June 4, 2012 by Al Watan Daily

MONDAY, JUNE 4, 2012

@alwatandaily

Issue No. 1455

12 PAGES

www.alwatandaily.com

150 Fils with IHT

Al-Assad dismisses Houla massacre accusations

DAMASCUS: President Bashar Al-Assad dismissed on Sunday accusations his government had any role in the brutal Houla massacre, as he charged forces outside Syria of plotting to destroy the country. In a rare televised address to parliament, Al-Assad, dressed in a smart suit and tie, said even “monsters” were incapable of carrying out massacres such as last month’s killings near the town of Houla in central Syria. At least 108 people, including 49 children and 34 women, were slaughtered in the massacre which started on May 25 and spilled into the next day, triggering international outrage. Assad’s defiant speech came as Arab leaders called on the United Nations to act to stop bloodshed in Syria, and France raised the prospect of military action against Damascus under a UN mandate. “What happened in Houla and elsewhere are brutal massacres which even monsters would not have carried out,” the Syrian leader said. “The masks have fallen and the international role in the Syrian events is now obvious,” he said in his first address to the assembly since a May 7 parliamentary election, adding the polls

were the perfect response “to the criminal killers and those who finance them”. Al-Assad also paid tribute to civilian and military “martyrs” of the violence in Syria, saying their blood was not shed in vain. “We are not facing a political problem but a project to destroy the country,” Al-Assad said, adding there would be “no dialogue” with opposition groups which “seek foreign intervention.” “Terrorism cannot be part of the political process,” said Al-Assad, who had last spoken in public in January. In Sunday’s speech which lasted more than an hour, he dismissed the impact in Syria of uprisings sweeping the Arab world, saying those demonstrating and fighting against his rule were paid to do so. “Some are unemployed, they receive money for participating in demonstrations,” he said. As Arab leaders called for UN action, France, which spearheaded a NATO air assault against Libyan dictator Muammar Gadhafi last year, said it has not excluded military intervention in Syria. France “has not excluded military interven-

Al-Rujaib faces second grilling

Staff Writers

KUWAIT: The Parliament on Sunday witnessed heated debates, as MPs launched scathing attacks on the government. Amid this atmosphere, MP Riadh Al-Adasni filed a new motion to question the Minister of Social Affairs and Labor Ahmad Al-Rujaib, which revolves around five main issues, including alleged irregularities at Orphans Care, the deterioration of the sports situation in the country, bogus companies, weak oversight and malpractices involving the operations of cooperative societies. This makes Al-Rujaib’s interpellation akin to the one filed earlier against the former Finance Minister Al-Shamali, who later resigned following a grueling questioning session. Speaking to reporters at the National Assembly, the lawmaker stated that his interpellation motion is backed up by supporting documents, while claiming a sharp increase in the level of corruption under the new minister. Al-Adsani also brushed aside the idea of merging his interpellation with that of MP Al-Saifi Al-Saifi who also filed a motion to grill the same minister. He informed the press that his motion has been included in Parliament’s scheduled session for June 19. For his part, Al-Saifi affirmed that the issues contained in his interpellation differ from Al-Adsani’s, even though both of them are targeting Minister Al-Rujaib. Reportedly, the government is of the view that the motion is marred by constitutional and legal loopholes, particularly with regard to his claims over the issues of sports and cooperative societies. Parliamentary sources reported that Al-Adsani’s interpellation will be announced to lawmakers during the session tomorrow (Tuesday), so that it can be included in the agenda, though 48 hours have not passed since the motion was filed. The precedent, according to the sources, reflects the intention to merge the two interpellations or discussing them during the scheduled June 19 session. The sources, in the meantime, alluded to differences among MPs regarding the legality of this step. Moreover, MP Obeid Al-Wasmi hinted at a possible motion to question His Highness the Prime Minister Sheikh Jaber Al-Mubarak Al-Sabah over press reports suggesting that the government is likely to rebuff the Jaber University and blasphemy Laws, as well as backtrack on plans to set up a fund to support owners of small businesses. The lawmaker posted on his twitter that the move can be interpreted as reflective of the government’s lack of respect for its own decisions or that it is not the real government. “In both cases, this is unacceptable,” the MP said.

Ghanaian plane crashes, at least 10 dead

ACCRA: A cargo plane has crashed while attempting to land at an airport in Ghana’s capital, slamming into cars and a bus loaded with passengers on a nearby street and killing at least 10 people, officials said. The crash on Saturday night happened in Accra near the Kotoka International Airport, which sits near newly built highrise buildings, hotels and the country’s defense ministry. Al Jazeera’s Yvonne Ndege said that witnesses had described the aircraft smashing through the airport perimeter fence before hitting the bus.

At least 10 people were killed in the crash, all in vehicles on the road struck by the plane, said Billy Anaglate, a spokesman for the Ghana Fire Service. Ambulances took the injured to nearby hospitals. The Boeing 727-200 was operated by Nigerian cargo airline Allied Air, Doreen Owusu Fianko, managing director of Ghana Airport Company, told reporters. “The aircraft collided with a mini Mercedes van resulting in 10 confirmed fatalities,” she said, adding that all four crew of the aircraft had survived the More on 5 accident.

tion” in Syria, but only under a UN mandate, Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said, while urging Russia to drop its backing for AlAssad. He said that “the Russians have to understand that the future of Syria is not to be considered” with Al-Assad still in power. “Until then we have to increase pressure, increase sanctions, mobilize public opinion and isolate (Assad) as much as possible - and make those who still support him lose interest, and I’m thinking of Russia of course,” Le Drian said. UN chief Ban Ki-moon called on Sunday for broad international talks on the rising Syrian crisis, urging Security Council members to consider Arab League demands for stronger UN action in the strife-torn country. “Our priority at this time is to help the Syrian people... I want to welcome a wider international discussion on the future course of actions,” Ban told reporters after a meeting with Organization of Islamic Cooperation chief, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, in the Saudi port city of Jeddah. CONTINUED ON PAGE 3

The royal barge ‘Spirit of Chartwell’ carrying Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II and other members of the royal family sails during the Thames Diamond Jubilee Pageant on the River Thames in London on June 3, 2012. (AFP) More on 9

Progress rate of Jaber Al-Ahmad Hospital estimated at 32%: Safar

Indian guitar players raise their instruments in unison after making a new Limca record for “largest guitar ensemble” in Guwahati on June 3, 2012. (AFP)

Blast at Nigerian church kills 15

KANO: A suicide bomber who tried to drive an explosives-packed car into a church in northern Nigeria on Sunday killed at least 15 people, including himself, and injured 40, officials said. Speeding up his vehicle, the attacker approached a checkpoint near the church in Bauchi State, which has previously been hit by Islamist group Boko Haram and where tension between Muslims and Christians has led to violence in the past. “We have a checkpoint not far from the church which prevented the bomber from gaining access to his target,” said state police commissioner Mohammed Ladan. “So he rammed the car into a security gate and the car exploded,” Ladan added. Bauchi’s State Emergency Management Agency said in a statement that it found 15 dead bodies at the blast site and evacuated 40 injured people to a nearby hospital, adding that the area around the church had been cordoned off by police. Witnesses said the force of the blast near the Harvest Field of Christ church on the outskirts of Bauchi city caused the building to collapse on the worshippers inside. Residents said that when the building came down, some fled outside seeking refuge, but ran into a raging fire. “There was confusion as residents and churchgoers tried to flee. Some of them out of fright fell into the fire caused by the explosion,” said resident Timothy Joshua. Another witness, who requested anonymity, said the bomber had an accomplice who tried to escape the scene after the blast went off, but was chased down and killed by enraged residents. Police could not confirm this account. -AFP

Lebanese army deploys in Tripoli after 15 killed

Protests sweep Egypt, prosecutor to appeal sentences

ter the verdicts were issued. Some of the demonstrators slept in tents or out in the open overnight on the vast intersection, epicenter of the 18-day revolt that forced Mubarak to resign on February 11 last year. A tearful Mubarak, who enjoyed near absolute power for three decades, was flown by helicopter to Tora prison on Cairo’s outskirts after the verdict but then refused to leave the aircraft. A security official said Mubarak “suffered from a surprise health crisis” but was finally convinced to go to his cell. Chants of “Void, void” and “The people want the judiciary purged” erupted after the sentencing. There were similar protest rallies in Alexandria, on the Mediterranean coast, and other parts of Egypt, where many were in shock at the police chiefs’ acquittal. Rights groups also slammed the verdict. Mubarak’s sentence “is a significant step towards combating long-standing impunity in Egypt” but the security chiefs’ acquittal “leaves many still waiting for full justice,” Amnesty International More on 3 said.

KSE price index down 71.86 points, largest drop in 10 months

Compiled by Al Watan Daily

KUWAIT: Kuwait’s index experiences its largest drop in 10 months as global market declines and a downbeat outlook for the local economy spur investors to sell. Price index decreased 71.86 points rising to the level of 6,121.96 points, weighted index down 3.8 points declining to 400.9 and the KSX index put on 9.4 points reaching 960 points. Number of trades amounted to 3,594, value of traded stocks 18,452,509.488 Kuwaiti dinars and volume of exchanged shares 186,060,558. Telecoms operator Zain drops 1.4 percent and Islamic lender Kuwait Finance House (KFH) dips 1.3 percent, with both stocks now trading at around 2009 levels. “In Kuwait, not much is happening economically and that is weighing on the market,” says Shahid Hameed, Global Investment House head of asset management for the Gulf region. “First-quarter corporate results were not strong. The main index is an all-price index so it doesn’t really show what has happened to bluechip stocks.” Three main indices of the national bourse were red upon closing Sunday’s session. Trading started at Kuwait Stock Exchange (KSE) with an all-red board on Sunday, with the price index reading 6,092.8 points at 9:45, on a down of 101.02 points, the weighted index reading 397.75 points on a slip of 6.95 points, and the KSX 15 index reading 952.03 on a loss More on 6 of 17.37 points.

‘Smart bomb’ drug attacks breast cancer

Participants start the National Cancer Survivors Day march in Chicago, June 3, 2012. The participants, which included cancer survivors, as well as members of the health community, family and friends, walked a distance of three miles (5 km) during the morning’s festivities. (Reuters)

CHICAGO: Doctors have successfully dropped the first “smart bomb” on breast cancer, using a drug to deliver a toxic payload to tumor cells while leaving healthy ones alone. In a key test involving nearly 1,000 women with very advanced disease, the experimental treatment extended by several months the time women lived without their cancer getting worse, doctors planned to report Sunday at a cancer conference in Chicago. More importantly, the treatment seems likely to improve survival; it will take more time to know for sure. After two years, 65 percent of women who received it were still alive versus 47 percent of those in a comparison group given two

standard cancer drugs. That margin fell just short of the very strict criteria researchers set for stopping the study and declaring the new treatment a winner, and they hope the benefit becomes more clear with time. In fact, so many women on the new treatment are still alive that researchers cannot yet determine average survival for the group. “The absolute difference is greater than one year in how long these people live,” said the study’s leader, Dr. Kimberly Blackwell of Duke University. “This is a major step forward.” A warning to hopeful patients: the drug is still experimental, so not available yet. Its backers hope it can reach the marMore on 8 ket within a year.

Judge Kamal Bashir Dahan (center), head of Libya’s Supreme Court, meets with members of the Constitutional Chamber in Tripoli June 3, 2012, in which the court agreed to review the constitutionality of a new law that criminalizes the gloriﬁcation of ousted leader Muammar Gadhaﬁ or any of his supporters. (Reuters)

ALWATAN DAILY

kuwait

MONday, JUNE 4, 2012

Cabinet to discuss Dow, interpellation Mutairan Al-Shamali and Mohammad Al-Hajeri Staff Writers

KUWAIT: During its weekly session today, under the chairmanship of His Highness the Prime Minister Sheikh Jaber Al-Mubarak Al-Sabah, the Cabinet is scheduled to discuss MP Al-Saifi Al-Saifi’s interpellation against the Minister of Social Affairs and Labor Ahmad Al-Rujaib and the latter’s stance over the issue. Sources have indicated that the government is of the view that there are constitutional and legal loopholes in the motion, particularly with regard to sports and cooperative societies, and that the minister will make this clear during the Cabinet session.

In addition, the Cabinet is expected to assess the constitutional perspective pertaining to the rejection of a number of laws, including blasphemy, the construction of Jaber University and a fund for initiatives and entrepreneurships. According to the sources, in the event that the government sends back the said laws, it will voice skepticism over the operational mechanism for these projects. While the Housing Minister Shuaib Al-Muwaizri is due to brief the Cabinet about the expedition of new housing cities, the Minister of Electricity and Water Abdul-Aziz Al-Ibrahim will present progress report on the Northern Zour Power Station. Further, the ministers will discuss government’s handling of the Dow issue.

Queen Elizabeth coronation in Dixon House Fadha Al-Muaili Staff Writer

KUWAIT: The United Kingdom Ambassador to Kuwait Frank Baker said that the British-Kuwaiti relations are “strong and historic”, adding that selecting Dixon House as the place to exhibit the coronation of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II “is an excellent choice since it symbolizes the deep ties between the State of Kuwait and Great Britain.” Baker’s statement came during the launch of the exhibition held and organized by the Kuwaiti Society for Stamp and Coins Collectors in coordination with

the National Council for Arts and Literature. Kuwaiti Society for Stamp and Coins Collectors Deputy President Waleed Al-Sayf said that the society adopted the idea as it celebrates the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953 as Queen of Great Britain. “The exhibition underscores the unique ties between Kuwait and Britain. Dixon House was chosen because it was the house of the British representative between the years 1904 and 1915, which was also the post office then,” he remarked. He added that the relations between the two countries go all the way back to 1775 when the postal route was altered through Kuwait.

Progress rate of Jaber Hospital estimated at 32%: Safar Mervat Abduldayem Staff Writer

KUWAIT: Minister of Public Works and Minister of State for Planning and Development Dr. Fadhil Safar said in a statement on Sunday that preparations to construct two bridges linking AlSubiyah Creek and Bubyan Island are underway. He explained that a 4.2 km long bridge will be designated for railway, while the other bridge will be a 1.42km for the main road. He noted that the main aim of building the two bridges is to link the Bubyan Island to Subiyah City through Subiyah Creek. In his speech during the opening of the exhibition of the ministry’s campaign, in cooperation with Dar Al Watan for Press and Publication, Safar said that the ministry is implementing a number of major projects as part of the development plan, which includes several projects such as the new terminal at Kuwait International Airport that will accommodate 13 million passengers a year and is expected to be completed within four years. Safar said that the ministry organized the exhibition as part of its media campaign to present the projects to the citizens. He added that the progress rate of Jaber Al-Ahmad Hospital is estimated at 32 percent, noting that no changes have been done to the project. Safar said that expenditure rate in the last fiscal year reached 94 percent of the budget. He added that the Jaber Al-Ahmad Bridge project is being discussed by the Cabinet, adding that the project is expected to be finalized by the Cabinet in near future.

Traffic at Kuwaiti ports paralyzed for second day of dust

United Kingdom Ambassador to Kuwait Frank Baker (left) with Waleed Al-Sayf (right) during the launch of the exhibition held to celebrate the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II on Sunday, June 3, 2012. (Al Watan)

Lawmakers explore cooperation opportunities with Bosnia SARAJEVO: Kuwaiti lawmakers from the Friendship Parliamentary Committee underlined Sunday the importance of people’s role in pushing ahead and giving impetus for relations between Kuwait, Bosnia and Herzegovina. In statements to Kuwait News Agency (KUNA), Kuwait’s Deputy Parliament Speaker Khalid Sultan Bin Essa, who heads the delegation, said that Bosnia and Herzegovina has great natural and human potential that can be used by businesspeople to strengthen economic gains for both countries. He added that the Kuwaiti lawmakers visit also seeks to buttress legislative cooperation and exchange

of democratic experiences, as well as to achieve greater convergence between the peoples of the two countries. Bin Essa stressed that there is a good opportunity to achieve integration in several areas between the two friendly countries in several domains, particularly tourism. The Kuwaiti MP also noted there are great investment opportunities in Bosnia and Herzegovina, particularly in the property sector. In addition to MP Bin Essa, the delegation includes MPs Waleed Al-Tabtabaie Ahmad Al-Azmi, Bader AlDahoum, Adel Al-Damkhi, Mohammad Al-Hatlani and Mohammad Al-Mutairi. -KUNA

National Guards undersecretary discusses cooperation with British official KUWAIT: The country’s National Guards Undersecretary Lieut. General Nasser Al-Daie discussed on Sunday ways of bolstering military cooperation with the United Kingdom during a meeting held with Lieut. General Simon Mayall, Middle East Adviser at the Ministry of Defense. The meeting would buttress means of bilateral

cooperation that would deep-seat Kuwaiti-British relations even further, Al-Daie said during the encounter attended by British military attache Colonel John Ensor. The meeting was also attended by the Guards’ commander of military affairs Major General Waleed Al-Nuwayef and head of contracts and tenders sector lieut. colonel Abdullah Khalid Faisal. -KUNA

KUWAIT: Operations continued to be on halt for the second day in a row at Kuwait’s two major seaports Shuwaikh and Shuaiba due to the extremely dusty weather conditions, said a port official on Sunday. Wind speeds exceeded 60 kmph, while horizontal sight was left below 300m, leaving port authorities with no choice but to halt all operations at the facilities, Suliman Al-Yahya, head of marine operations at Shuwaikh port told Kuwait News Agency (KUNA). The cease continued for the second day running as the extreme dust storm in the country resumes. Five incoming vessels were on hold as well as another outgoing, which was told not to move until weather conditions improve. For his part, acting marine operations chief at Shuaiba port Tawfiq Shehab reiterated his colleague’s statement on the state of the weather and sight. -KUNA

His Highness the Amir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah (right) greeting the Lebanese president Michel Suleiman upon his arrival on a one-day visit on Sunday, June 3, 2012. (KUNA)

KUWAIT: The President of Lebanon Michel Suleiman arrived here Sunday for an official one-day visit to the State of Kuwait, during which he is to hold talks with His Highness the Amir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah. The Lebanese leader was accompanied by his Deputy Prime Minister Samir Moqbil. The president was greeted upon arrival by His Highness the Amir, along with a host of officials including His High-

ness the Crown Prince Sheikh Nawaf AlAhmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, Parliament Speaker Ahmad Al-Saadoun, Deputy Chief of the National Guard Sheikh Meshaal Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, and His Highness the Prime Minister Sheikh Jaber Al-Mubarak Al-Hamad Al-Sabah. Also greeting the president were Deputy Minister of the Amiri Diwan Sheikh Ali Jarrah Al-Sabah, ministers, senior state officials, and senior officers of the Army, Police, and National Guard. -KUNA

FM warns against ‘extreme dangers’ of situation in Syria

Kuwaiti, Jordanian officials meet in Amman, discuss investments AMMAN: Kuwaiti investors and Jordanian officials met here late Saturday at the residence of the Kuwaiti Ambassador Dr. Hamad Al-Duaij, discussing means to bolster relations within the investment domain. Jordanian Minister of Trade and Industry Shabib Ammari told Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) that the meeting focused on means to boost relations between Kuwaiti and Jordanian investors, addressing issues that would hinder cooperation. On his part, Ambassador Al-Duaij hoped that the meeting would help find solutions towards issues facing Kuwaiti investments here. Kuwaiti and Jordanian investors said that the meeting, held in a relaxing and casual atmosphere, was a step in the right direction that would help resolve any differences, pointing out that both countries have a lot to offer. -KUNA

Army chief-of-staff, US senior officer discuss cooperation

National Guards Undersecretary Lieut. General Nasser AlDaie (right) with Lieut. General Simon Mayall during a meeting on Sunday, June 3, 2012. (KUNA)

Michel Suleiman departs after one-day visit

KUWAIT: Kuwait Army Chief-ofStaff, Lieut-General Khalid Al-Jarrah AlSabah on Sunday met with Lieutenant General Thomas Bostick, US Army Chief of Engineers and Commanding General of the US Army Corps of Engineers, and discussed issues of mutual interests. During the meeting, Lt.-Gen Staff Sheikh Khalid exchanged friendly talks with Bostick, who is currently visiting the country along with an accompanied delegation, as well as discussing important joint issues, particularly regarding military aspects and ways of enhancing them. -KUNA

Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Sabah Khaled Al-Hamad AlSabah at the Arab League meeting held on Saturday, June 2, 2012. (KUNA)

DOHA: Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Sabah Khaled Al-Hamad Al-Sabah cautioned late Saturday against the grave dangers of conflict in Syria on the whole region. “No country in the region is protected against the grave repercussions of deteriorating situation in Syria,” Sheikh Sabah, also Minister of State for Cabinet Affairs, said in a joint press conference with Arab League Secretary General Nabil Al-Araby following the extraordinary ministerial meeting of the Kuwaitchaired Arab League Council. “We are working to avoid these dangers and to protect Syria against a civil war which will have extreme impacts on the Arab region, including Gulf states,” he added. The Kuwait foreign minister underlined that Arab Gulf states are cooperating and coordinating with other Arab countries to put an end to violence in Syria and help meet Syrian people’s aspirations for better future. With regard to latest developments in Sudan, Sheikh Sabah Al-Khaled said that the Arab League Council has expressed support to all measures to retain the sovereign and protect security and stability of the Republic of Sudan. He revealed that the Arab League is mediating between Sudan and South Sudan to ease tension and avoid any new confrontations between the two neighbors. For his part, Arab League Chief AlAraby admitted the need for reconsidering the deadline of UN-Arab League Envoy Kofi Annan’s mission as the vio-

lence continues unabated against desperate Syrians. Al-Araby pointed out that the Arab ministerial council has asked the UN Security Council to consider using Article VII to press the Syrian regime to abide by some of the Annan’s six-point plan. He, however, stressed that the Arab council’s statement did not ask for military intervention in Syria but urge the international community to pile more pressures on President Bashar Al-Assad regime. Al-Araby also disclosed intensive contacts with China and Russia to press them to change their staunch support to Al-Assad regime. These contacts have already helped make a slight change in Moscow and Beijing’s policy towards the crisis in Syria, he said. The Arab League Chief noted that the council’s statement demanded the Syrian opposition to unite and close ranks, adding that the Arab League will host a meeting for the Syrian National Council and other Syrian opposition powers on June 9 to help achieve this goal. The Arab League Council held its extraordinary meeting in Doha Saturday to mull the deterioration Syrian conflict, particularly with the failure of the UN observers mission to bring to halt 15-month violence. Monitors say more than 13,400 people have been killed across Syria since an anti-regime uprising erupted in March 2011, including nearly 2,300 since April 12. -KUNA

ALWATAN DAILY

WORLD Reviving the revolution! By Hossam Fathi Staff Writer

We apologize to all the families and relatives of martyrs who sacrificed themselves during the great Egyptian revolution and we feel sorry for losing such great youths who sacrificed for defending our rights and freedom. We feel sorry for the laws that acquitted the persons who killed them due to the lack of evidence! In any case, we might find some positive points in the sentence that quitted Alaa and Gamal - the sons of Mubarak - as well as the assistants of the former minister of interior. The positive points of the historic sentence include reviving the dying revolution and we hope politicians will understand this lesson. Some people took to the streets to reject the acquittal of the sons of the former presidents and assistants of the interior minister, while others headed to the posters of the presidential candidate Shafiq to tear them down and express their wrath. Other people showed a different stance, planning to avoid committing more mistake which might lead to replicating the former regime, especially when the followers of the former regime gained a substantial morale boost from the recent sentence which acquitted the sons of Mubarak in addition to other icons of the former regime. hossam@alwatan.com.kw Twitter:@hossamfathy66

West talks of nuclear Iran to hide own problems, says Khamenei

DUBAI: Iran’s ruling cleric, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on Sunday accused the United States and its allies of lying about the threat of a nuclear Iran to cover up their own problems, state television reported. In a televised address marking the 23rd anniversary of the death of Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, Khamenei also warned Israel against any attack on Iran, saying it would receive a “thunderous blow”. Khamenei - who has total command over Iran’s nuclear policy - has publicly forbidden the development of nuclear weapons, but Western nations suspect that Tehran is developing in isolation each of the components required for an atomic bomb capability. “What Americans and Westerners do is idiotic. They magnify the nuclear issue to cover up their own problems,” Khamenei said, referring to the continuing economic gloom in the US and Europe. “They are deceitfully using the term nuclear weapons,” he added. Iran’s supreme leader said Israeli talk of military strikes showed it felt vulnerable after the fall of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, a US and Western ally, last year. “If they take any calculated action, they will receive a thunderous blow.” On Saturday a senior military commander said Iranian missiles could reach all parts of Israel and threatened US bases in the region if Iran was attacked. Away from what is common-place fiery rhetoric in Tehran, Iran held negotiations with world powers in Baghdad on May 23-24 in an attempt to reach agreement over concerns about its nuclear program. Diplomats say Iranian negotiators were more forthcoming than in previous attempts to find a solution, and believe Khamenei has given his negotiating team a wider hand to explore a deal as sanctions continue to bite deep into the Iranian economy. Iran maintains he will not give up its rights to establish a peaceful nuclear program but has at times appeared flexible to curbing high-grade uranium enrichment that is the West’s most pressing concern. Another round of talks has been scheduled for June 18-19 in Moscow. -Reuters

mondAY, June 4, 2012

Protests sweep Egypt, prosecutor to appeal sentences

CAIRO: Hundreds of Egyptians occupied Cairo’s Tahrir Square on Sunday after a night of rage as the state prosecutor said he would appeal sentences handed down to Hosni Mubarak and his security chiefs. A judge sentenced Mubarak, 84, and his interior minister Habib al-Adly to life in prison on Saturday for involvement in the killing of hundreds of protesters during the uprising that ousted them from power last year. Mubarak was cleared of graft charges, six police chiefs were acquitted, and Mubarak’s sons Alaa and Gamal had corruption charges against them dropped on a technicality, prompting protesters to take to the streets in Cairo, Alexandria and other Egyptian cities. The state prosecutor’s office said he had ordered “the start of the appeals procedure” against sentences in the trial, but did not clarify whether it would appeal all the verdicts or just the acquittals. Mubarak’s defense has also said it would appeal. Around 20,000 people took to Cairo’s iconic Tahrir Square on Saturday after the verdicts were issued. Some of the demonstrators slept in tents or out in the open overnight on the vast intersection, epicenter of the 18-day revolt that forced Mubarak to resign on February 11 last year. A tearful Mubarak, who enjoyed near absolute power for three decades, was flown by helicopter to Tora prison on Cairo’s outskirts after the verdict but then refused to leave the aircraft. A security official said Mubarak “suffered from a surprise health crisis” but was finally convinced to go to his cell. Chants of “Void, void” and “The people want the judiciary purged” erupted after the sentencing. There were similar protest rallies in Alexandria, on the Mediterranean coast, and other parts of Egypt, where many were in shock at the police chiefs’ acquittal. Rights groups also slammed the verdict. Mubarak’s sentence “is a significant step towards combating long-standing impunity in Egypt” but the security chiefs’ acquittal “leaves many still waiting for full justice,” Amnesty International said. Meanwhile, Egypt’s presidential candidate and former Hosni Mubarak premier, Ahmed Shafiq, on Sunday tried to establish his demo-

Egyptian protesters gather in Cairo’s landmark Tahrir Square on June 3, 2012. Hundreds of demonstrators are occupying Tahrir Square after a court sentenced ousted president Hosni Mubarak and his interior minister Habib Al-Adly to life in prison but acquitted six security chiefs in the deaths of protesters last year. (AFP)

cratic credentials and said his Muslim Brotherhood rival would bring back the “dark ages”. Shafiq urged Egyptians “to choose for Egypt a president who will make it a country for all, not a state for one faction.” The ex-air force commander, who will face the Brotherhood’s Mohammed Mursi in a presidential run-off later this month, said Egypt under his leadership would respect human rights.

“No one will be detained for their opinion... Security services will be committed to the law and to human rights standards,” Shafiq told a news conference. “I represent a secular state... the Brotherhood represents a sectarian state.” “I represent progress and light, they represent backwardness and darkness,” he said. Shafiq said he would strive for a “modern, civil,

Lebanese army deploys in Tripoli after 15 killed TRIPOLI, Lebanon: Lebanese troops deployed in the city of Tripoli on Sunday after 15 people were killed in clashes between supporters and opponents of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, local medics said, the deadliest fighting in Lebanon since Syria’s uprising began. Residents said relative calm had returned to the Mediterranean city since the soldiers took up positions around the city at around 7 a.m. (0400 GMT), after gunmen exchanged heavy machinegun fire and rocket-propelled grenades. Two people wounded in the fighting died on Sunday, adding to the 13 killed on Saturday. Occasional gunfire could still be heard but was less intense than earlier exchanges.

Prime Minister Najib Mikati and other local politicians held a crisis meeting in Tripoli at the weekend and instructed security forces to use an “iron fist” to quell the violence. The mainly Sunni Muslim protests against Assad have polarized Tripoli, where a small community of Alawites - from the same offshoot of Shiite Islam as Assad - have frequently clashed with majority Sunni Muslims who support the uprising. Gunmen from the Jebel Mohsen district, home to Tripoli’s Alawites, have fought intermittent skirmishes over recent weeks with Sunni Muslim fighters in the Bab Al-Tabbaneh area. The latest clashes began after midnight on Friday and continued through-

out Saturday until the army deployment. The death toll was the highest in a single day in Tripoli, reflecting the increasing threat to stability in Lebanon caused by tensions over neighboring Syria. Sunni Muslim fighters have also fought street battles in the capital Beirut, and the kidnapping last month of 11 Lebanese Shiites in Syria has further fuelled tensions. Residents said those killed in Tripoli included civilians caught in the crossfire and that a Lebanese soldier was among dozens who were wounded, at least 10 of them seriously. The Lebanese National News Agency said there was “shelling across both areas heard every five minutes, and snipers targeting civilians” on Saturday. -Reuters

Lebanese army armored vehicles patrol in Tripoli’s Sunni neighborhood of Bab Al-Tabbaneh on June 3, 2012. (AFP)

Netanyahu weighs options on disputed settler homes

JERUSALEM: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sought on Sunday a way to implement a Supreme Court ruling to remove five settler buildings erected on private Palestinian land without alienating his political supporters. Netanyahu’s right-wing government has until July 1 to carry out the court’s decision but it faces an earlier deadline, Wednesday, when ultranationalist legislators plan to submit a bill to legalize the dwellings retroactively, a law he opposes. About 30 families live in the five three-storey stone apartment buildings in the Ulpana neighborhood of the Beit El settlement in the occupied West Bank. Government officials said on Sunday Netanyahu had proposed a plan that would avoid demolishing the homes. Engineers would instead cut through their foundations and move them to another part of the settlement where no land ownership claim is pending in court. He also plans to build 10 homes in Beit El for each of the five apartment buildings that is moved, the officials said, in an apparent attempt to appease the Jewish families and their supporters. Palestinians fear Israeli settlements, built on land Israel captured in a 1967 war, will deny them a viable state. The UN World Court considers the settlements illegal but Israel, citing historical and Biblical links to the territory, disputes this. Before making a final decision on his plan, Netanyahu has asked Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein to advise whether it would hold up to court challenges, the officials said. The prospect of forcing settlers from their homes has turned into a political minefield for Netanyahu, who heads the right-wing Likud party and has long banked on the support of settlers and their backers. But Netanyahu would also likely face a public outcry should he be seen as defying the Supreme Court, which many Israelis regard as an important independent watchdog over the government. -Reuters

Al-Assad dismisses Houla massacre accusations CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

Ban said he had “taken note” of Arab League calls for more peace monitors on the ground in Syria and “setting a certain time limit” for implementing international envoy Kofi Annan’s six-point Syria peace plan. “All these are very important recommendations and I hope that these will be discussed by the Security Council members,” he said, adding that the UN and OIC will “do all what we can in close coordination...to support (Annan’s) efforts.” Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim AlThani, who heads the Arab League Syria committee said on Saturday that it was “unacceptable that massacres and bloodshed continue while (Annan’s) mission is ongoing indefinitely.” Speaking during a meeting attended by Annan in Doha, he said the Arab League “demand the UN Security Council refer (the peace plan) to Chapter VII so that the international community could assume responsibilities.” Chapter VII outlines action the Security Council might take, including military force, in response to threats to international peace, breaches of the peace and acts of aggression. Meanwhile, Syrian troops and rebels clashed on Sunday in the countryside of Damascus province and near the northern city of Aleppo, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported. Opposition fighters attacked regime forces overnight at a checkpoint in Damascus province near the border with Lebanon, the Britain-based watchdog said. And in Aleppo, violent clashes broke out between the army and rebel forces in at least two villages, the monitoring group reported, without reporting casualties. But a

civilian was killed in shelling of Antareb, a town in Aleppo province near Idlib where rebel forces are concentrated. Another civilian was killed in bombing of Kafr Sita town in the central province of Hama. In Douma, near the capital, activist and doctor Adnan Wehbeh was shot dead in front of his clinic, the Observatory said, blaming security forces for what it said was an assassination. The Observatory also reported that a convoy of 45 tanks and armored vehicles transporting soldiers was seen heading east on the Palmyra-Deir El-Zor road. In the northwest province of Ar-Raqqah, hundreds of people took part on Sunday in the funeral of a man killed the previous day in bombardment of the town of Tabka, according to the group. And at a funeral in Damascus province, it said, thousands of mourners chanted anti-regime slogans at the funeral of a man killed by sniper fire in the town of Irbin. On Saturday, violence in Syria killed 89 people, including 57 soldiers, the largest number of casualties the military has suffered in a single day since an uprising began in March 2011, the watchdog said. The Observatory’s head Rami Abdel-Rahman explained that regular troops were fighting in unfamiliar territory. “What exacerbates those losses is that the army is fighting locals of those towns and villages, whether military defectors or civilians who took up arms against the regime, who know the area inside out and enjoy public support.” The Observatory says as many as 2,400 of the more than 13,500 people killed in Syria since the uprising erupted in March 2011 have died since a UN-backed ceasefire began on April 12. -AFP

fair state” while the Muslim Brotherhood will “take it to the dark ages.” Shafiq gained support as a candidate in the country’s first post-revolt presidential election thanks to a strong law-and-order campaign in a country where many crave stability. But Shafiq, who served as the last prime minister under ousted president Mubarak, is reviled by activists who spearheaded the 2011 revolt. -AFP

Palestinians threaten to relaunch prisoner hunger strike RAMALLAH, Palestinian Territories: Palestinian prisoners in Israel are threatening to relaunch a hunger strike, a Palestinian official said on Sunday, blaming Israel for reneging on a deal that ended a recent one. “There are still provocations in the prisons, and the prisoners are threatening to resume the strike if the situation remains as it is,” Palestinian prisoners minister Issa Qaraqaa said at a press conference in Ramallah. Some 1,550 Palestinians imprisoned in Israel ended a hunger strike on May 14 in exchange for a package of measures which would allow visits from relatives in Gaza, and the transfer of detainees out of solitary confinement. Israel also said it would not extend administrative detention orders, unless new evidence emerged. In return, prisoner leaders committed to not engage in militant activity inside jail and to refrain from future hunger strikes. Administrative detention is a procedure that allows suspects to be held without charge for renewable periods of up to six months. But Qaraqaa said Israel was not keeping its end of the deal. “Israel has begun to violate the deal it signed with the prisoners, and within ten days after announcing the end of the strike, Israel renewed administrative detention orders for approximately 30 prisoners,” Qaraqaa charged. “Israel wants to punish the prisoners for striking with these renewed orders,” he said. Qaraqaa also said he doubted Israel would allow the Gaza visits it had committed to. “So far, we don’t know if Israel will even allow families of prisoners from Gaza to visit their imprisoned relatives,” he said. An Israeli defense official who wished to remain unnamed rejected Qaraqaa’s claims. “As of the end of last week, three administrative detention orders were renewed,” the official told AFP. Regarding the visits from Gaza, the official said that Israel was indeed working toward enabling visits, but it was a process that “would take some time” as it “involves many different bodies.” Qaraqaa also addressed the issue of two prisoners, Mahmud Sarsak and Akram Rikhawi, who have been on extended hunger strikes. He said they “were on the verge of a coma and have a low heart rate.” Israel Prison Service spokeswoman Sivan Weizman said that the two were under medical supervision in the infirmary in Ramle prison near Tel Aviv, and if the need arose, would be transferred to a civilian hospital for further care. -AFP

UAE donates $136 mln urgent food aid to Yemen DUBAI: The UAE on Sunday announced food aid worth 500 million dirhams ($136 million) for Yemen where aid groups say around 44 percent of the population do not have enough to eat, state news agency WAM reported. President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al-Nahayan “has approved allocating 500 million dirhams to buy food and distribute it urgently to the brotherly Yemeni people,” WAM said. The move is to “alleviate the suffering and ensure the availability of basic needs” to enable Yemenis to achieve “better security, stability and prosperity,” said the statement. The food items include “rice, sugar, cooking oil, baby milk, canned food and other basic items of daily use,” it said. Last month, seven aid groups warned diplomats that Yemen was on the brink of a “catastrophic food crisis.” At least 10 million people, some 44 percent of the population, do not get “enough food to eat”, they said, adding that one in three children was “severely malnourished.” On May 21, the European Union unblocked an extra five million euros (6.2 million US dollars) for Yemen to help fight mounting malnutrition in what it said was a “desperate” food crisis affecting almost half of the population. The Commission has already mobilized 20 million euros ($24.9 million) in humanitarian aid for Yemen this year, directed at increasing and improving access to clean water, supporting feeding programs, developing cash-for-work schemes and providing cash grants for 200,000 people. Deadly anti-regime protests swept Yemen last year, finally forcing president Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down in February after 33 years in power. The political crisis has left the country’s economy in tatters and aggravated the dire security situation, with Al-Qaeda militants launching a wave of attacks in the mostly lawless south since Saleh’s departure. Yemen is the poorest country in the Arabian peninsula, with more than 40 percent of people living below the poverty line. -AFP

ALWATAN DAILY

OPINION / VIEWS

MONDAY, JUNE 4, 2012

In Africa, a militant group’s growing appeal William Maclean Noor Khamis Mohamed Ahmed Reuters

hen Abdullahi slipped across the Kenya-Somali border to join the fighters of Islamist militant group Al- Shabaab in 2009, the livestock herder from northern Kenya found himself among recruits from around the globe. There were ethnic Somalis who had grown up in Australia, Britain, France and the United States. But there was also a large number of fellow Kenyans in the group’s ranks. They included, unexpectedly, dozens of young men who did not share his Somali ancestry or language but came instead from the green, tropical heartland of Kenya where Christianity is the dominant religion. Washington and London have long worried the Somali group aimed to expand its influence in Africa. That suspicion was confirmed last July when a United Nations investigation found Al-Shabaab had created extensive funding, recruiting and training networks in Kenya. Much remains unclear about the strength of the group’s following outside Somalia. Abdullahi’s story about his time in Al-Shabaab couldn’t be independently verified. Going Over

Pinning down the number of non-Somalis who have joined Al-Shabaab is difficult. Boniface Mwaniki, head of Kenya’s Anti-Terrorist Police Unit, said it was impossible to compile accurate figures because the Kenyan-Somali border is porous and long. The militant group is also using its connections and social media to inspire the creation of loose networks of sympathizers in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. Kenya’s Security Minister George Saitoti worries that this support could allow Al-Shabaab to threaten East Africa, and especially Kenya, the region’s economic hub. Non-Somali East Africans have taken part in Al-Qaeda

Smart Taxes

Hans Eichel Yannis Palaiokrassas Project Syndicate

overnments throughout the European Union and around the world confront a seeming Catch-22: the millstone of national debt around their necks has required them to reduce deficits through spending cuts and tax increases. But these are impeding the consumer spending needed to boost economic activity and kick-start growth. As the debate shifts from austerity towards measures aimed at stimulating growth, smarter taxation will be essential to getting the balance right. When governments think about the difficult task of raising taxes, they usually think about income tax, business taxes, and value-added tax (VAT). But there are other taxes that can raise significant amounts of revenue with a much less negative impact on the economy. These are the taxes that governments already levy on electricity and fossil fuels. Such taxes play a crucial role in cutting the carbon emissions that cause climate change. But recent research shows that they can also play a useful role in raising government revenue at little cost in terms of economic growth. Euro for euro, dollar for dollar, yen for yen: energy and carbon taxes have a lower negative impact on a nation’s economy, consumption, and jobs than income tax and VAT. For example, an increase in direct taxes, such as income tax, can reduce consumption by twice as much as energy and carbon taxes that raise the same amount of revenue. Maintaining consumption at as high a level as possible is vital to reviving economic activity, which means that freeing money for consumers to spend is just as important. Energy and carbon taxes can raise revenue while leaving the economy in a stronger state to sustain a recovery. Conventional taxes raise revenue, but pose a much greater risk of depressing growth in the process. This is not the only reason why looking more closely at energy and carbon taxes makes sense. The current framework for energy taxation, particularly in Europe, is not sustainable. Tax rates

The pull of militancy is placing new strains on the region’s Muslim communities, say elders, clerics and younger Muslims.

attacks before, including the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and the suicide bomb attack on an Israeli-owned hotel near Mombasa in 2002. In September last year Kampala’s High Court jailed two Ugandans on charges connected to the attack. Concern over AlShabaab’s growing East African contingent was one of the motives for Kenya’s decision to send troops into Somalia last October. Elders Lose Control

The pull of militancy is placing new strains on the region’s Muslim communities, say elders, clerics and younger Muslims. “The older generation has lost control of the youngsters. They’ve lost it completely,” said Kimathi, who was born a Christian in Nyeri in Kenya’s central highlands and converted to Islam in his mid-30s. But Kenya’s police have made life harder for the group’s recruiters. Back in April 2009, when Abdullahi joined Al-Shabaab, it was possible for recruiters to carry out indoctrination sessions in a mosque. Abdullahi met Al-Shabaab clerics from Somalia when they came to preach in his home town of Mandera. “It was after afternoon prayers. We went to a corner of the mosque where we could talk quietly,” he said. “They said Islam was under attack, and they mentioned Ethiopia. They told us the Ethiopians and other Christians were attacking Islam and they wanted to wash Islam out of the country.

on different fuels vary by more than 50 percent across the EU, causing major distortions in the single market. Creating a level playing field on energy taxation in the EU would harmonize economic incentives, eliminate gas-tank tourism by drivers crossing borders for lower prices, and improve the business climate in all of Europe’s economies. Rising energy bills, driven by the cost of fossil fuels, are a massive political issue in many countries in Europe and elsewhere, including the United States, where consumer energy prices have become a major issue in the run-up to this year’s presidential election. But, relative to other forms of taxation, energy taxation tends to benefit consumers overall. The gains from avoiding the negative impact of conventional taxes work across the economy, particularly as the least welloff maintain a higher level of disposable household income. Most energy and carbon taxes are levied by national governments. But in Europe there is another option for raising revenues: the European Union Emission Trading Scheme (ETS). In terms of the effect on GDP and jobs, the cost of increasing revenue from this source would be as much as one-third less than that of raising the same amount via income taxes or VAT. Given Europe’s fiscal deficits and the economic impact of reducing them, that is a huge potential prize. But, first, the issues depressing the carbon price must be addressed. Taking the massive over-allocation of carbon-emission permits out of the ETS will be vital. Finance ministers everywhere need to think more imaginatively about their fiscal options. Energy and carbon taxes can produce less economic pain and more gain than conventional taxes can. Europe needs fiscal consolidation, reductions in carbon emissions, and a strategy for economic growth. Greater reliance should be placed on energy taxes and an effective ETS to deliver all three.

You Want To Attack

Al-Shabaab may have lost Abdullahi, but there are others ready to take his place, many of them not ethnic Somalis. In the port city of Mombasa on Kenya’s Indian Ocean Coast, sermons by fiery clerics stoke anti-Western sentiment. Suleiman Adam, a 25-year-old mobile-phone card salesman, says his radicalization began in 2002 when he enrolled in an Islamic boarding school north of the city. Adam, whose forefathers came from Sudan, is the son of a truck driver who could not afford to send his son to a regular high school. But even in his radical days Adam was not as extreme as some of his classmates, who included non-Somali Kenyans like him. “There are some... who are 50-50. We felt it’s not a jihad, going to explode yourself, that’s not a jihad. It wasn’t making sense. But there were those who were 100 percent. They believed in that.” That faith is exploited by unscrupulous radical preachers, say community leaders like Imam Mustafa Bakari. The Salafi Influence

Financial considerations also play in Kenya’s capital Nairobi. It’s not hard to find Al-Shabaab sympathizers in the Eastleigh district, which teems with ethnic Somalis. But over the past few years the group’s influence has extended to other areas, including Majengo, a huddle of streets beside the downtown area. One of the most vocal of its sup-

port bases is a group called the Muslim Youth Centre, once headed by radical preacher Ahmed Iman Ali, who now lives in Somalia. Omar and many of his congregation are Salafis, followers of an ultra-conservative brand of Islam that has its roots in Saudi Arabia. Salafis are in the minority among Kenya’s 4.3 million Muslims, but are beginning to flex their muscles. Older, non-Salafi Muslims in Majengo view Omar’s congregation with suspicion, in part because Omar’s followers have recently asserted control over the district’s main mosque, the Pumwani Riyadh, one of Nairobi’s oldest. Imam Yahya Hussein, deputy imam of Pumwani, insists his followers will retake control of the mosque once current renovations are finished. Police Problems

It doesn’t help that the police response to radicalism is often heavy-handed and corrupt, community activists say. Diplomats say that poor Muslim coastal areas of East Africa such as Mombasa or Tanzania’s Zanzibar islands are particularly vulnerable. It’s “not far-fetched at all” to suggest that political stability on the East Africa coast could be threatened, a Western official said. Kimathi, the Kenyan human-rights activist, also blames counter-terrorist activities by Western and African forces. He spent almost a year in detention, much of it in solitary confinement, on suspicion of involvement in the Kampala bombings. He had visited Uganda to advise several Kenyans transferred there by Kenyan authorities after they had been picked up for the attacks. The prosecutor dropped murder and terrorism charges against him in September 2011 and released him. * William Maclean, Noor Khamis and Mohamed Ahmed are Reuters correspondents. The views expressed here are their own.

Ali Farzat

* Hans Eichel is a former German finance minister. * Yannis Palaiokrassas, a former Greek finance minister, was European Commissioner for the Environment and Fisheries.

Would I lie to you? The Need for Independent Certification Nader Henein Security Advisor, RIM EMEA

dvisors, evangelists or consultants. Companies have long tried to repackage the way they deliver their message on security so that it doesn’t sound like a sales pitch. But the simple fact is that there is no reason why you should gamble the security and future of your organization on the promises of an employee tasked with portraying their product in the best possible light. I myself work within the Advisory Division of the BlackBerry Security Group and before speaking at an event or to a customer I make it a point of saying “please don’t take my word for it - due diligence is key.” Let’s look at the typical scenario, Mr. John Doe shows up at the office of your CTO, on time, wearing a freshly pressed suit with a stack of crisp business cards. His title

boasts impressive accolades such as “Senior Architect” and “CIISP”, he’s an older gentleman who demands respect and exudes wisdom, still is there any reason to trust him when it comes to your organization’s security? Over the better part of the past decade we have worked very hard to build a product at the forefront of mobile security. We have dedicated hundreds of thousands of manhours in architecture, development and testing, the result of which is a solution widely regarded as the “Gold Standard” of mobile security. But how can clients who are concerned about the security of their network and their data differentiate the truth in the previous paragraph from a well-crafted marketing message? Quite simply, they shouldn’t have to.Trust should never enter into the equation and therein lays the need for independent third-party accreditation. Traditionally, this is conducted by well resourced, government certified labs to thoroughly test

claims made by vendors about their products. Within the BlackBerry Security Group we have a growing team dedicated to certification, they work tirelessly with labs in Canada, the US, the UK, Germany, China and many more on various government and industry certifications to effectively remove the need for “TRUST” from the equation. This is not a one-off process: we have to certify all major versions of our devices and sever software so that the entire lifecycle of the data as it travels from your network to the mobile device and back is covered. The process of certification is an expensive and lengthy process that requires, amongst other things, code reviews, penetration testing and a close working relationship with these certification labs, which are more often than not, part of the sponsoring government. So how does this affect you and the decisions you make? First of all, the next time Mr. John Doe comes to visit and

makes a claim about the security provided by his product, perhaps you can ask him who has certified these claims and when was the last time they did an independent code review, or if the current version is covered? The lack of certification is quite telling as well, asking if they had started but not completed the process of certifying their product may indicate an undisclosed security flaw. Secondly, only a handful of labs across the globe have the capacity and expertise to certify a complex product with millions of lines of code, so why try to do it in-house? Make a policy that “prefers” products that have passed certain internationally accepted certifications, this way you and your company can leverage a substantial amount of work to ultimately ensure you maintain a consistent security posture throughout the lifecycle of your data, from server, to laptop, to smartphone to USB drive and beyond that on private clouds.

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ALWATAN DAILY

WORLD

mondAY, June 4, 2012

Ghanaian plane crash kills at least 10 people ACCRA: A cargo plane has crashed while attempting to land at an airport in Ghana’s capital, slamming into cars and a bus loaded with passengers on a nearby street and killing at least 10 people, officials said. The crash on Saturday night happened in Accra near the Kotoka International Airport, which sits near newly built highrise buildings, hotels and the country’s defense ministry. Al Jazeera’s Yvonne Ndege said that witnesses had described the aircraft smashing through the airport perimeter fence before hitting the bus. At least 10 people were killed in the crash, all in vehicles on the road struck by the plane, said Billy Anaglate, a spokesman for the Ghana Fire Service. Ambulances took the injured to nearby hospitals. The Boeing 727-200 was operated by Nigerian cargo airline Allied Air, Doreen Owusu Fianko, managing director of Ghana Airport Company, told reporters. “The aircraft collided with a mini

Mercedes van resulting in 10 confirmed fatalities,” she said, adding that all four crew of the aircraft had survived the accident. The plane had taken off from Lagos, Nigeria, but failed to stop at the end of the runway after it touched down at Accra’s Kotoka airport just after 19:00 GMT, she said. The area is near to El-Wak Sports Stadium and Hajj Village, where Muslims in the country stay before they journey to Mecca. Local television showed images of the plane lying across a road with its tail damaged as the flight crew jumped off and received help from emergency responders. Ghana, a nation of more than 25 million in West Africa, has not had a major airplane crash in recent years. The last air emergency the country had was in June 2006, when a TAAG Linhas Aereas De Angola flight to Sao Tome hit birds during takeoff. The plane landed safely and none of the 28 people onboard were injured. -AFP

SINGAPORE: As the United States moves to bolster its military position in Asia, it faces severe budget cuts from Congress, an increasingly powerful rival in China and a hornet’s nest of regional political sensitivities. The shift in US policy puts Asia and the Pacific front-and-center of its strategic priorities and is driven by concerns that China has raced ahead in the world’s most economically dynamic region while the US was tied up fighting its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But in a region rife with disputes and increasingly beholden to China’s economic engine, the Pentagon is being careful its “pivot to the Pacific” doesn’t create too many waves. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who is spearheading the US effort to sell the new strategy in Asia, told regional defense leaders at a major security conference in Singapore that it is only natural for the Asia-Pacific to be in

Emergency vehicles are seen at the site where a Boeing 727 cargo plane crashed into a bus, near Kotoka International Airport in Accra, Ghana, June 2. (AP)

meeting, which ended Sunday. “Asia is certainly big enough for all powers - established and emerging.” US officials stress they are not seeking new permanent facilities on foreign shores and instead are looking at a slew of less-threatening and less-expensive deals to rotate troops into existing bases throughout the region, step up joint military maneuvers and push for access to key ports. -Indonesia, which had only limited military relations with Washington in the 1990s because of US human rights concerns, is now looking to buy a broad range of American hardware and is joining in joint maneuvers. The Philippines, which kicked US forces bases off their soil in 1992, is actively courting increased US military support, including allowing more troops in on a rotational basis. Washington is already testing out that approach in Australia, which has agreed to allow up to 2,500 Marines to deploy to the northern city of Darwin. The Marines will use Australian facilities, not a new US base, and the plan has met with

little opposition. The first detachment of Marines arrived in April. Most of the troops going to Darwin were freed up by another deal aimed at placating a key ally - an agreement with Tokyo this year to move about 9,000 Marines off of the island of Okinawa. Meanwhile, Panetta has arrived at a former US air and naval base at Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam, becoming the most senior American official to go there since the war ended. Panetta says he hopes to encourage efforts with Vietnam to locate and identify more of the US war dead who are still missing. He plans to visit the USNS Richard E. Byrd, a cargo ship operated by the Navy’s Military Sealift Command. The ship has a largely civilian crew and is used to move military supplies to US forces around the world. The US military’s Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command has six recovery teams and two investigative teams in Vietnam searching for troop remains. There are about 1,200 unaccounted for service members believed to be in Vietnam. -AP

Japan PM to reshuffle cabinet on Monday

Hun Sen’s party poised to win Cambodia elections PHNOM PENH: Prime Minister Hun Sen’s ruling party was expected to win Cambodia’s local elections Sunday in a vote that monitors say is tainted by vote buying and other irregularities. The elections for local governing councils across the country are viewed as the key indicator of public opinion ahead of general elections in 2013. Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party has ruled Cambodia for nearly three decades. It has strong rural support and overwhelmingly won both previous local elections in 2002 and 2007. Ten political parties were vying for seats, but none have the means to compete with Hun Sen’s party, said Koul Panha, executive director of election monitoring group Comfrel. “The ruling party has used state property and civil servants to help campaign for the sake of its own party interests,” he said, adding that there have also been widespread reports of vote buying and intimidation to secure support. King Norodom Sihamoni issued a statement ahead of the election urging voters not to bow to election-related intimidation. “I publicly call on compatriots, brothers and sisters, children, nieces and nephews not to fear oppression, intimidation or threats from any individual or political party,” the constitutional monarch said in a statement issued in March. The country’s 9.2 million voters are eligible to choose councils to administer Cambodia’s 1,633 communes and urban sub-districts known as sangkats. In the 2007 commune elections, the Cambodian People’s Party won 1,592 commune chief out of 1,633 communes. It was followed by the main opposition Sam Rainsy Party with 28 communes and royalist Funcinpec Party, which won two communes. -AP

US drone strike kills 10 in northwest Pakistan

China cracks down on Tiananmen anniversary

the spotlight because it is home to some of the world’s biggest populations and militaries. Before moving on to Vietnam and India, Panetta said Washington will “of necessity” rebalance toward the Asia-Pacific region and vowed 60 percent of the Navy’s fleet will be deployed to the Pacific by 2020. He said the US presence will be more agile, flexible and high-tech. Troops may increase overall, but no major influx is expected. Longterm allies such as Japan, Australia and South Korea strongly support a robust US presence and see the shift as a welcome development. “The US has made the Asia-Pacific its top priority to reflect the fact that the world economic center of gravity now resides in this region,” said Carlyle Thayer, a professor at the University of New South Wales, in Australia. But others worry the US could try to isolate China, at the rest of Asia’s expense. “With their enormous economic potentials, it is natural that many countries want to build good relations with both China and the United States,” Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said at the three-day Singapore

Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda speaks to reporters after meeting with ruling party legislator Ichiro Ozawa, who opposes a proposed tax increase, June 3, in Tokyo. (AFP)

NEWS IN BRIEF

WANA: The second US drone attack in as many days killed 10 people in northwest Pakistan on Sunday, intelligence officials said, an incident likely to raise tensions in the standoff between Washington and Islamabad over NATO supply routes to Afghanistan. The remotely-piloted aircraft fired four missiles at a suspected Islamist militant hideout in the Birmal area of the South Waziristan tribal region near the Afghanistan border, officials said. A drone strike in the same area killed two suspected militants on Saturday. -Reuters

US tries not to make waves with ‘Pacific Pivot’ Panetta arrives at former American base in Vietnam

TOKYO: Japan’s Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda said he will reshuffle his cabinet on Monday in an attempt to secure opposition support for passing legislation to increase a tax on sales. Defense Minister Naoki Tanaka and Transport, Land and Infrastructure Minister Takeshi Maeda are widely expected to lose their jobs. The leading opposition Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has called for both to be dismissed after they were censured by the upper house in April for a series of gaffes and for trying to influence a local election respectively. Farm Minister Michihiko Kano may also be replaced due to his alleged role in passing classified documents to a repatriated Chinese diplomat, whom police suspect of having engaged in spying activities, local media said. The prime minister told reporters Sunday about his plan for a cabinet reshuffle after failing to convince Ichiro Ozawa, leader of the largest intraparty group of Noda’s

Democratic Party, of his plan to hike the sales tax. “I told (Ozawa) that I will reshuffle the cabinet tomorrow,” he said. Noda met Ozawa on Sunday, for the second time in a week, to enlist support in enacting the tax bill during the current parliamentary session. But Ozawa, who has said economic growth should come before a tax hike, later told reporters he was “opposed to” Noda’s position, making it inevitable the premier will turn to the leading opposition for support. Noda has already told the secretary-general of his ruling Democratic Party of Japan to coordinate with the LDP so that the tax bill will be presented to a lower house vote before the session ends on June 21, local media reported. By passing the bill, Noda hopes to increase the current five percent sales tax rate in two stages - to eight percent in April 2014 and to 10 percent in October 2015 - to rein in the public debt of the rapidly ageing nation. -AFP

BEIJING: Police in China beat and detained political activists marking the 23rd anniversary of the brutal crackdown of the Tiananmen democracy protests on Sunday, rights campaigners said. Officers used violence against rights defenders in the southeast Fujian province and detained them, while more than 30 petitioners were held in Beijing and forced to return to their home province, the activists reported. “Around 20 rights defenders were stopped by police and beaten this morning on May First Square,” Shi Liping, the wife of activist Lin Bingxing, told AFP by phone from Fuzhou, capital of Fujian province. -AFP

Aid workers saved after death threat KABUL: NATO and Afghan forces launched a daring operation to rescue two female foreign aid workers and their two Afghan colleagues after learning the Taliban planned to kill one of the hostages, an intelligence official said Sunday. The troops carried out the successful mission before dawn Saturday, swooping in on helicopters to pluck the aid workers from a cave in a mountainous area of northern Badakhshan province. They killed the eight militants holding them captive as well, said Afghan intelligence spokesman Shafiqullah Tahiri. The militants hoped killing one of the hostages would pressure negotiators to accept their demands of a 1 million US dollar ransom and the release of five of their colleagues imprisoned in Kabul, said Tahiri. -AP

Suu Kyi returns to Myanmar after historic trip NAYPYIDAW: Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has returned to her homeland after testing the boundaries of the country’s political reform with her first foreign trip in over two decades. Suu Kyi said her visit to Thailand was “very satisfactory” as she strode through Yangon airport flanked by local journalists and photographers after being on Sunday readmitted to Myanmar. The democracy champion had previously refused to leave the country, even to visit her dying husband, because of fears the former junta would never allow her to return. -AFP

Spain calls for new euro fiscal authority

BUSINESS

mondAY, june 4, 2012

m ar ket watc h

See Page 7

OIL MARKETS

KUWAIT

DUBAI

QATAR

OMAN

ABU DHABI

BAHRAIN

EGYPT

1.16 % 6122

2.02% 1442

1.00% 8333

0.58% 5721

0.58% 2427

0.12% 1138

1.3% 4626

SAUDI

1.00% 6748

US Crude $83.26 $0.03 London Brent $98.63 $0.20 Kuwait Crude $96.18 $0.82 Information Courtesy: KAMCO

CURRENCIES US Dollar

British Pound

Saudi Riyal

Qatari Riyal

Indian Rupee

Euro

Japanese Yen

UAE Dirham

Bahraini Dinar

Philippine Peso

Buy 0.2799 Sell 0.2802 Buy 0.348 Sell 0.3485

Buy 0.43 Sell 0.4305

Buy 0.003587 Sell 0.003593

Buy 0.0746 Sell 0.0747

Buy 0.07621 Sell 0.07629

Buy 0.07697 Sell 0.07688 Buy 0.7423 Sell 0.74342

Buy 0.005045 Sell 0.005039 Buy 0.006448 Sell 0.006435

Prices in Kuwaiti fils as of June 3, 2012 Courtesy: KAMCO

KSE price index down 71.86 points, largest drop in 10 months Compiled by Al Watan Daily

KUWAIT: Kuwait’s index experiences its largest drop in 10 months as global market declines and a downbeat outlook for the local economy spur investors to sell. Price index decreased 71.86 points rising to the level of 6,121.96 points, weighted index down 3.8 points declining to 400.9 and the KSX index put on 9.4 points reaching 960 points. Number of trades amounted to 3,594, value of traded stocks 18,452,509.488 Kuwaiti dinars and volume of exchanged shares 186,060,558 Telecoms operator Zain drops 1.4 percent and Islamic lender Kuwait Finance House (KFH) dips 1.3 percent, with both stocks now trading at around 2009 levels. “In Kuwait, not much is happening economically and that is weighing on the market,” says Shahid Hameed, Global Investment House head of asset management for the Gulf region. “First-quarter corporate results were not strong. The main index is an all-price index so it doesn’t really show what has happened to bluechip stocks.” Three main indices of the national bourse were red upon closing Sunday’s session. Trading started at Kuwait Stock Exchange (KSE) with an all-red board on Sunday, with the price index reading 6,092.8 points at 9:45, on a down of 101.02 points, the weighted index reading 397.75 points on a slip of 6.95 points, and the KSX 15 index reading 952.03 on a loss of 17.37 points. Trades came to 994 transactions, worth KD 6,097,783.832, and 39,650,110 shares changed hands till that time. It was all red on the sector indices board as well, with only the utilities and insurance sector indices showing no change since last closing. Dollar gains

The US dollar opened the week on a strong footing

Sri Lankan workers chop fire wood at a store in Colombo on June 3, 2012. Sri Lanka recorded an impressive 8.3 percent growth rate last year, up from 8.0 percent in 2010, the first full year after troops defeated Tamil separatist rebels in May 2009 and declared an end to nearly 40 years of fighting. (AFP)

against most of its counterparts and continued to gain dramatically as concerns over global growth and risks emerging from the Euro zone debt crisis prompted risk aversion in the market. Additionally, the greenback continued its momen-

tum as economic data from the Euro area and the UK disappointed the market. However, on Friday, the greenback lost steam due to disappointing figures from the labor market, adding concerns over the US economy and fuelling the pos-

sibility of further easing from the FED. The euro opened at 1.2574 and reached a high of 1.2624 due to thin trading at the beginning of the week. Worries over Spain’s banking sector combined with talks of a Greek exit added more pressure on the single currency. The Euro dropped to a low of 1.2286 on Friday amid a disappointing US job report. The Euro then closed the week at 1.2337. The Sterling Pound followed suit with its European counterpart, opening the week at 1.5690 and reaching a high of 1.5717 in early trading sessions. The Sterling continued to lose momentum gradually following the deterioration in sentiment in the market. On Friday, the currency reached a low of 1.5265 amid figures that showed that the manufacturing sector is contracting at a faster-than-expected pace and closed the week at 1.5361. The Japanese Yen was the sole gainer against the US Dollar last week. It started the week at 79.54 and continued to gain gradually towards Friday. The USDJPY dropped dramatically after the release of the US job data to reach a low of 77.65. The JPY continued to trade in a volatile manner and closed the week at 78.04. The Australian Dollar lost its footing against the greenback amid figures that showed that the Chinese manufacturing sector is growing at a slower than expected rate. The Aussie reached a low of 0.9579 but quickly recouped some of its losses and closed at 0.9711. On the commodities side, US crude oil dropped more than nine percent last week, reaching the lowest point since the beginning of the year at $82.56 a barrel, after a weak US jobs report, and the EU region’s jobless rate reaching a record high, signaling a deeper recession across the region. Oil closed the week at $83.23. Gold rose 2.5 percent to break above $1,600 for the first time since May 10 on Friday, after weaker-than-expected US payrolls data fuelled expectations that the Federal Reserve could unleash another round of monetary easing to boost growth.

Group seeking International Investment Bank to buy EFG Hermes to appeal to regulator announces Q1 total income at $3.2 million CAIRO: Shareholders of Egyptian investment bank EFG-Hermes voted on Saturday against a group of investors seeking to buy the bank, but the investors will appeal to Egypt’s regulator to suspend the decision, the group targeting the bank said. The group, called Planet IB, said it intended to offer 13.50 Egyptian pounds (2.23 US dollars) per share to buy the Cairo-based investment bank, Egypt’s biggest. Shares in EFG closed at 10.99 pounds on Thursday, the last day of Egypt’s trading week. EFG shareholders voted to go ahead with an earlier plan to form a joint venture with Qatar’s QInvest that would give the Qatari firm control over EFG’s main business, Planet’s chairman, Mahmoud Abdel Latif, told Reuters. Alongside Abdel Latif, until recently chairman of Cairo-based AlexBank, Planet’s investors include Egyptian billionaire Naguib Sawiris and the son of the ruler of the Gulf emirate of Sharjah, Tariq bin Faisal Al-Qassimi. Abdel Latif said the EFG board had railroaded rejection of the offer through the meeting at a time when many of the shareholders were out of the room watching the verdict being read in the trial of Egypt’s ousted leader, Hosni Mubarak. “Around 50 percent were there, and these 50 percent were mostly people who were directed by the management to attend,” Abdel Latif said. Before the vote, “some of the 50 percent who were in the meeting went outside into the lobby of the hotel to watch TV and listen to the Mubarak verdict.” Neither of EFG’s two chief executives was answering the phones. Planet was asking the regulator to halt the process and have another vote taken after shareholders were allowed to hear Planet IB’s offer, Abdel Latif said. “I think that is fair to everybody,” he said. “Our legal argument is the process in the general

assembly was not really transparent and did not give people time to think, and that the board of directors directed the shareholders who attended to take a decision against Planet IB’s offer.” He said his group had sent a letter to the regulator and planned to meet with Egyptian Prime Minister Kamal Al-Ganzouri on Sunday to gain support for its buyout offer. Planet had earlier lined up investors and then asked EFG to give it a short amount of time to perform due diligence on the bank before making a tender offer on the Egyptian stock exchange, Abdel-Latif said. EFG’s market value has more than halved to less than 870 million US dollars since the national uprising that ousted Mabarak last year. The joint venture with QInvest would give the Qatari firm control over EFG’s main business. Sawiris, one of Egypt’s richest men, built a global telecoms empire by venturing into frontier markets with strong growth potential. Now 57, he has eased off day-to-day management of his empire after selling assets including Italian operator Wind and his most lucrative business, Algeria’s Djezzy, to Russia’s Vimpelcom in a deal worth $6 billion. EFG has securities brokerage, investment banking, asset management, research and private equity operations and a controlling interest in Lebanese lender Credit Libanais. Egyptian share prices have tumbled since Mubarak’s ouster, and many investors have been looking to snap up assets seen as undervalued. The bank came under further pressure on Wednesday, when its two chief executives, Hassan Heikal and Yasser El Mallawany, were referred to trial alongside Mubarak’s two sons as part of a probe into illegal share dealings. EFG said it would defend the two chief executive officers. -Reuters

KIPCO announces new HR appointment KUWAIT: The Kuwait Projects Company (KIPCO) has announced in a press release on Sunday the appointment of Khaled Al-Sharrad as Group Chief Hu-

Khaled Al-Sharrad, KIPCO’s new Group Chief HR & Admin Officer.

man Resources and Administration Officer. Al-Sharrad was previously Senior Executive Vice President, Head of Human Resources and Administration Division at KIPCO Asset Management Company (KAMCO). Al-Sharrad took up his new position with KIPCO on June 1. Samer Khanachet, KIPCO’s Group Chief Operating Officer, said, “We are delighted that Khaled has joined us. This is the first time we have appointed a head of human resources and administration across the KIPCO Group to oversee our HR and administration activities. Khaled will bring his vast experience and excellent management skills to bear on our organization and throughout the KIPCO Group.” Al-Sharrad said, “I am very pleased to be joining KIPCO because its corporate culture focuses on people and the sustainability of economic and social goals. I am looking forward to my new position where I will assist group companies develop their organizational culture to help employees to do their jobs even better”.

MANAMA: International Investment Bank (IIB), a globally focused investment bank based in the Kingdom of Bahrain operating in line with Shari’ah principles has announced its results for the three months ended March 31 2012. This was stated in a press release on Sunday. Total income for the first quarter was $3.2 million compared to $0.9 million a year earlier, mainly derived from investment banking fees and profit earned on funds placed with financial institutions. Total expenses reduced to $1.4 million in the period, a reflection of management’s stringent ongoing cost control policy. Share of loss from associates was $0.2 million compared with $0.7 million in the first quarter of 2011. After booking Gains on foreign exchange of $0.1 million, the Bank earned Net income of $1.7 million in the period compared with a net loss of $1.3 million in the same period last year. Total Assets at March 31 2012 were $151.4 million compared to $148.5 million at year end 2011. The increase principally arises from the purchase of investments of $3.4 million in 2012 funded partially by the profit

made during the first quarter. Capital Adequacy Ratio was 36 percent as at March 31 2012 versus the Central Bank of Bahrain’s minimum requirement of 12 percent, demonstrating IIB’s capacity to significantly increase its investment portfolio in the future from a regulatory capital perspective. Commenting on the Bank’s results, Saeed Abdul Jalil Mohammed Al-Fahim, Chairman of IIB, said: “Trading conditions in 2012 continue to be very challenging for investment banks for two principal reasons. Firstly, many investors have incurred significant losses during the past 3 years on their regional and global portfolios and have, therefore, been reluctant to commit to making new investments. Secondly, many regional banks have suspended the provision of financing of real estate development and private equity projects. Despite the challenging market environment, IIB’s stakeholders and investors have demonstrated their confidence in our strategy, that has resulted in IIB earning a net income of $1.7 million during the three-month period. During the current difficult global con-

MSLGROUP consolidates its Middle East offering through Capital MSL CAPITALS: MSLGROUP, the strategic communications and engagement network of Publicis Groupe has announced in a press release on Sunday that it will be consolidating its presence in the Middle East and North Africa through its Capital MSL brand. Through the growing network of Capital MSL offices in the region, MSLGROUP will provide the full range of strategic communication and engagement services building on Capital MSL’s reputation for delivering strong reputational management and powerfully effective outcomes for many of the region’s most ambitious companies, brands and organizations. This move is a step in the wider rationalization of Publicis Groupe PR brands following the launch of MSLGROUP in 2009. As part of this rationalization, MS&L MENA announced last week they would be re-branding to LeoComm to reflect the agency’s relationship with parent the Leo Burnett Group. “This new brand alignment will facilitate the ongoing growth of two strong and differentiated Publicis Groupe PR brands in the region which is good for clients, good for Publicis and good for the PR in-

dustry as a whole,” said Anders Kempe, President for MSLGROUP’s EMEA operations. The new alignment coincides with the announcement by Capital MSL of several significant new-business wins reflecting the strength and breadth of the firm’s offering in the Middle East. Following closely on the appointment of Capital MSL by BlackRock (Asset Management) and Saudi Telecommunications Company (STC) in the last quarter of 2011, Capital MSL has also recently picked up the corporate communications business for Abu Dhabi National Insurance Company (ADNIC), the World Economic Forum, Baring Asset Management, Warburg Pincus, the Rashid Centre for Diabetes Research and Delta Faucet. Capital MSL has been making a number of key hires in recent months as part of a strategic re-structuring of its operation as it gears up for expansion and continuing growth. There is an extremely good fit between our specialist and strategic communications expertise and the increasingly sophisticated requirements of clients across the MENA region.

ditions, the Bank has adopted the strategies of prudent investing, strict liquidity management and capital protection. IIB’s asset position demonstrates core strength with 40 percent of Total Assets represented by cash and short-term murabaha placements with financially-sound regional banks with a further seven percent invested in regional listed equities, giving a total liquidity position of 47 percent.” Commenting on the 2012 results, Aabed Al-Zeera, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Board member said: “Our strategy has been to structure and market to clients a range of attractive investment offerings in the manufacturing, financial, energy and real estate sectors in various countries. During 2012, IIB has concluded one investment banking transaction in Bahrain and also purchased shares in a regional quoted company. The Bank’s “pipeline” of potential transactions has enabled the Bank to evaluate several opportunities for possible future launches or direct investment. IIB’s balance sheet continues to be strong, evidenced by the fact that it had no borrowings or off balance sheet commitments during the year.”

Iraq’s oil exports drop by 2.2 percent in May

BAGHDAD: Iraq’s Oil Ministry says the country’s crude oil exports dropped by 2.2 percent from April to May due to increased domestic demand. Ministry spokesman Assem Jihad said Sunday that oil exports averaged 2.452 million barrels a day in May, down from an average of 2.508 million barrels a day in April. Jihad says Iraq earned eight billion US dollars from oil exports in May, compared to $8.8 billion in April. Domestic demand in Iraq usually increases during the hot summer months. Iraq holds the world’s fourth largest oil reserves, some 143.1 billion barrels. Oil income makes up nearly 95 percent of the government’s revenues. -AP

ALWATAN DAILY

BUSINESS

HSBC gets formal approval for Oman merger, names board, CEO DUBAI: Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC) Holdings has received formal regulatory approval to merge its business in Oman with local lender Oman International Bank, it said in a statement to the Muscat stock exchange on Sunday. The combined entity, named HSBC Bank Oman, begins operations today after gaining assent from the sultanate’s Ministry of Commerce & Industry, with shares in the bank to trade from Monday under the HBMO.OM ticker, the statement said. HSBC, Europe’s biggest bank, will own 51 percent of the new entity.

monday, june 4, 2012

Simon Cooper, chief executive of HSBC Middle East and North Africa, has been named chairman of HSBC Bank Oman, with Ewan Stirling appointed as chief executive, the statement said. Waleed Omer Abdul-Monem AlZawawi, previously a director on the OIB board, was named deputy chairman. Two other members of OIB’s current board, including its chairman, Juma Ali Juma Al-Juma, will sit on the merged entity’s board. The Gulf Arab state had briefly halted the merger after a creditor of the British bank filed an objection to the tie-up citing a pending lawsuit. -Reuters

Sunday 3 June, 2012 Index Price index Weighted Index KSX 15

MADRID: Spain, the latest combat zone in Europe’s long-running debt wars, urged the euro zone to set up a new fiscal authority to manage the bloc’s finances and send a clear signal to markets that the single currency project is irreversible. Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said the authority would also go a long way to alleviating Spain’s woes which, along with the prospect of a Greek euro exit, have threatened to derail the single currency project. It is not the first time a European leader has proposed creating such an authority but the problems and the size of Spain - a country deemed too big to fail - have prompted EU policymakers to hurriedly consider measures such as creating a fiscal and banking union ahead of a EU summit on June 28-29. Germany, the paymaster of the euro zone, and others insist such a move can only happen as part of a drive to much closer fiscal union and relinquishing of national sovereignty. Overspending in the regions and troubles with a banking sector badly hit by a property crash four years ago have sent Spain’s borrowing costs to record highs and pushed the country closer to seeking an international bailout. The risk premium investors demand to hold Spanish 10-year debt rather than German bonds rose to its highest since the launch of the euro - 548 basis points - on Friday. The Spanish government, which has hiked taxes, slashed spending, cut social benefits and bailed out troubled banks, argues that there is little else it can do and the European Union should now act to ease the country’s liquidity concerns. In private, senior Spanish officials have said this could be done by using European money to recapitalize directly ailing banks or through a direct intervention of the European Central Bank on the bond market. They have also said the euro zone should quickly move towards a fiscal union to complete its 13-year monetary union but Rajoy went a step further by making a formal offer. “The European Union needs to reinforce its architecture,” Rajoy said at an event in Sitges, in the north-eastern province of Catalonia. “This entails moving towards more integration, transferring more sovereignty, especially in the fiscal field. “And this means a compromise to create a new European fiscal authority which would guide the fiscal policy in the euro zone, harmonies the fiscal policy of member states and enable a centralized control of (public) finances,” he added. No taboos

He also said the authority would be in charge of managing European debts and should be constituted by countries of the euro zone meeting strict conditions. Earlier this week, ECB President Mario Draghi said EU leaders should break away from the incremental approach that has failed to get ahead of the euro zone debt crisis for more than two years and quickly clarify their vision for the future of the currency. Adding to growing pressure for dramatic policy action at this month EU leaders’ summit, he warned that the ECB could not fill the policy vacuum. Establishing a new authority could require a change in the EU treaties, a usually lengthy and politically painful process which requires ratification in all 27 member states of the bloc. A spokesman for Olli Rehn, the EU commissioner in charge of economic and monetary affairs, said draft legislation designed to step up financial discipline in the euro zone, would create such a fiscal authority by granting new powers to the EU’s executive. “This would grant enhanced powers to the European Commission on fiscal surveillance, including allowing the sanctioning of countries,” said Amadeu Altafaj. “Even before a budget is drafted and reaches the national parliament, the Commission could ask for a revision of the budgetary plans if it considers this would not allow a country to meet its fiscal commitments, and thereby could endanger financial stability.” Germany has said further integration in Europe was required, including additional controls on national public finances, and was ready to consider revising the treaties if needed. A day after Berlin supported giving Spain an extra year to cut its deficit down to the 3 percent of GDP threshold, Chancellor Angela Merkel said it should be possible for countries that violate fiscal rules to be sued in the European Court of Justice. The idea is already part of a new “fiscal compact” signed by 25 EU states and which is due to come into force next year. Several countries, including France, Austria and Finland, have already signaled they are not willing to give up their parliaments’ budgetary powers. Merkel also praised higher German wage deals and signaled flexibility on a financial transaction tax, in a sign she is open to new measures to boost growth in Europe. The comments, at a conference of her Christian Democrats (CDU) in Berlin, show that she is ready to heed calls for Germany to do more for growth but wants other euro states to accept giving up sovereignty over their budgets in exchange. “You can’t ask for euro bonds, but then not be prepared to take the next step towards closer integration,” she said. In an interview with Greek newspaper Vima, Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti said while he believed common bonds in the 17-nation euro zone would become a reality they should not become a “license to spend and burden others. With the debt crisis now centered on Spain’s teetering banking sector, talks are also under way on creating a banking union in the euro zone based on centralized supervision, a European deposit scheme and a central fund that would cope with failed lenders. Germany’s finance ministry said on Friday it was willing to consider this option in a mid-term perspective. “Not on the eve of the apocalypse”

Rajoy backed the idea on Saturday and said that the government would explain before the end of June how it would recapitalize Spain’s banking sector, which is currently being reviewed by independent auditors. Spain has picked the “Big Four” accounting firms KPMG, PwC, Deloitte and Ernst & Young to carry out a full, individual audit of its ailing banks, a source with knowledge of the decision told Reuters on Saturday. Moving away from pessimistic speeches in recent weeks, Rajoy said Spain would weather the financial storm by stepping up efforts to rein in public finances and by implementing structural reforms at national and European level. “We’re not walking on a bed of roses but we’re also not on the eve of the apocalypse,” he said. -Reuters

Low

6,193.04 404 32 404.32 967.94

6,083.33 397 26 397.26 951.08

Trades Value (KD)

Trades

124

25000

3 100 3,100

188

128

126

153,009

19,565

Last

124

188

Change

ź Ÿ

128

ŷ ź

-10 0 -10.0

Trades Value (KD)

Trades

104

406 250 406,250

42 251 42,251

120

120,926

14,765

0.0

SRE

260

255

51,999

13,360

PEARL

39,550

1,182

0.0

TAM

224

5,020,000

1,124,480

AREEC

160

100

MASSALEH ARABREC

91 35

20,999 2,015,519

1,911 69,599

2 58

0.0

-3.0

846,115

49,527

180

20,005 1,044,139

3,605 75,799

4 40

188 939.81

ź ź

-2.0 -14.22

106

104

59,637

6,282

106

-6.0

Volume

106

Low

124

188

KFOUC

High

186,082,908 18 458 896 18,458,896 3,599

URC

GPI Oil & Gas

Security

Volume Value (KWD) Number of Trades

NRE

4.0

ABAR

0.0

Last

104

124

Change

ź ź

260

224

160 91 35

Ÿ ź ź ź

-2 0 -2.0 -2.0

-5.0 0.5

0.0

-2.0

-5.0 -2.5

UREC

0.0

ERESCO

890,217

79,750

-2.0

MABANEE

950

920

1,456,030

1,348,579

INJAZZAT

164 010 164,010

10 269 10,269

INVESTORS

50 84

49 81

1,280,240 430,000

62,967 35,310

57 8

940

-30.0

620

610

588 000 588,000

358 980 358,980

ALQURAIN Basic Materials

214

210

303,166 950,803

64,025 429,286

24 47

212 970.11

ź ź

-2.0 -18.41

IRC ALTIJARIA SANAM

280,000

15,720

-3.0

KCEM

400

5,000

2,000

400

-5.0

AAYANRE

288,002

23,522

-2.0

REFRI

AQAR

20,000

1,880

CABLE

1,200

1,140

47,476

55,440

ALAQARIA

SHIP

200

320,000

64,000

-10.0

MAZAYA

675,424

51,122

PCEM

870

840

3,110

2,703

ADNC

PAPER

0.0

THEMAR

347,865

29,569

GRAND

0.0

TIJARA

2,171,001

81,366

TAAMEER

135,808

5,501

0.0

ARKAN

0.0

ARGAN

180

5,000

900

ABYAAR

13,915,029

600,630

126

0.0

MUNSHAAT

963,095

29,845

FIRSTDUBAI

2,260,547

88,643

KBT

10.0

REAM

MENA

16,000

620

-10.0

ALMUDON

MARAKEZ

-6.0 0.0

REMAL Real Estate

355

345

4,381,000 39,522,112

1,534,260 5,378,671

63 735

KINV

100

12,532

1,253

FACIL

270

265

51,990

13,787

BPCC ALKOUT

MRC

ACICO

GGMC

650

1,900

1,235

HCC

KPAK

KBMMC

NICBM

EQUIPMENT

NCCI

142

4,376

621

GYPSUM SALBOOKH

AGLTY

360

340

481,699

169,727

EDU

100

10,000

1,000

CLEANING CITYGROUP

118 0

116 0

736,005 0

86,296 0

55 0

610 0

1,180

ź ŷ

ŷ ź

200

870 0

Ÿ ŷ

650

ŷ ŷ

142

355

100

Ÿ ź

118 0

ź ŷ

-20.0 0.0

0.0

-40.0 10.0 0.0

-50.0

0.0

2.5

-8.0

KGL

102

451,804

45,694

102

-6.0

KCPC

330

310

11,553

3,583

330

-5.0

110

100

HUMANSOFT NAFAIS SAFWAN GFC

166,563

4,657

MAYADEEN

53,924,238

1,131,265

300

1,300

1,280

46,000

59,288

MTCC

786,828

67,860

UPAC

365

355

60,000

21,500

ALAFCO

CGC

110 30

1,280 88

Ÿ Ÿ Ÿ ź ź

355

280

0.0

6.0

IFA

5,960,844

238,434

136

NINV

116

112

2,847,354

321,653

KPROJ

320

310

1,091,020

343,476

COAST

443,657

20,469

TII

SECH

0.0

IIC

SGC

112

200

0.0

IFC

314,578

29,670

MARKAZ

114

20,000

2,280

KMEFIC

200

-3.0

AIG

ALAMAN

919,099

29,187

0.0

ALOLA

140

134

1,115,000

155,160

ALMAL GIH

0 32

0 30

0 5,129,930

0 158,071

0 96

0.0

2.5

0.5

-40.0 -1.0

-10.0

285

280

19,200

5,422

MUBARRAD

LOGISTICS

275

265

1,112,109

299,790

SCEM

GCEM

610,310

55,164

QCEM

974,590

61,414

FCEM

106

20 59,772,882

2 2,138,673

1 654

106 929.67

ź ź

-8.0 -3.45 3.45

0.0

RKWC Industrials KSH NSH PAPCO

102

8,177

834

CATTL

DANAH

174,670

15,037

POULT

275 0

ŷ ŷ

102 0

ŷ ŷ ŷ

126

0.0

-1.0

0.0

NIH

ISKAN MADAR

0 0

ATC

YIACO Health Care

445

435

108,520 108,520

47,226 47,226

13 13

440 1184.36

ź ź

-20 -16.46

KCIN

860

850

3,132

2,673

860

-40

KHOT

SULTAN

100

396,636

39,531

CABLETV

EYAS

IFAHR

375

325

2,550

949

MASHAER

265

250

368,660

93,894

OULAFUEL

295

265

60,346

17,488

MUNTAZAHAT

80,000

4,000

JAZEERA

99 0

375

265

295

ź ŷ Ÿ ŷ Ÿ

410

GNAHC

551,800

25,143

AMWAL

MASAR

ALIMTIAZ

244

2,500

610

0 1,029,207

0 173,316

0 90

0 941.23

ŷ ź

0 0.69 -0.69

700

680

860,047

593,271

690

-10

2,020

1,980

55,291

111,185

5,830,096 6,745,434

412,074 1,116,530

167 254

71 853.37

ź ź

-4 -27.63

1,040

UFIG KOUTFOOD Consumer Services

NMTC

HITSTELEC 72 Telecommunications NBK

1,040

1,020

3,247,050

3,315,274

110

GBK CBK

405 750

390 750

428,248 57,170

169,663 42,878

20 4

244

2,000

405 750

ŷ Ÿ

ź ź

6,043

1,000

MANAZEL

22,790,856 22 790 856

687 461 687,461

269

NIND

216

212

636,500

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Ÿ ź ŷ ŷ ŷ ź ź ŷ ź

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Spain calls for new euro fiscal authority

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LIFE

A vegetarian food label doesn’t mean low fat Food labeled “vegetarian” on its package or on a restaurant menu may not contain meat, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s low in fat. In fact, some vegetarian foods can be high in fat, including textured soy patties, soy hot dogs, soy cheese, refried beans and snack bars. Even tofu may have more fat than you might think: 4 ounces has about 95 calories and 6 fat grams, mostly from polyunsaturated fats. Even those practicing the healthy vegetarian lifestyle should be aware to read the Nutrition Facts panel on food labels to compare the calories and the nutrients in foods. A registered dietitian can help you with a vegetarian food plan that is also low in fat.

monday, JUNE 4, 2012

‘Smart bomb’ drug attacks breast cancer Research reveals CHICAGO: Doctors have successfully dropped the first “smart bomb” on breast cancer, using a drug to deliver a toxic payload to tumor cells while leaving healthy ones alone. In a key test involving nearly 1,000 women with very advanced disease, the experimental treatment extended by several months the time women lived without their cancer getting worse, doctors planned to report Sunday at a cancer conference in Chicago. More importantly, the treatment seems likely to improve survival; it will take more time to know for sure. After two years, 65 percent of women who received it were still alive versus 47 percent of those in a comparison group given two standard cancer drugs. That margin fell just short of the very strict criteria researchers set for stopping the study and declaring the new treatment a winner, and they hope the benefit becomes more clear with time. In fact, so many women on the new treatment are still alive that researchers cannot yet determine average survival for the group. “The absolute difference is greater than one year in how long these people live,” said the study’s leader, Dr. Kimberly Blackwell of Duke University. “This is a major step forward.” A warning to hopeful patients: the drug is still experimental, so not available yet. Its backers hope it can reach the market within a year. The treatment builds on Herceptin, the first gene-targeted therapy for breast cancer. It is used for about 20 percent of patients whose tumors overproduce a certain protein. Researchers combined Herceptin with a chemotherapy so toxic that it can’t be given by itself, plus a chemical to keep the two linked until they reach a cancer cell where the poison can be released to kill it. This double weapon, called T-DM1, is the “smart bomb,” although it’s actually not all that smart - Herceptin isn’t a homing device, just a substance that binds to breast cancer cells once it encounters them. Doctors tested T-DM1 in 991 women with widely spread breast cancer that was getting worse despite treatment with chemotherapy and ordinary Herceptin. They were given either TDM1 infusions every three weeks or infusions of Xeloda plus daily Tykerb pills - the only other treatments approved for such cases. The median time until cancer got worse was nearly 10 months in the women given T-DM1 versus just over 6 months for the others. That is about the same magnitude of benefit initially seen with Herceptin, which later proved to im-

connection between madness, genius

FILE - Breast cancer cells seen here in this undated file image.

prove overall survival, too, Blackwell said. T-DM1 caused fewer side effects than the other drugs did. Some women on T-DM1 had signs of liver damage and low levels of factors that help blood clot, but most did not have the usual problems of chemotherapy. “People don’t lose their hair, they don’t throw up. They don’t need nausea medicines, they don’t need transfusions,” said Blackwell, who has consulted in the past for Genentech, the study’s sponsor. “The data are pretty compelling,” said Dr. Michael Link, a pediatric cancer specialist at Stanford University who is president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the group hosting the Chicago conference where the results were being presented. “It’s sort of a smart bomb kind of therapy, a poison delivered to the tumor ... and not a lot of other collateral damage to other organs,” he said. Dr. Louis Weiner, director of Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, said the results strongly suggest T-DM1 improves survival. It delivers more drug directly to tumors

NASA to hunt black holes with new space telescope NEWYORK: After months of delay, NASA’s newest space telescope is just less than two weeks away from launching on an ambitious mission to seek out the universe’s black holes and investigate their mysterious origins according to LiveScience. The space agency’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) is slated to launch June 13 from Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. The X-ray space telescope will ride into orbit on a Pegasus XL rocket from Orbital Sciences, which is designed to launch in midair from a rocket-carrying aircraft. The mission has been awaiting launch since March, when NASA delayed its liftoff pending a review of the rocket. NuSTAR will study how black holes form and grow, and how these processes affect their host galaxies, said Fiona Harrison, principal investigator of the NuSTAR mission at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, Calif. “It’s the very first telescope to focus high-energy X-rays,” Harrison told reporters today (May 30) in a news briefing. “This will enable NuSTAR to study some of the hottest, densest and most energetic phenomena in the universe, for example black holes and explosions of massive stars.” NuSTAR will examine these objects with unprecedented sensitivity by studying light in the high-energy, short-wavelength X-ray range. Images beamed back from NuSTAR will be 10 times sharper than current X-ray observatories in orbit, Harrison said.“It’s opening up a new window on the universe,” said Paul Hertz, director of the astrophysics division at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. “Although we are going into this mission with many scientific questions, like all of our NASA missions, we’re going to find unexpected things out there that will lead us to questions and answers that we aren’t even anticipating at this time.” NuSTAR was originally scheduled to launch in March, but was delayed after NASA decided more time was needed to review software on the Pegasus XL rocket. The delay meant that the mission, which carried an initial price tag of about $165 million, increased by several million dollars, or a few percent, Hertz said. NuSTAR’s science missions, however, were not impacted by the extra time required for the rocket’s software review. NuSTAR will examine the innermost regions of black holes, where hot material is accelerated close to the speed of light, boosting emissions into the high-energy X-ray range, Harrison explained. In these areas, light is bent and severely distorted by the black hole’s strong gravity. By studying atoms in the X-ray band as they are drawn into the black hole, researchers will be able to see the effects of a black hole’s intense gravity. These observations will let scientists watch as a black hole feeds and grows, and will offer them a glimpse of the environment surrounding these cosmic giants, said Daniel Stern, NuSTAR project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. But NuSTAR is also designed to study other intriguing phenomena in our galaxy and the universe, Stern added, including the remnants of massive stars that end their lives in violent supernova explosions, high-speed particle jets, ultra-dense neutron stars, and coronal mass ejections and flares from the sun.

with less side effects, “a clear advance,” he said. Denise Davis, 51, a customer service representative at a propane company, was diagnosed three years ago with breast cancer that had spread to her liver and bones. Since February of last year, the Lynchburg, Va., woman has made the two-hour trip to Duke in Durham, N.C., every three weeks to get infusions of T-DM1. “I call it ‘Herceptin-plus,’” she said. Scans every six weeks show “everything is still shrinking or stable,” she said. “Right now, I’m feeling pretty good about it. The only way I’d feel a little better is if it took care of everything, but I’ll take what I can get.” Genentech, part of the Swiss company Roche, plans to seek approval later this year to sell the drug in Europe and the United States. Another company, ImmunoGen Inc., made the technology combining the drugs. Genentech says the price of T-DM1 has not been determined. Herceptin costs more than $4,000 a month plus whatever doctors charge to infuse it. Herceptin’s US patent doesn’t expire until 2019. -AP

NEW YORK: Many of history’s most celebrated creative geniuses were mentally ill, from renowned artists Vincent van Gogh and Frida Kahlo to literary giants Virginia Woolf and Edgar Allan Poe. Today, the fabled connection between genius and madness is no longer merely anecdotal. Mounting research shows these two extremes of the human mind really are linked - and scientists are beginning to understand why according to LiveScience. A panel of experts discussed recent and ongoing research on the subject in New York as part of the 5th annual World Science Festival. All three panelists suffer from mental illnesses themselves. Kay Redfield Jamison, a clinical psychologist and professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, said the findings of some 20 or 30 scientific studies endorse the notion of the “tortured genius.” Of the many varieties of psychosis, creativity appears to be most strongly linked to mood disorders, and especially bipolar disorder, which Jamison suffers from herself. For example, one study tested the intelligence of 700,000 Swedish 16-year-olds and then followed up a decade later to learn which of them had developed mental illnesses. The startling results were published in 2010. “They found that people who excelled when they were 16 years old were four times as likely to go on to develop bipolar disorder,” she said. Bipolar disorder entails dramatic mood swings between extreme happiness (known as “mania”) and severe depression. How might this brutal cycle engender creativity? Research by another panelist, James Fallon, a neurobiologist at the University of California-Irvine, suggests an answer. “People with bipolar tend to be creative when they’re coming out of deep depression,” Fallon said. When a bipolar patient’s mood improves, his brain activ-

ity shifts, too: activity dies down in the lower part of a brain region called the frontal lobe, and flares up in a higher part of that lobe. Amazingly, the very same shift happens when people have bouts of creativity. “There [is] this nexus between these circuits that have to do with bipolar and creativity,” Fallon said. As for how the brain patterns translate into conscious thought, Elyn Saks, a mental health law professor at the University of Southern California, explained that people with psychosis don’t filter stimuli as well as other people. Instead, they’re able to entertain contradictory ideas simultaneously, and become aware of loose associations that most people’s unconscious brains wouldn’t consider worthy of sending to the surface of our consciousness. While the invasion of nonsense into conscious thought can be overwhelming and disruptive, “it can be quite creative, too,” said Saks, who developed schizophrenia as a young adult. For example, word association studies, which ask participants to list all the words that come to mind in relation to a stimulus word (such as “tulip”), demonstrate that bipolar patients undergoing mild mania can generate three times as many word associations in a given time period as the general population. As for how this leads to strokes of genius, it could be that the sheer bounty of unsuppressed ideas means a greater probability of producing something profound. Of course, no one is bursting with creative energy during a severe bout of depression or schizophrenia. Above all, these conditions are debilitating and even life-threatening, the scientists said, and although society benefits from the productivity of its tortured geniuses, those individuals don’t always consider their moments of brilliance to be worth the extensive suffering. Saks put it this way: “I think the creativity is just one part of something that is mostly bad.”

Two new elements on periodic table get names NEWYORK: Two of the heaviest elements on the periodic table were officially named over the weekend according to LiveScience.The man-made elements 114 and 116, which contain 114 and 116 protons per atom, respectively, are now officially called flerovium (Fl) and livermorium (Lv). The names were chosen to honor the laboratories that first created the elements: the Flerov Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions in Dubna, Russia, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif. Scientists at the two institutions collaborated to synthesize both of these heavy elements by smashing calcium, which has 20 protons, into curium, which contains 96 protons. When these atomic nuclei collided (the electrons were stripped off beforehand, rendering the atoms into ions), they glommed together to create element 116. Such large “super-heavy” elements are not stable, so element 116 decayed almost immediately into element 114. In separate trials, the researchers created 114 independently by slamming together calcium and plutonium, which has 94 protons.The elements were first made more than 10 years ago, but subsequent testing was required to

confirm the fleeting elements’ existence. The elements’ official names were not approved until now by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), which governs chemical nomenclature. Before they got their official names, flerovium and livermorium were temporarily called ununquadium and ununhexium, roughly based on the Latin words for the numbers 114 and 116. Four other super-heavy elements - 113, 115, 117 and 118 - have the temporary names of ununtrium, ununpentium, ununseptium, and ununoctium, and are waiting for their permanent monikers. “These names honor not only the individual contributions of scientists from these laboratories to the fields of nuclear science, heavy element research, and superheavy element research, but also the phenomenal cooperation and collaboration that has occurred between scientists in these two countries,” Bill Goldstein, associate director of Lawrence Livermore lab’s Physical and Life Sciences Directorate, said in a statement. The Flerov lab is named for Georgiy N. Flerov (19131990), a Russian pioneer of heavy-ion physics who dis-

Three rare elephants found dead in Indonesia PARIS:Three critically-endangered Sumatran elephants have been found dead in an oil palm plantation in western Indonesia and are believed to have been poisoned, an NGO said Saturday. Villagers found the dead animals on Thursday in a government-owned oil palm plantation in the eastern part of Aceh province. They were estimated to be four and five years old, local environmental group Fakta said. “We suspected that they died after consuming bars of soap laced with poison we found near the carcass,” the group’s chief Rabono Wiranata told AFP. “It seems that the elephants have died around one week,” he said. The animals are usually either killed by villagers, who regard the beasts as pests that destroy their

plantations, or by poachers for their tusks. Early last month, two other Sumatran elephants were found dead in the west of the province. There are fewer than 3,000 Sumatran elephants remaining in the wild, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, marking a 50 percent drop in numbers since 1985. WWF changed the Sumatran elephant’s status from “endangered” to “critically endangered” in January, largely due to severe habitat loss driven by oil palm and paper plantations. Conflicts between humans and animals are increasing as people encroach on wildlife habitats in Indonesia, an archipelago with some of the world’s largest remaining tropical forests. -AFP

FILE - a 2-week old Sumatran elephant, plays with his mother Kartini at Indonesian Safari Park in Bogor, West Java, Indonesia, Thursday, Jan. 20, 2011. (AFP)

covered the spontaneous fission of uranium.The Lawrence Livermore lab was founded by E.O. Lawrence (1901-1958), an American physicist and Nobel laureate who already has an element, Lawrencium, or element 103, named after him. In addition to helping discover flerovium and livermorium, scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Lab were collaborators on the projects that first created elements 113, 115, 117 and 118. The creation of heavier and heavier elements is important not just for its novelty, but for the chance that soon scientists will find an “island of stability,” an undiscovered region in the periodic table where heavy elements become stable again. If very heavy elements could exist for longer than nanoseconds, researchers hope they could experiment on them, and develop uses for them. In 2011, three other new super-heavy elements, 110, 111 and 112, were officially christened darmstadtium (Ds), roentgenium (Rg) and copernicium (Cn), after the German city of Darmstadt, where they were created, as well as the German physicist Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen and the Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus.

Earth-threatening asteroid pushed around by sunlight

NEW YORK: Sunlight has a subtle effect on asteroids, pushing them around ever so slightly. This Yarkovsky effect, as it’s called, is caused when sunlight is absorbed and re-emitted as heat. Now scientists have measured the precise change in an asteroid’s orbit caused by this according to LiveScience. Asteroid 1999 RQ36 is about one-third of a mile wide (0.5 km). Its path around the sun has been altered by about 100 miles (160 km) over the past 12 years due to the Yarkovsky effect, the study finds. The orbit of the space rock - which crosses Earth’s path, presenting the remote chance of a future collision - was measured by the ground-based Arecibo and Goldstone radar stations in 1999 and 2005. Last September, another set of observations revealed the orbital change. The Yarkovsky effect is named for a 19th-century Russian engineer who first proposed the idea that a small rocky space object would, over long periods of time, be noticeably nudged in its orbit by the slight push created when it absorbs sunlight and then re-emits that energy as heat. The tiny effect is difficult to measure. “The Yarkovsky force on 1999 RQ36 at its peak, when the asteroid is nearest the sun, is only about a half-ounce - about the weight of three grapes on Earth,” said study team member Steven Chesley of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “Meanwhile, the mass of the asteroid is estimated to be about 68 million tons. You need extremely precise measurements over a fairly long time span to see something so slight acting on something so huge.” Because asteroid 1999 RQ36 hangs out in the vicinity of Earth, and could someday threaten to hit the planet, scientists are curious where its changing orbit will take it in the future. Chesley and his colleagues used the new measurements to show that the asteroid passed (or will pass) within 4.6 million miles (7.5 million km) of Earth 11 times from the years 1654 to 2135. In 2135, the space rock will make its closest brush with us, swinging by Earth at about 220,000 miles (350,000 km) away. That’s closer than the moon, which orbits about 240,000 miles from Earth. What happens after that gets harder to predict. “The new results don’t really change what is qualitatively known about the probability of future impacts,” Chesley said. “The odds of this potentially hazardous asteroid colliding with Earth late in the 22nd century are still calculated to be about one in a few thousand.” NASA plans to launch the OSIRIS-Rex mission in 2016 to collect a sample from 1999 RQ36 and return it to Earth.

ALWATAN DAILY

CULTURE

MONday, JUNE 4, 2012

Crowds brave rain for Queen Elizabeth’s giant jubilee armada

Britain’s Queen Elizabeth waves from onboard the Spirit of Chartwell, as it approaches Westminster Bridge during her Diamond Jubilee Pageant on the River Thames in London June 3, 2012. (Reuters)

LONDON: Queen Elizabeth joined a spectacular armada of 1,000 vessels on Sunday for the most dazzling display of British pageantry seen on London’s River Thames for 350 years, watched by cheering crowds celebrating her 60th year on the throne. Pealing bells greeted the flotilla as the queen’s gilded royal barge sailed alongside a colorful and eclectic array of boats from leisure cruisers and yachts to a Hawaiian war canoe and Venetian gondolas. Typically inclement British weather failed to dampen enthusiasm, with hundreds of thousands of onlookers, waving “Union Jack” flags, massed on the riverbanks to catch a glimpse of the procession along the seven mile (11 km route). The queen, wearing a silver and white dress with a matching coat, smiled broadly and waved to the crowds from the royal barge, “The Spirit of Chartwell”, alongside her 90-year-old husband Prince Philip. They were accompanied on the barge by heir-to-thethrone Prince Charles, his eldest son Prince William and new wife Kate, a global fashion trendsetter who wore a vivid red Alexander McQueen dress and matching hat. Up and down the country, organizers said millions of people attended diamond jubilee street parties in honor of the 86-year-old sovereign, the only British monarch after Queen Victoria to have sat on the throne for 60 years. “We’re English, we know what the weather is like. We really don’t care if we get wet you know - it’s the jubilee, it’s the queen, so it’s nice to come up and celebrate it,” said Jackie, a 39-year-old sales consultant who travelled across southern England to watch the Thames pageant. From New Zealand Maoris who paddled their canoe wearing traditional cloaks to sailors and people dressed as pirates, the flotilla boasted a colorful array of participants from every corner of the planet. There were even vessels from the 1940 evacuation of British and Allied troops from Dunkirk in northern France - a famous rescue performed by crafts of all shapes and sizes and a celebrated piece of British history. Organizers said Sunday’s river pageant, reminiscent of a Canaletto canvas from the 18th century, was the largest of its kind since a similar spectacle was held for King Charles II and his consort Catherine of Braganza in 1662. Churchill and Eisenhower

Other craft included Motor Torpedo Boat 102 on which Allied Forces commander General Dwight Eisenhower and British Prime MinisterWinston Churchill inspected warships before the 1944 D-Day invasion of Nazi-occupied France.

Guns are fired on the banks of the River Thames to celebrate Britain’s Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee in London, June 3, 2012. (Reuters)

Historians and commentators say the pomp and spectacle of British royal occasions gives the country a sense of national pride at a time when the economy is in recession and people face deep austerity measures. Street Parties

Fireworks explode over Tower Bridge during the Thames Diamond Jubilee Pageant on the River Thames in London on June 3 2012, where 1,000 vessels of all shapes and sizes will be part of the Diamond Jubilee river Pageant. (AFP)

The flotilla passed under 14 bridges and past landmarks including the Houses of Parliament, St Paul’s Cathedral, and the Tower of London, after the picturesque Tower Bridge bascules were raised in salute. Another boat taking part, “Amazon”, featured in diamond jubilee celebrations for Queen Victoria, Elizabeth’s great-great-grandmother, held in 1897 when Britain’s empire spanned much of the globe. The jubilee pageant appeared on news sites around the world and was among the top trending topics on the Twitter micro blogging site, with messages ranging from congratulatory to comic. “Booze cruise” wrote @Queen_UK, an irreverent and unofficial spoof twitter handle written from the queen’s perspective. Although the queen is still head of state in 16

countries from Australia and Canada to tiny Tuvalu in the Pacific Ocean and head of the Commonwealth, Britain is a shadow of its former imperial self. Nevertheless, interest in the pageant and affection for Queen Elizabeth extended to former colonies such as Canada. “I admire Queen Elizabeth II for her extraordinary grace and diligence,” marketing expert Amanda Batchelor told Reuters from her home in Toronto where she was watching on television. “The fact that she remains relevant to millions of people - in the UK and abroad - over six decades of rapid change is testimony to her longevity. She is a sign of stability and security. She is a kind of living history.”

Hong Kong’s mother tongue hushed as Mandarin gets louder HONG KONG: At the age of 10, Hong Kong student Miranda Lam can hold a conversation and write in both English and Mandarin Chinese. But ask her to speak to her grandmother and she shakes her head. “I don’t know what she says sometimes,” she says. Her grandmother speaks Cantonese, Hong Kong’s official language. But Miranda’s parents both Cantonese speakers themselves - have chosen to limit the time they speak it at home. Instead, they talk to Miranda mainly in English and Mandarin, to improve her chances of attending an international school. To linguists, Miranda’s struggle to speak her mother tongue is a worrying indication of how Cantonese may be under threat in Hong Kong from the spread of Mandarin, the official language of mainland China. “It is difficult to calculate the timing but in the medium- to long-term, Cantonese is an endangered language” in Hong Kong, said Stephen Matthews, an associate professor in linguistics at the University of Hong Kong. It might survive for 50 years or so but after 50 years, it will still exist but it may well be on its way out.” Cantonese is the language of the streets, courts and the Legislative Council in the city of 7.1

FILE - Cantonese is the language of the streets, courts and the Legislative Council in Hong Kong, a city of 7.1 million people. (dpa)

million people. Although its written form shares the same roots as Mandarin, it differs in pronunciation and grammar which, according to linguists, makes it a distinct language rather than dialect. Matthews, who has lived in Hong Kong for 20 years, believes the threat to Cantonese comes from current policies and changing attitudes towards Mandarin, also known as Putonghua, since the territory was handed back to China by Britain in 1997. “Putonghua was pretty much invisible in the early 1990s,” he said. “Before the handover a number of friends and students would say ‘I don’t want to learn Putonghua. I’m not interested’.” “But then around the time of the handover they said ‘Maybe we should start learning Putonghua.’ They were talking about it. Now, of course, everyone is doing it.” Matthews believes one significant factor is that schools have begun switching from Cantonese to Mandarin for the teaching of Chinese literacy, a move that improves students’ Mandarin but which appears to have a detrimental effect on their Cantonese. More than 160 primary schools are currently using Mandarin in Chinese language lessons after a government policy encouraging a switch from

Cantonese was introduced in 2003. Then there are the students like Miranda who are sent to international schools. “Their Cantonese is suffering. It is undergoing attrition,” said Matthews, using a technical term for the process by which people lose their native language. Another factor influencing the shift is the rising flow of mainland visitors, whose numbers have soared since cross-border travel was made easier in recent years. In response, shops, restaurants and hotels are increasing their use of Mandarin. The move has angered some and earlier this month a group staged a demonstration outside clothing chain Giordano after it began using the simplified Chinese characters used in mainland China, rather than the traditional characters understood by Cantonese speakers. Thomas Lee, professor of linguistics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, is less pessimistic and believes Cantonese is “still very much alive.” But he warned it needed to remain in use in mainstream education to avoid becoming marginalized, pointing to the decline of Shanghainese - now reckoned to be spoken by less than 50 per cent of people in China’s second city - as an example of how dialects and languages can decline in a matter of generations. Lee said while he appreciated the benefits of schools switching to Mandarin, education officials should consider implementing the switch in higher levels only rather than all levels of schools. “For a language to really thrive and develop, it requires not just home use,” he said. “It requires use in literature and cultural arts and all the complicated domains of language use.” One concern expressed by Lee was that the Hong Kong government might follow “the underlying assumptions of the central government policy” that it was economically and socially preferable to have a single, unifying language. University of Hong Kong linguistics student Tsui Wa Han said it would be a “cultural disaster” for Cantonese to die out. “If Cantonese becomes extinct, some of our cultural heritage would follow suit,” Tsui wrote in an essay. “Cantonese opera would not be sustainable and beautiful, idiosyncratic expressions ... would be lost forever. -dpa

Across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, street parties were being held to mark the occasion. Prince Charles and his wife Camilla dropped into one in central London before the pageant, joining in a rousing rendition of the national anthem. While the queen and the royal party braved the elements under a golden canopy on a barge in the middle of the Thames, the wet conditions proved too much for Prime Minister David Cameron, who moved his Downing Street party indoors. That said, the government hoped the festivities would mark the start of a summer of revelry capped off by the Olympic Games in London, raising the public’s spirits and their poll ratings. “What is great is that we have the jubilee and then the Olympics. We should show how great we are in Britain,” said Joanne Richmond, 61, from central England, who was in London for the queen’s coronation as a two-year-old. However, economists have warned that the extra public holidays will hit Britain’s already ailing economy, potentially prolonging a recession. The celebrations come as polls show the overwhelming backing for the monarchy, which has overcome a slump in the 1990s following marital infidelities and the death of the hugely popular Princess Diana in a 1997 Paris car crash However, not everyone in London was cheering as about 100 republicans waving banners demanding “Votes not Boats” and “Make Monarchy History” staged a protest near Tower Bridge. “Her achievement is just staying alive, doing little and saying less,” Graham Smith, head of campaign group Republic, told Reuters. Even republicans acknowledge there is almost no chance that the queen will be ousted and take solace in indications many Britons are simply indifferent -- 2 million people are leaving the country to take advantage of the extended public holiday. Celebrations will continue today with a pop concert outside Elizabeth’s London residence Buckingham Palace and conclude with a service of thanksgiving at St. Paul’s Cathedral on Tuesday followed by a carriage procession. -Reuters

Rare copy of Book of Mormon reported stolen from Arizona store PHOENIX: Police searched during the weekend for clues to the suspected theft of a rare, first-edition copy of the Book of Mormon, valued at $100,000, that was reported stolen from a suburban Phoenix bookstore over the Memorial Day weekend. The authorities said they were in the early stages of an investigation into the disappearance of the 1830 leather-bound volume, which its owner said has became a must-see artifact for young Mormons worldwide before embarking on church missions. “At this time we have no specific information of the whereabouts of the book,” said Detective Steve Berry, a Mesa, Arizona police spokesman. “I don’t think it’s a big secret the book was there. But I don’t think everyone knows how valuable it is.” The Book of Mormon is a foundational, holy text of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The 588-page book missing since Monday is one of only 5,000 copies ever printed, said its owner, bookstore owner and proprietor Helen Schlie. The Book of Mormon was published in 1830 by church founder Joseph Smith, who claimed the manuscript came from his translation of an ancient “reformed Egyptian” text engraved on golden plates he found buried, with the guidance of an angel, in a stone box near his home in New York state. Schlie, who bought the first-edition print in the late 1960s, told Reuters that she discovered the book was missing when she went to retrieve it for two missionaries visiting from Asia. The women wanted to take a picture with it. Such requests are common. The cramped store, overflowing with books, has a special area set aside for people to take pictures with the famous text. Emotional reactions to touching the book are common, she said. Schlie, 88, said she was stunned when she went into her office, opened the bottom draw of an unlocked file cabinet where the book was kept in fireproof box, and the volume was nowhere to be found. “I still can’t believe it,” she told Reuters. “It’s been so much a part of my life for years, and now it’s gone. It’s been a shock.” Schlie, a convert to the Mormon faith whose store is a block away from a large Mormon temple in downtown Mesa, sparked controversy in 2005 when she started to sell framed pages out of the book for between $2,500 and $4,000. She has said her intention was to earn enough money to open an ice cream parlor that would generate revenue for Mormon youths to help pay for their missions and perhaps future education. About 50 pages were sold before the weekend disappearance of the book, whose total value Schlie puts at about $100,000. All that remains in her possession at the moment is a single framed page, from Chapter 5. Schlie said it was important for the book be returned, so it can “finish its mission.” “Someone said the person who took it should read it, ponder it and then return it. That sounds right,” she said. -Reuters

ALWATAN DAILY

ENTERTAINMENT

Song Of The Day

Fahad AlSabah Staff Writer

Song: No Problem (Feat. Flinch & My Name Is Kay) Artist: Diplo Album: Express Yourself - EP Genre: Dance In short: Diplo brought out the big guns for his latest EP, although the songs feature mostly unknown people, the productions are top notch. “No Problem” is the perfect workout song - not even this dust storm could stop you when you’re blasting this one. To listen to the song visit www.alwatandaily.com E-mail your feedback to falsabah@alwatandaily.com

The Buzz Fans toss chairs after Buffalo concert canceled Fans of the country music singer Eric Church smashed chairs and threw bottles and cans after his planned concert in Buffalo was canceled due to bad weather. The Buffalo News reports organizers of the WYRK Taste of Country concert decided to halt the multi-act show at around 11 p.m. Friday after strong winds threatened the stage at Buffalo’s Coca Cola Field. Church had originally been scheduled to go on at about 9:45 p.m. Some fans, who had been waiting in heavy rain, responded by hurling chairs onto the stage, or dumping them into large piles. Some witnesses described the scene as frightening. The singer issued a statement saying he was “bummed” about the cancellation, but planned to return to Buffalo at a later date. -AP

monDAY, JUNE 4, 2012

Family Feud TV host Richard Dawson dies at 79 LOS ANGELES: Richard Dawson, the wisecracking British entertainer who was among the schemers in the 1960s TV comedy “Hogan’s Heroes” and a decade later began kissing thousands of female contestants as host of the game show “Family Feud” has died. He was 79. Dawson, also known to TV fans as the Cockney prisoner-of-war Cpl. Peter Newkirk on “Hogan’s Heroes,” died Saturday night from complications related to esophageal cancer at Ronald Reagan Memorial Hospital, his son Gary said. The game show, which initially ran from 1976 to 1985, pitted families who tried to guess the most popular answers to poll questions such as “What do people give up when they go on a diet?” Dawson won a daytime Emmy Award in 1978 as best TV game show host. Tom Shales of The Washington Post called him “the fastest, brightest and most beguilingly caustic interlocutor since the late great Groucho bantered and parried on ‘You Bet Your Life.’” The show was so popular it was released as both daytime and syndicated evening versions. He was known for kissing each woman contestant, and at the time the show bowed out in 1985, executive producer Howard Felsher estimated that Dawson had kissed “somewhere in the vicinity of 20,000.” “I kissed them for luck and love, that’s all,” Dawson said at the time. He reprised his game show character in a much darker mood in the 1987 Arnold

FILE - This June 1978 file photo shows Richard Dawson, host of “Family Feud” in character. (AP)

Schwarzenegger film “The Running Man,” playing the host of a deadly TV show set in a totalitarian future, where convicts try to escape as their executioners stalk them. “Sat-

urday Night Live” mocked him in the 1970s, with Bill Murray portraying him as leering and nasty, even slapping one contestant (John Belushi) for getting too fresh.

TV’s Push Girls break wheelchair boundaries

The British-born actor already had gained fame as the fast-talking Newkirk in “Hogan’s Heroes,” the CBS comedy about prisoners in a Nazi POW camp who hoodwink their captors and run the place themselves. Despite its unlikely premise, the show made the ratings top 10 in its first season, 1965-66, and ran until 1971. Both “Hogan’s Heroes” and “Family Feud” have had a second life in recent years, the former on DVD reissues and the latter on cable television’s GSN, formerly known as the Game Show Network. On Dawson’s last “Family Feud” in 1985, the studio audience honored him with a standing ovation, and he responded: “Please sit down. I have to do at least 30 minutes of fun and laughter and you make me want to cry.” “I’ve had the most incredible luck in my career,” he told viewers. “I never dreamed I would have a job in which so many people could touch me and I could touch them,” he said. That triggered an unexpected laugh. Producers brought out “The New Family Feud,” starring comedian Ray Combs, in 1988. Six years later, Dawson replaced Combs at the helm, but that lasted only one season. According to the Internet Movie Database, Dawson was born Colin Lionel Emm in 1932 in Gosport, England. His first wife was actress Diana Dors, the blond bombshell who was Britain’s answer to Marilyn Monroe. -AP

Desperate Housewives actress Kathryn Joosten dies at 72

George Lucas names Kennedy as Lucasfilm successor Filmmaker George Lucas on Friday named veteran producer Kathleen Kennedy as his co-chair and successor at the iconic film studio he founded four decades ago. Kennedy and Lucas will serve as board co-chairs at Lucasfilm Ltd. as the “Star Wars” creator moves forward with his retirement plans. Lucas, 68, will continue as CEO and work with Kennedy as she transitions into her new role at Lucasfilm, the San Franciscobased company said. The legendary filmmaker said he chose Kennedy as his successor because he was looking for “someone with great creative passion and proven leadership abilities, but also someone who loves movies.” In recent months, Lucas has told reporters he plans to move away from producing big-budget movies so he can focus on smaller, art-house films. Kennedy will step down from her role at The Kennedy/ Marshall Co. and shift responsibilities to her partner Frank Marshall. Together they have produced Academy Awardnominated films such as “War Horse,” ‘’The Adventures of Tintin,” ‘’The Sixth Sense” and “Sea Biscuit.” Over the past three decades, Kennedy has worked with Steven Spielberg to produce blockbuster films such as “E.T.,” ‘’Schindler’s List,” and the “Indiana Jones” and “Jurassic Park” franchises. Kennedy, 58, said she feels fortunate that Lucas will work with her for the “next year or two” as she moves into her new job. “It is nice to have Yoda by your side,” Kennedy said in a statement. -AP

Facebook, Grey’s Anatomy win GLAAD awards GLAAD likes Facebook. The social networking site won the Special Recognition Award at the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation’s 23rd annual Media Awards. Other honorees at Saturday’s ceremony in San Francisco included “Grey’s Anatomy” for drama series, “Days of Our Lives” for daily drama series, Max J. Rosenthal of The Huffington Post for digital journalism article, Wells Fargo for the Corporate Leader Award and “Grey’s Anatomy” creator Shonda Rhimes for the Golden Gate Award. The awards salute fair, accurate and inclusive representation of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community and the issues that affect their lives in the media. Other winners from among this year’s 35 categories were honored at ceremonies in New York and Los Angeles earlier this year. -AP

Matthew Fox pleads ‘no contest’ to DUI ET has learned that Matthew Fox has pleaded no contest to one count of DUI in exchange for no jail time, reports ET Online. The former “Lost” star was arrested in Bend, Oregon over the first weekend of May on suspicion of driving under the influence while he was on his way to a fast food restaurant at about 3:30 a.m. The Deschutes County D.A. confirmed that as part of the deal, the actor is required to complete a drug and alcohol program within one year from now. If he complies with all the court’s orders, the case will be dismissed. Fox was not present today in court.

Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’ son gets football scholarship Justin Combs, the 18-year-old son of hip-hop mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs, will attend UCLA on a $54,000 football scholarship. It is one of 285 athletic scholarships the university hands out every year. But it comes at a time when student fees are rising and a year after the university had to use more than $2 million in student fees to cover an athletic department funding gap. UCLA says, however, that athletic scholarships are funded by ticket sales, corporate partnerships, media contracts and private donations. The Los Angeles Times says the senior Combs is worth an estimated $475 million and gave his son a $360,000 Maybach car for his 16th birthday. And Justin Combs has defended the scholarship in a tweet, saying he put the work in. -AP

FILE - Actress Kathryn Joosten attends the Nathalie Dubois Pre-Emmy Gift Suite at Luxe Hotel on Sept. 16, 2011 in Beverly Hills, California. (AFP)

In this photo provided by the Sundance Channel, “Push Girls” stars, Auti Angel, left, and Mia Schaikewitz, right, dance it out at key locations throughout New York City on May 31, 2012 in New York. (AP)

LOS ANGELES: Angela is a stunning model, Auti is a dancer who is trying for a baby, Tiphany is designing a clothes line and Mia works as a graphic designer. And all four women are paralyzed from the neck or waist down and are about to shatter widespread notions of what it’s like to spend life in a wheelchair. “Push Girls”, launching on the Sundance Channel on Monday, chronicles the lives of the ambitious and dynamic quartet in a way that producers say has never before been seen on US television. “Plenty of people have no idea what it’s like to spend the day in the life of someone with a disability, let alone a spinal cord injury,” said Tiphany Adams, 29, who was paralyzed in a horrific 2000 car accident. “How do we get in and out of a car? How do we go to the bathroom. How do we go grocery shopping? How do we get in the shower? How do we get dressed? I thought it was a brilliant idea for the world to see that,” she said. Told without self-pity, “Push Girls” shows the women going about their lives in Los Angeles just like other good-looking females in their 20s, 30s and 40s - flirting, going to nightclubs, chatting about love lives and searching their souls about the future. Unlike many current reality shows dreamed up in writers’ rooms and producers’ offices, the 14-episode documentary was inspired by the girls themselves. “I wanted to do a show about people in wheelchairs. Then going out to find them, the girls came first,” producer Gay Rosenthal told Reuters. Rosenthal became involved after meeting and becoming friends with Angela Rockwood, 37, a model and actress who was paralyzed from the neck down after a car accident in 2001. Recently separated from her husband, Angela is seen in the show trying to resume her modeling career.

Inspiring Women

“I was so taken by Angela’s energy, her aura, her outlook and her joie de vivre,” said Rosenthal. After meeting Angela’s three friends, Rosenthal proposed the idea of a documentary and they quickly agreed. New friend Chelsie Hill, 20, who was paralyzed from the waist down in a car crash just three years ago, is also featured in the show. “I felt I had to tell this story. That night so changed my life. When you see all of them share such an energy and positive outlook, you cannot help but be inspired,” Rosenthal said. Nothing was off limits for the filming of the show, giving Rosenthal a careful path to tread between realism and voyeurism. “When people hear it’s a show about women in wheelchairs, I expect them to think it’s going to be exploitive. That doesn’t surprise me, but hopefully the way I am telling the story and the way the girls are sharing their lives, it’s going to be ‘Wow! How dynamic, how interesting,’” she said. Sundance Channel general manager Sarah Barnett said that “Push Girls” was a great fit for the cable network’s drive for programming that is bold, broad-minded and unusual. Rosenthal said she hoped “Push Girls” would help to change perceptions of people in wheelchairs the way TLC documentary series “Little People, Big World”, which she also produces, has done for dwarfism. “It has been extraordinary to see the change. In the beginning of ‘Little People’ it used to be like, ‘little person! midget! freak!.’ I remember little Zach getting chased in one of the early episodes. Now it’s like, ‘little people - cool, be my friend,’ and I can’t ask for more than that,” she said. -Reuters

LOS ANGELES: Kathryn Joosten, a character actress best known as the crotchety, yet loveable, Karen McCluskey on “Desperate Housewives” and the president’s secretary on “The West Wing,” has died. She was 72. Joosten, who had battled lung cancer for 11 years, died Saturday at her home in Los Angeles, her publicist Nadine Jolson said. Joosten “was surrounded by love and humor ‘til the end,” her family said in a statement. “We are laughing through our tears.” Joosten won two Emmy awards for her portrayal of Mrs. McCluskey, who kept a close eye on her Wisteria Lane neighbors on “Desperate Housewives.” The hit show ended its eight-year run on ABC last month with a series finale in which Joosten’s character passed away. Her character’s battle with cancer was a story line in the show. Joosten’s “Desperate Housewives” co-stars took to Twitter to express their condolences. “Rest in peace, she was an amazing woman and a wonderful actress,” Felicity Huffman wrote. Brenda Strong said in a tweet: “Wisteria Lane won’t be the same without you.” Joosten was a psychiatric nurse and single mother in suburban Chicago when she began her acting career at 42. She wrote on her website that she pursued her childhood dream of acting after getting involved with her hometown theater in Lake Forest, Ill. She said she received her first break when she was hired to be a street performer at Disney World in Orlando. She worked odd jobs to make ends meet and moved to Hollywood in 1995. She said she landed her first small role within months on the comedy “Family Matters.” Over the years, she found steady work appearing in such popular shows as “Dharma & Greg,” ‘’Ally McBeal” and “Scrubs.” She became a familiar face to fans of NBC’s “The West Wing” when she appeared as Dolores Landingham, President Jed Bartlet’s trusted secretary. “Some people in Hollywood think of me as a model for dramatic midlife transitions: suburban housewife to Emmy-winning actress,” she wrote on her website. “But I never plotted a master plan for following my dreams.” Joosten was an advocate for lung cancer awareness and research and sat on the board of governors for the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. She is survived by her sons, Jonathan and Timothy. Plans for a memorial service were pending. -AP

Appeals court calls off Housewives Sheridan retrial LONDON: In a major setback for Nicollette Sheridan in her lawsuit against “Desperate Housewives” producer Touchstone Television, an appeals court has issued a ruling delaying indefinitely a planned September retrial and suggesting that the key claim in the case likely should have been resolved in favor of Touchstone, Reuters has learned. As you’ll recall, a Los Angeles jury deadlocked in March over whether the former “Housewives” actress was owed about $4 million for being improperly fired as retaliation for complaining after she was struck in the face by series creator Marc Cherry. The jury failed to reach a verdict, with eight of 12 jurors siding with Sheridan, so a retrial was set by Judge Elizabeth Allen White for Sept. 10. Touchstone/ABC lawyers then appealed in an attempt to prevent a retrial, arguing that California law precludes wrongful termination lawsuits when an actress’ contract option is simply not exercised. That argument was made unsuccessfully

several times during the litigation. But now, in a surprising development, on Friday the California Court of Appeals issued an order agreeing with Touchstone and bumping the planned retrial off the calendar indefinitely. In a short “writ of mandate,” the appeals court overturned the trial judge’s denial of Touchstone’s motion for a directed verdict-essentially, that means the appeals court believes Touchstone should have won the major part of the case because a prior ruling in a case called Daly v. Exxon made clear that most employees whose options are not picked up can’t sue for wrongful termination. The ruling is a big blow to Sheridan. The appeals court set an August 9 hearing date for the trial judge to show up and justify why the case should move forward to a retrial, but Superior Court judges rarely attempt to challenge appeals court rulings. The likely effect, therefore, will be that Judge

White adheres to the appeals court mandate and issues some kind of directed verdict in favor of Touchstone on the wrongful termination claim. Touchstone hasn’t completely won, however. The appeals court suggests Sheridan can reconfigure her case as a labor code violation under the OSHA law (Section 6310), which could lead to significant damages. Other appeals are possible. But a lawsuit that began as a $20 million bombshell when originally filed has now been brought to the brink of dismissal. Sheridan’s legal team led by Mark Baute will need to work some magic to bring it back. “It is further ordered that the retrial currently set for Sept. 10 is hereby stayed pending further order of the court,” the ruling states. Sheridan lawyer Baute tells Reuters that despite the appeals court’s indefinite stay, he is planning to fight to keep the retrial on track. Lawyers for Touchstone have not responded to requests for comment. -Reuters

ALWATAN DAILY

SPORTS

monDAY, june 4, 2012

tennis

Azarenka out of French Open, Djokovic survives PARIS: Victoria Azarenka was knocked out of the French Open fourth round on Sunday and could now lose her world number one ranking, while Novak Djokovic narrowly avoided following her to the exit. Belarussian Azarenka was beaten 6-2 7-6 by Slovakian 15th seed Dominika Cibulkova and must wait to see if Russian Maria Sharapova will claim the top spot. Sharapova, who meets unseeded Czech Klara Zakopalova in the last 16 on Monday and has yet to drop a set here, must get to the Roland Garros final for the first time to become number one. Cibulkova, who reached the French semifinals three years ago and had lost seven times to Azarenka in eight previous meetings, collapsed on to her back, a big grin on her face, after winning the tiebreak 7-4 with a backhand crosscourt on her second match-point. The Slovakian will play either US Open champion Samantha Stosur of Australia or American teenager Sloane Stephens in the quarter-finals. Asked by a reporter how she would recover from the defeat, a stone-faced Azarenka said sarcastically: “I’m going to kill myself!” Azarenka, who had come within five points of defeat in the first round against Italy’s Alberta Brianti, was asked what had gone wrong on Sunday. “Pretty much everything, really,” she said. “I don’t know how to describe my performance today. I wasn’t satisfied being out there playing that way but I guess it happens.” Djokovic, the men’s world number one, had to come back from two sets down to beat Italian Andreas Seppi and continue his quest to hold all four grand-slam titles at once. The Serbian hit 77 unforced errors - 26 more than defending champion Rafa Nadal had racked up in three matches - before turning things around and managing to beat Seppi 4-6 6-7 6-3 7-5 6-3. He will now play either fifth-seeded Frenchman Jo-Wilfried Tsonga or number 18 Stanislas Wawrinka of Switzerland. Italy’s Sara Errani saw off her second French Open champion in two rounds when she beat Russian Svetlana Kuznetsova 6-0 7-5 to reach the quarter-finals of the claycourt grand slam for the first time.”

Serbia’s Novak Djokovic v Italy’s Andreas Seppi during their fourth round match in the French Open tennis tournament at the Roland Garros stadium in Paris, Sunday, June 3, 2012. (AP)

I am curious to see how far I can go, what level I can get to,” said clay specialist Errani, who had knocked out Serbian Ana Ivanovic, the 2008 winner, in the third round. “I am curious to see how far I can go, what level I can get to,” said clay specialist Errani, who had knocked out Serbian Ana Ivanovic, the 2008 winner, in the third round. Kuznetsova’s demise left Li Na as the only French Open champion still in the women’s draw, after earlier-round defeats for Francesca Schiavone and Serena Williams. China’s Li, who won last year, meets Kazakh qualifier Yaroslava Shvedova in the fourth round on Monday. Sunday’s matches were played under cloudy skies and Kuznetsova, who won in 2009, said the

gloomy weather had affected her. “Today the weather was so bad. I felt cold during the whole match. For me to move was really complicated, I couldn’t make my feet move,” said the Russian who started working with Marat Safin’s old coach Hernan Gumy a week before the tournament. Errani will now play another first-time quarter-finalist here, 10th seed Angelique Kerber who beat Croatian Petra Martic 6-3 7-5 on Suzanne Lenglen Court. The Italian said she would change her tactics to play left-hander Kerber but, pressed on what she would do, told reporters with a smile: “I am not telling you for now, I am keeping it to myself.” -Reuters

Basketball

Durant soars late as Thunder tie series with Spurs OKLAHOMA CITY: Kevin Durant’s unstoppable fourth-quarter explosion lifted Oklahoma City to a 109-103 victory over the recently unbeatable San Antonio Spurs on Saturday and leveled the Western Conference Finals series at 2-2. With visiting San Antonio on the heels of the

Thunder in the final quarter, Durant ran off 16 straight points and finished with a game-high 36 to give Oklahoma City a second straight home win and turn up the heat in the best-of-seven series. “Once a player of that caliber, with that much talent starts scoring it’s hard to stop him,” Spurs

Oklahoma City Thunder power forward Serge Ibaka (right), from the Republic of Congo, blocks a shot by San Antonio Spurs forward DeJuan Blair as Kevin Durant (left) watches during the second half of Game 4 in the NBA basketball playoffs Western Conference finals, Saturday, June 2, 2012. (AP)

forward Stephen Jackson told reporters after trying unsuccessfully to contain Durant. “He got into a nice rhythm and got rolling. It was too late.” San Antonio were on a 20-game win streak, the longest ever combining the regular season and playoffs, and looked in complete control of the West matchup before dropping the last two on the road. Tim Duncan scored 21 points to lead the way for the Spurs but they fell behind by 12 at halftime and their late rally fell short. After the visitors trimmed the deficit to four, Durant’s personal run stretched it back to nine and all but clinched the victory. Lost in Durant’s heroics was an unlikely performance from team mate Serge Ibaka, who recorded a career-high 26 points and made all 11 of his field goal attempts. Ibaka caught fire, repeatedly making open perimeter shots, and made up for quiet nights from Russell Westbrook and James Harden, who combined for just 18 points between them. “He didn’t miss a shot? Wow,” Durant said of Ibaka’s play. “He played phenomenal. He’s been working on his jump shot since he got in the league and it’s starting to be money now.” Thabo Sefolosha was the surprise hero of Game Three for the Thunder, but in Game Four it was their big men who rose to the challenge. Center Kendrick Perkins added 15 points and nine rebounds to spark the home team. “Their big guys were the difference in the game,” Duncan said. “Ibaka made great jump shots. There are a lot of things we need to do.” The Spurs will have their chance to respond with Game Five in San Antonio on Monday. -Reuters

Kerber reaches French Open quarter-finals for first time

PARIS: German 10th seed Angelique Kerber bludgeoned her way into the French Open quarter-finals for the first time with a 6-3 7-5 win over Croatian Petra Martic on Sunday. Kerber made an impressive run to reach the US Open semi-finals last year and has a chance to match or even improve on that result after dispatching her 21-year-old opponent on a dark and gloomySuzanne Lenglen

court. With the heavens threatening to open at any time, a muttering Kerber did not want to hang around longer than necessary and yelled out an almighty “Come on” after she fired down a backhand winner on her third matchpoint. She will next face Italy’s Sara Errani, another first-time quarter-finalist, who knocked out 2009 champion Svetlana Kuznetsova. -Reuters

Angelique Kerber of Germany returns the ball to Petra Martic of Croatia during the French Open tennis tournament at the Roland Garros stadium in Paris June 3, 2012. (Reuters)

cricket

Ireland face Bangladesh in World Twenty20 warm-ups

LONDON: Ireland will begin their preparation for this year’s ICC World Twenty20 in Sri Lanka with a three-game series against Bangladesh in Belfast next month, it was announced Saturday. “It’s great news that we’re taking on Bangladesh and the games will give us valuable preparation as we build towards the World Cup in Sri Lanka,” Ireland coach Phil Simmons said in a Cricket Ireland statement. “We played an exciting brand of cricket in winning the recent qualifying tournament in Dubai and we’re now eighth in the world rankings in this format of the game,” the former West Indies batsman added. “In Paul Stirling we have one of the most exciting players in international cricket at present and I’m sure the Belfast public will relish the opportunity to watch him on home soil.” The matches, which form part of a nine-day Bangladesh tour, will be staged

at Stormont on July 18, 20 and 21. Bangladesh all-rounder Shakib Al Hasan said: “We are always looking for tough challenges as professional cricketers and I am sure the tour of Ireland would test our skills and resolve. This will be wonderful preparation for both teams heading into the ICC World T20.” “Ireland are a very competitive side and in their conditions they will be formidable. However, we have a team that is brimming with confidence.” “We have proven match winners and some fresh faces who are tailor-made for the demands of T20 cricket. This promises to be an exciting contest.” Ireland have met Bangladesh just once before in the shortest format, when they were six-wicket winners during the 2009 World Twenty20. Ireland have been drawn against Australia and West Indies at this year’s World Twenty20 in Sri Lanka, which starts in September. -AFP

FILE- Alex Cusack of Ireland hits a shot during their Hong Kong cricket sixes quarter final match against Pakistan on Oct. 30, 2011. (AFP)

track and field

Xiang wins hurdles at Prefontaine Classic EUGENE, Oregon: Liu Xiang lunged across the finish line and quickly looked up to his left at the giant scoreboard. Then, he impatiently waited. A split second later - only it felt like an eternity - the board flashed Liu’s time in big, white characters - 12.87 seconds. That sent the 110-meter hurdler from China straight into euphoria as he thrust his fist into the air before dancing and skipping around the track with unbridled exuberance. Sure, there was the excitement from holding off a star-studded field to get the win at the Prefontaine Classic on Saturday. But there also was that glittering time on the scoreboard. Maybe at first he thought he had tied the world record, but it turned out to be wind-aided by a slight margin. So the world mark set by Cuba’s Dayron Robles remains safe for now. Long after the race was over - and after Liu did a celebratory lap around the track to high-five anyone with an extended hand - he was asked if he ever thought about breaking world records. “No. I never think about that,” Liu said through

a translator. “I think I can run that fast. I’m ready for that.” Liu once held the world mark when he finished in 12.88 seconds during a race in July 2006. Nearly two years later - just before the 2008 Beijing Olympics - Robles took the record. And there it has stood. Robles was actually scheduled to be in the field, but had trouble securing his visa and pulled out of the competition at the last hour. There were still plenty of other rivals to push Liu, who held off Aries Merritt and Jason Richardson in what was billed as one of the marquee events at Pre. This race certainly lived up to the billing, with Liu getting off to a good start in the impressive victory. “I just treated it as a regular race,” Liu said. His reaction to the win proved it was anything but just another race, especially this close to the London Olympics. And had the wind not been gusting, this very well could’ve been a performance to remember. These days, nothing Liu accomplishes on the track comes as a shock to Richardson. “He’s just amazing,” Richardson said. “It almost goes without saying.” -AP

Xiang Liu, of China, third from (left), races against, from left to right, United States’ Dexter Faulk, David Oliver, Jason Richardson, Aries Merritt and Great Britain’s Andrew Turner, (right), in the 110-meter hurdles on Saturday, June 2, 2012. (AP)

MONDAY, JUNE 4, 2012

SPORTS

Sports Editors Highlight LONDON: England goalkeeper Rob Green will leave West Ham this summer after six years, club chairman David Gold has confirmed. The 32-year-old will be out of contract at the end of June and has not agreed new terms despite the Hammers’ promotion back to the Premier League. Former captain Matthew Upson left Upton Park as a free agent last year and Green is now set to follow having been linked withTottenham, QPR,West Brom and Spanish side Malaga. Gold wrote on Twitter: “Robert Green is a free agent he has chosen to move on. Matthew Upson did the same thing. -AFP

Football

Japan beat Oman in football Russia fly to Euro World Cup qualifying match 2012 on a high after Italy win MOSCOW: Russia coach Dick Advocaat said his team were brimming with confidence as they flew out to Euro 2012 on Sunday with a big friendly win over Italy in their pocket and the luck of a relatively easy group draw. The Euro 2008 semi-finalists recorded their first post-Soviet win over Italy in Zurich on Friday - a 3:0 drubbing that made amends for a lackluster draw with Lithuania in their previous warm up for the June 8 tournament kick-off. The 64-year-old Advocaat said his coaching experience from four previous big event finals told him that Russia were entering the European football showpiece at their peak. “We are on the upswing. We are improving from game to game,” Advocaat said of his veteran squad. “The Italy result fills us with confidence. These friendly games were very important,” the Dutch coach said. Russia will be furious if they fail to progress from a group that besides their opening match foes the Czech Republic also includes co-hosts Poland and Greece. The team is almost identical to the one that showed charismatic flair in their shock defeat of the Netherlands in the 2008 quarter finals -- a win that showed Russia playing an attacking style of foot-

Russia’s national football manager Dick Advocaat smiles during a news conference in Moscow June 3, 2012. (Reuters)

ball missing for many years. Russia will be captained by 2008 star Andrei Arshavin and feature a backbone of players from the championship winning Zenit Saint Petersburg side that has been playing competitively in Europe for much of the past decade. Advocaat said he had “eight or nine”

players in mind who would feature for Russia regularly in the opening matches. “But I cannot name the 11 who will come out on the pitch against the Czech Republic on June 8,” he said. Russia will play the hosts in Warsaw on June 12 and conclude the group stage with a match against Greece on June 16. -AFP

Injured England defender Cahill out of Euro 2012 Japan’s Shinji Okazaki, fights for the ball with Oman’s Mohammed Al-Musalami during their soccer match for the World Cup Asia qualifying at Saitama stadium in Saitama near Tokyo, Sunday, June 3, 2012. (AP)

SAITAMA, Japan: Asian Cup holders Japan beat Oman 3-0 on Sunday in the first match of the final Asian qualifying round for the 2014 World Cup. Goals early in both halves gave the hosts a comfortable win at theSaitama stadium, with CSKA Moscow midfielder Keisuke Hondafirst on the scoresheet in the 12th minute, shooting into the right corner from a Yuto Nagatomo cross. Two-time J-League top scorer Ryoichi Maeda scored via the left upright in the 51st minute, and he had another shot blocked three minutes later only for Stuttgart forward Shinji Okazaki to collect the rebound and make it 3-0. “We were a bit tense at the beginning, but I wanted to win. I’m glad that we won,” said Honda. “I scored the goal as I planned to do. I think we relaxed with that goal.” Maeda, who plays for Jubilo Iwata, added: “We will have the next game very soon. I’m going to refresh and

prepare for the game. As for my goal, I’m happy, because I missed a header shortly before. I want to score goals again.” Japan dominated throughout the 90 minutes, with Oman limited to a single shot on target through midfielder Fawzi Doorbeen at the end of the first half, and never able to create another clear scoring chance. A total of 10 Asian countries are split into two groups of five for the continent’s fourth qualifying round, with the group winners and runners-up earning places in Brazil, and the third-placed teams going into play-offs. “It was our first game, so it was important to get off to a good start,” said Japan’s Italian coach Alberto Zaccheroni. “I think we can play well in the next two games.We were able to concentrate because of the support of so many people at the stadium.” Japan will play Jordan on Friday, with Australia and Iraq their other opponents in Group B. -AFP

Kuyt signs for Turkey’s Fenerbahce

LONDON: England defender Gary Cahill has been ruled out of the European Championship after fracturing his jaw in Saturday’s final warm-up match against Belgium. The central defender is the third England player in the last week to be ruled out of Euro 2012, following injuries to midfielders Frank Lampard and Gareth Barry. Cahill was injured in the first half of England’s 1-0 victory over Belgium at Wembley after being shoved into goalkeeper Joe Hart by Dries Mertens. The Football Association says Cahill has two fractures of his jaw, one either side. Liverpool defender Martin Kelly will be called up in his place. Meanwhile, John Terry has been given the all clear following fears of a hamstring injury after coming off Saturday. England’s Euro 2012 opener is against France on June 11. -AP

England’s Gary Cahill, center, is pushed into goalkeeper Joe Hart (right) by Belgium’s Dries Mertens (left) during the international friendly football match between England and Belgium in London, Saturday, June 2, 2012. (AP)

Rowe helps Revolution beat Fire FOXBOROUGH, Massachusetts: Second-half substitute Kelyn Rowe broke a scoreless game in the 70th minute to lift the Revolution to a 2-0 win over the Chicago Fire on Saturday night. Rowe, who came on in the 64th minute, gave the Revolution the advantage while Benny Feilhaber added another in the 73rd minute. Revolution goalkeeper Matt Reis made three saves to preserve the shutout, his second of the season.The win snapped the Revolution’s two-game winless streak and upped their record to 5-7-1 (16 points).

Meanwhile, the Fire dropped their second straight and fell to 5-5-3 (21 points). The Revs and Fire struggled to find scoring chances in the first half, as Reis and Fire goalkeeper Sean Johnson were rarely tested. Chicago nearly got on the board in the 48th minute when Orr Borouch sent it to Dominic Oduro, who’s header ricocheted off the post. Four minutes later, Sebastian Grazzini hit one from outside the box and forced Reis to the dive before Patrick Nyarko put a foot on it at the near post.

But the Revolution attack came to life in the second half. Six minutes after he entered the match, Rowe took a hold of pass from Feilhaber and flicked it through to put the Revolution on top. Rowe returned the favor in the 73rd minute when he played a diagonal ball to Feilhaber, who redirected it past Johnson to cap the scoring. The Revolution return to action in two weeks when they face the Columbus Crew on June 16 at home. The Fire head home to face the New York Red Bulls on June 17. -AP

South Africa held, Zimbabwe lose in World Cup qualifiers Dirk Kuyt (right) of the Netherlands warms up during a training session in preparation for the Euro 2012 soccer championships in Hoenderloo May 28, 2012. (Reuters)

ANKARA: Dutch international forward Dirk Kuyt ended a six year spell with English Premier League side Liverpool on Sunday after he agreed to move to Turkish giants Fenerbahce according to media reports. The 31-year-old - capped over 80 times and a member of the Dutch side beaten in the 2010 World Cup final - reportedly signed a three year contract with the Turkish league runners-up for a fee of 1-million euros. Kuyt only won one trophy while at Liverpool, last season’s League Cup although he also played in an FA Cup final and a Champions League final. Fenerbahce, one of the giant Istanbul teams, officially declared the transfer to the Turkish stock exchange, said the private NTV television. “Kuyt wants to play for Fenerbahce. We signed a three-year contract,” Ali Yildirim, board member of Fenerbahce, was quoted as saying by the Anatolia news agency. “We had been working for this transfer for months.

He is a very important player, a big win for Fenerbahce,” he added. Yildirim declined to comment on the transfer fee, saying that would be announced later. Kuyt is expected to come to Turkey late June, said Yildirim. Fenerbahce finished second in the Turkish league after Galatasaray and qualified for next season’s Champions League. But the final decision rests with the Turkish Football Federation (TFF), which previously banned Fenerbahce from the 2011-2012 Champions League after allegations that several matches were fixed during the 2010-2011 season. The investigation into the allegations led to a wave of arrests last summer, while Fenerbahce was hit hardest by the case that sent its boss, Aziz Yildirim and more than a dozen team members behind bars in the ongoing trial. -AFP

JOHANNESBURG: South Africa were held 1-1 by Ethiopia and Zimbabwe lost 1-0 to Guinea Sunday in home 2014 World Cup qualifiers on a dismal day for countries from the south of the continent. Salahdin Said gave the impressive Ethiopians the lead before half-time at Royal Bafokeng Sports Palace in north-west mining town Rustenburg, which they held until late in the second half when Katlego Mphela levelled. Ibrahima Traore fired a first-half free kick into the top corner of the net at the National Stadium in Harare to get the Guinean campaign off to a great start ahead of a home clash with Egypt next weekend. South African supporters joke that the only way Bafana Bafana (The Boys) can play in a major tournament is by staging it and the 2010 World Cup hosts looked far from a team capable of reaching the next finals in Brazil. The top Group A seeds only threatened the supremely fit, well-organized visitors from free kicks with midfielder Steven Pienaar and striker Mphela troubling goalkeeper Sesay Basa. Ethiopia took the lead on 28 minutes as Egypt-based striker Said intercepted a careless midfield pass from Siphiwe Tshabalala, held off the challenge of centre-back Bongani Khumalo and rifled the ball past Itumeleng Khune. Recalled 34-year-old striker Siyabonga Nomvethe was having no impact up front for South Africa while Said was always dangerous as the second half wore on and the Black Lions became increasingly adventurous in search of a second goal. But a rare slip by an Ethiopian defender 13 minutes from time let in Mphela to curl the ball past Basa and into the far corner of the net for a fortunate share of the points before facing Botswana in Gaborone next Saturday. Coach Pitso Mosimane said he remained confident South Africa would top a pool completed by the Central African Republic, who celebrated a first World Cup qualifying victory by

overcoming Botswana 2-0 in Bangui Saturday. Rival coach Sewnet Bishaw lamented the mistake that led to the equalizer and deprived Ethiopia of a first World Cup qualifying victory on the road in 14 attempts. Germany-based striker Traore struck on 25 minutes in Harare while Zimbabwe had a goal disallowed and striker Knowledge Musona wasted several chances to salvage a point. With Egypt scoring twice in the second half to down Mozambique 2-0 behind closed door in Alexandria, the stage is set for a top-of-the-table showdown between the National Elephant and the Pharaohs in Conakry next Sunday. -AFP

Bongani Khumalo of South Africa in action during the 2014 FIFA World Cup Qualifier match between South Africa and Ethiopia, at Royal Bafokeng Stadium on June 3, 2012. (AFP)