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DJOKOVIC
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THURSDAY
JANUARY 8, 2015
RABI AL-AWAAL 17, 1436
VOL.9 NO. 3048 QR 2
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QA to reduce fuel
surcharge: Baker
CARNAGE IN FRANCE
Qatar Airways planes set to have automatic tracking system
MANEESH BAKSHI
DOHA
Gunmen flee after attacking the offices of French weekly Charlie Hebdo in Paris on Wednesday. (REUTERS)
Gunmen storm satirical weekly
office in Paris, massacre 12
AFP
Qatar condemns
attack
PARIS
HEAVILY armed gunmen massacred 12 people on Wednesday
after bursting into the Paris ofﬁces of a satirical weekly that had
long outraged Muslims with controversial cartoons of the Prophet
Mohammed (PBUH).
The attack on the Charlie
Hebdo headquarters was the
bloodiest in France for at least
four decades.
Victims included three cartoonists and the chief editor
who had been holding a morning meeting when the assailants
armed with Kalashnikovs opened
ﬁre, ofﬁcials said. The police
said witnesses heard the attackers shout “We have avenged the
QFA to back
Sepp Blatter
QATAR Football Association
(QFA) President Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa bin Ahmed
al Thani has said that QFA
will support Joseph Sepp
Blatter for FIFA presidency
against Prince Ali bin al
Hussein of Jordan.
“I want to stress on the
strong relationship with
Prince Ali, but reiterate that
there is a question mark
over nominating Prince Ali,”
he said, adding that “We as
QFA and through the AFC,
emphasise our support for
Blatter’s continuity.”
At a meeting in Brazil,
99 percent of the members present and the QFA
agreed Blatter is capable
of governing world football
today. (QNA)
QATAR on Wednesday condemned the attack on Charlie Hebdo, saying such acts
against defenceless civilians
contradict all moral principles
and human values. The Foreign
Ministry extended condolences
and sympathy to the French
government and the families
of the victims, wishing speedy
recovery to the injured. (QNA)
Prophet” and “Allahu Akbar”.
President Francois Hollande
immediately rushed to the scene
of what he called “an act of exceptional barbarism.”
Amateur video shot after
the bloodbath showed two men
masked and dressed head-to-toe
in black military style outﬁts leaving the building, then shooting a
wounded policeman in cold blood
as he lay on the pavement.The
gunmen then returned to a black
Citroen and drove off.
Editor-in-chief
Stephane
Charbonnier, known as Charb,
was among those killed in the
attack. Others left dead included cartoonists known as Cabu,
Tignous and Wolinski.
The capital was immediately
placed under the highest alert
status. The gunmen remained at
large by early evening and there
was no claim of responsibility.
MORE ON PAGE 14 ❯
Goods unclaimed for 2 months
at ports to be auctioned
QNA
DOHA
THE cabinet on Wednesday approved a draft law amending some
provisions of Decree Law No. 29 of
1966 on regulating Qatar ports and
referred it to the Advisory Council.
Under the amendment, goods and
containers that remain in stores and
yards of the port for two months from
the date of arrival without being withdrawn or for one month from the date
of entry into the port without being
exported are to be auctioned.
The cabinet also approved the
draft Emiri decision annulling the
decision of the deputy ruler No. 5 of
1969 on organising the auctioning of
unclaimed goods.
The cabinet took necessary measures on the issuance of a draft Emiri
decision amending some provisions
Goods and containers that
remain in stores and yards
of the port for two months
from the date of arrival
without being withdrawn
are to be auctioned.
of Decision No. 48 of 2014 on the organisational structure of the Ministry
of Interior.
Under the bill, a new administrative unit called General Administration for Industrial Security is to be
added to the ministry’s units.
The decision was taken at the
cabinet’s regular meeting chaired by
Prime Minister and Minister of Interior HE Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser
bin Khalifa al Thani.
SEE ALSO PAGE 2 ❯
MEC asks car dealers to compensate customers
TRIBUNE NEWS NETWORK
DOHA
THE Ministry of Economy and
Commerce (MEC) has asked three
car dealers to pay compensation to
customers for selling them vehicles involved in accidents as brand
new ones.
The MEC had recently closed
down the showrooms of the three
dealers for selling used cars after
repairs and painting.
The MEC has given an opportunity to the three car dealers and
affected customers to settle the
The MEC had recently
closed down the
showrooms of the three
dealers for selling used
cars after repairs and
painting.
matter amicably.
Following the order from the
MEC, the car dealers have started
working out methods to satisfy the
affected customers. They are considering settling the dispute by either paying refund or giving them
another car.
The showrooms were closed
after the MEC inspectors
found violations by these dealers
during surprise visits to their facilities.
The MEC had issued administrative closure decisions under
Article 7 of Law No. 8 of 2008
that states “Suppliers are obliged
to provide the following information in clear label: type, nature
and components of the product.
Suppliers are also prohibited
from describing, advertising or
displaying products using false
or deceptive information”.
QATAR Airways will reduce its
fuel surcharge following the fall
in crude oil prices, its CEO Akbar
al Baker said on Wednesday, but
ruled out the possibility of any reduction in air fares.
Baker was speaking at a press
conference after the induction of
the Airbus A350 XWB into the Qatar Airways ﬂeet.
The aircraft was inaugurated by
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of State for Cabinet Affairs HE
Ahmed bin Abdullah al Mahmoud.
Baker said, “There is no possibility of any reduction in the fare on
account of the falling crude prices.”
He said the airline was in a negative territory when crude prices
were hovering above $100 a barrel.
He maintained that the fuel price
was not the only component that
contributes to the cost of operations of an airline.
“So, as of now, the price is going
down. The airline will now again
get into proﬁtability. This does not
mean that if the fuel price went
down by 50 percent, we have to
start reducing the fares by 50 percent,” he said. He, however, did not
comment on the extent of reduction of fuel surcharge.
Baker said Qatar Airways is
planning to roll out planes equipped
with an automatic aircraft tracking
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of State for Cabinet Affairs HE Ahmed bin
Abdullah al Mahmoud with other dignitaries at the ceremony to induct A350
XWB into Qatar Airways fleet in Doha on Wednesday.
system as early as this year, a move
that will help prevent tragedies
such as the disappearance of the
Malaysia Airlines ﬂight MH370.
“We are aggressively pursuing
the matter of continuous tracking
with International Air Transport
Association (IATA). It is high time
that such monitoring should be
made mandatory so that all aircraft
are automatically tracked from the
time they take off,” he said.
Baker said the airline is close
to developing a system which will
equip the whole ﬂeet with the capability of sending ﬂight data on
a continuous basis to the ground
control for effective tracking.
He said Qatar Airways will
introduce a new state-of-theart proprietary seat that will be
unrivaled in the industry. “We
are planning its ﬁrst commercial service by deploying it on
the Doha–Frankfurt route from
January 15,” he said.
SEE ALSO PAGE 16 ❯
02
Thursday, January 8, 2015
Mist covers various parts of Qatar on Wednesday reducing visibility for motorists and causing traffic snarl. (FOROZ SAYED/JITENDRA PATEL)
A tough day for motorists as thick fog envelops Doha
SANTHOSH CHANDRAN
DOHA
OFFICE-GOERS and other
motorists were stranded
on streets within Doha and
outside for a long time on
Wednesday morning as a
thick fog enveloped the sky
reducing visibility sharply
and also leading to collisions
of vehicles in some areas.
However, no major ac-
cidents were reported due to
the fog and the Trafﬁc Police
and Civil Defence personnel
managed to bring the situation under control in the affected areas well in time.
Meanwhile, the Ministry
of Interior (MoI) urged the
motorists to be careful. The
MoI tweeted, “Visibility is low
due to dense fog especially
outside the city. Motorists, be
attentive and drive carefully.”
QUICK READ
Qatar, Morocco officials
discuss relations
QATAR'S Ambassador to Morocco HE Abdulla bin Falah al Dosari met with Morocco's High Commissioner for Water, Forests
and Combating Desertification Abdulazim
al Hafi in Rabat on Wednesday. The meeting dealt with bilateral relations and ways
to develop them in addition to other topics
of mutual interest. (QNA)
Qatar's ambassador to Belgium
hosts luncheon banquet
QATAR'S Ambassador to Belgium and the
European Union HE Sheikh Ali bin Jassim
al Thani has hosted a luncheon in honour
of Michele Alliot-Marie on the occasion of
assuming her new duties as Chair of the
relations committee with the Arab Peninsula
at the European Parliament in the presence
of the GCC ambassadors accredited to Belgium. Speaking at he function, Qatar's envoy
congratulated Michele Alliot-Marie on assuming her position. He called for coordinated
efforts, unified visions to reach common
solutions to various political, security and
economic challenges facing the world. (QNA)
MoE destroys 12
consignments of
infected products
TRIBUNE NEWS NETWORK
The MoI tweeted further,
“Use fog lights and low beam
headlights while driving in
fog. Don’t turn on hazard
lights and high beams.”
Speaking to Qatar Tribune the Head of Forecasting
and Analysis Section of Meteorology Department Abdulla al Mannai said, “The
temperature will drop from
Thursday afternoon, but the
foggy weather will continue
for the next couple of days.
Besides, the dusty weather on
Thursday afternoon will create trouble for motorists.”
Many of the roads to Doha
and highways to Ras Laffan,
Al Shamal, Mesaieed and Industrial Area were blocked by
the Police on Wednesday to
avoid accidents. Police also
diverted trafﬁc from Wukair
and Messieed roads to avoid
congestion and mishaps.
The trafﬁc situation led to
a lot of inconveniences to the
commuters. Some employees could not reach their ofﬁces to perform their duties
in the morning shift whereas
some others were delayed
for one to two hours to reach
their ofﬁces.
An Indian employee who
stays in Wakra and has an ofﬁce in West Bay said, “Even
though I was diverted back
saieed said, “The broken
glasses at several places on
the way reveal that a large
numbers of vehicles have
collided due to poor visibility caused by the fog.”
Even though the ﬂow of
vehicles at Corniche road
was dead-slow, the sight of
sea and the open gardens
blanketed with mist was fascinating for many joggers at
Corniche.
Private clinics demand avenue to lodge MDPS gets Cabinet’s
nod to conduct census
complaints about Seha beneficiaries
QNA
TRIBUNE NEWS NETWORK
DOHA
OFFICIALS of various private
health centres and clinics participating in the National Health
Insurance Scheme (Seha) have
called on the National Health Insurance Company (NHIC) to provide an avenue for the clinics and
physicians to lodge complaints
about the patients and visitors’
misbehaviour just like the patients do.
The ofﬁcials said there should
be a way for the clinics to lodge
complaints about the patients’
misbehaviour, especially when
the patients fail to keep their appointments and still insist to see a
doctor in a rude manner.
According to the ofﬁcials,
some patients are always rude to
doctors, threatening to stop them
from working and call for withdrawal of their licences.
The concerned personnel said
they have appropriate mechanism
to monitor the performance of
their employees even more closely
Some patients are always
rude to doctors, threatening to stop them from
working and call for withdrawal of their licences.
than the state authorities.
They pointed out that various
sanctions and penalties imposed
by the health authorities in the
country were adequate enough
to prevent healthcare providers
from manipulating the system.
The
participating
clinics
praised the NHIC for developing
a new system to prevent manipulation of the income of healthcare
services provider.
The ofﬁcials demanded the
NHIC to deal with the compliant
clinics in a good way that will further prevent them from committing errors, expressing their keenness to provide excellent services
without pressures from the NHIC,
according to Al-Watan newspaper.
“We are required, according
to NHIC’s directives, to facilitate
the treatment of citizens but the
procedures of doctors licensing as
well as the evaluations conducted
by a Supreme Council of Health
(SCH) take a long time,” they said.
They said the doctor cannot
begin practising the profession
before he gets the licence which
is granted after three months of
ﬁling application and payment of
the required fees.
The ofﬁcials also complained
that when the insurance electronic system breaks down, there
is no one to quickly repair it while
the instructions and information
given by the health insurance ofﬁcials are sometimes contradictory.
According to the instructions
of the ofﬁcials, they said, the patient shall be received whether he
has an appointment or emergency
as long as he has health insurance even if he does not hold his
ID, which violates the law. At the
same time, about 25 percent of
women and children do not hold
their ID cards and they come holding only the health cards they use
in Hamad Medical Corporation.
CLAMPDOWN ON STREET VENDORS
DOHA
THE Department of Agriculture in the Ministry of Environment (MoE) checked altogether 5,129 consignments weighing 74, 817
tonnes in December, 2014, and destroyed 12
of them weighing 8.21 tonnes for violating
the Agricultural Quarantine Law and for
being largely rotten and infected.
The consignments included various types
of imported agricultural products such as
vegetables and production inputs which were
kept at the quarries and agriculture quarantine ofﬁces at Customs’ ports in the state.
Besides, the Department issued phytosanitary certiﬁcates to 38 consignments
of agricultural products weighing 924.24
tonnes that were meant for exports after
checking them thoroughly.
The Agricultural Quarantine is the ﬁrst
line of defence to protect and prevent the
plant from pests. It is a preventive measure which aims to protect the plant wealth
in the state.
Agricultural quarantine ofﬁces apply Law
No 24 of 2005 on Agricultural Quarantine
along with its executive regulations, resolutions and circulars.
to my house, I was stranded
in trafﬁc congestion for more
than two hours”
An engineer working at
Ras Laffan Industrial City
and residing at Ain Khalid
said, “We were compelled
to stop the car many times
on the way to the worksite.
We reached at the worksite
at 10 am after a delay of
three hours”
A truck driver in Me-
The General Control Section of the Control Department of Doha Municipality in coordination with the Police
Department (Al Fazaa) and Public Hygiene Project conducted inspection campaign on street vendors in Industrial
Area, arrested four vendors and took legal actions against them.
DOHA
THE Cabinet at a meeting
chaired by Prime Minister
and Minister of Interior
HE Sheikh Abdullah bin
Nasser bin Khalifa al Thani
on Wednesday approved a
proposal by the Ministry of
Development Planning and
Statistics (MDPS) to carry
out the general census of
population, houses and establishments for 2015.
The census aims to
measure
demographic
changes of Qatar's population based on sex, age
and families, and to identify highly populated areas
based on nationality, sex,
age and other variables, and
to learn how these areas are
linked by location based on
municipalities, regions and
other geographic, functional
or planning classiﬁcations.
Furthermore, the census identiﬁes changes in
housing conditions, buildings and business establishments and their economic
activity. It also builds modern statistical frames to be
used in sample family surveys that are related to the
workforce, economic activity, health and education
among other things.
Following the meeting,
Deputy Prime Minister and
Minister of State for Cabinet
Affairs HE Ahmed bin Abdullah al Mahmoud said the
Cabinet took the necessary
measures on the issuance
of a draft Emiri decision
amending some provisions
of Decision No 48 of 2014
on the organisational structure of the Ministry of Interior. Under the bill, a new
administrative unit named
General
Administration
for Industrial Security is to
be added to the ministry's
units.
The Cabinet also approved the prime minister's draft decisions on the
formation of a ministerial
group for coordination and
follow up of major projects
(of strategic importance)
and the formation of a ministerial group to regulate the
allocation and reclamation
of new lands. It also approved the premier's draft
decision on forming a ministerial group to encourage
and partner with the private
sector in economic development projects.
Additionally, the Cabinet
ratiﬁed the draft decision of
the Municipal Council on
issuing its internal regulations and rules of procedure,
which cover provisions relating to the council's divisions, including its presidency, bureau, committees
and general secretariat as
well as its powers, meetings,
requests and proposals of
members on public issues
that are covered in the council's jurisdictions.
The regulations also
cover voting on issues on
the agenda and the council's
budget. They stipulate that
statements of the council
are secret and can't be published without the permission of the president.
The Cabinet ratiﬁed a
draft decision by the director-general of Qatar News
Agency on establishing divisions in its administrative
units and to assign their
tasks.
In addition, the meeting
ratiﬁed a draft memorandum of understanding on
the implementation of beneﬁcial initiatives between
the Supreme Committee
of Delivery and Legacy and
Qatar Tourism Authority.
The meeting also approved the hosting of the
fourth meeting of the Qatari-Italian joint committee
on January 28 and 29.
The cabinet took measures to ratify a memorandum of understanding on
training diplomats between
the Diplomatic Institute at
Qatar's Ministry of Foreign
Affairs and Saud Al-Nasser
Al-Sabah Diplomatic Institute at Kuwait's Foreign
Ministry.
Nation
Thursday, January 8, 2015
QATAR FALCONS AND HUNTING FESTIVAL
03
Qatar, Kuwait
slam attack on
Saudi border
QNA
DOHA
Two new winners
emerge in Hudud Al
Tahaddi challenge
TRIBUNE NEWS NETWORK
DOHA
TWO more winners of the
Hudud Al Tahaddi challenge
triumphed in the exciting Qatar
Falcons and Hunting Festival
on Wednesday, qualifying their
owner for a prize of QR100,000
as well as the chance to win a
new Lexus.
The Hudud Al Tahaddi
challenge saw falcons seeking
to obstruct the ﬂight of homing pigeons especially trained
to ﬂy to another site many kilometres away.
The event, witnessed by a
large number of spectators eager to follow the actions at the
festival grounds, will continue
on Thursday.
One of the winners, Mohammed bin Sultan al Shahwani,
expressed his delight with the
success of his falcon, Uday, in
cornering the homing pigeon
and winning the contest.
He said, “I could have been
more prepared, but I am certainly happy to have won the competition, and the QR100,000,
thereby entering the runoff
round to compete for a new Lexus. The homing pigeons really
gave the falcons a run for their
money, thanks in no small part
to the efforts of their trainer, Abdullah Fakhroo.”
The day's other winner,
Mohammed Masoud al Ithba
al Marri, also expressed his joy
over winning the challenge,
adding that he had participated
in the challenge to compete and
win, and not just to participate,
having put extensive efforts
into training his falcon.
Participants & spectators at the Qatar Falcons & Hunting Festival at Sabkhet Marmi near Sealine on Wednesday.
Commenting on the festival
so far, Marri commended the
organising committee for its
efforts. “We thank the member
of the committee. The festival
has been of a high standard,”
he said.
The sixth edition of the
Qatar Falcons and Hunting
Festival is being organised by
the Gannas Society under the
patronage of HE Sheikh Joaan
bin Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani at Sabkhet Marmi near Sealine, Mesaieed.
QATAR has strongly condemned and denounced the criminal attack, which occurred in the border area north of Saudi
Arabia, killing and wounding a number of
security men, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.
The statement stressed Qatar keenness
on standing with Saudi Arabia in protecting its borders from any aggression or attack targeting its security and stability.
The statement reiterated Qatar’s ﬁrm
stance against violence in all its forms and
manifestations. It expressed Qatar condolences to the families of the victims who
died as a result of this crime.
In the same vain, Kuwait has condemned the attack.
The statement stressed Qatar
keenness on standing with
Saudi Arabia in protecting its
borders from any aggression
“The Council of Ministers condemns
the terrorist attack that took place against
one of the border guard patrols in the
northern border region of Saudi Arabia,
killing three servicemen and injuring two
others,” Kuwaiti Minister of State for Cabinet Affairs Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah
al Sabah said in a statement after a weekly
government meeting.
The meeting, chaired by Kuwait's Prime
Minister Sheikh Jaber Mubarak al Hamad
al Sabah, commended vigilance of the Saudi border guards in preserving security and
stability of the Kingdom, according to Kuwait's News Agency (KUNA).
Sheikh Mohammad also underlined
the serious efforts being made by Saudi
Arabia to eliminate terrorism. The cabinet,
he added, considered the attack against the
Saudi border guards as an assault against
all GCC countries and reafﬁrmed rejection
to all forms of terrorism. The cabinet, further said Sheikh Mohammad, extended
condolences to families of the victims and
wished the wounded speedy recovery.
04
Nation
Thursday, January 8, 2015
QUICK READ
Culture minister meets Lebanese counterpart
MINISTER of Culture, Arts and Heritage HE Dr Hamad Abdulaziz
al Kuwari on Wednesday met with Lebanese Minister of Culture
Remon Araiji, currently visiting Doha to participate in the opening of the Doha International Book Fair and attend its associated cultural programme. The Lebanese minister praised the
preparations of the Ministry of Culture to mark the fair's Silver
Jubilee. The two ministers discussed means to boost cultural
cooperation between the two countries. (QNA)
Environment minister receives invite from UAE
MINISTER of Environment HE Ahmed bin Amer al Humaidi on
Wednesday received a written message from UAE's Minister of
Environment and Water Rashid Ahmad bin Fahd. The message
included an invitation for Humaidi to attend the second edition
of the Global Forum for Innovations in Agriculture (GFIA 2015),
which will be held at Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Center on
March 9 and 10. UAE Ambassador to Qatar HE Saleh bin Mohammed al Amri delivered the message to the minister. (QNA)
SJC chief meets Algerian justice minister
PRESIDENT of the Court of Cassation and Chairman of the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC) HE Masood Mohamed al Amri met
with Algerian Minister of Justice Tayeb Louh and his accompanying delegation in Doha on Wednesday. Algerian Ambassador to
Qatar HE Abdelfattah Ziani attended the meeting. (QNA)
Kyrgyz minister meets Qatari ambassador
KYRGYZSTAN'S Minister of Agriculture Taalaybek Aydaraliev on
Wednesday met with Qatari Ambassador to Bishkek HE Mohamed bin Arar al Nuaimi. The meeting addressed bilateral relations
and means to bolster them in different fields. (QNA)
QRC set to host consultative meeting
of MENA National Societies from Jan 12
TRIBUNE NEWS NETWORK
DOHA
QATAR Red Crescent (QRC)
on Wednesday morning
held a press conference at its
headquarters to announce
the details of the consultative
meeting of MENA National
Societies, to be organised by
QRC at Crowne Plaza Doha
from January 12-14, 2015.
QRC Secretary-General,
Saleh bin Ali al Mohannadi,
told the reporters, "QRC was
selected to host this important meeting in recognition
of its active role in the International Red Cross and Red
Crescent Movement and its
extensive experience in relief,
development, and humanitarian advocacy and diplomacy,
particularly in such a strategic
part of the world."
The purpose of the meeting, he said, is to unify collective efforts of MENA National Societies and facilitate
joint humanitarian action,
in light of the key recom-
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Qatar Red Crescent Secretary-General Saleh bin Ali al Mohannadi with other officials at a press
conference in Doha on Wednesday.
mendations adopted in the
previous meetings in Cairo
(2012), Tehran (2013), and
Tunisia (2014), as well as the
International RCRC Movement constitutional meetings in Sidney (2013).
The meeting will be attended by representatives of
31 MENA and non-MENA
National Societies, including
Advisory Council
panel discusses
Al Shahaniya city
border law
QNA
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01/02/2015
Qatar General
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Corporation
Than
Dafna
11.00 AM
From : 08/01/2015
To : 15/01/2015
KAHRAMAA
Website
Qatar General
01/02/2015
Electricity & Water
Corporation
Not later
Dafna
Than
11.00 AM
From : 08/01/2015
To : 15/01/2015
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TRIBUNE NEWS NETWORK
DOHA
THE Advisory Council's Services
and Public Facilities committee
on Wednesday discussed Decree
Law No 19 of 2014 amending some
provisions of Law No 22 of 1988
on assigning the borders of AlShahaniya city and decided to refer its report in this regard to the
Advisory Council.
At the beginning of the meeting, the committee unanimously
reappointed Saqr Fahd al Muraikhi as the secretary of the
committee.
Advisory Council Speaker HE
Mohamed bin Mubarak al Khulaiﬁ
on Wednesday met with Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, chief justice and
president of the Supreme Court of
England and Wales.
Khulaifi welcomed Lord Thomas and briefed him on the powers and the role of the Advisory
Council.
Advisory Council Deputy Speaker HE Issa bin Rabea al Kuwari attended the meeting along with the
Council's controller Mohamed bin
Abdullah al Sulaiti and Advisory
Council Secretary-General HE Fahad bin Mubarak al Khayareen.
QATALUM has collaborated
with the Abdulla Bin Zayed
al Mahmoud Cultural Islamic
Center on the publication of
a book, entitled Understanding Islam, which aims to introduce Qatari society and
culture to non-Muslims from
different nationalities living in
Qatar.
The books were delivered
on December 23 at Al Fanar,
with Qatalum’s Communications Department representatives delivering the ﬁnished
books to the Islamic Center
– a non-proﬁt organisation
related to the Ministry of Endowments and Islamic Affairs.
According to Qatalum
and the Islamic Center, the
book aims to promote the
“establishment of ideals of
the Qatari community, including religious, moral and
authentic Arab values which
highlight the human and cultural values of Islam”.
Ibrahim Jassim Fakhri,
Qatalum’s Corporate Communications Manager, says
For more details of tenders, please visit KAHRAMAA website :
http:// www.km.qa • T: 44845555
‘Understanding Islam’ published in support of Qatalum.
this book demonstrates Qatalum’s ongoing commitment to
Corporate Social Responsibility and the company’s vision
to increase social cohesion
among all living in Qatar –
nationals and expats alike.
“We are deeply committed
to helping all people understand each other and integrate
well here in Qatar – especially
with non-Qataris making up a
large majority of the country’s
population. Increasing understanding about Islam among
non-Muslims living here in
Qatar is as important as Muslim Qataris respecting the be-
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The
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(Qrs.)
SQL
LTC
CONSULTANCY 25,000/896/2014
SERVICES
Validity of
bank
guarantee
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Qrs
150
days
500/-
Offer
Validity
Date & place
from tender documents
closing will be collected
date
120
days
Closing
date
25/01/2015
Kahramaa Website
Not later
From:08/01/2015
Than
To:15/01/2015
11.00 AM
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Addressed to: Secretary, Limited Tenders Committee. The closing date
and tender number should be clearly written on the envelope.
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and tender number should be clearly written on the envelope.
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Qatalum backs publishing
of ‘Understanding Islam’
DOHA
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Tender
No.
and Under-Secretary-General
Matthias Schmale and Dr Abdullah Mohamed al Hazzaa,
Secretary-General of the Arab
Red Crescent and Red Cross
Organisation.
According to the agenda,
the ﬁrst day will see discussions on the current humanitarian conditions in the
MENA region in general, and
all the Arab countries, Iran,
France, America, UK, Germany, Norway, and Denmark.
Other guests include
senior ofﬁcials from the International Committee of
the Red Cross (ICRC), the
International Federation of
Red Cross and Red Crescent
(IFRC) — notably IFRC Secretary-General Elhadj As Sy
particularly in crisis-stricken
countries, such as Syria,
Iraq, Palestine, Libya, Lebanon, and Jordan.
Among the major issues to
be discussed are the exchange
of experience and capabilities
for better disaster preparedness and response, thus keeping updated with humanitarian developments; systematic
supervision and effective participation from national societies in relation to the planning and taking stock of IFRC
contributions; following up on
the decisions of the 8th Asia
Paciﬁc Conference, the 8th
MENA Conference, and other
relevant conferences.
The participants will also
consider how to promote
the role of youths, highlight
the importance of engaging
them in national society activities, examine the MENA
humanitarian
conditions
amid the status quo and political instabilities, and prioritise the agendas of MENA
National Societies.
For more details of tenders,
please visit KAHRAMAA website :
http:// www.km.qa • T: 44845555
liefs and values of those who
have moved here to work,”
Fakhri said.
“This ﬁne book promotes
inclusivity, religious tolerance
and pluralism within Qatar,
and we are proud to be associated with it,” Fakhri added.
Abdullah al Mulla, representative of the Abdulla Bin
Zaid al Mahmoud Cultural
Islamic Centre, said: “We extend our heartfelt thanks to
Qatalum for supporting the
publication of this valuable
book which will be an important reference for non-Muslim communities in Qatar.”
Beach Volleyball
match at Sharq
Village and Spa
Hotel on Jan 16
TRIBUNE NEWS NETWORK
DOHA
IN an effort to educate the public on harmful effects of smoking, Events and Beyondwill host a
beach volleyball friendly match between Qatar's
top online and media group at Sharq Village and
Spa’s beach area on January 16 and 23.
The match will be organised in cooperation
with Ooredoo and Sharq Village and Spa Hotel.
In a press statement, Sharq Village and Spa
Hotel expressed its delight in supporting Events
and Beyond's initiative on its ‘No Smoking’ campaign while Ooredoo said that one way to contribute to Qatar's sports development is by taking an active role in engaging the public in sports
activities.
“Playing beach volleyball is one of the sports
that anyone can basically play. Engaging in sports
activity is a good way to take off your mind of
smoking,” said Carsten Fritz, general manager of
Sharq Village and Spa Hotel.
Abdulla Ibrahim of Ooredoo said, “It is our
objective to help Qatar develop physically and socially active citizens because by doing so, we create a healthy population and help boost the country's economy.”
The beach volleyball friendly match is part of
Beyond the Net Campaign initiated by Events and
Beyond aimed at making the public aware of certain societal issues through sports.
Nation
Thursday, January 8, 2015
05
QAPCO reaches out to Dhreima children
Supports award
ceremony by appreciating top performing students
TRIBUNE NEWS NETWORK
DOHA
QATAR Petrochemical Company (QAPCO) Q.S.C., one
of the leading petrochemical
powerhouses in the region,
looks to further engage and
contribute to the development of Qatar through initiatives and community outreach programmes that truly
make a difference in society.
In this regard, QAPCO
has recently sponsored an
award ceremony appreciating some of the ‘hard working students’ of Dhreima,
thereby rewarding talent to
encourage them to excel in
their studies.
Thirty outstanding students were recognised for
their school performance
and were awarded with special prizes. Dhreima involves
highly motivated and enthusiastic students who are top
achievers at school and dedicated to their studies.
Khaled Kamal, Director of Dhreima, thanked
QAPCO has recently sponsored an award ceremony appreciating some of the hard working students of Dhreima.
QAPCO for its support and
for organising a special ceremony to inspire and encourage children.
Speaking on the occasion, Dr Mohammed Yousef
al Mulla, Vice-Chairman and
CEO of QAPCO, expressed
his support to Dhreima. “At
QAPCO, we draw strength
from the alignment of our
strategy with the Qatar National Vision 2030. Every
day, our focus is to ensure
we participate in translating
this vision into reality. We
believe that contributing to
Qatari society and serving
our country is part of our
license to operate. It is our
role to invest in the future of
our country, by supporting
the youth of our nation and
by offering them the tools
and means to reach their aspirations,” he said.
He added, “So, we are delighted to support Dhreima
and its activities. Dhreima’s
noble mission is essential as
it strengthens social cohesion and integration within
our society by placing emphasis on solidarity. The actions and values promoted
by Dhreima are exemplary
and an inspiration to many.”
The appreciation of the
top performing students during the ceremony is aimed at
highlighting the signiﬁcance
of education.
During the ceremony,
Kamal said, “Education
holds a central place for
Dhreima. Furthermore, we
encourage our students to
study scientiﬁc disciplines
as we believe in its beneﬁts
and the many possibilities
offered by a science-oriented
curriculum. Our aim, at Dhreima, is to support our students’ enthusiastic quest for
learning and development
and to encourage them to
pursue their higher education, in Qatar and abroad.
We are immensely proud of
our students’ success.”
Kamal further said, “One
of Dhreima’s objectives is
for students to effectively
integrate the labour market.
And we do so by providing
relevant training, original
workshops and by offering
hands-on professional experience aimed at developing leadership and general
life skills among students.
We strive to ensure that the
students of Dhreima are
well equipped with knowledge and capability to participate in achieving the ambitions of the Qatar National
Vision 2030.”
Dr Mulla congratulated all the awardees for
their decent school grades
and stressed, “Education is
the key to empowering the
youth. With education, you
will develop strategic skills
and competencies and have
access to rewarding jobs in
companies. With education,
you will be able to achieve
your dreams.”
Kamal concluded by
thanking QAPCO. “We look
forward to our future collaboration with QAPCO, especially in the forthcoming students activities,” he added.
3,250 register for Ooredoo Marathon BQFP launches young adult book guide
TRIBUNE NEWS NETWORK
Friday’s marathon
to feature world
class athletes,
first time runners
DOHA
TRIBUNE NEWS NETWORK
DOHA
OOREDOO on Wednesday
announced that 3,250 participants have registered to take
part in the Ooredoo Marathon 2015 – more than double the number of runners in
last year’s event – which will
take place on Friday.
This year’s marathon will
begin at 6:40am from Katara
and will take full marathon
runners along the Corniche
to the Museum of Islamic Art
Park in Doha and back again
twice, in a two-lap course.
As well as the increase in
competitors, Ooredoo will
host some of the world’s top
professional marathon runners for the ﬁrst time this
year. The professionals including Ethiopia’s Ruit Aga
Sora and Kenya’s George Kipruto Sirma, will run along-
Fatima Sultan al Kuwari, Director of Community & Public Relations, Ooredoo, with other officials at a
press conference in Doha on Wednesday. (RAFEEK PALAYOOR)
side competitors as they train
for the marathon season and
aim to win part of a prize
purse worth QR 1,000,000.
Fatima Sultan al Kuwari,
Director of Community &
Public Relations, Ooredoo,
said: “We are very excited to
be hosting the best and largest Ooredoo Marathon to
date, with a fully revamped
route and a host of exciting
activities for spectators and
supporters. There are races
for runners of all levels of
ability, so we hope that everyone gets the most out of
this exciting event.”
The Ooredoo Marathon
2015 is sponsored by Qatar
Airways, Hamad Medical
Corporation Kulluna, Sports
Corner, Reach out to Asia,
Katara and Baraem TV.
Ali Abdullah al Khater,
Executive Director, Corporate
Communications,
Hamad
Medical Corporation, said:
“Hamad Medical Corporation
is proud to be associated with
the Ooredoo Marathon 2015,
which continues to grow in
popularity each year. We
wish all the participants the
best of luck in the event.”
Maryam al Beshri, Direc-
tor, Events, Marketing and
Fundraising, Reach Out To
Asia, said: “ROTA is always
pleased to collaborate with
partners committed to community empowerment and
social inclusion - especially
through education and sport.”
To ensure the safety of all
runners and spectators, the
Corniche road, as well as several areas of downtown Doha
will be closed from 6.30am –
12.00pm. People interested
in watching the race can visit
http://marathon.ooredoo.qa/
en# and click on the ‘map’ to
see the full marathon course.
BLOOMSBURY Qatar Foundation Publishing (BQFP),
a member of Qatar Foundation (QF),is pleased to announce the launch of the new
volume of its Golden Guide
for Children’s Books and the
ﬁrst ever Young Adult Golden Guide in the Middle East.
Offering a handpicked
selection of the best young
adult titles in the Arabic
market, the guides are a critical resource for librarians,
parents and educators when
choosing books for either the
home or the classroom.
By delivering top quality
learning content for children
and young adults in the Middle East, BQFP is supporting
QF on its mission to preserve
and develop the Arabic language in addition to promoting culture and education in
the region.
The launch and workshop took place earlier this
week and were attended by
librarians from preparatory
and secondary independent
Filipino band Aegis to rock Doha ‘Al-Shawaheef’
AILYN AGONIA
DOHA
THE talented members of the
famous Filipino band Aegis
are all set to serenade their
Doha fans at the event billed
Big Bang 2015 to be staged at
the Marriott Hotel on Friday.
The group, which rose to
fame in the late ‘90s with their
phenomenal hit singles ‘Luha’,
‘Halik’ and ‘Basang-basa sa
Ulan’, is teaming up with Filipino comedian and impersonator Pooh for the highly-anticipated live entertainment show.
Aegis’ famous siblings and
lead vocalists Mercy Sunot
and Juliet Sunot are expect-
ed to bring the house down
with their distinct husky and
powerful voices that primarily earned the admiration of
music-loving Pinoys.
Aegis has been around the
Philippine music industry for
more than a decade and is also
revered for performing for their
compatriots abroad. The group
is also admired for promoting
OPM (Original Pinoy Music)
with their notable love songs.
Joining the Sunot sisters
are Stella Marie Pabico (keyboardist), Vilma Galoviogo
(drummer), Rowena Pinpin
(bass guitarist) and Rey
Abenoja (lead guitarist).
Meanwhile, it would be
Members of the popular Filipino band Aegis.
the second time for versatile
performer Pooh to take on
the Doha centrestage. He performed in Doha in 2008 alongside singer Yeng Constantino
at the Doha Exhibition Centre.
Aside from being a renowned stand-up comedian
and impersonator, Pooh is
also a popular singer and television host. He was recognised
with the best male comedy
actor award (Aliw Award) in
2006 and 2007. The concert
will start at 6pm. Ticket prices are QR100 (silver), QR150
(gold) and QR250 (platinum).
Beat and Bytes Production
is among the event's community partners.
all set to begin
TRIBUNE NEWS NETWORK
DOHA
THE countdown for the second
stage of the traditional boat race
‘Al Shawaheef’ has begun.
The second edition of the event
is held as part of the Active Qatar
Campaign activities, under the umbrella of the Qatar Olympic Committee. The race will take place at
Katara, Gate 20, on January 10.
Ten Qatari teams are taking
part in the ‘Al-Shawaheef’ race.
They include: Hal Sharq, Al Waab,
The race will take place at
Katara, Gate 20, on Jan 10.
Al-Khor, Al Dhaayin, Lusail, Al
Rayan, Al Wakra, Laffan, Um Al
Hool and Al Dafna. The race’s ﬁrst
stage saw Al-Khor team take lead
with 14’42”. Ten teams from various parts of the country also took
part in the ﬁrst stage of the race.
The Organising Committee
and management have decided
to conduct this year’s edition in
three stages. In fact, the traditional
boat race was initially designed to
be an annually held single round
competition. The main objective of extending the race to three
stages was to increase competition
among participants and raise the
prize money.
Cover of the new Golden
Guide for Young Adults from
Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation.
schools across Qatar, who
will now be able to stock
their library shelves with top
quality Arabic books in terms
of content and production.
Sara Saeed al-Naimi, a
librarian at Omar Al Qurra
Independent School, said,
“The guides are essential for
my students and their parents as they are both varied
and comprehensive, including an amazing collection
of books available in Ara-
bic from a diversity of publishers. Furthermore, the
workshop helped guide me
through the many publishers
that will be showcasing their
books at the Doha International Book Fair.”
In 2012, BQFP released
its ﬁrst volume of the Golden
Guide for Children’s Books,
covering the best Arabic language titles for ages 2 to 10 as
an educational resource for
parents and teachers.
Filling a gap in the market, BQFP is now launching
the ﬁrst ever guide focused
on young adult ﬁction for Arabic books covering ages 9 to
18 in order to help pre-teens
and teenagers with their literary choices as they start
reading more complex and
thought-provoking material.
The Young Adult Golden
Guide is edited by Amira
Abed and features essays by
leading Arab authors Abdul
Aziz al Seoud and Fatima
Sharafeddine. They will be
handed out free of charge at
the Doha International Book
Fair taking place at the QNCC
from January 7 to 17.
06
Thursday, January 8, 2015
Nation | Slice of the West
Reports by Maneesh Bakshi. For events and press releases email [email protected] or call (974) 44422077.
IN THE GRIP OF TENNIS FEVER
B
RITON James Roberts
was not really a tennis fan
when he moved to Qatar
two years ago. However,
the Qatar ExxonMobil
Open, a yearly tennis extravaganza, made him a fan of the game
so much so that hejust can’t stay
away from this spectacular event
which is currently underway at
the Khalifa International Tennis
& Squash Complex.
“Because it’s much cheaper to get into this world-class
sporting event as compared to
Wimbledon, which happens in
my home country, I thought why
not give it a go and it’s great fun
to watch, not only just the sport,
but tonnes of fun-ﬁlled activity,
which goes on all around the
complex,” said Roberts enjoying
his time with his friends while
sitting in the food court.
“I am from North England
and we hardly get anything like
this happening up North. We
have to go down to London to
see Wimbledon. It costs us a
fortune to get into Wimbledon,
which makes it all the more
logical to come to Qatar Open,
as the tickets are so affordable
here,” he added.
The Qatar Tennis Federation hosts the Qatar ExxonMobil Open that is considered
to be one of the top sporting
events in the country. This
year’s tournament showcases
some of the biggest names on
the ATP World Tour including
Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal,
David Ferrer, Tomas Berdych
and many more.
In addition to the action on
court, there is an array of entertainment off the court, taking
place non-stop at different locations in the complex, which has
Children take part in activities like face painting and holding of falcon.
several spectator facilities, such
as the public village, the kids’
zone and the VIP village. There
is something for everyone, no
matter what age one belongs to.
“My kids are having a won-
derful time here,” said Christina
Anderson an American national
who came to watch Qatar Exx-
onMobil Open with her husband and two children. “It’s
like one big party here with so
many things going on all around
this place. My daughters are so
thrilled to have their face painted while my husband is keen on
watching Nadal in action.”
British national Mary Swift,
who joined Hamad Medical
Corporation two months ago,
said, “Contrary to my expectation, I found Doha to have
much pleasant weather. I have
found something or the other
always happening here. Just
a few weeks ago it was Qatar
National Day celebrations and
now it is tennis.”
The area outside the centre
court is divided into three main
zones, all of which offer a great
variety of activities and entertainment. On one end is located
a Food Court which houses fast
food joints including Pizza Hut,
Asiana, Arby’s, Sterling, TCBY
and Coffee Beanery.
The second zone is situated
a few paces from the food court,
which includes various sponsor
booths. And not too far from
the sponsors’ booths is the third
zone, which comprises a traditional village and the kids’ zone.
The traditional village is
built for the public to experience one of Qatar’s most beloved cultural attractions, the
souq, giving a ﬁrst-hand experience to visitors, of traditional
Qatari arts such as henna-designing, basket-weaving and
boat-building.
The kids’ zone boasts of a
host of activities for the little ones, including inﬂatable
castles, obstacle courses, facepainting and so on. There is also
something called kids clinic,
where young boys and girls can
interact with players and get
some pointers from them.
Acrobatic display by Hebei Acrobatic Team from China.
Dazzling display of rope-skipping at Qatar Open
R
OPE-SKIPPING is a
common form of amusement among children.
Most of us have tried it at
some point in our lives. But
this trio have taken it to an
all new level. What they do is
a dazzling acrobatic display
of skill, power and choreography, daily on the sidelines
of the Qatar ExxonMobile
Tennis Open.
It’s a must-see show for
those who plan to visit the
ongoing Qatar Open at Khalifa International Tennis and
Squash Complex. The team
comprising three young athletes with Sebastian Deeg
from Germany and Belgian
duo Kristof Laenen and Willem Tack.
“We are each doing this
sport for over 15 years and
it’s something that we love to
do on a daily basis. We practice this sport and strive to
learn together in order to attain perfection in our movements. It is a demanding
sport and it needs muscular
strength and stamina,” said
the team members, while
chatting with Qatar Tribune
before getting ready for their
ﬁrst performance on stage.
“Besides power, it also
requires a sense of rhythm,
coordination and timing
between members. The fun
part about this sport is that it
can be done solo as well as in
a group. Basically, it involves
the variations of skipping
styles and the patterns that
one can form by coordinating with different members.”
This sport has given the
trio a chance to visit different places and to perform at
different venues. “We generally practise in gyms or
inside big sports halls three
to four times a week and our
sessions generally last for
couple of hours,” said Willem Tack.
All the three members
are engaged in regular jobs
and they ﬁnd time after work
to enjoy their sport. “Well
it’s our hobby but we do wish
to make it a profession. And
for the time being, we are
happy to be here in Qatar to
perform in front of Doha audience. Apart from performances like this one we also
The rope-skipping team from Europe performs.
participate in European and
World level competitions as
well,” said Kristof Laeneu.
“We are happy to be here
and to share our sports with
people of Qatar. There are
many championships for
these sports such as Euro-
pean Championships and
the World Championships
that are held an alternate
years. The last world cham-
pionship was held in Hong
Kong,” he said.
Talking about the history
of the sport Sebastian said,
“The founder of competitive
sport of jump rope goes to
American Footballer Richard Cendali who was asked
by his coach to do skipping
while he was recovering
from an injury. Being a footballer he soon found rope to
impose no challenge to him.
And jumping up and down
was no fun, really.
“So he started doing
criss-crosses, side swings
and various other formations
to increase the degree of difﬁculty and ‘fun’ factor by way
of skipping rope. As he mastered different skills, he decided to teach these skills to
others, and the sport of ropeskipping was born”.
“We are having a nice
time here at this wonderful sports venue. In the
past, we have been involved
with performances like this
for events such as product
launches and various other
corporate events, but it is for
the ﬁrst time that we have
been invited for a sports
event like this. We have been
holding many workshops in
Belgium and Germany.
World
Thursday, January 8, 2015
07
Pro-democracy lawmakers walk Ugandan
army says
top LRA
in US
out of Hong Kong reforms debate rebel
custody
AP
HONG KONG
PRO-DEMOCRACY legislators walked out of the muchawaited start of a debate
on democratic reforms in
Hong Kong on Wednesday
to protest the government’s
intention to stick with a plan
to screen all candidates in
an election of the city’s top
executive in 2017, an issue
that sparked massive recent
street protests.
Chief Secretary Carrie
Lam, the city’s No 2 ofﬁcial,
opened the consultation
with a speech in the territory’s Legislative Council.
Lawmakers aligned with the
pro-democracy movement
calling for free elections
immediately raised yellow
umbrellas — symbols of the
street protests — and walked
out.
Pro-democracy legislators hold 40 percent of the
seats, enough to block the
election plan.
However, that would
only preserve a status quo
that is also unsatisfying to
democracy activists.
Currently, the chief executive is chosen by an elite
Hong Kong Civic Party legislator Alan Leong (centre) protests outside the Legislative Council building in Hong Kong, on
Wednesday. (EPA)
committee that is friendly to
central Chinese authorities.
The pro-democracy legislators accuse leaders in
Hong Kong and mainland
Governor of Congo
mining province
loses party post in
rift with president
REUTERS
KINSHASA
MOISE Katumbi, the powerful governor of Democratic Republic of Congo’s
copper-producing Katanga province, has been removed as regional head of
the ruling party, political
sources said, highlighting
a deepening rift with President Joseph Kabila.
Local police and intelligence chiefs have also
been summoned to the
capital Kinshasa, senior
ofﬁcials said, in an apparent attempt to limit the
political fallout following
Katumbi’s return to Congo after a lengthy absence
due to illness.
Katumbi had made
a speech in Katanga late last month
that was seen as a
thinly veiled attack
on Kabila, who has
been in power since
2001 and under
Congo’s constitution is required to
step down in 2016
at the end of his
second term.
Katumbi has long been
considered a pillar of Kabila’s
Katanga-centred
power base.
But he made a speech
in Katanga late last month
that was seen as a thinly
veiled attack on Kabila,
who has been in power
since 2001 and under
Congo’s constitution is
required to step down in
2016 at the end of his second term.
Couching his criticism
in football references, Katumbi urged his supporters to challenge Kabila’s
right to score a “third penalty” against Congo, a vast
mineral-rich country of
around 70 million people
blighted by conﬂicts and
corruption.
Katumbi’s
remarks
represent the highest-pro-
ﬁle challenge to a possible
third term from within Kabila’s own People’s Party
for Reconstruction and
Democracy (PPRD).
Katumbi is one of the
few political ﬁgures with
nationwide appeal due in
part to his ownership of
one of Congo’s top football
teams and could mount
a major challenge for the
presidency if he were to
run in next year’s polls.
Political analysts and
opposition leaders expect
Kabila to attempt to stay
in ofﬁce beyond 2016 by
either revising the constitution or delaying the elections.
In a meeting with Katanga local chiefs on Monday, Kabila sought to play
down his ambitions, saying he would not be distracted from the task of
governing by speculation
about the 2016 election.
Kabila took power in
2001 after his father, Laurent, was assassinated in
the middle of a conﬂict between the government and
rebels that had sucked in
regional armies and killed
millions of Congolese.
He steered Congo to
post-war elections in 2006
and won re-election in
2011, although the second
vote was marred by complaints of widespread irregularities.
Some opposition activists across Africa have
been emboldened to oppose their rulers by events
in Burkina Faso, where
protesters ousted President Blaise Compaore last
October after he sought to
extend his 27-year rule.
But African governments have also been
quick to quell copycat protest movements.
On Tuesday, Martin
Fayulu, president of a
Congolese opposition party, said several of his supporters had been arrested
while calling for an antigovernment protest.
China of breaking promises
to let the city choose its chief
executive through universal
suffrage by 2017.
The central Chinese gov-
ernment pledged such a vote
when the ﬁnancial hub was
handed from colonial British to Chinese rule in 1997
under a form of autonomy
dubbed “one country, two
systems.”
“The walkout is to signify
our protest against this government that’s been cheat-
ing Hong Kong people on the
political reform front,” said
legislator Claudia Mo, who
joined the protest.
“We tried for years, democrats in general to try to appease Beijing and play it soft
and try to be negotiable and
it’s all to no avail and now we
know we need to stand ﬁrm
for our younger generation.”
An earlier consultation
from December 2013 to May
2014 was followed by a report announced in August
that recommended the Beijing-backed plan for a panel
to screen all candidates. The
panel is generally believed
to favour the central government.
Lam urged the pro-democracy legislators to take
part in the consultation and
argued that a popular vote,
even under Beijing’s rules,
would be an important step
forward for the city’s democracy.
“I urge the members to
think twice and not completely destroy the limited
space for political discussion even before the second
consultation has started,”
Lam said to a half-empty
chamber.
Boko Haram threatens to step
up violence in Cameroon
REUTERS
ABUJA
A man purporting to be the
leader of Nigerian militant
sect Boko Haram has threatened to step up violence in
neighbouring Cameroon unless it scraps its constitution
and embraces Islam.
The video posted online
this week shows a man who
looks like the group’s head,
Abubakar Shekau, but is
ﬁlmed from a distance at different angles.
The group, which has
killed thousands and kidnapped hundreds in its
bid to carve out an Islamic
state in northern Nigeria,
had also targeted Cameroon
over the past year. At least
15 people were killed in an
attack by suspected Boko
Haram militants on a bus in
northern Cameroon on New
Year’s day .
The militants have issued
dozens of videos since their
uprising turned violent in
2009, sometimes claiming
attacks or threatening more.
In each ﬁlm a man with a
beard says he is Abubakar
Shekau, the Boko Haram
Dauda Iliya, spokesperson for the Chibok community in Abuja, speaks during a session to review
efforts to recover the abducted Chibok girls, in Abuja, recently. (REUTERS)
leader whom the military in
2013 said it had killed.
The latest message is addressed to Cameroon President Paul Biya.
“I advise you to desist
from following your constitution and democracy, which
is unIslamic,” the man says,
reading from a script.
“The only language of
peace is to repent and follow
Allah, but if you do not then
we will communicate it to
you through the language of
violence,” he adds.
It was not possible to
verify the video independently. It was done in the
style of most of Boko Haram’s releases, with Shekau,
or his look alike, standing
in the middle of a patch of
sandy bush surrounded by
the masked men with AK47s and four-wheel-drive
vehicles with guns mounted
on them. The videos are the
main means that the group
-- or at least a faction of it -uses to get its message out.
Boko Haram has long
been the main security threat
to Nigeria, Africa’s leading
energy producer, biggest
economy and most populous
nation, but it is also a growing menace to neighbours
Cameroon, Chad and Niger.
AFP
KAMPALA
UGANDA’S military conﬁrmed on Wednesday that
top Lord’s Resistance Army
rebel Dominic Ongwen was
in the custody of US special
forces in Central African Republic.
“His surrender puts the
LRA in the most vulnerable
position,” army spokesman
Paddy Ankunda told AFP,
adding he had ﬁrst surrendered to CAR’s Seleka rebels,
before being handed over to
American forces.
But it remains unclear
if US forces will now hand
Ongwen over to Uganda,
with the LRA commander
facing crimes against humanity and war crimes
charges at the International
Criminal Court.
When asked if US troops
would send Ongwen to
Uganda, Ankunda said: “We
are working out procedures.”
While Uganda is a signatory to the ICC and legally
Ongwen is being held
in the southeastern
CAR town of Obo,
close to the border
with South Sudan
and Democratic Republic of Congo.
bound to hand Ongwen over
for trial at The Hague-based
court, President Yoweri Museveni last month called for
African nations to quit the
ICC accusing it of being used
as a “tool to target” the continent.
Ongwen is being held in
the southeastern CAR town
of Obo, close to the border
with South Sudan and Democratic Republic of Congo,
Ankunda added.
Uganda’s
conﬁrmation Ongwen has surrendered follows Tuesday’s
announcement by the US
State Department that a
man claiming to be the commander was being held by
American troops deployed
in the hunt for rebel chief
Joseph Kony.
Long driven out of Uganda, small bands of LRA
ﬁghters now roam forest
regions of CAR, DR Congo,
Sudan and South Sudan.
Kony, who claims mystical-religious powers, has
long been reported to be
based in the Sudanese-controlled Kaﬁa Kingi enclave.
Ongwen’s surrender leaves
rebel chief and fellow ICC
indictee Kony as the last
major leader still at large,
Ankunda said.
China, Venezuela to step up co-operation
AFP
BEIJING
CHINA and Venezuela will
step up co-operation this
year, Presidents Xi Jinping
and Nicolas Maduro said
in Beijing on Wednesday
as falling oil prices threaten
the Latin American nation’s
economy.
Maduro was widely expected to ask for a new cash
injection to shore up oilrich Venezuela’s ﬁnances
during his visit as elections
loom and a faltering economy could hurt his left-wing
party’s chances.
“We have very good
news to share about the cooperation that will increase
this year,” Maduro said at a
meeting with his host.
“It will be strengthened
on the basis of the successful formula that we’ve
built,” he said, without giving details.
There were signs that Xi
was willing throw a lifeline
to what he called an “old
and good friend of the Chinese people”.
“Going forward we will
deepen cooperation in all
spheres,” he said.
Foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei told reporters at a regular brieﬁng:
“During President Maduro’s
visit we will work with them
to promote our strategic cooperation, including with
regards to ﬁnance.
“Due to falling oil prices
Venezuela is facing some
difﬁculties in its domestic
economy.”
Venezuela’s
economy
has sunk into recession in
recent weeks due to the
plummeting price of oil,
which the country relies on
SCAN TO LAUNCH A VIDEO
Chinese President Xi Jinping (left) and Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro review an honour guard during a welcome ceremony
at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China, on Wednesday.
(EPA)
for 96 percent of its foreign
currency. Maduro is in the
Chinese capital to attend
a two-day forum aimed at
bolstering China’s relations
with Latin American and
Caribbean countries, some of
which ofﬁcially recognise rival Taipei, viewed by Beijing
as part of its territory.
China is looking to increase its diplomatic heft in
the region, while Caracas
and Washington have been
at loggerheads since the days
of Maduro’s predecessor
Hugo Chavez.
Welcoming Maduro, Xi
told him: “When I visited
Venezuela I felt deeply the
love and esteem, as well as
the boundless memories, of
the Venezuelan people for
President Chavez, and that
they continue to hold high
the Venezuelan revolutionary system, making great
efforts to build a glorious
homeland.”
But the extent of any new
deal remained unclear, with
ofﬁcials saying that no new
agreements had been signed.
08
Opinion
Thursday, January 8, 2015
HAMAD BIN SUHAIM AL THANI
CHAIRMAN
ADEL ALI BIN ALI
MANAGING DIRECTOR
DR HASSAN MOHAMMED AL ANSARI
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
ESTABLISHED SEPTEMBER 3, 2006
End Of Anti-Americanism?
PRINTED AT ALI BIN ALI PRINTING PRESS
The Marches In Dresden
Given the open or porous borders across the continent,
immigration and asylum demand pan-European action
W
HEN 18,000 Germans turn out for an
anti-immigration rally in Dresden, it
is sadly inevitable that the spectre of Germany’s past will be invoked, both outside
Germany and within. Sadly, because antiforeigner sentiments are hardly limited
to Germany and political parties espousing resentment of foreigners – especially
Muslim refugees and immigrants – have
proliferated all across Europe, reaching
even to traditionally welcoming Nordic
lands like Sweden, Finland and Denmark.
Germany, in fact, has been among the
more generous of European countries in
giving refuge to victims of violence in other lands, and Chancellor Angela Merkel
has been among the more courageous of
European leaders in her stand against the
anti-foreigner movement.
That said, the march in Dresden on
Monday organised by the populist movement Pegida, the German acronym for
Patriotic Europeans Against Islamisation
of the West, is a worrisome manifestation of the vaguely deﬁned sense among
many Europeans that their identities,
destinies and livelihoods are being somehow threatened by people of different cultures, religions and colour.
Pegida’s marches have inevitably attracted neo-Nazis, soccer hooligans and
assorted far-rightists, but most participants are the same average Europeans
whose anxieties and frustrations have
also found expression in opposition to the
European Union and to globalisation.
In part because of its Nazi past, Germany has long been liberal in offering asylum.
In the past year, it took in about 200,000
asylum seekers, most of them from Iraq
and Syria – the largest intake of any other
country in Europe and four times the German total in 2012. Fortunately, the rise of
an anti-immigrant movement has not dissuaded the government from its policy.
On the contrary, after a similar Pegidaorganised march in Dresden in December,
Chancellor Merkel used her New Year’s
address to strongly urge Germans to keep
their distance from such rallies.
Admirable as they are, such exhortations will not stop Pegida or other antiimmigrant movements across Europe.
Germany and every other European government must ﬁnd ways to integrate immigrants into their societies and to speak
out clearly and ﬁrmly against the rise of
racism and xenophobia. But there is a
limit to what any one government can do
to control the ﬂow of people ﬂeeing poverty, war and repression.
Given the open or porous borders
across the continent, immigration and
asylum demand pan-European action.
Shiploads of desperate refugees braving
the Mediterranean cannot be the sole responsibility of coastal nations like Italy,
nor is it fair for some states to accept thousands of asylum-seekers while others shut
their borders. At the least, the European
Union should sharply increase the funds
it earmarks for handling immigration. Beyond that, it has become essential for the
union to shape a common policy on asylum. An equitably shared burden should
be easier for politicians to defend, and
united action on multinational problems
is what the European Union is all about.
NYT
NY lawmakers’ secret incomes
I
T has taken far too long, but federal
authorities are ﬁnally asking the right
questions about how New York’s parttime lawmakers make money apart from
their legislative salaries. The Times reported that investigators are examining
“substantial” secret payments from a
small law ﬁrm to one of New York’s most
powerful politicians, Speaker Sheldon
Silver of the Assembly. So far, there has
been no real explanation from Silver.
A small band of reformers is hopeful
that US Attorney Preet Bharara and the
FBI may soon be able to shed light on
how New York legislators amass income
and whether it is connected to legislative
payoffs that in effect amount to bribery.
Historically, legislators who are practicing lawyers, like Silver and Senator
Dean Skelos, who will be running the
state Senate, have provided only general
outlines of income and its sources, partly
on the specious grounds that saying more
would violate attorney-client privilege.
Silver has for years acknowledged that
he is associated with Weitz & Luxenberg,
a personal injury ﬁrm. His most recent
ﬁnancial disclosure form showed about
$650,000 from legal work. Federal authorities are now asking questions not
only about the money he has disclosed
but about what he has done to earn the
large, undisclosed sums he has received
for nearly a decade from Goldberg & Iryami, PC. The Goldberg ﬁrm specialises in
challenging tax assessments and seeking
tax reductions, which is not known to be
Silver’s main area of expertise.
State ethics laws are incredibly feeble,
and penalties for violations can be little
more than a tap on the wrist for someone
as wealthy as Silver.
NYT
Latin America’s long and deep hatred of the United States
may now fade with Obama’s historic opening to Cuba
C
UBA has been the epicentre of
anti-Americanism in modern
Latin America. As a political
ideology it was born during the
Spanish-American War of 1898,
reached its height with the victory of
the Cuban Revolution in 1959, and may
now, through a singularly courageous
move by President Obama, have begun
its ﬁnal decline.
The agreement to re-establish diplomatic relations between the United
States and Cuba will face serious problems: the opposition of conservative
American legislators, as well as a tortuous path toward civil and political
liberties in Cuba (the recent detention
of bloggers trying to expand the range
of free speech in Cuba is a bad omen).
But acclaim for the agreement is widespread in Latin America. By his historic announcement on December 17,
Obama has begun to dismantle one of
the most deeply rooted ideological passions of the southern continent.
At its distant origins, anti-Americanism had a religious character: a defensive fear on the part of conservative
groups and the Catholic Church directed
against the penetration of Protestant
belief and culture. For Mexico there
was the added offence of the 1846-48
American war of territorial aggrandisement. Nevertheless, the Liberals who
governed Mexico in the latter half of the
19th century retained an admiration for
the United States. Their republican and
democratic ideas were stronger than
their nationalist sentiments. Something
of the same nature was true among progressive elites throughout the continent.
But the war of 1898 united the countries of Hispanic America against the
United States and basically reconciled
them with Spain, from which they had
– Cuba was one exception – won their
independence. As a result of that war,
Latin American liberals experienced
something similar to many Marxists
after the fall of the Berlin Wall. They
felt like orphans, while various American writers and intellectuals (like Mark
Twain and William James) recognised
an irresolvable contradiction between
the democratic values on which the
United States was founded and the
now explicit intentions (as Henry Cabot
Lodge said in 1895) that “from the Rio
Grande to the Arctic Ocean there should
be but one ﬂag and one country.”
Many saw the independence of
Cuba secured by the war as merely the
conversion of a Spanish colony into an
American possession. And it was then
that the liberals of Latin America began to converge with Catholics, other
conservative groups and socialists in
forming a Latin American nationalism
centered on militant opposition to the
United States.
Between 1898 and 1959, with some
exceptions, the political, diplomatic
and military balance sheet of the United States in Latin America was nothing
short of disastrous. In 1913, the American ambassador Henry Lane Wilson
plotted with Mexican conservatives to
ENRIQUE KRAUZE | NYT SYNDICATE
overthrow (and eventually murder)
Francisco I Madero, the ﬁrst democratically elected president of Mexico,
a grim episode that foreshadowed other
abuses: landings of the Marines, occupation of territory, support for military coups, and the insistent presence
of huge American corporations. In the
United States, diplomacy to further the
interests of major businesses was seen
as normal; to Latin Americans it was an
intolerable display of greed.
Anti-Americanism in the
region will never disappear, but it is going out of
fashion – and Obama’s
decision will certainly
further its demise.
The region reacted with a surge of
nationalism, which the conservative
American presidents of the period between the world wars treated as a harbinger of communism. Franklin D Roosevelt, with his ‘Good Neighbor Policy’,
somewhat corrected the mistaken direction of his predecessors by accepting
the Mexican nationalisation of its oil
resources. But in Cuba, the connections
between politics and American business interests remained unbroken and
in plain sight. (Indeed, during World
War II, Pan-American cooperation with
the United States seemed to have its
most fertile moment – with the prominent exception of Argentina.)
At the beginning of the Cold War,
many Latin American thinkers attributed much of the region’s poverty and
inequality to the presence of American
interests and saw socialism, expressed
in various Marxist varieties, as a le-
gitimate alternative. The United States
continued to support authoritarian dictatorships, like the Somoza family business in Nicaragua. America’s claim to
be a fount of democratic values lost its
credibility.
In 1947, the liberal Mexican historian Daniel Cosío Villegas predicted:
“Latin America will seethe with unrest
and ... they will be capable of anything,
of sheltering and supporting the enemies of the United States and themselves becoming the most bitter of its
possible enemies. And then there will
be no way to subdue them, or even to
frighten them.”
The Cuban Revolution fulﬁlled this
prophecy and opened a new cycle of
intense anti-Americanism. Kennedy’s
Alliance for Progress and the conciliatory moves of Jimmy Carter could not
counterbalance the bitterness provoked
by Republican administrations. CIA involvement in the coup against Salvador
Allende in Chile or the crimes of the Reagan administration in the “dirty wars”
of Central America incited generations
of young Latin Americans to emulate
Che Guevara and Fidel Castro. The ideological hatred of “Yankee imperialism”
became standard in many universities.
The rage thus engendered was the most
effective weapon of survival for the repressive and dictatorial Cuban regime.
In 1989 the Berlin Wall fell and,
surprisingly, democratic governments
came to power through the ballot box in
various Latin American battlegrounds,
notably Chile, Nicaragua and El Salvador. Marxists were orphaned by ideology, and space was opened for liberal
and social-democratic governments.
Anti-Americanism in the region will
never disappear, but it is going out of
fashion – and Obama’s decision will
certainly further its demise. It had been
artiﬁcially maintained by the incendiary histrionics of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela. But it has become more difﬁcult
to mask the anachronism of Chavista
discourse, directed against the “empire”
that is the principal client for Venezuela’s oil. Only the great obstacle of the
American boycott of Cuba has remained
as an outmoded and divisive force.
In re-establishing relations with
Cuba, the United States renounces its
“imperial destiny” and recovers much
of the moral legitimacy needed to uphold the democratic values that led to
its foundation (and also of the countries
of Latin America). Obama’s action is
meant for the good of all the Americas,
including the United States. And freedom of expression in Cuba is an absolute necessity for its success. No people
or country is an island unto itself. The
Castro dynasty has kept Cuba as such
for 56 years.
(Enrique Krauze is a historian,
the editor of the literary magazine Letras Libres and the author
of ‘Redeemers: Ideas and Power
in Latin America’. This article
was translated by Hank Heifetz
from the Spanish.)
Trying To Remember
Everything was worse back then, but the world got by just the same
ROGER COHEN | NYT SYNDICATE
A
NOTHER year has come and once
again I am trying to remember
how things were long ago. Before
apps, when there were attention
spans, before six-star hotels, when
we always had Paris, before hedge-fund
honchos, when love was all you needed,
I think we got by just the same.
Before synching, when pen met paper, before screaming screens in taxis,
when there were lulls, before virtual
community, before cut-and-paste, to
the tap of my Olivetti, in the disorder
of carbon-stained ﬁngers and the thrill
of the class struggle, before information
overload, when there was mystery, before carbon footprints, in the heretofore,
before CCTV, in invisibility, before hot
yoga, in the galaxy of strangeness, my
impression, unless I’m wrong, is that we
made the most of our lot.
Before January cherries, when fruit
had seasons, before global avocado, when
you were told to eat up, before plate-size
cookies, when greed was contained, be-
fore fusion, in scattered division, before
the obesity onslaught, in our ordinariness, before efﬁciency took over, before
remorseless software, in our afternoon
dazes, could we – could we – have gotten
by all the same?
Memory is fading and I may be
wrong – but before celebrities, when
there were starlets, before Google Maps,
when our compasses were internal, before virtual ﬂirtation, when legs touched
under tables, we felt we managed pretty
well. Was it all an illusion? Before identity theft, when nobody could steal you,
before global positioning systems, when
we were lost, before 24/7 alerts by text
and e-mail, when there was idleness,
before e-readers, when pages frayed, we
did seem to survive.
Before Uber, when a cab was a cab,
before FaceTime and tweets, when there
was time, before speed cameras, when
you could speed, we managed all right.
Before homogenisation, when there
was tobacco smoke, before cuisine with
foam, when gravy was lumpy, before
aggregation, when there was copyright,
before digital, when there was vinyl,
before Made in China, when there was
Mao, before search engine optimisation,
when above the fold was what mattered,
before sanitisation, when there was
grime, we had the impression we were
getting by.
Before social media, when we were
social, before trending on Google, when
we zoned out, before adjustable appointments, when you stuck to the plan,
before “content,” when we spun yarns,
before nonstate actors, when states were
the threat, I believe we did get by all the
same. Before organic, when an apple
was an apple, before online banking,
when you knew your branch manager,
before global warming, when we feared
nuclear winters, before “save the planet,” when the earth seemed boundless,
before the Greens, when we faced the
Reds, it seemed we did somehow manage to eke out a life.
Or did we? Before iPhones and
“Search,” in the era of print, before portable devices, when there was ink, before the weather channel, when random
weather got weathered, before movieson-demand, when movies were demanding, before global brands, in the time of
the samizdat, before curved shower curtain rods, when they were straight, did
we really and honestly live somehow?
I grow uncertain. We must have been
much worse off. We lived in a different
world. The world leans in and moves
forward. Lives get longer. Poverty is reduced. Abuses are checked. Nostalgia is
the refuge of the deluded.
Yet I wonder. Before dystopia, when
utopia beckoned, before the new Prohibition, when lunches were liquid, before
Beyoncé, when we dug the Dead, before
“join the conversation,” when things
were disjointed, before gross inequality
and the masters of the universe, when
we resembled each other more, before
reality shows, in the dullness of the real,
I believe we got by just the same.
Before algorithms, when there was
socialism, before YouTube, when there
was you and me, before high-tech headphones, in the era of distance, we knew
much less but felt much more.
Before I forget, while there is time,
for the years pass and recall grows weaker, before the wiring accelerates, while I
can pause, let me summon it back, that
fragment from somewhere learned long
ago, that phrase that goes: “The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly
revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of
production, and with them the whole
relations of society.”
That was Karl Marx in the 19th
century, before Marxists became Bolsheviks, and Fascism arose, and Doublethink too, and humanity succumbed
to the 20th-century bloodbath.
And if back in that century, in that
distant and regrettable time, when we
listened to the tides and the world was
wider, before the tremendous technological leap, in the time of mists and drabness and faraway-ness and dreams, if
back then, without passwords or WhatsApp groups, we managed just the same,
even in black and white, how strange to
think we had to change “the whole relations of society.”
THE VIEWS EXPRESSED ON THE OPINION AND ANALYSIS PAGES ARE THE AUTHORS’ OWN. QATAR TRIBUNE BEARS NO RESPONSIBILITY.
Analysis
Thursday, January 8, 2015
Time For A Pause
The whole Sony saga reflects so many of the changes that are roiling and reshaping
today’s world before people learned to adjust to them
09
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Wonder fruit
Y
Tight Leash
THOMAS L FRIEDMAN
NYT NEWS SERVICE
Thanks to the
integration
of networks,
smartphones,
banks and
markets, the
world has never
been more
tightly wired.
OU could easily write a book, or,
better yet, make a movie about
the drama that engulfed Sony Pictures and The Interview, Sony’s
own movie about the ﬁctionalised
assassination of North Korea’s reallife dictator. The whole saga reﬂects
so many of the changes that are roiling and reshaping today’s world before
we’ve learned to adjust to them.
Think about this: In November
2013, hackers stole 40 million credit
and debit card numbers from Target’s
point-of-sale systems. Beginning in late
August 2014, nude photos believed to
have been stored by celebrities on Apple’s iCloud were spilled onto the sidewalk. Thanksgiving brought us the Sony
hack, when, as The Times reported:
“Everything and anything had been taken. Contracts. Salary lists. Film budgets. Medical records. Social Security
numbers. Personal emails. Five entire
movies.” And, on Christmas, gaming
networks for both the Sony PlayStation
and the Microsoft Xbox were shut down
by hackers. But rising cybercrime is
only part of the story. Every day, a public ﬁgure is apologising for something
crazy or foul that he or she muttered,
uttered, tweeted or shouted that went
viral – including the rantings of an NBA
owner in his girlfriend’s living room.
What’s going on? We’re in the midst
of a Gutenberg-scale change in how information is generated, stored, shared,
protected and turned into products and
services. We are seeing individuals become superempowered to challenge
governments and corporations. And
we are seeing the rise of apps that are
putting strangers into intimate proximity in one another’s homes (think
Airbnb) and into one another’s cars
(think Uber) and into one another’s
heads (think Facebook, Twitter and
Instagram). Thanks to the integration
of networks, smartphones, banks and
markets, the world has never been more
tightly wired. As they say: “Lost there,
felt here.” Whispered there, heard here.
And it’s now hit a tipping point.
“The world is not just rapidly chang-
ing; it is being dramatically reshaped,”
Dov Seidman, author of the book How
and CEO of LRN, which advises global
businesses on ethics and leadership,
argued to me in a recent conversation.
“It operates differently. It’s not just interconnected; it’s interdependent. More
than ever before, we rise and fall together. So few can now so easily and so
profoundly affect so many so far away.”
But, he added, “it’s all happened
faster than we’ve reshaped ourselves
and developed the necessary norms,
behaviours, laws and institutions to
adapt.”
The American-Canadian
relationship is a healthy
interdependency. The relationship between police
forces and black youths
today is an unhealthy
interdependency.
The implications for leading and
operating are enormous. For starters,
our privacy walls are proving no match
for the new technologies. “Now, we’re
not only getting X-ray vision into the
behaviour of others,” Seidman said.
“We’re getting ﬁne-grained MRIs into
the inner workings of palaces, boardrooms and organisations and into the
mindsets of those who lead them.”
So how does anyone adapt? Just
disconnect? “Trying to disconnect to
avoid exposure in a connected world is
a misguided strategy,” Seidman argued.
“If you do that, how will you create value and get anything done?” The right
strategy is “to deepen and strengthen
all these connections.”
But how? “If we’re in an interdependent world, then the only strategy
for countries, companies and individuals is to build healthy interdependencies so we rise, and not fall, together,”
Seidman added. “This comes down to
behaviour. It means being guided by
sustainable values like humility, integrity and respect in how we work with
others: values that build healthy interdependencies.” It means shunning “situational ‘values,’ just doing whatever
the situation allows.”
The American-Canadian relationship is a healthy interdependency. The
relationship between police forces and
black youths today is an unhealthy interdependency. The relationship between Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York
and his police force is an unhealthy interdependency.
But there is another critical part.
It’s how we learn to respond to all the
secrets being revealed: the CEO’s email
that not only makes him or her look
foolish, but also reveals that women are
being paid less than men in the same
jobs; the video of a suspect being killed
by police; the elevator footage of a football player knocking out his ﬁancée;
and private photos of movie stars. They
all have different moral and societal
signiﬁcance. We need to deal with them
differently.
“We need to pause more to make
sense of all the MRIs we’re being exposed to,” Seidman argued. In the
pause, “we reﬂect and imagine a better
way.” In some cases, that could mean
showing empathy for the fact that humans are imperfect. In others, it could
mean “taking principled stands” toward
those whose behaviours “make this interdependent world unsafe, unstable or
unfree.”
In short, there’s never been a time
when we need more people living by
the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you
would have them do unto you. Because,
in today’s world, more people can see
into you and do unto you than ever before. Otherwise, we’re going to end up
with a “gotcha” society, lurching from
outrage to outrage, where in order to
survive you’ll either have to disconnect
or constantly censor yourself because
every careless act or utterance could
ruin your life.
Who wants to live that way?
IN your Chill Out magazine, you published an article about pomegranate
fruit. It’s an interesting read. I have
always been fascinated with pomegranate’s uniqueness… I have been in
love with it for many years, but I rarely eat the fruit because it’s ‘too much
work for me’. I meant I found it complicated and challenging to get those
brilliant red seeds. Pomegranate is
actually not expensive, right? And I
believe there is an abundant supply
of the fruit here in Qatar, because evidently I always see the fruit in large
quantities in all supermarkets in the
country. Now that I have learned
about the many wonders this fruit can
do to our body, I am quite convinced
that, yes, it’s time to learn the easiest
way to peel those pomegranates and
then eat... drink to a healthier me!
Also, I love knowing that pomegranate symbolises prosperity, fruitfulness
and abundance. It wouldn’t harm to
believe! You see, I noticed that my
skin and hair are becoming really
dull. The article said pomegranate can
do amazing wonders to skin and hair,
too… this I will have to prove!
LIZZ Y
“One minute it’s practice,
30 minutes later, holding a koala
for a photo opp. #lifeontour
#experiences #loveit ”
Maria Sharapova
Health is Wealth
Bloggers’ Borough
GET HEARD!
Don’t Give Up On
Healthy Habits
How To Handle Stress In The Moment
QT NOW MAKES
YOUR LIFE
SIMPLE
REBECCA KNIGHT |
HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW
HEALTHDAY NEWS | NYT SYNDICATE
D
ECIDING to pursue healthy habits
isn’t so tough, but sticking with them
can be.
The Weight-loss Information Network suggests:
In a journal, write down your goals
and the progress you’ve made.
Think about obstacles to healthier habits, and come up with
a plan to get around
them.
Find a loved one
to help you when you
need encouragement
or support.
Treat yourself to
frequent rewards. After exercise, start with something you
enjoy, such as a fruit smoothie, chatting with a friend or taking a relaxing
shower.
Rewards shouldn’t counter your
goals, such as eating an unhealthy food
or skipping exercise.
Y
OU hear a lot of advice about how to
reduce stress at work. But most of it
is about what to do over the long term
– take up yoga, eat a healthy diet, keep
a journal, or get more sleep. But what
do you do when you’re overcome with
stress in the moment – at your desk,
say, or in a meeting? Perhaps you’ve
heard bad news from a client or were
assigned yet another project. How can
you regain control?
Low pay, unreasonable workloads,
and hectic commutes were the top
sources of tension, followed closely
by obnoxious coworkers. What exacerbates the problem is that “people walk into work already laden
with stress,”says Maria Gonzales, the
founder and president of Argonauta
Strategic Alliances Consulting and the
author of Mindful Leadership.
Justin Menkes, a consultant at
Spencer Stuart and the author of Better Under Pressure says it’s critical
“to get a handle on your reaction to
the stressful things that happen to you
in the moment.” Here are some techniques to do just that.
Identify your stress signals.
Train yourself to recognise “your
physiological signs of stress,” says
Gonzales. Perhaps your neck stiffens,
your stomach clenches, or your palms
sweat. These are all the result of what’s
happening inside your body. “The
minute you start to experience stress,
your pulse races, your heart beats
faster and hormones are released,” she
says. “This compromises your immune
system and your ability to experience
relaxation.” When you’re able to recognise the signs – instead of ignoring
them – you’ll be able to start addressing the underlying cause of the stress.
Don’t think of it as stress. “Most
often the reason your blood pressure
rises is because you’re being asked to
do something important by your boss
or a colleague and you want to succeed,” says Menkes. Shift your thinking
about the task causing you distress and
instead try to view it as “an opportunity
to move forward that you want to take
seriously,” he adds.
Talk yourself down. When
you’re stressed, the voice inside your
head gets loud, screechy, and persistent. It tells you: “I’m so angry,” or “I’ll
never be able to do this.” To keep this
negative voice at bay, “try talking to
yourself in a logical, calm tone and
injecting some positivity” into your internal dialogue, says Gonzales.
Take three deep breaths. Deep
breathing is another simple strategy
for alleviating in-the-moment tension. “When you feel anxious, your
breath starts to get shorter, shallower,
and more irregular,” says Gonzales.
“Taking three big breaths while being
conscious of your belly expanding and
contracting ignites your parasympathetic nervous system, which induces
a relaxation response.” “When your
mind becomes crowded with negative
thoughts, let deep breathing occupy
your mental real estate.”
Enlist a friendly ear. You
shouldn’t have to face nerve-wracking
moments at the ofﬁce alone. “Everyone needs to have somebody they
trust who they can call on when they’re
feeling under pressure,” says Menkes.
“Select this person carefully.”
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10
Thursday, January 8, 2015
Gulf / Middle East
35 killed, dozens hurt in suicide
attack near Sanaa police college
Shebaab
executes 4
‘informers’
in Somalia
AFP
REUTERS
SANAA
A car bomb exploded outside
a police college in Yemen’s
capital Sanaa on Wednesday,
killing 35 people and wounding dozens, police said, less
than a week after a suicide
bombing south of the capital
left nearly 30 dead.
Yemen’s sectarian conﬂict has worsened since
September when the Shi’ite
Muslim Houthi militia seized
Sanaa, deepening political
divides that spawned a popular uprising in 2011 and led
to a change of government
and splits in the army.
Al Qaeda in the Arabian
Peninsula (AQAP), one of the
Sunni militant group’s most
active wings, had staged increasing numbers of attacks
across Yemen before the
Houthi advance and has carried out more bombings and
shootings since.
Brigadier Abdulaziz al
Qudsi, deputy general manager of Sanaa police, said
that 68 people were also
wounded by the explosion
which sent a large plume of
smoke into the sky above a
densely built up and congested part of the city near
the central bank and defence
ministry.
“The situation is catastrophic. We arrived to ﬁnd
bodies piled on top of each
SCAN TO LAUNCH A VIDEO
Policemen, onlookers stand next to the scene of a car bombing in Sanaa on Wednesday. (AP)
other,” a paramedic at the
scene told Reuters as ambulances took casualties away.
“We found the top part of
one person yelling, while his
bottom half was completely
severed.”
Qudsi said the initial investigation showed that a
booby-trapped vehicle with
a driver and passenger in the
front had been parked near
where people who wanted to
register were standing beside
an outside wall of the police
college.
“They then hurried out
(of the bus) and escaped and
then the bus explosion happened at 7 am (0400 GMT),”
Qudsi was cited as saying by
state news agency Saba. He
said several of those wounded were in critical condition.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility
for Wednesday’s bombing.
Al Qaeda has in the past
claimed they were behind
similar attacks.
The victims from the latest blast included students at
the college and people waiting in line to enrol with the
police, the police sources
said, as well as passers-by.
A policeman told Reuters
that another car had been
passing as the bomb went off
and was set on ﬁre along with
everyone inside.
The Interior Ministry
said it was halting registration at the police college,
which takes place every year,
for a week. The US embassy
in Yemen condemned the
attack, saying it showed the
“nihilistic vision and depravity of terror groups operating
in Yemen”.
Western and Gulf Arab
countries fear that further
instability could weaken the
country’s government, giving AQAP more space to plot
attacks outside Yemen’s borders. Yemen shares a long
border with major oil exporter Saudi Arabia.
Yemen’s
army
has
launched several concerted
campaigns to dislodge al
Qaeda with the help of US
drone strikes, but the militants have proved capable of
entrenching themselves in
largely lawless parts of the
Arabian Peninsula country
where it has sympathy from
some Sunni tribes.
On Jan. 1 a suicide bomber killed at least 26 people at
a cultural centre in the central Yemeni city of Ibb in an
attack that appeared to target
the Houthi militia that seized
the capital in September and
advanced into other areas.
Palestine to join Two dead in Lebanon as
ICC on April 1, snowstorm hits M-E areas
says UN chief
AFP
BEIRUT
AP
UNITED NATIONS
UN Secretary-General Ban
Ki-moon said late on Tuesday
that the state of Palestine will
join the International Criminal Court on April 1, a highstakes move that will enable
the Palestinians to pursue
war-crimes charges against
Israel.
The Palestinians submitted the documents ratifying
the Rome Statute that established the court last Friday, the last formal step to
accepting the jurisdiction of
the world’s permanent war
crimes tribunal. The UN said
the secretary-general would
review the paperwork.
Palestinian Ambassador Riyad Mansour
said last week that
the Palestinians
are seeking to raise
alleged crimes
committed by Israel.
In a statement posted on
the UN’s treaty website, the
secretary-general announced
his acceptance of the documents saying “the statute will
enter into force for the State
of Palestine on April 1, 2015”
in accordance with the court’s
procedures.
He said he was “acting in
his capacity as depositary” for
the documents of ratiﬁcation.
Palestinian
President
Mahmoud Abbas signed documents to join the ICC a day
after the UN Security Council
rejected a resolution on December 30 that would have
set a three-year deadline for
the establishment of a Palestinian state on lands occupied
by Israel.
Joining the ICC is part of
a broader Palestinian strategy
to pressure Israel into withdrawing from the territories
and agreeing to Palestinian
statehood.
Abbas has been under
heavy domestic pressure to
take stronger action against
Israel after a 50-day war between the Jewish state and
militants in Gaza over the
summer, tensions over holy
sites in Jerusalem, and the
failure of the last round of
US-led peace talks.
The Palestinian decision
to join the ICC has already
sparked retaliation from Israel which froze the transfer
of more than $100 million
in tax funds collected for the
Palestinians on Saturday. It
promised tougher action on
Sunday.
The United States also
opposed the move, calling
it an obstacle to reaching a
permanent peace agreementl
that would give the Palestinians an independent state.
The Obama administration
said Monday it was reviewing
its annual $440 million aid
package to the Palestinians
because of the decision to join
the ICC.
While Palestinian membership in the ICC doesn’t
automatically incur US punishment, any Palestinian case
against Israel at the court
would trigger an immediate
cutoff of US ﬁnancial support
under American law.
Palestinian Ambassador
Riyad Mansour said last week
that the Palestinians are seeking to raise alleged crimes
committed by Israel, including during last summer’s war
in Gaza.
He said the Palestinians
will also seek justice for Israeli settlements on Palestinian
territory, which he said constitute “a war crime” under
the Rome statute.
An ICC investigation
could also lead to possible
war crimes charges against
Palestinians, but Mansour
said the Palestinians don’t
fear any possible action by
the court.
A Syrian man and a young
boy died in Lebanon as a rare
snowstorm on Wednesday
battered parts of the Middle
East, adding to the misery of
war refugees from Syria.
The bodies of the two Syrians, including the six-yearold boy, were found in the
Shebaa region of south Lebanon, the Red Cross said.
A security source said
they were refugees crossing
the mountainous border between Syria and Lebanon,
where temperatures plunged
as low as minus 7 degrees Celsius (20 Fahrenheit).
State National News
Agency reported a third person had died in the mountains apparently of exposure,
but there was no immediate
conﬁrmation as a Red Cross
source said heavy snow was
hampering search operations.
The deaths came as a major storm struck the Middle
East, hitting Syrian refugees
living in makeshift camps in
A snow plough clears the road during a snowstorm in Mdeirej
area, eastern Lebanon, on Wednesday. (REUTERS)
Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq.
Many refugees in Lebanon were trapped in their
tents by snow, struggling
to stay warm in temperatures hovering around zero
degrees.
The UN’s refugee agency
distributed cash and fuel coupons to over 80,000 refugee
families ahead of the storm,
which forced the closure of
all Lebanese ports and brieﬂy
shut Beirut’s international
airport. Schools stayed closed
Wednesday.
In Majdalun, close to the
eastern town of Baalbek,
around 40 tents were cut off
from surrounding villages by
a thick layer of snow, a photographer said.
“There is a lack of food and
heating materials,” said one
man who stepped out of his
tent. “We are asking charities
to intervene. We’re scared the
tents will collapse under the
weight of the snow.”
Heavy snowfall also cut
several roads in mountainous areas of Lebanon, where
more than a million Syrians
ﬂeeing civil war have sought
refuge.
“I’ve been a refugee here
for two years but this is the
worst winter I’ve seen,” said
Mohammad al Hussein, who
lives in an east Lebanon camp
with his wife and ﬁve children. “We feel humiliated,”
he added.
In Jordan, the UN children’s fund, Unicef, said it
would provide assistance
to more than 40,000 Syrian children in two refugee
camps. “It is imperative to
ensure that children are protected from the harsh weather
conditions,” Unicef representative Robert Jenkins said.
And the International
Federation of Red Cross and
Red Crescent Societies announced an emergency winter appeal of $19 million (16
million) for Syrian refugees in
Iraq. In Israel and the Palestinian Territories, hundreds
of schools were closed.
Across Jerusalem, streets
were largely deserted and few
people ventured out to brave
the high winds and intermittent rain, AFP correspondents said.
MOGADISHU
SOMALIA’S
Shebaab
militants have executed
four people accused of
spying for the United
States, Ethiopia and the
country’s internationallybacked government, ofﬁcials and witnesses said.
The executions by
ﬁring squad took place
at a square in the town
of Bardhere, a Shebaab
stronghold in Somalia’s
southwestern region of
Gedo, late on Tuesday,
and came a week after the
US said it had killed the
al Qaeda-afﬁliated militants’ intelligence chief in
an air strike.
“One of the spies
worked with the CIA and
facilitated the killing of
an al Shebaab commander,” a Shebaab judge in
the town said before the
four were shot dead.
According to the
judge, another one of
those executed had been
aiding US operations in
Barawe, a port town and
former Shebaab stronghold that was captured
last year by Somali and
African Union forces,
The executions by
ﬁring squad took
place at a square
in the town of
Bardhere, a Shebaab stronghold.
while the other two
worked for Ethiopian intelligence and Somalia’s
security agency.
“After hearing the
charges against the four
and their confession, the
Islamic court sentenced
them to the death penalty,” the judge said.
A local witness, Ali
Ronow, said hundreds
of locals watched the execution. “The men were
blindfolded and shot
from the back by a team
of hooded gunmen,” he
said. “All of them had
their hands tied behind
their backs when brought
on a pickup truck and
they were also hooded.
They were shot indiscriminately with machine
guns,” said Muktarey, another witness.
Last week the United
States conducted an air
strike in Saacow, 320 kilometres (200 miles) west
of the capital Mogadishu
and in the Middle Juba
region, and Somali ofﬁcials said Shebaab intelligence chief Abdishakur
Tahlil was killed along
with two other militants.
The Shebaab’s former
leader, Ahmed Abdi Godane, was also killed by a
US air strike in September 2014.
Syrians largest refugee group after Palestinians: UN
REUTERS
GENEVA
Syrian refugee children play around a tent in Akkar, northern
Lebanon, recently. (REUTERS)
SYRIANS have overtaken Afghans as the largest refugee
population aside from Palestinians, ﬂeeing to more than
100 countries to escape war
in their homeland, the United
Nations said on Wednesday.
At more than 3 million
as of mid-2014, Syrians accounted for nearly one in
four of the 13 million refugees
worldwide being assisted by
the UN refugee agency, the
highest ﬁgure since 1996, it
said in a report. Some 5 million Palestinians refugees are
cared for by a separate agency, UNRWA.
“As long as the international community continues
to fail to ﬁnd political solutions to existing conﬂicts and
to prevent new ones from
starting, we will continue to
have to deal with the dramatic humanitarian consequences,” UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio
Guterres said in a statement.
At least 200,000 people have died and half the
Syrian population has been
displaced since the conﬂict
began in March 2011 with
protests that spiralled into
civil war.
Worldwide, an estimated
5.5 million people were forcibly uprooted during the
ﬁrst six months of last year,
1.4 million of them ﬂeeing
abroad, the UNHCR said.
The Middle East and
North Africa has become the
main region of origin of refugees, overtaking the Asia and
Paciﬁc region that held the
top spot for more than a decade. Afghan refugees, the biggest group for three decades,
have fallen to second place,
with 2.6 million hosted by Pakistan and Iran at mid-year,
it said. Somalis ranked as the
third largest refugee group at
1.1 million.
Syria’s neighbours -- Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan and Turkey -- continue to bear the
brunt of the crisis.
India
Thursday, January 8, 2015
11
Sakshi raises new storm, asks Hindus to have 4 kids
PTI
MEERUT/NEW DELHI
BJP MP Sakshi Maharaj
was at the centre of another
controversy when he asked
Hindu women to have at
least four children, sparking
condemnation from the opposition which alleged that
the ruling party was trying to
polarise the atmosphere.
BJP on its part distanced
itself from the remarks of
Maharaj and urged its workers and public representatives to refrain from making
such comments.
“We have accepted the
slogan ‘Hum do, hamara
ek’. Now these traitors are
not satisﬁed. They have given another slogan ‘Hum do
aur hamara.... They are advocating marriage of a girl
to a girl, boy to another boy.
This is what the last government did.
“This is why I... want to
request women to give birth
to at least four children. Give
one to sadhus and ascetics.
Media says there are ceaseﬁre violations happening, so
send another to the border,”
the saffron-clad MP from
News
in brief
J&K inching
towards
governor’s rule
15 killed, 30
injured in AP
bus accident
NEW Delhi With no
headway being made in
government formation,
Jammu and Kashmir may
be inching towards a spell
of Governor’s rule as no
political party appeared to
be in a position to cobble
up numbers.
Reported discussions
between PDP and BJP or
with anyone else have not
yielded fruit even as the
tenure of the outgoing Assembly comes to an end
on January 18.
State Governor N N
Vohra, who is here on
a personal visit, had a
meeting with Union Home
Secretary Anil Goswami
and discussed the political
stalemate.
Later, caretaker Chief
Minister Omar Abdullah,
who returned from London
this morning after visiting his ailing father and
former Union Minister Farooq Abdullah, also called
on the Governor. Meanwhile, BJP President Amit
Shah expressed optimism
in about early resolution of
the impasse. (PTI)
HYDERABAD Fifteen
people, mostly college
students, were killed on
Wednesday and 30 others
injured when a state-run
bus in which they were
travelling fell down a dug
up area adjoining a hilly
road in Andhra Pradesh’s
Anantapur district.
Among the 15 deceased were 10 college
students, including a girl,
a forest guard and some
other passengers, a police
official said.
“The toll has risen to
15 with the death of some
injured persons undergoing treatment at different
hospitals. Most of the
deceased are college
students. At least 30 others are undergoing treatment at different hospitals
in Bengaluru, Anantapur
and Penukonda,” Deputy
Superintendent of Police,
Penukonda (Sub-Division),
N Subbarao said.
The accident occurred
at around 8.30 AM between Madakasira and
Penukonda ghat road in
the district. (PTI)
JD (U) President Sharad Yadav
Janata Parivar parties to launch stir
Unnao said at a religious
convention in Meerut.
Sakshi had earlier stoked
a row by describing Mahatma Gandhi’s assassin Nathuram Godse as a “patriot”
and was forced to apologise
in Parliament.
The opposition reacted
sharply to Sakshi’s controversial remarks with JD(U)
taking a jibe at the Sangh
Parivar and asking its leaders to lead by example.
They also demanded
a clariﬁcation from the
government. “Is the Indian population policy be-
BJP MP Sakshi Maharaj
ing changed? Why has the
Prime Minister maintained
silence for 24 hours. Why
has the Home Minister,
the party president, the finance minister maintained
silence on the issue,” Congress spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi said.
“Is this the new population policy? The nation
wants an answer. We are
conﬁdent that no answer will
come,” he said.
Senior Congress leader
and Deputy Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha,
Anand Sharma said through
such remarks by its MPs the
ruling party was trying to
polarise the matter to divert
attention from real issues.
Kerala guv for tobacco control in varsities
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM Kerala Governor P Sathasivam
said on Wednesday that tobacco control on campuses of
higher learning would be made an item in the agenda of
the Vice Chancellors’ meet held every quarter.
The former chief justice of the Supreme Court Sathasivam said this while interacting with the activists of ‘Tobacco Free Kerala’. “Every month, vice chancellors send
reports to me on instances of sexual harassment, ragging
and the like in campuses, and the action taken and steps
planned for the future.
Tobacco control measures in campuses, too, would be
included in the monthly reports,” said the governor. The
director of the Regional Cancer Centre Paul Sebastian, who
led the activists briefed the governor about the extent of
tobacco use in Kerala and the harm it causes. (IANS)
han Bhagwat and all other
members of the Sangh.
“It should be mandatory
for them to get married and
produce ﬁve children. Then
they should request the Hindu community. That will be
better.”
BJP’s national Secretary
Shrikant Sharma said the
party has asked its public
representatives and workers
not to make such comments
in public.
“The remarks made by
Sakshi Maharaj are his personal and the party has nothing to do with it,” he added.
Sushma urges diaspora to help
in transformation of India
PTI
GANDHINAGAR
INDIAN External Affairs
Minister Sushma Swaraj on
Wednesday appealed to the
Indian diaspora to contribute
to the country’s transformation as envisioned by Prime
Minister Narendra Modi
through investments, especially in government initiatives such as ‘Make in India’
and ‘Swachch Bharat’.
Speaking at the inauguration of the 13th Pravasi
Bharatiya Divas (PBD) here,
Swaraj said the government
was taking a slew of steps to
ensure that investing and doing business in India for them
becomes simpler and easier.
The 13th edition of
the ﬂagship congregation of diaspora is
coinciding with the
100th anniversary
of Mahatma Gandhi
arriving back to India
from South Africa in
1915.
“Over the next few years,
foreign investment is necessary ...We want you, the
young Pravasis, to contribute
to the development of India.
“We want you to participate in the vision that Prime
Minister Narendra Modi has
for the India’s future. We
have launched several initiatives that has the potential to
transform India,” she said in
her inaugural speech.
“Come, connect, celebrate
and contribute for trans-
SCAN TO LAUNCH A VIDEO
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj with Gujarat CM Anandiben Patel light the lamp for the inauguration of Global Trade Show
during Pravasi Bharatiya Divas in Gandhinagar on Wednesday. (PTI)
forming India,” she added.
Swaraj said the government
has undertaken programmes
like the ‘Make in India’ initiative, Jan Dhan Yojana, Clean
Ganga Campaign, Swachch
Bharat Abhiyan which promise big changes in the landscape, but may need investments.
“To enhance ease of do-
ing business, the government
has taken multiple steps to
simplify procedures, rationalise rules and increased use
of technology. Efforts are on
to identify laws which need to
be repealed.
“There is also a clear focus
of infrastructure and ﬁnancing of infrastructure,” the
minister said, promising that
Nothing offensive in
Aamir-starrer ‘PK’: Court
PTI
NEW Delhi Janata Parivar offshoots will launch a joint agitation against the ordinances on land, coal and mines, which
JD(U) President Sharad Yadav on Wednesday alleged, are
the Narendra Modi government’s “gifts” to its industrialist
backers in India and abroad.
Samajwadi Party President Mulayam Singh Yadav will
arrive in the national capital tomorrow to chalk out the
strategy for joint protests, Sharad told reporters, adding,
they were in talks with Trinamool Congress, which has also
reacted sharply against the ordinance, and the Left parties
over the issue. Condemning the BJP government for “not
debating” in Parliament, the amendments it brought in the
Land Acquisition Act, Sharad said, the new provisions have
“removed all legal hurdles” for industries. (PTI)
“The BJP has orchestrated this to polarise the
atmosphere and divert the
attention from real issues...
We would like to hear from
the Prime Minister because
he is the leader of the BJP.
“In the Winter Session (of
Parliament), he said he had
taken a strong note of this
(of controversial statements
made by party MPs) and assured us that it will not be
repeated,” Sharma said.
JD (U) leader KC Tyagi
said, “There should not be
any difference in what they
say and what they do-- Mo-
the government is committed to the highest standards
of transparency and integrity. She said there is a new
dynamism in the economy
and the formation of a strong
government at the Centre has
only added to the excitement
due to its “investor-friendly
measures”.
“The government is work-
Tharoor alleges bid
to implicate him in
Sunanda death case
IANS
NEW DELHI
NEW DELHI
DELHI High Court on
Wednesday said there was
nothing offensive in Aamir
Khan-starrer Bollywood ﬁlm
‘PK’ and there was no substance in allegations that it
has defamed and maligned
Hindu culture and religious
practices.
A bench, comprising
Chief Justice G Rohini and
Justice R S Endlaw, said
there was nothing wrong
in the movie and a detailed
order would be passed on
merits.
“What is wrong in the
movie? You cannot take offence at everything. We do
not ﬁnd any substance in the
allegations made in the petition. We will pass an order
on merits,” the bench said.
During the hearing, Additional Solicitor General
Sanjay Jain told the court
that a similar plea has already been dismissed by the
Supreme Court.
He said there was a provision to appeal against the
certiﬁcation of the movie. On
Anushka Sharma (left) and Aamir Khan in a ‘PK’ scene.
this, the court said the right
of appeal against certiﬁcation was limited to makers
of the movie and not open to
outsiders.
The High Court was
hearing a PIL ﬁled by Ajay
Gautam seeking directions
to delete “objectionable”
scenes from the movie ‘PK’
claiming that the contents
of the ﬁlm have hurt the religious sentiments of Hindus.
“There are certain sequences in the movie which
have the potential of hurting
Hindu religious sentiments
and the Censor Board has
not given it a serious consideration while granting the
certiﬁcate of ﬁtness for its
release in theatres,” it said.
ing in mission mode, you
can contribute and become a
partner,” she said.
The 13th edition of the
ﬂagship congregation of diaspora is coinciding with the
100th anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi arriving back
to India from South Africa in
1915, to lead the country towards attaining freedom.
A day after police said Sunanda Pushkar was poisoned,
her husband and Congress
MP Shashi Tharoor alleged
in a letter made public on
Wednesday that a police ofﬁcer tried to implicate him
and a domestic help in her
mysterious death.
In a letter to Delhi
Commissioner of Police BS
Bassi dated November 13,
Tharoor, a former central
minister, urged the police
chief to take action against
the officer.
Tharoor said four police
ofﬁcers interrogated his domestic help Narayan Singh
for 16 hours November 7 and
for 14 hours November 8.
On both days, he alleged
that Narayan Singh was repeatedly physically assaulted
by an ofﬁcer. “Worse, that
ofﬁcer used the traumatic
physical assault to try and
intimidate Narayan into
‘confessing’ that he and I
murdered my wife,” said
Tharoor.
He quoted Bassi as telling him that the ofﬁcer’s
conduct was “completely
unacceptable and illegal”.
The Congress leader, later
nominated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi as an
ambassador for the Clean
India campaign, said the
police action amounted “to
the use of physical coercion
in the attempt to frame an
innocent man.
“I request you to take
immediate and appropriate action against such unlawful misconduct of the
officer.” He said he and
his staff had always made
themselves available for
any investigation “but the
behaviour of the officers towards my staff is a matter
of serious concern to any
law abiding citizen”.
The letter became public
knowledge a day after Delhi
Police announced that Pushkar, who was found dead in
a luxury hotel here a year
ago, was actually poisoned
to death.
Pushkar, 52, died January 17 last year.
12
Thursday, January 8, 2015
Philippines / East Asia
envoy admits
AirAsia plane tail located, Taiwan
to not informing US
officials of flag
raises black box hopes raising ceremony
AFP
JAKARTA
INDONESIA
said
on
Wednesday it had found the
tail of an AirAsia plane that
crashed into the sea with
162 people on board, raising hopes of ﬁnding its black
boxes and explaining the disaster.
Search and rescue agency
chief Bambang Soelistyo said
he was sure of the discovery after divers took photographs of the tail, wedged
into the seabed 30 metres
(100 feet) underwater, on
which the company’s logo
could be seen.
“We have successfully obtained part of the plane that
has been our target. The tail
portion has been conﬁrmed
found,” Soelistyo told reporters in Jakarta.
AirAsia Flight 8501 vanished from radar screens
during a storm on December
28 when it was ﬂying from
the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore. All but
seven of those on board were
Indonesians.
The Indonesian meteorological agency said weather
was the “triggering factor”
of the crash in the Java Sea,
with ice likely damaging the
SCAN TO LAUNCH A VIDEO
Workers assemble a beacon buoy that will be placed on the site where the tail of crashed AirAsia
flight QZ8501 has been located, near Kumai port in Pangkalan Bun, Indonesia, recently. (REUTERS)
engines of the Airbus A320200. But a much clearer
explanation is not possible
without the black boxes,
which record the pilots’
voices as well as ﬂight information. They were housed
in the aircraft’s tail. “I am
News
in brief
led to believe the tail section
has been found. If right part
of tail section then the black
box should be there,” AirAsia
boss Tony Fernandes wrote
on Twitter after the announcement.
“We need to ﬁnd all parts
Philippine
govt seeks
clarification
on US drone
presence
soon so we can ﬁnd all (our)
guests to ease the pain of our
families. That still is our priority.”
Despite a huge operation
assisted by US, Russian and
other foreign military assets, progress in ﬁnding the
wreckage of the plane and its
passengers has been patchy
with stormy weather severely
hampering the search. So far
40 bodies have been found,
all of them ﬂoating at sea.
And despite the discovery of the tail, authorities
could not say when the black
boxes would be found and
retrieved.
One problem is the tail
being deep into the seabed,
according to chief maritime
affairs minister Indroyono
Soesilo.
The search for the rest of
the plane would now focus
on a two-nautical-mile area
surrounding the tail, with a
remotely controlled minisubmarine a key part of the
effort, Soesilo and other senior Indonesian ofﬁcials told a
press conference.
Many of the bodies yet to
be recovered were likely in
the main parts of the plane
that have yet to be found,
they said.
Indonesia’s
transport
ministry said on Wednesday
that it had ﬁred one transport ofﬁcial and disciplined
several others in a crackdown following the crash, as
it investigated how the ﬂight
was able to depart without
permission.
REUTERS
TAIPEI
TAIWAN’S top envoy to
the US on Wednesday said
that Taiwan did not let US
ofﬁcials know about a ﬂagraising ceremony on American soil, indicating that by
leaving the US in the dark
it would give Washington
deniability about the controversial matter with China.
Taiwan’s de facto embassy in Washington hoisted
a Taiwanese ﬂag on New
Year’s Day, which local media reported was the ﬁrst
such ﬂag-raising since the
US switched diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to Beijing in 1979.
China and Taiwan have
been ruled separately since
defeated Nationalist forces
ﬂed to the island at the end
of a civil war with the Communists in 1949.
On Monday, China angrily protested to the United
States, Taiwan’s biggest political ally, about the matter.
The US State Department said it was not told in
advance about the ceremony
and that it was inconsistent
with US policy.
Shen Lyushun, the representative of the Taipei
Economic and Cultural
Representative Ofﬁce in the
United States, told a Taiwanese parliamentary session on
Wednesday that Taiwan deliberately did not let Washington know about the ﬂag
ceremony.
Taiwan’s de facto embassy in Washington
hoisted a Taiwanese
ﬂag on New Year’s
Day, which local
media reported was
the ﬁrst such ﬂagraising since the US
switched diplomatic
recognition from
Taiwan to Beijing in
1979.
“We especially did not let
them (the US) know. It was a
goodwill gesture,” Shen said.
“If China protests, you can
say you didn’t know.”
Mainland China deems
Taiwan a renegade province
and has never ruled out the
use of force to take it back,
particularly if the island
makes a move towards independence.
Beijing is sensitive about
matters, such as the raising
of a national ﬂag, that might
give Taiwan ofﬁcial sovereign status.
MARKING VICTORY DAY
Students release balloons into the sky during a ceremony marking the 36th anniversary of the toppling of Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge
regime in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, on Wednesday. Around 1.7 million people are believed to have died in the ‘Killing Fields’ of
the ultra-Maoist guerrillas, whose four-year reign of terror was brought to an end in 1979 by invading troops from neighbouring
Vietnam. (REUTERS)
IANS
MANILA
Villagers walk past the Thai-Malaysia border check-point in
Narathiwat recently. Over 160,000 people were hit by the
country’s worst flooding in decades. (AFP)
More rains expected in areas devastated
by floods in Malaysia
KUALA Lumpur Malaysia’s weather bureau on Wednesday
warned of more rains in areas devastated by floods in
recent weeks, as the government rushed aids to hundreds
of thousands of victims.
The Malaysian Meteorological Department said “monsoonal rains with strong winds are expected to occur over
the states of Kelantan, Terengganu, Pahang, Johor and
Sabah from Wednesday until Friday. (DPA)
Thai villagers
protest mosque
construction
Internet links
disrupted in
Vietnam
BANGKOK Villagers in
northern Thailand are protesting the construction of
a mosque in a settlement
where they say there are
no Muslims, a news report
said on Wednesday.
Residents of Bupharam village in Nan province,
500 kilometres north of
Bangkok, held a town hall
meeting where many expressed concerns that the
project may have ulterior
motives and possibly lead
to religious unrest.
A Muslim group has
bought land in the village
and cleared the area to
begin construction.
“There are only two
provinces left in Thailand that do not have a
mosque,” said Imam Yarin,
the head of the group that
bought the land, and which
is based in another province. He said a mosque
was necessary there to
give visiting Muslims a
place to practise their
religion. Predominantly
Buddhist Thailand has
a Muslim population of
around 5 percent. (DPA)
HANOI Internet connections in Vietnam were
“suffering heavily” after
an undersea cable linking Vietnam to the United
States was damaged,
a senior official said on
Wednesday.
“At the moment no
reason for the broken
cable has been identified,
but there is a lot of maritime traffic in that area
so maybe a ship cut the
cable,” Deputy Minister of
Information and Communication Le Nam Thang told
dpa. The cable could take
up to a month to get fixed,
the military-run mobile
service operator Viettel
said in a statement.
The cable is part of
the Asia-America Gateway
linking South-East Asian
countries with the United
States. It was damaged
three times last year, causing slow connections for
weeks at a time. Reports
in local newspapers said
the damage could have
been caused by passing
ships or sharks biting the
cable. (DPA)
THE Philippine government
on Wednesday said it will
seek further clariﬁcation on
the presence of a US military
drone in the country and if
it carried weapons, even as
American ofﬁcials in Manila
clariﬁed that the unmanned
aerial vehicle was unarmed.
“We have asked our military authorities to conﬁrm
that this did not carry weapons and was not used for surveillance,” Xinhua quoted Department of Foreign Affairs
(DFA) spokesman Charles
Jose as saying. The Philippine
military said on Tuesday that
an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) recovered by local
ﬁshermen off Polilio island in
northern province of Quezon
was owned by the US counterpart. However, a spokesman of the Armed Forces of
the Philippines (AFP) said the
US Navy aerial target drone
recovered on last Sunday was
not a surveillance equipment.
The DFA noted that the
expended BQM-74E aerial
target “may have been used
in a training exercise conducted in international airspace or Guam airspace, and
subsequently drifted to our
waters”.
Thai man arrested for insulting king on Facebook
AP
BANGKOK
THAI police said on Wednesday they have arrested a man
who allegedly posted messages and photos on Facebook
that insulted the king, adding
to the skyrocketing number
of lese majeste cases in the
Southeast Asian country.
Thailand’s lese majeste
law is the world’s harshest,
mandating jail terms of three
to 15 years for anyone who
defames, insults or threatens
the monarchy. The charges
have often been used to harass political enemies.
Pongsak
Sribunpheng,
47, broke the lese majeste law
and a related computer crime
law by posting the insulting
Facebook content in 2012,
said national police spokesman Lt Gen. Prawut Thawornsiri.
He said the postings could
“incite chaos and hatred in
the society.”
He said that Pongsak, who
lived in the western province
of Kanchanaburi, confessed
to the crimes and said he took
part in the Red Shirt political
movement.
The Red Shirts were allied
with the former Thai government, which was ousted by a
military coup last year.
Manila traffic regulators to wear diapers during Pope’s visit
AP
MANILA
WHEN Pope Francis visits
the Philippines next week,
trafﬁc enforcers won’t let
the capital’s streets get gridlocked if they have to answer
the call of nature.
About 2,000 trafﬁc enforcers who will be on duty
during the January 15-19
papal visit will be required
to wear adult diapers, said
Metropolitan Manila Development Authority chairman
Francis Tolentino.
Tolentino also encouraged people who will wait
for hours to see the pope to
also wear diapers.
The prospect of wearing
diapers while on duty was
“well received” by his men,
he said on Wednesday.
Tolentino said the idea
will be tested on Friday by
800 trafﬁc enforcers who
work shifts during the nearly 24-hour annual procession of the Black Nazarene.
It will be the ﬁrst time that
trafﬁc enforcers in the Philippines will wear diapers
while on duty in the streets,
he said.
The Black Nazarene procession attracts hundreds
of thousands of barefoot
mostly-male Filipino Roman Catholics who parade a
centuries-old black statue of
Devotees carrying replica statues of the Black Nazarene walk
under a banner of Pope Francis during a procession in Manila on
Wednesday. (REUTERS)
Jesus Christ which devotees
believe possesses mystical
powers that could cure ailments and answer wishes of
good health and fortune.
Tolentino says there
won’t be enough portable
toilets for the millions of
people expected to see Pope
Francis hold an open-air
Mass at the seaside Rizal
Park on January 18.
“If you attend an event
that will last for 24 hours,
you cannot go around looking for a (portable toilet),”
Tolentino said.
Priests, nuns, seminarians, and the elderly also
should consider wearing
diapers, he said.
Asked if he will also wear
one, Tolentino said, “I will
try, but in my case, I have
less hydration.”
Pakistan / South Asia
Thursday, January 8, 2015
13
2 children
EC probes troops deployment Judge,
among 9 killed in
reports ahead of Lanka polls Afghanistan attacks
AP
PTI
KABUL
COLOMBO
SRI Lanka’s Election Commission on Wednesday said
it is investigating reports
that armed forces were being deployed in the country’s
Tamil-dominated north to inﬂuence voter-turnout ahead
of tomorrow’s bitterly-fought
presidential poll already
marred by violence.
Chief Election Commissioner Mahinda Deshapriya
said he has received complaints that troops were being deployed in the northern
Wanni region in violation of
the election laws.
“I have already taken
this up with the army commander, who says he has not
ordered troops to deploy,”
Deshapriya told reporters on
the eve of the election.
“I have been told that
there had been ‘stand-by orders’ given to send the army
to police stations and other
vital institutions,” he said.
The northern region is
dominated by the country’s
minority Tamil among whom
President Rajapaksa stands
quite unpopular for speaheading Sri Lanka’s win over
the LTTE in 2009.
Rajapaksa is also criticised in these areas because
Polling officials accompanied by policemen carry ballot boxes ahead of presidential elections in Colombo on Wednesday. (REUTERS)
of the tardy reconcilitaion
and rehabilitaion process and
war crimes allegation against
the Sri Lankan troops during
the nearly three-decade war.
The Tamils, who make
up the largest minority in Sri
Lanka, could be the deciders
as the majority Sinhalese,
who account for 70 per cent
of its 21 million population,
appear likely to be evenly dis-
News
in brief
tributed between Rajapaksa
and his arch rival Maithripala
Sirisena.
The Election Commissioner has also warned two
state-owned television networks and radio broadcaster
for broadcasting election
propaganda, violating election laws. The broadcasters
were told they would be taken
off the list of media houses
Pakistan
hangs 2
militants
allowed to broadcast election
results if they continue to violate election laws.
Meanwhile, the High
Court today refused to vacate
a District Court order barring
the Independent Television
Network (ITN), Rupavahini,
Swarnavahini and Derana
from broadcasting election
campaign propaganda.
Deshapriya said troops
had no role in the polls and
police were capable of esuring free and fair polling at 49
counting centres and 12,314
polling booths, at which 15
million people are eligible to
vote. The Police Department
said that 66,100 police personnel have been deployed
on election duties and they
would be armed with a T56
automatic assault riﬂes.
AT least nine people were
killed across Afghanistan on
Wednesday, including two
children who were struck by
a bomb blast while gathering
ﬁrewood, ofﬁcials said.
The fatal blast took
place in the Zhari district
of the southern Kandahar
province.
A separate bomb blast
in the Shahwali Kot district
of Kandahar wounded another 10 children, leaving
seven in critical condition,
said Samim Khopalwaq, the
spokesman for Kandahar’s
governor.
“Our children were there
to collect wood to burn when
they were hit by this bomb,”
said Bismallah Jan, the father of one of the wounded
children. “The government
should have cleared the area,
it their duty to protect us.”
Afghanistan is one of
the most heavily mined
countries in the world, and
children are often killed or
wounded while playing, collecting ﬁrewood or tending
animals.
The deaths of the two
children brought the day’s
toll across Afghanistan to
nine dead.
In the eastern Nangahar
province bordering Pakistan,
a bomb blast killed Judge
Mohammad-ul Hassan and
wounded two of his daughters in the provincial capital
Jalalabad, police spokesman
Hazrat Hussain Mashreqiwal said. The judge served
in neighbouring Laghman
province.
In another attack, insurgents killed six people
working on a road project,
including the head of a construction company, in northern Baghlan province, police
spokesman Jawed Basharat
said, adding that the attack
wounded another person
and left two missing.
In eastern Khost province, three suicide bombers
attacked a police academy,
with one blowing himself up
in a car and the other two
shot by police, the provincial governor’s ofﬁce said in
a statement. It said three police ofﬁcers were wounded.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attacks in
Nangarhar and Khost.
Taliban insurgents have
stepped up attacks on Afghan soldiers and police in
recent months.
US and NATO forces concluded their combat mission
at the end of last year and
Afghan troops took charge
from January 1.
GEARING UP FOR COUNTRY’S SECURITY
University graduates attend a course for selection as army officers in Heart, Afghanistan, on Wednesday. Afghan national forces
took over full responsibility for the country’s security on January 1. (EPA)
PTI
ISLAMABAD
Zaki-ur-Rahman Lakhvi (centre), the Mumbai terror attack
suspect, in Islamabad, recently. (AP)
Mumbai attack mastermind Lakhvi
to remain in jail
ISLAMABAD Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, the 2008 Mumbai terror attack mastermind, would remain in jail after Pakistan’s
Supreme Court on Wednesday overturned the High Court
order suspending his detention under a public security act
which evoked a strong reaction from India. A two-member
Supreme Court bench set aside the High Court’s order and
admitted the government’s appeal against the suspension
of LeT operational commander Lakhvi’s detention. (PTI)
12 militants
die in Pakistan
air strikes
3,000 killed in
Karachi violence
in 2014
ISLAMABAD Pakistani
helicopter gunships on
Wednesday swooped down
on militants in the volatile
northwestern tribal region,
killing at least 12 of them
in precise aerial strikes.
The airstrikes targeted
militants in the Datta Khel
area of North Waziristan,
where the military has
launched a massive offesive against terrorists.
Military spokesman
said in a statement that
“12 terrorists were killed
while seven vehicles and
four terrorists hideouts
destroyed” in the strikes.
The identity of those
killed was not known immediately but the areas under
the strike were controlled
by militants linked to top
Taliban leader Hafiz Gul
Bahadur.
The attacks were
carried out as part of the
ongoing military operation,
named Zarb-e-Azb. The
Taliban and other al Qaedalinked groups, who stage
attacks in Pakistan, are
known to have strongholds
in the tribal region. (PTI)
KARACHI Close to 3,000
people, including women
and children, were killed
last year in Karachi as
violence continued to
plague Pakistan’s biggest
city, a rights body said on
Wednesday.
The Human Rights
Commission of Pakistan
said that 2,909 people
including some 142 law
enforcement personnel
from police and paramilitary rangers were killed in
2014. “The law enforcement agencies also killed
some 594 suspected
criminals and militants
during January-December
this year,” an HRCP report
said. The report also cited
that around 134 political
activists of different political parties were killed in
the city in different incidents of targeted killings.
“Nearly 340 bodies
found in different areas
of the city in the year,”
the report said. Targeted
killings, sectarian violence
and terrorist attacks continued throughout the year
in Karachi. (PTI)
TWO militants belonging to
banned Sipah-e-Sahaba sectarian outﬁt were hanged on
Wednesday, as the Pakistan
government pressed ahead
with the execution of terrorists despite criticism by international rights groups.
The executions take the
number of those hanged till
now to nine after Pakistan
lifted its self-imposed moratorium on capital punishment following the Peshawar
school massacre last month
that killed 150 people, mostly
children.
Ahmed Ali alias Sheshnag
and Ghulam Shabbir alias
Fauji alias doctor belonged
to banned Sipah-e-Sahaba
organisation
and
were
hanged this morning in the
central jail of Multan.
Dawn reported that
Ahmed Ali, a resident of
Shorkot, Jhang district, was
hanged for killing three men
in 1998.
Ghulam Shabbir, a
resident of Talamba area
of Khanewal district had
killed Deputy Superintendent of Police Anwar Khan
and his driver Ghulam
Murtaza on the Bohar Gate
Road in 2000.
He was sentenced to
death by a special anti-terrorism court in 2002.
Bangladesh court bans media coverage of Zia’s son
PTI
DHAKA
BANGLADESH High Court
on Wednesday ordered a ban
on broadcast, publication
and dissemination of statements of the “fugitive” son
of opposition leader Khaleda
Zia amid heightened political
tension in the country after
the deadly violence on the
ﬁrst anniversary of the controversial polls.
“The High Court asked
the government to take
steps to prohibit publication, broadcast and dissemination of Tarique Rahman’s
speeches and statements in
print, electronic and social
media as long as he remains
fugitive,” Deputy Attorney
General Biswajit Roy told
newsmen.
The two-member bench
comprising justices Quazi
Reza-Ul Hoque and Abu
Taher Mohammad Saifur
Rahman issued the order,
responding to a writ filed
by Supreme Court lawyer
Nasrin Siddiqui Lina on
Tuesday.
Lina sought the ban amid
heightening political tensions after a spate of deadly
violence surrounding the
ﬁrst anniversary of Prime
Minister Sheikh Hasina’s
controversial re-election.
Lina said Rahman, the
senior vice president of BNP
who is now living in London
apparently to evade justice
as he is wanted by several
courts in number of criminal and graft charges, was
“hurting the sentiment of
Bangladeshis” and disturbing peace.
In one of the cases, Rahman was accused of masterminding the deadly grenade
attack on Hasina in 2004 in
which 24 people were killed.
Myanmar resumes citizenship verification of Rohingyas
DPA
YANGON
CITIZENSHIP veriﬁcation
resumed in Myanmar’s troubled Rakhine state, home to
nearly 1 million stateless Rohingya Muslim people, authorities said on Wednesday.
“The citizenship veriﬁcation process for Bengali Muslims here will be twice a year.
We are now starting the process as we saw the pilot project
was achieved,” said Khin Soe,
the ofﬁcial in charge of the
Rakhine state immigration
and population department.
Authorities late last year
granted citizenship to 40
Bengalis while another 169
became naturalised citizens.
More than 1,000 people applied for citizenship during
the pilot project in Myae
Bone township.
“They agreed to be listed
as Bengali because they realised it is the chance to lead
them to better conditions,”
Khine Soe said.
But it is still unclear
whether the new citizens
will be able to fully enjoy the
Sectarian conﬂict
broke out in 2012 in
the western state
between Buddhists
and Rohingya Muslims, leaving around
300,000 of the latter
in need of humanitarian aid. About 140,000
of them are still living
in temporary camps.
rights to move freely around
the country, attend university and hold political ofﬁce,
among others.
“They can go and settle
anywhere in the whole country, but most are still living in
the camps until now,” state
government spokesman Win
Myaing said.
The UN General Assembly last week approved a
resolution urging Myanmar
to provide full citizenship to
more than 1.3 million Rohingyas in Rakhine state.
The central government
has ofﬁcially categorised
them as Bengalis, implying
that they are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.
“The citizenship veriﬁcation is according to the 1982
Citizenship Law, and no one
is allowed to apply under the
ethnic category of Rohingya,”
Khine Soe said.
Sectarian conﬂict broke
out in 2012 in the western
state between Buddhists and
Rohingya Muslims, leaving
around 300,000 of the latter
in need of humanitarian aid.
About 140,000 of them
are still living in temporary
camps, according to the UN
Ofﬁce for the Coordination of
Humanitarian Affairs.
14
UK / Europe
Thursday, January 8, 2015
12 killed in terror attack
on Paris magazine office
O In a statement, US President Obama offered
thoughts and prayers for the people of France, which
he called “America’s oldest ally.” “France, and the
great city of Paris where this outrageous attack
took place, offer the world a timeless example that
will endure well beyond the hateful vision of these
killers,” Obama said.
Two police
officers among
dead; Security
raised to the
highest level
O “This is an intolerable act, a barbarism that resonates with us all as human beings and Europeans,”
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said in a statement, expressing his full solidarity
with France.
REUTERS
PARIS
HOODED gunmen stormed
the Paris ofﬁces of a weekly
satirical magazine renowned
for lampooning radical Islam,
killing at least 12 people, including two police ofﬁcers in
the worst militant attack on
French soil in recent decades.
One of the men was captured on video shouting “Allah!” as four shots rang out.
Two assailants are then seen
calmly leaving the scene and
remain at large.
Charlie Hebdo (Charlie Weekly) is renowned for
courting controversy with satirical attacks on political and
religious leaders and has published numerous cartoons
lampooning the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH). The last
tweet on its account mocked
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the
leader of the militant Islamic
State, which has taken control of large swathes of Iraq
and Syria.
“This is a terrorist attack,
there is no doubt about it,”
President Francois Hollande
WORLD OUTRAGED
O The UN Secretary-General condemned the deadly
attack on a French satirical magazine as “a horrendous, unjustiﬁable and cold-blooded crime.” “This
horriﬁc attack was meant to divide. We must not
fall into that trap. This is a moment of solidarity
around the world,” Ban said. He added that it is an
“assault on a cornerstone of democracy.”
O “This abominable act is not only an attack on the
lives of French citizens and their security, it is also
an attack on freedom of speech and the press,
core elements of our free democratic culture. In no
way can this be justiﬁed,” said German Chancellor
Angela Merkel in a statement.
Firefighters carry a victim on a stretcher at the scene after a shooting at the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical weekly, on
Wednesday. (REUTERS)
SCAN TO LAUNCH A VIDEO
told reporters after rushing
to the scene of the attack. His
government raised France’s
security level to the highest notch and scheduled an
emergency cabinet meeting.
The gunmen ﬂed towards
the eastern Paris suburbs after holding up a car, police ofﬁcials said. “There is possibility of other attacks and other
sites are being secured,” Police union ofﬁcial Rocco Contento said. Sirens could be
heard across Paris as Prime
Minister Manuel Valls said
Banned Marxist
group claims
suicide bombing
in Istanbul
security would be ramped up
at transport hubs, religious
sites, media ofﬁces and department stores.
The White House said US
security ofﬁcials were in contact with their French counterparts. “If the perpetrators
are still at large, we’re going to track them down, and
we’re going to work with the
French to do that,” a White
House spokesman told MSNBC television.
Another 20 people were
injured in the attack, includ-
ing four or ﬁve critically. Police union ofﬁcial Contento
described the scene inside the
ofﬁces as “carnage”.
“About a half an hour ago
two black-hooded men entered the building with Kalashnikovs (riﬂes),” witness
Benoit Bringer told TV station iTELE. “A few minutes
later we heard lots of shots.”
In a video shot by journalist Martin Boudot from a
rooftop near the magazine’s
ofﬁces, a man can be heard
screaming “Allah”; then fol-
lowed the sound of three or
four shots. “They’re coming
out. There are two of them,”
says a new voice on the video
as two men appear in the
frame, then raise their arms
in a shooting posture.
France last year reinforced its anti-terrorism laws
and is already on alert after
calls from Islamist militants
to attack its citizens and interests in reprisal for French
military strikes on Islamist
strongholds in the Middle
East and Africa.
O “The murders in Paris are sickening. We stand with
the French people in the ﬁght against terror and
defending the freedom of the press,” British Prime
Minister David Cameron said in a statement on his
ofﬁcial Twitter feed.
O Russian President Vladimir Putin sent condolences
to victims of Wednesday’s deadly attack and
condemned “terrorism”, his spokesman said on
Wednesday. “Moscow resolutely condemns terrorism in all its forms,” Putin’s spokesman Dmitry
Peskov told TASS news agency, adding: “Nothing
can justify terrorist attacks.”
O Egypt’s leading Islamic authority, Al Azhar, condemned the fatal attack by hooded gunmen on
Wednesday on the Paris ofﬁces of a satirical magazine known for lampooning radical Islam. Al Azhar, a
thousand-year-old seat of religious learning respected by Muslims around the world, referred to the
attack which killed at least 12 people as a criminal
act on its Facebook site.
s website
hacked ahead
3 soldiers killed as Ukraine Merkel’
of visit by
marks Orthodox Christmas Ukrainian PM
AP
BERLIN
REUTERS
KIEV
AFP
ISTANBUL
AN outlawed Turkish Marxist
group on Wednesday claimed
responsibility for a strike by a
female suicide bomber on the
heart of Istanbul’s tourist district, raising fears of a wave of
radical attacks one week after
it hit police guarding a palace
in the city.
The female bomber, a
young woman in her 20s,
killed herself and a policeman
early on Tuesday evening after walking into the police
station in Istanbul’s Sultanahmet district, home to the
city’s greatest concentration
of historical monuments.
Posing as a tourist who
had lost her wallet, she blew
herself up after police shot
her in the leg after they became suspicious, ofﬁcials
said. One other police ofﬁcer
was lightly injured.
The Marxist Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C) said in a
statement on its website “our
sacriﬁcial ﬁghter... carried
out the sacriﬁcial action on
the tourist police department
in Sultanahmet.”
Sultanahmet is home
to some of Turkey’s top attractions including the Aga
Sophia museum and the Blue
Mosque and is thronged by
thousands of tourists each
day.
The DHKP-C -- a radical
Marxist organisation considered a terrorist group by Turkey, the European Union and
the United States -- had also
last week claimed a January 1
attempted grenade attack on
police guarding the Dolmabahce palace in Istanbul that
caused no serious casualties.
It said that Tuesday’s
bombing was aimed at
“bringing to account” the ruling Justice and Development
Party (AKP) co-founded by
President Recep Tayyip Er-
The female bomber, a
young woman in her
20s, killed herself
and a policeman early on Tuesday evening
after walking into the
police station in Istanbul’s Sultanahmet
district.
dogan over corruption following a ruling the day earlier
that four former ministers accused of graft will not stand
trial.
As after the January 1 attack, the DHKP-C also said
the bombing was a reprisal
for the death of Berkin Elvan,
a teenager who died in March
2014 after spending 269 days
in a coma due to injuries inﬂicted by the police in the
mass anti-government protests of May-June 2013.
“It (the attack) happened
because the four former ministers, the thieves, escaped
prosecution. It happened because nothing has been done
to bring justice for Berkin,”
the group said.
“We will continue to resist, ﬁght and attack. We will
take up arms and attack. Wait
and see,” it added.
The DHKP-C named the
suicide attacker as Elif Sultan Kalsen, who according to
Turkish media was a woman
in her mid-20s and an active
member of the group.
The dead policeman,
named as Kenan Kumas, was
a former physics teacher from
the Black Sea city of Trabzon
who had been working for the
Istanbul police for ﬁve years.
Turkish media said his
wife only two months ago
had given birth to a daughter,
who like the bomber was also
called Elif.
Prime Minister Ahmet
Davutoglu had on Tuesday
praised the police, saying
their bravery had prevented
an even higher death toll.
THREE Ukrainian soldiers
have been killed in attacks by
Russian-backed separatists
in the past 24 hours, Kiev’s
military said on Wednesday,
in fresh violation of a ceaseﬁre regularly ﬂouted since it
was announced in September.
The deaths, which came
as both Ukraine and Russia
celebrated Eastern Orthodox
Christmas, also coincided
with fresh diplomatic efforts
to organise a summit in Kazakhstan next week in an
attempt to restore peace in
eastern Ukraine.
Though large-scale clashes have diminished in a conﬂict in which more than 4,700
people have been killed, sporadic ﬁghting has continued
amid subdued New Year
festivities and the run-up to
Orthodox Christmas, which
was observed quietly across
Ukraine on Wednesday.
One soldier was shot dead
by a sniper, while two oth-
People stage a traditional Christmas performance, locally known as ‘Vertep’, as they gather to
celebrate the Orthodox Christmas in Kiev on Wednesday. (REUTERS)
ers died in mortar and small
arms attacks near the international airport in the industrial city of Donetsk, military
spokesman Andriy Lysenko
told journalists.
“In the past 24 hours,
the situation in the east has
not really changed. The terrorists carried out provocative attacks on the forces of
the anti-terrorist operation
in violation of the ceaseﬁre,”
Lysenko said. There was no
conﬁrmation from the separatist side of fresh clashes
with government forces.
On the diplomatic front,
Ukrainian President Petro
Poroshenko is scheduled to
meet Russia’s Vladimir Putin and the leaders of France
and Germany on January 15
in the Kazakh capital Astana
to hold further talks aimed at
securing a lasting peace.
Ukraine and its Western
allies want Russia to end its
support for the separatists,
who have declared proRussian ‘people’s republics’
in eastern Ukraine, and to
withdraw troops and military
equipment from the region.
Russia denies its forces have
been involved in the conﬂict.
A German ofﬁcial says
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s
website and several other
German government sites
have been blocked, and a
pro-Russian organisation
has claimed responsibility.
A pro-Russian organisation calling itself CyberBerkut claimed on its
website on Wednesday
to have blocked the ofﬁcial sites of Merkel and
the German Parliament
ahead of a visit to Berlin by
Ukrainian Prime Minister
Arseniy Yatsenyuk. Merkel has been a leading ﬁgure in attempts to calm the
Ukraine crisis.
Merkel spokesman Steffen Seibert said several
government websites were
unreachable on Wednesday
morning because of a “serious attack clearly caused by
a multitude of external systems” — what is known as a
distributed denial of service, or DDOS, attack.
Seibert says the attack
is still being analysed, and
he did not say who was believed to be responsible.
UK’s Cameron under pressure on healthcare
REUTERS
LONDON
PRIME Minister David
Cameron came under pressure in parliament on
Wednesday over Britain’s
stretched health service,
with the opposition Labour
party accusing him of presiding over a crisis of funding and resources.
Voters list the state of
the National Health Service
(NHS) as one of their top
three concerns ahead of a
May 7 national election and
Labour, narrowly ahead of
Cameron’s Conservatives in
opinion polls, hopes to capitalise on discontent about a
system struggling to cope
with rising patient numbers.
Several hospitals in England have declared “major
incidents” in recent days,
complaining they are unable to handle the number
of patients seeking care in
accident and emergency
departments, while British
newspapers have carried
stories about people being
forced to wait several hours
for treatment.
“What’s disgusting ... is
a prime minister who said
people could put their trust
in him on the NHS and he
has betrayed that trust,” Ed
Miliband, the Labour lead-
er, told parliament, to loud
cheering.
“He’s in denial about the
crisis in the NHS. This is a
crisis on his watch as a result of his decisions.”
Cameron rejected the
criticism, saying there were
9,000 more doctors and
3,300 more nurses because
his government had protected NHS funding.
“The NHS is facing this
winter with more doctors,
more nurses and more money than it has ever had in its
history,” Cameron told lawmakers. “Any health system
in the world would struggle
to cope with some of this
pressure.”
Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron speaks during a television
programme at the BBC in London recently. (REUTERS)
US / Americas
News
in brief
Canada resettles
13,000 Syrian,
Iraqi refugees
Activists urge
court to throw out
anti-abortion law
OTTAWA Canada has
agreed to resettle another
10,000 Syrian and 3,000
Iraqi refugees over the next
three years in response
to a UN plea for help, the
immigration minister announced Wednesday.
This meets 10 percent
of the latest UN refugee
agency’s appeal for help
resettling people fleeing
violence in the two countries.According to a report
released earlier by the
UN High Commissioner
for Refugees, the number
of Syrian refugees has
outstripped Afghans as the
largest displaced population in need of protection.
“Syrians and Iraqis
face the worst forms
of violence in the world
today,” said Immigration
Minister Chris Alexander,
pointing to the Islamic
Group’s “murderous rampage across Syria and Iraq
and (its) systematic killing
of anyone who does not
adhere to their distorted
version of Islam.”
Millions have been
displaced by escalating
violence. (AFP)
NEW ORLEANS Abortion
rights advocates are set
to ask a US appeals court
on Wednesday to declare
unconstitutional a Texas
law they say would shutter
more than half the state’s
remaining abortion clinics.
A panel of the 5th US
Circuit Court of Appeals in
New Orleans will also hear
from lawyers for Texas arguing in favor of a requirement
that the state’s abortion
clinics have certain hospitallike settings for surgeries.
All three judges on the
panel were appointed by
former Republican President
George W. Bush. Abortion
rights advocates are bracing for what they believe is
a likely defeat before they
file a challenge to the US
Supreme Court.
The “ambulatory surgical
center requirement” was to
have taken effect on September 1. Under the measure, clinics would have to
meet a set of building standards ranging from widening
halls to having facilities for
certain surgeries, even when
an abortion is medically
induced. (REUTERS)
Protesters in Paraguay nailing themselves to crosses. (AFP)
Paraguay officials to talk with protesters
nailed to crosses
PARAGUAY The Paraguayan government agreed Tuesday
to meet with former workers who have nailed themselves
to wooden crosses over a wage dispute, an increasingly common form of protest in Paraguay that has been
condemned by the Roman Catholic Church but has often
been successful.
Four men and one woman have been nailed to crosses
for several weeks and a sixth person had planned to join
them Tuesday until Paraguay’s Work Ministry agreed to
meet with the protesters on January 26.
“With this news, we will cancel the sixth crucifixion,”
said organizer Carlos Gonzalez, but he added that the
other five would remain nailed to crosses. (AP)
Brazil truck factory employees to strike
work against layoff
SAO PAULO Workers at a Mercedes Benz truck factory
outside of Sao Paulo voted on Wednesday to stop work
for 24 hours in a protest over fired colleagues, the second
such strike in as many days as automakers cut payrolls in
anticipation of a third straight year of slumping sales.
The local metalworkers union said Mercedes Benz, a
unit of of Germany’s Daimler AG, had cut 244 workers at
the factory and about 750 others remained on paid leave
through April out of about 11,000 employees at the plant.
A Mercedes representative said some of the laid off
workers had taken voluntary buyouts, but did not confirm
how many. She had no immediate response to the union’s announcement of the strike beginning Wednesday
morning. (REUTERS)
Thursday, January 8, 2015
15
Obama, Congress head for
collision over pipeline
NYT SERVICE
WASHINGTON
THE White House on Tuesday made it clear that President Barack Obama would
veto a bill authorizing construction of the Keystone XL
oil pipeline, setting up an immediate clash with Republicans just as they assume control of Congress.
“The president threatening to veto the ﬁrst bipartisan infrastructure bill of the
new Congress must come as a
shock to the American people
who spoke loudly in November in favor of bipartisan accomplishments,” Sen. Mitch
McConnell of Kentucky, the
new majority leader, said
Tuesday. McConnell has
vowed to make the Keystone
bill the ﬁrst measure that the
new Congress sends to the
president’s desk.
The House is expected to
pass the bill Friday, and the
Senate is expected to take
up the measure next week.
For nearly four years, the
Keystone pipeline has been
a symbolic ﬂash point in the
political war between Republicans and Democrats over
energy, climate change and
jobs - even though many policy experts say the project’s
impact in those areas will be
small.
The legislation proposed
by Republicans would take
away Obama’s authority to
US senator for
screening
all airport
workers
US House Speaker John Boehner (centre) departs at the end of a news conference following a Republican caucus meeting at the US
Capitol in Washington on Wednesday. (REUTERS)
make a decision on the pipeline, which the president has
because the pipeline would
cross an international border.
But Obama has said he
cannot make a decision until
the State Department completes an environmental review, which has been held
up until there is a verdict in
a Nebraska court case over
the route of the pipeline. “I
would not anticipate that the
president would sign this legislation,” the White House
spokesman, Josh Earnest,
said Tuesday.
“There’s a well-established process that shouldn’t
be changed by legislation.”
Obama’s veto would make
the pipeline even more of a
political issue. The 1,179-mile
oil pipeline, which would carry 830,000 barrels of petroleum a day from the oil sands of
boreal forests in western Canada to oil reﬁneries and ports
on the Gulf Coast, enjoys bipartisan support in Congress
as well as with the public.
Six Senate Democrats
have signed on to the Re-
publican-sponsored bill, and
a poll by the Pew Research
Center for the People and
the Press in November found
that 59 percent of Americans
support the project.
One of those senators, Joe
Manchin III of West Virginia,
said he was “very upset, very
surprised,” by the president’s
threat to veto the bill.
9 gangsters die in clashes with
Mexican security forces
REUTERS
REUTERS
WASHINGTON
MEXICO CITY
US Senator Charles Schumer on Wednesday called for
tighter screening of all employees at US airports after
a Delta Air Lines Inc baggage
handler was charged with
helping smuggle 18 handguns
onto a ﬂight from Atlanta to
New York City.
Schumer, a New York
Democrat, will ask the US
Transportation Security Administration to require that
all airline and airport employees be physically screened
every day before work, his ofﬁce said in a statement.While
pilots and ﬂight crews must
pass through metal detectors
at airports, the people who
repair and clean planes, load
luggage and work in areas beyond the security checkpoints
do not get screened.
Schumer’s ofﬁce cited a
gun-running operation exposed last month in which
the baggage handler, Eugene
Harvey, was charged with
helping a former Delta employee, Mark Quentin Henry,
evade detection with the guns
in a carry-on bag.
AT least nine suspected
gang members were killed
on Tuesday in the western
Mexican state of Michoacan,
which is falling back into violence after authorities said it
had been stabilized.
Alfredo Castillo, the federal government’s security
commissioner for Michoacan, told a news conference
the preliminary tally was
nine deaths in two incidents.
Pena Nieto was
in Washington on
Tuesday where he
discussed Mexico’s
security problems
with US President
Barack Obama.
A vigilante walks between soldiers to voluntarily cooperate in a shootout investigation in La Ruana,
Michoacan, recently. (REUTERS)
In the former cartel
stronghold of Apatzingan
in western Michoacan, one
suspected gang member died
after being run over while
attempting to avoid arrest
as federal forces retook the
mayor’s ofﬁce, which had
been occupied by armed
men, he said.
Eight others were killed
in a gunﬁght with soldiers,
Castillo added. All told, 44
people were arrested.
The killings come as Mexican President Enrique Pena
Nieto is buffeted by protests
over the apparent murder
in September of 43 student
teachers in the neighboring
state of Guerrero by drug
gang members working with
corrupt police. Pena Nieto
was in Washington on Tuesday where he discussed Mexico’s security problems with
US President Barack Obama.
The US leader offered his
support in eradicating drug
gangs, but said it would be
up to Mexico to resolve the
security problems.
Michoacan went up in
ﬂames last year as vigilante
groups took up arms against
local gangsters operating with
impunity across the state.
Earlier on Tuesday, Castillo said one of the gangs
forced members to eat the
hearts of murder victims as
part of an initiation rite to
root out inﬁltrators.
Mexico’s President lauds Obama’s immigration steps
NYT SERVICE
WASHINGTON
MEXICO’S president, Enrique Peña Nieto, on Tuesday praised the steps that
President Barack Obama
has taken to shield millions
of unauthorized immigrants
from deportation, describing
them as “an act of justice”
after meeting with Obama at
the White House.
In his own remarks,
Obama thanked Peña Nieto
for helping to inform Mexicans that the protections he
outlined as part of an executive action on immigration
last year would be granted
only to those who have been
in the United States for
years. “We’re also going to be
much more aggressive at the
border in ensuring that people come through the system
legally,” Obama said, adding
that the “Mexican government’s been very helpful” in
making that clear.
Peña Nieto’s visit to
Washington coincides with
increased cooperation between the United States and
Mexico. Obama’s move to
regularize the legal status of
people who are in the United
States illegally, a majority
of them Mexicans, has been
widely praised in Mexico, as
has his effort to normalize
relations with Cuba, an effort
that Mexico is also making.
At the same time, US law
enforcement agencies have
played major roles in the arrests last year of high-proﬁle
drug cartel leaders, including Joaquín Guzmán Loera,
known as El Chapo, although
Mexican ofﬁcials tend to play
down that cooperation.
“In these recent years, a
level of mature and friendly
relations has been constructed, ﬁrst between the
presidents and the govern-
US President Barack Obama (right) listens to Mexican President
Enrique Pena Nieto in the White House in Washington, DC. (EPA)
ments,” Sergio Alcocer,
Mexico’s top diplomat for
North America, told reporters before Peña Nieto left
Mexico for Washington.
For Peña Nieto, the visit
was a respite from a political and security crisis back
home, where economic
growth has slowed, the peso
is falling in value against the
dollar and changes to allow foreign participation in
the oil industry and other
moves have yet to put more
money in Mexicans’ wallets.
In addition, the past several
months have been dominated by a string of security
crises, including the abduction and presumed murder
of 43 teachers college students in southern Mexico in
September and the killing of
22 people in a confrontation
with the army in June.
Peña Nieto was also battered by revelations that his
wife and ﬁnance minister
had been buying homes from
a top government contractor.
Shannon K. O’Neil, a Mexico
scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York,
said the meeting exempliﬁed
the good rapport the presidents and the governments
had developed.
16
The Last Word
Thursday, January 8, 2015
A NEW MILESTONE! QATAR AIRWAYS LAUNCHES WORLD’S FIRST AIRBUS A350 XWB
First commercial service likely on
Doha-Frankfurt route from Jan 15
MANEESH BAKSHI
DOHA
Deputy PM officially inaugurates
THE Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of State for Cabinet Affairs HE Ahmed bin Abdullah al Mahmoud inaugurated Qatar Airways A350 XWB aircraft in Doha on Wednesday.
The inaugural ceremony was organised by Qatar Airways
(QA). It was held in the presence of Mahmoud, and several
ministers and ambassadors. Mahmoud toured inside the
A350 XWB aircraft to witness the advantages of the ﬁrst aircraft of its kind in the world. (QNA)
GCC education ministers arrive
QNA
DOHA
GCC Education Ministers arrived in Doha on Wednesday
evening to take part in the
ﬁrst founding meeting slated
to be held at Doha Sheraton
Hotel on Thursday.
The ministers who arrived on Wednesday evening
were Kuwaiti Minister of
Education and Higher Education Dr Bader Hamad al
Essa, the UAE’s Minister of
Education Hussain Ibrahim
al Hammadi, Omani Minister of Education Dr Madiha bint Ahmed Nasser al
Shaibani and Bahraini Minister of Education Dr Majid bin
Ali al Nuaimi as well as GCC
Secretary-General Dr Abdul-
latif bin Rashid al Zayani.
Upon their arrival at Hamad International Airport,
they were greeted by the
Minister of Education and
Higher Education and Secretary-General of the Supreme
Education Council (SEC) HE
Dr Mohammad bin Abdul
Wahed al-Hammadi and the
Undersecretary of the Ministry of Education and Higher
Education HE Rabia Mohamed al Kaabi. Saudi Arabian Minister of Education
Prince Khalid al Faisal bin
Abdulaziz is expected to arrive on Thursday morning.
GCC Undersecretaries of
education ministries held a
meeting in Doha on Wednesday to prepare for the ministerial meeting.
QATAR Airways (QA) on
Wednesday became the global launch customer of the
next generation aircraft –
the A350 XWB – featuring
state-of-the-art technology
and an extra wide body for
maximum comfort and optimum efﬁciency.
Addressing a press conference on the occasion of
the inclusion of the world’s
ﬁrst Airbus A350 XWB into
the ﬂeet of QA, Qatar Airways Group Chief Executive
Akbar al Baker said, “We
are planning its ﬁrst commercial service by deploying it on the Doha-Frankfurt
route from January 15.”
A350 XWB will comprise
a two-class conﬁguration
with 36 Business Class seats
in a 1-2-1 conﬁguration, featuring 80” fully ﬂat beds
and 17” HD in-ﬂight entertainment screens. Economy
Class will comprise of 247
seats each 18-inch wide in a
3-3-3 conﬁguration, with up
to a 32 inch pitch.
Over 50 percent of the
Qatar Airways Group Chief Executive Akbar al Baker with other dignitaries at a press conference
in Doha on Wednesday. (JALAL PATHIYOOR)
A350 XWB is made of advanced materials such as carbon ﬁbre reinforced polymer
resulting in a lighter body
and 25 percent lower fuel
burn as compared to planes
in its category. Totally new
wing design and a carbon ﬁbre fuselage are some of the
technical highlights of this
new generation jet.
When asked if the aircraft has any special tracking devices for the safety
of the aircraft, Baker said,
“We are aggressively pursuing the matter of continuous
tracking with International
Air Transport Association
DOHA
QATAR Career Fair (QCF),
a member of Qatar Foundation for Education, Science
and Community Development, will host its ﬁrst Winter Career Camp for Qatari
nationals later this month.
Male and female preparatory school students are encouraged to participate, in
order to beneﬁt from a variety of interesting educational
programmes and workshops.
The winter camp will be
held at Qatar National Convention Center daily from
January 24 to 29, between
9am and 2pm. The camp is
open to both boys and girls,
with separate classes for each
group of students.
During the one-week programme, students will take
part in a series of stimulating
career-oriented workshops.
All students who successfully complete the programme
will be awarded participation
certiﬁcates. To ensure participation, students are advised
to register online by January
20. In order to be eligible,
Qatari students have to be in
the preparatory stage of education (7th – 9th Grade) and
not above 15-year-old.
The registration fee for the
Winter Career Camp is QR500
and participants will have to
obtain a letter of no objection
from a parent or guardian.
state-of-the-art proprietary
seat that will be unrivalled in
the industry.
Furthermore, responding to a query on whether
there would be any reduction in airfares due to the
drop in crude oil price in the
international market, Baker
ruled it out, but added that
reduction of fuel surcharge
was on the cards. He, however, did not comment on
the extent of the reduction of
the surcharge on the fuel.
According to him, the
airline did not increase the
price of tickets when crude
oil price was hovering above
INAUGURATED: 25TH DOHA INTERNATIONAL BOOK FAIR
This year’s collection: More than 500
publishers and 109,000 books at stalls
QCF opens registration
for its first winter camp
TRIBUNE NEWS NETWORK
(IATA). It is time that such
monitoring of planes is
made mandatory so that all
aircraft are automatically
tracked right from its taking
off till its landing.”
He further informed that
QA is close to developing and
testing a system which will
equip the whole ﬂeet with
the capability of sending the
ﬂight date on a continuous
basis to the ground control
operation of the airline so
that all the airborne planes
of Qatar Airways could be effectively tracked. The top ofﬁcial also disclosed that QA
is going to introduce a new
$100 a barrel and, therefore, there was no question
of reducing the airfares on
the account of fall in crude
oil prices.
Baker maintained that
fuel price is not the only
component that matters to
the cost of operations of an
airline. “Therefore, if the
fuel price falls by 50 percent,
it does not mean that we
should cut airfares also by 50
percent,” he said.
With regard to the Indian
aviation market, Baker said,
“This market is very important for us, but the restrictions on air trafﬁc imposed
by the Indian government
are also many.”
“India is a sleeping economic superpower. With the
forward looking Narendra
Modi government, I hope
that India will open its sky
to Indian and foreign carriers which in turn will give a
boost to Indian economy at
large,” he added.
Baker also ruled out privatisation of QA in future.
The media was later
taken on a tour inside the
A350 XWB.
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of State for Cabinet Affairs HE Ahmed bin Abdullah al Mahmoud and Minister of Culture, Arts
and Heritage HE Dr Hamad bin Abdul Aziz al Kuwari with guests at the book fair in Doha on Wednesday. (HANSON K JOSEPH)
MOODY TALAT
DOHA
CELEBRATING its Silver Jubilee,
the 25th Doha International Book
Fair (DIBF) opened its doors to the
public at the Qatar National Convention Centre on Wednesday.
A host of literary-oriented
events and activities along with a
‘hundred thousand titles’ are on
display at the fair.
The fair was inaugurated by Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of
State for Cabinet Affairs HE Ahmed
bin Abdullah al Mahmoud and Minister of Culture, Arts and Heritage
HE Dr Hamad bin Abdul Aziz al Kuwari in the presence of a number of
ofﬁcials, VIP guests and diplomats,
who accompanied the Deputy PM
on a tour of the book fair.
The fair is hosting more than 500
publishers from nearly 30 different
countries, more than 80 of which
are participating for the ﬁrst time,
this year. Collectively, the fair will
feature more than 109,000 books at
its display stalls, with around 97,000
titles in Arabic and close to 11,500 titles in English and other languages.
Alongside Qatar and the GCC
nations, exhibiting countries include Germany, the US, the UK,
Turkey, Jordan, Sweden, France,
South Korea, Malaysia, Austria,
Holland, Japan, India, Iran, Tunisia, Algeria, Syria, Sudan, Palestine,
Lebanon and Egypt. As part of the
Qatar-Brazil Year of Culture, Brazil
is the guest of honour at the 25th
edition of the fair.
Promising to be unprecedented
in many respects, the fair will host
a number of forums and activities
throughout its duration that mainly
focus on Arab culture, in addition to
the Doha Cultural Festival, which
will be held on the fair’s sidelines,
for the ﬁrst time since 2009.
The accompanying events include
an art exhibition, a play titled ‘Saqr
Quraish’ held at the QNCC theatre at
8pm, a poetry evening by Ahmed al
Shahawi, seminars and workshops as
well as a range of activities designed
exclusively for children.
More than a dozen forums and
seminars will be the highlight of
the book fair’s 25th edition, includ-
ing Youssef Thanoon’s ‘History of
Arabic calligraphy’ on January 11,
Ahmed Abu Dahman’s ‘Literature
and bridging nations’ on January
15 and Dr Aisha al Mannai’s ‘Qatar’s efforts in cultural dialogue’ on
January 17.
On January 12, a forum conducted by Dr Khaled Azab, Dr Sherrif Shahin and Ahmed Rashad will
shed light on the on-going ﬁght for
supremacy between print and electronic media and the debatable ‘demise of the library’.
Running till January 17, the fair
is open to visitors from 9am to 1pm
and from 4pm to 10pm everyday,
except for Fridays, during which
visitors are welcome between 4pm
and 10pm.