MONDAY, MAY 28 , 2012
@alwatandaily
Issue No. 1448
20 PAGES
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150 Fils with IHT
Late budget approval to delay pay increments
Staff Writers
KUWAIT: The recent pay increases and allowances will not be deposited in June as originally scheduled due to the government’s delay in approving the link budget, an informed official source affirmed on Sunday. The source further pointed out that the government cannot overstep the law by finding the funds necessary to pay the increments, adding that the National Assembly has equally breached the law by its failure to approve the budget in April as enshrined in the Budget Law. Additionally, the source noted that the government will ask the Parliament to speedily debate and endorse the budget even if this means holding extraordinary sessions for this purpose. In another development, members of the Majority Bloc have relayed a message to the government that it should seize the opportunity at hand by carrying out a Cabinet reshuffle in which ‘controversial’ ministers would be replaced with elements able to move the country beyond the ‘critical’ phase. An informed source close to the majority, who attended the bloc’s meeting at MP Mohammad AlKhalifa’s diwaniya on Sunday in Jahra, indicated that members of the bloc have decided to give His Highness the Prime Minister Sheikh Jaber Al-
Mubarak Al-Sabah an ultimatum throughout the coming week to dismiss the Minister of Social Affairs and Labor Ahmad Al-Rujaib or else the latter will face questioning from MP Al-Saifi Al-Saifi. He warned that all members of the bloc will back the would-be interpellator; hence Al-Rujaib will meet the same fate as the outgoing Minister of Finance Mustafa Al-Shamali. Members of the bloc listened to a presentation by Al-Saifi who explained the items highlighted in his interpellation and the reason for his adamancy to question the minister before any other MP does. Al-Saifi asserted that he had agreed with the Majority to file an interpellation against the minister of social affairs early next week, noting that the issues contained in his interpellation motion will be presented beforehand to the Majority’s Coordinative Committee. “The government has a good opportunity to effect a Cabinet reshuffle which is in tandem with the demands of the majority,” Al-Saifi stated. He added, “Our hands are extended to the government to endorse laws that serve the best interest of the people. However, the Cabinet should not include provocative elements.” Sources have indicated that members of the majority have rejected a minor Cabinet reshuffle with the aim of keeping the outgoing finance minister after he has been ‘rebuffed’ by the majority
Three tons of rotten food items busted by Ministry of Commerce
who represent the people in Parliament.The participants at the said meeting have reportedly stressed that Al-Shamali’s resignation should be accepted or else he will face a vote of no-confidence against him as scheduled. On the other hand, members of the majority have decided that the intended interpellation against the Defense Minister Sheikh Ahmad AlKhaled be further postponed on the grounds that his questioning is inconvenient at the moment. Meanwhile, MP Mohammad Al-Khalifa explained that an agreement has been reached to devote the coming period to the endorsement of anti-corruption bills. With regard to the payment of 2.16 billion US dollars to the Dow Chemical Company, members of the Majority Bloc agreed on the formation of a neutral investigatory panel into the case to determine those who accepted the deal only to opt out later. This comes at a time when the government intends to involve the Parliament as a party for addressing the issue and accepting any solution it envisages with this regard. Correspondingly, the oil sector has compiled a report containing details of the Letter of Intent which was addressed to the Dow Chemical Company and the paperwork that took place as well as the parties that were involved in the negotiations.
Kuwait cracks whip on traffic violators
Mervat Abduldayem Staff Writer
KUWAIT: In one of the country’s biggest bust against rotten food items, the City Inspector team, part of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, seized three tons and 200 kilograms of discovered unfit food for human consumption, ready for distribution to restaurants across the country in preparation for the holy month of Ramadan. Speaking to Al Watan, Ministry of Commerce and Industry Undersecretary Abdulaziz Al-Khaledi said that his ministry is extremely keen to monitor all food items for the safety of both citizens and expats alike. More on 3
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Do not collect donations at diwaniyas: Ministry
Staff Writers
KUWAIT: As a number of MPs and clerics have called for the collection of donations for the Syrian people following the recent massacre committed at Houla three days ago, the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor asked all people not to collect or pay donations inside diwaniyas, calling on donors to send funds only to listed charity organizations that have already obtained licenses for the collection of donations from the ministry. The ministry considers collecting donations in Diwaniya as a violation, therefore it has asked all to abide by regulations. The organizations that are authorized for collecting donations are the International Islamic Charitable Organization (IICO), Islamic Heritage Revival Society, Abdullah Al-Nouri Charitable Organization, Social Reforms Organization, Kuwait Bar Association, Najat Charitable Organization and Family Development Society.
UN meets over massacre, Syria blames rebels
Demonstrators protest in front of the Syrian consulate in Istanbul on May 27, 2012 against the regime of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad. (AFP)
DAMASCUS: Diplomats at the United Nations said the Security Council had set up a meeting at 1830 GMT on Sunday in the wake of the massacre, as Russia put off moves by members to release a statement on the killings. Britain and France had proposed a statement condemning the massacre, but diplomats said Russia would not agree to the condemnation until a briefing was given by the head of the UN mission in Syria, Major General Robert Mood. The regime was “not at all” to blame for the massacre in Houla in central Homs province that sparked an international outcry, foreign ministry spokesman Jihad Al-Makdissi insisted. Blaming “terrorists” for the killings on Friday and Saturday, Al-Makdissi said Damascus had opened an investigation, with results expected within three days. “Not one Syrian tank
IMF chief sparks Facebook war by Greeks
Supporters of opposition parties from the coalition “The Georgian Dream” take part in a mass anti-government protest gathering in the streets of the capital Tbilisi, May 27, 2012. (Reuters)
Mali split deepens after northern rebels unite
BAMAKO: A move by Mali’s Tuareg and Islamist rebels to merge and declare a new state in the north left the west African country closer to breakup Sunday, two months after a fateful coup in the south. As an Islamic state called Azawad took root in the north, the interim president tasked with restoring Mali’s unity was in a Paris hotel, recovering from an assault in his office on the eve of the transition’s official start. “The Ansar Dine movement and the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (Tuareg MNLA) proclaim their dissolution in Azawad (northern Mali),”
the two groups said in an agreement sent to AFP Saturday. “The two movements have created the transitional council of the Islamic state of Azawad,” said the groups, which have been controlling the area for the past two months, in their “protocol agreement”. “We are all in favor of the independence of Azawad,” they said, adding that “we all accept Islam as the religion.” The accord between the secular Tuareg and the Islamists comes after weeks of sometimes fraught discussions between two movements which have long been separated in their objectives and ideoloMore on 5 gies.
ATHENS: Greek web users waged Facebook war against IMF head Christine Lagarde on Sunday after she accused their countrymen of dodging taxes. The French managing director of the International Monetary Fund received more than 10,000 messages, many of them obscene, on her page on the online social network - where her postings typically draw a couple of hundred comments. By late Sunday afternoon a separate Facebook page had sprung up titled “Greeks are against Lagarde”. Its creators described it as “the page through which to show displeasure as a nation towards Lagarde!”, with a picture of the IMF chief. Greeks accused Lagarde on her page of belittling their suffering in an economic crisis that has seen salaries and pensions cut, in a recession now in its fifth year. Lagarde told Britain’s Guardian newspaper in an interview published Friday that Greeks must “help themselves” by all paying taxes, saying she was more concerned about Africans in poverty than Greeks in the economic crisis. “You should say that to the relatives of the 3,000 Greeks that have committed suicide, to the one million unemployed,”
wrote a Facebook user under the nickname Ntavos Paok. “You should tell your countrymen, who were many years in colonial Africa enriching themselves by stealing from the grandparents of the children you so hypocritically think of by comparing them with Greeks.” Retired civil servant Christina Tsekoura wrote of the hardship of her and husband whose pensions have been cut and who pay housing tax as well as supporting their unemployed daughter. “My family does not owe one euro to the tax office, to a public agency or a bank in Greece or abroad,” she wrote. “We believe in honesty, hard work and merit. I forbid you from equating me with thieves and taunting my family.” Greece made a deal in 2010 to receive hundreds of billions of euros (dollars) from the IMF and the EFSF, a European Union bailout fund, to rescue it from financial collapse, in return for tough reforms. One Facebook user, Litsa Sterp, resorted to ancient Greek wisdom, quoting the first-century scholar Plutarch: “Flee the hostile and tyrannous money-lender who interferes in your freedom and attaches conditions.”-AFP
went in” to Houla, he said. Al-Makdissi added that Kofi Annan, the UN-Arab envoy to Syria, was expected in Damascus on Monday, although there was no confirmation from Annan’s spokesman. In the wake of the Houla killings, exiled opposition head Burhan Ghalioun called for a “battle of liberation” against the regime until the United Nations takes action under Chapter VII allowing military intervention. “I call on the Syrian people to lead a battle of liberation and dignity, relying on its own forces,” he told a news conference in Istanbul. And the rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA) warned that unless the international community took concrete action it would no longer be bound by Annan’’s UN-backed peace plan and his April 12 ceasefire which has been violated daily. See also 4
Harnessing plant-invading fungi for fuel
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German teenager enslaved for years in Bosnia
KARAVLASI: A teenage German woman has been rescued from a Bosnian couple who are accused of starving and beating her for years and of harnessing her to a horse cart and making her pull it. The 19-year-old, kept in a hamlet near the northeastern town of Kalesija since 2004, had been taken to safety and the couple had been detained for investigation, regional prosecutors said on Sunday. Damir Arnautovic, a spokesman for the prosecution in Tuzla, told Reuters Television the woman had been in a bad physical and psychological state and had no papers. She was not named. He said Milenko Marinkovic, 52, and his wife Slavojka, 45, had been detained on suspicion of treating the woman in an inhuman way, “forbidding her any con-
tacts with people, forbidding her to attend school.” The woman’s German mother had once been married to Marinkovic, although the woman had a different father. Her mother still lives in the hamlet and told reporters there to go away. Arnautovic said the mother had been interrogated by the police as a witness and her role was being investigated. The neighbor who had tipped off police said the woman had been forced into hard labor and was covered in bruises and scars. Cazim Makalic once witnessed Marinkovic harness the girl to a horse cart and forced her to pull it with him and his friend sitting in it while he whipped her, he said. “I could not watch them beat and starve her any more,” he said. -Reuters
Palestinian Airlines resumes flights after 7 years
MARKA AIRBASE, Jordan: Palestinian Airlines is back in the skies after being grounded for seven years by the deepening enmities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Once hailed as a symbol of Palestinian statehood dreams, the carrier is a tiny operation, with just two 48-seat turboprop planes, two weekly flights and a borrowed hub in Egypt. But Palestinians say just being on the map again is what matters. “My hands were shaking when I bought the ticket ... and it said the name of the carrier is Palestinian Airlines,” said recent passenger Zuhair Mohammed, a 38-year-old teacher from Gaza. The 15-year-old airline’s fortunes have been closely tied to the quest for a Palestinian state. In the late 1990s, when Palestinians appeared on the verge of a statehood deal with Israel, Palestinian Airlines operated from Gaza International Airport, flew tens of thousands of passengers a year to Middle Eastern destinations and planned to expand to Europe. Those ambitions were crushed by the outbreak of a Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation in September 2000, following the collapse of U.S.-led peace talks. Over the next year, Israeli troops destroyed the Gaza airport, and Palestinian Airlines was forced to move its base to El-Arish, an Egyptian coastal More on 16 resort about 60 kilometers from Gaza.
Protesters take to the streets during a march in Hong Kong May 27, 2012. The demonstration was to mark the upcoming anniversary of the military crackdown on the pro-democracy movement in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989. (Reuters)