1st Sep

IPT IO N SC R SU B

150 Fils

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2012

SHAWWAL 14, 1433 AH

No: 15555

Syria clashes rage as safe havens plea fails 32 killed as total death toll tops 26,000

Max 47º Min 32º

in the

news

Harvard probes cheating NEW YORK: As many as 125 students at Harvard University are being probed for allegedly cheating in a final exam at the elite institution, administrators said yesterday. The official university site news.harvard.edu/gazette reported that a large number of undergraduates “may have inappropriately collaborated on answers, or plagiarized classmates’ responses, on the final exam for the course.” An initial investigation by the Harvard College Administration Board of more than 250 final exams resulted in cases of alleged cheating involving “nearly half the students in the class.” Neither the course, nor the students were identified in the scandal, which would be one of the biggest at the Ivy League college. According to the account, the allegations arose when a faculty member noticed “similarities between a number of exams.”

Shiites protest in Bahrain DUBAI: Thousands of protesters from Shiite opposition groups marched in Bahrain yesterday to demand the release of jailed activists, witnesses said. The march held under the slogan “Freedom and Democracy” was organized after a twomonth break in demonstrations in the tiny Gulf monarchy ruled by a Sunni minority. It was held near a motorway connecting Shiite villages with Manama. Protesters, including women, waved Bahraini flags and pictures of jailed activists from Shiite opposition groups, the witnesses said. They carried portraits of Nabil Rajab, a human rights activist sentenced to three years in prison for participating in illegal demonstrations, and placards reading “Free Nabil Rajab.” “We do not forget the prisoners!” the demonstrators chanted.

Arson suspects nabbed KUWAIT: Jahra police arrested two Iranian in Amghara scrap area in possession of certain quantities of gasoline and highly combustible materials. Security sources said the two were sent to criminal detectives for questioning on suspicion of being involved in Amghara fires. The source said the two Iranians were arrested at dawn after they attempted to escape when they saw the police.

KPC, Athabasca ink deal CALGARY: Kuwait’s state-controlled oil company has signed preliminary agreement to invest up to $4 billion in a joint venture with Athabasca Oil Corp in the northern Alberta oil sands, a newspaper said yesterday. The Globe and Mail reported that Kuwait’s ambassador to Canada, Ali Al-Sammak, confirmed that officials signed a memorandum of understanding this month and that a final agreement between Athabasca and Kuwait Petroleum Corp is expected in October. Athabasca’s shares were halted on the Toronto Stock Exchange yesterday, having closed at C$12.51 on Thursday.

NEW YORK: The United Nations Security Council convenes for a ministerial meeting on the humanitarian plight in Syria. — AP DAMASCUS: Fierce fighting rocked northern Syria yesterday as Turkey pressed its call for internationally protected safe havens in the country to stem the outflow of refugees and protesters demanded the fall of the regime. UN chief Ban Ki-moon told Syria’s premier in Tehran that Damascus must stop using heavy weapons in the conflict, and the International Committee of the Red Cross warned of a fast deteriorating humanitarian situation.

Clashes erupted in the battleground city of Aleppo, less than 50 kilometers from the Turkish border, and rebels attacked the Abu Zohur air base in Idlib province on the border where they said they shot down a MiG warplane on Thursday, a rights group said. Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu expressed frustration at the reluctance of Ankara’s Western allies to heed its calls for protected camps inside Syria to cope with the rapidly swelling numbers of fleeing civilians.

The United Nations estimates that in Aleppo alone at least 200,000 of the city’s 2.7 million population have fled since it

became a major battleground on July 20.

Rebels attacked a security service building in west Aleppo before dawn, and clashes erupted in the districts of Saif Al-Dawla and Salaheddin in the southwest and Hanano in the northeast, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

In Idlib province, rebels seized part of the Abu Zohur base in heavy clashes, the Britain-based watchdog said. The rebels say that aircraft from Abu Zohur have been used by President Bashar Al-Assad’s regime to launch devastating strikes on rebel-held areas. The Abu Zohur area saw some of the heaviest loss of life on Thursday, with 20 civilians, eight of them children, killed there among 119 dead nationwide, the Observatory said.

The total death toll since the uprising against Assad’s rule erupted in March last year now tops 26,000, the watchdog added. It reported 32 people killed yesterday, 23 civilians and nine rebels, with the highest toll in Homs province-nine rebels and five civilians. The Observatory said the siege of rebel-held districts of the central city of Homs entered its 90th day yesterday, warning that hundreds of families

remain trapped there.

“The injured and the elderly need medicine, the children need milk. But nobody in the world cares any more, no one at all,” activist Abu Bilal said in Beirut via Skype.

“Here in Homs, we are all dying a slow death.” Protesters demonstrated in Damascus, Daraa, Hama and also in Aleppo, chanting anti-regime slogans. “We will not surrender, despite your tanks and guns!” they shouted in Assali, a Damascus district, while chants like “Treacherous soldier, shame on you!” echoed in Daraa as protesters accused regime troops of killing civilians. The UN’s Ban told Syrian Prime Minister Wael Al-Halaqi and Foreign Minister Walid Muallem that the fighting must stop, “with the primary responsibility resting on the government to halt its use of heavy weapons.” He said at a news conference in Tehran: “What is important at this time is that all the parties must stop the violence. All those actors who may be providing arms to both sides... must stop.”

The International Committee of the Red Cross warned that the situation across large swathes of Syria was “edging towards irreversible deterioration.” —AFP

LOCAL

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2012

‘Cabinet can convince 2009 parliament to convene’ Approval of new budget KUWAIT: The Cabinet has the ability to convince a majority in the 2009 parliament to hold a special session to enforce the new general budget of the state, as well as address the electoral law should the Constitutional Court render the distribution of constituencies as being unconstitutional.

This claim was made by parliamentary insiders who indicate that the budgets committee is willing to meet and approve a new budget “if the Cabinet showed willingness to attend a special session held to enforce the said budget.”

Allowing the 2009 parliament to convene at least once since it was reinstated last June is seen as the safest way to address the two aforementioned topics. However, the oppositionist minority refuse to take part in an assembly that was dissolved late November of last year following public protest against corruption allegations linked to some members. In the meantime, most members of the 2009 parliament remain uninterested in taking part in a session held as a formality before the Parliament is dissolved again as the opposition demands.

On that regard, the sources who spoke to Al-Qabas believe that governmental assurances that a session can be held to enforce the budget and handle the constituencies’ situation can be enough to convince said majority to convene. “MPs Yousuf Al-

Zalzalah and Maasouma Al-Mubarak said recently that the 2009 parliament needs to bear its responsibility in handling the constituencies issue after the court’s ruling,” sources noted, before indicating that “these statements come as part of pressure put on the Cabinet to bear its responsibility in helping Kuwait out of the current case of legislative vacuum the country is suffering from.”

A number of lawmakers reportedly plan to discuss with subject with Speaker Jassem Al-Khorafi after he returns home from his vacation late September, around the same time in which the Constitutional Court is expected to make its ruling.

Meanwhile, the opposition bloc; a coalition of anti-government legislators who dominated majority seats in the annulled 2012 parliament, reportedly does not have plans to allow its members forward their resignations from the 2009 parliament, fearing that such step could be used as an excuse to hold a session to accept the resignation and potentially hold by-elections as well.

The opposition instead pushes for the prompt dissolution of the 2009 parliament followed by elections held as per the current electoral system, but the Cabinet leans towards waiting after the Constitutional Court’s verdict to change the law accordingly to avoid appeal in future election results.

Separately, unionists warned of a

‘negative impact’ that the political crisis has on union work in Kuwait, as labor unions continue to show divisions when it comes to supporting the oppositionists. On that regard, at a meeting held featuring representatives of labor unions on Wednesday night sharp disagreements were expressed “especially regarding taking part in mass demonstrations against the Cabinet’s step to refer the electoral law to the Constitutional Court,” according to a source.

“The union work, which is already suffering sectarian divisions, collapsed, reflecting negatively on workers’ rights,” said the source who spoke anonymously to Al-Qabas.

The opposition bloc met Thursday to evaluate the developments on the political scene following last Monday’s demonstration at the Iradah Square, and prepare for future protests as well as potential public seminars. The meeting also addressed preparations for launching the National Front for Protection of the Constitution; a topic that was also present at the agenda of a meeting held on Thursday by the Nahj oppositionist group according to MP Dr Waleed Al-Tabtabaei.

“Discussions focused on membership with the National Front, which is set to include members from Nahj, oppositionists , as well as other youth and political groups such as Civil Democratic Movement,” lawmaker saidi after the meeting.

Embassy confirms safety of all Kuwaiti holidaymakers in Malaga MADRID: The Kuwaiti Embassy in Spain confirmed yesterday the safety of all Kuwaiti holidaymakers in the Malaga region where a huge wildfire is raging out of control.

Head of the Kuwaiti Interests Office in Southern Spain and Third Secretary of Madrid Embassy Ahmad Al-Herbish said in statements that the embassy has contacted Kuwaitis in the region and all have confirmed their safety.

He added that the fire did not reach the residential areas where the Kuwaiti holidaymakers stay.

Al-Herbish pointed out the Embassy has also sent messages of reassurance to holidaymakers’ relatives in Kuwait.

The Kuwaiti Embassy in Madrid is doing all in its power to serve and protect the interests of the Kuwaiti citizenry and is ready to exert all required efforts to overcome any difficulties they may face.

The Kuwaiti Interests Office, which the Kuwaiti Embassy opens annually in Southern Spain, started its work this season on June 15 and will continue to provide services to Kuwaiti vacationers until Sept 15. The Office is located at Hotel Crowne Plaza

Estepona in the Southern Province of Malaga where it offers all help or consultation to Kuwaiti holidaymakers.

At least five thousand people were evacuated Friday as the huge wildfire raging out of control in southern Spain reached the edge of the tourist

resort of Marbella on the Costa del Sol. The fire broke out near the port city of Malaga late on Thursday and raced westward, fanned by strong winds and high temperatures. Millions of tourists visit the Costa del Sol, famed for its beaches. — KUNA

News

in brief

Marginal laborers pose threat KUWAIT: Visa trading now poses a new security threat especially after statistics revealed that large numbers of marginal laborers were involved in thefts and bootlegging.Interior Ministry Under Secretary Lt General Ghazi Al-Omar has issued to intensify security presence in residential areas and conduct raids to reduce those crimes significantly. The source said that security departments quickly respond and carry out their duties as required. The Farwaniya and Jahra security departments were outstanding in this regard as they were able to arrest thousands of laborers. The source said that Lt General Al-Omar is personally taking follow up action on the campaigns, in addition to enhancing the role played by detectives.

‘Uranium danger exists’ KUWAIT: The danger posed by radioactive Uranium still exists because the necessary environmental procedures are not complete, said Hamad Al-Matar, member of the annulled national Assembly. Al-Mattar answered questions posed by Sheikh Sabah Al-Nasser Al-Sabah Former Defence Ministry undersecretary. He said that a major polluted area in Doha was discovered adjacent to where the American forces store heavy equipment near the old camp, adding that the discovery was made by a Kuwaiti officer. “We took the necessary procedures of gathering and transporting the contaminated equipment to Um-Alqawati, covered them and announced a tender to dispose them of,” he said.

PAAET unable to admit more students KUWAIT: It appears that the Public Authority for Applied Education and Training (PAAET) is facing a true crisis in being unable to accept large numbers of students who applied for admission in addition to a shortage in faculty members. PAAET faces a seat shortage with the number of applicants exceeding expectations; at least 15,000 students for admission during the first and second terms of 2012-2013. The eligible students numbered to 18,000. The sources said that PAAET administration is overwhelmed with the flood of applications and announced the ability to admit 10,000 students in the first term of the new school year. However, the actual number of applicants is 15,000 in number. Sources said the meeting with the higher admissions committee was postponed several times by PAAET officials without expressing the reason. They said that they would discuss the number of accepted students and distribute them to colleges and also set the date to announce their names.Sources expressed dissatisfaction with the delay in announcing the names of accepted students and called for taking swift action.

Applications to allow NGOs await ministers’approval

KUWAIT: Minister of Justice Jamal Al-Shehab, who represented HH the Amir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah during the closing ceremony of the 24th Annual Pearl Diving Expedition, presents the Kuwaiti flag to a diver after returning with his comrades. Maj Gen Fahad Al-Fahad, President of the Kuwait Sea Sports Club which organizes the annual heritage trip, is seen on Al-Shehab’s right. The expedition concluded on Thursday with the ‘Al-Qfal’ ceremony; an event signaling the end of pearl diving expeditions.

KUWAIT: At least 50 applications to issue licenses to new Non-Government Organizations(NGOs) are pending approval from the Council of Ministers, said Salah AlRabah, the director of NGOs department at the Ministry of Social Affairs.

Al-Rabah said the applications were sent after receiving an approval from a committee. It was approved by the minister before being referred to the Council. He said that the law is outdated and does not cover many new things in the activities of those organizations.

He said the number of current NGOs is 84 operating in various fields while the number of applications submitted is around 306. After the country was liberated, applications were not considered because a ban was placed on establishing NGOs. He said that in 2004 the council of ministers issued a decision to allow the formation of NGOs according to new conditions, and several old applications were renewed and new ones were submitted, as some were approved and others rejected based on rules formulated by the ministry.

local

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2012

Traces of pork found in chicken hotdogs Prohibited food entering Kuwait

KUWAIT: At least 189 students including 75 female students will return to Kuwait today from the Czech Republic after taking part in a training camp to represent Kuwait in the 19th Arab School Sports Tournament to be held in Kuwait between Sept 5 and 16.

‘Injustice motivates domestic workers to commit suicide’ KUWAIT: The increasing suicide rate among domestic workers in Kuwait is an indication of the suffering and abuse they suffer at the hands of some sponsors, stated a local human rights organization recently. In a statement, it called for “immediate and adequate governmental action to diagnose and tackle the problem.”

“While it cannot be described as a phenomenon in the society, the issue remains a serious problem that concerns all organizations supporting human rights and people’s basic freedoms,” reads a statement released recently by the Kuwaiti Society for the Basic Principles of Human Rights (KSBPHR), suggesting that “the increase in suicide cases among domestic worker is met with inadequate governmental action to address the root causes of the problem.”

The KSBPHR believes that this problem not only affects the well-being of domestic workforce in Kuwait, but also “damages Kuwait’s international image by showing it as a country where human rights and dignity are not respected.” Furthermore, the society demanded in the statement that is posted on their website that ‘the domestic workers law,’ which protects rights of housemaids, and the ‘anti-human trafficking law’ are enforced as soon as possible “to protect the rights of the vulnerable and sponsors alike.”

Moreover, the KSBPHR urged authorities to cooperate with civil society institutions to carry out investigations and studies to diagnose the reasons which drive workers and housemaids to commit suicide. “A housemaid might commit suicide following sexual assault, and a worker can choose to end his life after being subjected to insult or severe physical assault by the sponsor,” the statement read. Abuse and mistreatment committed by sponsors or their family members leaves a negative psychological effect that according to the KSBPHR “adds to the feeling of injustice and psychological pressure that drive them to commit suicide.” The society called to understand the situation facing many domestic workers “who come from poor environments with the responsibility of supporting their families,” adding that workers in this case feel depressed “when they are deprived of their legal rights such as unpaid salaries, overwork and the lack of a hotline through which they can report cases of abuse.”

The society also urged people to “recognize and respect the God-given rights of domestic workers whose well-being becomes the responsibility of the family as soon as they enter their house.”

(Source: Official website of the Kuwaiti Society for the Basic Principles of Human Rights)

KUWAIT: The Kuwait Municipality is reportedly working on recalling a shipment of hotdogs that contained traces of pork that was made available at some restaurants according to official reports, amid reactions criticizing the failure of taking effective measures to prevent distribution of such food products to local markets.

“News about prohibited food entering Kuwait is not new, and will continue as long as the government does not make efforts to restructure departments assigned with testing and authorizing of imported products,” said MP Khalid AlSultan in a statement Thursday, adding that “strict penalties must be handed over to traders who sell their products before test results are released.”

The Kuwait Municipality closed a

store where a shipment of chicken hotdogs ‘mixed with pork and lard”‘ and imported from Brazil was found, announced Mohammad Al-Otaibi, the acting general manager. He told Al-Rai daily that municipality inspectors are working toward recalling around 1,688 large cardboard boxes containing the product which was made available to customers.

Meanwhile, Ali Al-Hajri, the head of the Commercial Supervision Department at the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, confirmed to Al-Rai that the boxes were sold to a number of restaurants “before test results confirm whether they are suitable for human consumption were released.”

Al-Hajri added that the trader committed a practice “in violation to Kuwait

Municipality regulations,” but added that recalling the items is responsibility of the Municipality which is the body that authorizes entrance of imported food products to the local market.

“State departments should bear their responsibilities fully,” said member of the annulled 2012 parliament Mohammad Al-Khalifa, who explained that the recent incident is part of “flaws and negligence that most state departments are guilty of.”

In the meantime, sources familiar with the state’s co-operative societies sector assured that the products could not have reached any of the state’s cooperative societies “because a company cannot supply a product unless it received a written authorization from the Kuwait Municipality.”

KUWAIT: The radio-controlled car team from the Aviation Science Department at the Kuwait Scientific Club will depart for Thailand to represent Kuwait in the 2012 Asian Radio-Controlled Cars Tournament.

Kuwait expresses concern over Syrian crisis at NAM meeting TEHRAN: Representative of the Amir of Kuwait His Highness Sheikh Sabah AlAhmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Sabah Al-Khaled Al-Hamad Al-Sabah, voiced Kuwait’s deep concerns over the deteriorating situation in Syria.

“Out of Kuwait’s respect to the will of people in their nations, it follows with serious concerns the Syrian crisis which entered its second year with more bloodier and violent developments that left thousands of civilian victims either dead, injured, displaced or refugee,” Sheikh Sabah Al-Khaled said in his speech at the Sixteenth Non-Aligned Movement’s Summit in the Iranian capital of Tehran.

The Kuwaiti top diplomat welcomed the recent appointment of Algerian veteran politician Lakhdar Brahimi as a UNArab envoy to Syria. “Kuwait wishes Brahimi great success in his mission to meet the freedom, democracy and pluralism aspiration of the Syrian people and protect the unity of its people and its territorial integrity,” added. Sheikh

Sabah Al-Khaled hailed the remarkable and steadily positive development of bilateral relations between Kuwait and Iraq. He also spoke highly of the historic supportive stance of the Non-Aligned

Movement towards the Palestinian cause, hoping this backing will continue till achieving ever lasting peace based on the UN resolutions and the Arab Peace Initiative. — KUNA

Gulf Street, Fourth Ring Road most dangerous to pedestrians KUWAIT: Some of Kuwait’s busiest roads, including the Arabian Gulf Road, the Fourth Ring Road and the Salem Al-Mubarak Street, were identified in a recent study as being prone to traffic accidents and hit and run incidents in the country for reasons that include lack of modern methods to protect pedestrian safety.

The study, mentioned in a booklet prepared by Maj Saad Al-Rujaib, head of the Hawally Traffic Control Department, sent it to senior officials at the Ministry of Interior’s Traffic General Department. The study, quoted by Al-Watan daily yesterday, mentions the area in front of the Swimming Pools Complex at the Gulf Road, area between the Salmiya Bridge and the Salmiya fire station junction at the Fourth Ring Road, as well as the areas near college institutions at the Cairo Road as places where the most number of hit and run cases take place in Kuwait. The Beirut and Tunis streets in Hawally were also mentioned in the study, in addition to locations near bus stops and restaurants along the Al-Taawon and the Blajat streets. The study also includes the area under the Marina Mall Bridge, as well as the Salem Al-Mubarak Street in Salmiya, especially the area between the Sultan Center and the Al-Thuraya junction.

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LOCAL

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2012

Praise for creativity of Kuwaiti architects VENICE: Paolo Baratta, the president of the Venice Biennale, hailed on Thursday Kuwait’s first participation in the 13th Venice International Architecture Biennale.

Baratta expressed admiration of the Kuwaiti pavilion he visited and the team, he described as “creative”, who designed it.

He said he was astonished by the creativity and professionalism of the young Kuwait male and female architects and interior designers who designed and built the pavilion. The organisers of the exhibition are pleased with the Kuwaiti contribution to the event, he added.

The project’s design team was led by young Kuwaiti architect Zahra Ali Baba, and was sponsored by the National Council for Culture, Arts and Letters (NCCAL).

Part of the project named ‘kathra’, which means abundance in Arabic, manifests the project’s two main horizontal and ground dimensions that have overlapped schemes of urban architectural developments in Kuwait over the decades.

It includes mosaic columns that showcase the interactional aspects of the Kuwaiti society, depicting a pictorial map of cultural and social connections through urban architectural growth.

The Venice International Architecture Biennale is arguably the most important event on the international contemporary architecture calendar. — KUNA

40 expatriates held in Farwaniya crackdown Two women assaulted on Blajat Street KUWAIT: Twenty four expatriates were arrested for failing to produce valid residence permits during recent campaigns in Farwaniya and Khaitan during which officers questioned public bus passengers and pedestrians.

Meanwhile, 16 expatriates were detained after police raided four apartments where illegal activities were being held, including prostitution and offering international telephone services. The 16 suspects were referred to higher authorities to face charges, while offenders were jailed pending deportation procedures.

Two sentenced The Criminal Court sentenced a citizen to five years imprisonment on Thursday after he was found guilty of slandering His Highness the Amir, while a juvenile delinquent was handed a one-year prison term after being convicted of the same charges.

The court explained in its judgment that “mentioning the Amir’s name must be accompanied with full elements of respect, and away from any form of mockery or scorn.” The charges against the two offenders were pressed by the Public Prosecution Department following investigations.

Two hurt in fight Two brothers were hospitalized after suffering serious

injuries following a fight that took place on Thursday morning in Taima. The victims, aged 19 and 16, were rushed by family members to Jahra hospital with stab wounds. Investigations revealed that the victims suffered injuries during a fight with six other teenagers; one of whom was soon arrested after he was found in the same hospital receiving treatment for multiple bruises. A case was filed and search is ongoing for the five runaway suspects.

Women assaulted Investigations are currently ongoing for four suspects who physically assaulted two women on Blajat Street recently. The four escaped before police arrived after the assault was reported. The two Kuwaiti victims denied knowledge of the identity of attackers, who reportedly forced them out of their car after asking them to pull over, and beat them up before leaving them and ripping out their clothes. The victims pressed physical assault and attempted sexual assault charges in a case that was referred to detectives for investigations.

Drug possession Two people were arrested in Hawally with possession of drugs on Wednesday night. The suspects, Lebanese and Palestinian, raised suspicions

when they became visibly nervous, as patrol officers approached their car after they pulled over. They were placed under arrest after an amount of drugs was found during search, and referred to the General Department of Drug Control (GDDC) to face charges.

School robbery A school janitor faces charges after he admitted responsibility for theft he reported at a school in Fahad Al-Ahmad. Detectives decided to summon the janitor, who was transferred to a school in Khaldiya since the case was reported a few months ago, after finding evidence indicating that he stole 26 computer sets.

During interrogations, the Arab man admitted to stealing the computers and selling them to a shop located in Hawally. The shop’s owner confirmed during investigations that he bought the computers from the suspect, but denied knowledge that they were stolen.

Brotherly hate A citizen approached Al-Adan police station officers recently to press murder threat charges against his brother. The latter allegedly threatened to kill the former if he stepped into the family home. A case was filed as police sought to summon the complainant’s brother to hear his side of the story. — Al-Rai, Al-Anba

Hollande to inaugurate Islamic Section of Louvre Museum PARIS: French President Francois Hollande will officially inaugurate the Islamic Section of the World Famous Louvre Museum in the French capital next month, a diplomatic source said yesterday.

The Islamic Section, which was an initiative under former President Jacques Chirac, is to be the largest Islamic exhibit in any museum in Europe and it will put over 3,000 works on exhibit.

Artefacts will include many items from Spain’s Moor Period and also from the Mogul period in India.

The source said that Hollande will attend the pre-public inauguration and that the museum will open the Islamic Section to the public on Sept 22 under the theme “The Radiant Face of a Great Civilization”.

The Islamic Section cost an estimated $125 million to complete and it will also include Islamic works that are currently on display in other sections of the museum.

Some financing has come from the French State but most of the mon-

ey for the project has been donated from Islamic countries. The Louvre, originally a fortified castle dating from the year 1200, has a worldrenowned permanent collection of mainly renaissance art works, but also offers travelling or private exhibits. The new section will be wholly devoted to Islamic art works.

From July to September 2006, Kuwait’s Minister of Amiri Diwan Affairs Sheikh Nasser Sabah AlAhmad Al-Sabah and his wife Sheikha Hussa put their extensive private collection on show in the Louvre here in a very successful and highly-visited operation.

The exhibition presented the most beautiful works from Sheikh Nasser’s private collection of Indian jewels and precious objects from the Mogul that they have assembled for many decades.

Louvre sources earlier indicated that the Kuwaiti exhibit had been a “great success” with 80,000 visitors in the three-month period. — KUNA

Mubarak Port pier under construction KUWAIT: The Mubarak Port pier is under construction and will be linked with roads and bridges leading to the port, said Adel Al-Torky, Assistant Undersecretary for Major Projects Sector.

He said that international advisors are now studying the works related to the project, including the completion achieved and the percentage of achievement attained in each stage, and the works undertaken including bridges, railroads, docks, and other services.

He said that it is a large-scale project whose parts are intertwining and is being executed over several stages. He said the project will cover housing, entertainment, tourism and environment adding that those projects have plans and a time schedule.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2012

Religious groups vie for domain names

8

The Russian oligarchs dueling in British trial

9

Brutality, anger fuel jihad in the Caucasus

10

RAMALLAH: Hekmat Besesso, a Palestinian woman’s rights advocate, sits beside a laptop that shows an image of her son, Yazan, 6, in the West Bank city of Ramallah. — AP

Palestinians chip away at male divorce monopoly Religious authorities announce sweeping reforms WEST BANK: For decades, Palestinian women seeking to divorce their husbands risked years of miserable, expensive litigation or lengthy domestic battles as they begged their spouses for permission to leave. On Thursday, Palestinian religious authorities announced sweeping new reforms of local divorce law that make it much easier for a woman to end her marriage. The rules have put the West Bank at the forefront of a movement that is slowly taking hold in the traditional, male-dominated societies of the Middle East.

“In Islamic law, the relation between spouses should be based on tenderness, love and understanding,” said Sheik Yousef Al-Dais, head of the Islamic courts in the Palestinian Authority, as he announced the new changes. “If there’s hatred between them, should we force them to stay together?” Under Islamic law, a woman cannot ask for divorce simply because she was unhappy. That is a privilege enjoyed only by men. Instead, she must prove ill treatment or receive approval from her husband.

Proving ill treatment often is no easy task. That requires evidence, like a landlord testifying a wayward husband never paid the rent, or medical certificates proving a woman was beaten. Proving those cases is sometimes impossible and frequently entangles women in years of court hearings. If a woman

can’t claim harm, she may ask her husband to grant her a divorce. In those cases, she must return the dowry and gifts she receives from her husband upon marriage. Some men demand more: exclusive children’s custody, thousands of dollars, apartments, or simply deny the divorce. “These women are investment projects for men, open to extortion at any time,” said Al-Dais.

From Thursday, women don’t have to give proof of ill treatment. A judge will have the power to decide, without evidence, that her marriage is harmful for her. Husbands are also barred from seeking “unreasonable” sums of money beyond the dowry, and the divorce must be completed within three months. These changes mark a huge step forward in a society where many still believe that women should have no right to separate from her husband.

A 31-year-old woman said she spent three years in court before a judge finally agreed to her divorce request.

She said that during the proceedings, her husband smashed her nose, ripped out her hair repeatedly - clutching it to drag her across the floor - and left her homeless after giving birth to their son. The woman, who asked to be identified only by her first name Nisreen because of fears for her safety, said the judges initially refused to grant the divorce because her husband promised to change. They also

didn’t accept police reports detailing her husband’s violence because they were from another country.

Where? why?

“You are destroyed psychologically, and physically, and then the sheiks say patience,” she said. She estimated her divorce cost her family $7,000 - the sum that the average Palestinian makes in five years.

The pressure to update divorce rules appears to have been prompted by a gruesome incident this month in which a man slashed his wife’s throat in a marketplace in the West Bank city of Bethlehem. The incident provoked widespread outrage in a culture where violence against women is mostly considered a private, family affair. Did she want a divorce? What happened to the husband? I presume she died?

The changes have prompted mixed feelings in this deeply conservative society. Many families pressure females from not divorcing, worried it would ruin the family’s reputation. Divorced women are seen as loose trouble makers, and men don’t like to been as dumped. Few families can afford to hire a lawyer and begin proceedings. “If a woman can divorce, she’ll dump him anytime she wants,” said Ahmad Qawasmi, a cosmetics salesman, 21. “I wanted to get married but now I’m reconsidering.

Because if my wife leaves me, people will say: There’s a guy whose wife dumped him.”

But feminists said the changes don’t go far

enough since they don’t limit the length of time or monetary compensation involved in completing a divorce. I thought there are limits. And lumbering security forces rarely implement court rulings. “Let not the (judges) be so joyful,” said Hekmat Besesso, 48, a women’s activist who said she spent eight months in a custody battle because her husband didn’t allow her to see her son, even though a court allowed her a once-a-week visit. Besesso lost custody of her son when she remarried another man last year - another quirk of Palestinian family law.

How old is the boy? Is she allowed to see him?

At an Islamic family law courthouse in Ramallah this week - where divorces are lodged - four judges sporting turbans and clerical robes welcomed the changes, saying they were sick of men squeezing women dry while attempting to divorce. But it may be some time before the changes are implement.

Nearby, bureaucrats kept giving contradictory instructions to a young woman in jeans and a scarlet headscarf as she tried to finalize her divorce.

Only 14 percent of marriages end in divorce in Palestinian society, said attorney Fatima al-Muaqat, an expert on Palestinian divorce law. But that figure was misleading because of the lengthy divorce process, which stretch up to 10 years, and the many women who either fail or don’t bother to seek a divorce. —AP

international

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2012

Prosecutors charge South Africa miners with murder JOHANNESBURG: South African prosecutors have charged 270 striking miners with murder of 34 co-workers seen being shot dead in a hail of police bullets captured in videos broadcast around the world. Prosecution have filed papers invoking a measure called “common purpose” seldom used since the dying days of apartheid, arguing the miners were complicit in the killings since they were arrested at the scene with weapons.

Legal experts said the move will likely collapse when a court hearing bail applications for the 270 near the mine resumes sessions next week and lambasted prosecutors for inflaming a tense situation by seeking a mass indictment that will eventually be rejected. “This is bizarre and shocking and represents a flagrant abuse of the criminal justice system in an effort to protect the police and/or politicians,” Pierre de Vos, a law expert at the University of Cape Town, wrote in a blog entry. “The apartheid state often used this provision to secure a criminal conviction against one or more of the leaders of a protest march, or against leaders of struggle organizations like the ANC.” President Jacob Zuma and his ruling African National Congress have faced increasing pressure over the killings, which are the deadliest security incident since apartheid ended in 1994, with many saying the government may be more concerned about protecting its own than miners in shafts. The government has launched a probe into the killings, including the deaths of 10 people ahead of the shooting at Lonmin’s Marikana mine, northwest of Johannesburg. It is withholding any police punishment until the investigation is over in around January.

The Independent Police Investigative Directorate, a government watchdog, said it had received nearly 200 complaints from the arrested miners of being assaulted and abused while in custody. Fewer than 7 percent of Lonmin’s 28,000-strong South African workforce reported for duty on Thursday as the platinum producer held talks with warring unions, attempting to cool tensions and bring people back to work. The world’s third-largest platinum producer has been forced to shut its mining operations for almost three weeks because of a violent turf war between the established National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and militant Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU), which led to the deaths of 44 people this month.

We have a 6.6 percent average attendance across all shafts this morning,” Lonmin said in a statement.

PEACE ACCORD The talks to end the impasse in the platinum mining city of Rustenburg, northwest of Johannesburg, resumed on Thursday after dragging into the night on Wednesday.

Gideon du Plessis, deputy secretary general of trade union Solidarity, said discussions are to secure “a return to work agreement - with the aim of getting workers back to work on Monday after most funerals have been concluded”. He said the grievances raised by the striking workers would then be dealt with and finally, a peace accord would be reached. Solidarity represents skilled workers, and its members have not been on strike, but all unions are taking part in the talks. The 3,000 strikers who have brought things to a standstill are mostly rock driller operators, who demand a monthly wage of 12,500 rand ($1,500), which would amount to a hike of over 25 percent over what the company says it currently pays, excluding bonuses.

In Australia, South Africa’s mines minister, Susan Shabangu, said on the sidelines of a conference that the violence was undermining investor confidence in Africa’s largest economy, which sits on 80 percent of known platinum reserves. “It is a cause for concern. The tragedy does impact on any potential investments.

Any investor would like to invest in a stable environment; we’ve got to recognize that,” she said. Lonmin accounts for 12 percent of the global output of platinum, used in car catalytic converters and jewelry.

Lonmin has said it may issue new shares to shore up a balance sheet hit by lost output and revenue, as well as the prospect of further losses as the entire platinum sector struggles with soaring power and labour costs and poor demand. —Reuters

Religious groups vie for domain names Saudis oppose Islamic names, also .sex, .gay, .porn PARIS: Centuries-old theological disputes have broken out in cyberspace as religions aim to influence the future presentation of faith on the Internet. The forum for the rivalry is not the pulpit or church bulletin, but the website of ICANN, the corporation that oversees the Internet address system and now wants to expand it beyond the usual .com, .org or .net domains.

When ICANN began accepting applications for new names early this year, bids came for extensions such as .catholic, .islam and .bible. Not far behind were critics who challenged many applicants’ right to monopolize those and other religious terms. “I respectfully ask you not to award .bible to a bunch of hardcore Biblethumpers,” wrote one critic of an application by the American Bible Society to manage that extension.

Questioning a Turkish IT company’s bid for the .islam domain, Fahd Batayneh of Jordan’s National Information Technology Centre asked how it could ensure no pornographers or Muslim extremists would use names with this ending? ICANN (www.icann.org), the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, is accepting comments on these and other applications for another month and will then evaluate the bids for new extensions, known as top level domains (TLDs). First results are due next summer. A group awarded a TLD can manage that domain exclusively, renting out addresses that use its extension and rejecting bids it considers unsuitable.

ICANN CAN’T The religious problems facing this 21st

century project are as old as the schisms and heresies that have haunted faiths for ages. Who speaks for Islam? Does the Vatican have a monopoly on the word “catholic”? How should one interpret the Bible? “I don’t think I can solve issues that have been going on for centuries,” Akram Atallah, interim head of ICANN, told Reuters by telephone from its Los Angeles headquarters. “Our goal, at the end of the day, is to provide innovation in the domain name system.”

Website owners are now restricted to a few dozen TLDs such as .com and country code domains such as .co.uk. Many of the 1,930 applications for new TLDs came from companies, including Internet giants such as Amazon and Google. If there are rival bids for the same TLD, ICANN has panels of experts to consider legal, financial and technical factors in making the decision to award a domain name. A dispute resolution process exists if an losing applicant disagrees. But there won’t be geeks consulting Gospels to decide who can have a TLD such as .church. “We don’t look into whether the Vatican has the right to the .catholic name,” Atallah said.

“Hopefully, the process will get to a conclusion that is satisfying to the majority.”

SAUDIS OPPOSE, CHRISTIANS SQUABBLE Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam, seems to see no hope of a consensus on religious TLDs and opposes them all. Its Communications and Information Technology Commission filed 163 comments, opposing not only TLDs with Muslim terms such as Islam, halal and Shia

but also Catholic and Bible. It also criticized bids for sex, gay, wine, virgin, dating, porn and other terms that go against its strict moral code. The Vatican’s application for exclusive use of .catholic drew criticism from members of several Protestant churches who also use the term, which comes from the Greek for “universal”. “This request is a move by a powerful group to squelch the voices and rights of other Christians,” wrote Dave Daubert, pastor of Zion Lutheran Church in Elgin, Illinois. Some comments asked if the large Life Covenant Church, based in Oklahoma, would share the .church name it applied for with other Christians who did not hold its evangelical beliefs. “If something as basic as the Ten Commandments can’t be agreed upon, how can the TLD be operated fairly?” one asked. The American Bible Society would share the .bible domain with “individuals and groups who, regardless of faith, have a healthy respect for the Bible,” spokesman Geoffrey Morin said.

Clerics aren’t the only ones trying to get into the game. AGITSys, an Istanbulbased IT company, said it wanted to create “a quality online space for the Muslim faithful” with domain names such as .islam and .halal and would allow Sunnis, Shi’ites and members of other schools of Islam to use it. “They didn’t consult anybody in the Islamic community,” said Batayneh from Jordan. “This application should have come from the Organization of Islamic Cooperation in Jeddah.” Some religions seem to have kept out of the fray entirely. There were no applications for .buddhist, .hindu or .jewish.— Reuters

Angolans vote one-sided election Complaints over inequality swell LUANDA: Angolans voted yesterday in a one-sided election this may be reflected in the size of the MPLA victory or the voter expected to prolong President Jose Eduardo dos Santos’ nearly 33 turnout. National elections commission chief Andre da Silva Neto years in power, but many citizens said they wanted to see a more said initial results were likely to be announced today.

Dos Santos is Africa’s second longest serving leader after equal share-out of wealth in Africa’s No 2 oil producer. Calls for Equatorial Guinea’s President Teodoro Obiang better services, such as power, water, health Nguema Mbasogo. Opponents and civil socieand education, and demands for greater ty critics say he has created a “one-person social equity, were an insistent theme as votstate” marked by rampant corruption and the ers cast their ballots in the seaside capital conspicuous enrichment of a small elite, Luanda and across the southern African including his own family. “Democracy is the nation. power of the people and today the people It is only the third national election since have the power in their hands”, Dos Santos, Angola won independence from Portugal in wearing a dark blue Cuban-style ‘guayabera’ 1975, and the second since the end a decade shirt, told reporters after voting at a heavily ago of a 27-year civil war whose scars can still guarded school just down the hill from the be seen in damaged buildings and amputee presidential palace in Luanda. He left in a fleet land mine victims. “To destroy is easy, but to of black limousines. construct is more difficult,” said Graca, a Before the vote, Elias Isaac, Angola country Luanda grandmother, who gave only her first director for the Open Society Initiative for name as she went to vote, carrying her baby Southern Africa (OSISA), a pro-democracy granddaughter in one arm and her voter’s NGO, told Reuters the one-sided election card in the other hand. “I hope that there can be peace and that we learn to divide what we Angolan President Jose would not pass muster as a credible democratic exercise. “We can’t really talk of transparent, have, the riches we have,” she added.

Eduardo Dos Santos fair and just elections,” Isaac said. The MPLA’s Dos Santos’ ruling MPLA is expected to win comfortably at the expense of smaller and weaker opposition par- monolithic hold on the state and its control of most local media ties, giving the silver-haired president a further five years in office gave it clear advantages in an uneven campaign over the former on top of the 33 years he has already been in power. But he faces a rebel group UNITA and seven other smaller coalitions and parties groundswell of discontent among ordinary Angolans unhappy fielding candidates. Opposition leaders complained of irregulariabout the unequal distribution of their country’s oil wealth, and ties in the vote preparations.— Reuters

INTERNATIONAL

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2012

Old mafia killing stirs constitutional dispute in Italy

Moves to ‘weaken president and Monti’ ROME: One of the mafia’s most notorious crimes has returned after 20 years to haunt Italy, dragging head of state Giorgio Napolitano into a nasty constitutional dispute in the run-up to a watershed election next year. The dispute, connected to the murder of antimafia magistrate Paolo Borsellino and his five-strong police escort in Palermo in July 1992, has unleashed a messy clash involving state institutions, politicians, judges and the media. The clash erupted when Napolitano demanded that prosecutors destroy a taped conversation between him and one of 12 people accused of negotiating with mob bosses. Critics say his action could undermine the power of judges to investigate politicians, open him to political attacks and spark a constitutional crisis.

The case has erupted at a time when the president must play a crucial role, deciding when to call elections - most likely next spring - and shepherding the debt-laden country towards a poll end-

ing Prime Minister Mario Monti’s technocrat government. What will follow is deeply uncertain, adding to market jitters about Italy’s economy. Both sides accuse the other of trying to exploit the dispute for political ends and weaken the president at a sensitive moment.

Napolitano himself issued an unusually angry statement on Thursday referring to “dark and destabilizing moves.”

Monti said: “We are faced by an exploitative attack”.

The president is accorded unusual respect in a country where most politicians are viewed with skepticism or contempt, and Napolitano was hailed as a hero when he ended the scandalplagued premiership of Silvio Berlusconi last November and brought in Monti to save Italy from a Greek-style crisis. But a dispute over an investigation into alleged negotiations to stop mafia attacks on government and judicial officials before and after Borsellino’s murder has exposed him to unusually outspoken attacks. Napolitano became

The Russian oligarchs dueling in British trial LONDON: Chelsea Football Club owner Roman Abramovich emerged victorious yesterday from a $6 billion legal battle with his former mentor Boris Berezovsky that has laid bare the intrigue behind the post-Soviet carve-up of Russia’s vast natural resources. Berezovsky, who became a Moscow powerbroker under the late President Boris Yeltsin only to fall foul of Vladimir Putin, had accused Abramovich of using the threat of Kremlin retribution to intimidate him into selling prize assets at a knockdown price. But Judge Elizabeth Gloster told a packed London courtroom that she had found Berezovsky to be an “unimpressive and inherently unreliable witness” who gave sometimes dishonest evidence and would say “almost anything to support his case”.

Gloster dismissed all of Berezovsky’s $6 billion in claims in one of the biggest private litigation cases ever, saying Abramovich - the world’s 68th richest man with a $12.1 billion fortune - was a “truthful and on the whole reliable witness”. “I am absolutely amazed about what happened today,” Berezovsky, 66, told reporters after listening expressionless as the verdict was read out in a modern, glass courtroom crowded with lawyers, bodyguards and journalists. “My confidence in English justice has been undermined by the judge’s decision,” he said, adding that the ruling was so sympathetic to Putin that it read as if the Kremlin chief had written it himself.

But such a stinging rebuke from one of Britain’s most experienced commercial judges is likely to cement Berezovsky’s reputation as a publicity-seeker and opens him up to claims for costs that could exceed $100 million. “There was a marked contrast between the manner in which Mr Berezovsky gave his evidence and that in which Mr Abramovich did so,” Gloster said in an hour-long dissection of Berezovsky’s claim which delved into the murky world of Russian business.

Abramovich, who made headlines by buying Chelsea in 2003, had denied Berezovsky owned the assets and said that he merely paid Berezovsky for political cover and protection known in Russian gangster slang as “krysha” or “roof”. The 38-page preliminary ruling marks the

vulnerable because the prosecutors taped calls made to him by former Interior Minister Nicola Mancino, who is accused of perjury for denying he knew about the negotiations. Mancino was allegedly asking for help in dealing with the case during the calls starting last November.

Napolitano says it is illegal to tap the president, even indirectly, and when the prosecutors denied this and refused to destroy the recording he appealed to the constitutional court. He says he has nothing to hide but is protecting his office as an independent figure above the political fray. The court has promised to expedite a verdict by the end of the year, only a few months before the expected election date, but Napolitano’s action has already created a political storm with unpredictable results.

Borsellino’s brother Salvatore has called on Napolitano to step down. He told Reuters the president’s action was “an obstacle on the road to truth and

justice over the massacre and the negotiations, which led to the murder of my brother.” He called on Napolitano to make the call public and put an end to “manoeuvres possibly aimed at destabilizing the president and our country’s institutions”.

Most mainstream papers and major parties have defended Napolitano but he has been attacked by rising populist leader Beppe Grillo, the Fatto Quotidiano daily and former magistrate Antonio di Pietro, who leads the small Italy of Values party. Influential former senior judge and member of parliament Luciano Violante alleges they represent “judicial populism” aimed at damaging both Napolitano and the Monti government.

On Thursday, Panorama magazine which is owned by Berlusconi’s family, caused new uproar when it alleged the phone taps included Napolitano rudely disparaging the former premier at the same time he was replacing him with Monti last year. — Reuters

Israel under pressure not to hit Iran alone Israel’s PM clashes with US envoy

MOSCOW: Russian tycoons Boris Berezovsky (left) and Roman Abramovich (then both lawmakers) walk after the session of the State Duma, parliament’s lower house in this file photo. — AP beginning of the end for a legal odyssey stretching from the gilded corridors of the Kremlin via the offshore enclaves favored by Russia’s tycoons to the rarefied atmosphere of London’s High Court. Judge Gloster stumbled at times trying to pronounce “krysha”, a term used by leather-jacketed gangsters on the streets of Russian cities and now the partial basis of a ruling in one of the most respected legal systems in the world.

“It is a very tough verdict for Berezovsky: it is very much based on an appreciation of him as a witness whether that is justified or not and he clearly thinks it is not,” said Philippa Charles, a litigation partner at law firm Mayer Brown, which is not directly involved in the case. The case has captivated some of the top lawyers in Britain, whose globally respected, traditionbound courts where barristers still wear wigs have become the venue of choice for the international rich to sue each other. — Reuters

JERUSALEM: Israel is facing growing international pressure not to attack Iran unilaterally, with the United States in particular making clear its firm opposition to any such strike.

Recent rhetoric by Israeli leaders that time is running out to halt Iran’s contested nuclear program has raised concern that military action might be imminent, despite repeated calls from abroad to give sanctions and diplomacy more time to work.

The US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, has always cautioned against a go-it-alone approach, but he appeared to up the ante this week by saying Washington did not want to be blamed for any Israeli initiative. “I don’t want to be complicit if they (Israel) choose to do it,” Dempsey was quoted as saying by Britain’s Guardian newspaper on Friday, suggesting that he would view an Israeli attack as reprehensible or illegal.

He went on to repeat that although Israel could delay Iran’s nuclear project, it would not destroy it. He said that unilateral action might unravel a strong international coalition that has applied progressively stiff sanctions on Iran. “(This) could be undone if (Iran) was attacked prematurely,” he was quoted as saying. While Tehran says its nuclear program is peaceful, Western powers believe it is trying to produce an atomic bomb. Israel, believed to have the only nuclear arsenal in the Middle East, views a nuclear-armed Iran as a threat to its existence. Adding to the sense of urgency, the UN International Atomic Energy Agency said on Thursday Iran had doubled the number of uranium enrichment centrifuges in an underground bunker, showing its desire to expand its nuclear work.

CRACKS IN THE ALLIANCE Israel’s vice Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon said yesterday he feared Iran did not believe it faced a real military threat from the outside world because of mixed messages from foreign powers. “We have an exchange of views,

including with our friends in the United States, who in our opinion, are in part responsible for this feeling in Iran,” he told Israel’s 100FM radio station. “There are many cracks in the ring closing tighter on Iran. We criticize this,” he said, also singling out UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon for travelling to Tehran this week. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he will speak out about the dangers of Iran in an address next month to the UN General Assembly in New York. He is also expected to hold talks with US President Barack Obama during his visit. A senior Israeli official told Reuters this month that Netanyahu would be looking for a firm pledge of US military action if Iran does not back down.

However, the meeting might well be icy.

Israel’s top-selling daily Yedioth Ahronoth reported yesterday that there had been an “unprecedented” and “angry” exchange between Netanyahu and the US ambassador in Tel Aviv earlier this month over Iran.

Quoting a source who was present at the meeting, Netanyahu had criticized Obama for not doing enough to tackle Iran. The US ambassador Daniel Shapiro took exception and accused the prime minister of distorting Obama’s position. The prime minister’s office declined to comment on the report and there was no initial response from the US embassy.

Adding to the growing chorus of concern facing Netanyahu, Haaretz newspaper reported on Friday that German Chancellor Angela Merkel had delivered a “harsh message” to Netanyahu 10 days ago, telling him to hold off on any attack plans. The German embassy in Tel Aviv declined comment. Israeli officials have repeatedly said that a growing array of sanctions against Iran are not having any impact on the Tehran leadership and believe they will only back down in the face of a credible threat of military action. However, Netanyahu faces an uphill task persuading his own military and inner circle of the wisdom of a unilateral strike. — Reuters

international

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2012

Brutality, anger fuel jihad in Caucasus Russia battles insurgency in Chechyna, Ingushetia, Dagestan GIMRY: Little girls in hijabs peek out of tin-roof houses and boys play at “cops and insurgents” in the narrow dirt streets. At one end of the village of Gimry men are building a new, red-brick madrassa, one of many religious schools springing up across Dagestan, a region in the high Caucasus mountains on Russia’s southern fringe, in the throes of an Islamic revival. More than a dozen young men from the village have “gone to the forest” - the local euphemism for joining insurgents in their hideouts, says village administrator Aliaskhab Magomedov. “It’s a full-fledged jihad,” he said. “They don’t recognize my authority. Islam does not separate the state from religion.”

Throughout the 12 years since Vladimir Putin rose to power and crushed a Chechen separatist revolt, Russia has battled a simmering insurgency across its mainly Muslim Caucasus mountain lands: Chechyna and its neighbors Ingushetia and Dagestan. With Putin back in the Kremlin after a four year hiatus as prime minister, he has tried to end the violence by emphasizing the unity of Russia, providing backing for mainstream clerics and cracking down hard on religious radicalism.

But the formula seems to be failing here, driving communities further into the embrace of radical religion, and sending more young men into the mountains to take up arms. In the first half of 2012 alone, the Caucasian Knot website recorded 185 insurgency-related deaths and 168 wounded, making Dagestan one of the deadliest places in Europe. The number of men seized by security forces as suspected militants so far this year, tracked by Russia’s leading rights group Memorial, has already exceeded last year’s total. And the violence has begun spreading beyond the Caucasus to other parts of the country, like Tatarstan, long a peaceful area on the Volga river in Russia’s European heartland.

DIRTY BUSINESS Fighting the insurgency is dirty business. In an empty office down in the provincial capital Makhachkala, police lieutenant colonel Magomed Gusseinov, 58, says his officers take out their anger and fear on petty criminals and other prisoners. “If you’re sitting on the second floor above the holding room, you can hear the screams.

They beat them, rape them with bottles, torture them. They do such things here every day.” “Our boys have zero emotion at work. They have to stand there for eight hours in uniform and they know they can be shot at any moment,” he said. “If my colleague is shot before my eyes, of course something burns in me, I want revenge. That’s how war works. It’s a crooked balance sheet.”

In the streets of the sun-drenched Caspian Sea city, government banners proclaim: “We are against terror”. Residents say they have become desensitized to near daily sniper and bomb attack on police.

“Not a day goes by without the killing of either a terrorist or a policeman. We’re so used to it, we think that’s the way things ought to be,” said taxi driver Nabib Abdulvagabov, 35. In one sleepy seaside neighborhood, a stray rocket-propelled grenade shell tore through the walls of family home in July, several blocs away from where security forces had laid siege to what they said was a rebel hideout.

Standing amid the charred and plaster-strewn shambles of his children’s room, Magomedgusein Vagidov seethed: “Why with all their radars and satellite today can they still not find a bunch of guys hiding in the woods?” he said. “They either don’t know how or don’t want to end this war.” Aisha, a former Russian-language teacher, said that most people in Dagestan were not caught up in new religious conservatism, but were sick of official corruption and wanted change like that seen in last year’s Egyptian revolution. “People have reached a breaking point. Bribes start at the maternity ward and end at the grave,” she said. “Clearly it will be religious here, though most people dislike these religious people. I think 80 percent of people don’t want Sharia law.”

ISLAMIC REVIVAL In Gimry, weathered tombstones pointing toward Mecca bear witness to the village’s ancient Muslim roots. But the Islam practiced here today bears increasingly little resemblance to the village customs of old. For centuries, the Muslim communities of Russia’s Caucasus mountains practiced Sufism, a mystical form of Islam whose practitioners chant prayers in circles. There was little of the formal Islamic legal scholarship that prevails across much of the Sunni Muslim world.

In the two decades since the fall of the officially atheist Soviet Union, many Caucasus Muslims studied abroad in Saudi Arabia, Egypt or other parts of the Middle East. When they returned, they clashed with the religious establishment, demanding a “purer” Islam uncorrupted by local Sufi customs. Government figures show 8,872 people are now studying Islam in institutions of higher education.

Dozens of madrassas, funded in part by zakat, a charitable contribution required by the Quran, have sprung up in villages across the

region. The messages being taught are often from the Salafi school of Islam which seeks to recreate the 7th century practices of the Prophet Mohammed and his successors.

“You can’t live by Sharia law where the Russian constitution rules,” said Abdurakhim Magomedov, a charismatic Salafi preacher whose video sermons are popular on the Internet and whose schools in the village of Novosasitli teach 200-300 pupils. The sprightly, white bearded 70-year-old who first translated the Koran into the local Avar language, says that while Dagestan is not yet ready for jihad, its Muslim population must not live under secular law and Russian rule.

“It’s written that if a man steals something, his hand must be chopped off. But you can’t do that today so we are not living by Sharia, and this isn’t right.”

Today in Gimry, along the single, potholed road to the remote scattering of houses, green signs proclaim “Allah is Great”. Disputes here are ruled on by the local imam, alcohol is scarce, polygamy is common and people say there has been no theft in years - virtues they attribute to Sharia law. Despite decades of Communist rule, most children know only the local Avar tongue and people speak of Russia as if it were another country, or an occupying force.

Federal forces recently encircled the village in a more than yearlong counter-terrorism operation - squeezing its trade in apricots and

speaking on condition of anonymity, described receiving USB memory sticks with video-taped threats to bomb their businesses if they refused to pay large sums of cash. One left. The other paid. On a most-wanted board in Dagestan’s capital, snapshots of smoothcheeked teenagers and twenty year olds in army fatigues outnumber black-and-white mugs of bearded veteran fighters.

The insurgency is romanticized in online videos and chat forums.

Locals refer to militants, sometimes with irony, as “Robin Hoods”. In recent months the relatively privileged sons of local officials have been among those who joined the rebels. The deputy mayor of the city of Khasavyurt on Dagestan’s border with Chechnya was fired this month after his son was killed by security forces at an alleged rebel safe house. In a survey, as many as 13 percent of Dagestanis under 30 said “yes” or “maybe” they could see themselves ending up as rebel fighters, sociologist Zaid Abdulagatov said. Some 95 percent view themselves as religious, he added.

The government’s response is to round up young men, who disappear and are brutally treated in captivity. Zhanna Ismailova says three of her four sons were taken this year by masked members of the security forces. One of them, Arslan, was freed after two days and went into hiding. Her cell phone holds pictures of bruises and burns on his body she says are signs of beatings and electric shocks, used to

DAGESTAN: In this file photo, people mourn during funerals in Chirkei, Russia’s province of Dagestan. — AP other produce. “They are kafirs (infidels) who are fighting against Islam,” a 22-year-old gym teacher who gave his name as Gadzhimurat said of the federal troops. He and other young men loitering outside the mosque said they condoned near-daily attacks on police.

HIJAB ON THE BEACH The influence of religious conservatism can be seen not only in remote villages but also on the streets of Makhachkala, Dagestan’s Caspian Sea coastal capital. The Salafi community has its own media outlets, charities and even a football league. A sex-segregated school that opened this year already has more than 250 students. “Five years ago, there were no Islamic clothing shops. Now every other girl wears a hijab,” said Fatima Ramzanova, 19, feet curled under her on the sand of a new women-only beach in a full, black Islamic dress she wears against her mother’s wishes. As the influence of Salafism has grown, insurgents have increasingly targeted state-backed Sufi religious leaders they accuse of assisting the government’s crackdown on true Islam. On Tuesday, a woman posing as a pilgrim entered a Sufi Muslim cleric’s home in Dagestan and detonated an explosive belt packed with nails and ball bearings, killing him, herself and six others, including an 11-year-old boy visiting with his parents. Earlier this month, masked gunmen opened fire in a mosque where Muslims were celebrating the end of Ramadan. In June, militants burned down another Dagestani mosque after killing the imam and a worshipper. The Kremlin is particularly alarmed by the spread of the violence to other regions, including Russia’s heartland. Last month a leading cleric was shot dead and another wounded by a bomb in the central province of Tatarstan.

DISILLUSIONED YOUTH Today, the ranks of fighters are filled by youths disillusioned by police brutality, joblessness, corruption and the perceived persecution of religious conservatives. Some are said to fund their activities by running protection rackets. At least two local entrepreneurs,

force him to admit to involvement in two suicide bombings on a police checkpoint that killed 12 people in May. Another of her sons, Ruslan, is in detention, and her youngest is still missing: “It’s been four months since my son was kidnapped and no one can tell me where he is,” she said in the house outside Makhachkala. “If my son is guilty, why don’t they charge him and try him?” Kamil Sultanahmedov, a popular young Islamic scholar who has himself been detained several times, says the crackdown by the security forces is only driving more recruits to the insurgency. “The security forces are making a lot of money off getting promotions in this conflict. We are just pieces of meat. Victims of our beliefs,” he said. “I don’t know what to say anymore to people who decide to join the insurgency. It’s their choice. I can’t judge it. At first, it is a form of self-defense.”

CHECHEN WARS Russia’s attitudes towards Islamic militancy were largely shaped in the two brutal post-Soviet Chechen wars that ended with the defeat of separatists a decade ago after Russian forces killed tens of thousands of people to halt an independence bid. As those wars wore on, rebel rhetoric turned from a nationalist message to an explicitly Islamist one. Defeated in Chechnya, rebels launched attacks in other parts of Russia. Thirty-nine attackers and at least 129 hostages were killed after a two-day siege at a Moscow theatre in 2002. More than 380 people, mainly school children, were killed in the siege of a primary school in Beslan in 2004. Bombs in the past two years killed dozens in a Moscow airport and subway.

Today, the Chechen rebel leader, Doku Umarov, leads an underground movement to create an Emirate across the Caucasus region.

He has called on Muslims across Russia to rise up. Since the autumn of 1999, when an incursion of Chechen rebel leaders into Dagestan sparked what became the second Chechen war, Dagestan has outlawed Wahhabism - the austere form of Islam that is the state religion of Saudi Arabia and has become a derogatory term for Islamic radicalism in Russia.—Reuters

international

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2012

Eastwood mocked for appearance LOS ANGELES: Clint Eastwood earned plenty of bad reviews for his latest performance: a bizarre, rambling endorsement of Mitt Romney. “Clint, my hero, is coming across as sad and pathetic,” tweeted film critic Roger Ebert as Eastwood ad-libbed Thursday night to an audience of millions - and one empty chair - on stage at the Republican National Convention. “He didn’t need to do this to himself.

It’s unworthy of him.”

Eastwood carried on a long-winded conversation an imaginary TAMPA: Actor-director Clint with President Barack Obama, Eastwood speaks to the audience at the Tampa Bay telling him that he failed Times Forum in Tampa, to deliver on his promise Florida, on August 30, 2012 and that it’s time for on the last day of the Romney and running mate Republican National Paul Ryan to take over.

“Mr. President, how do Convention (RNC). — AFP you handle promises that you have made when you were running for election, and how do you handle them? I mean, what do you say to people?” he said at one point to the empty chair. Twitter was instantly ablaze with comments mocking the Oscar-winning director of “Unforgiven” and “Million Dollar Baby.” “Clint has now eclipsed the total word count of his last three films,” tweeted film critic Richard Roeper during the speech, which was intended to last five minutes but went on for nearly 12.

Howard Kurtz, host of CNN’s “Reliable Sources,” said “Clint’s empty chair act” was the “weirdest convention moment I have ever seen.” Joe Scarborough, the conservative host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” declared that “a great night for Mitt Romney just got sidetracked by Clint Eastwood.”

Minutes after Eastwood began his speech, someone created an (at) InvisibleObama account on Twitter. It has already amassed 30,000 followers and counting.

“I heard that Clint Eastwood was channeling me at the RNC,” tweeted comic actor Bob Newhart, known for his onesided conversation bits. “My lawyers and I are drafting our lawsuit.” The 82-year-old actor and director also talked about Oprah Winfrey, Obama’s unfulfilled promise to close the U.S. prison at Guantanamo, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and lawyers. “When somebody doesn’t do the job, you gotta let ‘em go,” Eastwood said. The tough-guy actor of “Dirty Harry” fame then drew a finger across his throat. The Obama campaign shot back afterward by tweeting a photo of the back of the president’s chair, with Obama’s head peeking over it, along with the line: “This seat’s taken.”— AP

Mitt Romney asks US to ‘turn the page’ on Obama Obama pans GOP plan TAMPA: Mitt Romney is making the first stop of his fall campaign for the White House a visit to hurricane-damage Louisiana, hoping to convince Americans he is not just the right man to fix the economy but an all-around leader for the nation. President Barack Obama, for his part, served notice that he will use his powers of incumbency to make Romney’s mission hard. Fresh from the Republican National Convention, Romney scheduled a surprise visit to Lafitte, outside New Orleans, where he was to tour storm damage with Louisiana Gov Bobby Jindal.

Romney was joining part of Jindal’s scheduled day.

GOP running mate Paul Ryan was headed for the battleground state of Virginia solo, rather than in tandem with Romney.

Isaac left a wake of misery in Louisiana, leaving dozens of neighborhoods under deep flood waters and more than 800,000 people without power. While New Orleans was spared major damage, the storm walloped surrounding suburbs, topping smaller levees with days of rain and forcing more than 4,000 from their homes.

The Romney campaign has been considering a trip to the Gulf coast for days and scrapped a plan to visit earlier in the week because weather conditions on the ground were considered too dangerous.

Romney, who canceled the first day of his convention due to Isaac, is plunging into the presidential campaign’s final 67 days with his primary focus on jobs and the economy, and depicting Obama as a wellmeaning but inept man who must be replaced.

“America has been patient,” he said in his speech to the nation Thursday night.

“Americans have supported this president in good faith. But today, the time has come to turn the page.” His wife made the rounds of Friday morning talk shows to pronounce her husband the right man to fix a troubled economy, and predicted that argument would win over women voters who haven’t voted Republican in the past.

Ann Romney said women tell her: “It’s time for the grown-up to come, the man

that’s going to take this very seriously and the future of our children very, very seriously,” Mrs Romney said on CNN. “I very much believe this is going to be an economic election, and I think a lot of women may be voting this cycle around in a different way than they usually are, and that is thinking about the economy.” Obama,

big night to tell America his plans for moving forward, yet he chose not to,” the Obama campaign’s web video says.

Romney capped a high-energy night closing to the convention with a spirited and unusually personal speech infused with his family life, touching on his Mormon faith and recounting his youth. The cheers were

TAMPA: Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney (centre) and family members stand on stage at the Tampa Bay Times Forum in Tampa, Florida, on August 30, 2012 on the final day of the Republican National Convention (RNC). — AFP who will hold his own convention next week, planned to visit a Texas military base exactly two years after declaring the end of the US combat mission in Iraq, the war that haunts the last Republican president. This, as Democrats prepare to gather in Charlotte, NC, for Obama’s convention. His campaign issued a morning-after critique of Romney’s speech that faulted the GOP nominee for skipping over failings in his record on job-creation as Massachusetts governor and for not being up-front with voters about details of his economic plans that Obama says would reduce taxes for the wealthy and increase burdens on the middle class. “Thursday was Mitt Romney’s

loud and frequent, surely music to the ears of a candidate who struggled throughout the bruising primary season and beyond to bury doubts among many in his party that he was the authentic conservative in the field. “Now is the time to restore the promise of America,” Romney declared to a nation struggling with unemployment and the slowest economic recovery in decades.

Polls suggest a to-the-wire campaign finish. The two men will spend the next 10 weeks in a handful of competitive states, none more important than Florida and Ohio, and meet in one-on-one debates where the stakes could hardly be any higher.— AP

10-yr-old charged in infant’s death

MAINE: This picture provided by Nicole Greenaway shows her 3-month-old daughter, Brooklyn Foss-Greenaway, of Clinton, Maine, who died while in a babysitter’s care on July 8, 2012. — AP

PORTLAND: A 10-year-old girl was charged Thursday with manslaughter in the death of an infant whose mother said had ingested medication and been suffocated. The girl, who is not being identified, is the youngest person to be charged with manslaughter in Maine in at least 25 years.

The infant, Brooklyn Foss-Greenaway, of Clinton in central Maine, had been left overnight with an adult baby sitter in nearby Fairfield.

The sitter called police early July 8 to report that the infant was not breathing, authorities said. Emergency workers who arrived minutes later reported that child was unresponsive. The death of any child under age 3 triggers an automatic investigation in Maine, and detectives uncovered some “troubling signs” before the state medical examiner declared the death a homicide, said Stephen McCausland,

spokesman for the Maine Department of Public Safety.

The death was declared a homicide Wednesday, but investigators withheld further details on the cause of death.

Brooklyn’s mother, Nicole “Nicki” Greenaway, of Clinton, said the 10-yearold was the sitter’s daughter. Authorities told her the baby had ingested medication to treat attention-deficit disorder and been suffocated, she said, adding that she also saw bruises on her daughter’s body.

“I feel a little bit of relief that they’re charging her daughter at this point, but the mom really needs to be responsible.

She’s the one I left my daughter with,” Greenaway said. The 10-year-old girl was already in the custody of the Maine Department of Health and Human Services when a summons was delivered to her attorney on Thursday, McCausland

said. Police declined to identify the girl, who is due in juvenile court in October.

Her attorney didn’t immediately return a call from The Associated Press. Greenaway said that the 10-year-old had changed her baby’s diaper in the past, but that she had told the sitter an adult needed to be present at all times. Instead, the infant, who was reportedly fussy that night, was sleeping in a portable crib in the same room as the 10-year-old, Greenaway said.

When Greenaway finally saw her daughter at a funeral home, the infant had a black eye, bruises on the bridge of her nose and marks that looked like fingerprints on her cheeks, she said. McCausland said he couldn’t comment on whether charges could be brought against the sitter. A person who answered the phone at a listing for her said Thursday evening that she was not available. —AP

international

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2012

Mexican court nixes election appeal MEXICO CITY: Mexico’s highest election court voted Thursday to dismiss legal challenges mounted by the second-place leftist candidate seeking to overturn the results of the July 1 presidential election.

The unanimous ruling by the sevenmember Federal Electoral Tribunal paves the way for the old ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party to return to power, after it lost the presidency for the first time in 71 years in 2000 elections. The party, known as the PRI, won the presidential vote with a 6.6-point advantage for its candidate, Enrique Pena Nieto. But leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who finished second, challenged the results, alleging Pena Nieto engaged in widespread vote-buying and campaign spending excesses

Before the vote in their nighttime session, all of the justices said they did not think supporters of Lopez Obrador had submitted convincing evidence of the alleged abuses. “Mexico has a president elected by the people, in the person of Enrique Pena Nieto,” said Justice Salvador Nava. Justice Flavio Galvan dismissed evidence submitted by the leftist coalition regarding purported abuses by Pena Nieto’s campaign as “vague, generic, imprecise.” The evidence included gift cards, household goods and even farm animals purportedly given out to voters by the PRI. Outside the courthouse, demonstrators who believe Pena Nieto got an unfair advantage from media outlets, pollsters and campaign donors reacted with out-

rage. About 200 demonstrators chanted “No to imposition” and “Defend democracy,” and some grabbed steel security barriers that ring the courthouse and began banging them against the building’s gates. One youth group called for a “funeral march for democracy” yesterday.

Ricardo Monreal, Lopez Obrador’s campaign manager, said the justices “are acting like a gang of ruffians.” The justices said some of the evidence submitted was hearsay, or unclear.

For example, they said the evidence included gifts allegedly given out by Pena Nieto’s party, the PRI, without proof that was where they came from or that the gifts had been given to influence votes. Monreal complained that the justice wanted his coalition “to supply not

just the evidence, but the victims and criminals” as well. The court appeared to have done little if any of its own investigation of the accusations, which centered on hundreds and possibly thousands of pre-paid gift cards that shoppers at a Mexican grocery store chain said they were given by Pena Nieto’s party before the election.

The Associated Press interviewed about a half dozen people among shoppers who mobbed one Soriana store two days after the elections to redeem the cards; almost all said PRI supporters had given them the cards, expecting they would vote for the party. The court did not apparently interview any card recipients. Galvan said only that “there is no proof of vote-buying.” — AP

2 more deaths reported as Isaac drenches Louisiana Evacuations ordered near damaged earthen dam

LOS ANGELES: Preston Carter, 100, talks with police officers after police say his car went onto a sidewalk and plowed into a group of parents and children outside a South Los Angeles elementary school. — AP

100-yr-old driver hits 14 near LA school LOS ANGELES: The screams of women and children didn’t cause a 100-year-old driver to stop as he backed his large powder blue Cadillac onto a sidewalk across from an elementary school and hit 14 people, including 11 children. So people began pounding on his windows screaming for him to stop, a witness said. Three children remained hospitalized Thursday, authorities said, but were expected to recover. Children’s backpacks, shoes, candy and loose change were strewn about the scene after the accident behind a discount grocery store across from Main Street Elementary. Police said the driver, Preston Carter, was very cooperative and drugs or alcohol were not a factor in the crash. They confirmed he has a valid driver’s license and insurance. Carter talked to television reporters after the crash some five miles southwest of downtown Los Angeles, telling them he will be 101 years old Sept. 5.

“My brakes failed. It was out of control,” Carter told KCAL-TV. Police said Thursday they planned to inspect Carter’s vehicle, including testing the brakes. Asked about hitting the children, he said: “You know I’m sorry about that. I wouldn’t do that for nothing on earth. My sympathies for them.” Carter was pulling out of the grocery store parking lot, but instead of backing into the street, he backed onto the sidewalk, police Capt. George Rodriguez said. “I think it was a miscalculation on his part. The gentleman is elderly,” Rodriguez said. “Obviously he is going to have some impairment on his decision making.” Alma Solache said she was buying her children an afterschool snack Wednesday just before the accident outside a South Los Angeles school. “He was not paying attention,” said Solache, 24, adding that it was at least two or three seconds before the vehicle halted and people began pulling children out from beneath the car. In 2003, an 86-year-old man plowed into an openair street market in Santa Monica, California. Ten people were killed and 63 injured. The National Transportation Safety Board found the probable cause of that accident was “unintended acceleration” when George Weller stepped on the gas pedal instead of the brake, then panicked and continued on through the crowd.— AP

NEW ORLEANS: The storm that had been Hurricane Isaac crawled into the central US on Friday, leaving behind a soggy mess in Louisiana and two newly reported deaths. Neighborhoods were underwater and even homes that stayed dry didn’t have lights, air conditioning or clean water. It will be a few days before the soupy brown water recedes and people in flooded areas can return home. New Orleans itself was spared, thanks in large part to a levee system fortified after Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast in 2005. The city lifted its curfew but was hardly back to normal. “I have a battery-operated fan. This is the only thing keeping me going,” said Rhyn Pate, a food services worker who sat on a porch with other renters. “And a fly swatter to keep the bugs off me - and the most important thing, insect repellent.”

Isaac dumped as much as 16 inches (406 millimeters) of rain in some areas, and about 500 people had to be rescued by boat or high-water vehicles.

Many people said more water inundated their homes during this storm than during Katrina. At least five deaths were reported in Louisiana and Mississippi. The latest two victims, a man and a woman, were discovered late Thursday in a home in the hardhit town of Braithwaite, south of New Orleans. Their names were not immediately released.

An unidentified man died in a restaurant blaze that firefighters could not control because of Isaac’s strong winds Wednesday. Another man died falling from a tree during the storm, and a driver was killed when a tree crushed his truck. The storm earlier killed 24 in Haiti and five in the Dominican Republic.

And the storm’s damage may not be done. Officials were pumping water from a reservoir to ease the pressure behind an Isaac-stressed dam in Mississippi on the Louisiana border.

They planned to punch a hole in the dam to release excess water in a con-

trolled fashion Friday. Crews also intentionally breached a levee that was strained by Isaac’s floodwaters in southeast Louisiana’s Plaquemines Parish. In Louisiana, the storm cut power to 901,000 homes and businesses, or about 47 percent of the state. That was down to 39 percent, or about 821,000, by Thursday evening,

The two storms had little in common. Katrina came ashore as a Category 3 storm, while Isaac was a Category 1 at its peak. Katrina barreled into the state and quickly moved through. Isaac lingered across the landscape, dumping copious amounts of rain.

Both storms, however, caused the

LOUISIANA: People leave a building by boat after Isaac flooded the community of Braithwaite, Thursday, Aug 30, 2012. — AP the Public Service Commission said.

Officials said it would be at least two days before power was fully restored.

On a street turned river in Reserve, on the east bank of the Mississippi River, two young men ferried neighbors to the highway, using boards as paddles.

Lucien Chopin, 29, was last to leave his house, waiting until his wife and three kids, ages 7, 5 and 1 were safely away. His van was underwater and water flowed waist-high in the house he’d rented.

“It’s like, everything is down the drain. I lost everything. I’ve gotta start all over,” he said. Isaac hit on the seventh anniversary of Katrina, a far stronger hurricane that devastated New Orleans.

Mississippi River to flow backward.

And both prompted criticism of government officials - in the case of Isaac, officials’ calls for evacuations so long after the storm made landfall caused some consternation. Eric Blake, a specialist at the hurricane center, said although Isaac’s cone shifted west as it zigzagged toward the Gulf Coast, forecasters accurately predicted its path, intensity and rainfall. He did say the storm came ashore somewhat slower than anticipated. Blake cautioned against using Katrina as a benchmark for flooding during other storms.

“Every hurricane is different,” Blake said. “If you’re trying to use the last hurricane to gauge your storm surge risk, it’s very dangerous.” — AP

INTERNATIONAL

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2012

7.6 quake off Philippines triggers tsunami alert Quake severely shakes houses

NARATHIWAT: Thai bomb squad members inspect a box packed with explosives in Thailand’s restive southern province of Narathiwat yesterday. — AFP

Rebels launch multiple attacks in Thai south BANGKOK: Suspected Muslim separatists launched a wave of bomb attacks in Thailand’s south yesterday in a rare show of coordination in a usually low-level insurgency in the predominantly Buddhist country. Police say “bomb-like” devices were found in at least 60 locations in Narathiwat and Pattani, two of three mainly Muslim provinces bordering mainly Muslim Malaysia, along with scores of Malaysian flags.

Most of the devices were fake, but at least a dozen exploded and wounded two soldiers. A shadowy separatist insurgency by ethnic Malays resurfaced in January 2004, after simmering for decades. Since then, 5,206 people have been killed and 9,137 wounded, according to Deep South Watch, an organisation that monitors the violence.

The placing of the flags with the devices was aimed at souring relations between Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur, an analyst and a security official said. “The operation was designed as a show of solidarity with Malaysia, which will have a secondary effect of straining relations between Thailand and Malaysia,” said Anthony Davis, an analyst at IHS-Jane’s, a global security consulting firm.

The coordination and scale of yesterday’s action were “extremely rare” and intended as a rebuttal of the government’s handling of the eight-year conflict, said Srisompop Jitpiromsri of Deep South Watch, who is also a lecturer at Prince of Songkla University in Pattani. Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat have seen almost daily gun fights and bomb attacks since January 2004. The three provinces were once part of an independent Malay Muslim sultanate until annexed

by Thailand in 1909. —Reuters

MANILA: A 7.6 earthquake hit off the Philippine coast yesterday, triggering a tsunami warning for the eastern part of the archipelago and Indonesia, US seismologists said. The US Geological Survey said the quake had a depth of 34 kilometres (21 miles) and hit at 8:47 pm (1247 GMT), 139 kilometres east of the city of Sulangan on Samar island. The USGS had initially reported the quake as having a magnitude of 7.9, but revised it to 7.6.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said in a bulletin any wave generated by the quake would be expected to hit Indonesia first, at 1335 GMT. It would then be due to hit the Philippines at 1338 GMT. The times passed without immediate reports of damage. “An earthquake of this size has the potential to generate a destructive tsunami that can strike coastlines in the region near the epicentre within minutes to hours,” the center said.

A seismologist with the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs), Jane Punongbayan, said any potential wave may not hit until after 1430 GMT, later than the center’s alert.

Phivolcs chief Renato Solidum, said people living along the east coast of the country had been ordered to evacuate.

“It is a shallow quake and could trigger a tsunami so we have raised an alert,” Solidum said on local radio.

“Waves could reach one metre high and as a precaution those living in coastal areas facing the sea should now evacuate and go to higher areas.” In Indonesia, officials said there had not been any sign of a tsunami. “So far we have not received any reports of a tsunami hitting anywhere in Indonesia,” Suharjono, technical chief of Indonesia’s Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency, who goes by one name, told AFP. “We have heard about

CAGAYAN DE ORO: Residents gather at a collapsed house in Cagayan De Oro city, southern Philippines following a 7.6-magnitude earthquake that struck off the Philippines’ eastern coast late yesterday. — AP the Pacific warning and have alerted our disaster management agency in the Papua and Maluku provinces to be prepared for a possible evacuation in case there is a tsunami.”

Tsunami warnings had also initially been raised for Japan, Taiwan and several Pacific islands, but they were quickly lifted. Philippine authorities said the quake shook the eastern Philippines, but there were no immediate reports of damage or deaths. “So far there are no casualties reported, but it was felt from the north to the south of the Philippines, on the eastern seaboard,” civil defence chief Benito Ramos told AFP. Paula Daza, the governor of northern Samar province, one of the areas closest to where the quake struck, said power

had been cut in the area and there were reports of damage to infrastructure.

“Some cracks appeared on concrete roads, and at the base of at least one bridge,” he said.

Sol Matugas, the governor of another eastern region, Surigao del Norte, said on DZMM radio that the quake had severely shaken homes. “We were rather frightened. For the first time, we saw objects falling out of our cabinets,” he said. Geoscience Australia duty seismologist Clive Collins said the quake was unlikely to cause a major tsunami but there was the possibility of a local one being generated. “Something of that magnitude, it’s relatively shallow... it’s a possibility of a small tsunami, but at the moment we can’t say,” he said. — AFP

Japan, N Korea aim for higher-level talks soon BEIJING: Japan and North Korea hope to soon hold talks which could cover Pyongyang’s past abduction of Tokyo’s citizens, a Japanese official said yesterday after three days of preparatory discussions in Beijing. The two will iron out final details to conduct higher-level talks in the Chinese capital at “as early a time as possible”, said the official, who under briefing rules could only be described as connected to Japan’s foreign ministry.

This week’s results would be taken back to Tokyo and Pyongyang for further discussion, he said, and the two would work to “hold broad talks with issues of concern to both sides on the agenda”, possibly in September.

Japan intended to strongly pursue the abduction issue at the future discussions, which would be classified as intergovernmental talks, he said. This week’s encounters, by contrast, were conducted by low-level diplomats and were characterised by the official as “matter-of-fact”, “frank” and “preparatory”. Chief Cabinet Secretary Osamu Fujimura, the govern-

ment’s top spokesman, told a regular news briefing in Tokyo it was his understanding that the talks were “very sincere, candid and rather pointed”.

He added the government welcomed that they “have progressed toward bringing matters of mutual concern to discussions at a next, higher level”. The two countries have no formal diplomatic relations and have long been at odds over numerous issues, including the seizures and the legacy of Japan’s colonial rule of the Korean peninsula. Secretive North Korea admitted in 2002 that its agents kidnapped Japanese in the 1970s and 1980s to help train spies by teaching them Japanese language and culture, and later allowed five of them and their families to return home.

It said a number of others died, though many in Japan hold out hope they remain alive. There are also suspicions Pyongyang’s agents abducted more Japanese than they admitted.

Japan has said North Korea agreed to reopen investigations into the fate of

abducted Japanese when the two sides last met in 2008. Jin Matsubara, Japan’s state minister for the abduction issue, said recently that progress could yield big dividends in humanitarian aid for North Korea.

This week’s meetings were closely watched for any clues as to whether North Korea’s foreign policy could change under new leader Kim Jong-Un, who took power after his father Kim Jong-Il died in December. Tokyo is also worried about security issues related to North Korea, which carried out underground nuclear test blasts in 2006 and 2009 as well as tests of ballistic rockets that flew over Japanese territory in 1998 and 2009.

Pyongyang also launched a longrange rocket on April 13 that was supposed to fly over far southwestern Japanese islands, but broke up shortly after takeoff. Meanwhile impoverished yet highly militarised North Korea remains suspicious of Japan, which is a close military ally of the United States.

Pyongyang also regularly blasts Tokyo for its colonisation of the Korean peninsula in the first half of the 20th century and treatment of ethnic Koreans in Japan.

Yang Moo-Jin, professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, was optimistic about the potential for the talks. “Both North Korea and Japan appear to be thinking it is necessary to maintain a channel of dialogue”, he said. “There is no reason for the two sides not to hold higher-level talks as North Korea now badly needs foreign aid.” Yang also said that if Japan and North Korea agree to hold high-level talks, the agenda could include the abduction issue, or it could at least be discussed unofficially between their chief delegates. Another pending issue involves the remains of Japanese who died in North Korea during and shortly after World War II. The remains of about 13,000 have been sent back but about 21,000 are believed to be still buried there. — AFP

international

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2012

Indian lawmaker gets 28 years for 2002 massacre Conviction embarrassment for BJP, Modi

PESHAWAR: A Pakistani man carries a wounded bomb blast survivor to a hospital yesterday. — AFP

Car bomb kills 12 in Pakistan PESHAWAR: A car bomb ripped through a market in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar yesterday, killing at least 12 people and injuring 12, officials said. The device in a pickup truck exploded near a mosque in Matni, a southern suburb of Peshawar, the main city in Pakistan’s lawless northwest, senior police official Khurshid Khan told AFP. Another senior police official, Zarman Shah, told AFP the death toll stood at 12, with 12 wounded-three in a critical condition. Mian Iftikhar Hussain, the home minister for northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, told AFP three men had taken the vehicle to a workshop and a mechanic was working on it when the blast occurred. “We are investigating whether the car was brought to (the) workshop for mechanical repairs or to plant a bomb, or whether the bomb had already been planted and it went off during repair,” Hussain said. Nobody immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but Taleban militants have been carrying out similar bombings and suicide attacks in Peshawar. Pakistan is on the frontline of the US-led war on AlQaeda. Since July 2007, a Taleban-led insurgency has been fighting against the US-allied government. In the last five years, attacks blamed on Islamist bombers have killed more than 5,000 people according to an AFP tally.— AFP

COLOMBO: A Sri Lankan ethnic Tamil Hindu devotee participates with a trident pierced through his mouth, in an annual Hindu festival yesterday. — AP

AHMEDABAD: A former Indian state minister was sentenced to 28 years in jail yesterday for murder during one of the country’s worst religious riots, when up to 2,500 people, most of them Muslim, were hunted down and hacked, beaten or burnt to death in 2002. Maya Kodnani, a sitting lawmaker for Gujarat state’s ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and 30 others were jailed for their role in the so-called Naroda Patiya massacre, the single bloodiest episode of the three-day riots. Her conviction is an embarrassment for both the BJP - the country’s main opposition party - and Gujarat’s high-flying chief minister, Narendra Modi, who is lauded by foreign companies for his business-friendly policies and is often touted as the country’s next prime minister. When the sentences were announced, a wail erupted from a crowd of women relatives of the convicted gathered outside the courthouse in Ahmedabad, the western state’s main city.

Most relatives of the victims stayed away, a sign that 10 years on, memories of the bloodletting by Hindu mobs still cast a pall of fear over the state’s Muslim community. “We’re not risking our lives by going there today. It’ll be like walking into a lion’s mouth,” Nazir Khan, a school teacher in Naroda Patiya, a suburb of Ahmedabad, told Reuters.

Kodnani, Gujarat state’s minister for women and child development from 2007 to 2009, was the highest-profile figure to be convicted in connection with the riots.

Modi appointed her as a minister in his government despite the fact she had already been implicated in the killings, although she was not arrested until 2009.

Witnesses told investigators that 57year-old Kodnani, a gynaecologist, played a leading role in the massacre of 95 people - 30 men, 32 women and 33 children - in Naroda Patiya. Kodnani handed out swords to Hindu rioters, exhorted them to attack Muslims and at one point fired a pistol, according to witness statements seen by Reuters.

Kodnani arrived at the court in a police bus. Wearing a white saree, or traditional Indian dress, she was led into the building by women police officers. Also on the bus

was Babubai Bajrangi, a Hindu nationalist firebrand who was accused of disembowelling a pregnant woman with a sword. He was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole. “Babubai, don’t worry.

Lord Krishna is with you. You’re innocent,”

took place on his watch. It’ll be equally hard to justify Kodnani’s elevation to the rank of minister,” the Times of India said in an editorial.

Critics accuse Modi, who was chief minister at the time of the riots, of turning a

AHMEDABAD: An unidentified relative of an accused cries outside a court yesterday. — AP chanted some supporters crowding around the bus.

The others convicted were sentenced to lengthy terms in jail. The court earlier heard that police stood by while Hindu mobs attacked Muslims and told those pleading for help that they were “on holiday”. Some police also fired teargas canisters at Muslims gathered in the street, witnesses said.

Turning a blind eye The evidence and Kodnani’s additional conviction for conspiracy to commit murder has raised questions about the Gujarat government’s assertion that the riots were spontaneous - a Muslim mob had earlier set ablaze a train, killing 59 Hindu activists - and did not involve local officials. “Chief minister Narendra Modi will find it difficult to wink at the fact protracted violence

blind eye to the violence and have demanded many times over the years that he apologise, something he has refused to do. Modi insists he did nothing wrong, but memories of the riots taint his efforts to present himself as a highly efficient manager of his state’s booming economy.

Many supporters say his economic success makes him a strong candidate for prime minister but others fear he has too much political baggage. The United States has declined to issue him a visa.

Modi’s government has tried to distance itself from the Kodnani case, saying she was not a minister in 2002. There is no exact figure for the number killed during the three-day rampage and outbreaks of violence over the next two months.

Official government documents say more than 1,000 died, but human rights activists put the figure at 2,500. — Reuters

Disgraced father of Pakistan nuclear bomb mulls politics ISLAMABAD: The Pakistani scientist who sold nuclear secrets to Iran, North Korea and Libya, may try his hand at politics to rescue a country he says has become worse than a banana republic. Abdul Qadeer Khan, still lionised as the father of Pakistan’s atomic bomb despite his fall from grace in 2004, may have some appeal ahead of elections due next year. Many Pakistanis are deeply frustrated with their leaders over everything from chronic power cuts to their strategic ties with the United States, and they might welcome someone seen as a national hero on the political stage.

“I want to bring change and help the people of Pakistan, like I did back in 1974, when India test fired its nukes,” Khan told

Reuters in an interview at his heavily guarded Islamabad home. “Now, today, once again this country needs my help.”

Khan’s new movement, Tehreek-e-Tahafuz Pakistan, or Movement For Protection of Pakistan, is urging the South Asian nation’s youth to be heard through national elections and break the stranglehold of traditional political dynasties.

The 76-year-old scientist says Pakistan’s young people should stop wasting time watching “useless” current affairs talk shows which dominate the airwaves every night and purge the country of corrupt politicians through the ballot box. “The youth is 47 percent of this country’s population, they can bring the change,” said Khan, sitting in his study, near swords giv-

en to him by heads of state hanging on walls and Urdu poetry books on shelves.

“They should realise the importance of their vote and select those people in the next election who are clean.” Khan was at the centre of the world’s biggest nuclear proliferation scandal in 2004 when he confessed to selling nuclear secrets to Iran, North Korea and Libya. He was pardoned but placed under house arrest in 2004 by then president Pervez Musharraf. The government relaxed restrictions on him in 2009 but his movements are still limited.

There is a widespread belief in Pakistan that Khan was the victim of an international conspiracy against the country’s nuclear programme. Pakistani authorities deny any connection to Khan’s smuggling ring but

have never let foreigners question him.

Many Pakistanis still hail Khan as the man who enabled Pakistan to respond to archrival India’s nuclear detonations with its own tests in 1998. He fondly remembers working on Pakistan’s nuclear programme in the 1980s and how then military ruler General Zia ul-Haq once kissed him on his forehead when significant progress was made. Khan said his movement would register as an official political party if it gained momentum. So far, it is winning support from businessmen in the commercial capital, Karachi, as well as from a religious party, students and others. “Lots of army officers ... a large number, still believe that I have done my best for this country, they respect me,” he said. — Reuters

Business Weidmann resignation turns up heat on Draghi

17

Singapore risks economic gloom without baby boom

18

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2012

India disappoints with 5.5% growth

20

16

Thousands stranded by Lufthansa crew strike

MANILA: Applicants wait for screening during a jobs fair conducted by Cebu Pacific, the country’s second largest airline, at a hotel at the financial district of Makati city, east of Manila, Philippines yesterday. — AP

Fed to act as needed: Bernanke US economy ‘far from satisfactory’ JACKSON HOLE: Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke yesterday said the US economy faced “daunting” challenges and that progress reducing unemployment had been too slow, but he stopped short of providing a clear signal of further monetary policy easing.

Bernanke said the central bank would act as needed to strengthen the recovery but he also said it had to weigh the costs as well as the benefits of more monetary stimulus, although he hinted the costs may be worthwhile.

“It is important to achieve further progress, particularly in the labor market,” Bernanke said at the Kansas City Fed’s annual Jackson Hole symposium. “Taking due account of the uncertainties and limits of its policy tools, the Federal Reserve will provide additional policy accommodation as needed to promote a stronger economic recovery and sustained improvement in labor market conditions in a context of price stability.”

That was a somewhat weaker hint of policy easing than the minutes of the Fed’s last policy meeting had delivered. At that meeting, many members judged that “additional monetary accommodation would likely be warranted fairly soon” unless the economy showed substantial strengthening.

Bernanke, however, made clear he was not satisfied with the economy’s progress. “The stagnation of the labor market in particular is a grave concern not only because of the enormous suffering and waste of human talent it entails, but also because persistently high levels of unemployment will wreak structural damage on our economy that could last for many years,” he said. US stocks initially pared gains but soon moved higher as investors digested Bernanke’s remarks.

Investors had been bidding up stock prices in recent weeks on expectations the US central bank would launch a new round of bond buying soon. Prices for US government bonds rose and the dollar hit session lows against the euro. “These headlines seem to capture the essence of a more dovish Bernanke than we expected-’grave’ concern with labor market is striking,” said David Ader, head of government bond strategy at CRT Capital Group in Stamford, Connecticut.

Bernanke downplayed the potential risks from the Fed’s unconven-

Ben S. Bernanke

tional policies and argued that the asset purchases had been quite effective at boosting economic growth and fostering job creation.

“The costs of nontraditional policies, when considered carefully, appear manageable, implying that we should not rule out the further use of such policies if economic conditions warrant,” Bernanke said.

In response to the financial crisis and recession of 2007-2009, the Fed cut official rates to zero and bought $2.3 trillion in government and mortgage securities. It next meets on Sept. 12-13. The economy emerged from recession nearly three years ago, but growth has remained tepid. US gross domestic product grew at a 1.7 percent annual rate in the second quarter, too weak to bring down the nation’s 8.3 percent unemployment rate.

“Unless the economy begins to grow more quickly than it has recently, the unemployment rate is likely to remain far above levels consistent with maximum sustainable employment,” Bernanke said.

US economic data has improved since the Fed’s meeting, which came before a stronger-than-expected reading for July employment.

Reports on retail sales, exports and housing have also been relatively solid. Data on consumer spending for July on Thursday showed the strongest reading in five months.

The data has led some market participants to dial back their expectations of a fresh round of bond purchases when the Fed meets this month. As an alternative, many economists say, the Fed may simply push further into the future the date it thinks it will finally start to move interest rates higher. The central bank has said since January that it expects to keep rates near zero at least through late 2014. — Reuters

business

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2012

Hollande speeds launch of state investment bank CHALONS-EN-CHAMPAGNE: France will launch a public investment bank within days to help cashstrapped companies to obtain financing, President Francois Hollande said yesterday, bringing forward the date as his government speeds up efforts to fight a downturn.

The bank, originally due to be launched in January of next year, is designed to support small- and medium-sized firms which are struggling to obtain financing from private lenders amid super-tight credit conditions.

“A public investment bank will be created in the coming days,” Hollande told journalists in northeastern France. “There is no time to wait: we are facing too many emer-

gencies.” France is also fast-tracking the launch of a scheme to create 150,000 state-sponsored jobs for youths, in a move to tackle rising unemployment.

The new body brings together several existing public lenders under the state bank Caisse des Depots, aiming to offer thousands of credithungry companies business advice as well as a single window for loans.

“Pulling together all these different institutions under a single roof is not only a good thing, it’s an urgent move for France,” said Frederic Bonnevay, an economist for think tank Institut Montaigne. In July, Industry Minister Arnaud Montebourg told Le Parisien daily that a public bank was necessary because private lenders were not

“sufficiently interested” in the real economy, preferring to seek higher margins abroad.

Montebourg has since been involved in a controversy surrounding the choice of a private adviser for the new institution - FrancoAmerican investment bank Lazard.

Le Nouvel Observateur magazine, hinting at a possible conflict of interest, reported this week that Montebourg was behind the choice of Lazard, whose head of French operations, Matthieu Pigasse, is an outspoken ally of the Socialist Party.

Pigasse also owns the magazine Les Inrockuptibles, which named Montebourg’s wife as its editor-inchief in July. Montebourg has said he played no role in choosing Lazard, and told journalists that he thought

its nomination was a “very bad idea”.

“I was not informed of this choice,” Montebourg said at a meeting of business leaders near Paris. “I am not in favour. Why? Because, in order to launch a bank, you should certainly not ask for the advice of other bankers.”

Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici said on Thursday that he bore sole responsibility for the choice of Lazard, which also brought criticism from conservative political opponents.

Hollande added that, alongside the creation of a public bank, France would pursue reform of private banking to separate retail operations from investment and trading, as he had promised in his election campaign. — Reuters

Thousands stranded by Lufthansa crew strike Short and mid-haul flights mostly affected

SEOUL: Alan Mulally, the Global CEO of Ford Motor Co., answers reporters’ question during news conference in Seoul, South Korea, yesterday. — AFP

Thailand, ASEAN a bright spot for Ford Motor RAYONG: Car sales in China and Europe may be slowing down, but Southeast Asia is on a tear. Ford Motor Co. said yesterday that industry-wide sales are up 20 percent so far this year in its ASEAN region, which is made up of Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia. That’s double the pace of sales increases in China and the US in July.

Thailand, which is seeing a spike in sales as the country recovers from last year’s flooding, is up 40 percent from a year ago, said Matt Bradley, the president of Ford’s ASEAN region. Bradley and other Ford executives were visiting Ford’s new plant in Rayong on Friday to mark the production of Ford’s 350 millionth vehicle in its 109-year history.

ASEAN is still a relatively small player in the global industry, with total annual sales of 3.5 million. By comparison, China, the world’s largest car market, saw sales of 18.5 million last year, while U.S. sales were 12.8 million.

But Bradley said Ford expects ASEAN to make up an increasing part of its sales over the coming years as incomes rise and more people can buy cars. Ford is forecasting sales of 5 million in the region by 2020. “It’s just like China or India in terms of the growth opportunity,” Bradley said. Ford thinks wages in the fast-developing ASEAN region will grow eight to 14 percent per year over the next five years, compared with two to four percent in more mature markets like the US, according to Gary Johnson, Ford’s vice president of manufacturing for its Asia Pacific and Africa region, which includes ASEAN. The minimum wage in Thailand - which is what Ford pays workers at the Rayong plant - is now the equivalent to $9 per day, or around $2,340 per year. Ford says people typically start buying cars when annual wages reach $5,000 to $7,000.

Ford brings most of its 1,200 manufacturing employees to the plant in buses right now. But it expects them to be able to buy their own cars over time. — AP

FRANKFURT: A strike by Lufthansa cabin crew disrupted hundreds of flights yesterday, stranding thousands of passengers who faced further delays over a busy holiday travel weekend from a rolling series of stoppages about pay and cost cuts.

Frankfurt Airport operator Fraport AG said it had asked for no flights to depart to Frankfurt from European destinations, citing a lack of parking positions at Germany’s busiest airport due to planes grounded by the strike.

Intercontinental flights were not affected, Fraport said. Germany’s biggest airline said it canceled most of the 360 scheduled arrivals and departures at its Frankfurt hub during yesterday’s eight-hour strike, which followed the breakdown of 13 months of talks with trade union UFO. UFO, which represents around twothirds of Lufthansa’s 19,000 flight attendants, did not rule out further stoppages over the weekend and said it could call for industrial action at other airports “today or tomorrow”.

“It depends a lot on what Lufthansa’s response is,” UFO head Nicoley Baublies told Bayerischen Rundfunk radio, warning the airline not to pressure workers to break the strike. The stoppages were initially focused on flights to and from Frankfurt, but might affect the airline’s wider European and global network and could cost it millions of euros a day in lost revenue.

Lufthansa said it would try to place passengers on trains and alternative flights. “The call to strike action may lead to unscheduled flight delays and cancellations,” Lufthansa said in a message to passengers on its website.

“Long-haul flights are the uppermost priority and, wherever possible, should not be canceled. Nevertheless, delays must be anticipated.”

The coming weekend promises to be busy for travel because it marks the end of the summer holidays in many parts of Germany, and many Germans would be planning to get away since some regions are still in the midst of their summer breaks.

Long lines of passengers waited at Lufthansa service counters in Frankfurt where peanuts and bottles of water or apple juice were offered to disgruntled travelers.

Helga Froesch, munching sausage and bread while holding sparkling wine in a plastic glass in her other hand, said her flight to Malta has been delayed by a day. “We are now eating our breakfast,” she said.

Sara Vassallo, traveling with her husband and two children from Cape Town en route to Marseille, said: “We are used to strikes in France, but not here.” Like most global airlines, Lufthansa is battling soaring fuel

prices, weak demand from cashstrapped passengers and economic slowdown, as well as fierce competition from low-cost carriers such as Ryanair. Lufthansa, which operates around 1,850 flights daily, mostly from Frankfurt and Munich, also needs to generate more profit to pay for 17 billion euros ($21.3 billion) of new aircraft on order. The UFO union, which represents around two-thirds of Lufthansa’s 19,000 flight attendants, wants a 5 percent pay rise and guarantees that Lufthansa will not outsource jobs and use more temporary workers, as it has already done in Berlin.

Lufthansa says cabin crew must contribute to the cost-cutting programme. UFO warned this week the industrial action could continue for a long time and widen into nationwide stoppages if Lufthansa does not meet its demands. — Reuters

FRANKFURT: Cabin staff of German airline Lufthansa hold up a poster with their company’s logo, a crane, as they strike yesterday at the airport in Frankfurt, western Germany. — AFP

business

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2012

Weidmann resignation turns up heat on Draghi Asmussen wants IMF involvement for bond buys

ROME: Employees of the world’s leading producer of primary aluminum Alcoa hit their helmets in front of the Italian Parliament during a demonstration in Rome yesterday. The demonstrators protest against the closing of Portovesme and Fusina smelting plants on the Italian island of Sardinia which employs about 2,000 people. —AFP

Single supervisor for all eurozone banks in 2014 PARIS: EU Commissioner Michel Barnier said yesterday that eurozone banks would gradually come under the remit of a new common supervisor with a complete shift over for all 6,000 lenders in January 2014.

Barnier is leading preparations for plans for a common supervisor, which was part of a wider agreement on letting the new eurozone rescue fund directly help lenders instead of forcing countries to seek a full bailout.

There are disagreements between the 17 eurozone members as well as in the wider European Union over how fast and to what extent to centralise the current system which relies on national supervisors loosely monitored by the London-based European Banking Authority (EBA).

“We never envisaged a global switchover from one day to the next to direct and integrated supervision,” Barnier, the EU’s internal markets commissioner, was quoted as saying in the French business daily Les Echos.

He said any banks which receive support from the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) rescue fund should immediately come under the purview of the new regulator, which is hoped will begin operations on January 1, 2013.

“From that date, theoretically, the direct recapitalisation of banks by the rescue fund will be possible,” said Barnier. Then the common supervisor would take over responsibility for the largest so-called systemically important banks, and finally all 6,000 eurozone banks from January 1, 2014.

EU Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso is to present the proposals on September 12, with the European Central Bank expected to be handed the bank supervisor role.

But the Commission and Germany appear to still differ on the scope for the bank supervisor. German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said “we cannot expect a European watchdog to supervise directly all of the region’s lenders — 6,000 in the eurozone alone-effectively.”

Schaeuble called this “common sense”, although critics charge that Germany is seeking to protect its regional banks.

Barnier noted that “many problems have been caused in recent years by non-systemic banks, like Northern Rock, Dexia and Bankia.” The 2007 collapse of mortgage lender Northern Rock sparked Britain’s first bank run in modern history, while Dexia has forced France and Belgium into two bailouts and Bankia’s problems have pushed Spain to seek up to 100 billion euros to rescue its banks.

Barnier said however that for functions that do not impact on financial stability, such as consumer protection, national regulators would be left in charge. In an interview with a German newspaper he showed more flexibility on this question.

Barnier told the Sueddeutsche Zeitung daily the ECB would “have the final responsibility for all decisions” but that it could “organise cooperation with national supervisory bodies” and “delegate its missions.”

“It is also evident that we (the Commission) cannot fix in advance all of the details,” he added.—AFP

BERLIN/FRANKFURT: German central bank chief Jens Weidmann’s reported threat to resign has piled pressure on European Central Bank President Mario Draghi to mollify opposition to a new bond-buying plan without tying it up in so many knots it is rendered ineffective.

Weidmann, at a central bank symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, refused to comment on a report in the mass circulation Bild newspaper that he had considered quitting several times in recent weeks but had been dissuaded by the German government.

He has made no secret of his displeasure with the strategy to lower Italian and Spanish borrowing costs by buying bonds.

Stepping up the pressure to attach conditions to the plan, fellow German ECB policymaker Joerg Asmussen said late on Thursday the ECB should only purchase sovereign bonds if the International Monetary Fund was involved in setting the economic reform programmes demanded in return.

Draghi is skipping this weekend’s Jackson Hole retreat to try to smooth over a deep rift within the ECB over the bond scheme that is increasingly being played out in public.

The Italian will have little time to celebrate his 65th birthday on Monday as he tries to forge a deal before a Sept. 6 ECB policy meeting, and buy euro zone governments time to negotiate legal and political hurdles to a longer-term response to the bloc’s debt crisis.

“Opposition from Weidmann and reservations from some other Council members will mean that ECB bond purchases would be highly conditional, be focused on the short end and would not aim to bring yields down quite as much as Italy and Spain might like to see,” said Berenberg Bank economist Holger Schmieding.

Draghi’s July 26 vow to do “whatever it takes” to save the euro heralded his signa-

ture plan. But securing majority support for a plan Weidmann can live with poses the biggest balancing act he has faced since taking the ECB helm on Nov. 1 last year.

Highlighting the range of views among ECB policymakers, Executive Board member Benoit Coeure said on Friday the bank would do everything in its mandate to preserve the integrity of the euro-a line similar to Draghi’s in late July.

The ECB was studying ways of intervening in the short-term bond market based on strict conditionality and the countries concerned agreeing to aid programmes with the euro zone bailout funds, Coeure said.

The central bank was hurt by its experience last year of buying Italian bonds only for Italy’s then-prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, to renege on reform promises he had made to get the ECB to step in.

Austria’s ECB representative, Ewald Nowotny, addressed the ECB taboo of directly financing members states, saying there was a difference between buying

bonds directly from governments and purchasing them on the secondary market to get yields down.

That tallies with Draghi’s position, who said on Wednesday the ECB must employ “exceptional measures” at times to fulfil its mandate, his argument being that official euro zone interest rates are at record lows yet borrowing costs in some of its members are sky high, so monetary policy is not working as it should.

“I would warn against making an oversimple or even an ideological discussion about it,” Nowotny said.

Draghi also won some support from IMF First Deputy Manager David Lipton who said Europe had to dispel any doubts about the viability of the euro and that the ECB chief Draghi was “conceptually right on target”.

“He’s got the right idea, the right approach and he needs the conditions under which his action can be effective.

He needs the countries of the periphery to be doing what they need to do and then he can act,” Lipton told CNBC.— Reuters

MOSCOW: A hostess poses near an Opel/Vauxhall 2-seater electric concept car at the Moscow International Automobile Salon, on August 30. — AFP

Euro crisis set for September resurgence BRUSSELS: A phoney summer calm may come to an abrupt end this month with decisions by Germany’s Constitutional Court and the European Central Bank threatening to plunge the eurozone back into crisis.

A series of high-risk dates are etched on the minds of financial analysts, first among them Thursday’s ECB governing council meeting at which the central bank is expected to detail how and when it may step in on a larger scale to tame struggling countries’ borrowing costs.

ECB chief Mario Draghi’s statements indicating that the central bank was going to play a greater role in the eurozone’s rescue efforts was a key reason markets kept calm throughout August.

But with talk again of a Greece exit from the eurozone and predictions that Spain will need a sovereign bailout on top of help to shore up battered banks, the ECB’s contribution to crisis-fighting is just one piece of the jigsaw.

Just as important, according to analysts, is the German court ruling due on

September 12 on legal challenges to the European Stability Mechanism.

Any decision that holds up ratification of the new eurozone rescue fund, as well as the fiscal pact for tighter budgets, would undermine key elements of the eurozone’s new institutional defences against the debt crisis. Also on September 12, The Netherlands holds a general election which could see the rise to power of an anti-austerity party, and the European Commission unveils legislative proposals for eurozone-wide bank supervision, the first step towards a deeper banking union.

Meanwhile leaders such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Francois Hollande, Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti, Greek leader Antonis Samaras and Spain’s Mariano Rajoy are engaging in frantic shuttle diplomacy.

All the while, auditors from the International Monetary Fund, EU and ECB will be in Greece, where Samaras is trying to change the terms of a painfully-nego-

tiated second bailout by eurozone partners. The auditors are not expected to report back on Greek finances in time for an informal meeting of finance ministers and central bankers in Cyprus on September 14-15, but rather for an October 8 meeting of the Eurogroup in Luxembourg-and ultimately the first European Union summit of the new season on October 18-19. Natixis economists in Paris worry that “it’s all going to end badly.” “Uncompromising” pressure on Athens in the bailout re-negotiation may force an exit on Greece and “contrary to what is put about today in Germany or

by EU leaders,” this “will not protect” the other vulnerable Mediterranean countries, said Patrick Arbus. “Investors will quickly grasp the similarity with Spain, Portugal,” he underlined. Natixis expects eurozone states to fall short of their targets to cut their deficits, by 0.5 percent of GDP is their bet for the entire 17-state currency area this year, with Spain and Italy missing by 1.4 percentage points and Greece by even more.— AFP

BUSINESS

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2012

Singapore risks economic gloom without baby boom SINGAPORE: History suggests Singapore will enjoy a welcome baby boom in this Year of the Dragon, the most auspicious for births in the Chinese zodiac.

But after 25 years of state-sponsored matchmaking and fertilityboosting campaigns, the government’s attempts to arrest a sliding birth rate are falling flat, with potentially profound consequences for the wealthy Asian city-state. The calls to conception are now urgent and constant to citizens whose fertility ranks last among 222 nations in the US Central Intelligence Agency’s World Factbook.

Faced with dismal statistics like that, the government has begun a review of population and immigration policy and says it plans new measures to encourage births by the time it publishes the results of its consultation early next year.

The message to have more babies is all the more pressing as resentment builds over an influx of foreigners who now make up more than a third of the

population of 5.2 million, a factor that is eroding support for the long-ruling People’s Action Party. “We have a problem. The long-term trend is down but we cannot give up,” Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said in a speech on Sunday about the nation’s future. “We need to create the right environment, the right social environment, the right ethos so that Singaporeans want to settle down and have kids.” Social and economic engineering is nothing new in Singapore, where a firm government hand helped to steer a small island with no natural resources into one of the world’s most affluent countries in a little over a generation. But the relentless drop in the birth rate reveals the limits of that influence in what has been described as a “nanny state”. For a global trade and financial centre like Singapore, its extremely low fertility rate has implications for economic growth, tax revenues, healthcare costs and immigration policy as the number of elderly people looks set to triple by 2030. There are now 6.3 Singaporeans of working age for every senior citizen.

By 2030, the ratio will be closer to 2:1.

At current levels, the birth rate implies that the local population will fall by half within a generation, said Sanjeev Sanyal, a Singapore-based global strategist at Deutsche Bank.

“Even to attract a pipeline of good quality foreign talent, you need sociopolitical continuity and stability that can only be provided by a robust anchor population,” he said.

If there were any doubts about the government’s blatant message, the mint maker Mentos put out an advertisement urging married Singaporeans to do their civic duty on the evening of the Aug. 9 National Day festivities.

“I’m talking about making a baby, baby,” went the video’s rapped lyrics, accompanied by hip-thrusting animated hearts. “It’s National Night, let’s make Singapore’s birthrate spike.”

Not long ago, Singapore had the opposite problem. From the mid1960s, with post-war baby boomers hitting child-bearing age, the fears were that a population surge would threaten the development of the new-

ly independent nation. With the slogan “Stop at two”, the government penalised big families, legalised abortion and rewarded sterilisation. It was so effective that, by 1987, the policy was reversed and the slogan became “Have three or more if you can afford it”. Conspiring against more births are powerful contraceptives in the form of intense career pressure, long work hours, small apartments, waiting lists for nursery care and soaring prices.

“Work/life balance is what everybody’s after,” said Evonne, a marketing professional in her 30s, adding she and her husband plan to have one child. “If you don’t want kids, no matter what the government throws at you, I don’t think you really care.”

The 2010 census showed Singaporeans are marrying later than a decade earlier. In the age group 30-34, a key time for career, 43 percent of men and 31 percent of women were not married. For women in their 40s who were or had been married, those with only one child rose to 19 percent from 15 percent. — Reuters

China shares sink for third-straight month HSI down 0.4%, sheds 1.6% in August

CHONGQING: The Three Gorges Hotel and the 32-storey passenger terminal of Chongqing port are toppled in a controlled explosion to make way for new skyscrapers in southwest China’s Chongqing municipality yesterday. —AFP

Gold firms ahead of Bernanke speech LONDON: Gold prices firmed yesterday ahead of a key speech from Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, at which he is expected to give clues as to the likelihood of another round of US monetary stimulus. Bernanke’s speech at 1400 GMT will be closely watched for signs that the Fed is considering another imminent round of goldfriendly moves to boost growth such as quantitative easing, or money printing to buy bonds. Gold, silver and platinum were all on course to post their best month since January, lifted in part by speculation over steps the Fed may take to boost sluggish growth.

Gold prices jumped to 4-1/2 month highs earlier this week on talk of more QE. They have since settled back as investors await Bernanke’s speech, and may be vulnerable to a correction if it disappoints. “There is certainly something already priced in for Jackson Hole, and there is a bit of disappointment potential here,” Tobias Merath, an analyst at Credit Suisse, said.

“Expectations for more monetary easing would have to be fulfilled to break higher here,” he added. “For now, we have a bit of a cautious approach to the gold market.” “We still think the base case is for further sideways trading, and that would only change if investment interest picks up to the extent that we are able to break (technical resistance at) $1,700.”

Spot gold was up 0.1 percent at $1,657.76 an ounce at 0955 GMT, while US gold futures for December delivery were up $3.60 an ounce at $1,660.70. Expectations that Bernanke would offer hints of monetary stimulus were already waning early yesterday, pushing European shares a touch lower, while the euro rose. A 0.2 percent drop in the dollar index lent support to gold.

Gold prices more than doubled after the US central bank launched its first round of QE in 2008. — Reuter

HONG KONG: Hong Kong shares slipped and China sank to levels not seen since early 2009 yesterday, with both markets ending August in the red after first half corporate earnings disappointed and there seemed little chance of an imminent recovery.

Turnover was lackluster ahead of an annual meeting of central bankers in Wyoming later on Friday, with the market expecting Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke to keep expectations of monetary easing intact into September, but not immediately take any measures.

A scheduled quarterly rebalancing of the MSCI China index at Friday’s close did little to help boost yesterday’s volumes. In August, investors parked money in shares of companies able to project resilient earnings growth in a sluggish economic environment.

“People have been generally defensive in August, with earnings visibility overriding other considerations, such as low valuations,” said Alan Lam, Julius Baer’s Greater China equity analyst.

The CSI300 Index of the top Shanghai and Shenzhen listings shed 0.3 percent on Friday and 5.5 percent this month, suffering a third-straight monthly loss.

The Shanghai Composite Index shed 2.7 percent in August. The Hang Seng Index lost 0.4 percent to 19,482.6, holding above the 38.2 percent Fibonacci retracement of its rise from June lows to August highs at about 19,443. The benchmark shed 1.6 percent in August, its first monthly loss in three.

“September will be very busy policywise, so there might be a switch into cyclical names. There are meetings in Europe and the US, but I don’t expect China to do too much ahead of its National Congress meeting likely in October,” Lam added. Lam was refer-

ring to a meeting, to take place before year-end, that will mark the start of a once-in-a decade political leadership transition. New leaders do not typically make big changes in their first year, but could be forced into action if data suggests China could miss economic growth targets for the year, he said.

Beijing is expected to post China’s official manufacturing managers’ index reading on Saturday. A Reuters poll sees the index easing to a 9-month low of 50 in August. The state-run China Securities Journal reported on Friday that the combined first-half net profit of China’s 2,453 listed companies dipped 0.38 percent from a year earlier to 1.01 trillion yuan ($159.07 billion).

Yesterday, Citic Pacific slumped 7.1 percent to its lowest since April 2009

after iron ore looked set to hit nearly three-year lows. In August, the stock had its worst performance in 10 months as Chinese steel producers shunned fresh cargoes in the face of waning demand.

Sany Heavy Industries dived 4 percent after missing forecasts with a 28 percent fall in second-quarter net profit, its biggest quarterly profit drop since 2008, as the country’s economic slowdown led to a jump in unpaid bills.

Within the Hang Seng Index, August’s top performing stocks are skewed towards those that rely on the relative safety offered by the Chinese consumer as investors pulled money out of cyclical sectors most linked to a slowing economy at home and abroad. — Reuters

SHANGHAI: An investor stands in front of the stock price monitor at a private securities company yesterday in Shanghai, China. Asian markets fell yesterday after Wall Street declined on pessimism about fuel prices and stagnant job growth. — AP

BUSINESS

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2012

Australia approves China farm purchase CANBERRA: Australian yesterday approved a Chinese company’s bid for giant cotton farm, igniting new concerns about foreign investment in agriculture where resource-hungry China is showing growing interest.

Treasurer Wayne Swan approved Chinese textile group Shandong Ruyi’s purchase of Cubbie Station, which covers almost 1,000 sq km (390 sq miles) of south-western Queensland and which has been in administration since 2009 with more than A$300 million ($310 million) of debts.

“The proposal would bring an end to this long period of uncertainty, helping ensure the ongoing operation of Cubbie Group, protecting jobs and supporting economic activity,” he said. The approval comes as China, Australia’s biggest trade partner, seeks to increase food security by encouraging its firms to expand over-

seas. Another Chinese firm, Shanghai Zhongfu Group, is eyeing agricultural developments in the remote northwest.

Ruyi and Cubbie’s administrators would not comment on a price for the cotton farm, valued at up to $500 million, but said the foreign investment approval cleared the way for further negotiations on a sale. Under the proposed purchase, Ruyi will take 80 percent of the Cubbie Group, while Ruyi’s Australian partners, the fifth-generation wool processors the Lempriere family group, will take a 20 percent stake.

Swan imposed a number of conditions on the deal, saying Ruyi would need to reduce its stake to 51 percent within three years. Similar sell-down conditions were imposed on China’s Yanzhou Coal on its takeover of coal miner Felix Resources in 2009. Swan in March gave the company a one-year extension to cut

its stake in its unit Yancoal.

Swan said the Lempriere group would be responsible for operating Cubbie Station and for marketing the cotton on the international market, easing concerns Ruyi could use the deal to lock up a cheap supplies of cotton.

Cubbie can grow up to 330,000 bales of cotton in a good year, as well as some wheat, barley, sorghum and corn. The station also has entitlements to a massive 537,000 mega litres of water, or enough to fill Sydney Harbour.

The water allocations have raised political concerns that the sale to a Chinese firm could hopes of reforming water policy in Australia’s Murray-Darling food bowl, and the sale has drawn anger from those who wanted the government to block the deal.

“It is a mongrel of a deal,” independent lawmaker Nick Xenophon told

Reuters. “The conditions give a veneer of Australian involvement but result in Australia losing control of a strategic asset.” Xenophon and opposition lawmakers have long pushed for a reform of foreign investment rules for farm purchases, and they want the secretive Foreign Investment Review Board (FIRB) to lower its thresholds for approvals.

At present, the FIRB only looks at foreign investment proposals if a purchase amounts to 15 percent or more of an entity valued at A$244 million, meaning the great bulk of smaller farm sales avoid scrutiny. The opposition has proposed lower thresholds of $15 million.

The FIRB examines all proposed investments from state-owned enterprises, adding an extra hurdle for Chinese investments, where ownership structures and government links are considered less transparent. — Reuters

Japan eyes suspending state spending as money runs out BOJ offers record fund to ease market strain TOKYO: Japan’s government laid out plans yesterday to suspend some state spending as it could run out of cash by October, with a deficit financing bill blocked by opposition parties trying to force Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda into an early election.

The impasse in Japan’s parliament has raised fears among investors that the world’s third largest economy is being driven towards a “fiscal cliff”. “The government running out of money is not a story made up. It’s a real threat,” Finance Minister Jun Azumi told a news conference, making a last-ditch appeal for cooperation by opposition parties to pass the bill.

“Failing to pass the bill will give markets the impression that Japan’s fiscal management rests on shaky ground,” he said. Unless the bill clears the current parliamentary session that ends next week, the government will start suspending or reducing some state spending to avoid running out of money for as long as possible, the finance ministry said yesterday. Noda’s ruling Democratic

Party passed the deficit-financing bill through the lower house on Tuesday.

But the opposition boycotted the vote, signalling the bill has little chance of clearing the opposition-controlled upper house. Under the proposed contingency for suspending some spending, the finance ministry said government bond redemptions and interest payments on outstanding debt would not be affected as they will be made in full using reserves set aside for this purpose.

All state spending will be targeted, except for those that will severely effect public livelihood such as police, national security and disaster relief. Subsidies to local governments and state-run universities will be cut by half from the originally planned amount until the bill passes parliament, the finance ministry said.

That may affect 4.1 trillion yen ($52 billion) in payment to local governments expected next Tuesday and may potentially disrupt money market flows, if the shortfall in disbursements is big.

In an attempt to ease the strain on markets, the Bank of Japan offered to

supply a combined 2.4 trillion yen of one-month and four-month funds starting next Tuesday, of which 1.9 trillion yen was taken up.

That was the biggest amount offered on a single day under the central bank’s asset-buying and loan programme since it was put in place in October 2010. The upper house has passed a censure motion against Noda, piling more pressure on him to make good on his promise earlier this month to call an election to parliament’s lower house.

Several ruling party and opposition lawmakers have suggested that Noda would probably wait out the stalemate until the current parliament session ends on Sept. 8 and call a snap vote during an extra session in October to secure the deficit financing bill’s passage.

The term “fiscal cliff” is commonly associated with around $500 billion in expiring US tax cuts and spending cuts that could kick in automatically next year, triggering a “significant recession”, according to the Congressional Budget Office. — Reuters

SEOUL: Striking workers shout slogans during a rally to call for an end to temporary workers and the revision of existing labor laws in Seoul, South Korea, yesterday. The letters read “ Fight and Unity”. — AP

TAIPEI: Taiwan Central Bank Governor Perng Fai-nan talks on the China currency initiative during a press conference yesterday, in Taipei, Taiwan. — AP

Taiwan, China sign currency clearing deal TAIPEI: Taiwanese banks will be allowed start handling China’s tightly controlled currency this year under an agreement signed yesterday, paving the way for the island to become an offshore center for yuan trading.

After the deal becomes effective in about two months, Taiwanese banks will be able to take yuan deposits and convert yuan into the New Taiwan dollar. The conversion will allow Taiwanese investors on the mainland to cut foreign exchange costs by skipping the current process of first converting their yuan earnings into US dollars.

The long anticipated memorandum of understanding was signed separately by Governor Zhou Xiaochuan, the head of the People’s Bank of China in Beijing and his counterpart, central bank governor Perng Fai-nan in Taipei.

“We will continue to work with the other side so this service can be open as soon as possible,” Perng told reporters in Taipei, noting that clearing banks are yet to be picked by either side for the conversion. Perng said the deal will also clear the way for Taiwanese banks to tap into new businesses, such as yuan-denominated bonds or derivatives.

Those lucrative activities are now handled by Hong Kong banks or underground local lenders. Taiwan hopes the deal will enable it to develop into another yuan offshore center after Hong Kong. London and Singapore are among cities seeking to develop a similar yuan market.

Perng said local banks will have to significantly build up the amount of their yuan trading before the offshore market is established. Taiwan has a clear advantage in this regard - its $150 billion annual bilateral trade with China, with about $80 billion in Taiwan’s favor.

The trade volume was built mainly on the more than $120 billion which Taiwanese have invested on the mainland over the past three decades. China is gradually relaxing its tight foreign exchange control, and the slow progress has given rise to the business of yuan offshore centers.

Taipei has pushed Beijing for signing a currency clearing pact as the former political foes eased their hostilities in recent years to promote stronger economic ties. — AP

business

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2012

S&P cuts rating on Sharp to junk status TOKYO: Standard & Poor’s cut its credit rating on Sharp Corp. to junk status yesterday, following huge losses at the struggling Japanese consumer electronics giant. The global ratings agency downgraded Sharp two notches to BB+ and warned the Osaka-based firm was beset by weak cash flow and “deteriorating” market conditions.

The move was S&P’s second downgrade on Sharp in less than a month, and the first time a major ratings agency has cut the company’s rating to non-investment grade. “Sharp’s liquidity position has weakened, and the company is highly dependent on short-term borrowings in light of weak internal cash flow and a less favourable funding environment,” S&P said in a statement. “We may consid-

er lowering the ratings if Sharp’s earnings in (the year to March 2013) and prospects for its recovery deteriorate even further or the company’s financing environment and relationships with credit banks and strategic partners worsen,” S&P warned. Sharp shares plummeted nearly 13 percent to 198 yen before the downgrade yesterday on uncertainty about the future of a deal that would see Taiwan’s Hon Hai Precision invest about $800 million in the Japanese firm.

Also yesterday, Dow Jones Newswires reported that Sharp, which makes a range of consumer products including Aquos brand electronics, had yet to start mass producing screens for Apple’s next iPhone. S&P said it expected Sharp’s fortunes to improve in the second half of

Court tells India’s Sahara to refund $3bn NEW DELHI: India’s Supreme Court yesterday ordered business conglomerate and leading sports sponsor Sahara to refund more than $3 billion it collected from millions of small savers. The court told Sahara India Real Estate Corp. and Sahara Housing Investment Corp., units of the group owned by billionaire tycoon Subrata Roy, to deposit 174 billion rupees ($3.12 billion) with 15 percent interest in a state-run bank.

The court said they had NEW DELHI: Chairman of “no right to collect” the Sahara India Pariwar Subrata funds from the 22 million Roy Sahara listens to a investors “without complyspeaker during a press con- ing with any regulatory ference in New Delhi. — AFP provisions”. It added that a retired justice would oversee a probe into actions of the subsidiaries, which it said collected the money in violation of securities rules.

“We direct the money collected to be deposited in a nationalised bank,” the court order said. Sahara India Pariwar, or Family, straddles finance, infrastructure, housing, media and entertainment, consumer goods, manufacturing and services.

It is also a top sponsor of Indian cricket and motor racing.

Roy, a flamboyant businessman, is a hero to millions of poor Indians and one of the country’s best-connected businessmen who counts top politicians, entertainers and cricketers among his friends. The court warned in the event of “non-compliance”, the Securities Exchange Board of India (SEBI) bourse watchdog could seize property of Sahara, based in Uttar Pradesh state capital Lucknow. The court order said SEBI would pass the money on to the investors. The verdict upheld a previous order of a securities tribunal that Sahara had flouted SEBI guidelines while raking in deposits from mainly poor and rural savers. Sahara had issued bonds to investors that gave them the option to convert the debt repayable by the company into equity shares.

SEBI had ordered the two group companies to return the money as they had “mobilized huge public money in the guise of private placements” without adhering to the regulatory framework. A Sahara spokesman was not immediately available for comment. The Supreme Court had previously said Sahara had “exploited” small depositors “in the lower strata of society.” Roy, who styles himself as the “worker’s friend” has a rags-to-riches story. The son of a poor millworker, his group posted meteoric growth after starting out as a rural savings scheme with just three employees. — AFP

the fiscal year to March 2013, but added that its current rating was based on sealing the deal with Hon Hai, which makes Apple gadgets in China.

“The ratings also incorporate assumptions that major creditor banks continue to provide Sharp with stable financing and the company does not face serious concerns in refinancing its debt,” it added. Sharp said it lost about $1.76 billion in the April-June quarter while warning of a bigger-than-expected full-year loss. In a bid to save its bleeding balance sheet, the company has announced a huge overhaul that could see it cut about 15 percent of its 57,000-strong global workforce, its first layoffs since 1950. Sharp, which has seen its mainstay television, liquid crystal display and solar

panel products struggle, said the job reductions were part of a bid to cut annual fixed costs by 100 billion yen ($1.27 billion) to shore up its dented balance sheet. The company’s shares dived to a four-decade low earlier this month with investors wiping around $1.0 billion off its market value in just one day following the release of its dismal financial results.

The sharply lower share price sparked questions about whether Hon Hai would seek to renegotiate the terms of the tieup deal. Rivals Sony and Panasonic have also been swimming in red ink as Japan’s electronics giants struggle to cope with a strong yen, falling prices, heavy labour costs and fierce competition from foreign rivals. —AFP

India disappoints with 5.5% growth NEW DELHI: India’s economy grew a disappointing 5.5 percent in the last quarter ending June, marking a sharp slowdown from the 8 percent growth in the same period a year ago. The economy grew only 5.3 percent in the quarter before, signaling a sharp downturn from previously robust growth.

Economists say the dismal performance of the economy reflects the government’s disarray and inability to push through crucial economic reforms.

The economic figures for the AprilJune quarter released Friday by the government showed that industrial and investment activity had failed to pick up pace while the services sector weakened.

Agriculture grew 2.9 percent compared to 3.7 percent a year ago, while the services sector declined to 6.9 percent compared to 10.2 percent.

Manufacturing grew by a negligible 0.2 percent against 7.3 percent growth in the same period last year.

The only bright notes were in the construction sector, which showed a robust 10.9 percent growth; and financing, insurance, real estate and business service activities, which expanded by 10.8 percent.

With a political impasse in India’s Parliament holding up government decision-making, and the central bank refusing to reduce interest rates, companies have shied away from investments. Over the past year, the government has been roiled in a string of corruption scandals involving government ministers and bureaucrats.

Opposition parties have paralyzed parliamentary business since the latest scandal erupted on the sale of coal mining blocks without competitive bidding. The national auditors said the sale was expected to net private companies windfall profits of up to $34 billion. Other bad news came from the weather: a weak monsoon season hit farms dependent on rainfall, pushing

up food inflation. C. Rangarajan, who heads the prime minister’s Economic Advisory Council, said the 5.5 percent figure was “consistent with the 6.7 percent growth we had projected.” He said he expected growth to pick up in the last two quarters.

He said the government was com-

organization, said it was “deeply concerned with the continuing downward trend in GDP growth.”

CII head Chandrajit Banerjee warned that opportunities for the revival of economic growth would soon peter out if the economy continues its downward spiral. “The GDP

JAMMU: In this Dec. 1, 2011 file photo, Indian laborers work in an iron and steel factory on the outskirts of Jammu, India.

India’s economy grew a disappointing 5.5 percent in the last quarter ending June, marking a sharp slowdown from the 8 percent growth in the same period a year ago. — AP mitted to giving a push forward to the economy. “The investment sentiment must improve. The strong growth in some of the key infrastructure sectors like coal, power, steel and cement could lead the way for improving the investment climate,” Rangarajan said.

Industry leaders and economic analysts said the figures were disappointing and reflected a deceleration of manufacturing and services. Slowing factory output and investment would hurt long term growth, they said.

The Confederation of Indian Industry, the country’s main industry

numbers leave no doubt about the criticality of the situation and we once again appeal for a coordinated monetary and fiscal intervention to address this deteriorating situation,” Banerjee said. Other economic commentators felt the GDP numbers were in line with expectations. “Given the headwinds for agriculture due to deficient monsoon and the decline in domestic and global consumption along with the ongoing deterioration in investments, the outlook on GDP is very cautious,” said Shubhada Rao, the chief economist at Yes Bank. — AP

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SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2012

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e niv rsar n

Years

Hip-hop mogul Chris Lighty dies in NYC Page 27

Guests, dress in white and lit by spotlight, gather at the Art Science Museum of the Marina Bay Sands in Singapore. Diner en Blanc or “White Dinner” which started in Paris 24 years ago, made its Asian debut in Singapore. The 888 guests are expected to dress in only white and bring their own food, tables and chairs for a fine dining flash mob style gathering in a secret location made known to them only minutes before the event. — AP

Celebrity culture gone mad in ‘Superstar’ at Venice fest Page 25

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2012

T

he 36-year-old son of Sylvester Stallone and his first wife Sasha Czack was found unresponsive on July 13 at his Studio City apartment and the Los Angeles County Coroner has determined there was evidence of heart disease when he died. Despite earlier allegations of drug use, there were none found in his system at the time of death. A source close to the coroner told gossip website TMZ, it was unusual” for a person Sage’s age to have such advanced coronary problems. An initial autopsy on Sage’s body proved inconclusive. Following Sage’s tragic passing, Sylvester, spoke out about his loss. He said: “When a parent loses a child there is no greater pain. Therefore I am imploring people to respect my talented son’s

Pink

memory and feel compassion for his loving mother Sasha.” He also “begged” for the memory and soul of Sage - who played the actor’s onscreen son in 1990 movie ‘Rocky V’ - to be “left in peace” amid speculation of how he died. He added: “This loss will be felt for the rest of our lives. Sage was our first child and the centre of our universe and I am humbly begging for all to have my son’s memory and soul left in peace.”

wants a ‘basketball team’ of children

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he ‘Get This Party Started’ singer - who has 14-month-old daughter Willow with husband Carey Hart - says the “fiery” youngster has changed her outlook on life and she can’t wait to have more kids with her spouse. She said: “Willow is heavenly. She’s changed the way I look at life. She’s funny and fiery, with Carey’s looks and my attitude. It’s been amazing watching my man stumble awkwardly into love with his baby daughter. “I’d love to have more kids. I’d like to have a big, dysfunctional basketball team full of them.” The American pop star - who split from her motocross champion husband in 2008 before reuniting two years later - admits having a child together has helped to bring some stability to their lives and improved their marriage. She added in an interview with the Daily Mail newspaper: “We still have our moments, but that’s normal. We both come from families affected by divorce, so we have vowed to do things differently.” Pink admits she has become a “walking cliche” of motherhood but thinks being a parent has made her understand life better. She said: “It feels as if everything has started to make sense. I used to be bemused by people who sat around talking about their kids all day. I thought that was a cliche. Well now I’m a walking cliche.”

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he ‘Anger Management’ star revealed he once tried to buy the rights to the comic book and star in a big screen adaptation featuring the superhero and his alter-ego Peter Parker but he was talked out of it. Speaking on podcast ‘Mohr Stories’, he told Jay Mohr: “I had an office at Orion and I brought them ‘Spider-Man’. “I said ‘Look, in a couple of years, I’ll be too old to play Peter Parker. And they said, ‘yeah we’re just thinking that cartoons are not the future, comic books are not the future.’ “And I said, ‘But it’s ‘Spider-Man’. I’m perfect.’ “I had a guy who was going to get the rights for me.” However, the company talked him out of the idea, which Charlie says is something they should regret after later going into bankruptcy. He said: “They were like, ‘Nah, we’re gonna wait.’

They didn’t know s**t.” Despite a turbulent time after being sacked from sitcom ‘Two And A Half Men’, Charlie has again found success on the small screen with the news that his latest show ‘Anger Management’ has been renewed for an epic 90 episode run.

Chuck Saftler, executive vice-president at FX Networks said: “Charlie Sheen and the entire cast did an amazing job in the first 10 episodes, which were produced in a very tight window. I have no doubt that the producers and cast will be able to pull off the Herculean task of producing 90 episodes over the next two years. “We set a very high ratings bar that included some additional hurdles for ‘Anger Management’ to earn its back90 order, and the series met and exceed those metrics.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2012

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he reality TV star boasts a successful fashion and fragrance business along with her TV career but insists nothing has been handed to her and she has put a lot of effort into becoming a strong businesswoman. In the upcoming episode of ‘Keeping Up With The Kardashians’, she tells her brother Rob: “You say you want something, well, no one ever gave me anything, like, I worked.” Claiming Rob just needs to work harder to become successful, she refers to the example of their sisters, saying: “I want something, I make it happen. Kourtney wants something, she makes it happen. Khloe wants something, she

makes it happen. “I’ve always been, like, the type, like, to hustle and do it on your own, so I feel like sometimes when you want help, I’m like, you’re not directing us. I told mom ‘This is exactly what I want to do,’ and she made it happen. We would all help you if you had a little more guidance to us.” However, Rob insists he has been left out because he is a guy.

He says: “Majority of the time together, it’s you three, the three girls.”

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he ‘Resident Evil’ actress - who has daughter Ever, four, with husband Paul W S Anderson - made several visits to her favourite London establishment with one of her friends to acquire the items, but admits they are not in pristine condition. She said: “My gay husband and I - not Paul, but I have a gay husband on top of my husband - managed to steal a whole Lanesborough Hotel tea set. “We got four cups and saucers, a sugar pot, a pot for cream and the only thing we didn’t get was the teapot. “This was all on different trips. But because we stole it, it’s all broken.” Milla admits she used to regard herself as a “bad girl” and got in trouble with police many times when she was younger. She told Empire magazine: “I thought I was a bad girl when I was a kid. “We broke the law all the time, getting onto buses without paying. We’d find wallets and use the credit cards on the weekends, then get arrested for it. I’m so stupid we actually got caught. Also, writing on walls - my name was Rile.”

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he ‘Savages’ actress likes to experiment with cooking when she travels so is always taking local ingredients home with her and has to get them through customs without being found out. She said: “I love to go to cooking school when I travel and I like to smuggle ingredients home. I have smuggled so many ingredients across so many borders, like shallot confit from Thailand, or a new sauce from New Orleans not approved by the FDA. “I’m stuffing them in teddy bears cut in half and put back together again and I’ve gotten really good at it, although now I’m talking about it, I’m sure customs will be all over me next time I go anywhere.” Blake - who is

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lthough the 42-year-old actor is on a strict diet to lose weight for his new role in ‘The Dallas Buyer’s Club’, his spouse Camila Alves isn’t missing out as he makes sure to cook for her every chance he gets. He told Us Weekly magazine: “I’m playing a guy who is sick in my new movie so I need to lose muscle mass. I’m doing a high protein, low carbohydrate diet. I eat small amounts - only five ounces.

“But I’m doing a lot of cooking for Camila. She’s loves a good steak so I’ve been making rib-eye for her when I can.” Matthew also revealed he and Camila try to make sure their kids Levi, four and Vida, two, aren’t spoiled by teaching them to give back. He explained: “We’re doing little things.

We ask them which toy from Santa they want to give away to people in need.” The ‘Lincoln Lawyer’ star’s cooking for Camila will be appreciated by his wife as the Brazilian beauty recently admitted she is not having an easy pregnancy. She said: “This [pregnancy] has been a little different. “Anything you can feel in a pregnancy, I’m feeling in this one. So put it all in the pile, that’s how I’m feeling.”

currently dating actor Ryan Reynolds - also revealed how she has a huge amount of willpower, something which has always been apparent. She told Total Film magazine: “At school, I took on too many clubs and activities and they said, ‘You can’t do all these things’, and I asked why and they said, ‘Because it’s never been done before.’ I said, ‘Great, now you get to see it done for the first time!’ It was a terrible idea because I went to school from 6 am to 10 pm every day and I was miserable but I had to prove I could do it because of this willpower thing.”— Bangshowbiz

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2012

Small Kentucky town is focus of eclipse chasers

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n Kentucky, two-minute events that grab the world’s attention usually play out at Churchill Downs’ racetrack. But in five years, another short-running spectacle will have people looking skyward as this southwestern Kentucky town hits the astronomical jackpot. When a total eclipse of the sun darkens skies on Aug 21, 2017, the show will last longer in a stretch of hilly countryside near Hopkinsville than any place on the planet. It will last two minutes and 40 seconds, not much longer than the Kentucky Derby.

The town of 32,000 near the Tennessee border is already making preparations to cash in on the fortuitous celestial alignment. And like the Derby, run three hours away in Louisville, the eclipse itself will be a blip in time compared to the buildup.

“We will be the Mecca of the solar eclipse because we are the dead center,” said Cheryl Cook, executive director of the Hopkinsville-Christian County Convention and Visitors Bureau.

A few miles northwest of town, the countryside of crops, modest farmhouses and quaint churches is expected to draw bands of scientists and eclipse chasers. They’ll be armed with telescopes and cameras to capture the first total solar eclipse visible from the US mainland since 1979. “If people want to make the absolute most of it, and get every single last millisecond of looking, that’s where you want to be,” said Dean Regas, an astronomer at the Cincinnati Observatory.

Already, local motels are hearing from people wanting to witness the spectacle. At the Hampton Inn & Suites, eclipse chasing groups from Germany and Japan have reserved more than two-dozen rooms, said Jeff Smith, the inn’s general manager.

Smith said it’s a sign of the frenzy to come. “It will be the largest event that this community has ever seen,” he said. Local officials started a Facebook

This photo shows a welcome sign at the downtown area of Hopkinsville, Ky. — AP

page promoting the event. And they coined a slogan, promoting the eclipse as “the most exciting two minutes and 40 seconds in astronomy” - playing off the Derby’s claim as the most exiting two minutes in sports. Mike Mathis, co-owner of the Wood Shed Bar-B-Q & Restaurant, hopes to serve up slabs of barbecue ribs and piles of mutton to hordes of visitors. The eatery is a few miles from the best eclipse-viewing spot. Mathis vowed he won’t jack up his food prices when the big event arrives, and urged fellow merchants to resist the temptation. “Don’t try to gouge the folks so we can draw ‘em in,” he said. Vince Dixon, who runs an ATV repair shop nearby, describes the area as a “secluded little bubble,” but predicted area residents will be welcoming. It’s given him even more incentive to create a campground out of an empty field on his property.

“In my opinion, with the way the economy is, you better welcome them,” he said. “You take what you can get now.” A solar eclipse happens when the moon lines up between the sun and the Earth, casting a lunar shadow on the Earth’s surface and obscuring the solar disk. During a partial solar eclipse, only part of the sun is blotted out.

Total solar eclipses draw anywhere from hundreds to thousands of scientists, tourists and curious observers to areas with good views. There will be a handful of such spectacles around the world before August 2017, but none with good vantage points in the US mainland.

“I’ve only seen one total eclipse in my life, and it is the most incredible experience you’ll ever see,” Regas said. “On the top 10 list of astronomical events, this is No. 1 and No. 2 is way down the list. It’s not even close. “The way the sky just turns this purplish color, the temperature drops very quickly, the stars pop out in the middle of the daytime. It’s eerie. You get an idea of how scary it might have been for the ancients when this came out of the blue.”

The proximity of the prime viewing spot to Hopkinsville was reported earlier by the Kentucky New Era newspaper. The path of the total eclipse will cut a narrow swath across the country. It will start in Oregon and take a path through parts of Idaho, Wyoming, Nebraska, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, slivers of Georgia and North Carolina and then into South Carolina, Regas said.

Along the path in Kentucky and Tennessee, the sky will darken in such places as Paducah, Ky, and Clarksville and Nashville in Tennessee, he said. In Nashville, the total eclipse will last one minute and 47 seconds, he said. In most other parts of the country, a partial solar eclipse will be visible, he said. Scientists urge people to wear protective glasses when viewing a solar eclipse.

Bill Kramer, who runs a website geared toward eclipse chasers, said the crowds could be “more akin to a county fair than a gathering of scientists and astronomers.” “A solar eclipse is a very public event and does not require a tremendous amount of technical support - except to be at the right place at the right time,” Kramer said in an email.

Hopkinsville officials are talking about setting aside viewing areas, Cook said. Parks and a football field are among the possibilities. Seminars featuring astronomers in the days beforehand are being discussed. In one ironic twist, the solar eclipse will share the same Aug. 21 date as a popular piece of local folklore - when a family claimed to see a space ship with aliens land near their home in 1955. The family’s claims are kept alive in the Little Green Men festival near the eclipse-viewing spot.—AP

Dr M N Karassery

Indian writer calls for cyber law enforcement

By Sunil Cherian

D

r M N Karassery, noted Malayalam writer and spokesman of human rights, wants a cyber minister in the Indian parliament to closely monitor the social networking sites. His argument: today’s youth are irresponsible who pass a comment without thinking of its repercussions. Today, an event in Cochin can have its ripples in California and Jakarta, he says. He is not happy with the waves the recent Assam riots between indigenous Bodo people and Bangladeshi migrants have created. India saw the largest migration after the independence era, after a few electronic messages created panic that people from the north east India might be attacked.

Dr Karassery is in Kuwait to receive Kala Kuwait award for his social intervention through writings and speeches.

“We are entangled in a war, a cyber war; a war not on Earth but in virtual space”, he said. The ordinary folks do not know what an email hack is. But their life is affected after an email is hacked. Assam is an example. It has become common that when something happens in Kashmir, someone’s life is threatened in Kanyakumari. The social networking sites have become a platform for spreading rumors and riots.

Someone makes a statement in Facebook that Narayana Guru stood for the untouchables. The youngsters who ‘like’ this statement may not know who guru and what his message was. The mainstream media is accountable for its content. The editor is answerable. But in FB-like sites, anybody can write anything, he said.

Karassery who admits he is a Gandhian writes off Anna Hazare, who frequently conducts hunger strikes against corruption. The true Gandhian spirit is not consistent in Hazare, who seems to be a showpiece, Dr Karassery said.

Karassery is unhappy over how Gandhism is interpreted in today’s India through films like Munna Bhai, a Bollywood blockbuster starring Sanjay Dutt as a Gandhi follower.

“Gandhi’s passive resistance is truly an action”, Karassery said.

But history can only be interpreted, Karassery warns.

History is rooted in a fluid ground. History does not move in a linear style, but two feet forward, two feet backward, forming a cycle. “You have to filter the subjective angle from history”.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2012

Celebrity culture gone mad in ‘Superstar’ at Venice fest

F

rench film “Superstar” shone a harsh spotlight on celebrity culture at the Venice festival this week with the tale of an ordinary man who overnight finds himself the target of a media frenzy. One of 18 films vying for this year’s Golden Lion prize, Xavier Giannoli’s tragi-comic work stars Kad Merad as a hapless Martin who searches in vain for the reason behind his overnight celebrity and in the process discovers himself. “This character is very different from me,” the Algeria-born Merad told AFP in an interview in a garden on the seafront of the Venice Lido.

While his character rejects his newfound celebrity, the 48-year-old actor best known for his 2008 “Welcome to the Sticks” admitted he enjoyed his own. “Celebrity is a bit of a bonus even though it’s a bit complicated. Obviously my job is out of the ordinary and I think celebrity is part of that,” he said. The film starts with Martin being whisked through a hotel into a limo and chased through the streets of Paris at night by paparazzi-a poignant allusion to the 1997 death of Princess Diana in a similar pursuit.

The plot then moves back in time to the day crowds of people suddenly started asking for his autograph and his picture on a metro train on his

way to work, and a journalist played by Cecile de France who takes up his story. The most poignant moment in the film is Martin’s scream of despair during a live television chat show when the obsessive attention reaches its peak. The scream’s meaning is lost on viewers and is quickly imitated on social media.

De France’s character sees Martin as “a messenger” elected by the people to hold up a mirror to a celebrity-obsessed media world, but her interest fades as his celebrity star wanes and popular opinion quickly turns against him. For all the seriousness of its intent, the film still manages to draw laughs-like the obsession with every ordinary detail of celebrity lives or Martin’s struggle to explain he is not bidding for a “true reality” show. Asked about his own attitude towards Internet social networks, Merad said he was cautious. “I am fascinated by social networks. I have a Facebook page but I don’t communicate through them. I just look. I’m a voyeur!” — AFP

Belgian actress Cecile De France (left) and French actor Kad Merad arrive for the screening of “Superstar” during the 69th Venice Film Festival at Venice Lido. — AFP

Spike Lee’s love letter to Michael Jackson rocks Venice

T

he Walker Art Center in Minneapolis tested the boundaries of legitimate art with a film festival devoted to the online cat videos that pervade YouTube and social networks. It’s not unheard of for some cat videos to rack up as many as 50 million YouTube views. Most are simple: a cat tries and fails to jump into a cardboard box, or makes a ridiculously cute noise while eating a spoonful of sour cream.

Some are more cinematic, with tricky angles, animated graphics, mood music and other tricks of the filmmaking trade.

Organizers of Thursday night’s festival said they wanted to find out whether the private experience of viewing the videos online would translate to a shared and social expe-

rience when shown on an outdoor screen on the museum’s grounds. The festival made room for various kinds of cat videos, with categories for comedy, drama, foreign, animated, musical, art-house and documentary. Participants voted on a “People’s Choice” award, and several “lifetime achievements” were handed out to a few of the all-time popular videos. Organizers say what started as a lark quickly took on bigger dimensions when they got thousands of submissions for the festival. — AP

Prince Jackson, La Toya Jackson, Prince Michael Jackson II and Paris Jackson attend the St Paul Saints Vs. The Gary SouthShore RailCats baseball game at US Steel Yard on August 30, 2012 in Gary, Indiana. — AFP

US

director Spike Lee brings together Michael Jackson’s old studio hands and previously unseen behind-thescenes footage for a documentary that premiered yesterday at the Venice film festival. “Bad 25” deliberately leaves out the scandals surrounding the late pop legend in favour of an in-depth look at the making of “Bad” — 25 years after the release of what became one of the best-selling albums of all time. Home videos shot by Jackson himself or by his closest collaborators during rehearsals will delight fans, revealing the king of pop’s impish sense of humour, unflagging creative energy and meticulous attention to detail.

“For me this is a love letter for Michael Jackson,” Lee said at a press conference in Venice, explaining that the film was made in collaboration with the Michael Jackson estate giving access to new documents and videos. “This is a very special day.

Twenty-five years ago today the ‘Bad’ album was released,” said the director. The lifelong fan also said he was “out of it” for a month after Jackson’s death and played his songs every day for a year. “I think that for too many years we’ve concentrated on stuff about Michael Jackson that has nothing to do with the music. This is a time to concentrate on the music, on the genius of Michael Jackson,” he said.

“It was a chance to appreciate his creative process.” John Branca, the documentary’s executive producer and a longtime producer for Jackson, said: “‘Bad; was a real coming out artistically for Michael. We felt it was important to celebrate Michael’s work on the anniversary.” He said the film would be shown to Jackson’s kids Blanket, Paris and Prince. Many of the interviews were shot in the studio where “Bad” was recorded and bring out the still-raw emotions over Jackson’s 2009 shock death from choreographers, sound technicians and musicians who knew him at his best.

The documentary is a treasure trove for nostalgics for big hair and pop beat days, with tributes from singers Justin Bieber, Mariah Carey and Stevie Wonder as well as Lee’s voice heard off camera chuckling during the interviews. Conversations with Martin Scorsese, who filmed the music video for “Bad”, and concerts and footage of screaming fans also bring back memories of the anticipation surrounding the release of the album in preInternet days.

It is perhaps weighed down, however, by the bewildering quantity of the interviews and very little footage of Jackson himself talking about his work. A half-hearted attempt to affirm Jackson’s place in the tradition of African-American soul singers is also perhaps insufficiently explained. The documentary is scheduled for general release next month. — AFP

US film director Spike Lee poses during the photocall of “Bad 25” during the 69th Venice Film Festival yesterday at Venice Lido. “Bad 25” is presented out of competition. — AFP

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2012

Dean

Morgan

is looking for some screen

luck

Tzadok (Matisyahu, left), Em (Natasha Calis, center), Clyde (Jeffrey Dean Morgan, back) and Stephanie (Kyra Sedgwick, right) star in “The Possession.” — MCT

M

This undated publicity photo shows a poster for the documentary film, “2016: Obama’s America.” The conservative film exploring the roots of President Barack Obama’s political views surprised the film industry when it took in $6.5 million to land at No. 7 at the weekend box office ahead of three new releases: the Joseph Gordon Levitt action flick “Premium Rush,” the Kristen Bell comedy “Hit and Run” and the Ashley Greene horror film “The Apparition.” — AP

The Oscar race: So far, it’s looking beastly

I

f the Oscar eligibility period ended yesterday, the race would be all about a little girl and a little movie.

As the Venice Film Festival kicked off on Wednesday, with Telluride and Toronto waiting in the wings and New York to follow, most of the films that are likely to be in contention for the 85th Academy Awards have yet to be unveiled. The next month should bring a bevy of awards heavyweights, from Paul Thomas Anderson’s “The Master” to Ben Affleck’s “Argo,” Ang Lee’s “Life of Pi” to Terrence Malick’s “To the Wonder.”

And the remainder of the year will see the release of Quentin Tarantino’s “Django Unchained,” Kathryn Bigelow’s “Zero Dark Thirty,” Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln” and many more. But the first eight months of the year brought few films likely to square off against those at the Dolby Theatre next February.

From this perspective, first-time director Benh Zeitlin’s lyrical and startling “Beasts of the Southern Wild” looks to have by far the best chance of becoming a serious contender.

And newcomer Quvenzhane Wallis who just turned nine, but who was only five when she auditioned for Zeitlin will all-but-certainly seize Michel Hazanavicius’ 2011 spot as the tongue-

twisting name that Oscar-watchers had better learn to pronounce. (For the record, and for all the presenters who’ll be reading it in upcoming months: It’s Kwa-VEN-ja-nay.)

“Beasts” took the Sundance Film Festival by storm four days before last year’s Oscar nominations were announced, and it remains the only 2012 release that feels like the kind of film Academy voters must come to terms with. They won’t all like it - it’s too ramshackle and weird and indie for the folks who put the likes of “War Horse” and “The Blind Side” on the Best Picture roster in years past - but it is the kind of exhilarating, bracing work that has already captured a passionate following.

And given the Academy’s preferential system of ballot-counting, a small but passionate following will always get better results than ones with broader but more lukewarm support.

Encouraged by reports that “Beasts” drew a good crowd and played well at its official Academy members screening on July 1, I fully expect it to find a spot among this year’s Best Picture nominees - and I fully expect its pintsized leading lady to become the youngest Best Actress nominee in history. — Reuters

ovie fans, those with too much time on their hands, love to ponder the imponderable.

Why did America flock to see “Ted”? How did Tyler Perry build an empire by donning a dress?

What is new about “The Hunger Games,” other than its haven’t-seen-many-movies audience? And why isn’t Jeffrey Dean Morgan a star?

In an era when Hollywood has all but given up that Leo DiCaprio’s voice will ever change and has cast its net far afield looking for macho leading men - Gerard Butler from Ireland, Jason Statham from the UK, and Russell (Crowe), Joel (Edgerton) and Eric (Bana) from Australia - why isn’t the burly-baritoned Morgan the sleepy-eyed heir to Bruce and Sly? “Luck,” Morgan, 46, says. “It’s so much to do with luck and timing. Until I get that piece of luck, I will keep plugging away and hope that this next project is “the one.”

The “one,” this time, is “The Possession,” a horror picture built around Jewish mythology’s “Dybbuk Box,” a container able to contain a demon. Until an innocent (in this case a child) lets it out. Morgan has tried his hand at many genres, but always avoided horror.

“They sent it to me with the caveat, ‘It’s a horror movie.’ I wouldn’t even read it. It sat around for days.

But Ole (director Ole Bornedal) sent me this great (butt)kissing letter, telling me how right I was for this part, referencing other things he’d seen me in, and what I could bring to Clyde. I was so impressed with (his) ability to kiss (butt) that I finally read the script.”

The salty, swarthy Morgan might have broken out had “Watchmen,” which had him playing a rapist-costumed comic book “hero,” been a blockbuster. The graphic novel adaptation “The Losers” actually played like an “Expendables” without the cobwebs, plastic surgery and steroids of the cast. That didn’t blow up, either.

Morgan did not one but two movies set at Woodstock, bombs made by big-name directors

(“Taking Woodstock” and “Peace, Love & Misunderstanding”), so maybe it’s a judgment thing _ his or his agent’s. Then, there was “The Accidental Husband,” cursed to be left unreleased thanks to a studio that went belly up, and “Shanghai,” a Far East period piece with Chow Yun-Fat and John Cusack that was not released in the United States.

Go to the movie buff’s website IMDb.com and here are “Possession” enthusiasts, referring to Morgan as “Jeffrey Dean Anderson” by mistake, or saying “I thought that was (Oscar winner) Javier Bardem” in the trailer, a sentiment film critic Carrie Rickey echoes.

“Whenever I see him, I think ‘Javier Bardem,’” Rickey jokes. “Maybe he needs a Spanish accent or marriage to Penelope Cruz?”

Well, they do look alike. But a more likely answer to Morgan’s big-screen low profile is his work on TV. He broke out on “Grey’s Anatomy,” had a long stint on “Supernatural” and is currently star of “Magic City.”

Working film roles in between TV seasons is tricky for anybody. “The best storytellers right now are in TV, cable,” Morgan says. “That’s the world we’re living in now. And indie film and Hollywood just aren’t making as many movies.”

What an actor ends up doing is picking the best script offered that he or she can film in between TV seasons. Sometimes, that’s a remake of the high schoolersbattle-commie invaders picture “Red Dawn” (due out later this fall). And sometimes, it’s a horror movie. “The horror genre is drowning in a sea of horse (excrement),” Morgan says. “It’s all shaky cameras, found footage, crappy acting, no character development. I didn’t see any of those things in this (“Possession”) script - wellformed characters, a place you could do some acting. A family going through a divorce, a child under attack by a demon, all these things I could relate to. That made it more real to me.” —MCT

Tori Spelling welcomes baby boy

T

here’s a new baby in Tori Spelling’s house. The actress gave birth Thursday to a boy named Finn Davey. His stats? Six pounds, 6 ounces and 20-inches from head to toe. Spelling made the announcement on her website and on Twitter. The baby is the 39-yearold’s fourth child with 44-year-old actor-husband Dean McDermott.

Spelling gave birth to daughter Hattie 10 months ago. She also has a

son Liam, 5; and a daughter, Stella, 4.

McDermott has a son, Jack, from a previous marriage. Spelling said on her website this week that the pregnancy would probably be her last, although she said she was “in love with pregnancy” and called it “the most important job” in her life. — AP In this file photo, actress Tori Spelling poses for a portrait in New York. — AP

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2012

Hip-hop mogul Chris Lighty dies in NYC at 44 C

hris Lighty, a hip-hop mogul who helped the likes of Sean “Diddy” Combs, 50 Cent and Mariah Carey attain not only hit records, but also lucrative careers outside music, was found dead in his New York City apartment Thursday in an apparent suicide. He was 44. He was found at his home in the Bronx with a gunshot to the head and was pronounced dead there, police said. No note was recovered, but a 9 mm handgun was found and there was no sign of forced entry, said Paul Browne, New York police spokesman. The shooting appears to be self-inflicted, authorities said.

Lighty had been a part of the scene for decades, working with pioneers like LL Cool J before starting his own management company, Violator. But he was in the midst of a divorce and had been having recent financial and personal troubles. Twitter was abuzz with condolences just hours after the body was found around 11:30 am. “RIP Chris Lighty,” Fat Joe posted on his account.

“The man that saved my life!” Diddy wrote: “In shock.” Rihanna posted: “Rest peacefully Chris Lighty, my prayers go out to family and loved ones! Dear God please have mercy.” And Mary J Blige wrote: “U never know what can send a person over the edge or make them want 2 keep living. take it easy on people.”

50 Cent said in a statement issued through his publicist that he was deeply saddened by the loss. “Chris has been an important part of my business

This file photo shows hip-hop mogul Chris Lighty in his office in New York. — AP and personal growth for a decade,” he said. “He was a good friend and advisor who helped me develop as an artist and businessman. My prayers are with his family. He will be greatly missed.”

Lighty was raised by his mother in the Bronx as one of six children. He ran with a group called The Violators, the inspiration for the name of his management company, according to the company website. He was a player in the hip-hop game since he was a kid DJ. He rose through the ranks at Rush Management - mogul Russell Simmons’ first company - before eventually founding Violator Management in the

late 1990s. “Today, we lost a hip-hop hero and one of its greatest architects,” Simmons tweeted.

Lighty’s roster ranged from Academy Award-winners Three 6 Mafia to maverick Missy Elliott to up-andcomer Papoose and perpetual star Carey. He made it his mission not so much to make musical superstars, but rather multifaceted entertainers who could be marketed in an array of ways: a sneaker deal here, a soft drink partnership there, a movie role down the road. In a 2007 interview with The Associated Press, Lighty talked about creating opportunities for his stars - a

Chapstick deal for LL Cool J, known for licking his lips, and a vitamin supplement deal for 50 Cent.

“As music sales go down because kids are stealing it off the Internet and trading it and iPod sales continue to rise, you can’t rely on just the income that you would make off of being an artist,” he said at the time. Survivors include his two children. He and his wife, Veronica, had been in the process of divorcing. The case was still listed as active, but electronic records show an agreement to end it was filed in June.

He was also having financial trouble.

City National Bank sued Lighty, whose given name is Darrell, in April, saying he had overdrawn his account by $53,584 and then refused to pay the balance. The case was still pending. He also owed more than $330,000 in state and federal taxes, according to legal filings. His tax problems were much steeper a year ago, but he cleared away millions of dollars in earlier IRS liens last October, after selling his Manhattan apartment for $5.6 million.

Larry Mestel, the CEO of Primary Wave Music, the entertainment company that created the joint venture Primary Violator management last fall with Violator Management, said: “We are extremely shocked and sadden by this tragic news. Chris was a friend, business partner and most of all, an icon, role model and true legend of the music and entertainment industry. He will be missed by many and we send love and support to his family.” — AP

Online pranksters plot Taylor Swift gig for deaf kids C ountry pop diva Taylor Swift could find herself singing to deaf youngsters if social media pranksters have their way. Swift, whipping up buzz for her forthcoming album, is offering to do a concert at whatever school reaps the most votes in a Facebook campaign that requires participants to first “like” her page. Users of imageboard website 4chan responded with a call for mass voting in favor of the Horace Mann School for the Deaf and Hard of Hearingan idea that swiftly went viral Thursday on Twitter and Reddit.

Located in Boston, the school is the oldest public day school of its kind in

the United States, said the Daily Dot, a website that monitors social media trends. “Apparently you can vote once per day, so log back in tomorrow and do the same,” wrote one Reddit user with the handle ThePhenix. “Let’s give these kids the best concert of their lives!”

The contest ends September 23, and while there’s no way to ascertain which school leads the voting, many Reddit users doubted Swift would risk her carefully tailored good-girl image by snubbing a school for the deaf-even if the contest rules seem to give her the last word on where she’ll perform.

Last month a similar hijacking of a

Walmart social media marketing campaign resulted in Miami rapper Pitbull going up to Alaska to perform in the small town of Kodiak. Swift, 22, who already has 34.2 million likes on Facebook, is currently atop the Billboard Hot 100 chart with “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” the first single off her fourth studio album “Red” due out in October.

Notorious for writing songs about ex-boyfriends, she is currently dating Conor Kennedy, 18, a grandson of the slain politician Robert F. Kennedy who has yet to graduate from high school. — AFP

One Direction sets Nov release for album

B

Cher Lloyd performs on NBC’s “Today” show on Thursday, Aug 30, 2012 in New York. — AP

ritish-Irish boy band One Direction took the music industry by storm earlier this year when its debut album topped the US Billboard chart, and now the group is planning a second wave of success with a new record due in November.

The cheeky quintet, who rose to fame in 2010 on UK television talent show “The X Factor”, will release their sophomore album “Take Me Home” on Nov 13, Columbia Records said on Thursday.

“Take Me Home” will feature tracks co-written by the One Direction boys along with British artists such as Ed Sheeran and McFly’s Tom Fletcher. The album’s lead single “Live While We’re Young” will premiere on radio on Sept 24, and be available digi-

tally from Oct 1. One Direction, made up of Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Louis Tomlinson, Harry Styles and Liam Payne, surged onto the US airwaves earlier this year with catchy pop hit “What Makes You Beautiful”, gaining a strong following among teenage girls known as “Directioners”.

The band made Billboard history in March this year, becoming the only UK group to debut at No. 1 with their first album, “Up All Night”, which has sold 12 million records worldwide. The new album comes on the heels of One Direction’s performance at the London Olympics closing ceremony earlier this month and will be linked to their worldwide tour in 2013. — Reuters

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2012

Emerging designers

get a boost from industry leaders

K

A model wears jewelry by Trecy Bleich during a fashion show.

A model wears clothes from Painted Oyster.

im Roxie had dreamed of selling her eco-friendly cosmetics line in a major department store, but how she would accomplish that goal was uncertain. Then executives at Macy’s delivered a lip gloss-painted future, placing Roxie’s brand on Macys.com and in four Macy’s stores, including two in Atlanta.

“It has been so hard to break into the cosmetics industry on a department store level,” said Roxie, 29, who founded LAMIK eight years ago. “(Macy’s executives) really got my product and got very passionate about it. They became my biggest advocates.” Roxie is a graduate of “The Workshop at Macy’s,” a new vendor development program the retail giant launched this year to create business opportunities for multicultural and women-owned retail vendors. The weeklong series had 22 participants, five of whom saw their products everything from apparel to pet accessories - placed in Macy’s stores nationwide.

The program is part of an ongoing trend in which retail’s major players make special efforts to identify up-andcoming talent and help them gain a foothold in a challenging industry. As part of its Southern Designer Showcase, Belk recently hosted a competition for newbie designers.

The 15 winners announced this month will see their designs for sale in Belk stores this spring. At AmericasMart, the Atlanta-based wholesale market for consumer goods, a new section dedicated to emerging designers debuted last week, giving 20 start ups the chance to sell their products to boutiques around the country.

Caroline Hobbs, an Atlantabased designer of the up-cycled clothing line Painted Oyster, had relied on selling her collection at art festivals and at Etsy.com. I had been thinking about doing the apparel mart, but it is so expensive when you are by yourself,” said Hobbs, a former bail bondsman. “How do you get from a cottage industry to where you are shipping to stores and boutiques nationwide? Making this bridge for people like me is really nice.” At AmericasMart, Hobbs hoped to network with boutiques that would be receptive to her comfortable, casual brand of clothing, which includes vintage shirts and ties reworked as dresses, rompers and more. “Even if they don’t buy from me today, I hope to be able

to get my foot in the door as a serious contender,” she said.

Roxie operated her own makeup studios in Houston and Atlanta, but she realized she had a lot to learn about selling to a big department store.

During the weeklong workshop in New York, she learned all about marketing, production and sales. “They want to build your knowledge base so you know how to do business with a major retailer,” she said. “When you’re just meeting with a buyer, you don’t get that kind of information.” Roxie has since increased her production capacity and staff as a result of her partnership with Macy’s, which now retails her makeup at locations in Atlanta, New Orleans and Houston.

The 15 designers in Belk’s Southern Designer Showcase, including two from Georgia, not only will have their apparel and accessories sold in

Laura Scholer talks about her jewelry designs after a fashion show.

select Belk stores and on Belk.com this spring, they will receive manufacturing and merchandising support from the same resources used by Belk, said Belk Fashion Director Arlene Goldstein. For a new designer, that kind of boost is invaluable. But sometimes the benefits of such partnerships are less tangible.

Seeing the response to the brown satin dress and khaki jumpsuit from her EmJha collection on the runway at AmericasMart was satisfying for Atlanta-based designer MJ. After the show, the self-taught designer who bought a sewing machine in 2007 to learn the basics of garment construction sat in her Parisian themed booth with a laptop fired up and buyer sheets ready. “It is a first step out. I want to make sure I am as prepared as I can be,” said MJ, who is currently studying design at the Academy of Art University. “It is such a great opportunity for us because large companies are giving smaller companies the opportunity to showcase what they have.” — MCT

A model wears Haberdashery Eco during a fashion show at AmericasMart Apparel Show for up-and-coming fashion designers in Atlanta, Georgia. — MCT photos

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2012

Brazil Hair Fashion Show

Models display creations by hair stylists during the Hair Fashion Show in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Thursday, Aug 30, 2012. — AP photos

Spain Fashion Week

Models display Spring/Summer designs

by Roberto Verino during the Madrid Mercedes Benz Fashion Week, in Madrid yesterday.

— AP photos

HEALTH

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2012

Fruit company recalls mangoes with salmonella risk WASHINGTON: Federal health officials are telling Americans to avoid Daniella mangoes distributed by a Northern California fruit distributor because they may be contaminated with salmonella that has already sickened more than 100 people in 16 states.

The Food and Drug Administration issued the warning Thursday after Burlingame, Calif.-based Splendid Products recalled five lots of mangoes imported from Mexico. The mangoes carry the Daniella brand sticker with the lot numbers:

3114, 4051, 4311, 4584 or 4959. The FDA says consumers should not eat the fruit and throw it away, if they have any.

The mangoes were sold at various U.S. retailers between July 12 and Aug. 29.

Splendid said it voluntarily recalled the product “out of an abundance of caution,” after consulting government authorities.

Federal health officials are still investigating what caused the outbreak of 103 cases of salmonella Braenderup infections. US and

Canadian authorities are trying to identify which mango brands or sources may have caused the illnesses.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says 78 of the cases were reported in California. No deaths have been reported.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency also recently reported illnesses resulting from the same bacterial strain. US and Canadian retailers have said they will recall or remove Daniellabrand mangoes from stores. —- AP

Food intolerance makes many foods hard to swallow Going against the grain NEW YORK: As a child, you loved eating ice cream cones and drinking glasses of cold, delicious milk. Today, those same dairy treats leave you feeling gassy, bloated, and miserable. Could you be lactose intolerant?

You might be. Up to 20 percent of Americans live with intolerances to ingredients found in foods, most commonly the lactose in milk and the gluten in wheat and other grains. Even foods you ate with ease when you were younger can begin bothering your digestive system as you get older.

“Our bodies do change over time, and people can go many years without a food intolerance or allergy and then develop it,” says Dr. Michelle Hauser, a certified chef and nutrition educator and clinical fellow in medicine at Harvard Medical School.

Lactose intolerance, in particular, becomes more of a problem with age.

“It’s something that’s progressive through your life. What happens is, the gut loses its natural lactase enzyme as we age,” explains Dr. Stanley Rosenberg, assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.

Lactose is a sugar found in milk and other dairy foods. Normally, when you eat dairy, the lactase enzyme, which is produced in your small intestine, breaks lactose down into simpler sugars-glucose and galactose-so your body can digest it.

When you have lactose intolerance, your body doesn’t produce enough of this enzyme, so you have trouble digesting dairy products. Bacteria that live in your gut feast on the undigested lactose, producing the hallmark symptoms of lactose intolerance-gas pain, bloating, nausea, and diarrhea.

What to do: Try switching to dairy products that are easier for your body to digest, such as lactose-free milk, hard cheeses, and yogurt. You can also take lactase supplement pills or drops (Lactaid, Lactrase) before eating dairy to help your body break down lactose. Make up for the milk you’re missing by eating other calcium-rich foods, such as spinach, salmon, and sardines, or by taking a calcium and vitamin D supplement.

Celiac disease is an immune reaction triggered by gluten, a protein found in wheat, rye, oats, and barley. If you have celiac disease and eat a piece of wheat bread, your immune system attacks, going after the tiny fingerlike projections

called villi in your small intestine that help you absorb nutrients from food. This damage may lead to intestinal complaints, such as diarrhea and abdominal pain, as well as to iron and calcium deficiencies.

About 2 million Americans have celiac disease, but researchers are finding that just as many have intestinal symptoms of gluten sensitivity without qualifying for a celiac diagnosis.

“There has been recent acceptance by the medical community that gluten causes symptoms in people who don’t have celiac disease, although the mechanism isn’t clear,” Dr. Rosenberg says.

What to do: If you have celiac disease, going gluten-free can relieve your symptoms, but that’s easier said than done.

You not only have to avoid gluten-containing dietary staples like pasta, cereal, and bread, but you also can’t eat any foods that were prepared on the same surfaces as gluten-containing foods.

Gluten can also hide in places you’d least expect it, including soy sauce, instant coffee, salad dressing, and even some of the medicines you buy at your local pharmacy.

Supermarkets today are devoting increasing amounts of shelf space to gluten-free breads, cereals, and other products, which makes shopping easier for people with celiac disease. Yet there’s no need to go gluten-free if you aren’t sensitive to the protein. In fact, you could be shortchanging your body of essential nutrients by doing so.

“A lot of these gluten-free products are highly processed,” Dr. Hauser says.

“They’re not using whole grains. They have basically no fiber. And they get rid of the B vitamins and magnesium that would be in the wheat flours.” If you do cut back on gluten because you’re sensitive to it, do it in a healthy way by eating nutritious gluten-free grains, such as brown rice and quinoa.

Certain preservatives can trigger a reaction if you’re sensitive to them.

Sulfites, which are found in wine, dried fruits, and certain medicines, can cause symptoms ranging from flushed skin to wheezing. If you’re trying to avoid sulfites, watch out for names like sulfur dioxide, sodium bisulfate, and potassium bisulfite on food labels.

Monosodium glutamate (MSG)— which is sometimes added to enhance the flavor of Asian restaurant meals, and is

used as an additive in other foods-is another ingredient many people claim gives them symptoms ranging from heart palpitations to numbness and headaches.

This so-called “Chinese restaurant syndrome” has been controversial, because studies haven’t been able to confirm its existence. But if MSG seems to bother you, avoid foods containing MSG, glutamic acid, and its salts-which can include hydrolyzed vegetable proteins, hydrolyzed yeast, soy extracts, and protein isolate. Chicken or beef flavorings, bouillon, broths, and soup and rice mixes with flavor packets are some common MSG-containing foods.

Some foods just have a natural proclivity to make us feel uncomfortable. Take beans, for example.

“Those are naturally gas-producing foods,” Dr. Rosenberg says. Taking a product such as Beano before eating a bowl of baked beans or other high-fiber food can help your body digest the complex carbohydrates, making them easier to tolerate.

Artificial sweeteners such as mannitol and sorbitol have a tendency to produce diarrhea-in fact, they’ve been used as laxatives. The simple solution if they bother you is to cut back on or avoid sugar-free chewing gums and other foods in which they’re ingredients.

If you have a reaction after eating a specific food, you might describe it as a “food allergy.” Yet it’s very possible that what you have is actually a food intolerance. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference.

“The problem is, an allergic reaction and an intolerance have a lot of overlapping symptoms,” Dr. Hauser explains.

Here’s how to distinguish a food intolerance from a true allergy: Food allergy refers to an immune response to a particular protein in the food. Depending on the extent of the allergy, even a small amount of a food can lead to a severe and life-threatening reaction, called anaphylaxis, which requires immediate medical attention. Your doctor or allergy specialist can use a blood test or skin test to check for this immune response.

Food intolerance is sensitivity to or difficulty digesting a particular food. The symptoms are uncomfortable but not lifethreatening. Examples of food intolerances include lactose intolerance, sensitivity to food additives such as sulfites or MSG, and food poisoning.—MCT

EL ALTO: Inti employees prepare samples of mentisan in El Alto, Bolivia recently. The ointment — a household name in Bolivia — is manufactured by Inti Laboratories and celebrates its 75th anniversary this year. Originally created by German immigrant Ernesto Schilling in 1937, it is used to treat coughs, flus and colds, clear the respiratory tract, calm rheumatic and neuralgic pain, as well as burns and insect bites. — AFP

More Yosemite tourists infected with deadly virus LOS ANGELES: - Six visitors to California’s famous Yosemite National Park have now been infected with a rare rodent-born virus, two of whom have died, officials said Thursday, in an update on the outbreak. Earlier this week Yosemite authorities closed down all tent cabins in part of Curry Village, a popular lodging area in Yosemite Valley, the tourist hub at the center of the scenic park visited by millions of people every year. The National Park Service (NPS) has written to some 2,900 parties who stayed in the Boystown area tent lodgings between June 10 and August 24, alerting them to keep an eye out for symptoms of hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS).

The disease can take up to six weeks to incubate after exposure to the virus, usually through contact with the urine, droppings or saliva of infected rodents, primarily deer mice. The California Department of Public Health (CDPH) reported four more cases Thursday, for a total of six. A Pennsylvanian and a Californian have died, three others have recovered and one is currently hospitalized but improving. CDPH head Ron Chapman said his department and the NPS are working with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to probe the Yosemite outbreak “and reduce the risk of other visitors becoming ill from this virus.

“CDPH is continuing to monitor cases of Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome in persons who visited Yosemite National Park,” he added. Hantavirus is a rare but serious disease and early medical attention is “critical” to limit its effect. It begins with fever and aches, but can progress rapidly to a life-threatening illness, the NPS said. Since the disease was first identified in 1993 there have been some 60 cases in California and 587 cases nationwide in the United States, around a third of which have been fatal. — AFP

HEALTH

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2012

Mercury, oils from fish at odds in heart health Northern European study

Treatment for varicose veins depends on where problem is occurring WASHINGTON: Varicose veins are enlarged, bulging veins, usually blue or purple, that commonly appear in the legs. They develop when blood pools in veins, causing them to stretch.

Effective treatments are available. But finding the right treatment for your situation depends in large part on where the problem is occurring.

Veins bring blood to the heart from the rest of the body. To do this, the veins in the legs must work against gravity. Contraction of lower limb muscles helps to pump blood back to your heart. Valves in the veins open as blood flows toward the heart, then close to stop blood from flowing backward.

Varicose veins frequently develop when large veins deep in the legs lose their ability to efficiently return blood to the heart. That causes the blood to back up into other veins closer to the surface and bulge outward.

A number of factors can raise a person’s risk for varicose veins. As people age, varicose veins become more common because, over time, wear and tear can affect the valves within veins and make them prone to leak. Smoking and obesity are significant risk factors for varicose veins, as is having a job that requires long periods of standing or sitting. Family history seems to play a role. And women are more likely than men to get varicose veins.

Varicose veins are usually not dangerous, but many people don’t like the way they look. They can also cause symptoms, such as swelling, a feeling of throbbing or heaviness in the leg, and pain after standing. In some cases, skin damage can result from varicose veins. Rarely, a blood clot may form if a large amount of blood pools within a varicose vein. That situation can potentially be serious because a clot that breaks free and travels to the heart or lungs (pulmonary embolism) can be fatal. When considering the best treatment for varicose veins, an important factor is to determine the source of the problem. Using ultrasound to examine veins deep in the leg is often the first step. If those veins are not pumping effectively, treatment needs to be targeted there in order to reduce pressure in the other veins.

If a deep vein requires treatment, a common approach is radiofrequency ablation. During this procedure, a thin probe is inserted into the vein and the

tip of the probe is heated. The heat causes the vein to collapse and seal shut. This does not cause circulation problems because other veins in the leg can take on larger volumes of blood. In addition to radiofrequency ablation, a procedure called ambulatory phlebectomy may be used to remove varicose veins closer to the skin surface through a series of tiny skin punctures. If the deep veins are not affected and varicose veins are not severe, less-invasive treatment options are usually recommended. Wearing compression stockings may help veins and leg muscles move blood more efficiently. —MCT

LONDON: Omega-3 fatty acids and mercury, both found in fish, appear to have opposite affects on heart health, according to a northern European study. Researchers, whose conclusions were published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, looked at data from more than 1,600 men from Sweden and Finland to find that men with high levels of mercury in their body had an increased risk of heart attacks, while those with a high concentration of omega-3s had a lower risk.

Fish are considered part of a healthy diet, but the balance between potential risks and benefits from the two compounds is not clear. Researcher Maria Wennberg said that while the study can’t clarify cause and effect, there are ways to get fish oil naturally without getting a lot of mercury too.

“Fish consumption two to three times per week, with at least one meal of fatty, non-predatory fish (such as salmon) and an intake of predatory fish not exceeding once a week can be recommended,” Wennberg, of Umea University in Sweden, told Reuters Health by email. Predatory fish such as shark, swordfish, kind mackerel and tilefish are at the top of the marine food chain and for that reason concentrate mercury from the environment in their tissues.

The heavy metal is known to be toxic to the nervous system, especially in fetuses and children, and the US Environmental Protection Agency warns women of childbearing age and children against eating predatory fish.

The men in the study submitted hair and blood samples to measure their mercury and omega-3 levels, as well as information on their health and lifestyle.

The average mercury level among the Swedish men was 0.57 micrograms per gram of hair, and more than twice as high in their Finnish peers.

Swedes, however, had higher levels of omega-3s than did Finns. The researchers found that men with at least 3 micrograms of mercury per gram of hair had a somewhat increased risk of heart attacks compared with men with 1 microgram per gram, although they didn’t calculate the exact risk.

But this only held true if the men also had low levels of omega-3 fats. For men with more of the fats, it took higher levels of mercury to see an increased heart attack risk, suggesting the two compounds might have opposite effects on the heart.

The results don’t prove that the high mercury levels were responsible for the increased risk of heart attack, merely that the two are linked.

Dariush Mozaffarian, at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, said that other factors such as less education among those with high mercury levels could also be at work. Previous studies by Mozaffarian, who was not involved in the new work, did not show a link between mercury and heart attacks, but that research involved mercury levels much lower than in the current study. — Reuters

Reshaping the human species MELBOURNE: “A revolution is under way in human reproduction that is comparable in many ways to the revolution in physics that produced the atomic bomb,” wrote Peter Singer, the noted ethicist and philosopher, in the pages of TR in February 1985 (“Technology and Procreation: How Far Should We Go?”). The revolution was the new wave of fertility technology, which seven years before had resulted in the first human baby conceived outside the womb.

Singer felt that in vitro fertilization and other advances, like gene therapy, might “someday give us the power to reshape the human species itself.”

Taken in itself, IVF may seem nothing more than a means of helping some infertile women become pregnant. But it opens the door to an avalanche of technologies that could be far more controversial: the freezing of human embryos for research use, the donation of an embryo from one woman to another, surrogate motherhood, sex selection, gene therapy for inherited diseases ...

Not all of Singer’s predictions turned out to be accurate; genetic engineering of human traits, to name one potential technology he cited, isn’t close to happening.

But his essay is a reminder of the ethical angst created by the fertility breakthroughs of the time. To ethicists such as Singer, then head of the Centre for Human Bioethics at Australia’s Monash University and now a professor at Princeton and the University of Melbourne, the dawning era of biotechnology seemed full of unknown dangers. “Should we tinker with the human gene pool?” he

asked. “If so, in what way?” The new techniques, he wrote, “may even allow us to select for desirable traits as well as against undesirable ones”: This could be done by producing several embryos, identifying their genetic characteristics, and then implanting the most desirable embryo. Eventually, it may even be possible to modify the genetic properties of an embryo before implantation to eliminate defects and build in desirable qualities.

As he was writing, doctors were preparing to use gene therapy to treat a brain disorder called Lesch-Nyhan syndrome (the attempt would be unsuccessful, it turned out). The treatment involved removing bone marrow cells from affected children, genetically altering the cells, and injecting them back into the patient. A logical next step, Singer wrote, would be to use the therapy to treat genetic defects in the womb. And if major defects could be cured, why not minor ones?

In time, we may even decide to build in positive modifications. After all, natural selection has left ample room for improving the human race. And the ethical line between eliminating defects and making positive modifications is difficult to draw. If we learn how to affect intelligence, should we stop short at eliminating mental deficiency? If we eliminate abnormally depressive personalities, would it be wrong to try to produce people who tend to be a little more cheerful than most of us are now? If we eliminate tendencies toward criminal violence, might we not build just a little more kindness into the human constitution?

Singer thought we needed a new system of ethics to deal with our new capabilities.

What future human beings might do with technology was anybody’s guess, but in his mind it was better to think about all the possibilities in advance. (Some countries have tried to limit those possibilities by law: Germany and Norway ban egg donation, while France and Italy deny IVF to single women and gay couples.) Singer saw no problem with a couple using an egg donor if the woman had a genetic defect. But who defined what a “defect” was?

What if the defect is very minor? What if there is no defect at all, but the couple wants a donor egg or sperm from a male or female friend whose intelligence or beauty they consider superior to their own? A California sperm bank is already offering selected women the sperm of Nobel Prizewinning scientists.

Singer noted that some people feared a darker outcome. If we could make ourselves smarter or more beautiful, they mused, a government might be just as capable of using genetic modifications to make us docile. Here, at least, he felt we had nothing to worry about.

If we have succeeded in keeping our freedom in the age of television, snooping devices, and computers, we should be able to cling to it when we have the means to manipulate genetic traits as well. The technical ability to suppress liberty has been with us for a long time. It is our determination to prevent our rulers from exercising this ability that has kept us free. —MCT

TV listings

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2012

23:15 Ben 10 23:40 Chowder 03:30 I Was Bitten 04:25 Daniel And Our Cats 05:20 Monkey Life 05:45 Snake Crusader With Bruce George 06:10 Animal Airport 06:35 Animal Airport 07:00 Ned Bruha: Skunk Whisperer 07:25 Meerkat Manor 07:50 Chris Humfrey’s Wildlife 08:00 Animal Cops Houston 08:15 Weird Creatures With Nick Baker 09:10 Dick ‘n’ Dom Go Wild 09:35 Breed All About It 10:05 Crocodile Hunter 11:00 Dogs 101 11:55 Michaela’s Animal Road Trip 12:50 New Breed Vets With Steve Irwin 13:45 New Breed Vets With Steve Irwin 14:40 New Breed Vets With Steve Irwin 15:35 New Breed Vets With Steve Irwin 16:30 New Breed Vets With Steve Irwin 17:25 New Breed Vets With Steve Irwin 18:20 Wildest Latin America 19:15 Galapagos 20:10 Great Ocean Adventures 21:05 Wild France 22:00 Bad Dog 22:55 Dogs 101: Specials 23:50 Untamed & Uncut

03:05 Saturday Kitchen 2008/09 03:30 Saturday Kitchen 2008/09 03:55 Saturday Kitchen 2008/09 04:20 MasterChef 04:45 Living In The Sun 05:40 Living In The Sun 06:30 MasterChef 07:00 Antiques Roadshow 07:55 Antiques Roadshow 08:45 Antiques Roadshow 09:40 Antiques Roadshow 10:30 Antiques Roadshow 11:25 Masterchef: The Professionals 11:55 Masterchef: The Professionals...

12:20 James Martin’s Favourite Feasts 12:45 Bargain Hunt 13:30 Bargain Hunt 14:15 Extreme Makeover: Home Edition 15:00 Extreme Makeover: Home Edition 15:40 Come Dine With Me 16:35 Antiques Roadshow 17:25 Antiques Roadshow 18:20 Antiques Roadshow 19:15 Antiques Roadshow 20:05 Antiques Roadshow 21:00 Cash In The Attic 21:45 Cash In The Attic 22:30 Bargain Hunt 23:20 Bargain Hunt

03:00 03:10 03:30 04:00 04:30 05:00 05:10 05:30 06:00 06:30 07:00 07:30 08:00 08:30 09:00 09:30 10:00 10:10 10:30 11:00 11:10 11:30 12:00 12:10 12:30 13:00 13:10 13:30 14:00 14:30 15:00

BBC World News Weekend World One Day In BBC World News Mishal Husain Meets BBC World News World Features Trading Secrets BBC World News Fast Track BBC World News Working Lives BBC World News Middle East Business Report BBC World News Click BBC World News Weekend World One Day In BBC World News World Football Focus Mishal Husain Meets BBC World News World Features Mixed Britannia BBC World News World Features Newsnight BBC World News Our World BBC World News

03:00 04:00 05:00 05:45 06:00 07:00 07:30 08:00 08:15 08:30 09:00 09:15 09:30 10:00 10:30 11:00 12:00 12:30 13:00 13:30 14:00 14:30 15:00 15:30 16:00 16:30 17:00 17:30 18:00 18:15 18:30 19:00 19:30 20:00 20:30 21:00 21:30 22:00 23:00 23:30

BEHIND ENEMY LINES ON OSN ACTION HD 15:10 15:30 16:00 16:15 16:30 17:00 17:30 18:00 18:10 18:30 19:00 19:30 20:00 20:30 21:00 21:15 21:30 22:00 22:30 23:00 23:10 23:30

Weekend World One Square Mile BBC World News Sport Today Fast Track BBC World News Dateline London BBC World News World Features Trading Secrets BBC World News Final Score BBC World News Working Lives BBC World News Sport Today Fast Track BBC World News Click BBC World News World Features Dateline London

03:00 03:25 03:50 04:15 04:40 05:00 05:25 05:50 06:00 06:15 06:35 07:00 07:25 07:50 08:15 08:40 08:55 09:15

Dexter’s Laboratory Tom & Jerry Looney Tunes The Scooby Doo Show Johnny Bravo The Flintstones The Jetsons Wacky Races Johnny Bravo Dexter’s Laboratory A Pup Named Scooby-Doo Bananas In Pyjamas Jelly Jamm Baby Looney Tunes Gerald McBoing Boing Ha Ha Hairies Pink Panther And Pals The Garfield Show

09:40 10:05 10:30 10:55 11:20 11:30 11:55 12:20 12:45 13:00 13:10 13:35 14:00 14:15 14:40 15:30 16:20 16:45 17:00 17:25 17:50 18:05 18:30 20:10 20:30 21:00 21:25 21:50 22:15 22:40 23:05 23:20 23:45

Tom & Jerry Tales Sylvester & Tweety Mysteries What’s New Scooby-Doo? The Looney Tunes Show Dexter’s Laboratory Johnny Bravo Help! It’s The Hair Bear Bunch Pink Panther And Pals The Garfield Show Wacky Races Dastardly And Muttley The Scooby Doo Show Dexters Laboratory Dexter’s Laboratory The Garfield Show Looney Tunes Tom & Jerry Tom & Jerry Pink Panther And Pals Pink Panther And Pals Johnny Bravo Johnny Bravo Dexter’s Laboratory: Ego Trip The Looney Tunes Show Tom & Jerry Tales Sylvester & Tweety Mysteries The Garfield Show What’s New Scooby-Doo? Droopy & Dripple Scooby-Doo And Scrappy-Doo Popeye The Jetsons Duck Dodgers

03:00 The Amazing World Of Gumball 03:25 Ben 10 03:50 Adventure Time 04:15 Powerpuff Girls 04:40 Generator Rex

05:05 Ben 10: Ultimate Alien 05:30 Ben 10: Ultimate Alien 05:55 Angelo Rules 06:00 Ed, Edd n Eddy 06:25 Casper’s Scare School 07:00 The Powerpuff Girls 07:15 Hi Hi Puffy Ami Yumi 07:40 Total Drama: Revenge Of The Island 08:05 The Amazing World Of Gumball 08:30 Adventure Time 08:55 Level Up 09:20 Batman Brave And The Bold 09:45 Green Lantern: The Animated Series 10:10 Thundercats 10:35 Hero 108 11:00 Adventure Time 11:25 Grim Adventures Of...

12:15 Courage The Cowardly Dog 13:05 Ben 10: Ultimate Alien 13:30 Ben 10: Ultimate Alien 13:55 Powerpuff Girls 14:45 Thundercats 15:10 Generator Rex 15:35 Ben 10 16:00 Ed, Edd n Eddy 16:50 The Amazing World Of Gumball 17:15 Adventure Time 17:40 Regular Show 18:05 Total Drama: Revenge Of The Island 18:30 Powerpuff Girls 18:55 Courage The Cowardly Dog 19:45 Johnny Test 20:00 Ben 10: Ultimate Challenge 20:25 Ben 10: Alien Force 20:50 Ben 10: Alien Force 21:25 Redakai: Conquer The Kairu 21:50 Grim Adventures Of...

22:00 Codename: Kids Next Door 22:50 Ben 10

Anderson Cooper 360 Piers Morgan Tonight Quest Means Business CNN Marketplace Africa The Situation Room World Sport News Special World Report CNN Marketplace Africa Backstory World Report CNN Marketplace Middle East News Special World Sport News Special The Best Of The Situation Room World Report Backstory The Brief Inside Africa World Report News Special Talk Asia News Special News Special Backstory International Desk African Voices CNN Marketplace Europe CNN Marketplace Africa The Brief World Sport News Special International Desk Inside Africa International Desk News Special The Best Of The Situation Room World Report News Special

03:00 Fifth Gear 03:25 How Do They Do It? Turbo Specials 04:20 Weird Or What?

05:15 How Do They Do It? 05:40 How It’s Made 06:05 American Loggers 07:00 How It’s Made 07:25 Battle Machine Bros 08:15 Mega Builders 09:10 Extreme Engineering 10:05 Man Made Marvels Asia 10:55 Man, Woman, Wild 11:50 Alaska’s Great Race 12:45 Ultimate Survival 13:40 Ultimate Survival 14:35 Flying Wild Alaska 15:30 Swamp Loggers 16:25 River Monsters 17:20 Hillbilly Handfishin’ 18:15 Against The Elements 19:10 Finding Bigfoot 20:05 Gold Rush 21:00 Deadliest Catch 21:55 Hillbilly Handfishin’ 22:50 River Monsters 23:45 Robson Green’s Extreme Fishing Challenge

03:05 03:35 04:25 05:15 06:05 07:00 07:25 07:50 08:40 08:43 09:10 09:40 10:30 11:20 12:10 13:00 13:50 14:45 15:35 16:00 16:25 16:28 16:55 17:25

The Gadget Show Scrapheap Challenge Race To Mars Kings Of Construction What’s That About?

Game Changers Game Changers Bang Goes The Theory Head Rush Stunt Junkies Stunt Junkies Man Made Marvels Asia Sport Science Sport Science Sport Science Sport Science Sport Science Curiosity: How Does Life Begin?

Patent Bending Patent Bending Head Rush The Tech Show The Tech Show Cosmic Collisions

18:15 18:40 19:30 20:20 21:10 21:35 22:00 22:50 23:40

Game Changers Creating Synthetic Life Prophets Of Science Fiction Weird Or What?

Game Changers Game Changers Prophets Of Science Fiction Weird Or What?

Human Nature

03:15 Behind The Scenes 03:40 Extreme Close-Up 04:10 Celebrity Slimdowns: Losing The Weight 05:05 THS 06:00 THS 07:50 Behind The Scenes 08:20 E! News 09:15 Keeping Up With The Kardashians 10:15 Keeping Up With The Kardashians 11:10 Keeping Up With The Kardashians 12:05 E! News 13:05 Scouted 14:05 Kourtney & Kim Take New York 15:00 Khloe And Lamar 15:25 Khloe And Lamar 15:55 Ice Loves Coco 16:25 Ice Loves Coco 16:55 Kourtney & Kim Take New York 17:55 E! News 18:55 Keeping Up With The Kardashians 19:55 Keeping Up With The Kardashians 20:55 Style Star 21:25 Fashion Police 22:25 E! News 23:25 Chelsea Lately 23:55 Keeping Up With The Kardashians

03:45 04:30 05:20 06:10 07:00 07:50 08:40 09:30 09:55 10:20 11:10 12:00 12:50 13:40 14:30 14:55 15:20 16:10 17:00 17:50 18:40 19:05 19:55 20:20 21:10 22:00 22:50 23:40

Extreme Forensics The Haunted Crime Scene Psychics Disappeared FBI Files Murder Shift Mystery Diagnosis Real Emergency Calls Who On Earth Did I Marry?

On The Case With Paula Zahn Disappeared Forensic Detectives Murder Shift Mystery Diagnosis Real Emergency Calls Who On Earth Did I Marry?

On The Case With Paula Zahn Disappeared Forensic Detectives Undercover Who On Earth Did I Marry?

On The Case With Paula Zahn Stalked: Someone’s Watching Nightmare Next Door Couples Who Kill The Haunted Ghost Lab A Haunting

03:00 Weird & Wonderful Hotels 03:30 Weird & Wonderful Hotels 04:00 Warrior Road Trip 05:00 Extreme Tourist Afghanistan 06:00 Wheel2Wheel 07:00 Weird & Wonderful Hotels 07:30 Weird & Wonderful Hotels 08:00 Warrior Road Trip 09:00 Deadliest Journeys 09:30 Cycling Home From Siberia With Rob Lilwall 10:00 Don’t Tell My Mother 10:30 Don’t Tell My Mother 11:00 Kimchi Chronicles 11:30 Kimchi Chronicles 12:00 Gone to save the planet 12:30 Gone to save the planet 13:00 Extreme Tourist Afghanistan 14:00 Wheel2Wheel 15:00 Weird & Wonderful Hotels 15:30 Weird & Wonderful Hotels 16:00 Warrior Road Trip 17:00 Departures 18:00 Adventure Wanted 19:00 Long Way Down 20:00 On Surfari 20:30 On Surfari

TV listings

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2012 21:00 22:00 22:30 23:00 23:30

Treks In A Wild World Bondi Rescue: Bali Bondi Rescue: Bali The Best Job In The World The Best Job In The World

03:00 Weird & Wonderful Hotels 03:30 Weird & Wonderful Hotels 04:00 Warrior Road Trip 05:00 Extreme Tourist Afghanistan 06:00 Wheel2Wheel 07:00 Weird & Wonderful Hotels 07:30 Weird & Wonderful Hotels 08:00 Warrior Road Trip 09:00 Deadliest Journeys 09:30 Cycling Home From Siberia With Rob Lilwall 10:00 Don’t Tell My Mother 10:30 Don’t Tell My Mother 11:00 Kimchi Chronicles 11:30 Kimchi Chronicles 12:00 Gone to save the planet 12:30 Gone to save the planet 13:00 Extreme Tourist Afghanistan 14:00 Wheel2Wheel 15:00 Weird & Wonderful Hotels 15:30 Weird & Wonderful Hotels 16:00 Warrior Road Trip 17:00 Departures 18:00 Adventure Wanted 19:00 Long Way Down 20:00 On Surfari 20:30 On Surfari 21:00 Treks In A Wild World 22:00 Bondi Rescue: Bali 22:30 Bondi Rescue: Bali 23:00 The Best Job In The World 23:30 The Best Job In The World

07:25 Fish Warrior 08:20 World’s Creepiest Killers 09:15 Caught In The Act 10:10 Snake Wranglers 10:35 Snake Wranglers 11:05 Python Hunters 12:00 Restless Planet 13:00 World’s Deadliest Animals 14:00 Built for the Kill 15:00 Dangerous Encounters With Brady Barr 16:00 Dangerous Encounters 17:00 Python Hunters 18:00 Caught In The Act 19:00 Monster Fish 20:00 World’s Deadliest Animals 21:00 Built for the Kill 22:00 Dangerous Encounters With Brady Barr 23:00 Dangerous Encounters

04:00 06:00 08:00 PG15 10:00 12:00 14:00 PG15 16:00 PG15 18:00 20:00 22:00

My Bloody Valentine-R Rocky v-PG15 True Justice: Deadly Crossing-

03:00 05:00 07:00 09:00 11:00 13:00 15:00

16 To Life-PG15 Shanghai-PG15 Not Since You-PG15 Goodbye Solo-PG15 The Hole-PG15 The Silent Fall-PG15 Bond Of Silence-PG15

The Recruit-PG15 Behind Enemy Lines-PG15 True Justice: Deadly CrossingJesse Stone: Innocents LostBehind Enemy Lines-PG15 Sniper: Reloaded-18 Warbirds-PG15

17:00 19:00 21:00 23:00

Chasing 3000-PG15 Season Of The Witch-PG15 30 Minutes Or Less-18 Biutiful-18

03:00 Whitney 03:30 Melissa & Joey 04:30 The Tonight Show With Jay Leno 06:00 Friends 07:00 Late Night With Jimmy Fallon 08:30 Whitney 09:30 The Simpsons 10:00 Modern Family 11:00 The Tonight Show With Jay Leno 12:00 Friends 12:30 Friends 14:00 Melissa & Joey 14:30 Modern Family 15:00 The Simpsons 15:30 The Daily Show With Jon Stewart 16:00 The Colbert Report 16:30 Friends 17:00 Late Night With Jimmy Fallon 18:00 Man Up! 18:30 Man Up! 19:00 The Simpsons 19:30 The Office 20:00 The Tonight Show With Jay Leno 21:00 The Daily Show With Jon Stewart 21:30 The Colbert Report 22:00 Saturday Night Live 23:00 Seinfeld 23:30 Late Night With Jimmy Fallon

03:00 Castle 04:00 Glee

05:00 07:00 08:00 09:00 10:00 11:00 12:00 13:00 14:00 15:00 16:00 17:00 18:00 18:30 19:00 20:00 21:00 22:00 23:00

03:00 04:00 05:00 06:00 07:00 08:00 09:00 10:00 11:00 12:00 12:30 13:00 14:00 15:00 16:00 16:30 17:00 18:00 19:00 20:00 21:00 22:00 23:00

Good Morning America Smallville Castle The Ellen DeGeneres Show Glee The View Jane By Design Jane By Design Touch Live Good Morning America Smallville The Ellen DeGeneres Show Emmerdale Coronation Street Drop Dead Diva C.S.I. C.S.I. New York C.S.I. Miami Glee

Grey’s Anatomy Jane By Design Jane By Design Warehouse 13 Psych Private Practice Jane By Design Jane By Design Psych Emmerdale Coronation Street The Ellen DeGeneres Show Private Practice Warehouse 13 Emmerdale Coronation Street The Ellen DeGeneres Show Private Practice Drop Dead Diva C.S.I. C.S.I. New York C.S.I. Miami Grey’s Anatomy

03:00 A Traveler’s Guide To The Planets 04:00 Hunter Hunted 05:00 The Known Universe 06:00 Racing To America 07:00 Departures 08:00 Storm Worlds 09:00 Britain’s Greatest Machines With Chris Barrie 10:00 World’s Toughest Fixes 11:00 A Traveler’s Guide To The Planets 12:00 Hunter Hunted 13:00 The Known Universe 14:00 Warrior Road Trip 15:00 Redwoods: Anatomy of A Giant 16:00 Bin Laden’s Spy In America 18:00 World’s Toughest Fixes 19:00 Blowdown 20:00 Insect Wars 21:00 Alaska State Troopers 22:00 Pirate Patrol 23:00 One Ocean

04:00 Labor Pains-PG15 06:00 Kung Fu Dunk-PG15 08:00 The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy-PG 10:00 Bubble Boy-PG15 12:00 Flipped-PG 14:00 What’s The Worst That Could Happen?-PG15 16:00 Bubble Boy-PG15 18:00 Hitch-PG15 20:00 Dinner For Schmucks-PG15 22:00 The Legend Of Awesomest Maximus-18

03:30 05:15 07:30 09:00 11:00 PG15 12:45 15:15 17:00 18:45 21:00 PG15 23:00

Cruel Intentions-18 2001: A Space Odyssey-PG15 Citizen Jane-PG Family Gathering-PG15 An Invisible Sign Of My Own2001: A Space Odyssey-PG15 Family Gathering-PG15 Blind Mountain-PG15 Evita-PG Ike: Countdown To D-DayPlease Give-18

04:15 African Cats: Kingdom Of Courage-PG 05:45 The LXD: The Uprising BeginsPG15 07:15 The LXD: Secrets Of The RaPG15 09:00 Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows Pt.1-PG15 11:30 Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows Pt.2-PG15 14:00 The LXD: Secrets Of The RaPG15 16:00 Every Jack Has A Jill-PG15 17:45 Fast Five-PG15 20:00 The River Why-PG15 22:00 The Switch-18

04:00 Emilie Jolie-PG 06:00 The Great Bear-PG15 08:00 The Ugly Duckling Goes On Holiday-FAM 10:00 I’ll Be Home For Christmas-PG 12:00 Emilie Jolie-PG 14:00 The Wind In The Willows-PG 16:00 Spy Kids: All The Time In The World-PG 18:00 I’ll Be Home For Christmas-PG 20:00 Turandot-PG 22:00 The Wind In The Willows-PG

03:45 Dangerous Encounters With Brady Barr 04:40 Wildlife Rescue Africa 05:35 Wildlife Rescue Africa 06:30 Fish Warrior 07:25 Fish Warrior 08:20 World’s Creepiest Killers 09:15 Caught In The Act 10:10 Snake Wranglers 10:35 Snake Wranglers 11:05 Python Hunters 12:00 Restless Planet 13:00 World’s Deadliest Animals 14:00 Built for the Kill 15:00 Dangerous Encounters With Brady Barr 16:00 Dangerous Encounters 17:00 Python Hunters 18:00 Caught In The Act 19:00 Monster Fish 20:00 World’s Deadliest Animals 21:00 Built for the Kill 22:00 Dangerous Encounters With Brady Barr 23:00 Dangerous Encounters

03:45 Dangerous Encounters With Brady Barr 04:40 Wildlife Rescue Africa 05:35 Wildlife Rescue Africa 06:30 Fish Warrior

03:00 Army Of Darkness-18 05:00 Hackers-PG15 07:00 Riddles Of The Sphinx-PG15 09:00 Tracker-PG15 11:00 Hackers-PG15 13:00 The Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course-PG15 15:00 Tracker-PG15 17:00 The Craigslist Killer-PG15 18:45 Windtalkers-PG15 21:00 Warbirds-PG15 23:00 Circle Of Eight-18

BOND OF SILENCE ON OSN CINEMA

03:00 MSNBC The Ed Show 04:00 MSNBC The Rachel Maddow Show 06:00 NBC Nightly News 06:35 ABC Nightline 07:00 ABC World News W/ Diane Sawyer 07:30 Live NBC Nightly News 08:00 MSNBC The Rachel Maddow Show 09:00 MSNBC The Ed Show 10:00 MSNBC Morning Joe 13:00 MSNBC Caught On Camera 14:00 Live NBC Saturday Today Show 16:00 MSNBC Up With Chris Hayes Saturday 17:57 Live MSNBC Hardball W/ Chris Matthews 18:38 Live MSNBC The Ed Show 19:19 Live MSNBC The Rachel Maddow Show 20:00 Live ABC 20/20 21:00 MSNBC Melissa Harris-Perry 23:00 MSNBC Investigates

04:15 Mr. Popper’s Penguins-PG 06:00 B-Girl-PG15 08:00 Tomorrow, When The War Began-PG15 10:00 Kung Fu Magoo-FAM 11:45 Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows Pt.2-PG15 14:00 Ballistica-PG15 16:00 Tomorrow, When The War Began-PG15 18:00 Morning Glory-PG15 20:00 The River Why-PG15 22:00 The Edge Of Love-PG15

03:00 10:00 10:30 12:30 14:30 17:00 18:00 20:00 22:00

Cricket One Day International European Tour Weekly Live Rugby Union ITM Cup Live NRL Premiership AFL Premiership Trans World Sport Live Rugby Union Currie Cup Live Rugby Union Currie Cup Rugby Union ITM Cup

04:00 05:00 07:00 10:00 10:30 12:30 13:30 14:00 18:00 20:30 21:30

WWE Bottomline NRL Premiership Live AFL Premiership Futbol Mundial Live NRL Premiership Trans World Sport PGA European Tour Weekly Live PGA European Tour AFL Premiership UFC Countdown Live Super League

04:30 Senior European Tour Highlights 05:30 Golfing World 06:30 Total Rugby 07:00 European PGA Tour 11:30 Total Rugby 12:00 NRL Full Time 12:30 Live NRL Premiership 14:30 NRL Premiership 16:30 Total Rugby 17:00 World Match Racing Tour Highlights 18:00 Live Sailing World Match Racing Tour 20:00 NRL Premiership 22:00 European PGA Tour

03:00 04:00 05:00 06:00 07:00 09:00 10:00 11:00 11:30 12:30 15:30 16:30 18:30 19:30 20:30 21:00 22:00 23:00

WWE Bottomline UFC Unleashed UFC 151 Countdown UFC Unleashed WWE SmackDown WWE Bottomline WWE Vintage Collection V8 Supercars Extra V8 Supercars Highlights AFL Premiership WWE Bottomline WWE SmackDown WWE NXT UFC The Ultimate Fighter V8 Supercars Extra V8 Supercars Highlights V8 Supercars Highlights UFC 151 Countdown

03:00 04:00 05:00 06:00 07:00 08:00 09:00 10:00 11:00 12:00 13:00 14:00 15:00 16:00 17:00 18:00 19:00 20:00 21:00 22:00

Treasure Houses Of Britain The Universe The Korean War In Colour Soviet Storm: WWII In The East America: The Story Of The U.S. America: The Story Of The U.S. America: The Story Of The U.S. American Pickers American Pickers American Pickers America: The Story Of The U.S. America: The Story Of The U.S. America: The Story Of The U.S. Top Shot Treasure Houses Of Britain The Universe The Universe Top Shot Seeking Salvage Ancient Aliens

WHAT’S ON SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2012

Vanitha Vedi meet Indian Ambassador

T

he new office bearers of Vanitha Vedi Kuwait met the Indian Ambassador to Kuwait on 20/8/2012 and discussed various matters regarding the difficulties of the Indian Community in Kuwait.

The discussion focused mainly the issues related to Indian House Maids, difficulties facing the nurses who reached here through certain recruitment agencies, hike in air fares especially during summer as well as festival seasons, and also the periodic fee hikes in The Indian Schools in Kuwait.

In addition to that they talked

about the fees charging for the affidavits and other documents by The Indian Embassy. The delegates briefed about the forthcoming Onam Programme ‘Ragolsavam 2012” which is scheduled to be on 28th September 2012 at Indian Community School, Khaithan by Vanitha Vedi Kuwait. The pioneers who were in the meeting were Valsamma George, Shejamala Narayanan, SajithaScaria, Sumathy Babu, Shantha.R.Nair, Shoba Suresh, Rema Ajith, Sharlet Albert, Valsa Stanly, Sheela Thomas and Prasanna Ramabhadran.

Farewell to Farooq

G

oodbyes are not the end. They simply mean I’ll miss you, until we meet again! We hope this is true with S. M. Farooq’s farewell, and we get to meet him soon enough in his native land of Mangalore.

S.M. Farooq is an Executive Member of Tulu Koota Kuwait and well known was his charming ways in the Association.

He is leaving Kuwait for good on a noble cause and the members of Tulu Koota Kuwait bid him farewell with a heavy heart at the New Salmiya Playschool, Rumaithiya on 24th August 2012. He was felicitated with shawl and

memento by the President, Ramesh Kidiyoor, and Advisors; Sudhakar Shetty and Mrs Swarna Shetty.

The above dignitaries and the assembled members spoke high about Farooq. Ramesh Kidiyoor, said it was a real loss to the Association to miss his selfless services and expressed best wishes for his future and wished good health for his father.

Sudhakar Shetty fondly remembered how he always spoke and stood up for what he thought was right. He also thought that it was very proud moment for us to know that a son is leaving the comforts of this land to give a

helping hand to his father. Mrs Swarna Shetty, who took him as a friend, a brother and a mentor said that he was an excellent worker for the association.

Other members of the association Suresh Salian, Harish Bhandary, Yadunath Alva, Sathya Narayan and Chandrahas Shetty spoke very fondly about Farooq. The farewell program was conducted by the Vice President, Tharendra Shettigar and concluded with a vote of thanks by General Secretary, Sathya Narayan, followed by lunch. Tulu Koota Kuwait wishes Farooq the very best in all his future endeavors.

Afroz Alam: Fun-o-shakhsiyat SEND US YOUR INSTAGRAM PICS

W

hat’s more fun than clicking a beautiful picture? Sharing it with others!

This summer, let other people see the way you see Kuwait - through your lens. Friday Times will feature snapshots of Kuwait through Instagram feeds. If you want to share your Instagram photos, email us at instagram@kuwaittimes.net

T

he famous publishing house of Varanasi (India), “Tahreik-e-Adab” recently release a very beautiful Book “Afroz Alam: Fun-oShakhsiyat (Afroz Alam: Art & Personality)”. The book has been compiled by well known senior Indian literary personality Sayeda Nasreen Naqaash from Srinagar, India.

The book consists of articles, comments and views of 55 renowned Urdu Professors, laureates and philosophers. The young writer Afroz Alam, a very well known literary personality in Urdu world belongs to Bihar state in India and has been residing in Kuwait since 1999.

The book is dedicated to Dr. Abrar Rahmani, Dr Kalim Qaiser, Prof. Sharfuddin Sharf, Janaab Rashid Khan and Mohtarama Khatija Khanum.

The book consists of 252 printed pages in addi-

tion to 16 sheets of Afroz Alam’s photographs with globally famous personality in the field of Urdu literature on different occasions in India, Kuwait and other countries.

In addition to his deep involvement in literary activities, he is also founder member of Arbab e Fikr o Fun; an association of Urdu poets, active member of Writers’ Forum, Kuwait; a multi lingual association of Indian writers and poets in Kuwait and also co editor of famous Urdu literature magazines circulate thru electronic media and attached to some literary websites His eight books have already been published by various publishing houses. Many literary and social figures from all over the globe congratulated Afroz Alam for this inordinate achievement.

WHAT’S ON SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2012

Embassy Information

Markose reconciles with musical issues

By Sunil Cherian

P

opular Indian devotional and playback singer KG Markose, 55, is at now peace with himself, after a year that gave him rumors that he is at war with India’s divine voice Yesudas. But as a singer known for his soft, melodious and devotional songs, he finds the musicology of the present hard to digest. “Today’s successful music director is an operator, remixing the old successful melodies”, he said, in a low, but reconciled tone.

Markose is in Kuwait to take part in Keraleeyam, a program organized by Kala, Kuwait. Markose, who has the record of completing 3,500 concert stages to his credit, is teaming up with the local musicians for the Kala program. “I can sing for 3 and half hours on stage without difficulty”, he said.

“This is the result of the years I’ve put myself into the field of music”.

Markose whose family has a large number of doctors took to music after being influenced by his grandmother who was a choir member at the CSI church. His white dress, commonly mistaken as an imitation of singing

sensation Yesudas, was originally from his father who always appeared in white clothes, a common attire for doctors that time.

At the beginning of his music career Markose took concert programs more seriously than learning of music.

“Although my father was a doctor, he was not a moneymaker”, Markose said.

“We did have financial problems and my sisters had to be married off. So I took more stage programs”.

Markose who shot to fame after the song Kannippoomanam from the 1982 film Kelkkatha Sabdam says his Yesudas-like voice was distorted in the recording studio to make it weak. “The recording was done at Tharangini (studio owned by Yesudas) and there were some technicians who did not like my voice being compared with that of Yesudas. So they played with the spool and my voice was like stretched”.

But that is a forgotten note of the past. Markose has come away from grudges, rumors and his own ‘takenaway’ stardom. He admits his adoration for Yesudas, a singer, he says, can sing in low, medium and high pitches and worthy of imitation.

Places of interest Sadu House Al Sadu House stands on Arabian Gulf Street near the National Museum, representing one of the last preserved preoil -era dwellings in Kuwait. Al Sadu House became a centre for Bedouin art and the sale of traditional goods In 1979. Visitors can observe Bedouin women weaving at their looms, handmaking carpets, camel bags and tent screens.

Opening hours are Saturday to Thursday from 8:00 am to 1:00 p.m and from 4:00 to 8:00 p.m daily except Friday. (Tel: +965 2243.2395) Admission is FREE. Science & Natural History Museum A wealth of education awaits the visitor to the Science and Natural History Museum on Abdulla Al Mubarak Street. Each gallery contains either a collection or an exhibit covering a wide range of themes. Collections on display Include fossils, stuffed animals, skeletons, and dried flowers. There are exhibits on health, petroleum, space travel, and electronics, among others.

Forming part of the National Museum complex, the wonderful, modern Planetarium In the museum complex has shows at around 18:00 daily: local children, convinced the room is spinning, clap In syncopated beats every time the accompanying music begins.

A museum planetarium shows: Mornings: 1st Show: 10:00 a.m; 2nd Show: 11:00 a. m; 3rd Show: 12:00 p.m Evenings: 1st Show: 5:00 p.m; 2nd Show: 5:45 p.m; 3rd Show : 6:00 p.m. Note: Friday & Saturday no morning shows. (Tel: +965 22451195; +965 22456534). Admission is FREE. The Dickson House The house of the first British political agent In Kuwait is still

standing. The Dickson House, located across from the dhow harbour east of Sief Palace, was originally a Kuwaiti home built in 1870, but was given to Britain to use as residential headquarters. The compound was expanded several times over the years, but stands as an excellent example of early Kuwaiti architectural styles.

Opening hours are from Saturday to Thursday 8:30 a.m12:30 p.m and 4:30 a.m-8:30 p.m Friday 4:30 a.m - 8:30 p.m.

Admission is FREE. Al-Qurain Museum Located in the residential suburb of Qurain, This small museum is a memorial to a cell of young Kuwaiti patriots who tried to resist arrest in February 1991. Early In the morning, Iraqis bombarded the house for hours with machine guns, bombs and eventually a tank.

Monday to Saturday 8.30 a.m - 12.30 p.m; 4.30a.m -8.30 p.m Friday morning off. Afternoon: 4.30 a.m-8.30 pm. Winter Visiting hours: 4-8.30 pm. 1st Day of Eid off. Tel: +965 25430343 Al Hashemi Marine Museum The World’s largest wooden dhow, owned and build by Hussein Marafie,Al Hashemi is a ‘Baghalah’ of monumental proportions. Baghalah is a large wooden cargo vessel which sailed the seas in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Constructed next to Radisson SAS Hotel, the double-decked AlHashemi II is dry-docked next to pre-oil era Kuwaiti village and marine museum containing models of extinct and modern dhows The lower deck has the grand ballroom - one of the finest in Kuwait. Al-Hashemi II has earned the distinction of being listed in the Guinness Book of World Records. The museum is opened Sat. Thu. from 9 am till 5 pm. Admission is FREE.

EMBASSY OF AUSTRALIA The Australian Embassy Kuwait does not have a visa or immigration department. All processing of visas and immigration matters in conducted by The Australian ConsulateGeneral in Dubai.

Email: info.ausdxb@vfshelpline.com (VFS) immigration.dubai@dfat.gov.au (Visa Office); Tel: +971 4 355 1958 (VFS) - +971 4 508 7200 (Visa Office); Fax: +971 4 355 0708 (Visa Office). In Kuwait applications can be lodged at the Australian Visa Application Centre 4B 1st Floor, Al-Banwan Building Al-Qibla Area, Ali Al-Salem Street, opposite the Central Bank of Kuwait, Kuwait City, Kuwait. Working hours and days: 09:30 - 17:30; Sunday - Thursday. Or visit their website www.vfs-au-gcc-com for more information.

Kuwait citizens can apply for tourist visas on-line at www.immi.gov.au/e visa/e676.htm. nnnnnnn

EMBASSY OF ARGENTINE

The Embassy of Argentina requests all Argentinean citizens in Kuwait to proceed to our official email ekuwa@mrecic.gov.ar in order to register or update contact information.

The embassy encourages all citizens to do so, including the ones who have already registered in person at the embassy. The registration process helps the Argentinean Government to contact and assist Argentineans living abroad in case of any emergency. nnnnnnn

EMBASSY OF BRITAIN Consular section at the British Embassy will be starting an online appointment booking system for our consular customers from Sunday, 01 July 2012. All information including how to make an appointment is now available on the embassy website. In addition, there is also a “Consular Appointment System” option under Quick links on the right hand side on the homepage, which should take you to the “Consular online booking appointment system” main page.

Please be aware that from 01 July 2012, we will no longer accept walk-in customers for legalisation, notarial services and certificates (birth, death and marriages). If you have problems accessing the system or need to make an appointment for nonnotarial consular issues or have a consular emergency, please call 2259 4355/7/8 or email us on consularenquirieskuwait@fco.gov.uk. If you require consular assistance out of office hours (working hours: 0730-l430 hrs), please contact the Embassy on 2259 4320. nnnnnnn

EMBASSY OF CANADA The Embassy of Canada is located at Villa 24, Al-Mutawakel St, Block 4 in Da’aiyah. Please visit our website at www.Kuwait.gc.ca. The Embassy of Canada is open from 07:30 to 15:30 Sunday through Thursday. The reception is closed from 12:30 to 01:00 pm for lunch break.

Consular Services for Canadian Citizens are provided from 09:00 until 12:00 on Sunday through Wednesday. The Canadian Embassy will be closed on Sunday and Monday 19 and 20 August 2012 on the occasion of Aid Al Fitr. The Embassy will resume its duties on Tuesday 21 August 2012. The Canadian Embassy in Abu Dhabi provides visa and immigration services to residents of Kuwait.

Individuals who are interested in visiting, working or immigrating to Canada are invited to visit the website of the Canadian Embassy to the UAE at www.UAE.gc.ca.

TECHNOLOHY

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2012

Court rejects Apple patent claims against Samsung Tokyo District Court ruling TOKYO: A Japanese court yesterday rejected Apple’s claim that Samsung stole its technology, dealing a blow to the iPhone maker after last week winning $1.05 billion in damages in the US from its bitter rival.The ruling by the Tokyo District Court is the latest chapter in a long-running global patent war between the smartphone giants who have accused each other of stealing intellectual property for their own products.

The Japanese court found that Samsung did not infringe on Apple’s iPhone and iPad patents for some of its own Galaxy smartphones and tablet computer. The three-judge panel also awarded legal costs to Samsung.

“The defendant’s products do not seem like they used the same technology as the plaintiff’s products so we turn down the complaints made by (Apple),” Judge Tamotsu Shoji told the court.

Apple had sought damages and the block of sales of its some of Samsung’s products in the lucrative Japanese market.

But as well as dealing a blow to the US firm, the ruling will help Samsung pick itself up after the defeat in the United States, analysts said.

Samsung shares closed 1.48 percent higher in Seoul on Friday. “Investors were encouraged by the ruling in Tokyo... it eased concern over Samsung’s future which had been raised by the defeat in the US court battle,” said Seo WonSeok, analyst at Korea Investment Securities.

Samsung, which has steadfastly denied its rival’s claims in a string of similar cases filed across the globe, hailed the Tokyo court’s ruling.

“We welcome the court’s decision, which confirmed our long-held position that our products do not infringe Apple’s intellectual property,” it said in a statement.

A Japan-based spokesman for Apple, which can appeal the verdict, declined to comment.

Last week the iPhone maker won $1.05 billion in a massive US court victory over Samsung with jurors finding that the South Korean firm had “willfully” infringed on Apple’s patents.

The Japanese case, which focused on Apple’s claim that Samsung stole technology used to transfer music and video files, sought a comparatively small amount — 100 million yen ($1.27 million) — in damages. Both firms’ gadgets are increasingly popular in the the Japanese market which was previously monopolised by domestic giants such as Sony and Sharp.

“It was a ruling on just one technology so it is difficult to draw any conclusion on its overall impact,” said Michiru Takahashi, a patent lawyer at Jones Day in Tokyo.

“But... if Samsung had lost again it would have considerably hurt its image.”

The high-profile verdict in the United States last week regarded patents on a range of Samsung products including some of its popular smartphones and its Galaxy 10 tablet.

Jurors rejected the South Korean electronics firm’s patent theft counterclaims against Apple.

Also last week, a court in Seoul ruled the pair had swiped each other’s technology and awarded damages to both sides. The Seoul Central District Court said Apple breached two of Samsung’s technology patents, and ordered it to pay 40 million won ($35,000) in damages.

It also ordered Samsung to pay 25 million won for violating one of Apple’s patents. Each company had sought damages of 100 million won from the other. The South Korean court said there was “no possibility” that consumers would confuse Samsung and Apple smartphones-a key issue in the US trial-and that Samsung’s smartphone icons do not infringe Apple’s patents.

But it said Samsung infringed Apple’s patent for bounce-back technology, a widely copied spring-back action when users reach the edge of

a document. The court imposed a partial ban on both firms’ product sales.

The patent cases come as Apple loses ground to rivals including Samsung that use the Android operating system developed by Google.

Samsung shipped 50.2 million smartphones globally between April and June, while Apple sold 26 million iPhones, according to research firm IDC. The Asian firm held 32.6 percent of the market compared to 16.9 percent for Apple, while the US company holds about a 70 percent market share for tablets. —- AFP

TOKYO: This combo picture shows Apple’s iPhone 4S (top) and Samsung’s Galaxy S II (bottom) mobile phones in Tokyo. — AFP

Bing adds Facebook photo search feature SAN FRANCISCO: Bing added a feature Thursday that lets people search through photos friends posted on Facebook.

“With more than 300 million photos uploaded to Facebook per day, photo viewing is one of the most popular things people do on Facebook,” Bing social team senior program manager Ian Lin said in a blog post.“Now, with Bing, you can easily search and browse your friends’ photo collections.” The Facebook photo search feature was available at bing.com/friendsphotos.

In May, Microsoft began weaving data from users’ Facebook friends into Bing results as part of the biggest revamp of the search engine since its launch three years ago. The new version of Bing introduced a “social sidebar” that lists Facebook friends who may know something about a query topic.

In a move appearing shrewdly visionary, Microsoft in late 2007 paid what seemed an exorbitant $240 million for a 1.6 percent stake in Facebook.—AFP

Smartphones: Will design define future gadgets?

LONDON: In a pre-iPhone age, mobile phones came in all shapes and sizes. Remember the clamshell, candy bar, swivel, backflip, slider, dual-slider, lipstick, and, of course, the taco?

Nowadays, most phones have a touch screen, rows of icons and are rectangular.

In short, they all look a lot like the iPhone.

Now, in the wake of the Apple Inc vs Samsung Electronics trial, where the US firm won what the South Koreans scathingly called a “monopoly over rectangles with rounded corners,” the fear is that an era of rapid and exciting innovation in mobile design is over. The iPhone has won the day and all those whose handsets use Google’s Android operating system, the argument goes, will either give up or tread carefully for fear of litigation.

But others argue the opposite.

Paul Pugh, creative vice president at frog, a San Francisco-based design company owned

by India’s Aricent Group, believes companies may now unshackle their designers to come up with genre-busting form factors and user interfaces that breathe fresh life into the industry.

“We don’t know yet how far the impacts are going to go from here,” says Pugh. “I do hope it’s an inspiration moment for the Android platform and the manufacturers to put their bets on innovation ... to come with great user experience based on users’ needs, and not stagnate based on the patents crippling them.”

Frog knows how hard this is to bring to market. Take the SmartPad; a prototype Android phone the company unveiled last year that at first glance looked, in the words of one reviewer on the technology website Engadget, like “yet another plain smartphone - dark, nondescript, and maybe a little like an iPhone 4 that’s had its right-most extent sliced off.”

Flip open the two layers, however, and you had a phone with twice the normal screen size.

“Suddenly it’s a little tablet, two screens forming a 6-inch slate,” the Engadget reviewer wrote. The prototype, which belonged to Imerj, part of Singapore-listed contract manufacturer Flextronics International , intrigued: The Engadget article attracted more than 400 comments. It wasn’t a wholly new concept, but the design was impressive, including the software, which included apps that made the most of the extra screen. Imerj promised a kit for software developers, and a team worked on a slew of apps that made use of the innovative dual screen. They dreamed big: to take on Research in Motion’s BlackBerry.

“We had an idea that the smartphone was going to be the primary computing platform for most people going forward,” recalled Brett Faulk, then Imerj’s vice president of marketing.

“However, it has two challenges: small screen and small keyboard. So the concept was to create a product that scales as my productivity needs increase.”

After a few months, however, everything went quiet. Imerj’s Twitter account went dead, as did its website. Both are now offline. Faulk and others left the company. Flextronics declined to comment, as did frog’s Pugh.

A former member of the Imerj team said the project was deliberately aimed at a niche far from Apple’s consumer-driven world, but that was part of the reason for its demise.

Building a device and the suite of office applications to go with it required at least five years gestation, an investment the parent company in the end couldn’t make. “We were very ahead,” said the person, who was not authorized to speak about the project and declined to be identified. “We were very sad to see innovation being pushed aside.”

At issue now is whether the Apple vs.

Samsung verdict might upend such conserva-

tive calculations. It may already be happening: The latest addition to Samsung’s Galaxy range of devices - at the centre of the court case - is a camera with a display that looks, feels and acts like an Android smartphone, including WiFi and 3G connections. And Samsung itself has a patent on a dual screen device, according to patent blog patentbolt.com, that looks a lot like the SmartPad. But there are limits to what can be done with hardware. “There was a lot of ingenuity about the mechanical configuration of designing buttons and cameras and exposing these particular features,” said Horace Dediu, a former Nokia engineer who now runs a consultancy and influential blog called Asymco. With the rise of the iPhone “all that went away when you have a clean glass display with touch interface.” The problem he says, is that the operating systems available to device makers Android and, to a lesser extent, Microsoft’s Windows Phone - are designed for that shape.

So, if there is going to be a change in what a phone looks like, Google needs to be the one to change. “Theoretically, if Google thinks that this isn’t a winning game for them they may go to the manufacturers and say OK, we’re going to allow you to have mechanical differentiation,” said Dediu.

Until that happens, manufacturers have limited room to move. They can toy with the specifications and proportions of the device Samsung has had a surprise hit with its outsized Galaxy Note, the second version of which was unveiled on Thursday - or by tweaking the Android operating system itself.

Indeed, frog’s most visible success in smartphone design has been a user interface that Sharp Corp recently launched for its Android phones in Japan. Sharp, said Pugh, was looking to maintain its market lead as Japan shifts from older feature phones to smartphones, and gave frog a broad remit to come up with something to make their Android devices stand out.

The so-called ‘Fresh UI’ software adds an extra layer, or skin, to Google’s basic operating system, which Pugh says improves access to the most used features on a device.

Indeed, such skins are an increasingly popular way for handset makers to differentiate their devices from those of competitors.

Huawei on Thursday unveiled its own ‘Emotion UI’ skin which it said will give consumers “one more reason to choose a Huawei smartphone over another brand’s.” It’s not just for the big boys: Meizu, a small Chinese smartphone maker, has gained a cult following with its quirky customization of Android that once earned the ire of Steve Jobs, but is now fending off its own copycats. But taking this route is not without its problems.

For one thing, skins are usually just that: a surface layer that users either love or hate, and which quickly peels away to the standard Android interface that is little different whether the device costs $500 or $50. And while the goal is to differentiate, they can end up pushing the Android interface into more closely resembling Apple’s own iOS. Indeed, Apple presented slides at the trial alleging that Samsung’s tweaks to the home screen on 13 devices made it mimic that of the iPhone. The jury agreed.

Some makers have already taken note.

Meizu, the Chinese manufacturer, was happy when the home screen of one of its models was cited in court by Apple as an example of not infringing on its design patents, but the Chinese firm has nevertheless “modified some aspects of our user experience” for future products, according to the Zhuhai-based company’s product director Yang Yan. —- Reuters

CLASSIFIEDS SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2012

Al-Madena Al-Shohada’a Al-Shuwaikh Al-Nuzha Sabhan Al-Helaly Al-Fayhaa Al-Farwaniya Al-Sulaibikhat Al-Fahaheel Jleeb Al-Shuyoukh Ahmadi Al-Mangaf Al-Shuaiba Al-Jahra Al-Salmiya

22418714 22545171 24810598 22545171 24742838 22434853 22545051 24711433 24316983 23927002 24316983 23980088 23711183 23262845 25610011 25616368

Hospitals Sabah Hospital

24812000

Amiri Hospital

22450005

Maternity Hospital

24843100

Mubarak Al-Kabir Hospital

25312700

Chest Hospital

24849400

Farwaniya Hospital

24892010

Adan Hospital

23940620

Ibn Sina Hospital

24840300

Al-Razi Hospital

24846000

Physiotherapy Hospital

24874330/9

ACCOMMODATION Deluxe Villa in Block 5 Mishref suitable for diplomatic mission and organizations residence. Safety and security fence and ample parking

24732263

Rawdha

22517733

Adailiya

22517144

Khaldiya

24848075

Khaifan

24849807

Shamiya

24848913

Shuwaikh

24814507

Abdullah Salim

22549134

Al-Nuzha

22526804

Industrial Shuwaikh

24814764

Al-Q adisiya

22515088

Dasmah

22532265

Bneid Al-Ghar

22531908

Al-Shaab

22518752

Al-Kibla

22459381

Ayoun Al-Kibla

22451082

Mirqab

22456536

Sharq

22465401

Salmiya

25746401

Jabriya

25316254

Maidan Hawally

25623444

Bayan

25388462

Three bedroom CAC flat available with a South Indian family for Indian executive lady or bachelor. Contact: 99515956.

28-8-2012

GOVERNMENT WEB SITES Kuwait Parliament www.majlesalommah.net

The Public Institution for Social Security www.pifss.gov.kw

Ministry of Interior www.moi.gov.kw

Public Authority of Industry www.pai.gov.kw

Public Authority for Civil Information www.paci.gov.kw

Prisoners of War Committee www.pows.org.kw

Kuwait News Agency www.kuna.net.kw

Ministry of Foreign Affairs www.mofa.gov.kw

Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Affair www.islam.gov.kw

Kuwait Municipality www.municipality.gov.kw

Ministry of Energy (Oil) www.moo.gov.kw

Kuwait Electronic Government www.e.gov.kw

Ministry of Energy (Electricity and Water) www.energy.govt.kw

Ministry of Finance www.mof.gov.kw

Public Authority for Housing Welfare www.housing.gov.kw

Ministry of Commerce and Industry www.moci.gov.kw

Ministry of Justice www.moj.gov.kw

Ministry of Education www.moe.edu.kw

Clinics Rabiya

space. For information, call: 99123411. (C 4113) 29-8-2012

SITUATION VACANT Cook for Kuwaiti family, available in Kuwait with transferable residence, experience in houses, not restaurants. Call: 94088822. (C 4116) Required English speaking maid / nanny. Please call 99824597. (C 4117) 1-9-2012

Sri Lankan lady looking for a part time job, European or American house. Please call: 55680045. (C 4114) 30-8-2012

FOR SALE

Jaguar XK8, 1998, good condition, KD 1,750/- and Jaguar XJ6 Sovereign, 4 door 1995, KD 750/-. Contact: 99696299.

(C 4112) 30-8-2012 Mitsubishi Galant 2007 (new body) golden color, km 32000 only, excellent condition, KD 1900. Mob: 50699345. (C 4111) 29-8-2012 For sale villa furniture like new contains of one bed room , dining room, living room fully equipped kitchen.

Washer & dryer. Very reasonable price . Tel 97211688 27-8-2012

CHANGE OF NAME I, Shaik Abdulla, holder of Indian Passport No: Z1886177 residing in Noonevaripalli, Rajampet, Kadapa, AP, India, would like to change my name Shaikh Abdulla to Katta Yuvaraja Chowdary.

1-9-2012 I, Arbab Raza Khan, s/o Mr. Masood Raza Khan, holder of Indian passport No. G7270724 hereby change my name as Mehboob Raza Khan. (C 4089) 30-8-2012 I, Loyela Joao Borges, resident of Grande Neura post, Neura IIhas Goa, have changed my name from Loyela John Borges to Loyela Joao Borges.

Herein after in all my dealings and documents I will be known by the name Loyela Joao Borges.

29-8-2012

MATRIMONIAL TRANSPORTATION

Ministry of Communications www.moc.kw

Ministry of Information www.moinfo.gov.kw

Supreme Council for Planning and Development www.scpd.gov.kw

Kuwait Awqaf Public Foundation www.awqaf.org

Transportation required for a lady from Salwa to Al-Rai and back, office hours 8 am to 5 pm. Contact 66751476.

(C 4115) 1-9-2012

Proposals invited from a 45 year old Indian Muslim male having suitable job in Kuwait from any nationality Muslim widows, or divorced female.

Interested please send your complete details and phone no. to: msdin65@yahoo.com (C 4118) 1-9-2012

information SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2012

DIAL 161 FOR AIRPORT INFORMATION In case you are not travelling, your proper cancellation of bookings will help other passengers to use seats Airlines JZR QTR SAI MEA KAC ETH PIA MEA RJA GFA UAE ETD OMA THY FDB MSR QTR JZR MSC KAC THY JZR DHX BBC JZR KAC BAW KAC JZR KAC KAC FDB KAC KAC KAC KAC KAC UAE ABY QTR FDB ETD BAB GFA IRA MSC UAE JZR MSR IRM JZR MSR GFA KAC FDB MPH UAE JZR KNE JZR QTR SVA KAC RJA KNE KAC JZR KAC QTR IRC KAC IZG KAC JZR ETD UAE UAL GFA SVA JZR MSC JZR ABY KAC KAC RBG KAC

Arrival Flights on Saturday 1/9/2012 Flt Route 185 DUBAI 148 DOHA 441 LAHORE 406 BEIRUT 1544 CAIRO 620 ADDIS ABABA 239 ISLAMABAD 408 BEIRUT 642 AMMAN 211 BAHRAIN 853 DUBAI 305 ABU DHABI 643 MUSCAT 768 ISTANBUL 67 DUBAI 612 CAIRO 138 DOHA 503 LUXOR 2401 ALEXANDRIA 1546 ALEXANDRIA 770 ISTANBUL 1541 CAIRO 170 BAHRAIN 43 DHAKA 555 ALEXANDRIA 412 MANILA 157 LONDON 416 JAKARTA 529 ASSIUT 206 ISLAMABAD 382 DELHI 53 DUBAI 302 MUMBAI 352 COCHIN 284 DHAKA 344 CHENNAI 362 COLOMBO 855 DUBAI 125 SHARJAH 132 DOHA 55 DUBAI 301 ABU DHABI 436 BAHRAIN 213 BAHRAIN 3407 MASHAD 2405 SOHAG 871 DUBAI 165 DUBAI 618 ALEXANDRIA 5066 MASHAD 325 NAJAF 610 CAIRO 219 BAHRAIN 672 DUBAI 57 DUBAI 975 AMSTERDAM 3583 DUBAI 241 AMMAN 472 JEDDAH 535 CAIRO 140 DOHA 500 JEDDAH 562 AMMAN 640 AMMAN 476 JEDDAH 788 JEDDAH 257 BEIRUT 1542 CAIRO 134 DOHA 6791 MASHAD 538 SHARM EL SHEIKH 4161 MASHAD 118 NEW YORK 357 MASHAD 303 ABU DHABI 857 DUBAI 982 WASHINGTON DC DULLES 215 BAHRAIN 510 RIYADH 177 DUBAI 2403 ASSIUT 777 JEDDAH 127 SHARJAH 176 GENEVA 502 BEIRUT 3555 ALEXANDRIA 542 CAIRO

Time 0:15 0:20 1:30 1:35 1:35 1:45 2:05 2:05 2:10 2:20 2:25 2:30 2:50 2:50 3:10 3:20 3:25 3:55 4:00 4:25 4:35 4:55 5:00 5:00 6:00 6:15 6:30 6:35 6:40 7:15 7:30 7:45 7:50 8:05 8:15 8:20 8:20 8:25 8:30 9:00 9:20 9:30 9:35 10:00 10:10 10:40 10:45 11:05 11:25 11:55 12:30 13:30 13:40 13:40 13:45 13:55 13:55 14:05 14:15 14:20 14:25 14:30 14:30 14:55 15:00 15:00 15:00 15:05 15:15 15:25 15:30 15:45 16:00 16:20 16:35 16:55 17:10 17:20 17:20 17:30 17:35 17:40 17:45 17:45 18:00 18:15 18:15

QTR BAB KAC FDB KAC QTR MSR JZR KAC KAC IRM JAI KAC IRA AXB OMA MEA QTR KNE KAC GFA KNE ALK KLM UAE JZR SYR ABY QTR KAC JZR FDB JZR AIC GFA UAL JZR LMU DLH FDB MSR THY DHX JAI

144 438 786 63 104 6130 620 175 618 674 5064 572 774 607 393 647 402 146 460 790 221 474 229 415 859 135 341 129 136 614 513 61 539 975 217 981 239 1109 636 51 614 772 372 574

DOHA BAHRAIN JEDDAH DUBAI LONDON DOHA ASSIUT DUBAI DOHA DUBAI MASHAD MUMBAI RIYADH MASHAD KOZHIKODE MUSCAT BEIRUT DOHA MEDINAH MEDINAH BAHRAIN JEDDAH COLOMBO AMSTERDAM DUBAI BAHRAIN DAMASCUS SHARJAH DOHA BAHRAIN SHARM EL SHEIKH DUBAI CAIRO CHENNAI BAHRAIN BAHRAIN AMMAN ALEXANDRIA FRANKFURT DUBAI CAIRO ISTANBUL BAHRAIN MUMBAI

Airlines AIC UAL DLH MSR JAI KLM THY SAI MEA ETH MEA PIA THY UAE FDB OMA ETD MSR MSC QTR QTR BBC RJA JZR GFA THY JZR KAC BAW FDB JZR JZR JZR ABY KAC KAC KAC UAE QTR KAC KAC FDB

Departure Flights on Saturday 1/9/2012 Flt Route 976 GOA 981 WASHINGTON 637 FRANKFURT 615 CAIRO 573 MUMBAI 413 AMSTERDAM 773 ISTANBUL 442 LAHORE 407 BEIRUT 621 ADDIS ABABA 409 BEIRUT 240 SIALKOT 769 ISTANBUL 854 DUBAI 68 DUBAI 644 MUSCAT 306 ABU DHABI 613 CAIRO 2406 SOHAG 139 DOHA 149 DOHA 44 TEHRAN 643 AMMAN 164 DUBAI 212 BAHRAIN 771 ISTANBUL 534 CAIRO 1541 CAIRO 156 LONDON 54 DUBAI 240 AMMAN 256 BEIRUT 324 AL NAJAF 126 SHARJAH 561 AMMAN 671 DUBAI 787 JEDDAH 856 DUBAI 133 DOHA 101 LONDON 537 SHARM EL SHEIKH 56 DUBAI

18:20 18:40 18:40 18:45 18:45 19:00 19:10 19:15 19:20 19:25 19:30 19:35 19:40 19:50 19:55 20:10 20:15 20:25 20:25 20:25 20:35 20:45 20:55 21:05 21:15 21:15 21:30 21:30 21:35 22:00 22:00 22:05 22:10 22:25 22:35 22:40 22:55 23:05 23:10 23:30 23:35 23:40 23:40 23:50 Time 0:05 0:25 0:30 0:35 0:50 0:55 2:15 2:30 2:35 2:45 3:05 3:20 3:40 3:45 3:50 3:55 4:05 4:20 4:45 4:50 5:40 6:45 6:50 6:55 7:05 7:10 7:30 8:20 8:25 8:25 8:35 9:00 9:05 9:05 9:15 9:20 9:35 9:40 10:00 10:00 10:00 10:05

KAC ETD BAB JZR GFA IRA MSC KAC KAC KAC JZR UAE MSR KAC JZR IRM GFA FDB MSR JZR KAC JZR KNE MPH UAE KAC RJA KNE JZR KAC SVA QTR IRC KAC IZG ETD JZR QTR UAE MSC JZR GFA ABY UAL SVA JZR RBG KAC QTR FDB BAB KAC JZR MSR KAC KAC QTR JAI IRM IRA KAC KAC OMA MEA KNE KAC GFA KNE DHX ALK KLM JZR ABY KAC UAE SYR QTR KAC KAC JZR FDB QTR AXB GFA KAC JZR

107 302 437 356 214 3406 2404 541 165 501 776 872 619 785 176 5065 220 58 611 174 673 538 473 975 3584 617 641 461 512 789 505 135 6792 773 4162 304 238 141 858 2402 134 216 128 982 511 266 3556 613 145 64 439 283 184 621 1547 153 6131 571 5063 604 331 351 648 403 477 543 222 475 171 230 415 1540 120 381 860 342 137 301 205 554 62 147 394 218 411 504

GENEVA ABU DHABI BAHRAIN MASHHAD BAHRAIN MASHHAD ASSIUT CAIRO ROME BEIRUT JEDDAH DUBAI ASSIUT JEDDAH DUBAI MASHHAD BAHRAIN DUBAI CAIRO DUBAI DUBAI CAIRO JEDDAH SHARJAH DUBAI DOHA AMMAN MADINAH SHARM EL SHEIKH MADINAH JEDDAH DOHA MASHHAD RIYADH MASHHAD ABU DHABI AMMAN DOHA DUBAI HURGHADA BAHRAIN BAHRAIN SHARJAH BAHRAIN RIYADH BEIRUT ALEXANDRIA BAHRAIN DOHA DUBAI BAHRAIN DHAKA DUBAI ALEXANDRIA CAIRO ISTANBUL DOHA MUMBAI MASHHAD ISFAHAN TRIVANDRUM KOCHI MUSCAT BEIRUT JEDDAH CAIRO BAHRAIN JEDDAH BAHRAIN COLOMBO DAMMAM CAIRO SHARJAH DELHI DUBAI DAMASCUS DOHA MUMBAI ISLAMABAD ALEXANDRIA DUBAI DOHA KOCHI BAHRAIN BANGKOK LUXOR

Directorate General of Civil Aviation Home Page (www.kuwait-airport.com.kw)

10:10 10:15 10:25 10:30 10:45 11:10 11:25 11:30 11:45 12:00 12:15 12:20 12:25 13:10 13:20 13:25 14:25 14:25 14:30 15:05 15:05 15:10 15:15 15:25 15:25 15:45 15:50 15:50 15:55 16:00 16:00 16:15 16:25 16:25 16:45 17:20 17:30 17:45 18:05 18:15 18:20 18:20 18:25 18:30 18:35 18:50 18:55 19:00 19:20 19:25 19:30 19:30 20:05 20:10 20:25 20:30 20:30 20:35 20:40 20:50 20:50 21:05 21:10 21:15 21:15 21:30 21:35 21:35 21:50 21:55 22:05 22:05 22:10 22:20 22:25 22:30 22:35 22:40 22:45 23:00 23:00 23:10 23:10 23:30 23:40 23:45

C R O S S W O R D 7 8 3

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2012

Word Sleuth Solution

Yesterday始s Solution

ACROSS 1. Of southern Europe.

4. United States abolitionist born a slave on a plantation in Maryland and became a famous conductor on the Underground Railroad leading other slaves to freedom in the North (1820-1913).

10. (informal) `johnny' was applied as a nickname for Confederate soldiers by the Federal soldiers in the American Civil War. 13. The 21st letter of the Greek alphabet.

14. Make richer.

15. A self-funded retirement plan that allows you to contribute a limited yearly sum toward your retirement.

16. A plant hormone promoting elongation of stems and roots.

17. Relative darkness caused by light rays being intercepted by an opaque body.

19. Exceptionally bad or displeasing.

21. A silvery soft waxy metallic element of the alkali metal group.

23. The female or generative principle.

25. Aroused to impatience or anger.

26. (law) A comprehensive term for any proceeding in a court of law whereby an individual seeks a legal remedy.

29. The sense organ for hearing and equilibrium.

30. A condition (mostly in boys) characterized by behavioral and learning disorders.

31. The capital of Croatia.

35. A human limb.

36. According to the Old Testament he was a pagan king of Israel and husband of Jezebel (9th century BC).

38. A soft silvery metallic element of the alkali earth group.

39. Have confidence or faith in.

41. A unit of length of thread or yarn.

44. A radioactive element of the actinide series.

45. A city in southern Turkey on the Seyhan River.

47. An organization of countries formed in 1961 to agree on a common policy for the sale of petroleum.

51. Food mixtures either arranged on a plate or tossed and served with a moist dressing.

54. A large indefinite number.

55. God of love and erotic desire.

58. Large burrowing rodent of South and Central America.

59. The elementary stages of any subject (usually plural).

61. An independent ruler or chieftain (especially in Africa or Arabia).

62. Thigh of a hog (usually smoked).

63. A genus of Ploceidae.

64. An officer who acts as military assistant to a more senior officer.

DOWN 1. The capital of Western Samoa.

2. United States humorist who wrote about rural life (1818-1885).

3. French cabaret singer (1915-1963).

4. A unit of magnetic flux density equal to one weber per square meter.

5. A transuranic element.

6. Wild geese.

7. Some point in the air.

8. (informal) Of the highest quality.

9. A state in New England.

10. Humorously vulgar.

11. Become ground down or deteriorate.

12. Having the head uncovered.

18. Surveying instrument consisting of the upper movable part of a theodolite including the telescope and its attachments.

20. A person who makes use of a thing.

22. (informal) Exceptionally good.

24. Cubes of meat marinated and cooked on a skewer usually with vegetables.

27. A river in north central Switzerland that runs northeast into the Rhine.

28. (computer science) A standardized language for the descriptive markup of documents.

32. In bed.

33. A loose sleeveless outer garment made from aba cloth.

34. Resinlike substance secreted by certain lac insects.

37. Experiencing a sudden sense of danger.

38. (informal) Of the highest quality.

40. Noisy talk.

42. An associate degree in applied science.

43. Highly seasoned fatty sausage of pork and beef usually dried.

46. Greek mythology.

47. With no effort to conceal.

48. A metabolic acid found in yeast and liver cells.

49. Electronic warfare undertaken to insure effective friendly use of the electromagnetic spectrum in spite of the enemy's use of electronic warfare.

50. Long green edible beaked pods of the okra plant.

52. Harsh or corrosive in tone.

53. A challenge to do something dangerous or foolhardy.

56. A resource.

57. A constellation in the southern hemisphere near Telescopium and Norma.

60. A person forced to flee from home or country.

Yesterday始s Solution

SPORTS

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2012

White Sox lose to Orioles 5-3 BALTIMORE: Zach Britton struck out a career-high 10 in eight innings, Taylor Teagarden and Adam Jones homered and the Baltimore Orioles beat the Chicago White Sox 5-3 Thursday for their eighth win in 11 games. Baltimore took three of four from the AL Central-leading White Sox to complete a 5-1 homestand that started with a two-game sweep of Toronto. The victory moved the Orioles (72-58) within three games of the idle AL Eastleading New York Yankees, who host Baltimore in a three-game series that begins Friday night. Britton (4-1) gave up one run, seven hits and did not issue a walk. He fanned Dewayne Wise three times and eclipsed his previous single-game career high of seven strikeouts by the fifth inning.

ATHLETICS 12, INDIANS 7 Jarrod Parker pitched into the sixth inning and Oakland hit four home runs, leading the Athletics to their sixth straight win, a victory over the free-falling Indians and a sweep of the four-game series. Oakland, which has won eight of nine, maintained its onegame lead over Baltimore for the top spot in the AL wild card race. George Kottaras’ three-run double broke a 1-1 tie in the fourth while Coco Crisp, Cliff Pennington, Josh Reddick and Josh Donaldson homered. While the Athletics are flying high, the Indians continue to fade. Cleveland has lost five straight, 14 of 15 and is 5-27 since July 27.

MARINERS 5, TWINS 4 Blake Beavan gave up two runs in seven innings and Trayvon Robinson drove in two runs to lift the Mariners over the Twins.

Beavan (9-8) scattered five hits, walked two and struck out one.

Kyle Seager also drove in two runs for the Mariners, who have won 11 of their last 15 games. Brian Duensing (3-10) gave up three earned runs and four hits in 5 1-3 innings. He left after loading the bases in the sixth, and left fielder Josh Willingham’s blunder contributed to Seattle’s four-run inning. Willingham’s tworun homer in the eighth off Stephen Pryor made things interesting, but Tom Wilhelmsen picked up his 21st save to help the Mariners take three of four in the series.

BLUE JAYS 2, RAYS 0 Carlos Villanueva pitched six sharp innings and Toronto beat slumping Tampa Bay, snapping a five-game losing streak against the Rays. Tampa Bay lost for the fifth time in six games and dropped 11/2 games behind Baltimore for the second AL wildcard berth. The Rays have been shut out twice in the past three games. Kelly Johnson hit a two-run double in the first inning and the Blue Jays won consecutive games for the first time since Aug. 12-13, improving to 3-9 against the Rays this season. Villanueva (7-4) allowed five hits, all singles, to win for the first time since July 27 against Detroit. The right-hander had gone 0-4 in five starts since, despite never allowing more than four earned runs.

He walked one and struck out seven, including six straight during one stretch to tie a club record. Casey Janssen finished for his 18th save in 21 chances. Rays rookie Matt Moore (10-8) allowed two runs over six innings in his first loss since July 22. — AP

LOS ANGELES: Second baseman Aaron Hill #2 of the Arizona Diamondbacks tumbles over Andre Ethier #16 of the Los Angeles Dodgers at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, California. — AFP

Cubs edge Brewers CHICAGO: Jonathan Lucroy hit a grand slam and drove in seven runs for Milwaukee, but Alfonso Sorianoís RBI single capped a three-run comeback in the ninth inning Thursday that lifted the Chicago Cubs over the Brewers 12-11. In a seesaw game featuring a combined 15 extra-base hits, the Cubs led 3-0, trailed 9-3 and were still down 11-9 going into the ninth. Starlin Castro hit an RBI single against Francisco Rodriguez (2-7), Anthony Rizzo tied it with his second double of the afternoon and Soriano won the game with his one-out drive off the center-field wall. Lucroy tied his

MLB results/standings Oakland 12, Cleveland 7; Baltimore 5, Chicago White Sox 3; Philadelphia 3, NY Mets 2; Seattle 5, Minnesota 4; Chicago Cubs 12, Milwaukee 11; Washington 8, St. Louis 1; Toronto 2, Tampa Bay 0; San Francisco 8, Houston 4; Kansas City 2, Detroit 1; LA Angels 5, Boston 2; Arizona 2, LA Dodgers 0.

American League Eastern Division W L NY Yankees 75 55 Baltimore 72 58 Tampa Bay 71 60 Boston 62 70 Toronto 59 71 Central Division Chicago White Sox 72 58 Detroit 69 61 Kansas City 59 71 Cleveland 55 76 Minnesota 53 78 Western Division Texas 77 53 Oakland 73 57 LA Angels 69 62 Seattle 64 68

PCT .577 .554 .542 .470 .454

GB 3 4.5 14 16

.554 .531 .454 .420 .405

3 13 17.5 19.5

.592 .562 .527 .485

4 8.5 14

National League Eastern Division Washington 79 51 Atlanta 74 57 Philadelphia 62 69 NY Mets 61 70 Miami 59 72 Central Division Cincinnati 80 52 St. Louis 71 60 Pittsburgh 70 60 Milwaukee 62 68 Chicago Cubs 50 80 Houston 40 91 Western Division San Francisco 74 57 LA Dodgers 70 62 Arizona 65 67 San Diego 61 71 Colorado 53 76

.608 .565 .473 .466 .450

5.5 17.5 18.5 20.5

.606 .542 .538 .477 .385 .305

8.5 9 17 29 39.5

.565 .530 .492 .462 .411

4.5 9.5 13.5 20

career high for RBIs and Rickie Weeks had five hits. Ryan Braun and Cody Ransom also homered for Milwaukee, which had won eight straight against the Cubs.

PHILLIES 3, METS 2 Phillies star Jimmy Rollins was benched after a pair of baserunning blunders in Philadelphiaís win over the Mets. Rollins was pulled for the start of the seventh inning after a pair of mistakes in the sixth. The former NL MVP failed to run hard on a dropped popup that could have put him on second base.

He stole second base, then was caught in a rundown on a grounder and was tagged out. Rollins drew the ire of Phillies fans earlier this month when he jogged down the line on a grounder in a game at Miami. He met privately with manager Charlie Manuel the next day.

Manuel refused to bench his All-Star shortstop then. He had no hesitation against the Mets.

NATIONALS 8, CARDINALS 1 Bryce Harper hit his third home run in two games, Jason Werth homered for the first time since May, and Edwin Jackson struck out 10 Thursday night as the Nationals padded their NL East lead with a win over the punchless Cardinals.

The Nationals opened an 11-game homestand with an overwhelming performance against a wild-card contender that failed to score an earned run for the third straight game. Jackson (8-9) was so dominant that three of his strikeouts required throws to first because the Cardinals were chasing balls in the dirt.

The victory moved the Nationals 5Ω games ahead of idle Atlanta. Jaime Garcia (3-6) allowed six runs for the

Cardinals, whose streak of 28 scoreless innings ended in the eighth.

GIANTS 8, ASTROS 4 Hunter Pence hit a go-ahead two-run single in the seventh inning and the Giants rallied again for a win over the Astros. The Giants were down 4-0 after four innings. They cut the lead to one with a three-run fifth inning, and Pablo Sandoval singled in a run in the seventh to tie it. Pence, who hit a three-run homer on Wednesday, then caused trouble for his former team again, this time with a two RBI grounder off Fernando Rodriguez (1-9) to shallow center field that put San Francisco on top 6-4. San Francisco came back to win the opener of the series and Thursdayís win completed their sixth sweep this season. San Francisco got six innings out of starter Ryan Vogelsong (12-7). He allowed seven hits and four runs. Sergio Romo got the last out of the ninth for his eighth save.

DIAMONDBACKS 2, DODGERS 0 Ian Kennedy pitched two-hit ball into the seventh inning and Chris Young hit a two-run homer off Clayton Kershaw to help the Diamondbacks beat the Dodgers, snapping a six-game skid. The Diamondbacks extended their winning streak over the Dodgers to seven in a row in the opener of a four-game series.

Los Angeles lost for the seventh time in 10 games on a night when slugger Matt Kemp was out of the starting lineup with a stiff left shoulder. Kennedy (12-11) struck out seven and walked two over 6 1-3 innings, bouncing back from a loss against San Diego in his previous outing.

His last six starts against the Dodgers have been decided by three runs or less.

Kershaw (12-8) took the loss. — AP

SPORTS

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2012

Hamilton to repeat Armstrong doping claims in book PARIS: Less than two weeks after Lance Armstrong was handed a lifetime ban by the United States AntiDoping Agency (USADA), fellow American cyclist Tyler Hamilton will describe their alleged drug cheating together in a book. Hamilton, who was officially stripped of his Athens 2004 time trial gold medal by the International Olympic Committee earlier this month, will replicate claims he made about Armstrong last year in a book to be published on Sept 5.

Described by publishers as a “tellall” look at the world of professional cycling, “The Secret Race” will cover Hamilton’s battle with clinical depression and the story of “his complicated relationship with Lance Armstrong”. Hamilton, who rode with Armstrong on the US Postal Service team, will repeat allegations he made in a 2011 interview with “60 Minutes” that the Americans injected themselves with blood-boosters during the 1999 Tour de France, which Armstrong won. “(Armstrong) took what we all took... there was EPO (erythropoietin)... testosterone... a blood transfusion,” Hamilton said in that interview. “I saw (EPO) in his refrigerator. I saw him inject it more than one

time, like we all did, like I did many, many times.” Armstrong, who was stripped of his record seven Tour de France wins by USADA on Aug 24, has always denied taking banned substances but has repeatedly had to fend off accusations despite hav-

of all time, returning to the sport after beating cancer to win the Tour de France seven straight times, from 1999 to 2005.

POLARIZING FIGURE However, Armstrong is one of the

PARIS: McLaren Mercedes’ British driver Lewis Hamilton drives during the first practice session at the Spa-Francorchamps circuit yesterday in Spa ahead of the Belgium Formula One Grand Prix. — AFP ing never failed a drugs test. The 40year-old has been one of the most successful and controversial cyclists

sporting world’s most polarizing figures and has made many enemies throughout his career, with several

Labor talks between NHL, union on hold NEW YORK: Negotiations on a new collective bargaining agreement have been put on hold until Friday when the National Hockey League (NHL) expects to receive a counter-proposal from the union representing its players. With the threat of a lockout looming larger, union head Donald Fehr had initially hoped to deliver a response on Thursday but the NHL Players’ Association (NHLPA) needed more time to review team financial data it obtained on Wednesday.

“We’re hopeful that it’s a meaningful proposal that we can continue to make progress from,” NHL Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly told reporters.

“We feel like we made a good step in that direction earlier this week and we hope that they would take a step forward as well.”

The NHL wants to reduce the players’ share of hockey-related revenues to 46 percent from 57 percent despite enjoying record-breaking revenue of $3.3. billion last season along with an increase in television ratings.

Though the league’s most recent proposal is one year longer than its initial offer, Fehr believes changes in how the revenue is calculated would result in a significant increase in the amount of money players give up to escrow. “From a players’ standpoint, it doesn’t make much of a difference,” Fehr said. “Should the player not get the dollar value that is on his contract because there is a rollback ... or whether he doesn’t get an amount because there is escrow, he still

doesn’t get it.” With the current labor agreement set to expire on Sept 15, players and owners are in a critical stage of bargaining if they are to avoid another lockout like the one that wiped out the entire 2004-05 NHL season.

“We’re almost into September now,” said Daly. “I would say the positive thing is I think both parties are commit-

ted, if there are reasons to meet and continue to move forward, to meet as often as it takes to get a deal done. “But obviously every day that goes by it’s less and less likely that we’ll be able to come to closure on all of the issues we need to come to closure on.” The 82game regular season is scheduled to open on Oct 11. — Reuters

Harlequins targets back-to-back titles LONDON: Harlequins are determined to prove their first English Premiership triumph was no flash in the pan when they begin the defense of their title against Wasps at Twickenham today. The match forms part of the ‘London double header’ that has become the customary launch for a Premiership season, with two more capital clubs-Saracens and London Irish-in action at Twickenham today. This fixture will be the first match Quins, whose own Stoop ground is just a stone’s throw from Twickenham, have played at ‘headquarters’ since defeating perennial title contenders Leicester 30-23 in last season’s play-off final.

Quins, led by England captain Chris Robshaw, still have former All Blacks outside-half Nick Evans on board and Coach Conor O’Shea has challenged his side to match last term’s achievement. “It will be a nice piece of history for the club,” he explained. “We said after the final

whistle that good teams can win things, great teams kick on. “We’ll be introduced as Premiership champions but it won’t make any difference to us, the way we go about things,” former Ireland full-back O’Shea added. “We just want to bring our own intensity and our own style.”

Leicester face an interesting dilemma at fly-half where the English duo of Toby Flood, a seasoned international, and rising star George Ford are vying for the No 10 shirt. Tigers coach Richard Cockerill preferred to start Flood last term but Ford played in the final due to the England standoff’s injury. “At Leicester in particular, nobody’s spot is guaranteed,” Cockerill told the Leicester Mercury.

“Toby reacts to it very well. He knows that he needs to play very well to be in the side because he wants to play for England. “George Ford is younger but he is a very good player too. I am hoping he will kick on and be really good for us. Toby the same. — AFP

of his former team mates and colleagues allegedly ready to testify that he doped. Former team mate and deposed Tour de France winner Floyd Landis accused Armstrong in 2010 of using performance-enhancing drugs and teaching others how to avoid being caught. Armstrong’s agent, Bill Stapleton, could not be reached for comment on Thursday about Hamilton’s book, “The Secret Race: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour de France: Doping, Cover-ups, and Winning at All Costs”. Hamilton was a support rider of Armstrong’s at the US Postal Service team for his first three Tour de France victories.

In 2004, Hamilton won the timetrial at the Athens Olympics and was allowed to keep his medal after testing positive for blood doping because the laboratory accidently destroyed his B sample by deep freezing it.

The following year, Hamilton tested positive for a blood transfusion and was banned for two years. In 2006 he was linked to the Spanish doping scandal dubbed “Operation Puerto” before testing positive for steroids three years later. He was given an eight-year ban after he said he had taken an over-the-counter treatment for depression. — Reuters

Geale out to turn Sturm’s dream into a nightmare BERLIN: World champion Felix Sturm goes into today’s middleweight unification bout dreaming of adding the IBF title to his WBA crown, but Australia’s Daniel Geale is out to wreck his plans. Geale puts his IBF middleweight title on the line against 33-year-old Sturm, the WBA super world middleweight champion, when they meet in Oberhausen. The 31-year-old Geale returns to Germany having defeated Sebastian Sylvester in May 2011 to win the belt he has defended twice. The winner of today’s bout will walk away with both belts and Sturm, who has held the WBA title since 2007, says he has been dreaming of this chance.

“This fight has been a dream, a wish, for me since a long, long time,” said the German, whose two defeats came at the hands of Oscar de la Hoya in 2004 in Las Vegas and Spain’s Javier Castillejo in 2006. “Now I’m here and my dream is coming true. “I will do my best to impose my tactics on him and make him pay for his mistakes. “He is a great fighter but I’m quite sure that I’ll win today night. “I’m really happy that we found someone in Daniel Geale who did not hesitate to take this fight. It is the biggest of my career.” Sturm has not impressed recently: his June 2011 win over Matthew Macklin came only after a split decision, which had the Briton fuming, while he drew with Britain’s Martin Murray last December.

His last opponent Sebastian Zbik retired hurt after the ninth round in April, but Sturm insists Geale posses the biggest threat to his reign.”Daniel can move, he can box and he can put pressure on you,” said Sturm, whose undefeated run stretches to 14 fights. “I’m sure he will have a great game plan as well, but we will see if he will be able to follow this plan with me opposite him.”

Geale, a 2002 Commonwealth Games gold medalist and 2000 Olympian, is aware of the challenge he faces. “A lot of people have travelled to Sturm’s backyard and failed,” he said.

“I have to go out there and win. It being in Germany, I have to make sure I do it convincingly, especially if it goes down to a decision. “It’s coming at a good time for me: Felix hasn’t performed that well recently where as I feel I am improving with each fight.” — AFP

SPORTS

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2012

Lions maul Bills in NFL preseason DETROIT: Mikel Leshoure made the most of his opportunity to play before the NFL makes him sit. The Detroit Lions gave Leshoure a long look because the secondyear running back hasn’t been on the field much and he can’t be for the first two weeks of the season. Leshoure turned a short pass into a 33-yard reception to set up Detroit’s first touchdown and ran for a 2-yard score to give the Lions the lead in a 38-32 victory over the Buffalo Bills on Thursday night in the fourth and final preseason game. “I tried to be as balanced as possible,” he said.

“Inside the tackles, outside the tackles, catch the ball.”

The NFL is making Leshoure sit out of Detroit’s opener at home against St Louis and its Week 2 game at San Francisco because he was cited for two marijuanarelated offenses in the offseason. Lions coach Jim Schwartz said Leshoure will be able to attend meetings and work out at the team’s facility, but won’t be able to practice or play during his suspension. “I don’t have to leave,” Leshoure said. “So that’s a good, positive thing.” Detroit’s second-round draft pick last year didn’t play as a rookie because he tore his left Achilles tendon early in training camp. He was slowed by an injured right hamstring earlier this month, but flashed some of potential against the Bills with agile moves after making a catch and power on a run.

On a team desperate for help at running back, with Jahvid Best out for at least the first six weeks because of concussion-related concerns, Leshoure will be counted on when he returns. “When he got the ball in his hands, he looked good,” said Matthew Stafford, whose night ended when he threw a 24-yard TD pass to Calvin Johnson on the duo’s only drive. “It’s going to be a process for him to do what he has to do to stay in game shape with two weeks off.” Detroit’s offense, defense and special teams contributed toward the Lions (2-2) taking a 28-7 lead in the first quarter over the Bills (0-4) and yet Schwartz was still stewing about the game’s first drive.

Buffalo quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick completed all five of his attempts, including a 4yard TD pass to Stevie Johnson, on his first and last possession. “This game was about the guys who were getting their last chance to get noticed,” Fitzpatrick said. “I’ve been in that position a lot of times, so I know how big this game can be for your career. The Bills gave Tyler Thigpen an extended opportunity - in part because Brad Smith had a groin injury - to keep his job as their No. 2 QB and he didn’t take advantage of it.

Thigpen had an interception returned for a touchdown in his second straight game and ended the team’s comeback chances with another interception in the final minute.

STEELERS TOP PANTHERS Charlie Batch isn’t much on predictions.

Still, the Pittsburgh Steelers’ longtime backup quarterback believes he knows what he’ll be doing next week. “I totally expect to be sitting in the meetings Monday morning,” Batch said. The 37-year-old certainly played like a guy deserving of a 15th NFL season in Pittsburgh’s 17-16 preseason win over Carolina on Thursday night.

Batch completed 11 of 14 passes for 102 yards and a perfect 37-yard touchdown to Emmanuel Sanders to make a case he should stick around after teams trim their rosters to 53. “I feel like I can still play,” Batch said. “I feel that if I step in the huddle, guys can count on me.”

It’s a sentiment echoed by Jimmy Clausen, who passed for 173 yards and two touchdowns, including a 79-yard score to rookie Lamont Bryant with 2:31 to play to bring the Panthers (2-2) within a point. The 2-point conversion failed, however, and kicker Justin Medlock missed a 50-yard field goal with 32 seconds left. Clausen insists he has “no idea” whether he’ll beat out Derek Anderson for the right to back up starter Cam Newton, but showed in the waning moments of the exhibition season he can perform under pressure. “My name gets

called, that’s what you have to do is give the team a chance to win games and that’s what I did tonight with the offense,” Clausen said.

Both teams sat the majority of their top players. Quarterback Ben Roethlisberger and defensive back Troy Polamalu did not play for Pittsburgh (3-1), while Carolina coach Ron Rivera gave Newton and wide receiver Steve Smith the night off. The Steelers, however, suffered a blow when rookie linebacker Sean Spence went down in the third quarter with what coach Mike Tomlin called a “significant” left knee injury. The third-round

pick out of Miami (Fla) was trying to chase down Clausen when he took an awkward step and wrenched his left leg. Spence slammed his helmet on the turf before being tended to by trainers and was carted off the field.

Spence was the latest and most serious of a series of injuries to the team’s linebacking corps. James Harrison (knee) and Jason Worilds (wrist) didn’t play at all during the preseason and backup Stevenson Sylvester (knee) is out several weeks after getting nicked up during training camp. “I’ve been playing this game a long time and have been in a lot of physical battles, but to see a serious injury like that to a guy in just his fourth preseason game, it really makes you wonder,” Polamalu said.

MCELROY LIFTS JETS If Mark Sanchez and Tim Tebow don’t get it done in the red zone, the New York Jets can turn to Greg McElroy. After all, he was the only quarterback to lead the Jets to a touchdown this preseason. “That was obviously a point of emphasis for us, was just red-area execution, and we were able to do it for at least that one drive,” McElroy said following a 28-10 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles on Thursday night. The Jets (0-4) were the first team in 35 years to go three preseason games without a touchdown, matching the 1977 Atlanta Falcons for offensive futility. McElroy ended that drought. His reward will be a seat on the bench. “I’m glad we got it,” Jets coach Rex Ryan said.

“I’m not going to sit here and say I wish we (hadn’t scored). I would’ve liked to have saved it and tack it on next week.” The Jets open against Buffalo on Sept 9. The Eagles will play at Cleveland.Sanchez, Tebow and most of the Jets starters didn’t play in this battle between backups and guys fighting for roster spots. Michael Vick and all of Philadelphia’s starters watched from the sideline. Trent Edwards threw for 197 yards and two TDs to help the Eagles (4-0) finish the preseason undefeated for the first time since 1995. None of that will matter when the games count. Hours before kickoff, Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie stopped just short of issuing a win-or-else ultimatum to coach Andy Reid.

Lurie said the team must make a “substantial improvement” for Reid to return for his 15th season next year. He added another 8-8 record would be “unacceptable.” “I don’t have a level or anything like that,” Lurie said.

“I want to be clear about that. You try to make the best judgment you can after the season.” Reid’s contract runs through 2013.

“I don’t care about that stuff,” Reid said. “He has high expectations. I have high expectations. Let’s go play. We surely won’t be satisfied with 8-8. We’re striving for better than that. I’m not worried about it. I understand the business. I have a great relationship with Jeffrey.” The Jets hadn’t scored a TD in the 13 quarters before McElroy tossed a 6-yard TD pass to Terrance Ganaway midway through the second. Sanchez and Tebow failed to do that in 35 possessions.

McElroy finished 12 of 17 for 90 yards and one TD. He also rushed for 33 yards.

“Obviously we went out there with the intention and the hope to score some touchdowns, so we were able to get one,” McElroy said. “The execution was great. I told the guys when we were out on the field, I said: ‘Hey, let’s just make the most of ST LOUIS: St Louis Rams cornerback Janoris Jenkins leaps into the end zone after inter- this opportunity, you don’t get down here cepting a pass and returning it 76-yards for a touchdown during the third quarter of a pre- very often, let’s not take it for granted, let’s season NFL football game against the Baltimore Ravens on Thursday, Aug 30, 2012. — AP punch it in.’” —Agencies

SPORTS

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2012

Holders Atletico handed kind Europa League draw MONACO: Europa League winners Atletico Madrid will face Hapoel Tel Aviv, Viktoria Plzen and Portuguese newcomers Academica Coimbra in the group stage of this season’s competition following yesterday’s draw. “We have never played any of these teams.

We could have had tougher rivals but we have these, and we will fight to be champions of the group,” Atletico president Enrique Cerezo told reporters.

Athletic Bilbao, last season’s finalists, face Olympique Lyon, Sparta Prague and Hapoel Kiryat Shmona in another of the 12 groups that comprise the opening stage of UEFA’s secondary European club competition.

Tottenham Hotspur, who finished fourth in the Premier League last season but were denied a place in the

Champions League when Chelsea won that competition, were grouped with Panathinaikos, Lazio and Maribor three sides they have never played before. Five-times European champions Liverpool face Udinese, who were eliminated from the Champions League playoffs on Tuesday and Young Boys as well as the wealthy Russian club Anzhi Makhachkala, who boast Samuel Eto’o, the world’s bestpaid player, in their ranks. This season’s competition, which begins on Sept.20 and ends with the final in Amsterdam on May 15 next year has five former European champions, including Olympique Marseille, who face tough opposition from Fenerbache of Turkey, Borussia Moenchengladbach of Germany as well as AEL Limassol of Cyprus.

HIGH-QUALITY DRAW Marseille coach Elie Baup said: “This is a high-quality draw. We expect hot and high intensity games.

“Fenerbahce and Moenchengladbach have their place in the top European circle. These opponents fully know what the European ties demand. Even if it’s not the Champions League, this is a high level European competition.”

Inter Milan, European champions in 2010, also face a tough looking group against the hard-to-beat Russians Rubin Kazan, Partizan Belgrade and debutants Nefti from Azerbaijan.

Olympique Lyon, while never winning the Champions League, had qualified for that competition for 13 successive seasons and club president Jean-Michel Aulas said: “Of course we would rather be in the other competi-

tion but it would be a major honour to win this title and that is what we are going to try and do.”

Lazio bought former England international Paul Gascoigne from Tottenham in 1992 for 5.5 million pounds ($8.70 million) and general manager Maurizio Manzini said he planned to invite the ex-player to Rome for the match against Spurs.

“Tottenham is a team Lazio knows very well, a great team with great traditions and we are very familiar with White Hart Lane starting from the time we had Paul Gascoigne. “There is always a corner of Tottenham in our hearts.

He is a mythical figure for Lazio fans and very popular in general in Italy. “I hope we will have the chance to see him in London and for sure we will invite him to the match in Rome. — Reuters

MONACO: A picture shows boards displaying the names of European football teams during the draw for the UEFA Europa League group stage 2012/13 in Monaco. — AFP

French League Preview

Italian League Preview

Milan look to make amends ROME: Former Barcelona forward Bojan Krkic is hoping to put his club loyalty card credentials on the line today when AC Milan travel to Bologna looking to make amends for their opening day defeat.

With the bulk of Serie A action tomorrow, including defending champions Juventus’s away trip to Udinese, Massimiliano Allegri’s side’s second game of the season presents a double challenge. They must show that last week’s shocking 1-0 defeat at home to promoted Sampdoria was a blip and that they are also making progress in plugging the gaping holes left by some key departures.

Prior to last week’s defeat Milan’s fans were barely digesting the club’s decision to sell centre back Thiago Silva and striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic to Paris Saint Germain.

But since then another key striker, Antonio Cassano, has decided to defect to arch rivals Inter. Although Milan vice-president Adriano Galliani failed in his bid to lure Brazilian playmaker Kaka back to the club from Real Madrid because of prohibitive tax rules, Milan have tried to make amends.French teenager Mbaye Niang has arrived, as a future prospect, from French side Caen but perhaps the biggest story was the arrival of Bojan on a oneyear loan deal from Serie A side AS Roma.

Having spent four “dream” years at Barcelona, Bojan was sold to Roma last

season but it has been an unhappy experience. The 22-year-old is even hoping his move becomes more permanent. “I didn’t play much for Roma and arriving here at Milan is a step forward for me,” said Bojan, who scored seven goals in 33 appearances for Roma last season. “It wasn’t an easy year in Rome, but I learned a lot. I want to do well and help the team. I want to stay after the loan period.” Milan on Thursday completed the signing of tough-tackling Dutch midfielder Nigel De Jong from Manchester City although it remains to be seen whether the 27-yearold is given a run out at the Stadio Renato Dall’Ara. It has been a busy week for transfers all round, but it got particularly nasty between Fiorentina and Juventus.

Fiorentina, who travel to Napoli tomorrow hoping to build on their 2-1 win last week at home to Udinese, were all set to boast of one of the coups of the summer with the signing of Dimitar Berbatov. But after paying the Manchester United striker’s air fare to Florence, the Bulgarian failed to arrive-and Fiorentina suggested late interest in his services from Juventus was the reason. “... the player never arrived in Florence... because of the reckless and arrogant attitude of other companies which belie the values of honesty, fair play and ethics of sport,” said a team statement. — AFP

PSG ready to crash Lille house-warming party PARIS: If misfiring Paris Saint-Germain are to register a first victory of the season this weekend, they must overcome a Lille side emboldened by their qualification for the Champions League group phase. After three games, PSG are already six points behind early pace-setters Marseille, following three straight draws against Lorient, Ajaccio and Bordeaux.

It is far from ideal preparation for tomorrow’s trip to Lille, which was always going to be one of PSG’s toughest away fixtures, even without the added pressure generated by their disappointing start to the Ligue 1 campaign. Lille, deposed as champions by Montpellier last season, have only just moved into the Grand Stade but the 50,000-seater arena will feel that bit more homely following Wednesday’s 2-0 win over FC Copenhagen in the Champions League play-off round. The success gave Lille a 21 aggregate win, taking them into the competition’s group stage and blowing away the doubts that had crept into the club following their 1-0 loss to the Danes in last week’s first leg.

“I said that this would be the baptism of the Grand Stade, and I wasn’t mistaken,” said Coach Rudi Garcia after Wednesday’s game. “We’re going to have

dinner together but from tomorrow (Thursday), our minds will already start turning towards PSG’s visit tomorrow.”

Lille’s 2-2 draw at Nice last weekend left them in eighth place in the table, four points below Marseille. While the 2011 champions are not yet firing on all cylinders domestically, the need for improvement is far more pressing at PSG. Despite around 140 million euros ($175 million) having been invested in new players in the summer, Carlo Ancelotti’s men have flattered to deceive in their first three outings.

Last Sunday’s 0-0 draw with Bordeaux at Parc des Princes was particularly frustrating, with jeers greeting the final whistle and L’Equipe sports daily branding Ancelotti a “broken down coach” in a subsequent edition. “Our ambition is to win everything,” centre-back Alex told the club website, psg.fr, this week. “During pre-season we worked a lot in order to achieve this objective. We’ll give everything for it.

“We’ve not had the best start possible, but we have the time to catch up and improve the situation.” Ancelotti could hand a debut to new signing Thiago Silva against Lille and if he does, he must choose whether it is Alex or Mamadou Sakho who makes way in central defense. — AFP

SPORTS

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2012

Tired City need time to find rhythm: Mancini MANCHESTER: Manchester City manager Roberto Mancini admits it could take several weeks before the Premier League champions hit peak form as their tired stars recover from Euro 2012. City have made an unbeaten start to their title defense, but Mancini knows his side have been below their best so far, with an unconvincing 3-2 win over Southampton followed by a hard-fought 2-2 draw at Liverpool. The Italian believes the main reason for City’s lethargy is the mental and physical strain on his players after the European Championship in Poland and Ukraine.

Mancini decided to drop one of the key figures in his team, Spain’s David Silva, for the trip to Liverpool because he felt the playmaker needed a rest and he does not expect an immediate improvement in today’s clash with QPR at Eastlands. “We don’t have all the players in good form,” Mancini said. “The international players started pre-season on July 25.

They are not in good form. This is one of the reasons.

“David started his pre-season late and for one week went to Puerto Rico with Spain. He needs training and maybe to play, but not for 90 minutes.”

QPR’s visit will prompt glorious memories for City after their incredible 3-2 win over the west London

club that clinched the title on the final day of last season. Trailing 2-1 heading into stoppage time, it appeared City had squandered a golden opportunity to win the title for the first time in 44 years. But Edin Dzeko sparked a dramatic fightback with the equalizer before Sergio Aguero bagged the winner with virtually the last kick of the season to wrestle the title away from Manchester United. Just three months on, though, Mancini is more concerned with improving his squad than reveling in past glories.

Mancini has been desperate for new faces since the end of last season, when he called for the club’s hierarchy to make quick additions to establish City as a European force. Going into the final week of the transfer window the only purchase he had managed was Jack Rodwell from Everton. But with the club closing in on the signings of Fiorentina’s Matija Nastasic, Swansea City’s Scott Sinclair and former England goalkeeper Richard Wright, Mancini could finally get the new recruits he desires.

Mancini will have a similar squad to the side that drew at Anfield last time out, with Aguero, Micah Richards and Gareth Barry all still injured. However, the QPR team that arrives at Eastlands will look very

different from the one that clung onto their Premier League place despite losing to City last season.

Rangers’ celebrations that day may have been nothing more than a footnote to the main event but with a place in the top-flight guaranteed, club owner Tony Fernandes subsequently bankrolled several expensive signings for Coach Mark Hughes. With the change in personnel comes a change in expectations, and it is clear another narrow escape will not be satisfactory.

And with one point in the opening two league games of the season, and the 5-0 home defeat by Swansea on the opening day still raw in the memory, former City boss Hughes could do with upsetting the odds at City. QPR’s chances have not been helped by the absence of Mali midfielder Samba Diakite, who has returned home to France because of personal reasons. “Samba is unfortunately having difficulties with some personal issues at the moment and we are supporting him in every way we can,” Hughes said. “We hope he can overcome this very quickly and get back to being the outstanding player that he undoubtedly is. In the meantime, we are giving him the time and help that he needs.”— AFP

SPANISH LEAGUE PREVIEW

Matches on TV (Local Timings)

Super Cup winners seek league upturn

English Premier League West Ham v Fulham Abu Dhabi Sports HD 3

14:45

Tottenham v Norwich Abu Dhabi Sports HD 3

17:00

West Brom v Everton Abu Dhabi Sports HD 4

17:00

Wigan v Stoke City Abu Dhabi Sports HD 6

17:00

Swansea v Sunderland Abu Dhabi Sports HD 7

17:00

Man City v QPR Abu Dhabi Sports HD 3

19:30

MADRID: Having claimed the season’s first piece of silverware with victory over Barcelona in the Spanish Super Cup, Real Madrid return to domestic action needing to close a five-point deficit on the Catalans in La Liga. Madrid coach Jose Mourinho uncharacteristically tore into his players after their 2-1 derby defeat by Getafe last weekend, describing their performance as “unacceptable”. He got the reaction he was looking for in the Super Cup though, with a sparkling first-half display on Wednesday at the Bernabeu paving the way for a 2-1 victory over 10man Barca that gave Madrid the trophy on away goals. It was the only silverware that Mourinho lacked in Spain after win-

ning the King’s Cup in his first year and then the league title last season, which ended Barca’s hegemony under Pep Guardiola, who had finished first in the previous three campaigns. “The trophy will give us confidence. We should enjoy the moment but also realise that we must now move forward and know that we cannot afford to make any more mistakes,” said Cristiano Ronaldo, ahead of tomorrow’s game at home to Granada.

“We know we have to improve as a group as well as individually. We started the game against Barca well, scoring two goals, but then relaxed and eased off as we became tired.”

The defeat was a blow for new Barca

Ferguson angry with FA over Young injury MANCHESTER: Sir Alex Ferguson, the Manchester United manager, is angry with the Football Association for revealing that winger Ashley Young has a knee injury that will rule him out of action for club and country for the next two weeks. The FA named their latest England squad, for forthcoming internationals against Moldova and the Ukraine, on Thursday and left Young out of Roy Hodgson’s group. In doing so, they also explained that Young has a knee injury, a revelation that has angered Ferguson who believes it has given Southampton, whom United were scheduled to play on Sunday, a competitive advantage.

“It was nice of the FA to let everyone know that Ashley Young is injured,” said Ferguson. “There is no point giving them any information now. “He’s out, he got a knee injury last week, although it’s not serious. Obviously, he will be ready for a couple of weeks’ time.” Ferguson failed to explain how the FA are supposed to omit a player from their squad without explaining the reasons behind it, but his reaction serves as the latest example of the poor relations between the veteran manager and the game’s ruling body. Meanwhile, Ferguson has received better news over the progress of the Scotland international midfielder Darren Fletcher whose career looked in jeopardy last season when he was diagnosed with a debilitating bowel disease. Ferguson seems certain to name the 28-year-old in his 25-man squad for the Champions’ League, something he can easily do as he has enough vacant positions in the party because of the UEFA rule that means clubs do not need to register players who have spent the required time in an academy system.—AFP

MADRID: Real Madrid’s Cristiano Ronaldo from Portugal holds the trophy after his team’s victory over FC Barcelona in their Spanish Supercup second leg soccer match at the Santiago Bernabeu stadium in Madrid. — AP

coach Tito Vilanova as he seeks to emulate the successes of his predecessor. He has so far failed to tighten up the defense, which was the weak point of the team last season, and centre-backs Gerard Pique and Javier Mascherano were chasing shadows for much of the first 45 minutes against Madrid. Still, Vilanova praised the way his side responded after the break. “I am proud that with 10 men in the second half, we managed to create five scoring chances,” he said. “This isn’t a psychological blow. We would have preferred to win, but it isn’t make-or-break for the season and we now return to the league.”

Barca take on Valencia looking to maintain their 100 per cent record, which is also shared by Real Valladolid and Rayo Vallecano. Valladolid are yet to concede a goal in an impressive return to the top flight and they face an Athletic Bilbao side in disarray after the departure of Javi Martinez to Bayern Munich, and with Fernando Llorente expected to follow him out of the door. Their policy of only fielding Basques means their ability to hold onto their players is crucial but their fine displays last season have put them in the shop window.

Rayo now play Sevilla, who were happy to come away with a point from the Andalusian derby with Granada after playing the whole second half with 10 men following the dismissal of goalkeeper Diego Lopez. Atletico Madrid will look to continue their strong start to the season, which included a hat-trick by striker Radamel Falcao in a 4-0 victory over Athletic Bilbao, when they play Real Betis.

Malaga learnt on Thursday that they will face AC Milan, Zenit Saint Petersburg and Anderlecht in the group stage of their debut Champions League campaign, and they take on Real Zaragoza. Modest Levante were the major surprises last season, qualifying for the Europa League, but after a stuttering start without a win, they aim to get back on track against Espanyol. — AFP

sports

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2012

Liverpool strike late to break Hearts LIVERPOOL: Luis Suarez’s late goal sent Liverpool into the Europa League group stage as the Reds drew 1-1 with Hearts at Anfield on Thursday to clinch a 2-1 aggregate success. Brendan Rodgers’ team had a 1-0 advantage from last week’s first leg at Tynecastle and despite dominating for long periods at Anfield, they only just scraped past the Scottish Premier League outfit.

David Templeton looked set to make Liverpool pay for their wastefulness when his weak shot was allowed into the net by Pepe Reina with five minutes left.

But three minutes later Suarez burst away down the left and managed to find the net from close-range to secure Liverpool’s place in the group stages of Europe’s second tier competition. It was an unnecessarily nervous end to the evening for a Liverpool side that had plenty of chances to see off the Edinburgh club.

“We knew it was going to be tough,” Liverpool’s Stewart Downing said on ESPN. “We made more hard work of it than we should have done. We were a little bit wasteful in front of goal.

“However, the manager stressed to the team ‘don’t go down under pressure’, and I think we bounced back well. “We created lots of chances we didn’t finish though and we have to be more clinical in front of goal. That was a lesson for us.” Rodgers, who has allowed Andy Carroll to join West Ham on a season-long loan, can also be forgiven for having half an eye on the 24 hours ahead. The Liverpool manager could see Charlie Adam and Jay Spearing leave and is be keen to add new faces ahead of deadline.

Hearts began brightly and Callum Paterson hit a half volley that landed just wide and had another effort blocked by a teammate. Suarez immediately carried a threat and after swapping passes with Martin Kelly, he had a low effort pushed away by Hearts goalkeeper Jamie Macdonald. Downing has endured plenty of criticism during his time at Anfield but he showed great skill to beat Paterson with ease and send over a cross that was flicked on by youngster Adam Morgan and headed towards goal by Suarez, only for Marius Zaliukas to clear off the line.

John Sutton went down in the area under Jamie Carragher’s challenge with the visitors appealing for a penalty, before Liverpool’s Joe Allen broke forward and had a long-range effort held by Macdonald. Sutton glanced a header wide from a whipped cross from Templeton and Morgan wasted a decent opening after he was played through by Steven Gerrard after a quick break. After the break, Gerrard picked out Martin Skrtel at the near post but the Slovakian defender’s effort was turned wide

by Andy Webster.

And Jonjo Shelvey thumped another effort from 25 yards just past the top corner as the hosts continued to press. Suarez then passed up two opportunities to kill the tie. The Uruguayan was sent through by Jordan Henderson and had his close-range effort blocked on to the post by Ryan McGowan. A minute later he spun 10 yards from goal and curled a shot past the far post.

Raheem Sterling, who had replaced Morgan just after the hour, made an immediate impression and just missed after an beating several defenders and Gerrard also hit a bending shot narrowly wide midway through the second half. Hearts went close again through Mehdi Taouil and Daniel Grainger also had a free-kick deflected wide by the wall. The Scottish side pulled the tie level in the 85th minute when Reina allowed a routine shot from Templeton to squirm through his body and into the net.

But, with extra-time looming, Suarez broke clear down the left and managed to squeeze a shot inside the near post in the 88th minute.

CSKA CRASH OUT In other matches, CSKA Moscow crashed out to AIK Solna on Thursday. CSKA, 2005 UEFA Cup winners, lost 2-0 to the Swedes who knocked out the Russians 2-1 on aggregate after Kwame Karikari grabbed an early goal for the visitors and Martin Lorentzon added a second in stoppage time. Elsewhere, most of the favoured teams made it through to the next round. Inter Milan secured a 2-2 draw against Romanian side Vaslui to progress 4-2 on aggregate despite going down to 10 men after goalkeeper Luca Castellazzi was red-carded in the 33rd minute following a foul on Liviu Antal.

Olympique Marseille survived a goalless draw with Moldovan side Sheriff, going through thanks to a 2-1 win last week, while Red Star Belgrade went out after a 3-2 defeat at Girondins Bordeaux, Yoan Gouffran’s penalty sealing victory for the Ligue 1 side. Newcastle United saw off Atromitos 1-0 and 2-1 on aggregate thanks to substitute Haris Vuckic, on for the injured Ryan Taylor, who placed a fine curling shot from the edge of the area past the Greek club’s goalkeeper Charles Itandje, formerly of Liverpool. —Agencies

LIVERPOOL: Liverpool’s English forward Adam Morgan (left) heads towards the goal during the UEFA Europa League qualifying football match between Liverpool and Hearts at Anfield on August 30, 2012. — AFP

Villas-Boas aims to lift the gloom at Hotspurs LONDON: Andre Villas-Boas accepts Tottenham have made a disappointing start to the Premier League campaign and the news that centre back Younes Kaboul is out for four months has hardly lifted the mood at White Hart Lane. Villas-Boas admits a solitary point from the opening two games against Newcastle and West Bromwich Albion is an unsatisfactory return as the new Tottenham manager attempts to emulate the fourth-placed finish achieved by his predecessor Harry Redknapp last year.

Anything less than victory over Norwich City at White Hart Lane today will mean the gap between Spurs and the top four will grow uncomfortably wide even at this early stage of the season. But Kaboul’s absence after undergoing knee surgery is an early blow to Villas-Boas’s hopes of establishing defensive stability in his starting line-up. “He had an operation on his patella tendon. He continuously damaged it during the last three months and we decided that conservative treatment wouldn’t take him any further,” Villas-Boas said.

“It’s a massive, massive blow for us. We are looking at three to four months out.”

Kaboul’s absence, however, does not mean Michael Dawson is back in the manager’s first team plans a week after the England centre back was told he was surplus to requirements. “We have known about this possibility (of Kaboul’s surgery) for quite some time, and this was even mentioned in the discussions I had with Michael,” Villas-Boas added.

The Portuguese coach insists there have still been enough signs of encouragement despite the lack of victories and he believes it will only take an improve-

ment in concentration to resolve his side’s flaws. “Of course you always want to start better and one point out of a possible six is something that disappoints us because we have given two good performances,” Villas-Boas said. “There are positives to take on board but the results aren’t there and we have to push to make that happen. “Going back on both games I thought we were extremely good at Newcastle and in the first half against West Brom.

“Looking over the two games you could say we need to improve our concentration levels and that’s what we will take from them.”

Moussa Dembele, the Belgium international signed from Fulham this week as a replacement for Luka Modric after the Croatian’s move to Real Madrid, is in line to make his debut, but fellow midfielder

Scott Parker is still two weeks away from a return. Like Villas-Boas, Norwich manager Chris Hughton is attempting to fill the gap left by a successful predecessor, in his case Paul Lambert who left for Aston Villa in the close-season. And like the Portuguese, Hughton is still looking for his first league win after the an opening day 5-0 loss at Fulham and last weekend’s home draw against QPR. The odds are against Hughton as he returns to Spurs, who he served for 18 years as player and coach, but the former Newcastle boss insists his side will travel with confidence. “You have to give yourself the best possible chance, and the only way you can give yourself that is to have no fear, go in with a game plan, be brave in everything that you do, and see where it takes you,” Hughton said.—AFP

Schweinsteiger not ready for Germany BERLIN: Bastian Schweinsteiger is still not fit enough to play for Germany and has been left out of their squad for the World Cup qualifiers against Faroe Islands and Austria next month. Coach Joachim Loew, who named 34-year-old Miroslav Klose as his only out-and-out striker in the 22-man squad, said Schweinsteiger was still not match fit after a series of nagging injuries. “I have spoken with Bastian and we have come to the understanding that he still needs some time to get back into training and match rhythm. Our plan for Bastian Schweinsteiger is laid around the two matches in October against Ireland and Sweden.”

Schweinsteiger came on as a second-half substitute for Bayern Munich in their opening Bundesliga game of the season against Greuther Fuerth today as well as a German Cup first round tie the week before. Loew stuck largely with the squad which faced Argentina in a friendly two weeks ago and was outclassed in a 3-1 home defeat. Philipp Lahm, rested for personal reasons from that game, is recalled along with Arsenal pair Per Mertesacker and Lukas Podolski.— Reuters

sports

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2012

London bombings survivor makes Games bow LONDON: Martine Wright, a London bombings survivor who lost both her legs in the 2005 attacks, made an emotional debut in the Paralympics on Friday as Britain took their Games bow in sitting volleyball. Watched by London Mayor Boris Johnson, the 39-year-old took to the court at the ExCeL exhibition centre, receiving an ovation from the crowd in the South Arena 2.

Great Britain, having put together a team from scratch for the London 2012 Games, were beaten

by Ukraine 25-9, 25-20, 25-14. Ukraine took the first set with relative ease, though Great Britain gave them a tougher ride in the second set, reeling in their big lead. Wright came on at 24-20 down in the second set, getting a big cheer from the crowd when her name was announced. But she could not prevent the visitors from taking the set on the next point. Wright came on again at 102 down in the third set and was cheered again as she took her first service, though Britain lost the point.

She was taken off at 23-13 down, ensuring she received her own round of applause before Ukraine sealed victory. The bombings took place on July 7, 2005, the day after London won the right to host the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Four Islamist suicide bombers detonated their explosives on three London Underground

trains and a double-decker bus, killing themselves and 52 others. Wright could easily have been among those killed. One of the bombers blew himself up in the same carriage on her Circle Line train. She only awoke from a coma in hospital more than a week later.

Johnson, who played some impromptu air bongos when the cameras turned on him, was joined by “Carry On” films star Barbara Windsor.

“It’s very moving to see Martine here,” the mayor said. “The whole thing is fantastic and Great Britain are doing brilliantly well. They’re up against some very tough opponents here in Ukraine, there’s no question. The Ukrainians got some very strong performers at the net.” He said Wright’s participation summed up the positive spirit of the Paralympics. “Who’d have thought that at 9:00 in the morning you’d get a crowd like this with all this enthusiasm for a sport that two and a half years ago we didn’t even compete in. It’s absolutely wonderful,” he said. “I think these Paralympics are going to be more successful than any Paralympics there’s ever been.” The Great Britain team, brought together only in the last two to three years, readily admit they are not medal-contenders yet are thrilled to be performing on home soil. Sitting Volleyball is played on a smaller court than regular volleyball. — AFP

Dream comes true for UK bombings survivor LONDON: Martine Wright, a survivor of the London bombings who lost both legs in the 2005 attacks, made an emotional debut in the Paralympics sitting volleyball Friday, describing it as a “dream come true”. Watched by London Mayor Boris Johnson at the ExCeL exhibition centre, the 39-year-old received an ovation from the packed crowd as she took to the court.

Great Britain, having put together a team from scratch for the London 2012 Games, were beaten in straight sets by a much more experienced Ukraine team. But there was no dampening Wright’s enthusiasm. “It was absolutely amazing,” she said. “I’ve been on quite a journey the last few years. To be able to finally get on court in front of my friends and family that have supported me and been so important to me over the last few years was an absolute dream come true-and a dream that I never actually would have had before July 7.” On that day seven years ago, four suicide bombers detonated their explosives on three London Underground trains and a double-decker bus, killing themselves and 52 others. The bombings took place the day after London won the right to host the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Wright could easily have been among the dead. She was sat just a short distance away from bomber Shehzad Tanweer, who killed six innocent people on a Circle Line train.

She only awoke from a coma in hospital more than a week later. Wright said she did not let her mind drift back to the 7/7 attacks as she made her Games bow. “I didn’t think about it. Today was about performance and that was it,” said the survivor, who wears the number seven. “I had my family in the crowd and I could see my son waving a banner with ‘go mummy, go mummy’. That’s something that I’ve had in my head for the last few years. “They were all here. Mum, Dad, sister, brother, son.” Wright said she had also received an email of support from Elizabeth Kenworthy, the off-duty police officer who saved her life by stemming her blood loss by tying a makeshift tourniquet around one of her legs.

The Londoner got a big cheer from the crowd when she came on for a point at 24-20 down in the second set, and again when she returned at 10-2 down in the third set. She was taken off at 23-

LONDON: Martine Wright of Britain gestures as she plays the Ukraine, during their women’s sitting volleyball match at the 2012 Paralympics games yesterday. — AP 13 down, ensuring she received her own round of applause before Ukraine sealed a 25-9, 25-20, 2514 victory. Johnson said Wright making the British team summed up the spirit of the Paralympics.

“It’s very moving to see Martine here,” the mayor said. “Who’d have thought that at 9:00 in the morning you’d get a crowd like this with all this enthusiasm for a sport that two and a half years ago we didn’t even compete in. It’s absolutely wonderful.”

Wright said when Britain won the right to stage the Games, “all I kept thinking about was how the hell am I going to get tickets.”Now in a very weird, weird twist of fate or destiny, I don’t need tickets because I’m actually taking part,” she told reporters. “If people take something from my story and my journey, that gives me strength and inspiration. So I’ve just got to keep going.”My motivation is I truly believe I was meant to do this journey and I just want to make my family and my nation proud, and play a sport that I absolutely love. “If I can inspire people... then my job’s done.”—AFP

Stubborn Weggemann swims against adversity LONDON: Feeling hopeless and defeated after a routine epidural injection for back pain in 2008 left her paralysed, Mallory Weggemann was taken to the US Paralympic trials by her sister despite not wanting to go. Days later the competitive swimmer was back in the pool and her life changed forever. In July 2009 she broke her first world record in Canada and at the short course world championships in Rio de Janeiro in November she smashed six more.

Then in 2010 at the long course worlds in the Netherlands Weggemann bagged eight gold medals and one silver, finishing with nine world records.

“Everyone jokes that I’m stubborn but I think that personality trait is what has allowed me to move forward in life,” Weggemann told Reuters ahead of her Paralympic Games debut today. “I still have days where life gets me down. But if I wasn’t paralyzed I would still have hard days too.

It’s not because I’m paralysed that I have hard days. It’s because I’m human.”

After an appeal against the International Paralympics Committee (IPC) ruling to change her classification was rejected on Wednesday, 23-year-old Weggemann said she felt the system had “failed” her.

Weggemann will now race against athletes who have full function from the knee up whereas she has no feeling or movement from her belly button down. She has overcome far greater adversity to get to London however. On Jan 21, 2008, two months shy of her 19th birthday, she entered hospital and never walked again.

“I said ‘I’m going to walk out of here.’

When that didn’t happen after three weeks I started making lists in my head of all the things I would do once I walked again,” the American said at a Procter and Gamble event. “A few months later I realized I was putting roadblocks up for myself by saying all those things. What happens if I don’t walk again?” It was then that her sister stepped in having seen an article in the local newspaper, whisking Weggemann to the trials at the University of Minnesota just 20 minutes from their house. “At that point in time, I had never heard of the Paralympics. I’d been a

competitive swimmer since I was seven but I didn’t want to go. My sister said ‘No, you’re going.’ “I saw athletes with all different disabilities and I saw them compete.

Prosthetics, wheelchairs, walking canes, everything aside they were all in that pool. “I remember the rush of emotions when I was introduced to the coaches later that evening, who had heard I was a swimmer.

The passion I have for the sport came right back and I wanted to swim again. “I came home on that Saturday night and told my parents I wanted to get in the water again. I don’t think my parents thought I was really serious but on Monday I was back in the pool. Swimming saved me.”

NEW BODY Before she was paralyzed, Weggemann loved her social life but had a “horrific” upper body technique. Now she defies her condition to carve through the water at breathtaking speed. “I had coaches who said I could be really, really good if I put my mind to it. But I said ‘Nah I just love hanging out with my friends.’ I was the social butterfly, I still am. There was definitely another level I could have taken my training to. “When I was paralyzed I saw it as a challenge. How far could I push my body? Before I was paralyzed I was all kick, I was horrific with my upper body. Now I work with my new body and I have a whole different drive and determination.”

Weggemann will need every ounce of this to overcome the disappointment of being one of 40 athletes to have their classifications changed before the start of the Games, a usual move by the IPC ahead of major championships. Whatever the outcome of her first Paralympics, Weggemann is looking at the bigger picture after a chat with 2008 Beijing Games decathlon gold medalist Bryan Clay. “Bryan told me to not forget about the journey and to soak it all in, because the Paralympics last for 10 days when you’ve trained for four years for it and it’s easy to get wrapped up. “So I’m going to soak it all in and enjoy it,” she said, gazing over the River Thames and feeling like a “kid in a candy shop.”— Reuters

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2012

Sports

Liverpool strike late to break Hearts

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NEW YORK: In this file photo, Andy Roddick, of the USA, kisses his trophy after winning the men’s final at the US Open tennis tournament in New York. The 2003 US Open champion and former No 1-ranked player surprisingly announced his plans to retire at a news conference at Flushing Meadows yesterday on his 30th birthday. —AP

Roddick stuns the tennis world Venus ousted; Federer, Serena match on NEW YORK: Andy Roddick stunned the tennis world by announcing that the US Open would be his last tournament on Thursday but there was no sign of the end of the road for his contemporaries Roger Federer and Serena Williams on day four at Flushing Meadows. Federer led the tributes for Roddick after defeating Bjorn Phau with an evening exhibition to reach the third round of the men’s draw, while Serena added her own plaudits after remaining on course for a fourth US Open crown with a victory over Maria Jose Martinez Sanchez.

Roddick’s announcement of his impending retirement came shortly after France’s fifth seed Jo-Wilfried Tsonga produced his worst match of the year to be the first big-name casualty of the men’s draw. The former world number one and US Open champion said he realized during his first-round victory over Rhyne Williams that he had lost the desire to remain on tour. “I just feel like it’s time,” Roddick, who celebrated his 30th birthday on Thursday, said. “I’ve always wanted to, in a perfect world, finish at this event. I have a lot of family and friends here.

“I thought all year I would know when I got to this tournament. When I was playing my first round, I knew. Playing here, I don’t know what it was.

“I couldn’t imagine myself being there another year.” Roddick played Australian Bernard Tomic on Arthur Ashe Stadium yesterday night in a

highly-charged atmosphere. Top seed Federer absolutely dominated German Phau to win 6-2 6-3 6-2 in the opening match of Thursday’s night session before paying tribute to Roddick, who he defeated in three Wimbledon finals.

“A great champion and a great guy,” Federer told the crowd. “I hope you guys make it hard for Tomic tomorrow night. I’m going to be watching.” In the women’s draw, Serena, though not at her best, was an easy 6-2 6-4 winner over Martinez Sanchez but second-seeded Angieszka Radwanska struggled before peeling off 11 straight games in a 4-6 6-3 6-0 defeat of Carla Suarez Navarro. “It was one of those days,” said Williams, who double faulted six times. “I wasn’t really happy with the way I was playing. I just wasn’t happy out there today in general. “I think I woke up on the wrong side of the bed.”

While Serena advanced, her sister Venus lost 6-2 5-7 7-5 to Germany’s sixth seed Angelique Kerber in a tense battle under the lights following Federer’s dominant triumph. Venus, twice a champion at Flushing Meadows, blasted 43 winners but committed un uncharacteristic 60 errors in the two-hour, 45-minute loss to the southpaw Kerber, a semifinalist here a year ago. Teenager Sloane Stephens again lived up to the hype with a 5-7 6-4 6-2 win over Tatjana Malek and there was more

American success when 32-year-old men’s wildcard James Blake wound back the clock to beat 24th seed Marcel Granollers 6-1 6-4 6-2.

WILDLY ERRATIC Tsonga was wildly erratic in his 6-4 1-6 6-1 6-3 loss to 52nd-ranked Martin Klizan of Slovakia in Louis Armstrong Stadium. “It seemed like I couldn’t hit the ball hard enough to put my opponent out of position,” said Tsonga. “I don’t really know why it was like this today, but sometimes it happens with me. I don’t know. “It’s tennis. I will tell you that. We have to play every week. I’m not a machine. Sometimes I’m tired. Sometimes not.

Sometimes in good shape. Sometimes not. That’s it.”

American Mardy Fish attended Roddick’s retirement announcement after defeating Russian Nikolay Davydenko 4-6 6-7 6-2 6-1 6-2 to reach the third round. Roddick, who won the 2003 US Open and was a Wimbledon finalist in 2004, 2005 and 2009, played Tomic in the first match of the prime-time night session yesterday night. “There’s a lot of eyeballs on TV sets from people who don’t even normally watch tennis during night matches of the US Open,” he said. “I think I’ve played as many as anyone.

“It’s just something I’ll look back on with really fond memories. Hopefully won’t be my last one.” — Reuters