Participation in CMC polls a duty: Khulaifi

Transcription

TUESDAY FANS WERE THE
FEBRUARY 3, 2015
RABI AL-AKHIR 14, 1436
VOL.9 NO. 3074 QR 2
REAL HEROES
OF OUR
SUCCESS,
SAYS
CAPOTE
PG ❯
HIGH :
24°C
DUSTY AND PARTLY
CLOUDY
LOW :
14°C
Fajr:
QAFCO SIGNS
SERVICES CONTRACT
WITH GE
4:56 am
Dhuhr:
11:48 am
Asr:
2:57 pm
Maghrib:
5:20 pm
Isha:
6:50 pm
QUICK READ
PG ❯
SNOW PUMMELS US NORTHEAST
Fahmy’s release
from jail ‘imminent’
OTTAWA Egyptian-Canadian
journalist Mohamed Fahmy’s
release from an Egyptian
jail is “imminent,” Canadian
Foreign Affairs Minister John
Baird said on Monday, a day
after his Al Jazeera colleague
Peter Greste was freed. Baird’s
spokesman confirmed the
statement, which was made to
Canada’s public broadcaster
CBC, but declined to elaborate, as Canadian diplomats
met their counterparts in Cairo
to press the case. PAGE 16 ❯
Jordan to reinstate
envoy to Israel
AMMAN Jordan will return its
ambassador to Israel, the
government said on Monday,
three months after withdrawing
the envoy in protest at Israeli
restrictions on access to Al
Aqsa mosque. For the first
time since making peace with
its neighbour in 1994, Jordan
announced in November it was
pulling its envoy out of Israel
following growing tensions over
the sacred compound housing
Al Aqsa mosque. PAGE 16 ❯
DOHA
Residents dig their cars out from the snow in Chicago after a huge winter storm hit northeastern US on
PAGE 15 ❯
Monday. Over 3,000 flights were cancelled due to the bad weather. (AFP)
Narcotics among 248 Customs seizures
TRIBUNE NEWS NETWORK
DOHA
QATAR has made 248 seizures
of narcotic substances and
other prohibited items during
the second quarter of 2014, according to a report of the Risk
Management Department of
the General Directorate of Customs (GDC).
Qatar came second in the
Gulf Cooperation Council region in terms of seizures and
detection of tax evasion after
Saudi Arabia, which accounted for 253 seizures during the
same period.
The report said Qatar Customs had made 82 seizures of
narcotic substances, including
10,381 narcotic pills, 272 grams
of hashish, 63 grams of marijuana and 410 grams of heroin.
Airport Customs accounted
for 177 seizures followed by
Land Port Customs with 63 seizures. Sea Port Customs made
eight seizures.
Besides narcotic substances,
TUNIS Tunisia on Monday
presented its new coalition
government, dominated by the
secular Nidaa Tounes party
but also including its Islamist
rivals. Prime Minister Habib
Essid announced the makeup of his cabinet, which had
initially been abandoned after
the moderate Islamist Ennahda party warned it would vote
against a line-up that excluded
its members. PAGE 17 ❯
the seizures included alcohol and
tobacco, weapons, ammunition,
fireworks and pornography.
Commercial fraud and tax
evasion cases, along with intellectual property rights violations, were also detected during
the period.
Airport Customs has been
at the forefront of detecting the
bulk of commercial fraud cases
and IPR violations, while Land
Port Customs at Abu Samra accounted for the majority of tax
evasion cases.
Alarab channel goes off
air a day after launch
REUTERS
Islamists join new
Tunisia government
Participation
in CMC polls a
duty: Khulaifi
REEM AL-HARMI
Egypt confirms
death for 183
EGYPT confirms mass death
sentences for police killings
CAIRO An Egyptian court on
Monday confirmed death
sentences against 183 men
convicted of killing 13 policemen, in a verdict slammed as
“outrageous” by rights group
Amnesty International. The
policemen were killed in an
attack on a police station in
Kerdasa, a town on the outskirts of Cairo, on August 14,
2013. PAGE 16 ❯
UNTOUCHED AND
UNADULTERATED
MANAMA
BAHRAINI authorities have suspended a television channel owned by
Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, one
day after its launch, following an interview it broadcast with an aide to a
Bahraini opposition leader.
Alarab channel blamed technical
and administrative reasons for Monday's halt, without giving details. But
a Bahraini newspaper and a source
familiar with the matter said the
channel had been suspended for violating media neutrality.
The website of privately-owned
Akhbar al-Khaleej newspaper said
the suspension was “related to the
failure of those in charge to abide
by the prevailing norms in the Gulf,
including the neutrality of media positions and staying away from anything that could negatively impact
the spirit of Gulf unity”.
That appeared to refer to the interview with Marzouq, an aide to Sheikh
Ali Salman, the detained SecretaryGeneral of Bahrain’s main Shi'ite opposition movement. It was broadcast
after the channel officially went on the
air on Sunday. A source familiar with
the affairs of the channel said Bahraini officials had delivered the suspension order on a visit to the station
over issues of “journalistic neutrality”.
SEE ALSO PAGE 16 ❯
Qatar sees 8.2% rise in tourist arrivals
DOHA
THE efforts of the Qatar Tourism
Authority (QTA) to attract more foreign tourists seem to be paying off.
Qatar welcomed more than 2.8
million visitors from around the
world in 2014, an 8.2 percent rise
over 2013, according to QTA’s annual report released on Monday.
Since 2009, international visits to
Qatar have increased by 91 percent
with an average annual growth of
13.8 percent, the report said.
Qatar attracted visitors from several key markets. While GCC countries contributed about 40 percent of
THE GROWTH STORY
❯ Qatar welcomed more than 2.8
million visitors from around the
world in 2014.
❯ Since 2009, international visits to
Qatar have increased by 91 percent with an average annual
growth of 13.8 percent.
❯ GCC countries contributed about
40 percent of the tourists in 2014.
the tourists in 2014, 15 percent of the
tourists came from European countries. Asia and Oceania contributed
around 28 percent.
According to the report, arrivals
from all regions of the world have
grown substantially over the past five
years, with Asian/Oceania and GCC
markets expanding by 107 percent
and 102 percent respectively since
2009. Visits from Europe have surged
by 82 percent over the past five years.
“These impressive results
would not have been achieved
without the hard work of QTA, and
its public and private sector partners, based on the principles and
objectives set out by the National
Tourism Sector Strategy 2030,”
said Issa bin Mohammed al Mohannadi, Chairman of QTA.
TURN TO PAGE 2 ❯
THE Supervisory Committee for
the Central Municipal Council
(CMC) elections has urged the citizens, who haven’t yet registered
their names in the voters’ list, to
do so during the “addition and
deletion” period concluding on
Thursday.
Commenting on the “modest
number of voters’ registered in
the first phase”, Chairman of the
Supervisory Committee BrigadierGeneral Majid Ibrahim al Khulaifi
said, “The Ministry of Interior
(MoI) has left no stone unturned
to prepare for the council elections. It made all arrangements to
facilitate hassle-free registration
of voters in the constituencies and
through Metrash2 services. However, the number of applications
received for voters’ registration at
the end of the first phase on January 22 was considerably modest,
as compared with the previous figures of over 32,000.”
Khulaifi stressed that the CMC
election is a national exercise, participation in which is the duty of
every citizen.
He said the invitation to citizens to register themselves as voters is not limited to any specific
group or segment of the society. It
is an invitation for all citizens re-
CMC polls Supervisory Committee
Chairman Brigadier-General Majid
Ibrahim al Khulaifi.
The ‘addition and deletion’
phase, which started on
January 28, will conclude
on February 5.
gardless of their class, position and
professional stature, he added.
Khulaifi said neglecting the
electoral process is a breach of responsibility towards society.
People should not shirk their
responsibility towards society, he
added.
The ‘addition and deletion’
phase, which started on January
28, will conclude on February 5.
Around 20,666 citizens have
registered in the voters’ list so far,
he added.
02
Tuesday, February 3, 2015
Emir endorses Cabinet
decisions, issues decrees
QNA
DOHA
THE Emir His Highness
Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad
al Thani on Monday endorsed Cabinet decision
No 2 of 2015 enforcing
provisions of Law No 24
on retirement and pensions on Qataris working
at the Behavioral Health
Support Centre.
HH the Emir also endorsed Cabinet decision No
3 of 2015 setting up the Tenders Committee at the Ministry of Youth and Sports
and Cabinet decision No 4 of
2015 setting up the Tenders
Committee at the Ministry
of Communications and Information Technology.
He also endorsed Cabinet decisions No 5 of 2015
and No 6 of 2015 setting
up the tenders committees
at the Ministry of Transport and the Ministry of
Justice respectively.
The decisions shall be
effective and are to be published in the official gazette.
HH the Emir Sheikh
Tamim bin Hamad al Thani
also issued Emiri Decree No
5 of 2015 to endorse an air
transport agreement pertaining to air services Qatar and Argentine signed in
Buenos Aires city on January 18, 2010. The agreement
shall have the power of law
in accordance with Article
68 of the Constitution.
HH the Emir also issued Decree No 7 of 2015
endorsing a cooperation
agreement in the legal field
between Qatar’s Ministry
of Justice and the Ministry of Justice of Georgia
signed in Doha on April
22, 2014. The agreement
He issued Decree No 8
of 2015 to endorse a memorandum of understanding
on cooperation in the field of
energy technology between
the Ministry of Energy and
Industry of Qatar and the
Ministry of Energy of the
Republic of Croatia signed
in Zagreb on December 5,
2013 to which the text of this
decree is attached. The MoU
Power generation drops by 16.3% in Dec
DOHA
THE total electricity generated in December decreased
by about 16.3 percent while
water generation dropped by
2.2 percent, compared to November data, the 12th issue
of (Qatar: Monthly Statistics)
bulletin released by the Ministry of Development Planning & Statistics has revealed.
The bulletin data indicate
that the population in Qatar
in December dropped to 2.2
million people, after it was
2.3 million in November,
representing a decrease of
1.5 percent.
At the Hamad International Airport, the December number of arrivals and
departures increased by approximately 15 percent and
23 percent respectively.
The number of driving
licences issued for nationals
and residents rose approximately by 23.6 percent and
Vehicles registered in
the country increased
to 11,743 compared
to 10,212 registered
in November.
15.1 percent respectively.
Thus, the total number of
licences in December increased by 15.6 percent compared to November.
In general, vehicles registered in the country increased
to 11,743 compared to 10,212
registered in November.
Private vehicles came on
top as the highest number
registered in December with
over 7,000 vehicles, followed
by the private transport vehicles with over 3,000.
Economically, the CPI
amounted to 118.6 points in
December, after it was 119 in
November, recording a slight
slump of 0.3 percent.
The value of shares traded in Qatar stock exchange
decreased in December by
11.2 percent, together with
the overall index by 3.7 percent, compared to November. As for foreign trade data,
Japan came first for Qatar’s
exports with over QR8.7 billion, South Korea was second
and India third with over
QR6.9 billion and QR4.4 billion respectively.
The maximum imports
were from the US worth
QR1.3 billion followed by
China QR1.2 billion and Germany QR834 million.
‘Tourism sector to reach greater heights’
❯❯ CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1
“I am confident that the tourism sector’s achievements
will continue to reach greater heights in 2015 through
newly-launched initiatives.
The result will be more visits
from tourists from all over
the world, thus achieving the
goal of establishing Qatar
as a preferred international
tourism destination with
deep cultural roots,” Mohannadi added.
Hotel sector also experi-
enced strong performance
in 2014.
According to the report,
occupancy rates increased
across all classes of hotels,
with the average hotel occupancy rate reaching 73 percent in 2014 compared to 65
percent in 2013. Five-star hotel segment saw a surge of 71
percent compared to 61% in
2013. Revenue per available
room (RevPAR) increased by
8.3 percent in 2014.
A diverse range of events
and activities, along with
extensive marketing campaigns, contributed to the
growth of the leisure tourism sector.
The tourism sector directly contributed QR13.6
billion to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2013,
representing 4 percent of
Qatar’s non-extraction economy. The total economic impact of tourism, including indirect contributions, tallied
QR28 billion, comprising 8.3
percent of Qatar’s non-extraction GDP. Tourism also
contributes
substantially
to the Qatar job market. In
2013, there were 61,000 jobs
that directly supported by
the industry.
The launch of the Qatar National Tourism Sector
Strategy 2030 last year was a
turning point for the tourism
industry. The strategy is designed to serve as a roadmap
for developing the tourism industry over the next decades.
Regarding cooperation
with international tourism
organisations, QTA launched
a second cooperative agreement with the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), which
aims to assess current statistical systems, build capacities on both local and regional levels, provide training for
QTA staff and technical support for QTA departments,
as well as supporting strategies to develop the human
capital of the tourism sector.
In addition, QTA is working
with UNWTO on a visa facilitation policy study.
Nation
03
QT INTERVIEW WITH US ART HISTORIAN PHILIP JODIDIO
US art historian’s spotlight on Qatar’s architecture
RAMY SALAMA
DOHA
A DETAILED work on modern architectural landmarks
of Qatar by US art historian
Philip Jodidio, a specialist
in architecture, is due to be
published in April.
And the spotlight will be
on some of the remarkable
buildings and structures that
have been built in the country for local and international audiences and scholars.
Discussing the forthcoming work in a recent interview
with Qatar Tribune, Jodidio
underlined its significance
in initiating an awareness of
the country’s architectural
landmarks to international
audiences with a particular
interest in architecture.
“Something that is apparent in such a book is that
there are quite a number of
very interesting buildings
here for those who follow
contemporary architecture.
I’ve enjoyed visiting every
last building in the book, of
course, and there is a variety of forms of expression
in Qatar’s architecture and
some buildings that deserve
to be better known outside
the country,” he said.
The author noted that
the book was extensively
researched, having taken
about three years and almost a dozen visits to the
country to examine its many
architectural landmarks. “I
came back here 10 times to
visit contemporary buildings in Qatar, mostly in
Doha and outside the city
as well. The book took some
time to prepare; work on it
began in 2010 and it will be
‘I came back here 10 times to visit contemporary buildings in Qatar,
mostly in Doha and outside the city as well. The book took some time
to prepare; work on it began in 2010 and it will be published in April’
~ Philip Jodidio
published in April,” he said.
The book is slated to
be published in both English and Arabic editions by
Skira Rizzoli Publications,
renowned publishers of fine
art books globally recognised for their diverse range
of art, photography, architecture and design titles,
as well as their high standard of content, design and
production. It will include
numerous photographs by
well-known and acclaimed
architecture photographer
Roland Halbe.
“There are about 50 buildings covered in the work,
most of them in contempo-
rary architectural style. It will
also include structures like
Souq Waqif, which involve
various forms of architectural
expression, and is very interesting,” Jodidio said.
The other prominent
and often admired structures addressed in the
book’s pages are the Qatar
National Convention Centre (QNCC) and some of the
buildings of the Hamad Bin
Khalifa University.
Jodidio was recently invited by the Qatar Museums’
(QM) publications department to give a talk as part of
a book discussion session organised at the QM pavilion
at the Doha International
Book Fair. Notably, Jodidio
is the author of a significant
work on the Museum of Islamic Art (MIA), which includes the insights he gained
from his association with the
building’s designer.
“I’ve known the architect
of the MIA building, IM Pei,
since the late 1970s when
he was working on the National Gallery in Washington. I followed his work on
the pyramid of the Louvre
very closely when I was in
Paris, and when the time
came to build the MIA here,
I was naturally in touch with
him,” Jodidio concluded.
US art historian Philip Jodidio reads from his work on MIA at
the QM pavilion of the Doha International Book Fair recently.
Journalism is a double-edged sword today: David Weaver
US expert discusses
changing face of
journalism at NU-Q
DOHA
WORLD-RENOWNED media researcher David Weaver
visited Northwestern University in Qatar (NU-Q) recently
to meet with local journalism
students and discuss global
reporting and the changing
face of journalism.
Professor Weaver is a
pre-eminent researcher of
media issues, known especially for his work on
journalistic professionalism
through the much-respected
series, ‘The American Journalist’. These studies provided the clearest assessment
of who the American journalists are (and were) with
longitudinal tracking over
several decades.
Professor Weaver’s work
extends to the international
community: he recently published The Global Journalist
in the 21st Century, an update on his 1998 project ‘The
Global Journalist’ that looks
at the thoughts and perceptions of journalists around
the world. This is particularly relevant as news and
Northwestern University in Qatar’s Huda Barakat with journalism
expert David Weaver discuss ‘reporting in the digital age’.
information moves beyond
national borders and journalists increasingly write for
international audiences.
“There is not a typical ‘global journalist’,” said Weaver
in address to NU-Q students
and faculty, “but there are
signs of international agreement on professional roles
and values like independence, autonomy, credibility
and reporting ethically.”
One common thread
among global journalists is
technology. “Today there is
a huge demand for content
across multiple platforms,
online and offline. Deadlines
for journalists used to be
every 24 hours, now it’s constant. There’s less time for
analytical reporting and fact
checking. On one hand, journalists need to keep up with
consumer demands, but on
the other, there needs to be
accurate and responsible reporting. It’s a double-edged
sword,” remarked Weaver.
A visit by such a prominent scholar is a chance
for NU-Q students to learn
more about what it means to
be journalists, explains Everette E. Dennis, dean and
CEO of NU-Q. “For decades
David Weaver and his colleague G Cleveland Wilhoit
were the go-to sources for al-
most anything people wanted to know about American
journalists. The more we
know about what scholars
call ‘the sociology of news’,
the more we understand
how to assess and evaluate
news and news credibility.”
Professor Weaver spent
the past week at Northwestern University in Qatar
speaking to the student body
and meeting with the faculty
and leadership teams. As
well, Weaver visited classes
to give students the opportunity to ask questions and
engage in discussion about
media studies and the role of
the global journalist.
04
Nation
QUICK READ
Emir sends condolences to
German president, Chancellor
THE Emir His Highness Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al Thani on
Monday sent a cable of condolences to German President
Joachim Gauck and German Chancellor Angela Merkel on the
demise of former German president Richard
von Weizsaecker. (QNA)
Workshop on preparations
of 13th UN Crime Congress
Deputy Emir sends condolences to
German president, Chancellor
THE Deputy Emir His Highness Sheikh Abdullah bin Hamad al
Thani on Monday sent a cable of condolences to German President Joachim Gauck and German Chancellor Angela Merkel on
the demise of former German president Richard
von Weizsaecker. (QNA)
Assistant FM meets Korea vice-foreign minister
ASSISTANT Foreign Minister for Foreign Affairs HE Mohammed
bin Abdullah al Rumaihi met with Vice-Foreign Minister of the Republic of Korea Cho Tae-yong and his accompanying delegation
in Doha on Monday. They discussed bilateral relations between
the two countries and ways of developing them in addition to issues of common interest. A number of senior officials from the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs attended the meeting. (QNA)
UAE minister meets Qatar’s ambassador
UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Dr Anwar Mohammad
Gargash met with Qatar’s Ambassador to the UAE HE Faris bin
Roumi Mohamed al Nuaimi in Abu Dhabi on Monday. They reviewed bilateral relations between the two countries and ways of
enhancing them in addition to issues of common concern. The
meeting was attended by a number of senior officials at UAE
Ministry of Foreign Affairs. (QNA)
Advisory Council committee meets
ADVISORY Council's Interior and External Affairs Committee held
its 34th regular session on Monday. At the outset of the meeting , the committee unanimously re-elected Mohamed Abdullah al Sulaiti as its rapporteur. Then, the committee studied a
draft law amending some provisions of the traffic law issued by
Decree No 19 of 2007 and decided to submit its report to the
Advisory Council. (QNA)
DOHA
A TRAINING workshop on
preparatory works of 13th
UN Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice
started at Civil Defence officers’ club on Sunday.
The four-day training
workshop was inaugurated
by the Advisor of Minister
of Interior Major-General
Abdullah Yusuf al Mal, who
is also the chairman of the
preparatory committee of
the UN Congress.
The inaugural ceremony
was attended by Dr Ahmad
Hassan al Hamadi, vicechairman of the committee,
and Brigadier Badr Ibrahim
al Ghanim, director of the
Technical Office of the Minister of Interior.
The participants include
members of organising committee, officers from MoI and
representatives of the Ministry
of Foreign Affairs, Public Prosecution and General Secretariat of the Council of Ministers.
Mal said that the elements involved in the preparation of the congress were
prepared in accordance with
joint studies done by the
concerned bodies from the
ministries of interior and
foreign affairs to choose the
The four-day workshop will discuss activities in the field of crime prevention and justice on preparations for the 13th UN Congress.
best of views for the success
of the conference as the conference will be held in GCC
for the first time over the
past 60 years.
He added that Qatar had
made all preparations for the
successful conduction of the
congress in accordance with
the decisions of the Ministry
of Interior, Ministry of Justice
and Ministry of Foreign Affairs along with Qatar Foundation and Public Prosecution.
Mal pointed out that Qatar had presented two initiatives concerned with the
conference. The first one is
the youth forum to be held
on April 7 and 9 prior to the
congress. A high level meet
also will be held for the first
time on April 12 and 14, which
will be attended by heads of
many countries and delegates
of Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
Ministry of Justice and Public
Prosecutions from different
states.
An introductory presentation was made in the workshop by an officer from United Nations Office on Drugs
and Crime, on the activities of the UNODC and UN
policymaking in the field of
crime prevention and criminal justice.
The second presentation
pointed out that the Vienna
acts, which work to put forward policies and standards
to combat crime and criminal
justice has submitted its recommendations at the opening
of the UN session in accordance with the different levels
to approve all matters relating to the fight against corruption and human trafficking, illegal immigration and
illegal trafficking in drugs.
He added that the decisions
are based on what has been
discussed in Vienna, making
reference to the importance
of the Doha Declaration.
The second session dealt
with introduction about the
conference and preparatory
phase with reference to the
regional preparatory meetings, and provisional agenda
and topics under discussion
and the structure of the preliminary procedures and
consultations for the conference, a high-level side for the
first and second committees
and other workshops and
sub-meetings.
The workshop will conclude on Wednesday. The
final day session will discuss
the United Nations conventions on international crime
and logistics and issues related to preparing the 13th
UN Congress.
Advisory Council speaker meets UK ambassador
SPEAKER of the Advisory Council HE Mohamed bin Mubarak al
Khulaifi held a meeting with Ambassador of the United Kingdom
to Qatar HE Nicolas Dasinter Hobton in Doha on Monday. They
discussed bilateral relations in the parliamentary field and the
means to enhance them. Advisory Council Secretary-General HE
Fahad bin Mubarak al Khayareen attended the meeting. (QNA)
Ex-IAF man joins MES
as senior vice-principal
Online registration open for M-E healthcare forum
DOHA
HAMAD Medical Corporation
(HMC) has commenced online registration for this year’s
Middle East Forum on Quality and Safety in Healthcare,
which will take place from
May 29 to 31 at Qatar National
Convention Centre in Doha.
The annual forum has become a showcase for healthcare improvement where experts will present innovative
methods to improve healthcare quality that have proved
to be successful in clinical
environments globally. This
year’s M-E Forum will focus
on enhancing patient engagement practices and establish-
ing better patient flows across
healthcare delivery systems,
as well as implementing specialised intervention programmes to deliver improved
patient outcomes.
Held in partnership with
the Institute for Healthcare
Improvement, the forum will
provide hospital administrators, doctors, nurses, allied
health professionals and students in health disciplines
with an opportunity to network on a large scale, with
more than 30 workshop sessions and several keynote addresses from guest speakers.
To register online, participants can log on to the
http://ihimeforum.hamad.
qa website.
HMC’s Deputy Chief of
Medical, Academic and Research Affairs, Medical Education Dr Abdullatif al Khal,
who is a co-chairperson for
the Middle East Forum Planning Group, said the forum
has grown significantly year
on year, and that the number
of available places in the different sessions is limited.
DOHA
DR M Dinesh Babu, a retired Indian Air Force (IAF)
officer recently took over as
the Senior Vice Principal of
MES Indian School. It is the
second time in the 40 years’
history of MES Indian School
that an academician with Defence background has joined
as a senior official. Babu had
served the IAF for 17 years.
Hailing from Thrissur district in Kerala, Babu is basically a CBSE empanelled trainer,
mentor and consultant for
CBSE schools across India. He
holds PhD in Business Communication, BE in Mechanical Engineering, a Master’s
Degree in English Literature
and Business Administration
(MBA). Before joining MES he
had worked as a faculty member and Principal of a CBSE
affiliated Senior Secondary
School in India.
Babu is a professional
trainer in human resources
It’s countdown to Vodafone’s
literary competition awards
Qatar to attend GCC
health ministers’ meet
QNA
DOHA
Dr M Dinesh Babu
DOHA
development and has conducted more than 500 training programmes on emotional
intelligence, classroom management, motivation, positive attitude, effective teaching methods and life skills to
teachers in India and abroad.
He has also conducted
training sessions on communication and time management for corporate people and
professional students.
Besides, he has offered
career counselling, dealt with
adolescent problems and examination fears, and parenting workshops.
THERE are only 10 days remaining to the close of Vodafone’s 2nd Literary Competition when a panel of judges
– Qatari literary and luminary experts – will convene
to decide the winners of the
QR145,000 prize pot.
The competition held
under the patronage of the
Minister of Culture and
Heritage HE Dr Hamad bin
Abdulaziz al Kuwari, was
launched recently in line
with the theme of Qatar
National Day celebrations
2014 “I treated you with
honesty, guidance and integrity”, derived from a
poem written by Qatar’s
founder Sheikh Jassim bin
Mohammed al Thani.
Qatar’s citizens and residents willing to participate in
the competition can register
until February 13, 2015, in
either of the two categories
of the contest.
In the first category, the
applicant is expected to write
and submit one short story
with word count between
500 and 1000 words taking
cue from the competition’s
title “I treated you with honesty, guidance and integrity.”
The prizes for this cat-
egory is as follows; 1st
Prize QR20,000, 2nd Prize
QR15,000 and 3rd Prize
QR10,000.
In the second category,
submissions have to be a collection of stories, on any subject matter, with a minimum
of 10 stories or 100 pages.
The prizes for this category are as follows; 1st
Prize QR50,000, 2nd Prize
QR30,000 and 3rd Prize
QR20,000.
To understand the full
terms and conditions and to
know the details on how to
submit your literary work,
visit Vodafone Qatar’s website at www.vodafone.qa.
QATAR will participate
in the 78th Conference of
Health Ministers in Gulf
Cooperation Council (GCC)
Countries on February 4 and
5 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Qatar’s delegation to the
conference will be headed by
Minister of Public Health HE
Abdullah bin Khalid al Qahtani. The conference will discuss
a range of topics, most notably
combating non-communicable diseases, combating smoking and cancer, vocational
health and expatriate labour as
well as issues of polio, standards and regulations of cooperation with Gulf societies of
health, statistical bulletin and
basic health indicators.
The participants will discuss ways to develop and improve work of the executive bureau of GCC Council of Health
Ministers, the electronic link
gate between the information
centres in GCC countries and
executive bureau in addition
to means of enhancing health
information and smart card
systems and Gulf regulations
relating to continuing professional development.
They will also discuss unified procurement and central
pharmaceutical registration
in addition to scientific forum
for the Administrative and Financial Affairs at ministries of
health in the GCC countries.
Forum to highlight drivers of sustainable economic growth
DOHA
THE 2nd Entrepreneurship
in Economic Development
Forum, organised by Qatar
University in collaboration
with Qatar Ministry of Economy and Commerce and Interactive Business Network
(IBN), will emphasise on the
importance of developing the
private sector and SMEs.
The forum will also stress
the need of investing in an
entrepreneurial eco system
and human capital, as well
as creating a knowledge
economy in order to support
economic development and
prosperity in line with the
goals expressed in Qatar’s
National Vision 2030 Plan.
To be held under the
patronage of Minister of
Economy and Commerce HE
Sheikh Ahmed bin Jassim al
Thani, the Forum is scheduled to take place on March
2 and 3 at the Sheraton Doha
Resort and Convention Hotel
under the main theme ‘Fostering the New Generation of
Entrepreneurs in Qatar and
the Gulf’.’
The Forum also aims
to put into perspective the
significance of an active involvement and collaboration among organisations
within the private and public sectors that promote and
encourage
entrepreneurship. This includes entrepreneurship centres, the
Ministry of Economy and
Commerce as well as a host
of other private and public
sector organisations.
In order to ensure thorough discussions and exchanges of vital information
on relevant topics that can
help facilitate the promotion and development of
entrepreneurship, four interactive sessions and several keynote messages are
expected to be participated
in and delivered by a host of
international speakers.
Among the topics included in the keynote messages
are ‘Investment in Entrepreneurship to Shape a New
Company’, ‘Entrepreneurship Practices: Investing in
the human capital of the
company’, and ‘Economic
restructuring and shift from
a manufacturing sector towards the service sector’.
IBN Chief Executive Officer Raed Chehaib encourages young people
to participate in the forum and develop their entrepeneurial skills.
On the other hand, the
interactive sessions will include topics such as ‘Developing the private sector in
Qatar and other GCC countries to diversify the economic pillars’, ‘Developing an
entrepreneurial eco system’,
‘Knowledge economy and
the new Know-How: New
forms and competitiveness
for SME’s’, and ‘Social entrepreneurship and innovation:
the growing importance of
social innovation’.
Chief Executive Officer
of IBN Raed Chehaib said
“Through the Entrepreneurship in Economic Development Forum, we are hoping
to inspire and encourage the
young generation in Qatar
and other GCC countries to
develop their entrepreneur-
ial skills.”
“At the same time, we
are also aiming to emphasise the importance of a cohesive and well-coordinated
action among key public and
private sector organisations
in facilitating entrepreneurship.”
He added, “We are therefore aiming to attract wide
interest and participation of
officials and policy makers,
major public/private institutions involved in education and youth development,
business leaders, banks and
specialised financial institutions, economists and experts in various fields, as well
as the academic community
in Qatar and the rest of the
Gulf countries and internationally.”
Nation
Tamuq hosts liberal arts meet
DOHA
TEXAS A&M at Qatar (Tamuq) is currently hosting
its third annual Liberal Arts
International Conference at
Hamad Bin Khalifa Student
Center at Education City.
The three-day meet,
which will conclude on Tuesday, is being organised by
the university’s Liberal Arts
Program in collaboration
with The Initiative in Professional Ethics (TIPE), an
umbrella organisation for
all ethics-related activities
at Tamuq. The branch campus and Qatar National Research Fund are conference
co-sponsors and Hamad Bin
Khalifa University (HBKU)
is the co-host.
“Texas A&M is recognised globally as a leader in
engineering education and
research,” said Dr Mark H.
Weichold, dean and CEO at
Tamuq. “Part of its success
rests on its multidisciplinary
approach, which includes a
strong commitment to the
social sciences, arts and humanities. Our Qatar campus
is no exception. Our substantial social sciences, arts and
The three-day conference, being held at Hamad Bin Khalifa Student Center at Education City, will
conclude on Tuesday.
humanities faculty include internationally recognised leaders in their fields, and all of
our students take a variety of
these courses to complement
their engineering courses.”
Dr Troy Bickham, liberal
arts programme chair and
professor of history at Tamuq, said, “The conference is
a unique opportunity within
Qatar for scholars across
the country in the social sci-
ences, arts and humanities to
engage with each other and
colleagues around the globe.”
The theme of this year’s
conference is ‘Looking Forward, Looking Back: Transnational Perspectives on
Globalization’. The event
will explore the impacts of
globalisation from a variety
of disciplinary lenses. More
than 70 participants representing more than 20 coun-
tries and nationalities are attending the meet.
Dr Leslie Seawright, conference co-organiser and assistant professor at liberal
arts at the branch campus,
said, “This year, we are welcoming conference participants who represent prestigious universities in the world
such as Oxford University in
the UK and Harvard University in the US.”
Opening day keynote
speaker was Dr David Jolliffe, professor and Brown
Chair of English Literacy
from the University of Arkansas, USA. His address,
‘Global Corporate Decisions,
Local Impacts and the Need
for Economic Literacy’,
launched the conference.
The second day featured
a keynote speech by Dr
Michael Reksulak, director,
social sciences, arts and humanities at Qatar National
Research Fund.
Keynote speaker on the
conference’s final day is Dr
Tim Winter, professor and
Research Chair of Cultural
Heritage from Deakin University, Australia, who will
give the talk, ‘Thermal Modernities and the Entangled
Future of Air’.
Dr Nancy Small, instructional associate professor of
liberal arts at Tamuq, said,
“Anchored by keynotes from
well-known speakers in a variety of disciplines, the Liberal Arts International Conference will feature sessions
that approach globalisation
and its implications from an
interesting and compelling
array of perspectives.”
Nojoom members
can earn points at
Jumbo Electronics
DOHA
OOREDOO on Monday
announced that its multi
award-winning
loyalty
programme, Nojoom has
added its newest partner,
Jumbo Electronics, as the
company looks to continue to expand its range of
partners in 2015.
With the new partnership, Nojoom members
will be able to earn and
redeem Nojoom points
with Jumbo Electronics’
shops across Qatar.
As an added bonus
to commemorate the
launch, members who
earn or redeem points
from now until March 4
will be automatically entered into a special draw
where 10 lucky members
will win a range of incredible prizes including
smart TVs, home theatre
systems,
smartphones
and more.
Ahmed Ali al Mohannadi, Director, Customer
Experience and Segmentation, Ooredoo, said:
“Nojoom is making sure
we kick off 2015 with
new partners offers, deals
and competitions that
truly reward our customers. We want this year
to be our best ever and
teaming with Jumbo
Electronics will mean our
range of rewards just got
even bigger.”
CV Rappai, Chief Executive Officer, Jumbo
Electronics, said: “Jumbo
Electronics and Ooredoo
both believe in the power of technology, which
is why we are delighted
to partner with Nojoom
to give customers the
best deals in Qatar on
quality electronic such
as mobile phones and
household appliances.”
Jumbo
Electronics
offers innovative, worldclass electronics, communication and digital solutions, with 16 branches
available in locations
such as Al Nasser, City
Center, Salwa Road and
Airport Road.
This addition to the
growing list of Nojoom
partners, expands the
range of electronic and
digital service options
available, giving members an abundance of
choices to shop around
and find the best deals.
Members will earn 1
Nojoom point for every
QR6 spent at Jumbo
Electronics.
Moreover, members
can choose to redeem
their points towards
their purchase at Jumbo
Electronics from voucher
denominations starting
at QR50.
Every Ooredoo customer with a Qatar ID
can enrol into Nojoom,
and redemptions can be
made following Nojoom’s
redemption channels by
logging into their account
at www.ooredoo.qa/nojoom or by downloading
the Ooredoo App.
Ahmed Ali al Mohannadi, Director, Customer Experience and
Segmentation, Ooredoo, and CV Rappai, Chief Executive
Officer, Jumbo Electronics, at the signing ceremony in
Doha recently.
Qatar Charity has built 21 classrooms, benefiting 2,000 students.
QC projects aid 150,000 Sudanese
DOHA
QATARCHARITY
(QC)
projects have benefited
152,000 citizens in ten
states of Sudan in the areas
of health, water, education,
shelter and support for women and children.
A sum of QR10 million
was spent on support for
women and families, with
the number of sponsored
children rising by 27 percent
to 3,481, 2,980 of whom are
orphans. It also supported
153 poor families, 38 people
with disabilities, 207 students and 103 teachers.
A variety of activities
were carried out, benefiting
more than 3,000 orphans.
QC is building nine homes
at a cost of QR303,000. A
sum of QR1.1 million was
spent on seasonal projects
that benefited 71,686 people,
including orphans, needy
families, people with disabilities and students. These
projects have covered several regions of Sudan and included breakfasts for fasters,
benefiting 52,892 people at a
cost of QR677,000, Zakat alFitr for 629 people at a cost of
QR90,000 and sacrificial animals at a cost of QR304,000.
QC intervened in the field
of relief, contributing to the
flood disaster efforts after
the recent rains that flooded
the River Nile State. This in-
cluded distribution of food
and shelter materials, benefiting 23,000 people.
In addition, Qatar Charity
completed the reconstruction
to areas affected by floods that
hit Khartoum in 2013, building
21 classrooms and 40 toilets,
benefiting 2,000 students.
In the area of incomegenerating projects, QC has
implemented 227 projects at
a cost of QR773,000, benefiting 1,589 citizens, through interest-free loans, in partnership with local organisations.
In the area of health,
QC spent QR1.3 million, benefiting 24,600 people.
In all, QC has implemented projects worth QR28 million for Sudan in 2014.
05
Diplomatic Institute
highlights 2014
achievements
QNA
DOHA
THE Diplomatic Institute at
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has issued its annual
report on its activities and
achievements in 2014.
The report began with
a speech by Director of the
Diplomatic Institute HE Ambassador Dr Hassan bin Ibrahim al Muhannadi stressing the importance of the
annual inventory of the important works and achievements made by the Institute
over the past year.
Muhannadi said that the
report represents an opportunity to review and consider
the Institute work on one
hand, and to communicate
with those interested in its
work on the other hand.
He underlined the need
for improvement, continuous follow-up and openness
to all ideas and keenness to
involve senior minds and important figures in the activities of the Institute, adding
that Qatar, under the leadership of the Emir His Highness Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al Thani, is determined
to be at the forefront of modern states.
Muhannadi
thanked
Minister of Foreign Affairs
HE Dr Khalid bin Mohammed al Attiyah, Their Excellencies Foreign Minister's
Assistants, especially HE
Rashid bin Khalifa Al Khalifa, assistant Foreign Minister
for Services and Follow-Up
Affairs, and everyone who
supported the Institute.
In the field of training, the
Institute organised a variety
of programmes for different
cadres, both for new or senior staff. The Institute organised 49 training courses over
the past year, ranging from
diplomacy and international
relations and cooperation, to
consular work, media, and
the art of negotiation, in addition to foreign languages,
foreign policy, international
organizations, protocols and
international law.
The Institute also organised course on formulating
reports and correspondence,
Qatar's history, environmental issues, and other areas of
importance to the diplomat
and the employee in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The Institute also held
a programme for diplomats
transferred to work in the
Qatari diplomatic and consular missions abroad and
embarked on a remote training project, an integrated elearning system that offers
live or registered training
sessions in order to provide
an opportunity for all dip-
lomats both at home and
abroad to participate in its
training programmes.
The Diplomatic Institute
cooperated with local and international universities and
institutes such as the Faculty
of Islamic Studies at the Hamad Bin Khalifa University,
Al Jazeera Media Center for
Training and Development,
Harvard University and the
United Nations Institute for
Training and Research (UNITAR) to organise its training
programmes.
In addition to the Foreign
Ministry staff, specialists
from other ministries and
institutions took part in the
programmes.
In the field of studies
and report, the Diplomatic
Institute issued a number of
valuable books, such as ‘Life
is Negotiations’, ‘The Diplomat’s Guide for Protocol
The Institute organised 49 training
courses ranging from
diplomacy and international relations
and cooperation to
consular work, media
and art of negotiation
and Etiquette’, ‘The Role of
Qatar in Achieving Global
Partnership in Development’
and others. The Institute also
continued issuing its quarterly magazine.
The Diplomatic Institute launched in 2014 the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs
electronic library for the
ministry’s staff at home and
abroad as a way to research
and self-learning.
In 2014, the Institute organised 19 seminars in the
various aspects of politics,
economy and applied sciences, attended and lectured by
public figures, senior professors, diplomats and experts.
It signed three memorandums of understanding in
2014 with the Diplomatic Institute in Bulgaria, the Saud
Al Nasser Al Sabah Diplomatic Institute in Kuwait, and the
National School of Administration in France.
The future plan of the Diplomatic Institute will include
continuous development of
its organisational structure to
increase the effectiveness and
the quality of the services and
activities it provides.
The plan also includes the
implementation of a comprehensive strategy to introduce
the Institute regionally and
internationally, and the implementation of comprehensive training programmes
for administrative and diplomatic staff in the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs.
QU welcomes CMED’s prospective students
DOHA
QATAR University (QU)
recently welcomed 179 prospective students interested
in joining the new College
of Medicine (CMED). The
event drew over 250 attendees and was an opportunity
for students and their parents to meet the Dean Dr
Egon Toft, faculty and staff
to learn more about the college, its programmes and
curriculum.
The event followed an online marketing campaign by
the college, which is seeking
to admit up to 50 students in
the first year.
More than 400 students,
including over 50 Qatari
nationals, have registered
their interest so far, college
officials said, noting that
priority in admission will be
given to Qatari students, and
to outstanding international
students, especially long-
term residents and students
born in Qatar. Admission
to the college will begin on
February 22 and extend until July 9.
Students also met four
practising doctors from Hamad Medical Corporation,
Sidra and Primary Health
Care
Corporation,
who
shared their experiences.
A presentation by CMED
Associate Dean for Clinical
Affairs Dr Abdullatif Al Khal
gave students an insight into
the world of medicine.
An exhibition featured
information booths from
QU Admissions Department,
Scholarships Office, Honors
Program, and Student Activities Department as well
as HMC ‘Doctors of the Future’ programme that aim to
attract students to the medical profession. Dr Toft said:
“This is an historic day as it
marks the first event for the
first national medical college
in the history of Qatar.”
Qatar University Dean Dr Egon Toft at the presentation in Doha recently.
06
Opinion
China Sharpens Its
Censorship Blade
HAMAD BIN SUHAIM AL THANI
CHAIRMAN
ADEL ALI BIN ALI
MANAGING DIRECTOR
DR HASSAN MOHAMMED AL ANSARI
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
ESTABLISHED SEPTEMBER 3, 2006
PRINTED AT ALI BIN ALI PRINTING PRESS
Putin Resumes His War
The aggressive censorship strategy betrays a mounting anxiety
over the ability to manage popular discontent
The US has pledged to help Ukraine in every way, but lethal
assistance could open a dangerous new chapter in the struggle
T
HE fighting in eastern Ukraine has
flared up again, putting an end to any
myth about the cease-fire that was
supposed to be in force since September.
Though the Russian economy is staggering under the twinned onslaught of
low oil prices and sanctions – or, conceivably, as a result of that onslaught – President Vladimir Putin has sharply cranked
up his direct support for the rebels in the
provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk, while
continuing to baldly deny it and to blame
all the violence on the United States.
Meanwhile, Ukraine is broke, and
without the military means to move
against the Russian-backed rebels. Most
of the victims are civilians who struggle
with hunger and dislocation in the rubble
of the combat zones and die in the constant exchanges of shells and rockets.
The eruption of fighting in recent
weeks, which was not supposed to happen until spring, has given new force to
pleas to the Obama administration to give
Ukraine the means to resist Putin – in
money and in arms.
Certainly the United States and Europe should increase their aid to Ukraine
and explore ways to expand existing
sanctions against Russia. NATO’s commander, General Philip Breedlove, is said
to support providing weapons and equipment to Kiev. And Secretary of State John
Kerry is said to be open to discussing the
idea. But lethal assistance could open a
dangerous new chapter in the struggle
– a chapter Putin would quite possibly
welcome, as it would “confirm” his propaganda claims of Western aggression.
So far, President Barack Obama has
cautiously pledged to help Ukraine in every way “short of military confrontation.”
Yet with sanctions and diplomacy making
no headway against Russian aggression,
it is imperative that the United States and
its allies take a new look at what would
bring Russia to a serious negotiation.
The first question is, to negotiate what?
Along with denying the direct involvement of his troops in eastern Ukraine, Putin has not made clear what he is trying to
achieve. Russian officials have suggested
that Moscow has no interest in annexing
eastern Ukraine, the way it grabbed Crimea, but rather seeks a Ukrainian federation in which the pro-Russian provinces
would have relative autonomy, along with
assurances that Ukraine will not move to
join NATO.
There is definitely potential for negotiations there. Yet the latest rebel attacks
have focused on Mariupol, an important
port on the Black Sea, and on expanding
the rebels’ control to areas that would give
their self-proclaimed “republics” greater
military and economic cohesion. And that
speaks to long-term rebel occupation.
Tempting as it is to focus on punishing Putin, the greater objective must be
to end the fighting so that Ukraine can
finally undertake the arduous task of reforming and reviving its economy. Toward that end, the West must make clear
to Putin that if a federation is his goal, the
United States and its allies will actively
use their good offices with Kiev to seek a
workable arrangement.
But if the evidence continues to accumulate that Putin and the rebels are carving out a permanent rebel-held enclave
in eastern Ukraine, à la Transdniestria,
Abkhazia or South Ossetia, he must know
that the United States and Europe will be
compelled to increase the cost.
NYT
I
N early November, when Beijing
played host to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting, city officials closed hundreds of factories
and forced millions of vehicles off
the roads to clear the soupy gray smog
that normally blankets the sky. But one
day the pollution level soared, with
data from the United States Embassy
showing an index reading six times the
World Health Organisation’s safe daily
limit. Seeking their last course of action, the Chinese officials summarily
removed the American statistics from
smartphone apps and Chinese websites.
Reading the news while on my university campus in the United States, I
joked with friends in Beijing that it had
reminded me of a proverb we learned
in elementary school that tells the story
of a man who tries to steal a large copper bell from a house. To carry it away,
he decided to break it into pieces with
a hammer, but feared the noise might
alarm its owner. So he plugged his ears,
believing it would muffle the sound for
other people.
The element of self-deception in
China’s attempt to control information
has always invited mocking scepticism.
In 2000 President Bill Clinton famously compared Chinese Internet censorship to “trying to nail Jell-O to the wall.”
But as the ensuing years have proved,
Chinese censors’ commitment to this
seemingly hopeless enterprise has created a dire reality that imprisons each
of its citizens.
Last year, several non-Chinese social media apps, including Instagram
and Line, fell under the censors’ blade,
joining a growing list of foreign services,
such as Facebook and Twitter, that are
inaccessible in China. Google, having
long been in the crosshairs of the Chinese authorities, saw its Gmail service
in China disrupted in late December. In
recent weeks, the authorities have disabled popular virtual private networks
— technical loopholes that many residents had used to access online content
beyond the Great Firewall.
Returning to China from abroad
during school vacations increasingly
feels like stepping into an alternate
universe. Internet tools that my peers
across the world use to stay connected
are replaced by their heavily monitored
Chinese versions, where benign criticisms of the Communist Party can lead
to police interrogation or jail time.
Mainstream media and publishing
are under similar assault. Gone are the
days when industry insiders summarised taboo topics with the “three Ts”
— Tiananmen, Tibet and Taiwan. The
often-farcical appearance of the censorship rules has on occasion galvanised
individuals into making a demand for
transparency but more often has only
HELEN GAO | NYT SYNDICATE
served to alienate them by depriving
them of channels for communication.
The specifics of the ongoing ethnic
violence in the western region of Xinjiang, which resulted in hundreds of
deaths last year, may never be known
to outsiders due to government restrictions on media reporting of the subject.
The pro-democracy protest in Hong
Kong received only sketchy coverage
on the mainland, where the protesters
The element of self-deception in China’s attempt
to control information has
always invited mocking
scepticism.
were called “radical elements” instigated by “foreign anti-China forces.” Other
groups, from rural petitioners to liberal
intellectuals, are also suffering a shrinking platform for their voices.
Such monopoly over information
has bred misunderstanding among the
people. Few Chinese I have met, for example, are willing to consider that the
party’s oppressive policies in Xinjiang
may be responsible for the recent bloodshed. Rather, the vast majority maintains that the attacks are simply the
deeds of “savage Uighurs brainwashed
by extremist thoughts,” as a taxi driver
in Urumqi recently told me. Similarly,
many mainlanders were quick to question the Hong Kong protesters’ motives
or laugh at their naïveté, while remaining ignorant about their demands.
Early last year, after decades of silence, a group of elderly women that
were former Red Guards at an elite
Beijing high school made a public apology for their role in one of the most infamous incidents during the Cultural
Revolution: the death of their school’s
vice principal as a result of mass beating. The wider discussion it triggered
online was quickly shut down by authorities, but the brief outburst of public
comments contained little forgiveness.
Without a platform for rational
dialogue that helps make sense of the
deeper political cause of the tragedy, the
discourse devolved into ad hominem attacks fixating on the culpability of individuals. In a recent meeting with these
women, one asked me about my friends’
opinions toward their apology. She became quiet when I told her most of my
peers are oblivious of the incident.
The fragmentation of society, in
which individuals sit in solitary confinement with their hopes and complaints,
makes a mockery of the buoyant description of “the motherland’s ethnic
and cultural unity” that filled my high
school textbook. Chinese leaders might
believe that isolating grievances helps
them contain the society-wide discontent. In reality, however, it only leads
to a vacuum of trust that ultimately undermines the Communist Party’s own
credibility.
Increasingly, the party’s aggressive
censorship strategy betrays a mounting anxiety over its ability to manage
popular discontent. Behind the grandiose discourse of the “Chinese Dream”
in newspaper editorials and political
meetings are talks of fear of a post- Soviet-style color revolution.
But even as Chinese leaders are
determined to heed the lessons of the
breakup of the Soviet Union when a
loosening of media control in the late
1980s ushered in a flood of destabilising
dissent, they seem no less apprehensive
about the risk of their restrictive strategy backfiring.
In the aftermath of a New Year’s Eve
stampede in Shanghai that killed 36
people, censors moved swiftly to limit
public discussion. Relatives of the victims were accompanied by plainclothes
police at the site of mourning: Grieving, too, has become subversive, some
Chinese commentators wryly observed
on social media. The authorities worry
that the widespread sympathy it garners might fuel public anger toward the
government.
The man who covers his ears while
stealing the bell now seems to be quickening his steps. Rather than hoping
others will not hear him, he may instead
be too busy scanning the road, praying
not to trip over in his hasty escape.
(Helen Gao, a native of Beijing,
is a master’s student in East
Asian Studies at Harvard.)
The Vaccine Lunacy
In America, it used to be that unvaccinated children were clustered in impoverished neighbourhoods;
now they’re often clustered among sophisticates in gilded ZIP codes
FRANK BRUNI | NYT SYNDICATE
A
FEW years back, an acerbic friend
of mine who was a recent transplant to Los Angeles told me that
she itched to write a satirical novel with the following narrative:
A group of wealthy, educated people
in Santa Monica who deliberately didn’t
vaccinate their children subsequently
take them on a “poor-ism” trip to a developing country. The goal is to make
them wiser and more sensitive to suffering in the world. While being sensitised,
the kids catch diseases that they could
have been inoculated against. Some of
them die.
As a plot, it lacks subtlety (and compassion). But as a parable, it’s crystalclear. You can be so privileged that
you’re underprivileged, so blessed with
choices that you choose to be a fool, so
“informed” that you’re misinformed.
You’ve probably heard or read about
the recent outbreak traced to the theme
park. But there’s a chance that you’re
unaware, because it hasn’t received
nearly the coverage that, say, Ebola did,
even though some of the dynamics at
work here are scarier.
It started in mid-December and is
now believed to be responsible for more
than 70 cases in seven states and Mexico; 58 of those are in California, which of
course is where the park is – in Orange
County, to be more specific.
As it happens, there are affluent
pockets of that county where the fraction
of schoolchildren whose parents have
cited a “personal belief” to exempt them
from vaccinations is higher than the
statewide average of 2.5 percent. That’s
also true of some affluent pockets of the
San Francisco and Los Angeles areas.
It used to be that unvaccinated children in America were clustered in impoverished neighbourhoods; now they’re
often clustered among sophisticates in
gilded ZIP codes where a certain strain
of health faddishness reigns. According
to a story in The Hollywood Reporter
last year, the parents of 57 percent of the
children at a Beverly Hills preschool and
of 68 percent at one in Santa Monica had
filed personal-belief exemptions from
having their kids vaccinated.
Why? Many of them buy into a
discredited theory that there’s a link
between the MMR (mumps-measlesrubella) vaccine and autism. They’re encouraged by a cadre of brash alarmists
who have gained attention by pushing
that thinking. Anti-vaccine panic was the
path that the actress Jenny McCarthy
travelled to innumerable appearances
on prominent news and talk shows; she
later demonstrated her singular version
of concern for good health by working as
a pitchwoman for e-cigarettes.
Other parents have separate or additional worries about vaccines, which
can indeed have side effects. But they’re
weighing that downside against what
they deem to be a virtually nonexistent
risk of exposure to the diseases in ques-
tion. And that degree of risk depends entirely on a vast majority of children getting vaccines. If too many forgo them, we
surrender what’s known as “herd immunity,” and the risk rises. That’s precisely
what health officials see happening now.
In 2004, there were just 37 reported
cases of measles in the United States. In
2014, there were 644. And while none of
those patients died, measles can kill. Before vaccines for it became widespread in
1963, millions of Americans were infected
annually, and 400 to 500 died each year.
“I don’t think its fatality rate has decreased,” said Daniel Salmon, a vaccine
expert at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg
School of Public Health. “We just haven’t
had enough cases for someone to die.”
An estimated 90 percent of unvaccinated people who are exposed to the
measles virus become infected, and they
themselves can be infectious four days
before they develop a telltale rash.
But what’s in play is more than one
affliction’s resurgence. The size and sway
of the anti-vaccine movement reflect a
chilling disregard for science – or at least
a pick-and-choose, cafeteria approach
to it – that’s also evident, for example,
in many Americans’ refusal to recognise
climate change. We’re a curious species,
and sometimes a sad one, chasing knowledge only to deny it, making progress
only to turn away from its benefits.
The Internet makes it easier for people to do their own “research” and can
lead them to trustworthy and untrustworthy sites in equal measure. And we in
the traditional media don’t always help,
covering the news in an on-one-hand,
on-the-other-hand fashion that sometimes gives nearly equal time to people
citing facts and people weaving fiction.
This subject has been studied and
studied and studied, and it’s abundantly
clear that we’re best served by vaccinating all of those children who can be, so
that the ones who can’t be – for medical
reasons such as a compromised immune
system – are protected.
THE VIEWS EXPRESSED ON THE OPINION AND ANALYSIS PAGES ARE THE AUTHORS’ OWN. QATAR TRIBUNE BEARS NO RESPONSIBILITY.
Analysis
A Future Segregated
By Science
Other countries are moving ahead of America in producing STEM graduates
07
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Fight diabetes
New Perspective
CHARLES M BLOW
NYT NEWS SERVICE
Few women and
minorities are
getting STEM
(science,
technology,
engineering and
mathematics)
degrees, although
STEM jobs are
multiplying
and pay more
than many
other careers.
L
ET me say up front: I’m not a science guy. I have always loved science, but I have always loved the
arts – drawing, painting and, yes,
writing – more.
My deepest foray into science came
in high school when I won my way to
the international science fair. (Don’t get
too excited; that sounds more impressive than it was.) It was 1988, and I had
produced a project about why the ‘Star
Wars’ missile defence system wouldn’t
work. My project was a beautiful monstrosity made of stained and varnished
plywood, with an insert for a diorama
of missiles flying, lasers blasting and
a midair explosion, and a cutout with
space for a small television and a VCR
(yes, I’m that old).
I won the district fair – in part, I
suspect, because the judges’ pool was
heavily populated by members of the
military – even though I had violated
one of the cardinal rules of science fairs:
I hadn’t actually done an experiment.
Mine was a fancy research project – like
a 3-D opinion piece. But it didn’t matter. The airline lost the whole project
when I flew to the international science
fair, so I never got to compete.
Although my science dreams were
dashed, I still loved science. And I’ve
long been surrounded by science people. My ex-wife was a physics major.
My oldest child is a biology major, and
when my twins enter college next year,
one wants to major in physics and the
other in a scientific field to be determined.
But their interests defy a distressing
disparity: Few women and minorities
are getting STEM (science, technology,
engineering and mathematics) degrees,
although STEM jobs are multiplying
and pay more than many other careers.
This raises the question: Will our fu-
Health is Wealth
Blood Transfusion During Heart
Surgery May Up Pneumonia Risk
HEALTHDAY NEWS | NYT SYNDICATE
R
ECEIVING a blood transfusion during heart bypass surgery may raise a
patient’s risk of pneumonia, researchers report.
“The ability to store and transfuse
blood is one of medicine’s greatest accomplishments, but we are continuing
to see that receiving a blood transfusion may alter a patient’s ability to fight
infection,” Dr James Edgerton, of The
Heart Hospital, Baylor Plano in Texas,
said in a Society of Thoracic Surgeons
news release. He was not involved in
the study.
For the current study, investigators
looked at data on more than 16,000
patients who had heart bypass surgery.
The surgeries took place at 33 US hospitals between 2011 and 2013.
Nearly 40 percent of those surgical
patients received red blood cell transfusions, the findings showed. Just under
4 percent of the entire group developed
pneumonia.
People given one or two units of
red blood cells were twice as likely to
develop pneumonia compared to those
who didn’t receive blood transfusions.
Those who received six units or more
were 14 times more likely to develop
pneumonia, the researchers found.
Pneumonia is a known risk following coronary artery bypass grafting
(CABG) surgery, and developing it has
been shown to significantly increase a
patient’s risk of illness and death, study
leader Donald Likosky, from the University of Michigan Health System, explained in the news release.
“Previous research has shown that
one in every 20 CABG patients develop a major infection, with pneumonia
being the most common type of infection,” Likosky said.
Findings are generally considered
preliminary until they’ve been published in a peer-reviewed journal.
“Patients should receive red blood
cell transfusions based on clinical need.
Surgical teams may have opportunities
to reduce the need for transfusions
among patients,” Likosky said.
ture be highly delineated by who does
and who doesn’t have a science education (and the resulting higher salary),
making for even more entrenched economic inequality by race and gender?
According to the National Math and
Science Initiative: “STEM job creation
over the next 10 years will outpace nonSTEM jobs significantly, growing 17
percent, as compared to 9.8 percent for
non-STEM positions.”
Is science education a
new area of America’s
segregation?
And yet, the group says, we are not
producing enough STEM graduates;
other countries are moving ahead of us.
When you look at women and minorities, the situation is even more
bleak.
Let’s start with high school. Last
year, a Georgia Tech researcher analysed which students took the Advanced
Placement exam in computer science in
2013. The researcher, Barbara Ericson,
found that in three states no women
took it, in eight states no Hispanics did
and in 11 states no blacks did. (In Mississippi only one person – not female,
black or Hispanic, by the way – took the
test that year. Oh, Mississippi.)
Now, on to college, where the disparities remain bleak.
The Associated Press reported in
2011 that “the percentage of AfricanAmericans earning STEM degrees has
fallen during the last decade” and that
this was very likely a result of “a complex equation of self-doubt, stereotypes,
discouragement and economics – and
sometimes just wrong perceptions of
what math and science are all about.”
It continued: “Black people are 12
percent of the United States population
and 11 percent of all students beyond
high school. In 2009, they received just
7 percent of all STEM bachelor’s degrees, 4 percent of master’s degrees, and
2 percent of PhDs, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.”
It doesn’t get better in the workplace. In a 2013 editorial, The New
York Times pointed out: “Women make
up nearly half the workforce but have
just 26 percent of science, technology,
engineering or math jobs, according to
the Census Bureau. Blacks make up 11
percent of the workforce but just 6 percent of such jobs and Hispanics make
up nearly 15 percent of the workforce
but hold 7 percent of those positions.”
Even when minority students do get
STEM degrees, there seems to be a disproportionate barrier to their finding
work in those fields.
“Top universities turn out black and
Hispanic computer science and computer engineering graduates at twice the
rate that leading technology companies
hire them,” an October analysis by USA
Today found.
Furthermore, USA Today reported
in December: “In 2014, leading technology companies released data showing
they vastly underemploy African-Americans and Hispanics. Those groups
make up 5 percent of the companies’
workforce, compared to 14 percent nationally.”
No matter what strides we make –
or don’t – in the march toward racial
and gender equality in this country, is
this an area in which the future will feel
more stratified, and in which the inequalities, particularly economic ones,
will mount? Is science education a new
area of our segregation?
THIS is with reference to the news
report ‘1,000 kids in Qatar live with
Type 1 diabetes’, published in Qatar
Tribune on January 30. Although
it was not mentioned as to why children in Qatar are diabetes-prone, I
have guessed – and correct me if I’m
wrong – that it is primarily because
of their eating patterns and lifestyle
choices. Secondly, I thought of marriages between blood relations. In the
past, I have read some reports that
many scientists and health experts are
condemning the union of close family members not only because of the
risk of birth defects, but also because
it triggers diabetes. But I think this
concern needs a thorough research.
The issue of children nowadays not
living a healthy lifestyle and not following a ‘good-food habit’ could be the
real culprit. Parents should know this,
thus they should be the one to guide
their children on how to be free from
diabetes. 1,000 children and teenagers
with Type 1 diabetes could be a small
percentage, but this could also mean
that they are at high risk of developing Type 2 diabetes. Type 2 diabetes
is more aggressive in children than in
adults, so health authorities and parents must work together to combat the
prevalence of the disease. Proper consultation with the experts and a matter of discipline in terms of eating the
right foods could be the answer.
SIDI TM
“Congratulations to Unicef
Ambassador @DjokerNole
Novak Djokovic on winning
his 5th AusOpen title & 8th
career Grand Slam!”
Unicef
Bloggers’ Borough
GET HEARD!
Girls Outperform Boys Academically
Around The Globe, Study Says
QT NOW MAKES
YOUR LIFE
SIMPLE
NYT SYNDICATE
G
IRLS tend to get better grades in
reading, math and science than
boys, according to a new study that
challenges the widely held belief that
boys do better in these subjects than
girls.
“Even in countries where women’s
liberties are severely restricted, we
found that girls are outperforming
boys in reading, mathematics and science literacy by age 15, regardless of
political, economic, social or gender
equality issues and policies found in
those countries,” study author David
Geary, professor of psychological sciences at the University of Missouri,
said in a university news release.
The researchers analysed the
grades of 1.5 million 15-year-old students around the world between 2000
and 2010.
They found that girls outperformed
boys in reading, math and science in
70 percent of the countries included
in the study. These findings held true
even in countries where females face
severe social restrictions.
Boys did better than girls in only
three countries or regions: Colombia,
Costa Rica and the state of Himachal
Pradesh in India. Girls and boys were
about equal in the United States and
Englad, the researchers found.
In countries with low levels of gender equality, girls were far ahead of
boys in educational achievement, according to the study.
Findings were published recently
in the journal Intelligence.
“The data will influence how policymakers think about the options available,” Geary said.
“For example, to increase levels of
equal opportunities in education. We
believe that policymakers and educators should not expect that broad
progress in social equality will necessarily result in educational equality. In
fact, we found that with the exception
of high achievers, boys have poorer educational outcomes than girls around
the world, independent of social equality indicators,” he said.
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08
Pakistan / South Asia
Bangladesh opposition chief
Khaleda faces murder probe
Pakistan test-fires
nuclear-capable
cruise missile
PTI
AFP
ISLAMABAD
DHAKA
BANGLADESH authorities
on Monday ordered a probe
into allegations of murder
against opposition chief Khaleda Zia and arrested a media
magnate as two more people
were shot dead in spiralling
political unrest.
Although experts said it
was unlikely that the accusations filed in a private lawsuit would result in charges
against Zia, they will add to
the pressure on the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP)
leader who has been struggling to topple the government through a transport
blockade.
The order by a magistrate
for police to probe the allegations came hours after the
owner of a private television
channel was arrested after a
meeting with Zia in her Dhaka headquarters.
“Metropolitan Magistrate
Atiqur Rahman ordered the
Gulshan police in Dhaka to
investigate the complaint and
submit a report by March 1,”
Ashiqur Rahman, a court official, said.
A lawyer for the plaintiff,
pro-government activist A B
Siddiqi, said Zia was responsible for the death of 42 peo-
Shop owners and business association representatives form a human chain to protest against the blockades during a countrywide strike
called by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party in Dhaka on Monday. (EPA)
ple killed after opposition activists firebombed buses and
trucks in a wave of protests.
“She is to blame for the
death of 42 innocent people
as she ordered her supporters
to attack vehicles with petrol
bombs,” said lawyer Roushonara Sikder Daizy.
The 69-year-old leader,
who has been holed up in her
News
in brief
Peshawar school massacre survivors
leave for China on ‘healing trip’
PESHAWAR (Pakistan) A
group of students and teachers who survived a Taliban
massacre at a Pakistani
school left on Monday for a
trip to China aimed at healing the mental scars of their
ordeal.
Heavily-armed militants
stormed the Army Public
Relatives carry photograph
School in the northwestern
city of Peshawar in December, of a student who was killed
in Peshawar school attack
killing 150 people, most of
them children, in Pakistan’s recently. (REUTERS)
bloodiest-ever terror attack.
The carnage horrified the world and left many survivors
badly traumatised. Now 10 students and two teachers
who escaped the bloodshed have been sent on a 10-day
trip to help them recover. “The basic aim of the visit is to
divert the attention of the survivors,” from the nightmare, a
security official said. (AFP)
Imran Khan
seeks speaker’s
suspension
Afghan forces
kill 14 Taliban
militants
ISLAMABAD Pakistani
cricketer-turned-politician
Imran Khan on Monday
demanded suspension
of National Assembly
Speaker Ayaz Sadiq till investigation is completed
into the alleged rigging
in the National Assembly
constituency-122 in the
2014 general elections.
During a meeting with
Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Justice
(Retd) Sardar Mohammad
Raza, Imran Khan said
his party has also requested the CEC to form
two task force groups to
look into giving overseas
Pakistanis a right to vote
as well as the possibility
to introduce an electronic
voting system for next
general elections, Dawn
reported.
The meeting took
place two days after an
election tribunal in Lahore turned down Imran
Khan’s plea for action
against an inquiry commission that inspected
the record of election in
the NA-122. (IANS)
KABUL Afghan national
army units in coordination
with the police have killed
at least 14 Taliban militants and injured eight others in the past two days,
an army spokesperson
said on Monday.
“Units of national army
in coordination with police
have killed 14 Taliban
rebels including three
foreign nationals in Qaisar
district over the past two
days,” Xinhua quoted army
spokesperson Mohammad
Reza Rezai as saying.
The anti-terrorist
operations took place in
Faryab province. Two of the
three foreigners were from
Uzbekistan and another
one from Chechen, Rezai added. According to
Afghan security officials,
extremist elements from
foreign countries including
Pakistan, Arab and central
Asian states have been
fighting alongside Taliban
militants in Afghanistan. An
Afghan security personnel
was killed and three sustained injuries in the operations, Rezai said. (IANS)
and lorries.
In the latest deaths, two
activists from the BNP-allied
Islamist
Jamaat-e-Islami
party were shot dead allegedly by police, including a
23-year-old student. More
than 10,000 opposition activists have been arrested, including dozens of front-rank
officials.
PAKISTAN on Monday successfully test-fired a new indigenously developed cruise
missile capable of delivering
nuclear and conventional
warheads up to 350 km,
bringing many Indian cities
under its range.
The Ra’ad missile enables Pakistan to achieve
“strategic standoff capability” on land and at sea, as
it uses extremely complex
“Cruise Technology” that
has been developed by only
a few countries in the world,
Pakistan army said.
“The state of the art
Ra’ad cruise missile with
stealth capabilities is a low
altitude, terrain hugging
missile with high manoeuvrability and can deliver
nuclear and conventional
warheads with pinpoint accuracy,” army said.
Director-General Strategic Plans Division, Lieutenant
General
Zubair
Mahmood Hayat, while
congratulating the scientists
and engineers on achieving yet another milestone of
historic significance, termed
it a major step towards
strengthening
Pakistan’s
full spectrum credible minimum deterrence capability.
“Pakistan’s
Strategic pursuits are aimed at
achieving Strategic Stability
in the region,” it said.
He appreciated the technical prowess, dedication
and commitment of scientists who contributed whole
heartedly to make this
launch a success.
The Ra’ad missile
enables Pakistan to
achieve “strategic
standoff capability”
on land and at sea,
as it uses extremely
complex “Cruise
Technology” that has
been developed by
only a few countries
in the world, Pakistan
army said.
He showed his full confidence over operational preparedness of Strategic Forces including employment
and deployment concepts,
refinement and training of
all ranks in operational and
technical domains.
The successful launch
has been commended by
President Mamnoon Hussain and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.
They also congratulated
the scientists and engineers for their outstanding
achievement.
office since January 3, has already been charged by police
with lesser crimes including
“abetting” and “instigating”
the fire bombings.
Zia called the protests
early last month. She urged
supporters to enforce a nationwide blockade of roads,
railways and waterways to
try to force Prime Minister
Sheikh Hasina to call a fresh
general election.
The opposition boycotted
the last poll in January 2014
on the grounds the result
would be rigged.
The protests have triggered widespread violence
that left at least 46 people
dead -- mostly victims of firebombing attacks on buses
Taliban attacks
on checkpoints
kill 9 Afghan
policemen
US diplomat pledges friendship
to new Sri Lanka government
AP
AFP
KABUL
COLOMBO
TALIBAN insurgents, some
likely wearing police uniforms, attacked checkpoints
in Afghanistan, killing at
least nine officers in their latest assault, authorities said
on Monday. The deadliest of
the two attacks targeting a
checkpoint in Afghanistan’s
southern Kandahar province,
the heartland of the Taliban.
There, gunmen stormed the
checkpoint in Maiwand district, killing at least five officers, police spokesman Zia
Durani said.
Durani
said
police
launched an investigation
into the assault amid indications one or more of the attackers wore police uniforms.
In western Herat province,
another Taliban assault on a
checkpoint killed four police
officers in Chashti Sharif district, said Ghulam Rasoul, a
district police chief.
He said a police officer
assigned the checkpoint disappeared after the attack,
raising suspicion he escaped
with the Taliban and helped
facilitate their assault. The
Taliban claimed both attacks. So-called “insider attacks” have plagued both
NATO and Afghan forces
over recent years.
A top US diplomat promised
on Monday that Washington
would be a friend and partner of Colombo as she made
the first visit by a senior
American official since the
toppling of Sri Lanka’s longtime strongman.
In the build-up to last
month’s presidential elections, a top lieutenant to
then president Mahinda Rajapaksa accused the United
States of trying to bring
about “regime change”,
marking a new low in bilateral relations.
But since Rajapaksa was
beaten at the ballot box, the
United States has moved
swiftly to rebuild ties with
a country that has become
increasingly close to China
over the past decade.
Speaking on a visit to Colombo, Assistant Secretary
of State Nisha Biswal said
the US was ready to help Sri
Lanka on a range of issues,
including its human rights
record, which was hugely
contentious under Rajapaksa.
“I am indeed excited to
be in Sri Lanka and see for
myself the energy that has
the world talking about Sri
Lanka and about Sri Lanka’s
Nisha Desai Biswal (right), assistant secretary for South and
Central Asian Affairs, shakes hands with Sri Lanka’s Prime
Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe during their meeting in Colombo
on Monday. (REUTERS)
democracy and for all the
right reasons,” Biswal said.
“Sri Lanka can count on
the US to be a partner and
a friend in the way forward,
whether it is on rebuilding
the economy, on preventing
corruption, and advancing
good governance and ensur-
ing human rights and democratic participation for all of
its citizens.”
Speaking to reporters after talks with Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera,
Biswal stressed the new government could count on US
support to meet “difficult
challenges ahead”.
She did not directly refer
to the pending US-initiated
probe into allegations that
up to 40,000 ethnic Tamil
civilians were killed by Sri
Lankan forces while defeating Tamil separatists in
2009.
However, she said Washington wanted to work with
Colombo to “find constructive ways forward on all the
areas of interest between our
two nations”.
Samaraweera said he
would be travelling to Washington for talks with Secretary of State John Kerry next
week. “We want to raise the
relationship between our
two countries to a new level
of cordiality and I hope to
continue this dialogue in
Washington,” he said.
Rajapaksa, who ruled the
island for a decade, alienated many foreign leaders by
refusing to cooperate with
an international probe into
alleged abuses in the final
stages of a 37-year civil war
that ended in 2009.
Kerry had voiced appreciation for Rajapaksa’s early
concession of defeat in the
January 8 vote, although
there have since been allegations that he tried to
hold onto power by staging
a coup.
Solar water plants for drought-hit Pakistan area
REUTERS
MITHI (PAKISTAN)
WORSENING drought has
led to over 80 percent of water resources in Pakistan’s
southern Tharparker district
becoming unfit for people to
drink, a new study says.
That has led to plans by
the Sindh provincial government to invest 5.4 billion Pakistani rupees ($53 million)
in installing 750 solar-powered reverse osmosis water
purification plants across the
sprawling desert district, to
help get safe drinking water
to the region’s over 1.5 million people.
All of the facilities are expected to be set up and working by June this year, the government said.
Residents living near a
first plant, inaugurated in
January in the Misri Shah
area of Mithi, the district
headquarters of Tharparker,
say it is transforming life in
the parched region, where
vanishing rain and drying
groundwater supplies mean
most available water is now
saline or too high in fluoride.
“It is really hardly less
than a miracle for us that
we can now drink sweet
and clean water, for the first
time in my entire life,” said
45-year-old Rekha Meghwar
of Mithi, as she turns on the
water plant’s tap to fill her
pitcher.
Sindh provincial government has plans
to invest 5.4 billion
Pakistani rupees in
installing 750 solarpowered reverse osmosis water purification plants across the
district of Tharparker.
Billed as the ‘Asia’s largest
(by capacity) solar-powered
water purification plant’, the
facility will treat 3 million gallons of water daily, enough
to meet the water needs of
300,000 people in Mithi
and in 80 adjoining villages,
according to officials in the
Mithi town municipal office.
Constructed at a cost of
400 million Pakistani rupees
or $4 million, the plant is expected to particularly benefit
women, who currently often
must fetch water from faraway hand-dug wells.
Sunita Bheel, a woman
waiting in line for water from
the new Mithi plant, said
women in the area often walk
two kilometres a day to fetch
water from a hand-dug well
owned by a landlord outside
the village. Local people said
having water available for
themselves, and their livestock, may stem increasing
waves of migration from the
area. Anil Kumar, who lives
in Morrey-Jee-Waand village, a few miles from Mithi,
said 80 percent of people in
his village and in seven other
villages around it migrated
last September to other areas
in the region with supplies of
dam water in an effort to find
potable water for themselves
and their livestock, and to
seek jobs after crops failed.
“But they are now gradually returning to their villages
when they learn about the
sweet water (plant),” he said.
Philippines / Southeast Asia
News
in brief
1 jailed, 6 arrested
in Thailand over
royal insult
Massive fire erupts
at Chinese tire plant
in eastern Thailand
BANGKOK Thailand’s
Criminal Court imprisoned a sister of
a former princess for
lese-majesty, while police arrested six people
on the same charges,
local media reported on
Monday.
Sudathip Muangnual,
49, confessed to the
charges and was sentenced to 30 months in
prison. She is a sister
of former princess
Srirasmi, who recently
gave up her royal status.
Also on Monday, six
contributors to an online
group writing about the
Thai monarchy called
Banpodj Network were
arrested, according to
Bangkok-based JS100
radio.
Police said they
were trying to arrest the
leader behind the network, who they suspect
of being abroad. (DPA)
BANGKOK A massive fire
that engulfed a tire plant
in Thailand’s eastern
industrial estate caused
about $40 million in
losses for one of China’s
largest tire exporters, officials said on Monday.
The fire, which started
on Sunday night and took
more than seven hours to
control, destroyed six out of
15 warehouses in the Linglong International Tire compound in Sriricha district in
Chonburi province, part of
Thailand’s eastern seaboard, said Industrial Estate
Authority of Thailand Governor Verapong Chaiperm.
He said the cause of
the blaze was not immediately known as police were
waiting for plumes of smoke
to die down before investigating the scene.
Verapong said no casualties were reported, but
the fire forced the company
to shut the plant for two
days. (DPA)
Indonesian rescue personnel unload a casket containing the
recovered remains of a victim of the ill-fated AirAsia flight
QZ8501 upon its arrival at Makassar hospital on Sunday. (AFP)
Bodies of six more AirAsia crash
victims found
JAKARTA Indonesian divers on Monday found another six
victims of the AirAsia plane crash, an official said, taking
to 84 the number of bodies retrieved since the accident in
late December.
Two bodies were found inside the fuselage of the plane,
while another four were located near the wreckage on the bottom of the Java Sea. Another body was located on Sunday as
the national search and rescue agency resumed operations.
Divers had taken a two-day break after searching at sea for
weeks in poor weather conditions.
“Divers will continue to search for more bodies tomorrow,”
S B Supriyadi, a search and rescue agency official who has
been coordinating the operation said.
The Indonesian military, which has provided the bulk of
personnel and equipment for the operation, withdrew from the
search last week. (AFP)
Three French tourists deported over taking
naked photos at Angkorian temple
BANGKOK Three Frenchmen caught snapping naked photos
of each other at an ancient Cambodian temple were deported after being convicted of pornography and indecency
charges, local media reported on Monday.
The male tourists, all aged 19 or 20, were at Banteay
Kdei, near the temple complex that includes Angkor Wat in
the western province of Siem Reap, when they were apprehended on Thursday, the Cambodia Daily reported.
They were tried over the weekend and fined 1 million riel
(250 dollars) each, given six-month suspended sentences
and deported, the report said. (DPA)
09
Thai PM orders tight security
after mall blasts rattle Bangkok
Two people were hurt in the explosions which, according to police, were meant to create panic
REUTERS
BANGKOK
THAI Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha ordered security to be tightened in Bangkok on Monday after two
small bombs rattled a luxury
shopping mall and stoked
tension in a city under martial law since a coup in May.
Two people were slightly
hurt but the blasts caused
little damage on Sunday
evening. They were the first
to shake the capital since the
military seized power to end
months of sometimes deadly
street protests.
“I have ordered security
to be tightened because this
case involves the well-being of the people,” Prayuth
told reporters.
“This case shows that we
still need martial law ... there
are still bad people disrupting
the peace. We must find ways
to severely punish them.”
There was no claim of
responsibility.
CCTV footage showed two
possible suspects near where
the pipe bombs exploded in
the heart of one of Bangkok’s
busiest shopping districts but
the images were unclear and
they had not been identified,
police said.
Defence Minister Prawit Wongsuwan said such
violence “inflicts loss of
confidence” in the coun-
SCAN TO LAUNCH A VIDEO
Thai policemen patrol at the site of two small explosions on a walkway leading to a luxury shopping mall in Bangkok on Monday.
try. Tourism accounts
for about 10 percent of
Thailand’s economy.
Political tension has been
high since last month when
a national assembly handpicked by the junta banned
former
Prime
Minister
Yingluck Shinawatra from
politics for five years.
The decision angered supporters of Yingluck and her
self-exiled brother, Thaksin
Shinawatra, although there
has been little sign of a return to the protests that have
dogged Thailand for years.
The military has been tough
on dissent since the coup.
Thailand has weathered
turbulent politics for a decade as former telecommunications tycoon Thaksin and
his allies have vied for power
with the Bangkok-based royalist-military establishment
that sees the Shinawatras
as a threat and reviles their
populist policies.
The bombs were just a few
hundred metres away from
the site of a military crackdown on ‘red shirt’ supporters
of the Shinawatras in 2010.
Occasional crude bombs
similar to those used on
Sunday kept the capital on
edge for months after the
2010 crackdown.
(AFP)
The motive for the Sunday blasts appeared to be
to create panic, said junta
spokesman Winthai Suvaree. The bombs were behind
power transformers on a
walkway linking an overhead
rail line to the Siam Paragon
mall, police said.
Sporadic violence during
the six months of protests that
preceded the May 22 coup
claimed almost 30 lives.
Australians among next group to Philippines to buy 3
be executed in Indonesia: Official naval landing craft
from Australia
AFP
JAKARTA
TWO Australians on death
row in Bali will be among
the next group of prisoners
to be executed in Indonesia, an official said on Monday, as Jakarta takes an increasingly hard line against
drug traffickers.
Attorney General H M
Prasetyo did not say when or
where Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, the leaders
of the so-called ‘Bali Nine’
drug-smuggling gang, would
be put to death by firing
squad, only that “they will be
included” in the next batch.
Indonesia last month executed six drug traffickers including five foreigners, triggering a diplomatic storm as
Brazil and the Netherlands -whose citizens were among
those killed -- withdrew
their ambassadors.
Indonesian
President
Joko Widodo has been a vocal supporter of capital punishment, and had already rejected clemency appeals from
Sukumaran and Chan.
The pair were arrested in
Bali in 2005 and sentenced
to death the following year
for attempting to smuggle eight kgs (18 pounds) of
AFP
MANILA
(File photo) Convicted Australian drug smugglers Myuran Sukumaran
(left) and Andrew Chan (right), the leaders of the so-called ‘Bali Nine’
drug-smuggling gang, inside Kerobokan prison in Denpasar, Bali. (AFP)
heroin out of the Indonesian
holiday island.
Apart from confirming
the men would be in the next
group to be executed, the attorney general did not give
any further details to reporters, or say who else would be
included in the group.
In December Sukumaran
lost his appeal for presidential clemency, the last chance
by a death row convict to
avoid the firing squad.
Chan’s appeal was rejected last month, removing
the final hurdle for Jakarta
to push ahead with executing the pair. Authorities have
insisted they be put to death
together as they committed
their crime together.
On Friday they applied
for a fresh judicial review of
their cases but the attorney
general’s office has insisted
there are no more legal avenues open to them.
Widodo,
known
as
Jokowi, has shocked rights
groups with his support
for executions, as they had
hoped he would take a softer
line on capital punishment.
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has urged
Indonesia to show mercy to
the pair.
“We were surprised -and dismayed -- that Jokowi
decided to make the death
penalty a signature issue of
the early part of his administration,” Phelim Kine, deputy director Asia for Human
Rights Watch said.
THE Philippines will buy
three surplus naval landing craft from Australia
in addition to two vessels
Canberra has donated to
deal with future relief efforts following typhoons,
a defence official said
on Monday.
The three 44.5-metrelong (146-foot) craft, which
are designed to carry heavy
supplies, will be acquired
and refurbished at a cost of
around 726 million pesos ($
16.5 million), said Defence
Department public affairs
chief Arsenio Andolong.
“By market standards,
these are almost giveaway
prices,” he said.
“These vessels will be
used for humanitarian assistance and disaster relief,”
Andolong said.
The Australian embassy
confirmed that the Philippines had expressed its
intention to purchase the
three vessels.
Australian Defence Min-
ister Kevin Andrews previously announced that two
of the same ships would be
donated to the Philippines
to help with humanitarian
assistance and relief work,
and would arrive in the
Southeast Asian archipelago
in May.
Australia saw the need
for such vessels after a shortage during relief operations
following Super Typhoon
Haiyan, Andolong said.
Haiyan, the strongest storm ever recorded
on land, decimated whole
towns and villages when it
struck in November 2013.
The Australian military
were dispatched to help
victims of the storm, which
left more than 7,350 people
dead or missing.
“They know we are typhoon prone and they saw
the effects of (Haiyan) on
us,” Andolong said.
The
poorly-equipped
Philippine military is one
of the weakest in the region
and the government is looking to foreign allies to help
bolster its resources.
Indonesia court proceeds with US couple’s trial in murder case
AP
BALI
AN Indonesian court decided on Monday to go ahead
with the trials of an American couple charged with
murdering the woman’s
mother while vacationing
on the resort island of Bali
last year.
The three-judge panel
overruled defence arguments that the indictment submitted by prosecutors had inaccuracies
and should be annulled.
Hearings will resume on
Wednesday at Denpasar
District Court in the pro-
vincial capital of Bali.
“The indictment is fully
qualified both formally and
materially according to the
law,” said presiding judges
Made Suweda. “Therefore,
the defence objections
are rejected.”
The badly beaten body
of Sheila von Wiese-Mack,
62, was found in a suitcase
in the trunk of a taxi outside
an upscale hotel in August.
Heather Mack, 19, and
her
boyfriend
Tommy
Schaefer, 21, both from Chicago, are being tried separately with the same judges
and prosecutors. They are
charged with premeditated
murder and face a maximum penalty of death by
firing squad if found guilty.
Their lawyers argued
earlier that inaccuracies in
the indictment could lead
to multiple interpretations
of the suspects’ activities
and the crime scene, raising
questions of whether other
people had entered the victim’s room and killed her.
They also objected to
the citing of communications between the defendants on cellphones as
evidence of premeditated
murder, arguing that cellphone
communications
are prone to manipulation.
US citizens Tommy Schaefer (right) and his girlfriend Heather
Mack (left) with embassy representatives at a court in Denpasar
on the Indonesian holiday island of Bali, on Monday. (REUTERS)
Prosecutors have alleged
that the couple sent text
messages about their initial plan to disguise a murder as suicide on the beach.
Both defendants sat
quietly as the decision to
proceed with the trials was
read out by judges. Unlike
previous hearings, Schaefer
didn’t shed tears.
In their indictment,
prosecutors said the couple
plotted the murder because
von Wiese-Mack did not
endorse their relationship,
and that Mack once suggested that Schaefer hire
someone to kill her mother
for $50,000 before their
visit to Bali.
It said that an argument
over the hotel bill made
Mack’s mother angry and
she scolded Schaefer, using
a racial slur, and Schaefer
then battered her with a
fruit bowl handle.
Mack, who is seven
months’ pregnant, helped
stuff her mother’s body in
the suitcase by sitting on it
to enable Schaefer to close
it, the indictment said.
They then hired a taxi and
placed the suitcase in the
trunk and told the driver
they were going to check
out of the hotel and would
return, but never did.
10
11
2014 TOURISM PERFORMANCE SUMMARY
INTERNATIONAL VISITS TO QATAR*
WORD FROM THE CHAIRMAN
milions
Qatar grew by 8.2% from 2013, and
the longer run trend is even more
impressive with an average annual
growth of 13.8% over the past five
years.
Issa bin Mohammed Al Mohannadi
Chairman of QTA
It is my pleasure to announce
that the tourism industry in Qatar
continued its strong performance
in 2014. All key indicators
demonstrated improvement
and growth. Qatar is rapidly
becoming an important destination
for international travelers, with
continued major investments in the
tourism sector. Visitor arrivals to
Major Achievements
In 2014, the QTA worked tirelessly
toward implementing the Qatar
National Tourism Sector Strategy.
We opened satellite offices in Saudi
Arabia, Singapore, and Germany, in
addition to our existing two offices
in the UK and France, as one
means for expanding our footprint
and achieving our goal of 7 to 9
million visitors by 2030.
QTA also continued work with
the United Nations World Tourism
Organization (UNWTO) to upgrade
our policies and regulations to the
highest international standards
and to develop human capital for
the tourism sector, both here in
Qatar and across the region. QTA
generates 8.3% of non-extraction
GDP. These figures are encouraging,
prompting all of us to exert additional
effort and undertake further initiatives
to develop the tourism sector.
signed the Global Code of Ethics for
Tourism, intended to minimize the
negative impacts of tourism on the
environment and cultural heritage,
while maximizing the benefits for
residents of tourism destinations.
In addition, QTA organized a variety
of successful events and festivals,
including the Eid festivals and the
Summer Festival, which attracted
huge numbers from Qatar and
GCC.
Bright Prospects for the Industry
Prospects for the industry are bright
as developers see the tremendous
opportunity and are rapidly planning
and constructing hotels, resorts, and
other attractions to accommodate
the expected demand from
international markets. QTA is working
to support this growth through a
wide range of strategic marketing
activities and initiatives, the provision
of improved data and information to
industry stakeholders, and a more
robust and supportive regulatory
environment. Let us continue our
journey of success in 2015 by
working together to further develop
and expand Qatar’s tourism sector.
Establishment of Contribution to
the GDP
In line with the objectives set by
the Qatar National Vision 2030 and
the Qatar National Tourism Sector
Strategy 2030, tourism is becoming
a vital pillar in Qatar’s development
and a key driver of economic
growth in the country. New QTA
research implementing the Tourism
Satellite Account measurement
system estimates that tourism
3.0
2.5
2.0
Other Asia inc. Oceania
GCC
1.0
0.5
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
Hotels experienced strong performance in 2014. Occupancy rates increased across all classes of hotels last year. Average hotel occupancy reached 73%
in 2014 compared to 65% in 2013. The largest gains were experienced in the 5 star segment which realized a jump to 71% last year from 61% in 2013.
These strong gains in demand translated into revenue increases across the entire industry. RevPAR (revenue per available room) increased 8.3% in 2014 with
particularly strong performance in the 5 and 3 star segments which saw RevPAR gains of 9.5% and 15.5%, respectively.
HOTEL OCCUPANCY RATES
HOTEL REVPAR (REVENUE PER AVAILABLE ROOM)
2014 VS. 2013 % CHANGE
2013
2014
10%
10%
2%
13.6
QAR
billion
28
61,000
jobs were directly
supported by the
industry
billion
9%
6%
6%
6%
3%
0%
All Classes
QAR
8%
9%
0%
8.3%
4.0%
15%
40%
20%
The total contribution
to GDP was
15%
12%
50%
TOURISM SHARE OF NON-EXTRACTION GDP IN 2013*
The direct contribution
to GDP was
came from
Europe
…DRIVING STRONG HOTEL PERFORMANCE
30%
4%
15%
originated from
various parts
of Asia and
Oceania
*Source: Ministry of Interior, Tourism Economics
60%
Direct Tourism
industry share
of visitors
came from
other GCC
countries
2014
0
Tourism represents an important part of a diversified Qatar economy. Although still in its early stages of development, the tourism sector already directly
contributes QAR 13.6 billion to GDP, representing 4% of non-extraction economy. The total economic impact of tourism, including indirect impacts, tallies QAR
28 billion and comprises 8.3% of total non-extraction GDP. Tourism also contributes substantially to the Qatar job market with 61,000 jobs directly supported by
the industry.
6%
13.8%
40% 28%
Other Arab
70%
8%
growth
over 2013
Annual rate of
growth
Other Africa
1.5
TOURISM IS AN ECONOMIC ENGINE…
In
2013
million
visitors in
2014
Europe
80%
Total tourism
impact share
2.8 8.2%
Americas
5 star
4 star
3 star
1 & 2 star
2013
2014
65%
73%
average hotel
occupancy rate
average hotel
occupancy rate
All Classes
5 star
4 star
3 star
1 & 2 star
0%
*Source: Qatar Tourism Economics
…AS INTERNATIONAL TRAVELERS VISIT QATAR IN INCREASING NUMBERS
Qatar continues to emerge as a destination for international travelers. Our country received more than 2.8 million visitors in 2014, representing 8.2% growth over
2013. Since 2009, international visits to Qatar have increased 91% with an average annual rate of growth of 13.8%.
The Qatar visitor market is diverse. In 2014, 40% of visitors came from other GCC countries, while 28% originated from various parts of Asia and Oceania, and
15% came from Europe. Visits from all world regions have grown substantially over the past five years. Asian and GCC visitor markets have expanded 107% and
102%, respectively, since 2009. Visits from Europe have also surged 82% over the past five years.
Arrivals to Qatar by Region
…WITH MORE DEVELOPMENT ON THE WAY
Qatar was home to nearly 16,000 hotel and hotel apartment rooms on average throughout 2014. This includes 85 hotel properties and 22 hotel apartment entities.
Five star hotel properties lead the way with 7,748 rooms across 33 properties.
As Qatar anticipates continued increases in international visitation and prepares for major events, such as the World Cup in 2022, significant hotel capacity is under
development. Room supply is set to more than double in the coming years with 66 hotels and 14 hotel apartments planned for opening in the next five years. In
2015 alone, QTA anticipates the opening of 20 new properties, which would add nearly 4000 rooms to Qatar’s accommodation portfolio in the coming year. Aside
from properties currently under construction, there are proposals for nearly 50 additional properties, under varying degrees of development, for additional expansion
in future years.
HOTEL ROOM SUPPLY
% change,
2013–14
CAGR*,
2009–14
Cumulative
growth,
2009–14
16,000
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
1,481,688
1,699,886
2,057,157
2,346,358
2,611,451
2,826,257
8%
14%
91%
14,000
GCC
556,264
643,550
845,705
952,865
1,090,263
1,124,329
3%
15%
102%
12,000
Other Arab
207,537
226,351
271,344
287,265
293,034
319,418
9%
9%
54%
10,000
Other Africa
20,485
23,917
24,879
31,640
35,027
34,702
-1%
11%
69%
378,619
448,881
511,557
591,648
653,549
782,904
20%
16%
107%
Europe
231,310
265,069
301,843
365,840
409,140
421,171
3%
13%
82%
87,473
92,118
101,829
117,100
130,438
143,733
10%
10%
64%
TOTAL
Americas
NUMBER OF PROPERTIES
Existing rooms
Rooms under development
107
8,000
hotels and hotel
apartments
6,000
4,000
2,000
0
5 star
CAGR*: Compound Annual Growth Rate
Existing
4 star
3 star
1 & 2 star
Hotel
Not yet
classed apartments
Next 5 years
80
hotels and hotel
apartments
Expected
openings 2015
20
hotels and hotel
apartments
10
11
2014 TOURISM PERFORMANCE SUMMARY
INTERNATIONAL VISITS TO QATAR*
WORD FROM THE CHAIRMAN
milions
Qatar grew by 8.2% from 2013, and
the longer run trend is even more
impressive with an average annual
growth of 13.8% over the past five
years.
Issa bin Mohammed Al Mohannadi
Chairman of QTA
It is my pleasure to announce
that the tourism industry in Qatar
continued its strong performance
in 2014. All key indicators
demonstrated improvement
and growth. Qatar is rapidly
becoming an important destination
for international travelers, with
continued major investments in the
tourism sector. Visitor arrivals to
Major Achievements
In 2014, the QTA worked tirelessly
toward implementing the Qatar
National Tourism Sector Strategy.
We opened satellite offices in Saudi
Arabia, Singapore, and Germany, in
addition to our existing two offices
in the UK and France, as one
means for expanding our footprint
and achieving our goal of 7 to 9
million visitors by 2030.
QTA also continued work with
the United Nations World Tourism
Organization (UNWTO) to upgrade
our policies and regulations to the
highest international standards
and to develop human capital for
the tourism sector, both here in
Qatar and across the region. QTA
generates 8.3% of non-extraction
GDP. These figures are encouraging,
prompting all of us to exert additional
effort and undertake further initiatives
to develop the tourism sector.
signed the Global Code of Ethics for
Tourism, intended to minimize the
negative impacts of tourism on the
environment and cultural heritage,
while maximizing the benefits for
residents of tourism destinations.
In addition, QTA organized a variety
of successful events and festivals,
including the Eid festivals and the
Summer Festival, which attracted
huge numbers from Qatar and
GCC.
Bright Prospects for the Industry
Prospects for the industry are bright
as developers see the tremendous
opportunity and are rapidly planning
and constructing hotels, resorts, and
other attractions to accommodate
the expected demand from
international markets. QTA is working
to support this growth through a
wide range of strategic marketing
activities and initiatives, the provision
of improved data and information to
industry stakeholders, and a more
robust and supportive regulatory
environment. Let us continue our
journey of success in 2015 by
working together to further develop
and expand Qatar’s tourism sector.
Establishment of Contribution to
the GDP
In line with the objectives set by
the Qatar National Vision 2030 and
the Qatar National Tourism Sector
Strategy 2030, tourism is becoming
a vital pillar in Qatar’s development
and a key driver of economic
growth in the country. New QTA
research implementing the Tourism
Satellite Account measurement
system estimates that tourism
3.0
2.5
2.0
GCC
1.0
0.5
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
Hotels experienced strong performance in 2014. Occupancy rates increased across all classes of hotels last year. Average hotel occupancy reached 73%
in 2014 compared to 65% in 2013. The largest gains were experienced in the 5 star segment which realized a jump to 71% last year from 61% in 2013.
These strong gains in demand translated into revenue increases across the entire industry. RevPAR (revenue per available room) increased 8.3% in 2014 with
particularly strong performance in the 5 and 3 star segments which saw RevPAR gains of 9.5% and 15.5%, respectively.
HOTEL OCCUPANCY RATES
HOTEL REVPAR (REVENUE PER AVAILABLE ROOM)
2014 VS. 2013 % CHANGE
2013
2014
10%
10%
2%
13.6
QAR
billion
28
61,000
jobs were directly
supported by the
industry
billion
9%
6%
6%
6%
3%
0%
All Classes
QAR
8%
9%
0%
8.3%
4.0%
15%
40%
20%
The total contribution
to GDP was
15%
12%
50%
TOURISM SHARE OF NON-EXTRACTION GDP IN 2013*
The direct contribution
to GDP was
came from
Europe
…DRIVING STRONG HOTEL PERFORMANCE
30%
4%
15%
originated from
various parts
of Asia and
Oceania
*Source: Ministry of Interior, Tourism Economics
60%
Direct Tourism
industry share
of visitors
came from
other GCC
countries
2014
0
Tourism represents an important part of a diversified Qatar economy. Although still in its early stages of development, the tourism sector already directly
contributes QAR 13.6 billion to GDP, representing 4% of non-extraction economy. The total economic impact of tourism, including indirect impacts, tallies QAR
28 billion and comprises 8.3% of total non-extraction GDP. Tourism also contributes substantially to the Qatar job market with 61,000 jobs directly supported by
the industry.
6%
13.8%
40% 28%
Other Arab
70%
8%
growth
over 2013
Annual rate of
growth
Other Africa
1.5
TOURISM IS AN ECONOMIC ENGINE…
In
2013
million
visitors in
2014
Europe
80%
Total tourism
impact share
2.8 8.2%
Americas
5 star
4 star
3 star
1 & 2 star
2013
2014
65%
73%
average hotel
occupancy rate
average hotel
occupancy rate
All Classes
5 star
4 star
3 star
1 & 2 star
0%
*Source: Qatar Tourism Economics
…AS INTERNATIONAL TRAVELERS VISIT QATAR IN INCREASING NUMBERS
Qatar continues to emerge as a destination for international travelers. Our country received more than 2.8 million visitors in 2014, representing 8.2% growth over
2013. Since 2009, international visits to Qatar have increased 91% with an average annual rate of growth of 13.8%.
The Qatar visitor market is diverse. In 2014, 40% of visitors came from other GCC countries, while 28% originated from various parts of Asia and Oceania, and
15% came from Europe. Visits from all world regions have grown substantially over the past five years. Asian and GCC visitor markets have expanded 107% and
102%, respectively, since 2009. Visits from Europe have also surged 82% over the past five years.
Arrivals to Qatar by Region
…WITH MORE DEVELOPMENT ON THE WAY
Qatar was home to nearly 16,000 hotel and hotel apartment rooms on average throughout 2014. This includes 85 hotel properties and 22 hotel apartment entities.
Five star hotel properties lead the way with 7,748 rooms across 33 properties.
As Qatar anticipates continued increases in international visitation and prepares for major events, such as the World Cup in 2022, significant hotel capacity is under
development. Room supply is set to more than double in the coming years with 66 hotels and 14 hotel apartments planned for opening in the next five years. In
2015 alone, QTA anticipates the opening of 20 new properties, which would add nearly 4000 rooms to Qatar’s accommodation portfolio in the coming year. Aside
from properties currently under construction, there are proposals for nearly 50 additional properties, under varying degrees of development, for additional expansion
in future years.
HOTEL ROOM SUPPLY
% change,
2013–14
CAGR*,
2009–14
Cumulative
growth,
2009–14
16,000
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
1,481,688
1,699,886
2,057,157
2,346,358
2,611,451
2,826,257
8%
14%
91%
14,000
GCC
556,264
643,550
845,705
952,865
1,090,263
1,124,329
3%
15%
102%
12,000
Other Arab
207,537
226,351
271,344
287,265
293,034
319,418
9%
9%
54%
10,000
Other Africa
20,485
23,917
24,879
31,640
35,027
34,702
-1%
11%
69%
378,619
448,881
511,557
591,648
653,549
782,904
20%
16%
107%
Europe
231,310
265,069
301,843
365,840
409,140
421,171
3%
13%
82%
87,473
92,118
101,829
117,100
130,438
143,733
10%
10%
64%
TOTAL
Americas
NUMBER OF PROPERTIES
Existing rooms
Rooms under development
107
8,000
hotels and hotel
apartments
6,000
4,000
2,000
0
5 star
CAGR*: Compound Annual Growth Rate
Existing
4 star
3 star
1 & 2 star
Hotel
Not yet
classed apartments
Next 5 years
80
hotels and hotel
apartments
Expected
openings 2015
20
hotels and hotel
apartments
12
India
Modi
invites
Xi meets Sushma, confident Chinese to India
about growth of bilateral ties for boosting ties
IANS
IANS
BEIJING
NEW DELHI
CHINESE President Xi Jinping on Monday met India’s
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and expressed
confidence in the growth of
bilateral relations during the
year.
Xi met Sushma in the
Great Hall of the People,
where the two sides agreed
to focus on a positive bilateral agenda for the year. Xi
observed that bilateral ties
had achieved a turnaround
and entered a “new phase” of
partnership after his visit to
India in September last year.
“Since my visit to India,
the relations between our
two countries have entered a
new phase. The positive side
of China-India relations has
been growing,” Xi said.
He also said major steps
were being taken to implement the agreements inked
during his India visit. “I have
full confidence on the future
of China and India relations.
I believe the good process will
be achieved in the growth of
bilateral relations.”
Xi also recalled his visit
to Ahmedabad where he
was hosted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the
Sabarmati riverfront.
SCAN TO LAUNCH A VIDEO
Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj (left) and Chinese President Xi Jinping hold a meeting at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on
Monday. (AFP)
“I still cherish the fresh
memories in my mind about
the gracious hospitality extended to me by the government and people and particularly I cherish the fond
memories of my trip to Prime
Minister Modi’s hometown
News
in brief
SC warns ex-Kerala CM Achuthanandan
over using courts for politics
NEW Delhi The Supreme
Court on Monday frowned at
former Kerala chief minister
V S Achuthanandan for using
judicial forums to drag on
his fight against his political
rivals. The court warned of
imposing exemplary costs if
it found that the matter being
raised before it was devoid
Achuthanandan
of merits and he was using
judicial forums for political agenda. “Have you made any
allegation of corruption against the present chief minister
(Oommen Chandy of Kerala)? You are not taking any responsibility. Are you fishing in troubled water?” said the apex
court bench of Justice T S Thakur and Justice Adarsh Kumar
Goel as Achuthanandan’s counsel sought the adjournment
of the hearing. Asking Achuthanandan’s counsel if his client
was ready to file an affidavit alleging corruption against
Chandy, the court said it would impose heavy costs if it
found him to be using judicial forums for political agenda.
PDP’s Baig offers
to resign from
Lok Sabha
HC issues notice
to Kejriwal on
Walia’s plea
JAMMU Senior PDP leader
Muzaffar Hussain Baig on
Monday offered to resign
from the Lok Sabha in
the wake of attack over
his statement on rehabilitation of West Pakistan
refugees in Jammu and
Kashmir and for favouring
party’s alliance with BJP.
He said he had written to PDP patron Mufti
Mohammad Sayeed, saying if his intentions are
“suspected”, his letter of
resignation from Parliament should be forwarded
to Speaker Sumitra
Mahajan.
“There has been a
whisper campaign that I
am pushing for an alliance
between BJP and PDP because I would like to get
some personal benefit out
of it. I have made it clear
to both the BJP emissary
as well as PDP leadership that I express my
views without any desire
or agenda to secure any
political position,” said
the former Deputy Chief
Minister in a four-page
statement. (PTI)
NEW Delhi The Delhi High
Court on Monday issued
notice to AAP leader Arvind
Kejriwal on a plea filed
by Congress leader Kiran
Walia, questioning the legality of his candidature from
the New Delhi constituency
as he is a resident of Uttar
Pradesh. Justice Vibhu
Bakhru posted the matter
for February 4 and sought
response from Kejriwal, the
Election Commission and
Delhi’s Chief Electoral Officer. Walia, who is contesting
against Kejriwal from New
Delhi, moved the high court
saying the Aam Aadmi Party
chief gave a wrong residential address because
he wished to become an
elector from Delhi. Seeking
cancellation of Kejriwal’s
candidature, Walia said he
cannot contest from New
Delhi as he is a resident of
Uttar Pradesh. She said the
former Delhi chief minister
has committed fraud by
submitting a false affidavit
to the Election Commission
that he is a permanent
resident of B K Dutt Colony.
(IANS)
in Gujarat state,” he said.
Xi mentioned in particular the special gesture
shown by Modi in personally
accompanying him to the
Sabarmati ashram and also
walking together with him
along the riverfront.
He also conveyed his regards and greetings to President Pranab Mukherjee and
Modi. Swaraj Swaraj conveyed Modi’s wishes on the
occasion of the upcoming
Lunar Year of the Sheep, the
Chinese New Year.
VHP’s Prachi stokes
fresh controversy
with communal rants
PTI
BADAUN (UP)
RIGHT-WING outfit Vishwa
Hindu Parishad’ leader Sadhvi Prachi has stoked fresh
controversy by making inflammatory remarks on the
issue of ‘love jihad’ and defending her statement that
Hindu women should have
four children.
“They are trapping our
daughters through ‘love jihad’. These people who give
birth to 35-40 ... are spreading love jihad ... They are trying to make Hindustan into
Darul Islam. When I made
the remarks, it was as if the
country was hit by a quake.
The media said you have
sparked an uproar with your
remarks on four children. I
said I have only advocated
four children for Hindus not
40 ... And it is important because the country needs it,”
the saffron clad leader said
at a function organised by
VHP which “felicitated” Hindus who have more than four
children.
Prachi had contested the
2012 Assembly elections on
BJP ticket from Purkazi constituency in Uttar Pradesh
state.
She was among persons
accused of inciting riots
through their provocative
speeches in Muzaffarnagar
in 2013 and was later granted bail.
The latest hate speech
came despite Indian Prime
Minister Narendra Modi’s
warning to party leaders to
restrain from making controversial comments which
can overshadow his government’s agenda of development and economic reforms.
The BJP was quick to distance itself from Prachi’s remarks, saying the party does
not agree with such views
and is not interested in discussing any such issue.
“The BJP does not agree
with any such comment. We
do not think that the comments are correct. BJP does
not want to discuss any issue
other than good governance
and even the people are not
ready to accept any such discussion. Under such circumstances, there is no significance of such remarks,” said
chief of BJP’s Uttar Pradesh
unit Laxmikant Bajpai.
He asserted that the
leader was not speaking at a
party platform.
Prachi felicitated 20 persons, who had more than
four children at the ‘Virat
Hindu Sammelan’ organised
by VHP on Sunday.
The external affairs minister’s Beijing visit comes
days after the visit of US
President Barack Obama to
India that saw both sides announce a joint strategic vision for Asia-Pacific and the
Indian Ocean.
PRIME Minister Narendra
Modi said on Monday that
India and China share ageold ties and it is necessary for
both countries to boost people-to-people links through
tourism in order to know
each other better.
In a video message on
the occasion of launch of
the “Visit India Year 2015”
in China, the prime minister
said that in 2016, India will
celebrate ‘Visit China Year’.
Modi’s video message
comes as External Affairs
Minister Sushma Swaraj is
in Beijing for bilateral talks
to lay the groundwork for
Modi’s visit in May.
Inviting the Chinese to retrace the steps of ancient Chinese travellers Hiuen Tsang
and Fa Shien who came to
India hundreds of years ago,
he asked the Chinese to visit
Buddhist religious sites like
Bodhgaya, Sarnath, Nalanda
and Kushinagar and turn
the pages of history. Modi
referred to his own village
of Vadnagar which Hiuen
Tsang had visited. He said
that he was happy to learn
that President Xi Jinping’s
hometown is Xian, where the
Buddhist monk Hiuen Tsang
spent his last years after his
return from India.
He said this was not just
a historical fact but a sign of
the close ties between both
nations.
In a video message
on the occasion of
launch of the “Visit
India Year 2015” in
China, Modi said that
in 2016, India will
celebrate ‘Visit China
Year’.
Referring to Xi’s visit to
Ahmedabad last September
and also his own previous
visits to China when he was
chief minister of Gujarat,
Modi said both he and Xi had
decided during the September meeting that both countries will observe ‘Visit India
Year 2015’ in China and the
following year ‘Visit China
Year’ in India.
Sushma Swaraj, addressing the India-China media
forum in Beijing on Sunday,
said: “Tourism is an effective
vehicle to promote peopleto-people understanding and
the two countries agreed that
we need to make stronger efforts in that regard.”
AAP, BJP take ‘insulting’
election ad issue to EC
IANS
NEW DELHI
THE row over Arvind Kejriwal being shown of “upadravi gotra” - or destructive subcaste - has led the
AAP and the BJP locking
horns, with both parties on
Monday lodging complaints
against each other with the
Election Commission.
Aam Aadmi Party chief
Kejriwal said he, while following social activist Anna
Hazare’s ideals that one
must have the capacity to
tolerate insult, ignored
many insulting acts of the
Bharatiya Janata Party but
they “crossed limits” and his
party will now approach the
poll panel.
“What has happened to
the BJP, first they targeted
my children, but I tolerated
it. Annaji has said we must
have capacity to tolerate insult,” Kejriwal tweeted.
“In social life, I never
complained against personal insult. But this advertisement crosses the limit. They
are calling the whole Agrawal caste destructive. They
say I belong to a destructive
subcaste,” he said.
AAP leader Deepak Bajpai said the party has filed a
complaint with the poll panel against the BJP. “Yes, we
AAP convenor Arvind Kejriwal addresses his supporters at an
election campaign meeting in old Rajinder Nagar, New Delhi, on
Monday. (PTI)
have lodged a complaint,”
he said.
The BJP denied having
made any caste reference in
an election advertisement
that mocked Kejriwal, and
accused the AAP of giving it
a religious and casteist connotation.
In its complaint to the
Election Commission, the
BJP said the AAP was violating the model code of
conduct by “unnecessarily stretching and imputing meanings to the words
used” by the BJP.
“He (Kejriwal) tried to
tarnish the image of the BJP
so that the AAP can benefit.
The BJP does not believe in
caste politics or divide voters in caste lines.
“The word ‘gotra’ is used
as a metaphor and the ‘upadravi gotra’ has been used
for saying he belongs to
an anarchist clan which he
himself claims to be,” the
BJP said in its complaint.
“Kindly take appropriate
action against AAP and its
national convenor (Kejriwal),” the complaint added.
BJP leader and union
Power Minister Piyush Goyal told media persons that it
was “extremely sad” that an
expression used to represent
that political party’s ideology, has been sought to be
twisted on religious ground.
Church vandalised in South Delhi; Home Ministry seeks report
PTI
NEW DELHI
IN the fifth such incident
since November, a church
was vandalised by some unidentified persons on Monday
in South Delhi’s Vasant Kunj
area, sparking outrage among
the Christian community
which alleged that it is part of
a “hate campaign”.
The incident at St Alphonsa’s church came just five
days ahead of the Delhi assembly elections on Saturday.
Police said the unidentified persons entered the
church premises at around
1 am by breaking open its
main gate and damaged a
number of sacred items. A
case of theft has been registered, police said.
“We are investigating the
incident and scanning the
footage of CCTV installed
near the church to identify
the accused. We are probing
all the angles in the case,”
said a senior police official.
The church’s priest Father
Vincent Salvatore alleged that
it was a “clear case of desecration” of the church.
“It has been happening
for the last many months. It
happened in St Sebastian’s
Church in Dilshad Garden,
then in Vikaspuri and in Jasola. This is the fifth church,” he
said. The Union Home Minis-
Police carry out investigation at St Alphonsa’s church that was
vandalised at Vasant Kunj in New Delhi on Monday. (PTI)
try sought a report from the
Delhi Police on the incident.
In a communication, the
Home Ministry also told the
Delhi Police to send a report
as early as possible informing
it what steps are being taken
to ensure safety of religious
places across the city.
The Delhi Police has
also been asked to inform
how many arrests have been
made in attacks on religious
places in the last six months,
sources said. Strongly condemning the incident Delhi
Archbishop Anil Couto said
the “attack” reflected government’s failure to give protection to minorities and their
religious structures. “Another
act of vandalism and targeted
attack on our churches in
Delhi is nothing but a reflection of hate campaign and
false propaganda by groups
whose sole aim is to break the
religious harmony and social
peace of this great nation. The
attack within a week after celebration of Republic Day reflects a lot on the government
and its failure to give protection to minorities and their
religious structures,” he said.
UK / Europe
13
Ukraine separatists vow to
mobilise 100,000 fighters
UK doctor’s campaign
for ‘human touch’
wins huge support
Rebels battle to
encircle transport
hub town in
the east
A TERMINALLY-ILL British
doctor’s campaign encouraging healthcare workers to introduce themselves to their
patients and make a human
connection has gained hundreds of thousands of followers.
Fed up with being referred to as “Bed 7” while in
hospital receiving treatment
for cancer, Kate Granger
said she had started a campaign with the Twitter hashtag #hellomynameis.
“I really hope my legacy
will be putting compassionate practice right at the heart
of healthcare delivery every
single day,” the 31-year-old
told the BBC’s Today programme on Monday.
“It is about making a human connection, beginning
a therapeutic relationship
and building trust,” said
Granger, who is due to start
her latest round of chemotherapy for sarcoma, a rare
type of cancer which grows
in the body’s connective tissue.
“There is evidence out
there that it actually improves patient outcomes,”
she added.
British Prime Minister David Cameron offered
his support with a tweet on
AFP
DONETSK
PRO-RUSSIAN separatists
vowed on Monday to mobilise up to 100,000 fighters
for their latest east Ukraine
offensive as the United States
mulled sending weapons to
Kiev’s outgunned forces after
the latest truce bid collapsed.
The pledge to dramatically escalate a nine-month
conflict that has already left
at least 5,100 people dead
came as the rebels battled
to encircle the beleaguered
transport hub of Debaltseve.
“There will be general
mobilisation in the (separatist) Donetsk People’s
Republic in 10 days’ time,
we plan on mobilising up to
100,000 men,” rebel leader
Alexander
Zakharchenko
told the separatist news
agency DAN.
Ukrainian army spokesman Andriy Lysenko said
the rebel call-up meant they
“don’t have the human re-
A guard attempts to arrest a fighter of the Ayda Ukrainian volunteer battalion, who entered the
compound of the Ukrainian Defence Ministry in Kiev on Monday. (AFP)
sources and haven’t achieved
their objectives, that is taking the strategic town” of Debaltseve.
Kiev authorities announced at the end of January that they also were calling up 50,000 troops in the
face of the latest rebel offensive.
Fighting in Ukraine’s
eastern industrial heartland
Ex-IMF chief
Strauss-Kahn
goes on trial
for ‘pimping’
AFP
LILLE, FRANCE
EX-IMF chief Dominique
Strauss-Kahn arrived in
court on Monday to stand
trial for “pimping” as part
of a prostitution ring, four
years after a sex scandal
cost him his job and a shot
at the French presidency.
The disgraced 65-yearold economist finds himself
back in the dock -- this time
in the northern French city
of Lille -- accused of being
at the centre of a vice ring
which hired prostitutes for
sex parties in Brussels, Paris and Washington.
The
silver-haired
Strauss-Kahn, dressed in
a dark suit, slipped past
a throng of journalists to
arrive in the empty woodpanelled courtroom, where
he paced up and down with
his hands in his pockets in
front of the imposing stone
bench.
Strauss-Kahn -- once
one of the most powerful
men in the world -- will
take the stand alongside
a colourful cast of characters including luxury hotel
managers, police, freemasons and a brothel owner
nicknamed “Dodo the
Pimp.”
Nearly 300 journalists
are accredited to cover the
three-week trial, the first
day of which will be dominated by a host of procedural applications.
Lurid details of group
sex and high-end prostitution are likely to emerge
in the trial for “aggravated
pimping in an organised
group”, a charge punishable by up to 10 years in
prison and a fine of up to
1.5 million euros ($1.7 million).
The trial will be the latest in a series of legal woes
offering a peek behind the
bedroom door of a man
once tipped as a potential challenger to former
French president Nicolas
Sarkozy.
The ex-head of the
International
Monetary
Fund, known in France as
DSK, saw his career implode in 2011 when he was
paraded handcuffed in
front of the world’s cameras after a New York hotel
maid accused him of sexual
assault.
Those criminal charges
were dropped and the case
settled in a civil suit, but
six months later StraussKahn’s name cropped up
in an investigation into a
prostitution ring in northern France and Belgium.
Britain’s Prime Minister David
Cameron
Monday, praising Granger
for leading a campaign for
“compassionate care”.
Health Secretary Jeremy
Hunt has called the doctor’s efforts “inspiring” and
around 90 National Health
Service organisations, representing some 400,000
medical sector workers, have
endorsed it.
Granger was diagnosed
with cancer during a holiday
in the United States in 2011
and in her latest blog she
said she feared that cancer
would get the better of her
this year.
has intensified in recent
days, with five Ukrainian
soldiers and seven civilians
killed in the last 24 hours.
The conflict claimed
around 50 lives over the
weekend, as the latest attempt at truce talks collapsed
in acrimony in Minsk on Saturday.
Kiev military spokesman
Lysenko said Debaltseve
town centre had been shelled
and that government reinforcements had launched a
counter-attack to stop rebels
encircling the town.
Over the past three days
Ukrainian forces had evacuated 1,872 people from three
towns worst hit by fighting,
including Debaltseve.
In the self-proclaimed
rebel capital Donetsk, mili-
EU Parliament
buildings
evacuated after
bomb scare
Greece on diplomatic offensive
to win over Europe on debt
DPA
BRUSSELS
SEVERAL European Parliament buildings in Brussels
were evacuated on Monday
after a suspicious vehicle was
found parked nearby, several
weeks after Belgian authorities foiled a terrorist plot.
The country has been on
high alert since mid-January, when police carried out
a series of raids, acting on information that a terrorist cell
was on the verge of launching an attack. Two suspects
were killed in one raid, in
eastern Belgium.
The buildings evacuated
on Monday include administrative offices and the legislature’s visitor centre, the Parliamentarium, spokeswoman
Marjory van den Broeke told
dpa. The main building was
unaffected.
On first inspection, the
car in question appeared not
to contain explosives, another spokeswoman told Belga
news agency. Police and
military explosives experts
were on site. Earlier on Monday, a suspicious vehicle was
spotted near the US embassy
in Brussels, Belga reported.
The car was later found to
have no dangerous items,
and the alarm was lifted half
an hour later.
New Greek leaders get a boost from Obama warning to creditors
AFP
LONDON
GREECE’S new leaders on
Monday embarked on a diplomatic campaign to win
backing for a renegotiation
of a 240 billion euro ($270
billion) bailout, winning
support from US President
Barack Obama but a stark
warning from Britain.
On a European charm
offensive in the face of German opposition, Finance
Minister Yanis Varoufakis
met his British counterpart
George Osborne in London,
while Prime Minister Alexis
Tsipras held talks in Cyprus.
Greek stocks, which
have been volatile since the
January 25 election won by
Tsipras’s left-wing Syriza
party, jumped more than five
percent after Obama warned
that imposing austerity on
Greece could backfire on its
creditors.
“You cannot keep on
squeezing countries that are
in the midst of depression,”
Obama told CNN.
“At some point, there has
to be a growth strategy in order for them to pay off their
debts to eliminate some of
their deficits.”
Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis (left) meets with Britain’s
Finance Minister George Osborne in London on Monday. (AFP)
Obama said the Greek
economy was in “dire need”
of reform but warned that
drastic changes were tough
to implement in a struggling
economy.
A source travelling with
finance minister Varoufakis
said the “whole government
was very happy” to hear
Obama’s comments in the
face of hardening rhetoric
from austerity proponents.
In Cyprus on his first
foreign trip since coming to
power, Tsipras said he had
not expected so much international support for his
campaign and stressed that
Greece wanted a wider debate about debt for “all the
peoples of Europe”.
“Europe is in crisis, not
just Greece and Cyprus,” he
said.
He also doubted the legality of the current system
of supervision of indebted
nations by the so-called
“troika” of creditors, the International Monetary Fund,
European Union and Euro-
pean Central Bank (ECB).
Tsipras will travel to debtladen Italy on Tuesday and
on to Brussels on Wednesday for talks with European
Commission president JeanClaude Juncker.
In London, British minster Osborne warned that the
stand-off between Greece
and the eurozone was “the
greatest risk to the global
economy” but said that he
had enjoyed a “constructive
discussion” with Varoufakis.
In comments shown on
British television, he said all
sides should “act responsibly”.
The Greek government
source said Varoufakis was
“delighted” following the
talks, adding: “having a key
ally like Britain in the EU is
a major asset”.
The Greek minister was
later to meet with around
100 figures from London’s
financial sector, including investors and bankers exposed
to Greek debt.
“We are very open to
investment,” stressed the
source, who insisted that
Greek debt would be serviced “on terms that will have
no detrimental effect on private bondholders”.
Dutch team at MH17 site to collect more remains
AFP
THE HAGUE
Members of the public walk through a metal detector as they
arrive at the Lille courthouse in France on Monday. (AFP)
tary aged males met the
separatist leader’s call-up
announcement with scepticism.
“I wouldn’t give it too
much credence,” said Alexander, 28.
“Either it’s wrong or
they’re saying it for Ukrainian media,” said the pro-separatist transport manager.
“But if it’s true, the aim is
to kill the entire population
of Donetsk,” he said, adding
that Zakharchenko was “losing the support of those who
supported him”.
Web-designer Vitaly, 24,
said the call-up would lead
nowhere.
“Every day, I feel a little
bit more a hostage” of the
separatist authorities, he
said.
The surge in fighting
comes as Washington and
NATO’s military commander
appear to be moving towards
supplying arms to Ukrainian
forces, The New York Times
reported Sunday.
President
Barack
Obama’s administration was
reviewing whether to provide
“lethal assistance”, in addition to non-lethal aid such
as body armour and medical
equipment which it already
supplies to Kiev, it said.
AFP
LONDON
A DUTCH team is at the
MH17 crash site in war-torn
Ukraine to collect more remains of the 298 people
killed when the Malaysia Airlines jetliner crashed in July,
officials said on Monday.
“At the moment there’s
a small team at the crash
site,” Dutch defence ministry
spokeswoman Marloes Visser told AFP.
“They’re there to pick up
body parts which have been
collected by local authorities
at a particular spot,” Visser
said.
Most of those on board
the Boeing 777 when it was
shot down over eastern
Ukraine on July 17 were
Dutch, and just three of the
dead have yet to be identified
by forensics experts in the
Netherlands.
Experts hoped the latest remains could help with
the identification of the final
three, Dutch news reports
said.
Winter conditions meant
the team will not search the
area and the remains are to
be flown back to the Netherlands on Saturday, Visser
said.
Their job has also been
Members of a Dutch expert team watch as parts of the wreckage
of the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 are removed and loaded onto
a truck in Ukraine recently. (AFP)
complicated by heavy fighting in the nearby key Ukranian town of Debaltseve, in
the escalating conflict that
has left at least 5,100 people
dead since April.
Visser said the Dutch
team “is not armed as they
aren’t part of the conflict”.
Kiev and the West have
claimed that the airliner was
shot down in the conflicttorn area by separatist fighters using a BUK surfaceto-air missile supplied by
Russia. Moscow denies the
charges, pointing the finger
at Kiev.
Dutch experts last year
repatriated parts of the plane
to be reconstructed as part of
a probe into what caused the
crash. The Netherlands has
also kept a small permanent
team in Kharkiv over the last
few months.
14
World
Blast after presidential
campaign rally in Nigeria
AFP
KANO
A
SUSPECTED
suicide
bombing rocked a presidential campaign rally in northeast Nigeria on Monday, as
the country braced for fresh
Boko Haram attacks before
polling in just under two
weeks time.
President
Goodluck
Jonathan, who had been addressing supporters of his
ruling Peoples Democratic
Party (PDP) in Gombe city,
had just left the venue when
the blast happened in a car
park outside.
Rescue workers and
health officials said the
bodies of two women were
brought to the Gombe State
Specialist Hospital with 18
people who were injured.
“We have evacuated two
bodies of females we believe
were suicide bombers behind the blast,” said the rescue official, who asked to remain anonymous because he
was not authorised to speak
to media.
The blast, confirmed by
eyewitnesses including a local reporter following the
presidential convoy, came a
day after two explosions in
Gombe city blamed on Boko
Haram militants.
A man throws a container of water towards a burning car after a bomb explosion barely a few minutes after Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan left Gombe stadium on Monday. (REUTERS)
Sunday’s attacks left at
least five people dead in a
weekend of deadly violence
that also saw the Islamists attack the key city of Maiduguri
for the second time in a week.
Nigerian troops, aided by
civilian vigilantes, repelled
the attack while Chad and
Cameroon bombed the Boko
Haram-held town of Gamboru, on the eastern fringe of
Borno State.
Security analysts believe
Maiduguri, the Borno state
capital, will likely be hit again
Australia PM
drops parental
leave plan, rules
out resignation
REUTERS
SYDNEY
AUSTRALIAN
Prime
Minister Tony Abbott on
Monday dropped a signature plan for paid parental
leave and promised a more
consultative approach on
economic and security
problems, seeking to stave
off mounting criticism of
his leadership.
Abbott, 16 months in
the top job, has faced a series of challenges including
an economy battered by a
plunge in commodity prices
as well as broken election
promises, policy back flips
and perceived gaffes.
Pressure on him soared
after last week’s decision to
award a top honour to Britain’s Prince Philip, Queen
Elizabeth’s husband.
More questions about
his leadership were raised
after a disastrous state
election on the weekend,
when the Queensland Liberal-National Party, closely
aligned with Abbott’s Liberal-National coalition, surrendered the largest political majority in Australia’s
history after just one term
in office.
In a speech dubbed by
some commentators as the
most important of his political career, Abbott outlined
his priorities including job
creation, helping families
and small business, building roads and strengthening national security.
He said he had not considered stepping down.
“This will be a test of
character,” Abbott said
in response to a question
about his leadership at Canberra’s National Press Club.
“Politicians pass the test
when they do what is best
for the long-term, not when
they give in to short-term
fear and make a difficult
situation worse.”
Abbott’s tough stance
on asylum seekers, his
pressure on Russia over
the downing of a Malaysian Airlines jet in Ukraine
and success on trade deals
have won approval but
been over-shadowed by
anger over proposed cuts
to health, education and
other services.
Abbott said he believed
he had the full support of
his deputy party leader,
Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, who along with
former Liberal Party leader Malcolm Turnbull, has
been touted as a potential
replacement.
In an effort to shore up
support from both his party
and the public, Abbott announced he was scrapping
his A$5.5 billion ($4.3 bil-
“Politicians pass the
test when they do
what is best for the
long-term, not when
they give in to shortterm fear and make
a difficult situation
worse.”
lion) paid parental-leave
scheme that had been criticised for being too expensive and made without consultation with colleagues.
He said he took responsibility for his decisions.
“I accept that the paid
parental leave scheme was a
captain’s call,” Abbott said.
“I accept that the restoration of Knighthoods was a
captain’s call. They are the
two captain’s calls which I
have made but I have listened, I have learned and I
have acted.”
Haydon Manning, associate professor at Flinders
University’s school of social
and policy studies, said Abbott’s cabinet colleagues
were unlikely to seek to replace him for now.
before polling day, given its
symbolism for the group and
because it would undermine
the February 14 vote.
The election is expected
to be the closest since Nigeria returned to civilian rule in
1999, with the prospect of
the PDP being dumped out
of power for the first time in
16 years.
Nnamdi Obasi, Nigeria
researcher at the International Crisis Group, said the
upsurge in violence was “predictable” and that another
strike on Maiduguri was on
the cards.
Boko Haram is in control
of most of Borno and has effectively surrounded Maiduguri, which is seen as one of
the few places left in the state
where voting could feasibly
still take place.
Turnout could be affected
if large numbers of people,
may of them displaced by six
years of violence, desert the
city, which with other areas
in the northeast is a main opposition stronghold.
Warring South Sudan sides
sign another ceasefire deal
REUTERS
ADDIS ABABA/JUBA
SOUTH Sudanese President Salva Kiir and rebel
commander Riek Machar
signed another ceasefire
agreement on Monday,
edging them closer to a final deal to end a 15-month
conflict that has ravaged
the world’s newest country,
mediators said.
Information
Minister
Michael Makuei, a member
of Kiir’s negotiating team,
said the men had agreed in
principle to the creation of a
second vice presidenial post
as part of a larger powersharing deal, and hoped to
reach a final accord by the
end of March.
But he said there was
still disagreement on whether the two vice presidents
would have equal status.
More than 10,000 people
have been killed, more than
1.5 million people have been
driven from their homes and
many in the oil-producing
nation of about 11 million
people are struggling to find
enough to eat.
The conflict erupted in
December 2013, two and a
half years after independence. As part of the deal,
the warring sides have
agreed to abide by a ceasefire deal signed in January
2014 that has been frequently violated.
Abe defends handling
of IS hostage crisis
AP
TOKYO
JAPANESE Prime Minister
Shinzo Abe defended his policy toward terrorism, as the
flag at his official residence
flew at half-staff on Monday
in a mark of mourning for
two hostages killed by the Islamic State group.
During a long day of parliamentary debate, Abe parried numerous questions
about his handling of the
hostage crisis, which came to
a grisly end with news early
Sunday that journalist Kenji
Goto had been beheaded by
the extremists.
Abe said his announcement of $200 million in
non-military aid for the fight
against the Islamic State
group, made during a visit to
the Middle East just days before the militants demanded a
$200 million ransom for the
two hostages, was meant to
convey Japan’s strong commitment to battling terrorism
and fostering peace and stability in the region.
Some have questioned
that decision, saying Abe
should have been more cautious and not mentioned the
Islamic State group by name.
Responding to a question
by an opposition lawmak-
Japanese PM Shinzo Abe
er, Abe confirmed that he
was aware of the hostage
situation when he made
the announcement.
Abe said he wished to publicise Japan’s contribution to
the fight against extremism,
and rejected the idea of a more
cautious approach.
“As international society
seeks to restore peace and stability in the Middle East ... I
thought it would be the most
appropriate destination to visit, and that I should broadcast
my message to the world from
there,” Abe said. “I thought
announcing Japan’s contribution to fulfill its responsibility
would contribute to the international community’s effort
to fight against terrorism and
prevent its expansion.”
Abe said he did not see
an increased terrorist risk
following threats in a purported Islamic State group
video that vowed to target
Japanese and make the knife
Goto’s killer was wielding
Japan’s “nightmare.”
“The terrorists are criminals,” Abe said. “We are determined to pursue them and
hold them accountable.”
Still, Japan has ordered
heightened security precautions for airports and other
public transport and at Japanese facilities overseas, such
as embassies and schools.
The government also has
called on journalists and others in areas near the conflict
to withdraw, given the risk
of further kidnappings and
other threats.
Goto’s
wife,
Rinko
Jogo, said in a statement
released Monday that she
was devastated but proud
of her husband.
Jogo requested privacy for
her family as they deal with
their loss, and thanked those
who had supported them.
“I remain extremely proud
of my husband, who reported
the plight of people in conflict
areas like Iraq, Somalia and
Syria,” she said in the statement, issued through the
British-based journalist group
Rory Peck Trust.
South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir (left) and rebel commander
Riek Machar after signing a ceasefire agreement during the Inter
Governmental Authority on Development Summit on South Sudan
in Addis Ababa on Sunday. (REUTERS)
According to the latest
roadmap, talks will resume
on February 19 and be completed by March 5, with the
goal of a transitional government taking effect by
April, Makuei said.
The two sides need a
transitional government in
place by July, when Kiir’s
presidential term runs out.
The rebels, however,
have said many more details
need to be ironed out before
the deal can be labelled a
‘power-sharing’ agreement.
After signing the latest
deal, Machar said the two
sides would hold more discussions on the functions of
the provisional government.
Few other details were
revealed after frantic latenight talks. Regional diplo-
mats had warned the warring sides that failure to
come up with a new deal
could see sanctions imposed
on them.
The African Union (AU)
launched an inquiry into
rights violations and other
issues related to conflict a
year ago, but the final report has been put aside “to
advance the peace process,”
said Olusegun Obasanjo, the
former Nigerian president
who led the inquiry.
Rights groups have said
both factions have been responsible for ethnic killings
and other abuses, driving
the nation to the brink of
famine. The fighting has
largely pitted Kiir’s Dinka
ethnic group against Machar’s Nuer group.
China building second
aircraft carrier: Reports
AFP
BEIJING
A FIRM has won a contract
to supply cabling for a second Chinese aircraft carrier,
comments by local authorities suggested in the latest
sign that Beijing is boosting
its maritime power, although
news of the development was
swiftly deleted online.
Authorities in Changzhou
said on a verified social media
account that “in 2015, our city
will focus on promoting some
major programmes”, including Jiangsu Shangshang
Cable Group “winning the
contract for China’s second
aircraft carrier”.
The Changzhou Evening
News carried a similar report
at the weekend, although
both the newspaper article
and the post on Sina Weibo,
a Twitter-like microblogging
service, were deleted shortly
after publication.
Neither report gave details
of the ship.
China’s first aircraft carrier
was purchased from Ukraine
through an intermediary and
was commissioned in 2012,
while the country’s defence
spending has been increasing
sharply in recent years.
The deputy chief of staff
of China’s navy, Song Xue,
said in April 2013 that the
country “will have more than
one aircraft carrier” but left
the timing open.
In a subsequent leak,
Wang Min -- the Communist Party secretary of
Liaoning province, where
China’s first aircraft carrier
is based -- said the country
was already working on a
second ship to be completed around 2020.
Propaganda authorities
ordered that all reports of
Wang’s remarks be deleted,
according to US-based China
Digital Times, which monitors
censorship in China.
Wang Min, the Communist Party secretary of Liaoning
province, said the
country was already
working on a second
ship to be completed
around 2020.
Nevertheless,
China’s
nationalist
commentators
quickly responded to the latest reports, calling Monday
for more aircraft carriers to be
built in the face of “Westernbacked provocations”.
“China is now the world’s
second-largest economy, but
its only flattop is a training
ship rebuilt from an ex-Soviet aircraft carrier,” said an
op-ed by Sun Xiaobo in the
Global Times, which is affiliated with the official Communist Party newspaper, the
People’s Daily.
Ebola vaccine trials begin in Liberia
AFP
MONROVIA
THE first large-scale trials of
two Ebola vaccines were due
to begin in Liberia on Monday, the partnership conducting the research said.
The vaccines contain
harmless fragments of the
virus that trigger an immune
response, according to the
Partnership for Research on
Ebola Vaccines in Liberia
(PREVAIL), a collaboration
between the United States
and Liberia.
“The study will begin at
Redemption Hospital in Monrovia. Subsequent sites will
be added at other hospitals in
and near Monrovia after the
first 600 participants join the
study,” it said in a statement.
Researchers, led by the US
National Institutes of Health,
aim to enlist around 27,000
healthy men and women aged
18 and over, PREVAIL said.
The candidate vaccines
-- GlaxoSmithKline’s Chad3EBO-Z and rVSV-ZEBOV,
manufactured by Merck and
Newlink -- have been determined as safe for use on humans in smaller trials in several countries.
PREVAIL said the vaccines
could cause pain, redness or
swelling in the injected arm,
A health worker injects a woman with an Ebola vaccine during a
trial in Monrovia on Monday. (REUTERS)
as well as fever, headaches
and tiredness, but added that
the side-effects “typically have
been mild to moderate and
have gone away on their own”.
The study was launched at
the Redemption Hospital on
Sunday at an event attended
by Liberian Vice-President
Joseph Boaikai.
“We hope that this scientific undertaking we launch
here today will get answers for
the mystery surrounding this
disease,” he said.
There is currently no vaccine to guard against Ebola
on the world market, and no
specific drug approved to treat
it, even though the virus first
emerged in the 1970s.
Researchers have said that
it remains unknown what
level of immune response is
needed to protect humans
from Ebola.
US / Americas
15
Snowstorm blasts US Northeast for 2nd time in a week
REUTERS
NEW YORK
A HUGE winter storm hit
the northeastern United
States on Monday, the region’s second snowy blast in
less than a week, after leaving more than a foot (30 cm)
of snow in the Chicago area.
Hundreds of flights
were cancelled or
delayed due to snow
and ice at Chicago’s
O’Hare International
Airport, Newark
Liberty International
Airport, Boston Logan
International Airport
and New York’s LaGuardia Airport.
The storm pummelled
millions of morning commuters with freezing rain,
snow and gusty winds from
New York City to Boston.
Up to six inches (15 cm)
of snow was forecast for New
York City. Boston, already
buried under two feet (60
cm) of snow from a blizzard
last week, was predicted to
see a foot.
Pedestrians navigate the snow, ice and puddles along Manhattan’s streets in New
York City on Monday. (AFP)
Snow-weary
residents
could take little comfort
from groundhog Punxsutawney Phil, who emerged
from his burrow on Monday
morning in Pennsylvania
and saw his shadow. According to legend, seeing
Parents of slain
Mexican students
seek justice from
UN watchdog
REUTERS
GENEVA
THE parents of Mexican students believed murdered by
a drugs gang appealed to the
United Nations on Monday
for help in seeking justice,
saying they had no faith in
the government’s ability to
investigate the crime.
President Enrique Pena
Nieto’s government said
last week that the 43 trainee
teachers who disappeared
four months ago were killed
on the orders of a drug cartel
who mistook them for members of a rival gang.
The
killings,
which
shocked a nation already suffering from endemic crimerelated bloodshed, have led
to mass protests against the
government and fuelled the
widely held belief that organised crime and certain politicians have close links.
“We’ve decided to come
here, to this committee, to
get some support and to really obtain justice, given the
fact that our government
is not able to do anything,”
Bernabe Abrajan, whose son
Adan was one of the victims,
told reporters on the sidelines of a UN Committee on
Enforced
Disappearances
session.
He was wearing a T-shirt
bearing a photo of his son.
The session began with a
minute of silence for the victims.
Mexico’s attorney general
has said that the students’
bodies were incinerated and
thrown into a river. The remains of only one has been
identified so far. The mayor
of the town of Iguala and his
wife have been arrested as
two chief suspects.
The committee pressed
repeatedly about the scope
of investigations, the national data base on missing
persons, and protection programmes for witnesses and
complainants.
Committee member Juan
Jose Lopez Ortega asked:
“How many public officials
have been removed from
public office in connection
with investigations under
way?”
Juan Manuel Gomez
Robledo, a senior Mexican
foreign ministry official and
head of the government delegation, said the disappearance of the students showed
the need to make a stand
against organised crime as
well as addressing problems
linked to poverty and corruption.
Amnesty International
said it had documented cases
of abductions and disappearances when Mexican security
forces, including the army,
had supported or turned a
blind eye to the work of criminal gangs.
The UN committee oversees compliance with a treaty
banning enforced disappearances through arrest or
abduction by state agents
or people working with the
backing of the state.
Juan Manuel Gomez Robledo, Deputy Foreign Minister for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights of Mexico, arrives at the headquarters of the office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in
Geneva on Monday. (EPA)
his shadow means six more
weeks of winter.
The New England Patriots’ victory in Sunday’s
Super Bowl football game
helped some area residents
take the newest snowy onslaught in stride.
A man clears snow and ice from a sidewalk along Manhattan’s streets in New York
City on Monday. (AFP)
“The Super Bowl had already made things great and,
wow, now we get this,” said
Steve Pieper, 51, an inventor,
walking his dog, Duchess, in
Cambridge, Massachusetts.
“This is the perfect snowstorm. This is a perfect New
England day,” he said.
The National Weather
Service warned residents of
Vermont, New Hampshire,
Maine,
Massachusetts,
Rhode Island and northern
Connecticut to expect as
much as a foot of fresh snow
from the “potent” storm.
“Bitterly cold weather
will settle in behind this system from the Upper Midwest
to New England,” the service
said on its website.
It warned of “dangerous wind chills” through the
coming days.
Hundreds of flights were
cancelled or delayed due to
snow and ice at Chicago’s
O’Hare International Airport, Newark Liberty International Airport, Boston
Logan International Airport
and New York’s LaGuardia
Airport.
The
storm,
which
dropped more than 19 inches
(48 cm) of snow at O’Hare,
seemingly took some residents by surprise, said Alan
Gillman, owner of Gillman
Ace Hardware in Chicago.
Customers were clamouring for snow shovels
when he opened on Monday,
he said.
“People weren’t really
thinking ahead,” he said.
“I’m getting calls all morning, ‘Do you have shovels?
Do you have shovels?’”
Monday’s snow forced
the closing of schools from
the Midwest to New England, including Chicago
Public Schools, the country’s
third-largest public school
system, and districts in
Detroit, Boston and Providence, Rhode Island.
Obama budget seeks $14bn
to boost US cyber security
REUTERS
WASHINGTON
PRESIDENT
Barack
Obama’s budget proposal
for the 2016 fiscal year seeks
$14 billion for cybersecurity
efforts across the US government to better protect federal and private networks from
hacking threats.
Federal cyber security
funding has steadily increased in recent years, reflecting the intensity of
threats US companies and
government agencies are
facing from cyber intruders,
both domestic and foreign.
The budget, released on
Monday, calls for deployment of more intrusion detection and prevention capabilities, greater sharing
of data with the private sector and other countries and
more funding to beef up the
government’s ability to respond to attacks.
The funding would support several specific programmes, such as monitoring and diagnostics of federal
computer networks, the
EINSTEIN intrusion detection and prevention system
and government-wide testing and incident-response
training.
“Cyber threats targeting
US President Barack Obama (left) arrives to speak at the Department of Homeland Security in Washington on Monday. (AFP)
the private sector, critical infrastructure and the federal
government
demonstrate
that no sector, network or
system is immune to infiltration by those seeking to steal
commercial or government
secrets and property or perpetrate malicious and disruptive activity,” the White
House summary said.
It is unclear how much
funding the Republicancontrolled Congress will
dedicate to cyber security
efforts during the next fiscal
year.
Among various requests,
the White House sought
$227 million for construction
of a Civilian Cyber Campus,
meant to spur public-private
partnerships, and $160 million for information technology and cyber security of the
weapons programme at the
Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration.
The Pentagon’s budget
alone called for $5.5 billion
in funding for cyber security.
The agency’s chief weapons
tester last month told Congress that nearly every US
weapons programme showed
“significant vulnerabilities”
to cyber attacks, including
misconfigured, unpatched
and outdated software.
Colombian guerrillas, govt resume talks
AFP
HAVANA
LEFTIST FARC guerrillas
resumed peace talks with
the Colombian government
on Monday in Cuba, after a
year-end break. The Bogota
government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia have been negotiating for more than two
years in Havana to bring an
end to the 50-year insurgency, but key issues remain
unresolved, including disarmament and how any agreement should be ratified.
“We resumed the talks,
and are hoping to continue
to seek an agreement in the
terms known by the people
of Colombia and the whole
world,” said a statement
from the guerrillas read to
the press by commander
Joaquin Gomez.
Gomez criticised an initiative launched by President
Juan Manuel Santos in 2013
that would put any peace accord to a national referendum.
“Everything has its time
and place, which does not
give space to false solutions
like referendums with electoral flavours and ambitions
beyond what was already
agreed,” said Gomez.
The government delegation led by Humberto de la
Calle made no statements
to the press as the two sides
resumed negotiations after
taking a break for a month
and a half, during which the
FARC declared a unilateral
ceasefire.
Peace negotiations began
in November 2012 and so far
the two sides have agreed on
three of the six points of the
agenda.
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) negotiator Joaquin Gomez (centre) addresses the
media flanked by fellow FARC members in Havana on Monday. (REUTERS)
16
Gulf / Middle East
Bahrain satellite
channel off air
a day after launch
REUTERS
MANAMA
BAHRAINI
authorities
have suspended a television
channel owned by Saudi
billionaire Prince Alwaleed
bin Talal, one day after its
launch, following an interview it broadcast with an
aide to a Bahraini opposition leader.
Alarab channel blamed
technical and administrative reasons for Monday’s
halt, without giving details.
But a Bahraini newspaper
and a source familiar with
the matter said the channel
had been suspended for violating media neutrality.
The website of privately-owned Akhbar al Khaleej newspaper said the
Alarab channel
blamed technical
and administrative
reasons for Monday’s
halt, without giving
details. But a Bahraini newspaper and
a source familiar with
the matter said the
channel had been
suspended for violating media neutrality.
suspension was “related
to the failure of those in
charge to abide by the
prevailing norms in the
Gulf, including the neutrality of media positions
and staying away from
anything that could negatively impact the spirit of
Gulf unity”.
That appeared to refer
to the interview with Marzouq, an aide to Sheikh Ali
Salman, the detained Secretary-General of Bahrain’s
main Shi’ite opposition
movement. It was broadcast
after the channel officially
went on the air on Sunday.
A source familiar with
the affairs of the news
channel said Bahraini officials had delivered the
suspension order on a visit
to the station over issues of
“journalistic neutrality”.
A Bahraini official said
the suspension had “nothing to do with the Marzouq
interview”.
The official noted that
Alarab had also broadcast
an interview with Information Minister Isa Abdulrahman later in the day.
Salman, whose arrest
provoked a wave of protests
in Bahrain and criticism
from the United States, is
on trial on charges of promoting regime change by
force, a charge he denies.
A
spokesman
from
the news channel was not
available to comment. But
in a brief statement on its
Twitter account, Alarab
said: “The channel stopped
broadcasting for technical
and administrative reasons.
We will come back soon,
God willing.”
Bahrain’s
Information Affairs Authority confirmed that it was working
with the Alarab’s “management team in order to
swiftly resolve the matter, which is expected to
see broadcasting resume
shortly”.
Speaking in 2012 in the
wake of the Arab Spring
revolts against autocratic
rulers in some Arab countries, Prince Alwaleed told
US news network CNN the
planned channel was an attempt to fill “an opening for
a more pragmatic and logical channel that really takes
the centre’s point of view”.
Bahrain, where the US
Fifth Fleet is based, faced
protests in 2011 led by
mainly Shi’ite Muslim citizens demanding reforms
and more of a share in the
Sunni-led government.
Authorities have quelled
the protests but the island
kingdom continues to face
protests and attacks using home-made explosives
from time to time.
Muslim Brotherhood supporters stand behind bars during their trial in Cairo on Monday. (REUTERS)
Egypt court confirms death penalty
for 183 Brotherhood supporters
Morsi’s ‘espionage’
trial to start on
February 15
AFP
CAIRO
AN Egyptian court on Monday confirmed death sentences against 183 men
convicted of killing 13 policemen, in a verdict slammed as
“outrageous” by rights group
Amnesty International.
The verdict came as another court announced that
deposed Islamist president
Mohamed Morsi would stand
trial on February 15 in an
espionage case -- the fourth
trial he is facing.
The policemen were killed
in an attack on a police station in Kerdasa, a town on the
outskirts of Cairo, on August
14, 2013.
The attack took place
on the same day that security forces killed hundreds of
demonstrators in clashes as
they dismantled two massive
protest camps in Cairo supporting Morsi.
The court had in December issued a preliminary verdict against 188 defendants
in a mass trial, of whom two
were acquitted on Monday
while one, a minor, was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Charges against the remaining two were dropped
after the court found that they
were dead.
PULL OF BOOKS
Egyptian women look at books at the 46th Cairo International Book Fair in Nasr City distric of Cairo on Monday. Some 850
publishing houses from 27 countries are participating in the fair. (EPA)
Monday’s verdict, which
can be appealed, came after
the initial sentences were sent
to the grand mufti, the government’s official interpreter
of Islamic law, for ratification.
Morsi and several top
leaders of his blacklisted Muslim Brotherhood are in custody
and facing several
trials on charges punishable by death.
Since the army deposed
Morsi on July 3, 2013, at least
1,400 people have been killed
in a police crackdown on protests, mostly Islamists supporting the ousted leader.
Hundreds of his sup-
porters have been sentenced
to death in swift mass trials
which the United Nations
says were “unprecedented in
recent history”.
In a statement after Monday’s verdict Amnesty International said the court’s decision
was “outrageous” and “an example of the bias of the Egyptian criminal justice system”.
Rights groups and critics of President Abdel Fattah al Sisi, the former army
chief who ousted Morsi, say
authorities are using the judiciary as an arm to repress
any form of dissent, including
from secular activists.
Morsi and several top
leaders of his blacklisted
Muslim Brotherhood are in
custody and facing several
trials on charges punishable
by death.
Separately, another court
is to deliver a verdict on April
21 in the trial of Morsi and 14
others for inciting the killing
of protesters in clashes outside the presidential palace in
December 2012.
He is also on trial over a
jailbreak and attacks on police stations during the 2011
uprising that ousted president Hosni Mubarak.
Also on Monday, an appeals court ordered a retrial in
a case involving the murder of
a police officer during a firefight with Islamists in Kerdasa
in September 2013 when security forces stormed the town
to flush out Islamists who had
taken control of it.
Jazeera vows not to leave
Baher in Egyptian jail
AFP
DOHA
Jordan’s envoy to return to Israel 3 months after recall
AFP
AMMAN
JORDAN announced on
Monday that its ambassador to Israel would return
to his post in Tel Aviv three
months after being recalled
over “violations” at Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa mosque.
“We have asked Ambassador Walid Obeidat to
return to Tel Aviv,” government spokesman Mohammad al Momani said.
Amman recalled Obeidat
on November 5 after police
clashed with stone-throwing
Palestinians inside the flashpoint Al Aqsa compound,
with Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh describing Israeli
actions as “violations” and
“way beyond the limits”.
Momani, who is also minister of state for information,
said the decision to return
Obeidat to Israel comes after
the government “felt that the
situation (at Al Aqsa) is in
the right direction”.
Obeidat’s recall had put
enormous pressure on already frosty ties between
Israel and Jordan, the only
Arab country apart from
Egypt to have a peace treaty
with the Jewish state.
Tensions soared to a new
level when in early November Israeli police entered
several metres (yards) inside Al Aqsa mosque during
clashes triggered by a vow
by Jewish far-right groups to
visit the holy site.
The compound, holy to
both Muslims and Jews, is
one of the most sensitive
spots in the Middle East.
Jordan, where almost
half the population of seven
million is of Palestinian origin, has historical custodianship over the flashpoint site
and other Muslim holy sites
in Jerusalem. Amman is also
seen as a key player in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks,
and King Abdullah II has
repeatedly called on Israel to
end “its unilateral action and
repeated attacks” against Jerusalem’s holy sites.
AL Jazeera vowed on Monday
“not to leave” Egyptian producer Baher Mohamed in jail
following the release of Australian journalist Peter Greste
and amid rising hopes Canadian Mohamed Fahmy will
soon be deported.
All three were jailed on
New Year’s Day in 2014, for
allegedly aiding the blacklisted Muslim Brotherhood
group. Greste, an award-winning reporter, was deported
from Cairo on Sunday after
400 days in captivity and flew
to Cyprus.
And Canadian officials
have said they are “very hopeful” that a deal can be struck
for Fahmy “shortly”, with
both reporters being deported under a decree passed by
Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al Sisi that allows for the
transfer of foreigners on trial.
But there are concerns
that no such escape route exists for Mohamed, an Egyptian, who until Sunday shared
a cell with Greste in Cairo’s
Tora prison.
Heather Allan, head of
newsgathering at Al Jazeera
English, said the pan-Arab
television network would
fight to free all three.
“We are very worried
about him (Baher Mohamed),” admitted Allan. “I think
it is not lost on anybody that
there is an Egyptian national
(From left) Al Jazeera scribes Mohamed Fahmy, Peter Greste and
Baher Mohamed
involved here.”
Asked if Al Jazeera was
hopeful he may be released
along with his colleagues, Allan added: “I can’t say I am
confident, no. I just don’t
know, honestly. Are we going
to keep on fighting it? Absolutely -- we are not going to
leave him there.”
She said Mohamed “must
be feeling pretty isolated at
the moment”, but the Qatarbased broadcaster was in
constant touch with the producer’s family.
“We might have to try
some other tactics because
we don’t have a foreign country involved, but our commitment to getting him out is
just as strong as it ever was.”
The arrest of the three
journalists two years ago
sparked worldwide condemnation, with Washington and
the United Nations leading
calls for their release.
Allan added that she was
hopeful Fahmy would be released, though Al Jazeera
“might be the last to find out”.
Greste’s family held a
news conference in Brisbane
on Monday calling for the release of his two colleagues.
The relief that Australian
journalist Peter Greste feels
at being freed from prison in
Egypt is restrained by concern for his two colleagues
who remain in detention, his
family said. It is the fate of
his two Al Jazeera colleagues
that is tempering Greste’s
joy, his brother told a news
conference in the city of Brisbane.
“He’s not going to forget his two other colleagues,
there’s no doubt that his excitement is tempered and
restrained and will be until
those guys are free.
Gulf / Middle East
Air strikes on
opposition-held
towns in Syria
kill at least 32
AFP
BEIRUT
SYRIAN government air
strikes on opposition-held
towns across the country
killed at least 32 people
on Monday, and wounded
dozens more, a monitoring
group said.
In Jassem in the southern province of Daraa, 15
civilians were killed in four
air strikes, while 25 others were wounded, said the
Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The strikes in response
to a major rebel offensive
that has been underway in
southern Syria for months.
“As usual, the regime
is striking populated areas
in order to make civilian
supporters of opposition
fighters turn against them,”
Observatory director Rami
Abdel Rahman said.
Rebels fighting to oust
President Bashar al Assad
have suffered a spate of
defeats at the hands of his
forces, but they still have
the upper hand in Daraa.
“Opposition fighters are
making steady progress in
Daraa province. The vast
majority of the west of the
province has completely
fallen out of government
control, and that is where
Jassem is located,” Abdel
Rahman said.
Rebel fighters in the
area benefit from “the fact
that supply lines from
Jordan are still open,” he
added. The involvement
of experienced fighters of
Syria’s Al Qaeda affiliate,
the Al Nusra Front, has also
helped the rebels to gain
territory in Daraa.
Elsewhere, air strikes
on Douma, the besieged
rebel-held town east of
Damascus, killed at least
six civilians and wounded
dozens more, the Observa-
tory said.
An AFP photographer
in Douma said the strikes
hit residential areas and
that most of the wounded
were children.
At Khan Sheikhun in the
northwestern province of
Idlib, 11 people were killed,
including a former army officer who had defected from
the loyalist army to join opposition forces, said the Observatory.
The regime first deployed warplanes in the
Syrian war in July 2012.
Rebels fighting
to oust President
Bashar al Assad
have suffered a
spate of defeats
at the hands of his
forces, but they
still have the upper
hand in Daraa.
Now, nearly four years
into the conflict, there are
air strikes every day, despite
repeated warnings from the
international community
that such tactics fail to discriminate between civilian
and military targets.
On a separate front,
Syrian Kurds fighting
the Islamic State group
made fresh advances near
Kobane, seizing a new
string of villages a week after the flashpoint town was
recaptured from the IS jihadists.
“The Kurds now control an area stretching
across 14 kilometres (nine
miles) southwards from
Kobane, 10 kilometres to
the east, and 10 to 12 kilometres to the west,” said
Abdel Rahman.
The Observatory director also said Kurdish
People’s Protection Units
(YPG) backed by Syrian
rebels killed 10 IS members
in the past 24 hours.
AP
SANAA
YEMEN’S Shiite rebels
who overran the capital,
Sanaa, are demanding
their militia becomes part
of the country’s army and
police force as a precondition for talks on releasing
the nation’s president and
Cabinet members from
house arrest, a senior politician said on Monday.
The demand is the latest in the power grab by
the Houthi rebels who last
month raided the presidential palace, months
after taking over key state
institutions and military
facilities after descending from their northern
stronghold into Sanaa in
September.
The demand, along
with other conditions put
forth by the rebels, could
thwart UN efforts to find a
negotiated solution to the
crisis in Yemen.
The impoverished Arabian Peninsula country,
which is also home to a
formidable al Qaeda affiliate, has been leaderless since President Abed
Rabbo Mansour Hadi
submitted his resignation
from the presidency last
month after the Houthis
pressured him for a greater share of power and besieged his home.
On Monday, Abdullah Noaman said that his
Nasserite Party pulled out
of the UN-brokered talks
the day before, after the
Houthis demanded that
their 20,000-strong mili-
Supporters of the Houthi movement take part in a demonstration in Sanaa on Monday. (REUTERS)
tia join the country’s military and security forces as
a precondition to any kind
of deal.
He accused Houthis of
using the talks as “political cover to complete their
coup.”
On
Sunday,
the
Houthis gave Yemen’s
political factions a threeday ultimatum to reach
an agreement, otherwise
they said they’ll take over
themselves.
Drone strike kills four Qaeda suspects
AFP
SANAA
A drone strike killed at least
four Al Qaeda suspects in
Yemen on Monday, tribal
sources said, the third attack
in a week after Washington
vowed to pursue its anti-jihadist campaign there.
The unmanned aircraft,
which only the United States
operates in the region, tar-
geted a car carrying “at
least four” suspects in Baida
province, the sources said.
They said the bodies inside the car were left
charred.
“Loud explosions were
heard after the attack,” one
source said, saying this
could mean the car had been
“loaded with arms and explosives”.
This was the third such
AFP
TUNISIA on Monday presented its new coalition government, dominated by the
secular Nidaa Tounes party
but also including its Islamist
rivals, as it prepares to tackle
security problems and a faltering economy.
Prime Minister Habib Essid announced the make-up
of his cabinet, which had initially been abandoned after
the moderate Islamist Ennahda party warned it would
vote against a line-up that
excluded its members.
“We have made changes...
to widen the composition of
the government with the participation of other political
parties,” Essid said.
The new team, which includes a minister and three
state secretaries from Ennah-
da, will be put before parliament for a vote of confidence
on Wednesday.
“We have no more time to
lose, we are in a race against
the clock,” Essid said as he
announced the line-up at
the presidency. His government will be the first since
landmark parliamentary and
presidential elections last
year that were the first freely
contested polls in the history
of the North African country.
The anti-Islamist Nidaa
Tounes of President Beji
Caid Essebsi won the largest
number of seats in October’s
general election, with Ennahda coming second.
But Nida Tounes did not
secure a majority and Ennahda, which holds 69 of parliament’s 217 seats, had rejected
a cabinet in which it was not
represented.
Political scientist Ahmed
strike since US President
Barack Obama on January
25 vowed no let-up in Washington’s campaign against
jihadists in Yemen.
Four suspected militants were killed in a similar
strike on Saturday, while another raid left three alleged
Al Qaeda militants dead on
January 26. Both of those
attacks were in the southern
province of Shabwa.
Islamic State withdrawing from 35 migrants
missing off
Kobane outskirts, says monitor Yemen coast
AFP
REUTERS
KURDISH militia backed by
US-led air strikes are making rapid advances against
Islamic State forces in rural
areas around Kobane after driving the group from
the Syrian border town last
week, the Kurdish militia
and a monitoring group said
on Monday.
A spokesman for the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia said
Islamic State forces were collapsing around Kobane.
The Syrian Observatory
for Human Rights, the monitoring organisation, said Is-
lamic State fighters were
putting up little resistance in
the face of the Kurdish advance and may be pushed
back even further.
“The fighting organisation
of Daesh ... is in a state of complete collapse at present and
cannot hold ground,” Redur
Xelil, spokesman for the YPG,
told Reuters by telephone, using a pejorative Arabic acronym for Islamic State.
The battle for Kobane, a
predominantly Kurdish town
known as Ayn al-Arab in
Arabic, became a focal point
for the US-led air campaign
against Islamic State in Syria.
The Syrian Kurds, who
also received military support
from Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga
forces, drove Islamic State
from the town last week.
Islamic State controls wide
areas of northern and eastern
Syria, including a strip of territory across the northern Aleppo countryside and a corridor
stretching southeast from
Raqqa province to the border
with Iraq.
Although the town has little strategic value, the battle
for Kobane marked the first
example of direct US support
for ground forces fighting Islamic State in Syria.
As part of its strategy to
roll back Islamic State in Syr-
ia, the United States is also
planning to train and equip
non-jihadist rebels, who account for only a modest part
of the fighters battling President Bashar al Assad.
Active recruitment of Syrian trainees has yet to start. The
United States has ruled out the
idea of cooperating with Assad in the fight against Islamic
State, describing him as part of
the problem.
The YPG says it has 50,000
fighters deployed in three predominantly Kurdish areas of
northern Syria. It has said it
is willing to be a partner in the
US-led campaign against Islamic State.
Tunisia announces new coalition govt with Islamists
TUNIS
17
Make militia part of Yemeni
army, police, demand Houthis
BEIRUT
A boy wounded in an air strike by forces of Syrian President
Bashar al Assad sits at a field hospital in the Duma neighbourhood of Damascus on Monday. (REUTERS)
President Beji Caid Essebsi (right) with Prime Minister Habib Essid in Tunis on Monday. (AFP)
Manai said the “almost symbolic” representation of Ennahda would ensure a majority for the government
in parliamentary votes and
allow Essebsi to “neutralise”
the Islamists.
Tunisia has struggled to
form a stable government
since it became the birthplace of the Arab Spring uprisings by ousting longtime
dictator Zine El Abidine Ben
Ali in 2011.
It received international
praise for its transition to democracy, in stark contrast to
other countries in the region
now battling instability after
similar revolts.
However, the country is
mired with a sluggish economy, and unemployment
remains stubbornly high, especially among young people.
Essebsi has vowed to address economic problems to
“realise the promises of the
revolution: dignity, employment, health and regional
equality”. In addition, Tunisian security forces continue
to battle jihadists who have
claimed responsibility for
a series of attacks on police
and soldiers that have killed
dozens of people since Ben
Ali’s ouster.
Monday’s cabinet allotted
six ministerial posts to Nidaa
Tounes members, including
that of foreign affairs. The
portfolios of interior, defence
and justice were assigned to
independents.
SANAA
AT least 35 African migrants
went missing after their boat
capsized in bad weather off
southwest Yemen on Monday, a military official said.
Authorities have rescued
eight Ethiopians and five Somalis, including a woman,
and the body of another Somali has been retrieved from
the boat which was carrying
49 people, General Saleh alSabbari told the official Saba
news agency.
Strong currents and high
waves overturned the boat
off the city of Dhubab as it
In the past five years,
more than 500,000
people have reached
Yemen following
treacherous journeys.
was sailing through the Bab
al Mandab separating the
Arabian Peninsula from east
Africa, said Saba.
It said search operations
were ongoing.
African migrants, especially Ethiopians and Somalis fleeing poverty and unrest
at home, generally slip into
southern Yemen by boat before heading north towards
the Saudi frontier.
In December, Yemen
said 70 migrants had died
when their vessel capsized
in bad weather near the Bab
al Mandab strait. On May 31
last year, 60 migrants from
Ethiopia and Somalia along
with two Yemeni crew members drowned, according to
the UN refugee agency.
In the past five years,
more than 500,000 peoplehave reached Yemen following treacherous journeys.
18
Nation | African Panorama
Reports by Catherine W Gichuki. For events and press releases email [email protected] or call (974) 44422077.
MOTIVATIONAL READING
FOR EVERYDAY LIFE
D
RAWING upon his own
life’s experiences, he has
written regularly for newspapers in Qatar. His writings have dwelt upon how
to overcome the storms of life. It
wasn’t long after that people began
asking for a book they could read,
relish, go back to at leisure.
Nigerian expatriate Fidelis C
Odogbo finally came out with that
book, of 158 pages titled Principles for Living. Published by a
US-based publisher The Authors
House, the book also has a Spanish
translation.
Talking to Qatar Tribune Odogbo said that he wrote motivational
stories that were published weekly
in the newspapers. “The book is a
product of those years of writing in
the newspaper. It’s the compilation
of those articles in a book form,” he
said.
Odogbo had been writing for
newspapers since 2005 and it took
him about three-years compile his
work into a book. But finding a
publisher was no easy task. Finally,
he found the publisher too. “The
publisher is based in the US but has
an office in the UK. They do print
on-demand, where you retain your
rights as an author,” Odogbo said.
Talking about how he came up
with the title of the book, Odogbo
said it was because the writings
are based on stories that have very
good lessons to learn from.
“I figured out that people learn
from stories; the thing was to look
for the principles underlying the
stories. A regular story has its own
principle that becomes a lesson to
anyone who cares to learn from it.
That’s why I thought of principles
for everyday life. Everyone can
choose to apply it to themselves.”
Most of the stories in the book
are based on Odogbo’s experiences.
What he did was that he looked for
a particular story that mirrored his
experiences and put it in the story
and brought out the lesson from
that story through his own experience. For instance, if he talked
about patience, he got a story that
talked about patience, and painted a picture of what happened to
him around the story and how he
learned patience as a result of that
experience.
And that is why he calls it ‘simple
principles’, because everyone can
easily relate to what he talks about.
“It’s not mystical or religious. It’s a
daily thing that we face.”
The book has been edited by a
Nigeria-based editor, Eguono Uyovbukerhi, while the cover was designed by the publisher. “They gave
me various covers and I ended up
choosing this one,” Odogbo said.
According to him, he wrote
many drafts before arriving at the
the world. I have seen it in Asia, Japan, Germany, different bookstores
all over the world. It’s on Amazon, Barnes&Noble, Google Books,
among online booksellers.”
Now he is in the process of writing his second book. “I have written 30 to 40 chapters for the
past two years. I haven’t finished it, but soon I will.”
And for aspiring authors
his message is, “Patience, because a book is not written in
a day. You write a book not
just for the sake of it. If you
are writing a book, you have
a message, you have an audience. Have patience in terms of
going through all the hassles of
publishing it, because sometimes,
the worst critic of an author
is the author himself.”
Most of the stories in the book are
based on Odogbo’s experiences.
What he did was that he looked for
a particular story that mirrored his
experiences and put it in the story
and brought out the lesson from that
story through his own experience.
Copies of the Spanish and English book. (PHOTOS: RAFEEK PALAYOOR)
final one. “I can’t tell you how many
times I tried to make the prose
readable, free of error, in proper
grammatical structure. I also gave
three people to read it through, before I gave it out for publishing.”
According to him, the idea to
translate the book into Spanish
came from his publisher. “My publisher was notified that there was a
book fair in Germany and it was a
good idea to present the book.”
Odogbo further said that when
he did that an author found the
book and wrote to him and he said
that he loved the title and he had
gone through the book and it was
something that he could put in the
Spanish market. “Therefore, we
did the necessary deals and it was
translated into Spanish. Therefore,
it was published in Mexico. It was
published for the Mexican market, and it is also feeding the Latin
American countries.”
Odogbo has participated in international book fairs in Japan,
Germany and the United Kingdom.
“My publisher always informs me
whenever there is a book fair.”
He said that the biggest challenge that he faced was putting the
book into print. “The challenge was
not in writing the book. The challenge was putting it into print. Before I ended up in Authors House, I
had gone through several publishing companies. I opted for printon-demand kind of publishing,
whereby, you publish the book and
it is in an electronic form. Whenever you need copies, you place an
order for the book and then it gets
printed.”
But even when he was writing,
the appreciations were the hardest
to do. “I had to think of those people
who really impacted my life. It was
hard, because I realised that where
I am today, is not a result of what I
have done in past few months, but
it is actually a consequence of my
relationship with people and how
they have influenced me in becoming what I am doing today. It was
really challenging but finally I managed it.”
If he was to change any part of
the book, he would change the audience and not the style of writing.
“I wrote about professionals who
would like to take their career to
the next level, some motivational
tips that you can learn. That’s the
idea I had then. I wrote so many
things about life in general. Therefore, if I am to do it again, I would
pinpoint areas in our life, maybe, academics, business, career. I
would just focus on one.”
According to him, when he
eventually came up with the book,
it was a dream come true because,,
since his childhood, he had dreamt
of penning a book. Even as a child,
he was interested in how people
used words to communicate.
When he watched movies what
intrigued him, was not the characters in the movies but their conversation, how they used words.
“When I wrote, it came out naturally and that’s how I found out that
I could write. I knew that one day I
would write. I am happy that I was
able to put something in print here
in the world. After I am gone, there
is a legacy left behind. For me, it is
a focus actualised and I feel that it
is something that will stand the test
of time.”
But with the rise of ebooks, he
is not scared that the printed word
will become obsolete.
“There is an ebook of it already.
My publisher did that. They control the ebook. It is available in
nearly all the online bookstores in
Fidelis C Odogbo
‘Kenyans a growing tribe in Qatar’
T
HE number of Kenyans
in Doha has increased
significantly since the
opening of the Kenyan
embassy in Doha in October 2010, according to the
Kenyan envoy.
Speaking at the launch
of co-operatives for the
Kenyan community, an
event attend by a Kenyan
delegation including the
Cabinet Secretary for Industrialization and Enterprise Development Adan
Mohamed and Commissioner of Co-operatives
Patrick Musyimi, among
other high-profile delegations, the Kenyan Ambassador to Qatar HE Galma
Mukhe Boru said that the
number of Kenyans has
increased in Qatar since
2010.
“In 2010, when the
Kenyan embassy opened
in Doha, Kenyans in Qatar
numbered only 800. That
number has grown today
to about 12,000 working
Kenyan Ambassador to Qatar HE Galma Mukhe Boru.
in various sectors of Qatar economy from banking, civil aviation, Qatar
Airways, hotel industry,
education, health, transport, private security firms,
transport (as drivers, me-
chanics) and construction,
and that number keeps on
growing.”
He added that when the
embassy opened in 2010,
they set some strategic areas of their focus in line
Members of the Kenyan community at the launch of the co-operatives recently.
with the vision 2030, while
promoting closer bilateral
relations between Kenya
and Qatar.
“One of the strategic
areas, was seeking employment opportunities for Ken-
yan nationals in Qatar.”
The envoy said that the
labour relations have been
anchored firmly between
the two countries within the
framework of Labour Agreement that was signed by
the then Minister of Labour
John Munyes in May 2012.
According to the envoy,
following the signing of
the agreement, a memorandum of understanding
to implement it was con-
cluded in November the
same year to establish a
committee comprising officers from the two sides, to
deal with matters of labour
migration between the two
countries.
Nation
19
24 organisations to mark
NSD 2015 at Aspire Zone
DOHA
ASPIRE Zone Foundation
(AZF) is, through its exceptional venues and world-class
logistical and organisational
capacities, attracting 24 major
organisations and companies
in Qatar to mark this year’s
National Sport Day (NSD)
throughout its sporting facilities that spread over a total
area of 2.5 square kilometres.
Following the experience
enjoyed by their employees and families in previous
years, RasGas Company and
the National Human Rights
Committee (NHRC) have
chosen to celebrate the NSD
at Aspire Zone for the fourth
consecutive year. Both companies have lined up a series
of fun-filled activities.
On the other hand, Lekhwiya, Qatar Petroleum
(QP) and Qatar Stock Exchange (QSE) have opted
for Aspire Zone to mark this
year’s sport day in order to
enjoy the wide range of facilities and services offered
by AZF.
Aspire offers wide space
areas and sporting venues that
allow thousands of participants to engage in sports and
physical activity, and this is
why Aspire is the perfect place
to be for the NSD occasion.
Fourteen companies and
organisations are planning a
series of activities for members
of the public. These include Lekhwiya, Maersk Oil, Action on
Diabetes, Al-Ta'adhod Group
(GREE Air Conditioners), Qatar Cycling Federation, Qatar
Development Bank, Al-Noor
CB’s ‘Life in Qatar’
drive for ‘newcomers’
DOHA
COMMERCIAL Bank, one of
the leading full service banks
in Qatar, has announced an
exciting new campaign for
its ‘Life in Qatar’ customers
following the continued success and popularity of this
tailored banking proposition
for expatriates who are soon
to arrive in, or have recently
relocated to, Qatar.
‘Life in Qatar’ is designed
to reduce the stress of relocation by helping expatriates settle in faster whilst providing
a wide-range of rewards that
now include a free gift voucher
to furnish their new house.
‘Life in Qatar’ customers with a monthly salary of
over QR15,000 who open a
Commercial Bank account
with a credit card will receive
a free gift voucher worth up
to QR1,000 to help furnishing their new house, redeemable at selected furniture
stores. Similarly, customers
with a monthly salary of over
QR7,500 per month with
an account and credit card
are entitled for a furniture
voucher worth QR500.
With ‘Life in Qatar’, the
process for getting a loan is
even easier for new arrivals
as they can receive immediate
approvals on vehicle and personal loan applications to help
them cover essential initial expenses entailed by relocation.
‘Life in Qatar’ provides a
unique opportunity for salaried expatriates to ease the
burden of moving prior, during and after arrival. Before
arrival, expatriates can open
their account through online Commercial Bank bank-
ing services for remittance
services. Commercial Bank’s
dedicated website, www.lifeinqatar.com provides reliable information to answer
the most frequently asked
questions by those intending
to relocate and it is constantly
updated to help new residents adapt to living in Qatar.
Upon arrival, Commercial Bank debit cards are
readily available for collection. ‘Life in Qatar’ also helps
customers to get instantly
connected by providing them
a free phone and SIM card;
they are also applicable for
hotel discounts in Doha.
Customers get a free
executive service to find a
house; up to 30 percent discount on car rental and various discounts at B/Attitude
spa in Doha. For Sadara eligible customers are entitled
for airport pickup to a destination of their choice upon
arrival.
Commercial Bank EGM,
Head of Retail and Enterprise, Dean Proctor, said:
“Commercial Bank is the
original and the leading bank
in the market providing a
specialised proposition for
new arrivals to Qatar. The
bank also offers the most
comprehensive range of benefits available for salaried
expatriates who are about to
move and / or have recently
relocated to Qatar.
We are extending our rewards even further to cover
home furnishing. Geographical transfer from one country
to another is always a daunting process, but ‘Life in Qatar’
is designed to smoothen and
facilitate expatriates experience before even arriving.”
Institute for the Blind, Ministry
of Energy and Industry, Qatar
Women's Sports Committee,
Qatar Football Association,
Sidra Medical and Research
Center, the Cultural and Social
Center for People with Special
Needs, Sports Corner and Abdullah Abdulghani & Brothers
Company.
Additional 10 companies
that will take part include:
QP, RasGas, QSE, NHRC, Hemaya Security Services, Qatar
Chemical and Petrochemical
Marketing and Distribution
Company (Muntajat), ORYX
GTL, Msheireb Properties, the
Supreme Council of Health
and the Supreme Committee
for Delivery & Legacy.
More information about
AZF’s NSD event programme
is available at www.lifeinaspire.qa/nsd
New daily QA flight to
Singapore from June 1
Qatar Biobank to
host healthcare
meet on Feb 8
DOHA
DOHA
QATAR Airways (QA) will launch
an additional daily flight to Singapore from June 1, 2015, as part of
its global expansion drive and to
cater to the increased passenger
demand.
The airline has announced it
will operate the new flight and the
existing two daily flights to Singapore with its third, fourth and fifth
A350 XWB aircraft commencing
service in June, July and August
2015. With this, QA will become
the first airline to operate the
A350 XWB to Singapore and the
Asia Pacific.
QA will operate three daily
flights to Singapore with its A350
XWB aircraft. With this additional
frequency, QA will strengthen its
position in one of the leading business cities in Asia Pacific region
as an airline providing passengers
with a premium travel experience.
The new daily flight will be
departing Doha at 20:25 hrs and
arrive in Singapore the next day
at 9:15 hrs, followed by a quick
turnaround from Singapore at
10:40 hrs and returning to Doha
the same day at 13:15 hrs.
“Qatar Airways is proud to be
the first airline in the world to introduce the next generation A350
XWB aircraft to Asia, redefining the travel experience of our
passengers,” said Qatar Airways
Group Chief Executive Akbar al
Baker.
“We are also delighted to add
another flight to this important
and strategic route which will provide our Singapore-based passengers with even more options when
they travel on business or leisure
to key destinations in Europe and
DOHA-SINGAPORE SCHEDULE *
❯ Departure in Doha QR944 at 02:25, arriving in Singapore at 15:15
❯ Departure from Singapore QR945 02:30, arriving in Doha at 05:05
❯ Departure in Doha QR938 at 07:00, arriving in Singapore at 19:50
❯ Departure from Singapore QR939 at 21:20, arriving in Doha at 23:55
❯ Departure in Doha QR942 at 20:25, arriving in Singapore at 09:15 (next day)
❯ Departure from Singapore QR943 10:40, arriving in Doha at 13:15
(*from June 1, 2015)
the Americas that include London,
Paris, Frankfurt, Rome, Milan,
New York, Chicago and Houston.”
Passengers will benefit from
the new boarding experience
achieved by the unique dome-design entrance with welcome light
distribution.
The aircraft also offers wide
seats with generous room in all
classes of service thanks to a
number of design developments.
The business class cabin has 36
seats in a 1-2-1 configuration featuring an 80” full flat bed and 17”
HD in-flight entertainment screen.
The economy class features
247 18-inch wide seats in a 3-3-3
configuration, each with a 10.6”
in-flight entertainment screen,
and more space at shoulder level
for passengers in window seats
due to the vertical side wall panel design.
CULTURAL FESTIVAL AT AL DOSARI PARK
More than 5,000 people attended the kite festival organised by the Indian community at Al Dosari
Park and Game Reserve recently. Several competitions were organised as part of the festival, which
is held during January end every year.
QATAR Biobank, a member of Qatar Foundation for education, science and community
development (QF), is set to host the nation’s
first conference that will explore the development of Qatar’s healthcare and medical
research community this month.
Qatar Biobank’s inaugural conference,
titled ‘Biobanking in the Context of Personalised Healthcare’, will gather local, regional
and international experts to discuss the future of personalised healthcare in integration with biobanking worldwide. It will be
held on February 8 and 9 at Qatar National
Convention Centre (QNCC) in Doha.
“Biobanks are a key component in today’s
healthcare sector because they allow us to revolutionise the practice of medicine through
personalised care. Qatar Biobank’s continued work to collect quality samples and information will no doubt allow researchers in
Qatar and across the region to advance their
understanding of human health and diseases
in order to tackle Qatar’s prevailing health issues,” said Dr Hanan al Kuwari, Chairperson
of Qatar Biobank’s Board of Trustees.
The event, a first of its kind in Qatar, will
feature in-depth sessions about the importance
of biobanking and its role in improving healthcare services. The conference will also lay the
foundations for future cooperation between
leading Qatari and global medical institutions.
“With Qatar’s continued economic and demographic expansion in recent years, it is important to ensure continued health for the local population to safeguard the sustainability
of future generations in Qatar, and personalised medicine through biobanking will enable
us to do just that,” added Dr Hadi Abderrahim, Managing Director of Qatar Biobank.
A number of keynote speakers will attend
the conference, including Edward Abrahams,
President of the Personalised Medicine Coalition in the USA; Ma’n H Zawati, Professor at
the Center of Genomics and Policy at McGill
University in Canada; Elio Riboli, Director of
the School of Public Health at Imperial College London; and Dr Hilal Lashuel, Executive
Director of QBRI, among others.
20
The Last Word
Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra, led by Grammy nominated Alastair Willis, performs at the Qatar National Convention Centre in Doha on Sunday.
QPO impresses with Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony
MANEESH BAKSHI
DOHA
QATAR Philharmonic Orchestra (QPO), under the
baton of Grammy nominated Alastair Willis, gave a
memorable performance of
Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in the packed auditorium
of Qatar National Convention Centre on Sunday.
The performance saw the
appearance of MDR Radio
Choir of Leipzig and the soloist Felisitas Fuchs, soprano
Elisabeth Meister, alto; Robert Gambill, tenor; Dietrich
Henschel, bass baritone who
voiced the choral part during
the fourth movement of the
symphony.
The 9th of Beethoven
is first work to have incorporated voice in a symphony and is not only the
best known symphony of
Beethoven but also one of
the best known compositions in the whole of classical music repertoire.
The words for the voice
were taken from a poem
written by Friedrich Schiller titled ‘Ode to Joy’ with
certain modification done
by the composer himself.
The work on the symphony, which took many years
to be completed, probably
started during 1793 when
Beethoven first proposed to
compose his symphony on
‘Ode to joy’.
The symphony was premiered in 1824 when its
author was on the verge of
complete deafness. He himself conducted the first performance.
“The first movement for
me personally is the struggle between frustrations
and peace,” said the conductor while introducing the
symphony to the audience.
Beethoven’s music is considered synonymous with
struggle; struggle for peace,
fulfilment of spirit. It is also
a struggle for serenity and
triumphant joy represented
in the first movement.
The second movement
introduced some light hearted melodies symbolising
pure joys of life. The music
was set at fast tempo with
different sections of the orchestra into play. However,
the movement culminated
with the return of the violins. The whole effect of the
music was mesmerising.
“The third movement in
contrast is a slow yet one of
the most beautifully written
music by Beethoven,” said
Alastair Willis. The second
movement started with a
very simple melody and it
sounded again later during
the movement with its contents getting more complex
as it progressed. The unusual horn solo by forth horn
was another highlight of the
third movement.
The last movement saw
the chorus passages beginning with the solo bass baritone solo ‘O Freunde, nicht
diese Töne’ followed by the
other soloist joining in to
form a dialogue. The long
symphony came to an end
with a huge standing ovation
from the audience.
HBKU holds Education City career fair
DOHA
HAMAD Bin Khalifa University (HBKU), a member
of Qatar Foundation (QF)
for education, science and
community development,
hosted the first joint Education City Career Fair on
Sunday and Monday at the
HBKU Student Center.
HBKU organised the fair
in collaboration with its partner varsities, Virginia Commonwealth University in
Qatar, Weill Cornell Medical
College in Qatar, Texas A&M
University at Qatar, Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar, Georgetown University
School of Foreign Service in
Qatar, Northwestern University in Qatar, HEC Paris
in Qatar and UCL Qatar.
The fair, sponsored by
Qatar Shell, enabled students and alumni from universities across Education
City to connect with representatives from more than
90 Qatar-based organisations for obtaining information on internship and employment opportunities.
The fair enabled students and alumni from universities across Education City to connect with representatives from more than 90 Qatar-based organisations.
Dr Khalid al Khanji,
Vice-President of Student
Affairs for HBKU, noted:
“The Education City Career
Fair provided students and
alumni an opportunity to
connect with the local employers to help young professionals embark on a rewarding career path.”
Rob Sherwin, Deputy
Country Chairman of Qatar
Shell said: “We are proud to
be the lead sponsor of First
Education City Career Fair,
which coincides with Qatar
Foundation’s 20th anniversary. As the largest international investor in Qatar,
Shell aims to become the
employer of choice for Qatari
nationals, helping enable the
delivery and operation of our
current and future projects
in the country.”
Mohamed Habib Soliman, a senior from Texas
A&M University at Qatar,
majoring in chemical engineering, stated, “We’ve nev-
er had a joint career fair before, and it’s a big event for
everyone in Education City.
For more than 90 companies to be in one place together, it’s great practice for
future career opportunities
to meet these people.”
Noor al Thani, an
alumna from Georgetown
University’s School of Foreign Service in Qatar, who
majored in international
economics, mentioned the
benefit of a multi-sector
fair. “It’s great that there
is one fair this year, unlike
other years, because there
is space for different types
of students in different
companies. For example, I
personally thought oil and
gas companies would only
look for engineering students, but in reality, they
are looking for a diversity
of students from a variety
of backgrounds.” More than
800 students and alumni attended the fair.
HEC Paris hosts New York-based MBA students
DOHA
HEC Paris School of Management, ranked
number one in the world for Executive Education by the Financial Times in 2014, hosted
a group of MBA participants from the Lubin
School of Business (Pace University - New York
City, USA), during their study trip to the UAE
and Qatar recently.
As part of the education-themed day of
their trip, the delegation comprising three professors and 30 students, visited the HEC Paris
premises at the Tornado Tower in Qatar. They
were welcomed by Ms Nora Kerbache, Director
of University and Corporate Relations along
with other members of the HEC Paris community in Qatar.
Prof Laoucine Kerbache, Dean & CEO of HEC
Paris in Qatar, delivered a presentation on ‘HEC
Paris and its Role in the Qatar Higher Education
System’ followed by a discussion and networking
with the students. Then a mini case study on a
local firm through a session was handled by Dr
Wolfgang Aman, Associate Professor in Strategy
and faculty member of HEC Paris in Qatar.
Students from Lubin School of Business (Pace University - New York City, USA) who visited the HEC Paris School of Management in Doha recently.

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