the Horn of Africa, saying that it was part of a “drive to promote peace, security, stability & politi-cal dialogue”.

However, yesterday TPLF spokesman Getachew dismissed the initiative, saying: “We are hard-pressed to know ... how people would reasonably expect a constructive role from an insti-tution that has given partiality a very bad name.”

“Solving a crisis at the very least requires acknowledging the existence, let alone the magni-tude of the problem,” he wrote on Twitter.

The war has proved to be a sen-sitive subject for the AU, which is headquartered in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa.

Although Washington has been openly critical of Abiy’s handling of the war, African members of the UN Security Council have backed Ethiopia in opposing for-mal discussion of the situation in Tigray at the world body.

According to the members, whose stance is backed by Rus-sia and China, the confl ict is Ethiopia’s internal aff air and any international eff orts should go through African leaders or via the AU.

As the confl ict has deepened, the humanitarian toll has spiked,

with aid workers struggling to reach cut-off populations and 400,000 people facing famine-like conditions in Tigray, accord-ing to the UN.

Obasanjo previously headed the AU’s election observer mis-sion during Ethiopia’s polls last June, where Abiy won a landslide victory.

However, one-fi fth of the country’s constituencies, in-cluding in Tigray, were unable to vote due to ethnic violence and logistical problems.

There was no immediate re-sponse from the AU to the TPLF’s allegations, and calls to the bloc’s representatives were not an-swered.

Ethiopian rebel forces accuse AU of bias amid mediation bidAFPAddis Ababa

Miss Kenya pageant

Sharon Obara is crowned Miss Kenya 2021. The contest returned after last year’s edition was cancelled due to the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic. 16 participants competed to be crowned Miss Kenya and represent their country at the Miss World contest that will be held in Puerto Rico in December.

Coronavirus (Covid-19) vaccine maker BioN-Tech said on Friday that

it was looking into building malaria and tuberculosis vac-cine production sites in Rwan-da and Senegal, narrowing its search for African locations.

The future malaria and tu-berculosis vaccines would be based on the so-called mes-senger RNA technology, also used in its Covid-19 shot, the German drugmaker said.

BioNTech did not say when production was likely to start.

In July it said that it would seek to develop a vaccine for the mosquito-borne illness malaria, eyeing production in Africa.

In a meeting with Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame, Sen-egalese President Macky Sall and European Union Com-mission President Ursula von der Leyen on Berlin on Fri-day, BioNTech chief executive Ugur Sahin affi rmed the Ger-man biotech fi rm’s intention to manufacture mRNA vaccines on the African continent, Bi-oNTech said.

The sites would be near pro-spective vaccine hubs planned by the World Health Organi-sation (WHO), the company added.

The project to develop manufacturing expertise on the African continent marks a longer-term attempt to avoid a repeat of healthcare inequali-ties brought to the fore by the coronavirus pandemic.

The WHO has criticised a

Covid-19 vaccine supply gap between industrialised nations and low-income countries, particularly in Africa.

Attempts to set up African production of Covid-19 vac-cines have been limited so far.

Senegal’s Institut Pasteur of Dakar (IPD) this month reached a deal with US compa-ny MedInstill for the bottling of Covid-19 shots.

IPD, however, has yet to se-cure a partnership with a vac-cine patent holder.

Pfi zer and BioNTech last month struck a deal for South Africa’s Biovac Institute to process over 100mn doses a year of their vaccine for Africa.

Biovac will carry out fi nal production steps and bottling based on imported active sub-stance in a process known as fi ll and fi nish.

Johnson & Johnson (J&J) has enlisted South African drug-maker Aspen Pharmacare also for the fi ll and fi nish process based on imported vaccine substance.

Senegal’s Institut Pasteur is the only facility in Africa cur-rently producing a vaccine – a yellow fever shot – that is pre-qualifi ed by the WHO, which requires manufacturers to meet strict international standards.

There are currently fewer than 10 African manufacturers that produce vaccines against any disease, in Egypt, Moroc-co, Senegal, South Africa and Tunisia.

The EU has said it wants to back the development of vac-cine production hubs in at least three African countries, including Senegal and South Africa.

BioNTech looking at Rwanda, Senegal for vaccine productionReutersBerlin

At least 10,000 children in South Africa have dropped out of school since the coronavirus

(Covid-19) pandemic started, with students learning half or less than av-erage in 2020, the education ministry said yesterday.

Face-to-face lessons have only par-tially resumed since South Africa’s schools reopened in June last year, after more than two months of home-schooling.

Public schools have since been shut again over shorter periods – including a delayed start to the 2021 academic year – and most students still only

physically attend class on a rotational basis to avoid crowding.

Education Minister Angie Motshek-ga said yesterday that as a result, chil-dren in 2020 learnt between 50-75% less than the previous year’s average.

Coronavirus interruptions have also aff ected attendance, with 10,000 fewer children aged between seven and 14 enrolled in school in 2021, according to a preliminary analysis by the Depart-ment of Basic Education (DBE).

Enrolment was also 25,000 lower than expected for children aged be-tween four and six, although less con-cerning for secondary school students.

“The unprecedented closures of our schools, and the unplanned disrup-tions to teaching and learning, have resulted in the reversal of gains made in

the last 20 years,” Motshekga said at a press briefi ng.

Most learning losses were observed in poorer rural areas and townships, where Internet access is limited.

“If children are not in contact with teachers, especially children from disadvantaged communities, learn-ing does not happen as it should,” DBE researcher Martin Gustafsson told the briefi ng.

He added that primary school chil-dren were still only in class for an av-erage of three days a week and had al-ready missed half of planned learning this year.

South Africa is the continent’s worst virus-hit country, with over 2.7mn confi rmed coronavirus cases and more than 81,000 deaths.

Covid pandemic sets South Africa

schools back 20 years: ministerAFPJohannesburg

Somaliland has agreed “(in) principle” to take in refugees from Afghani-

stan, a foreign ministry offi cial said on Friday, as tens of thou-sands of people desperately fl ee the war-torn nation fol-lowing a Taliban takeover ear-lier this month.

On Friday, a spokesman for Somaliland’s foreign minis-try told AFP that Hargeisa had entered into discussions with US offi cials about temporarily hosting Afghan refugees.

“We (in) principle agree ... to host Afghan refugees for the transit period,” the offi cial said, adding that the agreement was still at a preliminary stage, with technicalities still to be worked out and no date set for their arrival.

The US government has also been in talks with Uganda about taking in refugees.

On Wednesday, a char-ter fl ight carrying 51 Afghans – men, women and children – landed in the East African country, with more evacuees expected to arrive in the com-ing days.

The evacuations were in response to a request from Washington to temporarily host “at-risk” Afghan nation-als who are in transit to the United States and other desti-nations worldwide, Uganda’s

foreign ministry said.Media reports say Kampala

has agreed to take about 2,000 refugees but this has not been confi rmed.

Earlier this week, the found-er of Afghanistan’s only board-ing school for girls said that nearly 250 schoolgirls, fac-ulty and staff would decamp to Rwanda to continue their education for the next several months.

Aid agencies have repeat-edly said that the international response to support refugees in East Africa has been under-funded, with the UN World Food Programme slashing its monthly assistance to refugees in Rwanda by more than half this year.

Somaliland declared inde-pendence from Somalia dur-ing the 1991 civil war and has thrived as a comparative bea-con of stability.

While some governments maintain informal ties with Hargeisa, Somaliland is not diplomatically recognised by any other nation.

Somalia fi ercely opposes So-maliland’s claims to independ-ence and considers the region part of its territory, though in reality Mogadishu exercises little authority over its aff airs.

Boasting a long coastline on the Gulf of Aden and a vast desert interior, Somaliland has a functioning government and institutions, its own currency, passport and armed forces.

Somaliland ready

to take in Afghan

refugees: offi cialAFPHargeisa, Somalia

DR Congo’s former health minister held over Covid-19 funds fraud

Former Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) health minister Eteni Longondo was detained on Friday over the alleged misappropriation of funds allocated to the fight against the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic, off icial sources said.Longondo “was placed under a provisional arrest warrant this evening” following lengthy questioning, a government source said.The former health minister, who was in off ice until April, was taken to the Makala prison in the capital Kinshasa.Longondo, who had run the health ministry since September 2019, stands accused of “embezzlement of public funds allocated to the response” against the Covid-19 pandemic, the Congolese Association for Access to Justice (ACAJ) said on Twitter.Longondo has denied any fraud, saying that the money in question, believed to be more than $7mn, had been “in the process of being verified” at the time of the enquiry.In November he returned the sum of $721,900 which he said had been an overpayment from the central bank.President Felix Tshisekedi, who took off ice in January 2019, has vowed to make the fight against corruption a hallmark of his tenure.Former presidential chief of staff Vital Kamerhe was in June sentenced to 13 years in prison for embezzling nearly $50mn.The DR Congo ranks 170th out of 180 countries in the 2020 Corruption Perceptions Index by the anti-graft NGO Transparency International. – AFP

Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo)’s famed Virunga National Park announced on Friday the birth of a mountain gorilla in this tourist region threatened by armed groups.“The birth of a new baby male occurred on the morning of August 22,” said park communication off icer Olivier Mukisya.The discovery was made by “a team of eco-guards” during a routine monitoring visit to the home of the gorillas in the Kibumba area of North Kivu in the east of the country, Mukisya explained.The national park said that the new baby belonged to the Baraka family of gorillas which was ‘currently composed of about 18 individuals”.“The Baraka family recorded its first birth of the year and this last one brings the number to 13 since January 2021,”

from all the gorilla families in the region, said Mukisya.Situated on DR Congo’s borders with Rwanda and Uganda, Virunga covers around 7,800sq km of the North Kivu province, of which Goma is the capital.Inaugurated in 1925 it is the oldest nature reserve in Africa and a sanctuary for the rare mountain gorillas, which are also present in neighbouring Rwanda and Uganda.The total population of mountain gorillas in the region covering the three countries is estimated at 1,063, according to the last full count in 2018.The gorillas Virunga retreat has also become a hideout for local and foreign armed groups that have operated in eastern DR Congo for around 25 years.The eco-guards regularly clash with rebels and militias in the area. – AFP

New birth of a mountain gorilla in DR Congo’s Virunga park

Chad rebel group FACT is ‘willing to join national dialogue’

A Chadian military-political rebel group behind this year’s insurgency said on Friday that it was prepared to take part in a national dialogue proposed by transitional president Mahamat Idriss Deby.Deby seized power in April after his father, the former president, was killed while visiting troops fighting the rebels, who had crossed the border from Libya to take a stand against the elder’s 30-year rule.The Libya-based rebel group that claimed responsibility for Deby’s death, known as the Front for Change and Concord in Chad (FACT), has now welcomed his son’s off er to hold talks with all

stakeholders, including opposition armed groups.“If there are peaceful initiatives to build a new democratic Chad without dictatorship and the absolute confiscation of power, of course we will join them,” said FACT spokesman Kingabe Ogouzeimi de Tapol.Deby’s Transitional Military Council (CMT) has previously refused to negotiate with rebel groups, in particular members of FACT, which in April swept south from bases in Libya and reached within 300km (186 miles) of the capital N’Djamena before being pushed back by the army. – Reuters

Suspected religious militants killed at least 19 people in a raid on a village in eastern Democratic

Republic of the Congo (DR Congo), lo-cal authorities said.

The attackers looted houses and started fi res in Kasanzi-Kithovo near Virunga National Park in North Kivu province overnight between Friday and

Saturday, local authorities said.“I don’t know where to go with my

two children,” villager Kahindo Lem-bula, who lost four of her relatives in the attack, told Reuters by phone. “Only God will help us.”

The head of Buliki district, Kalunga Meso, and local rights group CEPAD-HO blamed the assault on the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) – a religious militant group accused of killing thou-sands of people in recent years, mostly in remote areas.

There was no immediate claim of re-sponsibility.

The government declared martial law in North Kivu and neighbour-ing Ituri province at the beginning of May, in an attempt to quell a surge in violence that the military largely at-tributes to the ADF.

However, the number of civilians killed in such attacks has only in-creased since then, according to the Kivu Security Tracker, which maps un-rest in eastern Congo.

Attack in eastern Congo village kills 19ReutersBeni, DR Congo

100,000 newCovid deaths inUS ‘predictablebut preventable’Guardian News and MediaWashington

As many as 100,000 new Covid-19 deaths in the US by December is “predict-

able but preventable”, the lead-ing US infectious diseases ex-pert said yesterday, as dozens of states reported rapidly increas-ing fatalities.

Amid resistance in some states to public health measures and mandates, the Delta variant of the virus has pushed up deaths in 14 states by more than 50% in a week, and by at least 10% in 28 more, according to Johns Hop-kins University.

Those fi gures follow a dire warning from the University of Washington that tens of thou-sands more could die, with a daily peak of 1,400 by mid-Sep-tember.

Johns Hopkins yesterday put the US death toll from Covid-19 at almost 637,000.

“What is going on now is both entirely predictable and entirely preventable,” Dr Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden, told CNN’s State of the Union.

“We know we have the where-withal with vaccines to turn this around, and the reason the num-bers are so alarming is that we have about 80mn people in this country who are eligible to be vaccinated who are not yet vac-cinated.

“We could turn this thing around and we can do it effi -ciently and quickly if we could just get those people vaccinated. It’s so important that people in this crisis put aside any ideologi-cal and political diff erences and just get vaccinated.”

Vaccine hesitancy is decreas-ing, fi gures show, with an aver-age of about 900,000 shots be-ing administered each day in the US, up 80% in a month.

Last week, Biden hailed full Federal Drug Administration (FDA) approval of the Pfi zer vac-cine for those 16 and older as “a

key milestone” in the coronavi-rus fi ght.

But experts say that the rate must increase further, and the public needs to continue social distancing and mask wearing, if the situation is to improve.

“We can save 50,000 lives simply by wearing masks,” said Ali Mokdad, professor of health metrics sciences at the Univer-sity of Washington. “That’s how important behaviours are.”

On NBC’s Meet the Press, Fauci said the administration would stick to its plan to off er booster shots beginning next month to those vaccinated eight months ago.

Some countries, such as Is-rael, are off ering boosters after fi ve months, after reviewing data suggesting protection begins to decrease in a shorter timeframe.

“We’re still planning on eight months,” Fauci said. “That was the calculation we made (and) this roll out will start on the week of September 20.

“That’s the plan that we have, but we are open to data as they come in. This will have to go through the FDA process and then the advisory committee on im-munisation practices that advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). So right now, we’re sticking with eight but we’re totally open to any variation in that based on the data.”

Asked if he believed coronavi-rus would become endemic, Fau-ci said: “In some respects, yes, but mostly no. We have within our power the wherewithal to really suppress this outbreak, at least in the US. We want to do it globally, and we’re playing an important role in that.

“But with regard to the US, if we really got the overwhelming majority of those 80mn vacci-nated, you would see a dramatic turnaround in the dynamics of the outbreak. So, it really is up to us. We have the power to do it. We just need to do it.”

Hospitals around the US are struggling to manage a signifi -cant increase in admissions due to Covid-19, the vast majority of unvaccinated patients.

Biden honours UStroops killed in KabulReutersDover Air Force Base, Del.

US President Joe Biden ar-rived at Dover Air Force Base yesterday to honour

members of the military killed in a suicide bomb attack during the evacuation of civilians from Afghanistan last week.

An Islamic State suicide bombing on Thursday killed scores of Afghans and 13 Ameri-can troops who were guarding Kabul’s airport amid an air-lift that has evacuated about 114,400 people in the past two weeks.

American forces launched a military strike in the Afghan

capital yesterday targeting a possible suicide car bomb, US offi cials said.

“We are in a period of serious danger given what we are see-ing in the intelligence,” Biden’s national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, told CNN’s State of the Union programme in an inter-view broadcast yesterday, before the latest strike was reported.

“We are taking every pos-sible measure at the direction of the president to ensure that our forces are protected on the ground even as they complete their mission of bringing in the remaining American citizens and Afghan allies.”

Biden, a Democrat, faced criticism from Republican law-

makers, who accused his ad-ministration of bungling the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan.

After arriving at the base in Delaware, Biden and his wife, Jill, met with the families of service members killed in the attack.

They watched as fl ag-draped cases carrying 11 service mem-bers’ remains were loaded into vans. The sounds of crying could be heard and one woman collapsed and was taken to an ambulance.

After the event, a woman let out anguished screams.

The remains of two more service members will be trans-ferred in an event not covered by media at the request of their

families. Thursday’s attack, which was claimed by ISIS-K, the Afghan affi liate of Islamic State, was the most lethal inci-dent for US service members in Afghanistan in a decade.

The bombing took place just outside the gates of the airport, where thousands of people have gathered to try to get a fl ight out of the country since the Taliban returned to power on August 15.

The Taliban’s rapid advance across Afghanistan amid the withdrawal of American and al-lied troops combined with the chaotic scenes at the airport have presented Biden with his biggest foreign policy challenge as president.

Biden has vowed to punish

those responsible for the airport bombing.

The US military said on Sat-urday that it had killed two ISIS-K militants in a drone attack in eastern Afghanistan.

Sullivan said the two “are individuals involved in the fa-cilitation and planning and pro-duction of explosive devices and they are part of the larger net-work of ISIS-K.”

The United States has evacu-ated nearly 5,500 American citizens from Afghanistan since August 14, including 50 in the last day, and was still working to get about 250 American citizens still in the country onto evacua-tion fl ights, a State Department spokesman said.

Graham repeats Bidenimpeachment callGuardian News and MediaWashington

Lindsey Graham has repeat-ed his call for Joe Biden to be impeached over the US

withdrawal from Afghanistan, saying the president “ignored sound advice” and has “been this way for 40 years”.

Some observers may harbour doubts about Graham’s sincer-ity.

The Republican senator from South Carolina was close to Bi-den when Biden was a senator, a relationship which remained strong when the man from Dela-ware became vice-president to Barack Obama.

Only six years ago, in 2015, Graham told the Huffi ngton Post: “If you can’t admire Joe Biden as a person, then you got a problem. You need to do some self-evalua-tion. ’Cause what’s not to like?”

Furthermore, Graham report-edly called Biden in mid-Novem-

ber, seeking to explain both his enthusiastic support for Donald Trump’s refusal to admit defeat and his championing of attacks on Hunter Biden, the president’s only surviving son, during the election campaign.

Biden rebuff ed him, the New York Times reported, the call proving “short, and not espe-cially sweet”.

Yesterday, amid a cacophony of comment and invective over Afghanistan from Biden’s advis-ers and opponents, Graham gave a short interview to CBS’s Face the Nation.

Calling for US forces to remain in the country, to tackle terrorists who killed 13 US troops and as many as 170 Afghans this week, he said: “You cannot break (Is-lamic State’s) will through drone attacks.

“You’ve got to have people on the ground hitting these people day in and day out. You can’t do it over the horizon. “(Biden) de-serves a lot of accountability for

this. And I’m sure it will be com-ing.”

Graham is not the only Repub-lican to call for Biden to resign or be impeached but as Democrats hold both houses of Congress the idea is a total non-starter.

Attacks on Biden are more fo-cused on seeking to infl ict lasting damage before midterm elec-tions next year.

Regardless, Graham told CBS he still thinks Congress should make Biden the fourth president it has tried to remove, after An-drew Johnson, Bill Clinton and Trump.

“I think it’s dereliction of duty to leave hundreds of Americans behind enemy lines, turn them into hostages, to abandon thou-sands of Afghans who fought honourably along our side, to create conditions for another 9/11 that are now through the roof,” said Graham.

As a senator, Graham was a ju-ror in Trump’s two impeachment trials.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks during a campaign event at VeriForm in Cambridge, Ontario, yesterday.

Mexico has deployed hundreds of security forces to head off a caravan of migrants and asylum seekers who departed the southern Mexican city of Tapachula en masse on Saturday in eff orts to reach the Mexican capital, where they hoped to seek expe-dited asylum proceedings. Videos posted to social media showed confrontations between members of Mexico’s heavily militarised National Guard and the migrants, many of whom were accompanied by young children or carrying babies in their arms. Migrants in Tapachula have been staging protests to demand their cases be expedited so they could leave the southern state and relocate to other parts of Mexico or head to the US border.

A collection of prized Meissen porcelain smug-gled across Europe after its Jewish owners were forced to flee the Nazis and later procured for Hitler before being uncovered in a salt mine by the “Monuments Men”, is to be auctioned in New York next month. The extraordinary journey that the 18th-century artworks have undergone, reflecting the turmoil of the World War II years, has been reconstructed by art historians and res-titution lawyers before their sale by Sotheby’s, the international auction house. Potential buyers who have registered an interest in the works, which are expected to fetch more than $2m include museums, individual collectors and dealers.

Tens of thousands of people took to the streets in Washington, Houston, Atlanta and other US cities to protest against laws in several Republican-led states that critics say will make it harder for minorities to vote. The date selected for the rallies was not picked at random: It was on August 28, 1963 that a quarter-million people descended on Washington for a massive civil rights rally highlighted by the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr’s famous “I have a dream” speech. Addressing a much smaller crowd, his son Martin Luther King III spoke of the need to safeguard American democracy and to guarantee voting rights for everyone.

A conservative radio host from Florida who criti-cised coronavirus vaccination eff orts – and called himself “Mr Anti-Vax” – before contracting Covid-19 himself has died, his station said. A statement said: “It’s with great sadness that WNDB and Southern Stone Communications announce the passing of Marc Bernier, who informed and entertained listeners on WNDB for over 30 years. We kindly ask that privacy is given to Marc’s family during this time of grief.” When Bernier was hospitalised with Covid-19, three weeks ago, WNDB operations manager Mark McKinney told local media: “If you’ve listened to his show, you’ve heard him talk about how anti-vaccine he is on the air.”

Fifty Starbucks workers in New York are trying to form a union, which would be the first in the US for the coff ee chain if successful. Last week, the group of workers in the Buff alo area publicly an-nounced their union organising drive and the for-mation of their organising committee, Starbucks Workers United, in a letter to the Starbucks CEO, Kevin Johnson. None of the more than 8,000 Starbucks locations in the US are unionised. Alexis Rizzo, one of the founding members of the organ-ising committee, has worked at Starbucks for six years, since she was 17 years old. She emphasised the union drive was an eff ort to improve a work-place she enjoys working in.

Mexico looks to stopmigrants’ caravan

Porcelain seized by Nazis goes up for auction

Thousands protest curbson minority voting rights

Radio host who rubbished vaccine dies of Covid

Starbucks workers toform chain’s first union

LAW AND ORDER SALEANGER OBITUARY DECISION

US President Joe Biden, US First Lady Jill Biden, US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin (centre) and other off icials, attend the dignified transfer of the remains of a fallen service member at Dover Air Force Base in Dover, Delaware, yesterday, one of the 13 members of the US military killed in Afghanistan last week.

AFPMontreal

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party appears to be ced-

ing popularity to its Conserva-tive rivals, according to polls published, with early elections only weeks away.

The Conservatives of Erin O’Toole, the main opposition party, took a slim lead as support for the Liberals has eroded in re-cent days, according to a track-ing survey by Nanos Research conducted for the CTV network and the daily Globe and Mail.

The poll shows Conservatives favoured by 33.3% of eligible voters, to 30.8% for Trudeau’s Liberals, a diff erence just within the poll’s margin of error but refl ecting a steady swing away from the Liberals in recent days.

In mid-August, when Tru-deau announced plans to hold an early election on September 20 — less than two years after the last federal ballot — his

Liberals held a small lead.But Trudeau’s hopes of re-

gaining a majority in the House of Commons appear a bit more tenuous today, Nik Nanos, founder of the eponymous poll-ing fi rm, told CTV.

“It looks like the Conserva-tives are now gaining the upper hand and there is defi nitely neg-ative pressure on the Liberals,” he said.

The CBC public network’s poll tracker also showed a narrow but growing shift in favour of the Conservatives, giving them a lead of 32.5% to 32.2%.

The Nanos poll put the left-leaning New Democratic Party in third position, supported by 21.7% of eligible voters.

The CBC tracker had the New Democrats at 20.2%.

Nanos showed O’Toole, who is still relatively unknown among the general public, with a rising approval rating, up 3.2 points to 27.2% since August 23.

Approval for Trudeau slid by 2.8%, to 29.9%, over the same period.

Trudeau rival gainingpopularity, reveal polls

WORLD7Gulf Times

Monday, August 30, 2021

Australia Covidcases at a highas ‘reopening’debate heats upAustralia’s New South Wales, the epicentre of the nation’s Delta-fuelled outbreak, reported 1,218 cases as authorities there are set to slightly ease restrictions after nine weeks in lockdown

ReutersMelbourne

Australia logged a record 1,323 local Covid-19 cases yesterday as debate rages

on whether the country should start living with the virus in the community, after initially be-ing successful with suppressing coronavirus.

Australia’s most populous state New South Wales (NSW), the epicentre of the nation’s Delta-fuelled outbreak, reported 1,218 cases as authorities there are set to slightly ease restric-tions after nine weeks in lock-down.

The lockdown is scheduled to last until the end of September.

NSW state Premier Gladys Berejiklian vowed to reopen the state once 70% of those 16 and older get vaccinated. “No mat-ter what the case numbers are doing (...) double-dose 70% in NSW means freedom for those who are vaccinated,” Berejiklian said.

She said yesterday the state has reached the halfway point of achieving the target.

In Victoria, the country’s sec-ond most populous state which is in its sixth lockdown since the start of the pandemic, there were 92 new infections yesterday, the highest in nearly a year.

Victoria state Premier Daniel Andrews said his state’s lock-down, due to end on Thursday, will be extended, but would not say for how long.

“We see far too many cases to-day for us to seriously consider opening up later on this week,” Andrews said.

The Australian Capital Terri-tory, home to the national capital Canberra, had 13 new cases.

Australia has fared much bet-

ter than most developed na-tions, posting just over 50,100 Covid-19 related cases and 999 deaths.

After the national government closed international borders ear-ly in the pandemic, its six states and two territories have used various combinations of state border closures, lockdowns and strict social distancing measures to combat Covid-19.

But the national government now insists that the Covid-zero strategy, which had been suc-cessful in suppressing earlier outbreaks, is unrealistic after the highly contagious Delta variant reached its shores and is harmful to the economy.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has been urging states to reopen their borders once a vaccination target of 70% of those 16 and older is reached, but virus-free Queensland and Western Aus-tralia states have hinted they may not follow.

Nationally just 33.7% of those eligible have been fully vacci-nated, although in recent weeks Australia has been racing to in-oculate its population.

At current rates, 80% could be vaccinated by mid-Novem-ber.

“Learning to live with the vi-rus is our only hope,” The Age newspaper cited Australia Treas-urer Josh Frydenberg as saying yesterday. “To delay and deny that fact is not only wrong but incredibly unrealistic.”

Victoria supports the federal reopening plan, but the state authorities believe the cur-rent outbreak, now at 778 active cases, can be suppressed with a strict lockdown, which involves a nightly curfew for Melbourne, Victoria’s capital.

The June quarter economic growth fi gures due to be released on Wednesday may hint whether Australia would enter its second recession in as many years, as the September quarter to be re-leased later in the year is broadly expected to show a contraction, refl ecting the current outbreaks and lockdowns.

ReutersDhaka

Major global retailers have agreed on a two-year pact with garment workers

and factory owners in Bangladesh, extending a pre-existing agree-ment that makes retailers liable to legal action unless their factories meet labour safety standards.

The statement, signed by the deal’s deputy director Joris Old-enziel and representatives for UNI Global Union and Indus-triALL Global Union, confi rms the content of a copy of the pact, seen by Reuters.

“This is a legally binding agreement between companies and trade unions to make ready-made garment (RMG) and textile factories safe,” the statement

said. “The renewed agreement advances the fundamental ele-ments that made the accord suc-cessful.”

The original agreement, known as the Bangladesh Accord, was due to expire tomorrow.

The new version comes into force on September 1 and is named the International Accord for Health and Safety in the Textile and Garment Industry

to reflect its wider reach.Some 200 retailers signed up

to the accord in 2013, including retail giants H&M, Inditex, Fast Retailing’s Uniqlo, Hugo Boss, and adidas.

A list of those that have also signed up to the extension will be made available on September 1, sources said.

A spokesperson for Uniqlo said they had not yet seen the new ac-

cord, but they “generally support a new binding agreement...that has independent oversight and can be expanded to other countries.”

H&M, Inditex, Hugo Boss and adidas did not immediately re-spond to requests for comment.

The fi ve-year accord, struck in the aftermath of the Rana Plaza collapse in 2013 that killed more than 1,100 garment workers, in-stituted an independent body that

held thousands of inspections and banned unsafe factories from supplying its signatory buyers.

That helped to make some 1,600 factories safer for 2mn workers, labour activists say.

Under a transition deal agreed in 2018 after the original accord expired, a newly-formed body, the Ready-Made Garments Sus-tainability Council (RSC), which brings together unions, brands,

and factory owners, took over the work of running factory inspec-tions.

However, the RSC did not take over one portion of the ac-cord – the ability for retailers to be tried in court in the country in which they are domiciled if they fail to meet their obliga-tions, including cutting ties with factories that do not meet the accord’s standards.

Retailers to extend Bangladeshi garment workers’ safety pact

Party faction tries to oustDuterte from chairman roleReutersManila

A row between rival fac-tions in the Philippines’s ruling party escalated

yesterday when a group led by boxing star Emmanuel Pacquiao tried to remove President Rodri-go Duterte from his role as party chairman by electing their own.

Refusing to recognise the de-cision, Duterte’s supporters said he was still chairman and brand-ed the other faction as “pretend-

ers and attention seekers”.Pacquiao, Duterte and their

respective supporters have been trying to wrest control of the PDP-Laban party ahead of elections in May by unilaterally electing their own members to leading party roles.

The faction supported by Du-terte recently booted out Pac-quiao as party president, but Pacquiao has refused to step down.

The two men fell out in June after Pacquiao criticised Du-terte’s stance on the South Chi-

na Sea territorial dispute with China, while the latter lashed back by lambasting the boxer’s “shallow” foreign policy knowl-edge .

Pacquiao and his allies in the party elected senator Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel III as chair-man, according to one of his backers, the party’s executive director Ron Munsayac.

Duterte’s backers refused to acknowledge Pimentel’s elec-tion.

“President Rodrigo Roa Du-terte is the PDP Laban party

chairman. He remains to be so and will continue to be so,” the group led by Duterte said in a statement.

The head of the Philippines’ election commission was cited last week as saying it would have to decide based on documents and the party’s constitution which faction is the legitimate representative of PDP-Laban.

Last week Duterte, who has been in power since 2016, said he would run for the vice presi-dency elections under the PDP-Laban banner.

Under the constitution, a president can serve only one six-year term.

The party is due to hold a na-tional convention on September 8 where it is expected to endorse Duterte’s aide and incumbent senator Christopher “Bong” Go to be its presidential candidate.

Pacquiao, who was on his way home following his loss in the August 21 boxing match with Cuban Yordenis Ugas in Las Ve-gas, has said he would announce next month if he will run for president

More Moderna vaccines in Japan found contaminatedAFPTokyo

Two Japanese regions suspended use of some Moderna Covid-19 shots

yesterday after more cases of contamination were spotted, the local governments said.

The move came a day after the Japanese health ministry said it was investigating the death of two men who received doses from other tainted Moderna batches — though the cause of death is un-known.

Okinawa prefecture, in south-ern Japan, said it had suspended use of Moderna shots at a major vaccination centre in the city of Naha, while Gunma prefecture, north of Tokyo, also said it had paused use of contaminated lots.

“We are suspending the use of Moderna Covid-19 vaccines as foreign substances were spotted” in some of them, authorities in Okinawa said in a statement.

In Gunma an offi cial said: “We continue use of Moderna lots that are not aff ected by the incident.”

The contamination in Okinawa and Gunma follows the suspen-sion of 1.63mn doses across Japan on Thursday after the deaths of two men aged 30 and 38 in August following their second Moderna doses.

Those doses were drawn from one of the three batches suspend-ed by the government on Thurs-day.

Japan’s health ministry said however that it was investigating the cause of death and it is un-known if there is a causal link with the vaccine.

“At this time, we do not have any evidence that these deaths are caused by the Moderna Cov-id-19 vaccine, and it is important to conduct a formal investiga-tion to determine whether there is any connection,” Moderna and its Japanese distributor Takeda said in a joint statement on Sat-urday.

The nature of the particles found in the vials, which were manufactured by a Moderna contractor in Europe, is also not known yet.

“The vials have been sent to a qualifi ed lab for analysis and ini-tial fi ndings will be available early next week,” Moderna and Takeda said.

The contractor, Spanish phar-maceutical fi rm ROVI, said in a statement that it was investigat-ing the cause of contamination and the doses were only distrib-uted in Japan.

It added that the issue may have originated on one of its man-ufacturing lines.

Around 44% of Japan’s popula-tion has been fully vaccinated, as the country battles a record surge of coronavirus cases driven by the more contagious Delta variant.

More than 15,800 people have died from Covid-19 in Japan, and large parts of the country are un-der strict virus restrictions.

Lava flows from Mount Merapi, Indonesia’s most active volcano, yesterday.

Volcano spews lava

A vendor sells coconut at a market in Colombo as Sri Lanka extended a stringent coronavirus curfew for another week after reporting its highest daily death toll of more than 200.

Lockdown extended

8 Gulf TimesMonday, August 30, 2021

WORLD

Singapore ‘must remain open topreserve global business hub status’Singapore must stay open to preserve its status as a global business hub, its prime minis-ter said yesterday, even as the country continues to tighten its foreign worker policies and addresses anxieties among locals over competition for jobs.Foreign labour has long been a hot button issue in Singa-pore, but uncertainties due to the Covid-19 pandemic have increased employment worries among locals as the city state recovers from last year’s record recession.“We must make it crystal clear to the world that Singapore is determined to stay open, in order to earn a living for ourselves,” Lee Hsien Loong said in his National Day Rally speech.He said the country must not give the impression that Singa-pore is becoming xenophobic and hostile to foreigners.“It would gravely damage our reputation as an international hub. It would cost us invest-ments, jobs and opportunities. It would be disastrous for us.”While Singapore will continue to tighten its foreign worker poli-

cies, it will only do so gradually so as not to hurt businesses, Lee said.The government will also pass a law to ensure fair hiring, he said.Lee’s government has been tightening foreign worker policies for several years while taking steps to promote local hiring, including by raising the salary threshold for issuing work permits.Just under 30% of Singapore’s 5.7mn population are non-res-idents, up from around 10% in 1990, according to government statistics.Singapore yesterday hit a key milestone of fully vaccinating 80% of its population against Covid-19, setting the stage for further reopening of the economy as the country gets ready to live with the virus as endemic.“We may have to tap on the brakes from time to time, but we want to avoid having to slam on the brakes,” Lee said.“So in the next phase, we will move step by step not in one big bang like some countries but cautiously and progressively, feeling our way forward,” Lee added.

WORLD9Gulf Times

Monday, August 30, 2021

Take-up ofsecond Covidjab in Englandlevelling off Guardian News and MediaLondon

Hundreds of thousands of people have failed to come forward for their

second Covid jab, offi cial data shows, as scientists warned that improving uptake among adults is more crucial than moving on to children’s vaccines or booster shots.

Experts have repeatedly em-phasised the need to receive both doses of the coronavirus vac-cines as the second jab greatly increases protection against Covid.

But fi gures from Public Health England (PHE) suggest take-up of second doses is levelling off in older age groups, and is lower than for fi rst jabs.

The data, which extends to August 22, also shows take-up of fi rst doses has essentially pla-teaued in almost all eligible age groups except the very youngest, and falls with age.

While nearly 20.4mn people aged 50 and over in England have had their fi rst dose, just under 19.9mn have had their second – a diff erence of almost 500,000.

That’s despite people aged 50-54 being invited for their fi rst jab since March 17, more than 23 weeks ago.

In December, a 12-week gap between doses was recommend-ed, which was cut to eight weeks for those aged 50 and over in May, a move later expanded to all eligible for the jabs.

Some over-50s may only re-cently have had their fi rst jab and hence not yet be eligible for their second, but the appearance of reluctance to receive second doses is supported by other data.

According to fi gures from the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), about 23.9mn second doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab had been given in the UK as of August 18.

This is far less than the 24.3mn fi rst doses administered by May

26 – 12 weeks earlier – and the 24.5mn fi rst doses given by June 23, eight weeks before.

As noted by the Independent newspaper, this means between 400,000 and 600,000 Britons eligible for a second Oxford/As-traZeneca jab have yet to come forward.

With the MHRA advising that those under 40 should, if possible, be offered a differ-ent Covid jab, the majority of these will be older adults and hence are at greater risk from the virus.

Prof Rowland Kao, an epide-miologist at Edinburgh Univer-sity, said it was not surprising that uptake of second doses was lower as some people would miss appointments and some may yet come forward for their second jab.

“But there may also be less incentive to get a second dose – we are out of lockdown, which would have incentivised some, and with the message being that we are in the all-clear that impetus may be lessened,” said Kao.

Dr Michael Head, a senior re-search fellow in global health at the University of Southampton, agreed there were probably many reasons behind the fi gures. “This may include concerns over side-eff ects and also factors such as having been away on holiday over August or feeling that the second dose isn’t necessary,” he said.

Head said more needed to be done to tackle concerns over rare side-eff ects, noting research had shown the risks of blood clots were much higher from Covid infection than from the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab.

“This needs to be commu-nicated to the general public to increase confi dence and ensure that uptake ends up as high as it possibly can be,” he said.

An increase in the number of cases was expected in September as holidays ended and students returned to school and univer-sity, he added.

Guardian News and MediaLondon

A charity founded by the Prince of Wales has launched an ethics in-

vestigation into “cash for ac-cess” claims that middlemen took cuts for setting up dinners involving wealthy donors and the heir to the throne.

The Prince’s Foundation said it was taking the allegations “very seriously” after it was claimed that individuals could pay £100,000 to secure a dinner with the charity’s founder and an overnight stay at Dumfries House, his mansion in Scotland.

An e-mail was said to reveal that fixers could take up to 25% of the fees, which were intended for the royal’s charity ventures,

the Mail on Sunday reported.Michael Wynne-Parker, a

British businessman who was banned in the past by official watchdogs from giving financial advice and serving as a compa-ny director, was named as the sender of the e-mail, which sets out what donors could receive.

Five percent of the fees would go to Wynne-Parker, according to the e-mail from November

2019, while 20% would go to another middleman.

It states that the money would be paid into the account of Burke’s Peerage, the “who’s who” of the British aristocracy, and that its editor, William Bor-trick, was representing Prince Charles.

A spokesperson for the Prince’s Foundation said: “The Prince’s Foundation takes

very seriously the allegations brought to its attention by the Mail on Sunday relating to third parties who have introduced prospective donors to our char-ity in the past.

“We were not aware of any financial gain being sought by these individuals, whom we have never paid, and have ceased our relationship with these individuals and referred

the matter to our ethics com-mittee for investigation.

“Michael Wynn Parker (sic) does not represent the Prince’s Foundation and the e-mail he sent is not representative of the foundation’s approach to fund-raising.”

The Prince’s Foundation, which was created through a merger in 2018 of the Prince’s Foundation for Building Com-

munity and others including the Prince’s Regeneration Trust, added in its statement that it was dependent on generous donations to deliver its activity throughout the world.

The investigation will be headed by Douglas Connell, the chair of the Prince’s Founda-tion, and Dame Susan Bruce, the chair of its ethics commit-tee.

Prince of Wales charity probes ‘cash for access’ claims

UK government blastedover Afghan exit issueAFPLondon

The UK government yes-terday faced a torrent of criticism after its hurried

withdrawal from Afghanistan ended, leaving hundreds eligible for relocation behind.

Prime Minister Boris John-son hailed a mission “unlike anything we have seen in our lifetimes” after the UK airlifted over 15,000 people in the last two weeks.

Troops landed back at Brize Norton airbase in southern Eng-land yesterday after Britain was forced to withdraw following the decision of its ally the US to end its 20-year presence.

Johnson praised the evacua-

tion eff orts in “harrowing con-ditions” and assured the mili-tary that decades of deployment “were not in vain” after the Tali-ban retook control.

But current and former of-ficials slammed government failings, suggesting many more Afghans could have been res-cued.

The Observer left-wing broadsheet cited a whistle-blower as saying thousands of e-mails from MPs and charities to the foreign ministry high-lighting specifi c Afghans at risk from the Taliban takeover went unopened.

Foreign Minister Dominic Raab has already been strongly criticised for not immediately leaving a beach holiday when the Taliban took control.

The Observer said it saw evi-dence that an offi cial e-mail account set up by the Foreign Offi ce to receive such pleas reg-ularly had 5,000 unopened e-mails last week.

It said these included mes-sages from ministers’ offi ces and the leader of the opposition La-bour party, Keir Starmer.

“They cannot possibly know (how many people have been left behind) because they haven’t even read the e-mails,” the whistleblower was quoted as saying.

The Foreign Offi ce responded that its crisis team worked 24/7 “to triage incoming e-mails and calls”.

Offi cials have given varying estimates of how many eligible Afghans did not board evacu-

ation fl ights, the last of which left Saturday, with the head of the UK armed forces General Sir Nick Carter putting this “in the high hundreds”.

The Sunday Times right-wing broadsheet quoted an unnamed minister as saying: “I suspect we could have taken out 800 to 1,000 more people”.

The same minister slammed Raab, claiming he “did nothing” to build ties with third countries from which Afghans might enter the UK.

The Foreign Offi ce acknowl-edged that Raab had delegated calls to his Afghan counterpart while saying he recently called his Pakistani counterpart.

The damning reports came after the Times reported last week that it found contact de-

tails of staff and job applicants left behind at the British em-bassy compound in Kabul, po-tentially endangering them.

Public opinion has been sharply divided in Britain over a high-profi le campaign by an ex-serviceman, Paul or “Pen” Farthing who runs a British ani-mal charity to evacuate his ani-mals and staff from a shelter in Kabul.

Farthing managed to fl y out on a privately chartered plane on Saturday with around 150 cats and dogs on board, landing at Heathrow on Sunday morning.

He was hailed as a hero by supporters but opponents ques-tioned the ethics of using of-fi cial time and military support to evacuate animals as Afghans remained behind.

Japanese soy sauce brandlooking to woo IndiansAFPMumbai

Every dish tastes better with a dash of soy sauce, even dessert: that’s the

ambitious pitch of Japanese food giant Kikkoman, hoping to persuade Indians to use it in curries, sweets and everything in between.

Convincing 1.3bn people to add a staple of East Asian cuisine to their butter chicken and sa-mosas is no cakewalk but it will likely be easier than the brand’s 1960s push into the US.

“When we entered the US, people thought we were sell-ing bug juice because of its dark colour,” Harry Hakuei Kosato, Kikkoman’s India representative, said.

Today the brand’s funnel-shaped dispenser is a ubiquitous presence in US households, ac-counting for half of the fi rm’s $4.4bn revenues, and Kikkoman

now hopes to replicate that suc-cess in India.

Sales were boosted by the West’s growing craze for Japa-nese cuisine since the 1980s, but the company is taking a diff erent approach to India, which is home to a signifi cant vegetarian popu-lation.

“It is not about getting every-one to eat sushi. We want our soy sauce to become the ketchup of India,” said Kosato.

He hopes that the move to market the sauce as an endlessly adaptable condiment will strike a chord in a country where culi-nary innovation is part of street food culture.

For instance, Mumbai’s grilled Mumbai Sandwich — a hawker staple — is a buttered British-style toastie, but with a fi lling that includes boiled potato, on-ion, tomato, beetroot, and co-riander chutney, topped with a sprinkling of “sev”, a crunchy deep-fried Indian snack.

So it is perhaps unsurprising

that some Indian chefs began us-ing soy sauce in their dishes long before Kikkoman launched in the country earlier this year.

Restaurateur Prashant Issar fi rst deployed it in a biryani six years ago, while running Mirchi and Mime, a Mumbai restaurant showcasing modern Indian cui-sine.

Since then he has added a dash of soy sauce to a range of local dishes, from samosas to lamb keema.

“When I tried it with keema pao, it was just like ‘oh wow’. It was an explosion of fl avours,” Is-sar said.

“It has this indefi nable umami fl avour, this tart, sharp quality you can’t fi nd anywhere else,” he explained, describing it as “a bit of a chef’s secret”.

Kikkoman is now trying to get the word out to ordinary Indians and counting on social media in-fl uencers like Shalini Kapoor to drum up an appetite for its prod-uct.

India’s new Covidcases rise by 45,083ReutersNew Delhi

India reported 45,083 new coronavirus infections yes-terday, according to data

from the health ministry, driven by surging cases in the southern state of Kerala.

The country’s Covid-19 cases stood at about 32.7mn, with deaths rising by 460 to 437,830 in the last 24 hours, data showed.

In Kerala, where cases have spiked in the wake of a major festival, the state government reported 31,265 new infections late on Saturday — comprising nearly 70% of the country’s total new daily cases.

The state plans to lock down hard-hit areas and restrict pub-lic movement to mainly essen-tial services and emergencies, according to an order issued on Saturday.

Meanwhile, Indian vaccine maker Bharat Biotech is seek-ing international manufactur-

ing partners as it targets a billion doses of its Covid-19 vaccine each year, the company said yes-terday.

Covaxin, the company’s home-grown Covid-19 vaccine approved for emergency use in India, is one of two shots driving the country’s massive vaccina-tion programme.

But Bharat Biotech has struggled to boost output, missing supply commitments to the Indian government, which is also relying on a ver-sion of the AstraZeneca vac-cine produced by the Serum Institute of India and Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine.

The company yesterday rolled out the fi rst batch of Covaxin shots from a facility in An-kleshwar in western India that has the capacity to produce more than 10mn doses per month.

Bharat Biotech said it was ex-ploring opportunities with its international partners who have expertise in commercial-scale manufacturing of inactivated vi-ral vaccines.

Military personnel arrive at RAF Brize Norton base after being evacuated from Afghanistan, in Oxfordshire, Britain, yesterday.

Bollywood actor Armaan Kohli (centre) is escorted by the security off icials of Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB), in Mumbai yesterday. The actor was held yesterday morning after banned drugs were allegedly recovered from his house.

Actor detained

We have no choice but to change how we consume, produce and invest

By Joseph E StiglitzNew York

The world has fi nally awoken to the existential imperative of securing a rapid transition to a green economy. Finance

will play a pivotal role in that process. But while fi nancial institutions have made a big show of doing their part – issuing green bonds and installing green lightbulbs – far too many continue to provide capital to the fossil-fuel industry and support other parts of the economy that are incompatible with a green transition.

Such fi nancing actively fuels the climate crisis. Many of these investments are long-lived. Discovering, developing, and fully exploiting a new oil fi eld takes decades, stretching well beyond the horizon in which the world must become carbon neutral to prevent catastrophic levels of warming. As such, these projects almost certainly will become “stranded assets”: holdings that have lost their value and usefulness amid the fi ght to save the planet.

These losses pose a risk to the investor and, potentially, to the economic system and the planet. Because most owners of stranded assets will selfi shly fi ght to exploit their holdings no matter what, fi nancing for these investments creates an adverse

political dynamic. There are powerful lobbies committed to fi ghting the green transition, lest they be the ones left holding the bag. Moreover, if the transition succeeds, these same groups will demand compensation – eff ectively “socialising” the downside risk of investments that never should have been undertaken in the fi rst place. If history is any guide, they will succeed in making themselves whole.

Ideally, we would simply ban such investments. But, for now, this option is politically infeasible in the United States and many other countries. Another option is to deploy regulatory tools. Since markets are short-sighted and often fail to account fully for key risks, the obligation to ensure fi nancial stability falls on those charged with overseeing the economy, including central banks.

The 2008 fi nancial crisis showed what can happen when even a small part of the world’s asset base (US subprime mortgages) gets repriced. The repricing of assets that are likely to be aff ected by climate change could have systemic eff ects that will dwarf those of 2008. The fossil-fuel sector is just the tip of the (melting) iceberg. For example, rising sea levels and increasingly common extreme weather events, from wildfi res to hurricanes, could force a sudden repricing of vast swathes of land and real estate, too.

Thus, regulators need to require full disclosure of climate risk – which includes not just physical dangers but also direct and indirect fi nancial risks. Even if there is not unanimity about the magnitude of these risks or the pace of the coming change, prudence

requires disclosure of what could happen under the plausible scenarios that have been extensively discussed in Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessments and elsewhere. Moreover, a policy regime capable of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050 (combining carbon pricing with regulations) will almost surely have a signifi cant impact on asset prices.

If the economy moves too slowly in a green direction, it increases the “transition risk.” Rather than a smooth, effi cient transition to carbon neutrality, with gradual adjustments in asset prices, we could end up with a more chaotic one in which prices would jump at critical moments when markets fully internalise the reality of the change.

To mitigate this risk, fi nance must not only stop providing funds for investments that despoil our environment; it also must provide funds for the investments needed to move us in the right direction. We may need both carrots and sticks to nudge the industry along.

For example, banks that make climate-risky investments should be obligated to hold more reserves to refl ect that risk. Investors have been warned: those who nonetheless continue to make investments in fossil fuels should not eff ectively be subsidised by the public through the deductibility of losses. In the US, the government underwrites the vast majority of residential mortgages; going forward, it should do so only for green mortgages (loans for homes that are well insulated and energy effi cient).

Furthermore, to encourage investments that are predicated on a high carbon price, governments could

issue “guarantees” that if the price of carbon turns out to be lower than expected in, say, 20 years, the investor will be compensated. This would function as a kind of insurance policy, pressing governments around the world to uphold their commitments under the Paris climate agreement.

These and other similar policies will assist the green transition. But even with such prodding, the private fi nancial sector is unlikely to do enough on its own. Many of the critical investments that we need are long-lived, and private fi nancial markets too often focus on the short term.

To help fi ll the gap, green development banks have already been created in many jurisdictions, including the state of New York. Elsewhere, existing development banks’ mandates have been broadened to include green development. These institutions are making an important contribution not just in providing fi nance, but also in assisting with the design and structuring of the green projects themselves.

The climate crisis demands enormous economic and societal changes. We have no choice but to change how we consume, produce and invest. The challenge is manageable. But if it is to be managed well, fi nance must play its part. And that will take more than a little prodding from civil society and governments alike. — Project Syndicate

Joseph E Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics, is University Professor at Columbia University and a member of the Independent Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation.

Gulf Times Monday, August 30, 2021

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EDITOR-IN-CHIEFFaisal Abdulhameed al-Mudahka

Deputy Managing Editor

K T Chacko

The present and clear danger posed by Delta variant

A new study from the journal Nature has given one more reason to be extra vigilant against the Delta variant of Covid-19. The fi nding is that people with the variant can transmit the virus for almost two days before experiencing any symptoms. This has to be read together with the fact that presymptomatic transmission may account for nearly 75% of Delta variant infections. Vaccinated people with rare ‘breakthrough’ infections may also be able to transmit the virus as easily as unvaccinated people because of elevated viral loads. This change could be a key feature driving the most recent surge in Covid-19 cases, according to the study.

Presymptomatic transmission was a feature of the previous variants of the novel coronavirus, but the research suggests the gap between receiving a positive test to feeling symptoms was just 0.8 days. With the Delta variant, it’s 1.8 days. As a result, nearly three-quarters of infections with Delta happen during the presymptomatic phase, the research suggests. The Delta strain is more contagious, in part, because infected individuals carry and shed more virus than previous versions, observed Dr Stefen Ammon, medical director of the Covid-19 Task Force for DispatchHealth, an on-demand healthcare service. While the earlier version of Covid-19 was as transmissible as the common cold, the Delta variant is more transmissible than seasonal infl uenza, polio, smallpox, Ebola, and the bird fl u, and is as contagious as chickenpox, he added.

Because of this increased transmissibility, Delta has become the dominant variant worldwide. It accounts for more than 90% of Covid-19 cases in the US. As Ammon recalled, when Covid-19 vaccines fi rst became available, they demonstrated a great ability to prevent the recipient from contracting any form of Covid-19, which largely removed vaccinated asymptomatic and presymptomatic exposures from the equation. However,

the Delta variant has developed an ability in some instances to partially evade the immunity provided by vaccination, meaning there are more breakthrough infections in vaccinated individuals from the Delta variant than were seen from previous versions of the virus.

However, experts contend that vaccines remain our best available tools to control the spread of Covid-19 and protect people from serious disease, hospitalisation, and death. Recent studies show the critical importance of getting the Covid-19 vaccine both for personal health and limited transmission. Dr Jason Gallagher, an infectious disease expert and clinical pharmacy specialist in infectious diseases at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia, US, referred to two studies which show that the viral RNA declines more quickly in vaccinated people than unvaccinated people, suggesting that they are less likely to transmit virus to others.

These accumulated fi ndings, along with the rapid rise in Covid-19 case numbers worldwide, have reinforced public health advisories from earlier in the pandemic. These include mask mandates, calls for physical distancing, and vaccination mandates — in many countries. All people, both vaccinated and unvaccinated, should wear masks while inside in public or crowded spaces, said Dr Elizabeth Beatriz, an epidemiologist at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health in the Bureau of Community Health and Prevention and a public health and Covid-19 adviser at Parenting Pod. This is particularly true if you are in an area where there are a lot of Covid infections, or you live with someone who is unvaccinated, including children, or someone who is immunocompromised, or who is likely to get very sick if they do become infected with Covid, she urged. In short, vaccination is the best protection.

Research suggests nearly three-quarters of infections with Delta happen during the presymptomatic phase

Getting fi nance onside to meet climate challenge

WORLD11Gulf Times

Monday, August 30, 2021

Taliban assure 100 countries of continued departures

AFPWashington

The Taliban has assured 100 countries that it will con-tinue to allow foreigners and

Afghans with foreign travel papers to leave the country “in a safe and orderly manner,” even after the US troop withdrawal ends tomorrow, the countries said in a statement yesterday.

The 100-nation group includes the United States, Britain, France and Germany.

“We have received assurances from the Taliban that all foreign nationals and any Afghan citizen with travel authorisation from our countries will be allowed to proceed in a safe and orderly manner to points of departure and travel outside the country,”

the statement said.“We are all committed to en-

suring that our citizens, nationals and residents, employees, Afghans who have worked with us and those who are at risk can contin-ue to travel freely to destinations outside Afghanistan,” added the statement, which was also signed by the European Union and Nato.

The group said it would con-tinue issuing travel documents to “designated Afghans,” adding that “we have the clear expectation of and commitment from the Taliban that they can travel to our respec-tive countries.”

China and Russia were not among the signatories to the docu-ment.

Jake Sullivan, the national se-curity advisor to US President Joe Biden, said earlier yesterday that any Americans who elect to re-

main “are not going to be stuck in Afghanistan.”

The US has “a mechanism to get them out” if they choose to leave in the future, Sullivan added on the Fox News network, without elabo-rating. “The Taliban have made commitments to us,” he said.

France and Britain plan to call on the United Nations today to create a “safe zone” in Kabul to allow hu-manitarian operations to continue, French President Emmanuel Ma-cron told the Journal du Dimanche, saying the proposal was “com-pletely feasible.”

France ended its evacuation ef-forts in Afghanistan on Friday and Britain followed suit on Saturday.

US troops have been scrambling in dangerous and chaotic condi-tions to complete a massive evacu-ation operation from the Kabul airport by an August 31 deadline.

In a statement, nations cite pledge that includes passage for Afghans with foreign travel papers Macron urges Kabul ‘safe zone’ ahead of Big 5 session today

France and Britain will today urge the United Nations to work for the creation of a “safe zone” in the Afghan capital Kabul to protect humanitarian operations, French President Emmanuel Macron said.“This is very important. This would provide a framework for the United Nations to act in an emergency,” Macron said in comments published in the weekly Journal du Dimanche.Above all such a safe zone would allow the international community “to maintain pressure on the Taliban,” who are now in power in Afghanistan, the French leader added.Macron also said discussions France is having with the Taliban over the evacuation of nationals and persons in danger from Afghanistan does not indicate recognition of the group as the country’s new rulers.“We have operations to carry out in Afghanistan — the evacuations. The

Taliban are the ones in control... we have to have these discussions from a practical point of view. This does not mean there will be recognition. We have set conditions,” Macron told the evening news show of TF1 television during a visit to Iraq.The five permanent members of the UN Security Council — France, Britain, the US, Russia and China — will meet today to discuss the Afghanistan situation.Paris and London will take the opportunity to present a draft resolution which “aims to define, under UN control, a ‘safe zone’ in Kabul, that will allow humanitarian operations to continue,” Macron said.Macron announced on Saturday that discussions had been “started with the Taliban” to “protect and repatriate” Afghan nationals at risk beyond August 31.Speaking to reports in Iraq, where he was attending a meeting of key

regional leaders, Macron added that with help from Qatar, there was a possibility of further airlift operations.He added that France had evacuated 2,834 people from Afghanistan since August 17.In the article published by the French Sunday newspaper, Macron said he envisaged targeted evacuations in future “which would not be carried out at the military airport in Kabul” but perhaps via civil airports in the Afghan capital or from neighbouring countries.Macron also took aim at the kind of talk going on some quarters in France which “stir fears” about the arrival of Afghan refugees in France.“My role is not to stir up fears among our compatriots, it is to provide solutions to resolve them,” he added, assuring that he aims to manage migratory pressures with “humanity, firmness, with a ability to protect our borders as necessary”.

Taliban to allow women to attend university

AFPKabul

Afghan women will be al-lowed to study at univer-sity but there would be a

ban on mixed classes under their rule, the Taliban’s acting higher education minister said yester-day.

The hardline group that stormed to power in mid-August after ousting the Western-back government have vowed to rule diff erently compared to their 1990s stint when girls and wom-en were banned from education.

“The... people of Afghani-stan will continue their higher education in the light of Shariah law in safety without being in a mixed male and female envi-ronment,” Abdul Baqi Haqqani, the Taliban’s acting minister for higher education said at a meet-ing with elders, known as a loya jirga, yesterday.

He said the Taliban want to “create a reasonable and Islamic curriculum that is in line with our Islamic, national and his-torical values and, on the other hand, be able to compete with other countries”.

Girls and boys will also be seg-regated at primary and second-ary schools, which was already common throughout deeply conservative Afghanistan.

The group have pledged to respect progress made in women’s rights, but only ac-cording to their strict inter-

pretation of Islamic law.Whether women can work, get

education at all levels and be able to mix with men have been some

of the most pressing questions.But the Taliban rebranding is

being treated with scepticism, with many questioning whether

the group will stick to its pledg-es.

No women were present at the meeting in Kabul yesterday, which included other senior Tal-iban offi cials.

“The Taliban’s ministry of higher education consulted only male teachers and students on resuming the function of uni-versities,” said a lecturer, who worked at a city university dur-ing the last government.

She said that showed “the sys-tematic prevention of women’s participation in decision mak-ing” and “a gap between the Taliban’s commitments and ac-tions”.

University admission rates have risen over the past 20 years, particularly among women who have studied side by side with men and attended seminars with male professors.

But a spate of attacks on edu-cation centres in recent months, killing dozens, had caused panic.

The Taliban denied being be-hind the attacks, some of which were claimed by the local chap-ter of the Islamic State group.

During their previous bru-tal rule, the Taliban excluded women from public life, enter-tainment was banned and bru-tal punishments were imposed — such as stoning to death for adultery.

The Taliban have yet to an-nounce their government, say-ing they would wait until after the departure of US and foreign forces.

Segregation-driven edict announced at a meeting with elders in Kabul where no female was present

Acting Higher Education Minister Abdul Baqi Haqqani speaks during a consultative meeting on Taliban’s general higher education policies in Kabul yesterday. (AFP)

Taliban supreme leader in Afghanistan

AFPKabul

The Taliban’s supreme leader Hibatullah Akhun-dzada — who has never

made a public appearance and whose whereabouts have largely remained unknown — is in Af-ghanistan, the hardline group confi rmed yesterday.

“He is present in Kandahar. He has been living there from the very beginning,” said Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid.

“He will soon appear in pub-lic,” added deputy spokesman Bilal Karimi.

The so-called commander of the faithful, Akhundzada has shepherded the Taliban as its chief since 2016 when snatched from relative obscurity to over-see a movement in crisis.

Little is still known about Akhundzada’s day-to-day role, with his public profi le largely limited to the release of annual messages during Islamic holi-days. He has yet to issue any kind of statement since the Taliban swept to power and took control of Afghanistan in mid-August.

The Taliban have a long his-tory of keeping their top leader in the shadows.

The group’s enigmatic founder Mullah Omar was notorious for his hermit ways and rarely trav-elled to Kabul when the group was in power in the 1990s.

Instead, Omar stayed largely out of sight in his compound in Kandahar, reluctant even to meet visiting delegations.

Kandahar was the birthplace of the militant movement and the epicentre of the Taliban’s iron-fi sted government in the 1990s.

Turkey can’t take new refugee burden: FMReutersIstanbul

Turkey cannot take the burden of a new migrant wave from Af-ghanistan, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said yesterday after talks with his German counterpart, as concerns about a

new migrant wave remain after the Taliban’s taking of power.The events in Afghanistan have fuelled worries in the Europe-

an Union of a repeat of the 2015 refugee crisis, when nearly a mil-lion people fl eeing war and poverty in the Middle East and beyond crossed to Greece from Turkey before travelling north to wealthier states.

To stem the fl ow of refugees, the EU reached an agreement with Turkey in 2016 for it to host Syrians fl eeing the war in their country in return for billions of euros for refugee projects.

Cavusoglu said yesterday that Europe, as well as regional coun-tries, would also be aff ected if migration from Afghanistan turns into a crisis and that lessons should be learned from the Syrian refugee crisis.

“As Turkey, we have suffi ciently carried out our moral and hu-manitarian responsibilities regarding migration,” Cavusoglu said, speaking in a joint news conference with German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas.

“It is out of the question for us to take an additional refugee bur-den,” Cavusoglu said.

Turkey currently hosts 3.7 million Syrian refugees, the world’s largest refugee population, in addition to around 300,000 Afghans. It has been reinforcing measures along its eastern border to prevent crossings in anticipation of a new migrant wave from Afghanistan.

Maas said Germany was grateful to Turkey for its off er to continue to help run Kabul airport after Nato’s withdrawal and said Germany was ready to support that fi nancially and technically.

“It is in our own interests to ensure that the collapse in Afghani-stan does not destabilise the entire region,” he said in a statement.

Maas is on a trip to Turkey, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Pakistan and Qatar to show Germany’s support for the countries most likely to suff er the fallout of the crisis in Afghanistan.

Turkey’s neighbour Greece has completed a 40km fence and sur-veillance system to keep out migrants who still manage to enter Tur-key and try to reach the European Union.

Thousands protest in Berlin against Covid curbs

ReutersBerlin

Several thousand peo-ple marched through the streets of Berlin yesterday

for a second day of unauthorised protest against coronavirus vac-cinations and restrictions aimed at curbing a fourth wave of the pandemic.

Shouting “Hands off our chil-dren”, the protesters waved signs decrying what they called “vacci-nation apartheid” as parts of Ger-many consider imposing tougher restrictions on people who are not vaccinated against coronavirus.

Dozens of police dressed in riot gear sought to control the march through residential streets in eastern Berlin.

Berlin police said on Twitter it had detained about 80 people at the demonstration, with a focus on violent people or those call-ing for violations of coronavirus regulations.

On Saturday, police detained more than 100 people at a similar demonstration after the march-ers tried to get through barri-cades to the government quarter in central Berlin. About 60% of the German population has now

been fully vaccinated and about 65% have had at least one shot, but infections are rising rap-idly again, prompting offi cials to consider ways to encourage more people to get protected. With a signifi cant minority in Germany sceptical about vaccination, the government in the city of Berlin has come under fi re for exhorting

teenagers to get the shots, which are authorised for those over the age of 12.

At least one region in Germany is planning to impose tougher re-strictions on people who are not vaccinated, an offi cial was quoted as saying yesterday. The German government currently requires people to be vaccinated, test neg-

ative or have a recovery certifi cate to enter indoor restaurants, visit hospitals and nursing homes and attend events, parties or do sports indoors. The southern state of Baden-Wuerttemberg’s social ministry has proposed banning unvaccinated adults from restau-rants and concerts altogether, and restricting their contacts.

Demonstrators rally against government measures to curb the spread of Covid as security personnel stand guard in Berlin yesterday. (Reuters)

End to French Covid blank cheque

AFPParis

France will turn off the fi re-hose of aid to help business-es through the Covid-19

pandemic, instead directing funds where most needed, the govern-ment’s accounts chief said yes-terday.

“It’s the end of whatever it takes”, Minister for Public Ac-counts Olivier Dussopt warned.

The government wants to “look at what is really being lost, rather than just what is being said”.

He added that not all industries or regions were suff ering equally, and that even within some Covid-hit sectors, there were businesses that were thriving.

“We are ready to help the sec-tors that really need it,” Dussopt told Radio J ahead of a meeting with leaders from industries still suff ering from the pandemic, in-cluding tourism, small businesses and culture.

He said that any aid “will be a necessarily transitional, very sec-tor-focused approach”.

Poll campaign heats up as Merkel’s conservatives slideReutersBerlin

The campaign over who will replace German Chancellor Angela Merkel heated up yesterday after an opinion poll showed the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) opening up

a bigger lead over Merkel’s conservatives.Support for the SPD rose two points from last week to 24%,

their highest result in four years according to the INSA poll con-ducted for the Bild am Sonntag newspaper. The conservatives slipped one point to 21%, their lowest ever polled by INSA.

Germany goes to the polls on September 26 when Merkel steps down as chancellor after 16 years in offi ce and four straight na-tional election victories. Merkel’s imminent departure has weak-ened support for her conservative alliance.

It was the second survey in the last week that has put the SPD ahead. Support for Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) and their Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), has been falling steadily in recent weeks. The bloc’s candidate for chan-cellor, CDU chairman Armin Laschet, has been under fi re since he was caught on camera laughing during a visit last month to a town hit by fl oods. In a hypothetical direct vote for chancellor, the INSA poll showed that the SPD’s candidate, Finance Minister Olaf Scholz, would take 31% of the vote, compared with 10% for Laschet and 14% for the Greens candidate, Annalena Baerbock.

The three candidates are due to hold a televised debate yesterday evening. Despite the SPD’s lead in the polls, they would still need to team up with two other parties to govern, prompting a discussion about which possible coalition partners would be acceptable.

QATARGulf Times Monday, August 30, 202112

Sheikha Dr Aisha speaks at Forbes Middle East Family Business Summit

Sheikha Dr Aisha bint Faleh al-Thani, founder and chairperson of Al

Faleh Educational Holding, spoke at the Forbes Middle East Family Business Summit 2021 earlier this month.

The debut event was attend-ed by more than 1,000 peo-ple virtually from across the globe, with many from across the Mena region, according to statement from Al Faleh Edu-cational Holding yesterday.

The summit discussed the evolving business landscape for family businesses in the cur-rent scenario and their importance to the region’s economy.

Addressing the event, Sheikha Dr Aisha recalled that though the journey of digitalisation was relatively slow in most family businesses, the outbreak of the coronavirus (Covid-19) pan-demic expedited the transformation in most businesses in or-der not to disrupt the day-to-day operations.

“We at Doha Academy schools and AFG College with the University of Aberdeen shifted the teaching and learning methods to online platforms,” she said. “Our main concern was to ensure that the students will not be aff ected by the clo-sure of schools and educational institutions.”

“Our students and teaching body have learned to utilise the online platforms optimally, and hence have benefi ted from this experience,” Sheikha Dr Aisha said. “As such we will continue to use online learning methods and tools within the teaching and learning experience even after this pandemic is over.’’

One of the topics under discussion was about how family businesses are exploring the IPO (initial public off ering) route for their businesses and what are the pros and cons of taking the business public.

In this context, Sheikha Dr Aisha shared her experience from transforming her business into a publicly-listed company in the Venture Market of Qatar Stock Exchange (QSE).

Al Faleh Educational Holding is the fi rst woman-led Qatari company to go public and is the fi rst Qatari educational insti-tution to be listed on QSE’s Venture Market.

Forbes Middle East editor-in-chief and chief executive Khuloud al-Omian noted that “family businesses are the back-bone of the Middle Eastern economy, and their contribution to the region has been phenomenal as they orchestrated some of the world’s most successful businesses from herein”.

“We look forward to hosting these great leaders in-person at our 2nd Annual Family Business Summit next year,” he said.

Sheikha Dr Aisha bint Faleh al-Thani

Health minister visits QSC stand at Najah Qatari festival

Qatar Scientific Club (QSC) yesterday in a tweet thanked HE the Minister of Public Health Dr Hanan Mohamed al-Kuwari for visiting its stand at the fourth edition of the Najah Qatari festival, and encouraging the innovators. The event at the Qatar National Convention Centre concluded on Saturday.

Qatar Year of Culture has an-nounced the Portland, Oregon iteration of Jedariart, a public

art initiative that brings Qatari artists and mural art to the US, as part of Qa-tar-USA 2021 Year of Culture.

In partnership with the Portland Street Art Alliance (PSAA), Qatari art-ist Fatima al-Sharshani will paint a new mural on a building wall located at 636 SE 10th Avenue.

The featured work, entitled The Nev-er Ending You, is an expression of conti-nuity and infi nity.

Al-Sharshani has been working in calligraphy art since 2011 and is the founder of Qaif, a calligraphy company.

The Never Ending You is an abstract piece that merges Arabic letters into a shape of a circle, representing continu-ity.

The inner depth of the circle is a sen-sory expression that sparks a notion of infi nity, and the never-ending power that lives within us.

Similar to Jedariart, the PSAA was created to advance street art culture and empower artists to activate the spaces where they live and work.

Al-Sharshani’s artwork will be a part of a larger programme to update and re-vamp building walls within the Central Eastside Industrial District, and will be located alongside murals by local artists like John Vance, Daniel Santollo, Jade Sturms, Sunny Beard, Isis Fisher, Jesus Torralba, and Rupezzy.

“We are so excited to continue the

Jedariart programme throughout the US,” said Aisha al-Attiya, head of Qatar Museum (QM)’s Years of Culture. “By introducing talented Qatar-based art-ists like Fatima al-Sharshani to the US, we’re continuing to build the Years of Culture programme and create a mu-tual partnership and understanding be-tween the US and Qatar cultures.”

“I am incredibly proud and grate-ful for this opportunity to represent my country, Qatar, abroad in the Qa-tar-USA 2021 Year of Culture,” said al-Sharshani. “I am honoured to share my story through art and highlight the beauty of Arabic calligraphy on the walls of Portland.”

Jedariart is an annual programme in Qatar developed by the QM, under the patronage of its Chairperson HE Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, in 2020 to add vibran-cy and meaning to the walls of Doha through murals, encouraging individu-als to refl ect on social, historical, and cultural conversations.

In selecting creatives for the initia-tive, the QM launched an Open Call in-viting aspiring and established artists in Doha to submit a proposal.

In addition to Nada Khozestani, whose mural Ladies in Batoola is cur-rently on view at the Doha Fire Station, selected 2020 participants are Mubarak al-Malik, Huda Basahal, Noura al-Mansoori, Dimitrije Bugarski, Sharefa al-Mannai, Thamer al-Dossari, Muna al-Bader, Fatima al-Sharshani, Michael

Perrone, Maryam al-Maadhadi, Shuaa al-Kuwari, Abdulaziz Yousef, Abdulla al-Emadi, Alanoud al-Ghamdi, Haifa al-Khuzaei, and Aisha al-Fadhala.

This is the fi rst year Jedariart is trav-elling internationally, as a part of the Year of Culture initiative.

Following the Portland, Oregon pro-gramming, Jedariart will travel to sev-eral other US cities.

Each stop of the tour will feature

a diff erent artist from Qatar working in a variety of styles, all of which cel-ebrate the Qatari culture and traditions and inspire curiosity and discussion through beautifully unique pieces.

Jedariart is just one of the many pro-grammes that will be presented in the US and Qatar this year.

The 2021 Year of Culture programme will continue to debut virtual and in-person events, including exhibitions

and installations of works by Qatari and American artists; events showcas-ing the music, fi lm, and fashion of both countries; sporting events; culinary experiences; entrepreneurship, innova-tion, STEM, and business events; and educational programmes.

All past, present, and future exhibi-tions, programmes, and events will be featured on the offi cial Years of Culture website, http://www.yearsofculture.qa.

Jedariart, Portland initiative announced

The concept drawing for Qatari artist Fatima al-Sharshani’s Jediariart, Portland mural, The Never Ending You, 2021.

W Doha Hotel & Resi-dences is hosting a design exhibition en-

titled Cultural Fusion by Vir-ginia Commonwealth Univer-sity School of the Arts in Qatar (VCUarts Qatar) Graphic Design students, in collaboration with the United States embassy in Doha and Qatar Museums (QM) at ART29.

In celebration of Qatar-USA 2021 Year of Culture, the collab-orative display explores ongoing Qatar-US relations, taking art enthusiasts on a journey through the two diff erent cultures.

The exhibition will be open to the public until September 18, between 10am and 10pm daily.

The Cultural Fusion project commenced at VCUarts Qatar, allowing design students to ex-plore new ways of embracing the many diverse cultures through a

range of creative freedom.This resulted in diverse out-

comes, eight of which are on ex-hibit at ART29.

The designs on display narrate the inspiring elements of each culture, embrace diff erences, and depict artistic interpreta-tions of the strong ties of both nations through vibrant strokes and hues.

Art lovers will be taken on a sensory voyage where the desert of Qatar meets the New York streets, an immersive experience not to be missed.

In a statement, W Doha gen-eral manager Wassim Daageh said: “We welcome the oppor-tunity to take part in the Qatar-USA 2021 Year of Culture once again and are proud to support Qatar’s dynamic art scene by showcasing the creativity of young talented artists.”

VCUarts Qatar dean Amir Berbic said: “An understand-ing and appreciation of one an-other’s culture goes a long way in cementing and celebrating friendships between countries – and this is especially true when such emotions are expressed through a creative lens.”

“The Year of Culture aff orded VCUarts Qatar’s community of creatives a unique opportunity to do exactly that,” he added.

US embassy cultural aff airs offi cer Samantha Jackson hailed the growing relationship be-tween Qatar and the US through shared cultural experiences.

She congratulated the VCUarts Qatar Graphic Design students in successfully unit-ing our people and countries through art, and thanked all partners for contributing to this exhibition as part of the Qatar-

USA 2021 Year of Culture.Sponsor ExxonMobil Qatar’s

president and general manager Dominic Genetti thanked the QM and VCUarts Qatar for or-ganising the project that refl ects the strong partnership and true friendship Qatar and the US share.

The Cultural Fusion marks the

10th edition of the QM’s Years of Culture programme, which aims to convey Qatar to an in-ternational audience through a variety of exhibitions, festivals, competitions, and events.

QM CEO Ahmad Musa al-Namla said: “We are delighted this year to celebrate the 10th edition of Year of Cultures with

the US – a country with whom we share enduring ties.”

“This exhibition provides a platform to showcase students’ designs and to promote cross-cultural exchange,” he added.

ART29 is a platform that presents the works of up-and-coming local, regional, and in-ternational artists.

W Doha hosts a Qatar-USA Year of Culture show by VCUarts students

The exhibition of creations by VCUarts Qatar students will be open to the public until September 18.

The Qatar Year of Culture initiative brings

Qatari artists and mural art to cities in the

United States

Aman continues ‘Drop Off Your Kids’ campaignQNADoha

The Protection and Social Rehabilitation Centre (Aman), one of the centres

that operates under the umbrella of Qatar Foundation for Social Work, continues to implement its awareness campaign “Drop Off Your Kids” coinciding with the beginning of the new school year, by using social media plat-forms to deliver messages and expressive images, in co-opera-tion with a number of infl uenc-ers and activists in this fi eld.

The campaign aims at en-couraging parents to take their children to school, to reduce dependency on servants taking children to school, to use the delivery time in dialogue with children, to enhance the positive impact on the child’s psyche as a feeling of security and pride, and to urge offi cials to facilitate their employees taking the time to drop off their children at school.

Head of the Technical Produc-tion Department at Aman, Maha al-Mannai, stressed the centre’s keenness on producing aware-ness campaigns to protect target groups of women and children, victims of violence and family breakdown, and those who are exposed to it, as awareness is one of the most important methods of protection and prevention to reduce violence.

Through the “Drop Off Your Kids” campaign, a set of aware-ness messages will be published with the aim to strengthen the relationship between children and their parents, thus reduc-ing any negative eff ects that may occur on children’s behaviour in the future, she added.

For her part, the director of the Communication and Media Offi ce at Aman, Hanan al-Ali, stressed the need to continue implementing this awareness campaign on an annual basis, given the great and surprising echoes and interactions it has received from various segments of the public during the past years, and stemming from the centre’s keenness on enhancing family cohesion by urging par-ents to maintain close and con-tinuous communication with their children to make them feel safe.

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“The School Health Department has launched the ‘Back to School Campaign’ in every public school under the theme A safe return to school,” said Dr al-Dahnaim.

“We will highlight the most com-mon communicable and infectious diseases among students and how to combat and prevent them, in-cluding Covid-19, chickenpox, in-fl uenza, lice, infection of the hands, feet, mouth and scabies,” the offi cial stated.

“This aims at improving and sup-

porting students’ health and pro-vide them with all preventive meas-ures against the spread of diseases among them,” she continued.

Dr al-Dahnaim also said that many activities and educational lectures are being launched to en-hance the health awareness of stu-dents about the most common dis-eases.

“This includes how to follow the most important ways of disease prevention in their environment whether at home, school or public places by preparing fl yers, educa-tional messages, colouring books

and informative posters,” she ex-plained.

Dr al-Dahnaim noted that par-ents also will be involved in the campaign and will receive educa-tional and informative messages on a regular basis.

“We would like to emphasise the role of parents in preparing their children to return to school. They must ensure an early bed time, maintain a healthy diet and edu-cate children about preventative measures,” the offi cial added. “They should visit the health centres if the children feel sick.”

New academic year starts with coronavirus protocols

A teacher interacting with students yesterday. PICTURE: Ram Chand