May 11, 2012

FRIDAY, MAY 11, 2012

@alwatandaily

Issue No. 1431

20 PAGES

www.alwatandaily.com

150 Fils with IHT

MP Al-Juwaihel barred from Parliament for spitting

Staff Writers

KUWAIT: In an unprecedented move, the National Assembly on Thursday decided to bar Member of Parliament (MP) Mohammad Al-Juwaihel from attending parliamentary sessions and committee meetings for two weeks. The decision was made in accordance with Article 89 of the Parliament’s Rules of Order. A majority of 48 members voted in favor of the move, while MP Dr. Hamad Al-Mattar abstained.

A proposal to ask police to arrest Al-Juwaihel to examine him for alcohol, totally banned in the conservative Muslim state, was referred to Parliament’s legal panel to see if the request was in line with the law. Lawmakers in Kuwait enjoy immunity and protection against arrest or interrogation by the judiciary while Parliament is in session.

MP Osama Al-Munawer said that it was the fifth time that AlJuwaihel was drunk when he arrived at the Parliament. His claim was supported by fellow MP Jamaan Al-Harbash who said that he was aware that Al-Juwaihel was drunk.

MP Abdullah Al Barghash warned of dire consequences if no action was taken against Al-Juwaihel.

Several opposition MPs said that Al-Juwaihel was coming to Parliament while drunk and MP Mussallam Al-Barrak alleged that he was being backed by a number of ruling family members.

Information Minister Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah Al-Sabah categorically denied the allegation.

Moreover, the Parliament decided also to refer two other proposals to the Parliamentary Legislative Committee to examine the constitutionality of arresting Al-Juwaihel and barring him from entering the Parliament. The committee will convene a

Social allowance increases effective starting June

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Judicial tribunal clears former PM in graft probe: Lawyer KUWAIT: A Kuwaiti judicial tribunal investigating graft allegations has cleared the former prime minister of any wrongdoing in a series of financial transactions made abroad, the law firm representing him said on Thursday.

Sheikh Nasser Al-Mohammad Al-Sabah’s government resigned last year after some opposition lawmakers accused it of having made a series of illegal financial transfers via Kuwait’s overseas embassies.

Sheikh Nasser, had repeatedly denied any wrongdoing. It was the first time that a complaint against a former prime minister and a member of the ruling Al-Sabah family had been investigated at such a high level in the Gulf oil producer.

Sheikh Nasser was “cleared and exonerated on all criminal charges filed against him”, a statement from the law firm repreMore on 2 senting him said.

meeting Sunday to look into the said proposals.

Earlier, a squabble erupted, over the course of the parliamentary session, during which MPs Mohammad Al-Juwiahel and Hamad Al-Matar traded insults. Parliamentary sources confirmed that Al-Mattar received a barrage of insults from Al-Juwaihel while he was about to leave the Chamber and that the latter even spat on Al-Mattar. MP Mohammad Al-Saqr was seen holding MP Al-Mattar and keeping him at bay. However, Al-Matar screamed loudly describing Al-Juwaihel as “animal and impolite.” As AlMattar approached to set on Al-Juwaihel, lawmakers and ministers flanked him in an attempt to cool him down. But Al-Mattar continued to yell, calling Al-Juwaihel as “filthy and nasty.”

Al-Mattar then approached the podium where he asked the National Assembly Speaker Ahmad Al-Saadoun to enforce the Rules of Order and said, “You either have to enforce the Rules on him or else I will attack him ... He’s impolite and intoxicated.”

Al-Saadoun responded, “Calm down, I will apply the Rules.”

The speaker soon adjourned the proceedings to restore order to the Chamber. At this point, MP Hussein Al-Qallaf ushered AlJuwaihel out of the Chamber while others tried to prevent him from leaving the House.

When the session was later resumed, the Secretary General of the National Assembly read out a proposal concerning Al-Juwaihel’s violation of the Rules of Order, and the allegation that he was in an abnormal condition.

MP Osama Al-Munawer stated that “this is the second time that MP Al-Juwaihel entered the Parliament drunk. I hereby state that his brain will be blown up if he dares enter again in similar condition.”

Damascus rocked by blasts, TV blames ‘terrorists’

CONTINUED ON PAGE 2

Kuwaiti crude up 16 cents, settles at $108.66

CAPITALS: Price of Kuwaiti crude oil spiked 16 US cents to 108.66 US dollars per barrel (pb) in transactions on Wednesday, compared with $108.50 on Monday, reported Kuwait Petroleum Corporation (KPC) on Thursday.

The humble hike follows a six-day downturn in shadow of jitters over global economy, rise of the American strategic oil reserves and an anticipated European decision to release another bail-out installment for Greece.

In more news, oil traded around $113 per barrel on Thursday as dealers weighed weaker-than-expected Chinese trade data against relatively encouraging US jobs figures against.

Rising supply from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) added pressure. The group’s monthly report said oil supply was plentiful and in excess of market requirements.

Brent crude slid 33 cents to $112.87 a barrel by 1348 GMT after reaching an earlier high of $113.64. U.S. crude climbed 50 cents to $97.31 by 1348 GMT after reports showed new US jobless claims fell slightly last week.

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Commercial Bank of Kuwait Q1 profit at $1.19 million

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Olympic flame lit for London Games

In this photo released by the Syrian official news agency SANA, flames and smoke rise from burning cars after two bombs exploded, at Qazaz neighborhood in Damascus, Syria, on Thursday May 10, 2012. Two large explosions ripped through the Syrian capital Thursday, heavily damaging a military intelligence building and leaving blood and human remains in the streets. (AP)

CAPITALS: Two powerful blasts in quick succession rocked the Syrian capital at morning rush hour Thursday, killing and wounding dozens of people, state television said, blaming the attacks on “terrorists.” “Two explosions caused by terrorists took place on the freeway in the south of Damascus,” the television said, adding that the blasts occurred “as people were heading to work and children to school.”

Residents said the explosions rattled windows and sent

Amnesty calls on UAE to release Islamists if held for views

ABU DHABI: Amnesty International has said that two Emirati Islamists detained in an undisclosed location in the United Arab Emirates could be at risk of “torture or other ill-treatment”, and called for their immediate release if they are only held for their views.

Saleh Al-Dhufairi was arrested last week in the northern emirate of Ras Al-Khaimah by men who identified themselves as belonging to both state security and local police.A Ras Al-Khaimah police spokesman has denied the police were involved.

Al-Dhufairi, general manager of an Islamic organization, the Holy Koran Foundation, was also detained in March for “provoking strife” after criticizing state security services on Twitter.

He is also a member of Al-Islah (Reform), a group which is calling for greater adherence to Islamic principles, Amnesty said. Another Al-Islah member, Salim Sahoo, was arrested in the emirate of Sharjah in April, Amnesty said, and was also being held in an undisclosed location, adding that he was apparently not involved in social media activities.

“The whereabouts of two men arrested in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in April remain unknown. They might be at risk of torture or other ill-treatment,” the rights group said in a statement dated May 9.

“If both men are held solely for their peaceful exercise of

Bodies found at Russian jet wreckage in Indonesia

Greek actress Ino Menegaki (right), playing the role of High Priestess, lights the Olympic flame during the torch lighting ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games at the site of ancient Olympia in Greece May 10, 2012. (Reuters)

GREECE: The Olympic flame was lit in Ancient Olympia in Greece on Thursday, in a solemn ceremony filled with mystery and tradition that signals the final countdown to the start of this year’s summer Games in London.

Actors in ancient Greek costume invoked the god Apollo in the ruins of the 2,600-year-old Temple of Hera, using a concave mirror to harness the sun’s rays and kindle a flame on the torch for a relay that will take it around Greece and Britain. Dignitaries at the ceremony included the president of the International Olympic Committee Jacques Rogge, as well as the head of the London organizing committee, Sebastian Coe. “We promise to protect the flame, to cherish its traditions and stage an uplifting torch relay of which we can be proud,” Coe said in a speech, vowing the event would “lift the spirits

and hopes of people across Britain and across the world”.

After thanks to the god Apollo, “king of the sun and the idea of light”, in the shadow of the Greek, British and Olympic flags, the flame was handed to the first relay runner, Greece’s Liverpool-born open water swimming champion Spyros Gianniotis.

He then passed it to 19-year-old British boxer Alexander Loukos, whose father hails from the Greek island of Lesbos and grew up in the east London borough where the Olympic Stadium is situated.

The ceremony marks the start of a week-long torch relay, which will take it to five major Greek archaeological sites, including the Acropolis, before it arrives at the old Olympic stadium in Athens, site of the first modern Games in 1896.

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plumes of smoke billowing into the sky.Television footage at the site of the blasts, which took place on a freeway in the south of the capital, showed an apocalyptic scene with charred bodies and the carcasses of vehicles with smoke still rising from them.

The report did not give a breakdown on the number of people killed and those wounded, but said most of the casuMore on 4 alties were civilians.

CIDAHU: Rescuers discovered bodies Thursday near the shattered wreckage of a new Russian-made passenger plane that smashed into the side of an Indonesian volcano during a flight to impress potential buyers. All 45 people on board were feared dead.

Due to the remoteness of the crash site and the steep, rugged terrain, the bodies will be placed in nets and lifted by ropes to a hovering chopper, national search and rescue agency spokesman Gagah Prakoso said. Heavy mist was hampering visibility, however, forcing the postponement of evacuations until Friday.

“So far we haven’t found any survivors, but we are still searching,” he said as teams of soldiers, police and volunteers continued to troop up the slopes. The Sukhoi Superjet-100 - Russia’s first new model of passenger jet since the fall of the Soviet Union two decades ago - was in Indonesia as part of a six-nation tour of Asia aimed at drumming up new customers.

It was carrying dozens of representatives from local airlines and journalists on what was supposed to be a quick, 50minute demonstration flight Wednesday.

Some excited passengers snapped pictures of themselves smiling and waving in front of the twin-engine jet before lifting off, then quickly posting them as profile pictures on Facebook and Twitter.

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their right to freedom of opinion and expression, they should be released immediately and unconditionally,” it said.

Officials at the UAE Ministry of Interior were not immediately available to comment. The UAE has been clamping down on Islamists in recent months, concerned they could be emboldened by the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in other Arab countries.

The major oil exporter has avoided popular uprisings that have toppled four Arab heads of state since last year, thanks in part to its cradle-to-grave welfare system, but it has shown little tolerance towards dissent in a country where Emiratis form a minority and the vast majority of the eight million population are foreign workers.

The arrests of Sahoo and Al-Dhufairi last month came a few days after reports that Sheikh Sultan al-Qassimi, a cousin of the ruler of Ras Al-Khaimah and head of Al-Islah, was taken from his house by armed men. The UAE last year revoked the citizenship of six Islamists it described as posing a threat to national security.

Some of the men demanded greater power for the Federal National Council, an elected body that advises the federal government in Abu Dhabi.

The six men, all members of Al-Islah, were detained after refusing to sign a declaration to seek a new nationality within two weeks. -Reuters

Ex-Miss USA Rima Fakih gets probation in DUI case

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Couples participate in a military mass wedding ceremony in Taipei May 10, 2012. 264 couples tied the knot together on Thursday, with Minister of National Defense Kao Hua-chu as the witness for the ceremony. (Reuters)

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ALWATAN DAILY

kuwait

FRIDAY, may 11, 2012

Judicial tribunal clears former PM in graft probe: Lawyer KUWAIT: A Kuwaiti judicial tribunal investigating graft allegations has cleared the former prime minister of any wrongdoing in a series of financial transactions made abroad, the law firm representing him said on Thursday.

Sheikh Nasser Al-Mohammad Al-Sabah’s government resigned last year after some opposition lawmakers accused it of having made a series of illegal financial transfers via Kuwait’s overseas embassies.

Sheikh Nasser, had repeatedly denied any wrongdoing. It was the first time that a complaint against a former prime minister and a member of the ruling Al-Sabah family had been investigated at such a high level in the Gulf oil producer.

Sheikh Nasser was “cleared and exonerated on all criminal charges filed against him”, a statement from the law firm representing him said.

The tribunal found that the funds were intended for “humanitarian issues and to satisfy Kuwait’s international obligations”, the Salman Duaij AlSabah law firm said.

The transfers were “of a diplomatic and political nature in the best interest of the state of Kuwait”, it said.

Sheikh Nasser had been questioned by a tribunal that has jurisdiction over past and present ministers as part of an ongoing inquiry into alleged graft under the previous administration. Members of the closed-door tribunal do not comment to the media.

Sheikh Nasser remains under investigation by a less-powerful parliamentary panel.

When the allegations first came to light last year protesters and opposition lawmakers staged a series of protests outside parliament that culmi-

FILE-photo obtained online of former PM Sheikh Nasser Al-Mohammad Al-Sabah.

nated in the storming of the chamber, forcing the government to resign and triggering the dissolution of the assembly.

A snap election in February gave Islamist-led opposition candidates a majority in parliament.

Since then, those opposition MPs have quizzed the current prime minister, Sheikh Jaber Al-Mubarak Al-Sabah, over his handling of the investigation, highlighting continued discord in the region’s most outspoken parliament. -Reuters

Teachers are significant component in education: Sheikha Ayda Abdulaziz Al-Fadhli

Staff Writer

KUWAIT: Sheikha Ayda Salem Al-Ali Al-Sabah called on the Ministry of Education and the Kuwaiti Teachers Society to set up specific criteria to appraise the ideal teacher, indicating that generalizing the incentives without any reference to teachers’ performance would be prejudicial to other distinguished teachers.

She gave her statements to the press during the opening of the Educational Exhibition held Thursday morning by the Kuwaiti Teachers Society under her patronage, which was organized as part of the “Thank You Teacher!” activities.

Sheikha Ayda said that the teaching grading

employment, which was endorsed recently “should have been introduced ages ago especially when we consider that the teaching profession is not similar to other professions and therefore there should be employment grading to other categories within the educational authorities after proper appraisals with proper criteria.”

Sheikha Ayda said that teachers are one of the most important components within the frame work of the educational process and consequently have pivotal roles in the society. She added that the country has never failed to exert to provide a suitable teaching environment for both students and teachers alike by supplying the school and classes with the right appropriate educational tools and equipment. On his part, the Director of the

Kuwaiti Teachers Society Mutib Al-Otaibi said that His Highness the Amir of Kuwait Sheikh Sabah AlAhmad Al-Sabah will attend the festivals related to honoring 300 teachers which will be held May 16.

Al-Otaibi said that the state has exerted all efforts to improve the teachers’ working conditions by advancing a better employment grading for them. “On our part, teachers now need to double their efforts and work harder to improve the existing educational framework,” he remarked.

He went on to say that the Kuwaiti Teachers Society are partners in the educational decision making, as well as making and forwarding proposals, along with the Ministry of Education and the parliamentary educational Committee in the National Assembly.

Severe shortcoming in services provided to citizens, expats: Healthcare Forum Mervat Abduldayem

Staff Writer

KUWAIT: The participants in the activities of Kuwait Forum for Healthcare Technology and Standards launched an initiative by the medical engineers at the Kuwait Society of Engineers under the theme “Safe Heath”, stressing the need to use safe technology in healthcare provided by pub-

lic and private health institutions. They said that there is a notable shortcoming in set regulations in government bodies which provide healthcare to citizens and expatriates.

The activities of the forum began by a speech delivered by Member of Engineers Association Asmaa Al-Lughani, in which she said that medical engineers in Kuwait Society of Engineers chose to focus on health services because they are aware of

Group photo of the participants in the activities of Kuwait Forum for Healthcare Technology and Standards on Thursday, May 10, 2012.

(Al Watan)

the importance of this issue as they work in medical institutions. She added that engineers acknowledge the dire need for a safe work environment, in addition to the need to provide modern medical technological devices which could be safer for both patients and medical teams.

Kuwait Society of Engineers Chairman Engineer Hossam Al-Kharafi delivered a speech in which he stressed the need to develop health performance and services in the country, and enhancing the role of medical engineers in order to provide safe medical technology. He noted that engineers in Medical Engineers Association exerted great effort to hold the forum, hoping that the forum will be successful.

Al-Kharafi added that developing health services in the country is a very important issue. He valued the efforts exerted by the participants to develop health services in the country. He said that he is confident that they are aware of the fact that Kuwait is in dire need to develop the use of technology, localizing it and training nationals who can use this technology and maintain it, as well as to develop it. He explained that such a goal requires an institutionalized effort. He explained that the medical engineers believe that there is a need for an official body to be called the Public Authority for Medical Healthcare Technology. He said that medical engineers in Kuwait Society of Engineers had earlier developed a program for global cooperation in this field.

FM touches on Arab matters during NAM ministerial meeting SHARM EL-SHEIKH: The 17th ministerial meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), currently hosted by the Egyptian resort of Sharm El-Sheikh, started Thursday its second and final session here.

The ministers issued on Thursday a final communique which covered a wide range of recommendations in relation to various issues like weapons, international security, terrorism, democracy, dialogue, women, water security, and Arab cooperation among other politically-related issues.

It also included NAM’s stance of the international efforts exerted by the UN and Arab League to resolve the crisis in Syria, most notably the six-point agreement that would ensure an end to the Syrian crisis.

The communique is expected lauds the governments of Kuwait and Iraq, on the finalizing of various issues between them, with Iraq expected to be called on to implement its remaining UN Security Council obligations.

In Wednesday’s session, Kuwaiti Deputy Prime Minister, Foreign Minister and State Minister for Cabinet Affairs Sheikh Sabah Al-Khaled Al-Sabah said “the historic visit” by His Highness the Amir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber AlSabah to Iraq in late March showed that the two neighbors managed to overcome “the painful experiences” of the Iraqi invasion.

“His Highness the Amir led Kuwait’s delegation to the 23rd Arab Summit in Baghdad, on March 29, and held summit meetings with the Iraqi leaders; this showed clearly that the relations between the two countries were brought back to the normal track of neighborliness and amity,” the minister said.

Sheikh Sabah Al-Khalid said the Movement celebrated last year its 50th anniversary, but the conditions that led

to its inception aren’t there now due to the change of balance of powers in the world.

“Nevertheless, the objectives of the organization are still there, including the quest for a more balanced world order able to respond resiliently to the accelerated global changes, and the need to coordinate the policies and stances of the developing countries on the international arenas in a way to satisfies the aspirations of their peoples,” he argued.

Sheikh Sabah Al-Khalid reaffirmed Kuwait’s support to the plan of the UNArab League Joint Envoy for Syria Kofi Annan aiming to put an end to the violence in the Arab country and meet the aspirations of Syrian people based on the relevant resolutions of the Arab League.

As for the Palestine question, he said it is the core the Arab-Israeli conflict, condemning Israel for persisting in violating the human rights of the Palestinian people and continuing the illegal Jewish settlement expansions in the occupied Palestinian territories. He urged the UN Security Council to shoulder its responsibility for forcing Israel to implement all relevant Council resolutions notably the ones numbered 242, 338, 1397, 1515 and 1860. The conference included representatives of some 120 countries, with Kuwait’s delegation headed by Deputy Prime Minister, Foreign Minister and Minister of State for Cabinet Affairs Sheikh Sabah AlKhalid Al-Hamad Al-Sabah.

The Kuwaiti delegation consisted of the country’s ambassador to Egypt Dr. Rasheed Al-Hamad, Director of Sheikh Sabah Al-Khalid’s office Sheikh Dr. Ahmad Nasser Al-Mohammad Al-Sabah, Permanent Delegate to the Arab League Jamal Al-Ghunaim, Permanent Delegate to the United Nations Mansour Al-Otaibi, Advisor to the Kuwaiti Embassy in Cairo Mohammad Al-Hamad, and other officials. -KUNA

Foreign Minister and Minister of State for Cabinet Affairs Sheikh Sabah Al-Khaled Al-Hamad Al-Sabah, representing Kuwait during NAM ministerial meeting on Wednesday, May 9, 2012. (KUNA)

Kuwait-Jordan trade exchange up to $280 million in 2011 KUWAIT: The trade exchange between Kuwait and Jordan remarkably grew up to 280 US dollars in 2011, a Kuwaiti official said here Thursday.

“Kuwaiti-Jordanian trade exchange has been markedly growing since 2007.

It edged up to $280 million last year,” Undersecretary of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry Abdulaziz Al-Khaldi told a news conference following the signing of the minute of the fifth session of the Kuwaiti-Jordanian technical trade committee.

He said the meeting came up with fruitful recommendations that would be in the interest of Kuwait and Jordan in several sectors.

During the meeting, both sides agreed to boost trade exchange by means of spurring joint exhibitions and sharing information bearing on both, Kuwaiti and Jordanian, markets as well as coordinating views and positions on international issues, he said.

In the field of industrial cooperation and national product protection, they agreed to further reinforce and cement coordination and cooperation in the realm of supporting small and medium-sized industrial projects, he added.

In foreign direct investment, Al-Khaldi said the committee had welcomed an announced plan to set up a joint foreign direct investment committee.

It also lauded the final agreement on mutual cooperation in customs affairs, the Kuwaiti official said.

He also quoted the committee as stressing the significance of setting up joint ventures for the sake of bolstering and beefing economic cooperation and urging businessmen and investors from both sides to discuss available investment opportunities. -KUNA

MP Al-Juwaihel barred from parliament for spitting Continuation from page 1

The Information Minister Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah Al-Mubarak expressed the government’s regret over the recent incidents at the Abdullah Al-Salem Chamber and urged the enforcement of the Rules of Order. Commenting on the incident, MP Jamaan AlHarbash said, “This is not a conflict between the Minority and the Majority. I wonder how someone like him (Al-Juwaihel) enters Parliament while drunk.”

Al-Juwaihel, who was elected to parliament for the first time in February, caused an uproar in the Gulf state when he launched a campaign against Bedouin tribes.

Ahead of the Feb. 2 election, tribesmen burned down his election tent after he allegedly insulted a major tribe.

Kuwait’s parliament has been often mired in controversies sparked by bitter standoffs between lawmakers, but charges of drunkenness are rare.

Meanwhile, the investigation panel constituted by the Tribunal for the Trial of Ministers decided to shelve the case involving former Prime Minister Sheikh Nasser Al-Mohammad Al-Sabah as it found no evidence of crime in the case.

Lawmakers have swiftly reacted to this development with some demanding apology for the former prime.

MP Abdulhmameed Dashti proposed the suspension of all the parliamentary panels investigating the alleged financial transfers abroad or the multimillion deposits, saying that their work will be a waste of time.

The lawmaker stressed that court decisions should be upheld.

He went on to ask, “After all, why didn’t the MPs provide supporting documents to the investigation committee if their claims are true?”

Similarly, MP Adnan Al-Mutawa asserted that the court’s verdict is final and overrules all other previous claims. He added that the ruling constitutes a huge em-

barrassment for MPs in charge of investigation committees. The MP noted that MPs have capitalized on the issue of financial transfers, which ultimately led to the storming of the Parliament building dissolution of the previous legislature. Al-Mutawa noted that the former premiership was targeted through false claims.

In the same vein, MP Nabeel Al-Fadhel described the verdict as a death certificate for the parliamentary committee probing alleged illicit financial transfers abroad.

He went on to say that MP Al-Juwaihel’s action on Thursday has saved MP Musallam Al-Barrak from scathing criticisms.

On the opposite side, MP Abdulatiff Al-Omair said that the verdict issued by the Tribunal for the Trial of Ministers is a judicial decision that must be upheld.

“However, the decision does not prevent the continuation of the Committee with its work,” the MP concluded.

MPs holding MP Hamad Al-Mattar back after being allegedly spit at and offended by MP Al-Juwaihel on Thursday, May 10, 2012. (Al Watan)

ALWATAN DAILY

KUWAIT

Social allowance increases effective starting June

Obese in Kuwait number 42% of population

Heba Salem

Staff Writer

KUWAIT: Manpower Restructuring Program announced on Wednesday the total value of increases, in which the private sector employees, will receive starting June as it was approved by the Civil Service Commission and the Cabinet.

It is worth noting that total value of social raise that will be received by employees, who are under the program’s umbrella, reveals a hike in most levels, where medicine, pharmaceutical, and engineering bachelor degree holders will increase from 380 Kuwaiti dinars to KD 790 for unmarried graduates.

Those who are married and have seven children will witness an increase from KD 848 to KD 1,248.

Those who have a bachelor degree in law, accounting, IT, statistics, economy, nursing, and teaching will witness an increase from KD 410 to KD 740 for the unmarried graduates, while those who are married will receive an increase from KD 848 to KD 1,198. Unmarried university degree holders from other fields will receive an increase from KD 410 to KD 690, while the married will receive an increase from KD 848 to KD 1148.

Those who have diplomas and high school graduates that have two years of educational training will receive an increase of KD 629 for the single, while the married will receive an increase from KD 820 to KD 1,073.

Single high school or preparatory stage graduates who have one year training course will receive an increase of KD 557 from KD 367, while those married will recieve 988.

Those who graduated from preparatory stage and are single will receive KD 511, while those married will receive KD 940.

All increases that will be added to social raise consist of the increase approved by the Cabinet and the 25 percent social raise as per the decree issued concerning the increases of the government sector employees. In addition, Masters and PhD holders will receive an additional KD 75 and KD 150 respectively. The total cost of the increases is

Degree

University majors (medicine - pharmacy engineering)

Increment value prior to raise

single

married

Total value (Raise 50KD) (increment 50KD) (inflation 50KD)

190

278

220

350

190

278

220

190

278

169

50 KD for each child – max 7 children

Cabinet’s recently approved increase

Difference in social allowance with increase (25%)

Total social allowance after increase

single

married

single

married

330

50

70

790

1248

350

280

50

70

740

1198

220

350

230

50

70

690

1148

250

220

350

190

50

63

629

1073

161

242

220

350

140

50

61

571

1017

147

222

220

350

140

50

56

557

988

Middle school degree

141

216

220

350

100

50

54

511

940

Bellow middle school

136

211

220

350

50

50

53

456

884

University majors (law accounting - IT statistics - economics nursing - teaching) Other University majors Diploma or High school degree plus 2 years training or more High school degree plus 2 years training courses or equivalent High school or middle school degree plus 2 years course or equivalent High school or middle school degree plus 1 year course

KD 90 million.

Meanwhile, the program has taken several steps to prevent bogus appointment, such as setting up a new department that supervises Kuwaiti employees; reinforcing Islamic principles for workers at the private sector; coordinating with the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor; intensifying inspection campaigns by the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor to places that are related to employees who are part of the problem; changing the methods used in inspection campaigns; and prohibiting the appointment of Kuwaitis at jobs that are not convenient for Kuwaiti employees, such as mandoub (services man).

Regarding the problem of lay offs and the role

of the Manpower and the role played by the Government Restructuring Program (MGRP) to solve this problem, an official said that the effects of the global financial crisis began to hit the world economy few months ago, and Kuwait wasn’t an exception. He added that the crisis affected all sectors in Kuwait. He pointed out that MGRP took several procedures to address the issue of lay offs.

First, the Cabinet issued decision no. 675 for 2009 on those whose services ended in private sector including the laid offs during the period 1/08/2008-31/12/2009, on paying an allowance for 12 months. Secondly, MGRP cooperated with the parliament to issue Unemployment Insurance Law in order to contain this problem.

Minister commends small, medium-sized enterprises draft law BEIRUT: Kuwaiti Minister of Commerce and Industry Anas Al-Saleh said here on Thursday the draft law on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) is meant to satisfy the demands of the youth and catalyze economic development.

Speaking to Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) on the sidelines of the 20th session of the Arab Economic Forum (AEF), Al-Saleh voiced hope that the National Assembly (Kuwaiti parliament) would

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FRIdAY, may 11, 2012

pass the draft law at an early date.

“The law will help the country make a major stride in the efforts to support the youth, combat unemployment, and enable the private sector to drive economic growth,” he affirmed.

“The draft envisages launching a national fund for supporting the SMEs with a KD two billion capital; it takes stock of the imbalances that led to the botching of previous SMEs experiences,” the

Kuwaiti Minister of Commerce and Industry Anas Al-Saleh (first right) on the sidelines of the 20th session of the Arab Economic Forum (AEF), on Thursday, May 10, 2012.

(KUNA)

minister pointed out. Dealing with the two-day AEF session, Al-Saleh said the gathering aims to debate the impacts of the political changes in the Arab region on the economic and financial situations. Al-Saleh, leading Kuwait delegation to the event, added that he would take part in a meeting with senior economic decision-makers and business people from Lebanon and other Arab countries. The meeting aims to discuss the roles of the banking sector and the SMEs in economic development as well as the outlook of the Arab economies in the wake of the Arab Spring events.

Meanwhile, Minister of Information Sheikh Muhammad Al-Abdullah Al-Sabah praised on Thursday efforts of the government and the parliament in bringing to light a new bill for the formation of a national fund for support of small and medium-sized enterprises.

In a press statement following a parliamentary session on Thursday, which passed the new bill, the minister said the latter would contribute to the diversification of the national economy and increase the potential for the success of young entrepreneurs with workable business ideas.

He said the new bill got unanimous endorsement by the MPs and wished that the government would speed up its implementation.

With regard to the recent display of discord and rancor in the parliament on the part of MPs and their use of abusive language and the exchange of epithets, the minister expressed his dismay at such conduct and said it behooved the MPs to behave in accordance with the by-laws set by the Parliament. -KUNA

Al-Othaina says to endorse effective IT applications for security

KUWAIT: Almost 42 percent of people in Kuwait in all age groups can be described as obese, said Dr. Abeer Al-Bahoe, in remarks to Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) on Thursday.

About 65 percent of people in Kuwait do not practice any form of sports activity, she said, noting that up to 53 percent of youngsters spend daily between three to four hours motionless in front of TV or the computer.

The WHO, she said, observes this day every year to bring attention to the fact that moving around in any guise, be it walking or jogging or doing strenuous exercises or practicing a favorite sport does a world of good to the person’s health and well-being.

She said the Ministry of Health, where she works, is organizing on this occasion in conjunction with a local university an open day for youngsters and their families to get involved in sport activities. The open day will take place at the sport facilities of Gulf University for Science and Technology (GUST), where attendants would be afforded free blood tests for diabetes, cholesterol, and high blood pressure, she said. -KUNA

E-gate collects KD 16 million in 2010-11, says official

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KUWAIT: The total amount paid by electronic payment service (tasdeed) through the Kuwait government portal came to about KD 16 million for 2010 and 2011, revealed Director of e-government gate at the Central Agency for Information Technology (CAIT) Dr. Ittihad Al-Bahar on Thursday.

In statements to Kuwait News Agency (KUNA), Al-Bahar estimated the number of transactions carried out through (tasdeed) service for the same period at 261,198.

Data showed that the total amounts paid since the beginning of 2012 to the end of April were KD 1.3 million, through 52,403 processes, she said.

She pointed out the number of new visitors to the site about 392,000 visitors in the past four months.

Within the framework of the efforts to provide the largest number of services via the official website of the state, CAIT will add a new service for people with special needs, Al-Bahar unveiled.

She added that the gate has launched its services through different social networking sites (Twitter, Facebook and YouTube) to better communicate with residents and citizens.

The Kuwait e-gate (www.e.gov.kw) can serve as a one-stop solution for all citizens, residents, business people, and governmental bodies to seek more than 474 e-governmental services around the

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It provides services under three categories; services directed at citizens and residents, at businessmen, and other visitors of the page. It gives access to eservices from 39 different governmental bodies.

Each of these main three sectors is also divided into three sub-categories.The first one is “Information Services” which saves visitors time and effort by providing all necessary information, such as the name of the service and a description of it, required paperwork, procedures, fees, and online application forms.

The second category is “e-services” where visitors can look up their personal data at all governmental bodies and directly find the needed information. It also allows visitors to inquire about renewal date for civil IDs, traffic violation tickets and court cases.

Meanwhile, the third category is “ministries” where visitors can easily reach any ministry and get familiarized with its services and all related government bodies.

The e-gate also provides information on Kuwait’s culture, tourist attractions, health services at all medical centers and hospitals in the country.

It also offers reports on weather conditions, reports main news, provides aviation information, and lists currency exchange rates. -KUNA

Sri Lanka eyes closer ties with Kuwait

KUWAIT: Visiting Sri Lankan Minister of Foreign Employment Promotion and Welfare Dilan Perera said here Thursday his country is willing to forge bilateral relations with Kuwait on the basis of mutual interest.

The Sri Lankan minister also voiced his country’s interest in reinforcing cooperation and coordination in the fields of sharing and developing manpower, the Kuwaiti Ministry of Social Affairs said in a release on Thursday.

Perera is here to sign a memo of understanding with the Kuwaiti government in the fields of work and manpower, it added.

The memo is mainly intended to cement existing relations between the governments of both friendly countries, according to the release. -KUNA

Saud Al-Nabhan

Staff Writer

KUWAIT: The Minister of Communication and the Chairman of Information Technology Central Apparatus Eng. Salem Al-Othaina affirmed in a statement on Wednesday evening that the National Center for Computer Emergency is progressing well.

He said, during the inauguration of the fourth conference and fair of Kuwait for information security, that the center is an important step in the field of information security as it aims at protecting computers against any hacking.

The minister disclosed that the Apparatus will endorse effective criteria and applications to reach to information security integrity, especially in the field of programs.

On his part, the General Manager of Information Technology Central Apparatus Abdulateef Al-Saree said that apparatus coordinates with international companies to adopt the required procedures for maintaining information security at the governmental institutions.

The Information Director at ProMedia International Jamal Omran extolled the contribution and cooperation of the government institutions for supporting the conference, particularly as information security is considered an important matter. He added saying that the process of hacking electronic websites led to big financial losses estimated to be five billion US dollars, indicating that hackers could penetrate more than 1,200 websites just in the Gulf States.

Kuwait host-state for WHO disease classification center

General Manager of Information Technology Central Apparatus Abdulateef Al-Saree speaking during a conference held on Thursday, May 10, 2012.

(Al Watan)

KUWAIT: The World Health Organization (WHO) selected the State of Kuwait to host the regional center of disease classification, in recognition of Kuwaiti Health Ministry’s expertise in the field of bio-statistics and health information.

Assistant Health Ministry Undersecretary for Planning and Quality Dr. Walid Al-Falah said WHO assigns great priority to disease classification and statistics and comparisons. Al-Falah, also Secretary of ministry undersecretaries’ council, added the ministry for its part realized the importance and value of thorough statistics and data.

He said the ministry is holding a workshop on data analysis May 13-17, with regional WHO experts contributing to the sessions. The attendees would be trained in the latest systems and analytical skills to be able to contribute to a sounder strategic planning in the future.

This is the second workshop hosted by Kuwait and the fourth in the Gulf, the official added. -KUNA

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ALWATAN DAILY

regional NEWS IN BRIEF Bahrain delays medics’ retrial until June MANAMA, BAHRAIN: A Bahraini defense lawyer says the retrial of 20 medical professionals on allegations of aiding the Gulf kingdom’s uprising has been adjourned for a month. The doctors and nurses had been sentenced to prison terms of between five and 15 years by a now-disbanded security tribunal, which was set up by the Sunni monarchy as part of crackdowns against Shiite-led protests that began 15 months ago. In March, a retrial began in civilian court but was immediately postponed. Lawyer Jalila al-Sayed says the court Thursday delayed proceedings again until June 14. A retrial also is under way for a group of 21 activists, including a rights defender on hunger strike for three months. -AP

Stun gun plot on Dubai racing camel wins jail time DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES: A Dubai court has sentenced three men to jail terms for rigging a stun gun on a racing camel in an attempt to jolt the animal into running faster. Dubai media reports Thursday say the men received threemonth sentences for animal cruelty. The plot was uncovered by racing officials inspecting the so-called electronic jockeys used on the camels. Small machines that coax camels into running have replaced boy jockeys in the UAE after claims of child abuse. The court Wednesday heard testimony that the remote-triggered stun gun was fitted onto the machine. The camel finished the race in second place. -AP

Iraq’s fugitive VP wants new court in terror case BAGHDAD: An Iraqi court postponed the terror trial against the country’s fugitive vice president for a second time Thursday, with his lawyers demanding a special tribunal to hear the case that he says was brought by political enemies.

Tariq al-Hashemi’s legal team said it is still waiting to hear whether Iraq’s Supreme Court will agree to move the trial from Baghdad’s criminal court to a new court appointed by parliament. Al-Hashemi is one of Iraq’s highest-ranking Sunnis and is accused of running death squads that targeted Shiite officials and pilgrims.

He denies the charges. The case threatens to paralyze Iraq’s government by fueling simmering Sunni and Kurdish resentments against the Shiite prime minister, who critics claim is monopolizing power. Al-Hashemi lawyer Muayad Obeid al-Ezzi said the next court hearing is May 15. -AP

friDAY, MAY 11, 2012

Syrian capital rocked by blasts, TV blames ‘terrorists’ US allocates $40M for victims of Syrian crisis

CAPITALS: Two powerful blasts in quick succession rocked the Syrian capital at morning rush hour Thursday, killing and wounding dozens of people, state television said, blaming the attacks on “terrorists.”

“Two explosions caused by terrorists took place on the freeway in the south of Damascus,” the television said, adding that the blasts occurred “as people were heading to work and children to school.” Residents said the explosions rattled windows and sent plumes of smoke billowing into the sky.

Television footage at the site of the blasts, which took place on a freeway in the south of the capital, showed an apocalyptic scene with charred bodies and the carcasses of vehicles with smoke still rising from them.

The report did not give a breakdown on the number of people killed and those wounded, but said most of the casualties were civilians.

An AFP photographer at the site said a number of civilian cars were destroyed and buildings damaged. A crater three meters wide was caused by one of the explosions.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group, said the explosions occurred at an intelligence services base in Damascus. It said at least one of the blasts was caused by a car bomb.

Damascus has been the target of a number of bombs in past months as President Bashar Al-Assad faces a revolt against his regime which his forces are attempting to crush.

The blasts came a day after a bomb attack

on a UN observer convoy in the southern city of Daraa, which injured six Syrian troops escorting the vehicles.

Responding to the Daraa attack, UN leader Ban Ki-moon warned Syria’s government and opposition there is only a “brief window” to avoid civil war and indicated the future of the ceasefire monitoring mission was in doubt.

Highlighting an “alarming upsurge” of

roadside bombs, alongside government attacks, Ban said both sides “must realize that we have a brief window to stop the violence, a brief opportunity to create an opening for political engagement between the government and those seeking change.”

The Observatory says that almost 12,000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in Syria since the revolt, inspired by Arab Spring

Ethiopian troops battle Somali rebels blocking supplies MOGADISHU: Ethiopian troops and Somali government forces killed 17 al Shabaab rebels on Thursday after the Islamist militants blocked a road in southern Somalia and stole goods, a regional official said. Mohamed Abdi Mayow, the governor of Bakool region, said the al Qaedalinked militants had been blocking trucks carrying supplies to Hudur for seven weeks and had unloaded goods from at least five lorries.

“They blocked all supplies and unloaded goods. This led to the fierce fighting and we swept al Shabaab from the area, Mayow told Reuters by telephone from Hudur.

S.Sudan ready to resume talks with Sudan ‘any time’ JUBA: South Sudan said on Thursday it was ready to reopen negotiations immediately with its northern neighbor Sudan to try to resolve oil, security and frontier disputes that ignited border fighting last month. Minister of Cabinet Affairs Deng Alor told reporters that his country, which became independent from Sudan last year, was committed to complying with a U.N. Security Council resolution last week that called on both countries to negotiate their differences peacefully or face sanctions.

“We are ready to go for negotiations any time ... I expect negotiations to resume any time from now,” Alor told a news conference in the South Sudanese capital Juba.

The May 2 Security Council resolution endorsed an African Union plan demanding that Khartoum and Juba cease hostilities, withdraw troops from disputed areas and resume talks within two weeks on all outstanding disputes.

It gave them three months to resolve the issues under threat of sanctions. South Sudan on Wednesday accused Sudan’s armed forces of carrying out fresh bombing raids on border areas. Khartoum routinely denies such accusations. But Alor said the new attacks alleged by his government did not affect its commitment to resume talks with Sudan on the thorny issues of oil exports, security, border demarcation and citizenship that have remained unresolved since South Sudan became the world’s newest independent nation last year.

“We are ready to go the extra mile to negotiations,” he said. “Nobody is interested in war, we don’t want it, the international community doesn’t want it and the region doesn’t want it.”

Alor said South Sudan was waiting for former South African President Thabo Mbeki, the head of a high-level AU panel tasked with resolving the disputes between north and south, to formally call the two sides to resume negotiations on a specific date.

The north has said it accepts the Security Council resolution, but insists talks focus first on “security issues”. “In the coming negotiations, if we don’t solve the security problems ... there will be no talk over any other clause - not oil, not trade, not citizenship, not Abyei, or any other file,” Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir Bashir told a group of oil and mining workers on Thursday.

Specifically, Khartoum accuses South Sudan’s ruling party, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, of backing its civil war ally, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North, which is fighting Sudanese government forces in Sudan’s South Kordofan and Blue Nile states.

Alor denied that South Sudan was giving any support to the SPLM-N. “We are definitely friends (with the SPLM-N), but that does not mean that we will support them militarily,” he

In this photo released by the Syrian official news agency SANA, a Syrian fire fighter extinguishes burning cars after two bombs exploded, at Qazaz neighborhood in Damascus, Syria, on Thursday May 10, 2012. Two strong explosions ripped through the Syrian capital Thursday, killing or wounding dozens of people and leaving scenes of carnage in the streets in an assault against a center of government power. (AP)

uprisings, broke out in March last year.

About 800 of them have died since a UNbacked truce was supposed to have taken effect on April 12. Damascus was hit by two blasts on May 6, with three soldiers wounded in one of the attacks. Television footage showed a mangled car destroyed by one of the explosions.

A deadly suicide bombing at Zein al-Abidin mosque in the capital’s central Midan district on April 27 killed 11 people and wounded dozens, according to state media.

An Islamist group calling itself Al-Nusra Front had earlier claimed responsibility for a deadly suicide bombing on April 20 near the Syrian city of Hama that targeted a restaurant used by the security forces.

The Syrian authorities regularly blame the blasts on “terrorist groups” they say are behind the violence that has swept the country for the past 14 months. The opposition accuses regime forces of being behind the bombings in an attempt to discredit protesters demanding the ouster of Assad.

A US State Department official responsible for refugees says Washington has allocated 40 million US dollars to assist relief organizations aiding victims of the Syrian crisis.

Anne Richard, Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees, and Migration, says the money will be funneled through international and local agencies inside Syria and in surrounding countries, including Jordan.

She says Palestinians and Iraqis in Syria will also benefit. Richard told reporters on Thursday in Amman that she discussed contingency plans with Jordanian officials. She declined to provide details.

She also said that Washington was easing a backlog on Iraqi refugees seeking asylum in the US She says 70,000 Iraqis were admitted in the past five years. -Agencies

FILE- Deng Alor Kuol, the South Sudanese Minister of Foreign Affairs, speaks to the media following the passing of a United Nations Security Council resolution regarding ongoing hostilities between Sudan and South Sudan at UN headquarters in New York, May 2, 2012. (Reuters)

said. The AU road map for talks made resolving the dispute over oil a priority, Alor said. - Reuters “It’s a priority for everybody, for us, the Government of Sudan, for investors and for the AU,” he said. “We are committed to negotiations and discussing everything.”

Sudan, which was Africa’s largest country before South Sudan broke off last year, lost three quarters of the oil output previously produced by unified Sudan. Khartoum and Juba have quarreled over oil transit fees for carrying South Sudanese crude through Sudan’s pipelines and Red Sea port.

In January, the dispute led to South Sudan shutting down oil production, and the reduced output and depleted revenue have put severe strain on both countries’ fragile economies.

In the absence of an agreement, and if Sudan continued to refuse to allow South Sudan to use its pipelines for crude exports, then Juba would go ahead with its plan for an alternative pipeline through another country, Alor said.

He repeated South Sudan’s claim that it occupied the disputed Heglig border oil zone in last month’s fighting - an action condemned by the international community - “because it was being used as a staging ground by the government of Sudan to attack us”.

“We acted in self-defense,” he said. The minister said the outstanding security problems in disputed border areas like Abyei and in South Kordofan and Blue Nile states stemmed from lack of full implementation by Khartoum of a 2005 peace deal that ended more than two decades of civil war and paved the way for the South’s independence. -Reuters

Ethiopian forces pushed into southern Somalia in November to open up a third front against the militants, who are also fighting Ugandan and Burundian troops around Mogadishu and Kenya’s military along its southern border.

While they have squeezed al Shabaab out of some areas, the militants hold large chunks of central and southern Somalia and pose the biggest threat to efforts to stabilize the country after two decades of civil conflict.

Al Shabaab routinely extorts taxes and loots food to sustain its five-year insurgency against the Western-backed government.

Al Shabaab withdrew from Hudur under Ethiopian military pressure in March, calling their exit a tactical retreat.

The rebels said they had been engaged in a gun battle outside Hudur, less than 100 km (60 miles) from the Ethiopian border, but denied any of their combatants had been captured alive.

“They ran from seven (of their own) dead bodies as we fought them back. No single al Shabaab was caught,” Sheikh Abdiasis Abu Musab, the spokesman for al Shabaab’s military operation said. It is difficult to verify independently the accounts and both sides at times exaggerate

successes and underplay losses.

In a separate incident, unidentified gunmen killed a local aid worker employed by Islamic Relief in the city of Baidoa, Bakool’s regional capital. “The two men shot him in the head and chest after evening prayer. He died in hospital hours later,” said Hussein Ali, a doctor working for Islamic Relief in Mogadishu.

It was not clear who was behind the attack.

Somalia is one of the most dangerous countries in the world for aid workers to operate in, with abductions and killings increasingly common.

-Reuters

Turkey’s PM, generals unite in anger at writer’s Aesop fable ISTANBUL: A journalist’s fable portraying the Turkish military as a spoilt, overfed dog has provoked a rare show of unity by top generals and the Prime Minister seen by many as their nemesis. “This is an individual whose pen always drips with filth,” Erdogan said of columnist Bekir Coskun, whose account of a privileged military that puts comfort and security before freedom drew on a fable from ancient Greek writer Aesop. Erdogan has radically cut back the power of a military that toppled four governments in the last five decades. Hundreds of serving and retired officers face accusations of coup plots in trials unthinkable only a few years ago for a long-privileged army that kept politicians on a short leash.Writing in the secularist Cumhuriyet newspaper at the end of April, Coskun retold the ancient Greek story with a twist by naming the tame dog “Pasha”, the honorary Ottoman title given to generals and to secular state founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. “I think the Pashas should now seek legal redress over this matter,” said Erdogan, who himself once sued a cartoonist who had depicted him as a cat.

Some 100 journalists are currently in jail in Turkey, attracting international criticism of the European Union candidate’s record on freedom of expression. The government says few of them are in jail due to what they have written.

The army has also issued a statement attacking writers who undermine or provoke the army,

saying they abused freedom of expression.

“Some writers...cheaply poured scorn on a military title carried by soldiers including our Eternal Chief Commander Gazi Mustafa Kemal Ataturk,” the general staff statement said.

Army statements once carried enormous weight. Declarations could shape government policy or even undermine prime ministers, but the military have now become less inclined to react publicly to criticism or, of late, the prosecution of those in its ranks. An avowed admirer of Ataturk, Coskun’s allegorical tale appeared to be passing comment on the current crop of generals who have been brought to heel by Erdogan.

The piece was published at a particularly sensitive time. Last month, police began arresting officers allegedly responsible for pressuring Turkey’s first Islamist prime minister, Necmettin Erbakan, to resign in 1997. Erdogan was a member of Erbakan’s party. Hundreds of military officers, including former chief of staff General Ilker Basbug, are already on trial over their alleged role in conspiracies against Erdogan, whose AKP first swept to power in 2002.

Relations between Erdogan and the military have been fraught. After the AKP won a third consecutive election last year, four top commanders quit in protest over the conduct of investigations into their comrades.

Their resignations cleared the way for Erdogan to appoint General Necdet Ozel as armed

forces chief. Since his appointment there appears to have been less friction despite state prosecutors ramping up their pursuit of suspected coupmakers.

Coskun appeared to allude to this transformation in the relationship in his reworking of Aesop’s tale about a hungry wolf who admires a well-fed, groomed dog, Pasha, sitting in his hut.

The dog invites the wolf to join him in his comfortable life. But when he learns of the collar the dog must wear, the wolf leaves, saying the loss of freedom is too high a price to pay for a life of comfort.Coskun defended his piece in an interview with broadcaster CNN Turk on Wednesday night.

“The article had some benefits in that it made the prime minister appear like a Kemalist...and I reconciled the Turkish Armed Forces and the government,” Coskun said.

“Me and my family are under threat at the moment. How can a prime minister make a writer a target?” he said.Media representatives criticised the responses by the army and Erdogan to the column, with the Contemporary Journalists Association (CGD) calling on the army to respect press freedom. “Journalists, writers and the press generally in our country already live under conditions of government pressure and severe self-censorship. General Staff intervention shouldn’t be added to that,” said CGD chairman Ahmet Abakay. -Reuters

Skepticism main challenger in Algerian election

ALGIERS: Skeptical Algerians abstained in large numbers from a parliamentary election on Thursday which the country’s ruling elite hoped would help them claw back credibility after Arab Spring revolts left them looking out of touch.

Last year’s upheavals in the region, though they largely passed Algeria by, have created pressure for reform and a renewal of the ageing establishment that has ruled without interruption since independence from France half a century ago.

The authorities in Algeria have responded by promising an “Algerian Spring” - a managed process of reform they offer as a counterpoint to the upheavals elsewhere.

But many Algerians see elections as futile because real power, they say, lies with an informal network which is commonly known by the French term “le pouvoir”, or “the power”, and has its roots in the security forces. Officials say the country is ruled by democratically elected officials.

Reuters reporters in Algiers, in fishing villages on the Mediterranean Sea to the west, and in the Kabylie mountains to the east, said only a trickle of people were going into polling stations, though numbers were expected to pick up later.

The election is likely to give the biggest share of seats in parliament for the first time in Algeria’s history to moderate Islamists, mirroring the trend in countries such as Egypt and Tunisia.

Many Algerians, however, believe the vote will change little because parliament has only limited powers and even the opposition parties have ties to the establishment.

Holding a plastic cup of coffee at a pavement cafe in the town of Zeralda, west of the capital, a man in his thirties said he had no plans to get up and go to a polling station. “What’s the use? Parliament has no power,” Karim Chiba said.

In Tizi-Ouzou, a town about 100 km

east of Algiers, polling stations were almost empty on Thursday morning.

Asked about the election, Salim, a 28year-old who runs a newsstand in Tizi-Ouzou, joked: “What are you talking about?

Vote? What vote?”

Thursday was declared a public holiday to encourage voting. Interior Minister Daho Ould Kablia said on state television that nationwide turnout at midday was 15.5 percent. “People are happy,” he said. “We hope it will be a celebration.”

A turnout of about 35 percent, the record low figure at the last parliamentary vote in 2007, would be embarrassing for the authorities.

They had hoped a big turnout would give them fresh legitimacy in a year when Algeria marks the 50th anniversary of independence. That will be an occasion for lavish celebrations but also for soul-searching on whether the country is on the right path.

-Reuters

ALWATAN DAILY

WORLD

fridAY, may 11, 2012

Bodies found at Russian jet wreckage in Indonesia CIDAHU: Rescuers discovered bodies Thursday near the shattered wreckage of a new Russian-made passenger plane that smashed into the side of an Indonesian volcano during a flight to impress potential buyers. All 45 people on board were feared dead.

Due to the remoteness of the crash site and the steep, rugged terrain, the bodies will be placed in nets and lifted by ropes to a hovering chopper, national search and rescue agency spokesman Gagah Prakoso said. Heavy mist was hampering visibility, however, forcing the postponement of evacuations until Friday.

“So far we haven’t found any survivors, but we are still searching,” he said as teams of soldiers, police and volunteers continued to troop up the slopes.

The Sukhoi Superjet-100 - Russia’s first new model of passenger jet since the fall of the Soviet Union two decades ago - was in Indonesia as part of a six-nation tour of Asia aimed at drumming up new customers.

It was carrying dozens of representatives from local airlines and journalists on what was supposed to be a quick, 50-minute demonstration flight Wednesday. Some excited passengers snapped pictures of themselves smiling and waving in front of the twin-engine jet before lifting off, then quickly posting them as profile pictures on Facebook and Twitter.

Just 21 minutes after takeoff from a Jakarta airfield, however, the Russian pilot and co-pilot asked for permission to drop from 10,000 feet to 6,000 feet (3,000 meters to 1,800 meters),

Indonesian Soldiers look a map try to find the location of plane crash at Taman Nasional Halimun Salak in Sukabumi, West Java, May 10. (AP)

said Daryatmo, chief of the national search and rescue agency.

They gave no explanation, disappearing from the radar immediately afterward.

It was not clear why the crew asked to shift course, he said, especially when they were so

British police join anti-austerity protest

Thousands of off-duty police officers gather in central London to march through the streets in a protest against cuts in the police service, May 10. (AP)

LONDON: Thousands of British police officers planned to join striking border officials and healthcare workers on Thursday in a protest against wage caps, pension reforms and other austerity measures. Unions predicted some 400,000 public sector workers would walk out, a smaller protest than in November when Britain saw the biggest strike in years, but a significant show of public discontent just after Prime Minister David Cameron’s government took a drubbing at local elections.

The rare sight of some 20,000 off-duty police officers marching through London will be particularly embarrassing for Cameron, whose centre-right Conservatives pride themselves on being the party of law and order. “Prime Minister, actions speak louder than words,” the Police Federation union said in full-page adverts published in several national newspapers on Thursday. “Police officers feel strongly that the government cutting the police budget by 20 percent, privatizing core policing roles and pushing ahead with its ill-considered police reforms could jeopardize public safety,” the union said.

The Conservatives and their junior Liberal Democrat partners have vowed to press ahead with unpopular austerity plans despite both parties suffering badly in local council elections last week amid discontent that the country had fallen back into recession after two years of deep spending cuts.

Public hostility to austerity has hit governments across the European Union, with French President Nicolas Sarkozy ousted by Socialist Francois Hollande who promised a gentler approach on debt reduction, and Greece in political crisis after voters deserted the main parties. “(Finance minister) George Osborne’s austerity plans are beginning to sicken everyone,” said Gail Cartmail, assistant general secretary of Britain’s largest union, Unite. Nick Herbert, the minister in charge of policing, defended the government’s actions.

“It’s very important that tough decisions are taken to deal with the deficit and the police service, police officers, I’m afraid, can’t be exempted from that. I really don’t think that would be fair,” Herbert told Sky News.

Police officers have been legally barred from taking industrial action since the 1990s. The Police Federation, which represents 135,000 low ranking officers in England and Wales, said Thursday’s action could be larger than the biggest police protest staged in Britain, in 2008, over a pay row with the then Labor government. “We’re at the lowest ebb I can ever remember,” Paul McKeever, the federation’s chairman, told Reuters.

Cuts to police budgets and a government-commissioned report that recommended allowing officers to be sacked, pay cuts for some and raising the pension age, have all caused disquiet. -Reuters

Bomb targets police in Pakistan trouble spot

ISLAMABAD: A bomb ripped through a Pakistani police patrol on Thursday, killing one policeman and wounding three others in the increasingly troubled southwestern city of Quetta, police said.

The device was detonated remotely when a police vehicle on a routine patrol passed along a road on the outskirts of Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan province, which suffers from Taliban, sectarian and separatist violence. It was the second fatal attack on police in the city in two days. “The bomb blast wounded four policemen and one of them died in hospital,” senior police official Sikandar Tareen told AFP. “It is not immediately clear who targeted the police,” he said. Another police official confirmed the attack and casualties.

There was no immediate claim of respon-

sibility. Police are frequently attacked in Baluchistan. On Tuesday, senior police official Shah Nawaz Khan was assassinated in Quetta in a drive-by shooting claimed by Al-Qaeda-linked militant group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LJ).

LJ has orchestrated violent attacks on Muslim minority Shiites and other police officials in Baluchistan say they have been threatened by the group. On April 29, British aid worker Khalil Dale was found beheaded in Quetta, nearly four months after he was kidnapped in the city. There has been no claim of responsibility for his murder.

Hundreds of people have been killed since separatist Baluch rebels rose up in 2004, demanding political autonomy and a greater share of profits from oil, gas and mineral resources in the region. -AFP

close to the 7,000-foot (2,200-meter) volcano, or if they got an OK. Communication tapes will be reviewed as part of the investigation. It’s unlikely they will be released to the public any time soon.

Prakoso said the plane smashed into the

jagged ridge on top of Mount Salak, a long-dormant volcano at speeds of 480 miles per hour (800 kilometers per hour).

It exploded and sent debris tumbling down the side of the mountain, leaving a giant earthy gash along the slope as trees in its path were stripped bare.

Family members, many of whom spent a long, sleepless night at the airport, broke down in tears on hearing news that the wreckage had been spotted, first by helicopter, then by land search-and-rescue teams.

Others stared blankly ahead in disbelief.

The Superjet - developed by the civil aircraft division of Sukhoi with the co-operation of Western partners - has been widely considered Russia’s chance to regain a foothold in the international passenger plane market. The country’s aerospace industry was badly undermined in the economic turmoil following the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. The 75-to95-seater plane has been touted as a challenger to similar-sized aircrafts from Canada’s Bombardier Inc. and Brazil’s Embraer SA. Potential buyers will scrutinize the crash investigation for signs of flaws in the aircraft.

“If it’s a technical fault ... then obviously that will be very serious for them,” said Tom Ballantyne, a Sydney-based aviation expert.

“But if it’s pilot error or the fault of air traffic control, it won’t be quite so bad because they’ll be able to say, ‘Well, it’s not the airplane’.”

The Superjet made its inaugural commercial flight last year. -AP

US plans 10-month warship deployment to Singapore WASHINGTON: The first of a new class of US coastal warships will be sent to Singapore next spring for a roughly 10-month deployment, the Navy said on Wednesday, spotlighting a move that may stir China’s fears of US involvement in South China Sea disputes.

Deployment of the shallow-draft ship “Freedom” will help refine crew rotations, logistics and maintenance processes to maximize the class’s value to US combat commanders, Rear Admiral Thomas Rowden, the Navy’s director of surface warfare, told reporters.

“We’ll be deploying the ship for about 10 months in the spring of next year” to Singapore, he said in a teleconference. “In the meantime, we’re prepping her for success in the execution of that deployment.”

Singapore is strategically located along the Strait of Malacca, the chief link between the Indian and Pacific Oceans through which flows about 40 percent of world trade.

The government has discussed hosting up to four such US “Littoral Combat Ships,” or LCS, on a rotational basis at its naval facilities. Both countries have said the deployment stops short of a basing agreement.

It signals Washington’s “commitment to the region and enhances its ability to train and engage with regional partners,” US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and his Singapore counterpart, Ng Eng Hen, said in a joint statement last month after meeting at the Pentagon.

President Barack Obama last year ordered stepped-up emphasis on the Asia-Pacific region in a “rebalancing” of US national security planning after a decade of land wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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NEWS IN BRIEF Zimbabwe critical of South Africa ruling on abuse HARARE: Zimbabwe’s justice minister has denounced a South African court ruling that would allow prosecutions related to alleged torture under President Robert Mugabe. “The ruling brings the South African justice system into disrepute. No specifics have been identified, because they should have laid a blow by blow account of what crime has been committed,” Patrick Chinamasa told state media on Wednesday. The Tuesday ruling could affect Zimbabwean refugees, many of whom have fled to neighboring South Africa, and government officials, who also sometimes come on business or personal trips. -AFP

Red Cross stops work in Pakistani cities ISLAMABAD: The Red Cross says it has suspended operations in two of Pakistan’s largest cities following the killing of a British nurse working for the group in the country. The body of Khalil Rasjed Dale, 60, was dumped close to the southwestern city of Quetta on April 29. He was kidnapped in the city in January. In a statement Thursday, the International Committee of the Red Cross said it was suspending humanitarian activities in the northwestern city of Peshawar and port city of Karachi. The organization has already stopped work in Quetta and surrounding Baluchistan province. -AP

China warns citizens as row with Philippines escalates

Included in the so-called pivot to the Pacific would be the LCS stationing in Singapore, a rotational US Marine Corps presence in northern Australia and new areas for military cooperation with the Philippines.

China has territorial disputes with the Philippines, Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia and Taiwan across the South China Sea, each searching for gas and oil while building their navies and in some cases, their military alliances.

China’s military warned the United States last month that US-Philippine military exercises had raised the risk of armed clashes over contested waters amid a standoff between Philippine and Chinese vessels in a different part of the South China Sea. Littoral combat ships are an entirely new breed of warship. Capable of speeds greater than 40 knots, they are designed for modular, “plug-and-fight” missions for mine-clearing, anti-submarine and anti-surface warfare.

Manned by as few as 40 core crew members, the Freedom will require a relatively small footprint in Singapore for maintenance, Rear Admiral Jim Murdoch, the program executive officer, said in the teleconference.

“A much smaller” US group than 40 would be permanently deployed to the city-state, including US naval and contractor personnel, he said. In addition, teams would have to come in and out when the ship is docked in Singapore for routine scheduled maintenance. Talks on details of arrangements between the Pearl Harbor, Hawaii-headquartered US Pacific Fleet and the Singaporean authorities were continuing, Murdoch said. -Reuters

BEIJING: China told its citizens Thursday they were not safe in the Philippines and its state media warned of war, as a monthlong row over rival claims in the South China Sea threatened to spill out of control. Chinese travel agencies announced they had suspended tours to the Philippines, under government orders, and the embassy in Manila advised its nationals already in the country to stay indoors ahead of planned protests. “Avoid going out at all if possible, and if not, to avoid going out alone. If you come across any demonstrations, leave the area, do not stay to watch,” the embassy’s advisory said. -AFP

PM’s former aide takes stand at UK ethics inquiry LONDON: Britain’s phone hacking scandal came knocking on the door of Downing Street Thursday, as Prime Minister David Cameron’s former communications chief faced a grilling by a media ethics inquiry about his time as editor of a tabloid newspaper that practiced large-scale illegal eavesdropping. Andy Coulson has always insisted he did not know that News of the World employees were hacking the voice mail messages of celebrities, politicians and even crime victims in its quest for scoops and circulation. He left the paper in 2007 after a reporter and a private investigator were jailed for hacking, and became Cameron’s powerful media chief later the same year. He quit that job in January 2011 as the hacking scandal intensified. -AP

Peru president leaves Japan with $250 million loans TOKYO: Peruvian President Ollanta Humala wrapped up a three-day visit to Japan Thursday, having secured up to 250 million US dollars worth of loans for infrastructure projects.

The cash will be used on projects including better water and sewage systems in Lima and boosting energy-saving measures in public transport, the two sides said in a joint statement.

Peru supplies raw materials including copper, zinc and silver to resource-strapped Japan, which is one of the South American nation’s largest trading partners.

Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda said Wednesday Tokyo would provide up to 20 billion yen in loans.

Humala said Peru wants to increase cooperation with Japan “in the areas of renewable energy, eco-efficiency and clean technologies, for the purpose of progressively reducing his country’s dependence on fossil fuels,” Kyodo reported.

A free trade agreement that took effect in March will, over the next decade, see tariffs scrapped on goods that represent more than 99 percent of the value of trade between the two countries.

Peru is also one of a number of countries involved in talks to form a huge Pacific-wide free trade area. -AFP

Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda (left) meets with Peruvian President Ollanta Humala on the latter’s visit to Tokyo, Japan, May 9. (AFP)

Putin to skip G8 summit in US next week MOSCOW: Russia’s President Vladimir Putin will skip the G8 summit and ice breaker talks with President Barack Obama next week, the White House said, raising new questions about MoscowWashington ties.

Putin had been expected at the summit at Camp David and to hold talks with the US leader in a first test of whether the “reset” policy between the Kremlin and the White House will survive his return to the presidency.

Officials said here after a call between the two leaders, that Putin would send ex-president, and current Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, with whom Obama had a close relationship over the last three years, to the United States.

“Noting his responsibilities to finalize cabinet appointments in the new Russian government, President Putin expressed his regret that he would be unable to attend the G8 Summit,” the statement said.

The summit at Obama’s Camp David retreat on May 18-19 will also mark the international

coming out party of new French president Francois Hollande, Putin’s move raised suspicions that there was already tension between the White House and Putin’s Kremlin, following an election campaign that saw the Russian leader fling angry rhetoric towards Washington.

But US officials noted that Obama’s National Security Advisor Tom Donilon spent two days in Moscow earlier this month where he met Putin and did not appear to believe there were sinister motives behind his decision to stay at home.

They said the US and Russian leaders will use the G20 summit in Mexico in June to get together instead, and the statement stressed the two sides wanted to work on common interests, despite differences in some areas.

It said that the two leaders welcomed the “reset” of relations and noted “substantial progress” during the last three years on issues like nuclear security, nuclear non-proliferation, Afghanistan, trade and commercial ties.

The Kremlin earlier reported Obama’s call with Putin but did not mention the Russian leader’s noshow at Camp David.

Putin’s non-arrival will dampen hopes for any progress on ending the violence in Syria, an ally of Russia, which has blocked the most punitive attempts to sanction President Bashar Al-Assad’s at the UN. Washington and Moscow have also been increasingly at odds over the issue of a US missile shield in Europe, which the US side says is not threat to Russia but the Kremlin says erodes its military deterrent.

In tough rhetoric last week, Russia warned that the dispute was near a “dead end” and warned it might have to deploy new rockets in Europe to take out elements of the controversial shield.

Obama signaled to Medvedev, in an infamous open-mic incident in what was supposed to be their last meeting in Seoul in March, that he could be more flexible on missile defense if he wins reelection in November. -AFP

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ALWATAN DAILY

OPINION

FRIDAY, MAY 11, 2012

The futile efforts of peacekeeping forces Abdullah Khalaf

T

he explosive scenes of artillery shelling and the subsequent gory massacres of innocent men, women and children on an almost daily basis in Syria are indeed not only heartrending and gut-wrenching. The facades of building riddled with holes caused by gunfire, litter-strewn streets empty streets resembling ghost towns that we once bustling with life; gives one an eerie feeling that the situation might never ever return to normal. It is also pathetic that despite exemplary efforts being exerted by international peacekeeping forces, their efforts are rendered futile by the stubborn attitude maintained by the Syrian leader Bashar Al-Assad.

In a recent announcement, the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Jakob Kellenberger resigned himself to the underlying fact that peacekeeping efforts have failed miserably and blamed its failure on the stubborn insistence of the Syrian leader for refusing to stop the bloodshed of innocent men, women and children who are unsuspecting victims of their leader’s unwarranted quest for power and authority.

In fact, violence has been so intense in some parts of Syria that at times the uprising against President Bashar Al-Assad has qualified as a localized civil war, Jakob Kellenberger said on Tuesday adding; “earlier this year, Homs and the northwestern province of Idlib more recently, have met the humanitarian agency’s three criteria for defining a non-international armed conflict - intensity, duration and the level of organization of rebels fighting government forces.” In March, Kellenberger had disclosed that he had held discussions with the Syrian president who had affirmed that the regime had indeed withdrawn all troops from residential areas but refused to admit that the massacres had yet to cease.

It is indeed ironical for Russia to offer such a suggestion bearing in mind the fact that the Syrian regime has always resorted to force and violence right from the onset of the crisis.

On the other hand, the Norwegian head of the international peacekeeping forces affirmed that he had tried to endorse clauses contained in the peace plan but failed to contain the ever-increasing violence and bloodshed that only seems to be increasing by the minute. He however rued the fact that peacekeeping forces cannot be considered to be on par with armed forces and hence they are in dire need of physical help and support to implement and execute their missions.

The number of international peacekeeping forces which currently stand at about 300, are faced with several obstacles in maintaining peace and order simply because they are definitely no match against the barbaric tactics that are being used against them by the Syrian forces. He also said that several other conflicts across the world have been resolved with a far lesser number of peacekeeping forces, but the situation in Syria is so dangerously volatile that the forces are simply not only outnumbered but are being compelled into submission.

Other peacekeeping monitors had earlier headed to Syria to execute the Annan Peace Plan that concentrates on withdrawing the Syrian armed forces from residential areas; but this mission has yet to be executed due to lack of adequate support. Neeraj Singh, spokesman for the UN monitoring team in Syria declared that the number of UN observers in Syria reached 70 and it would be notably increased during the upcoming days. He however refrained from affirming the exact date or timing of the increase prob-

ably due to the sensitivity of the issue.

Singh added in press statements that nine observers are now in Homs, four in each of Daraa, Hama and Idlib governorates, asserting that the observers pay field visits to scores of towns, quarters, and villages in Syria interacting and communicating with the population as to form a real picture about the ongoing situation on the ground before sending their daily reports which give actual and real descriptions of the reality on the ground. He also expressed his regret over the ongoing violence, adding that the Russian stance actually encourages the Syrian regime to blatantly resort to the military option.

The Middle East Newspaper, on the other hand, published a report on April 30, 2012 stating that the regime had started detaining scores of intellectuals in various fields including the enigmatic theater critic Emad Houriya and Dr. Jalal Noufal. Likewise, the regime has also detained several other artists and executives and threatened of dire consequences if they refuse to express their support and solidarity with the regime. The Syrian Center for Legal Studies and Researches has condemned their detentions and called for the immediate and unconditional release of the detainees.

In fact the security apparatuses have also detained a number of doctors, medical assistants as well as eminent lawyers like Yara Meshal Shammas.

The Doctors Without Borders organization (Medecins Sans Frontieres) which is an international medical humanitarian organization working in nearly 70 countries to assist

people whose survival is threatened by violence, neglect or catastrophe; expressed its deep regret over the fate of all those activists as well as over the random conviction of civilians and activists; particularly after the detention of the Head of the Syrian Information Center Mazen Darweesh.

Without mincing any words, the organization sternly rebuked the Syrian regime and demanded the immediate release of all detainees.

Much to the consternation of peoples and leaders of countries across the world, Russia actually encourages the regime to deal with the crisis through weapons and force in the event that the situation gets out of hand. It is indeed ironical for Russia to offer such a suggestion bearing in mind the fact that the Syrian regime has always resorted to force and violence from the onset of the crisis. The French minister of Foreign Affairs, on the other hand, has warned Syria of dire consequences if it does not end the violence immediately and also threatened to invoke Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter. He also set aside a May 5, 212 deadline to execute the Annan Peace Plan.

There can also be no doubt in one’s mind that some Arab states might take the initiative of interfering in the peace plan through providing certain Syrian factions with arms and ammunitions as was witnessed recently when a cache of weapons were seized while being smuggled into Syria via Lebanon. However, some sources accused the Lebanese Future Movement of attempting to smuggle those weapons while other sources have accused Israel of stoking the issue further. It is only too apparent, that the besieged people of Syria will only witness a further spate of violence in the event that international peacekeeping forces and other organizations fail in their attempts to stop the fighting and bring about an atmosphere of peace and tranquility. It is high time that peace prevails once again in that once beautiful, serene and peaceful country.

The conspicuous vacuum witnessed in leaderships -- Part I Dr. Shamlan Yousef Al-Issa

T

he renowned journalist and writer Thomas Friedman wrote an article that was published in the International Herald Tribune in its Monday May 7, 2012 edition in which he spoke about his travels to several Arab countries in the region and beyond. In that article he expressed his surprise and alarm over the fact that the Arab Spring that dawned on several countries in the region failed to herald the induction of effective and illustrious political leaderships in those countries. I am certain that he was referring to all those MPs who contested and won the elections that were held in some of those Arab countries. I am also certain that when Friedman spoke about those leaderships, he was actually referring to all those Arab men and women that contested the elections with absolutely legitimacy; coupled with a sense of commitment and the need to inform the their peoples the truth behind all their plans and actions for their respective countries and citizens in exemplary efforts to push their societies forward and turn the wheels of development onward. During a host of healthy conversations with Arab friends, Friedman was keen to explain the fact that his country namely; the United States and other countries across Europe are undoubtedly faced with the same problems. This surely implies that there exists a deep vacuum in the global leadership; but the situation in Arab world is far different simply because each and every country in the Arab world necessarily needs to make a transition from the likes of Saddam to the likes of Jefferson without being stuck in the middle with the likes of Khomeini. Why has the Arab Awakening produced a negligible number of new leaders? I say it is partially because of the feeble elections that were held in countries like Egypt and Yemen but failed to materialize in countries like Libya or even Syria. This explanation might seem a bit too technical; but then again, there are other deep and vital factors that can explain in microscopic detail what exactly is going on in those countries.

A key issue in such a situation lies in the fact that ordinary people are required to pluck the courage to face the community head on and tell the people how much precious time they have lost by suffering in silence under the reigns of despotic regimes. No one tell the people that they spent more than fifty years under despotic regimes. No one wants to suffer and bear the brunt of authoritarian regimes, but in Southeast Asia, governments of countries like South Korea and Taiwan have used their influence, power and authority to build economically powerful countries through progressive educational systems for their citizens - prompting both men and women to contribute positively and effectively to their respective economies.

In fact it is he burgeoning middle class in those countries that have contributed immensely in bringing about change and prosperity.

This was only possible after those countries went through a transition from despotic regimes to democratic regimes. Despotic regimes in the Arab world have achieved nothing other than taking advantage of their influence to forge close relationships with the more affluent countries like Israel and Iran the same way that Gamal Abdulnasser forged a relationship with Israel. Now that despotic and dictatorial regimes have been deemed redundant, it is no secret that diehard Islamist groups and parties are desperately trying to fill the void. The question is: “Who can we expect to educate the people that although Islam is a great religion, it is not “the answer” to raise awareness for the development of any Arab or any other nations? Education here is the most appropriate answer to that question. Iran could manage to harness development in the land of Khomeini simply because it is in possession of huge reserves of oil and hence; can also afford to continue with its policies of contradictions and confrontations. Egypt and Tunisia, on the other hand, possess negligible oil reserves and hence; have to resort to taking loans from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to fund its development programs.And in order to obtain the required loans, new Islamic leaders of these countries will need to lessen their subsidies and increase taxes. However the reality of these movements is that they are used to taking and not returning what they have taken. Can these governments bring themselves to face the new reality and most importantly; who will tell the people this underlying fact?

To be continued...........

Our economy is fine

Ali Farzat

Syrian Businessmen

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2

The anticipated demise of Wilayat Al-Faqih Abdullah Al-Hadlaq

T

he conspicuous and mysterious disappearance of Iran’s Supreme Leader Khamenei from the political and religious scene amid the current circumstances, either due to failing health, untimely death or even surrendering his authoritative power dubbed as the “Wilayat Al-Faqih” can surely be deemed as a catastrophic disaster and a major dilemma for the Iranian regime in Tehran. I choose to say this simply because Khamenei is irreplaceable and secondly because most of the Marjei (religious references) have since long; abandoned the principle of the Wilayat Al-Faqih.

It is also ironical indeed that members of the staunchly religious Marjei unanimously agreed that the best man to shoulder such a responsibility and rightly deserves to be crowned as its head happens to be the bitterest enemy of the Wilayat Al-Faqij and more importantly, one who does not even recognize its legality or existence. That man happens to be none other than the one and only -- Mesbah Yazdi. It is also common knowledge that members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard swear their allegiance to Khamenei, and not to any of the other pillars of that system. This is purely evident in the fact that Khamenei is not only revered among members of the Wilayat Al-Faqih but is crowned with the supreme title of “Vice-Mahdi” and “Supreme Leader.”

Members of the Revolutionary Guard do not and have never ever believed in the power and authority of any other factions or their leaders. In fact the situation is so volatile that the entire region will be immersed in turmoil in the event that Khamenei abdicates or is forcibly usurped from power. Chaos and commotion will rule the roost rendering the Iranian regime to suffer from a lack of vision, be

faced with a constitutional, political and religious vacuum; prompted by the presence of a host of other religious references that are a direct threat to the very existence of Khamenei; since they consider themselves to be more influential and knowledgeable than Khamenei.

These other religious references have always left no stone unturned in criticizing and ridiculing not only the current system of governance but the Supreme Leader Khamenei and the powerful authority of the Wilayat AlFaqih as well.

They also nurse the strong belief that Ahmadinejad won the elections through fraudulent means after the polls were rigged to be in his favor and hence; lost the favor and confidence of the general electorate. And in the unlikely event that the Iranian regime fails to regain the confidence of its people or in the event that the people themselves demand a change in regime, it will surely accord a host of opportunities to other open minded political entities to take center stage and take the reins of the government into their hands.

The Iranian regime should necessarily maintain warm and friendly ties with all its neighbors and commit itself to solving any and all differences with its neighbors through peaceful means. Most importantly, it should also exert exemplary efforts and work diligently towards cooperating with its neighbors to maintain and ensure security and stability in the Arabian Gulf instead of threatening those very countries in the region. Last but not least, it should cease lending financial and material support to terrorist organizations such as the Hezbollah and Hamas, as well as to authoritarian regimes like the bloody regime of Bashar Al-Assad.

The hostile government led by Ahmadinejad, which has always raised provocative slogans about its nuclear

ambitions and blatantly voiced its hostility openly against the West (especially the United States) suddenly cowed down to demands set by the West as was witnessed in the recent negotiations with Istanbul. In fact, it actually agreed to all the unconditional terms and conditions that were laid down at the negotiating table. And when questioned about its views on international sanctions that were expected to be slapped on Iran, the government claimed that they were “blessings in disguise showered upon Iran by God Almighty” because through those blessings “Iran will attain self-sufficiency in each and every field.”

Latest reports now indicate that the government of Ahmadinejad recently submitted several requests to countries in the West to revoke all those sanctions that has literally battered its economy and crushed its currency to rock bottom. But an adamant United States of America with the help and support of other countries in Europe have affirmed their commitment to the cause and hence; will not lift those sanctions until such a time that Tehran shuts all its nuclear reactors down and dismantles all its sites.

Tehran now stands at the crossroads and is still wondering how to get out of a situation that it has put itself in.

However, there seems to be no immediate solution to that crisis in sight.

This is evidently a clear and direct response to a statement that was earlier issued by a senior US official who had disclosed that the United States and its allies would lose no precious time in compelling the Iranian regime to cease enriching uranium and subsequently shut its nuclear sites down in attempts to ensure that it does not go back on its promise. In fact, Washington has even gone a step further by trying to convince China to form a united front in the face of Tehran’s dangerous and ulterior motives.

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friDAY, may 11, 2012

7

Europe’s opportunity in Hollande Martin Schulz Project Syndicate

R

arely has an election resonated so widely across the European Union as the French presidential ballot has done. Rarely has a leadership change in one EU member state created expectations of a real policy shift. Remarkably, a new European demos and public sphere are emerging from the economic crisis. Europeans are recognizing how interdependent they are. One country’s failures can threaten the entire European economy, and can call into question the fruits of 60 years of integration.

Peace, solidarity, and prosperity are not irreversible achievements; only 27 countries working together can guarantee them. François Hollande’s victory is a fresh chance for Europe. It should spell the end of a policy oriented exclusively towards austerity, which has paralyzed our economies and divided the EU. The new French president’s commitment to a European growth policy has brought hope to citizens, and should not alarm anyone certainly not the financial markets.

Hollande’s plans for a growth initiative fall on fertile ground, especially in the European Parliament, which has repeatedly called for such measures. I am delighted that this message is increasingly echoed by the political mainstream, including most recently by European Central Bank President Mario Draghi. Likewise, the European Commission is working on a “growth pact” to be discussed by EU leaders in June. Indeed, Europe needs a master plan to avoid a tailspin of recession, growing unemployment, and weakening banking systems.

A new master plan for growth would not be about printing money. Fiscal discipline remains essential, as are deep structural reforms. The growth pact can be properly financed by new sources of revenue, such as a financial-transaction tax and joint project bonds for infrastructure investment, or by curbing tax evasion and tax fraud and eliminating tax havens, as well as by more efficient and intelligent use of structural funds.

What is to be done? First, targeted investment should be given priority. The European Invest-

We need an immediate contingency plan to finance job training, improve educational opportunities and, crucially, create incentives for employers to hire young people.

ment Bank would be a good vehicle - in addition to new project bonds - to boost spending on major infrastructure projects (for example, in the energy sector). The EIB could be given significantly more resources to boost its loan programs. In the longer-term, we should revisit the idea of joint Eurobonds.

Channeling EU structural funds towards innovation is essential, given that spending on research and development is alarmingly low compared to our global partners. Fundamental reform of the Common Agricultural Policy should not remain a taboo. Indeed, the CAP is ensuring neither sustainable agriculture nor decent incomes for all farmers.

Undoubtedly, tough negotiations lie ahead on this front, including with Hollande.

Second, young people must be a top priority.

Our responsibility here is twofold: to put growth back on track, but also to respond immediately to the human tragedy that has hit our youth. The eurozone’s unemployment rate, at 10.9 percent, is at its highest level since the euro was introduced, and young people everywhere, as the first to suffer the consequences of the crisis, are paying a disproportionally high price. Youth unemployment in Spain, for example, is above 50 percent.

We cannot afford to sacrifice a generation, or, rather, risk creating a lost generation that could destroy Europe’s social fabric and stability. We need an immediate contingency plan: invest to finance job training, improve educational opportunities, and, crucially, create incentives for employers to hire young people. The ECB has been offering long-term loans to banks at a favorable rate. This

money should be loaned out to small and medium-size enterprises, which are the lifeblood of Europe’s economy. The EU also needs common initiatives to replace piece-meal bilateral agreements on tax evasion and tax havens, which undermine the goal of a fair society.

Third, member states should not cut the EU budget indiscriminately during negotiations on the Union’s long-term spending plan for 2014-2020. If we are serious about a master plan for growth, we need to provide the necessary means. The EU budget is an investment vehicle that boosts economic growth and creates jobs. It finances crucial pan-EU transport and energy links. It helps to foster innovation and boost research and development. The EU budget leverages investment, allows for economies of scale, and cannot run a deficit.

The EU’s lack of solidarity, imagination, courage, unity, and vision in recent years has made Europe a symbol of division for some, if not many.

We cannot let this continue. Hollande’s election offers us a valuable opportunity to meet the challenges that the EU faces. Alternatively, we can allow growing poverty, fear, and anger to give rise to xenophobia and racism, and thus place at risk the EU’s greatest accomplishments.

But let us be optimistic. It is not too late. Europe can still emerge stronger from its current economic woes. The EU is changing direction at last, and Europe’s leaders will find an energetic partner in the European Parliament.

Police stand guard near the venue of the European Central Bank meeting in Barcelona that was held on May 2, 2012. The ECB held the one-day meeting, with pressure growing on the bank to cut borrowing costs, eroding the euro’s interest rate advantage. (Reuters)

* Martin Schulz is President of the European Parliament.

Connecting to the future

Pledging ourselves out of democracy Nicholas Wapshott Reuters

We just need a president to sign this stuff ... Pick a Republican with enough working digits to handle a pen to become president of the United States.

I

In this photograph taken on April 10, 2012, Chairman and Managing Director of India’s Bharti Airtel Limited, Sunil Mittal delivers a speech during the launch of Airtel’s 4G services in Kolkata. India recently set a new world record by selling seven million cell phones a month, more telephone connections than any country has ever established in one month. (AFP)

Shashi Tharoor Project Syndicate

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ne of my favorite photographs shows a Hindu sadhu right out of central casting - naked body, long matted hair and beard, ash-smeared forehead, rudraksha-mala around his neck, the works - chatting away on a mobile phone. The contrast says so much about the land of paradoxes that is today’s India - a country that, as I wrote years ago, manages to live in several centuries at the same time.

There is something particularly special about the sadhu and his cell phone, because it is in communications that India’s transformation in recent years has been most dramatic.

When I left India in 1975 to go to the United States for graduate studies, there were perhaps 600 million Indians and just two million land-line telephones. Having a telephone was a rare privilege: if you were not an important government official, a doctor, or a journalist, you might languish on a long waiting list and never receive a phone. Members of parliament had among their privileges the right to allocate 15 telephone connections to whomever they deemed worthy.

Moreover, a phone, if you had one, was not necessarily a blessing. I spent my high school years in Calcutta, and I remember that if you picked up your phone, there was no guarantee that you would get a dial tone; if you got a dial tone and dialed a number, there was no guarantee that you would reach the number you sought, and you heard an exasperated “wrong number!” more often than a friendly “hello.”

If you wanted to call another city, say, Delhi, you had to book a “trunk call,” and then sit

by the telephone all day waiting for it to come through. Or you could pay eight times the going rate for a “lightning call” - but even lightning struck slowly in India in those days, so a lightning call took a half-hour instead of the usual three or four (or more) to be connected.

As late as 1984, when an MP rose to protest the frequent telephone breakdowns and the generally woeful performance by a publicsector monopoly, the then communications minister replied in a lordly manner. In a developing country, he declared, telephones are a luxury, not a right; the government had no obligation to provide better service; and any Indian who was not satisfied with his telephone service could return his phone since there was an eight-year waiting list for telephones.

Now fast-forward to today. In the first edition of my book The Elephant, the Tiger and the Cellphone, I reported that, in April 2007, India set a new world record by selling seven million cell phones that month, more telephone connections than any country had ever established in one month. By the time the book was printed, bound, and distributed to bookstores, that figure was already out of date. And in 2010, India sold 20 million cell phones three months in a row.

India has now overtaken the US as the world’s second-largest telephone market, with 857 million SIM cards in circulation and an estimated 600 million individual users. China has more, but India is ahead in phones per capita, is adding them faster, and is projected to overtake China before the end of 2012. I am not merely celebrating a triumph for India’s capitalists.

What is wonderful about the “mobile miracle” (I am not embarrassed to call it that) is that it has accomplished something that our socialist policies proclaimed but did little to achieve - it empowered the less fortunate. The beneficiaries are not just the affluent, but people who in the old days would not have dreamed even of join-

ing the dreaded waiting lists.

It is a source of constant delight to me to find cell phones in the hands of the unlikeliest of my fellow citizens: taxi drivers, paan wallahs (betel vendors), farmers, and fishermen. If one visits a friend in a Delhi suburb, one will notice on the side streets an istri wallah with a wooden cart that looks like it was designed in the sixteenth century, using a coal-fired steam iron that looks like it was invented in the eighteenth century, to press clothes from the neighborhood. These days, however, he has a twenty-first-century instrument in his pocket; incoming calls in India are free under most calling plans, so it costs him nothing to find out where his services are needed.

Recently, I visited the country farm of a friend in Kerala. He asked if I wanted fresh coconut water; I said yes, and he pulled out his cell phone and dialed the local toddy tapper. A voice replied “I’m here;” we looked up, and there he was, on top of the nearest coconut tree, with his lungi tied up at his knees, a hatchet in one hand and a cell phone in the other.

Fishermen take cell phones out to sea to call the market towns on the coast on the way back to shore to see where they can get the best prices for their catch. Farmers used to have to send an able-bodied relative - perhaps a ten year-old boy - on a grueling walk to town in the hot sun to find out whether the market was open, whether their harvest could be sold, and, if so, at what price. Now they save a half-day’s time with a two-minute call. The cell phone has empowered the Indian underclass in ways that 45 years of talk about socialism singularly failed to do. In the new India, communications has become the great leveler. * Shashi Tharoor, a former Indian Minister of State for External Affairs and UN UnderSecretary General, is a member of India’s parliament and the author of a dozen books.

f anyone were to suggest that members of the House and Senate should abandon their own judgment and instead follow a strict dogma laid down by an outside body, we would be appalled. And if it were proposed that the president should be little more than a rubber stamp to sign any and all legislation presented to him by Congress, we would throw up our hands in horror.

Under the Constitution, members of Congress are representatives of all their constituents, and they are expected to weigh the value of legislation, discuss it, then vote according to their conscience. It is, after all, the House of Representatives, not the Supreme Soviet or the Chinese National People’s Congress. The Founding Fathers, in their wisdom, didn’t intend congressmen to be mere delegates or toe a line drawn by others.

Since 1978, however, when California passed Proposition 13 to reduce property taxes, this essential element of our democracy has been compromised by those who have tied the hands of lawmakers by having them sign solemn and binding “pledges.” By far the most successful is the “Taxpayer Protection Pledge” promoted by Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), in which congressional candidates agree in advance of election to “oppose any and all efforts to increase the marginal income tax rates” and “oppose any net reduction or elimination of deductions and credits, unless matched dollar for dollar by further reducing tax rates.” It was Ronald Reagan who in 1986 urged Grover Norquist, president of the ATR, to administer a no-tax-increases pledge, though as president he went on to raise taxes 11 times.

According to ATR, 238 representatives and 41 senators have made the pledge, though some now regret signing it. Of GOP congressmen, 95 percent have promised not to raise taxes in any circumstances. It is this unanimity among Republicans that has led to the end of give-and-take across the aisle in Washington and brought government to a grinding halt. Other pledges that bind lawmakers include promises to oppose abortions, to ban pornography, to prevent women from fighting in the armed forces, to outlaw Sharia law, to deny gay marriages, to cut and cap public spending, to pass a constitutional amendment demanding a balanced federal budget, to remain faithful to their spouses (good luck with that), and to support “robust childbearing and reproduction” (whatever that is).

Those who dare renege on the pledge not to raise taxes can expect to be targeted

by ATR, or, as Norquist so charmingly puts it, for the group to “educate the voters that they raise taxes” and “encourage them to go into another line of work, like shoplifting or bank robbing, where they have to do their own stealing.” One of those on ATR’s hit list is the Republican senator from Indiana for 35 years, Dick Lugar, hardly a liberal, who, having refused to sign the pledge, is currently defending himself from a primary challenge by a Norquist-approved alternative.

So far, so sinister. But Norquist has another adjustment to the Constitution in mind.

He wants the majority in Congress to become the main driver of government. “We don’t need a president to tell us in what direction to go,” he told the 2012 conservative CPAC conference. “We just need a president to sign this stuff ... Pick a Republican with enough working digits to handle a pen to become president of the United States.” His vision of American democracy is something like the British Parliament, with the prime minister backed by a majority in the Commons deciding and the monarch obediently providing.

Norquist is aware that by abandoning the division of powers established by the Founding Fathers and with Congress directing the actions of a compliant chief executive, he is proposing a revolutionary shift in power. “This is a change for Republicans: the House and Senate doing the work with the president signing bills,” he said. “The leadership now for the modern conservative movement for the next 20 years will be coming out of the House and the Senate.”

So where does this leave Mitt Romney? His working digits dutifully signed Norquist’s “no new taxes” pledge, and he has declared that his economic policy is the Paul Ryan austerity plan, which Norquist approves. If Romney is elected along with a Republican majority in both Houses, he can expect to emerge as powerless and politically pointless as Queen Elizabeth. And if he refuses to play along with Norquist, he can expect to be left twiddling his thumbs while America burns, just like President Obama. * Nicholas Wapshott is a Reuters correspondent. The views expressed here are his own.

8

ALWATAN DAILY

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Jabriya (Surra) Jleeb Al-Shuyoukh Old Jahra New Jahra & Abdaly Hawally Ras Al-Salmiya Al-Riqa Salmiya Shuwaikh Sabah Al-Salem (Messila) Sulaibiya Sulaibikhat

2531 0000 2431 0000 2477 0000 2457 0000 2261 0000 2571 0000 2394 0000 2561 0000 2481 0000 2551 0000 2467 0000 2487 0000

South Sabahiya Fintas Zoor Ahmadi Ardiya Fahaheel Farwaniya Kuwait City Mishref Manqaf Nuzha Umm Al Haiman & Wafra Shuaiba

2361 0000 2390 0000 2395 0000 2398 0000 2488 0000 2391 0000 2471 0000 2240 0000 2538 0000 2371 0000 2251 0000 2328 0000 2326 0000

metropolitan

Bus No. 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 29 31 32 34 36 38 39 40 41 51 59 * 101 102 103 105 139 501 502 506 507 602

a re a b u s ro u tes

Origin

Orthopaedic Orthopaedic Kheitan * Messila Salmiyah * Kheitan * Salmiyah Orrthopaedic Al-Jleeb Al-Jleeb * Al-Jleeb Kheitan Salmiyah Jahra Gate Sulaibiya Al Jleeb Kheitan Jabriya Salmiyah Al-Jleeb Messilah Kheitan Fahaheel Kheitan Al Jleeb * Al-Jleeb * Fahaheel Fahaheel Jahra Fahaheel Jahra Gate Airport Fahaheel Al-Jleeb Al-Jleeb Fahaheel

Destination

Sharq Sharq Mirgab Mirgab Mirgab Jahra Gate Sharq Mirgab Sharq Mirgab Sharq Mirgab Mirgab Jabriya Sharq Mirgab Sharq Sharq Sharq Salmiyah Jahra Gate Sharq Sharq UN Circle Mirgab Mirgab Mirgab Mirgab Mirgab Al-Jleeb Fahaheel Mirgab Mirgab Jahra Gate Sharq Fahaheel

Via

Shuwaikh 4th Ring Rd Airport Rd Ras Salmiyah 4th Ring Rd 4th Ring Rd Hawalli Shuwaikh Kheitan Farwaniyah 3rd Ring Rd King Faisal Rd Hawalli Hawalli Andalus Shuwaikh Shamiyah Nuzha Farwaniyah Farwaniyah Bayan Shuwaikh Shuwaikh Al Rai 6th Ring Rd Al Hasawi Sabah Salem 3rd Ring Rd Jahra Rd Shuwaikh UN Circle Jahra Rd Fahaheel Rd Hawalli Shuwaikh Ahmadi

KD 70 KD 140 KD 40 KD 40 KD 40 KD 40 KD 40

VISITORS RESIDENTS

H.S.C. Barium Enema Barium Meal O.C.G. Ultrasound Ultrasound desfruct M.R.I.

KD 40 KD 50 KD 45 KD 45 KD 15 KD 130 KD 245

KD 40 KD 35 KD 30 KD 30 KD 10 KD 65 KD 180

eMbassies &

Ministry of

C omm u nic a tions Telephone for Test & Complaints

warsha@warsha.com

f or e x p a tri a tes

VISITORS RESIDENTS

C.T. Scan Angiogram I.V.P MCUG Asc Urothrogram Sinogram Sialogram

Tel.: Afghanistan 2532 9461 Algeria 2251 9220 Argentina 2537 9211 Austria 2255 2532 Australia 2232 2422 Azerbaijan 2535 5247 Bahrain 2531 8530 Bangladesh 2531 6042 / 3 Belgium 25722014 Bhutan 2251 6640 / 50 Bosnia 2539 2637 Brazil 2532 8610 Bulgaria 2531 4458 Canada 2256 3025 China 2533 3340 Cuba 2254 9361 Cyprus 2243 3075 Czech 2252 9018 Denmark 2534 1005 Egypt 2251 9956 Ethiopia 2533 4291 Eritrea 2531 7426 Finland 2531 2890 France 2257 1061 Germany 2252 0827 Greece 2481 7101 Georgia 2535 2909 Hungary 2532 3901 India 2253 0600 Indonesia 2483 9927 Iran 2256 0694 Italy 2535 6011 Japan 2530 9400 Kenya 25353314 / 25353362 Lebanon 2256 2103

Libya 2257 5183 Malaysia 2255 0394/5/6 Morocco 2531 2980 / 1 Netherlands 2531 2650 Niger 2565 2943 Nigeria 2562 0278 North Korea 2532 9462 Oman 2256 1956 Pakistan 2532 7651 Philippines 2534 9099 Poland 2531 1571 Qatar 2251 3606 Republic of Botswana 2538 3619 Romania 2484 5079 Russia 2256 0427 Saudi Arabia 2240 0250 Senegal 2257 3477 Slovak Republic 2535 3895 Somalia 2539 4795 South Africa 2561 7988 South Korea 2533 9601 Spain 2532 5829 / 7 Sri Lanka 2533 9140 Switzerland 2534 0172 / 5 Syria 2539 6560 Thailand 2531 7530 Tunisia 2252 6261 Turkey 2253 1785 UAE 2535 5764 UK 2259 4320 Ukraine 2531 8507 USA 2259 1001 Venezuela 2532 4367 Vietnam 2531 1450 Yugoslavia 2532 7548 Zimbabwe 2562 1517

2257 5182 2255 0384 2531 7423 2532 6334 2564 0478 2562 0296 2535 1097 2256 1963 2532 8013 2532 9319 2531 1576 2251 3604 2539 3529 2484 8929 2252 4969 2242 0654 2254 2044 2535 3894 2539 4829 2561 7917 2531 2459 2532 5826 2533 9154 2534 0176 2539 6509 2531 7532 2252 8995 2256 0653 2259 4339 2538 0282 2532 4368 2535 1592 2532 7568 2562 1491

Police stations Tel.:

Abu Halifa 2371 7656 Ahmadi 2398 0304 Ardiya 2488 1273 Bayan 2538 7762 Dahar 2383 0500 Dahiya 2256 0855 Dasma 2253 1917 Fahaheel 2391 2959 Faiha 2255 2693 Farwaniya 2471 1977 Ferdous 2489 0583 Fintas 2390 4388 Hawalli 2264 1116 Jabriya 2531 5855 Jahra Ind. Area 2457 5565 / 2458 7392 Jahra North 2455 2295 Jleeb Al Shouyoukh 2431 1234 Keifan 2483 2839 Kheitan 2472 2590 Mina Abdullah 2326 1144 Nugra 2261 6662 Omariya 2474 2160

Ambulance

Central Adan Amiri Hospital Da’iya Fahaheel Farwaniya Farwaniya Jahra Mubarak Al Kabir Sabah Salmiya Shuaiba

23940600 / 23941455 22422366 22510854 23919098 24883000 24725149 24570583 25311437 24815000 25739011 23261927

Private Hospitals

Al-Rashid Hospital Dar Al-Shifa Hospital Hadi Clinic London Hospital Mowasat Hospital Salam Hospital

Qadsiya 2257 4386 Qurain 2542 3772 Rabiah 2474 2160 Rawda 2256 0058 Riqqa 2394 1958 Rumaithiya 2562 4123 Sabah Al-Salem 2551 7229 Sabahiya 2361 5619 Salhiya (Kuwait City) 2242 7157 Salmi 2457 6576 Salmiya 2572 6950 Salwa 2562 6950 Shamiya 2484 5953 Sharq 2244 2466 Shuaiba Ind. Area 2326 1789 Shuwaikh 2481 3726 / 2484 4842 Sulaibekhat 2487 6555 Sulaibiya 2467 0672 Sulaibiya Ind. Area 2467 2728 Surra 2531 2220 Tayma’a 2457 1700 Wafra 2381 0412 Waha 2455 7902 Zour 2395 0160

Adan General Hospital Al-Sabah Chest Hospital Al-Sabah Maternity Hospital Amiri General Hospital As’ad Al-Hamad Dermatology Center

Farwaniya General Hospital Ibn Sina Hospital Jahra General Hospital Mubarak Al-Kabeer General Hospital Subhan Renal Hospital Sulaibikhat Orthopedic Hospital

25624000 22802555 1828282 1883883 25726666 22533177

Private Health Centers/ Clinics

Boushahri Clinic British Medical Center Care Clinic International Clinic

Public Hospitals

cons u l a tes

Fax 2532 6274 2251 9497 2537 9212 2256 3052 2232 2430 2535 5246 2533 0882 2531 6041 2574 8389 2251 6550 2539 2106 2532 8613 2532 1453 2256 4167 2533 3341 2254 9360 2240 2971 2252 9021 2534 1007 2256 3877 2533 1179 2531 7429 2532 4198 2257 1058 2252 0763 2481 7103 2535 4707 2532 3904 2257 1192 2481 9250 2252 9868 2535 6030 2530 9401 25353316 2257 2182

centr a l 4 7 2 2 0 0 0

94904040

hospital charges

medical services

Call, sms, Email us

O n- s i t e I T s e r v i c e s

23940600 24815000 24848067 22450080

1885544 23713100 22610666 25745111

Public Health Centers/ Clinics:

Dasman Clinic Faiha Polyclinic Farwaniya Polyclinic Hawalli Polyclinic Inaya Germen Medical Center Sabah Al-Salem Clinic Salmiya Polyclinic Shamiya Clinic Shuwaikh Clinic Yarmouk Clinic

24832067 24883000 24840300 24575300 25312700 24840027 24874240

22447602 22545188 24726033 22611645 25750777 25524821 25723500 25610660 24848913 25336482

DOCTORS & DENTISTS

I N PR I VAT E PR AC T ICE

Andrology, Male Infertility and Impotence Specialist Abdullatif A. Al Salim 2533 4438

Dermatologist & Venereologists Fahad I. Al Othman 2266 5166 Taibah M. Almonayes 2573 7477 Dr. Mohamed Bo Hamra 2266 5166

Dentists & Oral Surgeons Ahmed Al Balool 2262 2211 Badri K. Al Rayes 2574 2557 Duha Al Shaqan 2264 4614 Ebraheem Behbehani 2573 0000 Farida Al Herz 2257 3883 Maria Blanaru 2573 0000 Najat Essa-Bahman 2262 4595 Najeeb Kassim 2573 9277 Salwa A. Abdulsalam 2573 0000 Kuwait Medical Center 2575 9044 / 5 Endocrinologists Latifa Al Dowaisan Kamal Abdulaziz Al Shome

Gastroenterologist Mohamed A. Al Shimali 2532 2030 - 2263 9955 Urologist Fawzi Taher Abul Ali Yousef Mehdi

2565 0064 2533 3501

General Practitioner Dina Al Rifai 2533 3501 - 2533 3502 Obstetricians & Gynecologists Samira Al Awadi 2573 8055 Ma’asouma Maksheed 2573 1275 Mohamed Gamal 2534 9077 Mai Al Snan 2532 1171

2572 8004 2532 9924

Ear, Nose & Throat Surgeons Hossam Eldin Abdulfattah 2574 5056 Abdulmohsen Mousa Jafar 2565 5535

Cosmetic Surgeon Dr. Adel Quttainah

2562 5030 / 60

Ministries

Awqaf & Islamic Affairs Commerce & Industry Communications Defense Education Health Higher Education Electricity & Water Finance

2248 0000 2248 0000 2481 9033 2484 8300 2481 7702 2487 7422 2240 1300 2537 1000 2248 0000

Foreign Affairs Housing Information Justice, Legal & Administrative Affairs Energy Planning Social Affairs & Labour Public Works

2242 5141 2530 1000 2241 5301 2248 0000 2241 5201 2242 8200 2248 0000 2538 5520

RESTAURANT • Café Library Lounge Al-Manshar Rotana Hotel Tel: 23931000 Hang.Out Lounge Galleria 2000 Tel: 25755588 Song Bird Café Hilton Kuwait Resort Tel: 23725500 Chit Chat Café Restaurant Safir Hotel & Residences -Fintas Tel: 25455555 Lounge Café Safir Hotel & Residences -Fintas Tel: 25455555 The English Tea Room Sheraton Hotel Tel: 1835555 Waterlemon Al-Raya Tel: 22244797 Marina Mall Tel: 22997666 Le Pain Quotidien Palms Beach Hotel Tel: 25633684 Marina Crescent Tel: 22244942 Avenues Tel: 24954632 • Casual Dining Applebee’s Bneid Al-Gar Tel: 22407536 Fintas Tel: 23714559 Burgerhub Gulf road Tel: 22464818 Chili’s Bneid Al-Gar Tel: 22452200 Chili’s Al-Bida’a Tel: 22253120/1 Hard Rock Café Salmiya Tel: 25710004 Ruby Tuesdays Bneid Al-Gar Tel: 22444454 T.G.I. Fridays Bneid Al-Gar Tel: 22544300

• Chinese China Hut Tel: 25656226 China Express Jabriya Tel: 25342399 Salwa Tel: 25653230 China House Salmiya Tel: 25713339 / 60 China Lake Al-Blajat St. Tel: 25713072 / 3 China Town Salmiya Tel: 25652541 Greens Al-Wafra Complex Tel: 22516031

Tel: 1815050 • French Le Notre Gulf Road Tel: 25758888 • Indian Dawat Restaurant Bneid Al Gar Tel: 22411728 Abu Halifa Tel: 23724251 Al Alamia Mall, Jahra Tel: 24554642 Taal Restaurant Salmiya Beda’ Tel: 22253142 Winner’s Salmiya Tel: 25739954 Abu Halifa Tel: 23711374 / 5 Riggae Tel: 24895501 / 2 Jahra Tel: 24560088/8800

Gulf Royal Tel: 23925390-Fintas 22622556-Hawalli 25710448-Salmiya 22244795-Marina

Asha’s Tel: 22244502/3/9 Marina Crescent Tel: 24954700

Noodles Salmiya Tel: 25712233

Bukhara Sheraton Hotel Tel: 22422055

The Peacock Radisson Blu Hotel Tel: 25673000

Tourist Restaurant Kuwait City Tel: 22411702

Noodle Factory Avenues Tel: 24954751

Mugal Mahal Farwaniya Tel: 24726126/7 Fintas Tel: 23915588 Salmiya Tel: 25722223/4 Sharq Tel: 22425132

• Continental Casper & Gambini’s Kuwait City Tel: 22430054 La Marina Sharq Mall Tel: 22426672 • Fast Food Burger King Tel: 22444466 Domino’s Pizza Tel: 1800800 Hardees Tel: 1888333 KFC Tel: 1888666 Little Caesar’s Tel: 1888855 Pizza Hut

Tikka Tel: 1822833 • International Al-Bustan Radisson Blu Hotel Tel: 25673000 Al-Hamra Sheraton Hotel Tel: 22422055 Al-Marsa Restaurant Le Meridien Tel: 22510999 Atrium Restaurant Courtyard Marriott Hotel

Tel: 22997000

L I S T I N G S

Beit 7 Kuwait City Tel: 22450871 Café Rio Al-Fanar Tel: 25732226 Dunes Ritz Hotel Tel: 22499911 Failaka Al-Manshar Rotana Hotel Tel: 23931000 La Brasserie JW Marriott Tel: 22455550 Ritz Shamiya Tel: 24820184 Shuwaikh Tel: 24844350 Square International Tel: 22437681 Test n’ Taste Villa Moda Tel: 24827010 Teatro Hilton Kuwait Resort Tel: 23725500

Kuwait City Tel: 22400737

Nino Gulf Road Tel: 22541900 Pizza Express Abdullah Al-Salem Tel: 22560273 Al-Bida’a Tel: 22253166 Airport Tel: 24342681 Tel: 23725500 Ricardo Sheraton Hotel Tel: 22422055 • Japanese Edo Shaab Tel: 22659590 Kei JW Marriott Hotel Tel: 22422650 Korea & Japan Restaurant New Park Hotel Tel: 25634200

Sakura Crowne Plaza Hotel Tel: 24742000

AlRoshinah Restaurant Safir Hotel & Residences -Fintas Tel: 25455555

Shogun The Palms Hotel Tel: 27070022

Il Forno Restaurant Courtyard Marriot Hotel Tel: 22997000 Johnny Carino’s Salmiya Tel: 22667050 La Piazza Kuwait City Tel: 24246639 Lorenzo

Manousha Salmiya Tel: 25722607 / 8

Al-Noukhaza Crowne Plaza Hotel Tel: 24742000

Fakhr Al-Din Restaurant Kuwait City Tel: 22423180

Villa Fairouz Shaab Tel: 22652030

Shrimpy Gulf Road Tel: 22563118 Totally Fish Marina Crescent Tel: 22244960/1

Garden New Park Hotel Tel: 25634200

Yeldes Palace Kuwait City Tel: 22455212

Kabab-Ji Tel: 1861616

Zahrat Tunis Hawalli Tel: 22662444/333

Mais Al-Ghanim Kuwait City Tel: 22402590

• Persian Kabab Al-Hijja Bnaid Al-Gar Tel: 22517512

Palm Palace Salmiya Tel: 25756331 Saj Express Kuwait City Tel: 22497822 Sarai Al-Bida’a Tel: 22253180/1 Shisha &

Sushi Club Al-Blajat St. Tel: 25712144 Wasabi Al-Bida’a Tel: 22253112 Kuwait City Tel: 22494000 • Lebanese Al-Berdawny Palace Tel: 25661117 Ayam Zaman Holiday Inn Tel: 18477777 Burg Al-Hamam Gulf Road Tel: 22529095

• Steak House Relais De L’Entrecote Al-Fanar Complex Tel: 25729600 Terrace Grill JW Marriott Hotel Tel: 22455550

Shabistan Crowne Plaza Hotel Tel: 24742000

The Gaucho Grill The Palms Hotel Tel: 25667370 -

• Seafood Al-Ahmadi Crowne Plaza Hotel Tel: 24742000

• Tex-Mex Chi Chi’s Salmiya Tel: 25625811

Al-Boom Radisson Blu Hotel Tel: 25756000

Tumbleweed Southern Grill Al-Bida’a Tel: 22253154/5

Maki Al-Blajat St. Tel: 25733561 Marina Waves Tel: 22244560

Flavors Restaurant Safir Hotel & Residences -Fintas Tel: 25455555

• Italian Ciro’s Pomodoro Kuwait City Tel: 22424004

Saj Express Kuwait City Tel: 22497822

Te l : 1 8 3 9 0 9 0

Salmiya - Jabriya - Keifan www.healthstop.com.kw

HOTELS

FIVE STAR Al-Manshar Rotana Hotel Crowne Plaza Kuwait Hilton Kuwait Resort JW Marriot Kuwait City Hotel Kempinski Julai’a Hotel & Resort The Regency Hotel & Resort Le Meridien Le Meridien Tower Marina Hotel Kuwait Movenpick Albid’a Movenpick Palms Beach Hotel & Spa Radisson Blu Hotels & Resorts Refad Palace Safir International Hotel Kuwait Sheraton Kuwait Hotel & Towers Safir Hotel & Residences Kuwait

23931000 24772000 23725500 22455550 1 844 444 25766666 22510999 22831831 22244970 22253100 24610033 22824060 25673000 23908630 22530000 22422055 25455555

FOUR STAR Carlton Tower Hotel The Courtyard by Marriott Kuwait El Joan Resort Four Points by Sheraton Kuwait

22452740 22997000 23281897 22415001

Ghani Palace Hotel Holiday Inn Khalifa Resort Kuwait Continental Hotel New Park Hotel Al Bastaki Hotel Al Dana Hotel Heritage Village Palace Hotel Shiik Flamingo Hotel & Resort Swiss-Belhotel Plaza Kuwait

25710301 1 847 777 23280144 22527300 25634200 22555081 23902760 22520600 1 821 111 25725050 22436686

THREE STAR Imperial Hotel Oasis Hotel Safari House Hotel Second Home Hotel Spring Continental Hotel Ibis Hotel Salmiya Ibis Hotel Sharq

22528766 22465489 22443136 22532100 25742410 25713872 22928080

TWO STAR International Hotel Kuwait Residence Hotel

25741788 22467560

Emirates hit by fuel costs, sticks with expansion DUBAI: Emirates, Dubai’s flagship carrier, said on Thursday it would seek out new routes to sustain its fast pace of growth after a steep rise in fuel costs punctured annual profits.

The Dubai-government owned airline, which said it has no plans to hedge against fluctuating fuel prices or pass much of the higher costs onto customers, reported a 72-percent drop in 2011 net profit.

“Frankly we need more airplanes sooner to do all the things we want to do.

BUSINESS

fridAY, may 11, 2012

m ar ket watc h KUWAIT

DUBAI

QATAR

0.51% 6452

0.8% 1515

0.7% 8548

OMAN 0.1% 5746

ABU DHABI 0.1% 2478

OIL MARKETS BAHRAIN NO CHANGE

EGYPT 0.4% 5013

SAUDI

MARKET CLOSED

US Crude $97.58 $0.77 London Brent $113.25 $0.61 Kuwait Crude $108.66 $0.16 Information Courtesy: KAMCO

CURRENCIES US Dollar

British Pound

Saudi Riyal

Qatari Riyal

Indian Rupee

Euro

Japanese Yen

UAE Dirham

Bahraini Dinar

Philippine Peso

Buy 0.2781 Sell 0.2786 Buy 0.3602 Sell 0.3609

Buy 0.4496 Sell 0.4506

Buy 0.00348 Sell 0.003486

Kuwaiti crude up 16 cents, settles at $108.66 Oil hovers near $113 on US, China data

CAPITALS: Price of Kuwaiti crude oil spiked 16 US cents to 108.66 US dollars per barrel (pb) in transactions on Wednesday, compared with $108.50 on Monday, reported Kuwait Petroleum Corporation (KPC) on Thursday.

The humble hike follows a six-day downturn in shadow of jitters over global economy, rise of the American strategic oil reserves and an anticipated European decision to release another bail-out installment for Greece.

In more news, oil traded around $113 per barrel on Thursday as dealers weighed weaker-than-expected Chinese trade data against relatively encouraging US jobs figures against.

Rising supply from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) added pressure.

The group’s monthly report said oil supply was plentiful and in excess of market requirements.

Brent crude slid 33 cents to $112.87 a barrel by 1348 GMT after reaching an earlier high of $113.64.

U.S. crude climbed 50 cents to $97.31 by 1348 GMT after reports showed new US jobless claims fell slightly last week.

Brent has fallen sharply from highs of around $126 per barrel in April due to worries about political turmoil in Europe and a growing conviction that the

market is well supplied.

“Brent seems to be bottoming out,” said Carsten Fritsch, oil analyst at Commerzbank.

“But I do not expect to see much of a rebound in the coming days due to physical oversupply and a weak euro zone.”

China’s exports and imports in April grew at a far slower rate than forecast, government data showed.

Its trade performance last month was also surprisingly weak, and analysts said the government would need to loosen monetary policy to spur expansion or risk missing annual growth targets.

The price difference between the Brent and U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crudes has meanwhile risen to its highest level since April 16, the day of the announcement that the reversal of the Seaway Pipeline had been moved forward to the middle of May. Seaway will carry 150,000 barrels per day (bpd) from Cushing, Oklahoma, the delivery point of the U.S. crude contract, to refineries on the US Gulf Coast. The first crude is scheduled to go into the pipeline next week.

Traders said the spread was widening despite Seaway’s imminent reversal as crude stocks have continued to build around the Cushing storage hub, hitting a record high.

Signs of rising supplies globally also weighed on oil prices.

OPEC quoted secondary sources in its monthly market report saying that it pumped 1.62 million bpd above its supply target and demand for its own oil in April. -Agencies

See page 11

Buy 0.0742 Sell 0.0743

Buy 0.07578 Sell 0.07584

Buy 0.07651 Sell 0.07644 Buy 0.7384 Sell 0.73894

Buy 0.005221 Sell 0.005216 Buy 0.006571 Sell 0.006559

Prices in Kuwaiti fils as of May 10, 2012 Courtesy: KAMCO

The Bankia headquarters building is seen in Madrid, May 10, 2012. Hoping to put an end to a four-year banking crisis, Spain’s government effectively took over Bankia SA, one of the country’s biggest banks, late on Wednesday after days of market anxiety over the lender’s viability. The center-right government of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy told Spaniards the banking sector was safe and said more measures to strengthen ailing lenders would come on Friday after a February banking reform proved insufficient. (Reuters)

Commercial Bank of Kuwait Warba covers more Q1 profit at $1.19 million than 50% of establishment expenses KUWAIT: Commercial Bank of Kuwait (CBK), the Gulf state’s fourth-largest lender, reported a 75-percent drop in firstquarter net profit on Thursday.

Net profit was 329,000 Kuwaiti dinars (1.19 million US dollars) in the first three months of the year, compared with 1.33 million dinars in the same period of 2011,

according to a bourse filing.

Trading in the bank’s shares was halted at the beginning of April along with those of several other companies that had been unable to report previous earnings on time. The bank appointed a new chairman and chief executive last month.

-Reuters

KSE ends trading in mixed shades KUWAIT: Trading ended at Kuwait Stock Exchange Thursday with the main indices in mixed zones. The price index lost 4.7 points to reach 6,446.8 points, while the weighted index came to 419.23 points a rise of 1.48 points.

Trades came to 3,964 spot transactions worth 29,543,310 Kuwaiti dinars, with 407,402, 500 shares changing hands till end of session.

As for sector indices, four of them were green and the other four were red. Top gainer sector was services which put on 68.6 index points. The biggest loser sector was

that of the non-Kuwaitis with a slip of 37.9 points.

Top share for the day was that of Palms Agro Production Company, while top loser was the Ithmaar Bank.

The board at Kuwait Stock Exchange at 9:30 a.m. Thursday was mixed but tipped into the red territory as the price index showed a loss of 45.3 points to 6,406.2 points. The weighted index meanwhile came up 0.16 points to read 417.91 points.

Trades came to 1,045 transactions worth KD 7,434,700, and volume so far came to 134,812,500 shares. -KUNA

UAE telco du Q1 profit up 62% as mobile data surges

DUBAI: United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) du on Thursday reported a 62 percent rise in first-quarter net profit, beating analysts’ estimates, as the telecoms operator added subscribers and mobile data revenue more than doubled from a year earlier.

Du, which is majority-owned by government institutions, made a profit of 333.1 million UAE dirhams (90.69 million US dollars) in the three months to March 31, up from 205.8 million dirhams in the year-earlier period, according to a statement to the Dubai bourse.

A one-off gain of 30 million dirhams from “favorable settlements” also boosted this year’s first-quarter profit. The company did not provide further details on the gain.

Analysts polled by Reuters on average forecast du would make a quarterly profit of 268 million dirhams.

Quarterly revenue was 2.45 billion dirhams, up from 2.04 billion dirhams in the corresponding period of 2011. Revenue from mobile services rose 21.8 percent to 1.9 billion dirhams.

Mobile data revenue more than doubled from a year earlier to 297 million dirhams.

“We believe this will continue to grow in importance as a revenue stream,” Chief Executive Osman Sultan said in the statement.

Du, which ended rival Etisalat’s domestic monopoly in 2007, also added 320,600 mobile subscribers to increase its mobile customer base to 5.5 million, giving it a 46.7 percent market share in the country.

Fixed line subscribers also rose 13.5 percent to 545,300, while the firm’s operating margin in the first-quarter was 37.8 percent, up from 30.5 percent in the corresponding period of 2011.

Network sharing in the UAE, which will allow competition in home telecoms services, faces further delays because du and rival Etisalat have yet to agree on commercial terms for the arrangement.

Shares in du have risen 6.6 percent year-to-date. They were yet to begin trade on the Dubai bourse Thursday. -Reuters

KUWAIT: Warba Bank held its General Assembly Meeting for the financial period ended Dec. 31 2011, during the meeting held in the Ministries Complex the Chairman and Managing Director Jassar Al-Jassar noted that the Bank’s management adopts a clear strategy prepared by one of largest specialized international firms who worked for five months to set up the bases and standards through which the targeted segments, markets, as well as geographical presence have been identified with a view to cater for the bank’s customers from different sectors and to enable Warba Bank to be distinguished among other competitor Sharia-compliant banks in Kuwait.

This was stated in a press release on Thursday.

Positive indicators included achieving total returns of three million Kuwaiti dinars for the first fiscal period ending Dec. 31, 2011, which covers 50 percent of the incorporation and preoperation expenses. This achievement gives the bank a momentum before starting full operation,

launching of branches, and receiving customers; and speeds up the process to cover the full expenses of incorporation and pre-operation expenses very soon. Upon reaching the breakeven point, Warba Bank will start gaining profits, and increasing the share’s book and market values.

Such achievement would not have been made without Allah’s support, then Warba Bank’s keenness on investing the capital in safe and diversified assets with limited risks during the incorporation stage. In addition, Warba Bank has prepared the bank’s essential infrastructure, setting the future strategy and action plan; furnishing the bank’s headquarters and branches; employing the human resources required for launching the bank; choosing and implementing the latest systems which serve the bank’s objectives relevant to providing customers with special and innovative products.

It should be noted that such stage requires very high expenses and costs in the newly es-

Egypt gets $1 billion from Saudis, clearing IMF hurdle

CAIRO: Saudi Arabia has transferred one billion US dollars to Egypt’s central bank, an Egyptian minister said on Thursday, in a move seen as helping Cairo secure a $3.2 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Egypt has asked the International Monetary Fund and other donors for loans to help it plug a balance of payments deficit aggravated by the political and economic turmoil of the last 15 months.

Last year’s uprising chased away tourists and foreign investors, two of Egypt’s main sources of foreign currency, and economists say the country will need a minimum of $11 billion over the next year to stave off a balance of payments crisis and a potential devaluation of its currency. Before it agrees to the loan, the IMF has told Egypt to come up with an economic program that has broad domestic political support and to line up additional resources from international donors.

In a statement, Planning Minister Faiza Abu El-Naga said the Saudi funds had been deposited with the central bank for eight years and that “coordination was ongoing” with Saudi Arabia about remaining elements of a $2.7 billion aid package first broached with Riyadh a year ago. The Saudi package also includes $500 million of support for development projects, $250 million to finance purchases of petroleum products and $200 million of support for small- and medium-sized enterprises.

An Egyptian official said last month Saudi Arabia had agreed to transfer all the funds by the end of April.

But a week later Riyadh recalled its ambassador in a rare diplomatic row over street protests in Cairo against the arrest of an Egyptian lawyer in Saudi Arabia. A year ago, Egypt said Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab states had pledged billions of dollars in support, but only just one billion dollars actually arrived at the time, with Saudi Aabia and Qatar sending $500 million each. -Reuters

tablished entities, especially when it comes to banks.

Warba Bank’s total assets stood at KD 121 million; depositors and banks’ funds in Warba Bank amounted to KD 22 million as at 31 December 2011. These signs indicate that the bank is on the right track as per the bank’s approved strategy and action plan. The developments made during the incorporation stage have started achieving the expected results thanks to the efforts exerted by all staff members at all levels.

Indeed, the honorable principles of the Islamic Sharia contributed to the formation of the charter of values and principles that are followed by all divisions & departments throughout Warba Bank, which preserve our fair and transparent identity. To this end, Warba Bank’s Sharia Supervisory Board (SSB) has reviewed and studied each and every form used in addition to examining the contracts between the bank and the external entities.

TAQA Q1 net profit soars on assets sale ABU DHABI: Abu Dhabi National Energy Company (TAQA), a stateowned oil explorer and power supplier, said quarterly net profit more than tripled, helped by a gain selling non-core Canadian assets.

TAQA, 75-percent owned by the government of Abu Dhabi, said on Thursday it made a first-quarter profit of 534 million UAE dirhams (145 million US dollars), including 378 million from the Canadian disposals. Revenue rose five percent to 5.7 billion dirhams.

The results included a one-off gain of 92 million dirhams from a change in fair value of its Otter field acquisition in the North Sea. TAQA plans to seal a deal on acquiring 50 percent of a power plant in the Kurdish region of Iraq in the second quarter, chief executive Carl Sheldon

said on a conference call.

Last month, TAQA said it agreed to take a stake in a 1,000 megawatts power plant in a joint venture with Mass Global Investments Company.

TAQA, which plans to spend about $2.2 billion in capital expenditure this year, has adequate cash and credit lines to meet its funding requirements this year.

“There are big repayments next year, we will look at the next 6-12 months about what decisions those would be,” Sheldon said.

Earlier this month, TAQA said it planned to start work on its delayed gas storage project in the Netherlands in July following approval from the government.

TAQA shares were up 4.2 percent at 0640 GMT. -Reuters

US dollar exchange rate stable against Kuwaiti dinar

KUWAIT: Exchange rate of the US dollar against the Kuwaiti dinar stabilized at KD 0.278, and so did the euro at KD 0.360, compared to Wednesday’s figures, said the daily bulletin of the Central Bank of Kuwait (CBK) on Thursday.

Exchange rate of the Sterling pound was also settle at KD 0.449, and the Japanese yen remained unchanged, at KD 0.003. The Swiss franc stayed the same as yesterday also with KD 0.300. -KUNA

10

ALWATAN DAILY

BUSINESS

friDAY, may 11, 2012

China’s crude oil imports up 3.3%, to 5.44 million barrels per day Fed clears China’s first US bank takeover

CAPITALS: China’s crude oil imports rose 3.3 percent in April from a year earlier to 22.26 million tons, or 5.44 million barrels a day (bpd), according to data released by the Chinese government on Thursday.

But imports declined 5.5 percent from March’s 23.55 million tons (5.57 million bpd), the General Administration of Customs said on its Website.

April’s crude import volumes were the lowest since December. In the first four months of this year, China imported 92.87 million tons (5.63 million bpd), up 9.3 percent from the same period of 2011.

The import-dependency rate of China, the world’s second-biggest energy importer after the US, reached a new high of 56.3 percent last year, the state-run China Daily reported earlier this year, adding that domestic oil demand would grow five percent in 2012.

In more news, The United States opened its banking market to China’s biggest bank ICBC, for the first time clearing a takeover of a US bank by a Chinese state-controlled company.

Just days after high-level US-China economic talks in Beijing, the Federal Reserve approved an application from Industrial and Commercial Bank of China to buy a majority stake in the US subsidiary of Bank of East Asia.

The transaction will make ICBC the first Chinese statecontrolled bank to acquire retail bank branches in the United States. ICBC has been the most aggressive of China’s “big four” banks in expanding abroad.

Outside China, it operates subsidiary banks in Asian countries and has branches in a number of countries including Germany, Japan and Singapore.

According to the Fed, the bank has total assets of roughly 2.5 trillion US dollars.

ICBC will buy up to 80 percent of the US unit of the Hong Kong-based Bank of East Asia, which operates 13 branches in New York and California.

As part of the deal, ICBC and two state-backed financial

FILE- Oil rigs belonging to PetroChina are seen near the banks of a snow covered lake in Daqing in northeastern China’s Heilongjiang province. China’s crude oil imports rose 3.3 percent in April from a year earlier to 22.26 million tons, or 5.44 million barrels a day (bpd), according to data released by the Chinese government on Thursday. (AP)

firms - China’s sovereign wealth fund, the China Investment Corporation (CIC), and Central Huijin Investment - will be recognized as bank holding companies, regulated as commercial US banks.

The Fed said the takeover may not occur before May 15, or later than three months from Wednesday.

The broad expansion of China’s footprint in the US market comes amid a series of financial reforms in China that

could begin to open the lucrative market to US firms.

After the May 3-4 talks in Beijing, the US Treasury noted China had made “encouraging progress” on a number of issues, including taking steps toward a more open and market-oriented financial system.

The Fed said Wednesday that the ICBC proposed acquisition, which is “relatively small,” would not have much of an impact on the banking market.

“The combined deposits of the relevant institutions in the Metropolitan New York banking market represent less than one percent of market deposits,” the central bank noted.

ICBC already has banking and financial services in the United States through its New York branch and its subsidiary broker-dealer.

The competition includes Bank of China branches in the New York metropolitan area, and CIC, which has a noncontrolling stake in Morgan Stanley.

ICBC will pay $140 million to buy an 80 percent interest in Bank of East Asia USA, China’s state news agency Xinhua reported in January 2011, at the time the deal was signed.

“This unprecedented acquisition of a controlling stake in a US commercial bank by a mainland bank is strategically significant,” Xinhua quoted ICBC chairman Jiang Jianqing as saying.

The Fed said its Board also consulted with the China Banking Regulatory Commission, the country’s main banking regulator, and pointed to steady improvement in regulation since its founding in 2003.

“For a number of years, authorities in China have continued to enhance the standards of consolidated supervision to which banks in China are subject, including through additional or refined statutory authority, regulations, and guidance,” it said.

In other Fed board decisions, Bank of China, the thirdlargest bank, won approval for a branch in Chicago. Bank of China operates two insured federal branches in New York City and an uninsured branch in Los Angeles.

Agricultural Bank of China, the fourth-largest bank, was set to establish a branch in New York City, where it already operates a representative office. -Agencies

Lower oil prices a modest drag on Gulf equities Saudi to supply full contract volumes to the world CAPITALS: The world’s top oil exporter Saudi Arabia will keep supplying crude oil to its customers in June at the same volume as May as ample supplies of competing grades keep pressure off refiners to replace controversial Iranian barrels.

At least six Asian buyers and one global major said they would continue to receive full contracted volumes in June as they did in May. One European company said the June supply would be same as May but declined to specify the volume.

“We got a notice for full contract volume, and there is no change from May,” a Seoulbased refining source said.

Saudi Arabia has supplied full contractual volumes to most Asian buyers since late 2009.

The steady supply from Saudi Arabia comes as some of the largest buyers of Iranian crude in Asia have cut back imports to seek exemption from US sanctions and as a European embargo makes it impossible to secure insurance cover for tankers to ship the crude.

Alternative demand

Typically, oil demand dips in the second quarter in a transition from heating consumption to summer gasoline demand in the northern hemisphere and many Asian and European refiners carry out planned maintenance shutdowns.

That has helped offset a cut in purchases from sanctions-hit Iran for now. But buyers may seek higher volumes from top oil exporter Saudi Arabia from next month, trade sources said, as summer demand increases and the market begins to feel the full impact of sanctions on Iran.

Refiners are allowed to seek 10 percent more than the volume agreed in annual contracts under a clause called operational tolerance. They can also cut purchases by the same

extent. Global markets are currently awash with oil as producers raised output to help fill a supply gap caused by a drop in imports from Iran while demand is lower on seasonal refinery maintenance and a slowdown in world economic growth.

“We just have to decide when it’s time to load the cargoes,” a source at a refinery said, adding that this will depend on whether rival Oman grade will stay weak in the July spot market that will start trading next week.

Saudi Arabia, the biggest producer of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countreis (OPEC), is pumping around 10 million bpd and is storing 80 million barrels to meet any sudden disruption in supplies, Saudi Oil Minister Ali Al-Naimi said on Tuesday.

Oil markets would remain well supplied even after fresh international sanctions against Iran take effect, Al-Naimi said, as global crude oversupply is already as much as 1.5 million bpd.

Iran exports about 2.2 million barrels per day (bpd), mostly to Asia.

Many traders in Europe have said if there should be demand shift from Iranian crude to Saudi barrels, it would come from Asia.

“The problem here is not all the buyers of Iranian crude have term contracts with Saudi and Saudi only supplies to term customers,” a trader in Europe said.

“European buyers need more flexibility than Asians because we are not sure about demand. It’s not as strong and steady as in Asia.”

Reuters model shows profits from processing crude into fuels, or refining margins, are more stable in Asia than Europe. The margins averaged $7.19 a barrel in the last five days in Singapore, compared with $7.63 in the past 12 months. They touched a high of $10.02 a barrel in August. -Reuters

DUBAI: A slide in global oil prices is weighing on stock markets in the Gulf, helping to push down heavyweight petrochemical shares, but stocks remain unlikely to enter longer-term downtrends, analysts say.

Regional markets were hit hard this week, with Dubai’s benchmark index closing Wednesday at a three-month low and Saudi Arabia’s bourse recording its largest daily loss in three weeks on the day. The Saudi index has lost 4.2 percent in the last five sessions, though it is still 13 percent higher than its level at the end of last year. Equally ominous for the markets is a decline in trading turnover, which suggests some investors have lost interest in stocks. Daily stock trading turnover in Saudi Arabia rose early this year to several times last year’s levels, but it has since fallen back to only about twice typical turnover in 2011.

One major reason for the decline is the weakness of stock markets globally, which have been dragged down by renewed concern about Europe’s shaky economy and the euro zone debt crisis. Another factor for the oil-dependent Gulf, though, is the drop in oil prices; in the past six weeks Brent crude has fallen from around $125 a barrel to $112. For many Gulf economies, which derive a third or more of their output from the oil sector, that means slower growth.

“The worsening world economic outlook is hurting the demand for petrochemical products and exports,” said Saudi-based Khaled Alageel, general director of Nama Oil and Mineral Consultation. “Our correlation is to US and European equities, and in turn oil is correlated to them.” At the start of April, Saudi Economy and Planning Minister Mohammed Al-Jasser said his country’s gross domestic product was heading for 6 percent growth this year, down only slightly from 6.8 percent in 2011.

Lower oil prices, combined with lower Saudi crude output as the global economy slows, could put a dent in that forecast, perhaps bringing Saudi economic growth under five percent, analysts believe.

The weak oil price helps to explain why the Saudi petrochemical stocks index is down 13

FILE - A man walks past a sign of the Dubai Financial Market Nov. 29, 2011. A slide in global oil prices is weighing on stock markets in the Gulf, helping to push down heavyweight petrochemical shares, but stocks remain unlikely to enter longer-term downtrends, analysts say.

(Reuters)

percent from this year’s peak in April, underperforming a nine percent drop by the overall market index. “This year’s average petchem selling prices will be five to eight percent lower than in 2011,” said Tariq Alalaiwat, equity research analyst at NCB Capital.

Healthy

There are reasons to think that Gulf stock markets are not starting an extended slide, however. One is the fact that last year’s strong growth has partially eased financial tensions in the region left over from the global credit crisis and Dubai’s corporate debt problems of 200809. Companies have had time to work on restructuring their debts. Meanwhile, Dubai’s long slide in real estate prices may be close to ending; a Reuters poll of analysts published this week suggested that after a collapse of roughly two-

thirds since 2008, Dubai home prices would rise four percent by year-end.

Secondly, oil prices have only returned to levels which prevailed in the second half of last year, when Gulf economies were growing solidly. In fact, officials in Saudi Arabia and some other Gulf countries appear comfortable with the idea that oil prices might fall further. An oil price of $100 a barrel is fair, Kuwait’s oil minister Hani Hussein told the al-Rai newspaper this week.

Analysts said such comments appeared to stem from a recognition that moderately lower oil prices might actually be healthy for the Gulf.

Although they could slow the region’s growth rates slightly in the immediate term, they could set the stage for more stable long-term growth by easing pressure on the struggling global economy. -Reuters

Islamic repo agreements struggle for traction

DUBAI: Islamic repurchase agreements may struggle to gain wide acceptance as a tool for financial institutions because the industry lacks clear rules governing their use, participants at a major industry conference told Reuters.

Liquidity management products such as Islamic repos were one of the main themes at the annual meeting of the Bahrain-based Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions (AAOIFI) in Manama this week.

The shortage of such instruments is becoming increasingly problematic for Islamic finance as the industry grows, bankers and analysts said. By allowing investors to lend out assets for short periods, Islamic repos could help to solve the problem by giving banks a way to balance their short-term liquidity flows with demand.

So many in the industry are keen for AAOIFI, one of the world’s top standard-setting bodies in Islamic finance, to set guidelines for how repos should be structured and used.

“Some banks are flush with deposits and they need to manage this liquidity,” Srinivasan Gopalakrishnan, assistant vice president at Bahrain-based Al Salam Bank, told Reuters. “A lot of participants want AAOIFI to be more active, and for it to move faster.”

Khaled Al-Fakih, AAOIFI’s secretary general, told Reuters before the meeting: “We would like to see insightful debate on repo and hedging that can help us develop standards that can benefit the industry.”

Methods

But creating instruments that are widely recognized as obeying Islamic principles is proving particularly difficult in the case of repos, and participants at this week’s meeting said there was no conclusive outcome from the discussions.

Five possible methods to create an Islamic repo were outlined in a speech by Yousef Abdullah Al Shubaily, Sharia scholar at Dubai-based Minhaj Advisory, but there was no consensus on which should be favored.

“There was not much depth” in discussions, said Zarizan Ibrahim, Sharia manager at Malaysia’s CIMB. “More research should be done.”

Another delegate said: “They discussed the elements and functions in general...but there were no recommendations.”

In conventional repos, an investor borrows an asset for a predetermined period during which he receives income from it. The very phrase “Islamic repo” is controversial among some scholars who fear the instruments might simply replicate conventional financial products without addressing a real economic need.

“Conceptually the benchmark is conventional financial products, and this fundamentally presents an issue for scholars,” said Paul McViety, legal director at law firm DLA Piper.

Religious principles look likely to constrain the use of Islamic repos. Calculating margin calls on repos may be problematic since it can be seen as using an implicit interest rate. Trading the assets behind repos with third parties

could be disallowed by some scholars because of Islam’s ban on pure monetary speculation; this makes Islamic repos less attractive economically.

Another issue is the practice of netting, which allows firms to effectively cancel positions within their trading books by setting them off against each other. Netting is not recognized by regulators in many Gulf countries where Islamic repos might be conducted, according to a report by Bahrain-based International Islamic Financial Market (IIFM).

Zainal Abidin Mohamed, head of business banking at Malaysia-based AmIslamic Bank, said such issues needed to be addressed head-on.

“If we want to make Islamic banking more international, we need more time to discuss these,” he said on the sidelines of the conference.

Progress

A hedging master agreement was launched by the IIFM and the International Swaps and Derivatives Association in March 2010, and could help to provide a basis for Islamic repo deals.

But the agreement has not yet gained full, global acceptance and in practice banks have used the template as a reference document, making modifications of their own.

This has generated variations in contracts that have increased uncertainty and may be slowing the development of the Islamic repo market.

Nevertheless, market demand is pushing institutions to introduce the instrument. Last August National Bank

of Abu Dhabi and Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank executed what they described as the Gulf’s first Sharia-compliant repo transaction, a one-week maturity deal that was valued at 20 million US dollars and was backed by Malaysian and Abu Dhabi government-related Sukuk. They used a collateralized Murabaha model for the repo, a common costplus arrangement in Islamic finance.

Since then, National Bank of Abu Dhabi (NBAD) has done several other Islamic repo deals, including a $100 million transaction, said Mark Pritchard, vice president and head of Islamic institutional coverage at NBAD’s financial markets division.

The deals, including weekly and monthly tenors, have been done with United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain counterparties, said Pritchard, adding that his bank hoped to expand the transactions to another Gulf country, which he did not name.

He also said NBAD was looking at potential alternatives to the Murabaha model for Islamic repos.

Even if the industry agrees on common standards for repos, past experience with other Islamic hedging products suggests it might take two to three years for an active market to develop, according to Ijlal Ahmed Alvi, chief executive of IIFM. Some industry participants think the market needs a clearinghouse which would alleviate concerns such as counterparty risk and legal enforceability of contracts.

Setting up such a clearinghouse, however, was not discussed in detail at the AAOIFI meeting, and it is not clear who would take responsibility for it. -Reuters

ALWATAN DAILY

BUSINESS

FRIdAY, MAY 11, 2012

11

Emirates hit by fuel costs, sticks with expansion DUBAI: Emirates, Dubai’s flagship carrier, said on Thursday it would seek out new routes to sustain its fast pace of growth after a steep rise in fuel costs punctured annual profits.

The Dubai-government owned airline, which said it has no plans to hedge against fluctuating fuel prices or pass much of the higher costs onto customers, reported a 72percent drop in 2011 net profit. “Frankly we need more airplanes sooner to do all the things we want to do. For every route (we have), there’s about five behind which we want to do and get going,” Emirates’ President Tim Clark said in an interview with Reuters Television.

The airline, which launched in 1985, presently flies to 123 destinations in 73 countries. It has posted a profit in every year of operation and growth has slowed only twice in 2009 and 2011.

The airline is the world’s largest customer of the Airbus A380 superjumbo. It ordered 90 A380 aircraft in 2010, of which 21 have been delivered.

“We are now fairly focused on trying to shrink our fleet number and types down to two or three. So, the Airbus A380 is the top end, the Boeing 777 and the Airbus A350 in the middle and lower end. That’s it,” said Clark.

Keeping those planes in the air cost Emirates 24.3 billion UAE dirhams (6.6 billion US dollars) in fuel costs in the 2011-2012 financial year, 40 percent of total costs and up 44.4 percent from the previous year, the company annual earnings report said.

“Hedging at this stage, when prices are high and forward curve so strong, is probably not smart,” said Clark. “We had to introduce fuel surcharges. If the fuel comes down to around $70 to $90, we will take surcharges off.”

Rising fuel costs and the financial turmoil in Europe are also expected to impact earnings of most global carriers, the

FILE - Boeing delivers the 1000th Boeing 777 to Emirates Airline & Group in a ceremony at Boeing’s factory in Everett, Washington, March 2, 2012. Emirates, Dubai’s flagship carrier, which said on Thursday it has no plans to hedge against fluctuating fuel prices or pass much of the higher costs onto customers, reported a 72-percent drop in 2011 net profit. (Reuters)

International Air Transport Association said last month.

Clark said it was keeping all options open for a $550 million Islamic bond, or Sukuk, maturing in June: “We have closed the year with $4.8 billion in cash balance. We have absolutely no problem of maturity. Whether or not we will finance (the Sukuk) through the various instruments, we can decide at the time.”

Emirates and its home base of Dubai are betting that

its location - a third of the world’s population are within a four-hour flight - will continue to attract passenger traffic away from other global hubs such as London, New York and Singapore.

No acquisitions

Emirates, which is among the top 10 in the world by passenger numbers, reported a profit of 1.5 billion dirhams

Japan posts current account surplus for 2nd month Tokyo stocks end 3-month low on euro-zone debt crisis

TOKYO: Japan logged a current account surplus for a second month in March at 1.589 trillion Japanese yen (19.9 billion US dollars) on the back of a recovery in exports and an increase in overseas investment income, the Finance Ministry said Thursday.

The figure shrank 8.6 percent from a year earlier as higher demand for energy pushes up imports, but improved from a 30.7 percent fall

in February.

The current account balance, the broadest measure of trade in goods, services, tourism and investment, is the difference between Japan’s income from foreign sources against payments on foreign obligations, excluding net capital investment.

The trade surplus alone fell 98.2 percent in the reporting month from a year ago to 4.2 billion yen ($53 million), according to the data released by the ministry.

Exports rose 7.3 percent, up for the first time in six months, while imports rose 11.9 percent for the 27th straight monthly gain. The

income account surplus, which measures the difference between dividends flowing into Japan and those paid to overseas investors, grew 10.1 percent to 1.800 trillion yen ($22.6 billion), buoyed by an increase in overseas investment returns.

The yen’s strength has prompted Japanese manufacturers to increasingly shift their production overseas in pursuit of cheaper costs, making income to become a key factor in Japan’s overall current account surplus.

For the fiscal year ended March 31, Japan posted a surplus of 7.893 trillion yen ($99.0 billion), down 52.6 percent from the previous

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

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104 265 53 146 325 13.0 58 25.0 130 25.0 230 104 118 102 52 38.5 148 51 34.5 71 40.0 48.5 69 26.0 275 51 38.5 51 41.5 100 275.0 93.0 22.0 22.5 63.0 29.0 194.0 265 114 31.50 69 68 60 51 64 42.50 114 83.20

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57 110 130 246 36.0 236 154 132 39.5 110 93 1,000 72 20.5 62.0 84 62 71 100 37.0 82 36.0 86 17.5 43.5 60 85 170 45.5 33.5 41.5 17.5 41.0 134 134 220 60 350 59.45

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Previous Close Change 179.51 0.59 6,451.50 -4.70 Trading Activity Chng Volume Tran. Value(KD)

Date of Closing Prices:

DTD 0.33% -0.07%

Last Bid

Last Ask

MTD YTD 0.44% 0.33% 4.57% 10.88% Div. Annual Close Yield High Low P/E

20 20 -10 2.07

592,500 280,000 115,000 110,000 10,000 510,000 560,000 2,080,000 200,000 4,457,500

16 13 5 4 1 7 13 102 15 176

635,900 118,950 92,450 66,000 8,800 139,250 240,800 1,491,800 118,950 2,912,900

1,060 420 760 580 880 270 425 710 590

1,080 425 800 600 890 275 430 720 600

3.7% 0.0% 0.0% 2.5% 1.7% 1.8% 2.3% 2.1% 0.0% 2.0%

1,220 510 800 680 930 285 480 900 600 326.42

1,040 425 700 600 790 236 410 720 530 314.20

15.55 36.55 1272.02 18.04 33.01 26.31 13.14 25.66 130.71 19.37

-2 -2 -

120,000 10,000 4,160,000 380,000 90,000 880,000 1,040,000 40,000 2,720,000 15,960,000 320,000 10,640,000 80,000 200,000 6,560,000 1,420,000 3,880,000 6,200,000 120,000 40,000 1,040,000 240,000 2,940,000 59,080,000

5 1 75 15 3 18 25 1 30 81 4 92 1 5 56 71 76 104 6 1 23 4 57 754

12,280 2,650 215,760 55,520 29,250 50,720 103,160 4,640 100,800 2,351,640 16,000 358,800 3,080 13,800 256,480 382,400 360,440 384,440 21,960 2,800 62,000 12,080 323,760 5,124,460

102 260 51 144 320 57 98 116 36.5 146 50 34 38.5 69.0 270.0 94.0 63.0 186 30 69 66 58 50 110.0

104 265 52 146 325 58 230 100 118 102 37.0 148 51 34 39.5 71.0 246 55 39.0 275.0 95.0 64.0 188 280 33 68 59 51 112.0

0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 6.2% 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% 0.0% 0.0% 1.8% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 3.7% 4.2% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 2.4%

112 285 67 182 345 18.5 69 25.0 130 36.0 230 122 120 102 52 35.5 150 65 35 71 44.0 48.5 70.0 26.0 295 65 39 51 47.5 104 270.0 130.0 25.0 33.5 96.0 29.0 190 310 114 32 89 73 60 59 64 42.5 140.0 85.99

104 255 40 144 295 11.5 50 25.0 130 21.0 230 99 102 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 42.5 106.0 74.96

15.85 10.02 0.00

Ex-D Ex-D 2 Ex-D 0.05

40,000 40,000

2 2

5,520 5,520

270 460 450 136 -

300 510 460 140 -

6.7% 3.8% 5.4% 3.6% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 4.8%

325 610 540 148 220 134 40.5 44.91

13.38 280 13.67 520 10.96 450 22.45 102 66.32 220 102 40.5 64711.96 13.05 42.22

-1

2,400,000 920,000 140,000 40,000 80,000 80,000 120,000 2,060,000 3,920,000 480,000 85,000 200,000 47,600,000 2,280,000 4,160,000 400,000 9,400,000 120,000 160,000 560,000 18,480,000 80,000 1,040,000 80,000 80,000 160,000 4,370,000 99,495,000

28 10 5 2 1 2 6 29 44 12 10 5 261 27 40 10 82 3 2 5 111 1 11 1 1 4 55 768

134,480 101,200 18,200 9,840 2,800 18,880 17,440 260,080 146,920 44,240 85,100 14,680 915,240 138,400 348,000 24,480 680,720 9,800 5,360 23,360 849,760 2,640 42,040 3,080 3,120 9,040 1,539,550 5,448,450

56 110 130 246 34.5 228 146 122 37.5 92 1,000 73 19.0 58.0 87 61 71 99 36.5 81 86 42.0 46.5 32.5 40.0 37 56 345

57 112 132 248 38.0 236 154 126 38.0 93 1,020 74 19.5 60.0 88 62 72 102 39.0 83 33.5 91 43.0 60 90 180 47.0 34.5 41.0 38.5 40 59 350

0.0% 4.5% 0.0% 6.1% 0.0% 3.4% 0.0% 5.6% 0.0% 6.4% 0.0% 1.0% 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% 5.9% 5.9% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 3.7% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.9%

63 118 152 246 37.5 250 130 100 52.0 120 104 1,080 85 20.0 68.0 97 75 73 90 38.0 92 23.0 91 17.5 45.0 70 80 174 52.0 39.5 40.5 28.5 25.5 134 40 220 70 480 60.26

47 97 108 200 28.5 224 114 77 27.0 108 94 840 62 11.0 35.0 77 54 52 74 33.0 59 13.5 87 17.5 31.0 57 64 116 27.5 22.0 25.0 17.5 15.0 134 31 220 49 270 49.06

4,620,000 4 620 000 160,000 50,000 22,500 80,000 55,000

57 6 4 6 8 7

1,044,240 1 044 240 19,160 21,750 30,200 21,250 48,450

226 118 430 178 1,340 265 134 870

228 120 435 188 1,360 275 146 880

0 0% 0.0% 0.0% 3.4% 0.0% 5.4% 3.7% 0.0% 7.4%

260 136 475 158 1,480 345 222 920

214 116 415 122 1,240 290 134 660

-

-

-5 -2 1.5-1 -1 -2 2.51.0 1.0 6.01 -1 -2 0.56-

-

-2 -8 1.5-1 20 1 1.02.03.0 -1 1 2.51.01 0.51.02.5Ex-D -3 0.28 20 5 -

(TSE) lost 35.41 points, or 0.39 percent, from Wednesday to 9,009.65, the lowest finish since February 13.

At one point, the index briefly fell below the psychologically important 9, 000 level for the first time since Feb. 14, when the Bank of Japan announced additional monetary easing to boost the economy, which bolstered investor sentiment through the end of March.

The broader Tokyo Stock Price Index, which includes all shares on the TSE’s first section, was down 0.41 point, or 0.05 percent, to 765.42, with notable decliners including sea transport. -Agencies

05 / 01 / 2012

For more Information please contact "Global" at (+965) 180 42 42 or www.globalinv.net

For more Information please contact "Global" at (+965) 180 42 42 or www.globalinv.net Ÿ

year, the sharpest fall among comparable data available since fiscal 1985.

The figure was also the smallest yearly surplus since fiscal 1996. Exports fell 2.8 percent for the year, while imports rose 14.0 percent due to higher oil prices and growing imports of fossil fuel to ramp up thermal power generation following last year’s nuclear crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant.

In more news Tokyo stocks continued their slide on Thursday, sending a key index to the three-month low on renewed concerns over the Europe’s debt crisis. The 225-issue Nikkei Stock Average on the Tokyo Stock Exchange

Trading Prices of Kuwait Stock Exchange Date of Closig Prices: 10/05/2012

Date of Closing Prices: 10 / 05 / 2012 For more information please contact “Global” at (+965) 180 42 42 or www.globalinv.net Global General Index KSE Price Index

for the fiscal year ended March 31 from 5.4 billion dirhams in 2010.

Revenue rose 15 percent to 62.3 billion dirhams.

Emirates’ drop in profits is in line with its competitors such as Air France-KLM, German flagship airline Deutsche Lufthansa and Singapore Airlines. In the region, it competes with Abu Dhabi’s Etihad Airways and Qatar Airways.

Air France-KLM’s first-quarter losses widened and Singapore Airlines posted an unexpected loss in its fourthquarter - both hit by high fuel costs and the slowing global economy.

“In addition to the cost of fuel, Emirates had an operationally challenging year with the political unrest across the Middle East and North Africa affecting flight schedules,” the airline said in a statement on Thursday.

Clark said that company has its “hands full” with its growth plans and has no room for acquisitions.

“With all we have going on, I think you will have to be Superman to suddenly say we are going to take on Indian aviation or the European aviation. That’s not to say that we are not been approached multiple occasions and we still are,” he said.

He said the offers have been coming from the highest levels in the government. Emirates was linked to a possible buy of Spicejet in India this year.

The passenger seat factor for 2011 was 80 percent, in line with the prior year.

Profit for the wider Emirates Group, including airline services arm, Dnata, was 2.3 billion dirhams, down from 5.9 billion a year earlier.

Emirates paid a 500 million dirham dividend to the Dubai government while Dnata paid 350 million dirhams.

In 2010, Emirates’ dividend payout was 2.3 billion dirhams.

-Reuters

14.46 0.00 8.73 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 46.63 0.00 0.00 73.01 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 16.31 0.00 0.00 0.00 18.77 20.94 16.18 534.87

0.00 0.00 5.59 14.21

51.21 12.93 17.17 23.03 13.10 15.16 23.12 30.00 0.00 15.17 422.48

186.08 0.00 15.57 8.50 200.54 0.00 0.00 26.88 439.41 0.00 0.00 19.60

19.44 7.87 12.17 18.03 31.52

Shuaiba Industrial

-

Metal Collecting Global General Index 120 Kuwait Foundry KSE Price Index

ACICO 250 United Industries 89 Company High Boubyan Petroch.

610 1,140 Gulf Glass National Bank Gulf Bank 495 Hilal Cement Commercial Bank 770 Al Kout Ind. Project Ahli Bank 640 K-PAK Ahli UnitedMaterial Bank 850 Building International 248 Nat. Ind.Co.Bank 460 Burgan BankHolding Equipment Kw Finance House Consumer Industries 890 Boubyan Bank 590 Kuwait Gypsum Global Qurain Index - Banking 218 Salbookh Trading Kw Investment -40 IKARUS 265 Commercial Facilit.

Boubyan Int'LAdv. Ind. 41 Int'L Financial 174 National GlobalInvest.

Index - Industrial Kw Projects 300 National Cinema Ahlia Holding 13.5 Kw Hotels Coast Invest.

53 410 Agility Int'L Investor Market Complexes Securities House ZAIN 740 Ind. & Fin. Inv. Safat Energy 82.0 Securities Group Educational Group Int'L Finance 320 Indep. Petroleum 110 MARKAZ 160 National Cleaning KMIFIC Sultan - 106 Int'L Inv. Center Group Arabi 156 Aref Inv.Group Group City Group Investment Dar - Tele.

2,360 AlWataniya AMAN Inv. Kw Gulf Link 124 ALOLA Inv. 110 Kw Cable ALMAL Inv. Vision 50 Automated System - Gulf Inv. House NAPESCO - A'ayan Leasing KCPC 380 32.5 Bayan Inv. K.S.H Inv. GLOBAL EyasInv. Osoul Hits Telecom GULFINVEST - 92 KFIC - 21.0 Al Safwa Holding KAMCO - Human Soft Int'l Leasing & Holding Inv. -78 Privatization Nat. Int'l Holding - Nafaaes Holding - Housing Finance National Slaughter MADAR 126 Aref energy 26.5 AlSafwan Deera Holding 600 AlGulf Safat Inv. 69.0 Petroleum 122.0 AlGulf Salam Group 33.0 Franchising 41.0 Ekttitab Credit Holding & Collection AlNational Qurain Holding -23.0 Ranges Sokouk BurganHolding Well Drilling 16.5 Al-Madina 40.0 IFA H&R Finance NOOR Combinted Group 1,680 Tamdeen Inv. 160 Jeeran Holding KW BH Int'l Exch.

Palms Agro 112 Taiba Kuwaiti Holding 76.0 Safat TEC Kuwait Syrian Mushrif Trading 104 Strategia 340 UPAC 53 Kuwait China Inv. 290 ALAFCO Manafae Inv. Al-Muwasat - Gulf North Africa Mashaer Holding 275 Amwal Fuel AlOula Masar Future Comm.

Al-Imtiaz 132 116 Hayat Comm.

Global Index - Investment 67 Mubarrad Transport Kuwait Insurance 52.0 Kuwait Resorts Gulf Insurance - Advanced Technolgy Ahlia Insurance 405 Yiaco Medical 112 Warba Insurance Al Jazeera Airways 430 Kuwait Re-Ins. Al Soor Fuel 224 First Takaful - Future Kid Ins. Wethaq Insurance 280 KGL Global Index - Insurance Al Nawadi Alrai Media 122 Kuwait R.E. 48 Zima R.E. Holding United 100 National 126 GlobalR.E. Index - Services Salhia R.E. 204 LiveStock Trans.

Pearl R.E. Dana Al-Safat 22495 Tamdeen R.E. United Poultry Ajial R.E. - Kw FoodStuff 1,380 Massaleh R.E. United Food Arab R.E. 30.0 Kout R.E. Food - Union

- ŷ 120 źź - źŷ 248 ŷ 87 ź Low 600 ŷ 1,120 - ŷŷ 490 - ŷŷ 770 - ŷŷ 640 - źŷ 800 - Ÿ 248 - ŷŷ 455 - źŷ 880 - źŷ 580 - ŷ 216 źź -40 ŷź 260 - źŷ 40 - źŷ 170 źŸ 300 - Ÿŷ 12.5 ŷ - ŷ 52 ź 405 ŷ ŷ - ŷ - ŷ 740 ŷ ŷ 81.0 ź - ŷ - ŷ - ŷ 320 ŷź 108 152 - ŷŸ 104 ŷŷ 150 - ŷź - ŷŷ 2,320 ŷŸ 122 ŷŷ 108 49 - źŷ - - ŷŷ - - ŷŷ 365 ŷŷ 31.0 - ŷŷ -ŷ - 84 ŷŸ -19.0 ŷź - - ŷŷ -77 ŷŷ - - ŷŷ - - ŷŷ - ŷŷ 118 26.5 530 ŷŸ - ŷŸ 66.0 114.0 31.5 Ÿź 39.0 - źŷ - 22.0 ŷź 16.5 - ŷŷ 38.5 - źŷ ŷŷ 1,660 158 źŷ - ŷ 110 Ÿ - ŷ 76.0 ź - ŷ 104 ŷ - ŷ 340 Ÿ 53 ŷ 290 - ŷź - - ŷŷ 265 - ŷŸ - ŷŷ 124 - źŷ 114 źŸ 66 ŷ - ŷŸ 51.0 - - ŷŷ - ŷŸ 395 108 410 źŸ 224 ź - -ŷ 275 ŷŸ - źŷ 120 źź 48 100 - Ÿŷ 118 ŸŸ 200 ź - ŷ ŷ 22495 źź - - ŷŷ 1,380 - ŷŸ 30.0 - źŷ - - ŷŷ

Global Index - Food 98 96 ERESCO 86091 84088 Mabani Sharjah Cement 75 7496 INJAZZAT RE Gulf Cement 100 Inv. Holding Um QuwainGrp Cement 12.0 - 11.5 Int'L Resorts 102 Fujaira Cement 95 78 77 Commercial R.E Ras AlKheimah 70 65 Sanam R.E. ARIG 54 53 Aa'yan R.E United Gulf Bank 162 162 Aqar 295 295 Egypt Kw Holding Kuwait R.E Holding Bahrain Kw Ins. 59 AL Mazaya 60 49.5 House 54.0 14.0 AlGulf Dar Fin. National R.E 14.0 InovestInt'L Holding -67 -58 Themar Ahli United Bank - 170 Grand R.E Projects - 170 - 53.0 Tijara & R.E Invest -53.0 Ithmaar Bank AlGlobal TameerIndex - Non-Kuwaiti Arkan Al-Kuwait R.E 70 70 Markaz Real Estate Safat Global AlInvestment Argan Int'L Funds 28.5 28.0 Abyaar Al-Bareeq Holding 23.5 - 23.5 Munshaat AFAQ First Dubai 26.0 - 25.5 Al-Shamel KBT 27.0 Al-Safat Real Estate 27.0 Manazel 16.5 - 15.5 Ajwan Real Estate REAM Specialities Group 490 490 - Mena Real Inter.

Estate - Masaken AlDulaqan MoudonR.E Intl. R.E - - Markaz Real Estate 57 56 Eid Food Kuwait Remal 295 - 285 Maidan ClinicR.E

źŸ Ÿŷ ŸŸ ź ŷ Ÿ Ÿ ŷ ź ŷ ź ź ŷ ź ŷ ź ź ź ŷŸ ŷŷ ŷź ŷź ź ŷ ŷ ŷ źŷ źŷ ź ŷŷ źŷ ŷź ŷŷ ŷŷ źŷ Ÿ ŷ ź

Last Close Previous Close - Change 216 216 20,000 1 120 176.53130 -10 177.24 -0.70 2,400 - 5,754.20 - -27.30 350 3505,726.90 60,000 3 14,960 250 250 Last Prev.

Trading Activity -2 520,000 11 45,760 88 90 Close Close Chng - Volume 275,000Tran.

16 Value(KD) 610 167,200 610 1,000 1,000 3,796,050 - 1120 1120 69 3,377,500 20 495 495 - 830,000 407,950 222 222 770 770 10,000 1 7,700 - 415 415 640 -20 2 6,400 660 10,000 275 275 800 50 850 350,000 23 282,700 224 Ex-D 224 16 248 248 - 700,000 173,600 310 310 460 465 -5 500,000 10 229,750 184 184 890 -10 880 1,280,000 66 1,127,050 102 102 590 590 607,850 1,035,000 33 128 Ex-D 128 319.37 319.54 8,092,500 6,639,050 0.17--2 1,780,000 24024 218 216 386,080 1,200,000 40 42 47,480 106 106 -14 --3 188 188 260 265 -5 250,000 14 65,750 4072 1,680,000 -1 67,160 4172 13 1,848,930 168.51 8,842,500 157 0.04 168.48 170 1,040,000 20 172 -2 177,720 300 110,000 5 33,000 295 5 1,020 1,020 7,040,000 12.5 12.5 46 90,920 280 280 1,280,000 22 52 53 -1 67,280 260,000 405 105,400 12 405 25.0 25.0 52 52 130 130 1,121,100 1,515,000 740 69 740 31.0 31.0 3,920,000 81.0 83.0 31 317,600 2.0230 230 110 110 102 102 6,400 320 20,000 325 5.0108 112 73,920 680,000 18 2 146,560 940,000 156 4.0 160 50 50 -28 106 380,000 40,160 106 44.0 44.0 -15 900,000 156 137,160 152 52 52 --4 -30 550 550 74 74 - - - - 22,500 2,300 52,650 2,360 28.5 28.5 - 60 -7 93,680 760,000 124 124 108 1425 54,920 108 - 500,000 58 4958 49.5 15,840 -1 320,000 4 295 295 23 - - 23 - - 320 320 71 - - 71 - - 138,900 370,000 370 370 31.0 31.0 58,760 1,840,000 2230 - 255 255 48.5 - 48.5 - - 260 260 - - 68 68 -Ex-D - 1,041,840 11,840,000 137 91 88 3 20.5 20.5 26.0 26.0 - -1 47,280,000 276 942,520 21.0 20.0 244 - 244 - - - 270 270 9478 - 9478 -11 96,360 1,240,000 - - 51 51 - - 112 112 - 36 36 - - - 154 154 -22 51 51 - 61,840 500,000 126 126 26.5 26.5 24 6,360 - 20 240,000 20,000 600 11,500 580 75 75 -59 69.0 4,000,000 273,480 67.0 2.0 8.0 120.0 112.0 1,305,280 48,360 33.0 34.0 1,520,000 21218 1.0- 11,180,000 2.039.5 41.5 24 77,080 1,920,000 120 120 19.0 19.0 - 0.523.0 101 436,680 23.5 19,280,000 16.5 5 7,920 16.5 480,000 255 255 39.0 0.5- - 10,640,000 93 419,440 38.5 400 400 29.0 29.0 -16 234,200 1,680 140,000 1,680 160 2.0158 12,680 80,000 4 95 95 255 255 4,440 112 104 8 40,000 2 114 114 9,120 76.0 79.0 3.0120,000 1 26.00 26.00 160 000 16 640 104 104 160,000 7 16,640 68 68 335 340 5.0 40,000 13,600 4 53 200,000 53 10,600 2 290 295 11,600 40,000 --5 60 -1 60 168 168 46.5 - - - - 46.5 275 270 240,000 64,850 64 -5 -11 64 255 255 42.50 - 42.50 - - - 265 265 128 130 -2 1,240,000 38 157,920 116 114 2.0 40,720,000 80,000 558 4 9,240 76.02 0.1275.90 2,702,550 66 66 14 680,000 45,160 -6 325 325 52.0 49.5 280,000 2.5 14,320 - - 560 560 - 810 810 -485 485 405 7 10.0 80,000 395 32,000 118 -8 5 120,000 110 62 13,200 430 30,000 425 12,500 220 220 Ex-D 224 228 20,000 1 -4 4,480 114 114 - - - 106 Ex-D 106 40.50 40.50 280 275 5 310,000 13 85,550 43.63 43.43 0.19- 120,000 6 13,200 92 92 124 80,000 9,680 122 14 3,840 49 -1-2 48 80,000 98 92,000 9 100 9998 1 920,000 383,920 124 120 4 3,100,000 741.80 738.71 97,107,500 105 970 3.09 5,639,570 12 104,680 200 204 -4 520,000 184 184 37.5 37.5 80,000 96 -1 7,600 95 32 224 10.0100,000 22,400 234 136 136 120 120 20,000 1,380 27,600 1,360 82 -20 -3 82 335 335 1 30.0 80,000 30.5 0.5- 2,400 510 510 - 108 108 - - 100,000 336.90 35,200 3.80 333.10 31,160 -1 320,000 98 97 85 1,656,950 10 1,935,000 850 5738 860 1,880,000 168,920 89 89 2 8,960 120,000 23 7599 7396 20,680,000 187 2,033,280 15 23,960 11.5 12.0 0.52,000,000 Ex-D 67 67 38.0 38.0 97 2 249,200 99 2,520,000 46 3 18,520 78 77 1 240,000 118 118 67,400 17 1,000,000 65 70 -5 114 114 4 10,720 54 -1 55 200,000 1 3,240 162 166 -4 20,000 90 90 11,800 -5 295 300 40,000 2 38.0 38.0 Ex-D 455 455 11 59 26,160 440,000 -4 63 90,520,000 4,639,160 52.0 54.0 569 1 80,000 1,120 14.0 14.5 0.5--2 4 273 1,335,280 21,280,000 9166 9162 23,800 170 170 140,000 -4 17.5 17.5 - -5 -12 31.0 31.058.0 53.0 1,200,000 63,600 59 59 1,132 8,528,280 0.5444.67 138,280,000 44.13 -4 320,000 2 22,400 70 74 122 122 48.5 48.5 - - - 124 124 12 0.52,720,000 76,880 28.0 28.5 144 144 1.0- 80,000 1 1,880 23.5 24.5 106 106 0.5240,000 6,160 3 26.0 25.5 250 250 Ex-D 35,040,000 946,080 - 4 27.0 27.0 21.5 21.5 1,200,000 8 1.0- 19,240 16.5 15.5 36 36 - -20 -1 134 134 490 10,000 510 4,900 - 134 134 51 51 - - - - 220 220 345 345 -1 240,000 6 13,520 5790 5890 47 610,850 295 290 5 2,110,000 1,960 1,960 0.02- - 53,085,000 - 332 4,151,200 49.73 49.75 39.5 39.5

Global Index - Real Estate Flex 102.0 Dar Al-Thuraya Real E 242 232 Nationl Ind. Group 232 źŷ Kw Medical Services 128 - 126 - ŷŷ 128 75 Pipes Ind. & Oil 450 Kuwait Cement 455 450 ź Amar For Fin. & Leas.

55 - ŷ 150 - ŷ Refrigeration Ind.Market Total Parallel 1,420 1,420 1,420 ź Gulf Cables & Elec.

335 - ŷ Heavy & Ship.

Totaleng.

Market 212 Marine Services - ŷ GlobalCement Special Indices 720 720 ŷ Portland 720 Ÿ GlobalIndustrial Index - Kuwaiti Co.'s 180 - ŷ Shuaiba Ÿ Global Index - 10 Large 104 104 ź Metal Collecting 110 Cap. 460 ź - ŷ Kuwait Foundry Global Index - Islamic -

102.0 242 -10 13,220,000 - 154 128 - 140,000 6 75 470 20 50,000 2 55 150 -1 10,000 1,460 -40 2,500 1 335 407,402,5003,964 212 Close Prev. Close 720 230,000 19 188.74 180 189.54 182.283 106 183.51-2 80,000 460 560.58 563.58

DTD MTD YTD 0.0% 216 180 13.22 226 -0.40% -1.55% -1.55% 0.0% 120 102 130 495 0.0% 315 350 365 -1.50% -0.47% -1.50% 230 2.0% 196 31.03 246 250 Annual Close 79 Last87 Last 89 Div. 0.0% 102 36.02 Bid600 Ask 620 Yield High630 Low550 P/E86.98 0.0% 1,080 4.0% 1,400 1,100 15.82 1,120 3.6% 1,140 1,120 1,100 14.74 490 495 - 0.0% 510 490 33.95 6.8% 216 206 12.73 770 780 1.9% 790 770 88.62 390 8.4% 340 9.94 415 640 660 - 3.1% 660 640 17.34 275 5.20 0.0% 300 255 840 850 - 1.6% 850 790 29.68 2.2% 228 224 35.32 246 248 255 248 23.59 300 315 0.0% 3.2% 25.33 325 260 460 465 475 46051 12.26 180 0.0% 0.0% 178 152 880 - 2.3% 900 88093 25.07 870 0.0% 102 590 - 0.0% 580 590 590 112.24 5.5% 128 18.88 128 18.61 216 218 2.0% 0.0% 319.54 210 13.15 222 318.41 0.0% 0.00 10240 10641 0.0% 10651 10641 40.56 190 4.3% 194 8.5% 214 162 16.76 260 265 265 260 12.09 0.0% 4068 4073 0.0% 4288 4070 2.7% 174.76 163.04 13.88 172 168 0.0% 174 170 88.93 295 300 305 295 12.13 910 1,020 6.7% 4.1% 1,120 19.14 12.5 13.0 0.0% 13.5 12.5 1.33 270 0.0% 280 280 51 52 0.0% 54 52 7.4% 400 405 430 340 15.68 0.0% 25.0 25.0 0.00 0.0% 41 0.00 65 0.0% 130 130 8.8% 730 740 900 690 11.15 33.5 0.0% 36.0 31.0 81.0 82.0 0.0% 81.0 45.0 0.0% 230 230 0.0% 110 110 58.86 0.0% 102 102 0.00 315 340 9.3% 0.0% 350 295 106 110 116 108 158 160 3.1% 170 110 20.44 0.0% 50 50 0.00 0.0% 136 102 - 104 - 106 0.0% 44.0 44.0 0.00 152 154 0.0% 132 12.84 0.0% 52 5284 0.00 560 0.0% 550 530 0.0% 74 74 0.00 2,360 2.1% 2,400 0.0% 2,440 1,920 12.32 27.0 29.5 28.5 28.5 0.00 124 0.0% 0.0% 122 132 110 112 10895 0.00 108 0.0% 49 50 - 0.0% 5168 4958 285 315 0.0% 8.5% 350 230 21.81 21 24 23 22 315 325 395 7.8% 340 7.88 0.0% 71 71 0.00 370 0.0% 365 305 2.7% 260 12.64 31.0 32.5 31.5 31.0 - 0.0% 7.1% 260 255 12.82 - 250 48.5 48.5 - 0.0% 260 260 7.7% 4.79 68.0 64.0 68.0 32.31 132 299.92 0.0% - 90 - 91 0.0% 20.5 20.554 - 20.0 - 20.5 0.0% 26.0 26.0 0.00 23.5 14.0 0.0% - 238 244 244 275 0.0% 270 12.91 280 0.0% -78 -79 0.0% 9484 9461 0.00 13.81 6.4% - 54 51 5184 116.80 106 0.0% 104 0.0% - 0.0% 36 36 0.00 184 154 154 9.95 0.0% 0.0% 51 5191 0.00 124 126 0.0% 120 26.0 26.5 27.0 27.5 540 710 4.5% 520 14.57 600 0.0% 0.0% 75 75 0.00 68.0 78.0 69.0 0.0% 30.0 10.71 99.0 120.0 120.0 118.0 28.5 16.0 33.0 0.0% 0.0% 19.5 39.0 41.5 120 130 0.0% 0.0% 140 19.0 20.0 19.0 18.0 22.5 23.0 0.0% 0.0% 22.5 0.00 12.0 16.0 16.5 17.0 16.5 250 0.0% 41.84 275 198 0.0% 39.0 38.0 38.5 39.0 400 0.0% 375 87.26 0.0% 490 380 0.0% 29.0 0.00 % 29.0 1,660 1,680 15.98 1,740 1,500 4.2% 156 8.28 3.8% 156 160 162 97 6.31 0.0% 89 73 255 22.77 255 270 5.1% 106 114 12.99 8.9% 126 86 11.92 114 0.0% 114 75.0 78.0 0.0% 78.0 57.0 26 27 0.0% 28 0 0% 0 00 102 104 0.0% 104 80 0.00 68 43.00 63 73 0.0% 68 340 330 345 12.34 8.8% 270 53 53 52 0.0% 55 280 290 295 315 3.79 3.4% 60 61 0.0% 60 130 6.0% 7.71 176 10.8% 168 47 47 - 47 172 4.7% 270 275 0.0% 305 9.78 64 69 64 21.75 0.0% 265 305 42.5 0.00 - 244 - 255 0.0% 42.5 0.0% 300 128.0 275 0.0% 18.62 265 124.0 128.0 132.0 5.19 116 2.4% 124 75.90 70 0.0% 114 10.01 76.32 67 51 0.0% 72 65 16.97 325 300 325 325 52.0 6.2% 0.0% 62.0 22.65 44.0 50.0 12.90 610 510 560 560 1.9% 770 640 33.57 750 4.5% 9.91 460 500 5.2% 520 485 3.7% 390 13.28 345 405 400 17.37 108 114 118 110 0.0% 485 410 9.86 425 430 9.1% 220 220 2.7% 0.0% 270 236 296.83 16.48 222 226 134 11498 110 4.7% 14.64 114 104 108 0.0% 40.5 43.0 0.0% 40.5 300 218 7.1% 8.57 275 280 12.60 44.80 92 43.43 77 7.6% 7.99 91 - 4.7% 0.0% 22.69 156 114 120 124 0.0% 37.20 49 49 48 48 106 0.0% 0.0% 110 12.83 100 100 9994 99 126 0.0% 120 22.21 128 122 12.2% 791.90 705.36 11.34 202 10.0% 200 17.83 208 200 0.0% - 0.0% 222 182 15.27 37.5 37.5 37.5 0.0% 114 234 22490 16.20 22496 4.5% -94 126 3.7% 136 126 6.02 146 0.0% 130 120 110 130 4.7% 1,500 1,360 1,400 11.55 1,360 6.1% 82 82 5.29 85 360 1.5% 390 43.95 340 0.0% 30.5 30.0 31.5 610 5.9% 500 9.14 520 108 108 15.28 112 118 - 6.5% 4.1% 365.22 331.33 11.45 0.0% 100 96 39.65 95 98 860 840 21.70 86088 87089 0.0% 0.0% 44 95 76 7355 7689 0.0% 7188 0.0% 108 0.00 12.573 11.543 11.598 12.099 0.0% 10.4% 31.13 0.0% 38.0 38.0 35.5 37.0 0.0% 122 46 0.0% 78 14.56 77 77 79 98 8.5% 126 10.58 118 100 0.0% 75 65 65 114 0.0% 132 118 102 54 26.32 0.0% 55 53 54 0.0% 232 112 352.87 172 120 0.0% 90 90 91 164 330 250 6.57 172 6.8% 0.0% 38.0 38.0 40.5 0.00 455 455 290 300 0.0% 5.5% 63 60 59 493.96 40.5 74.0 0.0% 14.5 4.15 14.5 14.0 0.0% 13.5 0.0% 9452 5.5% 91 91 9051 7.1% 9.38 17.5 17.5 - 66 0.0% - 65 33.5 31.0 31.0 19.44 30.0 0.0% 168.0 172.0 0.0% 57 0.0% 59 59 4.1% 40.74 47.16 8.74 70 74 0.0% 78 70 11.37 1,220 1,220 0.0% 0.00 48.5 48.5 116 126 0.0% 144 124 5.38 28.0 28.5 - 0.0% 29.0 28.0 27.28 0.0% 25.0 - 0.0% 24.5 23.5 23.5 5.03 4.7% 25.0 25.5 26.0 25.5 13.99 6.0% 255 0.0% 24.5 28.0 28.5 27.0 0.0% 24.0 0.0% 15.534 16.037 0.0% 16.5 15.5 0.0% 134 130 134 23.07 15.73 5.8% 490 500 3.7% 32 29 3250 0.0% 32 0.0% 220 0.0% 220 18.82 218 320 816.78 0.0% 57 60 0.00 55 57 - 0.0% 8.47 0.0% 295 270 0.00 290 295 1,960 0.0% 0.0% 1.1% 49.86 49.73 16.27 37.0 41.5 0.0% 22.19

-3,111,120 17,800 12270 22,550 455 150 4,900 3,550 1,420 29,543,310 310 Change 710 165,600 0.80 178 1.23 104 8,480 435 -3.00

102.0 232 13080 465 1,440 340 216 DTD 720 0.42% 190 0.68% 108 -0.53%

0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 2.2% 0.0% 3.3% 0.7% 4.6% 4.70% 3.0% 2.4% 13.9% 5.6% 0.0% 4.3%

232 260 130 128 470 450 158 150 1,460 1,420 340 335 212 222 MTD 710 740 0.23% 180 180 0.15% 104 116 460 460 -0.67%

70.58 18.38

13.91 6.49 14.66 8.02 193.84 YTD 96.15 0.00% 10.91 -3.46% 23.15 26.77 -0.25%

STOCKS WITH NBK CAPITAL

12

ALWATAN DAILY friday, may 11, 2012

April 2009 May21, 10, 2012

1% 6% Oman

Bahrain

-4%

-1%

-6% Qatar

90

GCC Best Performers

Dubai Saudi

95 10-Feb-12 85

10-Mar-12

10-Apr-12

S&P Pan 3-Feb-09 Arab Large/ 18-Feb-09 Mid Composite 19-Jan-09 5-Mar-09

S&P GCC Large/ Mid 20-Mar-09 4-Apr-09 Composite

-6%-2

19-Apr-0

1

Country (Index)

Index Level

% Chg.

YTD

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

Index 7,222

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

2,478 5,250

-0.1% -4.0%

Qa UAUAE Qatar (DSM Index) (ADSM Index)

8,548 2,695

-0.7% 0.6%

Ku Kuwait (KSE Weighted Index)

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

OmOman UAE(MSM (DFMIndex) Index)

Level 419

1,515 406

5,746 1,745

Ba Qa Bahrain Qatar(BSE (DSMIndex) Index)

1,160 5,590

Jo Jordan (Amman General Index)

1,967

Eg Egypt (EGX 30 Index)

OmOman (MSM Index)

Ba Bahrain (BSE Index)

M Morocco (Casa All Shares 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)

5,013

5,478

1,681

10,337

463

1,181

2,825 464

10,621

5,108

1,094 546

Tu Tunisia (Tunis SE Index)* * Market Closed

3,282

% Chg.-

12.5% YTD

0.4%

3.4%

0.0%

54 122

126,156 69,783

11.42 7.29

0 196

17,387 65,352

9.04 8.85

10

26,970

12.73

-

63,640

7.67

0.7%

-1.3%

-6.8%

-7.0%

8.5%

0.3%

2.2%

-0.2% -

2.4%

-2.6%

-

-

1,301 316

5 305

3,587

26

1,129 4,230

2,212

1,921

5,628

12,109 2,903

12,203

1,033

1,403

5,044 513

23.6%

739

5,115

2,119

13.6%

60 718

5,419 1,433

1,383 12,627

14,635

-7.2%

0.9%

6,163 5,860

-3.3%

7.3%

-

0.72 1.52

8,071 2,137

1.4% -18.8%

-

10.63 9.99

8,892 5,148

1,754 787

4,224

1,572 328

1,164

2,551 465

9,406

-

4,091

-

1,043

-

407

2,837

-

8.36 10.24

31,948 98,547

17,943 37,413

4

18,727

1

3

1.56

8.07

1.29

3.23

1.56

6.31

33,782

12.71

9,906

16.31

2,496

0.85

2.15

9.19

59,990

1.10

18.36

8,507

2

1.68

15.17

10,492

67

1.36

3.95

6.47

2,079

8.67

6,576

13.85

AED 2.95 -13.1% -6.7% KWD 0.265 KWD 0.099 SAR 22.95

-3.7% -8.6%

SAR 24.70

-6.4%

SAR 13.70

GCC Highest Turnover

101 Riyad Bank

21,052,493 10,645,169

Turnover (USD)

5,356,553

KFI Kuwait Finance House (KUW)

343,553,085 5,332,628 119,955,261 4,035,351

115 Alinma Bank (KSA) IQCIndustries Qatar (QA)

97,126,838

NBKNational Bank of Kuwait (KUW)

88,742,222

7,222 (0.0%) 77%

% of stocks trading above 1yr avg. price

-

Advance/Decline Ratio

115

7,931 / 5,916

Tadawul Index 52 week High / Low

110

1,416,794,969

Market Cap. (SAR '000)

106

105

-

Turnover (SAR '000)

111

#

#N/A

#

#N/A

#

10-Apr-12

S&P GCC Large/Mid Composite

10-May-12

#

% Chg.

#N/A

#N/A

#N/A

#N/A

#N/A

#N/A

#N/A

#N/A #N/A #N/A

#N/A

#N/A

#N/A

#N/A

#N/A

#N/A

#N/A

#N/A

#N/A

Worst Performers Turnover (SAR) 7020.SSE Etihad Etisalat Co. #N/A #N/A #N/A #N/A #N/A #N/A

1 Al Rajhi Bank

10-Mar-12

Close #N/A

Highest Turnover

100

64,280,166

EMAEmaar Properties (UAE) Best Performers

Tadawul Index (% Chg.)

120

-6.8%

Turnover (USD)

MENA Highest Turnover

ARTArabtec Holding (UAE)

201 Basic Industries Corp. (KSA) ETISaudi Etisalat (UAE)

Summary

-4.8% -8.9%

AED 1.05 SAR 48.00

KFI Kuwait Finance House (KUW)

Rebased Performance

-10.0%

AED 1.10% Chg. -6.8% Close

225 Saudi Industrial Inv. Grp.

2.50

SAUDI ARABIA *Market Closed

95 10-Feb-12

GC Gulf Cement Co.

EMAEmaar Properties (UAE)

1.92

% Chg.

QAR 123.30

1.81

0.86

8.0%

Close

QTEQatar Telecom

0.89 201 ALDALDAR Properties 1.74 Saudi Basic Industries Corp.

9.50

56,041

MENA Worst Performers

1.92 FAC ART Arabtec Holding 1.37 Commercial Facilities Co. 1.59 IFC International Finance Co. 0.88 238 Rabigh Petrochem.

9.91

15,024

1

1.02 1.77

10.28 6.87

57,358

46

10,218

3,418

65,456 264,263

8.0%

OMR 0.720

GCC Worst Performers

1.91

1.9%

QAR 21.60

BKMBankMuscat

PB1.43

2.0% 8.6%

KWD 1.080

QGTQatar Gas Transport Co.

PE 17.15

-2.6% 12.8%

38.4%

0.4%

-0.1%

12.27

100,988

17 2,183

0.9% 6.6%

5.1%

106

Mkt. Cap. 377,762 USD million

2.5% 8.8%

KWD 1.020 QAR 6.35

NBKNational Bank of Kuwait

PB

2.6% 9.8%

KWD 0.810 OMR 0.703

MA Mabanee Co. KCB Al Khaliji Commercial Bank

Trailing

2,293 4,130

0.1% 1.9%

-0.3%

396

Turnover USD million

PE

KWD 2.360 SAR 5.60

CBK Commercial Bank & of Contracting Kuwait GEC Galfar Engineering

Trailing

Mkt. Cap. USD million

2,775 10,090

11.9% -0.2%

0.0% 3.9%

461

52 Wk 5,916 Low

Turnover USD million

3.1% 9.3%

-0.8% 1.8%

-0.4%

52 Wk 7,931 High

52 Wk Low

% Chg.

KWD 3.6% Close0.087 % Chg.

NMKingdom WataniyaHldg. Co. 3 428

Period's Liquidity Ratio (PLR x)*

52 Wk High

Close

4 ALTThe Commercial Real Estate Co.

Period's Liquidity 1 Ratio (PLR x)

-1

MENA Indices Highlights

MENA Indices Highlights

MENA Best Performers

-1%

10-May-12

Abu Dhabi Abu Dhabi

95

Abu Dhabi

Palestine

0%

-2%

Oman

Dubai

0%

103

Kuwait

Palestine

Bahrain

Abu Dhabi

0%

Qatar Dubai

Return DailyDaily Return (%)(%)

105

0%

Kuwait

Dubai

106

100

2%

Oman Saudi

105

Qatar

Morocco Qatar

111

110

4%

Kuwait Oman

113

110

100

1% 6%

Jordan Kuwait

113

DailyIndex Index Performance Snapshot Daily Performance Snapshot

Egypt Jordan

115115

Bull/Bear Indicator Bull/Bear Indicator

Bahrain Bahrain

Rebased RebasedPerformance Performance

#N/A

#N/A

#N/A

#N/A

#N/A

Close

% Chg.

65.75 #N/A

#N/A

#N/A

#N/A

#N/A

#N/A

7020.SSE Etihad Etisalat Co.

65.75 -

#N/A

Saudi SE

Quotes Company Name 1 Al Rajhi Bank

Close 75.50

Daily % Chg.

High -

-

Low

Turnover (SAR '000)

-

-

-

-

1 Alinma Bank

14.00

-

-

-

-

1 Arab National Bank

29.90

-

-

-

-

-

-

2 Almarai Co.

66.75

-

-

Volume ('000) -

52-Week High 82.75

67.25

71.75

48.41

-

16.25

-

33.70

-

% Change

Low

on high -8.8%

YTD 8.6%

12 mths

14.7

23.5%

26,700,000

23.3

49.7%

37.9%

26.60

-11.3%

8.7%

-9.4%

1 Bank AlBilad

27.40

-

-

-

-

-

32.90

17.20

-16.7%

38.0%

37.3%

1 Banque Saudi Fransi

37.00

-

-

-

-

-

40.00

30.00

-7.5%

9.9%

4 Emaar the Economic City

12.10

-

-

-

-

-

13.60

6.20

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

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.

26.10 11.65

65.75

19.85

152.25 11.80

33.60

21.85

24.40

48.90

181.25

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

31.50

-

-

-

-

3 Saudi Cement Co.

89.75

-

-

-

-

1 Saudi Hollandi Bank

27.80

-

-

-

-

2 1 Saudi Investment Bank 2 Saudi Kayan Petrochemical Co. 7 Saudi Telecom Co. 2

20.75

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

1 Saudi Arabian Mining Co.

2 Saudi Basic Industries Corp.

5 Saudi Electricity Co.

22 Saudi Industrial Investment Grp.

Saudi International Petrochemical Co.

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

99.00

13.15

23.40 17.55

16.90

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

31.90

-18.2%

54.0%

11.2

1.6

69.2%

10,285,000

50.00

-5.1%

25.2%

26.4%

-

165.00

107.17

-

50.75

33.60

-33.8%

-17.4%

26.90

23.10

-9.3%

4.7%

-

-

-

-

13.10

28.20

56.75

11.10

-13.3%

7.05

-9.9%

21.20

-7.7%

-22.5%

63.4% 9.3%

33.3%

38.5%

42.1%

45,312,500

11.1

5.0

-9.2%

297,000,000

10.3

2.0

-3.3%

54,790,709

22.7

1.1

24.7%

50.8%

-

29.30

21.42

-5.1%

11.9%

10.5%

-

24.45

17.75

-

26.10 21.00 21.30

10,530,000

21.2

1.7

15.55

-16.4%

8.7%

-7.6%

9,652,500

13.6

1.1

15.50

-20.7%

-2.9%

-2.6%

17,000,000

13.4

35,000,000

11.7

98.50

-

-

-

-

-

106.75

68.50

47.60

-

-

-

-

-

83.25

47.50

-42.8%

-32.0%

-21.0%

-

-

5.25

-20.4%

64.9%

30.7%

49.80 9.15

-

-

-

-

-

-

37.00

56.25

11.50

27.82 41.60

-3.1%

22.2%

14.1%

-7.7%

14.5%

42.8%

-5.4%

-11.5%

18.5%

14.4% 13.2%

10.3

21.0%

33.00

-4.2%

7,608,333

10.9

25,350,000

42.60

23.70

11,033,820

-6.6%

-

35.00

4.7

-10.3%

5.3%

-

35.50

14.5

1.7

23.2%

-

-

13,731,750

47.3

1.5

-10.3%

-

-

29,137,500

10.2

2.3

18.55

-

-

44,010,000

nmf

1.6

-19.3%

41.30

34.00

18,729,597

nmf

12.85

-15.1%

-5.4%

2.0

0.8%

-9.9%

-8.4%

16.30

2.5

1.2

-5.4%

57.25

-

nmf

1.4

11.6

4.9%

2.9%

8.7

0.8

36,600,000

-12.3%

98.00

-

-9.8%

nmf

1.6

19,140,600

3.0%

11.4

1.7

7.8

-22.0%

13.3%

87.75

37.50

9,135,000

-6.0%

24.5%

109.75

18,448,590 43,729,411

-16.0%

-

-

-9.4%

46,025,000

34.9%

24.25

165.00

12,582,000

28.9

9.4

-13.8%

200.00

7,830,000

16.9

42.40

-

3.7

1.5

33,448,661

69.25

22.90

1.3

-2.6%

35.2% 28.7%

-

11.7

3.5

2.1

60.7% 64.6%

25,415,000

41.0

20.1

-15.9% -11.0%

21,000,000

8,220,000

6.05

-

13.85

15.75

PB

113,250,000

-13.8%

16.6%

Trailing PE

-0.3%

9.05

-7.0%

Market Cap. (SAR '000)

4.8%

-0.2%

82,600,000

13,790,000 9,639,000

28,012,500

12,810,000

nmf

1.5

1.4

1.7

9.6

1.7

14.5

5.6

11.5 8.8

nmf

2.1

2.0

2.8

2.5

3.3

STOCKS WITH NBK CAPITAL

13

ALWATAN DAILY friday, may 11, 2012

KUWAIT Rebased Performance

Summary

Best Performers 6,447 (-0.1%)

KSE General Index (% Chg.)

115

419 (0.4%)

KSE Weighted Index (% Chg.)

111

110

54%

% of stocks trading above 1yr avg. price

2.00

Advance/Decline Ratio

CBK.KSE

Commercial Bank of Kuwait

0.810

2.5%

National Bank of Kuwait

1.080

1.9%

29,531

Turnover (KWD '000)

Highest Turnover 100

Turnover (KWD) 1,491,800 1,121,100

ZA Zain Kuwait

1,044,240

N National Industries Grp. Holding 10-Mar-12

10-Apr-12

S&P GCC Large/Mid Composite

635,900

N National Bank of Kuwait

10-May-12

2.6%

1.020

2.0%

Worst Performers

K Kuwait Finance House

95 10-Feb-12

2.360

28,125,094

Market Cap. (KWD '000)

104

3.6%

NMTC.KSE Wataniya

461 / 396 NBK.KSE

KSE Weighted Index 52 week High / Low

% Chg.

0.087

6,511 / 5,694 MABANEE. Mabanee Co.

KSE General Index 52 week High / Low

105

Close ALTIJARIA The Commercial Real Estate Co.

386,080

A Qurain Petrochemicals Industries Co.

Close IFC.KSE

International Finance Co.

% Chg.

0.099

-4.8%

ALAFCO.KSAlafco Aviation Lease and Fin. Co.

0.290

-1.7%

ALQURAIN Qurain Petrochemicals Industries Co.

0.216

-0.9%

KFIN.KSE Kuwait Finance House #N/A

#N/A

0.710

-1.4%

#N/A

#N/A

KSE Weighted Index

Quotes Company Name

Close

Daily % Chg.

High

A Agility

0.405

0.0%

T Al Themar Intl. Holding Co.

0.086

-

A AREF Energy Holding Co.

0.126

A Al Ahli Bank of Kuwait

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

B Boubyan Petrochemical Co. B Burgan Bank

0.600

0.290

-1.7%

0.600

0.0%

0.610

0.430

A Burgan Co. for Well Drilling

0.255

C Commercial Bank of Kuwait

0.810

C Combined Grp Contracting Co. F Commercial Facilities Co. G Global Investment House

0.0%

2.5%

0.0%

-

0.188

JAJazeera Airways

0.430

IF International Finance Co.

K KIPCO Asset Management Co.

K Kuwait Cement Co.

-

1.5% -

0.099

-4.8%

0.275

-

0.435

1.2%

241

-

1.680

1.660

234

0.810

0.265

3

-

0.420

-

-

1.360

1.340

-

0.102

0.410

-

K Kuwait Projects Co. (Holding)

0.325

0.0%

0.0%

0.275 0.890

0.325

0.104

0.079

-17.3% -4.5%

40

0.580

0.365

0.280

500

0.132

0.085

275

0.630

0.530

0.610

0.524

0.420

0.930

10

-3.2%

1.300

-13.6%

0.255

0.051

-1.6%

-17.9%

0.700

0.375

-20.5%

0.410

0.198

1.945

115 -

0.530

-8.7%

0.019

YTD 8.0%

-5.5%

-17.3%

87,075

nmf

18.9%

1.6%

-4.6%

-7.9%

-6.0%

0.0%

1,048,941

-4.9%

-16.3%

664,336

6.3%

-13.6%

162,339

16.4

4.0

142,242

10.0

0.9 2.6

1.7%

8.9%

-12.9%

2.5%

1.9%

0.0%

3.4%

-45.7%

-12.9% -3.9%

-

0.495

0.285

-19.2%

-15.8%

-1.2%

181,553

nmf

-2.9%

-

13

0.710

1,492

0.270

139

0.325

29

1.240

0.214

0.138

-17.1% -12.2%

1,040

0.242

0.096

-59.1%

-

0.315

0.236

-12.7%

30

0.485

50

28

0.138

0.610

0.415

-11.3%

-28.7%

2,080

0.981

0.720

-27.6%

510

0.350

0.236

-21.4%

0.281

-17.7%

20

1.620

1.340

0.880

48 85

85

1.020

0.709

55

1.340

90

0.660

0.395

-14.8%

-4.2%

10.6%

-17.1% 30.6%

-61.2%

-5.5%

211.6%

-5.4%

-27.5%

-6.8%

-10.4%

12.7%

-14.8%

4,701,777

15.5

2.1

295,283

nmf

0.192

-18.6%

-12.3%

-18.6%

N National Real Estate Co.

0.130

0.0%

0.130

0.130

18

140

0.168

0.056

-22.6%

1.6%

27.5%

0.216

-0.9%

0.218

0.216

386

1,780

0.226

0.186

-4.4%

0.104

40

0.082

348

2.320

53

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

0.146 0.255 0.246

0.0% -

0.106 0.087

Z Zain Kuwait

10

0.0%

0.236

0.236

19

2.6%

0.740

-

-

0.246

-

2.360

-

0.246

3.6%

0.130

56

0.144

0.0% 0.0%

0.236

0.148

0.0%

0.106 0.087 -

2.360

0.740

-

-

0.740

1,121

380

0.280

-

0.144

0.360

0.242

40

0.248

0.200

80

0.270

0.216

380

0.136

-47.9%

0.0%

10.7%

-15.1%

434,387

0.0%

21,780

-8.8%

107,323

-47.9%

-

-15.0%

-17.7%

-0.8%

18.3%

17.1%

126,130

-7.5%

88,056

0.9%

-22.1%

-11.7%

-10.2%

2.6%

88,277

4.9%

0.093

14.5

237,600 61,356

0.8

2.3

0.1

25.3

127,927

-29.2%

-12.6%

1.4

-4.2%

0.280

N National Investments Company

24.1

6.1%

4,620

-8.8%

1.6

4.2

1,044

0.260

1.9

30.0

0.226

0.340

11.6

623,412

0.228

-

554,763

26.5

42.1%

0.0%

-

1.9

-17.7%

0.228

-

19.4

12.1%

N National Industries Grp. Holding

0.0%

277,380

0.9

1.3

-5.7%

-

nmf

0.7

31.5

0.909

-

72,408

nmf

79,996

1.145

-

3.7

4.0

285,265

30.4%

1.6

9.9

-20.3%

0.0%

7.9

104,060

7.8%

-34.3%

3.5

0.9

2,061,956

23.9%

1.9

16.8

-27.6%

-34.3%

1.0

141,000 79,485

1.9%

593

-

285,507

1.5

nmf

-

636

-

64,309

1.2

nmf

39.7

1.060

-

36.5

1,119,062

1.080

0.310

53,454

1.4

11.8

-18.9%

1.9%

N National Industries Co.

33.8

-12.6%

22

-

4.3

nmf

-23.0%

1.080

-

nmf

295,911

1,030,338

-27.4%

0.990

-

94,500

0.425

1.640

1.0

1.5

0.552

23

1.9

5.7

280

30

0.5

20.0

226,134

1.020

0.033

907,944

-20.5%

2.0%

N National Bank of Kuwait

PB

15.7

1.020

M Mena Holding

PE

423,969

20.3%

-3.9%

Trailing

Market Cap. (KWD '000)

6.6%

-39.3%

-29.3%

12 mths

119

-

-

0.720

-

0.657

140

103

0.098

0.430

-5.8%

-

-

1.380

0.0%

-

-

0.425

0.248

-

92

on high

0.430

560

-

% Change

Low

260

200

167

0.790

0.265

High

110

62

-

1.380

0.275

M Mabanee Co.

0.430

1.5%

K Kuwait International Bank

0.880

119

0.435

-1.4%

P Kuwait Portland Cement Co.

0.590

0.435

0.710

1.380

0.430

66 12

0.0%

K Kuwait Finance House F Kuwait Food Co.

0.600

-

52-Week

Volume ('000)

105

0.290

0.600

0.400

IK Ikarus Petroleum Industries Co.

0.290

0.610

0.0%

1.360

-

Turnover (KWD '000)

0.600

0.0%

0.425

C Gulf Cable and Electrical Industries Co.

IF IFA Hotels & Resorts

-

0.600

0.118

0.0%

0.049

G Gulf Bank

0.405

0.126

-

0.265

0.410

0.0%

0.0%

1.680

Low

1.4 0.8

nmf

0.7

nmf

0.6

21.7

2.1

17.6

1.0

13.1

1.1

nmf

1.6

23.0

0.9

4,160

0.097

0.067

-10.3%

13.0%

22.5%

159,629

15.2

0.6

23

2.480

1.880

-4.8%

21.6%

16.8%

1,189,517

11.3

1.5

-

-

1,515

-

1.160

0.690

0.0%

-36.2%

0.0%

-17.8%

0.0%

88,400

-36.2%

3,187,576

nmf

7.0

11.2

1.5

UAE Rebased Performance

Summary

Best Performers 1,515 (-0.8%)

DFM Index (% Chg.)

120

2,478 (-0.1%)

ADSM Index (% Chg.)

41% DU.DFM du 0.62 EMIRATES Emirates NBD 1,754 / 1,301 EMAAR.DF Emaar Properties

% of stocks trading above 1yr avg. price Advance/Decline Ratio

115

DFM Index 52 week High / Low

Highest Turnover

103 100

10-Mar-12 S&P GCC Large/Mid Composite

10-Apr-12

E Emaar Properties

Abu Dhabi SE

14,783,632

D Dubai Financial Market

10-May-12

1.6%

1.0% 0.8%

Worst Performers

E Etisalat

95 10-Feb-12

1.1%

2.98

Turnover (AED) 77,330,017 GCEM.ADS Gulf Cement Co. 39,101,836 ARTC.DFM Arabtec Holding 19,587,808 ALDAR.AD ALDAR Properties

A Arabtec Holding

101

2.80

385,706,076

Market Cap. (AED '000) 105

1.7%

1.21

281,394

Turnover (AED '000)

% Chg.

1.17

3.13

2,775 / 2,293 TAQA.ADS Abu Dhabi National Energy Co.

ADSM Index 52 week High / Low

111

110

Close TAMWEEL Tamweel

14,714,666

A ALDAR Properties

Close

-6.8%

1.05

-3.7%

0.87

-3.3%

2.95

DEYAAR.D Deyaar Development Co. SIB.ADSM

% Chg.

1.10

0.33

Sharjah Islamic Bank

-6.7% -3.5%

Dubai FM

Quotes Company Name

Close

A Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank

3.17

T Abu Dhabi National Energy Co.

1.21

A Air Arabia

0.60

A Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank

A Abu Dhabi National Hotels A ALDAR Properties A Amlak Finance

A Arabtec Holding A Aramex

A Arkan Building Materials Co. C Commercial Bank of Dubai D Dana Gas

D Deyaar Development Co. D du

3.15

2.10

2.80

0.41

0.33

3.13

E Emirates NBD

2.80

N National Bank of Abu Dhabi N National Bank of Fujairah

N National Bank of Umm Al Qaiwain S Sharjah Islamic Bank

S Sorouh Real Estate Co. T Tamweel

0.8%

1.25

1.20

0.0%

0.60

0.59

-0.3% -

-1.2%

1.96

M Mashreq

198

0.86

D Dubai Islamic Bank

G Gulf Cement Co.

3.11

-6.7%

1.83

-

0.6%

-

1.6%

-

3.32

2.69

916

758

1.40

1.14

4,533

7,581

500 -

159

3.55

5.5

0.8

-13.6%

0.8%

-13.6%

7,532,250

11.5

1.0

2,800,020

10.4

-11.3%

-0.3%

-20.5%

2.4%

-29.5%

4,289,386

3.22

2.95

77,330

25,320

3.46

1.18

-14.7%

94.8%

118.2%

0.87

0.84

30

35

1.45

0.71

-40.7%

-14.9%

-37.2%

-8.9%

-38.8%

-

1.83

0.42

3.13

1.04 -

-

-

1.80

7,671

2.80

104

0.41

2,880

0.33

1,568

3.08

12,103

1.00 -

14,784 -

-

4,241 37

6,951

4,643

3,906

14,582 -

-

1.96

3.24

0.69

0.46

3.63

1.10 -

8.88 -

1.10 -

8.84 -

-

84

2,306 -

96

-

77

2.80

4.63

2.65

-39.5%

0.67

-24.7%

1.46

8.57 6.98

67.00

-

4.95

3.00

110

1.02

0.80

-

-13.8%

-13.3%

2.41

102.00

261

-40.6%

-26.8%

1.88

-

7

0.34

0.20

-13.5%

2.26

67.00

20

2.67

-6.6%

-23.5%

11.20 10.75

2.80

1.69

0.0%

0.68

2,259 524

2.80

-

1.32

19,588 4,637

9.00

2.24

7.38

0.0%

1.7%

1.4%

56.3% 8.3%

0.0%

8.8%

9.1%

-21.5%

94.0%

0.38

1,906

4,901

0.50

0.24

-21.6%

50.4%

U United Arab Bank

3.95

-

-1.0%

2.97

0.40 -

2.93 -

65

-

22

-

3.90

4.50

2.82

3.28

-24.6%

-12.2%

7,442,226

15,561,769

903,207 -

5.7%

34,289,842

-8.9%

2,800,000

2,651,250

20.7%

-12.2%

0.53

-1.0%

-10.3%

8.5%

1.49

0.5

5.3

nmf

4.7

0.3

2.3

1.1

0.8

1.8 1.0

-18.6%

12,186

0.9

11.8 7.0

1.7%

14,049

8,080,000

0.9

7.1

68,546,234 26,550,000

-27.9%

1.12

2,706,821

1.4

-15.8% -3.5%

18.8%

3.6%

5,707,386

12.0

0.6

-30.3%

-14.7%

nmf

2,679,303

9.2

0.67

1.18

1.45

1,505,000

1.1

18,151,891

-3.3%

1.7%

9,358

1.5

nmf

-8.6%

-21.9%

1.17

9,444

14.9

13.0

1.63

0.87

0.5

4,630,763

1,530,000

14,308,571

-20.3%

-34.0%

0.3 0.6

-4.9%

54.9%

-34.3%

1.1

4.6

nmf

-28.6%

-5.0% 14.6%

8.4

1,924,074

-4.8%

-22.6% -17.7%

6.4

12.9%

-10.1%

0.88

0.99

-5.1%

1.0%

16.0%

-3.3%

1.04

0.0%

-23.5%

-9.7%

-1.7%

0.0%

20.2%

0.87

0.39

-18.5%

14.1%

8.60 8.81

-1.9%

7,448,824

-29.5%

8.72 8.87

1.01

0.0%

0.76

0.6% -0.1%

-

17,738,044

1.49

8.67 8.85

1.75

12.4%

2,100,000

3.30

-

14.0%

-27.6%

0.57

PB

-4.5%

-4.5%

13,184

0.0%

PE

-27.6%

39,102

4.95

Trailing

Market Cap. (AED '000)

1.98

0.76

2.93

8.85

12 mths

2.90

3.00

-6.8%

2.92

YTD

-

1.0%

1.10

on high

63

2.98

1.1%

% Change

Low

13,970

0.35

-1.9%

-

High

14,715

-3.5%

-2.4%

3.14

52-Week

Volume ('000)

1.04

1.08

2.80

2.94

* Closing Prices, Turnover and Market Cap. in USD

3.16

0.0%

U Union National Bank U Union Properties

Turnover (AED '000)

3.18

2.95

1.02

Low

0.3%

-3.7%

1.01

E Etisalat F First Gulf Bank

High

1.05

D Dubai Financial Market

E Emaar Properties

Daily % Chg.

-3.3%

8.8

nmf

13.8

1.3

8.3

0.9

18.5

2,110,185

8.0

7.5

31.3%

1,170,000

12.6

-8.5%

1,306,341

nmf

3,935,785

0.7

0.9

9.0

5,445,000

7,337,138

0.4

4.8

11.4

2.7

0.5

0.4

0.5

0.7

0.5

2.0

STOCKS WITH NBK CAPITAL

14

ALWATAN DAILY friday, may 11, 2012

QATAR Rebased Performance

Summary

Best Performers 8,548 (-0.7%)

DSM Index (% Chg.)

115

DSM 52 week High / Low

44% VFQS.DSM Vodafone Qatar 1.00 QEWS.DSMQatar Electricity & Water Co. 8,892 / 8,071 IQCD.DSM Industries Qatar

Market Cap. (QAR '000)

459,397,644

% of stocks trading above 1yr avg. price Advance/Decline Ratio

111

110

197,177

Turnover (QAR '000)

105

100

Q Qatar Telecom 10-Mar-12

10-Apr-12

S&P GCC Large/Mid Composite

8,523,250

Q Qatar National Bank

10-May-12

142.30

0.6%

0.7%

26.90

DHBK.DSMDoha Bank

0.4%

57.40

Turnover (QAR) 14,694,731 QTEL.DSM Qatar Telecom 10,945,238 ERES.DSMEzdan Real Estate Co. 10,112,942 BRES.DSMBarwa Real Estate Co.

MMasraf Al Rayan

90 10-Feb-12

1.4%

0.2%

Worst Performers

IQIndustries Qatar

95

% Chg.

8.80

142.00

MARK.DSMMasraf Al Rayan

Highest Turnover

99

Close

8,235,119

B Barwa Real Estate Co.

Close

% Chg.

123.30

-10.0%

20.20

QIIK.DSM Qatar International Islamic Bank

QIBK.DSM Qatar Islamic Bank

-1.9%

26.60

-0.6%

50.70

-0.4%

77.80

-0.4%

Doha SM

Quotes Company Name A Aamal Co.

Close 16.90

K Al Khalij Commercial Bank

16.32

C The Commercial Bank of Qatar

72.00

E Ezdan Real Estate Co.

B Barwa Real Estate Co. D Doha Bank

26.60

Daily % Chg.

High

-0.4%

0.1%

-0.6%

Low

17.09 16.35

26.75

Turnover (QAR '000)

16.85

1,063

26.40

8,235

16.30

1,162

0.0%

72.00

71.50

7,711

20.20

-1.9%

20.70

20.10

432

26.90

0.4%

57.40

0.2%

57.40

57.10

1,775

0.6%

142.90

141.00

14,695

0.7%

142.00

141.00

1,171

50.70

-0.4%

50.90

50.60

1,109

Q Qatar National Bank

133.10

-0.2%

133.50

132.90

8,523

Q Qatar Telecom

123.30

-10.0%

123.30

123.30

10,113

IQIndustries Qatar

142.30

Q Qatar Electricity & Water Co.

142.00

M Masraf Al Rayan

Q Qatar Gas Transport Co.

Q Qatar International Islamic Bank Q Qatar Islamic Bank Q Qatar Navigation

16.21 77.80

67.70

V Vodafone Qatar

8.80

0.1%

-0.4%

0.0% 1.4%

26.90

16.23

78.00

68.00 8.86

26.70

10,945

16.18

6,732

77.70

3,375

67.40

2,723

High

63

on high

14.00

18.01

310

% Change

Low

21.90

71

16.06

32.55

26.75

-22.8% -9.4%

-18.3%

YTD

-15.8%

-14.3%

21

24.97

18.60

-19.1%

-12.9%

53,580,433

nmf

-4.3%

-3.4%

14.9%

16.20

-12.2%

-7.4%

-12.2%

76.30

-8.8%

-7.7%

8

148.00

129.50

22

56.20

45.50

43

22.50

85.30

64

141.73

122.73

82

140.40

64.09

40 881

87.50 9.22

-14.3% -4.2%

-4.1% -9.8%

-6.1%

-10.5%

5.9%

7.0% 1.7%

-6.1%

1.8

1.9

10.1

3.3

0.2%

14,200,000

10.4

4.7

20,175,000

14.1

2.4

8,977,811

10.9

4.6

-4.2%

18,383,611

12.8

1.7

7,753,356

10.7

0.7

7,439,520

nmf

1.1

7,674,396

2.0%

-22.6%

-11.5%

-20.8%

7.24

-4.6%

16.6%

10.0%

92.4%

9.4

78,265,000

6.6%

-3.7%

0.9

1.3

-4.0%

67.70

-12.2%

11,864,454

1.1

7.6

-9.0%

118.80

18.47

10,350,715

1.6

12.0 9.3

148.50

415

-18.3%

PB

19.1

17,816,139

50.00

28.10

5,875,200

Trailing PE

-2.6%

104

408

9,202,050

-9.4%

-11.2%

68.00

Market Cap. (QAR '000)

3.3%

-5.0%

85.50

67.00

12 mths

16.9%

107 31

7,724

8.62

52-Week

Volume ('000)

93,133,988

68.3%

28,211,040

11.5

1.7

11.9

2.2

11.2

1.3

OMAN Rebased Performance

Summary

Best Performers 5,746 (0.1%)

MSM Index (% Chg.)

115

42% BKMB.MSMBank Muscat

% of stocks trading above 1yr avg. price

110

0.67

Advance/Decline Ratio

111

Close 0.59

RCCI.MSM Raysut Cement Co.

MSM 52 week High / Low

6,908,015

Market Cap (OMR '000)

0.5%

1.23

6,163 / 5,419 BKDB.MSMBank Dhofar 1,971 #N/A #N/A

Turnover (OMR '000)

% Chg. 0.3%

0.44

OTEL.MSMOman Telecommunications Co.

0.0%

#N/A

#N/A

1.29

-0.1%

105

Highest Turnover

102 100

Worst Performers Turnover (OMR) 209,086 RNSS.MSMRenaissance Services 117,667 OCOI.MSM Oman Cement Co.

O Oman Telecommunications Co.

B Bank Muscat

70,917

R Raysut Cement Co.

95 10-Feb-12

10-Mar-12

10-Apr-12

10-May-12

S&P GCC Large/Mid Composite

65,842

R Renaissance Services

32,619

O Oman Cement Co.

Close

1.29

BKDB.MSMBank Dhofar

0.44

#N/A

-0.7%

0.66

OTEL.MSMOman Telecommunications Co. #N/A

% Chg.

0.59

-0.3% -0.1%

#N/A

#N/A

0.0%

Muscat SM

Quotes Company Name

Close

Daily % Chg.

High

B Bank Dhofar

0.442

N National Bank of Oman

0.290

O Oman Telecommunications Co.

1.291

-0.1%

R Renaissance Services

0.585

-0.7%

B Bank Muscat

0.591

O Oman Cement Co.

R Raysut Cement Co.

0.659 1.230

0.0%

0.5% 0.0%

-0.3%

0.3%

Low

0.440

Turnover (OMR '000)

0.662

33

0.659

1.233

209

162

0.582

66

113

71

1.226

0.590

0.572

0.324

49

1.287

0.290

0.693

0.416

1.425

58

on high

0.423

0.671

24

% Change

Low

0.541

199

7

0.290

1.300

4

118

0.590

0.290

High

2

0.440

0.594

52-Week

Volume ('000)

1.041

1.250

0.711

1.006

0.458

-18.3%

YTD -2.9%

-19.5%

-7.1%

-4.0%

-11.9%

-11.3%

-4.9%

52.5%

-1.6%

61.8%

-10.5% -9.4%

-41.8%

12 mths

Market Cap. (OMR '000)

-9.1%

16.3%

-41.8%

PB

12.1

321,327

8.9

15.8

246,000

14.6

165,025

2.1

8.6

218,045

968,250

15.0%

7.3%

PE

486,251

1,061,905

12.3%

-1.4%

Trailing

1.2 1.2

1.5

8.7

2.0

nmf

1.0

2.5

BAHRAIN Rebased Performance

Summary

Best Performers 1,160 (0.0%)

BSE Index (% Chg.)

120

% of stocks trading above 1 yr avg. price Advance/Decline Ratio

115

Turnover (BHD '000)

122

BBK

6,554,976

Market Cap. (BHD '000)

110

Ahli United Bank

1,383 / 1,129

BSE 52 week High / Low

115

#N/A

BBK.BSE #N/A

Highest Turnover

105 102

Turnover (BHD) 14,439 BBK.BSE 8,807 #N/A

N National Bank of Bahrain

3,043

B Bahrain Telecommunications Co.

95 10-Feb-12

10-Mar-12 10-Apr-12 S&P GCC Large/Mid Composite

1,854

B BBK

10-May-12 Bahrain SE

% Chg.

0.61

#N/A

0.0%

#N/A

#N/A

#N/A

#N/A

#N/A

0.39

#N/A

-1.5%

#N/A

#N/A

Worst Performers

A Ahli United Bank

100

Close

32% AUB.BSE #N/A

-

B Albaraka Banking Grp.

#N/A

AUB.BSE

Close BBK

% Chg.

0.39

#N/A

#N/A

#N/A

#N/A

Ahli United Bank

0.61

BARKA.BS Albaraka Banking Grp.

0.93 -

-1.5%

#N/A #N/A

0.0%

Quotes Company Name

Close

Daily % Chg.

High

A Ahli United Bank*

0.610

0.0%

A Arab Banking Corp.*

0.460

-

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

0.930 0.090

0.466

0.394 797

0.220

0.550

0.260

-

0.0%

-1.5% -

0.0% -

Low

0.610

0.610

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

0.466

0.466

-

-

0.394 -

0.550 -

Turnover (BHD '000)

0.394 -

-

-

-

0.530

38 -

-

-

52-Week

Volume ('000)

High

63

3

-

2 9

-

7

5

16

% Change

Low

on high

0.676

0.599

0.530

0.420

-13.2%

0.380

1.029 0.116

0.486

0.420 797

0.857 0.082 0.390 797

-9.8%

YTD 1.2%

12 mths -7.9%

3,192,469

9.5%

-19.3%

1,430,600

-4.1%

18.9%

-3.3%

671,040

0.0%

0.0%

-30.0%

637,560

0.0%

470,448

-9.6%

-0.4%

-22.4%

0.0%

-6.2%

-4.8%

-9.6%

-22.4% -5.3%

0.240

0.065

-8.3%

238.5%

144.4%

0.424

0.260

-38.7%

-13.3%

-30.1%

0.600

0.530

Market Cap. (BHD '000)

0.0%

0.0%

943,462

Trailing PE

PB

10.1

1.3

7.8

0.8

84,571

nmf

0.8

335,434

10.5

589,108

216,986

6.8

0.4

8.5

1.3

4.5

0.6

10.2

1.7

nmf

nmf

1.4 1.0 1.0

LIFE

Do I Need the Meningococcal Vaccine?

The meningococcal vaccine helps prevent meningitis and sepsis (infection of the blood), which can lead to severe illness and death. People aged 16 through 21 are most likely to acquire meningococcal disease, the US Centers for Disease Control says. The agency says you probably should be vaccinated: • If you live in a dorm, or plan to live in one soon.

• If you are a military recruit.

• If you have a damaged spleen, or the organ has been removed.

• If you have a terminal complement deficiency.

• If you are a microbiologist who is frequently exposed to the bacterium Neisseria meningitidis.

• If you live in or plan to travel to a place where meningococcal infection is common.

friDAY, may 11, 2012

New weakness in Antarctic ice sheet discovered NEW YORK: A new sector of the Antarctic Ice Sheet is at risk of melting rapidly within the next century, new research finds, according to LiveScience.

The study raises alarm about an area thought relatively safe from the direct influence of climate change.

The Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf in the Weddell Sea is somewhat sheltered from the open sea, but the new research suggests that warm ocean currents could soon invade its underbelly, melting the shelf from below.

“The Weddell Sea was not really on the screen because we all thought that, unlike the Amundsen Sea, its warm waters would not be able to reach the ice shelves,” said study researcher Hartmut Hellmer. Melting is accelerating at the Amundsen embayment across the Antarctic Peninsula from the Weddell Sea. The results of their new study, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, surprised Hellmer, an oceanographer at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany, and his colleagues.

“We found a mechanism which drives warm water towards the coast with an enormous impact on the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf in the coming decades,” Hellmer said in a statement.

Predicting the melt

Hellmer and his colleagues used multiple models to determine how the ocean will respond to the atmosphere in the upcoming 200 years. They found that rising air temperatures above the southeastern Weddell Sea will thin the ice there, and warm ocean water will increasingly encroach beneath the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf.

By 2036, warm water currents will have reached the continental shelf, the researchers found. By about 2070, these warm waters will have drained the cavity beneath the ice shelf, and will reach the line between floating sea ice and grounded ice sitting on the seabed within 14 more years. This “grounding line” is very important: Ice that sits on terra firma is thicker than floating ice, and melting of this ice would discharge more liquid water into the sea.

By the end of the 21st century, the researchers found, the melting of the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf will go from

FILE - Edge of an ice shelf close to the Halley Station, Antarctica. (AFP)

today’s average rate of 0.7 feet (0.2 meters) of ice loss per year to 13 feet (4 m) per year. In some spots, as much as 164 feet (50 m) of ice will be lost each year. At a rate of 4 meters of ice loss per year, the ice sheet will shed 1,600 billion metric tons of ice annually.

Danger signs

A second study, published this week in the journal Nature Geoscience, finds that the seabed under the Filchner-Ronne Ice Sheet is steeply sloped and smooth, meaning there will be few topographical barriers to the accelerated melting.

Now researchers are working to better understand

Norovirus outbreak traced to reusable grocery bag CONNECTICUT: A case study showing how a grocery bag and its contents caused an outbreak of the stomach bug norovirus highlights the role that inanimate objects can play in such outbreaks, researchers say, reports HealthDay News. The study appeared online recently in The Journal of Infectious Diseases.

Noroviruses are highly contagious and the leading cause of gastroenteritis (commonly called stomach flu) worldwide. They also are the most common cause of food-borne outbreaks in the United States, according to a journal news release.

In this study, researchers examined a norovirus outbreak that occurred in a group of 17 girls, aged 13 or 14, and their four adult chaperones attending a soccer tournament in Washington state.

There were eight cases of norovirus infection in the group, including the patient who was believed to have been infected prior to the trip. This girl had no contact with her teammates after her initial symptoms began.

She moved into a chaperone’s room and then began vomiting and having diarrhea in that bathroom.

Several days later, other members of the group began having symptoms. The researchers concluded that they were infected by norovirus after handling a bag of snacks that had been stored in the bathroom where the first girl was sick.

Airborne norovirus within the bathroom likely settled onto the open grocery bag and its contents, the researchers concluded.

The findings confirm the high risk of contamination of surfaces in norovirus outbreaks on cruise ships, in nursing homes and in other group settings, said researchers Kimberly Repp, of Oregon Health and Sciences University in Portland, and William Keene, of the Oregon Public Health Division, also in Portland.

“While we certainly recommend not storing food in bathrooms, it is more important to emphasize that areas where [airborne] exposures may have occurred should be thoroughly disinfected,” the researchers said in the news release. “This includes not only exposed surfaces, but also objects in the environment” that could become contaminated and spread infection.

Monster black holes stifle star birth WASHINGTON: The intense energy and winds from gigantic black holes can block the birth of stars as scientists have long suspected, a new analysis of distant galaxies reveals, according to SPACE. Most galaxies, including our own Milky Way, are thought to have super massive black holes at their hearts. Some of these monster black holes are relatively calm, but others, known as “active galactic nuclei,” or AGN, can spew out more radiation than our entire galaxy does, and from a patch of space no larger than our solar system.

Scientists had long thought all this energy from active galactic nuclei quenched the formation of stars around them.

“There is so much energy in the radiation coming out from the AGNs, that if the surrounding gas absorbs just a small fraction - about one-twentieth will do it - it will have enough energy to escape from the host galaxy, and effectively becomes a wind clearing the galaxy of gas,” said study lead author Mathew Page, an astrophysicist at University College London. “Once the gas has been heated up and driven out, there’s no material from which to form stars.”

FILE - An artist’s illustration of the view into a black hole. (AFP)

Proving whether this star-stifling occurs has been a problem because measuring star formation in galaxies containing powerful active galactic nuclei has long been difficult. The radiation from these jumbo black holes outshines that from star formation in nearly all wavelengths of light.

The best chance to find this evidence lies in the farinfrared to millimeter wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum, since active galactic nuclei emit comparatively little radiation at these wavelengths.

In the new study, scientists combined observations of far-infrared to millimeter wavelengths, which shed light on star formation, with those of X-rays, which are clear signs of active galactic nuclei, to help show these super massive black holes apparently do suppress star formation.

“Even though the black hole is little more than a speck in size compared to the galaxy, basically that speck controls the fate of the whole galaxy,” Page told SPACE. The research is detailed in Thursday’s issue of the journal Nature.

Submillimeter observations from the Herschel Space Observatory revealed that rapid star formation was common in the host galaxies of active galactic nuclei when the universe was 2 billion to 6 billion years old. However, X-ray observations from the Chandra X-ray Observatory showed that vigorous star formation was not seen around black holes that had X-ray luminosities of 10^44 ergs per second. (An erg is a unit of energy, and 10^44 is short for a 1 with 44 zeroes behind it.)

“10^44 ergs per second is about 25 billion times the luminosity of the sun; it is about 10 times the luminosity of the Milky Way,” Page said.

All this energy should be enough to drive powerful outflows of gas, stripping the areas around the black holes of stellar construction materials.

Future research can focus on “catching some galaxies as they’re actually going through the stage of having their star formation switched off, rather than seeing them before or after, as we do for most of the objects we’ve looked at here,” Page said. “The biggest obstacle to that is the need to have infrared and X-ray observatories in space. A successor to the Chandra and XMMNewton X-ray observatories is what I’d like.”

how the ice streams that feed the ice sheet will respond to the melting. The ice shelves act like corks in a wine bottle, keeping the flow of ice behind them from reaching the sea, Hellmer said. According to study researcher Jürgen Determann, who like Hellmer is from the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, if the inland ice moves in lockstep with the ice sheet melting, it will mean an additional global sea level rise of 0.17 inches (4.4 millimeters) per year.

For comparison, between 2003 and 2010, sea levels rose about 0.05 inches (1.5 mm) per year because of melting ice, and an additional 0.06 inches (1.7 mm) because of thermal expansion of the warming waters.

Canada researchers find clues to a universal flu vaccine

PARIS: Canadian researchers have found more clues that may help lead to the creation of a universal vaccine against the seasonal flu, according to a study published on Tuesday. Researchers discovered that the vaccine given against “swine flu,” or the 2009 H1N1 variety, triggered a series of antibodies that protect against many other types of flu, including the highly lethal H5N1 bird flu strain.

The reason why these broadly protective antibodies are effective is they bind to the stem of a flu protein called hemagglutinin (HA) instead of the head of the same protein like most flu vaccines do, said lead researcher John Schrader.

“Current flu vaccines target the head of the HA to prevent infections, but because the flu virus mutates very quickly, this part of the HA changes rapidly, hence the need for different vaccines every flu season,” said Schrader, director of the University of British Columbia’s Biomedical Research Centre.

“Rather than attacking the variable head of the HA, the antibodies attacked the stem of the HA, neutralizing the flu virus,” he said. The research is published in the journal Frontiers in Immunology.

Last year, US researchers reported in the Journal of Experimental Medicine that people who recovered from the 2009 H1N1 “swine flu” pandemic developed unusual antibodies that protect against a variety of different flu strains.

The research was based on nine patients who fell ill in 2010, and found antibodies that when tested in mice could protect against a lethal dose of at least three other strains of flu, including bird flu. That finding also boosted hope for a universal vaccine against a series of strains that have existed for decades.

First detected in the United States and Mexico in 2009, swine flu was unusual because it was particularly dangerous for young people and pregnant women, unlike most other strains of flu which tend to be more lethal in older populations. The 2009 H1N1 pandemic killed more than 14,000 people worldwide. -AFP

Huge satellite Envisat is dead in space WASHINGTON: The European Space Agency declared the death of its massive Earth-observing satellite Envisat on Wednesday after a month of mysterious silence from the school bus-size spacecraft, reports SPACE. Envisat is the world’s largest Earthwatching satellite for civilian use, with ESA officials touting its 10th anniversary in space earlier this year. The $2.9 billion satellite was originally designed to snap high-resolution photos of Earth for five years, but managed to last 10 years during its successful mission.

The troubles for Envisat began April 8, when the satellite abruptly stopped communicating with ground stations. Repeated attempts to restore contact failed week after week, with ESA officials calling off the recovery efforts today.

“Despite continuous commands sent from a widespread network of ground stations, there has been no reaction yet from the satellite,” ESA officials explained in a statement.

There are several possible explanations for Envisat’s unexpected demise.

The failure of a power regulator may be blocking the satellite’s telemetry and telecommand systems, ESA officials said.

There may have also been a short circuit on board that plunged Envisat into a protective “safe mode,” then a second malfunction that left the satellite in an unknown state, incapable of receiving commands from Earth, they added.

“Although chances of recovering Envisat are extremely low, the investigation team will continue attempts to re-establish contact while considering failure scenarios for the next two months.”

According to ground-based radar images of Envisat and photos of the craft

FILE - An artist’s illustration of the Envisat satellite in orbit. (AFP)

from France’s Pleiades Earth-observing satellite (which was called in during recovery efforts), the solar array on Envisat is properly deployed, officials have said.

Envisat is by all accounts a huge satellite. It is about 30 feet long (9 meters) and 16 feet wide (5 m). The spacecraft weighs 17,600 pounds (8,000 kilograms) and has a huge sail-like solar array that is 16 feet wide (5 m) and 46 feet long (14 m).

In 2010, space debris experts said that the satellite’s immense size will make Envisat a major space junk risk for up to 150 years.

ESA launched the Envisat mission in 2001 to study the Earth from space in extreme detail. The satellite carries 10 sensors to study Earth’s oceans, land, ice

caps and atmosphere and has been a vital resource for about 2,500 scientific studies of our home planet.

The satellite has mapped the gradual decline of Arctic sea ice and tracked the regular opening of polar shipping routes in the summer months, in addition to its other discoveries, ESA officials said.

“The outstanding performance of Envisat over the last decade led many to believe that it would be active for years to come, at least until the launch of the follow-on Sentinel missions,” ESA officials wrote. “However, Envisat had already operated for double its planned lifetime, making it well overdue for retirement.”

The first launch of the new Sentinel Earthobservation satellites is slated for 2013.

World disease fund gets added $1.6 billion shot in arm GENEVA: The Global Fund, a leading financier in the struggle against AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, expects to have an additional $1.6 billion to fund projects in 20122014, its new chief said on Wednesday, a turnaround from a funding freeze last year.

“It’s a positive outlook where we did not have a positive outlook before,” the Fund’s General Manager Gabriel Jaramillo told Reuters.

The money includes funds from new donors, from traditional donors who are advancing their payments or increasing contributions and from some donors, such as China, that have offered to support projects in their own country to free up cash for more pressing needs elsewhere, Jaramillo said.

“It’s the traditional donors that have made the difference.

It is about recuperating trust and them being confident that they can satisfy their taxpayers that we are taking care with their money in these difficult times as well as we can.”

Last November a lack of donor funds prompted the Global Fund to scrap new grants until 2014, triggering a crisis for agencies working to tackle AIDS around the world.

Donor governments were strapped for cash after the financial crisis, but some also balked at reports that funds were being misused in four countries that received grants from the Global Fund and temporarily suspended their contributions.

Jaramillo took over earlier this year and has shaken up

the 10-year-old organization to focus more on managing the grants that the Fund makes with donor money, with 75 percent of jobs now in grant management or strategic investment roles.

He will make his first report to the Global Fund’s board on Thursday, explaining his reforms and the reasons for them.

Jaramillo’s reforms will prioritize 20 “high impact” countries that account for 70 percent of the global burden of the three diseases and receive 70 percent of the Fund’s grants.

“We have reorganized tactically and strategically to try to meet the Millennium Development Goals in health,” Jaramillo said. “This is a jump start for the final lap of the race.”

The Millennium Development Goals are eight targets that the international community agreed in 2000 and pledged to meet by 2015. One goal is to halt the spread of AIDS, malaria and other major diseases by that date.

Michel Sidibe, the head of UNAIDS, the joint UN program to tackle AIDS, said the announcement of an additional $1.6 billion “ushers in a new era for the Global Fund”.

The first $616 million of the new money will be put to work as soon as the grant requests have been reviewed by the Fund’s Technical Review Panel and approved by the board. The Fund said it would consult countries and its partners on how to use the remaining $1 billion most effectively. -Reuters

16

ALWATAN DAILY

CULTURE

fridAY, may 11, 2012

Liberator of ladies’ hair Vidal Sassoon dies at 84

FILE - In this Jan. 11, 1966 file photo, hair stylist Vidal Sassoon gives New York model Holly McGuire a closeFILE - Famed hairdresser Vidal Sassoon helps style the hair of a model in FILE - In this April 23, 2003 file photo, Vidal Sassoon cropped hairdo at a preview of the New York Couture Group styles in New York. (AP) Shanghai in this Sept. 9, 1997 file photo. (Reuters) poses in his Beverly Hills, Calif., home. (AP)

LOS ANGELES: Vidal Sassoon used his hairstyling shears to free women from beehives and hot rollers and give them wash-and-wear cuts that made him an international name in hair care.

When he came on the scene in the 1950s, hair was high and heavy - typically curled, teased, piled and shellacked into place. Then came the 1960s, and Sassoon’s creative cuts, which required little styling and fell into place perfectly every time, fit right in with the fledgling women’s liberation movement.

Sassoon was at his home in Los Angeles with his family when he died Wednesday at age 84, police spokesman Kevin Maiberger said. Maiberger said police were summoned to the home but found that Sassoon had died of natural causes, and authorities wouldn’t investigate further.

His exact cause of death was unclear, but publicist Mark Sejvar said Sassoon had leukemia for several years.

Sassoon opened his first salon in his native London in

I thought I’d be a soccer player but my mother said I should be a hairdresser, and, as often happens, the mother got her way.

My idea was to cut shape into the hair, to use it like fabric and take away everything that was superfluous.

1954 but said he didn’t perfect his cut-is-everything approach until the mid-’60s. Once the wash-and-wear concept hit, though, it hit big, and many women retired their curlers for good.

“My idea was to cut shape into the hair, to use it like fabric and take away everything that was superfluous,” Sassoon said in 1993 in the Los Angeles Times, which first reported his death. “Women were going back to work, they were assuming their own power. They didn’t have time to sit under the dryer anymore.”

His wash-and-wear styles included the bob, the FivePoint cut and the “Greek Goddess,” a short, tousled perm - inspired by the “Afro-marvelous-looking women” he said he saw in New York’s Harlem.

Many of those celebrity stylists were tweeting tributes as word spread.

“While Mr. Gernreich has dressed his mannequins to look like little girls,” The New York Times wrote after viewing Gernreich’s collection for fall 1965, “Vidal Sassoon has cut their hair to look like little boys with eye-level bangs in front, short crop in back. For really big evenings, a pin-on curl is added at the cheek.”

In 1966, he did a curly look inspired by 1920s film star Clara Bow for the designer Ungaro. He got more headlines

American Eagle Outfitters launch ‘Live loud in summer’

Business Director of American Eagle Retails Division for the Middle East Ciaran McCloskey, Brand Marketing Manager Rasha Taha, Operations Manager Ray Harris, Store Managers Malou Preligera and William Bautista, Visual Merchandisers and sales staff of AEO Marina Mall during the launch of its summer collection. (Al Watan Daily) Ricky Laxa Staff Writer

KUWAIT: “The American Eagle Outfitters (AEO) offers for its summer collection of subtle and loud colors; women with colored denim, Boho dresses, multi way push up bras and stylish workout outfits and men with Surf inspired, Legend T V-neck shirts, plaid shirts”, commented Business Director of American Eagle Retails Division for the Middle East Ciaran McCloskey in his opening remarks during the press preview held at the AEO outlet at the Marina Mall.

McCloskey told Al Watan Daily that the AEO collection are essentially laid back, not a fashion brand but its basic in style presents wide range of casual wear. The brand follows five major seasons and with three updates and complete change of look of stores twelve times in a year. The summer collections include AEO Girl with Colored Denim, skinny jeans and midi shorts come in an assortment of new colors from pop to pastels, a perfect match with a striped T and neutral sandals. Feather light T, light as air T will be a new favorite, with options in T’s, Tanks and crops. Colorblocking is made easy with this soft T in solids or contrasting stripe options. Boho dresses, bold printed and colorful maxi and regular length dresses are perfect for lazy summer days. Complete the flirty look with a knotted belt and a chambray shirt for cover-up. Colorful Multi-Way Pushup Bra, dare to bare this summer

with Mia bra from Aerie, the 8-way push-up convertible bra perfect under any summer outfit. Mia comes in eleven colors from bright to basic with endless options of matching underwear and Get fit comfortably with the Slim Gym collection designed for yoga, workouts & more. Mix, match and have a little fun pairing your favorite Gym bottom with printed sports bras and soft T’s and Tanks.

For male AEO, summer look is set to impress everyone with Surf Inspired, classic length cargo and preppy shorts in new bold colors make a statement this summer. Surf inspired graphic T’s or fun striped Polos, T’s and tanks add coolness to this look. Pop-color sunglasses top it off for the extra cool. Legend T, this T is summer’s must have item and comes in v-neck, Henley and the all new crew pocket T. The color range is from the most basic to the brightest neon and everything in between; there is one for everyone for those days under the sun. Plaid Shirts, this classic staple now comes in bright colors, bold patterns and short sleeves that scream summertime. Pair this with slim khaki in a vibrant hue and matching kicks for the ultimate prep look with a modern twist.

“AEO’s performance in 2011 was excellent and on business aspect, it continues to expand and definitely looks forward to another year of exceptional sales by providing our clients with a wide range of quality casual wear inspired by its presence in the market for the past twenty five years”, concluded McCloskley.

when he was flown to Hollywood from London, at a reputed cost of $5,000, to create Mia Farrow’s pixie cut for the 1968 film “Rosemary’s Baby.”

Sassoon opened more salons in England and expanded to the United States before also developing a line of shampoos and styling products bearing his name. His advertising slogan was “If you don’t look good, we don’t look good.”

The hairdresser also established Vidal Sassoon Academies to teach aspiring stylists how to envision haircuts based on a client’s bone structure. There are now academies in England, Germany, China, the US and Canada.

“Whether long or short, hair should be carved to a woman’s bone structure,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 1967. “Actually short hair is a state of mind ... not a state of age.”

Sassoon’s hair-care mantra: “To sculpt a head of hair with scissors is an art form. It’s in pursuit of art.”

He wrote four books: “Vidal: The Autobiography” released in February of this year; an earlier autobiography, “Sorry I Kept You Waiting, Madam,” published in 1968; “A Year of Beauty and Health,” written with his second wife, Beverly, and published in 1979; and 1984’s “Cutting Hair the Vidal Sassoon Way.

FILE - In this Feb. 23, 1993 file photo, a model sports a wild head of hair during a show of five decades of Vidal Sassoon hair styles at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. (AP)

He sold his business interests in the early 1980s to devote himself to philanthropy. The Boys Clubs of America and the Performing Arts Council of the Music Center of Los Angeles were among the causes he supported through his Vidal Sassoon Foundation. He later became active in postHurricane Katrina charities in New Orleans.

He had moved to Los Angeles in the early 1970s in search of a chemist to formulate his hair-care products and decided to make the city his home.

A veteran of Israel’s 1948 War of Independence, Sassoon also had a lifelong commitment to eradicating antiSemitism. In 1982, he established the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Growing up very poor in London, Sassoon said that when he was 14, his mother declared he was to become a hairdresser. After traveling to Palestine and serving in the Israeli war, he returned home to fulfill her dream.

“I thought I’d be a soccer player but my mother said I should be a hairdresser, and, as often happens, the mother got her way,” he told the AP in 2007.

He told the Chicago Tribune in 2004 that he was proud to have entered the field.

“Hairdressers are a wonderful breed,” Sassoon said.

“You work one-on-one with another human being and the object is to make them feel so much better and to look at themselves with a twinkle in their eye. Work on their bone structure, the color, the cut, whatever, but when you’ve finished, you have an enormous sense of satisfaction.”

Married four times, Sassoon had four children with his second wife, Beverly, a sometime film and television actress, usually billed as Beverly Adams.

None of the children went into the family business. The eldest, Catya, an actress and model, died in her sleep on New Year’s Day 2002 of an accidental overdose.-AP

Van Gogh museum unveils new willow watercolor AMSTERDAM: A young Vincent van Gogh was so struck by a dead willow leaning “lonely and melancholy” over a pond near The Hague that he knew at once he had to paint it.

“I’m going to attack it tomorrow morning,” he wrote to his brother Theo on July 26, 1882.

The Van Gogh Museum unveiled the painting Thursday, the first addition in five years to its world-famous collection of works by the postimpressionist master.

At a time when the artist was still honing his skills in perspective, anatomy and proportion using pen and pencil sketches, the water color was a bolt from the blue, although its muted tones are still a far cry from the exuberant and colorful oil paintings that characterized Van Gogh’s later works.

“It’s a very elaborate, well done water color and that’s quite extraordinary in this period of Van Gogh’s oeuvre,” said Marije Vellekoop, the museum’s curator of prints and drawings. “Out of the blue, in the summer, in July, he makes a series of water colors ... with a lot of detail, but also very painterly, fluent.”

The willow trunk droops over the water and a path wends its way to the horizon, where a windmill stands near a railroad depot.

Not unusually for a Dutch summer, gray clouds dominate the sky, but Van Gogh also captured the occasional splash of deep blue as the clouds broke. The sky was almost identical Thursday morning low gray clouds scudding over the landmark Amsterdam museum - as director Axel Rueger revealed the painting to the media.

This photo released by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, Netherlands, on Thursday, May 10, 2012, shows an 1882 water color of a pollard willow by Vincent van Gogh from his early Dutch period. (AP)

Rueger said the painting, bought at auction in London earlier this year for ¤1.5 million ($1.9 million), filled a gap in the museum’s collection of Van Gogh works.

“What’s so special is it is for the first time a rather substantial work that he executes in color,” Rueger told The Associated Press. “It comes from a very small group of works he makes at the time and we didn’t have anything like that in our collection.”

For now, it will hang at the Van Gogh Museum. Later this year it and dozens of other paintings will be shifted across the

Amstel River to the Hermitage Amsterdam while the Van Gogh Museum closes for several months for renovations.

Van Gogh wrote enthusiastically to Theo a few days after completing the painting, and included a sketch. The letter, on faded brown paper, hangs next to the completed painting in the museum.

In it, Van Gogh says he considers the willow the best of a series of water colors he painted that summer.

“I think he was very happy with the result and he was also confident that he could also work with color,” said Vellekoop. -AP

Jews stage pilgrimage to ancient Tunisia synagogue FRANCE: A Jewish pilgrimage to the oldest synagogue in Africa on Tunisia’s Djerba Island began Wednesday under tight security after it was cancelled last year following the revolution.

About 500 Jews from Europe and 1,000 Jewish Tunisians started gathering on the Mediterranean island before heading to the 2,500-year-old Ghriba synagogue, said Perez Trabelsi, head of the Tunisian Jewish community.

“Everything is going properly. I am satisfied,” Trabelsi said of the heavy police and military deployment on the island.

There were an estimated 100,000 Jews living in Tunisia when the North African country gained independence in 1956, but the vast majority quickly relocated to France, the former colonial power.

But, with roughly 1,500 members, Tunisia still has one of the largest Jewish communities in the Arab world.

The pilgrimage previously attracted tens of thousands of visitors, but turnout declined dramatically following an April 2002 attack at Ghriba claimed by Al-Qaeda that killed 21 people. The event was cancelled last year with the country on edge following a January uprising that toppled long-serving dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Tunisia’s moderate Islamist Ennahda party that won October elections has pledged to protect the interests of the Jewish minority.

But the country has seen a rise in demonstrations by adherents of an extreme-conservative Salafist strand of Islam who have called for the creation of a more rigid Islamic state in post-Ben Ali Tunisia. -AFP

ALWATAN DAILY

entertainment Song Of The Day

Fahad AlSabah Staff Writer

Song: Cosmic Artist: Kylie Minogue Album: X Genre: Pop In short: Kylie Minogue’s tenth studio album was a mixed bag, featuring a myriad of different producers and sounds.

The end result was satisfactory, even though many would disagree. “Cosmic”, written by Minogue, sounds so out of place on the record at first, but as time went, it proved to be one of the few songs that aged very well over the years.

To listen to the song visit www.alwatandaily.com E-mail your feedback to falsabah@alwatandaily.com

The Buzz Russell Brand to host MTV Movie Awards next month Russell Brand is returning to the MTV stage. The 36-yearold comedian has signed on to host the 2012 MTV Movie Awards. “This MTV Movie Awards will be more impressive than ‘The Avengers,’ and you won’t have to wait an hour for someone to Hulk out,” Brand said Thursday. After hosting MTV’s Video Music Awards in 2008 and 2009, Brand took on leading roles in films such as “Get Him to the Greek,” ‘’Arthur” and “Rock of Ages,” which hits theaters next month.

This is his first time hosting the MTV Movie Awards. Executive producer Jesse Ignjatovic, who worked with Brand on the VMAs, calls the actor-comedian “such a brilliant talent.”

“He brings the funny but he also has that rock ‘n’ roll aesthetic,” he said.The top contenders at the 21st annual MTV Movie Awards are “The Hunger Games” and “Bridesmaids,” which have eight nominations each, including bids for best cast, breakthrough performance and movie of the year. The show also includes offbeat categories such as best kiss, best fight, and best on-screen dirtbag. Fans can select the winners by casting votes online. Emma Stone, Andrew Garfield, Kristen Stewart, Charlize Theron and Mark Wahlberg are among the stars set to appear at the 2012 MTV Movie Awards, which will be presented June 3 at the Gibson Amphitheatre in Universal City, Calif., and broadcast live on MTV. -AP

Whitney Houston’s mother releases new gospel songs Whitney Houston’s mother has released a new album of gospel tunes, her first new music since her daughter’s death and in more than a decade. Cissy Houston’s “Walk on By Faith” was released by Harlem Records on iTunes this week and includes songs such as “Living Shall Not Be In Vain.” Harlem Records rep Bill Coyle said Wednesday her last album was in 1997. He says she started working on the album last year and musically arranged all four tracks. Cissy Houston has kept a low profile since her superstar daughter died in February, giving just one interview. Whitney Houston was 48 when she drowned in a Beverly Hills, Calif., hotel bathtub on the eve of the Grammy Awards. An autopsy showed cocaine played a role in her death. -AP

Lady Gaga to be on Simpsons season finale Lady Gaga brings her divine presence in animated form to the season finale of “The Simpsons” on May 20, and a new short promotional clip for the episode offers an idea of how the “Born This Way” chanteuse will come across in two-dimensional form. Judging from the brief advance look, the episode - dubbed “Lisa Goes Gaga” - will touch on most of the milestones of the singer’s career: The meat dress, the flame-shooting bra, the aerial stage acrobatics. And what “Simpsons” episode would be complete without Grandpa Simpson’s utter befuddlement over pop-culture phenomena? (Hopefully, he’ll give Gaga a lecture about how, back in his day, wearing an onion on your belt was all the rage style-wise.) -Reuters

Depp, Burton bring Dark Shadows comedy to London Johnny Depp’s gothic comedy “Dark Shadows” is creeping into London for its European premiere. The star joined director Tim Burton and co-stars Michelle Pfeiffer, Helena Bonham Carter, Eva Green and Chloe Moretz on the red carpet in the British capital Wednesday night. The movie hits UK cinemas Friday. For Depp, it was the eighth time he’s teamed up with Burton, who keeps things “fresh.” “It’s always new, it’s always different, so it feels like the first time every time,” he said. “He just keeps getting better and better as a filmmaker and as an artist.” “Dark Shadows” is based on the American cult classic TV series. It centers on Barnabas Collins (Depp) - a wealthy man who is turned into a vampire by a witch (Green) and then buried alive. Some 200 years later he is unearthed by a construction crew and suddenly finds himself back in his insular Maine hometown in 1972. A confused Barnabas discovers that his descendants have lost the wealth his family once had. Pfeiffer said the film version is very different. “Our movie isn’t all that reflective really of the original series,” she said. “It’s more of an homage really, but Tim has a very distinct stamp on this and it’s really more of a Tim Burton movie.” Burton was a huge fan of the TV show, which is why he jumped at the chance to adapt it for the big screen. -Reuters

FRIDAY, MAY 11, 2012

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Jury deliberates in Hudson family killings

CHICAGO: Jurors deliberated late into the night Wednesday without reaching a verdict after sitting through sometimes heated and embittered closing arguments at the Chicago trial of the man accused of slaying Oscar-winner Jennifer Hudson’s mother, brother and 7-year-old nephew.

The actress and singer sobbed and dabbed her eyes when prosecutors displayed photos of the bullet-riddled bodies of her three close relatives during closing arguments earlier in the day.

Prosecutors contend Hudson’s former brother-in-law, William Balfour, killed the family members in October 2008 in an act of vengeance against Hudson’s sister, Julia Hudson, to whom he was married but estranged at the time.

The judge at the high-profile trial told jurors they would be sequestered - staying at a nearby hotel overnights until they reached a verdict. They deliberated for more than four hours Wednesday and were scheduled to return to the courthouse to continue deliberations Thursday morning.

With no surviving witnesses to present, prosecutors spent two weeks laying out a largely circumstantial case against Balfour, a 30-year-old one-time gang member.

Public defender Amy Thompson seized on that during her closing argument, saying prosecutors had failed to meet their burden of proving Balfour was the killer.

“They know as they sit there that they have failed to prove the case,” Thompson said, almost at a shout. “I am offended,” she went on, “that they would ask you to throw your logic away.”

In a scathing final word to jurors before they began deliberations, lead prosecutor James McKay said for jurors to believe Balfour is innocent they would have to believe he was just unlucky enough to have someone else kill the Hudsons after he himself had threatened to murder them at least 25 times,

FILE - In this Jan. 10, 2012 file photo, singer and actress Jennifer Hudson attends a book signing in New York.

as witnesses had testified.

“I want to introduce you to William Balfour, the MegaMillions winner of bad luck,” he said. “But Mr. Innocent here did everything a guilty man would do,” including lying about his whereabouts and getting rid of the clothes he wore on the day of the triple murders.

McKay at times gritted his teeth, snarled and pointed at Balfour, who has pleaded not guilty to three counts of first-degree murder.

At one point, he walked up to look directly at Balfour from a few feet away. His voice soaring, McKay boomed, “Calling the defendant a dog is an insult to dogs!” The

comment prompted a buzz among spectators and objections from the defense.

Earlier in the day, prosecutor Jennifer Bagby displayed photographs of the victims smiling for a camera. A second later, she flashed photos of their blooded, bullet-ridden bodies.

“This defendant is the one that made (them) into these images,” Bagby said, glancing back at the photos.

Hudson bent forward, her head on her knee, crying. Her finance, pro wrestler David Otunga, put his arm around the singer and actress, rubbing her neck.

Thompson, for her part, argued that DNA

recovered from the alleged murder weapon, a .45-calibre handgun, and on the steering wheel of Balfour’s car did not match her client’s. “The only person who we know for sure didn’t do it in Chicago,” she said, “was William Balfour.”

Thompson also made the same argument she made in her opening: All of the evidence was circumstantial and no witness could place her client at the scene of the murders.

McKay told jurors that the defense was simply exploiting a popular misunderstanding about what circumstantial evidence is.

“Circumstantial evidence isn’t just as good as direct (witness) evidence. It’s better,” he said, saying it wasn’t subject to human interpretation. The circumstantial evidence against Balfour had become “a tsunami of evidence ... that is drowning him in guilt,” he added.

McKay also lashed out at Thompson, who had finished her closing minutes earlier.

“I don’t know what the acoustics are like in this courtroom,” McKay shouted. “But what in the world was she listening to here (during two weeks of testimony)?”

Starting her closing, Bagby laid the alleged murder weapon on the podium, the silver and black handgun clanging as it hit the wood. She said gunshot residue from the gun was found on the steering wheel of Balfour’s green Chrysler; bullets taken from the bodies were fired from the same gun, she said.

If convicted on all counts, Balfour faces a mandatory life prison term.

Prosecutors presented 11 days of testimony and called 83 witnesses, starting with Jennifer Hudson. She told jurors about the last time she saw her three family members alive and spoke with distain about Balfour, whom she had known since eighth grade.

The defense called just two witnesses two detectives who had testified earlier - in a bid to suggest investigators botched the triple-homicide investigation. -AP

Ex-Miss USA Rima Fakih gets probation in DUI case HIGHLAND PARK, Mich.: Rima Fakih, the first Arab-American to be crowned Miss USA, avoided jail during sentencing Wednesday in her Michigan drunken driving case, an experience she described as “very humbling.”

Judge William McConico put Fakih on six months of probation, ordered the former beauty queen to perform 20 hours of community service and said she must pay $600 in fines and costs. Fakih also must attend an alcohol safety class.

The 26-year-old pleaded no contest last month to driving while visibly impaired in Highland Park, an enclave of Detroit. A no contest plea isn’t an admission of guilt but is treated as such for sentencing. Fakih faced a maximum penalty of 93 days in jail.

“I’m very relieved” not to have been sentenced to serve jail time, Fakih said. “But let’s say it got to that point. I was willing to pay the price it took because I knew I made mistakes.”

Fakih has said she wasn’t drinking the night of her arrest in December, but two police breath tests put her blood alcohol content at more than twice the legal limit.

She was asked Wednesday about her previous denial, but Fakih’s lawyer, W. Otis

Rima Fakih, left, and defense attorney W. Otis Culpepper leave District Court in Highland Park, Mich., on Wednesday, May 9, 2012. (AP)

Culpepper, said he didn’t think it was “fair to revisit what went on that night.”

Fakih’s family moved to New York from Lebanon in 1993 and then to the Detroit sub-

urb of Dearborn 10 years later.When she won the Miss USA Pageant in 2010, she became the first Arab-American to do so. Supporters described her win as a victory for diver-

Dublin showcases earliest photos of baby-faced U2 DUBLIN: In the beginning there was Bono. And what a baby face he had.

Photographs documenting the gritty beginnings of U2 in the smoky pubs and clubs of 1970s Dublin are being unveiled Thursday at an exhibition in the band’s home city. Much of the exhibition by photographer Patrick Brocklebank has never been seen before.

Brocklebank’s black-and-white images capture the teenage Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen in 1978 and 1979 gigs, their vibrant hairdos and fashion missteps, and their clowning around in impromptu shoots and scruffy nighttime hangouts. At the time, fellow teenager Brocklebank recalls he thought U2 might just be the one local act to reach the big time - not because they sounded better than their rivals, but because they were harder-working.

“I actually preferred a few of the other Dublin bands at the time, the Virgin Prunes and the Blades,” Brocklebank said. “But the U2 people really stood out because they were organized. They knew what they wanted to achieve, even then.

“And of course Bono was never meek or mild. He was the ideal frontman,” he said. “Sometimes in the pub after a gig, you would hear Bono before you saw him. He always had a forceful personality that set him apart from the crowd.”

U2 manager Paul McGuinness is launching the exhibition Thursday night at The Little Museum of Dublin, a townhouse whose walls are filled, floor to ceiling, with eclectic memorabilia of Ireland’s turbulent 20th century. The 32-photo show will be on display through Sept. 2, and Brocklebank also is selling original prints of 10 images through the museum’s Web site. Brocklebank was shooting for the Irish music magazine Hot Press in 1978 when he attended several of U2’s first Dublin gigs and became their occasional roadie. His first photo on Sept. 9, 1978, is of a muscle-shirted Bono, mike

With other photos reflected behind, a February 1979 photo of an 18-year-old Bono posing under a fluorescent light is one of the more striking images from the “U2 1978-1981” exhibition opening in Dublin, Ireland, on Thursday, May 10, 2012.

(AP)

in hand, performing as the opening act for English punk rockers The Stranglers in front of a foul crowd of hard-core punks.

U2 was paid 50 Irish pounds (about $80) for the gig.

The Stranglers’ pre-set equipment took up most of the stage, leaving U2 only one claustrophobic corner. Brocklebank recalled that fans, reflecting the punk crudities of the day, spat and tossed lit cigarettes at them throughout their set.

Afterward, he said, Bono confronted The Stranglers in their dressing room about the shoddy treatment.

Barely a week later, Brocklebank took an iconic photo of U2 after another gig: the four boys posing backstage, two with fake guns in hand. Later that night, he took the first known photo of the band with their brand-new manager, McGuinness, over pints at Dublin’s long-closed Granary Bar. The band’s humble beginnings take pride of place in that photo. Mullen, the

drummer who founded the band by posting a recruitment ad on his high school’s bulletin board, can be seen holding up U2’s first award: First place in a talent competition in Limerick the previous St. Patrick’s Day, grand prize 500 Irish pounds - sufficient finance for the band to cut its first demo tape.

Brocklebank also shot publicity photos in February 1979 before U2’s first tour of Britain. A sequence of 12 images shows the band donning a range of poses - messing with fire extinguishers, pretending to be interviewed on TV, climbing atop air vents - inside the corridors and classrooms of Trinity College Dublin.

Formed in 1976, the band first performed under the name Feedback, then The Hype, before settling on U2 in March 1978. Since 1980 the band has recorded 12 albums, sold more than 150 million records, won 22 Grammys and become one of the highest-grossing live acts in history.

-AP

sity, saying it countered negative stereotypes about people of Middle Eastern descent that have flourished in post-Sept. 11 America.

Police said Fakih was driving 60 mph in a 30 mph zone and weaving in and out of traffic before they pulled her over, and officers found an open bottle of champagne behind the driver’s seat of the 2011 Jaguar. One breath test put her blood alcohol content at 0.20 and another put it at 0.19. The legal limit is .08.

Fakih said Wednesday the incident was out of character for her and that she didn’t take her first drink until age 23.

“It’s not something that I grew up to be like a party girl or anything like that,” she said.

Fakih said she plans to pursue careers in acting and public speaking. She’ll appear in a new celebrity dating show called “The Choice,” which premieres June 7 on Fox. “I’m more of an international figure now.

I have young girls and people from all over the world watching me, so I have to make sure that anything I do I’m taking extra precaution,” Fakih said. “Even though my intentions weren’t to drive drunk, I did put myself and a lot of people in danger. So I did learn a lot.”

-AP

Joshua Ledet wows American Idol judges LOS ANGELES: Backstage at “American Idol,” Hollie Cavanagh was bubbly and confident, practicing vocal riffs and giggling with fellow teenage contestant Jessica Sanchez.

By the show’s end Wednesday, Cavanagh was the sole finalist to be found wanting by the judges - and possibly by the viewers who decide which singer will exit Thursday. “Sorry, baby,” judges Steven Tyler and Jennifer Lopez both told Cavanagh, 18, of McKinney, Texas, after she delivered a version of Bonnie Raitt’s “I Can’t Make You Love Me” that they found emotionally wanting and unsuited to her big voice. She won praise for her performance of Journey’s “Faithfully,” but her three competitors all drew undiluted acclaim from Tyler, Lopez and Randy Jackson. “Neither man nor woman has sang that good with that much compassion, ever,” Tyler told gospel singer Joshua Ledet, 20, of Westlake, La., after his performance of James Brown’s “It’s a Man’s World.”

Ledet’s take on Josh Groban’s “You Raise Me Up” also had the judges cheering.

Sanchez, 16, of San Diego, earned her own show of respect for versions of Etta James’ “Steal Away” and Jennifer Holliday’s “And I’m Telling You (I’m Not Going).” “You’re just one of the best,” Lopez told her. For soulful Phillip Phillips, 21, of Leesburg, Ga., the raves came for performances of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Have You Ever Seen the Rain?” and “Volcano”

by Damien Rice. “I love you because you’re your own guy, said Jackson, adding: “Amazing.” Who will claim victory at the show’s May 24 finale?

The impressive field makes a prediction impossible, according to one judge. “It seems like it’s gonna be a real race to the finish. I don’t know who’s gonna win,” said Lopez, who’s scheduled to perform on Thursday’s show, along with 2008 “Idol” winner David Cook. If the tight race is causing a rift among the singers, it didn’t show Wednesday as they clowned around with each other between performances. But the youngest contestant, Sanchez, showed the pressure as she waited to perform “Steal Away.”-Reuters

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ALWATAN DAILY

AROUND TOWN / TIME OUT

FRIDAY, MAY 11, 2012

If you have an event you wish to include, please email: aroundtown@alwatandaily.com

Feature o f

graffiti

the day

moderately confused

KGL Holding establishes Multi-Purpose Training Center at Al Adan High School for Girls

KUWAIT: In line with its strong commitment to contributing to the enhancement of the quality of education in Kuwait, Kuwait and Gulf Link Holding Company established a Multi-Purpose Educational Training Center at Al Adan High School for Girls.

The Center will promote learning, encourage extra-curricular activities and boost personal development among students and administrative staff.

The Center was inaugurated on Sunday, March 25, 2012 by the Undersecretary of the Ministry of Education Tamather Al-Sedirawi who represented the Minister of Education Dr. Naif Al-Hajraf, Mubarak AL-Kabeer Educational District representatives, along with Hameed Abul- Chief Treasurer representing KGL Holding and Fatma Abdulla Dashti, the School Principal.

This initiative falls under the Corporate Citizenship program of Kuwait and Gulf Link Holding Company as the company seeks various opportunities to help in the advancement of the communities

Month a t

Sudoku

Intermediate

it serves where the company organized various programs, workshops and seminars in collaboration with the Global Center- College of Business Administration at Kuwait University, of whom KGL is a founder and supporter.

Also the company provided

Advanced

Elementary

various financial aids to various scientific and educational institutions in Kuwait and hosted many world renowned figures such as US Astronaut from Mexican origins, Dr. Jose’ Hernandes who visited Kuwait last year to inspire the Kuwaiti youth.

General A n n o u n c e m e n t s

a glance intersection between concept, design and the individual voice. Social activism campaigns to re-brand identity is the core essence of this year’s exhibition.

Diwaniya presentation May 15/ 7 p.m. / The AWARE Center: The AWARE Center cordially invites interested westerners to its special diwaniya presentation entitled, “My experience in Kuwait and the six sigma,” by Frank Serafini. Improvements in engineering and construction processes provide better oil refineries and hotel structures. But without improvements in business process then the new facilities would do little to improve customer satisfaction, employee loyalty, and shareholder revenue. Lean Six Sigma is a business process methodology that eliminates waste, improves speed, removes complexity, and reduces defects.

Golden era club

Zara Sa Jhoom Loon Main

May 11 and 25/ 5 p.m. - 7 p.m. / Rumaithiya: Golden Era Club presents ‘The Eight Fold Path to Yoga’. Yoga here! Yoga there! Yoga everywhere! Yet, few comprehend Yoga’s true nature! Join Yoga Guru - Aacharya Shashikala Pushkarna - on this unique journey to the true ‘union’ between the mind, body and spirit. All seniors (60+) are cordially invited. Venue- House #34, next to Abu-Tammam Intermediate School for Boys, Sate Alhusari St., Block 2, Rumaithiya. For registration call 97172788/ 66208183 or drop a line to goldenera60@yahoo.com

May 18/ 7 p.m. / Maidan Hawally: Indian Cultural Society presents” Zara Sa Jhoom Loon Main” with renowned playback singer from Bollywood Abhijeet and world fame theater cum comedy king Umar Sharif from Pakistan. The Chief Guest for the event will be Ambassador of India, Kuwait. Also guest of honor will be prominent personalities from Kuwait and respected embassies from different countries. It will take place at Dr. Kamil Al Rayes Auditorium, AIS opposite Police Station. Contact numbers for your assistance and information: 97270386, 94450833.

Fayre trade

International bazaar

May 12/ 10 a.m. -4 p.m. / Sadu House: Welcome to the fayre! A great day out for all the family. Do your summer souvenir shopping in the wonderful surroundings of Sadu house. Games for the kids, raffle, free admission. Relax after shopping with a scone and a nice cup of tea in the Diwaniya coffee shop.

Art and photography, handicrafts and gifts, jewelry rugs and carpets, sadu weaving, frankincense and myrrh, books, fashion. Supporting 5 charities. For more info: Fayretradeq8@yahoo.com Facebook: Fayre Trade Kuwait.

May 26/ 10 a.m.-3 p.m. / TIES Center: Stop by and have the opportunity to see and even own some international antiques on display and taste the delicious foods on display. Also have your name inscribed in Arabic calligraphy at no cost and have a taste of our Arabic ice cream. Various items will be available for sale, such as pashmina shawls, accessories, jewelry, Mexican food, Indian food, cosmetics, cookies, handbags, traditional Kuwaiti - style dresses and many more. For more information please contact 2523105/6 or 97228860

Graphic Design exhibition

Waist Watchers

May 15-17/ 10 a.m. - 7 p.m. / AUK: The Art & Graphic Design Program (GDES) at AUK will be holding the official opening of the Spring Senior Capstone Exhibition. Under the supervision of Professor Maryam Hosseinnia, Assistant Professor of Graphic Design at AUK, students will be displaying their graduation projects that reflect their ability to visualize and process the complex

Every Tuesday/ 6 p.m. – 7 p.m. / British Ladies Society: Meetings are based on the world’s most successful healthy eating plan. Weekly meetings include private weigh in, motivational talks, recipes to try, and cooking demonstrations.

Fee of KD 2.500 is required to cover for the cost of course material. For more info contact; Danielle desertdanny@hotmail.com.

Dilbert

K’S PATH invites applicants for the adoption of pets Sepp is a Domestic Long Haired (DLH) male cat. He will be 2-years-old April 2012. This friendly, laid-back boy loves a good cuddle and likes a high vantage point in a cat tree or ledge to look out from. He would do best in a home with children over 12 years of age.

To adopt, contact +965 67006122 or visit the website www.kspath.org

Mario is a gentle and affectionate 6-years-young Spitz male. This friendly boy does great with people and dogs of all ages.

Open House for Indian Citizens Ambassador of India would be holding an Open House for Indian citizens to address their problems\grievances on Wednesdays of the second and the fourth weeks of every month between 1500 hrs and 1600 hrs in the Embassy. In case Wednesday is an Embassy holiday, the meeting will be held on the next working day. To ensure timely action/follow-up by the Embassy, it is requested that, wherever possible, Indian citizens should exhaust the existing channels of interaction/grievance redressal and bring their problems/issues in writing with supporting documents.

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

You’re well aware that happiness in love does not depend on emotional promises alone. In order to attract your attention, anyone new in your life has to make some material offering as well. That’s exactly what could happen today. You’ll receive a gift from someone who has been buzzing around you for quite some time now.

People are finally beginning to catch on.

Taurus: April 20 - May 20

The mood is one of bustle and change, Taurus. It’s a good day to clear your wardrobe or other belongings. Out with the old, in with the new! You may consign the old stuff to the basement or to charity. It’s vital to make room for new relationships and some new tastes too. A new you is being born. Clear the path for it to come right through and shine at last!

Gemini: May 21- June 21

Today is a good day to organize professional or personal meetings. They will be productive. It’s an auspicious time for efficient, serious communication, realistic plans and some group harmony. All the ingredients for success and true advancement are available.

Just don’t be surprised if you’re the one in charge.

Cancer: June 22 - July 22

It isn’t always easy to win the admiration you expect from your partner, Cancer. But in this area today seems to be better than most. You’re likely to be brimming with ideas for ways to enhance your most appealing qualities. But don’t try to overdo it. Your efforts at intellectual or even physical seduction are most effective when they’re subtle, discreet and passionate.

Leo: July 23 - August 22

No one dislikes red tape and bureaucracy more than you. If you have any applications to submit or formalities to complete, you’ll definitely find the process much easier than usual. Communication channels that are normally closed will open and administrative mechanisms will be well oiled instead of grinding. Get all administrative tasks done well on time. Relax!

Virgo: August 23 - September 22

Some people tend to make mountains out of molehills. Currently, you’re likely to feel as though you’re surrounded by people who exaggerate problems. You, on the other hand, have a loftier perspective. You’re a visionary who can foresee future social trends.

This gift would serve you well as a political speechwriter.

Libra: September 23 - October 22

You’re visionary and progressive today, Libra, despite what people might say about all your tendencies to be conservative. You could easily come up with an effective way to help those people. For some reason, practical problems are easy for you to solve. Try not to pay any kind of attention to the idle and ineffective chatter of intellectuals. They’re a waste of time.

Scorpio: October 23 - November 21

Today you should abandon any intellectual pursuits and concentrate on practical problems related to organization and goal setting. You’re likely to find perfect solutions within an hour of starting.

The heavens are helping you to get started, Scorpio. Give them some credit for the ingenuity so waste no time in implementing all your plans the sooner the better for you!

Sagittarius: November 22 - December 21

You’re a great creator of systems, Sagittarius. You can tinker with every sort of construction, from theories and computer programs to scientific experiments and strategic evaluations. Today the planets are guiding you. You’re a perfect computer, who’s capable of synthesizing random events into pure reason.

Capricorn: December 22 - January 19

Who would have guessed that you have a keen ability to understand subjects as irrational as human passions? You’re getting down and dirty with the sticky, trivial realities of day-to-day life that never interested you before. Your nonstick coating will make you an excellent and creative personnel director, hiring and firing at the drop of a hat. Has that ever occurred to you?

Aquarius: January 20 - February 18

Until now, you didn’t know you were capable of managing people with problems. But the so-called poetic universe you inhabit is actually much more realistic than seems at first glance. People who believe that human reality is 100 percent logical will feel ridiculous when they see the elegant, humane solutions that you tend to invent at a moment’s notice. Explore!

Pisces: February 19 - March 20

At last, a day of relief from the tension! The flow of communication facilitates personal and professional projects. Now is the time to just listen to your partner or other family members about the material aspects of the future. For example, are you setting aside enough money for your children’s education?

ALWATAN DAILY

SPORTS

friDAY, may 11, 2012

19

basketball

Heat top Knicks 106-94, advance to face Indiana MIAMI: LeBron James was still on the court, enjoying the moment after ousting the New York Knicks, when the first questions came about what’s next for the Miami Heat.

James had 29 points, eight rebounds and seven assists, Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade both scored 19 points and the Heat beat the short-handed Knicks 10694 in Game 5 of an East first-round series Wednesday night. Miami will host the Pacers in Game 1 of the East semifinals on Sunday afternoon.

For the Heat, it was only the first step. They have one goal - getting back to the finals and winning it all and that was likely why even beating the longtime rival Knicks prompted, at most, a subdued celebration.

Carmelo Anthony scored 35 points for the Knicks, including a spinning jumper over James at the end of the third quarter that pulled New York within 81-67.

It was far from being enough to stave off an all-too-familiar playoff result for Anthony, part of that 2003 draft class that also yielded James, Bosh and Wade.

Anthony has played 54 postseason games, being part of wins only 17 times. A misleading stat for certain and no shortage of people in the Heat organization interrupted their celebrating of a series-clincher to tip their caps Anthony’s way afterward.

Head-to-head, Anthony and James both scored 139 points in the series. James shot 48 percent from the field, Anthony 42 percent. James averaged 6.2 rebounds and 5.6 assists, Anthony averaged 8.2 rebounds and 2.2 assists.

Amare Stoudemire scored 14 points, Landry Fields and J.R. Smith both added 12, Mike Bibby had 10 and Tyson Chandler grabbed 11 rebounds for New York, which is 1-8 in playoff games since Anthony and Stoudemire became teammates.

Stoudemire fouled out with 4:48 left, and the Knicks put together one more run with hopes of extending the season. New York cut the margin to 11 points four times in a 2-minute span, but Miami answered every time, the last of those a 3-pointer by Shane Battier with 54 seconds left.

That sent the white seat covers flying in all corners of the arena, the fans knowing it was finally over.

James had 13 points on only six field-goal attempts by halftime, Wade shook off a scoreless first quarter with 12 in the second, and Miami went into the break leading 55-44.

The margin was less than 10 points for only 90 seconds of the third quarter. Stoudemire went to the

Grizzlies avoid elimination, beat Clippers 92-80

Forward LeBron James (6) of the Miami Heat steals the ball from Guard Landry Fields (2) of the New York Knicks in Game Five of the Eastern Conference Quarter-finals, May 9, 2012. (AFP)

bench with his fifth foul with 6:41 left in the third, and Miami went on an 11-2 spurt not long after to all but seal the outcome. It was 67-58 when Fields made two free throws with 4:49 left in the quarter - and then the Heat’s “Big Three” needed just 3 minutes to blow the game open.

Bosh and Wade combined for six points in that flurry, James the other five, including a 21-footer with 1:29 left to put Miami up 78-60.

For the Knicks, it was not a fantastic finish.

Formula one

New York’s season started with great expectations.

Not long after the lockout ended the Knicks acquired Chandler from Dallas, a move made possible by using the amnesty clause on Chauncey Billups.

Those moves were expected. Just about everything else that happened was not. From the firing of coach Mike D’Antoni to the emergence of Jeremy Lin before he was sidelined by a knee injury, the Knicks had a roller-coaster ride that continued with a debilitating series of injuries against Miami. -AP

MEMPHIS: The Memphis Grizzlies have the Los Angeles Clippers frustrated and hurting. Blake Griffin sprained his left knee, Chris Paul went to the Clippers’ bench with a sore right hip and another late comeback fizzled against a Memphis team that got back to its bruising, grinding style to stave off elimination with a 92-80 victory over Los Angeles on Wednesday night.

Game 6 in the first-round Western Conference series is in Los Angeles on Friday night. If needed, Game 7 will be Sunday in Memphis. The physical pounding is starting to take a toll on the Clippers. Coach Vinny Del Negro said Griffin and Paul were being evaluated after the game.

During the game, the Clippers’ team doctor and trainer told Del Negro that Griffin and Paul could return in the fourth quarter. But once Paul started hobbling, Del Negro took him out.

Marc Gasol scored 23 points and Randolph added 19 as the Grizzlies got back to the inside-out style that helped them knock off top-seeded San Antonio in the first round last spring and push Oklahoma City to seven games in the semifinals. Rudy Gay added 14 points for Memphis. Mo Williams had 20 points for the Clippers, while Paul scored 19 and Griffin had 15 points and 11 rebounds. Paul and Griffin both missed time in the fourth quarter with the injuries.

Memphis pounded the ball into the paint and banged on the Clippers all night. The Grizzlies outscored Los Angeles 48-26 in the paint and had a 42-35 edge in rebounds. The Clippers expected the Grizzlies to do just that and couldn’t stop them. Gasol, an All-Star this season for the first time in his career, turned in his best game yet in this series after talking with Memphis coach Lionel Hollins and Randolph about being more aggressive.

The Clippers came in needing a win to clinch their first series since 2006 and advance to a second-round series against topseeded San Antonio. While Paul has plenty of postseason experience, this was the first close-out game for the likes of Griffin, Randy Foye and Jordan.

Los Angeles last led at 17-16 before a fastbreak layup by Tony Allen that was set up by a long pass from Gasol put Memphis ahead to stay at 18-17 with 5:40 left in the first quarter.

The Clippers closed the third quarter with a 14-2 run and got within six twice to conjure up memories of Game 1, when Memphis blew a 27-point lead. Foye pulled the Clippers within 85-79 on a layup with 55.7 seconds left. -AP

Olympics

F1 drivers need to show Olympic flame lit for London Games more respect, says Alonso

Fernando Alonso of Spain and Ferrari attends the drivers parade before the Bahrain Formula One Grand Prix at the Bahrain International Circuit on April 22, 2012. (AFP)

SPAIN: Formula One drivers need to wind back the clock and show each other more respect like they did in the past when motor racing was much more dangerous, according to Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso.

As he prepared for his home grand prix in Barcelona this weekend, the Spaniard reflected on the old days in his personal blog (www.ferrari.com) marking the 30th anniversary of the death of Ferrari great Gilles Villeneuve.

Alonso took part in an event at the team’s Fiorano test track on Tuesday to remember the Canadian, whose son and 1997 world champion Jacques also drove laps in Gilles’s 1979 Ferrari.

He also compared Villeneuve senior’s era to his own, with a veiled allusion to recent controversial track maneuvers.

Recalling Villeneuve’s epic 1979 French Grand Prix duel with Renault’s French driver Rene Arnoux, when the pair banged wheels and overtook each other repeatedly in the closing laps, Alonso recognised the sport had changed.

Alonso was furious after last month’s Bahrain Grand Prix where stewards decided not to punish Mercedes’s Nico Rosberg for two controversial moves on him and McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton.

The Spaniard shook his fist angrily from the cockpit at the German after Rosberg forced him off the track and on to the runoff as Alonso tried to overtake. Hamilton made it past Rosberg but only after going completely off the track.

Race stewards took no action but that prompted Alonso to comment sarcastically on Twitter that future races would be “fun”.

“You can defend position as you want and you can overtake outside the track! Enjoy!,” he said at the time.

Alonso was one of four different winners in the first four races of the season, making the most of wet conditions in Malaysia with an otherwise uncompetitive Ferrari who are fourth in the constructor standings.

He hopes his home race will narrow the gap between the prancing horse and top team Red Bull and second-placed McLaren, with new car updates set to be unveiled.

“We have updates on the F2012, some of which we tested in Mugello last week and others which we will try out on Friday in free practice. Clearly, having limited the damage in the first four races this year we must turn things around.

Having said that it’s not the case that if we are not on pole in Barcelona then it’s the end of the world.”

Barcelona is the first race of the season to take place in Europe and the fifth of 20 grand prix this year. Alonso is fifth in the drivers’ championship on 43 points, 10 behind Red Bull’s leader and champion Sebastian Vettel. -Reuters

GREECE: The Olympic flame was lit in Ancient Olympia in Greece on Thursday, in a solemn ceremony filled with mystery and tradition that signals the final countdown to the start of this year’s summer Games in London.

Actors in ancient Greek costume invoked the god Apollo in the ruins of the 2,600-year-old Temple of Hera, using a concave mirror to harness the sun’s rays and kindle a flame on the torch for a relay that will take it around Greece and Britain.

Dignitaries at the ceremony included the president of the International Olympic Committee Jacques Rogge, as well as the head of the London organising committee, Sebastian Coe. “We promise to protect the flame, to cherish its traditions and stage an uplifting torch relay of which we can be proud,” Coe said in a speech, vowing the event would “lift the spirits and hopes of people across Britain and across the world”.

After thanks to the god Apollo, “king of the sun and the idea of light”, in the shadow of the Greek, British and Olympic flags, the flame was handed to the first relay runner, Greece’s Liverpool-born open water swimming champion Spyros Gianniotis.

He then passed it to 19-year-old British boxer Alexander Loukos, whose father hails from the Greek island of Lesbos and grew up in the east London borough where the Olympic Stadium is situated.

The ceremony marks the start of a week-long torch relay, which will take it to five major Greek archaeological sites, including the Acropolis, before it arrives at the old Olympic stadium in Athens, site of the first modern Games in 1896.

A British delegation will receive the flame at a night-time ceremony on May 17. The last flame-bearers in Greece will be the weight-lifter Pyrros Dimas and the Chinese gymnast Li Ning, who lit the cauldron at the last Olympics in Beijing in 2008.

The London Olympic Games torch will tour the United Kingdom and also visit the Republic of Ireland before it arrives at the Olympic Stadium in east London on July 27 to a worldwide television audi-

The first torch barrier swimmer Spyros Gianniotis runs with the Olympic flame on May 10, 2012 during the lighting ceremony at the ancient site of Olympia. (AFP)

ence of billions.

The torch’s route in Britain starts on May 19 at Land’s End, the southernmost tip of England to begin an 8,000-mile (12,875-kilometre) journey.

From June 3-7, it will visit Northern Ireland and then the Republic of Ireland -- the only country outside the United Kingdom on the torch route.

The inclusion of the Republic of Ireland would have been unthinkable just a few years ago and shows the ever-closer ties between it and Northern Ireland, 14 years after a peace agreement largely ended three decades of sectarian strike in the north.

The torch relay culminates on July 27 with the final leg from Hampton Court palace, the riverside former home of king Henry VIII, to the Olympic Stadium for the opening ceremony that day.

The torch is a reminder of the ancient Olympics, when a flame burned throughout the Games. The tradition was revived in 1936 for the Olympics in Berlin.

No overseas legs of the torch relay have been planned this time round after those before the Beijing Games were hit by widespread protests against China. -AFP

Cricket

Johnson, Cummins in Australian ODI cricket squad

FILE - Australia’s Mitchell Johnson bowls onto unseen South African captian Graeme Smith during the second day of the first Test between Australia and South Africa, Nov.10, 2011. (AFP)

MELBOURNE: Former Test paceman Mitchell Johnson and young quick Pat Cummins were named Thursday in an Australian one-day squad for a tour of England and Ireland in June and July.

Left-armer Johnson has been out of international cricket for six months following foot surgery. Cummins, 19, is being eased back into elite cricket after missing the entire Australian summer season with a bone stress injury in his heel.

Chief selector John Inverarity said Johnson, 30, who is to play for Durham in this season’s English domestic Twenty20 competition, was in contention for the ICC Twenty20 World Cup in Sri Lanka starting in September.

“Mitchell needs to be in the set-up and have some quality competitive cricket leading into the Twenty20 world cup,” Inverarity said. “The selection panel is looking forward to Mitchell being reinvigorated after being out of the game for six months.”

Inveracity said exciting pace bowler Cummins was being eased back into cricket after his man-of-the-match seven-wicket debut in last November’s second Johannesburg Test against South Africa. “We are excited about the return of Cummins and we are looking to ease him back into the team. He will not be expected to play in all of the eight scheduled games,” he said.

Australia, to be led by Michael Clarke, are scheduled to play five ODIs against England, another against Ireland in Belfast and two other games against English county opponents.

“We will have to be at the top of our game to go to England and beat them on their home soil but we’ve selected a strong squad and believe we have the ability to win this one-day series,” Inverarity said. Inverarity said all-rounder Dan Christian was omitted to make way for Johnson, but remained in selectors’ plans for the ICC World Twenty20 and the ODIs and T20s against Pakistan. -AFP

FRIDAY, may 11, 2012

SPORTS

Football

La Liga set for frenzied Sunday finale

Real Madrid’s players celebrate at Cibeles square after Real Madrid won the Spanish Soccer La Liga, in Madrid, Thursday, May 3, 2012. (AFP)

MADRID: A Champions League spot, two Europa League berths and two relegation places are to be claimed or avoided in what promises to be a nervewracking finale to the La Liga season on Sunday.

Atletico Madrid, who beat Athletic Bilbao 3-0 to win the Europa League final on Wednesday, are eying a bigger prize for next season as they battle Malaga and Levante for Spain’s fourth and final Champions League place. A clutch of teams could make it into Europe’s second-tier club competition and five teams are scrabbling to avoid joining already relegated Racing Santander in the second division. The eight matches which affect these positions all kick off at the same time on Sunday.

Champions Real Madrid will parade the trophy at the Bernabeu when they take on sixth-placed Real Mallorca. A victory would give Jose Mourinho’s men a new La Liga record 100 points, beating by one the mark set by Barcelona in 2010, and would add to their league goal-scoring record which sits at 117 with one left to play.

Deposed champions Barca play the last league game of Pep Guardiola’s tenure at Real Betis on Saturday (2000), when Lionel Messi has the chance to build on his La Liga record tally of 50 goals.

Malaga fans more used to enduring final-day relegation battles will be in the unaccustomed position of cheering their side on to a possible first venture into the Champions League next year.

The Qatar-owned club are in pole position to secure Spain’s last remaining ticket into Europe’s elite

club competition, and some pay back on the millions invested in the club since it was bought two years ago.

The Romareda may still get to witness the despair of a team suffering relegation, however, because the only way visiting Sporting Gijon, who are 19th, can survive, is by winning.

“Possibly, this week is one of the most important in the club’s history,” Malaga’s Portuguese midfielder Duda told reporters. “It will be an emotional game, but with different emotions to those of other years where we have been playing to avoid relegation.”

Atletico are two points behind them in fifth, and need to raise themselves for one final effort away at relegation-threatened Villarreal. Seventh-placed Levante’s slender options require a victory over Bilbao and other results to go their way.

At the foot of the table, 15th-placed Granada, Villarreal, Rayo Vallecano, Real Zaragoza and Sporting, respectively, are separated by five points in the battle to avoid the drop. Two of the teams go head-to-head when Granada visit Rayo, the Andalucians hindered by a slew of suspensions.

Granada lost their heads at the end of their 2-1 defeat to Real last weekend and in a melee after the final whistle, when winger Dani Benitez threw a plastic bottle at the referee, a number of players were shown red cards.

The Spanish football federation have suspended Benitez for three months, midfielder Moises Hurtado and defender Siqueira for four matches and striker Alex Geijo for one. -Reuters

Atletico need to reach Champions League to keep Falcao

Sports Editors Highlight

LONDON: Arsenal assistant manager Pat Rice is retiring at the end of the season after 44 years service to the Gunners, the club said in a statement on Thursday. Former Arsenal player Steve Bould will replace him, manager Arsene Wenger said. Rice’s last match as Wenger’s No. 2 will be the Premier League season finale at West Bromwich Albion on Sunday when Arsenal will attempt to seal third place in the table. The 63year-old Rice, who played 49 times for Northern Ireland, first joined Arsenal as a youth player in 1964, was a member of their 1970-71 double-winning team and captained the side to FA Cup success in 1979. He played 528 times for Arsenal over 14 seasons and after a four year spell at Watford, returned to Arsenal and became Wenger’s right-hand man when the Frenchman joined the club in 1996. -Reuters

Manchester primed for final denouement LONDON: A thrilling and unpredictable Premier League season reaches its climax on Sunday when either Manchester United or Manchester City will be crowned champions after the closest title race for over 20 years.

At the same time, Arsenal, Tottenham Hotspur or Newcastle United will seal a Champions League place and Queens Park Rangers or Bolton Wanderers will join relegated Blackburn Rovers and Wolverhampton Wanderers in the Championship next season.

None of those seven clubs can afford a slip-up on an afternoon that will bring down the curtain on a season which has taken one unlikely twist after another.

With just 90 minutes plus stoppage time left to play Manchester City know that if they beat Queens Park Rangers at the Etihad, they will be champions for the first time since 1968 unless United defeat Sunderland by at least nine goals more than City win by.

Both teams have 86 points while City have an eight-goal better goal difference than their neighbours. City have scored 90 goals, United 88 and even in this goalcrazy season such a huge winning margin is highly unlikely.

However, if City should draw or lose to QPR, United would retain their title and be crowned champions for the 20th time with a win at Sunderland.

An added twist is that QPR’s manager is Mark Hughes, who a former United player who was sacked as City manager in 2009 to make way for Roberto Mancini.

Hughes hopes of keeping QPR up were boosted by Djibril Cisse’s 89th-minute winner against Stoke City last weekend and Cisse, who has either scored or been sent off in all seven matches he has played for the club, believes QPR can survive.

“I’ve always said we’re going to stay up - I believe in the club and the players,” the French striker said. “We have a great manager and we’re trying to build something really strong around the club.”

First place in the title race has fluctuated between the Manchester clubs all season with United top until the beginning of October, before City went ahead until the start of March. United then opened up an eight-point lead by Easter time.

That evaporated after an erratic run and City went back to the summit on goal difference on April 30 when they beat United 1-0 at the Etihad.

The race for third place and the automatic spot in next season’s Champions League is just as close as the battle for the title but involves three teams. Arsenal are favorites to take it as they are currently third with 67 points, followed by Spurs on 66 and Newcastle on 65.

Arsenal are at West Bromwich Albion, playing their last game under new England manager Roy Hodgson, Spurs face a Fulham side at White Hart Lane coached by their still-popular former manager Martin Jol and Newcastle travel to inform Everton.

All three will want to avoid finishing fourth, which normally carries with it a guaranteed place in the Champions League qualifiers but not this season.

Chelsea, who will finish sixth, their lowest position since 2002, will take the fourth Champions League spot if they beat Bayern Munich in the Champions League final on May 19, making third place an even greater prize for the chasing trio.

Spurs help third spot for four months before a dip in form coincided with manager Harry Redknapp being linked to the England job, but they appear to have regained their momentum with just two league defeats in their last nine.

Arsenal have only taken two points out of a possible 12 and Newcastle have come up fast on the rails, despite their defeat by City. Bolton also have it all to do at Stoke City where even a win will not save them if QPR get a draw in Manchester.

-Reuters

FILE - Manchester City’s Belgian footballer Vincent Kompany (2nd right) scores his team’s first goal against Manchester United during their English Premier League match, April 30, 2012. (AFP)

Man United’s Hernandez will not compete at Olympics LONDON: Manchester United striker Javier Hernandez will not play for Mexico at this summer’s London Olympics, his club announced on Thursday.

Hernandez, who turns 24 on June 1, had initially been called up as one of Mexico’s three over-age players, but United have now agreed with the Mexican FA he will have the full summer off instead.

United boss Sir Alex Ferguson told the club’s website: “His form last season was fantastic. He’s found the second year

more difficult, but a lot of that is down to not having a summer break for three years and playing every summer for his country. “Next year he will be fine as we have agreed with the Mexican Football Association that he is going to get the requisite rest he needs to perform in the Premier League.” Hernandez, nicknamed Chicharito, will still be involved in Mexico’s two World Cup qualifiers at the start of June. Hector Gonzalez Inarritu, Mexico’s director of the national teams,

said that Ferguson has denied permission for Hernandez to participate.

“Alex Ferguson denied Javier Hernandez’s participation in the Olympic games,” Inarritu told a press conference.

Other United players could also be called up for the Games with Ryan Giggs and Paul Scholes potential over-age players for Team GB, along with Danny Welbeck, Phil Jones and Chris Smalling if they are not in the England squad for Euro 2012. -AFP

Blackburn’s woes will not deter Indian investors: experts

NEW DELHI: Bad experiences with Blackburn Rovers and Racing Santander will not deter Indian investors from buying European soccer clubs, experts say.

Poultry giant Venky’s became the first Indian owners of an English Premier League team following their 23-millionpound takeover of Blackburn in November 2010. The apprehension that greeted them at Ewood Park snowballed into outrage after the club’s relegation from the Premier League following a 1-0 home defeat to Wigan Athletic on Monday.

La Liga club Racing Santander, who were majority owned by Indian businessman Ahsan Ali Syed, went into voluntary administration with debts of more than 33 million

euros last year and were relegated last month. “This is obviously a setback but I don’t think it would demoralize future Indian investors,” Bhaswar Goswami, executive director of sports company Celebrity Management Group, told Reuters on Thursday, after Blackburn’s relegation. “On the contrary, I think it will actually help them to look at it from a different angle. It would give them an idea how to go about the job of running a soccer team. There are well-respected corporate houses such as the Tata Group and Reliance who can do wonders. For companies that want to do business in Europe, owning a soccer club there is the easiest and quickest way to establish themselves,” he added. -Reuters

World Cup-winner Alessandro Nesta quits AC Milan

Radamel Falcao of Atletico Madrid holds the trophy at the end of the UEFA Europa League Final between Atletico Madrid and Athletic Bilbao at the National Arena, May 9, 2012. (AFP)

MADRID: Atletico Madrid need to secure Champions League football next season if they are to hang on to striker Radamel Falcao, club president Miguel Angel Gil Marin said on Thursday.

The Colombia forward scored two stunning goals to help Atletico beat Athletic Bilbao 3-0 in the Europa League final on Wednesday, finishing the tournament as top scorer for the second season in a row, with 12 goals.

Atletico lie fifth in La Liga, two points short of fourth-placed Malaga in the last Champions League qualification berth, and visit relegation-threatened Villarreal in the final round of matches on Sunday.

“If the club don’t manage to qualify for the Champions League they are going to have a problem in terms of income,” Gil Marin told Spanish radio. “Atletico need to be in the top four. If we don’t make it, it will be difficult that he (Falcao)stays.”

Falcao was signed from Porto for 40 million Euros ($51.73 million US dollars) last year after he helped them win the Europa League, and has quickly found his feet at the Calderon.

Atletico used some of the money raised from selling Argentine Sergio Aguero and Uruguayan Diego Forlan, who helped Atletico win the inaugural Europa League in 2010, and the 26-year-old has been their leading marksman with 23 goals in La Liga this season.

Only Barcelona’s Lionel Messi and Real Madrid’s Cristiano Ronaldo have scored more, but Atletico’s earnings are only around a quarter of Spain’s big two, and their lack of financial clout may force them to cash in on their prize asset. “(Fernando) Torres went and we carried on winning, and Aguero went and we continued winning,” Gil Marin added “The club is bigger than any one footballer.” -Reuters

MILAN: AC Milan’s World Cupwinning defender Alessandro Nesta confirmed Thursday he will quit the Serie A side after ten years with speculation rife that he intends to join MLS side New York Red Bulls. “This is my last season at Milan,” the 36-year-old told a press conference. “I have taken stock, and the rhythm of Serie A, the Champions League and the Italian Cup meant I couldn’t play all the time. It doesn’t suit me to sit on the bench and if I don’t feel important I prefer to stay at home.”

The 78-times capped Italy centre-half said he would like to play in the United States, where he has been linked with a move to the New York Red Bulls, but refused to confirm a move.

“I’d go gladly,” said Nesta. “It would be a wonderful experience. I’d gladly go across the Atlantic but as long as nothing has been signed I’m saying nothing. And there are other great and interesting opportunities like that one.”

If he did join the New York club he would link up with other former Europebased stars including France’s Thierry Henry and Mexican Rafael Marquez.

Nesta started his playing career with Lazio and captained the Rome side to the Serie A title in 2000 before heading

for Milan in 2002. With the rossoneri he won the Serie A title in 2004 and 2011, two Champions League titles in 2003 and 2007, and the Club World Cup in 2007.

He was also in the side that lost the Cham-

pions League final in 2005 to Liverpool despite Milan leading 3-0 at half-time.

Nesta’s career has been plagued by injuries ever since Italy’s triumphant 2006 World Cup campaign in Germany. -AFP

FILE- Barcelona’s Lionel Messi (left) vies with AC Milan’s Alessandro Nesta during the Champions League football match between Barcelona and AC Milan, Sep. 13, 2011. (AFP)