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SPORT | 08BUSINESS | 01

IMF approved $18bn in 50 requests for

emergency pandemic aid

Mbappé wins top scorer award

Ramadan Timing

Today's Iftar:6:11pm

Tomorrow's Imsak:03:19am

Qatar reports 918 new virus cases; over 2,200 recover THE PENINSULA — DOHA

The Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) yesterday announced the registration of 918 new confirmed cases of COVID-19, and 216 new recoveries, bringing the total number of recovered cases in Qatar to 2,286.

The total number of pos-itive COVID-19 cases recorded in Qatar to date stands at 18,890. There are a total of 16,592 active cases currently under treatment. The Ministry conducted 3,532 tests yes-terday, taking the total tests done so far to 116,495.

The Ministry in a statement has explained that most of the new cases are due to expatriate workers who have been

infected with the virus as a result of contact with indi-viduals who had been previ-ously infected, in addition to recording new cases from within groups of workers from various regions. These cases have been identified as a result of investigations carried out by the Ministry.

The remainder of new cases infected with the virus have come from citizens and residents who have contracted the virus from members of their families, who in turn had contracted the virus through their workplaces or other places where they had been exposed to infected people.

All the new cases have been quarantined where they are receiving medical care. �P2

Buses deliver gifts as children celebrate Garangao SIDI MOHAMED THE PENINSULA

Children celebrating tradi-tional Garangao event were thrilled to see specially-decorated buses which delivered gifts to children at their doorsteps last night.

Garangao buses were part of an initiative by the Ministry of Culture and Sports within the framework of the Ministry’s keenness to revive the heritage, and its campaign that seeks to achieve social cohesion in light of the coronavirus crisis.

The initiative was taken in collaboration with sports clubs and entities affiliated with the Ministry of Culture.

Garangao is a Qatari tra-ditional children’s party cel-ebrated after breaking the Ramadan fast on 14th night of the holy month, when half of the fasting month is over.

Taking all the precau-tionary measure to limit spread of the coronavirus, the buses roamed a number of areas in the country and distributed the sweets and nuts to children.

Aisha Al Mahmoud, Director of Public Relations and Communication at the Ministry, explained that the initiative comes within the framework of the Ministry’s keenness to continue reviving the country’s her-itage, through events that adhere to measures com-patible with the nature of the current stage in light of the coronavirus crisis.

She also noted that Garangao initiative aims to bring joy to children during the current health situation. �P2

MoPH carries out 2,500 random drive-through COVID-19 tests

THE PENINSULA — DOHA

As part of the countrywide efforts to manage the COVID-19 outbreak, the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) operated drive-through swabbing hubs at three health centres for two days, testing 2,500 randomly-selected persons for the coro-navirus infection.

The testing exercise was held in collaboration with the Primary Health Care Corpo-ration (PHCC), Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC)’s Ambu-lance Service, Laboratories and Qatar University.

The aim of this exercise was to conduct a community survey and gain more insight into community transmission and asymptomatic cases, which will in turn inform policy decisions.

H E Dr. Hanan Mohammed Al Kuwari, the Minster of Public Health, said: “We are constantly looking at new ways of identifying any unde-tected cases in the community so that we help to reduce the spread of COVID-19 and provide the appropriate care and support to people who have the virus but are showing no symptoms. We have used drive-through testing in the past successfully and we invite you to join this latest drive-through initiative. I urge eve-ryone who receives an SMS to take part and get tested.”

The COVID-19 pandemic is having a major impact across the globe. This survey will allow better under-standing of the flow of the virus in the community and adapt responses to the scien-tific findings. In line with national guidance, the swabbing hubs tested 2,500 members of the public at Al Thumama, Al Waab and Leabaib health centres staffed by PHCC, HMC and Qatar Uni-versity volunteers. �P2

NEW DEATHS

TOTAL DEATHSTOTAL

DEATHSTOTAL

RECOVERED

GLOBALLY

C VID-19

C VID-19

QATAR UPDATES ON 07 MAY 2020

TOTALTOTALTOTALTOTALTOTALDEATHS

TOTALTOTALTOTALTOTALTOTAL RECOVERED

3,813,123 267,469 1,266,047

NEW CASES ANNOUNCED

918

012

NEW RECOVERIES

216ACTIVE CASES

16,592TOTAL

RECOVERIES

2,286

TOTAL POSITIVE

NEW CASESANNOUNCED

NEWRECOVERIES

ACTIVECASES

TOTALRECOVERIES

Qatar has flattened COVID-19 curve: Health MinisterFAZEENA SALEEM THE PENINSULA

Qatar’s Minister of Public Health, H E Dr. Hanan Mohammed Al Kuwari, said yesterday that the curve of COVID-19 outbreak has been flattened and the country will soon be past the peak of the coronavirus spread.

She said the government has put in place a unique system to fight the pandemic.

“We have flattened the curve. We are not peaking that aggressively, which means we have flattened the curve,” said the Minister in an interview with Al Jazeera. “The country will soon see the end of the peak. Qatar is implementing practices recommended by WHO to beat the virus.”

H E the Minister said that, the public has been “fantastic

in following the regulations” by adhering to social distancing guidelines and other steps announced by the authorities.

“By putting social distancing measures we have flattened the

curve. We continue to monitor. We measure attack rate in the popu-lation we have tested. The re-pro-duction rate of COVID-19 has dropped significantly,” she said.

H E the Minister also

emphasised that the recovery rate of COVID-19 is high in the country, and Qatar has the lowest fatality rate, with only 12 deaths reported so far.

She said Qatar is following

the mathematical model to understand the capacity and make required preparations.

“Qatar has put a unique system in place to fight COVID-19. Those who come from countries that experience COVID-19 outbreak as well as the persons who contacted them or others with the disease are asked to undergo quarantine at gov-ernment facilities or at home,” she said.

“Persons with high risk are referred to government facilities. Those with low risk are asked to be quarantined at home. Qatar has implemented a legal decree to deal with quarantine vio-lators,” she added.

Speaking about mechanism to trace and test people for COVID-19, H E Dr. Al Kuwari said, “Qatar has set up an army of health workers to trace and track the cases.” �P2

Volunteers from the Ministry of Culture and Sports distributing Garangao gifts to children by driving around various residential areas in buses specially decorated for the occasion, in a Doha locality, yesterday. PIC: BAHER AMIN / THE PENINSULA

Dr. Abdullatif Al Khal (right), Co-Chair of the National Pandemic Preparedness Committee, and Dr. Ahmed Al Mohamed, Medical Director of Hazm Mebaireek Hospial, addressing the press conference.

Amir sends congratulations to President and PM of IraqQNA — DOHA

Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani and Deputy Amir H H Sheikh Abdullah bin Hamad Al Thani sent yesterday cables of congratulations to President of the brotherly Republic of Iraq, H E Dr. Barham Saleh, and Prime Minister H E Mustafa Al Kadhimi on the occasion of swearing in of new Iraqi government, wishing them and the government success and the brotherly Iraqi people further progress and pros-perity.

Only 328 COVID-19 patients required intensive care; 208 have recoveredSIDI MOHAMED THE PENINSULA

Dr. Abdullatif Al Khal, Co-Chair of the National Pandemic Preparedness Committee and Head of Infectious Diseases at Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC), has said that since start of the outbreak of the corona-virus in Qatar, only 328 cases have been sent to intensive care, of which 208 have recovered.

Addressing a joint press conference at Qatar TV along with Dr. Ahmed Al Mohamed, Medical Director of Hazm Mebaireek Hospial, Al Khal said, “We entered the peak phase a few days ago, and it is expected

that the number of infected people will increase in the coming days before it stabilises and then begins to decline.”

Speaking on the latest pre-cautionary measures taken by Qatar to prevent the spread of the virus, he pointed out that: “53 percent of the patients in intensive care do not need ventilators”.

About the spread of virus, he said that among residents in Qatar it began to spread from March 8. This means about 59 days have passed since its spread inside Qatar.

The pandemic began to increase during the past three weeks and entered its peak in the past week. “We expect that

it may continue to rise before it stabilises and then gradually decline again,” he said.

Dr. Al Khal further said that during the past week Qatar has witnessed fluctuation, as some days witnessed increase in the numbers, due to the cases that were checked.

He also said that “Most of the infected cases in the last week are from the 29-34 age group, followed by people aged from 35 to 44 years. Infected cases in the elderly are less and this is a good thing because complications more dangerous for them. There is also an infection rate among children, but it is mild and often without symptoms.”

“About one percent of infected cases enter intensive care, and half of them require ventilator. Eight to 10 infected

people enter intensive care every day, most of them have chronic diseases such as heart disease, and diabetes.” �P2

Minister of Public Health, H E Dr. Hanan Mohammed Al Kuwari speaking to Al Jazeera about the COVID-19 situation, yesterday.

The country will soon pass the peak of the outbreak as the virus' reproduction rate has

dropped significantly.

Qatar has a very high COVID-19 recovery rate and the lowest

mortality rate.

Qatar has set up an army of health workers to trace and

track the cases.

02 FRIDAY 8 MAY 2020HOME

FAJR SUNRISE 03.30 am 04.53 am

W A L R U WA I S : 26o↗ 30o W A L K H O R : 25o↗ 36o W D U K H A N : 27o↗ 32o W WA K R A H : 27o↗ 37o W M E S A I E E D 25o↗ 39o W A B U S A M R A 26o↗ 34o

PRAYER TIMINGS WEATHER TODAY

HIGH TIDE 04:11–17:41 LOW TIDE 00:00 – 11:54

Hot daytime with some clouds and slight dust, mild by night.

Minimum Maximum26oC 37oC

ZUHRMAGHRIB

11.30 am06.11 pm

ASR ISHA

02.58 pm07.41 pm

3,288 tonnes of local vegetables sold in AprilQNA — DOHA

The total sales of Qatari vege-tables, through the local products marketing program, reached 3,288 tonnes of various local vegetables in April.

The Ministry of Municipality and Environment explained that more than 504 tonnes of total sales were marketed and sold through the distinguished

product program and about 2,784 tonnes of the Qatar farms program, pointing out that these products are available in many major con-sumer complexes.

The marketing programs for local products supervised by the Ministry of Municipality and Environment in cooperation with the Ministry of Commerce and Industry aim to improve

the marketing of Qatari vege-tables and increase their demand.

Also, the marketing pro-grams aim to reduce pro-duction losses to the minimum and increase the income of Qatari farms, which in turn contributes to encouraging increased investment in the agricultural field, and the availability of local vegetables

in consumer complexes throughout the year.

Besides, they provide the opportunity for the Qatari farmers to display their local production of first-class vege-tables in the consumer com-plexes in high quality and at reasonable prices for the con-sumer without an intermediary, and without costing the farmer any fees for that.

Justice Ministry completes 8,228 real estate registrations, authentication transactions onlineQNA — DOHA

The Ministry of Justice has completed more than 8,228 transactions since the beginning of March through its electronic platforms and external service centers, and more than 69,517 subscribers have been regis-tered on Sak application. It is a part of the ministry’s efforts to keep pace with the current conditions and provide its services to the public without being affected by precautionary measures.

The transactions submitted to the public were divided between services related to real estate registration and docu-mentation services that wit-nessed the launch of a new package that includes 15 trans-actions, most of which can be completed online.

The transactions submitted

during this period included 2,888 real estate registration transactions. Of these transac-tions 2,655 transactions were completed electronically through Sak application, while 5,340 transactions related to documentation transactions, completed through the same application.

Within the framework of the follow-up of Minister of Justice and Minister of State for the Council of Ministers Affairs, H E Dr. Issa bin Saad Al Jafali Al Nuaimi, in the procedures for facilitating citizens’ access to the ministry’s services, the Min-istry has completed the prepa-ration of electronic forms for a number of transactions, including sales transactions of interest to all citizens, and it is now available through sub-mitting and receiving applica-tions through Sak application.

The Ministry of Justice has received, within its services to support the public that it launched since the beginning of last March, a number of calls amounting to more than 1,600 calls received by the Ministry via the hotline (137) from March 1, 2020 until now.

The competent authorities in the Ministry of Justice have previously created techno-logical infrastructure to restructure many electronic services and launch new elec-tronic services, which con-tributes to facilitating access for public to many of the services electronically.

This move came in accordance with the digital transformation plan adopted by the Ministry to bring services closer to citizens and facilitate access to them, as well as within the framework of the Ministry’s

commitment to the goals of Qatar National Vision 2030, and the plans and strategies of the Qatar Digital Government 2020.

As many as 164 complete electronic services are available through the various digital plat-forms of the Ministry, whether through the electronic portal, the comprehensive employee system, or from smart devices (tablets and mobile devices).

These services include all documentation services, whether concerning agencies, certifications or inquiring about documents.

In addition to real estate registration services of various kinds, such as real estate services, property transfer services, mortgage transactions, sales, bond issuance, the total number of real estate services is 70.

Green Tent organises online seminar on psychological effects of home quarantineQNA — DOHA

The Green Tent of the “A Flower Each Spring” program, addressed the topic of home quarantine and its psycho-logical, social and economic effects, at an online seminar, in which a number of specialists from Qatar, the Sultanate of Oman, Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco took part.

Participants in the seminar pointed out that the corona-virus pandemic has various psychological, social and eco-nomic impacts on people around the world, and that

everyone should take steps to avoid being affected psycho-logically by the current situation.

They pointed out that coun-tries and institutions were keen to support small and medium companies during the pan-demic, among them the State of Qatar, whose role did not stop only inside the country, but also provided assistance to countries that have suffered greatly from the crisis.

The Head of “A Flower Each Spring” program, Dr. Saif Al Hajari said that mankind is going through a great event that

humanity did not witnessed before, which pushed everyone to home quarantine, and one of the lessons learned is that every ordeal, in addition to its painful, sad and costly aspects, has other positive aspects.

Al Hajari added that eve-ryone must take advantage of the crisis by putting himself in a position to withstand and reduce the psychological, social, cultural and economic impacts. Quarantine is not new to Islamic history, and it is also the best option to limit the spread of this pandemic. For his part, Dr. Aziz Al Numan, a

consultant psychological from the Sultanate of Oman, said that the psychological effects of the coronavirus pandemic are many, including anxiety, stress and negative effects resulting from being exposed to a large number of news related to the pandemic and its contradictions.

He pointed out that the psy-chological problems caused by the pandemic are the result of lack of self-confidence, and the feeling of weakness for many, noting that the inability of many countries, especially developed countries, to

respond to the Coronavirus pandemic, left a feeling among many that their fate is unknown.

Dr. Abdul Naser Fakhro, from the College of Education, Qatar University, explained that despite the negative impact of the coronavirus pandemic, it also had positive effects, including the impact that the home quarantine on everyone, as it has contributed to building new habits and skills, and led to self-discovery, and gave many persons the opportunity to self-meditation.

He concluded that pollution

has decreased in the recent period and many have become more able to control their time.

In the same context, a number of specialists partici-pating in the seminar reviewed a number of religious texts and the positions of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and his companions in dealing with epidemics and afflictions.

Participants also dealt with the economic effects of the coronavirus pandemic on the world, as small and medium companies have been greatly affected despite the support provided by governments.

Qatar participates in Interpol regional meetingQNA — DOHA

The State of Qatar partici-pated in a meeting of heads of police agencies in the MENA region, via video conferencing. The meeting was organized by Interna-tional Criminal Police Organ-ization (Interpol) with the participation of a number of heads of police agencies.

Qatar was represented in the meeting by Major General Engineer Abdul Aziz Abdullah

Al Ansari, the Director of the Department of International Cooperation and Chairman of the National Counter-Terrorism Committee.

The meeting discussed the challenges faced by law enforcement, exchange of countries experiences in com-bating the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), developing security plans and strategies to address such a crisis and mech-anisms of cooperation with the Interpol.

Qatar was represented in the meeting by Major General Engineer Abdul Aziz Abdullah Al Ansari, the Director of the Department of International Cooperation and Chairman of the National Counter-Terrorism Committee.

Qatar reports 918 new virus casesFROM PAGE 1

The Ministry has stated that the current period will see a fluctuation in the number of cases of infection due to several reasons, including that the out-break of the virus is in the peak stage, before the number of infections begins to descend gradually.

The Ministry has also recently stepped up efforts to track the transitional chains of the virus and expand the search for people infected by conducting extensive and proactive investigations of large numbers of contacts with people who have recently been confirmed with the disease.

Buses deliver gifts as children celebrate GarangaoFROM PAGE 1

It will establish communi-cation and spread the spirit of affection, familiarity and love in the community.

Also it aimed to make children aware of the customs of their community. The gift bags containing nuts and sweets were sanitised, she added.

For his part, Issa Al Haremi, Director of Sports Affairs at the Ministry of Culture and Sports, explained that the celebration is a sym-bolic initiative because it aims to spread joy in the hearts of

children. It was organised in cooperation with 10 sports clubs including Al Rayyan Sports Club, Al Sadd Sports Club, Qatar Sports Club, Al Khor Sports Club, and Al Shamal Sports Club.

The Director of the Theater Affairs Center, Sallah Al Mulla said that the celebration was in an atmosphere full of joy, without any gatherings.

The festival brings echoing memory of Qatari culture and heritage which is narrated by forefathers to their children and grand-

children on the occasion.To celebrate the festival,

girls wear traditional gowns with embroidery and gold jew-ellery like earrings, necklaces, bangles. And boys wear tradi-tional Qatari dress ‘Thawb’, jackets, and caps.

As per the tradition, children sing ‘Garangao Garangao yatona atawna Allah Yatimkuk, Bait Makka Yuwad-dikum’ (Give us, Allah will give you and send you to Masjid Al Haram in Makkah Al Mukar-ramah) while visiting their neighbouring houses for gifts.

Only 328 COVID-19 patients required intensive care; 208 have recoveredFROM PAGE 1 “There is a noticeable increase in recovery cases, we have exceeded 2000 cases of recovery and the number is increasing and this indicator is very good,” he said.

Dr. Al Khal said that the “Remdesivir” drug is the first drug to be approved in principle and used in urgent and severe cases. Qatar has contacted the drug maker and it will be pro-vided as soon as it is commer-cially available. He also said that sanitary measures applied in the industrial area are con-tinuing even with the gradual lifting of restrictions.

For his part, Dr. Ahmed Al

Mohamed, Medical Director of Hazm Mebaireek said that about 14 additional hospitals are allocated in case that the five hospitals accommodate all the infected cases.

He said that Hamad Medical Corporation hospitals are open to the public and provide all emergency services The number of beds in Hamad Hos-pital has increased from 2,250 pre-pandemic to 5,000 beds during the pandemic and 40 percent of the beds are eserved.

Also we have increased the medical and nursing staff and increased the number of beds in the hospitals designated for coronavirus. COVID-19 testing at drive through swabbing hubs.

Qatar has flattened COVID-19 curve: Health MinisterFROM PAGE 1

“We started with 20 health workers, the team has now 300 health workers and volunteers. The team plays a key role in fighting COVID-19. Also we hope the Ehteraz application will help general public to identify whether they had been in contact with infected persons. Public can contact the hotline if they found themselves having contact with infected persons,” she said.

H E the Minister also said that the high number of COVID-19 cases in the country is the result of intensive testing measures.

“More than 40,000 people per million have been tested so far. Infection rates are not high. Some 93 percent of the cases are mild and only one percent are in ICU,” H E said. H E the Minister also said that five hospitals have been dedicated to treat COVID-19 patients, with 700 ICU beds hospitals are well equipped and fully staffed.

“When we see signs of deterioration, we start with all medicines and if the signs still deteriorate then the patient is moved to ICU and we have a strong team in the ICU,” said H E the Minister. Regarding easing of restrictions, H E the Minister emphasised that adequate safety measures will be taken when a decision is taken to ease travel restrictions and return to daily business.

“Definitely there will be easing of the restrictions, but it is dif-ficult to say when and how it will look like. Our priority as country is the safety. Mandatory quarantine will be introduced if flight traveling is resumed. We will not open unless it is safe to do that. We will keep the highest risk sector to open last. If we open too quickly there might be a second attack and we don’t want that,” said the Minister. Answering a question regarding the lockdown of Industrial Area, H E the Minister said it was important to ensure the health and safety of people and businesses of the area. H E the Min-ister also said that COVID-19 has created an opportunity for local market where masks and ventilators are produced.

MoPH carries out 2,500 random drive-through COVID-19 testsFROM PAGE 1

This service was not a drop-in service and only those who meet the nationally agreed criteria for research and have been asked to attend will be given the test.

Those referred to the drive through swabbing hubs arrived in their own car and did not enter the building. They were registered and asked a series of questions for research purposes, then pro-ceeded to be swabbed by specially trained Health Worker. The swabbing process involved a cotton bud being inserted into the nose, the sample was then securely stored and transported to HMC Laboratory for analysis. Once partipants were swabbed at one of the drive through hubs, they will receive results from the Ministry of Public Health as soon as possible by phone.

03FRIDAY 8 MAY 2020 HOME

QF celebrates Garangao with online cultural experienceTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

The spirit of Ramadan has been cele-brated in virtual form by Qatar Foun-dation through an online insight into Garangao – the mid-point of the holy month.

Members of the community from Qatar and beyond were invited to join a session organized by Qatar Founda-tion’s Community Engagement team and cultural consultancy company Embrace Doha that captured the essence of Garangao – from its meaning and purpose, to its traditions – with the usual events and activities that surround it unable to be held due to COVID-19.

The session explained how Garangao is an occasion to be cele-brated by people of all ages, with children being recognised and rewarded for fasting during the first weeks of Ramadan, and encouraged to continue doing so for the remainder of the holy month.

The online audience also learned about the traditional clothes that

children wear, the bags they carry, and the songs they sing at Garangao; the preparations that people make for the occasion.

“Ramadan is a time of sharing, and through this online event, we wanted to share knowledge about Garangao, and what it means to Qatar and the region, with people of all nationalities and cultures,” said Hend Al Mousawi, Head of Culture and Heritage Pro-gramming, Qatar Foundation.

“The impact of COVID-19 may have led to our lives changing, but our traditions endure, and through virtual events such as these during Ramadan, we are looking to bring people together in a different way to cele-brate this special time.”

Embrace Doha’s founder Amal Al Shammari, who led the online session, said:

“This beautiful celebration encourages social interaction between children and provides them with a sense of place within their community.“It also strengthens the ties between children and adult

TAMUQ graduates 105 engineers in virtual ceremony

FAZEENA SALEEM THE PENINSULA

Texas A&M University at Qatar (TAMUQ), a Qatar Foundation partner university celebrated academic achievements of its Class of 2020 in a virtual commencement ceremony held yesterday.

The historic virtual com-mencement ceremony, saw 105 Aggie engineers earn their bachelor and master degrees. They included 95 who graduated with bachelor’s degrees in chemical engineering, electrical engineering, mechanical engi-neering and petroleum engi-neering. The branch campus also awarded 11 with master’s degrees in chemical engineering. Of the total graduating class, 43 percent are female and 42 percent are Qatari. Graduates represented 23 nationalities.

Many guests joined to watch the live stream of the event.

Dr César Octavio Malavé, dean of Texas A&M at Qatar presided over the ceremony.

“This is not how we wanted to celebrate this milestone,” Malavé said, “but I can send you into the world with the knowledge that you have a c h i e v e d s o m e t h i n g remarkable: Not only have you earned a degree from one of the top engineering programs in the world, but you have done so under difficult and unprece-dented circumstances. So much has changed in such a short time, and yet learning — and life — goes on. You adapted to your new normal, and you kept yourselves on track. You per-severed, and more than that, you succeeded.”

“The proof is that you’re here today, ready to leave

university behind and head on to your next adventures. With challenge comes change, and each of you has shown your strength and resilience, and your commitment to being an engineering leader in Qatar. Remember that you are now among more than 500,000 graduates of Texas A&M Uni-versity around the world. Show the world how Aggies live their core values — not just in the workplace, but also into your communities and your families. We could not be more proud of you,” he said.

Texas A&M President Michael K. Young sent his video greetings to the graduates and honored their parents, families and mentors who encouraged them during their studies.

Abdulkarim Mohamed, a Class of 2020 petroleum engi-neering graduate addressed his classmates and fellow grad-uates. To date, Texas A&M at Qatar has granted a total of 1,161 degrees.

Dr Dhabia Al Mohannadi, a Class of 2012 graduate of Texas A&M at Qatar and now an assistant professor in the Chemical Engineering Program inducted the new graduates into The Association of Former Stu-dents, Texas A&M’s alumni organization that comprises the 500,000 graduates of the uni-versity and is known worldwide as the Aggie Network.

Syeda Manahil Akhter, who was awarded as mechanical engineering student of the year, speaking to The Peninsula

about future plans said, “I had originally planned to purse a job after graduation to get expe-rience before I went to do graduate school. TAMUQ has provided many amazing oppor-tunities and facilities that helped me develop both technical and soft skills. It has helped me become an all rounded person. The careers services also played an instrumental role in helping me secure internships which introduced me to the industry. Those internships gave me expe-rience for the future. I had planned to remain in Qatar for the start of my career.

“With the current situation, there is an equal chance that I will pursue graduate studies. The different research oppor-tunities and the internships

have helps that narrow down and identify the field of study I want to continue in if I went on to do graduate school,” said Syeda, also an undergraduate research scholar. Fatima Al Janahi, electrical engineering undergraduate and undergraduate research scholar, said, “I chose to study engineering when I was in high school, then I looked up for different universities. However, chose TAMUQ because it is one of the best engineering schools and will offer me a quality education in my country.

Speaking about her expe-rience at TAMUQ Fatima said, “It was a very rich experience, I learned a lot from the journey at TAMUQ. I had different opportunities to improve myself as a person and as a future engineer.”

The historic virtual commencement ceremony, saw 105 Aggie engineers earn their bachelor and master degrees. They included 95 who graduated with bachelor’s degrees in chemical engineering, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering and petroleum engineering. Graduates represented 23 nationalities.

Texas A&M University at Qatar (TAMUQ) Class of 2020 students.

QU-CPH student conducts multidisciplinary projectTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Qatar University’s College of Pharmacy (QU-CPH) MSc student in Clinical Pharmacy and Practice, Sawsan Al Mukdad defended recently her MSc thesis entitled the ‘Economic Evaluation of the CYP2C19 Genotype-Guided Antiplatelet Therapy Compared to the Universal Use of Tica-grelor or Clopidogrel in Qatar’.

The defense was conducted recently due to suspension of classes for students and precautionary measures to prevent novel coronavirus (COVID-19). Sawsan evaluated the pharmaconomics of CYP2C19 genotype-guided antiplatelet therapy com-pared to the universal use of antiplatelets after a percutaneous coronary intervention with the acute coronary syndrome.

As a direct response to a request by decision-makers at the Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC), Sawsan evaluated the cost-effectiveness of CYP2C19 genetic test guided therapy compared to the general use of Ticagrelor or Clopidogrel from the hospital perspective of the main healthcare provider in Qatar, the HMC. Using decision-analytic simulation models, this research demonstrated that CYP2C19 genetic-guided therapy is between dominant (higher effect with lower cost) and cost-effective com-pared to the general use of Clopidogrel and universal Ticagrelor, over the short- and long-term follow up durations, against clinical and quality-adjusted life years outcomes.

The research was conducted under the main supervision of CPH Associate Pro-fessor Daoud Al Badriyeh, co-supervised by CPH Associate Professor Hazem Elewa. Dr. Al Badriyeh said, “Sawsan’s findings of the high likelihood of the CYP2C19 genetic-guided antiplatelet therapy to be cost-effective approach, therefore, an important

and of significant value to the decision making in the Qatari practices, where opportunities for cutting spending on healthcare resources arises.”

About Sawsan, he added, “I supervised many postgraduates over the years. Sawsan is one of the most successful and has put her heart, mind and soul into even the smallest detail in this project. In this case, we have a multidisciplinary project between pharma-coeconomics and pharmacogenetics. Sawsan loved the areas of her research, which is very important. Her resolution to succeed is impressive and will surely take her places.”

Sawsan said, “This analysis is the first economic evaluation in Qatar and the region about CYP2C19 genetic-guided antiplatelet therapy versus universal use of Clopidogrel or Ticagrelor. Further, it includes several methodological aspects that make it unique among similar studies in international settings.”

In relation to her journey as a post-graduate student, Sawsan said: “The College of Pharmacy, under the leadership of Dean, Dr. Mohammed Diab, has unlocked the doors of success and a career that I love. I feel attached to this institution as I spent seven years living in its halls, starting with a BSc degree and finishing with MSc. Addi-tionally, my truly dedicated supervisors Dr. Daoud Al-Badriyeh and Dr. Hazem Elewa were always keen to provide me continuous support, and extensive personal and pro-fessional guidance. My overall experience as a postgraduate student in the College of Pharmacy was exceptional as the sup-portive research environment allowed me to have the opportunity to learn a valuable set of skills and knowledge. She added “I had a unique opportunity of being the pres-ident of the Interprofessional Education (IPE) Student Association that considerably enriched my personality”.

Sawsan’s was awarded the 5th Graduate Sponsorship Research Award, QNRF, Qatar Foundation. In addition, it has been eval-uated competitively at different occasions, where she received the following in recog-nition of the quality of her MSc research including the second place at the TAD Bootcamp Award from the Office of Graduate Studies at the Qatar University Annual Research and best presentation award at the College of Pharmacy 9th Annual Student Research Forum.

Sawsan had participated in several international and national conferences including the International Conference for Healthcare and Medical Students in Ireland, the 9th International Pharmaceutical Care Conference in Oman, CUDOS Congress at Sidra Medicine, the College of Pharmacy 9th Annual Student Research Forum, and the 4th Qatar University Health Research Sym-posium. As well as, the abstract of this study was accepted in the 25th Annual International Meeting of the International Society of Phar-macoeconomics and Outcomes Research in the USA and the British Cardiovascular Society Annual Conference in the United Kingdom.

Sawsan AlMukdad, QU-CPH MSc student in Clinical Pharmacy and Practice.General Directorate of

Traffic celebrates GarangaoTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

To celebrate the Garangao night, the General Directorate of Traffic distributed special gifts to children who are currently in the health quarantine. The Department aims to make children happy in light of the precautionary measures to limit the spread of coronavirus.

Garangao is a Ramadan tradition that is widely celebrated by children across Qatar and the Gulf region. On this night, children usually walk around their neighbourhoods singing traditional songs that mark the occasion and receive gifts and bags of sweets from their elders.

The Department’s gifts included a light-reflecting bag con-taining traditional sweets and nuts that are presented on this occasion to children.

The General Directorate of Traffic is keen to participate with community such important occasion, and also benefit from this occasion in strengthening the requirements traffic safety and security measures.

The General Directorate also called on all citizens and resi-dents to celebrate the Garangao night in homes and adhere to the precautionary measures to limit the spread of coronavirus.

The Department has made an educational video through its accounts on social media that includes the participation of children in this festive home, where a large number of users of social media interacted with this idea.

Officials with gift boxes.

members of the neighborhood through the traditional songs which tie young

ones to their shared history. Finally, it celebrates the value of sharing

throughout the Holy Month of Ramadan.”

Happy reunion

04 FRIDAY 8 MAY 2020 MIDDLE EAST

Israel lawmakers back Netanyahu-Gantz govt

AFP — OCCUPIED JERUSALEM

Israeli lawmakers approved the formation of a unity government between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his erstwhile rival Benny Gantz yesterday, inching towards an end to more than a year of deadlock.

Parliament voted by 71 votes to 37 to back the coalition deal that will see rightwing veteran premier Netanyahu share power with Benny Gantz, a centrist former military chief.

The two men have said they will swear in their new admin-istration on May 13, with Netanyahu remaining leader for 18 months, before handing over to Gantz. The other will serve as alternate PM, a new position in Israeli politics.

The proposed government had been challenged in the high court, with opponents arguing Netanyahu was ineligible to rule due to corruption indict-ments. They also charge that certain provisions in the coa-

lition deal break the law.But the court ruled on

Wednesday evening that there was “no legal reason to prevent the formation of a government” led by Netanyahu.

It added that by approving the coalition it was “not seeking to diminish the severity of the charges” against Netanyahu, but concluded that those could be addressed in his trial, due to begin on May 24.

Netanyahu has been written off by pundits and rivals many times since taking power in 2009, but the man some-times dubbed “the magician” has invariably found ways to remain in power.

As well as rebuilding an economy shaken by the corona-virus, the new government will also decide on the possible annexation of large parts of the West Bank, a move from which successive gov-ernments have refrained since Israel occupied the territory in the Six-Day War of 1967.

Israel has been without a stable government since

December 2018, holding three successive elections in which Gantz’s centrist Blue and White and Netanyahu’s Likud were near neck-and-neck.

During that time Netanyahu has remained in power in a caretaker capacity. He has also been charged with accepting improper gifts and illegally trading favours in exchange for positive media coverage.

He denies wrongdoing, but if the trial goes ahead as planned he will become the first serving Israeli leader to be tried. After the third election in March, Gantz broke with large parts of his Blue and White alliance and agreed to form a unity government.

He said it was necessary to provide political stability as the country seeks to repair the eco-nomic damage wrought by a coronavirus outbreak that has infected more than 16,000 people. Gantz’s critics, including many former allies, accused him of betraying his voters after cam-paigning for cleaner politics and pledging not to serve under an indicted prime minister. “Never have so few cheated on so many votes for such miserable reasons,” former Gantz ally Yair Lapid, poised to become oppo-sition leader, tweeted. While Israeli law bars ministers from serving while under indictment, there is no such law for prime ministers.

A doctor kisses the hand of Palestinian boy Hamza Ali Mohammed, 2, who was treated for a congenital heart disease in a hospital in Israel and separated from his family for two months due to the coronavirus disease lockdown, as he is carried by his mother upon their reunion at a checkpoint near Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, yesterday.

Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Kadhimi taking the oath in front of the parliament during an overnight session in Baghdad.

Iraq parliament approves PM-designate Kadhimi's govtREUTERS — BAGHDAD

Iraqi lawmakers approved a new government on Wednesday after six months without one as parties squabbled until the last minute over Cabinet seats in backroom deals.

Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, Iraq’s intelligence chief and a former journalist, will head the new government. He will begin his term without a full Cabinet, however, after several ministerial candidates were rejected.

Former prime minister Adel Abdul Mahdi, who has been leading a caretaker gov-ernment, resigned last year as anti-government protesters took to the streets in their thousands, demanding jobs and the departure of Iraq’s ruling elite.

They accuse the political class that took over after the 2003 US invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein of corruption that has driven the country into dysfunction and economic ruin.

The battle over gov-ernment portfolios since Abdul Mahdi’s resignation in

November prevented two pre-vious nominees for prime min-ister from forming a Cabinet.

Kadhimi’s candidates for Cabinet posts including interior, defence, finance and electricity passed with votes from a majority of lawmakers present.

Voting on the oil and foreign ministries was delayed as the parties failed to agree on candidates. They rejected the incoming premier’s picks for justice, agriculture and trade.

“The security, stability and blossoming of Iraq is our path,” Kadhimi wrote on his Twitter account after parliament voted for his Cabinet.

He said he would make tackling the coronavirus pan-demic, of which Iraq has suf-fered more than 2,000 cases and more than 100 deaths, a priority and hold to account those who had killed protesters in previous months of anti-gov-ernment unrest.

Iraqi officials say Kadhimi is acceptable to both the United States and Iran, whose battle for influence over Iraq has boiled into open confrontation in the past year.

Iran says virus outbreak ‘relatively stable’ as death toll nears 6,500 AFP & QNA — TEHRAN/KUWAIT

Iran said yesterday its corona-virus outbreak was “relatively stable” as it announced another 68 deaths as well as more than 1,000 infections for a fourth straight day.

The Islamic republic has battled to contain the Middle East’s deadliest outbreak of the COVID-19 illness since reporting its first cases in mid-February.

On Saturday the govern-ment’s official tally of daily infections hit 802 — its lowest level since March 10.

Iran’s count stayed below 1,000 again on Sunday, however its caseload has bounced back up above that mark on each day since then.

Health ministry spokesman Kianoush Jahanpour said the situation was “relatively stable”

as he announced that the latest fatalities took the overall death toll to 6,486.

Jahanpour said there were 1,485 new cases of infection, putting the country’s outbreak total at 103,135.

“More than 986 of these individuals had mild to mod-erate symptoms, or they were outpatients, or family members of infected patients,” he said.

Of all those infected, he added, 82,744 people had recovered from the illness and been discharged from hospital. Doubts have been raised about the tolls issued by Iran since it announced its first cases on February 19— two deaths in the Shiite holy city of Qom.

Meanwhile, the Kuwaiti Ministry of Health reported 278 new cases of Coronavirus in the country during the last 24 hours, bringing the total to

6,567.The Ministry had pointed

out yesterday that there has been two new deaths, bringing the tally of deaths of COVID-19 across the country to 44.

The Kuwaiti health author-ities had announced at an earlier time on Thursday that there has been 162 new recov-eries, bringing the total of recoveries in the country to 2,381. The Minister said analyses and medical exami-nations and tests proved that these cases were cured of COVID-19, and the recovered will be transferred to the hos-pital recuperation ward, pending their discharge within the next few days.

The Omani Ministry of Health reported 55 new cases of Coronavirus, 15 of which were of Omanis and 40 were of non-Omanis.

Saudi forces abandon security points in Yemen's SocotraANATOLIA — ADEN

Saudi Arabian forces have withdrawn from security points in Socotra Island’s provincial center of Hadibu as part of a de-escalation agreement signed with the United Arab Emirates-backed Southern Transition Council (STC), a source said yesterday.

The decision to withdraw was made abruptly, according to the local authority, who asked not to be named.

The takeover process began simultaneously with the withdrawal of armed militias of the STC and Yemeni gov-ernment forces from positions following clashes.

Last week, the STC declared self-governance and a state of emergency in the temporary capital of Aden and southern provinces, which caused tensions in Socotra as well as other provinces in the south. The Yemeni gov-ernment and provinces of Hadhramaut, Shabwa, al-Mahra, Abyan and the admin-istration of Socotra have rejected the STC’s move, which has also drawn widespread international criticism.

Yemen has been devas-tated by a conflict that esca-lated in March 2015 after Iran-backed Houthi rebels seized the capital Sana’a and forced President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi to flee the country.

Turkey slams Israel’s expansion of West Bank settlementANATOLIA — ANKARA

Turkey yesterday strongly condemned Israel’s plans to expand illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank. In a statement, the Turkish Foreign Ministry said the move was a “continuation of Israel’s policy of occupation and oppression”.

It said the plan indicated Israel’s drive to continue usurping the rights of Pales-tinians through blatant illegal settlement activity.

Turkey’s criticism came a day after Israeli Defense Min-ister Naftali Bennet approved the construction of 7,000 illegal settlement units in Efrat,

located in the southern part of the occupied West Bank.

The Foreign Ministry said Israel was eliminating any pos-sibility of a two-state solution through the persistent expansion of its illegal settlements in Pales-tinian territories.

It stressed that peace and stability were needed more

than ever at a time when the entire global community was battling the COVID-19 pandemic.

The ministry said Turkey rejects all Israeli settlement activity, which violates UN res-olutions, and will always stand by its Palestinian brothers and their cause.

Parliament voted by 71 votes to 37 to back the coalition deal that will see rightwing veteran premier Netanyahu share power with Benny Gantz, a centrist former military chief. The two men have said they will swear in their new administration on May 13, with Netanyahu remaining leader for 18 months, before handing over to Gantz.

05FRIDAY 8 MAY 2020 ISLAM

We should see the example of the Prophet (peace be upon him), his companions, and the earliest generation of Muslims if we want to get the maximum benefit from this blessed month of Ramadan.

Pious predecessors in RamadanSHEIKH SALMAN AL OUDAH

The Prophet (peace be upon him) said: “The best of my Ummah would be those of the generation

nearest to mine. Then come those nearest to them; then come those nearest to them” (Bukhari and Muslim).

We should see the example of the Prophet (PBUH), his companions, and the earliest generation of Muslims if we want to get the maximum benefit from this blessed month of Ramadan.

We will look at some of the things to which our pious predecessors used to pay extra attention during the month of Ramadan.

Reading the Quran Almighty Allah says: “The month

of Ramadan is that in which the Quran was revealed.” (2:185) For that reason, our pious predecessors used to increase their recitation of the Quran in Ramadan. Al Aswad ibn Yazid used to complete reading the entire Quran every two nights in Ramadan. He would sleep between Maghrib prayer and Isha prayer. Outside of Ramadan, he would complete reading the Quran every six nights.

Said ibn Jubayr would also com-plete reading the Quran every two nights in Ramadan. It is also narrated that Al Walid used to normally com-plete reading the Quran every three nights, but on the whole, he would complete it 17 times in the month of Ramadan.

Qatadah used to read the whole Quran every seven days, but in Ramadan he would take three days to do so. During the last 10 nights of Ramadan, he would read the entire Quran every night.

Al Qasim ibn Ali described his father, Ibn Asakir, author of The History of Damascus, as follows: “He used to always perform his prayers in congregation, and he was consistent in reciting the Quran.

He would always complete a reading of the entire Quran by Friday. However, in Ramadan, he would do so every day and retreat to the eastern minaret of the mosque. Describing Abu Barakat Hibatullah ibn Mahfuz, Adh-Dhahabi, the prominent scholar wrote, “He learned Islamic law and read the Quran. He was known for his charity and his good deeds.

In the month of Ramadan, he would read the Quran 30 times.”

Night vigil prayer Al Saib ibn Yazid said, “Umar ibn

Al Khattab ordered Ubayy ibn Ka’ab and Tamim Ad-Dari to lead the people in prayer in Ramadan. They would each read hundreds of verses at a go, until we had to support ourselves with canes because of the length of time we had to stand. We would only finish praying close to the time of Fajr prayer.” (Musannaf Abdul Razzaq and Sunan Al Bayhaqi) Abdullah ibn Abu Bakr narrated that he heard his father say, “By the time we finished our prayers (i.e. night vigil prayer) in Ramadan, the servants would have to

rush to prepare food in fear of the coming of Fajr.” (Al-Muwatta) Abdur-Rahman ibn Hurmuz said, “The reciters (leading the prayers) would complete the reading of Surat Al Baqarah in eight rak’ahs (units of prayer). When the reciters took 12 rak’ahs to complete it, the people regarded it as if the reciters were making things easy for them.” (Musannaf Abdul Razzaq and Sunan Al Bayhaqi) Nafi reported that Ibn Umar used to pray in his house during the month of Ramadan. When the people departed from the mosque, he would go off to the Prophet’s Mosque with a flask of water. He would not leave the mosque again until after Fajr prayer (Sunan Al Bayhaqi) Imran ibn Hudayr narrated that Abu Mijlaz would lead the prayers in Ramadan for the people in his neighborhood. He would recite the whole Quran in prayer in the course of seven days (Musannaf Ibn Abi Shaybah).

Ibn Abbas reported, “Allah’s Mes-senger (PBUH) was the most generous of all people in doing good, and he was at his most generosity during the month of Ramadan. Jibreel (Angel Gabriel) used to meet with him every year throughout the month of Ramadan, so that the Prophet could recite the Quran to him.

Whenever Jibreel met with him, he (the Prophet) became more generous

than a beneficial breeze.” (Bukhari and Muslim) Al Muhallab, a famous Maliki scholar, explained this Hadith, saying, this shows the blessings of good works and shows that engaging in some good deeds opens the door to performing others. Doing some good deeds assists one in further good works. We can see here that the blessings of fasting and of meeting Jibreel increased the Prophet’s generosity and charity, so much so that the Prophet became more generous than a beneficial breeze.

Al Zayn ibn Al Munir explained the description “beneficial breeze” as follows: His charity and good treatment for those who are the poor and the needy, as well as for those who are well-off and possess sufficient means, are as general as the relief brought by a beneficial breeze.

After Maghrib prayer, Ibn Umar used to break his fast only in the company of the poor. Whenever someone came to him while he was eating and asked him for something, he would take from his food what he deemed to be the beggar’s rightful share. Then he would stand up and leave the rest of the food for that person. He would then take what was in his hand and give it to his family, so that when he woke up in the next morning to resume his fast, he would not have eaten anything the night

before.During the month of Ramadan, Ibn Shihab Az-Zuhri would engage in nothing besides reciting the Quran and providing the poor with food.

Hammad ibn Abi Sulayman would take it upon himself to provide 500 people with food enough to break their fast, during the month of Ramadan. Then, on the day of Eid Al Fitr, he would give each of those people 100 pieces of silver.

Watching one’s tongue Abu Hurairah reported that the

Prophet (PBUH) said: “For those who do not abandon false speech and false acts, Allah has no need of their aban-doning of food and drink.”(Bukhari)

Al Muhallab made the following observation about this Hadith: “This shows that fasting entails refraining from obscene and false speech, just as it entails refraining from food and drink. Those who engage in false or obscene speech detract from the value of their fast. They expose themselves to their Lord’s dis-pleasure and to the possibility of their fast to be unaccepted.

The Prophet said: “If someone of you starts off the day fasting, they should avoid obscene speech and ignorant behaviour. If someone abuses them or starts to fight with them, they should reply by saying, “I am fasting; I am fasting.” (Muslim)

Al Maziri, the most prominent Maliki jurist of all time, had the fol-lowing observation about this Hadith, “It is possible that one is recommended to say, “I am fasting; I am fasting,” only to remind him or herself that he or she should refrain from getting engaged in the exchange of insults.”

Umar ibn Al Khattab said: “In Ramadan one does not abstain only from eating and drinking but also from lying, from uttering falsehood, from engaging in vain talk, and from swearing.” (Musannaf Ibn Abi Shaybah) Ali ibn Abi Talib said: “Fasting is not to leave off food and drink but rather to leave off lying, uttering falsehood, and engaging in vain talk.” (Musannaf Ibn Abi Shaybah) Abu Dhar Al Ghifari said: “When you fast, be on your guard as much as possible.” (Musannaf Ibn Abi Shaybah)

Jabir ibn Abullah said: “When you fast, your hearing, your vision, and your tongue should also fast by avoiding lies and sins. You should not abuse your servant.

You should maintain your com-posure and dignity on the day you fast. Do not make your fasting day the same as your normal day.” (Musannaf Ibn Abi Shaybah) Abu Hurairah said: “When you fast, do not act in an ignorant manner and do not insult people. If someone acts ignorantly toward you, say, ‘I am fasting’.” (Musannaf Abdul Razzaq) Mujahid said: “If you avoid two things, then your fast will be all right. You must avoid backbiting and lying.” Abu Al Aaliyah added, “A fasting person is engaged in worship as long as he or she does not backbite someone.” (From islamtoday.com)

Battle of Badr and its significanceADNAN KHAN

Ramadan is more than a month of ibadah with history showing the first

generation of Muslims achieved great victories during this blessed month.

All civilizations have seminal events that echo throughout the ages and are celebrated and remembered on anniversaries. The two World Wars are remembered regularly in Europe, it is considered a key part of Western history. Mean-while, the fall of the Berlin Wall is seen as a key victory for Capitalism.

Similarly the Ummah also has many events which all Muslims are taught at a young age and have come to define the Ummah. In the month of Ramadan many of these key events took place which shaped the Ummah and have played a key role in shaping its psyche.

While many are familiar with the events of the Battle of Badr, its wider political context and the values that drove the Ummah to achieve this first battle of the Muslims, against all odds, makes the victory of Badr a seminal event.

After 13 years of struggling in Makkah, following numerous meetings with various tribes and after much persecution and boycott, Allah blessed Prophet

Mohammad (peace be upon him) with nasr (victory) with the establishment of the Islamic State in Madinah, at the heart of the Arabian Peninsula.

The Quraysh did not give up their pursuit of the Muslims and the establishment of the Islamic state in Madinah only infuriated them further. The Prophet (peace be upon him) not content with merely establishing Islam, organised expeditions to strengthen the Islamic state, and thus Islam.

These expeditions included sending military expeditions; signing treaties with warring tribes; and securing key trade routes all of which contributed to strengthening Muslims and keeping the Quraysh of Makkah at bay.

The Prophet (peace be upon him) organised eight expedi-tions within a year of estab-lishing the Islamic state in Madinah. The last included a key trade route which was used by the Quraysh to traverse the desserts of Arabia to Al Sham (Syria) in order to transport its largest caravans, essential for the economies at the time. It was the interception of this caravan by the Muslims that turned into the now famous battle of Badr.

This victory led the Ummah to make Ramadan the month of great change. While much

literature has been written on Islamic conquests focusing on strategy many victories occurred during Ramadan due to the focus of the Ummah on Allah Almighty and this removed fear from the hearts of the Muslims. This is why some of the greatest victories in Islam occurred during Ramadan such as the conquest of Makkah (8 Hijri), the con-quest of Rhodes (53 Hijri), the successful landing of Muslims on the coast of Spain (91 Hijri), the victory by Tarik Ibn Zayed against the King of Spain (92 Hijri), the victory of Salahuddin against invading crusaders (584 Hijri), and Mamluk’s victory versus invading Tatars in the

battle of Ain jiloot (650 Hijri).

The Battle of BadrRegarding the Battle of

Badr, Allah Almighty said in the Quran: “Indeed Allah assisted you at Badr when you were weak, so be careful (to your duty) to Allah so that you may be of the thankful ones. When you said to the believers ‘Does it not suffice you that your Lord should assist you with three thousand angels sent down.” (Qur’an, 3:123)

The two armies met at Badr on 17th Ramadan, 2 AH. In the beginning as per Arab custom, single combat (one to one) took place. The famous Quraysh warriors Utbah, Shayba and

Walid came to challenge three ‘Ansars’ from Madinah. The Quraysh refused to fight any of the ‘Ansars’, demanding their ‘equals’ and so the Prophet (peace be upon him) sent Ubayda, Hamza and Ali (may Allah be pleased with them). The three Kuffar were killed (Ubayda was hurt). The Quraysh got disturbed and began attacking en-masse. In the thick of the battle, the Prophet prayed to Allah. In Surat Al Anfal Allah Almighty gave the answer: “When you asked for help from your Lord, He answered you. Indeed I will aid you with a thousand of the angels in rows behind rows.” (Quran, 8:9)

The enemies got frightened

and began to retreat. The bravery and skill of Muslim sol-diers under the leadership of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) and the sight of so many angels struck terror in the enemies’ hearts. Seventy-two Kuffar in total were killed including their leader Abu Jahl.Fourteen Muslims were mar-tyred. Seventy prisoners were taken by the Muslims.

The prisoners were treated with kindness and some became Muslims. In later days some of the prisoners said: “Blessed be the men of Madinah, they made us ride whilst they walked, they gave us wheat and bread to eat when there was little of it contenting themselves with plain dates.” The rich pris-oners paid ransom and were set free. Others were asked to gain their freedom by teaching 10 Muslims to read and write. The Battle of Badr strengthened the faith of the Muslims.

Courtesy: khilafah.com

The prisoners were treated with kindness and some became Muslims. In later days some of the prisoners said: “Blessed be the men of Madinah, they made us ride whilst they walked, they gave us wheat and bread to eat when there was little of it contenting themselves with plain dates.”

06 FRIDAY 8 MAY 2020MIDDLE EAST / AFRICA

Yemen imposes virus curfew Security men wearing protective masks stand in a street during a 24-hour curfew over COVID-19, in Sana'a, Yemen, on Wednesday.

Libyan official: 5 killed, dozens hurt in Tripoli shellingAP — CAIRO

Artillery shelling by Libya’s eastern-based forces killed five civilians and wounded dozens in the capital, Tripoli, an official w i t h t h e c o u n t r y ’ s UN-supported government said yesterday.

It was the latest attack on Tripoli by the eastern forces’ commander Khalifa Haftar, who launched a push last year to capture the city. The fighting, which has killed hundreds of civilians and displaced tens of thousands, has mostly stale-mated in recent months.

Libya has been in turmoil since 2011, when a civil war toppled long-time dictator Muammar Gaddafi, who was later killed. The country has since 2015 been split between rival administrations in the east and the west, each backed by armed groups supported by an array of foreign powers.

Meanwhile, a report by UN experts monitoring sanctions against Libya obtained earlier this week said that a private Russian security company has provided between 800 and 1,200 mercenaries to support Haftar’s offensive on the capital.

Haftar’s artillery on Wednesday hit two Tripoli neighbourhoods, Tajoura and Abu Salim, according to Amin Al Hashemi, the Health Minis-try’s spokesman with the Tripoli-based government. Children and paramedics were among the 46 civilians wounded in the shelling, al Hashemi added.

Earlier this week, the Inter-national Criminal Court’s pros-ecutor Fatou Bensouda said her office is working on new arrest warrants for possible war crimes committed in Libya. Attacks on civilians may

constitute crimes under the Rome Statute that established the ICC, she said, adding that military commanders will be held accountable for crimes committed by their forces.

The fighting over Tripoli has intensified in recent weeks despite UN calls for a cease-fire to allow authorities to focus on curbing the spread of the coro-navirus. Libya has so far recorded 64 virus cases, including three deaths.

The pandemic could pos-sibly devastate war-torn Libya, where conflict has created dire medical shortages.

Gaza police graduationA Palestinian Hamas police cadet fires a weapon as he demonstrates his skills during a graduation ceremony at Police Academy in Gaza City, yesterday.

At least 65 killed in flooding, landslides in RwandaAP — KIGALI, RWANDA

At least 65 people are dead after flooding and landslides in Rwanda, officials said yesterday after overnight heavy rains. Nearly 100 homes were washed away. The landslides were still occurring in the morning in Gakenke district in the mountainous northwest, resident Gilbert Mugabo said.

The East African nation has seen dozens of deaths caused by torrential rains in recent weeks but Wednesday night’s downpour was the worst in months, the ministry of emer-gency management said.

“We have so far counted 65

people dead from last night’s heavy rains. We urge people to leave risk areas,” the ministry tweeted. The flooding and mudslides swept away bridges and left some roads inaccessible.

The floods have also affected the region. In Kenya, the government has recorded 194 deaths in the past few weeks. Meteorologists in Rwanda predict that the heav-ier-than-usual rains will con-tinue and warn people to relocate from risk-prone areas.

The capital, Kigali, and northern Rwanda are particu-larly hilly and vulnerable to landslides.

Monitor: IS attack kills 11 Syrian regime, allied fightersAFP — BEIRUT

An attack by the Islamic State group in the Syrian desert yesterday killed 11 government and allied fighters, a moni-toring group said.

The fighters died in an attack on their vehicle between Al Sokhna and Al Shula in the area straddling Homs and Deir Ezzor prov-inces, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Rami Abdel Rahman, the head of the UK-based moni-toring organisation, could not immediately provide further details, but warned that the casualty toll could rise.

There was no immediate claim from IS, which disinte-grated last year but has con-tinued to conduct frequent guerrilla-style attacks in eastern Syria.

At least 27 government and allied fighters were killed in an attack by the group in the same desert area a month ago.

IS has also carried out deadly attacks in Iraq in recent weeks.

Observers have warned that border closures and mobi-lisation of security resources due to the coronavirus pan-demic could give rise to a surge in IS attacks.

The group, which once administered a proto-state the size of Great Britain, no longer has fixed positions, but it still has hundreds of fighters hun-kered down in desert hideouts.

Two members of the Kurdish-led Syrian Demo-cratic Forces were also killed in a suspected IS attack in Baghouz, near the border with Iraq, the Observatory said.

Such attacks against the SDF have been frequent in the Baghouz area. The Syrian gov-ernment has recorded 44 COVID-19 cases, including three deaths in areas under its control, while the Kurdish administration in northeastern Syria has reported three cases, including one death.

Africa CDC rejects Tanzania’s claim that its virus tests faultyREUTERS — ADDIS ABABA

The head of the Africa Centres for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention yesterday rejected an assertion by Tanzania’s pres-ident that coronavirus tests it supplied are faulty.

Tanzania’s government spokesman said a team was conducting investigations on the laboratory that conducted the tests, and the outcome will be made public once complete. The World Health Organization expressed confidence in the tests.

On Sunday, Tanzanian Pres-ident John Magufuli said the imported test kits were faulty after they had returned positive results on a goat and a pawpaw — among several non-human samples submitted for testing, with technicians left deliber-ately unaware of their origins.

The next day, the head of the national health laboratory

in charge of testing was sus-pended. The President did not say why the authorities had been initially suspicious of the tests.

“The tests that Tanzania is using, we know they are working very well,” John Nken-gasong told journalists.

The Africa CDC, along with the Jack Ma Foundation, a charity founded by the Chinese billionaire, supplied the tests, Nkengasong said.

Ma, founder of Alibaba Group, has donated thousands of tests kits, masks and pro-tective gear to African nations and the equipment is being used across the continent. No other countries have made public complaints about the tests.

“We are very instrumental in training, providing training to nearly all countries and pro-viding them with test kits. We’ve also in the last couple of weeks and months distributed tests

from the Jack Ma Foundation that have been validated and proven to be very, very reliable,” Nkengasong said.

Hassan Abbas, Tanzania’s chief government spokesman, said the government had formed a team of experts to examine the lab that conducted the tests, and it would give the outcome of the results once completed.

“What the president said was based on initial tests run by using animals... to test the veracity of the test results,” Abbas said.

“Our worry was based on empirical findings. Once the team finalises its work we will know the gravity of the lapses in the machines.”

Tanzania, where places of worship remain open, has at least 480 confirmed cases and 18 deaths, the fourth highest case load in Eastern Africa. But the data is from Sunday, the

most recent day the gov-ernment released figures.

Almost all other African nations release daily reports on the latest tallies on infections, fatalities and recoveries. Tan-zania’s lag has prompted

criticism from the country’s opposition that the government is being secretive.

Asked about Tanzania’s questioning of the tests, WHO Africa head Matshidiso Moeti said on a teleconference with

the media: “We are convinced that the tests that have been provided... both through pro-curement through WHO and those that came through Jack Ma donations, were not con-taminated with the virus.”

South African soldiers climb into an armoured personnel carrier during a patrol to enforce level 4 lockdown regulations to help curb the spread of COVID-19, in Sunnyside, Pretoria, yesterday.

30 die in South Darfur tribal clashesAFP — KHARTOUM

Thirty people were killed in tribal clashes that erupted in Sudan’s South Darfur province, Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok’s office said on Wednesday in a brief statement.

“South Darfur’s governor presented a detailed report about the situation in the province which showed that clashes erupting between tribal elements saw 30 deaths,” it said.

A tribal source said the bloody fighting between the Al Raziqat (Arab) and Al Falata (African) tribes was sparked by a dispute over stolen livestock.

“Nine people were initially

killed at night and then 21 people were killed in renewed clashes on Wednesday morning. The situation is extremely on edge, but fighting stopped as night fell,” said the source, who wanted to remain anonymous.

Tensions between Arab and African tribes in Darfur date back to 2003, when ethnic minority rebels took up arms against the then Arab-domi-nated government of since-ousted president Omar Al Bashir, accusing it of margin-alising the region economically and politically.

Khartoum then applied what rights groups say was a scorched-earth policy against ethnic groups suspected of

supporting the rebels . About 300,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million displaced in the conflict, the United Nations says. South Darfur’s governor Khaled Hashem told reporters on Wednesday that military troops were being deployed to the region to quell the outbreak of violence.

The current transitional government has sought to turn the page on Bashir’s three decades of iron-fisted rule, which ended when he was overthrown in mass protests in April last year.

One way they want to do this is by bringing an end to the multiple ethnic conflicts that have dogged Sudan since inde-pendence in 1956.

Lesotho’s ruling party to form new govt to oust embattled PMAFP — MASERU, LESOTHO

Lesotho’s ruling party yesterday told parliament it was quitting a coalition government and forming a new one with an opposition party, a move likely to lead to the ousting of embattled Prime Minister Thomas Thabane.

The All Basotho Convention Party (ABC) joined hands with the Democratic Congress (DC) party and started the process shortly after Thabane reiterated his intention to retire by the end of July.

Ruling party officials and opposition groups have piled pressure on Thabane to leave office earlier over allegations he had a hand in the 2017 murder of his estranged wife -- a case that has gripped the tiny southern African nation.

“A letter informing the speaker of the national assembly that we are no longer part of government was handed over to the speaker today,” ABC spokesman Montoeli Masoetsa said.

“We expect him to read the letter tomorrow,” he added.

After that parliament will relay the information to the Council of State, which advises Lesotho’s King Letsie III.

The Council of State is then legally obliged to ask the king to appoint a new prime minister — choosing a member of par-liament backed by the majority of MPs.

Earlier yesterday, the 80-year old Thabane repeated his intention to retire by the end of July this year on the grounds of “old age”.

“I wish to once again reaffirm my decision to retire

as prime minister,” Thabane said in an address to the nation, without setting a clear date.

“I have always been con-sistent that it is my wish to retire from office by the 31st of July, 2020, or earlier... if all the nec-essary conditions for my retirement are put in place,” he added.

The Prime Minister said the decision was “voluntary” as he was “no longer as energetic” due to his age.

Thabane and his previous wife Lipolelo Thabane, 58, were going through a bitter divorce

when she was gunned down outside her home in the capital Maseru, just two days before her husband’s inauguration in June 2017. Police have since found Thabane’s mobile number in communications records from the crime scene — prompting rivals within the ABC to demand his immediate resignation.

Last week, the ABC rejected a demand for immunity from prosecution after Thabane steps down. The prime minister’s current wife Maesaiah Thabane is deemed a co-conspirator in the murder case.

Senegal court upholds ban on repatriating virus dead

AFP — DAKAR

Senegal’s Supreme Court yesterday upheld a ban on repatriating the bodies of citizens living abroad who have died of coronavirus, rejecting a plea from their distraught relatives.

A group of families with dead relatives abroad had sought to overturn the ban on the grounds that it violated their right to mourn and practise religion in the Muslim-majority West African country.

Senegal’s government had ruled out bringing back the bodies to stem the spread of the virus.

Family members have said that around 80 Senegalese have died from COVID-19 overseas, including 40 in France alone.

Yesterday, their lawyers said that the Supreme Court’s decision had caused deep distress.

They had argued during the proceedings that the health risk of bringing back bodies was “non-existent,” and that the ban infringed religious rights.

Senegal has so far been spared a coronavirus outbreak on a par with those in Europe or the United States.

07FRIDAY 8 MAY 2020 ASIA

South Korean findings suggest ‘reinfected’ virus cases are false positivesREUTERS — SEOUL

South Korean health authorities raised new concerns about the novel coronavirus after reporting last month that dozens of patients who had recovered from the illness later tested positive again.

The findings suggested that some people who survived COVID-19 could become rein-fected with the virus that causes it, potentially complicating efforts to lift quarantine restric-tions and to produce a vaccine.

But after weeks of research, they now say that such test results appear to be “false pos-itives” caused by lingering — but likely not infectious — bits of the virus.

South Korea had reported more than 350 such cases as of Wednesday, according to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC).

As more and more South Koreans were released from treatment for COVID-19, authorities discovered a dis-turbing trend. Some ostensibly cured patients were later testing positive again.

While officials examined several possible explanations, including reinfection of patients, or reactivation of the virus, an expert panel convened by the government concluded last week that the most likely expla-nation was that the tests are returning “false positives”.

South Korea uses reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) tests, which detect the coronavirus’s genetic material.

The RT-PCR process can quickly return results and is considered the most accurate way to find out if a patient is infected with the coronavirus.

But in some cases, the tests may detect old particles of the virus, which may no longer pose a significant threat to the patient or others, said Seol Dai-Wu, an expert in vaccine development at Seoul’s Chung-Ang University.

“The RT-PCR machine itself cannot distinguish an infectious viral particle versus a non-infectious virus particle, as the test simply detects any viral component,” Seol said.

This so-called false positive result is likely behind the cases of recovered patients testing positive again, the KCDC says.

Authorities are still gath-ering evidence to support their theory that the particles are from “dead” virus cells, KCDC director Jeong Eun-Kyeong said.

The patients were retested after they either exhibited new respiratory symptoms, or were selected for retesting by authorities.

Less than half of those retested by mid-April were showing symptoms, according to the KCDC, but authorities now say it is unlikely that those symptoms were being caused by the virus.

Patients who tested positive for the new coronavirus after recovering from COVID-19 do not appear to be infectious.

The KCDC has not found a single case where such patients had passed the coro-navirus to another person, Jeong said.

When investigating people who appear to suffer a relapse of symptoms after recovering from COVID-19, the KCDC takes cultures of the virus, a process that takes more than two weeks

before reliable results become evident.

All 29 completed culture tests as of Wednesday had come back negative. At least 79 are being processed.

“The virus in the relapse cases have little to no infec-tiousness,” Jeong said.

Oh Myoung-don, a doctor at Seoul National University Hospital who is leading the panel of experts investigating the cases, said unlike hepatitis B or human immunodeficiency

viruses (HIV), coronavirus does not infiltrate into the host cell’s nucleus.

That means it does not cause chronic infection and chances of it reactivating are very low, he said at a briefing last week.

Authorities are also con-ducting tests to detect the presence of any antibodies that may have developed to fight the virus, and are testing and mon-itoring people who came into contact with the patients.

India launches massive operation to evacuate citizensANATOLIA — NEW DELHI

India started to evacuate 14,800 citizens stranded abroad yesterday in one of the biggest operations of its kind.

Some 64 flights will bring home the people caught amid coronavirus restrictions in an operation dubbed Vande Bharat Mission by Indian government.

More than 0.3 million Indians have requested for a flight to return.

“The first flight will take off for Singapore at 11pm on Thursday, touching base at 7.30am local time,” Sameek Bhattacharya, a spokesman for

flag-carrier Air India, said.The first flight will arrive in

India this afternoon from Bang-ladesh’s capital Dhaka.

Flights from India will go to the US, the Philippines, Sin-gapore, Bangladesh, UAE, UK, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Singapore, Phillippines, Oman, Bahrain, and Kuwait.

“Medical screening of pas-sengers would be done before taking the flight. Only asymp-tomatic passengers would be allowed to travel,” according to a press release issued by the Ministry of Home Affairs.

“The schedule for the evac-uation has been prepared and

shared. The rescue work will go on till May 15,” T Praveen Keerthi, an Air India Com-mander, said.

Meanwhile, the Indian Navy has initiated Operation Samudra Setu (Sea Bridge) to evacuate Indian citizens in West Asia and the Maldives.

“Indian Navy ship INS Jalashwa reaches Male for the evacuation of Indian nationals as part of the program. The ship will leave for Kochi (in Kerala) tomorrow carrying around 700 Indians, High Commission of India in the Maldives is coordi-nating final arrangements for emigration and local transport,”

the navy spokesperson tweeted.This is the biggest evacu-

ation after the 1990 evacuation when Air India flew back 0.17 million from Kuwait during the Gulf War.

The cost of the journey home will have to be borne by the pas-sengers. Tickets for the flights are higher than normal rates and thus many, who are stranded, are now in a state of fix.

Passengers also pointed out the hidden costs involved in the evacuation as they are made to sign a document saying they are willing to bear the expense of quarantine upon their return.

“We will get to know the

quarantine cost only after we reach India. Some people here have been barely surviving as their money ran out, now we are being asked for this hidden amount? This is troubling,” Vanita Iyer, a traveller currently stranded in Manila, Philippines, said.

The government has also made it mandatory for eve-ryone, taking the special flights, to install the Indian govern-ment’s COVID-19 mobile appli-cation, Aarogya Setu.

As per the Johns Hopkins University, India now has 53,045 confirmed cases including 1,787 deaths.

Gas leak at Indian chemical plant kills 11AFP — VISAKHAPATNAM

Eleven people were killed and hundreds hospitalised after a pre-dawn gas leak at a chemical plant in eastern India yesterday that left unconscious victims lying in the streets, authorities said.

Fears that the death toll from the incident on the out-skirts of the Visakhapatnam, an industrial port city in Andhra Pradesh state, might rise sig-nificantly were not borne out however.

The gas escaped out of tanks at a complex owned by South Korea’s LG Chem that had suspended operations because of India’s coronavirus lockdown.

Footage on Indian tele-vision channels showed people, including women and children, slumped motionless in the streets after locals raised the alarm in the early hours.

“There was utter confusion

and panic. People were unable to breathe, they were gasping for air. Those who were trying to escape collapsed on the roads - kids, women and all,” local resident Kumar Reddy, 24, told reporters.

Local police commissioner R K Meena, said that by yes-terday afternoon 11 people had been confirmed dead.

B K Naik, district hospitals coordinator, said 1,000 had ini-tially been hospitalised but by the afternoon around 600 remained receiving treatment, with none in a critical condition.

“This is a calamity,” Naik said.

Pictures taken at the King George Hospital in the city early in the day had shown two or three patients on each bed, many of them children, and several unconscious.

The incident had echoes of one of the worst industrial dis-asters in history when gas leaked from a pesticide plant

in the central Indian city of Bhopal in 1984.

Around 3,500 people, mainly in shanties around the plant operated by Union Carbide, died in the days that followed and thousands more in the following years. People still suffer its after-effects now.

“I pray for everyone’s safety and well-being in Visakhap-atnam,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Twitter.

The plant, operated by LG Polymers, a subsidiary of LG Chem, is on the outskirts of Visakhapatnam.

The city and the sur-rounding area are home to around five million people.

LG Chem released a statement in South Korea that the “gas leak situation is now under control”.

The plant had been left idle because of the coronavirus lockdown, according to Swaroop Rani, an assistant police commis-sioner in Visakhapatnam.

Smokes rise from an LG Polymers plant following a gas leak incident in Visakhapatnam, yesterday.

The National Museum of Korea is re-opened to public with low coronavirus cases during the novel coronavirus pandemic in Seoul, yesterday.

Indonesia summons Chinese envoy over burials at sea on fishing fleet

REUTERS — JAKARTA

Indonesia has summoned China’s ambassador to clarify the deaths of four Indonesian crew from two Chinese-flagged vessels, Indonesia’s foreign ministry said yesterday, after rights groups alleged the crew were mistreated and exploited.

The ministry issued a statement after a video was cir-culated on social media, appearing to show a burial at sea aboard a Chinese-flagged ship. The footage showed a group of men praying around an orange body bag before it was tossed into the ocean.

A Chinese embassy official in Jakarta did not immediately respond to a request for comment after the ambassador was summoned.

Indonesian Foreign Min-ister Retno Marsudi later told a

news conference that three Indonesian crew members had died aboard Chinese-flagged fishing vessels since December and had been buried at sea.

“One crew member died and was buried at sea on March 31. In December 2019, two other crew members...died and were also buried at sea,” Marsudi said, adding that another crew member crew died onshore of pneumonia in a hospital in the South Korean port of Busan.

Marsudi said she had asked Xiao Qian, Chiana’s ambassador to Indonesia, for clarification of whether the burials had been carried out at sea in accordance with International Labour Organ-ization (ILO) rules and whether “unsuitable” condi-tions on board the vessels contributed to the deaths.

The RT-PCR machine itself cannot distinguish an infectious viral particle versus a non-infectious virus particle, as the test simply detects any viral component: Seol Dai-Wu

Turkey provides food to needy BangladeshisANATOLIA — DHAKA

A Turkish relief association donated yesterday food packages in Bangladesh for 1,000 needy families.

The food items provided by Yardimeli International Humanitarian Aid Association were handed over to the authorities of a Bangladeshi educational institute Chittagong Grammar School-Dhaka (CGSD).

The aid will be delivered to the needy families whose kids are attending the CGSD Com-munity School in the capital Dhaka and the southern port city of Chittagong.

“This is the second time our embassy is providing food to underprivileged families in Bangladesh during the holy month of Ramadan,” said Mustafa Osman Turan, Turkey’s

ambassador in Dhaka, while addressing the handover ceremony.

In total, 4,000 families have been supported in these dif-ficult times of pandemic, he added.

On April 23, the Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TIKA), Disaster and Emergency Management Pres-idency, Turkish Red Crescent and Turkiye Diyanet Foun-dation donated food packages to 3,000 deprived families in Dhaka through Dhaka North City Corporation.

On April 29, TIKA also donated 5,000 personal care packages for the Rohingya ref-ugees in Cox’s Bazar.

“Turkey will continue to stand by the government and the people of Bangladesh as always,” Turan said.

Underlining the hardships

the deprived people in Bang-ladesh face, he added: “We know it is the poor and the underprivileged who have been hit hardest by this health and economic crisis during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

The CGSD authorities expressed gratitude to the Turkish government for their continued assistance to Bangla-deshi distressed people as well as destitute worldwide during the prevailing lethal pandemic.

“1,000 deprived families will greatly benefit from these basic food items — rice, cooking oil, gram pulses, etc. — during this period and we are grateful to the Turkish government for the help,” Asia Alam Chow-dhury, head of CGSD, said.

The South Asian nation has so far confirmed 12,425 infec-tions, with the death toll at 186. It has conducted 105,511 tests.

Carved stone turtle unearthed from Angkor reservoir siteAP — PHNOM PENH

Cambodian archaeologists have unearthed a large centuries-old statue of a turtle in an excavation at the famous Angkor temple complex in the country’s northwest.

The 56-by-93 centimeter carved stone turtle believed to date from the 10th century was discovered on Wednesday during the digging at what was the site of a small temple that had been built on Srah Srang, one of Angkor’s several reservoirs.

Researchers pinpointed where the temple had been and workers drained water off to enable the dig, which began on March 16, said Mao Sokny, head of the excavation team of the Apsara Authority, a gov-ernment agency that oversees the Angkor archaeological site.

The bottom half of the turtle remained buried while prepa-rations were being made to lift it out without damaging it.

Angkor was strongly influ-enced by Hindu culture, and as a result, when a temple or other important structure was built, sacred objects would often be buried in the ground under-neath as a gesture to ensure safety and good fortune. In several Asian cultures, turtles are seen as symbols of lon-gevity and prosperity.

The dig also discovered some other rare artifacts.

The Angkor complex is Cambodia’s biggest tourist attractions, as well as a Unesco World Heritage site and a symbol of national pride that is emblazoned on the Cam-bodian flag.

08 FRIDAY 8 MAY 2020VIEWS

CHAIRMAN

DR. KHALID BIN THANI AL THANI

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

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

ACTING MANAGING EDITOR

MOHAMMED SALIM MOHAMEDm.salim@pen.com.qa

DEPUTY MANAGING EDITOR

MOHAMMED OSMAN ALI osman@pen.com.qa

EDITORIAL

QATAR’S strategy against the COVID-19 pandemic, which has killed over 260,000 people worldwide, has been very effective. It’s mortality rate of 0.06 percent — 12 deaths out of 18,890 confirmed cases to date — is the lowest among the countries with major outbreaks. Experts have attributed this low mortality rate to Qatar’s efficient and well-equipped healthcare system and the country’s timely action and well-coordinated response to the outbreak.

The healthcare network of Qatar, home to a large expatriate population, has also been lauded by the foreign diplomats and the UN representatives for providing quality healthcare to all, and discriminating against no one.

The outbreak is currently passing through the peak phase in Qatar and the region, with thousands of new cases reported in recent weeks. Health authorities in Qatar have also expanded contacttracing and testing. More than 116,495 people have so far been tested for COVID-19 in the country.

The coronavirus testing is set to expand further as the Ministry of Public Health has embarked on conducting hundreds of random tests in various areas to assess the spread of the virus in the community. In the first phase, the Ministry is conducting 2,500 random, drive-through tests at three health centers.

People from different age, gender and ethnic groups are being tested under the initiative which will help inform policy decisions in the fight against COVID-19. This will also help detect asymptomatic cases. The authorities also opened a drive-through COVID-19 testing facility last month.

More than 2,200 people have already fully recovered from the infection, while majority of the active cases are stable and in good condition. With increased testing and stringent preventive measures adopted by the public and private sectors, health officials are confident to flatten the curve of the coronavirus spread very soon.

As part of the national efforts against the pandemic, authorities have put special emphasis on protection of migrant workers in the country, both from the COVID-19 infection and the negative economic effects of the global health crisis.

Representatives of expat communities, international labour leaders as well as labour attaches of a number of countries have praised the efforts by the Qatari authorities to safeguard the interests of migrant workers in the country.

Parts of the Industrial Area, where a large number of workers live and work and where several streets had been closed to prevent the spread of the virus, reopened on Wednesday after weeks of sterilization campaign and health checks, signifying the effectiveness of Qatar’s strategy against COVID-19.

Qatar’s success against COVID-19

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Quote of the day

Britain would advance with maximum caution and be guided by the science and data when considering whether any of the strict social distancing measures could be eased.

Boris Johnson, Britan's Prime Minister

A health care worker controls temperatures of drivers and passengers in Antalya after the Turkish government lifted the coronavirus travel restrictions for 7 cities namely Antalya, Aydin, Erzurum, Hatay, Malatya, Mersin, and Mugla.

The world is grappling with the corona-virus (COVID-19) pandemic that emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019. It has hit many countries across the world and caused the death of thousands and thousands of people without distin-guishing between the rich and the poor, the old and the young, and so on. It is not only fair but also too dangerous. Since it started five months ago, medical experts, health experts, and many others have been trying to develop vaccines throughout the world to fight the deadly virus, and sometimes we hear the good news that the vaccine is hopefully on its way, in a couple of months. On the other hand, administrators, rulers, politicians, in cooperation with their coun-terparts in other countries, have taken on the responsibility for organizing health services, treating the infected people, managing economy, helping those who are finally disadvantaged, those who have lost their jobs, after having to impose a curfew, applying quarantine and bringing limita-tions to some actions of the daily life.

However, the virus not only kills people but it also affects people psychologically, who strive to survive, who stay home in the quarantine, who are economically deprived of certain necessities of life and who have lost their jobs. It seems that one of the challenges that influence the people during the pandemic and will continue to do so in the post-pandemic period is the psychological problems caused by anxiety. Numerous people will undergo this mental disorder so that the experts have already started talking not only about the negative psychic effect of the virus many already suffer but also about the possible ways of treatment. Of them, psychological coun-seling comes first. But a warm uplifting family life also equally plays an important role in curing the psychological sickness.

The family institution has undergone dramatic changes and has lost its impor-tance since the industrial revolution.

Today, it is no longer the concern of many people, particularly young people: simply, it has no meaning in their lives because they believe that the family life imposes restrictions on them and brings many responsibilities and that it is too hard to manage family life and children dues to the economic hardship, which negatively influences the majority of people across the world. Thus, today many young people are not willing to marry at all or postpone their marriage till the late age, and also, the divorce rate is, unfortunately, getting higher and higher every day, further shat-tering the basis of the family institute and undermining the basis of stable societies. But this recent COVID-19 pandemic has shown not only how a warm stable family is of vital importance and becomes a safe haven, as well as a center for psychological rehabilitation in the difficult times, but also how its roles never become out of date. During this pandemic, which has visibly imprisoned almost all the people in their homes, well-established decent family life may play the ensuing three roles as in the past.

First, it appears that the family turns out to be a place for the uplifting emotional and psychological spirit. For example, the virus spreads very fast, causing people to be locked at home. They are bored and feel that their free movements are limited. They listen to the TV news all the time which constantly gives information about the number of death all over the world, fright-ening them, giving them a sense that they are not secure and they will be locked at home for a long time. Hence we hear the news of many psychological complaints in Turkey and elsewhere. A warm, solid family life with good relations will help lessen the gravity of the mental distur-bance. Family members will help and support each other, they will talk and listen to each other, they will joke and laugh together, they will tell stories, eat together and spend time together, encouraging each other not only to forget the anxious feeling of the time but also to give them an insight into the view that life continues and that these hard times will pass soon.

Secondly, the family becomes a strong source of financial and physical support during the time of the pandemic. As we hear on the TVs and see around us, for instance, many people have lost their jobs;

some people have had to take unpaid leave, and the salaries of many others have been reduced due to the lockdown of many businesses. Governments across the world, including the Turkish gov-ernment, are doing their best to help those people in need. However, it is not always easy to meet the rising demand and respond to everyone’s call so that the family institute plays an important role to support in two ways those family members who face difficulty. In the first place, family members support each other financially; they share what they have until the pandemic is over so that the spirit of solidarity, sharing and pro-tecting each other, and belonging to a stable castle enables them to stand on their feet and survive in these tough times. In the second place, the families, living in different places, unite and start living together as extended families. In this way, they reduce the cost of living and the cost of rent along with the cost of gas, electricity, and water whose prices have dramatically gone up during the pandemic. As in the past, therefore, the extended family structure relieves the burden of tension and pressure imposed not only on individuals in need but also on society that strives to do its best to protect the life of the people during this hardship.

Finally, the roles above that a good family puts into practice link the distressed people to the future during this hardship not only by adding meaning and value to life but also by having their spirits lifted. To illustrate, this pandemic descends all of us into a mood of pessimism, resulting in a bleak vision about the future.

The author is a professor of English Literature at Istanbul Sabahattin Zaim University.

NOAH SMITH BLOOMBERG

The coronavirus pandemic and the depression that follows will leave the US with a lot of unpayable debts. Consumers who lose their jobs will have difficulty making payments on credit cards, auto loans and student loans. Businesses that lose sales will default on loans and bonds.

In a bygone era when the economy was less dependent on a web of debt obligations, this might not have mattered as much. But the US economy has loaded up on debt over the years:

This doesn’t mean that the US is living beyond its means; the vast majority of this bor-rowing is money that

Americans owe to each other. But it does indicate that the modern economy is built on a sort of just-in-time financial supply chain, in which the sol-vency of businesses and house-holds depends on the prompt arrival of a vast number of debt-service payments from other businesses and house-holds. Disrupt that delicate web and much economic activity can grind to a halt. This is probably why asset bubbles hurt the economy a lot more when they’re accompanied by high levels of debt. Corona-virus, of course, will be worse than any asset bubble.

The damage to the web of debt will hamper the US econ-omy’s recovery. Businesses that survive with diminished revenue will struggle for years

to pay down debt before they’re able to start investing and expanding again. Debt will likewise hold companies back from changing their business models to better fit the demands of the post-pandemic economy. Workers burdened by debt will have a harder time switching jobs or going back to school, making the labor market less efficient at allocating talent to where it needs to go.

Bailouts are one potential solution. By turning business and household debt into gov-ernment debt, the Treasury can effectively consolidate the complex web of debt into a simpler relationship. But bailouts will inevitably be polit-icized, as they were in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis; everyone will argue that they

deserve bailouts more than others, and many will be resentful at the eventual allo-cation of government largesse. Fighting over the spoils could in turn make bailouts much smaller than they ought to be; this happened in 2009, when Tea Party anger steered the government away from bailing out most homeowners.

But there’s another way that the government can shrink the mountain of debt weighing down the US economy: inflation. Because most interest payments are fixed in nominal terms, inflation makes existing debt less important in real terms. Raising the long-term inflation target from the current 2% to a still-modest 4% would substantially increase the rate at which debt effectively vanishes.

Coronavirus and Family: A strong castle

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Inflation is the way to pay off coronavirus debt

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PROF. ALI GUNES ANATOLIA

This recent COVID-19 pandemic has shown not only how a warm stable family is of vital importance and becomes a safe haven, as well as a center for psychological rehabilitation in the difficult times, but also how its roles never become out of date.

09FRIDAY 8 MAY 2020 ASIA

The M/V Ruby Princess is pictured during a short aerial surveillance conducted at the Manila Bay Anchorage area, in Manila, yesterday.

Philippine broadcaster fights order to shut downREUTERS — MANILA

The Philippines’ biggest broad-caster asked the Supreme Court yesterday to quash an order by the telecoms regulator to shut down its operations, saying it undermined freedom of speech and the public right to infor-mation.

The regulator’s order for ABS-CBN Corp to cease oper-ations after its 25-year licence expired has prompted allega-tions by critics of President Rodrigo Duterte that his allies are trying to intimidate the media.

The president repeatedly threatened to block the renewal of ABS-CBN’s franchise after the channel angered him during the 2016 presidential election by refusing to air his campaign commercial.

“The continued operation of ABS-CBN is a matter of public interest and transcen-dental importance, it being among the largest broadcasting entities in terms of coverage and audience,” the company said.

ABS-CBN Corp also asked the Supreme Court to hear its petition quickly, saying the livelihood of thousands of its employees and their families were at stake.

The 66-year-old enter-tainment and media

conglomerate, said in it its petition that it employs 11,000 people.

It also operates 21 radio and 38 television stations nationwide and distributes online content. It went off air on Tuesday to comply with the regulator’s order, to wide-spread dismay from labour, business and media groups and opposition lawmakers.

“To close ABS-CBN now when it is most needed would certainly be detrimental to the public,” it said. “ABS-CBN cannot be closed without com-promising the fundamental guarantees of freedom of speech and the press.”

ABS-CBN said the National Telecommunications Com-mission (NTC) abused its dis-cretion when it ordered its closure even after it indicated in March the broadcasting company could remain on air pending its licence renewal. ABS-CBN’s 25-year congressional franchise expired on May 4.

“The NTC’s bad faith, malice and underhandedness are simply shocking and abhorrent,” ABS-CBN said.

The NTC was not immedi-ately available for comment. The regulator said on Wednesday it stood by its decision and that ABS-CBN could seek a temporary restraining order from a court.

Over 900 Taliban fighters freed so far in Afghan prisoner swapAFP — KABUL

The Kabul administration has released more than 900 Taliban fighters since the mili-tants signed a landmark deal with the United States to end the war in Afghanistan, an official said yesterday.

The release is part of a prisoner-exchange pro-gramme included in the US-Taliban deal agreed February 29, which has also seen the Taliban free dozens of Afghan security personnel.

“So far 933 Taliban detainees have been released from Afghan jails,” Javed Faisal, spokesman for Afghanistan’s National Security Council, said.

In return, the Taliban have released 132 Kabul adminis-tration prisoners, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said.

Zalmay Khalilzad, the US special envoy to Afghanistan who negotiated the US-Taliban deal, sees the prisoner exchange as an “important step” toward reducing vio-lence in the war-torn country.

The deal stipulated the Afghan government would release 5,000 Taliban pris-oners, while the insurgents would free 1,000 Afghan security force personnel.

Japan approves Gilead’s remdesivir to treat COVID-19 casesBLOOMBERG — TOKYO

Japan yesterday approved the anti-viral drug remdesivir for use against the novel corona-virus, three days after receiving an application from Gilead Sciences Inc, the company said in a statement.

The rapid move by Japan’s usually conservative authorities comes days after the US authorised the drug for emer-gency use on virus patients. The special approval process used in Japan is reserved for urgent situations, where there is no alternative, and the drug has already been authorised for use overseas.

Finding a treatment for COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus, could move the

world closer to easing lockdown measures put in place to help slow its spread. One early analysis showed that about two-thirds of severe COVID-19 cases improved when treated with the drug, according to a report published in April.

Multiple trials of remdesivir are still underway. In April, the World Health Organization (WHO) prematurely published results of a China trial by accident but retracted it soon after. The WHO post indicated

that the drug didn’t show ben-efits in preventing death and reducing virus load, but the Chinese trial was halted early after researchers struggled to enroll patients.

“The Japanese approval of remdesivir is in recognition of the urgent need to treat criti-cally ill patients in Japan. It is a reflection of the exceptional cir-cumstances of this pandemic,” Gilead Chief Medical Officer Merdad Parsey said in the statement.

While the virus has so far wreaked less health damage in Japan than the US or some European countries, the economy has taken a severe hit. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has said treatments and vaccines are needed to help restore eco-nomic and social activities.

Typically, for a drug to be approved in Japan, the gov-ernment requires clinical trials to include Japanese patients, or for a new trial to be done in Japan, said Bloomberg Intelli-gence analyst Caroline Stewart, who covers the pharmaceutical industry. While doubt remains over its efficacy, “it’s better than nothing,” she added.

Abe had earlier flagged that the authorisation was expected on Thursday. Health Minister Katsunobu Kato had said earlier

in the week that the panel charged with deciding on rem-desivir’s approval was to meet Thursday and that the process would be completed as soon as possible.

Earlier this month, Japan’s Health Ministry said in a message to local governments that even if remdesivir is approved, supplies may be limited and will be controlled by the central government.

More than 15,000 people have been confirmed as infected with the virus in Japan, and more than 500 have died, although experts say the rela-tively small number of tests conducted means there are probably more undetected cases.

Japan has extended its nationwide state of emergency

until May 31, with Abe saying the country’s coronavirus measures need more time to reduce infection rates. The state of emergency allows local gov-ernments to direct businesses to close and to urge residents to stay in their homes.

Abe Extends Japan Emer-gency Through May in Bid to Slow Virus

Abe said on Monday that he’s aiming to have Avigan, an antiviral drug developed by Fujifilm Holdings Corp, approved for use as a COVID-19 treatment by the end of this month. He added in a live streamed internet interview late Wednesday that trials were also beginning with an anti-parasite drug known as ivermectin, developed by Nobel prize-lau-reate Satoshi Omura.

China slams US over Trump's coronavirus ‘attack’ claimAFP — BEIJING

China accused the United States yesterday of trying to shift blame over the coronavirus, after President Donald Trump said the pandemic was a worse “attack” than Pearl Harbor or 9/11.

Tension between the world’s two biggest economies has reached fever pitch in recent days as they have exchanged barbed comments on each other’s handling of the virus.

“We urge the US side to stop shifting the blame to China and turn to facts,” said foreign min-istry spokeswoman Hua Chunying at a press briefing.

On Wednesday Trump drew analogies with the virus, which emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan last year, and infamous military and terrorist attacks on the United States.

“This is really the worst attack we’ve ever had,” Trump told reporters. “This is worse than Pearl Harbor. This is worse than the World Trade Center.”

The Japanese assault on the Pearl Harbor naval base in Hawaii drew the United States into World War II.

The September 11, 2001 IS attacks killed about 3,000 people and triggered two decades of war.

Trump said the coronavirus pandemic “should never have happened”.

“Could have been stopped at the source. Could have been stopped in China,” he said.

Hua responded: “They might say the pandemic is com-parable to Pearl Harbor or 9/11,

but the enemy facing the US is the novel coronavirus”.

She said Washington should “fight side-by-side” with Beijing instead of as “enemies”.

Hua added that “lots of foreign countries, experts and scientists have all made pos-itive comments on China’s effective virus prevention and control.”

“But the US alone has made some very disharmonious, untruthful and insincere remarks,” said Hua.

China said for the first time yesterday that researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were trained in the US and France, as it faces repeated US claims that the coronavirus pandemic originated there.

“Wuhan’s P4 lab is a collab-orative project between the Chinese and French govern-ments,” Hua told a press briefing.

The 300-million-yuan ($42m) lab was formally opened in 2018, with the founder of a French bio-indus-trial firm, Alain Merieux, acting as a consultant.

The lab’s French ties have previously sparked concern in France. The Institut Merieux, Alain Merieux’s firm, has stren-uously denied taking part in the lab’s design, construction and management.

F r e n c h P r e s i d e n t Emmanuel Macron has also denied that there was any evi-dence linking the Wuhan P4 lab to COVID-19.

The coronavirus, which first emerged in central China late last year, has now killed more than 73,000 people in the US.

Peolple wait for their turn at National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) office for new registration and biometric identification under Ehsaas Emergency Cash program in Rawalpindi, yesterday.

The Japanese approval of remdesivir is in recognition of the urgent need to treat critically ill patients in Japan. It is a reflection of the exceptional circumstances of this pandemic: Merdad Parsey

Pakistan to start easing lockdown amid sharp coronavirus spreadREUTERS — ISLAMABAD

Pakistan will begin lifting its coronavirus lockdown on Saturday, Prime Minister Imran Khan said, hours after the country announced its highest daily increase in new cases.

Pakistan, where a poorly enforced shutdown has been in place since late March, has recorded 24,073 cases of COVID-19, with 564 deaths. Yes-terday, authorities said there had been 1,523 new cases and 38 deaths in the preceding 24 hours.

“We’re deciding that we are ending this lockdown now,” Khan said in a televised address yesterday. “We know that we’re

doing it at a time when our curve is going up ... but it is not edging up as we were expecting.”

Impoverished Pakistanis cannot survive under lockdown any longer, Khan said. “Since we started this lockdown, we had this fear that these people who are daily wagers, who feed their kids on daily earnings, what will happen to them?”

He said the shutdown would be lifted in phases and warned people that the disease could get out of control if they didn’t take precautions.

The government’s handling of the virus has been strongly criticised by scientists and

doctors who fear the outbreak will gather pace among a pop-ulation of more than 200 million and overwhelm the country’s struggling health system.

“It will definitely lead to an increase in the number of cases, the number of critical cases,” the secretary of Pakistan’s Young Doctors’ Association, Salman Kazmi, said. “We are concerned about pressure that will come on the hospitals.”

Khan said the restrictions could be restored if the outbreak worsens, something his critics expect to happen due to what they describe as a confused policy response to the crisis.

Cruise ship linked to Australia virus cluster reaches ManilaREUTERS — MANILA

A cruise ship at the heart of Australia’s biggest coronavirus cluster arrived off the Philip-pines yesterday to repatriate more than 200 crew, leaving behind weeks of outrage and acrimony over why sympto-matic passengers were allowed to disembark.

Just under a quarter of Aus-tralia’s 97 coronavirus deaths can be traced back to Carnival Corp’s Ruby Princess, which has been a flashpoint for anger in Australia and the focus of a criminal investigation after a spike in cases followed its

March 19 arrival in Sydney.The 114,000-tonne, 19-deck

ship reached Manila Bay yes-terday, joining a cluster of about a dozen other cruise ships that will be subjected to on-board testing for COVID-19 before any Filipino crew members can disembark.

Reduced flights and travel bans due to the coronavirus, as well as outbreaks on several ships, have brought the cruise industry to a virtual standstill.

Princess Cruises said on Wednesday its voyages would remain suspended through to the end of summer.

According to the coastguard,

there are 214 Filipinos aboard the Ruby Princess, one of at least three ships owned by Carnival’s cruise company that became hotbeds of coronavirus infections.

A special commission of inquiry in Australia has been hearing testimony this week about events leading up to the unloading of about 2,700 pas-sengers without health checks.

Included at the hearing were details of medical logs a few days earlier that showed dozens of people aboard were showing acute respiratory symptoms, with numbers rising each day.

S Korean airline to resume flights on 19 international routes

ANATOLIA — ANKARA

South Korea’s national flag carrier Korean Air will reopen 19 international routes from the beginning of June, the company announced yesterday.

In a statement, Korean Air said the decision was taken as demand grows following ease in coronavirus restrictions by many countries, according to Yonhap news agency.

The routes included Wash-ington, DC, Seattle, Vancouver, Toronto, Frankfurt, Singapore, Beijing and Kuala Lumpur.

The airline had reduced its flights by almost 90 percent in March due to COVID-19 pandemic.

The Korean Air flights were down to 55 per week on 13 international routes since the beginning of the outbreak in the country. The new oper-ations from next month will mean flights running on 32 international destinations with 146 flights available.

The airlines would operate 900 flights on 110 routes before the pandemic.

The decision by Korean Air came a day after it was reported that Turkey’s national flag carrier is mulling to resume domestic and interna-tional flights after a suspension due to coronavirus from June.

The Turkish Airlines has drafted a flight plan for June, July, and August.

According to the three-month flight plan starting in June, Turkish Airlines will fly to 22 destinations in 19 countries, with a weekly frequency of 75 flights.

10 FRIDAY 8 MAY 2020EUROPE

Britain heading for a limited easing of lockdown next weekREUTERS — LONDON

Prime Minister Boris Johnson will announce a very limited easing of Britain’s coronavirus lockdown next week, adopting a cautious approach to try to ensure there is no second peak of infections that could further hurt the economy.

Johnson is due to announce the next steps in Britain’s battle to tackle the novel coronavirus on Sunday following a review by ministers of the current measures that have all but shut the economy and kept millions at home.

His government has been criticised for moving too slowly to tackle the outbreak which has led to more than 30,000 deaths in Britain — a charge the government dismisses by saying it has taken the right decisions at the right time.

But with an increasing number of anecdotal reports that more people are flouting the lockdown in anticipation of Sunday’s announcement and a public holiday today, ministers are under pressure to make any new rules as clear as possible after being criticised for mixed messaging.

At a cabinet meeting of his top ministers, Johnson said Britain would advance “with maximum caution” and be guided by the science and data when considering whether any of the strict social distancing measures could be eased.

“Any easement to the guidelines next week will be

very limited,” his spokesman told reporters.

“We are at a critical moment in the fight against the virus and we will not do any-thing which risks throwing away the efforts and sacrifices of the British public.” Ministers fear a swift easing could lead to a second peak in infection rates, which might overwhelm hos-pitals and force a second shutdown of businesses.

Earlier, the Bank of England underlined how deeply the lockdown had hurt the economy, saying Britain could be headed for its biggest eco-nomic slump in over 300 years.

Johnson, who says he fought for his life after himself contracting COVID-19, has ploughed money into a support programme for businesses, but appears to be erring on the side of caution of immediately firing up the economy.

Officials suggest there will

be a gradual move towards re-opening businesses. Ministers say that those operating out-doors might be able to find a way to work in the summer months but have warned that it was too soon to re-open schools.

To try to shore up support for his action plan, Johnson briefed opposition leaders on the latest situation, with Labour leader Keir Starmer saying there needed to be a national consensus on the next steps in tackling the virus.

“He also reiterated the seven principles that he wants the government to consider when planning for the next phase, including safety at work and preventing a cliff-edge to the job protection scheme,” a spokesperson for Starmer said.

Johnson also wants to pursue a strategy that unites the four countries of the United Kingdom: Scotland, Wales, England and Northern Ireland, with his spokesman saying the four-nation approach was the best way forward.

But Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said the only change to the lockdown which had been floated in the media that she might agree to in the immediate future was the limit on people only exercising once a day.

“I must make judgments informed by the evidence that are right and safe for Scotland,” Sturgeon, who will decide on whether to ease measures in Scotland, told reporters.

French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe looks on as he presents the details for the end of the country’s lockdown imposed to curb the spread of the coronavirus disease, at the Hotel Matignon in Paris, yesterday.

Rome hospital begins testing to check how many have had virus

AFP — ROME

Blood tests have begun in the region around Rome to allow authorities to gauge how many people have been exposed to the coronavirus since the epidemic struck Italy.

More data will help to map out how the virus has travelled through the population, as the country begins to emerge from the health crisis that has killed nearly 30,000 of its citizens.

Over the following few days, the region of Lazio — of which Rome is the capital —will perform some 150,000 blood tests on health workers and police, those assumed to be most exposed to the virus.

Such tests have already begun in other regions, espe-cially Lombardy in Italy’s north which has been hardest hit by the coronavirus.

Sergio Bernardini, a pro-fessor in biochemistry and director of the lab at Rome’s Tor Vergata hospital, said the large-scale screening efforts will produce a closer estimate of the number of people who have been infected with the virus.

“In reality, they’re probably much more numerous, eight to ten times more than the figures we have today,” Bernardini said.

The tests, which require just a finger prick of blood, look for the presence of anti-bodies indicating that the person has been exposed to the virus at some point.

Spain eyes normality, but Madrid and Barcelona may lagREUTERS — MADRID/BARCELONA

Spain was weighing up further steps yesterday to bring life back to normal as the coronavirus epidemic ebbed, but the capital Madrid and the city of Barcelona could remain under tight restric-tions for the time being.

Both cities and their sur-roundings have registered the highest number of coronavirus deaths and infections in Spain, one of the countries worst hit by the global pandemic.

But with the economy reeling and citizens chafing for an end to

a lockdown that has kept them largely confined to their homes for eight weeks, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s government is anxious to get the country up and running again without igniting a second wave of infections.

Parliament voted on Wednesday night to extend a state of emergency for two more weeks from Sunday. This gives the government power to control people’s movements as it gradually relaxes the lockdown which succeeded in curbing the outbreak.

“If the security measures are

complied with and the safety distances respected, I think it’s fantastic. I think it was about time,” said Charo Nunez, a pharmacy worker in Madrid.

“We’re exiting the pandemic I reckon, but we need to learn to protect ourselves. And people needed to get out and work.” The Health Ministry gave Spain’s coronavirus death toll for the past 24 hours as 213 yesterday, down from 244 the previous day and far below peaks of nearly 1,000 in early April.

That brought total deaths to 26,070. The number of

diagnosed cases rose to 221,447 from 220,325 the previous day.

The government’s phase-out plan has several stages in which restrictions are progres-sively eased, such as the opening of bars or stores.

Each region must apply to enter a new phase if it considers it meets hospital capacity requirements, among other conditions.

Catalonia’s regional gov-ernment proposed on Wednesday that the Barcelona metropolitan area would not be included in Phase 1, which starts

on Monday after a preparatory Phase 0, saying there is a mod-erate to high risk of a new wave.

Castille and Leon, one of the largest but less populated regions in central Spain, also said it would wait until later.

Attention is now focused on Madrid, the epicentre of the outbreak in Spain, which is still registering high numbers of new cases.

Madrid region said it had submitted a request to the Health Ministry on Wednesday night for it to move on to Phase 1.

Volunteers at London's People's KitchenVolunteers wearing protective face masks pack food boxes from Brixton People’s Kitchens emergency food hub at the Black Prince Community Trust in Vauxhall, following the outbreak of the coronavirus disease London, Britain, yesterday.

European coalition takes shape on coronavirus contact tracingREUTERS — BERLIN

A European coalition is forming around an approach to using smartphone technology to trace coronavirus infections that, its backers hope, could help to reopen borders without unleashing a second wave of the pandemic.

As countries rush to develop apps that would use Bluetooth short-range wireless to identify those who have come into contact with people infected with the virus, contro-versy has erupted over how best to handle the personal data they collect.

Britain and France argue people should trust their health authorities to hold such infor-mation on a central computer server. A loose coalition of other nations, led by Switzerland and including Germany and Italy, believe data should be kept only on handsets so that it would be impossible for governments to spy on their citizens.

Crucially for the coalition, its approach is compatible with that of US technology giants Apple and Alphabet’s Google, whose iOS and Android oper-ating systems run 99 percent of the world’s smartphones.

Apple has, on privacy grounds, erected a roadblock to centralised apps by pre-venting the Bluetooth Low Energy function on its iPhones from monitoring other devices

while running in the background.

That means for such apps to work, they would need to be open while the phone is unlocked — a pain for the user and a drain on the battery. Attempted workarounds have proven to be unreliable.

Supporters of the phone-based approach from Austria, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Italy, Portugal and Switzerland this week backed a roadmap to enable national apps to ‘talk’ to each other and handle infec-tions when people travel abroad.

“Everything about these projects has from Day One been about how we can make it work on an international level,” said Marcel Salathe, a digital epidemiologist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Tech-nology in Lausanne.

The standards row has been compared by German Health Min-ister Jens Spahn to a “war of religion”. It also has major rami-fications for Europe, a patchwork of over 40 nations where lock-downs have brought cross-border travel to a near standstill.

It is also playing out in other parts of the world.

Colombia has removed the contact-tracing feature in its official app for informing res-idents about the coronavirus after experiencing glitches, but aims to rebuild using the Apple-Google technology.

Black, ethnic groups more at risk from COVID-19: UKREUTERS — LONDON

Black people and men of Bang-ladeshi and Pakistani origin are nearly twice as likely to die from the COVID-19 disease than whites, even when adjusting data for deprivation, a new British report said yesterday.

The statistics chimed with reports in other Western nations, from Finland to the United States, that non-white ethnic groups have been worse hit by the new coronavirus which has killed nearly 263,000

people worldwide. “The risk of death involving the coronavirus (COVID-19) among some ethnic groups is significantly higher than that of those of white eth-nicity,” the government’s Office for National Statistics (ONS) said in a new report.

Scientists studying the novel coronavirus have noted striking differences in death rates based on age, sex and ethnicity, and hope genetics may hold clues for medicines or a vaccine. But there are still vast holes in knowledge.

Without adjusting for factors

including poverty, education and health, Britain’s ONS found that black males were 4.2 times more likely to succumb to a COVID-19-related death and black females were 4.3 times more likely than white counterparts.

The adjusted model showed that black people were 1.9 times more likely to die from COVID-19 than the white ethnic group.

Males of Bangladeshi and Pakistani ethnicity were 1.8 times more likely to die, and females from those groups 1.6

times, according to the adjusted model.

But individuals from the Chinese and mixed ethnic group have similar risks to those with white ethnicity, the ONS said.

Politicians were appalled.David Lammy, a lawmaker

for the opposition Labour Party, called for an urgent investigation.

London mayor Sadiq Khan, of Pakistani origin, said eth-nicity should be recorded on death certificates to shed more light.

Johnson is due to announce the next steps in Britain’s battle to tackle the novel coronavirus on Sunday following a review by ministers of the current measures that have all but shut the economy and kept millions at home.

France set to ease lockdown to relieve coronavirus painBLOOMBERG — PARIS

France will start rolling back lockdown measures, joining Germany, Italy and the Neth-erlands in easing restrictions as Europe’s economic pain from the fallout of the coronavirus intensifies.

French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said the country was ready for a nationwide plan to relax curbs on public life, though strict con-trols will remain on public transport in Paris, where infection rates are too high. Looser restrictions on businesses and stores will start coming into effect on Monday in a gradual process designed to avoid a second wave of infections.

“We are always looking for a balance between the indispensable return to normal life and the indis-pensable respect of all measures that will prevent the epidemic from restarting,” Philippe said yes-terday, adding that restrictions could be reimposed if infections rise. “The target of all the French people is that we can live with this virus” until a cure is found.

Despite more than 140,000 deaths on the continent, European leaders are feeling the heat to accelerate a return to normality and are trying to walk a fine line between reac-tivating the economy and avoiding a renewed outbreak.

The economic damage is becoming increasingly evident, with a 9.2 percent decline in

March industrial production in Germany and a 16.2 percent drop in France. The crippling impact on Europe’s two biggest economies from just half a month of factory closures sets up even grimmer figures for April, when millions of people were all but confined to their homes across the continent.

France’s end-of-lockdown plan will be progressive and dif-ferentiated. Local situations will be constantly monitored, with remote work remaining a pri-ority. Some schools could remain closed until fall due to difficulties in implementing social distancing and sanitary measures, and restaurants, bars and cafes will remain closed until at least early June.

11FRIDAY 8 MAY 2020 EUROPE / AMERICAS

Moscow extends lockdown after record virus casesAFP — MOSCOW

Moscow authorities extended coronavirus lockdown measures until the end of May yesterday as Russia reported another record increase in daily coronavirus infections, with more than 11,000 new cases.

A government tally showed 11,231 infections over 24 hours, bringing the total to 177,160.

Russia now ranks fourth in the number of reported cases in Europe and fifth in the world, according to a tally.

Coronavirus cases have been registered in all of Russia’s 85 regions, with Moscow the worst affected by far with 92,676.

Moscow Mayor Sergei Sob-yanin announced the lockdown extension and also said Musco-vites would now be required to wear masks and gloves on public transport. “The self-iso-lation regime of citizens will be extended until May 31,” Sob-yanin said on his blog.

“It’s still too early to open restaurants, theatres, and sport facilities.” Sobyanin reiterated that companies in Moscow involved in industry and con-struction would be allowed to resume work on May 12.

Moscow has been under lockdown since March 30 and a non-working overall

quarantine period is in place in Russia until May 11.

Residents of the capital are only allowed to leave their homes for brief trips to a shop, to walk dogs or to travel to essential jobs with a permit.

Citing results of screening tests, Sobyanin said that some 300,000 people in Moscow — or up to 2.5 percent of the city’s population — have in fact been infected.

He warned Muscovites they needed to “get used to the idea” of having to use protective masks and gloves.

“We understand that the number of people moving on transport will increase, one way or another, (and) the number of people communicating with

each other will increase,” he said separately in televised remarks.

President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that regional governors must develop plans to gradually lift lockdown restrictions but he also cautioned against acting too hastily so as to avoid a new wave of infections.

The number of infections in Russia has been rising by more than 10,000 a day since Sunday, in contrast to countries in western Europe that are taking steps to ease lockdown measures as their numbers fall.

Officials attribute the increase to mass testing and detecting asymptomatic cases not always counted in other countries.

Health officials said yes-terday they had carried out more than 4.8 million tests.

Russia’s mortality rate however is low compared to European countries hit badly by the pandemic, with health offi-cials registering 88 new deaths and a total of 1,625.

Russia cites a series of measures taken early in the pan-demic for its low mortality rate, including closing its borders and ordering the elderly and those at risk to self-isolate.

Some say however that the discrepancy is due to how the

death count is calculated.According to official figures

on Wednesday, Russia’s death rate was just 0.9 percent, com-pared with Germany, which is lauded for its virus response, with a fatality rate of 4.2 percent.

Culture Minister Olga Lyu-bimova this week became the

latest top official to test positive for coronavirus, after Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin and his construction minister were hospitalised.

The government has announced a number of measures to buttress the economy but has been accused of not doing enough to support

ordinary Russians in the face of what is likely to be a long eco-nomic downturn.

Since the start of the crisis, Putin’s approval rating has dropped to a historic low, according to independent pollster Levada, which said this week it hit 59 percent in April after 63 percent in March.

A couple wearing face masks, amid concerns of the COVID-19, walks in front of a huge banner for the upcoming 75th anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany in the Second World War that is used to cover a building under renovation in central Moscow, yesterday.

EU court adviser rejects challenge to UK aid for N-plantREUTERS — BRUSSELS

The European Union’s top court should reject an attempt by Austria to block British state support for a nuclear power plant in southwest England, a court adviser said yesterday.

Advocate General Gerard Hogan, of the EU Court of Justice, said in a non-binding opinion that the EU’s top court should dismiss the Austrian government’s appeal. Judges follow opinions in the majority of cases, but are not bound to do so.

Austria launched a case in 2015 to try to block state

support for the Hinkley Point project. A lower EU court dis-missed the challenge in 2018, prompting Austria to appeal.

The lower court had been “fully entitled” to dismiss Aus-tria’s challenge, Hogan said on Thursday.

French utility EDF and China General Nuclear Power Corp aim to have the Hinkley Point C nuclear power station on line in 2025. Expected costs for the project have increased, with the last estimate at up to £22.5bn ($27.8bn).

The European Commission cleared British government aid for the plant in 2014, saying it

did not violate EU competition rules.

Vienna challenged the Commission’s approval, arguing it contradicted EU policy of sup-porting renewable energy and the plant’s environmental impact had not been properly assessed.

State aid rules are designed to assess whether projects violate EU competition regula-tions, but not “rules pertaining to the environment”, Hogan said. He added EU law gave each member state the right to choose its mix of energy sources.

In particular, Austria

opposed the British govern-ment’s plan to support Hinkley Point C through multibillion-pound state credit guarantees, and a fixed price for electricity that is higher than market rates.

Austria has no nuclear power facilities and a long history of opposing the fuel. Luxembourg had backed Aus-tria’s challenge. Alongside Britain, a handful of EU coun-tries with existing or planned nuclear plants, including France, the Czech Republic and Poland, supported the Commis-sion’s approval of the Hinkley aid.

Suspect claims Norway mosque attack was ‘emergency justice’AP — COPENHAGEN

A Norwegian man suspected of killing his ethnic Chinese step-sister and then storming an Oslo mosque and opening fire said yesterday on the first day of his trial that it was an act of “emer-gency justice” and that he regretted not having caused more damage.

Philip Manshaus appeared at a court west of Norway’s capital and denied charges of murder and terror read to him by a prosecutor, the Norwegian news agency NTB said. Man-shaus has acknowledged the facts but denies the accusation, saying he opposes non-Western immigration.

Broadcaster NRK said that during his testimony Manshaus claimed the white race “will end up as a minority in their own home countries” and crit-icised those who “blackmail national socialism.” In court, Manshaus, 22, described how he killed his 17-year-old step-sister, Johanne Zhangjia Ihle-Hansen, by shooting her four times — three in the head and one in the chest — with a hunting rifle at their home in the Oslo suburb of Baerum. Ihle-Hansen was adopted from China as a 2-year old.

Shortly after that, Manshaus said he drove to a nearby mosque where three men were preparing for Eid Al Adha cel-ebrations. He wore a helmet with a video camera attached and a bulletproof vest, Man-shaus was armed with a hunting rifle and a shotgun and fired four shots with the rifle at a glass door before he was overpowered by one of the men

in the mosque at the time, Muhammad Rafiq.

During the scuffle, two more shots were fired but no one was hit. Rafiq was slightly injured in the struggle. In his testimony, Manshaus said he wanted to kill Rafiq. “I did everything I could to carry out the attack,” he told court, adding he was exhausted when police arrived.

The prosecution says Man-shaus acted “with the intention to kill as many Muslims as pos-sible.” The video recorde by his helmet was played in court yes-terday. NRK said it showed Man-shaus shooting at the mosque door before kicking it open. An elderly man — Rafiq — is then seen walking toward him and Manshaus is heard yelling: ”You should never take over Norway.”

Minutes later, when the suspect has been overpowered and is on the ground, Manshaus is heard moaning and begging to be killed, saying: “I can’t do anything more. I am faithful to my people.” The camera is facing the ceiling.

Some 30 witnesses, including the men at the mosque and Manshaus’ father, are expected to give evidence.

If found guilty, Manshaus could face up to 21 years in prison. The prosecutor has said it would consider a sentence where he would be sent to a secure mental facility for as long as he is con-sidered a danger to others.

Norwegian media have reported that Manshaus was inspired by shootings in March 2019 in New Zealand, where a gunman targeted two mosques, killing 51 people, and in August 2019 in El Paso, Texas, where an assailant targeted Hispanics and left at least 22 dead.

Minors deported from Mexico to Guatemala positive for virusAP — GUATEMALA CITY

Four unaccompanied Guate-malan minors tested positive for the novel coronavirus after being deported by Mexico this week, their government said yesterday.

The cases are the first that the government has acknowl-edged for deportees arriving from Mexico. The three boys and one girl — all teenagers - arrived by bus Monday, said Anaeli Torres, director of Special Protection and Non-Residential Attention for Gua-temala’s social welfare agency.

All four arrived with paperwork from Mexico cer-tifying that they were asymp-tomatic and Torres said they continue to be asymptomatic. But the government is testing all minors when they arrive before sending them back to their families, she said.

“Since the cases were iden-tified, the adolescents have been moved to the appropriate health services,” Torres said. She also called on Guatemalans living near shelters where deported children are housed to not stigmatize them.

Virus fears have led to aggressive rejection of deportees in some communities. “They have the right to return to their country and a dignified family reunification,” Torres said.

Ten other children who arrived with them from Mexico were still awaiting their test results, according to Torres.

The Guatemalan gov-ernment has reported at least 100 deportees from the United States who tested positive for the virus after arriving in Gua-temala. Those cases led the gov-ernment to twice suspend deportation flights from the US until that government began testing deportees and certifying they were negative before putting them on planes.

Waiting for news about COVID-19-hit relativesRelatives wait for information about their loved ones outside the nursing house “Retirement House Luis Elizondo”, where people have been infected by the coronavirus disease according to local media, in Guadalupe, on the outskirts of Monterrey, Mexico, on Wednesday.

Detained American claims he plotted Maduro’s captureREUTERS — CARACAS

A former US soldier captured in Venezuela said on Wednesday that he had been contracted by a Florida security firm to seize control of Caracas’ airport and bring in a plane to fly President Nicolas Maduro to the United States.

Venezuelan authorities on Monday arrested the man, Luke Denman, along with fellow US citizen Airan Berry and 11 others, in what Maduro has called a failed plot coordinated with Washington to oust him.

During quest ioning broadcast on state television, Denman said the firm, Sil-vercorp USA, had signed a con-tract with Venezuelan oppo-sition leader Juan Guaido to seek Maduro’s removal. A

Guaido advisor told CNN on Wednesday that he had signed an exploratory agreement, but it had never been finalized and the opposition did not support the attempted incursion.

US President Donald Trump has denied involvement. A senior Trump administration official said Maduro’s accusations of a US role “are not credible” and the administration remained focused on “achieving a peaceful, demo-cratic transition in Venezuela.” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Wednesday that the US government would use “every tool” to secure the Americans’ return, if they were being held in Venezuela.

In the video, Denman, 34, answered questions from a person off-camera speaking in English Denman, who looked calm and

wore a gray t-shirt, said his mission was to secure the airport and establish outer security. He did not give details on how his group planned to get Maduro on a plane.

It was unclear when or where the video was made, and where Denman and Berry are being held.

In March, the US Department of Justice charged Maduro and a dozen other current and former Venezuelan officials with “narco-terrorism” and the Trump administration offered a reward of $15m for information leading to his arrest.

“I was helping Venezuelans take back control of their country,” Denman, a former special operations forces member, said in the video.

Denman said he and Berry were contracted by Jordan

Goudreau, a US military veteran who leads Silvercorp, to train 50 to 60 Venezuelans in Colombia in January for the operation. Goudreau supplied the group with equipment, Denman said.

Goudreau confirmed his role as organizer of the oper-ation in media interviews on Sunday and told Reuters on Monday that Denman and Berry were “my guys.” He could not be immediately reached for comment on Wednesday.

Venezuelan authorities said they arrested the group by the isolated coastal town of Chuao, about 60 kilometers (40 miles) west of Caracas’ airport, after locals raised suspicions. Author-ities published photos of what they said was the group’s boat, loaded with ammunition,

weapons and communication equipment.

Eight people involved in the same operation were killed on Sunday in La Guaira state, near Caracas, Maduro’s government said.

During a televised virtual press conference on Wednesday, Maduro originally said he would show videos of the two Americans, but did not end up showing a video of Berry. He said Venezuela would seek Goudreau’s extradition.

“Donald Trump is the direct chief of this invasion,” Maduro added.

Guaido’s team, in a statement earlier this week, said they had “no relationship with any company in the security and defense branch,” including Silvercorp.

A government tally showed 11,231 infections over 24 hours, bringing the total to 177,160. Russia now ranks fourth in the number of reported cases in Europe and fifth in the world, according to a tally.

12 FRIDAY 8 MAY 2020AMERICAS

US scientists scramble to study fatal syndrome in kids linked to COVID-19REUTERS — CHICAGO

US scientists are working to understand a rare, life-threat-ening inflammatory syndrome in children associated with exposure to the new corona-virus by quickly assembling clinical trials and patient regis-tries.

Cases were first reported in Britain, Italy and Spain, but now doctors in the United States are seeing clusters of kids with the disorder, which can attack mul-tiple organs, impair heart function and weaken heart arteries.

This emerging syndrome, which may occur days to weeks after a COVID-19 illness, reflects the surprising ways that this entirely new coronavirus infects and sickens its human hosts.

At least one child in Britain has died. No children are believed to have died so far in the United States, “but that could change,” said Dr. Sean O’Leary, a pediatric infectious disease expert at Children’s Hospital Colorado who serves on the American Academy of Pediatrics committee on infec-tious disease.

O’Leary said efforts are getting underway to collect information on the disorder,

dubbed a “Pediatric Multi-System Inflammatory Syn-drome Potentially Associated with COVID-19.” “Every aca-demic center I know of is looking for these cases and trying to systematically track them,” he said.

The New York Department of Health on Wednesday reported 64 cases of the new syndrome as of May 5, and is calling on hospitals to immedi-ately report any cases to the department.

It did not say how many

children tested positive for the coronavirus, but said it believes the syndrome is potentially associated with COVID-19.

State public health officials are asking hospitals to perform a nasal swab PCR test looking for active infections, as well as antibody tests that could detect prior exposure to the virus, known as SARS-CoV-2.

Dr. Steven Kernie, a pedi-atric critical care expert at N e w Y o r k - P r e s b y t e r i a n /Columbia University’s children’s hospital, said 15 to 20 children have been treated for the con-dition in the intensive care unit.

“It’s still a rare condition. But it’s rising,” Kernie said.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it is working with the Council of State and Territorial Epidemi-ologists and other groups to gather data to better understand and characterize the syndrome, according to an emailed statement.

The aim is to develop a case definition that would allow the CDC to track the cases and advise doctors on how to care for these patients.

Not every child that has developed the condition has tested positive for the novel coronavirus, but enough have

for doctors to believe the con-ditions are linked.

For most children, COVID-19 disease is mild, and children are far less likely to be hospitalized with COVID-19 than adults, according to the CDC.

“Children seem to laugh off COVID-19 most of the time,” said Dr. Jane Newburger, a pediatric cardiologist at Har-vard’s Boston Children’s Hos-pital. “But rarely, a child will develop this hyper-inflam-matory state.”

Newburger said there appears to be a spectrum of illnesses, with some children coming in “very sick, even in shock.” Most have a

fever and impaired function in one or more organs.

Some children get sick very fast and need to be in a pedi-atric intensive care unit, while others can be cared for in a regular hospital ward, she said.

The syndrome was origi-nally thought to be linked with Kawasaki disease, which in severe cases causes inflam-mation of the heart arteries.

“The children we’re seeing are sicker than the typical child with Kawasaki,” Kernie said. “What we worry about is pri-marily the development of cor-onary artery aneurysm, which can be life-threatening.” A con-ference call with experts over

the weekend organized by Boston Children’s drew some 2,000 participants.

Researchers are focused on testing to confirm a link with COVID-19 and the collection of blood or DNA to study whether some children are genetically predisposed to develop the condition.

Heart specialists are worried about the long-term effects of the syndrome, espe-cially if heart arteries become weakened.

“It’s a very scary illness,” said Dr. Eric Topol, a cardiol-ogist and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute in La Jolla, California.

A nurse administers a COVID-19 test at a drive-through testing center at George Washington University in Washington, DC, yesterday.

White House: Trump tests negative for coronavirusREUTERS — WASHINGTON

US President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence have tested negative for the novel coronavirus after a member of the US military who works at the White House was found to have been infected, a White House spokesman said yesterday.

The military official was identified by CNN as a per-sonal valet to Trump.

“We were recently notified by the White House Medical Unit that a member of the United States Military, who works on the White House campus, has tested positive for coronavirus. The President and the Vice-Pres-ident have since tested neg-ative for the virus and they remain in great health,” spokesman Hogan Gidley said in a statement.

Gidley declined to give further details about the mil-itary member’s role at the White House.

Trump has now been tested at least twice for the coronavirus and both times tested negative. A test on April 2 came out negative, the White House said. White House adviser Kellyanne Conway said on Thursday the president was being tested routinely.

On April 3, the White House said that anyone expected to be near Trump or Pence will be given a rapid COVID-19 test out of an abun-dance of caution.

Americans outraged by shooting death of black manAFP — WASHINGTON

Politicians, celebrities and people speaking out on social media are angrily demanding the arrest of two white men in the shooting death of an unarmed black jogger in Georgia.

Ahmaud Arbery, 25, was killed on February 23 as he ran on a sunny day in his residential neighborhood in the town Brunswick. But the case gained national notoriety this week with the release of a 28-second cell phone video that captured the shooting.

In that footage, Arbery is seen running down the middle

of a residential street and approaching a white pickup truck that is stopped in the right lane with the driver’s side door open and a man standing in the back.

As Arbery tries to get around the truck and crosses in front of it from the right, he is con-fronted by a second man holding a shotgun. An alter-cation ensues as Arbery and this man struggle, and the black man is shot once, then once more a few seconds later.

The two white men have been identified by police as Travis McMichael, 34, and his father Gregory McMichael, 64, who both live in Brunswick.

According to the police report, McMichael Sr told police he thought Arbery was a suspect in a series of burglaries in the area and on the day of the shooting, while standing in his front yard, he had seen the young black man “hauling” down the street.

McMichael said he went inside, got his.357 Magnum while his son grabbed a shotgun, and they went out looking for Arbery. When they finally caught up with him and McMichael Jr got out of the truck with the shotgun, Arbery began to “violently attack” him, the father said, according to the police report.

The father said he saw his son shoot Arbery twice and Arbery fall to the ground.

After the video footage went viral, a Georgia district attorney said on Tuesday that a grand jury would be formed to see if there are grounds to charge the father and son. Neither has been arrested.

Around the country, political figures and celebrities expressed indignation and called for the two men to be prosecuted. “The video is clear: Ahmaud Arbery was killed in cold blood. My heart goes out to his family, who deserve justice and deserve it now,” Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden tweeted Wednesday night.

“#ahmaudarbery was mur-dered by two white men, ON CAMERA, and dudes have not been arrested. come on, people,” actress Zoe Kravitz said in an Instagram post fea-turing an expletive. It was shared by such figures as Billie Eilish and Kylie Jenner.

Some drew parallels between this case and the shooting death of another unarmed young black man, Trayvon Martin, by a neigh-borhood guard in Florida in 2012.

“We’re literally hunted EVE-RYDAY/EVERYTIME we step foot outside the comfort of our homes!,” basketball great LeBron James said on Instagram.

Soldiers distribute milk to needy Boston residentsUS Army National Guard soldiers and volunteers distribute 8,600 gallons of milk to residents in need at a drive-thru event at Boston College High School in Boston, Massachusetts, yesterday. The event was made possible by the co-operation of Dairy Farmers of America (DFA), Vanguard Renewables and HP Hood.

White House shelved CDC guidance on easing of virus curbsREUTERS — WASHINGTON

The White House shelved a step-by-step guide prepared by US health officials to help states safely reopen mass transit, restaurants, daycare centers and other public places closed by the coronavirus pandemic, an administration official said yesterday.

The 17-page document pre-pared by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was put off to avoid giving “overly prescriptive” guidance, said the official, a member of President Donald Trump’s White House task force, confirming a news report by the Associated Press that the guidance was shelved.

The CDC did not immedi-ately respond to a request for comment. More than 74,000 Americans have died from COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the virus, out of 1.2 million-plus known to be infected, according to a tally.

Many states have begun easing restrictions on social and business life, including Florida, Georgia and Texas, but have yet to meet White House recommendations to hold off until the number of new COVID-19 cases has declined for two weeks.

The administration official said the CDC document was only discussed by task force members after news of its existence leaked last month, prompting them to seek revi-sions to add greater nuance to the guidance.

“Issuing overly specific instructions — that CDC lead-ership never cleared — for how various types of businesses open up would be overly pre-scriptive and broad for the various circumstances states are experiencing throughout the country,” the official said.

Trump has largely allowed states’ governors to determine their own response to the out-break but has encouraged them to start reopening, deeply con-cerned by the economic dev-astation from the national shutdown.

Another reminder of the damage came yesterday, when the Labor Department reported that 3.2 million Americans claimed unemployment ben-efits for the first time last week, bringing the total to about 33.5 million since March 21, roughly 22.1 percent of the working-age population.

Public health experts have warned against reopening too soon, saying it could fan hot spots of infection and a second spike in deaths.

On Tuesday, Trump said he had decided to wind down the task force as the country moves into a second phase focused on the outbreak’s aftermath. But the next day, he said he had changed his mind and would keep the task force intact.

Trump, who is seeking a second term in a November election, has staked his re-election bid on the strength of a US economy that cratered with the onset of the virus as Americans stayed at home.

Hundreds evacuated as wildfires rage in Florida AP — PENSACOLA

Firefighters in the Florida Panhandle battled wildfires through the night that have forced hundreds of people to evacuate from their homes, authorities said.

A more than 575-acre fire in Walton County prompted about 500 people to evacuate. Authorities there said multiple structures were lost in the fire, which was 65 percent contained Thursday morning.

Walton County Sheriff Michael Adkinson said during a late-night news conference that those who were asked to leave their

home but had no place to go were sent to South Walton High School.

Another wildfire broke out Monday afternoon in neigh-boring Santa Rosa County as high winds and low humidity caused the blaze to expand 10 times in size, the Florida Forest Service said in a statement.

The fire started as a pre-scribed burn but quickly grew out of control, according to The Tampa Bay Times.

The Forest Service said mul-tiple structures have been lost in the 2,000-acre fire in the Santa Rosa County and author-ities are recommending

residents south of Interstate 10 to evacuate.

The agency did not make clear how many people have been evacuated from the area. So far, about 20 percent of the fire has been contained, author-ities said.

The evacuation order will remain in effect until noon Thursday and then will be reevaluated at that time, the Florida Department of Agri-culture and Consumer Services said in a statement.

“This is an extremely dan-gerous and fast-moving wildfire situation that is evolving rapidly, so everyone in the affected area should follow

directions from state and local officials,” said Florida Agri-culture Commissioner Nikki Fried.

Almost all of Florida has had less-than-usual rainfall this year. National Weather Service meteorologist Jack Cullen told The Times the dryness helped fuel the fires Wednesday. Cullen, who is based in Mobile, Alabama, said the wind is the real culprit.

“What made this (fire) today was the wind, to go along with the dry conditions and low humidity,” Cullen said of the fire near Pensacola.

There have been no reports of injuries or deaths.

This emerging syndrome, which can attack multiple organs, impair heart function and weaken heart arteries which may occur days to weeks after a COVID-19 illness, reflects the surprising ways that this entirely new coronavirus infects and sickens its human hosts.