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Issue No. 1359
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Interpellation announced in first Parliament session National Assembly forms temporary committees
Staff Writers & Agencies
KUWAIT: The National Assembly approved recommendations to form its temporary committees and its members during the Tuesday session. The Parliament also approved a Cabinet request to postpone the discussion of three proposed committee formations, pending inquiry to the next session in two weeks’ time as requested by Deputy Prime Minister, Foreign Minister, and State Minister for Cabinet Affairs Sheikh Sabah Al-Khalid Al-Hamad Al-Sabah. The three proposals are related to open discussions and investigations into recent government and Parliament corruption allegations. “We understand the importance of these proposals and the issue needs to
be included on the National Assembly’s agenda. This will be followed by the formation of committees to investigate what was stated by the parliament in those proposals,” stated Sheikh Sabah Al-Khalid Today, Parliament is set to discuss the address of His Highness the Amir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah during the inaugural session of the National Assembly’s newly-opened legislative term. During yesterday’s Parliament’s session, MP Saleh Ashour surprised everybody by announcing a plan to interpolate His Highness the Prime Minister Sheikh Jaber Al-Mubarak Al-Sabah. The MP said he will file an interpellation motion over the multimillion dinar issue. Ashour added that “the truth will be revealed to the people of Kuwait” when the premier steps up to the podium to face the motion.
“I will provide all the details, particularly since investigation panels do not arrive at the truth and makes no revelations,” the lawmaker told the Parliament. Yesterday’s session witnessed an argument with regards to a request for the formation of an investigatory committee into the issue of multimillion deposits and allegations that public funds were illegally channeled abroad through the Foreign Ministry. Rejecting the request, MP Nabeel Al-Fadhl described it as unacceptable, arguing that the request is tantamount to a full-fledged indictment. The MP said that “the lawmakers on the committee have become jurists, investigators and judges.” He also accused that the speakership is being run ‘behind the curtains” while pointing at MP Musallam Al-Barrak.
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form temporary committees, in Kuwait City, on Feb. 28, 2012. (Al Watan)
Syrian military pounds rebel areas, foreign journalists escape
Tunisia says ready to give asylum to Syria’s Al-Assad
AMMAN: Syrian forces shelled an opposition stronghold in Hama province, killing 20 people, on Tuesday and hit rebel-held parts of Homs, activists said, as two wounded foreign journalists trapped in the city were reported to have been smuggled safely to Lebanon. President Bashar Al-Assad sent units of an elite armored division, which is led by his brother Maher, into Homs overnight, activists said. Tanks with the words “Fourth Division Monsters” painted on them moved close to the besieged Baba Amr district. French journalist Edith Bouvier and British photographer Paul Conroy, both wounded last week in an attack in Baba Amr, were now safe in Lebanon, a diplomat and opposition sources said. It was not clear how they escaped.
In Hama province, security forces bombarded the town of Helfaya, a hotbed of protests in the uprising against Al-Assad. Activists said the 20 deaths of Sunni Muslim villagers there were among at least 100 killed in the province in the last two weeks in revenge for rebel Free Syrian Army attacks on security forces commanded by members of Al-Assad’s minority Alawite sect. The reports could not be independently confirmed. Syrian authorities tightly restrict media access to the country. Syrian forces on Tuesday launched the heaviest bombardment in their three-week assault on Baba Amr, activists said. Al-Assad, projecting an aura of normality in a land ravaged by 11 months of conflict over his right to power, decreed that a new constitution was in force on Tuesday after officials said nearly 90 percent of voters had endorsed it in a referendum.
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New flu virus found in bats All-India strike poses fresh challenge to government
More on 4
Numama choir hopes to unite new moms in Kuwait
Onilda Fernandes Staff Writer
A sea of umbrellas can be seen as thousands of Iglesia ni Cristo (Church of Christ) members gather at the Quirino grandstand for a rally in Manila on Feb. 28, 2012. More than met for rallies on Feb. 28, police said, amid perceived political tension with its once staunch ally President Benigno Aquino. (AFP)
Malaysia bans Erykah Badu show over Allah body art
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KUWAIT: A non-profit daytime community choir, Numama is a forum for women to unite, share, and escape reality for just 60 minutes a week through song. “Numama groups can be found in Australia, Singapore and Dubai. When I moved to Kuwait in September 2011, after three years in Singapore, where I directed Numama from its very beginnings, I decided to start one here as well,” explains Janet Swain to Al Watan Daily. Commencing in Kuwait on March 7, 2012 in a villa on Shaheen Al Ghanem Street, Swain hopes to make a difference to the women in Kuwait by introducing Numama here. “The sisterhood element is borne out in its name: the ‘mama’ is self-explanatory and the ‘nu’ refers both to the new season of life that motherhood brings but in addition, ‘nu’ means ‘woman’ in Mandarin Chi-
Giant rings mark 150 days to Olympics
Giant Olympic Rings, measuring 11m high and 25m wide, are launched on a barge onto the River Thames, in London, on Feb. 28, 2012, as organizers celebrate 150 days to go until the start of the 2012 London Olympics. (AFP) More on 16
nese,” says Swain, who has a degree with honors in music, from University of Western Sydney and Macquarie University in Sydney and is also an award winning songwriter and produced a solo CD in 2001. Numama was conceived back in the summer of 2009 by two young and displaced British mothers in Singapore, who discovered they shared something in common beyond a dislike of dirty nappies and sleepless nights--A love of singing. Neither could be said to come close to having any particular talent, but music and singing had woven a thread through both of their lives at school, university and beyond, into finding space for song in the world of work. Yet the arrival of children challenged their shared hobby with most choirs involving evening rehearsals (and therefore expensive babysitting), relatively unforgiving attendance rules and challenging music. More on 16
Egypt court dismisses bearded Mickey Mouse suit against Christian tycoon CAIRO: An Egyptian court on Tuesday threw out a case brought against telecoms tycoon and liberal politician Naguib Sawiris by a group of lawyers who accused him of showing contempt for religion, saying the plaintiffs had no legal standing in the case. The lawyers had brought the case against Sawiris, a prominent figure in Egypt’s Coptic Christian community, over a cartoon he posted online that they considered an insult to Islam. Sawiris, chairman and founder of the mobile phone operator Mobinil, tweeted a cartoon in June of Mickey Mouse with a long beard and Minnie Mouse veiled in black. The court, headed by Judge Ehab Yousry, dismissed the case against Sawiris on the ground that it had been filed by individuals who “lack legal standing”. Sawiris’s company suffered a boycott by some customers when news of the tweeted cartoon spread, but Sawiris said the impact had eased by October. A different court is scheduled to rule on March 3 on a similar case filed by another group of lawyers, including one Islamist who is also a member of parliament. Earlier this month, the Arab world’s most famous comic actor, Egyptian Adel Imam, received a threemonth jail sentence for insulting Islam in films and plays. Sawiris is a vocal critic of Islamist parties which have emerged in Egypt since President Hosni Mubarak was ousted in February last year. He is a co-founder of Free Egyptians (Al-Masryeen Al-Ahrar), a liberal party advocating the separation of state and religion. -Reuters
Members of trade unions participate in a rally during a nationwide strike in Ahmedabad on Feb. 28, 2012. (AFP)
NEW DELHI: A nationwide strike called by trade unions including those affiliated with the government hit Indian cities Tuesday, as millions joined the call for tighter labor laws and a minimum wage. Eleven central trade unions backed the strike call, posing a fresh challenge to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his leftist administration, which had called on the unions to call off the show of force. “This is a historic occasion. For the first time all the big trade unions have come together to protest the anti-labor polices of the government,” All India Trade Union Congress general secretary Gurudas Dasgupta told AFP. Among the unions’ demands are a national minimum wage, permanent jobs for 50 million contract laborers, more government efforts to rein in the rising cost of living, and an end to the sale of stakes in profitable public companies. More on 5
Scientists find ‘key to immortality’ for asexual worms
LONDON: British scientists have found that a species of flatworm can overcome the process of ageing to become potentially immortal and say their work sheds light on possibilities of alleviating ageing and age-related characteristics in human cells. In a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal on Monday the researchers found that the flatworms, known as planarian worms, can continuously maintain the length of a crucial part of their DNA, known as telomeres, during regeneration. “Our data satisfy one of the predictions about what it would take for an animal to be potentially immortal,” said Aziz Aboobaker, who led the research at Britain’s University of Nottingham. “The next goals for us are to understand the mechanisms in more detail and to under-
stand more about how you evolve an immortal animal.” Planarian worms have long fascinated scientists because they have an extraordinary ability to regenerate. A planarian worm split lengthwise or crosswise will regenerate into two separate living worms. Aboobaker’s team studied two types of planarian - those that reproduce sexually, like humans, and those that reproduce asexually by simply dividing in two. Both types appear to regenerate indefinitely by growing new muscles, skin, guts and even entire brains again and again, Aboobaker explained in a statement about the work, but the asexual ones also renew their stocks of a key enzyme which may mean they can be immortal. Scientists know that one of the key factors associated with ageing cells is telomere length. More on 15