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Title-holder Al Attiyah cruises into comfortable lead in Oman

Saturday 8 February 2020

14 Jumada II - 1441

2 Riyals

www.thepeninsula.qa

Volume 24 | Number 8161

Preparations in full swing for 9th National Sport DayTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

With just three days before Qatar marks the ninth edition of National Sport Day (NSD), public and private organisa-tions are all set for the cele-bration having prepared a rich lineup of events and activities aimed at promoting health and fitness through sport.

Qatar is one of the few countries which give strong impetus on the importance of sport through a nationwide observance of National Sport Day.

Since the initiative was launched in 2012, the holiday has successfully brought people from all walks of life and ages together in celebration of sport, while encouraging them to stay fit and active.

The Qatar Olympic Com-mittee (QOC), along with various national sports feder-ations, has announced it will mark the day by offering a wide-ranging programme of sports activities and demon-strations to the public.

QOC will organise a Team Qatar Sports Village at Barahat Msheireb in Doha from 8am until 8pm. A diverse range of sports for all ages including athletics, basketball, vol-leyball, gymnastics, table tennis, boxing, wrestling, taekwondo, karate and judo, in addition to gymnastics and martial arts workshops and on-stage entertainment from football freestylers and sport jugglers will be held during the event.

Aspire Zone Foundation (AZF) has prepared more than 20 unique events for all members of the community to enjoy including Run&Bike - a new team event presented by Aspetar, the popular Fun Run for all members of the com-munity, obstacle-course race, sports competitions and chal-lenges such as badminton, bas-ketball, running, hammer throwing, plyometric chal-lenges, children’s gymnastics, wall climbing and football related activities.

Qatar Foundation has designed a programme for the whole community — from aspiring athletes and sports enthusiasts to those completely new to exercise — including obstacle course races, yoga ses-sions, full-body workouts, and sports tournaments to be held at the Ceremonial Court, the Green Spine, Oxygen Park, and Multaqa (Education City Student Center), starting at 8am.

At Katara Cultural Village, 54 public and private entities are organising different events and activities including a wide array of sports, medical checkups and health advice, activities for persons with special needs, air show, per-formances and marine competitions.

Qatar Shell and Qatar Football Association (QFA) are teaming up once again to organise many family-oriented activities at Katara as part of the award-winning Koora Time programme.

Running from 7am to 5pm, the event will offer families the opportunity to participate in a variety of football and fitness activities for all age groups in a fun and non-competitive environment.

Marked every second Tuesday of February, National Sport Day is a pioneering initi-ative which encourages eve-ryone to participate in sporting activities.

Visitors tasting unique honey varieties at the Third Souq Waqif Honey Exhibition 2020. PIC: SALIM MATRAMKOT/THE PENINSULA

Souq Waqif Honey Exhibition set to conclude today after big successSIDI MOHAMED THE PENINSULA

Tens of tonnes of honey has been sold at the ongoing third Souq Waqif Honey Exhibition 2020 which will conclude today after attracting a large number of visitors since its launch on January 30, said General Super-visor of Souq Waqif Honey Exhibition, Khalid Saif Al Suwaidi.

The 10-day event is being organised by the Private Engi-neering Office (PEO) in coop-eration with the Ministry of Commerce and Industry and

with the participation of the Ministry of Municipality and Environment. Over 150 com-panies from 37 countries showcased more than 50 vari-eties of honey at the exhibition.

Speaking to The Peninsula, Al Suwaidi revealed that during the exhibition the organisers had removed three companies from the participation, two of which were banned as the honey being marketed by them had 20 percent more moisture while the third company was banned because of the use of types of plastic bottles that did

not meet specifications.“Increasing the moisture in

honey increases its fermen-tation and thus reduces its expiry date. Such honey can be used only within three months which is against laws in Qatar as well as the rest of the world,” he explained.

Al Suwaidi noted that the companies would be prevented from participating in the exhi-bition during the coming years, and their files have been trans-ferred to the concerned author-ities such as the Ministry of Public Health to take the appro-priate legal action. �P3

QF’s Education Development Institute introduces two new programsFAZEENA SALEEM THE PENINSULA

In order to encourage home-grown talent and expertise, Education Development Institute (EDI) has initiated two new programs that are arguably a global first.

The Qatar Foundation (QF) member has developed the pro-grams through a belief that per-sonalised learning matters as

much for teachers as it does to students, said Joanna Moe, Assistant Director for Teaching and Learning, EDI.

“PETAL (Program for Effective Teaching And Learning) and PALME (Program for Aspiring Leaders and Man-agers in Education) are two innovative professional learning designs based on research and the culmination of our own experience in our context,” she

told The Peninsula. “Among the programs

PALME is designed for aspiring leaders and mangers in edu-cation and PETAL is for effective teaching and learning,” she added. A total of 84 participants have registered for the pilot program which will run for a year and they can learn in Arabic and English.

“Both programs aim to make a great impact from the

investment of professional learning to improve student outcomes,” said Joanna. According to her, the person-alised and job embedded pro-grams PETAL and PALME emphasizes that the journey of learning and reflection is the central focus rather than ‘solving’ a problem.

“These programs are designed by keeping learning at the core,” said Joanna.

The programs will initially run at QF schools and expected to open for public and interna-tional schools in collaboration with the Ministry of Education and Higher Education.

PETAL and PALME will also increase data literacy of participants as they will learn how to use data to inform decision making in schools. The programmes will include five face-to-face sessions, 10

hours of one to one coaching and 20 hours of online content. “In the process participants will identify a problem of practice from their own work and with the support of their own research, a cohort of edu-cators, coaching and record of their learning journey in an e-portfolio, and then present their learning at the end in an exhibition format,” said Joanna. �P3

US aid for China and other countries impacted by coronavirus; toll rises to 636AGENCIES — WASHINGTON

The United States stands ready to spend up to $100m to assist China and other countries impacted by coronavirus, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced yesterday.

“This commitment — along with the hundreds of millions generously donated by the American private sector - dem-onstrates strong US leadership in response to the outbreak,” Pompeo said in a statement.

He said the US govern-ment’s commitment would be met through existing funds “both directly and through multilateral organizations.”

A Chinese doctor who was punished after raising the alarm about the country’s new coronavirus died from the pathogen, sparking an out-pouring of grief and anger over a worsening crisis that has now killed 636 people.

At least 31,000 people have been infected by a virus that ophthalmologist Li Wenliang brought to light in late December before becoming its latest victim. The virus is believed have emerged from a market selling exotic animals in Wuhan before jumping to humans and spreading across China and abroad.

Researchers at the South China Agricultural University have identified the endangered pangolin as a “potential interme-diate host” for the disease, as the genome sequences of viruses found on the scaly mammal are 99 percent identical to those on coronavirus patients. The virus has since spread across China, prompting the government to lock down cities of tens of mil-lions of people, and panic has spi-ralled around the globe as more than 240 cases have emerged in two dozen countries.

�P5, 11 & 12

Officers in protective gear enter the cruise ship Diamond Princess, where 10 more people were tested positive for coronavirus, to transfer a patient to the hospital after the ship arrived at Daikoku Pier Cruise Terminal in Yokohama, south of Tokyo, Japan, yesterday.

The Qatar Olympic Committee (QOC), along with various national sports federations, has announced it will mark the day by offering a wide-ranging programme of sports activities and demonstrations to the public. Marked every second Tuesday of February, National Sport Day is a pioneering initiative which encourages everyone to participate in sporting activities.

Over 100 Democrats rebuke Trump’s Palestine plan

ANATOLIA — WASHINGTON

Over 100 Democrats in the House of Representatives issued stark criticism of the plan US President Donald Trump released to end the Israel-Palestine conflict, saying it would ultimately lead to greater hostilities if enacted.

“Your plan will hurt Israelis and Palestinians alike, pushing them towards further conflict,” the open letter led by congressmen Andy Levin and Alan Lowenthal said.

“The ‘ultimate deal’ that your team has incubated for the past three years is not a serious or good faith attempt to bring such a durable peace to this conflict,” the con-gressmen and 105 of their col-leagues wrote yesterday. “Of utmost concern, your proposal effectively paves the way for permanent occupation of the West Bank.”� �P4

Oil prices fall over 1% as Russia needs

time on more Opec+ output cuts

02 SATURDAY 8 FEBRUARY 2020HOME

FAJR SUNRISE 04.56 am 06.13 am

W A L R U WA I S : 15o↗ 23o W A L K H O R : 16o↗ 28o W D U K H A N : 14o↗ 29o W D O H A : 17o↗ 27o W M E S A I E E D 15o↗ 22o W A B U S A M R A 13o↗ 33o

PRAYER TIMINGS WEATHER TODAY

HIGH TIDE 03:15 – 12:31 LOW TIDE 10:54 – 20:19

Moderate temperature daytime with some clouds and slight dust at some places, relatively cold by night.

Minimum Maximum17oC 27oC

ZUHRMAGHRIB

11.48 am05.25 pm

ASR ISHA

02.59 pm06.55 pm

Culture Minister meets members of Youth Consultative CommitteeQNA — DOHA

The Minister of Culture and Sports, H E Salah bin Ghanem Al Ali, met on Thursday with the members of the new Youth Consultative Committee who were elected at the conclusion of the work of the third Qatar Youth Forum.

H E the Minister welcomed the seven members of the com-mittee, affirming the leader-ship’s enduring confidence in Qatari youth.

H E the Minister pointed out that the elections were an important stage in the history of Qatari youth towards ena-bling them to participate in the progress of society. He praised the electoral process that took place during the past two days and the remarkable

participation of Qatari youth, as well as the civilised image that came out to be a role model for youth work. He added that all means and support tools will be provided to facilitate the work of the committee to achieve its societal goals to serve the Qatari youth and to

enhance their empowerment in society. On their part, the elected youth committee members expressed their com-mitment to serve the Qatari youth, stressing that they ran the election experience out of their awareness of the respon-sibility of the Qatari youth in building the country.

The Qatari Youth Forum witnessed the first elections for the members of the Youth Con-sultative Committee, which resulted in the victory of Hamad Khaled Labdeh, Muhammad Hamad Al Dahabib, Sheikha Ali Al Marri, Sharifa Youssef Al Sa’i, Fayza Sinan Al Kaabi, Ahmed Jassim Al Jasem and Khadija Abu Haleeqa, to the mem-bership Youth Consultative Committee to H E the Minister of Culture and Sports.

The Minister of Culture and Sports, H E Salah bin Ghanem Al Ali, with the members of the new Youth Consultative Committee, who were elected at the conclusion of the work of the third Qatar Youth Forum.

QF’s National Sport Day activities cater to all ages, interests and fitness levelsTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

The chance to race through an obstacle course, discover the health benefits of yoga, expe-rience a full-body workout with top US gym Dogpound, or get a taste of fresh and locally-grown produce will be on offer at Qatar Foundation’s National Sport Day celebration next week.

Designed to be enjoyed by the whole community – from aspiring athletes and sports enthusiasts to those completely new to exercise – activities will be taking place across Edu-cation City on Tuesday, Feb-ruary 11, including at the Cere-monial Court, the Green Spine, Oxygen Park, and Multaqa (Education City Student Center), with the fun starting at 8am and continuing throughout the day.

Khalifa Essa Al Kubaisi, Media Relations and Press Office Manager, QF, said: “Our National Sport Day event is part of a multifaceted, year-round program designed to encourage the community to make long-lasting lifestyle changes that will help drive the creation of a strong, active, and healthy society.”

“Nurturing people’s health and wellbeing is a central element of our mission – which is now into its 25th year – and we believe that sport generates positivity, unity, and valuable opportunities to bring people together, as well as being some-thing to simply enjoy.”

“Qatar Foundation’s National Sport Day activities cater to men, women, and children of all ages and fitness levels, and include activities for specially abled members of our

society, reflecting our com-mitment to inclusivity and accessibility. We look forward to welcoming people from across Qatar to Education City and getting involved in what we have to offer on this annual nationwide celebration of sport,” said Al Kubaisi.

Activities at Education City include the QF Race, which will see participants race through 17 obstacles in a test of speed, agility, strength, and endurance. Children will also be given the chance to try out a smaller version of the contest, the QF Mini Track, which is open to boys and girls between the ages of 4-15 years.

Un1t will provide a variety of cardio, conditioning, and weightl i f t ing sessions, Lululemon will offer yoga ses-sions, and PSG Football

Academy Qatar will host a series of activities for children and families, while a series of sports tournaments – including basketball and volleyball – will be held throughout the day.

The team from Dogpound – one of New York City’s most high-profile gyms – also return this year with a full week of fitness activities, from yoga and meditation sessions to outdoor circuit trainings at Education City and in the desert, as well as a series of discussions.

Meanwhile, visitors to Edu-cation City can take a break from exercising to explore Torba Farmers Market, at the Ceremonial Court, which will offer a variety of organically-grown produce, locally-pre-pared food and beverages, and sustainable products to the public.

This file picture of a child taking part in a competition as part of Qatar Foundation’s National Sport Day celebrations.

VCUarts Qatar hosts talk and workshop by Arabic typographer Wael MorcosTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Qatar (VCUarts Qatar), a Qatar Foundation partner university, recently hosted a talk and workshop by award-winning Arabic Type and Graphic Designer, Wael Morcos.

Morcos, who was named a Young Gun by the Art Directors Club, and an Ascender by the Type Directors Club, has been working on a number of branding and exhibition design initiatives for various institutions in Qatar, including the Media Majlis at North-western University in Qatar. He has worked on Arabic typefaces for major organiza-tions such as Nike, Bloomberg Businessweek, Yale University School of Art, Penguin Random House. In his talk,

titled, “Wael Morcos: Right-to-Left”, Morcos described the set of challenges that comes from translating typographic concepts from one writing system to another. He also shared some of his projects by his company Morcos Key, including Arabic lettering for Nike, and exhibition designs from around the Middle East.

In his workshop at VCUarts Qatar, Morcos explained to the University’s graphic design students that typeface design “requires a lot of craft that can only be mas-tered through practice. Spending time drawing letters is a great way to get started,” he said, adding that “A deep understanding of how the script flows, connects, extends and changes following dif-ferent styles is important.”

Graphic Design Associate Professor Basma Hamdy said, “We were honored to host

Wael Morcos at VCUarts Qatar. He brings a fresh and playful approach to Arabic type and graphic design in general. He was very inspiring for the students and whole VCUarts Qatar community!”

“There are many projects that were amazing and very inspiring for me as a designer,” said Graphic Design student Marwa AlKa-lbani. “I never ever knew Arabic typography requires so much time, effort and passion to be able to master it. It is way more complicated than Latin.” Another Graphic Design student Ayah ElNour added, “As a graphic designer that is a native Arabic speaker, I feel proud to see such work that I can relate to and use as an inspiration, which gives me hope that I can help spread the importance of Arabic in the visual world of Graphic design.

Participants during the workshop organised by Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Qatar.

All-female Qatari team wins top award at Carnegie Mellon innovation competitionTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar (CMU-Q) has awarded an all-female Qatari team the top prize at the 2020 Hack-athon competition.

“Tapped” is the name of the winning app developed by CMU-Q students Maryam Al Darwish, Haya Al Kaabi, Haya Al Kuwari and Buthayna Almulla.

The team’s invention takes accurate body measurements for tailoring by using the camera on a smartphone. They used a machine learning library called PoseNet to create the app. The team of graduating seniors is multi-disciplinary, with Al-Kaabi from the Biological Sciences Program, Al-Darwish and Al-Kuwari from the Computer Science Program, and Almulla from the Information Systems Program. “The CarnegieApps Hackathon began in 2013, and since then, it has become an

event that represents the true spirit of CMU-Q,” said Nui Vatanasakdakul, associate teaching professor of infor-mation systems and the faculty advisor for the event. “We use this event to showcase students’ abilities and innovation beyond the classroom boundary.”

There were 19 teams that competed at the eighth edition of the student-led compe-tition, including innovators from CMU-Q, College of the North Atlantic – Qatar, Qatar University and Texas A&M University at Qatar. In an intense competition run over 24 hours, teams were asked to push their limits and harness their creative energy to produce a winning app.

This year’s Hackathon was sponsored by Ooredoo Qatar, who provided prizes, judges and mentors for the compe-tition. Ooredoo also sponsored a category, the Ooredoo Special Theme for Innovations

in AI and 5G. Ahmed Al Mohannadi,

Senior Director, Business Development and Innovation, at Ooredoo, participated as a judge and presented the Ooredoo award. Manar Khalifa Al Muraikhi, Director of PR and Corporate Commu-nications, at Ooredoo, said: “We gladly support CMU-Q by working with them on this Hackathon event. We are looking to help incubate tech-nology innovations, and take this a step further to where we can bring several exciting applications to the market.”

Hackathon is an annual competition organized by the CarnegieApps student club. “As a team, our mission was to continue the legacy of CarnegieApps Hackathon, which was started as a platform for students to unleash their creativity and break all existing boundaries,” said Andrew Edward, an information systems student

a n d p r e s i d e n t o f CarnegieApps.

The event was judged by experts from Ooredoo, Qatar Business Incubation Center

(QBIC), Qatar Science and Technology Park (QSTP), and Carnegie Mellon. In addition to the Best Overall App and Ooredoo Special Theme

awards, teams were recog-nised in three other cate-gories: Best Technical App, Best Design and Best Rookie Team.

The team which won the Overall Application award at the 2020 Hackathon competition.

H E the Minister pointed out that the elections were an important stage in the history of Qatari youth towards enabling them to participate in the progress of society.

03SATURDAY 8 FEBRUARY 2020 HOME

President of Croatia meets Qatari envoy

The President of the Republic of Croatia, H E Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic, met with the Ambassador of the State of Qatar to the Republic of Croatia, H E Nasser bin Hamad Mubarak Al Khalifa, on the occasion of the end of his tenure, in Zagreb. They reviewed the bilateral cooperation relations, ways of supporting and developing them, and matters of common concern.

Qatar leading innovation inGCC’s mobile app marketTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Qatar is leading innovation in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)’s multimillion dollar mobile app market, VMware has announced at its recent CIO Exchange Doha.

During the roundtable, held under the theme ‘Application Development Transformation: Anywhere, Everywhere,’ industry experts and IT profes-sionals highlighted and dis-cussed the challenges and opportunities in Qatar’s mobile app development. The GCC’s mobile app market reached a record-high of $920m in 2019, up 11 percent on 2018, according to market research firm Statista.

During the event delegates took a deeper look into how organisations across the region and around the world are forming a framework required to embark on application devel-opment while considering key aspects like scalability, inte-gration, the utilisation of advanced networking, storage, and real-time analytics.

Applications, and the ability

to ensure their security and integrity, are growing in impor-tance as companies and organ-isations increasingly rely on modern apps to add function-ality and serve customers effec-tively. There are currently some 335 million apps available today, a figure that is expected to swell to more than 670 million by 2024.

In the course of the round-table discussions, Marc Frentzel, Solution Director, VMware, and Imad Sfeir, Country Manager for the Gulf, VMware, offered in-depth guidance on how to ensure integrity and security of apps. Wilson Xavier, Research Director IT Services, IDC, pre-sented the latest research findings on the innovative use

of emerging technologies, and how they are revolutionizing application development.

“Qatar is proving to be a leader in mobile app innovation and user experience, especially as the market grows and apps become a key pillar of organi-zations’ strategic plans,” said Marc Frentzel. “VMware is com-mitted to helping all types of organization to deploy and secure their apps, in their own datacenters and over any cloud, empowering them to bring maximum benefits in terms of improving operations and the delivery of valuable new services.”

Wilson Xavier, IDC said: “By bringing senior IT executives together for the CIO Exchange, VMware and IDC helped to facilitate valuable discussions about application development among our partners and cus-tomers. Participant organiza-tions were also provided with a context of industry best prac-tices and trends in-order to gain a greater understanding of the opportunities open to them as they strategize to seize the potential of modern apps.”

Participants during a session at VMware's CIO Exchange Doha.

QF honours Asian Arabic Debating Championship winnersTHE PENINSULA – DOHA

QatarDebate’s Asian Arabic Debating Championship in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, has come to a close, with a Jordanian team taking home first place.

The team from the Princess Sumaya University for Tech-nology (PSUT) was crowned champions after the final round of debating on February 3, while a team from the Gulf University for Science and Technology (GUST) in Kuwait came second, and a team from Lebanese American University (LAU) came third.

Dr. Hayat Abdulla Marafi, E x e c u t i v e D i r e c t o r , QatarDebate, a member of Qatar Foundation, said:

“Through the Asian Arabic Debating Championship, we seek to establish the Arabic lan-guage and restore its historical prominence. We aim to achieve this through the art of debate, enabling the youth to learn as well as explore ideas that can serve different people and dif-ferent communities.

“The competition itself is not our goal. Rather, our goal is to provide a space for growth, and to come together to share our ideas and experiences. This tournament featured 30 teams from 20 Arab and non-Arab countries, demonstrating that the Arabic language is a lan-guage and does not necessarily belong to an origin or a race.

“We are proud of all the par-ticipants, especially those who

speak Arabic as a second lan-guage – they reached this far by striving to learn. They mastered the language, discovered its secrets, and prevailed until they reached the final stages.”

The championship’s closing ceremony was attended by the Crown Prince of Pahang, Tengku Hassanal Ibrahim Alam Shah Ibni Al-Sultan Abdullah Ri’ayatuddin Al-Mustafa Billah Shah, and Syed Saddiq, the Malaysian Minister of Youth and Sports, who said in a speech: “Debating encourages critical thinking and builds your curi-osity of the world around you.

“It allows you to be well-informed, and teaches you how to be persuasive, how to under-stand issues from different sides, and the art of negotiation. It

teaches you to have compassion and empathy, and never fear failure.”

Abdulrahman Al Subaie, Head of the Outreach Program at QatarDebate, said the cham-pionship will now be repeated after every edition of the Inter-national Universities Debating Championship , which QatarDebate organises in rotation with the International Schools Arabic Debating Cham-pionship. “It encourages teams to stand out in their debating performance, to master com-peting in the Arabic language, and to have a unique expe-rience,” he said.

Bilal Bahaa, a member of the victorious PSUT team, stressed that winning the championship was the result of a lot of training.

HBKU’s College of Health and Life Sciences conducts information session for prospective studentsTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

The College of Health and Life Sciences (CHLS) at Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU) recently held an admissions-driven outreach activity, which highlighted its degree programmes and study options.

As with the wider HBKU network, CHLS’ admissions campaign is designed to attract local talent and international candidates as well as provide key program information for prospective students.

All CHLS faculty and administration were present at the event to allow

prospective student-faculty interaction. The information session drew numerous appli-cants who also had the oppor-tunity to take part in an inter-active question-and-answer session. Current CHLS students were delighted to speak to pro-spective students and share their valuable insights about academic and social life at HBKU. CHLS is currently accepting applications to its five master’s and PhD pro-grammes. Local applicants will have the opportunity to apply to these programs until March 15. A second session will take place on February 25 at Penrose House (LAS Building).

QF’s Education Development Institute introduces two new programs

FROM PAGE 1

At present EDI has a team of coaches from different countries, however with time it aims to build local talent to conduct the programs in future. The EDI supports the professional development of educators across Qatar, ena-bling them to engage with the

best and most promising edu-cational practices. EDI collab-orates with global experts to offer learning opportunities, organizes national conferences and symposiums for educators, develops training programs that address the needs of indi-vidual schools, and much more.

The team at the Education Development Institute of Qatar Foundation.

Visitors throng the third edition of Souq Waqif Honey Exhibition. RIGHT: Children curiously looking at the beehive on display at the exhibition. PICS: SALIM MATRAMKOT/THE PENINSULA

Third edition of honey expo set to conclude today after big success

FROM PAGE 1

About the exhibition and its support to local honey farms, he said that the exhibition aims at supporting Qatari products by introducing local honey pro-ducing companies to the public

and providing the opportunity for traders, entrepreneurs, and small and medium enterprises to present their products of honey and related products.

“On Saturday (today), we are organising a competition

which will be participated by more than 20 local companies. The competition includes the quality of honey, its smell and colour. The prizes will be QR10,000 for the first place, QR7500 and QR5,000 for

second and third positions respectively,” he said.

The exhibition includes more than 50 types of honey, of which 10 are being displayed for the first time in the exhi-bition. The local companies are

participating in the event because their honey is of superior quality.

For the first time, countries like Sweden, Denmark, and the US are participating in this exhi-bition. The exhibition also

includes Omani laboratory which can check the quality of honey. According to the Min-istry of Municipality and Envi-ronment statistics, Qatar’s pro-duction of honey has reached 45 tonnes annually.

There are currently some 335 million apps available today, a figure that is expected to swell to more than 670 million by 2024.

Joanna Moe, Assistant Director for Teaching and Learning, EDI.

04 SATURDAY 8 FEBRUARY 2020MIDDLE EAST / AFRICA

Fourth protester shot dead; Palestinians blame Trump's planREUTERS — RAMALLAH

A Palestinian protester was shot dead in the West Bank yesterday as Palestinian and US leaders blamed each other for violence that erupted after President Donald Trump unveiled a Middle East Peace plan that Palestinians rejected as one sided.

Yesterday's killing raised the Palestinian death toll to four. Palestinian protesters and Israeli security forces have repeatedly clashed since the peace proposals were unveiled by Trump, with Israel’s prime minister at his side.

Yesterday, mourners had gathered in the occupied West Bank for the funeral of a Pales-tinian police officer who was shot dead in the unrest a day earlier. Palestinian authorities said he was killed by Israeli gunfire. Israel has not commented.

There were sporadic clashes between protesters and Israeli security forces near Azzun, where the funeral was held.

Palestinians also clashed with Israeli troops in Jericho and burned tyres in the West

Bank village of Bil’in.Palestinian medics said one

protester had been shot and ki l led near Tulkarm yesterday.

The Israeli army said dozens of Palestinians had hurled rocks and fire bombs at troops, and soldiers had iden-tified a Palestinian who threw a firebomb and “responded with fire in order to remove the threat.”

“The Palestinian people will not allow the ‘Deal of the Century’ to pass,” said Mohammed Barakeh, waving a Palestinian flag in Bil’in, referring to the US peace deal.

“They are fighting for their

national character and the inde-pendence of their country,” said Barakeh, a former Israeli law-maker and member of Israel’s 21% Arab minority, many of whom identify with Palestinian brethren in the West Bank and Gaza.

President Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority has rejected Trump’s peace plan, which would give Israel most of what it has sought during decades of conflict, including the disputed holy city of Jeru-salem and nearly all the occupied land on which it has built settlements.

Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said Washington was to blame for the unrest since the plan was unveiled.

“Those who introduce plans for annexation and the legal-ising of occupation and settle-ments are really responsible for deepening violence and counter-violence,” he said.

He said Abbas would go to the UN Security Council with “a genuine peace plan”.

Trump’s senior adviser Jared Kushner, the main architect of the US plan, has denounced the Palestinian leadership, breaking from

decades of diplomacy when Washington sought to appear neutral. On Thursday, he blamed Abbas for the violence.

Israeli police said security chiefs had met on Thursday and would increase security “across the country, with emphasis on Jerusalem”.

Palestinians have long boy-cotted relations with the Trump administration, which they view as biased. Washington says its plan offers a path towards a Palestinian state, and blames the Palestinian leadership for chasing unrealistic goals.

Palestinians gather for Friday prayers at the Al Aqsa mosque compound in the Old City of Jerusalem.

Tunisia dismissesenvoy to UN over Trump planAFP — TUNIS

Tunisia fired its ambassador to the UN yesterday accusing him of failing to consult the ministry on key issues that diplomatic sources said included Washington’s controversial Middle East peace plan.

“Tunisia’s ambassador to the United Nations has been dismissed for purely profes-sional reasons concerning his weak performance and lack of coordination with the min-istry on important matters under discussion at the UN,” a foreign ministry statement said.

Diplomatic sources said that ambassador Moncef Baati, who has sat on the UN Security Council since the start of the year, had gone further than President Kais Saied wanted in his criticism of US President Donald Trump’s long-delayed peace plan.

Saied, a political outsider who only took office in November after an upset election victory, was con-cerned that Baati’s expressions of support for the Palestinians risked damaging Tunisia’s relations with the United States, the sources said.

Baati’s swift recall to Tunis meant that he missed a close-door briefing of the Security Council on Thursday by the plan’s architect, Trump adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner. After the briefing, Kushner blamed Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas for a spike in violence in Israel and the Palestinian territories since the unveiling of the plan on January 28.

Nearly 550 killed in Iraq protest violence: CommissionAFP — BAGHDAD

Nearly 550 Iraqis have been killed in protest-related violence since unprecedented anti-government demonstra-tions erupted in the capital and southern cities in October, the I r a q i H u m a n R i ghts Commission said yesterday.

Iraq’s health ministry con-firmed the first protester shot dead on October 1 but clammed up thereafter.

The Commission has since repeatedly complained that

authorities declined its requests for information on deaths, injuries and arrests.

The Commission, which is government-funded but operates independently, became the only source for death tolls until it too faced pressure last year to stop reporting.

It has resumed its public reporting and on Friday shared its latest statistics with AFP, showing that 543 people have been killed since October, including 276 in Baghdad alone.

Seventeen members of the security forces are among the dead nationwide, according to the updated list. The remaining are all protesters or activists, including 22 who were assassinated.

Up to 30,000 more have been wounded during the rallies, according to medical sources.

Iraq’s security forces have used live ammunition, tear gas, smoke bombs and even machine gun fire to try to disperse rallies in the

capital and Shia-majority south.

The Commission found that many of the wounded or killed were shot by live rounds, but Iraq’s government has repeatedly denied its security forces are shooting at the protesters.

Others have died when mil-itary-grade tear gas canisters have pierced their skulls or chests, after security forces improperly fired such equipment.

The Commission did not lay

blame on any particular side but protesters themselves have singled out armed factions and the military wings of political parties, alongside the security forces.

The United Nations, for its part, has accused unnamed “militias” for a vast campaign of assassinations, kidnappings and threats.

The Commission has doc-umented more than 2,700 arrests, with 328 people still detained. Another 72 Iraqis are categorised as disappeared.

Iranian politician slams veto on reformist candidatesANATOLIA — TEHRAN

A reformist polit ician yesterday criticised Iran’s Guardian Council for disqual-ifying many reformists from the ranks of would-be candi-dates for the country’s general elections slated for late February.

“The council rejects all its opponents like a political party,” Mostafa Tajzadeh, who has served as the deputy interior minister in the gov-ernment of former President Mohammad Khatami, said.

Underlining that the par-liament had turned into an institution at the disposal of the

regime, he added: “They pre-vented a ‘free election’ and took away the Iranian people’s right to choose.”

Iranian elections, he said, had become a mere “formality,” which had already been tilted in favor of the hardliners.

Highlighting that many conservative parliamentarians

desired the production of nuclear weapons, Tajzadeh said the current assembly sup-ports peace and the nuclear deal but the new lawmakers will most likely adopt pro-war policies. “It will mostly be in the hands of those who support militarist parties,” he said.

A drone photo shows a view of Syrian civilians’ convoy, who are being forcibly displaced due to the ongoing attacks carried out by Assad regime, Russia and Iran-backed groups, and are on their way to safer zones with their belongings near Turkish border, in Idlib, Syria, yesterday.

90,000 civilians flee Idlib over last 4 daysANATOLIA — IDLIB, SYRIA

Around 90,000 more civilians have left their homes in Idlib de-escalation zone in north-western Syria over the last four days due to attacks by regime forces and their allies.

The attacks by Bashar Al Assad regime, Russia and Iran-backed terrorist groups in res-idential areas of Aleppo and Idlib continue to displace thou-sands of Syrians.

According to Syria’s Response Coordination Group, the displaced civilians headed to areas near the Turkish border due to the attacks that

violate the cease-fire agreement between Turkey and Russia. The civilians, who left their houses due to the attacks, either flee to areas near the Turkish border or take shelter in areas cleared of terrorists by Turkey’s anti-terror operations.

Since January 2019, the number of Syrians displaced from Idlib and Aleppo has mounted to nearly 1.77 million. In September 2018, Turkey and Russia agreed to turn Idlib into a de-escalation zone in which acts of aggression are expressly prohibited.

However, more than 1,300 civilians have been killed in

attacks by the regime and Russian forces in the de-esca-lation zone since then as the cease-fire continues to be violated.

In a fresh move, Turkey announced on January 10 that a new cease-fire in Idlib would start just after midnight on Jan. 12. However, the regime and Iran-backed terrorist groups continued their attacks.

Since the eruption of the bloody civil war in Syria in 2011, Turkey has taken in some 3.7 million Syrians who fled their country, making Turkey the world’s top refugee-hosting country.

ANATOLIA — AMMAN

Hundreds of Jordanians staged a rally for the second Friday in a row near the US Embassy in the capital Amman against the US’ so-called Middle East peace plan. The crowd gathered at the invitation of the National Alliance Against Deal of the Century, which is comprised of a group of MPs, tribal figures, and heads of syndi-cates. Heavy rain did not prevent Jordanians from participating in the rally.

The participants chanted slogans against the U.S. pro-posal and carried banners reading: “Jerusalem is a trust” and “the Jordan Valley is for Jordanians ... not for Zionists”, and they burned the Israeli and American flags.

“Today we say that we condemn Trump’s position and consider him a criminal ... He violated the global peace and security and all agreements ... Trump must be referred to the criminal court of international community, and Arab people must act everywhere,” Saleh Al Armouti, a member of the Reform Bloc in the House of Representatives — the first chamber of Jordanian par-liament — said during his par-ticipation in the rally. Many lawmakers from the Islamist movement in Jordan were seen among the participants.

The “Deal of the Century” refers to Jerusalem as “Israel’s undivided capital” and recog-nizes Israeli sovereignty over large parts of the West Bank.

The plan does not appear to meet even the most basic Palestinian demands for com-prehensive peace with Israel, including the right of return for Palestinian refugees who were forced out of their homes as a result of the conflict.

CAR: Five chiefs from mainly Christian militia sentenced for war crimes

ANATOLIA — ANKARA

In the wake of the regime’s attack on Turkish troops in Idlib, Syria, a Russian dele-gation is expected to arrive in Ankara today to discuss the escalating situation, Turkey’s foreign minister said.

The announcement by Mevlut Cavusoglu came at a joint news conference in the capital city with his Slovakian counterpart Miroslav Lajcak.

Earlier this week, Syrian regime forces attacks killed seven Turkish soldiers and one civilian. In retaliation, the Turkish military targeted more than 50 positions and neu-tralized over 70 regime troops, according to Defense Minister Hulusi Akar.

Cavusoglu said Turkey, which hosts over 3.6 million Syrian refugees, and Russia, will work closely to resolve the crisis.

Asked about the latest developments in the strategic city of Saraqib, east of Idlib, Cavusoglu said the situation there remained critical as attacks by the regime continue.

Owing to the ongoing attacks hundreds of thousands of civilians had been displaced, he said, adding that despite agreements in Sochi and Astana, the regime’s aggression had risen. “The benefits of the deals are yet to be seen,” he said.

The foreign minister said

that Ankara will go all out in its efforts to ensure a permanent cease-fire and prevent a humanitarian crisis in Idlib -- the last stronghold of oppo-sition forces in the war-torn country.

On Thursday, Russia-backed Syrian forces advanced through Idlib province in a brutal ground offensive that was preceded by weeks of intensive aerial bombardment. This has terrified the civilians who have left their homes for shelter to safe havens.

Since March 2011, hundreds of thousands of Syrians have been killed by the regime and millions have been displaced, besieged and denied humani-tarian and medical aid.

In 2017, Turkey, Russia and Iran held meetings in Astana city of Kazakhstan and announced that Idlib and neighboring cities in the Eastern Ghouta region outside the capital Damascus, and the southern cities of Daraa and Quneitra would be de-esca-lation zones.

But the Assad regime and Iranian-backed terrorist groups launched attacks in violation of the agreements, and thanks to Russian air support, gained control of these territories with the exception of Idlib city.

Later in September 2018, Turkey and Russia agreed in Sochi to turn Idlib into a de-escalation zone where acts of aggression are expressly prohibited.

Jordanians stage pro-Palestinian rally near US Embassy

Russian team due in Turkeytoday to discuss Idlib

AFP — BANGUI, CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC

Five leaders from a predominantly Christian militia in Central African Republic (CAR) were given life terms yesterday for war crimes and crimes against humanity over atrocities committed in 2017.

Justice Minister Flavien Mbata said the sentences, handed down by the CAR Criminal Court in the capital Bangui, were the first ever issued by the nation’s judiciary for crimes against humanity.

“Those who introduce plans for annexation and the legalising of occupation and settlements are really responsible for deepening violence and counter-violence,” Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said.

Protest against new citizenship law

05SATURDAY 8 FEBRUARY 2020 ASIA

Coronavirus cases on ship marooned off Japan rise to 61

Thailand hit by worst drought in 40 yearsBLOOMBERG — BANGKOK

Thailand has been hit with what may be its worst drought in 40 years, pummeling sugar production in one of the world’s biggest exporters of the sweetener.

Sugar output may tumble about 30% to 9 million to 10 million tons, while cane output is forecast to fall below 90 million tons from about 130 million in the previous season because of the dry weather,

according to an industry body.“It’s worse than we

thought,” Sirivuthi Siam-phakdee, vice chairman of the Thai Sugar Millers Corp., said in a phone interview on Friday. “This will likely be our worst season in five years.”

The severe drought is adding pressure to Thailand’s struggling economy and its agri-cultural sector, which employs 11 million people. It may also further raise global sugar prices

that have surged about 35% in the last five months on concerns that adverse weather is threatening crops from India to Mexico.

Thailand’s main economic crops -- rice, rubber and sugar -- are already hurting from a long period of dryness. Adding to woes are the country’s slowing exports, a delay in gov-ernment budget spending, and an 80% decrease in Chinese vis-itors, a top source of foreign receipts in an industry that

makes up more than a fifth of the economy.

The drought in 2020 is expected to cost the country 46 billion baht ($1.47 billion), or 0.27% of the gross domestic product, according to Bank of Ayudhya’s Krungsri Research.

“Critically low levels imply risk of water shortages in many areas” the bank said in a note. “The effects will be felt not just within the agriculture industry but also in the industrial sector.”

Kerala budget’s ‘green’ touch’: Ban on CFL, filament bulbsIANS — THIRUVANANTHAPURAM

Kerala Finance Minister Thomas Issac yesterday presented the state Budget 2020-21 in the Assembly, giving it a ‘green’ touch by proposing total ban on CFL and filament bulbs, use of solar boats and subsidies for e-autos.

In his speech, Issac said that statistics revealed that 2.5 crore LED bulbs were used last year in Kerala.

He said that bulbs used in street light and in government buildings will be replaced by LED bulbs and sale of CFL and filament bulbs banned from November 2020.

The Minister said that 500 panchayats and 50 towns, including state capital Thiru-vananthapuram, will attain total cleanliness status in Solid Waste Management in 2021.

For this, strict criteria will be adhered to. Waste from households and institutions should be segregated at the source itself and bio-waste processed at the source itself, or nearby. Non-biodegradable waste shall be collected through Green Work Force (Haritha Karma Sena) and brought to the Resource Recovery Centres.

“Green Protocol should be complied with in all public functions and public offices. The public roads have to be kept clean. There should not be any dumping centres. Rs 20 crore will be made available to ‘Clean Kerala’ company from the outlay of Suchitwa Mission as a revolving fund,” said Issac.

A n o t h e r m a j o r announcement was on building 12,000 public toilets.

He also mentioned the gov-ernment’s policy to encourage use of electric vehicles.

Maldives to enhance security for tourists after stabbingsAP — COLOMBO

The Maldives government plans to increase security for tourists after suspected extremists stabbed three foreigners in the Indian Ocean nation.

The National Security Council was working with the police and other agencies to find out more about the attack, its motives and the perpetrators, the president’s office said.

Six suspects have been arrested in connection with the wounding of two Chinese nationals and an Australian.

The three were stabbed outdoors in separate attacks on Tuesday on Hulhumale Island, adjoining the airport island in the capital region. The government says the three are recovering in a hospital. The security council met with tourism industry repre-sentatives Thursday to consult about enhancing security in areas frequented by tourists, the statement from the president’s office said. It wasn’t specific about the measures that were planned.

Police ire as also investigating the authenticity of a video cir-culated on social media in which a masked man claims respon-sibility for the attacks. Maldives is an Indian Ocean archipelago, known for its expensive luxury island resorts. With a population of about 400,000 people, predominantly Sunni Muslim, the Mal-dives was known to have contributed the highest number of foreign fighters per capita in Syria.

Thai minister says kick out ‘Western’ tourists not wearing face masks

Thailand’s Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul, holding protective face masks to hand out to members of the public at a BTS Skytrain station in Bangkok, yesterday.

AFP — BANGKOK

Thailand’s health minister lashed out at “Western” tourists yesterday for not wearing face masks and suggested they be expelled from the country for putting others at risk during the coronavirus outbreak.

The outburst came as the kingdom faced steep losses over a drop in visitors from China, where the virus has killed more than 600 people and prompted sweeping travel restrictions.

Tourism accounts for 18 percent of the country’s gross domestic product and Chinese holidaymakers make up a quarter of total arrivals.

Thailand has detected 25 coro-navirus cases and nine of those patients have recovered, while streets, public transport and

shopping centres have filled with people wearing face masks.

Health Minister Anutin Charn-virakul was distributing masks at a busy Bangkok skytrain entrance when he complained that “farang” tourists didn’t take them and acted as if they “don’t care”.

Farang is a commonly used Thai word to describe Westerners and is sometimes used dismissively.

“These kinds of people, we should kick them out of Thailand,” he told reporters, waving a handful of masks in the air.

Anutin did not respond to additional requests for comment but posted an apology on his Facebook page for “losing it” after “some foreigners from Europe” were uncooperative in the mask campaign.

South Korea’s former spy chief jailedAP — SEOUL

A former South Korean spy chief received a seven-year jail sentence yesterday for using taxpayer money for political meddling in favour of the then conservative government, among other charges.

Won Sei-hoon, 69 (pic-tured), who led the National Intelligence Service (NIS) from 2009-2013, paid civilians to post favourable online com-m e n t s a b o u t t h e administration.

Under Won’s leadership the agency had “lost the trust of the citizens” and its role to protect national security had a lso been “ser iously damaged”, Seoul Central Dis-trict Court said.

Won was convicted of nine charges from 2017 to 2018, including using NIS funds to

bribe former conservative pres-ident Lee Myung-bak, and hiring civilians to produce online comments to sway public opinion in favour of Lee’s administration.

He was separately sen-tenced to four years in prison in 2018 for ordering NIS offi-cials to mount an online smear campaign against now-ousted conservative president Park

Geun-hye’s key rival in the 2012 election.

The closely-fought election saw Park defeat left-leaning Moon Jae-in, who was elected president in 2017 after Park’s impeachment over the cor-ruption scandal that also impli-cated the country’s top business group, Samsung.

The spy agency has often been accused of abusing its power to meddle in politics under Park and Lee, the two conservative, now-disgraced ex-presidents.

Lee, who served from 2008 to 2013, was found guilty on charges including bribery and embezzlement and sentenced to 15 years in prison 2018, but was granted bail last year.

Lee’s successor Park was sentenced to 25 years in prison and fined millions of dollars for bribery and abuse of power.

REUTERS — TOKYO

Dozens more people onboard a cruise ship quarantined in the port of Yokohama, Japan, tested positive for the coronavirus yesterday and thousands of passengers remained confined to their cabins, only allowed on deck briefly for fresh air.

The Diamond Princess, operated by Princess Cruises, was placed on a two-week quar-antine on arriving at Yokohama on Monday after a man who dis-embarked in Hong Kong was diagnosed with the virus.

Japanese Health Minister Katsunobu Kato told a news con-ference that 41 people on the liner had tested positive for coro-navirus yesterday, bringing the total of confirmed cases to 61. Twentyone of the new cases were Japanese.

Those infected were taken off the ship and moved to hos-pitals in Tokyo and neighbouring towns, the health ministry said. Blue and white tarpaulin sheets were hung up to screen them from the view of other passengers.

About 3,700 people are aboard the Diamond Princess, which usually has a crew of 1,100 and a passenger capacity of 2,670. The Princess Cruise website describes the ship as “your home away from home” and it will remain so for most passengers at last until Feb. 19. The quarantine period could be extended if need be, a Japanese government official told a media briefing.

The 61 cases came from a

AP — BEIJING

China’s top Communist Party investigators are looking into “relevant issues raised by the public” about a whistleblower doctor who was threatened by police after publicizing his concerns about the new virus and has now died from it. The party’s announcement yesterday came as the death toll in mainland China rose to at least 636. The outbreak has now infected more than 31,400 people worldwide.

President Xi Jinping spoke by phone with President Donald Trump, who said the US was working closely with China to help. Xi urged the US to “respond reasonably” to the outbreak,

echoing complaints that some countries are over-reacting by restricting Chinese travelers. Fol-lowing an online uproar over the government’s treatment of Dr. Li Wenliang, the ruling Com-munist Party said it was sending an investigation team to “fully investigate relevant issues raised by the public” regarding the case.

Li, 34, was one of eight medical professionals in Wuhan who tried to warn colleagues and others when the government did not. He wrote on his Weibo microblog account that on Dec. 3 he saw a test sample that indicated the presence of a coronavirus similar to SARS, which killed nearly 800 people in a 2002-2003 outbreak.

sample of 273 people who had been tested because they had showed symptoms or been in close contact with those who did. More tests will be done if any more passengers developed symptoms, Kato said.

For the stranded pas-sengers, who were promised “a treasure trove of exceptional delights” in the ship’s brochure, the new infections spelled only more gloom. Staff distributed thermometers and passengers were told that mental health experts were available for

telephone consultations around the clock. “We have instruc-tions to monitor our tempera-tures and report if we’re above 37.5,” one man, a 43-year-old Hong Kong resident on the ship with his family, said. Normal human body temperature is generally accepted to be 37 Celsius (98.6 Fahrenheit).

Passengers were finding out about the new infections from the internet before they were announced on the ship, said the Hong Kong man, who declined to be identified.

China probes death of doctor who warned about virus

Demonstrators arrange agricultural products as part of a protest against a new citizenship law, in Kolkata, India, yesterday.

India to continue rebel peace accord push in troubled areasAP — GUWAHATI

India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi said yesterday his government will continue its peace push in insurgency-wracked northeastern India, where accords with key rebel groups have led to the surrender of thousands of fighters.

Modi said decades of violent insurrection ended in the Bodo tribal heartland in Assam state after the signing of a January 27 agreement with the rebels.

He addressed hundreds of thousands of people, mostly Bodo tribespeople, while cele-brating the signing of the peace accord, in Kokrajhar, a town 250km west of Guwahati, the state capital.

They included several hundred rebels from the National Democratic Front of Bodoland who turned out in their olive-green fatigues after surrendering to government forces at a ceremony on January 30.

Leaders of the four factions that comprise the NDF wel-comed the prime minister with traditional scarves on the dais, but they did not speak.

On Jan. 28, Gobinda Basu-matary, one of the leaders who signed the accord, said that it would “bring peace after three decades. Since enough of

autonomy is given to us as part of the accord, the demand for a separate Bodo state is no longer necessary.”

On Thursday, the Bodo tribespeople lit 70,000 oil lamps in their homes rejoicing in relief from long-simmering land and ethnic disputes in the region.

“I can understand your feelings when you decided to bid adieu to your guns, bombs and pistols and return to normal life. I will ensure that no thorn shall hurt you now in the road to peace,” Modi said.

The government plans to provide technical skills to those who surrendered to take up jobs in the near future.

Dozens of rebel groups have been fighting the gov-ernment and sometimes each other for years in seven states in northeast India. They demand greater regional autonomy or independent homelands for the indigenous groups they represent.

The rebels accuse the federal government of exploiting the region’s rich mineral resources but neglecting the local people.

Modi told the rally on Friday that insurgency was on the wane in the northeast and his government was trying to reach similar deals with insurgent groups mainly in Nagaland and Manipur states.

06 SATURDAY 8 FEBRUARY 2020ASIA

Pakistan resolutioncalls for publichanging of childabuse convictsAFP — ISLAMABAD

Pakistan’s parliament passed a resolution yesterday calling for the public hanging of convicted child killers and those who abuse children, drawing a quick backlash from human rights organisations.

The non-binding resolution follows a spate of high-profile child physical abuse cases that have provoked outrage and riots across Pakistan in recent years.

Child killers and molesters “should not only be given the death penalty by hanging, but they should be hanged pub-licly,” said Ali Muhammad Khan, Pakistan’s Parliamentary Affairs Minister, who presented the resolution in the national assembly, or lower house.

Though a majority of law-makers approved the reso-lution, human rights minister Shireen Mazari stressed it was not sponsored by the government.

The resolution “on public hangings was across party lines and not a govt-sponsored res-olution but an individual act. Many of us oppose it - our MOHR (human rights ministry) opposes this,” Mazari tweeted.

Amnesty International voiced its concern over yester-day’s resolution, while urging Pakistan to focus on better pro-tections against child abuse,

including through fair trials without recourse to the death penalty.

“Public hangings are acts of unconscionable cruelty and have no place in a rights-respecting society,” Amnesty said in a statement.

Human rights organisations have long called on Pakistan to reinstate a moratorium on the death penalty, which was lifted after the Army Public School massacre in Peshawar in 2014 that killed 151 people, most of them students.

“There is no empirical evi-dence to show that public hangings are a deterrent to crime or in protecting the psycho-social well-being of children”, Sarah Belal, Exec-utive Director of Justice Project Pakistan, a non-profit group campaigning against the death penalty, said.

In March 2016, Pakistan introduced a law criminalising assault against minors.

Britain’s Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab, participates in a tree planting ceremony at British-Swedish multinational biopharmaceutical company, AstraZeneca, in Sydney, yesterday.

Green mission

Key Taliban leader dead in AfghanistanANATOLIA — ISLAMABAD

A key leader of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the mother organisation of the Pakistani Taliban, was killed in Afghanistan, the group confirmed late on Thursday night.

Sheikh Khalid Haqqani, the former deputy chief of TTP and member of the group’s central committee, along with another com-mander Qari Saif Peshawari were killed during a fight with forces in Afghanistan on January 31, Mohammad Khurasani, the outlawed mil-itant group spokesman said in a statement.

Khurasani did not disclose details about the clash, but said he was on his way for carrying out an attack when Afghan forces stopped his way and killed him.

Founded in 2007 by Bait-ullah Mehsud — hailing from the powerful Mehsud tribe of the South Waziristan tribal region — the TTP already stands divided into four groups: the Swat group, Mehsud group, Bajaur Agency group, and Darra Adamkhel group.

Haqqani, a notorious leader, was listed among the most wanted terrorists by Pakistani authorities for his involvement in several terror attacks in the country.

Analysts said the killing of Haqqani is a big hit for the TTP as he was leading their reli-gious section, using the Taliban for propaganda.

Azerbaijan to hold snap parliamentaryelection tomorrow; first time in historyANATOLIA — BAKU

Azerbaijan is set to hold early parliamentary elections tomorrow almost two months after the legislature was dissolved by a presidential decree.

Milli Majlis, the National Assembly of Azerbaijan, is holding snap polls for the first time in its history.

On December 2, with the initiative of the ruling New Azerbaijan Party (YAP) a pro-posal to dissolve the parliament was discussed and passed in the assembly. It was approved by President Ilham Aliyev on December 5. The state officials had earlier announced the snap

polls would help modernise the country’s legislative branch and speed up economic reforms.

Over 1,300 registered can-didates from around 20 political parties are competing in the run-up to 125 parlia-mentary seats.

More than 22.5% of candi-dates in parliamentary elections are women. Members of the unicameral parliament are elected for a five-year term.

Over 65,000 local and more than 800 international observers have been accredited for monitoring the elections.

The election campaign, which started on Jan. 17 all around the country, is scheduled to end early morning

on Saturday, a day before the polls. Some 5.2 million regis-tered voters will be able to cast their votes in over 5,500 polling stations in the country, according to the Central Election Commission of Azerbaijan.

There is no overseas voting set for the upcoming elections, except for certain groups in the military and foreign service.

Voting is scheduled to start at 8am local time and continue until 7pm.

The upcoming elections are set to be the sixth parliamentary polls in Azerbaijan since the country re-gained its inde-pendence in 1991 after the col-lapse of the Soviet Union.

Heavy rains and floods lash eastern AustraliaAP — CANBERRA

Heavy rains lashed parts of the wildfire and drought-stricken Australian east coast yesterday, bringing some flooding in Sydney and relief to firefighters still dealing with dozens of blazes in New South Wales.

New South Wales is the

state hardest hit by wildfires that have killed at least 33 and destroyed more than 3,000 homes in an unprecedented fire season that began late in a record-dry 2019.

New South Wales Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons said he was opti-mistic the rain will help

extinguish some blazes over the coming days. He said there were still 42 fires burning in the state, with 17 of those not contained.

“The rain is good for business and farms as well as being really good for quenching some of these fires we’ve been dealing with for many, many

months,” he said. “We don’t want to see lots of widespread damage and disruption from flooding, but it is certainly a welcome change to the relentless campaign of hot, dry weather,” he added.

Firefighters can’t contain major blazes across the southeast without heavy rain.

The rain forecast to move southwest from the north-eastern coast over the next week would be the first sub-stantial soakings to reach dozens of fires that have spread for weeks. Heavy rain and flash-flooding warnings extend across most of the New South Wales coast.

S Korea mass wedding attracts thousands despite virus fearsREUTERS — GAPYEONG

South Korean groom Lee Kwon-seok was excited to join thousands of other couples in the latest mass wedding performed by South Korea’s Unification Church yesterday, but he and his bride weren’t taking any chances amid the coronavirus outbreak.

They brought their own surgical masks to wear - his black to match his suit, and hers white to match her dress.

“I’m very happy to attend this deeply blessed joint wedding,” said Lee, 35. “Since coronavirus is going around these days, I wore a mask to be careful.” About 30,000 people from around the world gathered at the Cheong Shim Peace World Center in Gapyeong, northeast of Seoul, according to the church. Among them were 6,000 new couples getting married, while the others were renewing vows or watching.

The mass weddings are a well-known feature of the South Korea-based church, but the spread of the new

coronavirus, first reported in China, has cast a pall over many public events.

In the end, only a few couples wore masks at the wedding ceremony, which was overseen by Hak Ja Han Moon, wife of the founder of the Uni-fication Church, and known to believers as “True Mother.” “I didn’t put on a mask because I want to be beautiful for my husband,” said a 23-year-old bride from Benin, Nguessan Myeonguet Walehet. “I want just meet the True Mother, because it’s most important for me.” The church said the wedding was successful. The event had special significance as it also marked the 100th anniversary of founder Sun Myung Moon’s birth.

The Unification Church was founded in 1954 by the late Moon, who declared he and his wife were messiahs. From 1961 until his death in 2012, he oversaw mass weddings at which thousands were matched with spouses they sometimes had just met and who, in some cases, did not even speak the same language.

Members of the Multi-Ministry Taskforce, Director of Medical Services at the Ministry of Health, Kenneth Mark; Minister of Health, Gan Kim Yong; Minister of National Development, Lawrence Wong, and Liew Wei Li, Director of Schools, Ministry of Education, give a news conference after raising the coronavirus outbreak alert to Orange in Singapore, yesterday.

Official: US citizen believed kidnapped in AfghanistanAP —WASHINGTON

An American citizen has been kidnapped in Afghanistan by a Taliban-affiliated group, a US official said, and author-ities are working to rescue him.

US officials believe Mark Frerichs of Lombard, Illinois, was kidnapped by the Haqqani network, according to an official who was not authorized to discuss the case by name and spoke on con-dition of anonymity.

It was not immediately clear why Frerichs was in Afghanistan or where precisely he was picked up, though Newsweek — which first reported the kidnapping — said he was taken into custody last week in Khost province, in the eastern part of the country, and that he is a con-tractor who has worked as a civil engineer in different con-flict zones over the last decade.

The investigation is being handled by the FBI-led Hostage Recovery Fusion Cell, a multi-agency effort created during the Obama adminis-tration amid criticism over the government’s response to hostage-taking.

Art Frerichs, who identified himself as Frerichs’ father, said that he believed the Newsweek report was true. “I don’t want to say any more now for security reasons,” he said. “I have the utmost faith in Pres-ident Trump and the FBI.” The Taliban said it had no infor-mation on the kidnapping and nothing to say about it. No one has claimed responsibility for kidnapping Frerichs.

Singapore raises coronavirus alertREUTERS — SINGAPORE

Singapore yesterday reported three more coronavirus cases that have not been linked to previous infections or travel to China, prompting it to raise its alert to orange, the same level it reached during the SARS outbreak in 2003.

Singapore now has 33 con-firmed coronavirus cases. The orange alert means the virus is severe and passes easily from person to person and was last raised during an outbreak of H1N1 influenza in 2009-2010. Severe Acute Respiratory

Syndrome (SARS) killed more than 30 people in Singapore and hundreds worldwide.

“As there are now a few local cases without any links to previous cases or travel history to China, we have stepped up our risk assessment,” the health min-istry said in a statement, adding that firms should be prepared for “widespread community transmission”. The highest alert is red, which indicates the virus is spreading widely. Singapore advised businesses to cancel or defer non-essential large-scale events but said the

Singapore Airshow will go ahead next week although organisers may limit public visitors.

Of the new cases reported yesterday, one was a teacher and authorities said all students and staff who had come into contact with her would have to spend two weeks at home.

A British man has also con-tracted the coronavirus after travelling to a business meeting in Singapore which has also been linked to cases in the city-state, Malaysia and South Korea, health ministry official Kenneth Mak said.

Hong Kong unveils virus quarantine plans, with jail for dodgersAFP — HONG KONG

Hong Kong yesterday said it will deploy an army of volunteers to bolster plans to forcibly quar-antine all arrivals from mainland China, warning that anyone caught breaching the new rules faces up to six months prison.

In a major escalation of its battle against the new corona-virus, the international finance

hub has said anyone arriving from the mainland from today will have to undergo 14 days compulsory quarantine.

Officials hope the new measures will virtually halt all cross-border traffic while allowing the city to remain stocked with food and goods from the mainland where the virus has killed more than 600 people.

Cabinet ministers unveiled

the quarantine plans just six hours before the new policy was due to come on.

Hong Kong residents arriving from mainland China will be allowed to self-quar-antine at home. Chinese and international visitors will be able to self-quarantine at hotels or any other accommodation they have arranged.

“If they cannot arrange accommodation, they will be

taken to the temporary facilities prepared by the government,” health secretary Sophia Chan said. Anyone who has been to mainland China in the past 14 days and then flies into Hong Kong from another destination will also be quarantined.

Officials -- backed by vol-unteers from the civil service and some students -- will conduct spot checks or make daily phone calls to ensure

people were staying at home.Those caught breaking their

quarantine face up to six months in jail and a HK$25,000 ($3,200) fine.

“We will be stopping a lot of people with the new measures,” Security Minister John Lee said.

The new regulations have been enacted under a sweeping emergency law that allows city leaders to bypass the legislature during a disease outbreak.

Exemptions would be made for a variety of key jobs, including flight and shipping crews as well as cross border truck drivers to ensure goods and food keep coming into the city. Hong Kong has been hit by a wave of panic-buying in recent days with supermarket shelves frequently emptied of crucial goods such as toilet paper, hand sanitiser, rice and pasta.

The non-binding resolution follows a spate of high-profile child physical abuse cases that have provoked outrage and riots across Pakistan in recent years.

07SATURDAY 8 FEBRUARY 2020 EUROPE

Macron seeks greater EUrole in in curbing N-threatsAFP — PARIS

French President Emmanuel Macron called yesterday for European nations to play a more direct role in halting a new nuclear arms race, saying they “cannot remain spectators” against a threat to the conti-nent’s collective security.

“In the absence of a legal framework, they could rapidly face a new race for conven-tional weapons, even nuclear weapons, on their own soil,” Macron told military officers in a speech laying out France’s post-Brexit nuclear strategy.

France is now the only nuclear-armed power in the European Union at a time when long-standing accords on lim-iting the growth of nuclear arsenals appear increasingly at risk.

The US and Russia have abandoned the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty, each blaming the other for breaching its limits, and Washington is threatening to quit the New START arms reduction treaty when it expires next year.

Add to that China’s bid for global sway, there is a strong need for Europe to ensure it does not find itself in the middle of a Cold War-style standoff

“which could jeopardise the peace obtained after so many tragedies on our continent,” Macron said.

He warned of “the possi-bility of a pure and unrestrained military and nuclear compe-tition, the likes of which we haven’t seen since the end of the 1960s.”

“The vital interests of France now have a European dimension,” Macron said.

European nations should also insist on being signatories of any new deal to limit the development of new interme-diate-range weapons,” he added.

“Let us be clear: if negotia-tions and a more compre-hensive treaty are possible... Europeans must be stake-holders and signatories, because it’s our territory” that is most at risk.

France has already reduced the number of its warheads to under 300, Macron said, giving it “the legitimacy to demand concrete moves from other

nuclear powers toward global disarmament that is gradual, credible and can be verified.”

But he stopped short of offering to share France’s nuclear deterrence capabilities, a pillar of its security strategy since implemented by Charles de Gaulle in the 1960s.

Germany in particular remains strongly opposed to atomic weapons, although a leader in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party, Johann Wadephul, said this week that Paris should consider putting its arsenal under the auspices of the EU or Nato.

Macron invited European partners to engage in a “stra-tegic dialogue” on the deterrent role of France’s nuclear capacity as the country embarks on a costly modernisation of its arsenal.

“Our independence in terms of decision-making is fully compat ible with an unshakeable solidarity with our European partners”.

Macron also warned of the

need for “a greater capacity for autonomous action by Euro-peans,” who must step up their military spending.

“Why are they not ready to make defence a budget priority and make the necessary sacri-fices, even as the risks are growing?” Macron asked.

His speech came as a diplo-matic freeze between the EU and Russia since Moscow’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine has rekindled fears of fresh conflict along Europe’s eastern flank.

France has broken with some EU nations by recently reaching out to restore dialogue with President Vladimir Putin, who controls the world’s largest nuclear arsenal.

“There can be no defence and security project for European citizens without a political vision that seeks to progressively restore trust with Russia,” Macron said.

“We cannot accept the current situation, where the chasm deepens and talks diminish even as the security

issues that need to be addressed with Moscow are multiplying.”

Macron did not specify whether Britain, Europe’s other nuclear power, should be part of the deeper EU cooperation now that is has quit the bloc.

But he noted that “since 1995, France and the United Kingdom have stated clearly there is no situation in which a threat to one’s vital interests would not also be a threat to the other’s.”

“Brexit doesn’t change this at all.”

French President Emmanuel Macron (right) meets military officials before delivering his speech at the Ecole Militaire, in Paris, yesterday.

UN expert says Spain fails badly in tackling povertyAP — MADRID

A United Nations human rights expert yesterday lambasted Spain for its treatment of its poor, saying the country’s post-crisis economic policies have benefited businesses and the wealthy, but have left many ordinary people way behind.

UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights Philip Alston said that “the levels of poverty that exist in Spain reflect a political choice” made by governments over the past decade to benefit the wealthy with favorable tax policies while doing little to increase minimum wages or social protection services.

“In the economic area,

Spain has done very well,” Alston said in Madrid. “High GDP, high per-capita income, enormous overall wealth.

“In the social area, it´s a dif-ferent story: Spain is either at the bottom or close to the bottom on so many of the key indicators.¨

Alston was presenting his preliminary findings after vis-iting six regions and meeting with people living in poverty, civil society groups, academics and government officials.

Spain, with a population of 47 million, emerged from a grueling five-year economic crisis in 2013. And while the percentage pf people at risk of poverty and social exclusion inched down from 29% in 2013

to 26% in 2017, it is still much higher than the European Union average of 22%. The economy, the fourth largest in the EU, has been improving at a faster rate than the EU average for some years but unemployment is at 14%, double the EU figure.

Alston highlighted the most problematic areas as housing, jobs, minimum wages and edu-cation. He said women, children, the Roma community and migrants are among the worst affected.

“We only need to contrast the fact that between 2007 and 2017 the incomes of the top 1% grew by 24 percent while for the the bottom 90 percent they grew by less than 2 percent”.

“Spain decided to take in

less tax over the past decade by reducing corporate taxes and tax on high incomes, leaving it with less money to spend on the less well-off who suffered the brunt of the crisi”.

He said he had met with Roma groups “basically living in garbage dumps” and migrant workers in the south “living in probably the worst conditions I have ever seen.” He met with average Spaniards “desperately fighting eviction and trying to find somewhere to live,” adding that the dilemma for many fam-ilies is “heating or eating.”

Alston said the new Socialist-led coalition govern-ment’s pledged commitment to social justice provides a ray of hope but that it faces many

challenges. He said he would hold off on saying Spain was “utterly failing” in handling poverty only because of its much-admired health care system and its still good level of pension provisions.

Spain also had the worst rate of early school leavers in the EU, at 18 percent, while social housing accounted for 2% of homes, compared with between 20% and 30% in other European countries. In addition, youth unemployment was more than double the EU average.

“The Spain must first rec-ognise that social rights in housing, jobs and protection services need to be the basis of government policy,” he said.

Hungarian police reopen border post with SerbiaAFP — BUDAPEST

Hungarian police reopened a border crossing with Serbia yesterday, a day after hundreds of migrants ended a protest demanding entry into Hungary.

The protest came a week after dozens of people tried to get into Hungary at another Serbian border crossing during the night, prompting security staff to fire warning shots.

Hungarian police say there has been a sharp rise in attempts to enter the country from the south since December.

“The Tompa road border-crossing has been reopened,” said a statement on the police website yesterday.

Several hundred people, including women and young children, arrived on Thursday at a strip of land between

Serbia and Hungary demanding to be let in.

The migrants wrapped themselves in blankets and huddled in tents during a sit-down protest lasting several hours in bitter cold, young children held placards saying “We are just refugees, not crim-inals” and “We are running from war not hunger”.

They were later taken by bus to reception centres in Serbia, Svetlana Palic, spokes-woman for the Serbian com-missariat for refugees, said.

Their claims will be proc-essed in the same way as those of other asylum seekers, she said.

During 2015’s migrant crisis, Prime Minister Viktor Orban erected a razor-wire-topped fence at the 175km long frontier — one of the EU’s external borders.

Spain and Italy ready joint migration policyAP — MADRID

Spain and Italy want to forge a new strategic alliance that can shape the European Union’s future policies on migration, the two countries’ foreign ministers said yesterday.

Spain’s Arancha González Laya and Italy’s Luigi di Maio also said after talks in Madrid that an informal document on proposed EU-wide migration policies has been in the works for weeks.

They said they expected backing from other countries in the Mediterranean region - where most of the tens of thou-sands of refugees and migrants seeking a better life in Europe

every year first arrive.“We are going to work

together to strengthen relations on this issue,” González Laya said after their meeting.

The European Commission wants to begin a reform of the asylum system and policies of the 27 members of the EU later this year. One of the key hurdles is how to make all members —including eastern countries that refuse to take in migrants — help shoulder the burden that mostly falls on Mediterranean countries.

“We are on the border of the EU, we know better than anybody else the migration phenomenon, and we have the capacity and the expertise to

deal with this issue,” Di Maio said.

He added that Spain is a key partner for Italy on migration issues because of its influence in northern Africa.

The ministers gave minimal details about the contents of the proposal or when they expected to share it with other countries.

Di Maio also said strength-ening control on weapons des-tined to Libya — where many of the migrant trafficking mafias operate — was a key element for Italy.

Spain’s González Laya said Rome and Madrid’s proposal would be based on the principles of “justice” and “solidarity.”

There is a strong need for Europe to ensure it does not find itself in the middle of a Cold War-style standoff “which could jeopardise the peace obtained after so many tragedies on our continent”: Emmanuel Macron

Man charged as two stolen Banksy artworks foundAFP — PARIS

A man was charged yesterday after two stolen Banksy artworks were recovered in Paris.

An image of a masked rat wielding a box cutter — the alter ego the elusive British artist often uses — disappeared from outside the Pompidou Centre in September, a year after Bansky “blitzed” the French capital with murals.

The museum, which houses Europe’s biggest col-lection of modern art but does not have a Bansky, had filed a police complaint for destruction of property.

The man charged with “stealing a cultural asset” is one of three men arrested in and around Paris earlier this week.

Two works by Banksy were recovered in follow-up searches by the police but the stencilled work on the back of a sign for the Pompidou’s car park is still missing.

Thieves used a saw to cut it out of the sign.

The Pompidou theft came seven months after another Banksy work paying hommage to the victims of the November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris was stolen from outside the Bataclan, the concert venue where IS gunmen massacred 90 people.

Another anti-capitalist mural attributed to the secretive street art star disap-peared shortly after Banksy’s whirlwind trip, which the highly political artist said was to mark the 50th anniversary of the Paris student uprising of 1968. It featured a busi-nessman in a suit offering a dog a bone having sawed the animal’s leg off.Merkel’s CDU grapples with far-right fiasco fallout

AP — BERLIN German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party grappled yesterday with the fallout from a state governor’s election with both its support and votes from a far-right party, vowing not to work “directly or indirectly” with the far-right.

The election of Thomas Kemmerich as governor of the eastern state of Thuringia shook German politics and highlighted tensions in Merkel’s centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU).

Kemmerich’s election was only possible thanks to a manoeuvre by the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD. When the state legislature voted to pick a governor Wednesday, the party threw its support behind Kemmerich in

an apparent bid for mainstream respectability.

Kemmerich’s acceptance of its votes appalled left-leaning parties and many in his own centre-right camp. Merkel c a l l e d h i s e l e c t i o n “inexcusable.”

Annegret Kramp-Karren-bauer, who succeeded Merkel as CDU leader in 2018, gathered the party leadership in Berlin for a crisis meeting yesterday.

Kramp-Karrenbauer had struggled to impose her authority since taking over the party’s leadership and emerged weakened after CDU’s regional lawmakers ignored a recom-mendation from Berlin not to back Kemmerich.

The debacle also high-lighted the dilemma of a party that long said it would not ally with either AfD or the Left Party

of Thuringia state’s popular previous governor, Bodo Ramelow.

Participants at yesterday’s party meeting agreed unani-mously that “for the CDU in Germany and the CDU in Thur-ingia, it is still the case that there will be no cooperation with AfD, either directly or indi-rectly,” Kramp-Karrenbauer said.

She said her party is ready for “constructive cooperation” in finding a solution to the mess in Thuringia, but won’t elect a governor from the Left Party or one who depends on AfD votes.

Kramp-Karrenbauer called on center-left parties to present a candidate “who doesn’t divide the state.” If no solution can be found, she said, “new elections are inevitable.” The last state election took place in October.

German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (left) arrives to make a speech as she holds a press conference in Berlin, yesterday.

Eight international aid agencies jointly warned earlier this week that a war that has already cost at least 500,000 lives and displaced more than 16 million people risks turning into a “humanitarian catastrophe” that could dwarf the many disasters that have gone before.

08 SATURDAY 8 FEBRUARY 2020VIEWS

CHAIRMAN

SHEIKH THANI BIN ABDULLAH AL THANI

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

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

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MOHAMMED SALIM MOHAMEDm.salim@pen.com.qa

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MOHAMMED OSMAN ALI osman@pen.com.qa

EDITORIAL

QATAR through a number of initiatives and efforts made at national, regional and global levels has promoted the cause of peace, tolerance and interfaith harmony to defeat the growing threat of extremism worldwide.

Qatar has always supported international efforts to uphold values of tolerance. A number of Qatari institu-tions, especially the Doha International Center for Inter-faith Dialogue, are continuously promoting the culture of peace, dialogue and tolerance.

The 14th edition of Doha Conference on Interfaith Dialogue will be held next month to play its effective role in spreading the message of peace. The Conference aims to address the issue of hate speech, its dimen-sions and the religions’ attitudes towards it.

The Conference, which will be held in March 2020 under the theme ‘Religions and Hate Speech Scrip-tures and Practice’, will host over 500 participants from outside Qatar, representing more than 200 institutions, universities, religious, intellectual and academic center, from about 75 countries around the world.

According to Chairman of the Doha International Center for Interfaith Dialogue (DICID), H E Dr. Ibrahim bin Saleh Al Nuaimi, the Conference has achieved, over the past years, several benefits and contributed to cre-ating a positive image of the State of Qatar as a platform for tolerance.

Dr. Al Nuaimi pointed out that the Conference will focus on commonalities among the divine religions, to find a basis for mutual coexistence in the interest of humanity in general, away from debating religious thoughts.

“Respecting people of other religions requires us to invite them to dialogue whose results will positively reflect on the reality of Muslims outside Islamic coun-tries, which will lead to a retreat of hatred against Islam and Muslims, and provide more sympathy for the Ummah’s issues in non-Muslim countries, and these are goals we seek to achieve,” he added.

Last year, Qatar’s Permanent Representative to the UN, H E Ambassador Sheikha Alya Ahmed bin Saif al-Thani while addressing a “High-Level Forum on the Culture of Peace” at UN General Assembly had pointed out that the Doha International Center for Interfaith Dia-logue (DICID) had been holding annual international interfaith conferences with the participation of religious leaders from different religions.

“The outcomes of these conferences, which have actively contributed to promoting a culture of peace, providing a platform for constructive dialogue in order to understand and accept differences, to focus on shared noble human values, to advance efforts to combat extremism and hatred, and to build bridges of cooperation and understanding among peoples,” she had said.

Promoting tolerance

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Quote of the day

Some 26.1 percent of people in Spain, and 29.5 percent of children, were at risk of poverty or social exclusion in 2018, among the highest rates in Europe.

Philip Alston, UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights

Members of a family fleeing with their belongings pass through the town of Hazano in the northern countryside of Idlib.

More than half a million Syrians are surging toward the Turkish border to escape unexpectedly swift Syrian government advances into the country’s last opposition-held enclave, an exodus that aid agencies and the United Nations warn could mushroom into the worst humanitarian crisis of the nine-year-old war.

More than 200,000 people have fled their homes in the past week alone, streaming north along clogged roads toward the relative safety of the Turkish border, as Syrian troops, backed by Russian airstrikes, slice through opposition-held towns and villages in the northwestern provinces of Idlib and Aleppo, according to UN figures.

They have joined more than 300,000 people displaced from areas farther south since the launch of a government offensive in early December, bringing to 586,000 the number of people now on the move in a shrinking pocket of territory hugging the Turkish border.

More than half are children, most of the rest are women, and they are sleeping on roadsides or camping under trees in muddy fields because there is no accom-modation to be had, the United Nations says. The existing camps are full, local homes have taken in all the people they can hold, and there is an acute shortage of tents to provide shelter from harsh winter temperatures,

which projected to drop to 19 degrees Fahrenheit (minus-7 degrees Celsius) over the weekend.

People are burning their clothes to keep warm because fuel supplies are scarce, said Mohammed Barakat, who fled his home in rural Aleppo province two weeks ago and is now living in an unfinished building in the town of Harem on the Turkish border.

“Wherever you go, you see people sleeping on both sides of the road because they can’t find any shelter, either in tents or houses,” said Barakat, who works for the civil society group Kesh Malek. “In Harem, there are people on the sidewalks and all over the streets. People are just looking to save their lives.” Eight interna-tional aid agencies jointly warned earlier this week that a war that has already cost at least 500,000 lives and displaced more than 16 million people risks turning into a “humanitarian catastrophe” that could dwarf the many disasters that have gone before.

Already the exodus ranks as one of the biggest single popu-lation dislocations since the war began, said David Swanson, a UN spokesman based in Turkey. An additional 280,000 people are at immediate risk of being forced to flee as loyalist forces press north and west, herding civilians into an area that was already hosting hundreds of thousands of people displaced by earlier phases of the war.

“We’re seeing an unparal-leled exodus of humanity,” Swanson said. “We’re seeing carnage on a scale that we haven’t seen in this crisis in quite some time.” Syrian troops are now within seven miles of the city of Idlib, home to about 900,000 people who could be

expected to join the exodus if loyalist forces attack, the United Nations has warned.

Civilians are also dying in the relentless Syrian and Russian airstrikes that target towns and villages behind the front lines to clear out the civilian population ahead of troop advances. The United Nations puts the number of deaths at 373, with more than 1,000 wounded. Medical facil-ities have been targeted by air-strikes, the United Nations says, contributing to an acute shortage of treatment for wounded people.

The latest battles serve as a reminder that the Syrian war is far from over, even though its outcome is no longer in doubt. President Bashar al-Assad has prevailed in Damascus, and the opposition fighters who once held sway over vast areas of the country have now been squeezed into a corner of territory in the provinces of Idlib and Aleppo.

Assad has repeatedly vowed to reclaim every inch of Syrian territory. A cease-fire agreement between Russia and Turkey intended to avert a bloody final showdown broke down last month, and government forces are now pushing deeper into opposition territory than UN offi-cials and Western diplomats had anticipated.

The rebel force is now almost entirely dominated by fighters with the extremist Hayat Tahrir Al Sham, a former Al Qaida affiliate. Syria and Russia cite the connection to justify the assault as a fight against terrorism.

Liz Sly is The Washington Post’s Beirut bureau chief, cov-ering Lebanon, Syria and the wider region. She has spent more than 17 years covering the Middle East, including the first and second Iraq wars.

AFP — YAOUNDÉ

Voters in Cameroon will cast their ballots tomorrow in a country where the mood has been darkened by separatist violence and calls for an election boycott.

Elections to renew the central African country’s leg-islature and local councils are taking place for the first time in seven years, after two post-ponements. Despite the delays, the campaigning has been low key.

In the capital Yaounde, the few banners put up by the ruling Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement (RDPC in its French initials) are barely more numerous than posters calling on people to pick up their litter.

The RDPC supports Pres-ident Paul Biya, one of the world’s oldest and longest-serving leaders, who has

ruled with a steely fist for 37 of his 86 years.

The main opposition party, the Movement for the Rebirth of Cameroon (MRC) is refusing to field a single can-didate. Its leader, Maurice Kamto, spent nine months in jail after his defeat in 2018 presidential elections and is now abroad.

“We could have had a few seats in parliament and some town councillors, but how would that enable us to influence events in Cameroon?” Kamto said in an interview with AFP in Paris last month.

“I would have voted for the MRC but on Sunday I’m going to stay at home,” a young Yaounde voter, who gave his name as Xavier,said. The boycott will all but guar-antee a crushing victory for the RDPC, which in the out-going legislature had 148 out of 180 seats.

“Where’s the opposition?” was the whimsical question aired by a local RDPC chief, Augustin Tsafack, on the side-lines of a party rally in Yaounde.

The other large oppo-sition party, the Social Demo-cratic Front (SDF), which cur-rently has 18 seats, will take part in Sunday’s vote, going back on a threat to snub it.

In parallel with the leaden political mood, Cameroon is struggling with two conflicts. In two English-speaking regions in the west, the armed forces are battling separatists who want to secede from the majority French-speaking country. The 28-month con-flict has claimed more than 3,000 lives and caused more than 700,000 people to flee, according to tolls compiled by NGOs.

“How can the state guar-antee security for elections in

the anglophone regions, given that some towns are now inaccessible by road?” an independent observer from one of these regions asked at a meeting of the electoral commission in Yaounde on Wednesday.

The SDF traditionally draws much of its support from the anglophone regions but now fears that it has been outflanked by the radicals -- and says its candidates there have come under attack.

Similar worries are being voiced for the safety of polling stations in Cameroon’s Far North region, which has been battered by Boko Haram jihadists crossing from Nigeria. Municipal elections will also take place on polling day, something that has excited most media interest given the seemingly inevi-table outcome of legislative vote.

A monumental exodus, mostly women and children fleeing troops, may become Syria’s biggest crisis

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Cameroon elections overshadowed by boycott and violence

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09SATURDAY 8 FEBRUARY 2020 OPINION

Unusually, the goal covers not only emissions from electricity, gas and transport fuel used in the city, but also emissions generated in producing the goods and services consumed there - even if that happened elsewhere.

Uncertainty about the ultimate toll of the corona-virus outbreak centred in China is the primary driver of the aggressive response and heightened media attention it is getting. In the coming weeks, emerging epidemio-logical and virological analyses will be critical to reaching a better under-standing of the threat and developing critical diagnostic tools and vaccines.

These tools, alongside appropriate messaging from public health officials, are needed to mitigate the political and economic costs associated with the large-scale disruption of trade and travel in the current envi-ronment of anxiety.

The 2003 SARS corona-virus pandemic, which infected approximately 8,000 people and killed about 800, has become the inevitable point of reference for ana-lysing the impact of the current coronavirus outbreak. Understanding the similarities and differences between these outbreaks will be critical to managing the new virus.

SARS killed about 10 percent of those who caught it and was spread primarily in

healthcare settings. The new virus appears to spread more effectively than SARS, but only apparently kills approxi-mately 2 percent of those who catch it. The total caseload for this outbreak will far exceed the 8,000 SARS cases. But the true fatality rate remains uncertain at this stage, so it is too early to say with any con-fidence what this will mean for the total health burden.

These uncertainties have produced aggressive con-tainment strategies, especially in China. The Chinese gov-ernment has taken the unprecedented move of locking down Wuhan, a city of 11 million people, and others nearby, raising the total number of people under quarantine to approximately 60 million, a considerably higher number than during SARS. New international travel bans and restrictions are being announced daily - Hong Kong recently took the politically fraught step of cutting most travel options to the mainland.

Yet it is not clear such actions will curtail the spread of the virus. If done at the very early stages of an infectious disease outbreak, con-tainment is theoretically pos-sible. But instituting the lockdown in China at this late stage (weeks after the first cases were identified), after millions of people have already moved in and out of Wuhan, means the best-case scenario is a slight slowdown in transmission.

And the possibility remains that people can transmit this disease before they show symptoms (SARS was not known to be trans-missible during the asympto-matic stage). If this is the case, containment will become more challenging in the coming days.

Moreover, these types of restrictions also come with a considerable economic, social, and political toll. Enforcement efforts cost money, and local economies suffer from the halts to their travel, trade, tourism, retail, and entertainment activities.

The global economy may also take a hit from the dis-ruption to supply chains: Wuhan is a significant e-com-merce and industrial shipping hub and China is the source of a significant amount of active

ingredients for pharmaceu-tical products and personal protective equipment that is now in high demand globally.

What is more, such dra-conian measures also create an antagonistic relationship between citizens and govern-ments and make disease tracking more difficult, as people do not want to be pun-ished for skirting travel restrictions. Individuals suf-fering from other illnesses might also be denied proper care as healthcare centres become overcrowded or run out of critical treatments.

It is important to note that the economic damage to China and other affected nations during SARS was sig-nificant but temporary. But trepidation about the health of the global economy in 2020 and uncertainty relating to this virus suggest it is too soon to say the same for this outbreak.

For the rest of the world, the containment picture is different. With many fewer cases and public health offi-cials on high alert, it might be possible to staunch the out-break before it expands sig-nificantly. But the response is also being driven to some extent by fear and uncertainty in other countries.

The United States has taken aggressive steps to restrict the entry of foreigners coming from China and quar-antine Americans returning from China. But maintaining a proper balance between rea-sonable caution and overreach remains important in the current environment. We expect to see a continued debate over trade and travel restrictions to and from China.

The risk remains that this debate gets taken over by non-public health officials and generates significant eco-nomic disruption, possibly at the expense of best public health practices.

Another challenge today is the information anarchy that is a feature of the 2020 media landscape. While rumours and misinformation persisted during the SARS outbreak, they are an even bigger problem today.

The World Health Organi-zation (WHO) - the multi-lateral agency that monitors the outbreak and works to communicate risk in a way that strikes a balance between complacency and alarm - has its work cut out. Its recom-mendations on travel and trade are not enforceable, persistent budget shortfalls curtail its reach, and its efforts to communicate nuance on this issue can easily be over-shadowed by individuals and news outlets with less

expertise and a misplaced certainty about this rapidly evolving outbreak.

Fortunately, the pan-demic preparedness com-munity has come a long way since the SARS outbreak. The US and other developed nations are able to mobilise their surveillance systems and deploy resources to local hospitals relatively well (although local budget cuts, chain of command uncer-tainty, and the disbandment of the National Security Council’s pandemic response team in the US are worthy of concern).

In countries with weaker health systems, however, this type of robust response may be unrealistic. The spread of this virus in Africa remains a significant concern.

The development of tools such as rapid diag-nostic tests and vaccines is happening much faster than was the case in 2003. Hong Kong has already announced the creation of a vaccine. But development is only the first step. Mass pro-duction and distribution are the second and third steps and will almost certainly be politically and economically contentious.

Rich nations and countries where the vaccine is developed may demand they be put at the front of the line. Another concern is that the outbreak may have peaked by the time the vaccine is available, leaving minimal demand and a large stockpile of product that nobody is interested in purchasing. This has happened before and remains a considerable blind spot in pandemic preparedness.

The uncertainty around the outbreak in China will almost certainly continue to cause economic dislocation, intense media speculation, and extreme duress for China’s already overburdened healthcare system. It is also likely that global anxiety will fluctuate, depending on the news cycle and the flow of information.

But the experience with SARS and other global disease threats, alongside the signif-icant advances in pandemic preparedness in recent years, offer hope that more clarity will emerge soon and that information, if communicated properly, can be used to mit-igate the human, political, and economic costs.

Aditya Bhattacharji manages Eurasia Group’s healthcare analysis. Scott Rosenstein is a public health professor at Bard College’s Globalization and Interna-tional Affairs program.

The coronavirus: What should we be worried about?

Green-leaning Bristol in late 2018 became the first British city to declare a “climate emergency”. As part of that move, it announced an ambi-tious, stepped-up target to cut its planet-warming emissions to net zero by 2030.

Unusually, the goal covers not only emissions from elec-tricity, gas and transport fuel used in the city, but also emis-sions generated in producing the goods and services con-sumed there - even if that happened elsewhere.

But work to shift the port city in southwest England onto a cleaner path had begun far earlier, even before Bris-tol’s initial 2015 decision to become carbon-neutral by 2050, said Kye Dudd, a Labour councillor who leads work on transport and energy.

“The challenge of 2030 was not what do we do about it? In Bristol, it was how do we accelerate what we are doing?” he said.

Several months before the emergency declaration, Bristol had invited proposals from businesses to team up with the city on clean energy and green infrastructure projects worth about £1 billion ($1.3bn).

The city expects to choose a partner for the “City Leap” programme by the end of this summer.

Together, city officials hope, they can develop more solar and wind power capacity, expand the district heating network and roll out smart energy and battery technology, for starters.

Dudd said the initiative had to involve both gov-ernment and business, as the shift was too big for the council to manage alone - but the city also wanted to ensure local communities would benefit from new skills and revenues through its 50% stake in the joint venture.

“A lot of people are watching this and want to know if it will work,” he said. “Other local authorities don’t want to reinvent the wheel.” Around the world, front-runner cities are testing new ways to cut their emissions faster and protect residents from floods, heatwaves and rising sea levels, while improving their quality of life

in the bargain.According to advocacy

group The Climate Mobili-zation, which is trying to per-suade governments to respond urgently to climate change, more than 1,300 local governments in about 25 countries have now declared a “climate emergency”.

But in many cases, trans-lating that into concrete action is an uphill struggle, not least because it requires a wholesale shake-up of estab-lished methods of working, climate experts say.

“Emergency declarations, if they are real, can be very powerful tools, depending on the kind of governance and legal framework you’re in,” said Michael Berkowitz, a founding principal of Resilient Cities Catalyst, a nonprofit consultancy.

In countries such as the United States, such declara-tions can focus attention, unlock resources and help cut through red tape, said the former head of the 100 Resilient Cities network.

But to radically shrink a city’s carbon footprint will take sustained effort “over a couple of political cycles”, he noted.

For instance, London Mayor Sadiq Khan, a Labour

politician, has pushed on with cleaner transport policies started by his Conservative predecessor Boris Johnson, now Britain’s prime minister, including low emission zones and cycling infrastructure, Berkowitz said.

Another way to protect green policies is for local gov-ernments to involve busi-nesses and civil society groups as equal partners in the push to tackle climate change, he said, citing the port city of Rotterdam as a good example.

“If it’s just mayors with small coalitions pounding the table, that feels like hollow political statements,” he added.

In January, Barcelona city hall declared a climate emer-gency - but only after holding a series of public consulta-tions in the preceding three months, involving representa-tives of about 200 organisa-tions, to thrash out a compre-hensive action plan.

The document contains more than 100 measures to enable the city to meet a tighter target of cutting its emissions by 50% by 2030 and also to help residents adapt to climate change impacts, backed with 563 million euros ($623 million) of public money.

The actions include reducing private cars on Bar-celona’s roads, making resi-dential buildings energy effi-cient, producing more renewable energy, increasing doorstep waste collection and recycling, and adding green space, especially around schools.

“We decided not to make a declaration of intention with an empty result or just long-term promises,” said coun-cillor Eloi Badia, who is leading the work.

The announcement came right after the introduction of the city’s low-emissions zone, which aims to curb vehicle pollution.

But the extent to which the left-wing city government has brought big business along with it remains unclear.

Both the Spanish city’s port and airport have pushed back against proposals aimed at lowering their emissions, such as cutting some short-haul flights. They have also defended their existing efforts to tackle climate change.

In Milan, meanwhile, police last Sunday handed out several hundred fines to people who ignored a one-day ban on most cars, a test move aimed at tackling the Italian city’s notorious smog.

Cities experiment with big ideas to confront ‘climate emergency’

ADITYA BHATTACHARJI & SCOTT ROSENSTEIN — AL JAZEERA

MEGAN ROWLING REUTERS

The uncertainty around the outbreak in China will almost certainly continue to cause economic dislocation, intense media speculation, and extreme duress for China’s already overburdened healthcare system.

Uncertainties have produced aggressive containment strategies, especially in China. The Chinese government has taken the unprecedented move of locking down Wuhan, a city of 11 million people, and others nearby, raising the total number of people under quarantine to approximately 60 million, a considerably higher number than during SARS.

A health worker wearing a protective mask holds a placard during a protest in front of a government hospital in Manila yesterday.

10 SATURDAY 8 FEBRUARY 2020EUROPE

Diplomat Pierce appointed as UK’s new ambassador to USAFP — LONDON

Britain appointed its current UN envoy as the next ambassador to the United States yester-dayafter London’s previous top diplomat in Washington resigned over comments about President Donald Trump.

Downing Street said Karen Pierce (pictured) would replace Kim Darroch, who quit over leaked diplomatic cables in which he criticised Trump as “inept” and said the White House was “uniquely dysfunctional”.

The appointment has been keenly watched to fill a vacuum left by Darroch’s departure in July last year, and as Britain and the United States prepare for

talks over a post-Brexit trade deal.

Pierce, a career diplomat who has previously served in Washington as private secretary to the British ambassador between 1992 and 1996, is the first woman to hold the post.

Foreign minister Dominic

Raab called her “an outstanding diplomat” and said the appointment came at a time of

“huge opportunity” for the his-torically close nations.

Trump, who hit out at Darroch, calling him “a very crazy guy”, is reported to be a fan of Pierce, once calling her “fab”, according to the Daily Mail.

But she will still have to navigate a tricky series of spats that have recently dented the s o - c a l l e d “ s p e c i a l relationship”.

The main bone of con-tention has been Britain’s decision to allow Chinese firm Huawei limited access to run Britain’s new 5G network, against Trump’s wishes it be barred completely.

The US president was reported by the Financial Times

to be “apoplectic” during a recent phone call with Prime Minister Boris Johnson, although a Downing Street official said that they did not recognise that report.

Other rows have erupted over the US’s refusal to extradite the wife of a diplomat wanted for questioning over a fatal car crash and the Iran nuclear deal, which Trump has abandoned.

Pierce, 60, said she was “honoured to have been asked to represent the UK in the US” and played down the recent disagreements.

“I think it is the UK’s single most important relationship,” she said, adding “there is a deep bond between Britain and the US, built on many pillars”.

In a statement, she promised to “strengthen and even further deepen the special relationship between our two countries and peoples”.

Pierce, who has been praised for her straight-talking, has been Britain’s envoy to the UN in New York since March 2018 — again the first woman in that role.

She has served various roles in the Foreign Office in London, and apparently impressed prime minister Johnson when he was foreign secretary, the Daily Mail said.

Pierce, from Lancashire in northwest England, was also Britain’s ambassador to Afghanistan from year 2015 to 2016.

Ukraine and Hungary seek to mend ties amid language rowAFP — KIEV

Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said yesterday that Budapest is keen to mend ties with its eastern neighbour Ukraine after a row over a controversial language law.

Szijjarto was paying his first visit to Kiev after former comedian Volodymyr Zel-enskiy was elected president last year.

“The Hungarian gov-ernment is interested in renewing good neighbourly relations with Ukraine,” he said during a joint press conference with Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Dmytro Kuleba.

A conflict between the two countries erupted in 2017 when Kiev adopted a law that EU and Nato member Hungary says restricts the rights of Ukraine’s Hungarian ethnic minority to learn in their native language.

Ukraine denies the law is discriminatory.

Numbering around

100,000, ethnic Hungarians are the largest minority group in Transcarpathia.

“We want the Hungarians who live in Transcarpathia to have the opportunity to pre-serve their native language,” Szijjarto said.

Szijjarto added that during his talks with Ukraine’s edu-cation minister earlier in the day he “made a couple of sug-gestions” to resolve the situ-ation and urged Kiev to con-sider them.

Kuleba said that Ukraine and Hungary were seeking to make their relations “exemplary”.

He called for Transcar-pathia to become “a success story thanks to the joint efforts of Ukraine and Hungary.”

Another conflict between the countries erupted in 2018 when Kiev expelled a Hun-garian consul, accusing her of handing out passports to ethnic Hungarians living in Ukraine.

Dual citizenship is pro-hibited by law in Ukraine.

Princess Beatrice, Italian tycoon set to marry in May Amnesty condemns attack onscribe, lawyer in ChechnyaAFP — MOSCOW

Amnesty International yesterday condemned a “brazen” attack in Chechnya on a prominent investigative reporter and rights lawyer and urged Russian central author-ities to investigate.

A mob attacked Yelena Milashina, a journalist for inde-pendent newspaper Novaya Gazeta, and lawyer Marina Dubrovina, who has defended Chechen rights activists, late Thursday at their hotel in the regional capital of Grozny, the group said.

“This brazen attack is appalling,” Amnesty’s deputy director for Europe and Central Asia, Denis Krivosheev, said in a statement.

“As there is little hope of effective investigation at the local level, the federal Russian authorities must step in,” he said, adding that they have “clearly indicated that they have no intention of doing so.”

Milashina reported in Novaya Gazeta that a group of more than 15 people including women in black hijabs approached the women in the hotel lobby and asked her why she “defends Wahhabis who killed our husbands,” sug-gesting that activists support IS extremists.

The group knocked the

women onto the floor and hit them and pulled their hair while a man filmed them, she said.

The newspaper posted a photograph of red marks on Milashina’s forehead.

“The whole group began to beat Maria Dubrovina and me,” Milashina said in her statement to police, which she posted on Facebook.

“They grabbed my neck and head... they hit my head on the marble floor with great force, from which I still have contu-sions and hematomas.”

Rights organisations and activists have repeatedly come under attack in the region tightly controlled by strongman Ramzan Kadyrov.

The Council of Europe’s human rights commissioner Dunja Mijatovic yesterday slammed “the latest of a series of worrying attacks on human rights defenders and critics” in Chechnya and called on Russia to “urgently reverse this unac-ceptable situation.”

Dubrovina has defended clients including activist Oyub Titiyev of respected Russian rights group Memorial, who was convicted of drug pos-session last year in a sentence that prompted an international outcry.

He was freed on parole months later.

In a statement, Karen Pierce promised to “strengthen and even further deepen the special relationship between our two countries and peoples”.

UK govt to end automatic early release of terrorism convictsANATOLIA — LONDON

The UK plans to revamp its legal system to prevent terrorism convicts from receiving auto-matic early release from prison following a knife attack last week in London, according to local media.

Sudesh Amman, 20, stabbed two people on Sunday before being shot by police. He had previously been convicted of terror offenses and released from prison before completing his full sentence.

The emergency legislation

will require convicted terrorists to undergo a risk assessment by a parole board before being released.

Controversy came however when the government also announced that the law would not only be enacted for future terror convicts but also ones that were currently imprisoned, in what some rights groups call retrospective application of legislation.

This means that current terror offenders due for auto-matic release would have to spend more time in prison than

was decided at their trial.Justice Secretary Robert

Buckland told parliament: “We cannot have the situation […] where an offender — a known risk to innocent members of the public — is released early by automatic process of law without any oversight by the Parole Board.”

“We will, therefore, introduce emergency legislation to ensure an end to terrorist offenders getting released auto-matically having served half of their sentence with no check or review,” added Buckland.

Preempting the contro-versy around retrospective leg-islation, he said: “We face an unprecedented situation of severe gravity, and as such, it demands the government responds immediately and that this legislation will apply to serving prisoners.”

In a statement, London-based rights group Liberty objected to the move, saying: “The government’s response to recent terror attacks is a cause of increasing concern for our civil liberties.

F r o m l a s t

month’s knee-jerk lie detector proposal, to today’s threat to break the law by changing people’s sentences retrospec-tively, continuing to introduce measures without review or evidence is dangerous and will create more problems than it solves.”

“It’s clear that the UK’s counter-terror system is in chaos and desperately needs proper scrutiny and review,” it added.

The proposed bill is due to be introduced in parliament on Tuesday.

REUTERS — LONDON

Britain’s Princess Beatrice, the elder daughter of Prince Andrew and Sarah, Duchess of York, will marry her fiance Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi at London’s St James’s Palace on May 29, Buckingham Palace announced yesteday.

The ceremony will be a much more private affair than the wedding of her younger sister Eugenie, who married wine merchant Jack Brooksbank amid typical royal pomp and pageantry at Windsor Castle in 2018.

Since then, the sisters’ father Andrew, second son of Queen Elizabeth, has been caught up in a scandal over his relationship with disgraced former US financier Jeffrey Epstein, culminating in his stepping down last year from royal duties.

“Her Majesty The Queen has kindly given permission for the ceremony to take place at The Chapel Royal, St James’s Palace,” Buckingham Palace said.

“The ceremony will be fol-lowed by a private reception, given by the Queen, in the gardens of Buckingham Palace.”

Beatrice, 31, ninth in line to the throne, is a grand-daughter of the queen and the cousin of Princes William and Harry.

She became engaged to property developer Mozzi, 37,

in Italy last September.Although a princess, she

does not carry out official royal engagements but works for Washington-based data and software company Afiniti and divides her time between London and New York.

Eugenie’s wedding two years ago came months after the lavish ceremony for Prince Harry and his wife Meghan, and followed much of its format. It was held in the same setting —Windsor Castle’s 15th Century St George’s Chapel — and covered live by broadcasters.

However, there was

criticism of the grandeur and cost to the taxpayer for a minor royal.

S i n c e B e a t r i c e ’ s engagement was announced, Prince Andrew’s royal standing has also plummeted. He has denied allegations by American Virginia Giuffre, who says she was trafficked by Epstein.

A TV interview he gave last November to counter the claims attracted criticism and derision, and he was forced to step away from royal engagements as c h a r i t i e s d i s t a n c e d themselves.

Last month, a US prosecutor

said Andrew had given “zero cooperation” to US authorities investigating Epstein’s activities.

He was in the news again yesterday over his decision to defer an honorary promotion to Admiral to mark his 60th birthday later this month until he returns to public life.

British media also reported that the government had told local authorities there was no need to fly flags on public buildings to mark his birthday, although the bells of London’s Westminster Abbey will ring out, as is customary.

A file photo of Britain’s Princess Beatrice and property tycoon Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi.

Seven arrested for planning to beat migrants on Greece islandAFP — ATHENS

Police on the Greek island of Lesbos yesterday said they had arrested seven people on suspicion of planning attacks on migrants in the wake of anti-camp demonstrations this week.

The seven men, aged 17 to 24, were arrested on Thursday in possession of makeshift clubs and a metal rod, police said.

“An investigation showed that the suspects had banded together to carry out illegal acts mainly against foreign migrants,” the police said in a statement.

Two more minors are sought in connection with the case.

Overpopulation in migrant camps on Lesbos and other islands has led to an out-pouring of anger in recent days, with locals accusing asylum-seekers of stealing livestock and damaging agri-cultural property.

On Monday, hundreds of migrants on Lesbos staged a protest against tougher new asylum rules and camp con-ditions, demanding to be allowed to leave.

When some of the pro-testers neared the village of Moria residents called on the police to deny them entry.

Tear gas was fired to keep the migrants from entering the island capital of Mytilene.

In the following days, news reports and social media said local residents had formed vig-ilante patrols to intimidate migrants and NGO groups sup-porting them.

Elections in IrelandAn airman carries a ballot box in front of a guard officer and an election official, after arriving on Inishbofin Island by helicopter, ahead of Ireland’s national election, in Ireland, yesterday. According to a survey released last week, Republican Party Sinn Fein have surged into first place. Sinn Fein were at 25 percent, ahead of opposition party Fianna Fail on 23 percent, the final Irish Times/Ipsos MRBI opinion poll said.

11SATURDAY 8 FEBRUARY 2020 AMERICAS

Appeals court dismisses Trump's emoluments caseBLOOMBERG — WASHINGTON

US President Donald Trump beat back a lawsuit by 215 congressional Democrats who say he has been violating the Constitution’s emoluments clause by profiting from foreign government spending at his Washington hotel and other properties, capping a trium-phant week for the president.

A 3-0 federal appeals court in Washington yesterday said the House and Senate members lack legal standing to sue the president because they had not been injured by his alleged conduct. None of the judges was appointed to the court by Trump.

The ruling is the latest victory for Trump, who was acquitted in the Senate Wednesday on articles of impeachment brought by the Democratic-controlled House and found his opposition in dis-array following their botched Iowa Caucus.

Trump addressed the ruling as he departed the White House for a rally in Charlotte, North Carolina. “It’s another phony case and we won it three to nothing,” the president said.

Yesterday’s decision was the second by a federal appeals court throwing out an emolu-ments lawsuits against the pres-ident. Another appeals court allowed a third case to proceed though, potentially setting the issue up for consideration by the US Supreme Court.

The Constitution bars pres-idents from accepting things of value, or emoluments, from foreign governments without congressional consent. The Democrats who filed the lawsuit had sought an order requiring the president to get approval to keep any profits from foreign governments and state-con-trolled companies.

The appeals court over-turned an earlier ruling that found the Democrats had standing because the president deprived them “of the oppor-tunity to give or withhold their consent [to foreign emolu-ments], thereby injuring them in their roles as members of Congress.”

Trump opted to retain his domestic and international business holdings, including the luxury Trump International Hotel located just blocks from the White House, after winning the presidency. In lieu of dives-titure, he said he was trans-ferring control of those entities to his sons Donald Jr and Eric and to Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg.

In their lawsuit, the Demo-crats claimed the president has been enriched by foreign gov-ernments including those of Saudi Arabia and China.

The judges did not address Trump’s argument that profits from an ongoing business shouldn’t be considered emol-uments. His family-owned company opened the Wash-ington hotel, in a building leased from the government, a few

months before the 2016 election.

US Circuit Judges David Tatel, a nominee of President Bill Clinton, Karen LeCraft Henderson, who was named to the bench by George H W Bush and Thomas Griffith, an appointee of George W Bush, issued the decision. They heard arguments on December 9.

The court based its ruling on a 1997 Supreme Court decision that said six members of Con-gress lacked standing to chal-lenge the constitutionality of the

Line Item Veto Act. The law, signed by President Bill Clinton in 1996, gave the president power to veto individual budget items rather than limiting the veto to an entire budget bill. It was later declared unconstitu-tional in a different case.

“The Members can, and likely will, continue to use their weighty voices to make their case to the American people, their colleagues in the Congress and the President himself, all of whom are free to engage that argument as they see fit,” the

court said in its ruling. “But we will not — indeed we cannot —participate in this debate, over-turning an April trial court ruling.”

A federal appeals court in Richmond, Virginia, last year dismissed an emoluments suit filed jointly by the attorneys general of Maryland and the District of Columbia, though the court said in October it would rehear the case. An appeals court in New York revived a third suit in September, after a lower court dismissed it.

US President Donald Trump holding what he says is a copy of a US Court of Appeals ruling in an emoluments case against him as he departs for travel to North Carolina from Washington, DC, yesterday.

US astronaut returns to Earth after record missionAFP — ALMATY

Nasa’s Christina Koch returned to Earth safely after shattering the spaceflight record for female astronauts with a stay of almost 11 months aboard the Interna-tional Space Station (ISS).

Koch touched down at 0912 GMT on the Kazakh steppe after 328 days in space, along with Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency and Alexander Skvortsov of the Russian space agency.

Koch was shown seated and smiling broadly after being extracted from the Soyuz descent module in the Ros-cosmos space agency’s video footage from the landing site.

“I am so overwhelmed and happy right now,” said Koch, who blasted off on March 14 last year.

Parmitano pumped his fists in the air after being lifted into his chair while Skvortsov bit into an apple.

US President Donald Trump congratulated Koch on Twitter.

“Welcome back to Earth, @Astro_Christina, and congrat-ulations on breaking the female record for the longest stay in space! You’re inspiring young women and making the USA proud!” he tweeted.

Koch, a 41-year-old Mich-igan-born engineer, on

December 28 beat the previous record for a single spaceflight by a woman of 289 days, set by Nasa veteran Peggy Whitson in 2016-17.

Koch called three-time flyer Whitson, now 60, “a heroine of mine” and a “mentor” in the space

programme after she surpassed the record.

She spoke of her desire to “inspire the next generation of explorers.”

Koch also made history as one half of the first-ever all-woman spacewalk along with Nasa counterpart Jessica Meir — her classmate from Nasa training — in October.

The spacewalk was initially postponed because the space station did not have two suits of the right size for women, leading to allegations of sexism.

Ahead of the three-and-a-half hour journey back to Earth, Koch told NBC News on Tuesday that she would “miss microgravity”. “It’s really fun to be in a place where you can just bounce around between the ceiling and the floor whenever you want,” she said, smiling as she twisted her body around the ISS.

Koch will now head to Nasa headquarters in Houston where she will undergo medical testing.

White House weighs plan to oust aide who testified against TrumpBLOOMBERG — WASHINGTON

The White House is weighing a plan to dismiss Alexander Vindman from the National Security Council after he testified in President Donald Trump’s impeachment inquiry, preparing to position the move as part of a broader effort to shrink the foreign policy bureaucracy, two people familiar with the matter said.

Any moves would come after the Senate on Wednesday acquitted Trump on a near party-line vote at the con-clusion of the two-week impeachment trial. The White House intends to portray any house-cleaning as part of a downsizing of the NSC staff, not retaliation, according to the people.

Asked yesterday whether he wanted Vindman to leave, Trump said: “Well, I’m not happy with him.”

Vindman was one of the Democrats’ most crucial witness in their impeachment proceedings — a decorated Army lieutenant colonel, who raised the alarm over the pres-ident’s July 25 telephone call with Ukraine’s leader.

Before Vindman’s tes-timony, the only account of that call came from an anon-ymous whistle-blower whose identity has remained largely hidden to this day, and a partial transcript released by the White House.

Some of the officials being targeted for removal from the NSC would be reassigned because they’re perceived as

being disloyal to the president, three people familiar with the matter said on condition of anonymity owing to the sensi-tivity of personnel moves.

Senior staff were informed on Thursday that some aides would be leaving the White House, the people added.

The moves have been in the works since at least last week and could come as soon as today.

The departure of Vindman could trigger objections from Democrats and possibly some Republicans. Those concerns could mount if the Trump administration acts against additional government officials.

The plan to remove him suggests that the White House is feeling emboldened to retaliate against those Trump blames for making him the third US president to be impeached by the House.

Vindman has not been told of any change in his status, according to a person close to his legal team, and plans to show up for work until told otherwise. His twin, Yevgeny Vindman, also remains at the NSC and is not aware of any change in his status, that person added.

Trump demands loyalty from his top aides and has repeatedly dismissed officials after they disagreed with him or made critical comments behind his back.

The latest actions go further by taking aim at lower-level officials in non-partisan positions.

Cruise ship passengers screened for virus in New JerseyREUTERS — PORT OF BAYONNE

About two dozen passengers aboard a Caribbean cruise ship that docked in Bayonne, New Jersey, yesterday morning were screened for coronavirus and four were sent to a local hospital for further screening, the city’s mayor said.

Mayor Jimmy Davis of Bayonne, about 10 miles from New York City, described the hospitalisations as “an abun-dance of caution” and said offi-cials at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had indicated there seemed to be little threat.

“I have been advised that

the CDC considers this incident ‘Below Low Risk,’” Davis said in a statement on Facebook.

Video footage showed ambulances pulling up to the docked ship and medics car-rying out at least one person on a stretcher.

New Jersey currently has no confirmed cases of the corona-virus and the hospital where the four passengers were taken for screening was following “proper infection protocols,” New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy said on Twitter.

Royal Caribbean, operator of the cruise ship, said in a statement it is “participating in elevated levels of guest

screening” to combat the spread of the virus, the New York Post reported.

The coronavirus outbreak, which originated in the Chinese city of Wuhan, has infected more than 31,000 people and killed more than 600 people.

There have been 12 con-firmed cases of the disease in the United States, none fatal.

The US Centers for Disease Prevention and Control has said the risk of widespread trans-mission of the illness in the United States remains very low, but the Trump administration last week declared a US public health emergency to ensure containment of the virus.

The Royal Caribbean cruise ship Anthem of the Seas is docked after passengers were removed with possible coronavirus symptoms at the port of Bayonne, in New Jersey, yesterday.

A 3-0 federal appeals court in Washington yesterday said the House and Senate members lack legal standing to sue the President because they had not been injured by his alleged conduct.

Walmart shooting suspect faces federal hate crime chargesAP — WASHINGTON

The man accused of killing 22 people and wounding two dozen more in a shooting that targeted Mexicans in the border city of El Paso, Texas, has been charged with federal hate crimes.

Patrick Crusius, 21, has been charged with 90 counts under federal hate crime and firearms laws for his role in the August 3 shooting that author-ities said was aimed at scaring Hispanics into leaving the United States, according to an indictment.

Crusius is facing the death penalty on a state capital murder charge. He pleaded not guilty last year.

The shooting happened at a time when immigration offi-cials were trying to manage a crush of migrants at the US-Mexico border and there was political battle over their treatment. El Paso was the epi-center of the influx. President

Donald Trump has made cracking down on immigration a hallmark of his adminis-tration and the polarising topic makes headlines around the world.

Eight Mexican nationals were among the victims, and the indictment accuses Crusius of targeting people because of their “actual and perceived national origin.” The Walmart store is popular with shoppers from nearby Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, just on the other side of the Rio Grande from El Paso.

David Lane, a Colorado-based lawyer representing Crusius in the federal case, said that he had not yet seen the indictment but hopes federal prosecutors don’t to seek his client’s execution.

“Part of the evolution of our society involves understanding that justice is not synonymous with vengeance, because vengeance disregards the essential humanity in all of us and brutalises us all,” Lane said.

Former Navy secretary endorses Michael Bloomberg for president

AP — NORFOLK

The former Navy secretary who was fired after criticising President Donald Trump endorsed Democrat Michael Bloomberg for president yesterday, saying the US needs a leader with integrity who would have “a steady hand on the wheel.”

Former Secretary of the Navy Richard V Spencer announced the endorsement during a campaign event at a maritime centre and museum in Norfolk, Virginia. Spencer said he is a “lifelong Repub-lican” who says he’s “tremen-dously concerned” that democracies around the world, and international alli-ances, are under threat.

“I don’t care if you’re a Republican, you’re a Democrat or independent, if we are to sustain this experiment we call democracy, America needs the best leader available,” Spencer said. “I do believe Mike can get it done.”

Spencer was pushed out of his position after he clashed with Trump and military leaders over the fate of Navy Chief Petty Officer Edward Gal-lagher, a Navy SEAL who was accused of war crimes in Iraq.

Bloomberg, a billionaire former mayor of New York City, pledged to support the military, veterans and their families, and to work to rebuild international alliances.

Nasa astronaut Christina Koch (centre) arrives at an airport in Karagandy, Kazakhstan.

aduro’s government harshly criticised both Trump and Guaido but in the past it has allowed the opposition leader to move freely despite his efforts to topple the regime.

12 SATURDAY 8 FEBRUARY 2020AMERICAS / CLASSIFIEDS

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US warns Venezuela of consequences ifJuan Guaido harmedAFP — WASHINGTON

The United States warned Ven-ezuela’s rulers of consequences if opposition leader Juan Guaido is not allowed to return safely from a visit to Washington, where he enjoyed pledges of robust support.

In one sign that some saw as retaliation, authorities in Caracas threw into jail six oil executives with joint US and Venezuelan nationality, two months after allowing them to shift to house arrest.

Elliott Abrams, the US envoy leading the drive to oust leftist leader Nicolas Maduro, warned that the United States was “pre-pared” with unspecified actions if Guaido faces trouble.

“We hope that the regime makes the calculation, particu-larly after this trip, that the support for Guaido is strong and that the counter-reaction to any move against him would make it a mistake for the regime,” Abrams said. “We’re very con-cerned about it and we hope that he will return safely,” he said.

Guaido, who is considered

interim president by the United States and most other Western and Latin American nations, vowed to keep up his campaign. “We are going to mobilize in the coming days in Venezuela,” Guaido told reporters after meeting the head of the Organ-ization of American States, Luis Almagro.

“Yes, there are risks.” Guaido last week met Vene-zuelans in Miami and then appeared as a surprise guest Tuesday at President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address before Congress. He later met with Trump at the White House, which accorded

him the same treatment it would any head of state.

Maduro’s government harshly criticized both Trump and Guaido but in the past it has allowed the opposition leader to move freely despite his efforts to topple the regime.

Guaido enjoyed applause from across the political spectrum at the State of the Union address, despite a highly polarizing speech by Trump, and met on Thursday with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the top Democrat in Congress.

Maduro presides over a crumbling economy, with mil-lions having fled as they seek basic necessities, and his last election was widely criticized as fraudulent. But a year-long US campaign to oust Maduro, including through sanctions to stop Venezuela’s key export of oil, have failed to dislodge him. Guaido’s street protests have fizzled in size and Maduro still enjoys support from Russia, China and Cuba.

Abrams hinted that the United States would soon take action against Russia, amid

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (left) is welcomed by his Venezuelan counterpart Jorge Arreaza at the Foreign Affairs Ministry in Caracas, yesterday.

reports Washington could target state oil giant Rosneft over its increasingly close relationship with Venezuela. “Russia may soon find out that their continued support of Maduro will no longer be cost-free,” Abrams said. “You will see steps unfold in the coming weeks that demonstrate the seriousness of our intentions in Venezuela.”

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, currently on a tour of South America, said the US “is threatening to use all the options on the table and often resorts to provocations”. Hours after Guaido met Trump,

Venezuelan authorities arrested six men with dual nationality who had been executives at Citgo, the US subsidiary of state-run Ven-ezuelan oil firm PDVSA. The executives — who two months earlier had been allowed to return to their homes — were taken to the detention center of Venezuela’s intelligence services, according to their families.

“They were rearrested, it seems, to have them respond to new accusations,” said Gonzalo Himiob, director of Foro Penal, a Venezuelan non-governmental organization that defends the rights of prisoners. Alirio Rafael

Zambrano, whose brothers Alirio Jose and Jose Luis Zambrano are among the Citgo executives, said they were taken “abruptly” from their home. “We demand to know their whereabouts but more importantly (we demand) their freedom!” he tweeted.

Abrams said that the timing of the arrests was “suspicious” and that the United States was deeply concerned about its six citizens’ health. “We condemn this cruel and indefensible action and demand that their long, unjust detention come to an end and that they be allowed to leave Venezuela,” he said.

Dirty tap water has residents of Rio de Janeiro on edgeAFP — RIO DE JANEIRO

First the water was dirty, then it was full of detergent: Rio de Janeiro residents have had some disturbing stuff coming out of their taps, the latest environ-mental bungle for Brazil.

The problem started a little over a month ago, with wide-spread complaints of stinky, brown tap water in the “Mar-velous City,” which is known for the breathtaking beauty of its beaches, but also a history of polluting and mismanaging its water.

The public water utility, a much-maligned company called Cedae, said the issue was a harmless organic compound called geosmin. It fired the head of the city’s main water treatment plant, used carbon particles to reduce the geosmin and assured the greater metropolitan area’s 12 million inhabitants their water was safe to drink. But then it had to make another embarrassing announcement Monday: high levels of detergent from an unknown source had been found in the same water treatment plant, forcing author-ities to shut it down.

The plant, known as

Guandu, serves nine million people. The 13-hour shut-down left large swathes of the city with no tap water, in the middle of a sweltering southern-hem-isphere summer. As panic buying has set in, bottled water suppliers have struggled to keep up with demand.

“Deliveries have quad-rupled. And everyone wants water right this minute,” said Luciana de Barbosa de Jesus, owner of a wholesale supplier in the city center, as her delivery staff rushed to fill trucks and bicycle carts with huge orders of bottles and jugs.

The water shut-off forced authorities to push the start of the school year back from Wednesday to Thursday for more than 1,500 public schools.

It has also raised concerns about the city’s world-famous carnival in two weeks’ time, when some two million tourists will flock to Rio.

“If we don’t solve this problem fast, we could be holding carnival with a shortage of bottled water, forcing people to drink (tap) water that might not be safe,” said Leonardo Do Santos, a 38-year-old banker, as he stocked up on water in the

central business district.Bottled water is already

becoming hard to find. Many supermarkets have run out or are limiting customers’ pur-chases. On the street, vendors have as much as tripled the price of a 1.5-litre bottle, to six reals (nearly $1.50).

The state’s environmental regulator announced that it had fined Cedae 100,000 reals for failing to disclose test results on geosmin levels at the Guandu plant. Cedae said it had asked for an extension to complete the tests. “The water supplied by Cedae meets health ministry standards and is therefore safe to drink,” it said in an email.

Cedae did score a victory of sorts, when environmental authorities ruled the mystery detergent found in the treatment plant did not exceed acceptable limits. But the news did little to calm worried resi-dents — or stop a flood of jokes about the situation.

“Witzel found a ‘smart’ way to clean the water: add detergent,” quipped one Twitter user. “Now it comes out of the tap foaming, and we save on dish soap what we spend on bottled water.”

First Canadian coronavirus evacuees land in OntarioREUTERS — TRENTON, ONTARIO

A plane from Wuhan, China carrying an initial group of 176 Canadian evacuees from the coronavirus epidemic landed at Trenton air force base in Ontario early yesterday.

A second group, who left China on a US flight, should arrive later after switching planes in Van-couver, Francois-Philippe Champagne, minister of foreign affairs, told reporters on Thursday. A further 39 Canadians are on board the American evacu-ation flight, Global Affairs Canada said.

No one on board the plane from Wuhan that landed in Trenton showed symptoms of the coro-navirus or other illness during the flight, Health Minister Patty Hajdu told CBC Radio.

All evacuees will be quarantined on the base for two weeks, separated from each other in a building that resembles a small hotel, with families kept together.

One evacuee, Edward Wang, was promised a seat on the US plane along with his mother, also a Canadian citizen. He is eager to be back in Canada and nervous about the lack of hospital beds in Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak, which has killed more than 600.

“You imagine things like this happening in war zones,” he said, speaking before the flights left. “It feels so surreal.” While most of the passengers are Canadian citizens because of rules set by the Chinese government, Canadian authorities said that some permanent residents would be allowed on board to accompany minors.

A second Canadian flight is scheduled to leave Wuhan on February 10, Champagne said. As of Thursday, five cases had been confirmed in Canada.

Mexico won’t really raffle off huge presidential jetAP — MEXICO CITY

Mexicans will no longer have to worry about where to park a Boeing Dreamliner when the government raffles off the lux-urious presidential jet: The Air Force will keep it.

In fact, nobody will win the actual $130m Boeing 787 plane in the lottery-style raffle to be held in coming months. Among the many desperate attempts to get rid of the ridiculously expensive plane, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador had toyed with the idea of actually awarding the plane to the winner, along with a year’s paid maintenance and parking.

But López Obrador had worried that would cause problems for the winner, both because of the greed it could unleash among friends, rela-tives and acquaintances, and because the idea had been lam-pooned on social media, with people posting pictures of shacks or taco stands with a jet-liner parked outside.

So the president announced yesterday that the raffle will actually be symbolic, awarding total prize money of $100m, which lottery tickets state is “equivalent to the value of the presidential jet”. One hundred

winners will divide equal shares of the $100m pot.

“We did not want to award a prize that would be a problem,” López Obrador said. “You know, the memes, ‘where would I park it?’” Instead, he said, a cash prize winner would be free to use some of their winnings to rent the plane for a few trips, at the current hourly operating price of about $13,500 per hour.

The government hopes to sell 6 million tickets at about $25 apiece, raising $150m. The remaining money will pay to keep the airplane in flight con-dition while López Obrador tries to sell or rent it.

López Obrador flies tourist class on commercial flights and views the jet, bought for more than $200m by his prede-cessor, as wasteful. The plane failed to find a buyer after a year on sale at a US airstrip, where it piled up about $1.5m in maintenance costs.

The jet is expensive to run and is configured to carry only 80 people, with a full presi-dential suite with a bedroom and private bath. Experts say it would be too expensive to reconfigure back into a com-mercial airliner that normally carries as many as 300 passengers.

Cuban dissident freed but cannot leave countryAFP — HAVANA

An award-winning Cuban dis-sident who was detained this week announced that he has been released without charge but barred from a planned trip to Europe for a meeting on human rights.

Guillermo Farinas, a 58-year-old psychologist, is a leading voice in the opposition to Cuba’s communist gov-ernment and won the European Parliament’s Sakharov human rights prize in 2010.

Farinas was arrested on Tuesday in the central city of Santa Clara, where he lives, as he planned to go to the Spanish Embassy in Havana to pick up travel documents. He had been due to take part in a meeting of the human rights commission of the European Parliament.

“The main reason for my arrest was to keep me from travelling to Europe,” Farinas said. He said the authorities freed him Thursday night but barred him from leaving Santa Clara under threat of another arrest.

Farinas added that Cuban authorities fear he uses trips to Europe to sabotage relations with the European Union.