March 19, 2012

MONDAY, MARCH 19, 2012

@alwatandaily

Issue No. 1378

20 PAGES

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150 Fils with IHT

Cabinet refuses strikers’ demands, rejects raises

New state budget estimated at KD 22 billion

Mohammed Al-Salman, Mohammed Al-Khaldi, Osama Al-Qatari, Ahmed Al-Shemmari and Jarrah Al-Mutairi Staff Writers

KUWAIT: During its meeting on Sunday, the Cabinet has rejected the demands which have been put forth by the workers at the Kuwait Airways Corporation and the Customs Department. Reportedly, the Cabinet has flatly stated that it will not condone any action that can be detrimental to the interests of the State and its citizens. It stressed that strikes, under the law and Constitution, are not considered as sanctioned means of expressing opinions.

The Cabinet instructed all government institutions to take

all necessary measures to ensure smooth workflow and to avert any potential harm on all fronts. It also noted that differing views on wage increases are not addressed through imposing a status quo and strike threats. The Cabinet expressed appreciation to the Volunteer Work Committee, which has expressed readiness to fill any vacancies that might be left by strikers.

In a related development, the Kuwait Chamber of Commerce and Industry on Sunday issued a statement warning of dire repercussions for all segments of society in the event that the strikes continue. The statement pointed out that strikes weaken social and food security and punishes all consumers.

The Chairman of the Parliament’s Budgets Committee MP Adnan Abdulsamad announced that the committee had discussed the general framework of the State Budget for the fiscal year 2012 - 2013. He revealed that the new budget is estimated at about 22 billion Kuwaiti dinars with an increase of around 2.5 billion equivalent to 13 percent compared to the current budget.

India beat Pakistan by six wickets in Asia Cup

The lawmaker further noted that the revenues for the new budget are estimated at KD 14 billion with an increase of KD 487 million in comparison with last year’s. He added that oil revenues are estimated at KD 12.8 billion with an increase of KD 461 million which is equivalent to 3.7 percent based on an estimated 65 US dollars per barrel.

About KD 4.7 billion has been earmarked for the Section 1 (salaries) with an increase of 7.1 percent, and hence the wages will constitute 30 percent of the budget and 42 percent of the oil revenues.

Meanwhile, about KD 4.2 billion has been set aside for Section 2 on amenities and services, whereas KD 475 million will be allocated to transport and equipment. Around KD 3 billion has been earmarked for Section 5 on construction projects, maintenance and general consumption, while KD 9.5 billion has been set aside for different expenses and transformative payables.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 2

Kuwait Airways cancels flights for second day as strike continues

Nancy Oteifa

Staff Writer & Agencies

DHAKA: Pakistan’s Mohammad Hafeez (left) plays a shot as Indian captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni reacts during the one day international Asia Cup cricket match between India and Pakistan at The Sher-e-Bangla National Cricket Stadium in Dhaka, March 18, 2012. India defeated Pakistan by six wickets in Dhaka on Sunday. Pakistan made it to the final despite the defeat, finishing with nine points from three games, while India (eight points from three games) and Bangladesh (four points from two games) are still in contention. Bangladesh need to win their final league match against Sri More on 19 Lanka on Tuesday to knock India out. -AFP

World supply of Helium running low, party balloons to blame

LONDON: The world supply of helium, which is essential in research and medicine, is being squandered, say scientists according to The Guardian.

Oleg Kirichek, the leader of a research team at the Isis neutron beam facility at the UK’s Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, had an unpleasant shock last week. One of his key experiments, designed to probe the structure of matter, had to be cancelled - because the facility had run out of helium.

The gas, used to cool atoms to around -270C to reduce their vibrations and make them easier to study, is now becoming worryingly scarce, said Kirichek.

Research facilities probing the structure of matter, medical scanners and other advanced devices that use the gas may soon have to reduce operations or close because we are frittering away the world’s limited supplies of helium on party balloons.

“It costs £30,000 a day to operate our neutron beams, but for three days we had no helium to run our experiments on those beams,” said Kirichek. “In other words we wasted £90,000 because we couldn’t get any helium. Yet we put the stuff into party balloons and let them float off into the upper atmosphere, or we use it to make our voices go squeaky for a laugh. It is very, very stupid. It makes me really angry.” Helium is an inert gas that does not react with other chemicals and is therefore safe to handle. It is important to science because, even at incredibly low temperatures, it does not solidify and so can be used, in liquid form, to run super-cool refrigerators, a vital resource for scientists working in many More on 15 fields.

Former Mr. Universe turns 100 in India KOLKATA, India: A former Mr. Universe who has just turned 100 said Sunday that happiness and a life without tensions are the key to his longevity. Manohar Aich, who is 4 foot 11 inches tall, overcame many hurdles, including grinding poverty and a stint in prison, to achieve body building glory. His children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren gathered Sunday in the eastern city of Kolkata to celebrate his birthday the day before. Hindu priests chanted prayers while a feast was laid out to honor Aich, winner of the 1952 Mr. Universe body building title.

Rippling his muscles and flashing a toothless grin, Aich says his ability to take his troubles lightly and remain happy during difficult times are the secrets to his long life. That, and a simple diet of milk, fruits and vegetables along with rice, lentils and fish have kept him healthy.

He does not smoke and has never touched alcohol, he said.

“I never allow any sort of tension to grip me.

I had to struggle to earn money since my young days, but whatever the situation, I remained happy,” Aich said, sitting in a room decorated with posters and pictures of his many bodybuilding More on 17 triumphs.

Car bomb hits Aleppo; police crush Damascus march

KUWAIT: Kuwait Airways, the state’s national carrier, extended flight cancellations across its route network into a second day Sunday as it scrambled to cope with a strike by workers. The action by Kuwait Airways employees follows a work stoppage by customs officials that began last week and is blocking food items from entering the country. Workers are demanding higher pay and other benefits.

“Kuwait Airways’ sold tickets were transferred to other airlines and we refunded those who did not want to travel on other airlines.

The passengers were very flexible and we did not face any problems regarding tickets,” said Union Secretary Hussein Habib to Al Watan

Daily. The Cabinet has refused on Sunday the demands of the unions of Kuwait Airways and the Customs, which brought the issue to a new form of escalation as Kuwait Airways promised to paralyze the entire aviation traffic through involving NAS Aviation Services in the strike too.

He added, “The whole fleet of Kuwait Airways will be in by 8:00 p.m. and then the strike will continue until all our rights and demands are met. By midnight, the total loss will have reached four million Kuwaiti dinars as 25 flights have been canceled so far (by Sunday evening).

It is expected that we will cancel 111 flights within the coming two days, which make up a capacity of 22,000 seats, hence bringing the total number of losses to about 14.3 million US More on 2 dollars.”

Uganda responds to Kony 2012 video with own video

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England to relax shopping hours during Olympics

LONDON: England’s laws restricting shopping hours on a Sunday to six hours will be relaxed during the London 2012 Games, George Osborne has said.

The suspension would run in England and Wales for eight Sundays covering the Olympics (July 27 to August 12) and the Paralympics (August 29 to September 9).

“We’ve got the whole world coming to London -- and the rest of the country -- for the Olympics,” the chancellor of the exchequer told BBC television.

“It would be a great shame -- particularly when some of the big Olympic events are on Sunday -- if the country had a ‘closed for business’ sign on it.”

Campaigners against seven-days-aweek shopping hours claim it will open the door to a permanent shift in the rules, hitting family life.

“I want, through the Games, to give people the opportunity to visit our shops

and spend money and grow the economy and enjoy themselves,” Osborne said.

“All I’m proposing at the moment is we do this for the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games.”

Under the Sunday Trading Act 1994, shops in England andWales covering more than 280 square meters are restricted to any six hours of continuous trading between 10:00am and 6:00pm on Sundays.

The law also protects the rights of workers who do not wish to work on a Sunday. The Keep Sunday Special campaign said the plans were “profoundly worrying”.

“When did shopping become an Olympic sport? Why are the Olympics deemed to be a special case?”

Stores decide their own Sunday trading hours in Scotland, while large shops in Northern Ireland can open between 1:00pm and 6:00pm on a Sunday. -AFP

Christians gather to bid farewell to Egypt’s Pope

Mourners gather outside the Coptic Orthodox Church for the viewing of the body of Pope Shenouda III in Cairo, Egypt, Sunday, March 18, 2012. (AP)

CAIRO: Christians gathered on Sunday to pay final respects to Pope Shenouda III, who sought to soothe sectarian tension in his four decades atop Egypt’s Orthodox Church but saw increasing flare-ups in the majority Muslim nation in the last months of his life.

Friction has worsened since President Hosni Mubarak, who suppressed Islamists, was ousted last year. Since then Shenouda, who died on Saturday aged 88, often called for harmony and regularly met Muslim and other leaders.

Christians, who comprise about a tenth of Egypt’s 80 million people, have long complained of discrimination and in the past year stepped up protests, which included calls for new rules that would make it as easy to build a church as a mosque.

Shenouda had served as the 117th Pope of Alexandria since November 1971, leading the Orthodox community who make up most of Egypt’s Christians. His funeral will be held on Tuesday, Egyptian state media reported.

US President Barack Obama offered his condolences and Pope Benedict, leader of the world’s Roman Catholics, offered prayers after More on 16 being informed of his death.

A handout picture released by the official Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) shows a damaged building following a car bomb in Syria’s second largest city of Aleppo leaving dead and wounded on March 18, 2012. (AP) More on 4

Global economy on recovery path, risks remain: IMF chief

BEIJING : The global economy has stepped back from the brink of danger and signs of stabilization are emerging from the euro zone and the United States, but high debt levels in developed markets and rising oil prices are key risks ahead, the IMF said on Sunday.

“The global economy may be on a path to recovery, but there is not a great deal of room for maneuver and no room for policy mistakes,” International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director, Christine Lagarde, said in a speech in Beijing. In a separate talk on the same day, Lagarde said that China’s yuan could become a reserve currency in the future, adding that the country needed a roadmap for a stronger, more flexible exchange rate system.

She said signs of stabilization were emerging to show that policy actions taken in the wake of the global financial crisis were paying off, that U.S. economic indicators were looking a little more upbeat and that Europe had taken an important step forward in solving its crisis with the latest efforts on Greece.

“On the back of these collective efforts, the world economy has stepped back from the brink and we have cause to

be more optimistic. Still, optimism must not lull us into a false sense of security.

There are still major economic and financial vulnerabilities we must confront,” Lagarde said.

The IMF chief cited still fragile financial systems burdened by high public and private debt persists advanced economies as the first of three major risks and said euro zone public sector and bank rollover funding needs in 2012 were equivalent total about 23 percent of GDP. “Second, the rising price of oil is becoming a threat to global growth. And, third, there is a growing risk that activity in emerging economies will slow over the medium term,” she said.

Lagarde also said youth unemployment should be tackled and that all countries must persevere with their policy efforts if the progress made in stabilizing the global economy is to pay off with better prospects ahead.

She said advanced economies must continue with macroeconomic support and a balanced fiscal policy, together with financial sector reforms and structural and institutional reforms to repair the damage done by the crisis and to improve competitiveness.-Reuters

Anti-Communist pastor set to become German president

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Horse riders participate in a tent pegging competition in Islamabad on March 18, 2012. The tent pegging competition in Pakistan’s capital city Islamabad is taking place for the first time since 2004. (AFP)

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ALWATAN DAILY

kuwait

MONDAY, march 19, 2012

Kuwait Airways cancels flights for second day as strike continues Nancy Oteifa

Staff Writer & Agencies

KUWAIT: Kuwait Airways, the state’s national carrier, extended flight cancellations across its route network into a second day Sunday as it scrambled to cope with a strike by workers.

The action by Kuwait Airways employees follows a work stoppage by customs officials that began last week and is blocking food items from entering the country. Workers are demanding higher pay and other benefits.

“Kuwait Airways’ sold tickets were transferred to other airlines and we refunded those who did not want to travel on other airlines. The passengers were very flexible and we did not face any problems regarding tickets,” said Union Secretary Hussein Habib to Al Watan Daily.

The Cabinet has refused on Sunday the demands of the unions of Kuwait Airways and the Customs, which brought the issue to a new form of escalation as Kuwait Airways promised to paralyze the entire aviation traffic through involving NAS Aviation Services in the strike too.

He added, “The whole fleet of Kuwait Airways will be in by 8:00 P.M. and then the strike will continue until all our rights and demands are met. By midnight, the total loss will have reached four million Kuwaiti dinars as 25 flights have been canceled so far (by Sunday evening). It is expected that we will cancel 111 flights within the coming two days, which make up a capacity of 22,000 seats, hence bringing the total number of losses to about 14.3 million US dollars.”

He added, “On Oct. 24, 2011 we had organized another strike, but we ended it because they (officials) promised to meet our demands. However, until now nothing is achieved.

Even when the Civil Service Commission (CSC) set an increase in all public authorities in Kuwait, they didn’t include Kuwait Airways.”

Kuwaitis are used to well-paying government jobs and a cradle-to-grave social security system that is increasingly

Photo of Kuwait Airways’ staff stations at the Kuwait International Airport are seen with no employees due to strike that began on Saturday, March 17, 2012. (Al Watan)

becoming a burden on the state. Calls for better working terms have grown louder as the past year’s Arab Spring uprisings reverberated across the region. Kuwait Airways grounded its flights starting Saturday evening and extending into Sunday, according to airline spokesman Adel Boresly.

They affect incoming and outgoing flights on nearly two dozen routes including to regional hubs Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Doha, Qatar, and Western destinations such as New York and Frankfurt, Germany. It is unclear when flights will resume. “We are evaluating the situation (until) the strike is off,” Boresly said.

Education sector strikes adds to the list of protests Latifa Al-Badawi Staff Writer

KUWAIT: The demand for the academicians’ rights has been described as stronger and more extreme than the sand storm which the country is facing. The academic community is now determined to call for justice and equality in terms of employment grading.

On his part, Member of Parliament (MP) Mohammed Al-Khalifa stated that the university lecturers have every single right to demand for a better employment grading and that he, himself, fully supports such demands, calling on the government to endorse them and make education the top priority.

“If the country is facing financial difficulty, then we would be the first to say that we are ready to sacrifice and work for free, but thank God, Kuwait is enjoying a good and healthy financial surplus and thus justice and equality must be implemented,” he said.

Similarly, the parliamentary Educational Committee Rappoteur Dr. Mohammed Al-Hatlani said that the government is going through a critical situation by not implementing the principle of justice and equality among the various segments of society. He stressed that the staff faculty should be looked at as the crème de la crème of the society.

“It is very normal to see all these strikes because the government had promised and yet never carried out its promises. Such feature should not be a characteristic of the government that runs a country. We need to respect such demand and not belittle it. We, in the parliamentary Educational Committee, fully appreciate the legitimate rights of the teachers,” he remarked, warning at the same time the government from persistently refusing the demands of the teachers.

The Head of the Society of the Faculty of Staff in Kuwait University Dr. Awwad Al-Dhufairi said that the strike is a legitimate right in which university teachers have been calling for and that his society fully supports the demand. He expressed his surprise that the teaching profession is no longer sought after, as he accused the government of neglecting the importance and significance of such profession.

Head of the Society of the Faculty of Staff in Public Authority for Applied Technology and Training (PAAET) Dr. Maadi Al-Ajmi said that he would have preferred to see such gathering to discuss more urgent matters, but instead the gathering is here to strike against the government’s negligence.

There is a unanimous agreement that no compromise would be accepted and that the strike will not stop until all demands are met.

Contracts to repair highways, other infrastructure at KD 7.7 million KUWAIT: Minister of Public Works and Minister of State for Planning and Development Affairs Dr. Fadhil Safar signed three contracts for maintenance work on Al-Jahra Governorate highways and streets and operation of the DMC Kabd-Wafra pumps at an overall 7.7 million Kuwaiti dinars.

The first contract concerns maintenance of motorways and areas in Al-Jahra worth KD 2.1 million and small construction projects for parking, public services and utilities, and the like. It also covers rain drainage and manholes and pavement and tar repair at state institutions.

The second contract worth KD 3 million covers overall maintenance of highways and small

construction works to build bridges, pedestrian walks, and such utilities as part or extension to the motorways concerned.

The third contract is worth KD 2.6 million and covers operation and maintenance of the treated water grid. This includes delivering treated water to farms in Al-Abdeli and Wafra and to Um Al-Rimam lake and the northern military camps through the main pipeline. This last contract also covers operation and maintenance of the main pump and treated water grid that includes pumping stations at the control center, at Kabd and Wafra, and of the three-phase water treatment valves room at the control center. -KUNA

“Through an emergency team, which includes 35 members representing various departments of the institution, we will develop a contingency plan to deal with the matter, as well as to deal with reemerging situations like these,” he noted. Boresly pointed out the readiness of the emergency team for all eventualities that may be imposed by these exceptional circumstances, “despite the fact that these measures will increase the size of the liabilities and losses for Kuwait Airways,” he added.

Meanwhile, store shelves at some supermarkets are running empty as striking customs workers, who began walking

KFAED signs loan agreement for KD 30 million with Egypt KUWAIT: A loan agreement was signed here on Sunday between the Government of Egypt and Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development (KFAED), whereby the fund will provide a loan of 30 million Kuwaiti dinars (102 million US dollars) to assist in financing of Helwan Power Station Project.

An agreement (project agreement), concerning arrangements for implementation of the venture, was also signed between KFAED and Upper Egypt Electricity Production Company, which is undertaking the Project, according to a fund statement.

The loan accord was signed on behalf of Cairo by Abdul Kareem Mahmoud Soliman, Ambassador of Egypt to Kuwait, while the project agreement was signed on behalf of Upper Egypt Electricity Production Company by Fathi Alsaid Awad Ibrahim, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the said company. Abdulwahab

In another development, MPs representing the Parliamentary Majority have agreed to appeal to His Highness the Prime Minister Sheikh Jaber Al-Mubarak Al-Sabah to relieve the Finance Minister Mustafa AlShamali of his position.

It has been gathered that in the event that the request is turned down, an interpellation will be filed against him following the ultimatum given to the government. Sources have stated that the meeting was attended by 26 MPs. The participants at the said meeting have reportedly decided that any interpellation to be filed will be shown to other blocs to build a consensus around it. They also agreed to encourage calm with regard to the strikes as the government’s decision is being awaited to this effect and in case that the decision was disappointing they will resort to legislation. Also, the official spokesperson for the Parliamentary Majority MP Osama Al-Menawer announced the group’s intention to file a request for a special session to be held Thursday to debate the current state of affairs concerning demands for pay increments amid the Cabinet’s decision to endorse the Civil Service Commission’s report without changes.

He added that the group is following the strikes sweeping the country due to what he described as the government’s flawed policies that created discrepancies amongst citizens of similar specializations and qualifications. According to the lawmaker, the strikes were a result of government’s failure to keep its promise to syndicates, particularly the Kuwait Airways Corporation and Customs Department.

In the meantime, MP Waleed Al-Tabtabaie stated that the meeting held by the majority discussed an appeal to the government to remove the finance minister from his post or else the minister will face interpellation. MP Jamaan Al-Harbash, for his part, has regarded the government’s insistence on the presence of the minister in Cabinet as provocative.

Further, the Parliamentary Finance and Economic Committee has mandated its chairman Marzouq AlGhanem to contact the minister of finance to invite him to a meeting by the committee on Thursday to discuss the issue of special allowances and to listen to the government’s report on the issue.

The Committee’s Rapporteur MP Ahmed Lari affirmed that fairness should be observed with regard to the issue of special allowances, and urged the government to finalize the study it had promised.

Ahmed Al-Bader, the Director-General of KFAED, signed both the loan and project agreements on behalf of the fund.

The project aims at meeting increasing demand for electricity on the national grid of the Arab Republic of Egypt and improving performance of the grid through enhancing the reliability of supply of electricity by expanding generating capacity by adding a new combined power station with an installed capacity of 1950 MW in South Helwan 115 kilometers south of Cairo and connecting the new station with the national grid via 500 KV line. The station will utilize steam turbines fueled by natural gas with fuel oil as standby.

The project consists of construction of three steam turbine units of a capacity of 650 megawatts (MW) each. It includes all the necessary works for the power station, switch yard for connecting the generating units to the national grid through

CELF provides opportunity to engage in 4-month residency at Syracuse University

KUWAIT: US Department of State Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI) announced in a press release issued Sunday that the Civic Education and Leadership Fellowship (CELF) provides an opportunity for academics in the social sciences from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) to engage in a four-month residencies at the Maxwell School for Public Affairs at Syracuse University. The program includes both group seminars and individually tailored components for each participant.

The program is open to Kuwaiti citizens working at an accredited institution of higher education for a minimum of five years in social science disciplines, including political science, public administration, law, media, journalism, and communications. Applicants who hold PhD degrees (completed or in progress) are preferred. However, the minimum edu-

Cabinet refuses strikers’ demands, rejects raises continued from page 1

off the job Tuesday, refuse to allow hundreds of trucks to cross the border.

That is prompting merchants to hike prices, with the cost of some goods such as dairy products, detergents and diapers rising significantly. Oil exports do not appear to be affected by the customs strike.

Marzouq Awwad, secretary of the customs workers’ union, vowed to continue the job walk-off until its members’ demands are met. He said workers have allowed 97 trucks carrying perishable items such as fresh fruits, vegetables and dairy products to cross the border since the strike began.

“The union is not at war with the citizens, and is only on strike until the government and union reach an agreement,” he said. Power plant employees and university professors are also threatening to walk off the job unless they too get increased pay and retirement benefits.

Members of the Cabinet are in talks with labor leaders to try to resolve the dispute. Finance Minister Mustafa AlShamali has repeatedly said the country’s budget is strained, and cannot afford the pay increases of as much as 40 percent that unions are calling for.

Thousands of customs workers and other civil servants launched a similar wave of labor unrest in September and October that temporarily disrupted shipping traffic and threatened the country’s vital oil exports. Like in the latest strike, they were joined by Kuwait Airways workers.

Kuwaiti authorities have faced sporadic protests in recent months, though they have not been as big as the major pro-reform demonstrations seen elsewhere in the Arab World. The small nation’s parliament has the most powers of any elected body in the Gulf, and opposition lawmakers openly criticize the ruling family.

In January last year, Amir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad AlSabah, ordered 1,000 Kuwaiti dinar grants and free food coupons for every Kuwaiti. Neighboring countries such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar followed with handouts of their own as they sought to dampen calls for political reform.

cational requirement for candidates is a completed Master’s degree in one of the aforementioned fields. Applicants must have English language fluency to participate successfully in a high-level academic and professional environment. This program is subject to J-1 visa restrictions.

At the time of application and while participating in the program, Fellows must be citizens of Kuwait and cannot hold US citizenship or be a US Legal Permanent Resident.

A complete application includes an updated resume, a letter of support allowing the applicant to study in the United States from the applicant’s institution, and two essays of no more than 500 words each, written in English.

The deadline for submitting applications is May 14, 2012.

To apply, or for more information, please contact: kuwaitmepi@state.gov

500 KV quader-line with a length of about 350 kilometers. The venture also include the construction of cooling water intake and discharge pipe to the river Nile with a length of about two kilometers each, as well as the provision of the necessary consulting engineering services for the Project. It is expected to be completed by the end of 2016. By extending this loan, the fund will have provided 35 loans to Cairo as the fund already made 34 loans to the government there or to public entities in the Arab Republic with a total amount of KD 554 million, equivalent to about $1.9 billion, for the financing projects in various sectors.

Moreover, the Kuwaiti fund made eight technical assistance and grants of a total amount of about K.D. 1.97 million equivalent to about $6.7 million allocated for various purposes including the financing of technical and economic feasibility studies for certain projects. -KUNA

Amir to attend graduation of officers

KUWAIT: His Highness the Amir and Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah will attend on Monday graduation ceremony of the 38th batch of noncommissioned officers, 23rd group of officers for higher studies and fourth group of female students of Saad Al-Abdullah Academy for Security Sciences’ Authority Support Institute.

The ceremony is scheduled to take place at Saad Al-Abdullah Academy for Security Sciences at 10:30 A.M today, Monday.

-KUNA

Population reached 3.6 million, Kuwaitis make 35.5 percent

Heba Salem Staff Writer

KUWAIT: The Central Statistical Bureau announced the primary results of the population and facilities census that was conducted last year, where the total number of people in Kuwait reached 3.6 million. The bureau’s manager Abdullah Sahar said before a workshop that the average population growth rate according to nationalities between the censuses in 2005 and 2011 reached 5.4 percent. He added that the growth rate of Kuwaitis is 3.3 percent and for non-Kuwaitis is 6.7 percent. He added that the number of Kuwaitis is 1,089,969 (35.5 percent) while the number of non-Kuwaitis reached 1,975,881 (64.4 percent).

He noted that the population of Farwaniya Governorate was the highest among all governorates with a total of 325,513, while Mubarak Al-Kabeer Governorate was the least with a population of 258,813. He added that the number of males in all governorates is higher than the number of females, and remarked that Mubarak Al-Kabeer Governorate is the only governorate that has more Kuwaitis than

non-Kuwaitis.

Al-Ahmadi Governorate has the most Kuwaitis living in it (229,322) while Kuwait City has the least number of Kuwaitis (146,945). Farwaniya Governorate has the highest number of non-Kuwaitis (602,346) and Kuwait City has the least number of non-Kuwaitis (179,568).

Meanwhile, Minister of State for Planning Affairs and Development and Minister of Public Works Fadhil Safar stressed that the development plan cannot succeed without figures and historic datum to support it.

He added that the bureau was established a long time ago and has been providing Kuwait with data.

He explained that the census was conducted through advanced technology, such as geographic information systems to allow Kuwaitis and non-Kuwaitis to register their data online. He noted that the received data is carefully analyzed scientifically, and the Cabinet agreed to publish its results.

He remarked that the bureau uses scientific methods that are derived from international standards, where the statistics are thoroughly studied, and the numbers have been revised by international experts.

ALWATAN DAILY

KUWAIT

monDAY, march 19, 2012

Amir to leave on tour to Japan, Philippines Japanese PM Noda says “greatly honored” to welcome Kuwaiti Amir

CAPITALS: His Highness the Amir Sheikh Sabah AlAhmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah and the accompanying delegation is scheduled to leave Kuwait today, heading to Japan and the Philippines on official visits to these Asian nations.

Furthermore, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda said on Sunday he is greatly honored to receive His Highness the Amir of Kuwait Sheikh Sabah as a state guest, extending a wholehearted welcome ahead of his four-day visit from Tuesday.

In an exclusive interview with Kuwait News Agency (KUNA), Noda called the visit a historic event, which comes as the two countries mark the 50th anniversary of establishment of diplomatic ties. “We wish to take this major opportunity to further deepen mutual understanding between the peoples of both countries and to strengthen bilateral relations.” This would be the Amir’s first official visit to Japan since his succession to power in 2006. He last toured Japan in his former capacity as prime minister in July 2004.

It will be also the first trip to the country by a Kuwaiti head of state since 1995. The premier said Japan pays tribute to a leading role that Kuwait has been playing as a model of democratization in the Gulf region since its independence in 1961 through pioneering efforts made ahead of other Gulf countries, such as the legislation of a modern constitution and the establishment of the National Assembly consisting of democratically elected members.

“Recent situations in the Middle Eastern and North African region will be on agenda of my meeting with His Highness the Amir,” said Noda, expressing hope to discuss horizons for cooperation with Kuwait for the stability and peace of the region. The premier also showed Japan’s keenness to carry on in-depth discussions with the Kuwaiti side on themes discussed so far, such as stable energy supply, co-

operation by Japanese companies in improving infrastructure in Kuwait, and promotion of dialogue and exchanges in the field of politics.

“In addition, I wish to exchange views with His Highness the Amir on cooperation in new fields, including cutting-edge science and technology such as renewable energy and nanotechnology, as well as education, environmental conservation, and international medical exchanges.” Noda lauded the long history of bilateral relations of friendship and cooperation between the two countries, noting that ever since Japan recognized the independence of Kuwait earlier than other countries, both sides have nurtured firm friendly relations in the past half century with an emphasis on the energy sector.

“Having gone through last year’s auspicious occasion of the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries, Japan will seek to develop bilateral relations in an even broader scope of fields in a multilayered two-way manner in the future.” Bilateral documents signed or under negotiation in recent years include a 2008 memorandum on the establishment of the Joint Committee between the two governments with its first meeting held two years later, a double-taxation avoidance agreement, which was approved by the Japanese National Diet in 2010, an investment agreement on which the two countries agreed in effect in 2010, and a 2010 memorandum on the peaceful use of nuclear energy.

“Especially, we regard an investment agreement and a double taxation treaty as important tools to improve the business environment and expand investment between the two countries,” the Japanese leader highlighted. “The effects of a ‘win-win’ relationship can be produced by concluding and effecting such agreements at an early date and then connecting Japanese companies’ high-level technology and know-how with huge demand for infrastructure in Kuwait, thus resulting in increase of investment,” he affirmed.

“In the energy sector, moreover, Japan will utilize its technology, which is at the world’s highest level, to further expand bilateral cooperation in the field of renewable energy, including solar heat-based hybrid power generation, as well as in the area of energy conservation.” The premier

confirmed Japan’s commitment to strengthening collaboration in various fields with Kuwait, including science and technology such as nanotechnology, in order to broaden the base of bilateral cooperation.

Kuwait, one of the biggest OPEC oil producers, is Japan’s fifth largest crude oil supplier. Touching on the recent unstable Iranian situation, rising crude oil prices, and the impact of last year’s Fukushima nuclear reactor accident, Noda said, “Japan sees Kuwait as an extremely important partner underpinned by a long history of friendship and cooperation based on the energy field, and highly appreciates the long-term stable supply of crude oil by Kuwait.” Given the current uncertain prospects of the crude oil market, he voiced expectation that Kuwait will ensure such trust by taking leadership in securing stable supply and price stability of crude oil. “Furthermore, Japan pays tribute to initiatives demonstrated by Kuwait in promoting dialogue between oil-producing and consuming countries for the stability of international energy supply and demand, including the hosting of the ‘sian Ministerial Energy Roundtable’ last April and a ‘ministerial meeting of the International Energy Forum’ this month,” he said, laying hopes on Kuwait to continue and strengthen such efforts in the future.

As for stalled negotiations on a long-awaited free trade agreement (FTA) between Japan and the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), Noda sought Kuwait’s initiative towards a conclusion at the earliest. According to Noda, both sides agreed in principle to resume the talks on the FTA at a meeting of foreign ministers from Japan and GCC member countries held on the occasion of the UN General Assembly in September 2011. “Building on this basic agreement, Japan intends to resume the bilateral FTA negotiations soon aiming at their early conclusion and expects Kuwait to work on other GCC members and take leadership in obtaining their consent,” he underlined.

The GCC groups Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Bahrain.

Meanwhile, Noda shed light on Kuwait’s unstinting support to Japan following a 9.0-magnitude earthquake and ensuring tsunami in March last year that left more than 19,000 people dead or missing in the northeastern region.

3

“On behalf of the people of Japan, I would like to express our heartfelt gratitude to His Highness the Amir and the people of Kuwait for their kind words of sympathy and support offered in the wake of the Great East Japan Earthquake. Especially, we are deeply grateful for the donations of 5 million barrels of crude oil to Japan by the initiative of His Highness the Amir himself,” the Japanese leader said.

According to Noda, the relief from Kuwait has been used effectively for the support of reconstruction in the three hardest-hit prefectures of Iwate, Fukushima, and Miyagi.

“In addition, Kuwaiti Ambassador to Japan Abdulrahman Al-Otaibi visited Kesennuma city in Miyagi Prefecture last April and donated soccer balls as well as stationary and other relief goods to people affected by the disaster.

Moreover, the Kuwait Embassy held a charity bazaar at its premises in May in support of disaster victims and donated proceeds to the stricken areas,” Noda said.

“These activities represent the traditional friendly relationship and solidarity between the two countries. Japan is wholeheartedly grateful for the warm support of Kuwait.”

The premier reiterated that reconstruction in the affected areas is steadily under way, and daily lives elsewhere have been restored completely to what they were before the disaster. Assuring the safety of Japanese food, Noda urged Kuwait to relax the import restrictions on Japan’s products in a manner corresponding to the latest situation.

Kuwait has maintained restrictions on all Japanese products since the March disasters, which Noda described “the severest among Japan’s trading partners and not based on scientific grounds.” “We would like to remind Kuwait that Japan has further strengthened its food inspection system. It is scheduled to introduce the world’s severest safety standards in April, thus securing distribution of safe food,” he said, pledging to continue to provide scientific data in a timely manner. Noda also called on Kuwait to withdraw the import restrictions “for the sake of post-disaster reconstruction in the affected areas.” Meanwhile, Noda expressed Japan’s welcome to investment and tourists from Kuwait.

During a four-day visit, His Highness the Amir is scheduled to hold talks with the Emperor, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, as well as other leaders. -KUNA

Legislative Affairs Committee agree to strip immunity off Al-Fadhl Staff Writer

KUWAIT: The Parliamentary Legislative Affairs Committee decided on Sunday to hold a joint meeting with the Financial Affairs Committee on Monday in order to discuss a draft law that concerns the conditions of senior positions at the different state institutions.

During the very meeting the committee approved some suggestions and postponed others for further study.

Meanwhile, the Head of the Legislative Affairs Committee Dr. Waleed Al-Tabtabaie said in a press statement that the committee has approved lifting the parliamentary immunity off MP Nabeel Al-Fadhl due to a misdemeanor case; however the committee rejected lifting the parliamentary immunity off MPs Musallam Al-Barrak and Mohammad Al-Juwaihel due to press misdemeanor cases. Al-Tabtabaie pointed out that the

committee approved a draft law which stipulates granting the unemployed Kuwaiti women a monthly reward worth KD 300 in addition to approving the request of some MPs for establishing the national authority for protecting consumers.

The committee restricted granting the citizenship under ‘great services’ to Kuwait, given that the new parliamentary procedures stipulate that it is only allowed for the sons of martyrs and military individuals who participated in the wars of 1967, 1973 and the war of liberating Kuwait in 1990 to benefit from this item.

Regarding the law of national unity, Al-Tabtabaie disclosed that the committee delayed finalizing this law as the government representative Huda Al-Shayeji responded to the requests of MPs and the very law requires more study and clarifications.

New law to finalize Bedouns issue: Al-Damkhi Staff Writer

KUWAIT: The Human Rights Committee held a meeting yesterday to discuss the issue of setting up an investigative committee to look into the Kuwaiti detainees in Guantanamo Prison as well as those who are in Iraqi and Iranian jails.

The Head of the Committee Dr. Adel Al-Damkhi said that the committee had agreed to call on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Khaled Al-Jarrallah to review those cases, particularly the case of the Kuwaiti student Ali Al-Harbi. Al-Damkhi pointed out that the committee had invited the International Organization for Refugees to meet on Wednesday to discuss the issue of Bedouns (Stateless Arabs) who illegally reside in the country in the presence of the Bedouns committee representatives.

Al-Damkhi further stressed that the issue should be

underscored as it is a sensitive issue. He called for creating a draft bill to finalize the issue once and for all.

He added that the committee will call on the civil society to take part in the formulation of a report concerning the status of human rights in Kuwait as well as to participate in the preparation of law related to Public Authority for Domestic Laborers.

He also pointed out that the committee will assign the civil society and the International Labor to formulate a draft bill regarding domestic labor given that the country has more than 600,000 domestic laborers. He said that the country lacks the needed legislation to protect the rights of those laborers.

He also met with laborers who have been abused saying that the committee is working on setting up a 24 hour hot line so that complaints are made directly.

He said that an independent human rights body will be discussed in the next meetings.

Kuwaiti school to be built in Karary, Khartoum

Dust storm continued to hit Kuwait on Sunday, March 18, 2012. The weather gradually improved as of Sunday night, according to earlier statement made to KUNA by Director of the Meteorology Department at the Civil Aviation Directorate Mohammad Karam forecasted. Karam dismissed circulated reports expecting a new wave of sand storms would hit Kuwait soon. He forecast that the weather will be warm at day, and relatively cold at night with a gradual rise of temperatures. (Al Watan)

Failaka Island evacuated due to sandstorm KUWAIT: Failaka Island was evacuated Sunday due to the sandstorm and bad weather conditions witnessed in Kuwait recently, said the Ministry of Interior.

According to the statement, speedboats and other maritime vessels from the coast-guard were sent to the Island in order to evacuate some 277 individuals on the Island.

Medical and emergency teams were also sent to the Island to treat those suffering from asthma and blood pressure.

Kuwait is undergoing a dust storm and unstable weather conditions due to high air pressure, according the Saturday’s forecasts.

The active northwesterly winds, reaching to speed up to 50 kmph, caused horizontal visibility to drop below 300 meters in most of the country’s areas. -KUNA

Sheikha Amthal welcomes volunteers during ‘current circumstances’

Authorities in a press conference after laying the corner stone for “Kuwaiti Martyrs High School” in Karary area of Khartoum on Sunday, March 18, 2012, a project made possible through a donation from Kuwait’s Zakat House. (KUNA)

KHARTOUM: With a crowd of officials and members of the public present, authorities laid the corner stone for “Kuwaiti Martyrs High School” in Karary area of Khartoum on Sunday, a project made possible through a donation from Kuwait’s Zakat House.

Education Minister Dr. Yehya Saleh gave an address on the occasion, during which he praised the great Kuwaiti support to Sudan in service and humanitarian and cultural advancement sectors. He said this school would further aid the Sudanese in their march towards

development.

The official particularly recalled the readiness to extend support and many initiatives of “Direct Aid Organization”, formerly “Africa Muslims Committee”, and their help with development projects and programs in Sudan.

Meanwhile, Direct Aid coordinator in Khartoum Alman Sidati pointed out that the school building plan includes classrooms, an administrative building, a library, a computer lab, and a science lab. -KUNA

KUWAIT: Head of Kuwait’s Voluntary Work Centre Sheikha Amthal Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah called on people of various capabilities to volunteer in any field, as strikes continue to paralyze a number of state institutions in the country.

“Our dear country needs volunteers during these current circumstances, which necessitate the cooperation of all,” she said in a statement on Sunday.

“Kuwait calls us to work for its sake and to lift the damage off its people and all who live on its humble soil.”

The centre is welcoming volunteers of both genders in all ages, she said, calling on the expertise of retirees for tasks that require specialized know-how.

Volunteers can apply by contacting the centre by phone on its hotline 2225 5305 or by the e-mail webmasterkuwaitvolunteers.com. -KUNA

Ambassador to UK holds seminar on ‘European Union and Arab Spring’

Photo of Ambassador to the UK Khaled Al-Duwaisan. (KUNA)

LONDON: Ambassador to the UK Khaled Al-Duwaisan held a seminar, late Saturday, under the slogan of “The European Union and the Arab Spring.” The event was held at the ambassador’s house where he threw a dinner on the honor of Minister of State responsible for European issues and NATO David Lidington and a number of British parliament members, Arab ambassadors and senior academic and journalists. “A positive and constructive discussion on the latest developments in the Middle East took place,” Al-Duwaisan said when the seminar was over.

He further said that Arab ambassadors stress the important role of European allies in the region, especially the UK, to bring back stability in the Middle East. He emphasized that the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries were not affected by any uprisings due to the deep relations that ties these countries together. Fair distribution of fortune in the Gulf region and the ability to utilize this fortune were key ingredients to achieve development and social stability.

On his part, Lidington reiterated his country’s concern over the stability in the Middle East, supporting democracy and boosting ties with Arab nations. -KUNA

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ALWATAN DAILY

regional Al-Sayyed Al-Masri’s Funeral

By Hossam Fathi Staff Writer

KUWAIT: The Egyptian government has decided to invite the kings, princes, and presidents from all over the world to attend the funeral of Egyptian citizen AlSayyed Al-Masri who died at 98 years old. The gates of the King Abdullah Bridge that links Saudi Arabia to Sharm El-Sheikh have been decorated, and Sharm El-Sheikh International Airport is ready to receive aircrafts.

In Cairo, the streets that lead to historic locations have been lit using colorful lamps, since visitors will pass by those areas, while the Citadel and its surrounding gardens have become more beautiful than the gardens of Versailles in France. Those gardens hosted the army’s and the police’s orchestras who played musical notes. In addition, the monument at Al-Tahrir Square of the martyrs who fell during the recent Egyptian revolution have been polished, while old historic buildings have been renovated to look similar to their state in the 19th and early 20th Centuries.

Artists can be found at every street corner down town, where cars were banned from this area years ago.

This has made the area look like the internal streets in Paris and Rome. May Allah bless the soul of Al-Sayyed Al-Masri who was the last illiterate Egyptian. After his death, Egypt has become free of illiteracy. hossam@alwatan.com.kw Twitter:@hossamfathy66

Mossad ‘agrees with US’ on Iran nuclear goals

JERUSALEM: Israel’s intelligence service Mossad agrees with US assessments there is no hard evidence that Iran has decided to build a nuclear bomb, even though Israeli leaders have talked about Tehran’s plans to acquire nuclear weapons, The New York Times reported.

“Their people ask very hard questions, but Mossad does not disagree with the US on the weapons program,” the newspaper quoted an unnamed former senior US intelligence official as saying. “There is not a lot of dispute between the US and Israeli intelligence communities on the facts,” the former official said.

The Times reported last month that the latest assessments

by US spy agencies are broadly consistent with a 2007 intelligence finding that concluded that Iran had abandoned its nuclear weapons program. According to Saturday’s report, US spy agencies have spent years trying to track Iranian efforts to enrich uranium and develop missile technology, and they are watching for any move toward weaponization.

While the National Security Agency eavesdrops on telephone conversations of Iranian officials and conducts other forms of electronic surveillance, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency analyzes radar imagery and digital images of nuclear sites, the paper noted.

Outside analysts believe high-tech drones prowl over secret Iranian installations, The Times pointed out.

Meanwhile, clandestine ground sensors, which can detect electromagnetic signals or radioactive emissions that could be linked to covert nuclear activity, are placed near suspect Iranian facilities, according to the report. The United States also relies heavily on information gathered by inspectors with the International Atomic Energy Agency who visit some of Iran’s nuclear-related facilities, The Times said. -AFP

UK says Iran blocking website in censorship battle

LONDON: Britain accused Iran on Sunday of blocking a website days after it was launched by the British government to reach out to Iranians, in the latest spat over media censorship.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague said the “UK for Iranians” website which he launched on Wednesday with a personal video message had been blocked three days later by Tehran.

“I condemn this action by the Iranian government. We have no quarrel with the Iranian people and regret that the Iranian authorities fear their own citizens’ interaction and involvement with the outside world,” Hague said in a statement. Britain is at the forefront of Western opposition to Iran’s nuclear program, supporting tough sanctions against Tehran which it fears is seeking the bomb. Tehran says its atomic activities are entirely peaceful.

Relations hit new lows last November when protesters stormed the British embassy, prompting London to evacuate its Tehran staff and expel all Iranian diplomats from Britain.

Iran said that was an over-reaction and accused London of censorship when its state-run English language news channel Press TV was banned from British airwaves by media regulator Ofcom in January.

Britain’s public service broadcaster, the BBC, said on Wednesday it had suffered a sophisticated cyberattack following a campaign by Iranian authorities against its Persian service.

Hague said the website (ukforiranians.fco.gov. uk/en in English and ukforiranians.fco.gov.uk/fa in Farsi) and the use of social media such as Facebook and Twitter were an attempt to engage with Iranians and explain British policy.

Iran blocked a similar website set up by the U.S. State Department as a “virtual embassy” hours after its launch in December. Washington has had no diplomatic presence in Tehran since its embassy was stormed in 1979, the year of the Islamic Revolution and has led the global push to isolate Iran.

“Iran’s people have had to endure an ever-tightening stranglehold of censorship,” Hague said.

“The blocking of our website is only a very small part of what Iranians undergo daily: millions of websites blocked, access to e-mail services denied, international television channels jammed, films and theatre productions closed down, books unpublished, traditional Persian literature rewritten and newspapers banned.”

Many Iranians get around a government filter that blocks vast numbers of Western news and social media sites - including Facebook and Twitter - by using virtual private network, or VPN, software. -Reuters

monDAY, march 19, 2012

Car bomb hits Aleppo; police crush Damascus march

BEIRUT: A car bomb hit Syria’s second city Aleppo on Sunday, a day after blasts killed 27 in Damascus, and security forces arrested and beat activists at a rare anti-government protest in the centre of the capital. The British-based opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least three people had been killed and 25 wounded by the explosion close to a state security office in Aleppo. State news channel Syria TV said the “terrorist” attack had been between two residential buildings in the Al-Suleimaniya district, behind a post office building. It showed building fronts blasted open, masonry littering the street and a blood-spattered street corner. Activists and the government traded blame for the explosion, as they have over previous bombings. The TV channel showed pictures of bloody bodies and charred buildings from earlier blasts. “Their gift to us,” said a caption, followed by a bloody handprint.

“Their fingerprints are obvious.”

But an activist in Aleppo from the opposition’s local Revolutionary Council said the government was behind the attack.

“These explosions are always done by the regime to discourage people from joining the revolution ... they want to make our uprising seem like a terrorist operation to the rest of the world, but it is not,” said the activist, who called himself Marwan and spoke to Reuters by telephone. The opposition reported heavy raids by security forces and fighting with rebels in northern and southern Syrian provinces and suburbs of Damascus.

In the capital, as crowds gathered for memorials to victims of Saturday’s car bombs, security forces broke up an opposition march of more than 200 people when protesters began shouting “the people want to topple the regime”. The phrase has echoed through the wave of Arab uprisings that began last year and has toppled autocratic rulers in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen.

“They were walking through an area in central Damascus, near SANA (the state news agency). At first they shouted slogans against violence and the police didn’t do anything, but as soon as they started to call for regime change the police rushed in and started beating people with canes,” said Rami Abdelrahman, from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Dialogue

The protest, which called for non-violent resistance to the government, had been led by moderate opposition leaders previously tolerated by the government because of their calls for dialogue and rejection of foreign intervention.

Activists said the Sunday march aimed to commemorate the peaceful roots of Syria’s uprising, which has been overshadowed by a growing armed insurgency against state security forces.

Security forces arrested Mohammed Sayyed Rassas, a leader of the National Coordinating Body for Democratic Change (NCB), an opposition group which had visited China and Russia in attempts to promote dialogue between Assad and the opposition. Most opposition groups have rejected the NCB over its insistence on non-violence and its stance against foreign intervention, arguing the government’s fierce crackdown has made

People gather at the site of an explosion at an intelligence building in Damascus March 18, 2012. Two large explosions hit Damascus on Saturday, killing several security force personnel and civilians. (Reuters)

arming the uprising inevitable. Police also briefly arrested Fayyez Sara, who headed the Committee to Revive Civil Society, other activists said. Syrian government forces have crushed a rebel stronghold in the central city of Homs and have been pounding rebel strongholds in northern Idlib.

“It’s clear that the battle is finishing in the regime’s favour overall,” said a Lebanese official close to Assad’s government.

“On the security level there is a long and difficult struggle for the regime and it is obvious this will take a long time to finish ...

We will see many more explosions like those we saw yesterday but in general they have finished off the military fight and they don’t have much more to do.”

Damascus memorial

The United Nations says more than 8,000 people have been killed by security forces in the crackdown on a revolt against four decades of rule by the Assad family.

The struggle has become increasingly bloody as peaceful protest has given way to rebellion by armed groups. Authorities

Militants kill American teacher in Yemen

SANAA: Motorcycle-riding gunmen linked to Al-Qaeda shot and killed an American teacher in the Yemeni city of Taiz on Sunday, and Yemeni officials said government forces killed up to 14 militants in clashes and artillery attacks on their strongholds.

The attacks underscore the challenges facing President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi who took office last month after a year of massive protests against his predecessor Ali Abdullah Saleh.

A police source in Taiz said a gunman riding on the motorcycle driven by an accomplice shot a US English language teacher who was also deputy director of a language school, the Swedish Institute.

Officials from the institute identified the victim as Joel Shrun and said he was born in 1983.

The gunmen, who escaped after the attack, were believed to be linked to Al-Qaeda, the police source said. A group affiliated with the militant network claimed responsibility.

“This operation comes as a response to the campaign of Christian proselytizing that the West has launched against Muslims,” an unidentified person said in a text message to journalists, claiming responsibility on behalf of the AlQaeda-linked Ansar Al-Sharia (Partisans of Islamic Law).

Islamic militants often accuse Western aid groups of proselytizing.

Yemen has seen an escalation of Al-Qaeda violence since Hadi took office in February vowing to fight the Islamist network.

Taiz, 200 km (120 miles) south of Sanaa, is a commercial hub where many foreigners live and work. It was a flashpoint for protests against former President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s 33-year rule.

Also on Sunday, a government warplane bombed Islamist militants in the southern city of Jaar, causing people to flee their homes, residents said. There were no immediate reports of casualties. Ansar Al-Sharia captured Jaar in Abyan Province in March last year after the outbreak of protests against Saleh and have turned it into their main base in southern Yemen.

Daily clashes break out around areas controlled by militants in southern Yemen. A local official said that up to 14 militants were killed in artillery attacks and clashes on Saturday north of the Abyan provincial capital of Zinjibar, the area of Bagdar and the town of Jaar.

The United States and Saudi Arabia,Yemen’s neighbour and the world’s biggest oil exporter, are concerned about Al-Qaeda’s expansion in Yemen where it has regrouped after suffering reverses in Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

In early March, militants killed more than 110 soldiers in twin suicide attacks and said they had also captured some 70 soldiers. -Reuters

say they are fighting foreign militants who have killed more than 2,000 members of the security forces. Heavy fighting raged in the northwestern province of Deir El-Zor and military vehicles were torched, activists said on Sunday.

Rebels also blew up a bridge in southern Deraa, birthplace of the uprising, the Observatory said. The bridge had been used to transport supplies to security forces who surround the city. The Observatory said security forces raided the town of Artouz, a Damascus suburb, looking for wanted men. The Local Coordination Committee said residents there could hear heavy gunfire. In central Damascus, crowds of Syrians gathered at the sites of the two car bombings outside security bases on Saturday. The state news channel Syria TV showed footage of charred apartments, shattered windows and debris. Dozens of people waving Syrian flags gathered to pray for the victims.

“Whatever they want to do we won’t be afraid,” said one woman speaking to the channel. “We won’t be afraid, we are with President Assad ... those who don’t love Damascus should leave.” -Reuters

Israeli troops ‘wound boy in Gaza’

GAZA: Israeli troops wounded a six-year-old Palestinian boy on Sunday when they opened fire east of the town of Rafah, in southern Gaza, Palestinian medical sources said. “A six-year-old Palestinian child was wounded by Israeli army gunfire near the Kerem Shalom crossing, east of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, which is where the family lives,” emergency services spokesman Adham Abu Selmiya told AFP. “He is in moderate condition and was shot with live fire in his thigh,” he added. The Israeli army had no immediate comment on the incident and said it was checking on the report.

The shooting occurred near the Israeli border, where the military maintains an exclusion zone that extends several hundred meters inside the Gaza Strip, which it says is necessary to prevent infiltrations into the Jewish state.

Troops regularly open fire on Palestinians who enter the area, including children working or playing in the zone.

The shooting came amid a tense truce that ended four days of fighting between Israel and Gaza militants. The Egyptian-mediated truce was announced on Tuesday, and was accepted by both sides, though sporadic rocket fire into Israel and Israeli strikes on Gaza have continued.

The four-day outbreak of violence began with Israel’s assassination of a Palestinian militant commander and saw Gaza militants fire hundreds of rockets into the southern region of the Jewish state. Israel launched dozens of air strikes during the conflict, killing 25 people. -AFP

Turkish police fire tear gas on Kurdish festivities ANKARA: Turkish police used water cannon, tear gas and baton charges to break up Kurdish demonstrations across the country on Sunday, a sign of rising tension ahead of the Kurdish New Year next week.

Turkey’s pro-Kurdish party and Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) armed militants have both called for large demonstrations for Newroz, the Kurdish New Year that begins on March 21, sensing the government, which has strongly backed Arab uprisings, may be vulnerable to pressure from street protests.

Both the legal Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) and the PKK are demanding a level of autonomy for the mainly Kurdish southeast of the country. Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s conservative government has taken steps to increase cultural rights for the country’s Kurds - some 20 percent of the population - but says these are individual rights and that it is strongly against any separate political settlement for the Kurds or the southeast as a whole.

The biggest protest took place in Diyarbakir, the main city in the southeast. Several thousand people gathered to march to an area just outside the city to celebrate Newroz. Hundreds of riot police, backed by armored cars and helicopters, took over strategic points in the city from the early morning. They tried to prevent large crowds coming together and attempted to block the way to the Newroz meeting.

Turkish authorities have banned Newroz celebrations till March 21.

Clashes broke out across the city between stone-throwing youths and police

Pro-Kurdish demonstrators clash with riot police during a protest in Istanbul, March 18, 2012. (Reuters)

who fired tear gas and water cannon, and arrested dozens of people, witnesses said.

Still, at least 20,000 people gathered in the area outside the city, waving Kurdish flags and holding up portraits of Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed PKK leader. “Long live Ocalan,” and “the PKK is the people, the people are here,” the crowd chanted.

Police in Istanbul, Turkey’s biggest city with a large Kurdish population, also moved in to break up a Newroz celebration just outside the city’s ancient city walls.

Clashes broke out when police prevented two groups of more than 1,000 people each coming together, Turkish media said.

Turkish prosecutors have this year arrested thousands of people across the country accused of sympathies with the PKK, which Turkey, the United States and the European Union recognize as a terrorist organization. More than 40,000 militants, soldiers and civilians have been killed in the fighting since the PKK took up arms in 1984. -Reuters

Libya determined to try Al-Senoussi in home courts TRIPOLI: Libya is determined to try former spy chief Abdullah Al-Senoussi who was arrested in Mauritania, the justice minister said Sunday, as France and the International Criminal Court also seek his extradition. “Our courts are very good, even excellent, especially in Tripoli and we are able to carry out his trial according to international standards,” Ali Hmeida Ashur told AFP. “We expect diplomats and government officials to convince all parties of the need to try Al-Senoussi in Libya,” he said, adding that his country was in close contact with Mauritania over this issue.

On Saturday Libyan government spokesman Nasser Al-Manaa said that the prosecutor general had sent an extradition request to Mauritania through Interpol asking for Al-Senoussi to be handed back to Tripoli. The International Criminal Court and France also want to put Al-Senoussi on trial.

Long feared in Libya, Muammar Gadhafi’s former right-hand man is wanted by the ICC in The Hague for crimes committed while trying to crush last year’s uprising. Al-Senoussi faced an international arrest warrant after a Paris court sentenced him in absentia to life for involvement in the downing of a French airliner in 1989 that killed 170 people. The UTA airliner on a flight from Brazzaville to Paris via N’Djamena was brought down by a bomb on September 19, 1989 in Niger.

Al-Senoussi could also be held accountable in Libya for the Abu Salim prison massacre of 1996 when more than 1,000 detainees were gunned down. Amnesty international on Saturday said that Al-Senoussi, who was arrested in Mauritania, should be tried by the ICC in the absence of a functioning judiciary in Libya. -AFP

ALWATAN DAILY

WORLD

mondAY, march 19, 2012

Anti-Communist pastor set to become German president BERLIN: Joachim Gauck is poised to become Germany’s third president in just two years on Sunday after winning support from the country’s main political parties, but the feisty theologian may prove an awkward partner for Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Merkel reluctantly accepted Gauck for the mainly ceremonial post after her coalition ally joined opposition parties last month in backing him to replace Christian Wulff, who resigned in a scandal over financial favors.

Unlike Wulff, a former lawmaker from Merkel’s ruling centre-right Christian Democrats (CDU), the 72-year-old Gauck has no party affiliation. But he is known for speaking his mind - with the eloquence of a seasoned preacher - on controversial issues.

Eighty percent of Germans trust Gauck, a former Lutheran pastor and human rights activist, according to an opinion poll by Infratest published on Saturday.

Yet two thirds said they thought he would be an “uncomfortable” president for the country’s political parties.

In Germany, the president is chosen not by voters but by a special federal assembly comprising all 620 members of the Bundestag lower house of parliament and an equal number of delegates from the country’s 16 regions.

Gauck’s election is assured as he has the support of the three ruling coalition parties including the CDU and of the opposition Social Democrats and Greens.

“We expect a big majority (for Gauck),”

must be the guardian of the soul of our nation,” said Sunday’s edition of the top-selling daily Bild which also backed Gauck for the job in 2010.

“Gauck’s most important task is to restore dignity to this considerably tarnished office.”

Merkel and Gauck both hail from formerly Communist East Germany where her father was also a clergyman. They are said to have a good personal rapport, but she blocked a bid to install him as president in 2010 in favor of the ill-fated Wulff.

Gauck has a rich life story shaped by the Cold War. When he was 11 his father was sent to the Siberian Gulag for alleged espionage and did not return for four years.

That experience fostered an abiding aversion to totalitarianism, and he has said freedom will be the leitmotif of his presidency.

After the fall of Communism and Germany’s reunification, Gauck oversaw the archives of the dreaded Stasi, the East German secret police, earning recognition for exposing their crimes.

As a purely symbolic head of state, Gauck poses no threat to Merkel’s domination of German politics. But his moral authority and rhetorical gifts may dim some of her luster on the public stage.

The federal assembly is expected to start voting shortly after 1100 GMT. Unlike 2010, when Wulff only won in a third round of voting, Gauck is expected to be elected in the first round on Sunday. -Reuters

File photo of German Chancellor Angela Merkel (right) looking at former East German rights activist Joachim Gauck, joint candidate of government and opposition for the post of president, at the Chancellery in Berlin. (Reuters)

said Frank-Walter Steinmeier, leader of the opposition Social Democrats.

His only opponent is Beate Klarsfeld, 73, an anti-Nazi activist endorsed by the small Left Party.

The German head of state has little execu-

tive power but is supposed to provide moral leadership, a role for which Gauck, a prominent figure in the peaceful protest movement that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, seems well-suited.

“The president of the federal republic

organised by the opposition on Facebook.

The once fiercely-critical station fell under state control just a year after Putin won his first term as president in 2000. Tens of thousands had gathered outside Ostankino tower in the station’s defense at the time. The Kremlin had managed extend its grip on almost all major TV networks by the time the former KGB spy left office and became prime minister under his hand-picked presidential successor Dmitry Medvedev in 2008.

The sudden prospects of his return and the fraud-tainted polls that helped the ruling party keep its parliamentary majority in December fuelled mass protests not seen in Moscow since the days of the Soviet Union’s collapse.

The rallies have waned in the days since Putin’s dominant win in a vote European monitors called more transparent than previous elections.

Yet hundreds still came out in Moscow on Saturday and a group of activists staged an overnight vigil near Red Square in defense of democratic freedoms. NTV for its part seemed unbowed by the criticism and prepared to air the program for a second time “due to popular demand” on Sunday evening.

A pro-Putin youth group also vowed to show up at the TV tower on Sunday to denounce the protest movement’s defamation claims. -AFP

NEWS IN BRIEF Ten killed in train-minivan collision in Indonesia JAKARTA: At least 10 members of one Indonesian family were killed on Sunday, as their minivan spun out of control after colliding with a moving train and flipped over in a nearby rice field. The minivan packed with 14 people was passing through a railway crossing in Tasikmalaya city in West Java province, unaware of an oncoming train that slammed into it, police said. “The minivan was dragged over five to six meters and then rolled over into a rice field,” Tasikmalaya city police official Suherman told AFP. -AFP

Most Japanese favor break with nuclear power TOKYO: The poll, released Sunday by the Tokyo Shimbun newspaper, found that 43.7 percent of respondents believe Japan should gradually reduce its dependence on nuclear power and eventually do away with atomic energy altogether.

Another 35.9 percent agreed with that position more than they disagreed with it. Only 4.5 percent backed a nuclear future, with 12 percent saying they leaned toward supporting nuclear power. The poll of 3,000 adults was conducted last week. The newspaper did not specify the survey’s margin of error. -AFP

Polling begins for Tamil Nadu assembly by-poll CHENNAI: Voting for the by-poll in Sankarankoil assembly constituency of Tamil Nadu’s Tirunelveli district began amid tight security at 8 a.m. Sunday. Thirteen candidates, including six independents, are in the fray vying for votes from 206,087 voters (male 102,921, female 103,166). There are 242 polling booths in the constituency and voting would close at 5 p.m. The polling process will be webcasted and will be monitored by the Chief Electoral Officer using ten monitors installed in the control room of his office.

-AFP

Anti-Putin protests target iconic Moscow TV tower MOSCOW: Russia’s protest leaders prepared to picket Moscow’s main television tower on Sunday after footage purporting to show people being paid to rally against Vladimir Putin was aired nationally.

The demonstration outside Ostankino tower is intended to cap a growing campaign for Russians to boycott NTV television - a once independent network now run by the media arm of the state-run natural gas monopoly Gazprom. The station had aired a series of self-proclaimed documentaries in the run-up to Putin’s March 4 election to a third term claiming to back up his charges that the protests were being funded by the West.

Its latest report on Thursday night showed people openly accepting cash payments for attending a small anti-Putin demonstration in Moscow this winter. But some of those who appeared at the rally told various private media outlets this weekend that they had only shown up at the agreed location after responding to an ad placed by NTV television itself.

“Now it is clear why the Kremlin decided to decriminalize defamation and make it into a civil offence on the eve of the elections,” Gazprom Media’s former director Alfred Kokh wrote in his blog.

More than 1,500 people promised to attend the unsanctioned 3:00 pm (1100 GMT) event on a page

5

Opposition ahead in East Timor election count

Communists stage a rally near Moscow’s Ostankino television tower. (AFP)

DILI: Early results from East Timor’s presidential polls on Sunday showed the opposition Fretilin party’s Francisco “Lu Olo” Guterres had surged ahead with incumbent Jose Ramos-Horta lagging in third. A tally broadcast live by the country’s electoral commission on stateowned radio and television station RTTL, put Guterres ahead with 28 percent of the 411,353 votes counted so far -- around 65 percent of the total votes cast. Former guerrilla leader Taur Matan Ruak was in second place with 25 percent of the vote, while Nobel Prize-winning incumbent Ramos-Horta, who is seeking another five-year term, was in third place with 18 percent. -Reuters

Pakistan Maoists kidnap two Italian tourists in India gunfights, airstrikes leave 50 dead ORISSA: Maoist rebels have kidnapped two Italian tourists in the eastern Indian state of Orissa and issued a set of demands for their release, police told AFP on Sunday.

The incident occurred in Kandhamal district, central Orissa, police said, one of several states where armed Maoist rebels have waged a decades-long battle to overthrow state and national authorities.

“Maoists have abducted two Italian nationals from Daringbadi area of Kandhamal district,” regional deputy inspector general Radha Krishna Sharma told AFP. Sharma said the Maoists had initially nabbed

four people on Saturday, including two Indians.

They released the Indian hostages on Sunday morning. A search is underway to locate the two remaining hostages.

According to Indian news channel NDTV, the tourists were kidnapped while taking photographs of local women bathing in a river.

Local television reports said the kidnappers had issued a set of 13 demands for the release of the Italians, asking police to release an unspecified number of prisoners and end their operations to root out Maoists from the region.

The Indian government has described the Maoist movement, which often targets police

Coup-prone GuineaBissau votes for president Security officials stand amidst the rubble of a school which was hit by explosives in Landikotal, northwest Pakistan. (Reuters)

ISLAMABAD: At least 51 militants and four soldiers have been killed in air strikes and clashes with Pakistani security forces in the restive northwest over the past week, officials said Sunday.

On Sunday, Pakistani planes bombed a tribal belt bordering Afghanistan, killing 26 militants, a senior paramilitary official told AFP. “Pakistani jet strikes today killed 26 militants and wounded 15 others and destroyed their seven hide outs in different areas of Upper Orakzai and Kurram (tribal districts),” the official said.

Most of Upper Orakzai is in Taliban hands and is the scene of frequent clashes between security forces and Islamist militants.

Separately, at least 25 militants and four soldiers were killed in Bara, a restive town in Khyber tribal district in gunfights between March 12 and 18, the official said.

“Four security forces personnel embraced martyrdom and 12 others were wounded in gunfights which left 25 militants dead,” he said.

The official said that no militant had been

killed in custody and added that the military operation was directed at the militants belonging to the Taliban-linked Laskhar-e-Islam group that is led by warlord Mangal Bagh.

The group has been involved in recent suicide attacks and kidnapping in the northwestern city of Peshawar, which borders Khyber, he said.

Two local intelligence officials confirmed the clashes and death toll.

Independent verification of the incident is not possible as access to the area is restricted by the military.

Some 18,000 people fled their homes in Khyber in October last year amid fears of a fresh outbreak of fighting between the army and Islamist militants linked to the Pakistani Taliban.

Pakistan’s seven tribal districts near the Afghan border are rife with homegrown insurgents and are strongholds of Taliban and Al-Qaeda operatives.

Islamist militants have killed more than 4,800 people across Pakistan since government troops raided an extremist mosque in Islamabad in July 2007. -AFP

BISSAU: The small coup-prone west African state of Guinea-Bissau goes to the polls on Sunday to elect a new president - an office no one has yet held for a full five-year term. Ahead of the voting, the appeals for calm multiplied from the international community well aware of the impoverished country’s violent history.

Since independence from Portugal in 1974, achieved after an 11-year armed conflict, three presidents have been overthrown by coups, and one was assassinated in office in 2009. A mutiny by renegade soldiers in April 2010 prompted the European Union and the United States to suspend crucial budgetary and security sector reform support - leaving much hanging on a smooth election and post-poll reforms.

The most recent president, Malam Bacai Sanha, died in January after a long illness, prompting Sunday’s election.

Nine candidates are running for office, but only four have a fighting chance.

These include Carlos Gomes Junior, 60, who stepped down as prime minister to run in the election as the candidate for the ruling African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (APIGCV), The others are Kumba Yala, who ruled Guinea-Bissau from 2000 to 2003, lawmaker Manuel Serifo Nhamadjo and Henrique Rosa, a former businessman.

Some 180 foreign observers from the Economic Community of West African States, the African Union, the Community of Portuguese-Speaking Countries, Britain, the United States, Nigeria and South Africa are to monitor the polls.

The United States and UN Secretary-General Ban Kimoon have called for a peaceful, orderly and transparent election.

“We encourage all registered voters to make their voices heard by casting their ballot, and doing so peacefully,” the US embassy in the Senegalese capital Dakar said in a statement Friday. -AFP

and soldiers with deadly roadside mine ambushes, as the country’s biggest internal security threat. The insurgency, which began in 1967, feeds off land disputes, police brutality and corruption, and is strongest in the poorest and most deprived areas of India, many of which are rich in natural resources.

The rebels say they are fighting for the rights of neglected tribal people and landless farmers and their ultimate goal is to capture India’s cities and overthrow parliament.

They have kidnapped government officials and police officers in the past to raise ransom payments and negotiate other demands. -AFP

North Korea rejects calls to stop satellite launch plan PYONGYANG: North Korea on Sunday reiterated its commitment to launching a satellite in the face of protests by its neighbors and the US, who view the move as a disguised missile test. The North announced Friday it would launch a long-range rocket carrying a satellite between April 12-16 to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of its founding president Kim Il-Sung. Pyongyang insists the program is part of peaceful space research, and on Sunday railed against the “double standards” of the US, which with other nations believe it is effectively a missile test. The US, Japan, South Korea and the EU said the plan, announced just 16 days after Pyongyang agreed to suspend long-range missile tests in return for the US food aid, would breach a UN ban imposed after previous missile launches. But the North’s state-run KCNA on Sunday called the criticism “a base move... to encroach upon our sovereignty” and accused the US and Japan of “space espionage” by monitoring other nations with their own satellites. “Explicitly speaking, no one can tolerate the double yardstick and double standards in the issue of satellite manufacture and launch,” KCNA said in a statement. It also criticized “hostile forces” including Washington, Tokyo and Seoul of using the planned satellite launch to heap “political, military and economic pressure” on Pyongyang.

“No one has the right to take issue with the DPRK (North Korea)’s projected satellite launch this or that way,” it said, adding that its neighbors are “sadly mistaken” if they believe the North would cancel the launch. The launch by the impoverished but nuclear-armed state North is set to jeopardize a February 29 agreement with Washington, which had raised hopes of eased tension under the new leader Kim Jong-Un. Pyongyang agreed to suspend its uranium enrichment program, along with long-range missile launches and nuclear tests, in return for 240,000 tons of much-needed US food aid. The US State Department called the proposed satellite launch “highly provocative” and a threat to regional security.

And it voiced doubt over whether it could move ahead with providing the food aid if Pyongyang followed through with its threat. Seoul and Tokyo condemned the plan. Russia also voiced concern and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called on North Korea not to go ahead.

Even China, the North’s closest ally, expressed concern. -AFP

6

ALWATAN DAILY

OPINION

MONDAY, march 19, 2012

The medical city and the philosophy of nonsense Nabeel Al-Fadhl Staff Writer

F

ive MPs have come up with a new draft bill proposing the setting up of a new medical city. The problem here is not the proposal itself but about the MPs and their qualifications.

The first MP is Dr. Faisal Al-Mislem who happens to hold a PhD degree in history. The second is Dr.Waleed Al-Tabatabaei who also has a PhD degree in Islamic Sharia. As for the third MP, Dr. Jamaan Al-Harbash, his academic interest is remotely related to medicine. The fourth one is MP Falah AlSawwagh who has no relation with medicine whatsoever.

Those four MPs are members of the “Deform” Bloc. The last MP is Mubarak Al-Waalan who is specialized in hurting and harming people with minimum general knowledge in first aid.

Let us get back to the “glorious” draft bill tabled by the five fantastic MPs. During the deliberation it received the approval of the majority of the so-called “Majority MPs”, estimated to be 27 members. But what seems to be of great interest here is that the project itself didn’t have the full approval of some of the leading figures in the so-called majority of MPs. Both MP Abdullatif Al-Omairi and Vice-President of the National Assembly Speaker MP Khaled Al-Sultan are clear that they each have and entertain two different and divided opinions.

It seems that the so-called majority of MPs are divided into what can be termed as the “core” and the “extras”. The core is the heart of the bloc and therefore can be described as the faithful partisans.

Consensual leadership in Kuwait, Egypt and Syria

The extras are those who just complement the bloc but who are not really part of the core and this is perhaps why the core members have little, if any, regard to the extras and as a result are expected to approve and agree whatever ideas they may have without questions asked.

This is why we have on our table a draft bill which is inconsistent because of an obvious lack of coordination with the rest of the MPs, even though some had voted favorably for it. If we look closely at the project itself, the idea no doubt appeals to many of us. On one hand, it will provide free shares which mean a great financial incentive which certainly attracts the attention of many people.

On the other hand, it is an attractive project in terms that the country allegedly would end up with a bright and advanced medical city fully-integrated and more advanced medical equipment.

The proposed medical project has the proposed 100 million Kuwaiti dinars as a capital and naturally this means free shares for the people subsidized by the government.

The revenue generated by such a project is of no value to the state because only 10 percent is expected to reach the state budget through the Investment Public Authority. As for the rest, it will be within the hands of medical businesses.

Let us examine this carefully and in detail.

Any medical city and not fully integrated will need 500 million Kuwaiti dinars for just the cost of construction work.

Now, to find a proper and suitable land will add additional expenses reaching yet another KD 500 million. The issue here is not a location or that the land should be strategically located. The issue here is to find any plot of land on which one can build what may be termed as a medical city.

After the construction of the city is complete, the issue of fully equipping the proposed medical city will bring up further challenges. To fully equip the city with the right and more advanced medical equipment, tools and devices will cost no less than 100 million Kuwaiti dinars. If we move on to the issue of the operational cost, then we have yet another 100 million Kuwaiti dinars on our hand which is the least estimate for the first year of operation.

Let me stress that the figures mentioned so far are intense while purpose is moderately defined. I am not including here the issue of interests and so on and so forth. The reserved total estimate for such a well advanced medical city as claimed by the members of the “Deformed” bloc is no less than 1200 million Kuwaiti dinars.

Before even attempting to discuss the sources of finance of such a grand scaled project, we need to add that the citizen with one Kuwaiti dinars will cost the state KD 24 as it is the ratio of 50 million Kuwaiti dinars which is the share of the citizens as suggested to the 1200 million Kuwaiti dinars, which is the actual minimum and total cost of the medical city. Assuming all the funds and finance for such a huge

No milk...The cooperative societies are empty...We are worried.

T

At the livestock pen

That’s fine ...That’s fine... oh...It’s enough

No vegetables...the trolley is empty...A carton of tomatoes has reached KD 5 ...How come?!

Don’t worry..We are self sufficient. Livestock pens will provide us with milk and meat.

I can’t hear properly because of loud music.

What are you saying??

Self-sufficiency???

At the farm Oh..How is the situation?

Don’t worry...We are self-sufficient...

Our farms will provide us with whatever is lacking in the market

We have self sufficiency but it is beguiled

Mohmmed Thallab

mthallab@alwatan.com.kw

Strikes and the authority of the state Dr. Shamlan Yousef Al-Esa

T

project was successfully allocated and allotted, we could then face the issue of how to reimburse the state. It would not be sensible to suggest that the medical service provided and offered by the medical city would be free of charge. If we agree with this line of argument, then the only feasible option ahead of us is to charge citizens and the people the high cost of being treated in this fantastic well advanced medical city.

Just to break-even, it would be ideal that each citizen with the one dinar ownership proposal must pay KD 24 or even more to the medical city for at least the first year. The problem here is how to convince citizens who are enjoying free medical care and services provided by the state to move on to another medical service where he will end up paying money. Even our private hospitals nowadays are providing excellent medical service which will be far cheaper in comparison.

This is the outcome of the mental production of those who have no business or experience in the medical sphere.

The result is total waste of the state’s fund, deterioration of financial stability and no calculated revenue to reap.

The chances that the people of this country would ascertain the scale and volume of the disastrous situation would become apparent instantly. It is more likely that they will find out the scale of the tragedy when those behind the idea gained their fortune and retired somewhere in an exotic place.

Let us not forget that some years ago, a similar idea was adopted when the Bank of Warba was set with public shares.

One closer look at the insolvent bank today and then people would realize the seriousness of the matter.

BU QUTADA & BU NABIL

Nassar Abduljalil

he consensual leader is usually a well known personality and the majority of political parties and movements agree supporting him to hold the head of state`s position. Such a personality usually does not belong to any rival party and this step is taken when political parties fail to get the majority of votes during elections in order to reach the position of the president and the different parties start coordinating to choose a consensual personality for this sensitive position. We can give several examples about that in the countries that political movements cannot obtain an overwhelming majority, such as Egypt and Syria. In Kuwait as well, the Islamic, liberal and sectarian movements don`t have an overwhelming majority therefore the parliamentary majority selected the Speaker Ahmad Al-Saadoun wherein the speaker does not belong to any Islamic, liberal, tribal or sectarian movement.

Some movements also did not agree with the current speaker about many different issues during the era of the former parliaments but at the present time they agree because movements can implement their agenda through a consensual speaker.

In Egypt, the Islamic parties face the same matter because they don`t have an overwhelming majority but they might coordinate with each other and choose a consensual leader who does not belong to these parties. In Syria, the situation looks different but it resembles Egypt and Kuwait by certain aspects. The barbaric Syrian regime still commits killings every day because the United States and the other leading powers in the world have not yet agreed about a consensual president. May God help our Syrian brothers to restore their dignity and freedom very soon as well as Muslims everywhere, Amen.

Any medical city and not fully integrated will need 500 million Kuwaiti dinars for just the cost of construction work.

he decision of the government recently approved to raise the salary of civil servants by 25 percent and raising pension by 12.5 percent causes concern for escalation and of staging further strikes which are still going on. Some media expectations indicated that the government will face great losses worth hundreds of millions if strikes go on in sensitive sectors such as air transport wherein specialized figures estimated losses that occurred just within three days due to the strike of customs employees by KD 400 million. The question is “do civil servants have the right to stage strikes and interrupt interests of people?” We know that there is no law which bans strikes or allows staging strikes! The laws of civil service stipulate that civil servants have to attend duty and if they get absent then the days that they did not come to work will be deducted from their salary. So, why would employees stage strikes! The answer is clear; it is because the government did not enforce certain laws. The government has to inform all the employees about their rights and commitments including the procedures that will be endorsed against employees when they are absent or stage strikes.

We feel sorry for the stances of the MPs who supported

We feel sorry for the stances of the MPs who supported the stance of employees as they plan only to obtain certain electoral interests. the stance of employees as they plan only to obtain certain electoral interests. Moreover, the MPs urge employees to stage strikes in order to impose pressure on the government so that the very MPs will practice pressure on the government. The MPs and employees` pressure might force the government to become subject to such pressures and then the government might approve the requests even if the requests influence the budget of the country.

However, the different governments of the different countries face strikes by looking for an alternative solution such as the government’s right for hiring new employees or companies to replace the employees who stage strikes and some governments might ask the army individuals or even the individuals of the national guard to replace the employees who staged strikes until the case of strike is solved according to the government’s vision. The individuals of the Kuwaiti army or National Guard can replace the employees

of customs department temporary until tackling the current problem. Such a step contributes effectively in maintaining the interests of the country as well as the people and it was already applied by France, the United Kingdom and the United States just to maintain the interests of people. Sending individuals of the army to replace employees of customs department is a temporary solution and they will never occupy the positions of customs men forever, moreover the army will not endorse violent reactions against those who stage strikes but it will submit a temporary solution until finally reaching a solution to the problem of strikes.

The MPs attempt to exploit strikes to obtain some electoral interests wherein the MPs Musallam Al-Barrak, Khalid Al-Tahous, and Mohammad Al-Khalifa have visited the customs department then Al-Barrak warned against sending individuals of the army to replace employees of the customs department. He also threatened some figures saying that if

the army runs such a task then we will file cases against army individuals with the Public Prosecutor through accusing them of smuggling. Apparently, the MP’s interests in just achieving his goal even if that requires threatening others while he knows that the government or the Minister of Defense can call the individuals of the army to do other duties, not necessary to be for the army, such as replacing civil servants because there is no law which prevents the minister of charging the army to do other duties, as a result, the minister can intervene in solving the current problem of strikes.

We believe that the government has to restore its authority and that it is right in defending the interests of people against everybody that plans for obtaining personal interests including MPs and heads of labor unions who threaten to stage more arbitrary strikes.

We hope all those figures and officials who have a prime interest in the country and could be aware of the idea that stubbornness, disrupting the public and breaking laws weaken the authority of the state and it will never lead to any positive results or advantages for our country and democracy. What is happening in the country at the present time is reckless and a matter of irresponsible actions!! Even students started staging strikes to avoid going to schools and call for raising their grades!!! Alas country!!

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views

monDAY, march 19, 2012

China’s politics of the economically possible

Current public spending is so skewed toward the ruling elites that the CCP would risk losing its legitimacy should the budget become subject to public scrutiny.

Minxin Pei Project Syndicate

W

hen sound economic advice is divorced from political reality, it probably will not be very useful advice. The history of multilateral financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank is littered with well-intentioned and technically feasible economic policy prescriptions that political leaders ignored. But that has not stopped these institutions from trying.

The latest attempt is the World Bank’s just-released and much-applauded report China 2030: Building a Modern, Harmonious, and Creative High-Income Society. As far as technical economic advice goes, the report is hard to top. It provides a detailed, thoughtful, and honest diagnosis of the Chinese economy’s structural and institutional flaws, and calls for coherent and bold reforms to remove these fundamental obstacles to sustainable growth.

Unfortunately, while the Bank’s report has laid out a clear economic course that Chinese leaders should pursue for the sake of China, the Bank has shied away from the most critical question: Will the Chinese government actually heed its advice and swallow the bitter medicine, given the country’s one-party political system?

For example, among the most urgent reforms that China 2030 recommends is reduction of the state’s role in the

economy. This can be achieved by eliminating privileges for state-owned enterprises (SOEs), such as subsidized capital and monopolies, and by allowing the private sector more freedom. But, curiously, the report’s authors seem to forget that this would entail prohibitive, if not disastrous, costs for the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

China’s giant SOEs may have some economic usefulness, but their existential value is political. The CCP uses the SOEs to provide good jobs and perks for its members.

Of the CCP’s roughly 80 million members, more than five million hold executive positions in state-owned or affiliated firms. Factoring in the regulators and local administrators whose jobs similarly depend on maintaining the current level of state intervention in the economy, World Bank-style reforms would jeopardize probably close to ten million official sinecures.

There is little doubt that reducing the SOEs’ power would make the Chinese economy far more efficient and dynamic. But it is hard to imagine that a one-party regime

Goldman’s capitalistic monoculture

would be willing to destroy its political base.

Fiscal reform is another urgent priority highlighted by China 2030. China’s highly regressive fiscal system (the poor are taxed more than the wealthy) entails excessive revenues for the central government and relatively little expenditure on social services. In nominal terms, aggregate tax and non-tax revenues collected by both the central and local governments exceed 35 percent of GDP. But the bulk of the revenues is spent on administration, fixed-asset investment, domestic security, defense, and assorted lavish perks - entertainment, junkets, housing, cars, and high-quality healthcare - for government officials.

China 2010 suggests that China should gradually increase its spending on social services by 7-8 percent of GDP over the next 20 years. But why should the CCP do so? After all, the overall real taxation level in China is already quite high, which means that doubling social spending from the current level without raising taxes further would require severe cuts in expenditures that chiefly benefit the ruling elites.

7

The budgetary transparency that the World Bank has recommended will most likely not be realized for the same reason. Current public spending is so skewed toward the ruling elites that the CCP would risk losing its legitimacy should the budget become subject to public scrutiny.

Making China a “harmonious” society - the aim of the report’s advice on reducing inequality - is clearly a desirable goal. However, it is a tired slogan even by Chinese standards.

Trotted out by China’s rulers many years ago, the “harmonious society” campaign has yielded, at best, modest changes in policy. The underlying political drivers of social frustration and conflict - disenfranchisement, repression, pervasive official corruption, unaccountable rulers, and predatory state institutions and policies - remain unchanged.

Addressing these fundamental causes of social discontent and unsustainable economic performance requires not advice and pleas to the ruling elites, but a change in China’s political reality that compels those who benefit from the status quo to surrender their privileges for the good of the country.

Only two likely developments could lead to this outcome. One is the political empowerment of the Chinese people. But democratization is currently unlikely, given the CCP’s clear determination to defend one-party rule.

That leaves political change at the mercy of a systemthreatening crisis, brought on by China’s failure to tackle the pathologies the World Bank has so ably diagnosed. And, alas, China’s ruling elites are almost certain to dismiss China 2030 as politically undesirable and irrelevant. * Minxin Pei is Professor of Government at Claremont McKenna College.

Libya’s transition to transition

In some halcyon era, according to this view, Wall Street’s success was great news for employees, for customers and of course for the economy as a whole.

Ben Walsh Reuters

G

reg Smith doesn’t have any new criticism of Goldman Sachs in his New York Times op-ed today. Nor are his points as detailed and documented as the SEC’s allegations in the ABACUS case.

Instead, Smith is selling a warm, self-congratulatory glow to anyone who thinks that Wall Street used to be great. In some halcyon era, according to this view, Wall Street’s success was great news for employees, for customers and of course for the economy as a whole. And it was great because it was built of great things: “teamwork, integrity, a spirit of humility, and always doing right by our clients. It wasn’t just about making money.”

In Smith’s moralistic telling, Goldman’s success was the result of its culture. And as TED has pointed out, that’s a vision of its business that has been sold for a long time, at least since the days of Sidney Weinberg.

There are many ways to describe what “culture” is at Goldman Sachs: a patina, a justification, a means, a way to turn bright, hardworking college grads into profit-generating managing directors. But the key is that this culture was always an ideal that Goldman actively sold to clients and pressed into employees. Having gone through a month of analyst orientation, I can tell you that it is effective and takes a while to wear off.

But when it does wear off, and for me it was sometime after my second year, you realize the extent to which these values are pushed on you - and who benefits from their sale. The culture of Goldman Sachs is sold for the reasons that anything else is sold.

It’s the result, money that makes any bank tick. Goldman Sachs is no exception.

Smith is far from the first Goldman employee to think that clients weren’t valued. In 2006, a few days after Lloyd Blankfein was announced as the new CEO, I was getting a sandwich at a now-gone lunch spot near 85 Broad Street, then the firm’s headquarters. Waiting in line, I overheard a conversation between two bankers talking about how, with a trader running the firm, the client franchise was doomed. It was not a new argument then, and I heard it repeated afterwards from other bankers.

That was six years before Smith decided things were so bad that he couldn’t look fresh-faced college kids in the eye while handing them his GS business card.

Smith never seems to have understood that the very powerful and very wealthy people he counted as colleagues might be less than what they said they were. Now, 12 years, three promotions, two recessions and one financial crisis later, Smith is devastated when he realizes that the place he used to work is nothing like what the “Human Capital Management” manual said it would be. It’s only now that he realizes that the three ways to become a leader at Goldman Sachs revolve around making money? That is not a tough conclusion to come to. And certainly not one that takes 12 years.

Not only did Greg Smith take every banality Goldman Sachs offered him at face value for far longer than he should be willing to admit but he also seems to believe that there actually is such a thing as a virtuous past lodged inside the history of banking.

When were these good times Smith wishes would return?

Who were the gentlemen partners running investment banks by strictly adhering to the Latin mottos on their family crests? They never existed. Overly self-interested behavior by banks at the expense of their clients is as old as modern banking itself.

To believe that the culture of Goldman Sachs, or any other bank, is about “so much more” than making money misses a point that’s right in front of you. It’s not about more than making money. It’s about making money, full stop.

The rhetoric about teamwork, integrity, humility and client focus; those are the gauzy drapes that conceal and decorate the view. * Ben Walsh is an online editor at Reuters. Previously, he worked for Goldman Sachs from 2006-2011. The views expressed are his own.

FILE- Tripoli residents demonstrate outside the Girls Military College, the headquarters of the coalition of revolutionary brigades, to call on armed militias to leave the city or to join the state security on March 12, 2012. (AFP) Barak Barfi Project Syndicate

A

lthough Libyans are now celebrating the first anniversary of the revolution that toppled Muammar Al-Gadhafi, they are increasingly frustrated with their new leaders. Libyans complain that the interim government, known as the National Transitional Council (NTC), has not moved quickly enough to purge and prosecute senior Gadhafi officials, or to rein in the militias that overthrew his regime.

Though the NTC is dedicated to implementing Libyans’ demands, it lacks the technical capacity and time necessary to do so before the elections tentatively scheduled for this coming summer. Facing such constraints, it must concentrate on a small number of important initiatives, before turning power over to an elected government.

Political experience has never been a prerequisite for NTC membership. One representative was named to the Council because he defected with his MIG fighter plane 20 years ago. Other members were previously political prisoners or exiled dissidents.

Unseasoned in the art of politics, the NTC frequently lacks the foresight needed to make critical decisions. During last year’s eight-month revolution, the NTC concentrated on overthrowing Gadhafi, gaining international recognition, and securing access to frozen Libyan assets. Those tasks left little room for attention to planning a post-Gadhafi Libya. Today, the NTC simply does not have the human resources to consolidate the transition.

Libya has never been blessed with a professional bureaucracy like that of neighboring Egypt. Gadhafi frequently farmed out power to municipalities and citizens in an attempt to bypass the civil servants who consistently thwarted his grandiose plans. And almost two decades of international sanctions prevented a generation of Libyans from gaining the necessary technical skills by studying at Western universities.

Even the oil sector - the lifeline of the Libyan economy, accounting for 95 percent of the country’s foreigncurrency earnings - suffers from a shortage of profes-

Facing such constraints, it must concentrate on a small number of important initiatives, before turning power over to an elected government. sional managers. According to an American diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks, “Libyans put forward for employment with foreign (oil) companies often lack formal qualifications or applicable practical experience.”

Instead of injecting new blood into senior government posts during his 42 years in power, Gadhafi merely shuffled cronies between ministries. His last foreignintelligence chief, Abu Zayd Dorda, epitomizes this trend. During his 30-year political career, Dorda held numerous cabinet portfolios, ranging from agriculture to economics to municipalities. Dorda later served as Speaker of Parliament, Prime Minister, and Ambassador to the United Nations.

Today, the NTC is hard-pressed to find competent, politically untainted bureaucrats to fill its ministries.

But that does not concern most Libyans, who are clamoring for the dismissal of Gadhafi loyalists. One name on the tip of many tongues here is Central Bank Governor Sadiq Al-Kabir. Others, such as Libya’s former ambassador to France, Omar Brebesh, were found dead, apparently tortured by a militia that spearheaded the campaign to overthrow Gadhafi.

Lack of skilled civil servants is also making it difficult for the NTC to push through the changes that Libyans are demanding. The Council is not ready to try senior Gadhafi officials, many of whom are now in the custody of militias, because the existing justice system was never tasked with prosecuting political cases. Such trials were held in revolutionary courts staffed by Gadhafi zealots and operating outside the formal judiciary.

With no prospect for a fair trial in the foreseeable future, Gadhafi officials languish in jails.

Such bureaucratic inertia does not sit well with the

many Libyans who are still undecided about the revolution. But it is not only a shortage of capable public servants that hamstrings the NTC. Just as pressing are the time constraints under which it is operating. Since its inception last February, the NTC has consistently declared itself to be a transitional body that would cede power to an elected government once the country was liberated.

With elections set to be held no later than June 23, the Council has less than four months to prepare Libya for its first free vote in sixty years.

As a result, the NTC simply does not have the time necessary to implement the changes the Libyan people expect. It will not be able to disband the myriad militias that are destabilizing the country, because it cannot find their fighters the vocational training that it hopes will entice them to return to civilian life. It will fall on an elected government to carry out these reforms.

With the NTC confronting so many dilemmas with so little time, it must concentrate on a small number of key issues that can be resolved before it hands over power. The Council needs to focus on establishing some degree of rule of law, and on curbing militia abuses. It must respect and protect individual rights in order to demonstrate to Libyans that the type of arbitrary justice that characterized the Gadhafi era will not be tolerated.

The NTC may not be able to solve all of Libya’s problems. But, by chipping away at the mountain of challenges that the country faces, it can ease the burdens that will confront the elected government that emerges from the popular vote in June. * Barak Barfi is a research fellow at the New America Foundation.

classifieds@alwatandaily.com

monday, march 19, 2012

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Iraq approves Hormuz oil exports contingency plan

BUSINESS

mondAY, march 19, 2012

mar ket watc h KUWAIT 0.53% 6233

DUBAI

QATAR

OMAN

ABU DHABI

1.4% 1660

0.1% 8671

0.4% 5927

0.7% 2606

BAGHDAD: Iraq has approved a plan to expand its oil export routes by adding capacity from its northern fields and building a pipeline to ship oil from southern fields to Ceyhan in Turkey, a government spokesman said.The contingency plan was set by the government’s energy and economic committee to deal with any potential crisis should Iran close the Strait of Hormuz, which would halt about 80 percent of Iraq’s oil exports.

OIL M A RKE TS BAHRAIN

EGYPT

0.1% 1153

2.0% 5064

SAUDI 0.1% 7609

US Crude $107.15 $0.09 London Brent $126.06 $0.25 Kuwait Crude $124.87 $1.17 Information Courtesy: KAMCO

See page 11

CURRE NCIE S US Dollar

British Pound

Saudi Riyal

Qatari Riyal

Indian Rupee

Euro

Japanese Yen

UAE Dirham

Bahraini Dinar

Philippine Peso

Buy 0.2785 Sell 0.2787 Buy 0.3668 Sell 0.3672

Buy 0.4411 Sell 0.4416

Kuwaiti bourse rises 0.53% to close at 8-month high

Buy 0.003335 Sell 0.003341

Buy 0.0742 Sell 0.0742

Buy 0.07581 Sell 0.07587

Buy 0.07654 Sell 0.07646 Buy 0.7385 Sell 0.73914

Buy 0.005559 Sell 0.005552 Buy 0.006486 Sell 0.006467

Prices in Kuwaiti fils As of March 18, 2012 Courtesy: KAMCO

BUSINESS MATTERS

Fire your ‘wrong’ customers

Darlynn Amara Staff Writer

KUWAIT: The Kuwait Stock Exchange (KSE) rose 0.53 percent at closing on Sunday, touching an eightmonth high of 6,233.4 points, as investors continued to pick up small-caps. It extended year-to-date gains to 7.2 percent, underperforming some other Gulf Cooperation council (GCC) bourses. Meanwhile, the weighted index rose 1.02 points to end trade at 420.88 points.

Two of the eight indices closed in red, with the Food sector losing 5.6 points and the Banking sector losing just 0.7 points. The Investment sector made the greatest gains for the day with a rise of 51.4 points. Number of trades stood at 5,991 with a volume of 46,505,830 shared traded valued at 505,880,000 Kuwaiti dinars.

The biggest gainers on the stock exchange were AlMaidan Dental Clinic Company, followed by Al Safat Real Estate Company and Ithmaar Bank. Meanwhile, the biggest losers at the end of trade were Boubyan International Industries Holding followed by Kuwait Commercial Complex Company and Hayat Communications Company.

Main indices of KSE were bullish in early trading on Sunday with the price index putting on 6.2 points lifting the level to 6,206.2 points. The Weighted index followed suit gaining 0.89 points, reaching the level of 420.75 points.

According to an economic report prepared by Bayan Investment on KSE’s trading last week, the bourse closed on a positive note, supported by a massive purchase of blue chips and operating shares.

The positive performance came amid a state of anticipation as traders awaited the listed companies’ release of their annual financial results, the report underlined.

The total number of declared companies reached 90

Imtiaz Investment posts KD 22.7 million net profit in 2011 KUWAIT: Al Imtiaz Investment Company (AIIC), posted 22.7 million Kuwaiti dinars in net profits for the year that ended on Dec. 31, 2011 compared to KD 41.3 million during the preceding year.In a press statement on its website, the company estimated the share profitability at 20.2 Kuwaiti fils, compared to 36.7 fils in 2010.

It pointed out that the shareholders’ equities increased to reach KD 242.3 million against KD 231.5 million in 2010. Al Imtiaz Board of Directors recommended the distribution of 10 percent in cash dividends to shareholders. The total assets of the company reached KD 383.9 million while the total liabilities hit KD 106.8 million.

AIIC was established in April 2005 as a Kuwaiti Shareholding Company K.S.C. with a paid up capital of KD 36 million (approximately 125 million US dollars). The company aims to meet the increasing demand in the business investment sector within the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) markets in accordance with the rules and provisions of Sharia law.

In May 2010, the extraordinary general assembly of the company agreed to increase capital by 2.5 percent, or KD 2.764 million. Accordingly, the company’s capital became KD 113.361 million (approximately $405 million. -KUNA

Dr. John P. Hayes Exclusive to Al Watan Daily

KUWAIT: If you’re just joining us, catch up with previous installments in this series in the archives at alwatandaily. com. My client was losing money and I explained that he had three options that would turn around his business. First option: Reduce customer acquisition costs from 100 US dollars per customer to zero! (See Business Matters March 5). Second option: Convince the customer to pay more per visit! (See Business Matters March 12).

Third option: Keep the ‘right’ customers and capture more of them. Tell the ‘wrong’ customers goodbye.

Bitter pill to swallow!

Traders are seen at the Kuwait Stock Exchange on Sunday, March 18, 2012. The bourse rose 0.53 percent at closing on Sunday, touching an eight-month high of 6,233.4 points. (Al Watan)

out of 205 listed companies, realizing approximately KD 1.61 billion, with a decline of 17.85 percent compared to same companies’ results for 2010.

According to the report, KSE total market capitalization grew by 1.35 percent during last week to reach KD 29.21 billion, as six of KSE’s sectors recorded an increase in their respective market capitalization, whereas the other two recorded declines. Kuwait stock market contin-

ued its positive performance supported also by selling of small shares by some traders to make gains, leaving a positive impact on both of the market indices especially the weighted index. Meanwhile another report, by Oula Wasata Brokerage Company, said that the market was dominated last week by profit-generating operations. It noted that speculations on both blue chips and small shares were clear in the week’s dealings.

CI affirms NBK’s ratings with ‘Stable’ outlook KUWAIT: Capital Intelligence (CI), the international credit rating agency, affirmed National Bank of Kuwait’s (NBK) long and short-term Foreign Currency Ratings at ‘aa-’ and ‘a1+’, respectively, and its Financial Strength Rating (FSR) at ‘a+’. The Outlook for all ratings remains ‘Stable’. This was stated in a press release on Sunday.

CI said that NBK’s rating “is supported by the excellent asset quality and a strong capital position, as well as by the solid returns that NBK has been able to achieve, even in what have been some difficult years for the Kuwaiti banking system.”

“NBK is by far the largest bank in Kuwait and has a strong position in all segments of the non-Islamic banking market”, the agency added. “With the stake in Boubyan Bank and the widening range of products offered by in-

vestment banking arm NBK Capital, the Group has been able to compensate for the limited growth opportunities in the market with respect to its traditional domestic banking products.”

NBK enjoys the highest credit ratings of all banks in the region by the major international rating agencies: Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s and Fitch Ratings. NBK’s ratings are supported by its strong capitalization, prudent performance, and its disciplined approach to risk management, in addition to the stability and professionalism of its management team.

In 2012, NBK moved up 14 positions to rank 33 among the 50 safest banks in the world. NBK is the only Arab bank to be listed among the 50 safest banks in the world for the fifth consecutive time.

Jazeera Airways acquires high stake in regional flights KUWAIT: Jazeera Airways has acquired substantial operational shares at regional destinations and posted punctuality as to travel dates by 91 percent in January.

The company said in its monthly report that it took large stakes of operations, among the other aviation companies, to a chain of destinations, namely Alexandria, Luxor, Aleppo, Asiut, Sohaj, Deir Al-Zor and Damascus.

Proportion of its operations to Alexandria amounted to 36 percent, compared to 45 percent on the Kuwait-Asiut

route, 70 percent to Luxor, 35 percent to Sohaj, 23 percent to Sharm El-Sheikh and 25 percent to Cairo.

Its share of flights to Damascus amounted to 41 percent, compared to 72 percent to Aleppo and 82 percent to Deir Al-Zor. As to its flights’ stake to Amman, it reached 32 percent, as well as 32 percent to Beirut, 10 percent to Bahrain and 16 percent to Dubai. Jazeera, a company established in 2005, is listed in the Kuwait Stock Exchange. -KUNA

Nokia showcases latest innovations in Kuwait Nancy Oteifa

Staff Writer & Agencies

KUWAIT: Nokia held a press conference at Marriot Courtyard Sunday to announce the 2012 Nokia’s latest innovative range of Nokia devices into the Kuwaiti market.The event was attended byTom Farrell Vice President Middle East for Nokia, Vithesh Reddy General Manager Lower Gulf for Nokia, Salah Al Awadi Chairman for Future Company and Abdulghaffar ElAdeeb Manager Director at I2 Company.

This visit to Kuwait signifies the leading mobile phone company’s ongoing commitment to the Kuwaiti market and its growing importance as part of Nokia’s new strategy for growth in the region.

During the press conference Farrell outlined Nokia’s global strategy to drive smart-phone leadership through the Lumia range based on the Nokia with Windows Phone, which includes the award-winning Lumia 900 device. Farrell also highlighted Nokia’s commitment to connecting the next billion to the internet, the second pillar of its strategy through the launch of Nokia Asha range in the region. The Nokia Asha range will allow consumers to have access to a smart-phone experience by being able to download apps, surf the web, check email, play games and chat at an affordable price point.

Commenting at a press conference, Farrell said, “2011 was a hugely impor-

tant year for Nokia and marked a turningpoint in the company’s evolution. At the beginning of last year, we announced our partnership with Microsoft as our main smart-phone platform moving forward.

As early as October, we were able to deliver our first Nokia with Windows phone, the Lumia 800 and 710, which clearly demonstrates measurable progress in our new smart-phone strategy. We have also continued our commitment to innovation with the new award winning Nokia 808 Pure-View, which has redefined the smart-

phone market with its unprecedented 41 megapixel camera.

From his side Reddy previewed Nokia’s latest innovations which were announced at the recently concluded Mobile World Congress. He said “One year ago, we shared that Nokia was embarking on a new journey to build great mobile devices.

Today, with Nokia 808 Pure-View, four Lumia devices and four Nokia Asha devices, we are bringing compelling new products to the market faster than ever before, demonstrating that we can change the clock

(from left) Vithesh Reddy General Manager Lower Gulf Nokia, Tom Farrell Vice President Middle East Nokia, Salah Al-Awadi Chairman for Future Company and Abdulghaffar Al Adeeb Manager Director for I2 Company. (Al Watan)

speed of Nokia and also helping to open new market segments for smart-phones.”

Farrell noted “As for the Applications Nokia is a leading handset manufacturer, Nokia is committed to delivering local apps in local languages which has further reinforced brand loyalty within the region.

Download growth from the Nokia Store witnessed an unprecedented 280 percent growth in 2011 with over 3.5 million downloads a week in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region. Key to this success is Nokia’s ability to offer local consumers over 2500 local apps with Arabic language support they require.”

He concluded “As a strong believer in developing local talent, Nokia continues to invest in talent through its Developer Outreach Program to drive innovation and entrepreneurship in the region.

The Program includes Qt training and competitions for aspiring mobile app developers. Ahmed Al Shebli, a young Kuwaiti app developer was also lauded at the press event. Nokia applications such as q8GPA, GaidKout developed by Ahmed have witnessed over 40,000 downloads in the region.”

From his side Al Awadi added “We don’t really care about competition with other smart-phones companies because we believe that these companies gave all what they have from innovation, but we at Nokia still have a lot to give from innovation and new technology.”

Imagine discovering that all these years you have been attracting the wrong customers to your business. Ouch!

No one wants to hear that. However, all customers are not created equal. The philosophy that ‘the customer is always right’ is bunk. Some customers hurt more than help your business. Attract too many of the wrong kind and you’re not only adding to your frustration, you’re damaging the reputation of your business. You can’t satisfy wrong customers and they’ll tell others about your ‘bad’ business.

Most small business owners attract too many wrong customers. Why? Several reasons: (a) they don’t know what a right customer looks like, (b) they invite everyone to become a customer, and (c) they don’t target their marketing to attract only ‘right’ customers.

The wrong customer creates havoc in your life and business. You will spend more time making the wrong customer happy (and it’s often impossible to do) than you will spend attracting more right customers. That’s why you’re frustrated and that’s why you’re not making more money.

Shop elsewhere, please!

So I told my client, “Fire the majority of your customers.”

He said, “Now I know you are insane. . . . Get out!”

“No problem,” I said. “It’s your business. You said you wanted to know why you’re not making more money. I’ve told you why. In addition to options one and two, you need to tell most of your customers to shop someplace else.”

“Get out!”

“I’m going,” I said.

Wait, what did you say?

But before I got to the door he called me back. “Why do you say that? I’ve got good customers.”

“Really? You pay $100 for a customer who gives you nine dollars. What’s so good about that?”

“Okay,” he said, acknowledging my point. “But I won’t fire my customers and insult them. Who even does that?”

“Only business owners who want to make money more than they want to be politically correct and polite. Aren’t you tired of losing money and putting out fires caused by wrong customers?”

He didn’t like that answer either, but after a moment he said, “How would I fire a customer?”

I’ll tell you what I told him - next week.

How can you improve your business? Dr. John Hayes will help you discover points of opportunity. Free analysis for qualifying businesses. Send a paragraph describing your business; selected businesses may be featured in Business Matters. Dr. Hayes has worked with franchisors, franchisees and small business owners internationally. He is a professor in the College of Business at GUST. Contact him at questions@hayesworldwide.com, or via Twitter @drjohnhayes.

Disclaimer: Please note that the views and opinions presented in the column are the company’s own and do not necessarily represent those of Al Watan Daily and its staff.

Etisalat eyes mobile remittances in Gulf

DUBAI: United Arab Emirates (UAE) telecoms operator Etisalat, which saw 1.8 billion US dollars moved over its network last year via money transfers, has sought regulatory approval to expand its financial services offerings in the Gulf region, home to millions of expatriates. Mobile money services allow customers to pay bills or make remittances using SMS text messages, often at a cheaper cost than through banks or money transfer firms.

“Remittances are a huge business opportunity,” George Held, director of products and services at Etisalat, told Reuters.

“The cost base for telecoms operators is much different than for banks and exchange houses. We do not need bricks and mortar branches, so our costs are lower and we can pass on this saving and offer better exchange rates and transaction fees.”

The former monopoly was expected to focus on its home market and Saudi Arabia. Both countries have large expat populations and inbound annual remittances were worth about $36 billion combined in 2010, Held said.About 89 percent of the UAE’s 8.3 million population are expatriates, while in Saudi Arabia just over a fifth of the 27 million population are foreigners. Etisalat’s Egypt unit could also profit from an estimated eight billion dollars of inbound remittances from Egyptians working abroad. Etisalat has tied up with Western Union and MoneyGram International to allow money sent by mobile customers in the Middle East to be collected anywhere in the world. Aside from remittances, the operator hopes to offer salary payments, peer-to-peer domestic funds transfers and utility and shop payments.

“Remittances will be an extremely important part of our mobile money services. But it is not enough alone to drive service adoption, so we will offer a mix of services to make it very hard for customers not to get involved,” said Held. -Reuters

10

BUSINESS IN REGION

ALWATAN DAILY MONDAY, MARCH 19, 2012

Iraq approves Hormuz oil exports contingency plan Offers oil to Sri Lanka to avert Iran ban

BAGHDAD: Iraq has approved a plan to expand its oil export routes by adding capacity from its northern fields and building a pipeline to ship oil from southern fields to Ceyhan in Turkey, a government spokesman said.

The contingency plan was set by the government’s energy and economic committee to deal with any potential crisis should Iran close the Strait of Hormuz, which would halt about 80 percent of Iraq’s oil exports.

Iran has threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz, used for a third of the world’s seaborne oil trade, if Western moves to ban Iranian crude exports crippled its energy sector.

“Short and mid-term plans will be through boosting crude pumping and upgrading export capacity via Ceyhan port in Turkey. Also to increase the number of trucks that are shipping crude,” government spokesman Ali Al-Dabbagh said on Sunday.

Iraq exported 2.014 million barrels per day (bpd) in February, including 1.711 million bpd from its southern oil hub of Basra and via exports terminal in the Gulf, and 375,000 bpd from its northern fields around Kirkuk to Ceyhan.

Dabbagh said plans approved by the government were a short-term measure based on recommendations from the oil ministry, and said stepping up efforts to convince Iran and the United States of the need to avoid closing the Strait of Hormuz.

“The oil ministry suggested accelerating work to complete building the north strategic pipeline and connect it to the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline to export oil from Basra via Ceyhan port,” Dabbagh said.

Iraq has also been moving ahead with building a 680 kilometer pipeline able to transport one million bpd of crude from southern oilfields around Basra to a main pumping sta-

FILE - A worker adjusts the valve of an oil pipe at West Qurna oilfield in Iraq’s southern province of Basra Nov. 28, 2010. Iraq has approved a plan to expand its oil export routes by adding capacity from its northern fields and building a pipeline to ship oil from southern fields to Ceyhan in Turkey. (Reuters)

tion in Haditha in the west, an oil ministry spokesman said.

The Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline has come under sabotage attacks many times since the 2003 US-led invasion, and frequently breaks down due to technical faults.

Under the contingency plan, Iraq may revive the IraqSyria pipeline as a long-term measure to ship crude from southern fields to Banias in the Mediterranean. Plans to build a pipeline to transport crude to Jordan’s Aqaba port

Gold slips third week in a row, pushed down by stronger greenback KUWAIT: Price of gold kept slipping for the third week in a row in international markets pushed down by a stronger US dollar on the back of positive US economy data, a specialized report said. The report

by Al-Zummorroda Jewelry Company said that gold came down 3.5 percent by end of last week’s trading as a result of the dollar gaining and reaching its highest against European currency. Gold prices were affected by strong profit-taking as it slipped below 1, 662 US dollars per ounce and then $1,648 per ounce. After much fluctuation with strong demand checking the decline, the price reached $1,655 per ounce at the end of the week.

The report forecast more pressure on the dollar following a statement by the US monetary policy committee on keeping interest at 0.25 points till end of 2014, which would allow for more gains in the price of gold closer to the $1,700 threshold.

The strong demand keeping prices from sharp decline is from central banks and investment funds, the report pointed out, and most forecasts still suggest a price range close to the $2,000 per ounce despite the strong corrections in March.

Current prices are a good opportunity for medium and long term investment, and maybe even short term, though there is a cause for concern in the latter case in view of possible further strong corrections.

The report noted that factors which pushed prices up last year are still at play, and “any bump in economic data would result in panic and push prices up to new peaks.” When it came to silver, the report

PE firm Abraaj set for more deals, eyes India

FILE - In a picture taken on March 2, 2011 a Chinese sales assistant waits for customers at a gold jewellery shop in Hefei, in east China’s Anhui province. Price of gold kept slipping for the third week in a row in international markets. (AFP)

said the metal was more in tune with the movement of the dollar, slipping 5.2 percent from opening price to break the $32 dollar per ounce mark for the first time in March to finally end the week up at $32.5 per ounce, at a slip of 1.4 percent.

The forecast is that silver would maintain its strength and top the $34.5 per ounce mark due to actual demand, and that demand for the metal would double within a few months. The other precious metals saw less volatility, the report said, due to modest trading on the one hand and consistent

demand on the other. Platinum ended the week at $1,677 per ounce, while Palladium stayed at $703 per ounce.

As for the local market, 24 carat gold came to 14.7 Kuwaiti dinars for the first time since February, while 18 and 21 carat gold saw highest demand with considerable investment purchases, particularly small bullion. Likewise, silver came down to KD 300 per kilo, compared to February’s KD 330 and above, which means investment in silver is very timely. -KUNA

MENA tax landscape to promote business and improve transparency: Ernst & Young DUBAI: Ernst & Young’s (E&Y) MENA Tax Conference 2012, held in Dubai Sunday, outlined the evolving tax landscape in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. The conference was attended by more than 250 senior finance and tax professionals from across the region and was chaired by Sherif El-Kilany, MENA Tax Leader, Ernst & Young, stated a press release on Sunday. Over the past year, regional developments and economic pressures have impacted the taxation policies of almost all countries in the MENA region. On the one hand, countries have moved towards a more transparent and business friendly tax environment. On the other, we are seeing increased regulation and enforcement of tax compliance leading to increased administrative burden which, for foreign businesses, may translate to potentially higher tax cost. Most countries have lowered tax rates to encourage investment whilst fiscal policy dictates increased tax collections to strengthen public finances and fund social development. Kilany said, “From a fiscal and tax perspective, the changes we are seeing are largely positive, with business and investment friendly tax laws and increased transparency of regulation and enforcement. The changes rightly factor in the impact of the Eurozone crisis which continues to cast a gloomy shadow. We see MENA countries proceeding with their resources investment, infrastructure development and economic growth plans with more realism than we have experienced in the past.”

The Taxpayer’s challenge

Regional tax authorities often take a much broader, and at times more local,

interpretation of tax concepts that may be different from other jurisdictions. For example, the interpretation and application of new tax laws relating to foreign oil and gas contractors also requires local expert understanding and experience in dealing with the authorities.

A trend that could have considerable tax cost impact in the coming years is the increasingly rigorous tax assessment process and less attractive outcomes related to deemed profit tax declarations. Throughout the region we see tax authorities either tightening on deemed profit assessments or discontinuing this tax filing option.

Transfer pricing and tax treaties

Tax laws in Egypt, Oman and Qatar, now provide the tax authority the right to review the pricing of the related parties’ transaction and compare it with fair market price. Many countries, including Egypt and Qatar, have issued executive regulations that include accepted pricing methods and require tax payers to declare specific information for related parties’ transactions.

More complexity in tax laws relating to dependent agency, thin capitalization and transfer pricing is being introduced in countries like Egypt, Qatar, Kuwait and Oman. Kilany added, “In Egypt, for example, if the debt equity ratio of any company exceeds 4:1, excess interest is not tax deductible. In Kuwait, interest paid to financial institutions outside Kuwait could be challenged. It is important to keep abreast of tax practice in various countries in the region as these practices constantly change and evolve,” added Kilany. Tax treaties concluded by various MENA countries

were also considered.

Last year, Iraqi and Jordanian officials said the two countries had agreed in principle to build a pipeline to supply Jordan with crude oil in future. Iraq transports 10,00015,000 bpd of crude exports in trucks to Jordan.

Dabbagh said the plan also encouraged talks with top oil exporter of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) Saudi Arabia to ship Iraqi crude to Yanbu on the Read Sea. Iraq has managed to operate a first floating terminal which could help boosting oil exports from the southern fields to 2.2 million bpd.

In more news, Iraq has come forward to offer “substantial quantities” of crude oil to Sri Lanka, as the island desperately looks for alternatives to Iranian crude, according to a news report.

Iran supplies nearly 92 percent of Sri Lanka’s imported crude. But supplies have hit a snag in the face of US-led sanctions aimed at spurring Tehran to abandon its nuclear program.

The Colombo-based Sunday Times newspaper quoted Petroleum Ministry officials saying that Sri Lanka would stop crude oil imports from Iran from March 29, ahead of the US June 28th deadline.

Any country importing goods from Iran after would be subject to US penalties.

Sri Lanka’s refinery, built with Italian technology in 1968, can handle Iranian or Saudi light crude and talks were underway to get more Saudi oil, as well as increase refined petroleum product imports from Iraq and Oman.

India has said it will continue to import oil from Iran, joining China in refusing to bow to intensifying US pressure not to do business with the Islamic republic.

The West fears Iran is trying to build a nuclear bomb.

Tehran insists its nuclear program is only for civilian use and refuses to scrap its uranium enrichment activities, ramping up its program in the wake of recent Western economic sanctions against its finance and oil sectors. -Agencies

have expanded significantly and the extensive treaty network offers growing opportunities for double tax relief by way of withholding and income tax exemptions or reduced tax rates.

The years ahead

Commenting on the factors defining the fiscal landscape during the years ahead, Kilany said, “From a regional tax perspective, we are likely to see a continuance of low corporate tax rates to encourage local and regional investment. Countries will continue to face fiscal pressures to increase tax collections to fund social programs and subsidies. We will also see a move towards more complex tax laws and regulations to broaden the tax net and enforce compliance. These measures will create an increasingly challenging tax environment in many countries as the assessment process will become more involved with increasing level of scrutiny relating to cross border transactions and related party transactions. These trends will continue in almost all MENA countries.”

Ernst & Young’s MENA Tax Conference 2012 featured panel discussions where tax executives from global companies and Ernst & Young tax specialists exchanged experiences and views to highlight recent changes in tax regulations and practices in Egypt, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Oman, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. The impact of global economic crisis and political changes on the fiscal and tax policies in the region was discussed as were major issues faced by taxpayers in MENA countries. Presentations also included updates on regional transfer pricing policies and tax treaties.

DUBAI: Abraaj Capital, the Middle East’s largest private equity firm, is set to unveil more deal-making soon and plans a major push into India.

“In the next couple of months, we will call you guys again and again because we have a robust pipeline that is reaching completion,” founder and group chief executive Arif Naqvi told Reuters in an interview.

“We are in the process of completing investments - two or three investments,” said the 51-year-old Pakistani who is leading Abraaj’s drive to become an emerging market powerhouse.

“2012 is the fruit of efforts made in 2011.”

Dubai-based Abraaj, founded a decade ago, has raised seven billion US dollars since its inception.

It owns stakes in a range of Middle East companies including Orascom Construction, budget carrier Air Arabia, supermarket Spinneys and education group GEMS. Funds managed by it have stakes in 35 firms across the region. Abraaj has had a busy year already, led by a strategic deal to buy emerging markets-focused Aureos Capital. It is also investing $125 million in a Moroccan insurance holding firm and has tied up with the top shareholder of TransAtlantic Petroleum to buy the Canadian company’s oilfield services unit. Naqvi, one of the region’s most influential financiers, said nearby India would be a focus region for investment “We have about six investments in India and we are looking to ramp that up massively. We have 10 people on the ground, which is 10 more than we had last year ... India, to me, is a far more exciting market than China.” “We have a two billion dollar fund through which we invest private equity, and we have a couple of hundred million on the SME (small and medium enterprises) side dedicated to India. From the two billion dollar fund the country limit at max is 25 percent ... when you lever that up with debt and so on it becomes a very substantial number,” he said.

Buyout firms that invested billions of dollars during the Indian market’s boom years before the global

financial crisis are widely expected to look for opportunities to cash in their holdings, with more stake sales anticipated in coming months. Naqvi said exits by some Western private equity firms from Indian investments represented a buying opportunity, with Abraaj aided by the ramp up in its numbers on the ground.

“You cannot make investment decisions in Washington about an opportunity in India. Until you have got your hands dirty, until you have eaten daal, chawal, sabzi (pulses, rice and vegetable curry) in the street, how on earth can you make investment decisions?”

Ripe for deal-making

Naqvi, a graduate of the London School of Economics and Political Science and a former executive at Arthur Andersen and American Express, said the euphoria of the Arab Spring popular revolts had been replaced by realism. He said the private sector would continue to be the engine of economic development, and there was a need for investment. “Couple that with fact that valuations are at a very attractive level and people are no longer living in ga-ga land, where valuations were astronomically high, means that you are seeing some of the most compelling investment themes and opportunities of the decade.”

Naqvi said the time to complete transactions was longer because the universe of buyers had become smaller due to foreign investors’ heightened perception of political risk. Naqvi, who plans for Abraaj to exit some ventures in the next 18 months, expected companies to stay away from initial public offerings (IPO).

“All of the markets have essentially started being driven by policy and not by fundamental analysis ... because of that I feel that any sensible company will stay away and bide its time.” Abraaj sold its stake in Turkish group Acibadem to Integrated Healthcare Holdings (IHH), a healthcare unit of Malaysian firm Khazanah Nasional late last year. The deal valued Acibadem at around $1.68 billion. -Reuters

Tourism to contribute $44 billion to GCC economies in 2012

CAPITALS: Top industry executives and officials will head to the annual Arabian Hotel Investment Conference 2012 (AHIC), which takes place in Dubai on April 28-30 at Madinat Jumeirah, to discuss investment opportunities in a region where governments are ploughing billions of dollars into tourism infrastructure. This was stated in a press release on Sunday.

Flush with petrodollars, with oil prices consistently above 120 US dollars a barrel, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia and Qatar have all embarked on aggressive hotel and transport development programmes as they seek to diversify their economies away from oil and boost revenues from the tourism sector.

The total direct contribution of travel and tourism to gross domestic product (GDP) in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries is expected to reach $44 billion this year, up 27 percent from 2009, the peak of the financial crisis in the Gulf, according to the World Travel & Tourism Council.

“AHIC provides a platform for investors, government officials, developers, hotel executives and advisors to come together. Investment into the region’s tourism industry is still an attractive proposition despite the Arab Spring and the real prospect of a recession in Europe,” commented Jonathan Worsley, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Bench Events and Board Director of STR Global.

In the United Arab Emirates, this figure is expected to hit $19.9 billion this year, compared with $16.6 billion in 2009. Some of the Gulf state’s major tourism infrastructure investments include the eight billion dollars expansion of Dubai International Airport, as the emirate seeks to increase its capacity from 60 million passengers to 90 million by 2018 to become the world’s

busiest airport. Complementing its airport expansion, Dubai added a second Metro line last year to connect the city east to west and is scheduled to open a tramline in 2014. Meanwhile Abu Dhabi’s national carrier Etihad Airways continues to expand aggressively as the UAE capital continues to build its reputation as a tourist hub developing projects such as Ferrari World, an amusement park on Yas Island, and Saadiyat Island, home to the planned Louvre and Guggenheim museums.

“The economic conditions in the GCC are excellent and hotel revenues are continuing to grow steadily, so we see the region as a key hotel investment destination,” commented Amine Moukarzel, President, Golden Tulip Hotels, Suites & Resorts MENA. The direct contribution of travel and tourism to Saudi Arabia’s GDP is expected to reach $14.9 billion, or 2.9 percent in 2012, up from $10.4 billion in 2009, or 2.7 percent, as the Kingdom focuses its efforts to provide the necessary travel infrastructure to boost religious, business and domestic tourism. Saudi Arabia is spending more than $500 million on expanding its existing airports and is planning a new seven billion dollars airport in Jeddah.

Well documented but nevertheless still impressive is Qatar’s infrastructure spend which will dominate the next five years as the Gulf state prepares to host the 2022 World Cup and for life beyond, with around $65 billion due to be invested in new transportation schemes. These include the new $11 billion Doha International Airport, the six billion dollars Doha port project and a $25 billion metro and railway. The direct contribution of travel and tourism to Qatar’s GDP is expected to reach $1.1 billion in 2012, compared to US$800 million, in 2009.

GCC Equity Markets Review GCC Bourses ended February on a positive note as all 7 markets ended the month with gains on the back of a pickup in risk appetite in a global rally supported by G4 central bank policy that has succeeded in decreasing much of the tail risk that dominated markets in 2011, along with improving economic fundamentals of the GCC states driven by strong oil prices and recovery in the private sector. Dubai’s DFM General Index was the top performer for the second consecutive month increasing a staggering 20.53% to 1,730.43 followed by Tadawul, the largest bourse in the GCC region, rising 9% to close at 7,226.43 and the ADX General Index which added 6.4% to 2,611.13. Furthermore, Muscat Securities Market and Qatar Exchange reversed last month’s losses to post gains of 4.97% and 2.1%, respectively; meanwhile, Bahrain General Index rose a marginal 0.77% to 1,148.64. Kuwait’s KSE Weighted Index increased 1.06% to 409.42 while KAMCO TRW Index registered a 0.69% uptick to 2,602.68.

BUSINESS IN REGION

ALWATAN DAILY

11

MONDAY, march 19, 2012

All 7 GCC markets end February with gains on risk appetite pickup

KUWAIT: The following is a report prepared by Kuwait Projects Company (KIPCO) Asset Management Company (KAMCO) Research that analyzes the performance of the seven Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Equity Markets

KAMCO (18.03.2012): A report preparedFebruary

by KAMCO Research during 2012that in analyzes addition to assessing the latest key the performance of the 7 GCC Equity Markets February-2012 in economic and during market developments and their effect on the addition to assessing the latest key economic and market developments performance of each stock market. and their effect on the performanceGCC of each bourses stock market.ended February on a positive note as all seven markets ended the month with gains on the back of GCC Equity Markets aReview pickup in risk appetite in a global rally supported by G4 GCC Bourses ended February oncentral a positive note as all 7 policy markets ended the month bank that haswith succeeded in decreasing much gains on the back of a pickup in risk appetite intail a global rally supported

by G4 central bank markets in 2011, along with of the risk that dominated policy that has succeeded in decreasing much of the tail risk that dominated markets in improving fundamentals of the GCC states driven 2011, along with improving economic fundamentals ofeconomic the GCC states driven by strong oil by strong prices and recovery prices and recovery in the private sector.

Dubai’s DFMoil General Index was the top performer in the private sector. Dubai for the second consecutive monthFinancial increasing a staggering 20.53%(DFM) to 1,730.43 General followed by Index was the top performMarket Tadawul, the largest bourse in the GCC region, rising 9% to close at 7,226.43 and the ADX er for the second consecutive month increasing a staggering General Index which added 6.4% to 2,611.13. Furthermore, Muscat Securities Market and 20.53 to 1,730.43 followed by Tadawul, the largQatar Exchange reversed last month’s losses topercent post gains of 4.97% and 2.1%, respectively; meanwhile, Bahrain General Index a marginal in 0.77%the to 1,148.64.

KSE rising nine percent to close estrosebourse GCCKuwait’s region, Weighted Index increased 1.06% at to 409.42 while KAMCOand TRW Index registered a 0.69% 7,226.43 the ADX General Index which added 6.4 uptick to 2,602.68. percent to 2,611.13. Furthermore, Muscat Securities MarGCC Equity ket Marketsand Benchmark Return & Volatility Qatar Exchange reversed last month’s losses to post Closing gains of Return 4.97 percent Volatility and 2.1 percent, respectively; meanValue Feb-12 YTD-12 Feb-12 YTD-12 while, Bahrain General Index rose a marginal 0.77 percent Tadawul All Share Index 7,226.43 9.06% 3.25% 6.44% 7.80% to 1,148.64.

Kuwait’s KSE 4.76% Weighted Index increased 1.06 KAMCO KSE TRW Index 2,602.68 0.69% 0.67% 4.53% KSE Weighted Index 409.42 0.94% 6.47% KAMCO 6.73% percent1.06%to 409.42 while TRW Index registered a ADX General Index 2,611.13 6.40% 8.69% 12.92% 11.10% 0.69 percent uptick to 2,602.68.

DFM General Index 1,730.43 20.53% 27.86% 15.64% 19.07% appetite to equity markets in the GCC reQE 20 Index 8,746.98 Risk 2.09% (0.37%) returned 10.00% 9.92% gion as0.77% low volatility measures Bahrain All Share Index 1,148.64 0.77% 6.06% 5.36% across asset classes acted as MSM 30 Index 5,837.66 2.50% 5.52%hanging over markets in 2011 a signal4.97% that much of 5.83% the risk Source: KAMCO Research

has receded and encouraged investors to participate in the regional Risk appetite returned to equity rally. markets inThe the GCC region as lowgeopolitical volatility measures situation and the aftermath across asset classes acted as a signal of the riskSpring hanging overcoupled markets in 2011with the European developof that themuchArab has receded and encouraged investors to participate in the rally.to Theweigh regional geopolitical ments continue on investors; however, improving situation and the aftermath of theeconomic Arab Spring coupled with the European developments fundamentals along with aggressive central bank continue to weigh on investors; however, improving economic fundamentals along with policy have managed to reassure investor’s short term fears. aggressive central bank policy have managed to reassure investor’s short term fears. GCC GCC bourses operate in a solid economic landscape supbourses operate in a solid economic landscape supported by massive fiscal surpluses in ported massive fiscal surpluses in most GCC states, while most GCC states, while governments continue by commitments to deploy resources towards governments commitments to deploy resources infrastructure and development projects to stimulate growth.continue Demand for blue-chip stocks infrastructure projects to stimuthat are well positioned to benefittowards from the governments’ prudent policies hasand been adevelopment key driver of gains in major GCC securities in the aftermath of the global late markets growth.

Demand forrecession; blue-chip stocks that are well positioned to benefit from the governments’ prudent policies has been a key driver of gains in major GCC securities markets in1 the aftermath of the global recession; however, the rally witnessed since the beginning of the year has also seen KAMCO Research interest pick up in many small and medium cap stocks.

Looking forward, the European debt crisis, rising oil prices, global fundamentals and geopolitical tensions will remain important themes. In the short term aggressive central bank action by the G4 succeeded in delaying contingencies and supporting the rally. However, investors continue to monitor the rising tensions in Iran as the country cut exports to France and the UK in retaliation to the EU’s decision to ban Iranian crude oil imports by July. The situation has pressured oil price globally as it continues increasing towards 2008 highs having reached the 2011 peak set at the height

KAMCO Research

GCC Equity Markets Benchmark Return & Volatility Closing Value

Tadawul All Share Index

7,226.43

KAMCO KSE TRW Index KSE Weighted Index

Company

Ÿ

High

Low

National Bank Gulf Bank Commercial Bank Ahli Bank Ahli United Bank International Bank Burgan Bank Kw Finance House Boubyan Bank

1,100

1,080 460 710 880 250 425 870 550

Kw Investment Commercial Facilit.

Int'L Financial Adv. National Invest.

Kw Projects Ahlia Holding Coast Invest.

Int'L Investor Securities House Ind. & Fin. Inv. Securities Group Int'L Finance MARKAZ KMIFIC Aref Inv. Group Al AMAN Inv. ALOLA Inv. ALMAL Inv. Gulf Inv. House A'ayan Leasing Bayan Inv. GLOBAL Inv. Osoul Inv. KFIC KAMCO Nat. Int'l Holding Housing Finance MADAR Al Deera Holding Al Safat Inv. Al Salam Group Ekttitab Holding Al Qurain Holding Sokouk Holding Al-Madina Finance NOOR Tamdeen Inv. Int'll Exch KW BH Int Exch.

110 285 61 174 14.0 65 24.5 112 118 33.0 140 60 30 39.5 52 43.5 -

465 710 880 250 430 880 560

Global Index - Banking

Kuwait Syrian Strategia Kuwait China Inv. Manafae Inv. Gulf North Africa Amwal Al Masar Al-Imtiaz

24.0 29.0 65.0 186 29.5 85 71 57 140

Kuwait Insurance Gulf Insurance Ahlia Insurance Warba Insurance Kuwait Re-Ins. First Takaful Ins. Wethaq Insurance

490 -

480 -

Taiba Kuwaiti Holding

Global Index - Investment

Global Index - Insurance

Kuwait R.E. United R.E. National R.E. Salhia R.E. Pearl R.E. Tamdeen R.E. Ajial R.E. Massaleh R.E. Arab R.E. Union R.E. ERESCO Mabani INJAZZAT RE Inv. Holding Grp Int'L Resorts Commercial R.E Sanam R.E. Aa'yan R.E Aqar Kuwait R.E Holding AL Mazaya Al Dar National R.E Themar Int'L Holding Grand R.E Projects Tijara & R.E Invest Al Tameer Arkan Al-Kuwait R.E Al Argan Int'L Abyaar Munshaat First Dubai KBT Manazel REAM Mena Real Estate Al Moudon Intl. R.E Markaz Real Estate Kuwait Remal R.E

60 120 140 220 244 42.5 106

1,040

76 16.5 92 60 65 91 20.0 44.0 77 48.0 33.0 36.5 22.5 32 320

Global Index - Real Estate

Nationl Ind. Group Pipes Ind. & Oil Kuwait Cement Refrigeration Ind. Gulf Cables & Elec.

Heavy eng. & Ship.

Marine Services Portland Cement Shuaiba Industrial Metal Collecting Kuwait Foundry

255 134 455 130

1,440

315 150 880 375

ź ŷ Ÿ ŷ ź ŷ ŷ ź

108 280 57 172 13.5 63 24.0 106 118 32.5 136 58 29 38.0 52 42.0 234.0 100.0 22.5 28.0 60.0 186 29.5 85 71 52 136

244.0 108.0

ŷ

Ÿ ŷ Ÿ ŷ ŷ Ÿ Ÿ ŷ ŷ Ÿ ŷ Ÿ Ÿ ŷ ŷ Ÿ Ÿ Ÿ Ÿ ŷ ź ŷ ŷ ŷ ŷ Ÿ ŷ ŷ Ÿ ŷ Ÿ Ÿ Ÿ ŷ Ÿ ŷ ŷ ŷ ŷ Ÿ Ÿ ź ŷ Ÿ ŷ ŷ ŷ Ÿ ŷ ŷ Ÿ ŷ ŷ ŷ Ÿ

59 116 136 220 244 41.5 100 990 73 15.5 91 59 64 87 20.0 44.0 77 45.5 31.5 34.0 22.0 32 310

ŷ Ÿ ź ź ŷ ź ŷ ŷ ź ŷ Ÿ Ÿ Ÿ Ÿ ŷ ź Ÿ Ÿ ŷ ŷ ŷ ŷ ŷ ŷ Ÿ ŷ Ÿ ŷ ź Ÿ Ÿ ŷ Ÿ ŷ ŷ ŷ ŷ Ÿ Ÿ

248 132 445 130 1,440 310 150 880 370

Ÿ Ÿ Ÿ ŷ ŷ ŷ ŷ ź ŷ ŷ ŷ

1080 465 710 630 880 250 425 880 560 328.49

110 285 61 172 345 14.0 64 25.0 130 24.5 230 112 118 50 52 32.5 140 59 30 71 38.5 48.5 64 26.0 242 52 38.5 51 43.5 98 244.0 104.0 24.0 28.5 65.0 29.0 186 255 114 29.50 85 71 57 56 64 42.50 140 85.99

290 610 490 148 220 122 40.50 44.89 59 118 138 220 32.5 244 118 100 42.0 120 104 1,020 76 16.5 63.0 92 60 65 79 36.0 88 20.0 87 17.5 44.0 57 77 120 46.0 32.5 36.5 25.0 22.5 134 134 220 61 315 57.24

255 132 455 130 1,440 310 150 880 190 114 375

1080 485 720 630 870 250 430 880 560 328.52

15.64%

19.07%

1,148.64

0.77%

0.77%

6.06%

5.36%

8,746.98

MSM 30 Index

5,837.66

8.69%

2.09%

(0.37%)

4.97%

2.50%

6.73%

12.92%

11.10%

10.00%

9.92%

5.83%

5.52%

supported by market heavyweight Petrochemical Industries of the Libyan crisis. An unabated rise in oil prices can sigRisk appetite to equity in the GCC as34.9 low volatility measures sector, whichregion represents percent of the aggregate marnificantly hurdle areturned global economic recovery.markets Meanwhile, ket cap, increasing 7.55 percent to 496 billion riyals the continuing threat of a Greek exit from the EU, triggering across asset classes acted as a signal that much of the risk hanging over markets in ($132.4 2011 billion); and Banks & Financial sector jumping 12 percent a major sell-off and remainsinvestors a threat to global has receded andcontagion, encouraged to participate in the rally.

The regional geopolitical to 354 billion riyals ($94.5 billion). Trading indicators reeconomic recovery. Nevertheless, GCC bourses continue to situation andtothe of petrodollars, the Arab while Springcorded coupled the European developments doublewith digit increases with volume and value traded enjoy windfalls theiraftermath economies from continue to weigh on investors; however, fundamentals increasingeconomic 26 percent each.

During February,along the totalwith tradfinding support from earnings released as 446 out of 619improving volume reached 9.3 billion shares distributed 4.3 companies listed on all bank boursespolicy reported a 15 managed percent in- toedreassure aggressive central have investor’s short term fears.over GCC million transactions while value traded rose to riyals 196 crease in earnings to 46.4 billion US dollars in 2011 from bourses operate supported by billion massive fiscal surpluses up from 155 riyals in the previous month.in $40.3 billion in 2010. in a solid economic landscapebillion, most GCC states, while governments continue commitments to deploy resources towards The GCC equity markets are getting off to an optimisKuwait Stock Exchange: Speculation on penny stocks tic start in 2012. The bourses addedprojects together $49.3 helped offset the negative impactfor from poor corporate earninfrastructure andseven development to stimulate growth.

Demand blue-chip stocks billion to their market cap during February 2012 to reach ings, pushing the Kuwaiti bourse higher to buck the precedthat are well positioned to benefit from the governments’ prudent policies has been a key $775.3 billion up from $726 billion at the end of January ing three month downtrend. The KSE Weighted and KAMdriver of gains in major GCC Around securities markets theIndexes aftermath ofpositive the global recession; 2012 supported by gains in all markets. $33 billion COin TRW registered gains during February of the gain in market cap came from Tadawul highlighting rising 1.06 percent and 0.69 percent to close at 409.42 and its significance and dominance of the overall GCC equity 2,602.68 points, respectively. The KSE price index followed markets. The first two months of 2012 have been marked the trend and was able to break the 6,000 mark adding by a risk rally, where GCC equity markets have been 257.8 points and close at 6,126.9. Investors became more strong, adding $52 billion to their market cap. In February 1 active in the market and liquidity flowed into the stock extradin g indicators significantly improved, volume surged change with value traded surging 47.7 percent to 862 milKAMCO Research a whopping 75 percent to 30.8 billion shares worth $60.3 lion Kuwaiti dinars from KD 584 million in January while billion across 4.7 million deals, compared to January’s volvolume jumped a whopping 73.6 percent to 10.9 billion ume of 17.5 billion shares worth $47.9 billion spread over shares compared to 6.3 billion the previous month.

3.7 million deals. The jump in value was driven by Tadawul Dubai Financial Market: the DFM General Index cona 26 percent increase and accounted for 87 percent of total tinued its upturn in sync with the global equities rally to value traded. The GCC markets are currently trading at P/E soar 20.5 percent to 1,730.43, its highest level since Octoand P/B multiples of 16.31x and 1.61x. The Bahraini bourse ber 2010, as investors flooded into the market with renewed remains the most attractive in the GCC region with P/E and risk appetite. At the end of 2011, the bourse had drifted to P/B multiples of 11.12x and 0.91x, respectively. levels not seen since 2004, with share prices and trading Saudi Stock Exchange (TADAWUL): Strong economic indicators at record lows as investors exercised caution in fundamentals from Saudi Arabia coupled with positive fisa tumultuous year. The bourse’s year-to-date (YTD) 2012 cal year (FY) 2011 earnings and prospects for more initial performance, surging 27.9 percent, seems to indicate a public offerings (IPO) to be seen in 2012 pushed confidence new phase for the DFM General Index as the emirate has in the region higher, supporting the overall market perforovercome many of the negative impacts of the 2008 global mance, taking the Tadawul All Share Index (TASI) to levels recession. The economic turnaround was further confirmed not witnessed in 41 months after breaking the 7,000 mark. by strong earnings reported by publicly traded companies In February, TADAWUL market capitalization rose 9.4 perdisplaying continued growth despite a very difficult year recent to 1.42 trillion Saudi riyals ($380 billion) as compared gionally for business due to the Arab Spring. to 1.3 trillion riyals ($347 billion) recorded in January 2012 Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange: the ADX General Index

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Last Ask

MTD YTD 2.86% 3.81% 7.21% 1.74% Div. Annual Close High Low P/E Yield

922,500 230,000 5,000 120,000 1,740,000 1,260,000 770,000 1,290,000 6,337,500

47 9 1 4 9 20 45 36 171

1,012,550 105,850 3,550 105,600 435,000 541,750 672,050 709,550 3,585,900

1,080 460 720 580 880 250 425 870 550

1,100 465 730 640 890 255 430 880 560

3.7% 0.0% 2.1% 3.2% 1.6% 0.0% 0.0% 2.3% 0.0% 1.9%

1,220 510 790 680 920 260 480 900 590 328.52

1,060 465 700 630 790 236 425 820 550 317.17

15.63 33.49 81.72 17.93 30.73 23.78 11.90 25.07 106.53 19.12 42.09 13.26

100,000 50,000 43,440,000 2,220,000 9,360,000 4,040,000 400,000 5,940,000 940,000 240,000 16,860,000 3,640,000 1,760,000 400,000 80,000 26,640,000 7,460,000 19,160,000 240,000 8,320,000 23,560,000 60,000 80,000 320,000 40,000 9,440,000 4,700,000 189,490,000

5 4 347 38 57 72 5 127 24 3 162 63 20 5 2 211 183 440 3 75 269 2 1 6 1 154 82

2,361

10,840 14,150 2,560,120 385,680 127,320 260,280 9,760 641,040 110,920 7,840 2,337,360 215,280 52,400 15,520 4,160 1,134,480 1,794,000 2,011,200 5,560 236,760 1,502,040 11,160 2,360 27,200 2,840 522,760 653,040 14,656,070

108 280 60 172 335 13.5 64 23.0 110 118 32.0 138 58 30 38.0 64.0 52 36 42.5 244.0 104.0 22.5 28.5 65.0 186 29 85 71 53 55 138.0

110 285 61 174 340 14.0 65 25.0 228 112 120 33.5 140 60 31 40.0 69.0 244 56 43.5 106.0 24.5 29.0 190 72 59 57 140.0

0.0% 7.7% 0.0% 0.0% 5.8% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 8.5% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 3.2% 5 1% 5.1% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 8.9% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 2.3%

112 285 67 182 345 18.5 69 25.0 130 36.0 230 122 120 50 52 35.5 140 65 35 71 44.0 48.5 70.0 26.0 244 54 39 51 43.5 102 244.0 130.0 25.0 33.5 96.0 29.0 190 255 114 32 85 73 60 56 64 42.5 140.0 85.99

104 255 40 158 295 11.5 50 25.0 130 21.0 230 102 102 50 52 24.0 106 47 21 71 28.5 48.5 64.0 26.0 242 51 36 51 26.0 61 99.0 19.5 19.0 16.0 38.0 29.0 154 255 114 26 58 50 51 47 64 42.5 112.0 74.96

290 610 470 148 220 122 40.50 44.38

20 Ex-D 0.51

50,000 50,000

4 4

24,250 24,250

290 490 112 28.5

300 570 495 148 43.0

6.9% 4.1% 5.1% 6.8% 2.7% 0.0% 0.0% 4.6%

325 610 520 148 220 134 40.5 44.89

280 550 450 102 220 102 40.5 42.22

15.14 14.06 10.01 23.37 296.83

11,840,000 2 6,520,000 -4 620,000 -2 280,000 20,000 6.01.04,400,000 4 4,000,000 20 1,880,000 360,000 3 1.5 15,840,000 -1 1,120,000 1 800,000 1 920,000 7,680,000 800,000 2.0 160,000 40,000 2 -2 32,560,000 0.5 2,400,000 2.5 8,080,000 2,160,000 0.5 160,000 5 1,070,000 0.36 103,710,000

61 83 22 6 1 38 91 68 9 118 15 15 22 127 9 2 1 145 29 82 24 2 50

59 116 138 220 28.0 244 41.5 104 1,020 75 16.0 91 58 64 88 19.5 87 41.0 75 116 46.0 32.0 36.0 24.0 22.0 32 58 310

60 118 140 222 35.0 250 106 42.0 120 106 1,040 77 16.5 92 60 65 89 20.0 44.0 56 77 120 46.5 33.0 36.5 25.5 22.5 33 61 315

0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 9.1% 0.0% 4.1% 0.0% 5.0% 0.0% 5.8% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 5.7% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 3.7% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 1.0%

63 118 152 224 37.5 250 130 100 52.0 120 104 1,020 80 20.0 67.0 94 75 67 90 38.0 88 23.0 91 17.5 45.0 59 80 144 52.0 39.5 36.5 28.5 25.5 134 34 220 70 480 57.24

47 97 108 200 32.5 224 114 77 27.0 108 94 840 62 11.0 35.0 77 56 52 79 33.0 59 13.5 87 17.5 31.0 57 64 116 27.5 22.0 25.0 25.0 15.0 134 31 220 49 270 49.06

45.72 15.14 24.72 19.62

1,020

698,600 773,320 85,520 61,600 4,880 185,040 417,240 1,891,600 26,880 254,440 103,000 47,640 59,160 682,800 16,000 7,040 3,080 1,517,760 77,280 286,600 48,040 5,040 338,300 7,590,860

12,690,000 1,120,000 40,000 100,000 10,000 120,000 20,000 60,000 60,000

127 44 4 2 2 9 1 9 4

3,168,190 148,040 18,050 13,000 14,400 37,250 3,000 52,800 22,300

250 130 450 128 1,440 310 148 870 180 110 365

255 132 455 132 1,460 320 156 880 198 118 375

0.0% 0.0% 2.2% 3.8% 4.5% 3.2% 3.3% 11.4% 5.3% 0.0% 5.3%

260 136 470 158 1,480 345 222 920 200 120 495

214 120 415 130 1,380 310 146 660 180 102 370

7 2 15 -10 -

6.40%

6.47%

Source: KAMCO Research

2 3 0.5 1 1 6 6 0.5 4 1 1 -1 1 1.0 10.0 2.0 0.5 5.0 2.5 5 -1 2 0.73

248 130 440 130 1,440 310 150 890 190 114 375

4.76%

27.86%

108 285 58 172 345 13.5 63 25.0 130 24.0 230 106 118 50 52 32.0 136 58 29 71 39.0 48.5 64 26.0 242 51 38.5 51 42.5 98 234.0 102.0 23.5 28.5 60.0 29.0 186.0 255 114 27.00 80 72 57 54 64 42.50 140 85.25

59 116 142 222 32.5 250 118 100 43.0 120 100 1,000 73 15.0 63.0 93 59 64 79 36.0 88 20.0 87 17.5 42.0 57 75 120 48.0 32.0 34.0 25.0 22.0 134 134 220 61 310 56.88

7.80%

20.53%

QE 20 Index

Previous Close Change 185.67 0.47 33.00 6,200.40 Trading Activity Tran. Value(KD) Chng Volume Ex-D -10 10 -5 0.03-

4.53%

1,730.43

For more Information please contact "Global" at (+965) 180 42 42 or www.globalinv.net Last Close 186.14 6,233.40 Last Prev.

Close Close

6.44%

0.67%

YTD-12

0.94%

2,611.13

Bahrain All Share Index

3.25%

0.69%

Volatility Feb-12

1.06%

ADX General Index

DFM General Index

YTD-12

409.42

Date of Closing Prices: 18 / 03 / 2012 For more information please contact “Global” at (+965) 180 42 42 or www.globalinv.net Ÿ

9.06%

2,602.68

Trading Prices of Kuwait Exchange Trading Prices of Kuwait StockStock Exchange

Global General Index KSE Price Index

Return Feb-12

continued its positive start to the year with a second month of gains, surging 6.4 percent in February to close at 2,611.13 in line with the global equity markets rally as investors risk appetite returned. Strong FY 2011 earnings growth in the key banking and real estate sectors helped support the market’s rally. Boosted investor confidence resulted in major increase in liquidity as volume traded surged 95 percent to 2.6 billion shares with a corresponding 70 percent increase in value traded to 2.5 billion UAE dirhams ($677.41 million) over 30,991 transactions. Volatility eased slightly to 12.9 percent in February. In line with the bourse’s performance, market breadth skewed towards the gainers with an advancers-to-decliners ratio of 35-to-12 with 14 stocks remaining unchanged.

Qatar Exchange: the QE 20 Index gained 2.09 percent increase to 8,746.98, to almost erase last month’s loss bringing the market’s YTD 2012 loss to a marginal 0.37 percent, as investors saw the January’s sharp dip as a buying opportunity. Trading indicators improved slightly with volume rising seven percent to 152.3 million shares, while traded value rose 17 percent to 5.92 billion Qatari riyals ($1.63 billion) over 69,463 transactions. Volatility for the month remained elevated at 10 percent as compared to 6.23 percent in December 2011. During February, the aggregate market capitalization rose 5.04 percent to 455.95 billion Qatari riyals ($125.2 billion) from 434.08 billion Qatari riyals ($119.2 billion). The banking & finance sector rose 5.5 percent to 187.4 billion Qatari riyals ($51.5 billion) while the industrial and services sectors increased by 6.36 percent and 4.19 percent, respectively, leaving the insurance sector as the only loser at 0.45 percent to 10.79 billion Qatari riyals ($2.96 billion).

Muscat Securities Market: despite poor corporate earnings released from the majority of the listed stocks, the Omani Bourse was able to reverse last month’s negative performance and followed its peers in the GCC region to record a 4.97 percent gain in February and close at a six month high of 5,837.66 points reversing its YTD 2012 return to record a 2.50 percent rise. Trading volume decreased nine percent during the month to 212.6 million shares compared to 234.3 million in January 2012, however, increased interest in local equities due to attractive valuations was evident during the last three trading days of the month which helped push the index higher.

Bahrain bourse: The Bahraini Bourse ended the month on a positive note; Bahrain All Share index rose by 0.77 percent to reach 1,148.64. A sharp regional rise in trading turnover shows that the investor risk appetite for GCC markets has returned after a year in which the global financial crisis and political turmoil in the Arab world kept most markets depressed. Market’s volatility in the February 2012 eased down to 6.06 percent down from 8.14 percent in the December 2011, reflecting the restoration of investor confidence in the market and the financial position of the listed companies.

89.98 13.95 1.49 0.00

0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 30.41 0.00 119.09 0.00 0.00 0.00

0.00 9.75 22 77 22.77 11.92 53.75

0.00 5.68 13.12

13.05

17.65 6.45 16.98 42.51 25.73 0.00 17.18 31.68

5.93 27.59 12.50 5.21 46.49

23.07 18.82 0.00 0.00 18.91 77.57 18.59 6.58 7.42 137.15 117.52 11.52 25.37 21.83

ACICO

210

Global General Index 93 United Industries Boubyan Petroch.

610 KSE Price Index

1,400 Gulf Glass HilalCompany Cement High Al Kout Ind. Project 1,140 National K-PAK Bank Gulf BankMaterial 495 Building Commercial 770 Nat. Ind.Co.Bank Ahli Bank 640 Equipment Holding 77 Ahli United Bank 850 Mena Holding International Bank 248 Consumer Industries 460 Burgan Bank Kuwait Gypsum 890 Kw Finance House 218 Qurain Bank Boubyan 590 Salbookh Trading 48 Global Index - Banking 214 IKARUS Kw Investment Boubyan Int'L Ind. 79

210 91 600 1,400 Low 1,120 490 770 640 76 800 248 455 880 216 580 47 210 77

ŷ źź źŷ ŷ ŷ

ŷ ŷ ŷ ŷ ŷ ź Ÿ Ÿ ŷ ŷ ŷ ź ź ź ŷ Ÿ ź Ÿ ŷ ź 265 260 źŸ Commercial Facilit.

Global Index Industrial 41 40 ź Int'L Financial Adv. 1,020 1,020 NationalInvest.

Cinema 174 National 170 źŷ KwProjects Hotels 300 - Ÿŷ Kw 300 395 ŷź Agility 410 12.5 Ahlia Holding 13.5 Coast Invest.

53 52 64 59 źź Market Complexes -860 -850 ŷŸ Int'L Investor ZAIN Securities House - ŷŷ 82.0 79.0 Safat Energy Ind. & Fin. Inv.Group Educational - ŷŷ -Securities Group - - ŷŷ Indep. Petroleum Int'L Finance National Cleaning 144 142 ŷŸ 110 MARKAZ 108 120 Sultan Center 118 ŷŷ KMIFIC - ŷź Arabi Group 93 93 Int'L Inv. Group City Group - ŷŷ Aref Inv. Group - ŷ 2,260 2,240 ź Wataniya Tele.

Investment Dar - ŷ 118 Kw Gulf Link 112 Ÿ Al AMAN Inv. ŷ Kw Cable ALOLA Inv.Vision 110 108 - ŷŷ Automated ALMAL Inv. System 50 49 - źŷ NAPESCO -Gulf Inv. House - - ŷŷ KCPC Leasing 285 280 - ŷŸ A'ayan K.S.HInv. 32.5 - 31.0 - ŷŷ Bayan Eyas - ŷŷ GLOBAL Inv. Hits Telecom - 91 - 87 ŷŸ Osoul Inv. Al Safwa Holding 21.5 -20.5 ŷŸ GULFINVEST KFIC Human Soft - ŷŷ KAMCO - ŷŸ 82 Privatization Holding 85 Int'l Leasing & Inv. - ŷŸ 102 Nafaaes Holding 102 - - ŷŷ Nat. Int'l Holding -National Slaughter - ŷź Housing Finance 110 Aref energy 106 MADAR -- - ŷŷ Safwan 26.5 Al Deera Holding 26.5 61.0 Gulf Petroleum 59.0 ŷŷ Al Safat Inv. - ŷŷ Gulf Franchising 25.0 25.0 122.0 Al Salam Credit & Group Collection - 114.0 - Ÿŷ 39.0 ź 41.0 Ekttitab Holding 19.0 ŷ 20.5 National Ranges Al Qurain Holding ŷ - ŷ Burgan Well Drilling 16.5 Sokouk Holding 16.5 ŷ - 38.5 - ŷ IFA H&R Al-Madina Finance 40.0 ź 1,560 1,560 Combinted Group ŷ NOOR ŷ Jeeran Holding Tamdeen Inv. 160 158 - źŷ 102 102 Palms KW BH Agro Int'l Exch.

- ŷŸ 73.0 75.0 SafatKuwaiti TEC Holding Taiba - ŷź 93 92 Mushrif Trading Kuwait Syrian - ŷź U it d P j t United Projects 335 325 Strategia - ŷŸ 315 ALAFCO 310 53 53 ŷŷ Kuwait China Inv. Al-Muwasat -- - ŷŷ Manafae Inv. Gulf NorthHolding Africa - ŷŸ 250 Mashaer 248 Amwal - ŷŷ 280 Oula Fuel 280 Al MasarComm.

Future - ŷŷ 124 Al-Imtiaz 132 Hayat Comm.

81 źź 82 Global Index - Investment Mubarrad Transport 65 64 źŸ KuwaitInsurance Resorts -- - ŷŷ Kuwait Advanced Technolgy - - ŷŷ Gulf Insurance -Yiaco Medical 385 385 - ŷŷ Ahlia Insurance Al Jazeera Airways 475 465 źź 112 108 Warba Insurance Al Soor Fuel 242 242 ŷ Kuwait Re-Ins. First Takaful -- - ŷŷ Future Kid Ins. Wethaq -290 -280 ŷŸ K G L Insurance 88 Al Nawadi 87 źź Global Index - Insurance Alrai Media 48 - źŷ Kuwait R.E. 48 Zima Holding 100 - Ÿŷ United R.E. 100 -

Global R.E. Index - Services 118 National 126 200 Salhia R.E. Trans.

204 LiveStock 186 182 -102 Pearl -104 DanaR.E. Al-Safat 224 224 Tamdeen R.E. United Poultry Ajial R.E. Kw FoodStuff Massaleh R.E. United Food Arab R.E. 30.0 30.0 Kout Food Union R.E. Global Index - Food 98 96 ERESCO 860 840 Mabani Sharjah Cement 85 82 75 74 INJAZZAT RE 96 Gulf Cement 94 Inv. 71 11.5 70 UmHolding QuwainGrp Cement 12.0 - 95 - 95 Int'L Resorts Fujaira Cement 78 77 Commercial R.E 120 Ras AlKheimah 120 70 65 Sanam R.E. ARIG 54 53 Aa'yan R.E United Gulf Bank Aqar Egypt Kw Holding 330 330 Kuwait R.E Holding Bahrain Kw Ins. 59 AL Mazaya 60 Gulf House 56.0 14.0 55.0 Al DarFin. National R.E 14.0 50 Inovest Int'L Holding 58 Themar -188 Grand R.E Projects -190 Ahli United Bank -22.5 Tijara & R.E Invest Ithmaar Bank 24.0 Al Tameer Global Index - Non-Kuwaiti Arkan Al-Kuwait R.E 70 70 Markaz Real Estate Safat Global Al Argan Int'L Funds Investment 28.5 28.0 Abyaar Al-Bareeq Holding 23.5 23.5 Munshaat AFAQ 25.5 First Dubai 26.0 Al-Shamel KBT 27.0 27.0 23.0 15.5 18.5 Al-Safat Real Estate 16.5 Manazel 35 Ajwan Real Estate 35 REAM Specialities Group 355 355 Mena Real Estate Masaken 51 51 Al Moudon Inter.

Intl. R.E Dulaqan R.EEstate Markaz Real 57 56 Eid Food Kuwait Remal R.E 295 285 2,260 2,260 Maidan Index Clinic - Real Estate Global

ŸŸ źź ŷ ŷ ź ŷ ŷ ŷ ŷ ŷ ź ŷ ŷ źź ŸŸ Ÿź źŷ ŷ ź Ÿ ź ź ŷ ź ŷ ŷ ŷ ŷ ź źź Ÿ ŷ ŷ ź ŷ Ÿ ŷ Ÿ ź ŷ ŷ ŷ ź ŷ ź ŷ ź

Nationl Ind. Group 232 Dar Al-Thuraya Real E 242 Pipes Ind. & Oil 128 126 Kw Medical Services Kuwait Cement 455 450 Amar For Fin. & Leas.

-Refrigeration Ind. 1,420 1,420 Total Parallel Market Gulf Cables & Elec.

Heavy eng. & Ship.

Total Services Market Marine 720 Portland 720 Global Cement Special Indices Shuaiba Industrial Global Index - Kuwaiti Co.'s 104 Metal Collecting 110 Global Index - 10 Large- Cap. Kuwait Foundry

ź ŷ ŷ ŷ ź

Flex

Global Index - Islamic

-

-

ŷ Ÿ ź Ÿ ŷ Ÿ ŷ ŷ ŷ źŷ Ÿŷ źŸ

ŷ ŷ ź ŷ ŷ ŷ ŷ ź ŷ

Last Close Previous Close DTD MTD YTD 210 20,000 1 Change4,200 210 208 214 4.8% 224 196 24.22 -0.40% -1.55% 177.24 -0.70 -1.55% -1 2,240,000 36 206,680 92 176.5393 91 0.0% 102 92 33.44 92 6105,726.90 - 5,754.20 610 110,000 7 -27.3067,000 600 5.7% 610 550 86.98 -1.50% -0.47% 620 -1.50% 1,400 1,400 2,500 1 3,500 1,400 1,220 21.05 1,420 2.9% Last Prev.

Trading Activity Div. Annual Close Last Last 216 216 216 206 11.21 4.6% Close Close Volume Tran. Value(KD) Bid Ask Yield High Low P/E Chng 350 Ex-D 350 375 350 350 7.76 5.7% 3,796,050 1120 1120 69 3,377,500 1,140 1,120 14.74 - 1,120 275 275 255 300 1,100 275 13.23 300 3.6% 7.3% 20 495 495 830,000 407,950 490 495 - 0.0% 510 490 33.95 224 Ex-D 224 228 224 27.09 0.0% 770 770 10,000 1 7,700 - 770 780 790 770 88.62 325 325 325 260 20.86 2.5% 320 330 1.9% 640 -20 2 22 6,400 660 10,000 64075 66078 3.1% 66077 64051 17.34 18,320 77 75 240,000 36.90 0.0% 800 50 850 350,000 23 282,700 840 850 1.6% 850 790 29.68 33 33 33 33 0.00 0.0% 16 248 248 700,000 173,600 246 248 0.0% 255 248 23.59 102 102 102 93 0.0% 460 465 -5 500,000 10 229,750 460 465 0.0% 475 460 12.26 128 128 Ex-D 128 128 17.06 9.4% 890 -10 880 1,280,000 66 1,127,050 880 2.3% 900 880 25.07 870 432,040 216 218 2,000,000 216 222 210 112.24 8.71 218 0.0% 0.0% 590 590 607,850 --2 1,035,000 3326 590 580 590 590 15,000 48 47 4 1 320,000 51 41 47 48 0.0% 319.37 319.54 8,092,500 6,639,050 2.0% 319.54 318.41 18.61 0.17240 280,000 12 59,720 214 8 206 210 214 162 12.57 216 0.0% 106 106 -3 --5 102 10677 0.0% 10688 10670 40.56 240,000 82 18,560 77 0.0% 260 265 -5 250,000 14 65,750 260 265 8.5% 265 260 12.09 19,672,500 294 1.55 4,302,050 174.89 173.34 174.89 163.04 11.14 2.6% 40 1,020 170 280 300 400 12.5 52 60 25.0 860 130 81.0 31.0 110 230 305 102 144 108 120 50 93 44.0 550 52 2,240 74 118 28.5 63 108 280 49 345 23 285 71 260 31.0 260 48.5 91 68 21.0 20.5 26.0 270 244 84 94 102 51 154 36 110 51 590 26.5 61.0 75 25.0 120.0 120 39.5 19.5 19.0 255 16.5 395 38.5 1,560 29.0 73 158 102 255 73.0 114 92 26.00 335 68 315 53 130 60 46.5 250 64 280 42.50 275 128 81 75.90 65

54.0 325 640 560 385 485 475 110 242 220 114 98 40.50 290 87 43.43

128 48 100 100 782.60 124 200 184 37.5 102 224 130 120 1,440 82 365 30.0 530 108 350.62 97 860 85 75 95 11.5 70 38.0 95 78 120 65 132 54 228 90 330 38.0 455 59 56.0 14.0 91 58 17.5 190 31.0 24.0 59 46.31 70 122 48.5 124 28.0 144 23.5 106 25.5 250 27.0 23.0 15.5 35 134 355 134 51 220 345 57 106 295 2,260 49.73 36.0

232 93.0 128 65 450 65 150 1,420 335 212 720 180 Ÿ 104 Ÿ 460 Ÿ

41 1,020 172 280 295 410 12.5 53 63 25.0 850 130 81.0 31.0 110 230 305 102 142 112 120 50 96 44.0 550 52 2,280 74 112 28.5 63 108 280 49.5 345 23 280 71 260 31.0 260 48.5 86 68 20.5 20.5 26.0 270 244 82 94 97 51 154 36 112 51 590 26.5 61.0 75 25.0 112.0 120 41.5 19.5 19.0 255 16.5 395 39.0 1,560 29.0 73 160 96 255 74.0 114 93 26.00 330 68 315 53 130 60 46.5 248 64 280 42.50 275 130 85 76.02 64

54.0 325 640 560 385 485 480 118 242 220 114 98 40.50 285 91 43.63

128 49 100 99 780.55 120 204 186 37.5 102 234 130 120 1,440 82 365 30.5 530 108 350.83 98 850 82 73 97 12.0 70 38.0 97 77 122 70 132 55 228 90 325 38.0 455 63 57.0 14.5 91 53 17.5 192 31.021.5 59 46.28 74 122 48.5 124 28.5 144 24.5 106 26.0 250 27.0 20.5 16.5 32 134 330 134 51 220 345 58 106 290 1,860 49.75 36.0

1,680,000 2,500 1,040,000 110,000 4,930,000 7,040,000 - -10 1,280,000 -1-3 12,200,000 - 10 4,015,000 -10,520,000 - -- -1,060,000 2.0 - 680,000 660,000 --3 40,000 17,500 -40 3,640,000 6 - 500,000 -1 320,000 - - 70,000 -5 1,840,000 - - 5 18,760,000 1 13,280,000 - -2 13,960,000 -5 20,000 - - --2 600,000 - - - 240,000 3,800,000 320,000 -8.0 - 11,180,000 2.01,920,000 49,760,000 480,000 0.510,640,000 65,000 2.0- 80,000 6 100,000 1.0320,000 1.0680,000 60 000 60,000 -5 290,000 - 200,000 - - -2 1,480,000 - 10,000 - - -4.02 1,240,000 80,000 0.12-1 40,720,000 1,400,000 -1 -2 5 -

---

- -8-5 Ex-D - -5 -4 0.19-

- - 10,000 50,000 120,000 20,000 - 4,510,000 120,000 120,000

13 20 1 5 108 46 22 190 163 89 - - 29 1821 -1 7 63 14 4 - -6 22 - 174 107 - 154 -1 - 24 - 259 -4 212 24 237 5 93 -2 4 -2 -8 15 -5 29 - 41 -1 - 38 2 55827 - - -1 64 -1 - 86 62

1 -1 80,000 9 1 920,000 1,644 2.05 146,850,000 4 105 3,100,000 12 -4-2 520,000 8 160,000 - 41 1,280,000 3 10.0100,000 1 80,000 0.51,440,000 0.21-1 320,000 849 10 3 1,935,000 57 8 360,000 218 120,000 2-2 1,040,000 1529 0.5- 2,000,000 1,960,000 -1 - -2 40,000 3 1 240,000 -2 60,000 2 17 1,000,000 -5 4 -1 200,000 10,000 1 Ex-D 11 440,000 -4 11,840,000 153 -1 1 80,000 0.55 70 5,680,000 - -2 1,740,000 34 15,600,000 132 3 38,330,000 448 0.04 -4 320,000 2 - - - - 12 0.5- 2,720,000 1.080,000 1 0.5240,000 3 Ex-D 35,040,000 4 2.5 320,000 4 1,200,000 8 1.0320,000 3 3 190,000 - 25 -9 40,000 - -1 -1 240,000 6 47 5 2,110,000 2,500 332 1 400 53,085,000 0.02-

Ex-D

-

-

242 -10 13,220,000 - 154 93.0 128 140,000 6 65 470 -20 50,000 2 65 150 - - - 872,500 1,460 -40 2,500 118 335 5,991 212 - 505,880,000720 Close 230,000 19 Prev Close Prev.

180 195.72 195.21 106 -2 80,000 3 192.50 460 192.74 -

578.75

577.00

67,160 40 2,550 177,720 168 33,000 295 1,977,200 90,920 395 12.5 67,280 742,960 5159 - 850 3,441,250 848,440 80.0 - - 295 151,400 142 73,920 106 78,920 120 -94 3,720 39,500 2,240 419,200 116 27.0 54,920 108 15,840 49 335 - 21 19,850 280 58,760 31.0 - 1,677,800 64.091 275,520 -20.5 - -83 1,169,800 -92 2,040 - 144 64,720 108 - 540 6,360 26.0 228,480 59.0 8,000 24.5 1,305,280 - 118.0 77,080 981,440 19.0 18.0 7,920 16.0 375 419,440 38.5 101,400 1,560 12,680 15673 10,200 102 23,600 73.0 62,680 -92 19 600 19,600 330 63 89,950 310 10,600 52 - - 367,960 248 2,800 275 - - 270 157,920 6,520 124.082 2,702,550 90,280 65 - - 3,850 23,400 13,200 4,840 - 1,285,050 10,520 13,200

3,840 92,000 14,235,440 383,920 104,680 29,480 131,000 22,400 2,400 160,480 31,160 1,656,950 30,120 8,960 98,200 23,960 138,800 3,800 18,520 7,200 67,400 10,720 3,300 26,160 661,120 1,120 317,200 327,680 363,360 1,950,780 22,400 - - 76,880 1,880 6,160 946,080 6,720 19,240 11,040 67,450 2,040 13,520 610,850 5,650 4,151,200

-

52.0 300 510 360 460 465 108 242 - - 285 88 122 48 99 -

122 200 182 - 102 126 110 1,440 530 112 95 86084 7184 11.594 35.570 77 93 120 53 - 220 325 13.5 9055 - 58 30.0 188.0 70 116 28.0 23.5 25.0 24.5 19.0 15.5 -35 355 29 218 55 29084

2,260 -

3,111,120 -17,800 122 22,550 455 - 150 92,900 1,420 3,550 310 46,505,830 165,600 Change 710 178 0.52 8,480 104 0.24 435

1.74

40

0.0%

3.9% 1,020 172 0.0% 0.0% 300 - 6.7% 400 0.0% 10.0% 13.0 5260 0.0% 0.0% - 860 0.0% 23.3% 0.0% 0.0% 81.0 33.5 - 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 325 9.8% 0.0% 144 0.0% 110 122 9.3% 0.0% -98 0.0% 0.0% 560 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 2,280 2.2% 0.0% 118 0.0% 29.5 0.0% 0.0% 11067 0.0% 8.9% 50 - 0.0% 5.8% 24 - 0.0% 285 1.8% 0.0% 6.0% 32.5 - 0.0% 3.8% - 0.0% 0.0% - 0.0% 0.0% -21.0 0.0% 0.0% - 0.0% 23884 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 102 54 - 0.0% 5.2% 0.0% 0.0% 110 0.0% 610 3.7% 27.0 61.0 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 25.5 0.0% 120.0 - 0.0% 0.0% 39.0 0.0% 19.5 0.0% 20.0 0.0% 250 0.0% 16.5 0.0% 0.0% 395 0.0% 39.0 1,580 4.5% 0.0% % 0.0% 16076 3.8% 7.8% 270 - 5.1% 0.0% 74.0 0.0% 0.0% 2793 0.0% 9 0% 335 0.0% 9.0% 73 3.2% 315 0.0% 53 5.4% 61 - 0.0% 47 250 10.8% 0.0% 69 280 0.0% 0.0% - 280 0.0% 9.1% 128.084 0.0% 12.3% 66 2.4% 0.0% 55.0 6.2% 0.0% 325 0.0% 610 4.5% 2.6% 395 5.2% 500 475 9.1% 0.0% 114 244 0.0% 2.7% 110 106 0.0% 0.0% 43.0 290 0.0% 1.7% 93 4.7% 5.7% 130 0.0% 49 0.0% 110 0.0% 0.0% 100 11.6% 126 0.0% 202 184 10.0% 0.0% 37.5 4.9% 104 0.0% 224 - 4.5% 0.0% 0.0% 130 1,480 4.5% 6.1% 85 370 1.4% 0.0% 31.5 3.8% 560 6.5% 118 4.0% 0.0% 98 87085 0.0% 5.9% 7685 0.0% 10.5% 12.095 0.0% 0.0% 37.071 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 79 96 8.3% 0.0% 65 122 5.7% 0.0% 54 132 0.0% 0.0% 91 232 9.1% 0.0% 40.5 330 0.0% 7.7% 60 0.0% 14.5 0.0% 0.0% 9456 5.5% - 0.0% 5.3% 33.5 190.0 0.0% 0.0% 57 0.0% 3.9% 74 0.0% - 0.0% 126 0.0% 28.5 - 0.0% 0.0% 25.0 0.0% 0.0% 25.5 0.0% 255 3.2% 28.0 0.0% 0.0% 23.0 0.0% 16.0 0.0% 3.7% 130 2.0% 32 - 0.0% 51 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 57 - 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 295 - 1.1% 0.0%

48.5

232 94.0 130 70 465 -70 1,440 340 216 720 DTD 190 0.27% 108 0.12% -

0.30%

0.0%

0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 2.2% 7.7% 3.3% 0.7% 4.6% 3.0% 4.58% 2.4% 13.9% 5.6% 0.0% 4.3%

42 40 990 1,120 174 170 280 280 305 295 430 340 13.5 12.5 5465 5241 25.0 25.0 900 840 130 130 81.0 45.0 36.0 31.0 110 110 230 230 295 345 102 102 146 110 116 108 108 136 50 5084 104 44.0 44.0 530 550 52 52 1,920 2,280 74 74 95 126 28.5 28.5 11268 10863 230 280 51 49 340 395 23 22 260 305 71 71 260 260 31.5 31.0 260 260 48.5 48.5 132 68.0 68.054 14.0 23.5 20.5 20.5 280 26.0 26.0 270 24484 24461 94 9490 104 51 51 154 154 36 3691 120 51 51 520 710 26.5 27.5 30.0 74.0 75 75 16.0 28.5 99.0 120.0 140 120 19.5 41.5 19.5 12.0 19.0 19.0 198 275 17.0 16.5 490 395 39.0 38.0 1,580 1,500 29.0 29.0 15673 16289 102 25586 255 75.0 57.0 114 114 104 2680 28 335 270 68 68 280 315 53 55 130 130 60 60 47 47 172 250 64 64 265 305 42.5 42.5 300 265 132.089 128.070 76.32 72 75.90 51

44.0 56.0 325 325 640 640 560 560 345 390 520 485 410 480 118 110 270 236 220 220 134 11498 114 40.5 40.5 290 218 44.80 92 43.43 80

116 156 49 48 100 110 100 99 782.60 744.62 120 128 200 208 182 222 37.5 37.590 114 234 224 126 130 130 120 1,420 1,500 82 82 340 390 30.5 30.0 500 570 108 108 365.22 345.74 100 96 86095 84044 76 7355 108 12.573 11.543 38.0 38.0 122 46 78 77 126 118 75 65 132 132 54 55 232 188 90 90 330 250 38.0 38.0 455 455 63 59 74.0 40.5 14.5 14.0 91 91 17.5 17.5 31.0 31.0 59 59 47.16 40.74 78 70 1,220 1,220 48.5 48.5 144 124 29.0 28.0 24.5 23.5 26.0 25.5 28.5 27.0 16.5 15.5 134 134 32 32 220 220 57 60 295 270 49.8649.73-

-

232 260 130 128 470 450 158 150 1,460 1,420 340 335 212 222 710 740 MTD 180 3.08% 180 104 116 3.37% 460 460

2.91%

17.46 88.93 12.13 13.32 1.33 0.00 13.17

23.89 0.00 19.39 0.00 22.98 0.00 55.09 0.00 14.50 0.00 0.00 0.00

13.98 6.56 9.92 0.00 11.97 9.19 335.98 32.31 0.00 13.80

13.79

0.00 116.80 9.60 0.00 0.00 14.66

5.62

0.00

0.00 71.64 86.17 17.06 0.00 3.02 8.28 8.72 22.77 11.92

10.38

62 41 62.41 43.00

5.26 7.80 8.25 23.73 0.00 16.78

5.19 10.01

3.78 16.97 25.05 12.90 12.38 9.91 8.47 17.37 16.90 296.83

10.92 7.65

6.25 12.60

11.43 37.20 12.83 12.52 22.21 17.83 16.20

5.72 11.40 23.77 9.84 15.28 11.15 39.65 5.29

21.70

0.00 14.56

9.60

26.32

35.62 7.50 8.10 37.29 4.15 10.17

19.44 75.43

10.61

11.37 0.00 5.38 27.28

20.67 9.93 23.07

12.19

18.82 63.06 0.00 11.03 0.00 16.27

14.44

70.58 18.38

11.92 6.49 8.02 14.92 193.84 96.15 YTD 10.91 3.26% 23.15 1.39% 26.77

2.98%

STOCKS WITH NBK CAPITAL

12

ALWATAN DAILY monday, march 19, 2012

April 21, 2009 March 18, 2012

2% 6%

1% 6% Oman

2%

Dubai

-6%

Abu Dhabi Dubai

90

GCC Best Performers

Saudi

95 18-Dec-11 85

18-Jan-12

18-Feb-12

MENA Best Performers

-2%

18-Mar-12

-6% -2

S&P Pan 3-Feb-09 Arab Large/ 18-Feb-09 Mid Composite S&P 20-Mar-09 GCC Large/ Mid Composite 19-Jan-09 5-Mar-09 4-Apr-09 19-Apr-0

1 Period's Liquidity 1 Ratio (PLR x)*

-1

MENA Indices Highlights Country (Index)

Index Level

Sa Saudi Arabia (Tadawul All Share Index)* Country (Index)

Index 7,609 Level

UASa UAE (ADX Index) Saudi Arabia (Tadawul All Share Index)

2,606 5,250

QaUAUAE Qatar (DSM Index) (ADSM Index)

8,671 2,695

Ku Kuwait (KSE Weighted Index)

UAE (DFM(KSE Index) Ku Kuwait Weighted Index)

OmOman UAE(MSM (DFMIndex) Index)

421

Ba Bahrain (BSE Index)

Eg Egypt (Hermes Egypt Index (HFI))*

Le Lebanon (Beirut SE Index)*

Jo Jordan (Amman General Index)

Pa Palestine (Al-Quds Index)

M Morocco (Casa All Shares Index)*

Tu Tunisia (Tunis SE Index)*

Le Lebanon (Beirut SE Index)* *Market Closed

Pa Palestine (Al-Quds Index) * Market Closed

-0.7% -4.0%

3.8%

2,775 10,090

-1.2% 12.8%

8,892 5,148

4.1% 6.6%

5,064

-2.0%

5,478

1,681

11,088

463

1,208

2,825 486

10,621

4,764

1,094

3,282

0.1% 0.6% 0.1% 3.9%

5.1%

0.4%

0.4% -

-

-

2.2%

-0.3% -

-

-

0.9% -

467

8.4% 9.3%

-0.4% 1.9%

546

Tu TunisiaClosed (Tunis SE Index)* * Market

0.2%

5,927 1,745

2,001

52 Wk 7,601 High

18.6% YTD

22.7% -0.2%

Jo Jordan (Amman General Index)

M Morocco (Casa All Shares Index)*

0.1% % Chg.

-1.4% 1.8%

1,153 5,590

OmOman (MSM Index)

YTD

1,660 406

BaQa Bahrain Qatar (BSE (DSMIndex) Index)

Eg Egypt (EGX 30 Index)

% Chg.

52 Wk High

0.8% -18.8%

0.7%

-6.8%

8.5%

2.6%

68,858 264,263

8,071 2,137

62 122

124,278 69,783

2 196

17,283 65,352

5,628

3,587

39

4,224

1,572

10,785

5,044

2,551

513

4,785

4,091

23.6%

739

407

2,119

13.6%

3,418

-

465

14,635

-7.2%

-

1,164

-3.3%

0.1%

-

328

9,406

-

-

1,043

-

2,837

-

4

63,640

7.67

1.37

1.68

1.65

8.07

1.29

3.54

1.56

6.39

0.88

12.71

2.15

9.53

59,990

1.19

18.36

9,498

3.95

14.71

8,507

1.68

6.47

2,079

0.86

8.67

6,576

MENA Worst Performers

2.50

13.85

1.92

SAUDI ARABIA *Market Closed

OMR 0.512 SAR 22.95

225 Saudi Industrial Inv. Grp.

101 Riyad Bank

SAR 24.70

-6.4%

115

337,084,884

313,015,866

115 Alinma Bank (KSA)

343,553,085 208,590,533

119,955,261 184,660,266

115 (KSA) 422Alinma EmaarBank the Economic City (KSA)

97,126,838

NBKNational Bank of Kuwait (KUW)

1,497,853,109

Market Cap. (SAR '000)

114

88,742,222

2350.SSE Saudi Kayan Petrochemical Co. 4220.SSE Emaar the Economic City

Turnover (SAR) 2,168,318,219 3050.SSE Southern Province Cement Co. 1,264,236,857 1211.SSE Saudi Arabian Mining Co. 1,173,966,004 2050.SSE Savola Group Co.

43Dar Al Arkan Real Estate Dev. Co.

1 Alinma Bank

18-Feb-12

S&P GCC Large/Mid Composite

782,318,794

23Saudi Kayan Petrochemical Co.

18-Mar-12

Close

11.10

% Chg.

9.9%

13.00

6.6%

14.80

3.9%

12.95

3.2%

19.80

3.4%

Worst Performers

70Zain - Saudi Arabia

18-Jan-12

64,280,166

4300.SSE Dar Al Arkan Real Estate Dev. Co.

Highest Turnover

105

-6.8%

Turnover (USD)

201 Industries Corp. (KSA) 235Saudi SaudiBasic Kayan Petrochemical Co. (KSA)

17,367,961

-4.7% -8.9%

578,141,106

430 Dar Al Arkan Real Estate Dev. Co. (KSA)

7,601 / 5,916 1150.SSE Alinma Bank

Tadawul Index 52 week High / Low

Turnover (SAR '000)

-6.5%

Turnover (USD)

MENA Highest Turnover

0.75

Advance/Decline Ratio

% Chg.

-4.4% -8.6%

703 Zain - Saudi Arabia (KSA)

93% 7030.SSE Zain - Saudi Arabia

% of stocks trading above 1yr avg. price

121

3.9%

8.0%

2.80 SARAED 48.00

SAR 13.70

GCC Highest Turnover

7,609 (0.1%)

Tadawul Index (% Chg.)

125

3.9% 8.6%

1.33 -13.1% -5.0% KWDAED 0.265

EMAEmaar Properties (UAE) Best Performers

Summary

5.7% 8.8%

USD 0.085% Chg. -5.6% Close

KFI Kuwait Finance House (KUW)

Rebased Performance

95 18-Dec-11

AED 1.30

ITH Ithmaar Bank

6.6% 9.8%

8.0%

Close

SO Sorouh Real Estate Co.

0.89 201 ART Arabtec Holding 1.74 Saudi Basic Industries Corp.

16.11

2,549

OMR 0.720

GCC Worst Performers

1.89 FAC ALDALDAR Properties 1.37 Commercial Facilities Co. 1.63 OC Oman Cement Co. 0.88 238 Rabigh Petrochem.

9.50

10,477

2

0.79 1.52

9.35 8.85

33,782

1

10.45 9.99

1.09 1.77

10.09

60,456

67

2.07

10.99 6.87

18,727

QAR 21.60

BKMBankMuscat

PB

PB1.46

14.32

SAR 14.80

QGTQatar Gas Transport Co.

PE 14.23

27,572

KWD 0.214 QAR 6.35

115 Alinma Bank

11.66 7.29

15,024

17

Trailing

9.17 10.24

59,597

KWD 0.112 OMR 0.703

IKA Ikarus Petroleum Industries Co. KCB Al Khaliji Commercial Bank

13.41

18,525 37,413

SAR5.60 13.00 SAR

IFCGalfar International Finance Co. GEC Engineering & Contracting

Trailing

35,163 98,547

46

1,921

PE

102,879

59 718

1,129 4,230

12,634 1,425

2.4%

30 2,183

166

10 305

1,033

2.0%

2,293 4,130

396

5,419 1,433

2,903

-0.3%

Mkt.399,374 Cap. USD million

6,406 5,860

2,246

Mkt. Cap. USD million

Turnover 4,631 USD million

1,301 316

12,109

0.4%

525,916 Wk Low

Turnover USD million

1,754 787

1,433 12,627

39.8%

52 Wk Low

% Chg.

SAR 11.10% Chg. 9.9% Close

430Kingdom Dar Al Arkan 3 428 Hldg.Real Co. Estate Dev. Co.

Period's Liquidity Ratio (PLR x)*

MENA Indices Highlights

Close

4 703 Zain - Saudi Arabia

Abu Dhabi Abu Dhabi

-2%

Oman

Palestine

95

-4%

Dubai

0%

Palestine

0%

100

-1%

-2%

Kuwait

Bahrain Qatar Abu Dhabi Bahrain Saudi

Return DailyDaily Return (%)(%)

105

0%

Kuwait

Saudi Dubai

105

100

0%

Qatar

Qatar Saudi

111

110

4%

Oman Qatar

110

Kuwait Oman

113

112

Jordan Kuwait

113

114

DailyIndex Index Performance Snapshot Daily Performance Snapshot

Jordan Egypt

115115

Bull/Bear Indicator Bull/Bear Indicator

Bahrain Bahrain

Rebased RebasedPerformance Performance

692,568,329

42Emaar the Economic City

1140.SSE Bank AlBilad

2290.SSE Yanbu National Petrochemicals Co.

Close

95.25

% Chg.

-2.6%

33.70

-1.5%

28.10

-1.1%

34.20

52.00

-1.4% -1.0%

Saudi SE

Quotes Company Name 1 Al Rajhi Bank

1 Alinma Bank 2 Almarai Co.

Close 77.50

14.80

% Chg.

-0.3%

3.9%

Daily High

77.75

14.80

77.00

Turnover (SAR '000) 161,954

14.20

1,173,966

32.50

19,550

28.10

26,104

12.20

1,264,237

62.25

109,058 5,330

108.25

14,392

27.80

43,812

Volume ('000) 2,091

81,314

109.00

-0.2%

28.10

-1.1%

1 Banque Saudi Fransi

45.10

-0.4%

45.50

44.90

4 Emaar the Economic City

12.95

3.2%

13.00

12.30

692,568

16.95

168,867

12.15

74,067

25.80

94,794

3,635

51.25

23,707

457

33.50

59,920

1,772

1 Arab National Bank

1 Bank AlBilad

1 Bank Al Jazira

4 Dar Al Arkan Real Estate Dev. Co. 7 Etihad Etisalat Co.

4 Jabal Omar Development Co.

4 Jarir Marketing Co.

4 Kingdom Holding Co.

2 National Industrialization Co.

2 Rabigh Refining & Petrochemical Co.

1 Riyad Bank

1 Samba Financial Grp.

2 Saudi Arabian Fertilizer Co.

1 Saudi Arabian Mining Co.

2 Saudi Basic Industries Corp.

3 Saudi Cement Co.

5 Saudi Electricity Co.

1 Saudi Hollandi Bank

22 Saudi Industrial Investment Grp.

2 Saudi International Petrochemical Co. 1 Saudi Investment Bank 2 Saudi Kayan Petrochemical Co. 7 Saudi Telecom Co. 2 Savola Group Co. 0 3 Southern Province Cement Co. 0 1 SABB 3 Yamama Saudi Cement Co.

2 Yanbu National Petrochemicals Co. 7 Zain - Saudi Arabia

33.00

28.50

13.00

0.6%

0.0%

6.6%

109.75

Low

33.20

28.60

28.60

13.00

62.50

-0.8%

154.00

-0.5%

155.50

153.50

45.00

-0.4%

45.40

44.80

29,125

26.50

17,570

185.75

22,456

17.40

12.35

26.10

26.80

52.00

186.00 33.70

105.75 85.00

15.70

34.20

1.8% 0.8% 0.0%

0.0%

0.5%

-0.5%

-1.5%

26.90

52.25

187.00 34.20

105.50

0.3%

15.85

15.55

293,896

24.70

49,961

19.95

11,800

1.5%

0.3%

34.20

26.30

106.50

0.0%

20.15

40.10

12.50

-0.7%

-0.8%

19.80

17.40

429,644

24.90

24.35

63.00

15,322

-0.2%

3.4%

0.0%

-1.4%

85.75

34.20

25.20 24.50

20.20 19.85

40.20

34.80

84.50

33.80

9,810

9,069

24.15

61,643

19.00

782,319

34.10

25,924

34.10

17,517

50.75

68,901

40.00

42,815 6,869

95.25

-2.6%

97.50

94.00

51.25

0.0%

51.25

50.50

16,360

10.00

2,168,318

34.20

52.00

11.10

-0.3%

-1.0%

9.9%

34.50

52.50

11.10

52-Week

High

80.75

14.25

Low

67.25 9.05

on high

-4.0%

8,550,000

31.6

1.8

14,040,000

12.9

0.9

17.20

-1.1%

50.00

37.50

-9.8%

12.55

6.20

3.2%

340

100,275

12.20

1,744

64.50

54,730

9,814

29.80

-3.1%

19.0%

91.50

-0.5%

32.27

-0.4%

32,616,965

76.2%

107.2%

11,007,500

1.2%

43.2%

32.5%

16,171,560

0.8%

39.5%

36.5%

45,767,646

10.6%

10.6%

46,800,000

23.50

-4.5%

33.2%

49.8%

98.00

52.50

-13.3%

18.1%

64.3%

33.70

25.70

1.5%

14.8%

15.9%

24.40

17.75

-0.2%

23.6%

35.30

27.20

588

24.60

19.15

165.00 87.75

12.85

-3.5%

-6.0%

0.0%

18.55

-8.5%

15.55

-18.1% -0.7%

15.50

3.4%

15.0% 5.7%

9.9%

13.0%

31.1%

322

83.25

51.25

-38.4%

-26.8%

5.25

9.9%

100.0%

204,112

54.00

10.10

41.60

-10.8%

-3.7%

65,415,523

21.1%

19.2%

10.8%

11.5% 35.7%

60.1%

-16.0%

-16.4%

18.2%

19.0%

2.7%

59.7%

nmf

nmf

nmf

12.8

10.9

11.3 nmf

10.8

3.7

1.7

2.5

1.7

1.5

2.4

1.8

10.2 1.8 2.3

2.8

1.3

1.7

5.7

1.8

2.3

15.6

4.0

11,311,650

11.2

1.5

8,928,333

12.7

1.6

29,700,000

nmf

2.0

11,205,000

80,200,000

60.25

-26.5%

19.4%

21.8%

8.6

1.4

13,005,000

8.4%

106.75

34.20

317,250,000

18.6%

13.8%

71

46.50

9.0%

11,082,500

33.00

-3.4%

46,500,000

31,172,500

-12.4%

40.40

23.70

5.8%

40,200,000

24.8%

1,069

35.40

5.9%

nmf

10.3

2.0%

-0.4%

11.2

25,084,281

11.6%

23.10

25.8

18.0

-8.4%

2,007

1,330

45.6%

22.0

12.9

9,240,000

42.40

26.90

56.75

15.70

513

75.0%

43,750,000

22,863,600

18,761

756

34.1%

18.1%

112.50

40,355

48.90

3.4%

12.3%

4,057

2,532

60.5%

7.1%

8,430,000

-12.4%

192.75

267

79.3%

25,070,000

21.20

121

116

6.6%

6.05

7.05

45.20

657

69.6%

12.25

647

57.4%

68.1%

11.10

154.75

41.6%

16.6%

0.0%

17.20

34

5,993

15.75

3.5

28,050,000

10.1%

nmf

PB

5.5%

-0.9%

22,200,000

15.8

20.0%

28.40

28.50

116,250,000

Trailing

PE

-6.2%

1,563 921

4.7%

Market Cap. (SAR '000)

59.1%

83.75

26.60

11.5%

12 mths

58.3%

110.00 35.18

YTD

3.9%

132

592

% Change

17,100,000

13,335,000

34,200,000

29.4

21.2 15.7

10.5

14.3

14.9

11.8

10,378,125

14.1

15,540,000

nmf

29,250,000

9.2

1.3

1.9 1.3

1.7

2.2

5.0

2.0

3.1

2.8

3.6

STOCKS WITH NBK CAPITAL

13

ALWATAN DAILY monday, march 19, 2012

KUWAIT Rebased Performance

Summary

Best Performers 6,233 (0.5%)

KSE General Index (% Chg.)

115

421 (0.2%)

KSE Weighted Index (% Chg.)

114

58%

% of stocks trading above 1yr avg. price KSE General Index 52 week High / Low

Highest Turnover

100

Turnover (KWD) 3,441,250 3,168,190

N National Industries Grp. Holding

18-Feb-12

S&P GCC Large/Mid Composite

GBK.KSE

3.9%

0.255

2.8%

0.455

3.4%

1.020

NRE.KSE

Close

Gulf Bank

1,977,200

AGLTY.KSEAgility

N National Bank of Kuwait

1,012,550

AREFENRGAREF Energy Holding Co.

1,891,600

TAM.KSE

0.465

National Real Estate Co.

A Agility

MMabanee Co.

18-Mar-12

5.7%

0.214

2.0%

Worst Performers

Zain Kuwait ZA

18-Jan-12

% Chg.

28,723,921

Market Cap. (KWD '000)

95 18-Dec-11

IKARUS.KSIkarus Petroleum Industries Co.

46,363

Turnover (KWD '000)

103

0.112

467 / 396 MABANEE. Mabanee Co.

KSE Weighted Index 52 week High / Low 105

Close

International Finance Co.

0.46 KCEM.KSE Kuwait Cement Co. 6,523 / 5,694 NIND.KSE National Industries Grp. Holding

Advance/Decline Ratio

110

IFC.KSE

% Chg.

-4.1%

0.138

Tamdeen Real Estate Co.

-2.8%

0.400

-2.4%

0.110

-1.8%

0.244

-2.4%

KSE Weighted Index

Quotes Company Name

Close

A Agility

0.400

T Al Themar Intl. Holding Co.

0.087

A AREF Energy Holding Co.

0.110

A Al Ahli Bank of Kuwait

-2.4%

0.630

A Alafco Aviation Lease and Fin. Co. B Boubyan Bank

B Boubyan Petrochemical Co. B Burgan Bank

-

0.395

1,977

-

-

-

0.657

-

0.581

0.104

0.079

1,290

0.620

0.550

-9.7%

-5.1%

0.425

-1.2%

0.430

0.425

542

1,260

0.524

0.419

-18.9%

-6.0%

1.560

0.0%

1.560

1.560

101

65

1.945

1.300

-19.8%

0.0%

0.285

0.280

14

50

0.395

106

230

0.580

-

-

0.610

0.0% -

-1.4%

0.285

-

0.465

-4.1%

0.395

-

0.0%

0.610 -

0.710 -

-

-

0.475

0.465

0.455

3.4%

1.440

-

5.7%

0.242

K Kuwait Finance House

0.880

K Kuwait International Bank

0.250

K Kuwait Projects Co. (Holding)

0.345

-

0.0% 0.0%

1.440

-

1.440

0.112

-

-

0.455

0.445

-

-

14

60

23

672

0.250

0.250

435

-

-

280

0.214

0.285

0.134

1,740

0.350

0.236

-28.6%

-

0.425

0.295

-18.8%

0.909

N National Industries Grp. Holding

0.255

2.8%

0.255

0.248

3,168

12,690

0.285

0.192

N National Real Estate Co.

0.138

-2.8%

0.140

0.136

86

620

0.168

0.216

-0.9%

0.216

432

O Oula Fuel Marketing Co.

A Qurain Petrochemicals Industries Co. S Salhia Real Estate Co.

S Sultan Center Food Products Co. T Tamdeen Real Estate Co.

A The Commercial Real Estate Co. S The Securities House N Wataniya

0.280

0.0%

0.280

0.280

0.220

-0.9%

0.220

0.220

0.244

-2.4%

0.120 0.092 0.130

Z Zain Kuwait

0.118

79

-1.1%

0.092

0.091

103

2.240

40

-1.8%

0.860

1.2%

0.244 -

2.260 0.860

-

-

0.850

3,441

0.660

0.060

0.033

0.340

2,220

38.1

2.7

-19.4%

179,283

nmf

0.260

160,500

16.7

1.1

4.4%

309.5%

104,500

9.2

4.3

290,133

23.9

13.1%

-8.2%

439,160

11.7

-5.7%

6.1%

0.0%

-4.4%

16.1% 0.0%

-1.9%

0.360

0.265

-22.2%

-6.7%

280

0.240

0.200

-8.3%

5.8%

7.8%

-37.1%

79,996

0.8

0.8

21.1

259,332

578,883

3.7

nmf

-19.4%

18.6%

-4.4%

63,719

-2.0%

10

0.174

-21.9%

1.7

nmf

39.3

-41.7%

0.226

89,923

2,366,356

0.0%

-17.9%

-55.2%

8.3

-17.0%

0.158

0.056

3.1

59.7%

23.9%

-10.5%

nmf

25.9%

-2.2%

302,301

1.7

-11.1%

-44.3%

-45.0%

64,309

nmf

1.4%

0.295

2,000

2.1 1.3

12.1

2.0

1.2

31.5

1.3

0.8

60.4%

566,738

27.3

3.9

4.2%

4,701,777

15.5

2.2

-1.9%

330,251

nmf

-49.2%

21,780

-1.5%

112,496

-40.7%

30.2%

39.2

1.4

0.8

nmf

0.8

92,316

25.4

2.2

112,799

21.8

0.9

0.9%

21.3%

237,600 69,459

-6.8%

0.1

150,709 -

-0.7%

2.3

nmf

0.6

13.1

1.1

660

0.136

0.093

-11.8%

0.0%

-1.6%

1,120

0.094

0.067

-2.1%

19.5%

35.3%

168,803

16.0

0.7

18

2.280

1.640

-1.8%

15.5%

34.9%

1,129,033

3.1

1.4

5

0.244

1.580

-

62

0.120

60

-

-

0.0%

-

2.240

0.218

1,166,082

-5.3%

-20.0%

1.0

-5.1%

-2.7%

-1.0%

26.2

903,136

16.7%

-11.1%

1.145

3

9.8%

0.0%

53,454

1.3

1.0

1.420

923

386

-16.8%

12.0

14.0

1.620

-

1,013

0.172

-20.2%

-15.3%

295,911

1.2

152,978

-26.0%

-20.3%

1.080

0.174

0.0%

nmf

4.1

-1.1%

1.100

0.0%

-24.0%

82,500

1.0

18.9

-27.8%

0.820

0.0%

0.172

9.6%

1.9

nmf

150,744

0.415

1.100

1.080

N National Investments Company

1.5

0.630

0.636

-

13.0

-0.8%

1.020

-

656,611

-16.6%

1,880

-

-1.8%

0.236

1,892

0.325

4.2

0.290

40

-

nmf

-

0.990 -

979,012

-5.2%

-56.1%

0.114

1.040 -

-1.8%

0.096

0.480

2.0% -

1.6

0.255

50

1.020 0.033

6.2

-14.2%

-8.8%

0.5

245,628

-1.3%

-19.8%

PB

-4.5%

-10.1%

-27.8%

nmf

18.9

-45.7%

-10.9%

1.380

88,088

PE

953,341

20.3%

0.019

0.495

-13.0%

3.3%

-39.3%

0.055

0.465

418,735

19.6%

-26.0%

0.255

3.8%

Trailing

Market Cap. (KWD '000)

9.6%

8.9%

0.700

1.700

770

53

-1.6%

0.960

-1.1%

-

-22.5%

0.0%

12 mths

5,940

-

0.880

0.198

0.880

-

0.880

0.495

0.420

10

18

0.870

0.880

-

0.085

0.620

5

641

0.106

-

-

4

-

0.460

0.142

110

-

0.710

0.465

600

67

-

-1.0%

0.112

65

0.600

0.475

N National Industries Co.

-4.4%

710

0.106

JAJazeera Airways

N National Bank of Kuwait

-16.3%

0.2%

0.550

0.110

0.210

M Mena Holding

-4.1%

6.7%

0.560

0.214

M Mabanee Co.

-8.0%

YTD

0.0%

-1.8%

0.560

3.9%

P Kuwait Portland Cement Co.

-

0.248

% Change

-17.1%

0.214

F Kuwait Food Co.

0.435

on high

0.280

IK Ikarus Petroleum Industries Co.

K Kuwait Cement Co.

Low

0.380

1.440

K KIPCO Asset Management Co.

High

290

C Gulf Cable and Electrical Industries Co.

IF International Finance Co.

4,930

-

-

52-Week

Volume ('000)

90

0.049

IF IFA Hotels & Resorts

Turnover (KWD '000)

0.310

0.710

G Gulf Bank

0.410

Low

0.315

C Commercial Bank of Kuwait G Global Investment House

-

High

0.0%

0.255

F Commercial Facilities Co.

-

0.315

A Burgan Co. for Well Drilling

C Combined Grp Contracting Co.

Daily

% Chg.

20

-

0.270

0.216

-

4,015

-

1.380

0.840

-9.6%

0.0%

-37.7%

6.1%

0.0%

-4.4%

-6.2%

91,041

0.0%

88,400

-36.8%

3,704,480

nmf

1.0

18.4

0.9

nmf

7.0

13.0

1.8

UAE Rebased Performance

Summary

Best Performers 1,660 (-1.4%)

DFM Index (% Chg.)

130

2,606 (-0.7%)

ADSM Index (% Chg.)

Advance/Decline Ratio

120

DFM Index 52 week High / Low

110

2,775 / 2,293 CBD.DFM

ADSM Index 52 week High / Low

114

328,441

Turnover (AED '000)

Highest Turnover

100

D Dubai Financial Market

S&P GCC Large/Mid Composite

18-Feb-12 Abu Dhabi SE

16,982,639

E Etisalat

18-Mar-12

0.8%

3.12

0.3%

0.72

Commercial Bank of Dubai

0.3%

3.30

Turnover (AED) 55,820,322 SOROUH.A Sorouh Real Estate Co. 53,207,317 ALDAR.AD ALDAR Properties 29,779,530 ARTC.DFM Arabtec Holding

E Emaar Properties

18-Jan-12

1.0%

1.33

0.0%

Worst Performers

S Sorouh Real Estate Co.

90 18-Dec-11

% Chg.

410,880,474

Market Cap. (AED '000)

108

1.06

86% TAQA.ADS Abu Dhabi National Energy Co. 0.25 DU.DFM du 1,754 / 1,301 AIRARABIA Air Arabia

% of stocks trading above 1yr avg. price

123

Close

ARKAN.AD Arkan Building Materials Co.

16,918,796

A ALDAR Properties

UPP.DFM

DFM.DFM

Close

1.30

% Chg.

-5.0%

0.43

-4.0%

2.80

Union Properties

Dubai Financial Market

-6.5%

1.33

1.14

-4.4% -3.4%

Dubai FM

Quotes Company Name

Close

A Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank

3.10

T Abu Dhabi National Energy Co.

1.33

A Air Arabia

0.72

A Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank

A Abu Dhabi National Hotels A ALDAR Properties

3.40

2.20

Daily

% Chg.

-1.6%

-0.6%

0.71

1,524

2,121

D du

0.41

3.12

-

-

295

1.77

0.71

-40.1%

5.0%

-10.9%

-2.0%

0.50

0.48

4,371

8,896

0.71

0.34

-31.0%

8.9%

-18.3%

-1.5%

0.3%

0.42

3.17

3.00

81

0.40

3.08

3.12

-1.3%

0.0%

9.72

-1.5%

91.45

-

-

12.00

-1.2%

1.99

-

-

-

3.13

9.35

9.77

6,236 3,363

29,780 8,443

3.0%

14,262,857

13.0

2.3

-7.3%

2.8%

9,120,000

8,353,519

nmf

8.3

1.8%

-15.2%

73,448,041

12.6

83.1%

0.8%

1,067,426

nmf

9.70

1,854

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-0.6%

3.21

3.17

105

U United Arab Bank

3.70

-

* Closing Prices, Turnover and Market Cap. in USD

0.5

-17.1%

-

-

nmf

8.64

1.14

8,523

0.42

10,143

-

-

191 -

4.63

10.75 1.56

2.65

6.98

0.67

-

102.00

74.70

-

4.70

2.91

1.02

0.80

205 -

12.15 2.39

-

42,841

1.54

33

7,310

23,511 -

9.50

1.63

-31.7%

-9.6%

-16.7%

-10.3%

7.5%

25.8%

0.3%

23.4%

-9.9%

22.4%

-12.8%

-9.9%

-5.7%

-2.0%

19.0%

-1.2%

-16.7%

9.6%

9.9%

26.3%

1.1

18.8 9.3

1.9

0.9

1.3

1.3

16.2%

1,150,000

10.4%

5.30

3.28

-30.2%

1.6%

67.4%

7.9

0.6

-18.2%

-12.7%

0.5

9.7

2.82

0.24

6.9

2,425,500

1.5%

3.90

0.50

34,440,519

0.9

0.6

9.9%

23.8%

90.7%

-

1.2

2.2

52.9%

-22.8%

29,160,000

0.4

16.1

-15.6%

0.53

17,562,568

1.0

4,510,000

0.67

1.49

1.2

2,363,202

11.20

125

1.4

1.5

83.4%

1,828

391

-

0.47

13.4%

7.7

16,983

3.19

-4.0%

-4.8%

8.0%

35.7%

3,234,981

7.8

9.24

U Union National Bank

0.43

-5.5%

-21.9%

48.2

1.1

6,406,249

10.4

55,820

U Union Properties

92.0%

1,855,000

0.6

-4.3%

18,639,190

2,458

1.21

-10.1%

13.0

7.4%

1.26

-3.4%

1.88

13.8%

2,752,508

19.1%

1.39

1.15

2.31

2.80

0.68

-2.9%

6.2%

-12.3%

-6.5%

T Tamweel

3,822

3.30

1.46

0.20

4.4%

2.41

11.95

-

1,077

25,707

0.46

2.90

-4.1%

nmf

16.5

3.49

12.00 -

15,378

3.40

1.69

1,530,000

17,364

-

-

25

1.96

0.0%

12.4

53,207

-

-

823

0.0%

3,346,024

3.03

1.30

S Sorouh Real Estate Co.

4,186,000

314

1,569

3.16

1.00

0.8

1.05

3.30

1.87

0.0%

S Sharjah Islamic Bank

8.5

1.08

0.0%

1.92

3.16

N National Bank of Umm Al Qaiwain

5,433,222

1.0%

-3.1%

E Emirates NBD

4.10

3.1%

148.2%

0.0%

1.2

1.1

0.3

76.1%

-

12.7

0.8

13.3

-22.9%

-

7.0

PB

2,200,000

-10.4%

1.21

-

5.7

-19.1%

3.63

-

8,040,000

PE

0.0%

4,797

2.19

N National Bank of Fujairah

8,279,250

13,377

-

2.25

N National Bank of Abu Dhabi

-7.0%

11.5%

2.70

-

-0.9%

M Mashreq

22.4%

-25.2%

17,346,352

2.93

-

2.20

1.30

-14.3%

2.02

Trailing

Market Cap. (AED '000)

30.3%

44.6%

D Dubai Islamic Bank

G Gulf Cement Co.

10.8%

2.94

0.57

7.6%

-18.4%

-

0.84

11.5%

12 mths

-20.8%

1.14

F First Gulf Bank

1.14

-4.2%

YTD

0.76

1.19

9.29

1.63

2.92

-6.6%

% Change

1.68

-3.4%

E Etisalat

3.55

2.37

on high

12,758

1.14

3.06

3.32

Low

16,919

1.42

D Dubai Financial Market

E Emaar Properties

-

High

1.28

0.49

D Deyaar Development Co.

7

0.73

-

D Dana Gas

3.30

24

0.3%

1.06

C Commercial Bank of Dubai

3.40

249 1,149

A Arkan Building Materials Co.

1.88

772 1,524

-4.4%

A Aramex

3.10

52-Week

Volume ('000)

1.32

2.80

1.02

3.44

Turnover (AED '000)

1.33

-5.0%

A Arabtec Holding

3.12

Low

0.8%

1.33

A Amlak Finance

High

3,184,000

9.9

1.0

3,412,500

10.2

9.0%

7,961,044

5.3

0.7

-34.5%

3,686,685

11.2

1.8

68.1%

1,454,482

11.3 nmf

0.5

0.5 0.6

STOCKS WITH NBK CAPITAL

14

ALWATAN DAILY monday, march 19, 2012

QATAR Rebased Performance

Summary

115

Best Performers 8,671 (0.1%)

DSM Index (% Chg.)

114

Advance/Decline Ratio

168.50

Turnover (QAR '000)

452,558,088

Market Cap. (QAR '000)

% Chg.

2.7%

7.40

8,892 / 8,071 CBQK.DSMThe Commercial Bank of Qatar 224,701 BRES.DSMBarwa Real Estate Co.

DSM 52 week High / Low

110

Close

44% QTEL.DSM Qatar Telecom 0.75 VFQS.DSM Vodafone Qatar

% of stocks trading above 1yr avg. price

1.4%

74.40

1.1%

29.00

QNNS.DSMQatar Navigation

1.1%

74.00

0.3%

105

Highest Turnover 100

Worst Performers Turnover (QAR) 63,025,705 ERES.DSMEzdan Real Estate Co. 16,360,453 QNBK.DSMQatar National Bank

IQIndustries Qatar

99

B Barwa Real Estate Co.

12,916,018

Q Qatar Gas Transport Co.

95 18-Dec-11

18-Jan-12

18-Feb-12

18-Mar-12

S&P GCC Large/Mid Composite

11,725,628

Q Qatar Telecom

10,403,090

C The Commercial Bank of Qatar

Close

18.90

AHCS.DSMAamal Co.

% Chg.

-0.5%

135.20

-0.5%

77.10

-0.4%

15.55

QIBK.DSM Qatar Islamic Bank

QIIK.DSM Qatar International Islamic Bank

-0.5%

49.95

-0.3%

Doha SM

Quotes Company Name

Close

A Aamal Co.

15.55

Daily

% Chg.

-0.5%

Low

15.63

127

28.75

16,360

60.00

61

8

656

Low

on high

15.40

73.90

10,403

140

85.50

68.00

-13.0%

-11.4%

E Ezdan Real Estate Co.

18.90

-0.5%

19.60

18.81

417

22

24.97

18.60

-24.3%

26.60

-0.2%

17.71

-0.3%

77.10

-0.4%

60.00

IQIndustries Qatar

142.20

Q Qatar Electricity & Water Co.

135.50

M Masraf Al Rayan

Q Qatar Gas Transport Co.

Q Qatar International Islamic Bank

49.95

Q Qatar Islamic Bank

Q Qatar National Bank

135.20

Q Qatar Telecom

168.50

Q Qatar Navigation

74.00

V Vodafone Qatar

7.40

0.0%

60.00

0.1%

143.00

141.00

63,026

0.0%

135.50

134.50

5,923

-0.3%

50.10

49.95

1,062

26.65

17.80 77.10

26.40

10,108

17.66

12,916

76.90

3,761

73.10

4,372

-0.5%

135.80

134.40

9,658

2.7%

168.50

165.10

11,726

0.3%

1.4%

74.40 7.43

1

28.10

67.00

-19.2%

50.00

-10.4%

-3.2%

-8.5%

-1.8%

18,218,206

-3.3%

-13.5%

8,474,865

15.7

0.8

-2.0%

-1.1%

6,255,960

nmf

0.9

44.90

-11.1%

-7.5%

72

141.73

112.05

70

168.50

135.70

59

569

76.30

87.50 8.12

-9.6%

-4.6%

69.90

-15.4%

7.24

-8.9%

0.0%

0.9

-0.8%

56.20 85.30

1.1

9.3

1.1%

21 49

1.4

12.0

24.6%

-2.9%

-9.6%

PB

-4.5%

-11.7%

16.59

11,284,614

5,850,000

14.3

50,132,188

128.00

19.58

-14.6%

-9.9%

PE

-21.3%

-6.4%

153.50

729

7,697,250

-14.9%

44

-5.3%

-10.0%

Trailing

18,410,010

118.80 22.09

12 mths

Market Cap. (QAR '000)

-0.5%

148.50 28.10

-4.2%

-5.4%

444

381

4,191

7.30

35.90

-15.1%

-2.2%

74.50

D Doha Bank

16.06

YTD

1.1%

566

19.15

-35.5%

74.40

29.10

40

24.09

C The Commercial Bank of Qatar

1.1%

16.16

High

% Change

16.25

29.00

16.45

15.55

52-Week

Volume ('000)

K Al Khalij Commercial Bank B Barwa Real Estate Co.

-0.3%

High

Turnover (QAR '000)

6.9%

-2.2%

19.7%

15.6%

9.8

1.3

12,401,868

10.0

4.6%

78,210,000

9.9

3.0

3.4%

13,550,000

10.4

4.5

8.6%

7,560,869

11.6

1.5

19,950,000 9,808,577

17.0%

94,603,420

25.1%

29,656,000

1.8

nmf

1.8

14.2

2.3

12.5

8.0

13.3

1.6

12.6

2.3

11.5

1.4

OMAN Rebased Performance

Summary

115

Best Performers 5,927 (-0.4%)

MSM Index (% Chg.)

58% RNSS.MSMRenaissance Services

% of stocks trading above 1yr avg. price

114

0.50

Advance/Decline Ratio Turnover (OMR '000)

7,128,541

Market Cap (OMR '000) 105

104

406,281

B Bank Muscat 18-Feb-12

S&P GCC Large/Mid Composite

228,304

O Oman Cement Co.

18-Mar-12

0.7%

0.74

-0.1%

0.0%

0.31

Turnover (OMR) 719,976 OCOI.MSM Oman Cement Co. 675,434 BKDB.MSMBank Dhofar

O Oman Telecommunications Co.

18-Jan-12

0.8%

0.95

-0.3%

Worst Performers

N National Bank of Oman

95 18-Dec-11

% Chg.

1.41

NBOB.MSMNational Bank of Oman

Highest Turnover

100

0.60

RCCI.MSM Raysut Cement Co.

6,406 / 5,419 OTEL.MSMOman Telecommunications Co. 4,004 BKMB.MSMBank Muscat

MSM 52 week High / Low

110

Close

60,783

R Renaissance Services

Close

0.51

NBOB.MSMNational Bank of Oman

% Chg.

-4.7%

0.59

-1.4%

0.74

-0.1%

0.31

BKMB.MSMBank Muscat

OTEL.MSMOman Telecommunications Co.

-0.3%

1.41

0.0%

Muscat SM

Quotes Company Name

Close

B Bank Dhofar

0.586

N National Bank of Oman

0.310

O Oman Telecommunications Co.

1.405

R Renaissance Services

0.601

B Bank Muscat

O Oman Cement Co.

R Raysut Cement Co.

Daily

% Chg.

-1.4%

0.735

-0.1%

0.512

-4.7%

0.950

-0.3%

High

Turnover (OMR '000)

Low

0.590

0.311

0.515

High

Low

34

58

0.310

720

2,323

0.332

0.304

0.580

0.739

52-Week

Volume ('000)

0.730

406

0.507

228

0.950

24

553

446

0.680

0.781

0.608

-4.0%

-3.1%

12 mths

3.1%

0.711

-20.2%

25.0%

-16.5%

1.410

1.041

0.8%

0.602

0.600

61

101

1.197

0.458

-0.4%

-49.8%

7.3%

10.3%

536,330

1,138,059

1.0%

-12.3%

481

Market Cap. (OMR '000)

-11.3%

18.5%

675

1.190

7.1%

-15.8%

1.405

25

-5.9%

-6.6%

YTD

0.416

1.408 0.950

-13.8%

0.658

0.0% 0.7%

on high

0.509

% Change

335,110

Trailing

PE

13.4 9.7

9.4

2.1

nmf

1.0

190,000

12.7

-47.6%

169,539

1.3

1.2

13.2

1,053,750

2.3

9.8

169,407

21.8%

PB

1.1

1.9

BAHRAIN Rebased Performance

Summary

Best Performers 1,153 (0.1%)

BSE Index (% Chg.)

115

114

Advance/Decline Ratio

BSE 52 week High / Low

110

Close

32% AUB.BSE Ahli United Bank 1.00 BARKA.BS Albaraka Banking Grp. 1,433 / 1,129 ITHMR.BSE Ithmaar Bank

% of stocks trading above 1 yr avg. price

606

Turnover (BHD '000)

6,515,817

Market Cap. (BHD '000)

#N/A #N/A

0.69

% Chg.

1.5%

1.06

0.0%

0.09

#N/A

-5.6%

#N/A

#N/A

#N/A

#N/A

#N/A

105

Highest Turnover 100

99

Worst Performers Turnover (BHD) 408,341 ITHMR.BSE Ithmaar Bank 40,972 BARKA.BS Albaraka Banking Grp.

A Ahli United Bank IT Ithmaar Bank

822

B Albaraka Banking Grp.

95 18-Dec-11

18-Jan-12

18-Feb-12

A Arab Banking Corp.

18-Mar-12

S&P GCC Large/Mid Composite

#

Bahrain SE

#N/A

#N/A

-

AUB.BSE

ABC.BSE #N/A

Close

0.09

% Chg.

1.06

Ahli United Bank

0.69

Arab Banking Corp.

0.42 -

#N/A

#N/A

-5.6%

0.0%

1.5% #N/A

Quotes Company Name

Close

A Ahli United Bank*

0.690

A Arab Banking Corp.*

0.420

B Albaraka Banking Grp.* B Bahrain Islamic Bank

B Bahrain Telecommunications Co. B BBK

IN Investcorp Bank* IT Ithmaar Bank*

N National Bank of Bahrain U United Gulf Bank

* Closing Prices, Turnover and Market Cap. in USD

1.060 0.082

0.410

0.412 797

Daily

% Chg.

1.5% 0.0% -

0.085

-5.6%

0.304

-

0.575

-

High

0.690 1.060 -

Low

52-Week

Volume ('000)

0.670

1,083

1,600

-

-

-

-

-

1.060 -

-

-

-

-

0.085

0.085

-

-

-

Turnover (BHD '000)

-

-

2

109 -

2

-

-

High

0.750

1.280

0.570 0.116 0.492 0.436 797

Low

0.660

1.000

797

0.065

-

0.424

0.270

0.560

3,439,194

0.0%

-26.3%

1,306,200

4.6%

0.0%

590,400

0.0%

-30.0%

637,560

0.0%

-12.2%

491,832

-8.9%

-5.5%

-0.5%

-26.1%

30.8%

-28.3%

1.3%

0.0%

-12.2%

12 mths

Market Cap. (BHD '000)

-10.4%

-29.3% -16.7%

0.390

3.8%

-2.8%

0.380

0.082

YTD

-17.2%

-26.3%

0.115

0.655

-8.0%

0.420

1,275 -

on high

% Change

-14.9%

-29.3% -8.4%

-26.1%

-25.9%

921,723

Trailing

PE

11.1 7.8

1.4

0.8

6.4

0.4

7.4

1.2

4.5

0.6

10.8

1.8

77,053

nmf

350,759

11.0

227,610

nmf

253,707

PB

nmf

0.8

1.5 0.4

1.2

LIFE

Bringing home a premature baby

Caring for a premature baby, born before 37 weeks’ gestation, requires extra care and attention. The American Academy of Pediatrics says new parents of preemies should ask these questions before leaving the hospital: •What special care will I need to give baby at home? •What should trigger a call to the doctor’s office, or a trip to the hospital? •How will I know if baby is eating and sleeping enough, and gaining enough weight? •Do I need to give baby any medication?

•How frequently will I need to bring baby in for a checkup?

monDAY, march 19, 2012

Helium stocks running low, party balloons are to blame LONDON: The world supply of helium, which is essential in research and medicine, is being squandered, say scientists according to The Guardian.

Oleg Kirichek, the leader of a research team at the Isis neutron beam facility at the UK’s Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, had an unpleasant shock last week. One of his key experiments, designed to probe the structure of matter, had to be cancelled - because the facility had run out of helium.

The gas, used to cool atoms to around -270C to reduce their vibrations and make them easier to study, is now becoming worryingly scarce, said Kirichek. Research facilities probing the structure of matter, medical scanners and other advanced devices that use the gas may soon have to reduce operations or close because we are frittering away the world’s limited supplies of helium on party balloons.

“It costs £30,000 a day to operate our neutron beams, but for three days we had no helium to run our experiments on those beams,” said Kirichek. “In other words we wasted £90,000 because we couldn’t get any helium. Yet we put the stuff into party balloons and let them float off into the upper atmosphere, or we use it to make our voices go squeaky for a laugh. It is very, very stupid. It makes me really angry.”

Helium is an inert gas that does not react with other chemicals and is therefore safe to handle. It is important to science because, even at incredibly low temperatures, it does not solidify and so can be used, in liquid form, to run super-cool refrigerators, a vital resource for scientists working in many fields.

“Helium is particularly important for running superconducting magnets. These have to be cooled to -270C to operate, and liquid helium does that perfectly. These magnets are now widespread and found in machines that range from the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva to MRI scanners in hospitals,” said Professor Jim Wild, of Sheffield University. “Without helium, none of these machines would work. Unfortunately that threatens to be a real prospect in the near future.”

Earth only has a limited supply of helium, which is released as a by-product of the petrochemical industry. Essentially, pockets of the gas are disturbed during gas and oil drilling and rise to the surface. In the 1920s the US decided helium would be a strategic resource. It realized that air power would be crucial in future wars, and assumed that these would be fought by airships that would use he-

Dr. Atorina Benjamin Clinical Psychologist

Dear Dr. Atorina, My brother and I have a very tense relationship.

This has not always been the case. We used to be the best of friends. Now that we are both married it appears that most of our problems stem back to our significant others. It makes me so angry that we have such a strained relationship because we only have each other. I am not sure what to do. Part of me is being stubborn by not talking to him about mending our relationship. Any ideas of what I should do?

Thanks, Older Brother Dear Older Brother, FILE - Colored helium balloons rising in the sky. The world supply of helium, which is essential in research and medicine, is being squandered, say scientists. (Agencies)

lium to float. “The US created a vast stockpile of billions of liters of helium in the 1920s and kept it until the late 1990s, when it decided to sell it off,” said Jonathan Flint, the CEO of Oxford Instruments, whose scanners and other devices use helium for cooling.

For the past decade that vast stockpile has been sold off, causing prices to plummet. “Helium was cheap and we learned to be wasteful with it,” said Kirichek. “Now the stockpile is used up, prices are rising and we are realizing how stupid we have been.”

Professor Robert Richardson, of Cornell University, New York, who won the Nobel physics prize in 1996 for his research on helium, argues that a helium party balloon should cost £75, to reflect the true value of the gas used. Yet you can buy enough helium to float 200 balloons for that price. “We are squandering an irreplaceable resource,” he says.

Ironically, helium is the second most abundant element in the universe. (Hydrogen is the most abundant.)

It is just that helium is scarce on Earth. “The solar wind that pours away from the Sun is rich in helium, but it never reaches the surface of the Earth because of our thick atmosphere,” said Dr Ian Crawford, of Birkbeck College, in the University of London. “However, our studies of rocks brought back by Apollo astronauts shows that it is absorbed by soil on the Moon. There are about 22 grams of helium in every cubic meter of lunar soil. There is also hydrogen in that soil, which astronauts could use for fuel and to make water, so you could envisage the day when it becomes economic to build mines on the moon to supply us with helium. It just depends how expensive our own sources become.”

And that day might not be too far off, say scientists.

Supplies remain very uncertain.

Researchers are now warning that the use of scanners and other machines may be increasingly disrupted, an unpleasant prospect, said David Ward of the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy.

Genes may hold the key to aging skin CONNECTICUT: Your DNA might help dictate how your skin changes with age, one expert says according to HealthDay News.

While factors such as smoking and sun exposure contribute to skin aging, a person’s genes can have an even greater influence, explained Dr. Zoe D. Draelos, a consulting professor at Duke University School of Medicine.

“There is groundbreaking research underway to determine the differences between old and young genes,” Draelos said in an academy news release. “The hope is that by understanding how to

Ask the Doctor

make old genes act younger and how to keep young genes from getting old, we can better advise our patients on caring for their skin.”

Researchers are examining differences in how genes are expressed in older and younger skin, and how diet may affect those genes.

In one study, pregnant mice were fed a diet lacking in folic acid, which changed the expression of the gene responsible for hair color in their offspring. The poor diet resulted in a change from “blackish” to “blondish” hair in the offspring and in all future generations.

“This study demonstrated, quite remarkably, how some genes are turned on and off by what you eat,” Draelos explained.

“As dermatologists, we’re constantly asked by our patients ‘what should I use on my skin to make it look better,’” she noted. “This next generation of genomicbased research is helping us determine not only what ingredients may work best for specific skin types, but how what we eat now and throughout our life can affect our skin as well. Science holds the key to helping us make better recommendations based on this newfound knowledge.”

More than million children in Sahel ‘face hunger disaster’ PARIS: Up to 1.5 million children under five living in Africa’s Sahel region risk severe malnutrition if famine warnings are ignored, the United Nations childrens’ agency said over weekend.

“Between one million and 1.5 million children may suffer from severe acute malnutrition this year,” UNICEF spokeswoman Marixie Mercado told a press briefing.

“1.5 million is our worst case scenario,” she said, noting that drought was imminent.

Mercado called for emergency funds to stock enough food for the “dry, lean season” approaching the massive area running

from east to west across northern Africa.

So far, the UN agency had received only $24 million (18.3 million euros) of the $119 million it requested for 2012.

The affected countries are Niger, Chad, Burkina Faso, Mauritania, Mali, Cameroon, Nigeria and Senegal.

In the Sahel, rainfall is scarce, river basins are uneven and have low water tables for crops and livestock.

Nearly 13 million people face a serious food crisis that threatens to balloon into a large-scale humanitarian emergency in the Sahel, Oxfam aid agency has warned. -AFP

ESA astronaut André Kuipers of the Netherlands took this photo of Earth while aboard the International Space Station.

Looking down on a nighttime Europe, Portugal lies at the right of the image, while Paris lives up to its nickname of “the city of light” as the brightly glowing area at left. Airglow shines above the Earth’s surface. (AFP)

Einstein can rest easy as neutrinos obey speed limit

LONDON: New research suggests neutrinos that appeared to break one of Einstein’s fundamental theories by travelling faster than the speed of light actually keep within the universal speed limit after all.

The latest measurement of the sub-atomic particles’ speed of flight from the CERN research centre in Geneva to Gran Sasso in central Italy contradicts an initial super-fast reading reported last September, which caused a scientific sensation. Since then, more doubts have crept in about the original claims, especially after news last month that the first finding from the so-called OPERA experiment may have been distorted by faulty cabling.

The new analysis was done by researchers working on a separate experiment called ICARUS. Using independent timing data and measuring seven neutrinos in the beam sent from CERN, they found the time was exactly consistent with the speed of light.

Sandro Centro, an expert in high-energy physics and spokesman for the ICARUS experiment, said he believed the results of the new tests were conclusive. “The speed of light and speed of neutrinos are the same,” he said in a telephone interview after the team’s findings were published online on Friday.

The earlier controversial OPERA study had clocked neutrinos covering the 730 km from CERN to Gran Sasso 60 nanoseconds - or 60 billionths of a second - faster than light. “The evidence is beginning to point towards the OPERA result being an artifact of the measurement,” CERN Research Director Sergio Bertolucci said in a statement. But he added that the scientific community needed to be rigorous and further tests were planned in May using more pulsed beams from CERN to provide the final verdict. Many scientists had been skeptical about the original measurements, which flew in the face of Albert Einstein’s 1905 Special Theory of Relativity which states that nothing in the universe can travel faster than light, an assertion that underpins much of modern physics and cosmology. The ICARUS team, working at the same Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN) Gran Sasso laboratory, north-east of Rome, as colleagues on the OPERA project, had already queried the initial findings because the neutrinos did not appear to lose energy on their flight as would have happened if they had broken the light barrier. “As it happens in science, someone repeats the same experiment and can come up with a different result,” Fernando Ferroni, INFN’s president said in a statement. He said that after this latest results, doubts about the faster-than-light reading were “gaining more ground”.

The ICARUS scientists used a vast chamber of liquid argon to detect the arrival of the neutrinos at the Gran Sasso laboratory, which is dug deep in a mountainside. -Reuters

Thank you for submitting your question. Problems amongst family members are always very stressful and difficult to manage. It appears to me that you already realize that you should probably speak to your brother about the situation but avoid doing so because you are being “stubborn.” I encourage you to address the situation as soon as possible because you should not allow more time to go by without having resolved your issues. If you have realized that the majority of your problems are related to your wives and they are unwilling to work on mending the relationship, then perhaps you and your brother can focus on rebuilding your own relationship with each other first before trying to get your significant others involved. It is clear that this conflict bothers you because you care about your brother and value your relationship with him. Life is too short to allow resentment and anger to monopolize a sibling relationship. I hope that you and your brother will be able to mend your relationship and to move forward.

Best Wishes, Dr. Atorina Dear Dr. Atorina,

In the last year I have lost a tremendous amount of weight. I am very proud of my accomplishment because it really took a lot of effort and focus in order for me to stay motivated and continue on with my goal of becoming healthy. Now that I have achieved my healthy weight, I need to maintain it, which is where some of my fears come into play. I fear that I might lose control and regain all the weight I lost. It seems that food restriction and dieting was the easier part. I don’t know what the best way to approach the maintenance phase of my diet. Do you have any suggestions?

Thanks, ES Dear ES,

First of all, congratulations on your weight loss.

It sounds like you set quite a challenge for yourself and you were able to accomplish it. That is certainly not an easy undertaking. Your fear of regaining the weight is common and expected for someone who has lost a significant amount of weight. The most important thing to consider is your new relationship with food. Before you lost the weight, were you an emotional eater? For example, did you find yourself eating because you were angry, sad, or agitated? Did you use food as a way to try to feel better? Over the course of your weight loss journey, how did you manage your emotions? People that have an unhealthy relationship with food tend to use it as a “quick fix.”

They quickly realize that the food fix is very temporary and not long-lasting. This in turn, causes them to eat more and more. It is a very vicious cycle. In your situation, expect to put on a little weight as you enter the maintenance phase of your weight loss regimen.

Be mindful of the times you are eating for reasons other than hunger. Seek the support of a nutritionist and a trainer. Also, if you feel that your relationship with food is still unhealthy and you have unresolved fears related to your weight, then I encourage you to seek mental health support. Again, congratulations on your success of engaging in a healthy lifestyle that promotes health and wellness.

All the Best, Dr. Atorina

Dr. Atorina Benjamin is a Clinical Psychologist at Al Seef Hospital.

Please note that the responses given

by Dr. Atorina are based only on the limited information provided with each question submitted. This should not serve as a substitution for a consultation with a mental health professional.

Send your enquiries and concerns directly and confidentially to Dr. Atorina Benjamin for her weekly column to DrAtorina@AlWatanDaily.com.

16

ALWATAN DAILY

CULTURE

monDAY, MARCH 19, 2012

Moroccan women demand Christians gather reform after rape victim’s suicide to bid farewell to Egypt’s Pope

Women shout slogans as they protest against the suicide of Amina alFilali, 16 who was forced to marry the man who raped her outside parliament in Rabat on March 17, 2012. (AFP)

FRANCE: Some 200 Moroccan women staged an angry protest outside parliament Saturday, a week after the suicide of a 16-year-old girl who was forced to marry the man who had raped her.

The protesters shouted “Martyr Amina,” “The Law Killed Me,” and “We Are All Aminas,” and called for changes to a penal code that allows a rapist to stay out of jail if he marries his victim with the consent of her parents.

The suicide last Saturday of Amina al-Filali, who drank a lethal amount of rat poison, sent shockwaves through Morocco and sparked widespread calls for reform of a law that ostensibly defends family values.

Families of rape victims who are under 18 often agree to such a union because the loss of a woman’s virginity outside of marriage is considered a dishonor to her family.

Amina’s father Lahcen al-Filali said at a protest on Thursday that he had opposed the union but that his wife had insisted. “She said we had to do it so people would stop deriding us, to remove the shame,” he told AFP. “Can you imagine that a man who has forced a girl to follow him with a knife, and who rapes her, could then want to marry her?”

At Saturday’s protest, a giant banner written in Arabic, Amazigh (a Berber language) and French read: “Women’s Dignity. End Sexual Harassment.”

Houda Bouzil of the Democratic Association of the Women of Morocco told AFP: “In 2008, the government introduced a bill, which has since been shelved, to demand an overhaul of the penal code in order to end discrimination and violence.”

The affair has provoked an explosion of outrage in the news media and on the Internet, where an online

petition calling for the law to be changed attracted hundreds of signatures within hours.

“I did not know Amina, but I imagine the colossal number of these ‘Aminas’ who live, or lived, among us,” the independent newspaper Al Sabah wrote in a lengthy editorial.

“It’s the law, an absurd, grotesque social rule, that tries to remedy an evil -- rape -- with another even more repugnant one, marrying the rapist. ... Whom are we punishing in the end, the victim or her tormentor?” it asked.

The government has pledged to re-examine the law, while police summoned and released the rapist after Amina’s suicide.

Under Moroccan law, rape is punishable by five to 10 years in prison -- or between 10 and 20 years if the victim is a minor, which also entails a fine of 200 to 500 dirhams (18-45 euros, $24-60).

If the rapist marries his victim he cannot be pursued legally unless she manages to obtain a divorce.

But under the family code the decision of the judge authorizing such a marriage cannot be reversed.

On Thursday, 300 protesters staged a sit-in outside the local court that approved the marriage.

The scandal provoked by Filali’s suicide dominated a cabinet meeting earlier this week.

The women’s minister called for a change in the law while government spokesman Mustapha El Khelfi declared: “This girl was raped two times: the last time when she was married.”

But the practice of granting a rapist this opportunity to escape prosecution, the idea of saving family honor, is not confined to Morocco.

Two other north African countries, Algeria and Tunisia, follow the same practice. -AFP

Ireland leads global St. Patrick’s party FRANCE: Parades and festivals were held throughout Ireland for Saint Patrick’s Day on Saturday, while the global diaspora also joined in the party in honor of the Emerald Isle’s patron saint.

Debt-ridden Ireland shrugged off economic austerity measures to mark the national holiday, with more than half a million revelers on Dublin’s streets to celebrate all things Irish.

At least 60 million people worldwide claim Irish heritage and the feast day has become a firm fixture in the party calendar around the world.

There are parades around the globe, based on “craic”, or fun, music, greencolored beer and fancy dress echoing the island’s favorite mythical creature -- the leprechaun.

Irish ministers were deployed throughout the world promoting the message that the republic’s economy is recovering, while international landmarks were lit up green to join in the revelry.

The centerpiece of the celebrations, the Dublin parade and its marching bands, brought more than half a million people onto the capital’s streets, police said, with about 120,000 of them thought to have come from abroad.

The Dublin parade involves marching bands from Britain, Russia and the United

The Irish Dancing Music Association marches during the 251st annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade March 17, 2012 in New York City.

(AFP)

States and was to be reviewed on its 2.7-kilometre route through the city by President Michael D. Higgins and Dublin Lord Mayor Andrew Montague.

The party provides a traditional early kick-start to the tourist season, bringing in a much-needed injection of an estimated 43.5 million Euros ($56.8 million) to the Irish economy.

New York became the Big Green Apple as more than two million people crammed into Manhattan for the annual parade.

Streets along the length of Fifth Avenue were a sea of green shirts and fake green beards as well as innumerable shamrock leaf-themed trinkets.

Landmark sites throughout the world, including the Leaning Tower of Pisa, Niagara Falls, the London Eye observation wheel, the Burj al Arab hotel in Dubai, the Cibeles fountain in Madrid and Table Mountain in Cape Town were to be lit up in green.

In Britain, Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge, presented traditional sprigs of shamrock to members of the 1st Battalion Irish Guards, and met their regimental mascot, an Irish wolfhound called Conmeal.

Her husband Prince William is the regiment’s honorary colonel.

Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny and most members of his government are out of the country celebrating with the Irish

CAIRO: Christians gathered on Sunday to pay final respects to Pope Shenouda III, who sought to soothe sectarian tension in his four decades atop Egypt’s Orthodox Church but saw increasing flare-ups in the majority Muslim nation in the last months of his life.

Friction has worsened since President Hosni Mubarak, who suppressed Islamists, was ousted last year. Since then Shenouda, who died on Saturday aged 88, often called for harmony and regularly met Muslim and other leaders.

Christians, who comprise about a tenth of Egypt’s 80 million people, have long complained of discrimination and in the past year stepped up protests, which included calls for new rules that would make it as easy to build a church as a mosque.

Shenouda had served as the 117th Pope of Alexandria since November 1971, leading the Orthodox community who make up most of Egypt’s Christians.

His funeral will be held on Tuesday, Egyptian state media reported.

US President Barack Obama offered his condolences and Pope Benedict, leader of the world’s Roman Catholics, offered prayers after being informed of his death.

Thousands of Christians queued in Cairo’s Abbasiya district overnight and on Sunday morning at the cathedral where Shenouda’s body was initially laid in a coffin and later seated on a ceremonial throne wearing gold and red embroidered religious vestments, a golden mitre on his head and holding a gold-topped staff.

He was popular among many of Egypt’s Christians even outside the Orthodox Church, as well as among many Muslims. However, some Christian activists said Shenouda should have pushed the state harder to secure more rights for Christians.

In one phrase Shenouda often repeated and which was also cited in newspapers on Sunday, he would say: “Egypt is not a nation we live in; rather it is a nation that lives in us.”

The burial is expected to take place at the Wadi el Natrun monastery in the desert northwest of Cairo, where the late pope had requested he be buried.

Shenouda was banished to Wadi el Natrun monastery in 1981 by then-President Anwar Sadat after he criticized the government’s handling of an Islamic insurgency in the 1970s and Egypt’s 1979 peace treaty with Israel.

Under Mubarak’s rule, relations be-

diaspora.

Kenny is in the United States where he is due to present the customary bowl of shamrock -- Ireland’s three-leafed emblem -- to President Barack Obama at a celebration in the White House on Tuesday.

Obama has links with Ireland through an ancestor who emigrated from the small midlands town of Moneygall in 1849, and he visited the country last year to meet some of his cousins.

About 34 million people in the United States claim some Irish ancestry -- about eight times the population of the Republic of Ireland.

In his message for the national holiday, Higgins said Irish people had a “love for life”, a “sense of fun” and an “innate spirit of hope and optimism”.

“The Irish are an enterprising and resilient people. While navigating very difficult economic conditions, we refuse to succumb to defeat or fatalism,” he said.

“This indefatigable spirit has in the past ensured our survival and is now a source of our creativity and purpose.”

According to legend, St Patrick was born in Wales in the second half of the fourth century and was sold into slavery in Ireland at the age of 16. He escaped and later returned to the isle to convert it to Christianity. -AFP

Egyptian Christians perform prayers at Coptic Patriarchate headquarters in Cairo, Egypt, for Pope Shenouda III, after the death of the patriarch of the Coptic Orthodox Church, Saturday, March 17, 2012. (AP)

tween the government and the Coptic Church were generally smooth, with the pope portrayed in state media as a symbol of religious harmony, despite occasional outbreaks of sectarian violence.

“We will remember Pope Shenouda III as a man of deep faith, a leader of a great faith, and an advocate for unity and reconciliation,” the US president said in a statement issued by the White House.

Obama said Shenouda had been committed to national unity and was “a beloved leader of Egypt’s Coptic Christians and an advocate for tolerance and religious dialogue.”

Shenouda publicly supported Mubarak during his last days and before Mubarak’s ouster by a popular uprising on February 2011, a move that drew some criticism from some members of his church who joined the protests that ousted the president.

Some Muslim leaders also backed Mubarak in his last days.

Christians have long complained about rules that put more restrictions on building a church than a mosque and also say they have been discriminated against

in the workplace.

Christians have accused hard-line Islamists of attacking churches and said the authorities have failed to step in to protect them, although experts say some recent incidents have been fuelled by local grudges as well as sectarian tensions.

Such violence has for years been sparked by disputes ranging from rows over church building to inter-faith romances.

The head of Egypt’s ruling military council, Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, granted Christians working in state institutions three days mourning, state media reported.

Bishop Bakhomious, head of the church of Bahaira, a district in the Nile Delta north of Cairo, will temporally hold the post of pope for two months until a new leader is elected.

Egyptian media described the procedure for choosing a new pope as one based on a system of voting by board members of the church’s city councils.

The council’s vote on three preferred candidates, and the final choice is made when a name is picked out of a box by a young child, the media said. -Reuters

Occupy Wall Street celebrates 6 months since start

Dozens arrested at Occupy’s 6-month anniversary rally

NEW YORK: Chanting and cheering down Wall Street on Saturday to mark six months since the birth of the Occupy movement, some protesters applauded the Goldman Sachs employee who days ago gave the firm a public drubbing, echoing the movement’s indictment of a financial system demonstrators say is fueled by reckless greed.

“I kind of like to think that the Occupy movement helped him to say, ‘Yeah, I really can’t do this anymore,’” retired librarian Connie Bartusis said of the op-ed piece by Goldman Sachs manager Greg Smith, who claimed the company regularly foisted failing products on clients as it sought to make more money.

Carrying a sign with the words “Regulate Regulate Regulate,” Bartusis said the loss of governmental checks on the financial system helped create the climate of unfettered self-interest described by Smith in his piece, although Goldman’s leadership suggested he had not portrayed the bank’s culture accurately.

“Greed is a very powerful force,” Bartusis said. “That’s what got us in trouble.”

On Saturday, six months after the protesters first took over Zuccotti Park near the city’s financial district, the protesters gathered there again, drawing slogans in chalk on the pavement and waving flags as they marched through lower Manhattan.

With the city’s attention focused on the huge St. Patrick’s Day parade many blocks uptown, the Occupy rally at Zuccotti drew hundreds of people, with many gathering in the park into the evening hours.

Documentary filmmaker Michael Moore, who had given a speech at a nearby university, also made an appearance at the park, milling around with protesters.

With the barricades that once blocked them from Wall Street now removed, the protesters streamed down the sidewalk and covered the steps of the Federal Hall National Memorial.

There, steps from the New York Stock Exchange and standing at the feet of a statue of George Washington, they danced and chanted, “We are unstoppable.”

The sweep of the park by police just before midnight capped a day of demonstrations and marching in lower Manhattan. There was no official word on the number of arrests but dozens of people were handcuffed and led out of the park.

Earlier in the day, 15 people were arrested and three officers suffered injuries, police said.

Protesters reconvened at the park following afternoon marches through New York’s financial district. By 11 p.m. roughly 300 had gathered there.

“This is our spring offensive,” said Michael Premo, 30, of New York, who identified himself as a spokesman for the movement. “People think the Occupy movement has gone away. It’s important for people to see we’re back.”

As always, the protesters focused on a variety of concerns, but for Tom Hagan, his sights were on the giants of finance. “Wall Street did some terrible things, especially Goldman Sachs, but all of them. Everyone from the banks to the rating agencies, they all knew they were doing wrong. ...

But they did it anyway. Because the money was too big,” he said.

Dressed in an outfit that might have been more appropriate for the St. Patrick’s Day parade, the 61-year-old salesman wore a green shamrock cap and carried a sign asking for saintly intervention: “St. Patrick: Drive the snakes out of Wall Street.” He, too, praised Smith’s editorial and said it came just as the Occupy movement is again gaining ground.

It was a sentiment echoed by others. Stacy Hessler held up a cardboard sign that read, “Spring is coming,” a reference, she said, both to the Arab Spring and to the warm weather that is returning to New York City. She said she believes the nicer weather will bring the crowds back to Occupy protests, where numbers have dwindled in recent months since the group’s encampment was ousted from Zuccotti Park by authorities in November.

But now, “more and more people are coming out,” said the 39-year-old, who left her home in Florida in October to join the Manhattan protesters and stayed through much of the winter. “The next couple of months, things are going to start to grow, like the flowers.”

Some have questioned whether the group can regain its momentum. This month, the finance accounting group in New York City reported that just about $119,000 remained in Occupy’s bank account - the equivalent of about two weeks’ worth of expenses. But Hessler said the group has remained strong, and she pronounced herself satisfied with what the Occupy protesters have accomplished over the last half year.

“It’s changed the language,” she said. “It’s brought out a lot of issues that people are talking about. ... And that’s the start of change.” -AP

ALWATAN DAILY

entertainment Song Of The Day

monDAY, march 19, 2012

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Super busy SXSW wraps up with poignant moment

Fahad AlSabah Staff Writer

Song: If You Go Away Artist: Dusty Springfield Album: The Look of Love Genre: Soul In short: Dusty Springfield is the best companion to dusty weather, her rendition of “If You Go Away” will turn the current weather into a cinematic backdrop as soon as it is played.

To listen to the song visit www.alwatandaily.com E-mail your feedback to falsabah@alwatandaily.com

The Buzz Dennis Miller joins ABC Comedy Pilot Dennis Miller has joined the ABC pilot “Awesometown” as a genius boss who delivers cutting putdowns with surgical precision. That shouldn’t be a stretch for the former “Saturday Night Live” “Weekend Update” anchor, known for obscure and bitter insults. In recent years he has turned to political commentary, espousing his libertarian streak of conservatism. He has also spent two years as a “Monday Night Football” color commentator and hosted several talk shows.

“Awesometown,” written by Adam Sztykiel, follows four young professionals in New York. -Reuters

NBC gives second season to Grimm “Grimm” will be back. The NBC fairytale-inspired cop show has been renewed for a second season, NBC confirmed to Access Hollywood on Friday. Starring David Giuntoli and Russell Hornsby as detectives Nick Burkardt and Hank Griffin, and Silas Weir-Mitchell as Eddie Monroe, the show has managed to find an audience on Friday nights at 9/8c on the network. “This is a cop show and its small twist is that my perpetrators now can often be monsters,” David, who plays a descendant of the Brothers Grimm, told Access Hollywood last fall. “It’s subtle, but it creates a whole weight to it. It’s kind of beautiful in its simplicity.”

The Bodyguard in theaters for 20th anniversary March 28 “The Bodyguard” will return to theaters in a special onenight only presentation on March 28, Fathom Events said this week. The 1992 film and its anthem “I Will Always Love You” have re-emerged in prominence in the wake of its star Whitney Houston’s death last month. The re-release is not being billed as a posthumous tribute to the pop diva. Rather, Fathom is presenting it as an opportunity to celebrate the romantic drama’s twentieth anniversary. Warner Bros. will release “The Bodyguard 20th Anniversary Edition Blu-ray” on March 27. Special features include Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” music video and “Memories of The Bodyguard.”

-Reuters

Closer final season, other TNT shows get premiere dates TNT announced premiere dates Thursday for five returning shows -- including “The Closer,” which is airing its final six episodes -- and four new ones, including “Dallas.” “The Closer” will begin its final run on Monday, July 9 at 9/8c, and will be followed by the new detective drama “Perception,” starring Eric McCormack as a professor who solves crimes as he battles paranoid schizophrenia. The new “Dallas,” which reunites much of the original show’s cast, will begin its 10episode season on Wednesday, June 13 at 9/8c. -Reuters

MTV unveils new website for fans to reach artists MTV on Thursday unveiled plans to launch a new website, Artists.MTV, to connect fans with their favorite performers on personalized pages that put the artists’ brands, not MTV’s, front and center. Artists.MTV, which is expected to go live this summer, will allow stars and unknowns alike to take control of their page, promote themselves and generate income by selling products and services directly to fans. The website, which was at the South by Southwest (SXSW) music, film and interactive conference in Austin, Texas, is being created with Topspin, a direct-to-fan software platform. It allows artists to sell music, t-shirts, or other merchandise on the site, as well as book a gig. Artist pages will feature virtual tip jars allowing fans to “tip” the performers. Artists and fans can sign up at www.artists.mtv.com to receive updates and participate in a private beta launch beginning in May. -Reuters

Alex Ebert, (right) plays with members of Mumford & Sons, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes, and the Old Crow Medicine Show during a performance at the Paramount Theater during the South by Southwest (SXSW) Music Conference in Austin, Texas March 17, 2012. (Reuters)

Jay-Z performs at the AMEX Sync Show during SXSW in Austin, Texas on Monday, March 12, 2012. (AP)

AUSTIN: Stars of all stripes and celebrity hit town to close out South By Southwest, but it was a marching band that stole the show Saturday.

Members of the Austin High band watched their star turn in the premiere of filmmaker Emmett Malloy’s “Big Easy Express,” then joined documentary subjects Mumford & Sons, Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeroes and Old Crow Medicine Show in an outdoor concert at the University of Texas as the music conference fell into an exhausted heap on its final night.

Across town, Timbaland held a listening party at Perez Hilton’s annual to-do. Norah Jones played her new album for an appreciative group of fans. Matthew McConaughey joined The Cult during a free concert. Punk rock icon Bob Mould played “Copper Blue” in its entirety, bringing out the graybeards. And Peter Buck and Mike Mills of R.E.M. joined The Posies and Blitzen Trapper in one final tribute to Big Star frontman Alex Chilton, who passed away two years ago as he was due to participate in SXSW. Rumors of celebrity appearances swirled up and down Sixth Street, but few of them materialized as St. Patrick’s Day revelers clogged downtown Austin in a frenzy of partying that didn’t end till 2 a.m. last call.

Superstars such as Bruce Springsteen, Jay-Z, Eminem and others made this the busiest SXSW ever, overflowing with celebrity, secret performances and high-dollar endorsements that made sure the festival looked nothing like the humble event that started 25 years ago with just 200 bands spread over 12 clubs. With so much going on and plenty of places to get hammered on green beer, even the usually most exclusive events were easy to get into.

It took a bumpin’ tuba line and a bunch of enthusiastic high school kids to shake off the glitzy veneer that had many longtime festival participants grumbling about the good old days and inject a little innocent joy back into the conference.

With the UT Tower lit up in the background, the band took the stage, then laid down a rolling groove before joining Mumford & Sons on “The Cave,” recreating a powerful moment from “Big Easy Express” in front of thousands of fans on the lawn at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library. “That’s real music, ladies and gentlemen,” Marcus Mumford told the crowd after the song.

The film is full of poignant moments as the bands bond in close quarters, jamming on each other’s songs, writing new ones and taking old standards and making them new.

Over at Hilton’s party, producer Timbaland took the stage after a long absence from the spotlight. “I know you been missing me for a while,” he said.

Timbaland bragged on his own group of favorite collaborators, saying that collaborator Dev was now a member of his “Superfriends” before launching into his latest single, “Break Ya Back,” from his forthcoming album “Shock Value III.” He also rapped and beat-boxed over abbreviated versions of some of his best-known songs. “I don’t know if I can get off the stage,” he said. “I’ve got too many hits.” -AP

Norah Jones performs her entire new album during the SXSW Music Festival in Austin, Texas on Saturday, March 17, 2012. (AP)

“That’s real music from real people.”

Afterwards fans surrounded marching band members on the street and chanted: “One more song! One more song!”

The love of making music and the community brought by close collaboration were the dominant themes of “Big Easy Express,” which made its world premiere earlier in the day at the Paramount Theatre, then was replayed for the crowd before the night’s concert.

Malloy follows the three bands as they made a train trip from California to New Orleans via Austin. They covered 2,500 miles in a week and a half, playing music almost every step of the way and enlisting Austin High to join the fun in one of the film’s most delightful moments.

Former Mr. Universe turns 100 in India KOLKATA, India: A former Mr. Universe who has just turned 100 said Sunday that happiness and a life without tensions are the key to his longevity. Manohar Aich, who is 4 foot 11 inches tall, overcame many hurdles, including grinding poverty and a stint in prison, to achieve body building glory. His children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren gathered Sunday in the eastern city of Kolkata to celebrate his birthday the day before.

Hindu priests chanted prayers while a feast was laid out to honor Aich, winner of the 1952 Mr. Universe body building title.

Rippling his muscles and flashing a toothless grin, Aich says his ability to take his troubles lightly and remain happy during difficult times are the secrets to his long life.That, and a simple diet of milk, fruits and vegetables along with rice, lentils and fish have kept him healthy.

He does not smoke and has never touched alcohol, he said.

“I never allow any sort of tension to

grip me. I had to struggle to earn money since my young days, but whatever the situation, I remained happy,” Aich said, sitting in a room decorated with posters and pictures of his many bodybuilding triumphs.

Aich, who was born in the small town of Comilla in Bengal, was a puny youngster.

But he was attracted to exercising and building his muscles when as a schoolboy he saw a group of wrestlers in action.

After leaving school in 1942, he joined the Royal air force under India’s British colonial rulers and it was there that he began his relentless pursuit of body building.

Encouraged by a British officer named Reub Martin, who introduced him to weight training, Aich earned praise for his physique from his peers in the air force.

Some years later, however, he was thrown into prison when he protested against colonial oppression.

“It was in the jail that I began weight training seriously. This helped me prepare myself for the world championship,” said

Lady Gaga swears off interviews after Oprah appearance Oprah Winfrey has done the seemingly impossible, and silenced Lady Gaga. At least where the media is concerned.

“Poker Face” chanteuse Gaga (born Stefani Germanotta) told Winfrey in her interview for “Oprah’s Next Chapter” -- airing Sunday -- that she’s taking a vow of silence where interviews are concerned, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.

“Other than this interview, Oprah, I do not intend to speak to anyone for a very long time,” the singer said in the interview, to air Sunday. “No press, no television, if my mom calls and says, ‘Did you hear about...’ I shut it all off.” The “Alejandro” songbird’s apathy toward the media has grown so deep, in fact, that she doesn’t even follow news reports about herself.

“I don’t read a damn thing,” Gaga said. Winfrey and Gaga have been chummy in recent weeks. -Reuters

Indian body builder Manohar Aich (center), on the eve of his 100th birthday, looks at a print of one of his pictures hanging in a gymnasium, in Kolkata on March 16, 2012. (AFP)

Aich. “In jail I used to practice on my own, without any equipment, sometimes for 12 hours in a day,” he recalled.

But the jail authorities were impressed with his perseverance and he was given a special diet to help build his stamina.

India’s independence in 1947 led to Aich’s release from jail. Dogged by poverty, Aich and his wife struggled to put their four children through school. There was little cash to indulge his passion for body building, but Aich took up odd jobs to earn a little on the side.

His 1950 win of a “Mr. Hercules” contest spurred him to set his sights on the Mr. Universe tournament in London.

In 1951, Aich came second in the contest, and stayed on in London to prepare for another shot at the title. He returned to India after winning the title in 1952.

What followed were a host of awards, including top positions in Asian Body building Championships. Over the years, he also earned the more popular title of “Pocket Hercules” due to his 4 foot 11 inch-frame.

Six decades later, Aich helps his sons run a gym and fitness center and spends his days guiding juvenile hopefuls to reach the heights of body building that he did.

A minor stroke last year has robbed him of the ability to lift weights, but he keeps a watchful eye on young body builders training in his gym.

Although his two sons did not take up body building, Aich says his mentoring has earned him rewards. It has produced India’s eight-time national champion, Satya Paul. Another protégé, Premchand Dogra, snagged the Mr. Universe title in 1988.

Among his regrets, says Aich, is that he never had a chance to meet his more famous counterpart, a fellow Mr. Universe winner, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

But Aich says he’s seen many of Schwarzenegger’s action films.

“I like the incredible stunts he does in the movies,” Aich said. -AP

Hollywood producers to gain honors at GLAAD awards

NEW YORK: Hollywood producing duo Neil Meron and Craig Zadan will receive a top honor when the gay and lesbian watchdog group GLAAD presents its 23rd annual media awards in March, the group said on Thursday.

Zadan and Meron, film and television producers known for such movies as the Oscar-winning “Chicago,” “Hairspray” the new musical television show “Smash,” will receive the Vito Russo Award, named after one of GLAAD’s founders, at a March 24 ceremony in New York.

The New York ceremony will be hosted by Glee’s Cory Monteith and Naya Rivera. Joining them on stage will be Harvey Weinstein who will present high school student Katy Butler a special award in recognition of her antibullying efforts.

“Through many of their projects, Zadan and Meron have been trailblazers in telling the stories of the LGBT community,” the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation said in a statement, citing such television movies as “Serving in Silence: The Margarethe Cammermeyer Story” and “What Makes a Family.” Their current series “Smash” features a prominent gay character, GLAAD noted. The award will be presented by actress Bernadette Peters and is given to prominent, openly gay media professionals who have made strong contributions toward promoting LBGT equality, GLAAD said.

Other honorees announced on Thursday include “Grey’s Anatomy” writer and producer Shonda Rhimes, who won the Golden Gate Award, Wells Fargo which will receive the Corporate Leader Award and social media site Facebook, which will receive a special recognition award.

All three will be presented at the group’s San Francisco ceremony on June 2.

Dakota Fanning, Martha Plimpton, Carson Kressley, Padma Lakshmi and “Jersey Shore” cast member Vinny Guadagnino were also slated to appear at the New York show.Nominees for the award’s competitive categories were announced in January, and included Chaz Bono, the movie “Beginners” and the television comedy “Modern Family.”

GLAAD, which promotes positive images of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in the media, will present additional media awards in Los Angeles on April 21. -Reuters

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ALWATAN DAILY

AROUND TOWN / TIME OUT

MONDAY, MARCH 19, 2012

If you have an event you wish to include, please email: aroundtown@alwatandaily.com

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Damas presents Mother’s Day 2012 collection in Kuwait

Damas, the Middle East’s leading international jeweler and watch retailer, has unveiled its new Mother’s Day 2012 Collection across Kuwait, featuring three limited-edition pendants carefully designed to express gratitude and love for special women.

The pieces in the stunning collection, all of which are crafted in 18k gold, feature the word “Ummi” meaning ‘my mother’ in Arabic calligraphy, highlighted in sparkling diamonds.

“Express your gratitude and love to your mother with these new beautiful pieces of diamond jewelry

by Damas, all carefully designed to have one message: Mom, I love you,” said Raj Sahai, Director - Retail, Damas Jewelry. “These pendants all have a beautiful story behind them, which will make all women feel special and appreciated,” he added.

A striking circular designed pendant with chain is crafted in 18k yellow gold with flower motifs, offset by a white gold backing surrounded by diamonds.

The Ummi design is positioned in the center and studded with diamonds. The pendant is priced at KD 211.

For the modern mother, the 18k gold pendant with chain is completely designed only using ‘ummi’ which is studded with round brilliant diamonds. This stylish pendant indicates the preciousness of a mother and is priced at KD 224.

A heart-shaped pendant with chain is crafted in 18k gold, with Ummi mentioned in Arabic calligraphy studded with round brilliant diamonds engulfed in an 18k gold heart. The romantic pendant is priced at KD 121.

“Mother’s Day is a day to celebrate mothers and

Month a t

Sudoku

Intermediate

Advanced

Elementary

all important women in our lives.

The new Mother’s Day collection from Damas will remind her of a lifetime of good memories,” Sahai concluded.

Damas’ Mother’s Day 2012 Collection is available at select Damas stores across Kuwait for a limited time only. For more information, visit www.damasjewellery.com

General A n n o u n c e m e n t s

a glance Mousawi. Spread the Passion is a group of volunteers with the aim of involving individuals with a wide range of volunteer work. Making giving to others simple and a way of life as well as a way to develop ones skills and then help others. This group is only 2 years old but is already making an impact and expanding their network. They regularly serve notable charities and good causes such as Bayt Abdullah hospice and journey of hope. All are welcome to learn more about this group.

AUK hosts lecture March 21/ 6 p.m. / AUK: The Centre for Gulf Studies (CGS) at the American University of Kuwait is hosting a lecture entitled “’The People Are Missing’: Palestinians in Kuwait” by Dr. Mai Al Nakib, Assistant Professor of English at Kuwait University. During her lecture, Dr. Al-Nakib will look at the status of the Palestinian community in Kuwait prior to the first Gulf War, discussing the ethical consequences to Kuwait after their expulsion in 1991.

K’S PATH invites applicants for the adoption of pets Lana is a very affectionate and sweet female puppy of mixed breed. She was born in October 2011. Lana is a happy girl who loves to play and go for long walks. She will be a great addition to a family with children over 10 years of age.

Flag hoisting ceremony Kuwaiti cuisine March 15-April 5/6 p.m. - 8 p.m./TIES Center: TIES Ladies Club invites you to our Kuwaiti cuisine classes which will start soon. Join us for a one month cooking program where you will learn to cook real Kuwaiti food. All ladies are invited to join our classes and let your family enjoy the mouth watering Kuwaiti cuisine. For more information/registration, contact 25231015/6.

Arabic course March 11-April 19/ TIES Center: TIES Center is glad to announce the start of Arabic courses. We offer classes for all levels, from beginners to advance and also introduced new classes called Kuwait dialect. TIES Arabic classes are intended for all expatriates who wish to learn Arabic for whatever purposebusiness, basic communication, as a second language or simply as a hobby. For more information/registration, contact 97228860/97793440.

Diwaniya presentation March 20/ 7 p.m. /The AWARE Centre: The AWARE Center cordially invites you to its diwaniya presentation Tuesday entitled, “Spread the Passion: connecting volunteer opportunities to social responsibilities” by Fatemah Al-

Fiona is a beautiful female SemiLong Haired cat born in May 2008.

She loves being cuddled and a good belly rub! She enjoys being held and likes to play. Fiona would be a lovely new family member in a household with children over 5 years of age. To adopt, call (+965) 6700 1622.

March 23/ 8 a.m. / Jabriya: On the occasion of Pakistan National Day on Friday, a flag hoisting ceremony will be held at the Chancery premises in Jabriya (Block 11, Street-101, Building 46). All Pakistanis resident in Kuwait are cordially invited to attend the ceremony.

New Toastmasters Club Second and fourth Tuesday/ 7 p.m. - 9 p.m. / Jabriya: A new Toastmasters Club is being formed and encouraging new members to join. Toastmasters International is a world leader in communication and leadership development. It is a non-profit international organization dedicated to improve member’s communication and leadership skills by attending and participating toastmasters meetings. For more information, please contact Khaled Al-Hashem at 65588824.

Brainbang session October 7-April/ 11:45 a.m. -1:45 p.m. /Salmiya: BRAINBANG, the creative arm of Friends of CRY Club (FOCC) invites all students aged 11 and above, to join us fortnightly on Fridays. The areas of development are: Creativity in learning, tools and techniques to empower your mind, profile based learning, activity, fun, games and worksheet based assignments, practical experiments, mind gymnastics and application of learning techniques to conventional study.

E-mail: brainbang@focckwt.org or call 25660835/25618471/97677820.

Dilbert

The Philippine Embassy The Philippine Embassy in Kuwait announces that the Department or Foreign Affairs is advising all passport applicants to claim their passports within six (6) months from the date of application. Otherwise, unclaimed passports shall be cancelled and sent back to the Department for disposal. The Embassy will continue to entertain last minute claimants for such unclaimed passports within the next two months before finally canceling the passport in accordance with the directive of the Department.

Royal Thai Embassy The Royal Thai Embassy in Kuwait wishes to invite Kuwaiti companies that deal business with Thai companies or those agencies of Thai commercial companies to visit the Embassy’s Commercial Office to register their relevant information to be part of the embassy’s business and trade database. The Royal Thai Embassy is located in Jabriya, Block 6, Street 8, Villa No. 1, Telephone No. 25317530 -25317531, Ext: 14.

Nancy

Horoscopes Aries: March 21 - April 19

Travel that is possibly related to business could come up for you, Aries. A friend or colleague may accompany you. Expect the unexpected where your career is concerned. Unusual developments may open new doors so you can pursue different goals. You might want to take a course of some kind for pleasure or advancement. Your mind is especially sharp, so you’re likely to retain whatever you study now.

Taurus: April 20 - May 20

If you’ve been thinking about trying some new investments or starting a new savings plan, this is the day to get started, Taurus. You’re a lot more mentally focused than usual. People around you might have ideas that you should consider. You might experience some intuitive insights, so go with your gut. Don’t let your mind get in the way.

Tonight, keep a notebook by your bed to record your dreams!

Gemini: May 21- June 21

Partnerships, possibly business related, are on the agenda, Gemini. You might find yourself in discussions dealing with such partnerships, as well as contracts and other paperwork. You might also set aside time during which you can concentrate on a romantic relationship, a new one or current one that’s changing and growing.

Cancer: June 22 - July 22

Paperwork regarding finances, possibly those connected with your job, might take up a lot of your time today, Cancer. You should be feeling especially strong, confident, and focused, so if you’ve been thinking about looking for a new position, this is the day to check the ads. Advancement through your own efforts is strongly indicated by the aspects in force today.

Leo: July 23 - August 2

A creative project, perhaps one that could earn you some money, might well be the primary focus of your attention today. Perhaps you’ve been doing some writing or intend to teach a class. You might want to give the idea some thought, Leo, if you haven’t already.

Your physical and mental energies are high. Success is strongly indicated if you start the ball rolling.

Virgo: August 23 - September 22

A couple with a child might visit you today. One or both of these people could be connected with you in a business capacity. Whatever the connection, Virgo, a lot of interesting discussion should take place, and promising plans for the future could well be made.

Take care not to stay up too late.

Libra: September 23 - October 22

A lot of paperwork involving new plans for your business interests could need immediate attention.

Getting it done properly is probably going to require a lot of ingenuity on your part, Libra, but you’ll manage it. Your mind is particularly quick, sharp, and focused today, so you’ll be able to accomplish a lot in whatever you try. In the evening, attend a concert, lecture, or other event in your community.

Scorpio: October 23 - November 21

A new business opportunity may come your way, Scorpio. You aren’t likely to want to commit to a permanent involvement, but you might take it on temporarily simply for the sake of the money. Perhaps you want to make some changes in your home, such as new furniture or paint.Whatever comes your way, you’ll probably put a lot of energy into it and accomplish it all. Go for it!

Sagittarius: November 22 - December 21

Your physical energy is high and your ambition even higher, Sagittarius. You’re likely to want to turn your mind to new projects that can advance your socioeconomic status. You could spend a lot of time today gathering information and sending it out, doing whatever it takes to accomplish your goals.

Capricorn: December 22 - January 19

Practical abilities that you didn’t know you possessed might suddenly appear today, Capricorn.

You could be working behind the scenes on a project of some kind, perhaps involving earning some extra money or raising funds for a worthy cause. Your intuition is operating at a high level, so don’t be surprised if you tune in to the thoughts of others.

Aquarius: January 20 - February 18

The completion of a long-term goal might have you feeling enthusiastic, energetic, and happy. You’re also likely to be looking to the future, Aquarius, formulating ideas for other projects and discussing them with friends. Group activities could benefit you at this time and put you in touch with new people who could possibly become close to you. In the evening, go to an exciting movie.

Pisces: February 19 - March 20

Career matters are at the forefront of your concerns today, Pisces. Opportunities for advancement may suddenly appear that you weren’t aware of yesterday, and you’ll need to make snap decisions and go for what you want right away. Don’t be surprised if someone you’d nearly forgotten about is of great help today.

ALWATAN DAILY

SPORTS

monDAY, march 19, 2012

19

Cricket

India beat Pakistan by six wickets in Asia Cup Compiled by Al Watan Daily

DHAKA: India defeated Pakistan by six wickets in the Asia Cup one-day tournament in Dhaka on Sunday.

Virat Kohli smashed a 148-ball 183 as India achieved the stiff 330-run target with 13 balls to spare in the day-night match, the first between the two teams since the World Cup semi-final at Mohali last March.

Pakistan made it to the final despite the defeat, finishing with nine points from three games, while India (eight points from three games) and Bangladesh (four points from two games) are still in contention.

Bangladesh need to win their final league match against Sri Lanka on Tuesday to knock India out. Nasir Jamshed (112) and Mohammad Hafeez (105) earlier hit centuries as Pakistan scored a challenging 329-6 after electing to bat.

Led by Virat Kohli’s magnificent 183, India stayed in contention of the Asia Cup final berth as they crushed arch-rivals Pakistan by six wickets at Shere Bangla National Stadium in Mirpur on Sunday.

Rohit Sharma hit a six and 5 fours in his 83-ball 68 before Umar Gul had him caught

by Shahid Afridi at deep mid-wicket.

The Indian run chase got off to a bad start as Mohammad Hafeez trapped Gambhir

plumb in front of the wicket on the second ball.

Earlier, centuries by openers Nasir Jamshed and Mohammad Hafeez and a 34-ball 52 by Younis Khan powered Pakistan to 329/6. Younis hit a 34-ball 52 before Suresh Raina took an amazing one-handed catch at short extra cover to dismiss him off Praveen Kumar. Some brisk hitting by Younis brought up the Pakistan 300 in the 47th over.

Shahid Afridi managed to score 9 runs before Irfan Pathan had him caught by Virat Kohli at deep mid-wicket.

Pakistan openers Nasir Jamshed and Mohammad Hafeez hit brilliant centuries before falling in successive overs.

Jamshed, who raced to his maiden ODI century off 98 balls, hit 112 runs off 104 balls and his knock was studded with a six and 10 fours. Ashok Dinda then struck in the next over when he trapped Hafeez plumb in front of the wicket off a slower delivery.

So listless was the Indian bowling that captain MS Dhoni had used seven bowlers in 17 overs, without any success. The stand came after Pakistan captain Misbah-ul-Haq won the toss and chose to bat.

India made one change in their playing eleven, replacing injured Ravindra Jadeja with Yusuf Pathan, while Pakistan brought Wahab Riaz in place of Sarfraz Ahmed.

Indian cricket captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni (center), Virat Kholi (right) and Suresh Raina leave the field after winning a cricket match against Pakistan, March 18, 2012.

(AFP)

Formula one

Vettel and Red Bull look forward to Malaysia

Cool Button steers McLaren to Melbourne win MELBOURNE: Jenson Button ignored an incidentpacked race behind him and calmly steered his McLaren to victory at the season-opening Australian Grand Prix ahead of world champion Sebastian Vettel on Sunday.

It was the Briton’s third victory in four years at Albert Park, the 13th win of his career overall and he is the first driver other than Vettel to lead the championship since the German won the first of his two titles for Red Bull in 2010. Button’s compatriot and team mate Lewis Hamilton, who started on pole, finished third to round out the podium while Vettel’s team mate Mark Webber was fourth, his best ever finish in his 11th attempt to win his home race.

“Oh fantastic, what a great way to start the year, guys! Seriously, fantastic!” former world champion Button said on the team radio.

“The car is beautiful and she’s quick. Thanks guys.”

Vettel, who won 11 of 19 races last year including an absolutely dominant victory at Albert Park, benefited from a mid-race safety car to get past Hamilton but conceded he had been very much second best.

“I think Jenson was unbeatable today,” he told a news conference. “I’m very happy with second, it’s a lot of points. They are the ones to beat at the moment and we’ll see what happens next week.”

Fernando Alonso drove a spirited race to finish fifth for troubled Ferrari ahead of the Sauber of Japan’s Kamui Kobayashi after Williams driver Pastor Maldonado crashed out spectacularly on the final lap while running sixth. “After yesterday’s qualifying to be fifth behind the two Mclarens and two Red Bulls is a pretty good result in terms of number of points,” twice world champion Alonso, who started 12th, told Sky TV. Finland’s Kimi Raikkonen, one of six former world champions in the field, impressed on his return from two years out of the sport to finish seventh for Lotus.

Button, who was second in the title race last year and on the grid on Sunday, eased in front of Hamilton from the start but both will have been happy to avoid the usual crush behind them at the first corner.

Webber and compatriot Daniel Ricciardo were not so

McLaren-Mercedes driver Jensen Button of Britain (center) celebrates winning Formula One’s Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne, March 18, 2012. (AFP)

fortunate, the former sandwiched between two rivals as he dropped from fifth to ninth and the latter’s car spinning 360 degrees and taking out the Williams of Bruno Senna in the process.

Vettel, who started sixth on the grid, made the most of Webber’s misfortune and by the end of lap two had passed Nico Rosberg with a superb move into fourth place behind the other Mercedes of Michael Schumacher.When seven-times champion Schumacher went off the track onto the grass on lap 10 to effectively end his race, Vettel swept through into third place and started trying to eat into the 10-second gap to the McLarens.

TENNIS

Ricciardo finished ninth on his home race debut for Toro Rosso despite an accident at the start, while the last point was won by Force India’s Paul Di Resta in 10th.

Raikkonen progress through the field from 17th on the grid also benefited from the chaos caused by Maldonado’s late crash and made up in part for his Lotus team mate Romain Grosjean’s early exit. The Frenchman had lined up third on the grid and was sixth when Maldonado overtook and in the process smashed his front right wheel. Six cars retired from the race, including the departure of Petrov, which effectively cost Hamilton second place. -Reuters

MELBOURNE: World champion Sebastian Vettel was satisfied with second place at the season-opening Australian Grand Prix, saying it was the best he could have hoped for given the dominance of McLaren’s winner Jenson Button.

The 24-year-old German knows all about dominance having won the last two world championships and last year’s race in Melbourne by an intimidating margin.

Vettel believes the team underperformed by putting both of their cars on the third row of the grid at Albert Park and was looking forward to having another crack at the McLarens at next week’s Malaysian Grand Prix.

“They were too strong for us today, Jenson deserved to win. He was out of reach for us today, I’m very happy with second,” he said “We expected them to be strong. We were a little bit surprised by their pace in qualifying yesterday and today it looked a little bit better for us. Nevertheless they are the ones to beat at the moment. We have another race in Malaysia next week. If I recall last year, we were pretty dominant here and then qualifying (at Sepang) was just a few hundredths of a second between Lewis and me.

We’ll see what happens next week.”

Vettel conceded that his car was still not as he would like it but with 19 more races to come, he was confident major improvements could be made quickly.

“The car has a lot of potential,” he said. “Obviously we would have loved to have been in a better position yesterday but now we understand the car better and we need to fix the problems and give McLaren a harder time next week. There’s a long race ahead of us and opportunities to fight,” he added. “My target was to win the race, I finished second and I’m happy with that. The winner today totally deserved it so that was our maximum.”

Vettel’s Australian team mate Mark Webber finished fourth and was delighted with his best ever finish in his 11th attempt to win his home race. -Reuters

Bowling

Isner stuns Djokovic, to meet Federer in final

Indonesian bowling team, a tough contender in KBF Open Tournament Ricky Laxa Staff Writer

KUWAIT: The Indonesian Bowling Team comprised of eight players poses tough competition against opponents during this year’s Kuwait Bowling Federation Open Tournament currently being held at Cozmo Bowling Center. Al Watan Daily spoke to the President of the Indonesian Bowling Federation Hasrial Harimis.

Roger Federer, of Switzerland, returns a shot to Rafael Nadal, of Spain, during a semifinal at the BNP Paribas Open tennis tournament, Saturday, March 17, 2012. (AP)

INDIAN WELLS, California: John Isner pulled off the biggest upset of his career at the BNP Paribas Open on Saturday before Roger Federer imperiously outplayed long-time rival Rafa Nadal in the other semifinal. Big-serving American Isner overpowered world number one Novak Djokovic 7-6, 3-6, 7-6 and will face three-times champion Federer in Sunday’s final, the Swiss having eased past Spaniard Nadal 6-3, 6-4.

The second semi-final was delayed by three-and-ahalf hours because of steady rain before Federer and Nadal came out for their heavily anticipated showdown, the Swiss dominating before sealing victory in one hour, 31 minutes. Watched by a near-capacity crowd under leaden skies, Federer broke twice winner Nadal in the second game of the match, ending a riveting exchange with an overhead forehand smash to lead 2-0. However, the Spanish left-hander broke back in the fifth when the Swiss netted a forehand after the two players had treated the crowd to a sequence of absorbing rallies with superbly angled shots.

Federer regained control by breaking second-seeded Nadal in the ninth when the Spaniard’s backhand floated long and he served out to love in the 10th,

After nine years of annual participation in KBF open tournament, does the team expect to bag the grand prize this year?

clinching the first set in 42 minutes with a forehand drop shot. Oozing confidence and moving in typically elegant style, Federer again broke Nadal in the third game of the second after the Spaniard double-faulted to trail 0-40 before dumping a backhand into the net.

Serving for the match at 5-2, the Swiss surprisingly failed to hold as his opponent struck successive forehand winners after moving Federer from side to side with penetrating baseline shots. Nadal held serve for 4-5 and Federer came from 15-30 down in the 10th to beat his rival for a 10th time in 28 meetings.

Earlier, Isner blasted a total of 20 aces past the topseeded Serb, the last of them a well-placed 135 mph serve to clinch the final-set tiebreak 7-5 and end his match after two hours, 45 minutes. Isner, who had lost to Djokovic in their previous two meetings, threw his arms skywards in celebration before light drizzle began to fall on the showpiece stadium court at the Indian Wells Tennis Garden.

“That’s why I play this game, is to be able to enjoy moments like that,” 11th seed Isner told reporters with a broad grin after reaching the final in an elite ATP Masters 1000 event for the first time.” -Reuters

Harimis: We always participate in this annual tournament armed with hope that we will come home with the grand prize. After an impressive performance by our female players in the first round, landing one of them on top ten players in the tournament, we are in fact posing tough competition against other players. The team’s performance this year was highly remarkable and with previous Indonesian champion in previous tournaments in Kuwait and top player in Indonesia Ryan Lalisang, we hope to win if not claim top positions in this year’s tournament.

Which countries do you consider strong contenders?

Harimis: There are several pro bowlers from Europe this year and USA and are strong contenders. In fact PBA players are dominating the competition, but we came strong this year and we are hopeful that we will once again claim the title.

President of the Indonesian Bowling Federation Hasrial Harimis, Head coach David Sitorus and the Indonesian Bowling Team. (Al Watan Daily) The team is composed of how many members and how were they recruited?

Harimis: The team is composed of two male players Ryan Lalisang and Williem Widjaja and six female players Sharon Limansantoso, Putty Armein, Ivana Hie, Novie Phang, Tannya Roumiper and Puteri Astari. The head coach is David Sitorus. Indonesia often holds tournaments and the top players’ points are gathered and the best ones are recruited to join the training program. After sometime elimination rounds are held and final selection is made. The team is preparing for the national competitions in preparations for the Olympics, in which one of the sports is bowling.

How do you asses this year’s tournament?

Harimis: The team has competed in Saudi Arabia, Dubai and Bahrain and

Kuwait is quite exceptional. Aside from limited lanes available for players, the tournament is managed skillfully by a committee which knows the sports very well and we enjoy our stay in Kuwait.

In Jakarta we are used to sixty lanes as compared to the facility in Kuwait but the environment is good.

Any message to Indonesian bowling teams in Kuwait?

Harimis: His Excellency Ferry Admahar, Ambassador of Indonesia to Kuwait has informed us that there are bowling teams in Kuwait comprised of Indonesian nationals and are very active in participations with other nationalities. I urge them to keep playing and develop their techniques and skills and patronize the sports. I am also glad to know that even in foreign land Indonesians carry their passion and love for the sports.

moNdAY, MARCH 19, 2012

SPORTS

Sports Editor’s Highlight

ENGLAND: Former England coach Fabio Capello has ruled out a return to coaching in Italy.

Capello resigned as England boss last month after criticising the Football Association for stripping John Terry of the captaincy due to his being investigated over allegedly dishing out racial abuse, a charge he vehemently denies. “I don’t think I’ll coach again in Italy but maybe there could be something interesting abroad, even if it’s a different role,” he told a program on Rai public television.

“I’m interested in something new and different, I feel like a child of the world. If I get an interesting offer, whether it be a national team or quality work, I could accept it.” Capello won everything in club football in spells as coach of AC Milan, Roma and Juventus while he twice won the Spanish title in two separate one-year spells as Real Madrid boss. -AFP

Football

Bayern can take apart almost anyone, says Lahm MUNICH: Bayern Munich captain Philipp Lahm believes the Bavarian giants can ‘take apart almost anyone’ after their 6-0 hammering of Hertha Berlin meant they had scored 20 goals in their last three games.

Having drawn Marseille in the quarter-finals of the Champions League later this month, Bayern are bidding to claim the treble and are at Borussia Moenchengladbach on Tuesday in the German Cup semifinals.

Dutch winger Arjen Robben hit a hat-trick in Saturday’s rout at Berlin’s Olympic Stadium as victory kept Bayern second in the league, five points behind leaders Borussia Dortmund.

Bayern seem to be scoring at will: Robben has hit seven goals in three games, while the Bundesliga’s top-scorer Mario Gomez, having netted eight times in three matches, now has 22 goals in 25 league matches.

Having hammered Hoffenheim 7-1 last Saturday in the Bundesliga, then demolished Basel 7-0 in the Champions League on Tuesday to reach the last eight, Bayern are making a habit of tearing the opposition apart.

“In the last three matches, we’ve seen just how much attacking quality we have in the team.

We can take apart almost every opposing team,” said Lahm. “You have to take your chances and make sure you score. That’s what happened in the last two matches, and it’s happened again here. It’s obviously easy after that.”

Bayern face Marseille home and away before they travel to face Dortmund in the Bundesliga on April 11 and director of sport Christian Nerlinger says his team are proving their mettle as contenders on all counts.

Nerlinger believes Munich’s 2-0 defeat at Bayer Leverkusen in the German league a fortnight ago was the wake up call his team needed.

“If we can keep playing with such focus and conviction, we’re certainly heading in a terrific direction,” he said. “That was a truly impressive performance from the very first second on. We

Arjen Robben (left) of Muenchen scores the third goal during the Bundesliga match between Hertha BSC Berlin and FC Bayern Muenchen at Olympic Stadium, March 17, 2012. (AFP)

played outstanding football on an extremely difficult surface. We have to carry on like that.

After the Leverkusen defeat, a jolt has passed through the team and they have pulled together as a group.”

Berlin coach Otto Rehhagel said Hertha failed to cope with the threat of Bayern wingers Robben and France’s Franck Ribery.

“We never got to grips with the two wingers, Robben and Ribery,” said Rehhagel, who led Greece to the Euro 2004 title.

“I warned my players about that beforehand, and then we conceded the first goal very early.

We were inferior to our opponents throughout, and Bayern once again showed what an outstanding team they are.” -AFP

Dijon further dent Marseille’s Euro hopes PARIS: Relegation-threatened Dijon dented Marseille’s hopes of securing European football next season with a shock 2-1 win on a day of French league upsets Saturday.

Leaders Paris Saint-Germain, pushing for their first league title since 1994, were spared similar ignominy when defender Christophe Jallet scored an injury-time equaliser to snatch a share of the points from a 2-2 draw at struggling Caen.

After second-placed Montpellier suffered a 1-0 defeat at Nancy, it meant Carlo Ancelotti’s side saw their lead double to two points.

Bordeaux’s bid for only their 11th win in 28 games was scuppered when Ajaccio defender Yoann Poulard scored in the third minute of injury time to salvage a 1-1 draw for the Corsicans. Marseille’s fifth consecutive league defeat meanwhile leaves Didier Deschamps knowing that results elsewhere must go in their favor, and they must improve smartly, if they are to snatch a place in Europe next season.

“The reason we’re ninth in the table is because of our very poor start to the campaign, we can’t hide the fact,” said Deschamps. “I don’t think it was a fair result, even though the two goals we conceded were down to errors we made. This defeat hurts, and the fact it’s our fifth defeat consecutively, in the league has put us in a precarious position.”

Only days after qualifying for the Champions League quarter-finals, Deschamps sent out the exact same team with one exception: Brazilian striker

Brandao, the match-winner against Inter Milan at the San Siro midweek, started in place of Andre Ayew who was rested because of a sore shoulder.

That decision, however, appeared to backfire as a visibly fatigued Marseille team failed to muster a response to a 24th minute equalizer to Loic Remy’s opener from the penalty spot.

Marseille got off to the perfect start, with Remy converting an 11th minute penalty following a handball in the box. It was his 10th league goal, but his first since scoring in a 2-0 win over Lille in mid-January.

However the Marseille defense was exposed badly barely 10 minutes later when Younousse Sankhare beat ‘keeper Steve Mandanda with a well-taken strike to level.

Lacking spark and vibrancy, Marseille struggled to muster another goal and paid the price in the 78th minute when on-loan Chelsea midfielder Gael Kakuta beat Mandanda from the spot after Nicolas Nkoulou was red-carded for a foul on Dijon striker Koro Kone.

Marseille dropped one place to ninth, meaning their chances of securing third spot, the last place for Champions League qualification, are now virtually non-existent. A place in the Europa League may also be under threat.

“It’s paradoxical, in light of the joy we all experienced on Tuesday,” added Deschamps. “Playing after the Champions League is always difficult, although I don’t think the team were too fatigued. Dijon had two chances, and they took them.” -AFP

Fournier sacked by relegation-haunted Auxerre PARIS: Auxerre announced the sacking of coach Laurent Fournier Sunday, a day after the prospect of relegation returned to haunt the club. Auxerre are the only club in the French top flight to have avoided relegation, but that possibility crept closer to reality Saturday following a 2-0 reverse at home to Evian/ Thonon.

The result dropped Auxerre to 19th, and they will slip to bottom later Sunday if Sochaux draw with or beat Nice.This season Fournier’s side has won only four times, losing 12 and drawing 12 in 28 matches so far.

Fournier is the fifth coach from the French top flight to be sacked this season following Eric Roy (Nice), Antoine Kombouare (Paris SG), Bernard Casoni (Evian) and Mecha Bazdarevic (Sochaux).

The 47-year-old is a former footballer who notably played for PSG. He joined Auxerre as coach in June 2011 having coached PSG and Strasbourg.

The Burgundy club won their only league title in 1996, an era dominated by long-time coach Guy Roux who helped develop a string of top players including Eric Cantona, Laurent Blanc, Philippe Mexes, Basile Boli, and Djibril Cisse. -AFP

Real need to respect APOEL: Mourinho SPAIN: Real Madrid need to respect their Champions League quarter-final opponents APOEL Nicosia, despite the Cypriot club’s more humble background, the Spanish giant’s manager Jose Mourinho said on Saturday.

“APOEL are in the quarter-finals because they have earned it. They perhaps have a less prestigious profile than other teams but they’re having a great Champions League and need to be respected,” he told a news conference.

Real will be without midfielder Xabi Allonso for the first leg of the tie due to suspension but the Portuguese coach said he was unperturbed by the absence.

“Sahin, Lass (Diarra), Granero, all our midfield players can replace him. They are all natural replacements for Xabi,” Mourinho told reporters before Real’s league match with Malaga on Sunday.

Mourinho singled out Turkey’s Nuri Sahin, who arrived at Real last summer but has not yet had much time on the pitch.

“Sahin is one option among many. We’ve called him up for tomorrow. His work at the club is an example of professionalism,” he added.

The coach also denied rumors that his was set to announce that Sahin would be on loan next season.

“He will be with us next season, during which we will ask more of him,” he added. -AFP

Guardiola surrenders despite Messi’s 150th strike

BARCELONA, Spain: Barcelona coach Pep Guardiola watched Lionel Messi register his 150th league goal in Saturday’s 2-0 victory over Sevilla, but admitted that even the little master can’t win La Liga this season.

“Forget the league, we are not going to win,” said Guardiola, whose bitter rivals Real Madrid can restore their 10-point cushion against Malaga on Sunday. “If this team has anything then it is that it competes, but there has been another side which has been better and achieved better results than us and there is no need to smooth over the fact.”Despite his black mood, Guardiola insisted that his team would keep going until the end.

“Players at Barcelona go out to win. We have a very difficult tie in the next round of the Champions League against AC Milan but we are not going to hold back in the league and rest players,” he said.A sublime chip from Messi brought up the Argentine’s 150th league goal for Barcelona, and his 14th in the last six games, after a Xavi Hernandez free-kick had put the champions ahead after 18 minutes.

Guardiola put out his strongest side as Barca continued their pursuit of Real with the only surprise the absence of Carles Puyol from the defense with Javier Mascherano chosen to play alongside Gerard Pique at centre half.

Adriano started at left-back in place of Eric Abidal who will be out of the game indefinitely as he awaits a liver transplant.

Adriano had a deflected shot which looped just over the crossbar and then Pedro Rodriguez, put through by Cesc

Fabregas, had a strike parried by the keeper as the Catalan side pressed from the start.Then Adriano was upended as he surged towards the area

by Emir Spahic, who received a yellow card, and Xavi scored from the resultant free-kick.

Sevilla are the only side to have taken points off Barca at the Nou Camp this season in the league and they battled back with a Manu header coming back off the woodwork as Pique and Valdes looked on.

Frederic Kanoute had a shot blocked by Valdes while at the other end Pedro also was denied by Palop.

After the break Sevilla began to take the game to the visitors as Barca failed to show the same rhythm in the centre of the pitch and Manu fired inches wide from a Jesus Navas cross.

Iniesta then poked the ball just wide in front of goal after being set up by Messi and substitute Alexis Sanchez had a shot blocked by the keeper after running clear while Manu also had another glaring miss for Sevilla.

Rayo Vallecano moved within a point of the European places with a 3-0 victory over Real Betis.

Getafe put further distance between themselves and the drop zone as they bounced back from three straight defeats to beat second-frombottom Sporting Gijon 2-0.Rock-bottom Zaragoza were just minutes away from a much needed victory but Roversio equalized Helder Postiga’s opener after 88 minutes to give Osasuna a 1-1 draw.Elsewhere, an own-goal from Inigo Martinez gave Getafe a 1-0 win over Real Sociedad. -AFP