RAMADAN THOUGHT

Prayer times

Fasting times

And if all the trees on the earth were pens and the sea (were ink wherewith to write), with seven seas behind it to add to its (supply), yet the Words of Allah would not be exhausted. Verily, Allah is All-Hearer, All-Seer. — Qur’an 31: 27

Iftar today ............................. 6.12pmImsak tomorrow.................3.16am

Fajr....3.27; Zuhr....11.30; Asr....2.58; Maghrib.....6.12; Isha.....7.42

Qatar to chair ArabLeague meet onAl Quds tomorrow

GCC secretary-generallauds Qatar mediation in Somalia-Kenya row

Saudi to hold Haj under health andregulatory controls

Kabul blast toll 68

The General Secretariat of the Arab League announced yesterday that an extraordinary session of the Arab League Council at the level of foreign ministers will be held virtually tomorrow, under the chairmanship of Qatar. The session is at the request of the State of Palestine, it added. Assistant Secretary-General Hossam Zaki, in a statement, said that it was decided to upgrade the meeting to the ministerial level instead of permanent delegates, in proportion to the seriousness of the Israeli attacks on the worshippers in the Al Aqsa Mosque and the residents of the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood, as part of an Israeli systematic policy to Judaise Al Quds and change the existing legal and historical status of the city and its sanctities.The ministers will discuss Israeli crimes and aggression in the occupied Al Quds against Muslim and Christian holy sites, especially Al Aqsa mosque, as well as attacking worshipers in the holy month of Ramadan, in addition to the brutal Israeli attacks and plans to seize the homes of Palestinians in Al Quds, especially in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood, in an attempt to empty the holy city of its residents and displace its people. (QNA)

HE the Secretary-General of the Co-operation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf (GCC) Dr Nayef Falah Mubarak al-Hajraf has praised Qatar’s

eff orts and mediation between Somalia and Kenya by bridging views and enhancing relations between the two countries, thus strengthening international security, stability and peace. In a statement , the GCC secretary-general welcomed the announcement of Somalia and Kenya on the resumption of full diplomatic relations between them, highlighting the importance of this step that will bring prosperity to the peoples of the two countries and achieve security and stability in these countries. (QNA)

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has announced to hold Haj for this year 1442AH in a manner that ensures the health and safety of pilgrims, in accordance with the health, security, and regulatory controls so that pilgrims can perform their rituals easily and in a safe environment. The Ministry of Haj and Umrah of Saudi Arabia explained that the health authorities in the kingdom are continuing to assess conditions and take all health measures, pointing out the details of the controls and operational plans for this year’s Haj will be announced later. (QNA)

The death toll from a bomb attack outside a school in the Afghan capital Kabul has risen to 68, off icials said yesterday.

GULF TIMES

published in

QATAR

since 1978MONDAY Vol. XXXXII No. 11909

May 10, 2021Ramadan 28, 1442 AH www. gulf-times.com 2 Riyals

Barshim joint winner with Tobe at Tokyo meeting

SPORT | Page 1BUSINESS | Page 1

Chamber lauds Shura Council nod for draft law on investment and trade court

Qatar plans lifting of Covid-19curbs in 4 phases from May 28By Ayman AdlyStaff Reporter

Qatar plans to gradually lift the Covid-19 restrictions in four phases from May 28, with each

phase lasting three weeks, a top health offi cial announced yesterday.

“With a potential spike post-Eid a distinct possibility, this will allow suf-fi cient time to analyse the data and de-termine the impact,” stated Dr Abdul-latif al-Khal.

The chair of the National Strategic Group on Covid-19 and head of the Infectious Diseases Division at Hamad Medical Corporation was addressing a press conference on Qatar TV.

“The date of implementation and the duration of each phase will depend on the epidemic indicators, based on a great extent on the degree of compli-ance of the community members with the current measures, restrictions and guidance by the government,” he said.

“So, while I understand that many people may be eager to begin the lifting of restrictions as soon as possible, I ask you to please be patient.

“It is vital that we do not claim vic-

tory against this virus too early - with the new, highly-transmissible variants in the community, there is still the po-tential for the virus to gain momentum and for the number to increase,” Dr al-Khal cautioned.

“For the past 15 months we have lived under the threat of Covid-19 - this virus has negatively impacted the lives of each and every one of us in some way, either directly or indirectly. It is important to acknowledge how much we have achieved and how much we have sacrifi ced to get this virus un-der control.”

“Unlike last year, we will be able to

make more freedoms available to those who are vaccinated,” Dr al-Khal said. The National Covid-19 Vaccination Programme is progressing at a fast pace and more than 1.7mn doses have been administered since the beginning, the senior offi cial explained.

“Qatar is among the top 10 coun-tries in the world in terms of vaccine coverage for the size of its population. It is very encouraging that we are see-ing clear evidence that the vaccines are protecting people from developing symptoms of Covid and becoming ill.

“A study undertaken in Qatar and published last week in the New England Journal of Medicine showed that for fully vaccinated people - 14 days after receiving the second dose - vaccination is 97.4% eff ective in preventing severe, critical or fatal disease due to both the UK and South African variants.

“These statistics are very promising and give good cause to be optimistic about a return towards normal life once we have vaccinated around 80-90% of the eligible population in Qatar.

“In recent weeks, the combined impact of Covid-19 restrictions and increasing vaccination rates, and the overwhelming support of the com-

munity, has resulted in a consistent reduction in the number of new daily infections in the country.

“I urge people to take the vaccine whenever possible as it has been prov-en safe even for pregnant women and those with hypersensitivity.

“However we still need to be cau-tious as we are not out of the second wave yet and we are still dealing with two highly contagious and highly viru-lent strains of the virus that are ac-tively circulating in the community,” Dr al-Khal added. Page 2

Steady fall in number of new daily Covid-19 cases Returning travellers form a larger part of new cases More freedoms to be allowed to those vaccinated People urged to be very careful during Eid holidays

Dr Abdullatif al-Khal at the press conference yesterday.

No Indian strain in Qatar so farNo Indian strain in Qatar so farThe Indian strain of Covid-19 is not recorded in Qatar so far, Dr Abdullatif al-Khal said. “Even if it was spotted, it would be under control because of the quarantine policy,” he told a press conference on Qatar TV yesterday.With the number of community cases declining, infections from returning travellers now make up a larger proportion of the total daily cases of Covid-19, Dr al-Khal said.“Our data shows around 2-6% of

returning travellers test positive. This rate of infection is not abnormally high and consistent with rates that we would expect to see in people returning from multiple countries.“Our quarantine policy for anyone entering Qatar has been one of the strictest of its kind in the world and proved to be eff ective in detecting those infected and quickly isolating them and delaying the introduction of new variants into Qatar,” he added.

People chant slogans as they gather for a protest to express solidarity with the Palestinian people near the Israeli embassy in Jordan’s capital Amman yesterday. Page 7

Show of solidarity with Palestinians in Jordan

Schools, restaurants, salonsto ‘open’ in fi rst phase

Resuming blended learning in schools at 30% capacity, op-

erating public transport on all days, allowing dine-in at restaurants and reopening driving schools, barbershops, gyms, swimming pools, museums and libraries etc, are among the highlights of Phase 1 of the planned easing of Covid-19 restrictions in Qatar.

The lifting of restrictions will also be marked by vari-ous allowances for fully vac-cinated people.

The details of the four-phase plan, which relies on a set of key performance indi-cators, were given at a press conference jointly organised by the Ministry of Public

Health and Ministry of Com-merce and Industry yesterday. The MoPH also issued a series of infographics explaining the lifting of restrictions.

Phase 1 is planned to begin on May 28, Phase 2 on June 18, Phase 3 on July 9 and Phase 4 on July 30.

“Public compliance with the precautionary measures will play a key role in the successful implementation of this plan,” the MoPH urged the public. “Play your role in moving us

towards normality: wear your mask, keep a physical distance of 1.5m from others, and take the Covid-19 vaccine when it is your turn to do so.”

Following are the details of Phase 1, sector-wise:

Education Allow blended learning

in schools at 30% capacity. Continue to allow 1:5

sessions in special needs cen-tres. All instructors must be vaccinated. To Page 2

More than 1,000 mosques,grounds to host Eid prayersBy Shafeeq AlingalStaff Reporter

More than 1,000 mosques and prayer grounds across the country will host Eid-al-

Fitr prayers, the Ministry of Endow-ments (Awqaf) and Islamic Aff airs announced. Also, no place is avail-able for women, and children aged below 12 years at mosques and prayer grounds.

Awqaf published the list of the mosques and prayer grounds on its social media accounts and asked the believers to follow the safety meas-ures. Name, number and location of the 1,026 mosques and prayer grounds are available on the Twit-ter handle of the ministry https://t.co/3k5s8quKuU?amp=1.

Eid prayer will start at 5.05am. The ministry has informed that social dis-tancing will be applicable and urged the faithful to follow all precautions and safety measures announced in the last phase of reopening.

As per the advisory, worshippers should not shake hands even with gloves on. They should cover the mouth and nose while sneezing, wear face masks and do ablution at home as the bathrooms and ablution place of the mosques will remain closed. The ministry has urged the faithful not to go to the mosques early as they will be opened only with prayer calls. The believers should maintain a distance of two meters from each other and should not crowd inside the mosque.

The mosques will be reopened at various areas including Ezgava, Umm Saneem, Al Salata Al Jadeeda, Umm

Salal Ali, Umm Salal Mohamed, Umm Ghuwailina, Umm Qarn, Umm Le-khba, Bin Omran, Bin Mahmoud, Bu Sidra, Al Thumama, Al Jumailiya, Al Kharaitiyat, Al Jeryan, Al Huwaila, Al Kharrara, Al Khalidiya, Al Khar-saah, Al Kheesa, Al Dafna, Al Doha Al Jadeed, Al Thakira, Al Soudan, Al Sailiya, Al Sheehaniya, Al Ebb, The Pearl, Al Murra, Al Messila, Al Mirqab Al Jadeed, Al Meshaf, Al Mamoura, Industrial Area, Al Najada, Al Hilal, Al Wajba, Umm Ghuwailina, Al Khor, Al Duhail, Al Rayyan Al Jadeed, Al Rayy-an Al Qadeem, Al Sadd, Simaisma, Al Sailiya, Al Sheehaniya, Al Shamal, Al Azeeziya, Bani Hajer, Bu Samra, Bu Sidra, Dukhan, Raas Lafan, Rawdat Al Hamama, Rawdat Al Khail, Rawdat Al Fars, Rawdat Aba Al Heeran, Se-maisma, Onaiza, Fereej Al Nasr, Fereej bin Dirham, Fereej Al Manaseer, Fer-eej bin Omran, Fereej bin Mahmood, Fereej Abdul Aziz, Leibeib, Legataifi -ya, Meraikh, Mesaieed, Messaimeer, Msheirib, Nuaija, Wadi Al Sail, Ain Kahled, Al Ghanem Al Jadeed, Al Gharrafa, Fereej bin Omar.

File picture of a mosque.

Al Sadd’s South Korean star Nam Tae-hee celebrates with teammates after scoring against Al Arabi during their Amir Cup semi-final match at the Jassim bin Hamad Stadium yesterday. Al Sadd won the match 3-0 to stay on course for their 18th Amir Cup title. PICTURE: Noushad Thekkayil Page 12, Sport Page 1

Al Sadd in Amir Cup final

QATARGulf TimesMonday, May 10, 20212

A decked up and illuminated dhow along the Corniche yesterday evening. PICTURE: Thajudheen

Dazzling dhowTwo new appointments at Sidra Medicine

Sidra Medicine has ap-pointed Prof Ziyad M Hijazi as its chief medi-

cal offi cer (CMO) and Dr Khalid Fakhro as its chief research of-fi cer (CRO).

Dr Barbro Friden, CEO at Sidra Medicine said: “Both leaders have an unwavering commitment to advancing healthcare and with the sup-port of all of us at Sidra Medi-cine, I hope our organisation becomes the fi rst choice for parents across the Middle East who are seeking personalised care for their children. I also hope that our precision medi-cine programme, will set the clinical research framework for advancing academic medicine in this region.”

Prof Hijazi has nearly 40 years of experience in con-genital cardiology and has pio-neered several ground-break-ing interventional procedures in the fi eld. He is an interna-tionally recognised leader in the non-surgical repair of con-genital and structural heart de-fects in children and adults and in the development of novel trans-catheter devices.

As CMO of Sidra Medicine, Prof Hijazi will be responsible for the overall management of the hospital’s medical op-erations, upholding its clinical excellence and patient safety programmes and ensuring that patients in Qatar receive the highest standard of medical care.

Prof Hijazi joined Sidra Medicine in 2014, during which time he established the hospi-tal’s Department of Paediatrics and Heart Centre; staff ed by some of the top paediatric spe-cialists and healthcare profes-sionals from across the globe. The Heart Centre provides

treatment (medical, interven-tional, electrical and surgical) for patients with congenital or acquired heart disease.

Prof Hijazi also successfully set up Sidra Medicine’s Inter-national Medical Offi ce which has facilitated international patients to access several spe-cialist services, including car-diology, urology, plastics and neurosurgery among others.

As the CRO for Sidra Medi-cine, Dr Fakhro is responsible for designing and implementing the healthcare organisation’s ambitious research strategy to advance precision medicine in Qatar. The strategy aims to place Sidra Medicine among the top destinations for per-sonalised care in the world; leveraging next-generation technologies to enhance dis-ease diagnosis and implement advanced therapies for patients.

Prior to being appointed as the CRO, he led the Human Genetics Department at Sidra Medicine and was the inaugu-ral director of precision medi-cine, heading an ambitious programme where research in genomics and personalised medicine become embedded in the heart of Sidra Medicine’s academic medical enterprise; with a focus on national prior-

ity conditions, such as genetic diseases, autism spectrum dis-order, and diabetes. Dr Fakhro joined Sidra Medicine in 2014.

Under Dr Fakhro’s leader-ship, scientists in the Research Branch at Sidra Medicine, have made important strides to im-prove diagnosis of rare genetic conditions. They have also contributed towards Qatar’s eff orts to tackle the Covid-19 pandemic, through the devel-opment of new testing meth-ods and the publication of studies in conjunction with in-ternational collaborators.

In addition to his new role as the CRO, Dr Fakhro will con-tinue to run his own labora-tory, having won over $5mn in international grants, and pub-lished landmark studies on the genetic structure of Qatar, in-cluding the discovery of many novel disease-causing genes in the local population.

Dr Fakhro is also involved in capacity building and educa-tion via adjunct faculty ap-pointments at Weill Cornell Medicine – Qatar and at Ha-mad Bin Khalifa University, where he teaches classes and mentors the next generation of Master’s and PhD students in human genetics and genomic medicine.

Prof Ziyad M Hijazi Dr Khalid Fakhro

Schools, restaurants, salons to ‘open’ in fi rst phaseFrom Page 1

Allow training centres to operate at 30% capacity. All trainers must be vaccinated. Allow the reopening of

nurseries and childcare centres at a maximum capacity of 30%. All staff members must be vac-cinated.

Gatherings Allow social gatherings for

vaccinated people with up to 10 people outdoors (or fi ve if it in-cludes unvaccinated people) and fi ve people indoors. Unvaccinated people can only gather outdoors with a maximum of fi ve people. Allow the continuation

of daily and Friday prayers in mosques, with no children under 12 years old allowed, and the clo-sure of toilets and ablution areas. Not allow wedding parties.

Such parties will be allowed start-ing from Phase 2, with certain re-strictions on venues and capacity.

Outdoors and professional sports Allow groups of fi ve people

and members of the same house-hold to gather in parks, beaches and on the Corniche, with the capacity of private beaches lim-ited to 30%. Allow preparatory training

for local and international tour-naments approved by the Min-istry of Public Health. Profes-sional training allowed indoors and outdoors. Amateur sports training allowed for vaccinated people only with a capacity of 10 outdoors and fi ve indoors. Allow selected professional

sports events with a vaccinated spectator capacity of 30%, out-doors only.

Transportation Allow the operation of pub-

lic transport at 30% capacity, including on Fridays and Satur-days. Allow personal boats with

a maximum capacity of 10 peo-ple (only two of whom may be unvaccinated). Excursion and touristic boats will remain sus-pended, while rental boats will be allowed only for families from the same household. All staff

members must be vaccinated. Allow the reopening of

driving schools at 30% capacity. Vaccinated staff are allowed to run lessons.

Business and leisure Maintain workplace capac-

ity at 50%, with essential busi-ness meetings limited to 15 vac-cinated people. Maintain shopping malls’

capacity at 30% and the closure of food courts (except for pick-up and delivery), while children under 12 years will not be al-lowed. Allow outdoor dining at

30% capacity for all restaurants, and 30% indoor (for vaccinated clients only) capacity for restau-rants that are part of the Qatar Clean programme. Allow souqs to operate at

30% capacity, including on Fri-days and Saturdays, with no children under 12 years allowed. Maintain the capacity of

wholesale markets at 30%, with no children under 12 years al-lowed. Allow cleaning and hospi-

tality services as follows: At homes: Vaccinated staff can work in more than one house-hold and each house may have

more than one vaccinated staff member.At workplaces: Vaccinated staff can operate at 30% capacity

during working hours. Not allow conferences, exhi-

bitions and cultural events to be held. Such events will be allowed

from Phase 2, based on risk as-sessment by the MoPH and with restrictions on capacity.Allow the reopening of

theme parks and leisure centres at 30% capacity outdoors. In-door activities will be limited to vaccinated people only with a maximum capacity of 20%. Allow gyms and health

clubs to reopen at 30% capac-ity only for vaccinated clients. All staff members must be vac-cinated. Allow swimming pools and

water parks to reopen at 30% capacity outdoors. Indoor ac-tivities will be limited to vacci-nated people only with a maxi-mum capacity of 20%. Allow the reopening of cin-

emas and theatres at a maximum capacity of 30% for only vacci-nated people over 16 years old. Allow the reopening of

barbershops and hairdressers at a maximum capacity of 30% for vaccinated clients. All staff members must be vaccinated. Allow the reopening of mu-

seums and libraries at a maxi-mum capacity of 30%.

Sharp decline seen in new Covid-19 cases in QatarQNADoha

The Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) reported yesterday, 389 new con-

fi rmed cases of coronavirus (Covid-19), with 292 of these from community cases and 97 from travellers returning from abroad.

The MoPH recorded 1,063 re-coveries from the virus during the past 24 hours, bringing the total number of cases recovered in Qatar to 201,530.

The ministry announced six new deaths of those aged 43, 51, 55, 57, 66 and 69 years, all of whom had a history of chronic disease and were receiving the necessary medical care.

The number of new Covid-19 cases reported yesterday saw a sharp drop from the 533 cases recorded on Saturday. Before that, 600 cases were reported on Friday, 593 on Thursday, 645 on Wednesday, 640 on Tues-day, 644 on Monday and 646 on Sunday.

Vaccination Programme Data:1,813,240 Covid-19 vaccine

doses have been administered since the start of the programme 26,080 vaccine doses have

been administered in the past 24 hours 49.1% of the eligible popu-

lation has now received at least one dose of the vaccine 87.5% of over 60s (the most

vulnerable population group) have been vaccinated with at least one dose, while 80.1% have received both doses

Every day, hundreds of peo-

ple are becoming sick due to the Covid-19 with many requiring admission to hospital.

Since February 1, the number of people with Covid-19 admit-ted to hospital has doubled.

Qatar’s strict quarantine policy for returning travellers has enabled to delay the intro-duction of new variants into this country for several months,

but we are now seeing positive Covid-19 cases in the region and in Qatar with the new variants from South Africa.

This new variant is much more contagious and spreads more easily between people than the existing strain and may be associated with increased sever-ity of the disease.

New cases drop below 400 MoPH reports 389 new cases, 1,063 recoveries and 201,530 total recoveries

490 face prosecution for violating Covid measures

The designated authorities referred 490 people to the Public Prosecution for violating the preventive and precaution-ary measures enforced by the country to contain the spread of the Covid-19. Among them, 452 people were referred to the Public Prosecution for not wearing masks in places where they are mandatory, 20 persons for not maintaining a safe physi-cal distance, 15 for gathering in closed places and three for not installing the Ehteraz app.The measure is in line with the Cabinet decision, Decree Law No 17 of 1990 on infectious diseases, and the precautionary measures in force in the country to contain the spread of Covid-19. The designated authorities called on the public to adhere to the precautionary measures in place to ensure their safety and the safety of others.

“Never respond to suspicious messages and calls that ask for your personal or banking data to avoid being a victim of cybercrimes,” the Ministry of Interior has advised the public, listing the dos and don’ts if a person receives anonymous calls and messages.

QATAR

Gulf TimesMonday, May 10, 20214

Amal Ameen’s new fragrance ‘Soul’ launched

Amal Ameen has launched Soul, an ex-clusive and unique

new fragrance inspired by Mykonos.

“The Soul fragrance is a spiritual celebration in all its splendour, a free choice; a new feeling of freshness and newness without limitation that evokes a peaceful retreat after a long day. Soul repre-sents this calm moment of escape where our feeling of completeness and happiness is overwhelming. A satisfy-ing moment - all of our own - in which we fi nd comfort and pleasure,” a press state-ment noted.

It is an “aromatic version of life itself, made only using the fi nest and best oils and most exquisite natural ingre-dients. The delicate bouquet of oriental scents, blends the freshness of bergamot preciously with peach and orange blossom, which com-bine fl awlessly with woody base notes and rich musk.

Its essence captivates the tips of the soul and thrives through the deepness of na-ture, giving warmth with its pure fl oral and subtle clean notes and zesty composi-tion”, it explained.

The soft velvet feel black

box, limited edition, repre-sents elegance, mystery and sophistication. The fashion-able package hosts a screen inside, where the story of Soul is played. The bottle is cushioned with foam, and its white and black composition is evoking a timeless declara-tion of power, resulting from the experience of successful bestsellers like La Boutique Blanche, Amici Di Moda or La Blanche perfumes.

“Soul is bold and inter-national, it is cosmopolitan, elegant and self-confident. It rushes out like an explo-sion of feelings that brings back pleasant memories of paradise, of the beauti-ful island of Mykonos and its colours, which served as an inspiration. Conjuring memories of vacations in the sun, of deep blue skies, of salty waves, of breaths of pure air, Soul is a liberat-ing trip full of promise and possibilities,” the statement added. “Memories might fade away, but the scent of real feelings remains un-touched.”

The perfume can be found at La Boutique Blanche, or online on the Amal Ameen Beauty website/Instagram page: @Amalameenbeauty.

‘Soul’ by Amal Ameen.

Qatar Charity continues to receive Zakat Al-Fitr and donations for needyQatar Charity (QC) has said it

continues receiving Zakat Al-Fitr and donations from ben-

efactors until the morning of Eid Al-Fitr for the benefi t of the needy and the poor.

QC collects Zakat Al-Fitr, Zakat and donations from benevolent people through its headquarters, branches, collection points and collectors. Ben-efactors can pay their Zakat and do-nate at these places until midnight in Ramadan.

Qatar Charity seeks to share the joy of Eid Al-Fitr with the less for-tunate and the underprivileged, al-leviate the fi nancial burdens of poor families, meet the needs of orphans and the needy, improve their living conditions, and to promote solidarity and co-operation, according to a press statement.

QC’s Al Hilal branch remains open from 9am until the sunset prayer. The other branches and collection points are open from 10am to 5.30pm and from 8.30pm to midnight. On Fridays, they are open from 12noon to 5.30pm and from 8.30pm to midnight.

Qatar Charity has 32 branches, of which 20 are for men and 12 for wom-en, across the country. It also has 101 collection points, 1,622 donation box-es and 37 donation payment kiosks.

Zakat and donations can be made through Qatar Charity’s website (qcharity.org/en/qa) and app (qch.qa/appen) in an easy and accessible way, in addition to dialling 44667711.

QC has urged the benevolent people of Qatar to “hasten to do good deeds and give during the remaining days of Ramadan for the benefi t of the needy and poor”.

Qatar Charity off ers various options for Zakat and donations.

Al Wakra fi sh market sees customers’ surge in last week of RamadanAl Wakra fi sh market has received

more customers during the last week of Ramadan, after a pe-

riod of slump since the start of the holy month.

The surge in demand has seen higher retail prices, local Arabic daily Arrayah reported.

A number of sellers and traders pointed out that the initial drop in de-mand was due to the fact that fi sh is not often preferred by many customers during Ramadan.

They explained that Al Wakra fi sh market is open for the public on all days except Thursdays and Fridays. There are 22 retail shops and three cleaning stalls. Dr Abu Aqlah al-Mas-sari, from the health control section of Al Wakra Municipality’s Municipal Control Department, said that all the fi sh at the market is examined several times during the day to ensure they are fi t for human consumption.

A spike in summer heat could cause speedy deterioration of the fi sh on dis-play. He explained that the low sales of fi sh could lead shops to store the unsold quantities for the next day. Ac-cordingly, the section exercises tighter

control on the market to ensure that the fi sh are stored properly. In addi-tion, the sellers are banned from dis-playing unsold fi sh after two days and they are asked to dispose them.

Dr al-Massari, advised all fi sher-men to store suffi cient quantity of ice

in their boats and store the fi sh in ad-equate ice, as soon as they are caught. Similarly, customers are advised to go home as quickly as possible after buy-ing fi sh to store them properly in the fridge and to avoid spoiling them due to the hot weather.

The surge in demand has seen higher retail prices.

6 Gulf TimesMonday, May 10, 2021

QATAR

Since the beginning of the holy month of Ramadan, the Education Above All

(EAA) Foundation launched its nationwide fundraising cam-paign under the theme of “Do-nate To Build Their Future”, to support the world’s most vul-nerable and marginalised chil-dren by providing them with the educational opportunities.

The campaign intends to sup-port children’s access to safe, quality and equitable education to unlock their potential and create a better future for them-selves, their families and their communities.

The campaign will continue to support EAA’s projects across the world with a specifi c focus on supporting children in Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, Syria and Pal-estine, where the Covid-19 pan-demic has exacerbated the many pre-existing barriers to acces-sible education, which include a legacy of confl ict, poverty and insecurity. It will also support the Together project in Qatar.

The foundation’s retail part-ners have further launched a digital outreach campaign to encourage participation in EAA’s Ramadan contest through the social media channels of EAA

Donate (@EAADonate) and the EAA Foundation @education-aboveall_eaa and with the pos-sibility of donors winning free raffl e prizes including cash cou-pons, Qatar Airways fl ight tick-ets, spa treatments, Staycations at 5 star hotels and other gifts.

Mubarak al-Thani, communi-cation manager and head of Ad-vocacy at EAA Foundation, said: “This year’s campaign comes as the Covid-19 pandemic contin-ues to build upon the fundamen-tal barriers to education in place for millions of children around the world and we are pleased to have the support of our partners in reaching as big of an audience as possible for our call-to-action to be heard.

“Our mission to ensure that inclusive, equitable and quality education is delivered to those who need it the most continues, and we hope that the campaign draws renewed attention to the power of learning as the most important enabler of human de-velopment”.

EAA Education projects are eligible for Sadaqah and in or-der to raise adequate funds and enhance participation in the campaign, EAA is continuing to work with many partners across Qatar to drive awareness of the need to provide educational op-portunities for needy children so as to help them build a stronger future.

These partners include Qatar

Airways, LuLu, Marriott Qatar Business Council hotels, Carre-four Qatar, Arrayah newspaper, the Qatar Women’s Association, Yalla Toys, Vodafone, Oore-doo, Mega Mart, Awfaz global schools, Qatar Football Associa-tion, SPAR, Nakhilat, Abdullah Abdul Ghani and Bros, ELAN Qatar and Family Food Centre.

Partners will be channelling support through internal com-munications to employees and customers for support to EAA, selling merchandise of which a portion of proceeds are directed towards EAA, matching dona-tions and promoting the cam-paign’s call to action via their social media channels, and in newspaper coverage.

EAA Ramadan campaignoff ers needy childreneducational opportunities

As part of its social commitment towards the workers on campus, the College of the North Atlantic – Qatar (CNA-Q) collabo-

rated with Qatar Charity (QC) to distribute 350 Iftar meals.

This activity aims to reach workers in diff erent campus divisions such as security, cleaning, tech-nical, fi re and safety, civil and more.

In line with the Covid-19 restrictions, meal boxes were packed and loaded onto QC’s decon-taminated delivery van. Workers received their meals directly from the van while respecting social distancing and Covid-19 prevention measures.

Dr Salem al-Naemi, CNA-Q’s president said: “Ramadan is the time to be selfl ess and under-stand there is no way we can overcome diffi cul-ties without showing grace to others. While many of us gather at home to share Ramadan Iftars, for many shift workers it is not that simple to break their fast. We wanted to show CNA-Q’s workers appreciation to all the hard work and eff orts they put into their jobs even during fasting hours. We also extend our appreciation to Qatar Charity and the volunteers who made this event possible.”

Yousuf bin Ahmed al-Kuwari, CEO of QC praised CNA-Q’s initiative guided by the core values of the educational institute that thrive on community service and solidarity.

Al-Kuwari thanked CNA-Q for choosing QC as a partner in humanitarian actions and said: “Qatar Charity is keen on collaborating with all sectors, governmental or educational entities, in order to strengthen the values that we believe in and seek to spread in society. We strive to achieve human dignity and community development for the sake

of our nation and the society’s well-being.”Suhoor and Iftar are two elements of Ramadan

that have great signifi cance to all worshippers. It is a manifestation of solidarity and fellowship. College of the North Atlantic – Qatar has always been committed to the community causes and has worked relentlessly to encourage volunteering and actions that make a diff erence.

It is worth noting that this event falls under the Ramadan initiatives organised by QC, benefi ting as many as 490,000 persons in Qatar.

These projects include the mobile Iftar, which contains Iftar meals and food baskets for work-ers and drivers, in addition to Ramadan supplies for families with limited income, assistance and food baskets for those aff ected by the Covid-19 pandemic.

CNA-Q distributes Iftar meals with Qatar Charity

The campaign intends to support children’s access to safe, quality and equitable education to unlock their potential and create a better future for themselves, their families and their communities

QATAR/ARAB WORLD/RAMADAN7Gulf Times

Monday, May 10, 2021

The blessed times when supplications are acceptedIt is well known that the Lord descends in the

last third of the night and Says: “‘Is there any seeker of forgiveness so that I would

forgive for him? Is there anyone with a demand so that I would give him? Is there any repentant person so that I would accept his repentance?’ Until the rise of dawn.” [Al-Bukhari and Muslim]

This is the time during which the supplication is answered and when the slave is in prostration, he is even closer to his Lord and in a position that makes it more likely for his supplication to be fulfi lled. This is because Allah The Almighty draws near His slave at the last third of the night and the slave becomes the closest to the Lord while he is in prostration. For this reason, the Messenger of Allah, sallallaahu ‘alaihi wa sallam (may Allah exalt his mention), said: “I have been forbidden from reciting the Qur’an while bowing or prostrating. So, in bowing, exalt Allah The Exalted, and in prostration, be earnest in supplication, for you are in a position that entitles you to have your supplication answered.” [Muslim]

If those three conditions are realised: the slave is close to his Lord, and the Lord Is close to His slave, in the last third of the night when the supplication receives an answer, it is, most likely, that Allah The Almighty will respond to his supplication.

At the time of the Athaan (fi rst call to prayer), and in the interval between the Athaan and the Iqaamah (second call to prayer), the supplication never fails to receive an answer according to an authentic Hadith (narration) with a Saheeh (sound) chain of narrators. The same is true of the time following the prescribed obligatory prayers, the time when the Imaam is ascending the pulpit (on Friday) until the prayer is over, and the last hour of Friday.

Those days, nights and hours (during which the supplication is answered) are honoured for reasons, some of which are beyond human knowledge, and others are known to people.

In the last third of the night, the soul becomes pure, more sincere, and more devoted

to Allah The Almighty. On Friday, the hearts of believers collaborate in good deeds to solicit the mercy of Allah The Almighty, which makes it more likely for the supplication to receive an answer. The same applies to the state of submissiveness of the heart and humiliation before the Lord Almighty.

This is the reason why ‘Umar, may Allah be pleased with him, did not rely, in terms of response, on the supplication itself so much as on opening the gate of supplication. He says, “If the gate of supplication is opened, this means that the gate of response will be opened.” That is, when one is helped to supplicate in this manner where the heart is submissive, and one stands in humility before the Lord, singing His praises, imploring Him, humbly and tearfully, he should know that this supplication will receive an answer.

It is most likely that a supplication will be accepted by Allah The Almighty when one, being in the state of Tahaarah (ritual purity), faces the Qiblah (direction of prayer), raises his hands, and then supplicates in that state of submissiveness. This was the practice of the Messenger of Allah, sallallaahu ‘alaihi wa sallam, i who used to raise his hands in supplication so much that the whiteness of his armpits would be visible, [Al-Bukhari and Muslim], just as the Prophet, sallallaahu ‘alaihi wa sallam, did in all his aff airs. It was said in a Hadith (narration): “Whenever anything concerned him (the Prophet, sallallaahu ‘alaihi wa sallam, he would raise his head towards the sky; and whenever he strove in supplication, he would say: ‘Ya Hayy, Ya Qayyoom (O (Allah) The Ever-Living, The Sustainer of [all] existence).’”

If one faces Allah The Almighty and supplicates Him, raising his hands with humility, imploring Him humbly and tearfully and with a present heart, at those virtuous times, it is almost certain that his supplication will be accepted by Allah The Almighty.

Article source: http://www.islamweb.net/emainpage/

Completing the Qur’an in Taraweh prayerQuestion: Is it Sunnah to complete the entire Qur’an recitation in the Taraweh (the night prayer during the month of Ramadan) prayers during Ra-madan? Some people complete the entire Qur’an within six days (each night 5 parts) during the first days of Ramadan. They fear that they might not continue praying the Taraweh prayer in the same mosque and may lose the sequence or chain of the entire Qur’an completion in the Taraweh prayer as a result. Please explain this action ac-cording to the Sunnah.

Fatwa: A group of scholars, may Allah have mercy on them, hold the view that it is desirable to finish reciting the whole Qur’an during the Taraweh. So if a congregation can finish reciting the whole Qur’an more than once during the Taraweh without causing great difficulty to the

people praying, then this is good. The general principle that should be observed is that the imam should take the circumstances of the congregation into consideration, so he should recite a part of the Qur’an (neither very long nor very short) during the Taraweh so that he does not make them shun away from the congrega-tion, as some scholars, may Allah have mercy on them, have stated. Finally, it should be noted that a Muslim is not obliged to perform the Taraweh prayer in a par-ticular mosque and not go to other mosques, he is also not obliged to attend the Taraweeh prayer during the whole month until the recitation of the whole Qur’an has been accomplished, but if one does so, then this is better. Allah knows best.Source: The Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Aff airs

Safwa conducts latest Golden Leaf Promotion

Safwa has conducted its latest Golden Leaf Pro-motion at all Mega Mart

outlets around Doha. Through this promotion,

Safwa gave the opportunity to customers to fi nd a golden leaf inside the packaging of their products, from which they would register themselves for a raffl e contest.

“Safwa is constantly fi nding new ways to promote a healthy lifestyle and its locally grown products. Safwa takes its cor-porate social responsibilities seriously and believes it is vital for companies to invest back into their communities and created a strong bond with their consumers. The purpose of this promotion was to encour-age healthy products with an incentive of winning gold and vouchers worth QR2,000 to be used on their online platform,” the company said in a press statement.

Safwa gave a “special thanks to the management team of Mega Mart, Pagarani and Chandnani, who made this promotion a reality and for continuously supporting local producers”.

Mega Mart “highly encour-ages any opportunity for local

producers to emerge and grow in the market, and it believes that Qatar has the potential to become self-suffi cient towards sustainable development as part of its vision for 2030”, the statement noted.

It was also the fi rst retail store to display Safwa’s prod-ucts and the promotion was “perfectly aligned” with Mega Mart’s goals.

The promotion ran for an en-tire month across all the outlets,

and was a “tremendous success with substantial engagement with the community”. Many participants registered and eventually three winners where picked at random.

Fardan Fahad Alfardan was present at Mega Mart, The Cen-tre, to meet with the winners and hand over the awards.

The winners are: 1st place - Jagat Singh Kullar (prize: 8gm of gold); 2nd place - David David (QR2,000 Safwa vouchers); and

3rd place - Elloise Girle (QR1,000 Safwa vouchers).

“Safwa continues to promote a healthy lifestyle and aims to do more promotions with retail stores and the community. Safwa uses innovative agricultural techniques to provide its freshly harvested products, and hopes to expand largely in order to become one of the top local producers of vegetables and greens. Stay safe & healthy,” the statement added.

The purpose of the promotion is to encourage healthy products with an incentive of winning gold

Fardan Fahad Alfardan with the winners and Mega Mart off icials.

Mall of Qatar joins initiative to distribute food kits among workers across QatarIn line with its corporate

social responsibility (CSR) programme and on the oc-

casion of Eid al-Fitr, Mall of Qatar (MoQ), in collaboration with Wa’hab, has been spear-heading an initiative to provide 300 kits to labourers across Qa-tar, enabling them to overcome the current challenges and en-joy the Eid moments.

The kits included food ma-terials and personal hygiene items, and were well-packed and delivered to the labourers with the highest standards of safety and sanitation, MoQ said in a statement.

This initiative supports la-bourers and less privileged communities to enjoy the hap-py moments of the holy occa-sion.

Emile Sarkis, general man-ager, Mall of Qatar, said: “With Eid al-Fitr coming closer, we extend our sincere congratu-lations to all Muslims and to the people of Qatar. We pride ourselves in contributing to the eff ort to provide appropri-ate support to those who are in need and make a diff erence in their lives. This initiative is part of our CSR programme and that refl ects the values of solidarity in the community.”

The CSR programme “is at the core of Mall of Qatar’s business model, and the mall executes several educational, awareness and social initiatives

that give back to the commu-nity and contribute in achieving sustainable development”, the statement added.

Wardah Mamukoya, found-er and managing director of Wa’hab, said: “We are delight-ed to have partnered with Mall of Qatar and thank them for their generous contribution.

Together, we can help make a real difference and support the vulnerable communities to highlight our commitment to their wellbeing. The spirit of Ramadan is enhanced by sharing our food and bless-ings with those around us and these actions clearly demon-strate the collaboration and

solidarity of the community here in Qatar.”

Wa’hab, an award-winning SME, works to reduce food wastage and provide support to the communities in Qatar. By connecting surplus food to those in need, Wa’hab aims to promote social solidarity and protect the environment.

The kits included food materials and personal hygiene items.

Jordan warns Israel against

‘barbaric’ attacks on mosqueReuters Amman

Jordan urged Israel yesterday to stop what it described as “barbaric” attacks on wor-

shippers in Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa mosque and said it would step up international pressure.

Jordan, which has custodian-ship of Muslim and Christian sites in Jerusalem, said Israel should respect worshippers and international law safeguarding Arab rights.

East Jerusalem tensions have spilled over into clashes between Israeli police and Palestinians around Al Aqsa, at the height of the Ramadan fasting month.

“What the Israeli police and special forces are doing, from violations against the mosque to attacks on worshippers, is bar-baric (behaviour) that is rejected and condemned,” the govern-ment said in a statement.

Frictions have mounted in Je-rusalem and the occupied West Bank, with nightly clashes in East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah — a neighbourhood where nu-merous Palestinian families face eviction.

King Abdullah said Israeli ac-tions in the holy city were an es-calation and called on it to end its “dangerous provocations”.The monarch accused Israel of trying to change the demo-graphic status of the holy city which contains sacred sites.

Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said the kingdom, which lost East Jerusalem and the West Bank in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, would do its utmost to protect rights of Palestin-

ians against ownership claims by Jewish settlers. “Israel as the occupying force carries respon-sibility for protecting rights of Palestinians in their homes,” Safadi said in comments on state

media. Jordan blames Israel for allowing right-wing religious Jews entry into the Aqsa mosque compound, saying this ignites passions and raises risks of a wider regional confl agration.

Women carry signs as they demonstrate to express solidarity with the Palestinian people near the Israeli embassy in Amman yesterday. The sign reads: “Save the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood”.

Court delays hearing in Palestinian eviction case

Israel’s justice ministry said it would delay a key hearing today in a case that could see Palestin-ian families evicted from their Jerusalem homes to make way for Jewish settlers.“In all the circumstances and in light of the attorney general’s request, the regular hearing for tomorrow, May 10, 2021 (is) cancelled,” it said in a state-ment yesterday, adding it would schedule a new hearing within 30 days.Dozens of Palestinians and sev-eral Israeli police off icers have

been wounded in clashes in recent days in east Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood, the scene of a long-running land dispute and located a short walk from flashpoint holy sites.The case dates back to before the creation of the state of Israel.After Israel’s independence and the 1948 war with its Arab neighbours, east Jerusalem came under the control of Jordan. Many refugees settled in the district after fleeing Zionist forces in other parts of what was now Israel.

South Sudan president dissolves parliament in line with peace deal

Reuters Juba

South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir has dis-solved parliament, a long-awaited step to pave the way for the appointment of

lawmakers from formerly warring parties in the country.

The move was in line with a peace deal signed

to end a civil war that began in 2013. The presi-dent dissolved parliament on Saturday and the new body will be formed in “a matter of time, not too long”, his spokesman Ateny Wek Ateny told Reuters.According to the deal that ended the civil war, parliament must be expanded from 400 members to 550 and must include members from all parties to the peace accord.

South Sudan won independence from Sudan in 2011 after decades of civil war.

Tunisia yesterday started a week of coronavirus restrictions cover-ing the Eid holiday, as hospitals battle to stay afloat as Covid-19 cases soar. Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi said Friday that Tunisia was going through “the worst health crisis in its history” and that health facilities were at risk of collapse. Until next Sunday, mosques, markets and non-essential shops must close, gatherings and family or cultural celebrations are banned.

Tunisia begins week of curbs

RESTRICTIONS

Myanmarpoet dies afterbeing detained,claims familyKhet Thi’s wife said both of them were taken for interrogation on Saturday by armed soldiers and police in the central town of Shwebo, in the Sagaing region - a centre of resistance to the coup in which elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi was ousted

ReutersYangon

Myanmar poet Khet Thi, whose works declare resistance to the ruling

junta, died in detention over-night and his body was returned with the organs removed, his family said yesterday.

A spokesman for the junta did not answer calls to request com-ment on the death of Khet Thi, who had penned the line “They shoot in the head, but they don’t know the revolution is in the heart.”

His Facebook page said he was 45.

Khet Thi’s wife said both of them were taken for interroga-tion on Saturday by armed sol-diers and police in the central town of Shwebo, in the Sagaing region - a centre of resistance to the coup in which elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi was ousted.

“I was interrogated. So was he. They said he was at the interro-gation centre. But he didn’t come back, only his body,” his wife Chaw Su told BBC Burmese lan-guage news in tears from Monywa, around 100km away by road.

“They called me in the morn-ing and told me to meet him at the hospital in Monywa. I thought it was just for a broken arm or something...But when

I arrived here, he was at the morgue and his internal organs were taken out,” she said.

She had been told at the hos-pital he had a heart problem, but had not bothered to read the death certifi cate because she was sure it would not be true, Chaw Su said. Reuters was unable to reach the hospital for comment.

Chaw Su said the army had planned to bury him but that she pleaded with them for the body. She did not say how she knew her husband’s organs had been removed.

“He died at the hospital after being tortured in the interroga-tion centre,” the Assistance As-sociation for Political Prisoners activist group said in a bulletin that put the toll of civilians killed since the coup at 780.

The group, which monitors details of killings, did not iden-tify the source of its information.

Khet Thi was at least the third poet to die during protests since the February 1 coup.

Khet Thi had been a friend of K Za Win, 39, a poet who was shot dead during a protest in Monywa in early March.

Cultural fi gures and celebrities have been prominent supporters of opposition to the coup with protests daily in diff erent parts of the Southeast Asian country in spite of the killings and thou-sands of arrests.

Khet Thi had been an engineer before quitting his job in 2012 to focus on his poetry and to sup-port himself by making and sell-ing ice cream and cakes.

“I don’t want to be a hero, I don’t want to be a martyr, I don’t want to be a weakling, I don’t want to be a fool,” he wrote two weeks after the coup. “I don’t want to support injustice. If I have only a minute to live, I want my conscience to be clean for that minute.”

More recently, he wrote that he was a guitar player, a cake baker and a poet - not someone who could fi re a gun. But he im-plied his attitude was changing. “My people are being shot and I can only throw back poems,” he wrote.

India turns to ex-armymedics amid Covid surgeReutersMumbai

India will recruit hundreds of former army medics to support its overwhelmed

healthcare system, the defence ministry said yesterday, as the country grapples with record Covid-19 infections and deaths amid calls for a complete na-tionwide lockdown.

Some 400 medical offi cers are expected to serve on contract for a maximum of 11 months, the ministry said in a press release, adding that other defence doc-tors had also been contacted for online consultations.

Covid-19 cases and deaths

have been hitting records every two or three days.

Deaths rose by more than 4,000 for a second consecutive day yesterday.

Many Indian states have im-posed strict lockdowns over the past month while others have announced restrictions on public movement and shut down cinemas, restaurants and shopping malls. But pressure is mounting on Prime Minister Narendra Modi to announce a nationwide lockdown as it did during the fi rst wave last year.

The Indian Medical Asso-ciation (IMA) called for a “com-plete, well-planned, pre-an-nounced” lockdown instead of sporadic night curfews and re-

strictions imposed by states for a few days at a time.

“IMA is astonished to see the extreme lethargy and inappro-priate actions from the minis-try of health in combating the agonising crisis born out of the devastating second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic,” it said in a statement on.

Dr Anthony Fauci, a top White House coronavirus adviser, said yesterday he has advised Indian authorities they need to shut down. “You’ve got to shut down. I believe several of the Indian states have already done that, but you need to break the chain of transmission.

“And one of the ways to do that is to shut down,” Fauci said

on ABC’s ‘This Week’ television programme.

Modi is battling criticism for allowing huge gatherings at a re-ligious festival and holding large election rallies over the past two months even as Covid-19 cases were surging.

The health ministry reported 4,092 deaths over the past 24 hours, taking the overall death toll to 242,362.

New cases rose by 403,738, just shy of the record and in-creasing the total since the start of the pandemic to 22.3mn.

India on Saturday reported its highest ever single-day Cov-id-19 death toll of 4,187.

The Institute for Health Met-rics and Evaluation estimates

that India will see 1mn Covid-19 deaths by August.

With an acute shortage of oxy-gen and beds in many hospitals and with morgues and cremato-riums overfl owing, experts have said the actual numbers for Cov-id-19 cases and fatalities could be far higher than reported.

The world’s largest vaccine-producing nation has fully vac-cinated just over 34.3mn, or only 2.5%, of its 1.35bn population as of yesterday, according to data from the government’s Co-WIN portal.

Support has been pouring in from around the world in the form of oxygen cylinders and concentrators, ventilators and other medical equipment.

Third suspect arrested inNasheed assassination bidAFPMale, Maldives

The Maldivian police yes-terday arrested a third suspect in the attempted

assassination of former president Mohamed Nasheed, offi cials said as a manhunt continued for oth-ers who may have been involved.

The 53-year-old democracy pioneer and climate activist was seriously hurt after a bomb attack in the capital Male on Thursday night that also injured a British national and two others.

Police have blamed the attack on “religious extremists” while doctors noted that the explosive device had been packed with ball bearings to cause maximum dam-age. “We can confi rm that a third individual has been arrested in connection with the May 6 at-tack early yesterday,” police said in a statement.

They identifi ed him as Adhu-ham Ahmed Rasheed, 25, from

the islet of Thinadoo in the Vaavu atoll, about 75km south of Male.

He was arrested at dawn yes-terday after police scoured CCTV footage on the archipelago’s one-square mile capital island.

Offi cial sources said they be-lieved Rasheed may have deto-nated the explosive device using a remote control.

Police also released CCTV footage showing him waiting at a narrow alley as Nasheed and his bodyguards walked by to a wait-ing car.

The bomb, rigged to a parked motorcycle, was detonated as Nasheed was about to get into the vehicle.

The other two suspects in cus-tody were Mujaz Ahmed, 21, and Thahmeen Ahmed, 32, who were both arrested Saturday.

Police said the three men in custody had criminal records.

Two experts from the Austral-ian Federal Police (AFP) joined the investigation as local author-ities appealed for more informa-

tion about another man seen in the area.

There was no update from Nasheed’s hospital since it an-nounced on Saturday that he was off life support and out of danger, but would remain in intensive care.

Family members said he was able to speak to close relatives on Saturday.

Nasheed underwent 16 hours of surgery to remove shrapnel from his body and doctors said one shard narrowly missed his heart.

There has been no claim of re-sponsibility for the attack, but offi cials from Nasheed’s Maldiv-ian Democratic Party (MDP) have alleged that extremists and polit-ical interests could be involved.

The Indian Ocean archipelago of 340,000 people is major-ity Muslim, and in October 2019 police arrested a suspected Is-lamic State recruiter accused of sending dozens of Maldivians to Syria.

Chad military claims victory over rebelsReutersN’djamena

Chad’s military yesterday claimed victory in its weeks-long battle with

northern rebels that led to the death of President Idriss Deby on the battlefi eld.

The rebel group Front for Change and Concord in Chad (FACT) did not respond to a re-quest for comment.

The transitional military au-thorities have previously said they have defeated the rebels only for fi ghting to continue.

The fi ghting and broader po-litical instability are being close-ly watched.

Chad is a key power in central Africa and a longtime Western ally against Islamist militants across the Sahel region.

Crowds in the capital N’Djamena cheered yesterday as soldiers returned from the front line in a column of tanks and ar-moured vehicles.

“The triumphant return of the

army to the barracks heralds the end of operations and Chad’s victory,” the army’s chief of the general staff Abakar Abdelkerim Daoud told reporters.

At an army base in N’Djamena, dozens of captured rebels sat in the dirt, on display for the as-sembled press.

FACT fi ghters crossed the bor-der from Libya in April to take a stand against Deby, whose 30-year rule they opposed.

His subsequent death while visiting troops plunged the country into crisis.

On Saturday, security forces fi red tear gas to disperse a pro-test against the ruling military council.

Led by Deby’s son Maha-mat Idriss Itno, the council seized power after the former’s death, promising to oversee an 18-month transition to elec-tions.

Opposition politicians and civil society have denounced the takeover as a coup and called for supporters to take to the streets.

Australia’s most populous state recorded no new Covid-19 infections for a third straight day yester-day but extended raised social distancing and mask-wearing rules by a week as the authorities hunted for the source of a small outbreak. After a Sydney couple tested positive to the coronavirus last week, ending a long run without community transmission, the authorities reinstated some social distancing measures until May 10, and a campaign to get more people tested, as they scrambled to determine the source of infection. “As the ‘missing link’ case hasn’t been identified we’re keen to prevent a super-spreading event,” said New South Wales state premier Gladys Berejiklian in a tweet.

China will set up “a line of separation” at the sum-mit of Mount Everest to prevent the mingling of climbers from Covid-hit Nepal and those ascend-ing from the Tibetan side as a precautionary measure, Chinese state media reported yesterday. Everest base camp on the Nepalese side has been hit by coronavirus cases since late April. The Nepalese government, starved of tourism revenue, has yet to cancel the spring climbing season, usually from April to early June before the monsoon rains. It was not immediately clear how the line would be enforced on the summit, a tiny, perilous and inhospitable area the size of a dining table.

A large segment of a Chinese rocket re-entered the earth’s atmosphere and disintegrated over the Indian Ocean yesterday, China’s space agency said, following fevered speculation over where the 18-tonne object would come down. Off icials in Beijing had said there was little risk from the freefall-ing segment of the Long March-5B rocket, which had launched the first module of China’s new space station into earth orbit on April 29. But the US space agency Nasa and some experts said China had behaved irresponsibly, as an uncontrolled re-entry of such a large object risked damage and casualties. Because it was an uncontrolled descent, there was speculation about where the debris would land.

Vietnam reported 102 new Covid-19 infections yesterday as the country battled a fast-spreading outbreak which Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh said threatened political stability if not brought un-der control. The new cases raised the total to 3,332 since the pandemic began, with 35 deaths, the ministry of health said. Vietnam has been praised for its record in containing its outbreaks quickly through targeted mass testing and a strict, central-ised quarantine programme. But a new outbreak emerged late last month and has spread rapidly in the country, infecting 333 people in 25 cities and provinces, including the capital Hanoi, and leaving around 10 hospitals under lockdown.

Congolese army forces yesterday killed 10 rebels of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) in the trou-bled east of the country, a spokesman said. The off ensive kicked off last Thursday in North Kivu and Ituri provinces, with army and police off icers assigned to replace civilian authorities under a 30-day “state of siege”. In a clash in Halungupa, in the Rwenzori area, “our troops got the better of the ADF enemy. We in fact saw 10 dead bod-ies of ADF elements,” Antony Mualushayi, army spokesman in the North Kivu city of Beni, said. The death toll is provisional, he added. “We are determined to finish with the ADF once and for all,” he said.

Australia state huntssource of Covid outbreak

China to create ‘line ofseparation’ at Everest’

Chinese rocket segment falls to earth over Indian Ocean

Vietnam premier warnsover new Covid cases

10 rebels killed byCongolese army

PANDEMICDECISIONSPACE FALLOUT CRACKDOWN

A woman holds on to the oxygen cylinders for a patient after re-filling them at a factory in Kathmandu, Nepal, Yesterday.

People wait to board a ferry to their hometowns ahead of the Eid al-Fitr festivities in Munshiganj, Bangladesh, yesterday.

Heading home

8 Gulf TimesMonday, May 10, 2021

WORLD

“I don’t want to support injustice. If I have only a minute to live, I want my conscience to be clean for that minute”

WORLD9Gulf Times

Monday, May 10, 2021

The United States is closer to getting the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic un-

der control and health offi cials are focused on the next chal-lenge: getting more Americans vaccinated, the White House Covid-19 response coordinator Jeff Zients said yesterday.

“I would say we are turning the corner,” Zients said in an in-terview with CNN’s State of the Union.

He said that about 58% of American adults have received at least one coronavirus vaccine shot.

The task now is to continue building confi dence in vaccines and get enough Americans vac-cinated to mitigate the spread of the virus and its variants, he said.

US health offi cials are aiming to meet Democratic President Joe Biden’s goal of 70% of American adults having at least one shot by the July 4 US Independence Day.

Zients said reaching that goal could help the country reach a sustainable low level of infec-tions.

About 46% of all Americans have received at least one coro-navirus vaccine shot, according to the Centres for Disease Con-trol and Prevention (CDC).

Dr Anthony Fauci, the direc-tor of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, meanwhile said that another surge in coronavirus infections

would be unlikely if the Biden goal is met or exceeded.

“The larger proportion of the population that’s vaccinated, the less likelihood that in a sea-son like the coming fall or winter you’re going to see a signifi cant surge,” Fauci said on NBC’s Meet the Press. “That’s the reason why vaccinations are so important. That’s the wild card that we have now that we didn’t have last fall or the last winter.”

Fauci also said that there is “no doubt” that the US been under-counting fatal cases.

The country has offi cially lost over 581,000 people to the dis-ease caused by the Sars-CoV-2 (the offi cial name of the coro-navirus) – but a University of Washington study released on Thursday estimated deaths at more than 900,000.

“That’s a bit more than I would have thought the undercount-ing was,” Fauci told NBC. “But I think there’s no doubt ... that we are, and have been, undercount-ing.”

The United States has reported over 32.6mn cases since the virus was fi rst identifi ed at the end of 2019 in China.

America was battered by a spike in cases and deaths after the end-of-year holidays, but since January new infections have come down as vaccination rates have jumped.

Zients has also defended the latest masking guidelines from the CDC, which recommends that fully-vaccinated peo-ple should still wear masks at

crowded outdoor events or when they go indoors in public settings with other people who may not be vaccinated.

Some health experts have questioned whether the CDC guidelines are too strict, and that removing the indoor mask man-date for fully vaccinated people could encourage confi dence in the vaccines.

That move would not, howev-er, protect unvaccinated people from contracting the virus from a carrier who has been vaccinated.

The CDC guidelines will over time allow more people to take off their masks, Zients said in the interview with CNN, while ac-knowledging Americans’ mask fatigue.

“We’re getting there,” Zients said. “And the light at the end of the tunnel is brighter and bright-er. Let’s keep up our guard.”

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo meanwhile said yes-terday that many Americans are still struggling to return to work after the coronavirus pandemic,

and last week’s lower-than-ex-pected jobs numbers were a re-fl ection of that.

“I think we have a long way to go to recover from the pandem-ic,” she said on CBS’s Face the Nation programme.

“There are so many Americans still struggling” and 8mn fewer jobs than there were before the pandemic, she said.

US job growth unexpectedly slowed last month, likely re-strained by shortages of workers and raw materials.

Non-farm payrolls increased by only 266,000 jobs, well below the nearly 1mn jobs economists expected and a sharp contrast to steady increases in growth from January to March.

“We are making bold moves, but there’s a long way to go and we have to be there to help Amer-icans fi nd jobs,” Raimondo said of eff orts by the Biden administra-tion to boost the economy.

Women have been particularly hard-hit during the pandemic as many are clustered in industries

hit hardest – lower-skilled serv-ice jobs, she said.

Lack of aff ordable child care also hits women hard, and with schools closed their choices were curtailed further.

Raimondo rejected some Re-publicans’ contention that peo-ple are reluctant to return to work because they are receiving unemployment insurance, saying nothing in the data suggests that.

“The number one reason now that people aren’t going back to work is what you said: fear. Or if they can’t fi nd childcare or schools are still closed,” Rai-mondo said.

She said on Friday that the shortage in semiconductors was a factor in April’s jobs report, and yesterday she said she is focused on fi nding ways to produce them in the United States to avoid similar supply disruptions in the future.

Biden’s jobs package calls for a $50bn investment into the sup-ply chain to make the country less vulnerable, she said.

US is turning corner on pandemic: White House We have a long way to go to recover from pandemic, says commerce secretary ‘No doubt’ US has undercounted Covid deaths: Fauci

Reuters/AFPWashington

Fauci: The larger proportion of the population that’s vaccinated, the less likelihood that in a season like the coming fall or winter you’re going to see a significant surge.

Raimondo: We have a long way to go to recover from the pandemic.

A shooting in New York’s bustling Times Square on Saturday injured

a four-year-old girl and two women, in the latest incident of gun violence in the city, po-lice said.

The shooting took place just before 5pm local time, at the intersection of 7th Avenue and 44th Street, a New York Police Department (NYPD) spokes-person told AFP.

The three victims were a four-year-old child in a stroll-er, who was hit in the leg while her family was buying toys, a 46-year-old woman hit in the foot, and a 23-year-old tour-ist from Rhode Island hit in the leg.

They were hospitalised in Manhattan, and their lives were not in danger, said New York police commissioner Dermot Shea, at a press brief-ing.

He said that the three by-standers – who did not appear to know each other – stumbled into an argument between two to four men, at least one of whom fi red a gun.

No arrests had been made by early evening.

Police issued an appeal for witnesses and released sur-

veillance camera footage of a wanted man.

Times Square, one of New York’s tourist hotspots before the pandemic, has changed since theatres all closed in March 2020.

According to a recent report by the Times Square Alliance, the neighbourhood business association, the area recorded 25 violent crimes in the fi rst quarter of 2021, up from 17 cases in the same period of 2020.

At the end of March, a video of an assault on an older wom-an of Asian descent shocked the neighbourhood.

A man with a criminal record, who lived in a hotel near Times Square that had become a reception centre for the homeless, was arrested and charged.

Neighbourhood theatres are set to start reopening on September 14, however, and the mayor of New York, Bill de Blasio, recently announced a major campaign to revive tour-ism from June.

Shootings in New York have sharply increased since the summer of 2020 and the pro-tests against the police vio-lence that followed the death of George Floyd in Minneapo-lis, offi cial data show.

Crime in general was up 30% over the same period.

New York’s Times

Square shooting

leaves 3 injuredAFPNew York

Police off icers are seen in New York City’s Times Square following reports of three people, including a toddler, being shot.

Top US Republicans sought yesterday to portray their expected ouster of Rep-

resentative Liz Cheney as an act of unity, despite warnings that the move could deepen divisions over former president Donald Trump and sink party hopes in the 2022 elections.

In the strongest sign yet that Cheney faces defeat in a party vote expected on Wednesday, the top Republican in the House of Representatives, Kevin Mc-Carthy, said that he would back Congresswoman Elise Stefanik to replace the Wyoming Repub-lican as chair of the 212-member House Republican Conference.

Republicans hope to reclaim majorities in the Senate and the House of Representatives in next year’s congressional elections.

Most lawmakers have sought to placate Trump and the Repub-lican voters who enthusiastically support him, despite the loss of both chambers and the White House during his presidency.

McCarthy and Representative Jim Banks, who heads the Repub-lican Study Committee, a leading conservative caucus, said that Cheney is under fi re as a party leader because of her repeated criticism of Trump’s falsehood that the 2020 election was stolen

has distracted from party mes-saging against Democratic Presi-dent Joe Biden’s agenda.

“We need to be united and that starts with leadership,” McCarthy told the Fox News programme, Sunday Morning Futures. “We want to be united moving forward, and I think that’s what will take place.”

Asked if he supports Stefanik for Cheney’s position, McCarthy replied: “Yes, I do.”

Stefanik, a 36-year-old from New York state whose status in the party rose after she aggres-sively defended Trump during congressional hearings ahead of his 2019 impeachment, is also supported by No 2 House Repub-lican Steve Scalise and by Trump himself.

Cheney was among 10 House Republicans who voted to im-peach Trump on a charge of in-citing insurrection after hun-dreds of his supporters stormed the US Capitol on January 6 in a riot that left fi ve people dead in-cluding a police offi cer.

The daughter of former vice-president Dick Cheney, Liz Cheney has continued to criticise Trump for repeating falsehoods about his election loss to Biden and has called on Republicans to become the “party of truth” by rejecting his claims.

“Any leader who is not focused on pushing back against the radi-cal and dangerous Biden agenda needs to be replaced,” Banks, whose caucus represents about 70% of the House Republican

conference, told the Fox News Sunday programme.

However, while McCarthy and Banks cast Cheney’s likely ejec-tion from the party leadership as a step toward unity, others said Wednesday’s vote would only deepen divisions that could sink the party.

“Right now, it’s basically the Titanic. We’re in the middle of this slow sink. We have a band playing on the deck telling every-body ‘It’s fi ne’,” Republican Rep-resentative Adam Kinzinger, who also voted to impeach Trump, told CBS’s Face the Nation pro-gramme.

Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, who is seen as a possible Republican presidential candi-date in 2024, likened the Cheney

vote to “a circular fi ring squad” in an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press programme.

“We had the worst four years we’ve had – ever – in the Re-publican Party, losing the White House, the House of Representa-tives and the Senate. And suc-cessful politics is about addition and multiplication, not subtrac-tion and division,” Hogan said.

Cheney held off an initial chal-lenge to her House leadership po-sition earlier this year.

She also faces an uphill 2022 re-election battle in her home state of Wyoming, where Trump is working to defeat her as the state’s sole House member.

She and the former president each received nearly 70% of Wy-oming’s vote in November.

Republicans expected to oust Trump critic CheneyReutersWashington

Stefanik: began her Washington career as a moderate.

Cheney: under fire as a party leader because of her repeated criticism of Trump’s falsehood that the 2020 election was stolen.

McCarthy: We need to be united and that starts with leadership.

Guatemala protesters want president to resign over vaccine shortage

Dozens of Guatemalans protested on Saturday in the capital to demand the resignation of President Alejandro Giammattei, holding him responsible for a lack of coronavirus vaccines.“We are protesting for him [Giammattei] to resign and to tell us where the money for the vaccines is,” Karla Perez, a 48-year-old woman who held up a banner at the demonstration, told AFP.“Vaccines go in the arm, not in the pockets,” said the banner, displayed during the protest held in front of the National Palace, the former seat of government, which was guarded by police.Since February, 658,200 vaccine doses have arrived in Guatemala, some purchased and some donated.The country has a population of more than 16mn.For the protesters, the numbers reflect mismanagement and fuel suspicions of corruption.Giammattei has argued that the lack of vaccines is due to high global demand and has criticised the Covax global vaccine-sharing scheme for the delay in deliveries. – AFP

US government offi cials are working closely with top US fuel pipe-

line operator Colonial Pipe-line to help it recover from a ransomware cyber-attack that forced the company to shut a critical fuel network supplying populous eastern states.

The attack is one of the most disruptive digital ransom operations reported and has prompted calls from American lawmakers to tighten protec-tions for critical US energy in-frastructure against hackers.

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said Washington is working to avoid more severe fuel supply disruptions and to help Colonial restart as quick-ly as possible its more than 5,500-mile (8,850km) pipeline network from Texas to New Jersey.

“It’s an all hands on deck eff ort right now,” Raimondo said on CBS’s Face the Nation programme. “We are working closely with the company, state and local offi cials, to make sure that they get back up to normal operations as quickly as pos-sible and there aren’t disrup-tions in supply.”

Colonial said on Satur-day that it was “continuing to monitor the impact of this temporary service halt” and to work to restore service”.

Neither Raimondo nor the company gave an estimate for a restart date and yesterday Co-lonial declined further com-ment.

Colonial transports roughly 2.5mn barrels per day of gaso-line and other fuels from refi n-ers on the Gulf Coast to con-sumers in the mid-Atlantic and southeastern United States.

Its extensive pipeline net-work serves major US airports, including Atlanta’s Hartsfi eld Jackson Airport, the world’s

busiest by passenger traffi c.Retail fuel experts including

the American Automobile As-sociation said an outage lasting several days could have signifi -cant impacts on regional fuel supplies, particularly in the southeastern United States.

While the US government investigation is in the early stages, a former US offi cial and two industry sources said the hackers are likely a profession-al cyber-criminal group and that a group called DarkSide is among potential suspects.

DarkSide is known for de-ploying ransomware and ex-torting victims while avoiding targets in post-Soviet states.

Ransomware is a type of malware designed to lock down systems by encrypting data and demanding payment to re-gain access.

Cyber-security fi rm FireEye has also been brought in to re-spond to the attack, according to the two industry sources.

FireEye declined to com-ment.

Bloomberg News, citing people familiar with the mat-ter, reported late on Satur-day that the hackers are part of DarkSide and took nearly 100gb of data out of Colonial’s network on Thursday ahead of the pipeline shutdown.

Messages left with the Dark-Side hackers were not immedi-ately returned.

The group’s dark website, where hackers regularly post data about victims, made no reference to Colonial Pipeline.

Colonial declined to com-ment on whether DarkSide hackers were involved in the attack, when the breach oc-curred or what ransom they demanded.

President Joe Biden was briefed on the cyber-attack on Saturday morning, the White House said.

Another fuel pipeline serv-ing the same regions carries a third of what Colonial does.

US govt working to help pipeline operator after cyber-attack

ReutersWashington

Actor Scarlett Johansson joins criticism of Golden Globes body

Actor Scarlett Johansson has urged the film industry to “step back” from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) as criticism of the opaque film industry group, which controls the influential Golden Globe awards, continues to mount for sexism and racism.In a statement, the Avengers star said the “HFPA is an organisation that was legitimised by the likes of Harvey Weinstein”.Johansson said that “as an actor promoting a film”, participating in the organisation’s press conferences and award shows “has often meant facing sexist questions and remarks by certain HFPA members that bordered on sexual harassment”.The actor’s stance follows a letter from the Netflix chief executive, Ted Sarandos, on Friday to the organisation, stating that the streaming giant will not participate with the Globes unless the group pledges to reform itself.That was followed by the Amazon Studios chief, Jennifer Salke, who said in a statement that Amazon had “not been working with the HFPA since these issues were first raised”.Earlier, 75 of the HFPA’s 86 members voted for an inclusion and overhaul proposal put forward by the group’s board. – Guardian

If the gaps between haves and have-nots aren’t narrowed soon the entire pandemic response will be compromised

By Rosalind McKennaNew York

In March, South Sudan received its fi rst batch of Covid-19 vaccines. While that is good news, it came

almost four months after the fi rst doses were administered in the United King-dom, highlighting the wide disparities in global vaccine distribution. If these gaps are not narrowed soon – with international bodies leading a transpar-ent and equitable global vaccine rollout – the entire pandemic response will be compromised.

South Sudan received its doses thanks to the Covid-19 Vaccine Global Access (Covax) facility, which has been at the forefront of eff orts to ensure equitable access to Covid-19 tests, treatments, and vaccines worldwide. Institutions like the World Health Organisation, the World Bank, and Unicef have supported these eff orts.

But rich countries are hamper-ing progress by continuing to hoard supplies. In the United States, more than 2.1 million doses are being ad-ministered per day; South Sudan has administered around 1,000 vaccines in total. Overall, residents of high- and middle-income countries have received 83% of the 1.2 billion vaccine doses delivered so far.

In fact, the combination of export bans, hoarding, and supply short-ages has meant that Covax has so far managed to deliver only one in fi ve of

the Oxford-AstraZeneca doses that were supposed to arrive in countries by the end of this month. At this rate, advanced economies will be able to vac-cinate their entire populations before many low-income countries even begin their vaccine rollout.

To accelerate progress, international development banks have committed considerable funding to help poor coun-tries purchase and distribute vaccines, tests, and treatments. The World Bank alone has promised to contribute $12 billion. But the details of its pledge are getting lost, raising the risk that this much-needed money will be wasted for lack of scrutiny.

For starters, the World Bank has yet to clarify how it will use its market power to ensure that doses remain aff ordable. But as vaccine producers such as John-son & Johnson back away from their pledges to make vaccines available on a not-for-profi t basis, such intervention is becoming urgent.

The three US pharmaceutical fi rms with approved vaccines – Pfi zer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson – have already shared with investors plans to raise vaccine prices in the near future. In making $12 billion available for vaccine procurement and deploy-ment, it remains unclear what steps the World Bank is taking to make vaccine manufacturers share the technology and know-how to ramp up global produc-tion.

Furthermore, the World Bank is still struggling to explain how it plans to en-sure that its expenditure is transparent, or ensure that countries abide by plans to get vaccines to priority populations.

As the World Bank well knows, poor programme design and flawed vaccine rollouts can lead to exorbitant costs

and unfair outcomes. The first World Bank-financed Covid-19 vaccine-procurement operation, launched in Lebanon in January, was nearly sus-pended within a month of its launch because politicians were cutting in front of higher-priority individuals, such as health workers.

Transparency is vital to limit such behaviours, but the World Bank may be setting itself up for more of the same: it recently approved a project in Ethiopia, where similar queue-jumping is a known risk. It has also approved a project in Tunisia, where vaccine hesitancy and scepticism, and disinformation eff orts, are substantial – factors that can further undermine a programme’s effi ciency, if not addressed eff ectively.

These projects are being designed at rapid speed. Too often, however, World Bank teams – whether at the Bank’s headquarters in Washington, DC, or in the countries seeking funds – are developing these vaccine programmes without input from all essential stakeholders. If groups at risk of being excluded from the vaccine rollouts are not involved in project design and monitoring, it will become all the more likely that they will be left behind.

Such groups include refugees, prison-ers, and people living in slums and other overcrowded conditions. In Greece, for example, more than 70,000 asylum-seekers are being excluded from the national vaccination program.

Persecuted minorities, such as Myanmar’s Rohingya population and India’s Dalits (the lowest-ranked group in the country’s caste system), are also at high risk of being overlooked. And co-ordination in confl ict zones, such as in Syria, may pose a challenge, with

governments potentially even ignoring people in these territories.

In-country vaccination programmes must include clear protections for the most vulnerable groups, with the World Bank using its leverage to prevent discrimination in the implementation of its projects. Any vaccine funding must be made contingent on its fair and safe distribution. Moreover, there must be supervision and monitoring of these projects, as the Bank’s own board recently urged.

For this to work, the World Bank must engage directly with margin-alised groups. Their perspectives are essential to determine how best to spend the pledged funds and to ensure accountability by challenging misuse of resources and misallocation of vaccine doses.

The global vaccine rollout is a criti-cal test for an institution whose stated mission is to “end extreme poverty and advance shared prosperity.” Fortunately, there is reason to hope that the World Bank will pass. Its president, David Malpass, has called the Covid-19 crisis a “pandemic of inequality,” one of its hallmarks being unequal access to vac-cines.

But simply throwing money at the problem will not be enough to solve it. Only a transparent, inclusive, and well-designed strategy that explicitly protects the interests of the most vul-nerable and gives them a way to sound the alarm when things go wrong can do that. That would be money well spent. — Project Syndicate

Rosalind McKenna is a team manager in the fi nancing division of the Open Society Foundation’s Public Health Programme.

Gulf Times Monday, May 10, 2021

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K T Chacko

Covid-19 deaths may be more than double the 3.24mn reported

If the offi cially reported global Covid-19 death number is 3.24mn, a new study which claims that the actual fi gure is more than double, nearing 7mn, has come as a rude jolt. The analysis comes from researchers at the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, who looked at excess mortality from March 2020 through May 3, 2021, compared it with what would be expected in a typical non-pandemic year, then adjusted those fi gures to account for a handful of other pandemic-related factors. The fi nal count only estimates deaths “caused directly by the Sars-CoV-2 virus,” according to the study’s authors. Sars-CoV-2 is the virus that causes Covid-19.

According to the new study, the number of people who have died of Covid-19 in the US is more than 900,000, a number 57% higher than official figures. Researchers estimated dramatic undercounts in countries such as India, Mexico and Russia, where they said the official death counts are some 400,000 too low in each country. In some countries — including Japan, Egypt and several Central Asian nations — the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation’s death toll estimate is more than 10 times higher than reported totals.

“The analysis just shows how challenging it has been during the pandemic to accurately track the deaths — and actually, transmission — of Covid. And by focusing in on the total Covid death rate, I think we bring to light just how

much greater the impact of Covid has been already and may be in the future,” said Dr Christopher Murray, who heads the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. The group reached its estimates by calculating excess mortality based on a variety of sources, including official death statistics from various countries as well as academic studies of other locations. Then, it examined other mortality factors influenced by the pandemic. For example, some of the extra deaths were caused by increased opioid overdoses or deferred healthcare. On the other hand, the dramatic reduction in flu cases last winter and a modest drop in deaths caused by injury resulted in lower mortality in those categories than usual.

Researchers at UW ultimately concluded that the extra deaths not directly caused by Covid-19 were eff ectively off set by the other reductions in death rates, leaving them to attribute all of the net excess deaths to the coronavirus. “When you put all that together, we conclude that the best way, the closest estimate, for the true Covid death is still excess mortality, because some of those things are on the positive side, other factors are on the negative side,” Murray said. Experts are in agreement that offi cial reports of Covid-19 deaths undercount the true death toll of the virus. Some countries only report deaths that take place in hospitals, or only when patients are confi rmed to have been infected; others have poor healthcare access altogether.

Researchers at UW also released an updated forecast for the Covid-19 death count worldwide, estimating that roughly 2.5mn more people will die of the pandemic until September 1, driven in part by the dramatic surge of cases in India. “We need to better understand the impact of Covid across the globe so that countries can understand the trajectory of the pandemic and figure out where to deploy additional resources, like testing supplies and vaccines to stop the spread,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins.

Researchers at UW estimate that roughly 2.5mn more people will die of the pandemic until September 1

Money alone won’t ensure global vaccine equity

SPOTLIGHT: A medical worker prepares to inoculate a person with a dose of the Covaxin vaccine at a vaccination centre in Mumbai yesterday. (AFP)

WORLD11Gulf Times

Monday, May 10, 2021

‘Londoner’ Sadiq Khan wins an encore as mayor

AFPLondon

London Mayor Sadiq Khan, who won re-election Saturday, has risen from

humble roots to spar with prime ministers and presidents since taking charge of the British capi-tal fi ve years ago.

The 50-year-old politician from the main opposition La-bour party, a former human rights lawyer brought up on a London public housing complex, won a second stint at City Hall with victory over Conservative rival Shaun Bailey.

This continues a remarkable journey for the Pakistani immi-grant bus driver’s son, who be-came the fi rst Muslim mayor of a Western capital when initially elected in 2016.

He has made a name for him-self as a vocal critic of Brexit and successive Conservative prime ministers, including his mayoral predecessor Boris Johnson, as well as for a feud with former US president Donald Trump.

The pair became embroiled in an extraordinary war of words, after Khan criticised Trump’s

controversial travel ban on peo-ple from certain Muslim coun-tries.

In a series of bizarre attacks, Trump accused Khan of doing a “very bad job on terrorism” and called him a “stone cold loser” and a “national disgrace”.

The mayor in turn allowed an infamous blimp of Trump dressed as a baby in a nappy to fl y above protests in Parliament Square during his 2018 visit to Britain.

“He once called me a stone cold loser. Only one of us is a loser, and it’s not me,” a typically combative Khan told AFP as he campaigned ahead of Thursday’s poll.

Born in London in 1970 to parents who had recently arrived from Pakistan, Khan was the fi fth child out of seven brothers and one sister.

He grew up in public housing in Tooting, an ethnically mixed residential area in south London, and slept in a bunkbed until he was 24.

His modest background plays well in a city that is proud of its diversity and loves a self-made success story.

In his victory speech on Sat-

urday, Khan described himself as “a Londoner through and through”.

“I grew up on a council es-tate, a working class boy, a child of immigrants, but I’m now the Mayor of London,” he said.

Khan still regularly recalls how his father drove one of Lon-don’s famous red buses, and his mother was a seamstress. One of his brothers is a motor me-chanic.

He is a handy boxer, having learnt the sport to defend him-self in the streets against those who hurled racist abuse at him, and two of his brothers are box-ing coaches. He also ran the Lon-don Marathon in 2014.

At school, he wanted to study science and become a dentist. But a teacher spotted his gift for verbal sparring and directed him towards law.

He gained a law degree from the University of North Lon-don and started out as a trainee lawyer in 1994 at the Christian Fisher legal fi rm, where he was eventually made a partner.

He specialised in human rights, and spent three years chairing the civil liberties cam-paign group Liberty.

Khan joined Labour aged 15 when Conservative prime min-ister Margaret Thatcher was in her pomp.

He became a local councillor for Tooting in the Conservative-dominated Wandsworth local borough in 1994, and its member of parliament in 2005.

He still lives in the area with his lawyer wife Saadiya and their two teenage daughters.

Then prime minister Gordon Brown made him the communi-ties minister in 2008 and he later served as transport minister, be-coming the fi rst Muslim minister to attend Cabinet meetings.

As mayor, he vowed to focus on providing aff ordable homes for Londoners and freezing transport fares, but — like many in power around the world — saw his agenda engulfed by the pan-demic.

Khan has said his priority for a second term will be “jobs, jobs, jobs” as he bids to keep London on its perch as a top world city while tackling the crisis and the fallout from Brexit, which could threaten the capital’s vital fi nan-cial sector.

He is London’s third mayor after Labour’s Ken Livingstone

(2000-2008) and Johnson (2008-2016), with widespread speculation he could try to fol-low in his predecessor’s foot-

steps to Downing Street.Khan predicts Britain will have

a Muslim prime minister “in the not-too-distant future” but in-

sists it will not be him.“As long as Londoners continue

to trust me to be their mayor, I’m currently in this job,” he told AFP.

Mayor of London Sadiq Khan embraces a family member following a speech after being re-elected in the London mayoral election, at the City Hall in London. (Reuters)

Son of Pakistani parents predicts UK will have a Muslim PM in the not-too-distant future but insists it won’t be him

‘Earth’s power’: Iceland volcano’s lava geysers thrill visitorsAFPFagradalsfjall, Islande

Iceland’s Fagradalshraun vol-cano lies quiet for a spell before suddenly spewing red molten

lava geysers high into the air, vis-ible from the capital Reykjavik in an awe-inspiring display.

The volcano, which sprang into life in mid-March in the Geldinga-dalir valley near Mount Fagradals-fj all, has drawn visitors from around the world, many venturing as close as possible to the safety perimeter set up to protect against sprays of red-hot rock.

“It’s incredible to see,” said Henrike Wappler, a German woman who lives in Iceland, standing with her daughter at the edge of the volcano.

Marvelling at “the power of the earth,” she told AFP Saturday on her fourth visit to the site: “I feel small so near to this power — but I’m not scared.”

Up until a week ago, the vol-canic activity was continuous and low key, but now it is alternating

between quiet spells and furious outbursts.

One geyser was measured at more than 460 metres at dawn

last Wednesday, according to the national meteorological offi ce.

The powerful bursts throw up rock fragments called tephra, some still hot, that land several hundred metres from the crater, which is located in an uninhabited area on the Reykjanes peninsula in southwestern Iceland.

A low roar precedes the next explosion, a noise that “kind of reminds me of an airplane,” said Freyja Wappler-Fridriksdottir.

She was among more than 2,500 people at the site on Satur-day, kept back some 500 metres from the crater — a safety radius that varies from 400 to 650 me-tres depending on the wind speed.

“It’s not every day we can go to look at a volcano so close. It’s just really amazing and so beautiful,” she said.

Bjarki Brynjarsson, 25, was enthralled by the alternation of slumber and fury.

“I’m just waiting for the bomb to pop,” he joked.

Despite outward appearances, the volcano’s activity is continu-ous, vulcanologist Magnus Tumi

Gudmundsson said.“All the time the magma is

fl owing,” Gudmundsson told AFP. “This is not uncommon and this is a normal behaviour. It is, if any-thing, less common to have a very continuous fl ow with no pulsa-tions.”

The eruption, which began on March 19, is the fi rst on the Rey-kjanes peninsula in more than eight centuries, and it has been nearly 6,000 years since the last activity at the precise site.

Since the original eruption in the Geldingadalir (Eunuchs in English) valley, several new vents opened up.

Vulcanologists have predicted that the activity will continue for several months — if not decades.

But they are certain that the eruption is far from superfi cial, coming from the Earth’s crust.

“This is the most primitive lava that we have seen since the last Ice Age” some 10,000 years ago, said Edward Marshall of the Institute of Earth Sciences.

This file photo taken on May 5 shows the skyline of the Icelandic capital Reykjavik with the glow from the lava coming out of a fissure near the Fagradalsfjall on the Reykjanes Peninsula behind. (AFP)

Scotland vote sets up clash with London

AFPEdinburgh

The Scottish National Party yesterday said its landslide victory in Ed-

inburgh’s devolved parliament was grounds for a fresh inde-pendence referendum, despite opposition from London.

While the SNP campaigned on promises to hold a new vote, the UK government — which would need to give formal legal permission — is opposed, rais-ing fears of a protracted politi-cal and legal battle.

Now the nationalists say their slightly increased share of seats, one short of an over-all majority of 65, gives them a mandate for “indyref2”, so called after the “no” vote in Scotland’s fi rst independence referendum in 2014.

Scottish media stressed the SNP’s strong showing, with The Herald on Sunday head-lining its front page simply: Landslide.

But UK-wide newspapers had a diff erent take, as The Sunday Telegraph declared “Sturgeon falls short of ma-jority”.

SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon said in her victory speech that

Westminster now has “no democratic justifi cation” to deny a second independence referendum.

“I hope to lead Scotland to independence,” she told the BBC yesterday.

She said that it would be “absurd and completely out-rageous” for the referendum to lead to a legal wrangle in the Supreme Court, as could hap-pen if Westminster blocked it and the Scottish parliament passed its own legislation.

Prime Minister Boris John-son has said the 2014 refer-endum where 55% voted “no” should be a once in a genera-tion event.

Johnson said Saturday that the SNP’s aim of a second ref-erendum was “irresponsible and reckless” while he wrote a public letter to Sturgeon ask-ing her to “work together” in “Team UK.”

Sturgeon told the BBC that she thought the UK govern-ment ultimately would not stand against the referendum because this would come across as disrespectful of Scots’ democratic rights.

“It would mean that the Conservative government had refused to respect the demo-cratic wishes of the Scottish

people,” she said.“I think it is an understate-

ment to say that that wouldn’t play well.”

Sturgeon arrived back at her offi cial residence in Edinburgh yesterday, waving and giving a thumbs-up as a supporter shouted: “Well done!”

Yesterday, senior UK min-ister Michael Gove sought to downplay the brewing con-fl ict.

He insisted in comments to the BBC that for all UK leaders including Sturgeon the priority is recovery from the coronavi-rus pandemic and claimed the country did not have time now for a “protracted conversation about the Constitution”.

Gove also argued that the fact that the SNP do not have an outright majority in the de-volved parliament — as they did before the fi rst referendum in 2014 — made a “signifi cant diff erence”.

“It is not the case now, as we see, that the people of Scotland are agitating for the referen-dum,” said Gove, who himself grew up in Scotland.

The Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross claimed in a tweet that his party “stopped an SNP majority, stopped in-dyref2.”

Siberian doc who treated Navalny goes missing

A Siberian doctor who treated Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny after he collapsed on a flight in Russia last year has gone missing, Russian police said yesterday.Police in the Omsk region, about 1,370 miles east of Moscow, said physician Alexander Murakhovsky had left a hunting base in a forest on an all-terrain vehicle on Friday and had not been seen since.It said that emergency services, drones, a heli-copter and volunteers on the ground had joined the search eff ort.Murakhovsky was the head doctor at the hos-pital in the Siberian city of Omsk that treated Na-valny, President Vladimir Putin’s most prominent critic. Murakhovsky was subsequently promoted to the post of regional health minister.After tense negotiations with the authorities, Navalny was airlifted to Germany from Omsk for further treatment.Laboratory tests in three European countries, confirmed by the global chemical weapons watch-dog, established that Navalny had been poi-soned with a Soviet-style Novichok nerve agent.The Kremlin has repeated-ly rejected any suggestion that Russian authorities tried to kill Navalny. He was jailed in February on what he said were trumped up charges.

Putin fl ays ‘Russophobia’,

vows to defend interests

AFPMoscow

President Vladimir Putin on Sunday vowed Russia will “fi rmly” defend na-

tional interests and denounced the return of “Russophobia”, as the country marked the 76th anniversary of victory in World War II.

His speech to thousands of soldiers and veterans on Red Square came as recent tensions between Moscow and the West have recalled the Cold War over the confl ict in Ukraine and a litany of spy scandals in Eu-rope.

“The Soviet people kept their sacred oath, defended the homeland and freed the coun-tries of Europe from the black plague,” Putin told the crowd.

“Russia consistently defends international law. At the same time, we will fi rmly defend our national interests to ensure the safety of our people,” he said.

The Russian leader also condemned what he called a creeping return of ideologies of the time, when “slogans of ra-cial and national superiority, of anti-semitism and Russopho-bia, became ever more cynical”.

His speech came at the start of an annual parade that sees military hardware roll through the streets of Moscow.

More than 12,000 military personnel took part in yester-day’s parade, as well as some 190 pieces of military equip-ment and 76 fi ghter jets and helicopters.

Victory Day parades, which only became an annual event after the collapse of the Soviet

Union in 1991 and have taken on increasing importance in projecting Russia’s renewed military might during Putin’s two decades in power, also took place yesterday in dozens of cities across the nation.

A survey this week by state-run pollster VTsIOM showed that 69% of Russians view Vic-tory Day as the most important holiday on the calendar.

A third of respondents said they would take part in the celebrations, while a fi fth said they would watch on televi-sion.

“For me and my family, this holiday marks the victory of the entire Russian people,” Yulia Gulevskikh, a 31-year-old accountant told AFP in the Far East city of Vladivostok.

“We are proud, remember and honour all our relatives and friends. And all the brave soldiers,” she added, noting she was happy the parade took place despite pandemic meas-ures.

This year’s Victory Day was the second during the corona-virus pandemic.

Russia has lifted nearly all of its measures to limit the spread of the virus, though a ban re-mains in place on mass gather-ings in most regions.

As of yesterday, total in-fections stood at nearly 4.9 million and fatalities at over 113,000, according to a tally by health offi cials.

But authorities have been criticised for downplaying the severity Russia’s outbreak by counting only fatalities where the coronavirus was found to be the primary cause of death after an autopsy.

Queen Elizabeth’s cousin, Prince Michael of Kent, has been caught off ering investors access to the Kremlin in exchange for personal gain, according to a Sunday Times and Channel 4 investigation.The embarrassing claims come at a time of disas-trous relations between London and Moscow, notably after the 2018 poi-soning of a former Russian spy in England.Prince Michael told un-dercover reporters posing as investors from South Korea in a virtual meeting that for £10,000 a day he could make “confidential” representations to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s entourage. Channel 4’s Dispatches programme and the weekly newspa-per set up a fake South Korean gold company — House of Haedong. The prince said he could also give the company a royal endorsement in a record-ed speech for $200,000, with his Kensington Palace home as a backdrop. In a recorded meeting with the undercover reporters, his business partner Lord Reading called the prince “Her Majesty’s unoff icial ambassador to Russia”.“I think ... this is kind of slightly discreet, we’re talking relatively dis-creetly here,” he report-edly said. “Because we wouldn’t want the world to know that he is seeing Putin purely for business reasons, if you follow me.”Royals for Hire shows today on Channel 4.

UK royal off ers to sell access to Putin: report

QATARGulf Times Monday, May 10, 202112

Georgetown University in Qatar (GU-Q), a Qatar Foundation partner, rec-

ognised 71 students – 53 women and 18 men – at a virtual com-mencement ceremony attended by dignitaries, friends, and fami-lies recently.

The 34 Qatari and 37 interna-tional and resident students will join a growing community of GU-Q alumni pursuing graduate degrees or working in a diverse range of industries in Qatar and beyond, including education, communications, government, business, and banking.

GU-Q graduates earn a Bach-elor of Science in Foreign Service degree, Georgetown’s globally-recognised interdisciplinary pro-gramme off ered in four majors: Culture and Politics, Interna-tional Economics, International History, and International Poli-tics.

GU-Q dean Dr Ahmad Dal-lal opened the formal ceremony with a congratulatory message to students, saying: “Your class has demonstrated extraordinary resilience, creativity, and courage in the face of an unprecedented global crisis.”

“Your academic success dur-ing these challenging times is especially worth celebrating and demonstrates a commitment to Georgetown University’s core values of excellence and serv-

ice to humanity,” he said. “Now more than ever, we need your ideas, your hard work, and your commitment to addressing these challenges to make a better world for generations to come.”

The ceremony featured re-marks from Georgetown Univer-sity president Dr John J DeGioia.

HE Lolwah Rashid AlKhater, Assistant Foreign Minister and Spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Aff airs, was the keynote speaker at the ceremony.

She said: “As ambitious glo-bal citizens with a commitment to scholarship and service, you represent the best of Qatar’s in-vestment in its human capital, helping to drive Qatar towards its future.”

“Congratulations on your achievements and thank you for the lasting legacy of your many contributions to our commu-nity,” HE AlKhater said. “I look forward to hearing about what you achieve next as Georgetown alumni.”

HE the Assistant Foreign Min-ister also serves as a member of the GU-Q joint advisory board.

Prior to the virtual com-mencement, the GU-Q honoured major achievements of seniors, as well as faculty and staff , at the annual Tropaia Award Exercises, also held virtually this year.

At the ceremony, Dallal sent a special message of gratitude to

students’ families whose support during a challenging year was even more critical for student success.

Starting with a student body of 25 students in 2005, the GU-Q has now produced 635 alumni representing more than 50 coun-

tries, and delivers the same inter-nationally-ranked curriculum as Georgetown’s campus in Wash-ington, DC.

In addition to the four ma-jors, students have the option of expanding their fi eld of study through several minors and cer-

tifi cate programmes, part of a rigorous, multidisciplinary cur-riculum that is taught in a sup-portive learning environment.

GU-Q celebrates Class of 2021 in virtual ceremony

The GU-Q Class of 2021.

Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Qatar (VCUarts

Qatar), a Qatar Foundation part-ner university, will launch the online exhibition of this year’s graduating cohort of artists and designers today (Monday).

Members of the public, as well as artists, designers and indus-try professionals from across the globe, will now be able to view the creative output of Qatar’s latest generation of creatives, by accessing the link https://qatar.vcu.edu/bfa-mfa-thesis-2021.

The online show is a collective presentation of the skills and tal-ents of VCUarts Qatar’s Class of 2021, made up of 85 graduates.

Design for the ageing, the homeless, cultural conservation in Qatar, gender stereotyping, third culture children, mental well-being, nationality and iden-tity, social hierarchies, and ac-cessories, are some of the themes that have been examined by this year’s cohort of Fashion Design, Graphic Design, Interior Design,

MFA in Design, and Painting + Printmaking graduates.

Despite most of the academic year being held online, VCUarts Qatar ensured that students had access to resources that would allow them to incorporate tech-niques such as animation, textile design, silk printing, fabrication technology, visual languages, product, print and website de-sign, typography, home fashion merchandising, building code requirements, interior graphics, printmaking, digital painting, screen-printing, lithography, computer programming, and photographic stencil techniques,

in their fi nal projects.“Our fi rst BFA + MFA online

show last year resulted in even greater reach, allowing industry and media professionals to view and appreciate the talent and creativity at VCUarts Qatar,” said dean Amir Berbic.

“This year, we’re continuing in the same vein, and we’re thrilled to present the work of our gradu-ating Class of 2021 to you,” he said. “The projects on display show how this graduating group – despite the circumstance they were in – have ventured off the beaten track to explore areas as diverse as issues that aff ect hu-

manity across the globe, to those that off er a quirky, lighter twist on the ordinary and the every-day.”

The Class of 2021 follows in the footsteps of alumni who are making their mark in the four corners of the globe.

Some of them have been rec-ognised through international awards – such as the Interna-tional Property Awards, and the Red Dot Award – while others have had their work displayed at prestigious exhibitions and events in places such as Doha, Dubai, London, Berlin, Moscow, Paris, and Hong Kong.

VCUarts Qatar BFA+MFA 2021 online show launches today

Design by Nada Raafat Elkharashi, MFA in Design, Class of 2021.

Artwork by Almaha al-Maadeed, Class of 2021.

Al Sadd stayed on course for their 18th Amir Cup title after an emphatic 3-0 win

over Al Arabi put them in the fi nal of the prestigious tournament’s 49th edition yesterday.

South Korean forward Nam Tae-hee opened the scoring for Al Sadd early in the match before Baghdad Bounedjah and Santi Cazorla struck on the other side of the break as QNB Stars League champions thoroughly domi-nated the “Dream Team” at the Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad Sta-dium.

Al Arabi have won eight Amir Cup titles themselves but the last of their triumphs came in 1993 as other teams gained ground over them over the years.

Yesterday, they once came up short on the big stage, barely get-ting a decent crack at the Al Sadd goal as “The Wolves” literally had them chasing shadows.

Al Sadd had dominated the domestic league but their per-formance in the Asian Champi-ons League left a lot to be desired as they crashed out in the group phase, dashing coach Xavi Hern-

andez’s dream of winning his fi rst continental title as coach.

Still smarting from that fail-ure, Al Sadd were determined to

avoid another shock yesterday and they did it with some style at their home ground although spectators were barred from the

match as part of the govern-ment’s measures against the coronavirus pandemic.

Al Sadd hit the ground running

and almost scored twice within the fi rst fi ve minutes but Al Arabi goalkeeper Mahmoud Ibrahim foiled eff orts from Santi Cazorla

and Baghdad Bounedjah.But Ibrahim could do precious

little in the 10th minute when Yousef Abdurisag displayed some excellent skill on the right fl ank to cross for Nam who made no mistake from the centre of the box Ibrahim was instrumental in keeping Al Arabi’s margin of de-feat down as he pulled off saves from Abdelkarim Hassan and Bounedjah to ensure the teams went to half-time with Al Sadd leading by a solitary goal.

But any hopes Al Arabi had of causing an upset began fading as Al Sadd continued with their domination after resumption.

After a few close calls, the Al Arabi goal fell again in the 58th

minute when Bounedjah found himself in perfect position to score off an assist from Hassan al-Haydos in the 56th minute.

Al Arabi’s Youssef Msakni was hardly given any space to oper-ate freely by the Al Sadd defence which left him thoroughly frus-trated, even earning a yellow card.

They even introduced veteran Uruguayan Sebastian Soria late in the match but to no avail as Cazorla drilled a penalty in the 80th minute following a foul on Bounedjah to seal Al Sadd’s ticket to the fi nal on May 14.

The second semi-fi nal, be-tween Al Rayyan and Al Duhail, will be played today.

Al Sadd see off Al Arabi to reach Amir Cup fi nalBy Sports ReporterDoha

Al Sadd coach Xavi Hernandez reacts during the match.

Left: Al Sadd’s Santi Cazorla celebrates with teammate Baghdad Bounedjah after scoring a penalty against Al Arabi yesterday. PICTURES: Noushad Thekkayil