8th Jul

CR IP TI ON BS SU

SUNDAY, JULY 8, 2012

Syrian army shells Aleppo, conflict spills into Lebanon

SHAABAN 18, 1433 AH

Veteran Palestinian nationalist Hassan dies

Six injured in opening Pamplona bull run

www.kuwaittimes.net

Williams fights off Radwanska to win fifth Wimbledon title

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13 13 20 8Buyers beware: Kuwait no country for recalls Image-conscious companies loathe to lose customers

Libyans vote in historic polls TRIPOLI: Eager voters cast their ballots yesterday in Libya’s first free national elections in decades after the ouster of dictator Muammar Gaddafi, despite protesters disrupting some polling in the restive east. In Tripoli, voting began with queues of people keen to elect the General National Congress, which will be at the helm of the country for a transition period. “Words cannot capture my joy, this is a historic day,” said Fawziya Omran, 40, voting in a school in the heart of Tripoli.

Voters in the capital turned up draped in black, red and green flags - the colours of the revolution that toppled Gaddafi last year - as mosques blasted chants of “Allahu Akbar” (God is greatest). Joy was also palpable in the eastern city of Benghazi, cradle of the revolt.

“I feel like my life has been wasted so far, but now my children will have a better life,” said Hueida Abdul Sheikh, a 47-year-old mother of three.

Protesters demanding greater representation in the 200-member congress forced the closure of many polling stations elsewhere in the region, however.

Nuri Al-Abbar, chairman of the electoral commission, said acts of sabotage, mostly in the east, prevented 101 polling stations from opening. “Ninety-four percent of polling stations opened,” he told reporters in Continued on Page 13

TRIPOLI: Libyans hold up their ink-marked fingers that shows they have voted as they celebrate in Martyrs’ Square yesterday. — AP

Max 44º Min 33º High Tide 03:30 & 14:24 Low Tide 08:31 & 21:03

By Shakir Reshamwala KUWAIT: Recalls are a necessary evil for manufacturers, since the cost of recalling millions of items is far less than a class-action lawsuit by disgruntled customers.

Moreover, any deaths or injuries caused by using a faulty product may result in long-term damage to a brand, a loss that far exceeds any losses caused by a recall. Manufacturers also risk censure by local governments and trade bodies and even mandatory shutdowns if they fail to recall products that pose a harm to consumers. In the US for instance, the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s website has information on more than 5,000 product recalls, including dozens already this month. It also has an app for recall alerts.

Not so in Kuwait. All products sold here are free from defects, are of excellent craftsmanship and won’t harm your health in any way. One reaches this conclusion since no product ever seems to be recalled in this country, despite the fact that similar products may be part of a global recall by the manufacturer. This may also be because most products in Kuwait are distributed by agencies, many of whom have a monopoly on certain brands and may view a recall notice as something that can hurt their standing in the local market.

Automobile recalls are another sensitive issue in carcrazy Kuwait. Dealerships see a recall as a sign of weakness that can impact sales in the cutthroat market. A mechanic working at the service center of an auto dealership said recall notices are regularly received, and when vehicles come in for regular checkups, the Continued on Page 13

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SUNDAY, JULY 8, 2012

LOCAL Al-Omair selected as Salaf candidate

By A Saleh KUWAIT: Prominent clergymen at the Islamic Salaf gathering have selected MP Ali Al-Omair as their candidate in the upcoming elections, and discussed others who have yet to be chosen.

Sources said decision makers are in agreement over the nomination of Al-Omair in the third constituency, but in the second, held by MPs Khalid AlSultan and Abdellatif Al-Amiri, the issue will be decided during upcoming meetings, as there are several Salafis wishing to run for parliament, especially as those present said the current MPs’ performance was not satisfactory.

Meanwhile, a parliamentary source denied what MP Mubarak Al-Waalan had said, claiming the parliamentary majority agreed not to accept any member who participates in tribal bi-elections. The source said they had not agreed nor discussed it, and those are just wishes by some members. He said what is agreed upon by the majority is to support its current members, but some of them will not run for office without bi-elections, otherwise they will lose.

Member of Parliament Salwa Al-Jassar found it strange that some members of the 2009 assembly are still enjoying its advantages. She said some MPs are claiming that the 2009 assembly is shameful and a disgrace, so would it not be better for them to no longer enjoy the facilities of this assembly, such as transactions, cars, offices, sectaries and allowances?

MP Dr Salwa Al-Jassar said she will not continue to teach at Kuwait University following the ruling of the constitutional court that cancelled the decree that dissolved the 2009 assembly, meaning the MP cannot hold two jobs at the same time.

On the other hand, informed sources said the central department for dealing with illegal residents received information from Iraqi authorities about persons claiming that they are bedouins in Kuwait. The sources said this information is part of the cooperation Kuwait asked from Iraq to find the truth behind information about bedouins of Iraqi origin, and claim they do not have any documents from Iraq or anywhere else.

The sources said the information received by the central department proves that those named are Iraqis, and that the documents about them are not forged, but in fact reveals that the information these individuals provided were, in fact, forged.

Also, member of the annulled 2012 assembly, lawyer Osama Al-Munawer, said that the Arkan region in Burma is a new scar in the Muslim national body and is becoming larger, without any move from Muslim countries nor others who “may be conspiring against Muslims.”

He praised the statement by Kuwait’s Foreign Ministry about the situation with Muslims in Burma, but said “we are waiting for cutting relations with that country and asking the Security Council to discuss the issue.”

Dubai to host 23rd IALM conference DUBAI: Dubai Police will host the 23rd conference of the International Academy of Legal Medicine (IALM) in 2015, after it won an unanimous approval of members of the Academy.

Dubai won the right to host the event after a fierce competition with Spain and Italy during the 22nd IALM conference currently held in Istanbul, Turkey. The 2015 IALM gathering will be the first conference hosted outside of the European continent Deputy Chief of Dubai Police Major Colonel Khamis Al-Muzainah addressed this occasion by saying that “UAE has a keen interest in hosting such international events which easily helped the academy panel to choose Dubai as the next host city of the IALM conference and exhibition.”

“Hosting such global event translates the vision of Dubai Police that aims at strengthening the bonds amongst security institutes and academies, inside and outside of the country,” he noted He further said that such event would help greatly in touching base with the latest developments in doctrinal, scientific, and technological advances in legal medicine and forensic sciences. — KUNA

KUWAIT: Algerian Ambassador to Kuwait opened an exhibition on Algerian heritage yesterday and it was attended by a large number of ambassadors and diplomats accredited to Kuwait. - Photos by Fouad Al Shaikh

Youth activists agree on crisis, vary on solutions Political arena requires utmost care KUWAIT: Youth representatives within various active political blocs and movements have agreed that the local political arena requires the utmost care and attention from all concerned parties.

They also agreed on respecting the judiciary’s recent verdict to annul the 2012 parliament and other principles while they voiced different opinions concerning how to deal with various political problems.

NAHJ member, lawyer Mo’ath AlDuwailah, justified his movement’s participation in the determination yard demonstrations by what he described as a political deadlock and uninspiring movements calling for the same results by different people.

Al-Duwailah criticized calls for having a ‘constitutional Emirate’, noting that Kuwait was already a constitutional Emirate. He also denied that a public government was the main demand at the yard and said that it was only suggested by some demonstrating MPs. ‘We cannot summarize two hours of demonstrations into 60 seconds during which

an MP made a remark...while many other seminars included more slander.

Commenting on the constitutional court ruling, Al-Duwaliah stressed that it should be respected by everybody. He also slammed criticisms and accusations of treason directed at NAHJ. “Those who have anything against us can go to the public prosecutor, otherwise, let them..... stick to their homes!”, he stressed.

For his part, representative of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), political activist Othman Al-Othman, stressed that the main reason behind the political tension was the ruling family members’ conflicts that were manifested by referring to the grilling motions of the constitutional court. He also refused to accuse NDA of favoring its own gains and making deals with the government.

Further, activist Hamad Alyan refused to consider any solutions to the political crisis while officials’ statements were still contradicting each other. He also called for respecting judicial verdicts, though he thought that, compared to the short period in office, 2012 had seen many

achievements. For his part, political activist Abdullah Zaman opposed the current public movements at the determination yard, noting that demands raised at the yard have been twisted according to some participants’ interests.

Meanwhile, parliament sources said that a number of 2012 council members are making consultations to meet the HH Prime Minister Sheikh Jaber Al Mubarak during the coming few days to discuss rumors of amending number of constituency law. The expected meeting will be held to determine whether the government has a real intention to change the law. Sources said that experts’ declarations about the possibility of making a contest in the next council, if elections were carried under the current law, has encouraged the majority group members to expand the discussions of the subject .

Sources added that those who are seeking the meeting are the majority group members, pointing out that discussions were held about scheduling the meeting, which will include large num-

ber of MPs to check the “vision” for the next period, noting that the declaration of Minister of Information Sheikh Mohammad Al Abdullah is a matter of his personal opinion. He did not emphasize, but doubted that the amendment shall not come in that period. Sources said the government has several studies about the subject of the number of constituencies. In this direction, members of the majority group said they have already begun necessary preparations for elections through compiling necessary lists and the necessary coordination for running the elections. Consultations are going on very fast and led by unlimited numbers of majority group members to ensure the required results for the group.

In the opposite direction, sources said that the minority group in the 2012 council are making necessary consultations for coordination in the coming elections to ensure that their numbers increase by creating allies and new nominees for election who had serious chances of winning in the last elections.

MoH suffers from vehicle shortage KUWAIT: A shortage in transport vehicles is plaguing the Ministry of Health(MoH). Most departments including general registration and medical stores and others are suffering from a dearth in vehicles to transport mail, pharmaceuticals, vaccinations and other materials.

This is in addition to a shortage of vehicles in Ahmadi to transport sterilization materials from central medical store to hospitals and

health centers in the area. Several nurses have to leave their jobs and collect the materials and distribute it, making them prone to accidents and health problems. Also, sources have revealed that the Ministry of Health(MoH) has asked central medical stores to provide vehicles with cooling facility that ply to all the areas so that vaccinations can be supplied to schools. — Al-Anba

Illegal donation collection before Ramadan KUWAIT: Even before the advent of the month of Ramadan, cash donations have begun pouring in. Sources at the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor (MSAL) said that this phenomenon is noticeable in a number of mosques.

Sources said that subject will be discussed with the concerned administration at the ministry, and the Ministry of Awqaf. It

will be asked to take necessary action.

Sources urged citizens and expats not to deal with unauthorized donation collectors and limit their donations to the centers registered with the Ministry of Social Affairs. Any violation should be noted, sources warned.

Making cold calls over the phone and sending representatives to homes and work places violate the charity law. — Al-Anbaa

KUWAIT: On behalf of MoI’s undersecretary, Lieut General Ghazi Al-Omar, Assistant Undersecretary for Border Security Maj General, Anwar Al-Yaseen honored a number of military and civilian staff members for their efforts.

KUWAIT: Manal Al-Mattar, NBK Public Relations Executive Manager and Mohammed Akbar Assistant Professor of Communication at AUK in a group photo with the students.

NBK receives AUK mass communication students KUWAIT: As part of its corporate social responsibility, National Bank of Kuwait (NBK) arranged a field trip at its Head Office for Mass Communication Students at the American University of Kuwait (AUK). The visit aimed to introduce the students to the day-to-day duties of NBK’s Public Relations department.

Manal Al-Mattar, NBK Public Relations Executive Manager said: “The purpose of the field trip is to introduce the students to NBK’s PR department and the professional services it provides in order to enrich their academic and theoretical studies.”

“The field work program included a presentation about PR functions at NBK and a briefing of the different

events, divisions and services NBK’s PR department provides,” Al Mattar added.

Commenting on the conclusion of the visit, the students expressed their sincere thanks to NBK for the opportunity they have been given to gain a better understanding of the function of the PR department at the bank.

The tour is part of NBK’s ongoing commitment to its corporate social responsibility program and to promoting the education and development of the country’s youth. Other initiatives include providing summer training programs for students, hiring fresh graduates and offering professional development programs for new hires.

SUNDAY, JULY 8, 2012

LOCAL

MoI plans modernization to improve services for citizens Electronic gateway project KUWAIT: The Ministry of Interior (MoI) has drawn up future plans to develop and upgrade operations and services like facilitating people’s movement across border exits and telephone information services, a ministry official said yesterday. Col Tareq Hussein Al-Dosari, Director of Personal Computers at Technology and Information Department, affirmed in an interview that significance of the modernization project for sake of improving services for citizens, bring about personnel productivity and efficiency, in line with the relevant government strategy.

The Ministry of Information Technology is tasked with securing, storing, analyzing and providing information and data. The Department of Computers’ management is the central authority in charge of IT and computers.

Talking about future plans, Col Al-Dosari emphasized the electronic gateway project to facilitate entry and exist of people via the country’s ports and checkpoints, in addition to setting up a central building for storing data of sensitive documents in a computerized system.

There is also a project on the anvil for elec-

tronic e-mailing among the ministry’s diverse departments, the audio system for telephone services, such as information about papers of cars and driving, residency, passports and traffic tickets.

Elaborating, Col Al-Dosari touched on shortterm schemes as well, such as PC project for patrols for relaying data on the central computer to the patrols via MDT technology, as well as pin pointing the location of vehicles and persons to facilitate tracking, in addition to employment of GPS technology. Other projects within the framework is issuing driving licenses with hightech and anti-forgery technology, electronic archive, visual contact at prisons where the prisoner can get in contact with others via the internet. The department has also built a picture base, an electronic system for information about boats and fugitives to aid the coast guards to verify the identity of sea-goers.

Regarding geographic information, the colonel explained that it enables the department to “function in an excellent fashion with employment of the best technology to attach

maps with information about buildings and various other plots.” It also covers the Kuwaiti islands The first phase of the telephone service was installed to secure information about elections.

It includes issuance of reports, statistical information and lists of names. The ministry installs and upgrades computers every four or five years.

In another development, the Ministry of Interior has authorized insurance companies to investigate minor traffic accidents that result in no casualties, without the need for traffic investigators presence at the incident scene, Lieut General Yousif Al-Soudi Director of MoI’s Investigations Directorate, announced.

Al-Soudi stated that a decision was issued by the first deputy PM and interior minister’s office pertinent with the formation of a special committee including elements from the investigations directorate, security sector, traffic department and police patrol.

He added that the committee had visited various GCC states to review their experiences, and report on the matter along with its recommendations.

Insults against Syrian president

By Hanan Al-Saadoun KUWAIT: Police in Kuwait City are investigating the insults that were painted across walls. One message read ‘Down with Bashar Al-Assad.’ Security sources think either Syrians or citizens who are upset over the continuing strife in Syria may be responsible for the act.

Immoral act Meanwhile, a female citizen accused an individual for persuading her to commit immoral acts by sending pornographic material over whatsapp.

Police are investigating the case.

Thieves not found The Legal Department at the Municipality has failed to identify the thieves that stole computer parts from its department. A source said the issue has been pending at the legal department for over a year.

News

in brief

‘Prepare early for academic year’ KUWAIT: The Kuwait Teachers Society (KTS) stressed the need to prepare early for the next academic year, said KTS’s board member Soud Al-Azmi. He asserted that the Ministry of Education (MoE) should accord priority toward developing the educational process without yielding to political tension. Al-Azmi also urged MoE to solve educational problems swiftly, and coordinate with members better.

Expat medical centers KUWAIT: The Ministry of Health (MoH) has taken steps to link the expatriate labor medical examination center with the Ministry of Interior (MoI) through an automated system, said Dr Sami Al-Nasser, Manager of Ports and Border Health section at the Ministry of Health. In a press release, Al-Nasser stated that the Shuwaikh, Ahmadi, Farwaniya and Jahra centers will be linked initially, followed by the other centers that will be linked in phases. “The automated system is meant to avoid errors committed when using paper work and book-keeping,” he concluded.

KUWAIT: The Minister of Public Works Dr Fadhel Safar paid a visit to the main junctions of the Fifth Ring Road along Jahra road, accompanied by Undersecretary Abdelaziz Al-Kulaib and Assistant Undersecretary for Roads Affairs Saud Al-Naqi.

Safar said that the project will help improve services in Al-Qairwan, Sulaibiya and Jahra by improving the current intersection and the value of those projects amounting to KD 21,785 million.— Photos by Fouad Al-Shaikh

KFAED solves water shortage in Istanbul ISTANBUL: Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development (KFAED) has helped solve the problems pertaining water resources in Istanbul, said a Turkish official here yesterday. Chairman of Istanbul Water Authority Mehmet Oglu told KUNA that the KFAEDs loan agreement of KD 23.5 million helped develop water resources here, noting that the fund helped cover 60 percent of the city’s water development plan.

Small, medium size business ‘good’ for economy BEIJING: Small and medium size enterprises play an integral part in developing national economies of countries, said Sheikh Sabah Al-Khaled Al-Hamad Al-Sabah, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs on Saturday.

Sheikh Sabah Al-Khaled’s statement was made during a speech delivered by Kuwaiti Ambassador to the Republic of China Mohammad Saleh Al-Thuwikh to the ChineseMENA region so as to cooperate on small, medium size enterprises in Tianjin, north of China.

Sheikh Sabah Al-Khaled’s speech also touched on the benefit of such enterprises that can tackle world economic dilemmas, noting that in addition to facing problems, such projects would help develop the economies of poor and underdeveloped nations.

The speech highlighted Kuwaiti leadership’s efforts within such domain, indicating that HH the Amir of Kuwait Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah launched a fund in 2009 to support such economic initiatives.

He lauded Chinese-Arab ties in all fields. —KUNA

ABK partners with Al Corniche Club KUWAIT: Al Ahli Bank of Kuwait and the Al Corniche Club announced the signing of a partnership agreement to reward healthy living. ABK is offering new and renewing Al Corniche Club members exclusive benefits and rewards on a range of the banks premium products.

Stewart Lockie, General Manager of ABK’s Retail Division, explained, “The partnership is designed to reward loyalty for renewing Al Corniche members, plus present new joiners with a welcome gift from ABK” Mr Lockie added, “ABK is always looking at opportunities to promote healthy living, and through our association with the Al Corniche Club, Kuwait’s leading Resort

and Spa, we are able to support fitness and a healthy lifestyle.”

Gerard Oliver, General Manager of the Al Corniche Club, commented “ We are extremely excited about this partnership with ABK! The needs of our members are always at the forefront of any business decisions made, and so we are looking forward to the additional benefits that will be extended to both our existing and future members, as the result of such an alliance.”

For further information about this promotion please call Ahlan Ahli on 1899899, or visit our website www.eahli.com and talk live to any or our account managers via Ahli Chat.

Kuwait contests Dow penalty ruling KUWAIT: Kuwait recently filed a lawsuit with London’s International Arbitration Chamber appealing against an earlier verdict that imposed a fine of $ 2.16 billion for terminating its contract with the Dow-Chemical company in December, 2008.

In this regard, sources said that although the arbitration decision is not subject to appeal or contest, Kuwait was still waiting for a response, which will be the last hope at avoiding a penalty. It is based on Kuwait’s right to terminate contracts upon sovereign decisions made, and not company violations.

Notably, the Kuwaiti government had unilaterally terminated a contract with the Dow-Chemical company in view of public and parliamentary pressure. The Dow company waited for six months before filing a complaint with the London Arbitration Chamber.—Al-Rai

KUWAIT: On occasion of the 201st anniversary of the Independence Day of Venezuela, Ambassador Hadel Mostafa Paolini hosted a party at the Crowne Plaza Hotel over the weekend. A number of diplomats and other dignitaries attended it.

— Photos by Yasser Al-Zayyat

SUNDAY, JULY 8, 2012

LOCAL kuwait digest

kuwait digest

A measure of MPs’ popularity

Cooperate with honesty, truth

By Hamad Nayef Al-Enezi

By Abellatif Al-Duaij

M

M

ember of Parliament Musallam Al-Barrak has lost, in my opinion, much of his credibility lately through the contradictions of many of his statements as many members of the public are no longer confident about the accusations he directs at others. There are full video and audio recordings on YouTube about several of his statements in which he praises some persons, then a few days or months later he condemns the same people as being so bad! The thing, as far as I see it, is that he forgets his previous statements when he sees journalists lenses and people around him urging him to mention the names of those he thinks are behind every problem. So the man, amidst such a wonderful atmosphere, finds a must to mention any information he receives from any source, or a tweet and taken as an unquestioned truth!

He, in this, looks like some newspapers that publish all that they receive without researching and making sure about its authenticity. I am saying this while I agree with the MP over many of his opinions and demands. I appreciate his defence of the constitution and freedom during the period of his political history, but honesty makes it a must to say the truth, and the truth is that he went over board lately, and not one of his political adversaries is safe from his accusations without evidence that proves his accusations and claims.

The truth is that what Musallam is doing lately is regretful, and it is equally regretful that political activists “juniors and Olympians category” are following in his footsteps and using him as an example, and why not as long as his style guarantees him an increase in the numbers of those who vote for him every election, or as athletes say: “whatever makes us win...use it”.

I saw a TV interview that had MP Jamaan Al-Harbash with Ahmad Al-Jarallah, as most of the program’s time went through a useless argument about the number of those present at Al-Irada Square, as one said tens of thousands and another say several hundred, as if the number of those present is the divider between good and evil, and between what the people want and do not want. The truth is that I am one of the people and I do not care about the number of those present as it is the same for me whether they were 50 thousand or just 50, because the issue for me is that of principles, values and personal convictions, and if 100 thousand people gather against my opinion, I will only be convinced by proof and evidence, but the number of adversaries does not concern me, because one is like thousand and the thousand is like a million and the bad will not become good by the number of its supporters, nor the right becomes wrong through the small number of its supporters.

As for the claims that those gathering at “Irada Square” represent all of Kuwait, and the presence of tens of thousands of citizens represent the people’s opinion...I find it inaccurate, and if those who gather there are all Kuwaitis, then I may say it may be correct, but as long those gathering are led by 20 or 30 MPs, then it is for me not a measure of public opinion, rather, it is a measure of the popularity of those MPs, because most of those who go there are supporters, followers and fans of those MPs and they only came to see first hand how their heroes ridicule their political opponents! Many of those present are “twitter” correspondents who come to take pictures to send them as tweets, and so the number of those present is not an accurate scale of people’s wishes and not an expression of their opinion, and as I said before, even if the crowd’s opinion was in favor of one side against the other, it does not have to do with the opinion being right or wrong and I have not seen politicians who claim that their opinions are right due to the number of people present during their rallies. — Aljarida

kuwait digest

‘We have enough problems here’

By Dr Shamlan Yousif Al-Essa

A

t least 300 citizens recently held a demonstration outside the embassy of Burma in Kuwait in protest against the massacres committed against Muslims in Myanmar’s state of Arakan. Protestors have urged the government to stop the massacre and respect Islam.

In this regard, former MP Osama Al-Menawer said that all Arab and Muslim countries are not acting to stop the genocide. “Today, we will have to take a more practical stance.

There will be no more condemnations and let the Myanmar government know that assaulting Muslims in Myanmar is equal to an assault on all Muslims. We will be in a state of war against the country unless it negotiates with Muslims, breaks the siege and apologizes for hostile practices,” he said.

Lawmakers and young people who protested outside the embassy of Burma did not explain to the Kuwaiti public what the problem was. They did not explain the reason behind Muslims’ problems in the state of Arakan and why the government would launch a war against them. What are the demands of these people? Have they expressed their demand peacefully or did they use weapons to be independent?

Although I keenly follow local, Arab and some international press, I watch all news TV channels and have heard or read anything about a state of Arakan or about Myanmar. All we know about Myanmar is that it has a strong military regime and that there are Myanmarese democratic moves and calls for more freedom.

The Myanmarese democratic movement’s female leader has won international public opinion approval for her rightful demands of democracy and freedom.

I do not know why our Muslim Kuwaitis have begun talking on behalf of Muslims of the whole world? Why are they calling for Jihad and blame

the Arab governments for not liberating Muslims worldwide? What are these silly super ficial remarks?

All minorities, be them Muslims or non-Muslims, usually suffer from oppression. So such demands should include all oppressed and tortured human beings. So, our dear ‘ideologized’ MPs, we already have very complicated problems in the Arab world such as poverty, illiteracy and scientific and cultural deterioration that requires much care and attention from our youth and MPs, instead of calling for jihad around the globe!

Lawmakers and young people who protested outside the embassy of Burma did not explain to the Kuwaiti public what the problem was. They did not explain the reason behind Muslims’ problems in the state of Arakan and why the government would launch a war against them. What are the demands of these people?

Finally, I advise young people and lawmakers calling for jihad in Myanmar to stop interfering in other countries’ domestic affairs. However, if they really wish to go on Jihad, they can simply stop demonstrating and go join the ‘mujahideen’ in Burma or elsewhere instead of protesting in such a hot weather. We are against jihad, but we cannot stop anybody from doing it, be it him a former or future MP! — Al-Watan

kuwait digest

An elected Cabinet

By Mubarak Al-Maosharji

T

he early cabinets formed after Kuwait’s independence were headed by HH the Amir, before the prime minister’s post was moved to HH the Crown Prince. The situation continued for a long time, until the Crown Prince and Prime Minister posts were separated in the later years of HH Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmad AlSabah’s reign as the state’s Amir.

Today, there are calls to appoint a candidate from the public as prime minister, on the pretext that the constitution gives the Amir the right to select the premier, but without specifying that the candidate must be a member of the ruling family. People making these calls believe that the transition could help solve the longterm political turmoil that all constitutional experts in Kuwait are struggling to find solutions for, while at the same time preventing attacks against ruling family members for failing to tackle their responsibilities as members of the cabinet.

Meshary Al-Anjari, Waleed Al-Jerri, Abdullah AlRoumi, Saleh Al-Fadhalah, Nasser Al-Roudhan, AbdulAziz Al-Dhakheel, and Jassem Al-Oun. These are some of a long list of successful, highly respected Kuwaiti politicians who retired from politics after problem-free tenures both in the cabinet and parliament. In my opinion, any of these men could be worthy candidates to be assigned by HH the Amir to form a cabinet. In the meantime, ruling family members are still handed the first deputy prime minister post, as well as portfolios often referred to as “sovereignty ministries”.

There are many steps that can also be taken to help this cabinet succeed. First of all, the formation must not be carried out based on a quota system in which portfolios are offered to candidates based upon the sect they belong to. Second, ministers selected are required to have sufficient experience in working in their respective ministries, because this would enable them to easily diagnose problems and find solutions. In the meantime, this cabinet must have enough opportunity to operate without intervention from people with influence or lawmakers. Plus MPs would be required to give new ministers a chance to work before they hold them accountable for any potential failures. If any of these steps are not taken, I don’t think we can find a way out of the ongoing circle of tensions we are facing. — Al-Rai

any, or maybe all members of the 2009 parliament, believe that not attending the opening session, or the session swearing in the government, will lead to more complications and expand the constitutional crises even further in the country. The majority of the 2009 MPs, or the annulled assembly, believe they will benefit from the inactive period or the manufactured stretch.

I believe that all are delusional and the boycott of the swearing in session is the fastest solution to the current constitutional crises. Further, those who boycott among the 2009 MPs will be the losers, because boycotting the oath will be a boycott of the government, or rather a clear declaration of non-cooperation and will be enough to dissolve the 2009 assembly. This is what the constitutional court looked for and did not find in the previous dissolution decree. This time, the dissolution will be caused by the non-cooperation with the government of Sheikh Jaber Al-Mubarak, by having MPs refuse to allow members to take the oath of office.

This is exactly the situation the country went through in 1964, as the parliamentary majority, with the support of ruling family members, refused to hold the opening session and in turn did not allow the national government, in which the late Abdelaziz Al-Saqer, in agreement with the late Sheikh Sabah Al-Salem, contribute to its formation.

This stand was the same as a declaration of noncooperation by the assembly towards the government. The late Amir Sheikh Abdallah Al-Salem AlSabah, elected to axe the government, asked the prime minister to form another government that would be in harmony with the majority of the 1964 parliament, and that marked the formation of the first “senior employees” ministry in Kuwait, because all ministers were chosen from employees, principals and directors of department, except for the sheikh ministers.

Now, as expected from the announcement of the information minister, HH the Amir may opt to dissolve the assembly due to non-cooperation, and the country will end the constitutional crisis and the boycotters and those seeking to hamper the correction of 2009 assembly procedures will not benefit from anything.

For that, I believe the 2009 MPs, especially those who plan to run for elections, either from the majority or the minority, have it in their interest to bow to the constitutional court ruling and attend the session in the hope that this may lead to ease the correction procedures and maintain their reputation that they are doing their job, as they said they would when they took the oath, with honesty and truth. — Al-Qabas

kuwait digest

Another golden opportunity

By Dr Ahmad Al-Khateeb

T

he debate ongoing in Kuwait about how to end the current political predicament reflects a lack of understanding about the message the Constitutional Court sent to the Kuwaiti people. As such, solutions that many discuss are dealing with the situation as a constitutional or legal dilemma and from a purely technical standpoint. There are urgent calls coming from a perspective that pictures Kuwait as having always enjoyed stable political work and today requires efforts to find a way out of the problem so that the political situation goes back to its “wonderful” state.

The fact of the matter is, however, that what we are facing today is the result of a dangerous situation ongoing for years in which national unity has been damaged after the society became torn into different sectors, often giving priority to their own interests ahead of the national good. This is occurring at a time in which Kuwaitis are needed to unite more than ever in light of the developments sweeping through the region and posing a threat to our nation.

Whoever believes that there is a constitutional or legal exit from the current dilemma from a technical standpoint, are unaware of how serious the present situations in the region is and haven’t fully comprehended the real meaning behind the Constitutional Court’s historical verdict. This ruling guides us all towards the right path and urges us to understand the constitution fully before it’s too late. Article 174 of the constitution explains that a constitutional amendment is only issued with the approval of the state’s ruler and the public, and no party can force their will against the other, even if they have the ability to do so. You know why? Because ruling through mutual agreement is exactly the approach adopted since the state was founded, and helped make Kuwait a pioneer in the Arab region.

I would like to give one example to prove the level of understanding to constitutional principles of ruling that Kuwaitis had during the earliest days of democratic work. After the election of the inaugural parliament, the cabinet was formed by eleven ruling family members and three from outside. This was before the constitution was enacted. During a cabinet meeting, one of the ‘Sheikh’ ministers recommended that a decision be made to approve his claim of ownership of a property that the municipality refused to register for him because it was already owned by someone else.

A heated debate ensued at the time, mainly between the team of Sheikhs who sided with their relative, and the three remaining ministers. During an intermission, the late Hmoud Al-Zaid sat down with Abdul-Aziz Al-Saqr and Mohammad Al-Nisf and told them the following: “We are three against eleven, which means that they can take whatever decision they want despite our objection to it. This basically indicates that our presence in the cabinet is useless, while at the same time we find ourselves forced to cooperate in order to maintain the cabinet’s solidarity.

Therefore, I believe we should make a proposal that cabinet decisions can only be made unanimously, or otherwise we have to resign”. —Al-Qabas

SUNDAY, JULY 8, 2012

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Farida with some other Asian students.

Farida and her best friend Fatima at the One World Exhibition at the Kuwait University.

Farida and KU Language Center Deputy Director Ibrahim Naseer, her Arabic language teacher in Kuwait.

French student ‘socially active’ Spirituality, volunteerism intertwined

By Hassan A. Bari KUWAIT: “In the beginning, praise be to the creator who guided me to the spiritual path and alienated me from materialism. My relation with Allah has basically changed my life. I am overwhelmed by His blessings ever since I devoted my body and soul toward worshipping him. I developed a unique relation with Almighty Allah who guided me to sincere faith.

I realized that materialistic aspects are finite while Allah is everlasting and his existence is more precious than all the gold in the world. This spiritual serenity and Allah’s priceless assistance helped me achieve success in various fields. So why do you not take the same path? You have to realize that all your projects and dreams can be achieved with strong faith,” said Farida Boumedjeria, a nonArabic speaking student at Kuwait University’s Language Center.

Her name, Farida (meaning unique) really applies to her spiritual experience that is still in progress.

Her language is a specimen of the continuity of her story that focuses on faith as the source and the basic motive of power.

Background With Algerian roots, Boumedjeria was born in the French region of Le Pas-de-Calais and lives now in the north of France. She has four brothers and four sisters. Her father passed away and she always prays to Allah to grant her beloved mother long life.

Farida thinks so highly of her later father and appreciates his struggle as a miner to support the family and pay for the expenses of her education, which helped her start the first phase of life. She also recalls the values he instilled in her based on Islamic traditions and regulations like mercy, love and respect for others, honesty and good conduct.

Farida finished high school, earned a degree in higher technical studies as an assistant in business administration and then joined the University of Lille, France where she studied Arabic. She then taught French to illiterate people in a French Society for four years. She joined KU’s Program for non-Arabic Speakers as a European student last November.

Creating ACREAMANA Boumedjeria founded the ACREAMANA Association that she currently presides over in 2003 with the aim of boosting co-existence and dialogue among all sects of the diverse French community so that they can live together without racial discrimination. Speak ing about ACREAMAN, Boumedjeria said that it was built on four basic principles; Listening, Dialogue, Interchange

and Action. “ACREAMANA calls for cultural diversity and co-existence, it has run many social, cultural, educational and humanitarian projects,” she reiterated.

She added that ACREAMANA was awarded by the Tourcoing Municipality in 2003 for its contributions in enhancing the principles of co-existence through many activities designed to achieve intercultural harmony and agreement between people from different backgrounds.

“In appreciation of its cultural diversity-boosting activities, ACREAMANA was invited to an honoring ceremony at a Garden Party at the … lysÈe Presidential Palace in Paris,” she stressed.

Responding to a question about ACREAMANA’s activities and the obstacles it has been facing, Boumedjeria stressed that, as the chairperson, and because of the association’s limited budget, it was slightly difficult for her to coordinate and organize conferences, invite lecturers, prepare for various activities, financially support participants and entrepreneurs or even take part in useful activities. “Therefore, our activities are as limited as our resources,” she added, explaining that ACREAMANA has established mosque libraries, founded spiritual support societies, supported young authors and organized Islamic funeral and burial ceremonials. “Our cultural projects are endless, but our budget limitations have been hindering their execution,” she remarked.

She noted that she was in quest for financial support to new societies known for their fruitful and useful projects within the French Muslim community. “There is a high rate of unemployment in France, many other societies are also suffering from financial difficulties in northern France,” she added, expressing her admiration of Kuwait’s leading role in funding charitable, humane and cultural projects and establishments worldwide. She also added that as a Muslim woman, she is sometimes criticized for the way she and many others, dress.

Responding to a question about how ACREAMANA has managed to operate under such harsh circumstances, Boumedjeria stressed that it was their belief in the need to take part in developing their society and their strong desire to dispel any misunderstanding or prejudices about Islam that kept them going so far. “It was very essential to hold several conferences and forums to highlight the principles of Islam in a bid to enhance intercultural and interfaith dialogue,” she underlined, noting that the association mainly depended on volunteers. It gained great experience in voluntary work. “AREA-

MANA is now well-known in my city and I have faced so many obstacles during my work in it. My strong belief in Allah has surely motivated me and helped me bridge all troubled waters,” she added.

“One should not lose hope or easily give up when faced by some problems. We should learn from our mistakes. They make us, motivate and teach us and push us to develop and lead better lives,” she said, adding that life is no picnic and that it is not always so rosy. “One’s path might be thorny when facing hunger, sickness, hardship, desperation, loss of loved ones, death or war,” she stressed, noting that Allah’s mercy is the most precious soothing treasure, and that Allah usually saves our souls after testing our patience.

“Personally speaking, I managed to get many degrees in France despite being a Muslim, veiled woman and facing some obstacles. I managed to overcome them with persistence and determination to join some educational centers and private schools without being assaulted for the way I dress,” added Boumedjeria noting that French universities have no restrictions placed on dress codes and that no secular power could force her take off her veil after she willingly chose to wear it. “However, I will never force anybody to be veiled as Allah says: “There is no compulsion in religion,” she underscored.

Reviewing some of ACREAMANA’s activities, Boumedjeria said that as the association’s chairperson, she organized and took part in many conferences and forums such as the French government’s parliamentary committee meeting to discuss ‘niqab’.

She added that France 3 TV channel showed a report on ACREAMANA tilted ‘Hijab in the Republic,’ in which she frankly stressed that the Hijab controversy was exaggerated and that officials should discuss more crucial basic French concerns such as unemployment and housing. She added that out of the principles of dialogue and partnership, ACREAMANA voluntarily participated in the charity TV show TELETOON that was produced by the French Society for Muscle Atrophy; a rare disease.

ACREAMANA also took part in a fundraising campaign to provide school children’s needs for the Moroccan AKEPTO society and helped send aid to the children of Nablus in the occupied Palestinian territories. “I was so impressed by the strength of the Palestinian children though they look emaciated. I was also happy because we managed to put a smile on their faces and helped them forget the terrors of war for a short while,” she added lamenting that those poor children had lost

Al-Khamis wins KD250,000 Al Danah draw KUWAIT: Gulf Bank announced the winner of 2012 second quarter Al Danah Draw for KD 250,000 at an event held at Marina Mall. The draw event was hosted by Khaled Al-Ansari on the Dewaniya Show on 88.8 FM who, along with the Gulf Bank representative Hadeel Al-Fadhli, called the KD 250,000 winner, Moudi Abedulah AlKhamis a Dahiyat Abdullah Al-Salem branch customer, live on air. In addition, the ten Al Danah weekly winners were announced during the event, who were each awarded with prizes of KD 1000. Tawfeeq Abdulhameed Faraj, Mahmoud Abdulghani Al-Afandi, Abdulazeem Mohammed Marafie, Khaled Abdulhameed Mathkouri,

A Group photo of the Dewaniyah show Hadeel AlFadhli and team from Gulf Bank after announcing the second quarterly Al Danah draw winner.

Rehab Shleeweh Al-Mutairi, Majeed Mohammed Abdul, Shakeel Ahmed Zahiruddin, Peter William Riyad Yanni, Gang Yu, Jameela Saad Al-Fadly. The event was a lively interactive affair that also included appearances by Dr. Sulaiman Al-Asousi and Captain Hussain Al-Mukaimi.

Aly Shalaby, General Manager, Consumer Banking Group at Gulf Bank said: “We congratulate our second quarterly winner for this year, Moudi Abdullah Al-Khamis.

It’s always exciting to announce our winners’ names, and remind you that everyone stands a chance to win. We are encouraging our customers to keep or increase the money in their accounts so that they can be a part of this renowned draw prize.” Gulf Bank’s Al Danah offers weekly draws of KD 1,000 each to ten winners, and finally KD 1 million during the fourth quarterly draw. No other bank in Kuwait or across the Middle East is offering its customers the opportunity to win KD 1 million in one single draw prize, and the Bank is delighted to be rewarding its loyal and growing customer base in Kuwait through the Al Danah draw.

Customers are provided with several channels to open and / or deposit money into their Al Danah accounts, either through the Bank’s 56 branches, visiting the Bank’s website, www.e-gulfbank.com through the Customer Contact Center by calling 1805805 or they can use the Al Danah ATM deposit card to deposit money directly into their Al Danah account at any of Gulf Bank’s deposit ATM machines.

track of time and can no longer enjoy their childhood.

In Kuwait Boumedjeria’s trip to Kuwait was a unique and destined one. She said that on its website, the French embassy in Kuwait had announced a scholarship for four students upto an age of 28 to study Arabic in Kuwait.

“Nevertheless, I did not give up hope though I am the oldest of the four students who won the scholarship because of my strong belief that Almighty Allah will not ignore my prayers and Du’a,” she said. Her selection was a miracle. “Du’a is capable of opening all doors as Allah is more compassionate than a mother to her children as he has said, ‘Pray unto Me and I will hear your prayer.’ I was sure of that,” she said noting that ever since she set foot in Kuwait on Nov 2, 2011, she felt a great deal of tranquility and peace and that she had a strange feeling of having known this country for long before she came.

Boumedjeria feels that she experiences a strange sense of belongingness to Kuwait. “I love the way people respect each other here. They are so kind, and Kuwait is so safe that I can go out alone at any time. I can hear the Athan(prayer call) five times a day from my room at KU’s hostel and what lovely voices the

muezzins(prayer callers) have here!” she admired, noting that along with her friend, Fatima (a French and colleague in the Language Center), she attends religious classes three times a week. She also noticed that Kuwait respects cultural diversity and gives due care to women who are free to choose their careers and wear hijabs and niqabs anywhere. “I feel so happy and free in Kuwait because I have always believed that the best place to learn Arabic was in an Arab country and destiny brought me to Kuwait for which my admiration is growing on daily basis,” she underscored.

Studying Arabic in Kuwait has strengthened her resolve to resume her university courses in Arabic because Allah always commends it and it is the language of ‘Jannah’ (Paradise) dwellers.

Speaking about future aspirations, Boumedjeria said that along with her friend, Fatima, they intend to organize cultural activities jointly with Kuwaiti cultural societies to teach French to Arabs as well as resume their own study of Arabic.

“Unfortunately, these dreams might not come true because there are no cultural cooperation treaties signed between Kuwait and France, entitling French students to resume studies in Kuwait. In addition, Kuwait University’s admission conditions are

very strict,” she lamented reminding that Kuwait has already signed such agreements with other countries.

Both friends expressed hope that Kuwait and France would adapt student exchange programs so that they can help boost their bilateral relations through cultural and academic interchange.

Speaking about the activities she took part in during her stay in Kuwait, Boumedjeria said that she represented France and ACREAMANA on students activities at the Kifan Female Student Hostel on Dec 15, 2011 and an international exhibition held at the faculty of engineering and petroleum in Khaldiya under the title of ‘One World’ between March 5 to 8, 2012, which were both great opportunities to reinforce communication and intercultural dialogue.

In conclusion, Boumedjeria expressed gratitude to the state of Kuwait, KU’s Language Center, the Grand Mosque, the French embassy, her Kuwaiti friends and all Kuwaiti student unions. “I do pray to Allah Almighty that Kuwait prosper and may Allah preserve it and all Arab countries from all evils,” she concluded.

(Boumedjeria can be contacted at: acrea_amana@yahoo.com)

SUNDAY, JULY 8, 2012

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Iranian in police net for spate of house robberies KD 400,000 spent on parties

KUWAIT: Bhutan’s Ambassador to Kuwait, Dasho Tatchi recently visited Kuwait Journalists Association where he met with Board Chairman Ahmed Bahbahani and Secretary Faisal Al-Qenae. They discussed media relations between both countries.

Kim Jong Un makes public treatise to mark birth centenary of Kim Il Sung KUWAIT: Kim Jong Un, First Secretary of the Workers’ Party of Korea, First Chairman of the National Defence Commission of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and Supreme Commander of the Korean People’s Army, made public treatise titled “The Great Comrade Kim Il Sung Is the Eternal Leader of Our Party and People” on April 20 to mark the centenary of the birth of President Kim Il Sung, according to an embassy press release here yesterday.

Kim Jong Un said in his treatise: President Kim Il Sung was the most prominent leader and peerlessly great man in the 20th century.

The world does not know such a prominent leader, peerless patriot and great revolutionary as Kim Il Sung who glorified the 20th century as the century of victory in the cause of independence against imperialism, the cause of socialism while enjoying absolute support and confidence of the people from his teens to the 80s with his outstanding idea, leadership ability and noble virtues.

His whole life was the noble life of a popular leader who regarded believing in people as in Heaven as his maxim and embodied it in his ideas and leadership, translating it into a reality. It was thanks to the leadership of the President that the new historical era, there came the Juche era in which the popular masses once sidelined in history hew out their own destiny by their own efforts in the center of the times and history.

It was a historic event to be specially recorded in the history of human thinking and the revolutionary struggle of the popular masses that the President held aloft the banner of independence and formulated it as the principle and way for making a revolution and put it into practice.

The President steadily developed the relations with foreign parties and states on the principle of independence.

He was an invincible and iron-willed commander and military genius who started the Korean revolution and led it to victory with arms. He was highly praised and deeply trusted by the world people as an iron-willed commander, outstanding strategist and a symbol of victory in the anti-imperialist struggle as he defeated the formidable enemies, the Japanese and US imperialists who were superior in numerical strength and military technique with politico-ideological, strategic and tactical superiority in the last anti-Japanese revolutionary war and the Fatherland Liberation War. He was the greatest man whom no one could match in the revolutionary traits and personality.

For a long period since he embarked upon the road of the revolution, he suffered bitterest grief and agony, but he always thought of the revolution only and devoted his all to its victory. In the course of the protracted revolution, the President protected in a responsible manner the destiny and future of those whom he once made comrades. He took care of tens of thousands of revolutionary soldiers and deeply trusted them and showed every possible loving care for them.

With warm humanity and exceptionally simple and unassuming personality, he took deep care of the people.

He trusted all those who loved the country and the nation and put them forward as eternal companions in the way of working for them. He, possessed of broad and deep humanity, forged close friendship with many foreign party and state leaders as well as famous political, social and academic figures who aspired after independence.

He had the biggest number of comrades and friends in the world.

The President was the eternal leader of the Workers’ Party of Korea and the Korean people and the sun of Juche who laid the eternal foundation for the victorious advance and completion of the revolutionary cause of Juche.

The President founded the great Juche idea, ushering in a new era of the Juche revolution and leading the social revolution at various stages to a shining victory by applying the Juche idea and performing undying feats in all fields of the revolution and construction.

The Korean revolution is making a dynamic advance while working historic miracles in all domains of socialist construction despite unimaginable difficulties and ordeals. This is thanks to the WPK, a revolutionary party of Juche-type, the DPRK, a genuine people’s government, and the matchless People’s Army which were founded and developed by the President, and the people whom he reared to be strong in thinking and faith.

The single-minded unity of the party, army and people around the leader firmly assures the political stability and solidity of

the state and society and it serves as a powerful engine for defending the socialist country and vigorously pushing forward the revolution and construction.

He successfully solved the issue of succession to the revolutionary cause, providing a sure guarantee for the steadfast succession and victorious completion of the revolutionary cause of Juche century after century and generation after generation.

He, regarding the country’s reunification as the most important patriotic cause of the nation, worked heart and soul for the development of the movement of the country’s reunification and performed precious feats in the efforts to realize the cherished desire of the nation.

He checked and foiled the moves of the imperialist reactionaries for domination and worked hard for the development of the world socialist movement, the victory of independent cause against imperialism, the establishment of independent and fair international relations and global peace and security under the uplifted banner of independence and international justice.

The President is alive as the sun of Juche and the 100-year-long history of Juche Korea shines with his august name because leader Kim Jong Il firmly defended the idea and cause of the President and wisely led the drive for carrying out them.

Kim Jong Il was the closest revolutionary comrade and the most faithful comrade-inarms of the President as he upheld the President, regarding it as his lifelong mission to adhere to his idea and cause and glorify them. He made sure that the President was held in high esteem as the eternal leader of the party and people and the eternal President of the DPRK and aroused the whole party and army and all the people to the drive to carry out his behests, taking them as a programme of the party. Under the banner of Songun, Kim Jong Il protected the dignity and supreme interests of the country and the nation in reliance on powerful arms and glorified the socialist country of Juche as an invincible socialist power.

Kim Jong Il ushered in the June 15 era of reunification and brought about a new phase in developing foreign relations with his energetic leadership true to the behests of the President. The history of Kim Il Sung’s nation, Kim Jong Il’s Korea, is a glorious course in which the Korean revolution started in Mt. Paektu and has recorded victories. This is a path of eternal victory to be followed by the Korean people for final victory and a path of prosperity of the country.

It is the revolutionary duty and noble moral obligation of the party and people of the DPRK to hold Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il in high esteem for all ages and successfully carry forward and accomplish generation after generation the revolutionary cause of Juche bequeathed by them, Kim Jong Un said in his treatise, putting forth the tasks for carrying them out.

Kim Jong Un called for firmly preserving and glorifying the idea and exploits of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il for all ages, cherishing the unshakable conviction that they are with the Korean people forever.

He underlined the need to take Kimilsungism-Kimjongilism as the unique guiding idea and permanent guidelines of the Korean revolution and advance the revolution and construction as required by Kimilsungism-Kimjongilism.

He also called for carrying forward the idea and exploits of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il in the building of party, state and revolutionary armed forces and underscored the need to build the party, state and army in the way they did.

All the sectors and units should glorify the records of leadership provided by Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il to them and carry through their behests to bring the intentions and desire in their lifetime into reality, Kim Jong Un said.

He also called for successfully carrying forward the Juche-oriented ideas of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il on cultural construction and the feats performed by them in it and giving full play to the advantages and vitality of Korean-style socialist culture.

He stressed the need to accomplish the historic cause of national reunification without failure to the noble patriotic intentions and last instructions of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, boost foreign relations of the DPRK in the idea of independence, peace and friendship and make positive contributions to global independence.

He stressed that the WPK and the army and people of the DPRK would faithfully carry forward the idea and cause of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il and accomplish the revolutionary cause of Juche under the uplifted banner of Kimilsungism-Kimjongilism.

KUWAIT: An Iranian with a criminal record was arrested for breaking into and robbing houses, said security sources, noting that the suspect had ransacked 14 luxurious homes in Abdullah Al-Salem, Shuwaikh and Surra. Case papers indicate that the manager of criminal investigations, Maj. General Abdul Hameed Al-Awadhi, had referred a number of robbery cases where the culprit was still unidentified. Investigations led to the suspect, who had recently been released from prison after serving ten years for committing similar robberies. On raiding the suspect’s house in Rumaithiya, detectives found some stolen items, an unlicensed gun, jewelry and cash. The suspect admitted to committing 14 robberies since his release and said he usually wandered in wealthy neighborhoods waiting for the owners to leave so he could break in to ‘clean’ the house of valuables. He added that he made about KD 400,000 since his release and that he spent all of this money on parties and other types of pleasures.

Jahra protests The excessive security presence and precautions taken in Taima, Jahra, helped considerably reduce the number of bedouins taking part in Friday’s demonstrations, said security sources, noting that merely scores of bedouins protested after the Jum’a prayers. The sources added that protestors kept moving and refused to end the demonstration, which forced riot police to use tear gas and water cannons to disperse them. Twelve people were arrested, including a Kuwaiti lawyer, despite previous security warnings that those taking part in demonstrations would be deprived of the right to reconsider their legal status or even nationalization.

Heartless employer A search is on for a heartless employer who drove his sick housemaid to hospital 37 days ago and

left her without once visiting her or leaving his contact information with the hospital administration.

Security sources said that when the maid recently died, her relatives wished to have her buried in her home country, but they could not find her passport as it was still being held by the sponsor.

Abandoned baby Two couples were recently arrested for involvement in abandoning a newborn baby by placing it in a carton outside a public hospital, said security sources. Case papers indicate that on finding the baby, investigations led to the mother who said that the child was the result of an illegal affair. She also revealed that a citizen and his GCC girlfriend had helped her leave the baby at the hospital. A case was filed.

‘Crystal’ trader A citizen was arrested and charged with possession of 5 shots of a pure heroin known as ‘Crystal’, said security sources. A police patrol had observed the man driving erratically and upon stopping him found he was drugged, which called for searching the vehicle where the drugs were found.

Abandoned vehicle A Farwaniya police patrol recently found an abandoned vehicle in Khaitan that had been reported stolen, said security sources. Case papers indicate that a police patrol had investigated the vehicle after finding it in an open yard covered with dust. On checking the registration, they learned that it had been reported stolen three weeks earlier.

Robbery gang A delivery man reported that two unidentified robbers driving a plate-less vehicle stopped and assaulted him before they stole KD 60 and van-

ished, said security sources. A case has been filed.

Unconscious citizen A senior citizen was found unconscious in his vehicle, said security sources, noting that on examining him paramedics found that the man was diabetic and had fallen into a diabetic coma while driving. Fortunately, the man managed to pull over when he started feeling unwell. He received first aid and was taken to Adan hospital for treatment.

Drowning case Jahra detectives are currently conducting intensive investigations to discover the cause of the drowning of a 7-year-old child in a Spa swimming pool that is rented by a private school in the area.

Drunk man In a humorous incident, a drunk man lost his way in Jleeb and knocked on other people’s doors in the middle of the night, which startled them, said security sources. Noticing that he did not know the man who opened the door, the drunk man thought he was a visitor. “What are you doing in another person’s house at this time of night? Come on....go out..out”, said the drunk man before the owner ordered him out and called police.

Reckless drivers Eight reckless drivers were arrested in Mubarak Al-Kabeer for driving dangerously along Al-Ghous street, said security sources. Case papers indicate that residents of the homes overlooking Al-Ghous street in Jaber Al-Ali area reported that they could not sleep because of a number of drivers who had been stunt driving after midnight while operating very loud sport cars. Traffic police rushed to the scene and the drivers were arrested, their vehicles confiscated and cases were filed against them.

City Centre opens third hypermarket in Kuwait KUWAIT: City Centre Hypermarket, Kuwait’s premier megamarket, opened their third hypermarket in Kuwait at Dajeej, Farwaniya. The new hypermarket was inaugurated at 6pm on Wednesday, July 4 by Satish C. Mehta, Ambassador of India to Kuwait, in the presence of a large gathering of shoppers, well-wishers and top management of City Centre.

Since 1999, when City Centre first opened in Shuwaikh, the group correctly evaluated the rapidly expanding retail landscape in the country, to offer a wide range of products, including grocery, fresh foods, household, electronics, beauty-care, stationery, toys and a whole lot more, to shoppers in Kuwait. With the opening of their second hypermarket in Salmiya, at the iconic Salmiya Souk, the Group broadened its reach among consumers in the country and leveraged the footfall and spaciousness of Souk Salmiya to offer a greater depth of product lines.

Now, with the opening of a third hypermarket in Dajeej, City Centre hopes to entrench its position as the leading international hypermarket group in the country, with its ‘Mega-Value’ price, promotions, range, quality and service.

The opening of three hypermarkets across Kuwait is evident proof of the group’s commit-

ment to providing shoppers with convenient locations that are all easily accessible and have ample car parking facilities. In addition to offering a wide range of goods and home-ware for budget-conscious shoppers, City Centre offers the latest in apparel and accessories for men, women, children, infants and newborns. The clothing section is supplemented by specific dining, bed and bath items as well as a broad range of merchandise for home decor.

The total area of over 9,000 sq meters in the new hypermarket has around 7000 sq meters of retail shopping spread over two floors and a food court of over 2000 sq meters with a kids play area, and several famous global food service chains,including Pepe’s Pizza, Nizam’s, Chester chicken and Cafe Beanz.

The interior layout is highlighted by wide aisles, easily reachable well-stocked shelves and banks of check-out counters, designed to allow customers to find and select items with the utmost convenience. With the largest selection of varied products in an ambient shopping environment the new outlet of City Centre is geared for the upcoming Ramadan period with several special offerings to mark the holy occasion.

“With the opening of our latest hypermarket

in Dajeej, we are strengthening our commitment to the Kuwait market. Over the years, we have gained the trust and confidence of customers and the concept of City Centre as a one-stop shopping destination for the whole family, is firmly established in the minds of consumers in this country,” said Jasim Al-Ghanim, CEO of City Centre.

While the secret behind the success of City Centre lies in its value proposition of a blend of good quality merchandise for the family, provided in comfortable shopping environment at very competitive prices, Ajay Goel, COO of City Centre, admitted that the phenomenal growth of City Centre, within a relatively short span of time, was the winning combination of passion, commitment and hard work of the hundreds of staff who make up the City Centre Group.

The extensive retail space in the new hypermarket was constructed by main Contractor Prime One Group, one of the leading construction companies of Kuwait with Sumit S Puri at its helm as the Managing Director. The contractor was responsible for getting the City Centre Dajeej project ready in record time in all respects, including the structure, parking, interiors and electro mechanical works and service.

NBK launches health awareness program for employees KUWAIT: National Bank of Kuwait (NBK ) has recently launched a health awareness program for all its employees. The program aims to increase employees’ awareness

Abdul Mohsen Al-Rushaid

to avoid health problems. The program comes as part of NBK’s initiatives in increasing health awareness. The program focuses on achieving the perfect weight for each employee and raising awareness on serious threats caused by overweight.

Abdul Mohsen Al-Rushaid, NBK Public Relations Manager, said “ The health program initiative comes as part of a comprehensive agenda aiming at building up a healthy lifestyle among NBK employees. The program includes a diet plan, regular medical checkups, regular blood pressure tests and regular weight checkup, in addition to providing consultations and advice on how to maintain the weight lost.”

“The program is held under the supervision and direction of dietitians and specialized doctors who constantly follow up with the

employees and monitor their progress,” he added. NBK strongly supports health care awareness.

Throughout the years, NBK also

organized several social awareness programs including blood donation drives and breast cancer awareness campaigns.

KUWAIT: A group photo of the employees participating in the program.

SUNDAY, JULY 8, 2012

Syrian fighting spills into North Lebanon

India’s street children bank on the future Page 11

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Floods kill 103 in south Russia Storms, landslides wreak havoc in Krasnodar region MOSCOW: Severe flash floods and a landslide in Russia’s southern Krasnodar region have killed at least 103 people and affected nearly 13,000 in the area’s worst natural disaster in decades, officials said yesterday. President Vladimir Putin was expected to personally inspect the worst-hit areas as officials feared the death toll could go up even further. “He will be there soon,” spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

Residents were caught completely by surprise by the force of the waters, which ripped up paving and traffic lights, flooded the ground floors of houses, railways and roads, witnesses and officials said. One woman reportedly had to spend a night up a tree before being rescued from the floods caused by what officials said were exceptionally heavy rainstorms. In the district of Krymsk, an area worst hit by the disaster, officials had already discovered 92 bodies including that of a 10-year-old, a police spokesman said.

The town of Krymsk is located around 200 kilometers northwest of the Black Sea resort town of Sochi where Russia is gearing up to host the Winter Olympic Games in 2014. Officials have not been able to explain the large number of deaths, except by saying that the water swelled in the local Bakanka river and the disaster struck while Krymsk residents were asleep “Everything happened at night and very quickly,” the regional administration said in a statement.

Police declined to speculate on the reasons behind the massive toll, saying Moscow-based investigators were conducting a probe. The Russian Internet was abuzz with speculation that people died in a man-made catastrophe resulting from an open sluice gate at a water reservoir. Authorities denied the reports.

“Unfortunately, the rumor mills works much faster than the official information,” a spokeswoman for the regional governor, Anna Minkova, said on popular Echo of Moscow radio. “No water reservoir, no gate has been opened,” she said, adding that the district did not have a reservoir that might have caused the flooding. Nine people were reported killed in the popular Black Sea resort town of Gelendzhik and another two in the port of Novorossiisk over the past two days, police said. The victims included two woman and three men electrocuted in Gelendzhik on Friday. The authorities said they had to switch off power in the worst-affected areas to avoid more deaths. Tatyana, a resident of Krymsk whose house, perched on a hill, was not affected by the floods, said the disaster struck unexpectedly. — AFP

KYIV: Ukrainian rescue workers and police experts examine the site of a bus which crashed on the road between Kyiv and Chernygiv, some 115 km north of Kiev yesterday. A bus with Russian pilgrims, traveling to western Ukrainian Orthodox monastery crashed yesterday morning, killing 14 people and injuring 29. — AFP

Iran recalibrates threat to close Gulf oil choke point TEHRAN: Iran will close the strategic Strait of Hormuz at the entrance to the oil-rich Gulf only if its crude revenues are seriously threatened, its top military commander said in remarks reported yesterday. “We have plans to close the Strait of Hormuz because military commanders must have plans for any situation,” armed forces chief of staff General Hassan Firouzabadi said late on Friday, according to ISNA news agency. “But Iran, acting rationally, will not close the corridor through which 40 percent of the world’s energy passes, unless its interests are in serious trouble,” he said, referring to the country’s crucial crude revenues.

Several commanders and officials have vowed that Iran reserves as an option closing the strait-a strategic choke point for much of the Middle East’s oil if its nuclear facilities are targeted by military strikes. The threats, renewed repeatedly since December, have generated warnings from the United States, which says any attempt by Iran to close the waterway is a “red line” that would trigger a US military reaction.

“What my colleagues say regarding (the closing of the strait) echo mis-

sions assigned to them,” Firouzabadi told the Khorasan daily.

But, he explained, “the order to carry out the mission will only come from a decision by the Supreme National Security Council and approved by Supreme Leader ” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has final say on all state matters.

Firouzabadi said statements by military commanders would not affect any decision to close the passage of oil through the Strait of Hormuz.

Such threats have regularly caused hikes in oil prices across the globe.

Experts believe Iran, which exports all of its oil from its terminals in the Gulf, would be the first victim of any disruption of crude through the channel. The issue gained momentum last week as more than third of lawmakers in Iran’s parliament backed a bill calling for the waterway to be closed to oil tankers headed to Europe, as retaliation for a European Union embargo on Iranian crude that came into effect on July 1.

The EU measure is the latest of a raft of international sanctions designed to pressure Iran to curb its nuclear ambitions, which the West suspects mask military objective

despite Tehran’s repeated assertions of seeking only the civilian applications of the technology. The bill echoed a December warning by Iran’s first vice president, Mohammad Reza Rahimi, that the Islamic republic would close the strait if its crucial oil revenues are affected by Western sanctions. His warning was then followed by naval maneuvers of the elite Revolutionary Guards practicing shutting the waterway in January.

The US has also moved new forces into the Gulf to support antimine operations in the Gulf to keep the strategic waterway open, the US Navy said Friday. Iran has also warned it will respond to any military strikes against its atomic facilities. The United States and Israel say “all options” remain on the table if talks aimed at curbing Iran’s nuclear activities, condemned in four sets of sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council, fail. World powers and Iran revived negotiations over Tehran’s nuclear program this year, but seem to have reached an impasse after three rounds of talks, as differences in the negotiating positions of the two sides remains significant.— AFP

MPs let rip with gun, insults in talk show

AMMAN: An image grab shows Jordanian MP Mohammad Shawabka (left) pulling his pistol out after he accused former deputy Mansur Murad (not seen) of working as a spy for the Syrian regime during a live television talk show in Amman. — AFP

AMMAN: A live television talk show in Jordan produced a torrent of insults, a shoe flying across the studio and a pistol being whipped out, as the host desperately tried to keep two rival politicians apart. The show on private satellite channel Jo Sat, aired on Friday, started to spin out of control after MP Mohammad Shawabka accused former deputy Mansur Murad of working as a spy for the Syrian regime.

The charge led to an sharp exchange of insults and accusations. “You are a spy in the pay of the Syrian regime,” insisted Shawabka, only to be accused by Murad of being “spy in the pay of (Israel’s secret service) Mossad and a thief.” The MP hurled his shoe as his accuser and threatened him with a pistol as both men jumped out of their seats, with the moderator scrambling between the men close up in front of the camera to keep tempers from flaring into all-out violence. Jordan, where activists have been staging proreform and anti-corruption demonstrations, has also been the scene of several anti-Damascus protests since the outbreak of the March 2011 revolt in neighboring Syria.— AFP

SUNDAY, JULY 8, 2012

I N T E R N AT I O N A L

Salvaging South Sudan’s history from dust and termites JUBA: Surrounded by walls of boxes, researchers scan and catalogue the crumbling, mildewed pages, some nibbled by rats, which make up the national archives of the one-year-old republic of South Sudan. During the five decades of civil war, an extreme climate and an assortment of animals have eaten away at the archives, some of which are still piled up in a giant city centre tent-unbearably hot and humid even in early morning. “We cannot leave our history to be destroyed by termites, rats and water-we have to rescue these documents,” said archivist Youssef Fulgensio Onyalla.

He shudders at the memory of discovering documents largely ravaged by rain, cockroaches and rats in the basement of a school in 2007, two years after a peace deal ended one of Africa’s longest civil wars.

“We broke the windows and left it open for three days for ventilation,” but the smell and dust was so strong that the team got sick and two people were hospitalized, he said. Ever since, Onyalla has feared for these documents like an anxious parent. “The moment I saw those papers in that condition, I knew I had to take care of them, protect and preserve them for the future,” he said, carefully touching the boxes of yellowing papers.

“This is quite literally the national history... from 1903 right the way up to the 1990s-almost 100 years of South Sudanese history that’s been rotting in a tent”, said Nicki Kindersley, a history student at Britain’s Durham University, one of three foreigners helping to clear out the tent. “So far we’ve reached 2,300 boxes of information, we’re probably going to reach around 6,000 - it’s an absolutely amazing treasure trove of information”, she said. The finds include original political party constitutions, lists of the first Southern political parties and minutes of the court cases of the 1955 mutineers who sparked South Sudan’s first civil war. “We’ve never seen everyone’s names and all the details of what hap-

pened before,” said Kindersley.

There are also insights into the lives of former British colonists as they muddle through tasks like legislating against suspected witchcraft in the Zande people in the steamy jungles close to the Democratic Republic of Congo. “In a scene reminiscent of the witches in Macbeth, the sergeant major surprised three Zande at night... murmuring incanta-

tions over a cauldron,” one colonial commissioner wrote in a report. The restoration project was originally funded to find maps showing Southern districts drawn up around Sudan’s 1956 independence, to help solve outstanding issues of borders, contested territory and the sharing of oil wealth following South Sudan’s split from the north.

“These are going to be useful when we go for

JUBA: A woman holds up two passports, one British and one South Sudanese, in Juba. Young South Sudanese graduates who left the country during its decade of civil war are returning, trading their comfortable lives in the developed world to be part of a re-building process in South Sudan. — AFP

arbitration over the territories”, said Pagan Amum, South Sudan’s top negotiator and secretary-general of its ruling SPLM party. But the benefits are in fact even wider. Archivists also hope historical records of internal conflicts over borders, cattle and grazing land will help resolve modern-day violence of the same type that kills thousands every year. As people flock back to South Sudan following the years of war, these documents may also help to prove land ownership. Onyalla’s family won an age-old claim after he stumbled across 1955 information about his grandfather’s inheritance from a leper cousin.

Jok Madut Jok, an academic and undersecretary of the Ministry of Culture, says the country is producing its first history textbook for high school thanks largely to the archives. “I think it will really help students in the South to know about their own history,” said Thomas Becu, who knew nothing about his country apart from fighting until 2006, when he returned from Uganda and began work in the archive. After a war that sent people abroad or to the bush, Jok says it is vital to teach people their past to form a national identity. “You have to imbue your citizens with a sense of contribution, pride and loyalty to their country, and that can only come when their story features in history,” he said.

Studying past policy failures should also stop the government repeating them, he said. But politicians have yet to take much interest in the archives, or submit records from 2005 onwards. Norway has donated a museum for the archives that should be built by 2014, but unless legislation is passed to pull in documents from army archives and government, the past will remain unclear. Meanwhile, Onyalla is salvaging every last scrap. “When the tent is closed I go around it, and if I see a piece of paper like this,” he said, showing a stamp-sized space between his thumb and forefinger, “if it has some writing on it, I put it in my pocket and keep it.” —AFP

Syrian fighting spills into North Lebanon 3 killed in Lebanon as death toll mount

BENGHAZI: Libyan protesters demanding greater representation gather around burnt ballot boxes and electoral material outside a polling station in the eastern city of Benghazi yesterday. Hundreds of protesters burned ballots to demand greater representation although most residents of the Mediterranean city of Benghazi voted in historic elections vowing to build a new Libya. — AFP

Benghazi votes in droves vowing to build new Libya BENGHAZI: Crowds of young and old from the eastern city of Benghazi, cradle of the revolt that toppled Muammar Gaddafi last year, showed up yesterday to vote in historic elections, vowing to build a new Libya. But at one polling centre in the city and some other parts of eastern Libya, the voting was marred by attacks by protesters calling for greater representation for their region in the new national assembly. They forced the closure of several polling stations in areas outside Benghazi during the voting to elect a new national assembly.

“I am voting today for a new Libya which we will create from the blood shed by our martyrs,” said Abdel Jalil Mansur, who works at Benghazi airport. “The blood of our martyrs will not go to waste,” he said as he stepped out of Al-Hurriyah polling station in central Benghazi carrying his five-year-old daughter, Arwa, draped in the new Libyan flag. An AFP correspondent touring the city saw men, women and children heading to various polling stations in groups, while members of security forces fired their machineguns at key road intersections to mark the landmark elections, chanting “Allahu Akbar” (God is greatest).

Young men and women drove their cars around the city chanting “Free Libya! Free Libya! carrying the Libyan flag and honking their vehicles. The revolutionary spirit of Benghazi was clearly evident as mosques played records of nationalist songs and chants of Allahu Akbar since the early hours. Hueida Abdul Sheikh, a 47-year-old mother, was one of the first voters in Benghazi in the hope that the vote she cast will help build the future for her and her three children. “I look forward to a better life as a Libyan and as a woman,” she said at western Benghazi’s Al-Sadeq Bala school.

“I feel like my life has been wasted so far but now my children will have a better life. All they need is a push, and I believe the new

leaders will give that push so that children can achieve their ambitions,” she added. Another voter, policeman Yussef Amer Ali, said he had voted for “peace and security” in the hope that “all Libyans will achieve their dreams in this new country.” Benghazi was the city to rebel against the regime of Kadhafi, with protesters, inspired by the Arab Spring uprising in neighboring Egypt and Tunisia, pouring out onto the streets in February 2011.

That first protest in Libya’s second-largest city, spread rapidly to engulf the entire country. It ended with the capture and killing of Gaddafi on October 20 after a revolt supported by powerful NATO air cover. Yesterday, groups of young men carrying machineguns were patrolling various streets, especially near polling centers, offering what they said was “protection to voters and voting centers.” But protesters demanding greater representation for eastern Libya, forcefully closed several polling stations. A group of armed men stormed Al-Alwiya Al-Khadra polling station in central Benghazi, beat five security guards, ransacked the place and stole ballot papers the list of voters, a witness said.

As they left, they fired at an empty police car parked outside. Some voting centers were also shut in the eastern city of Ajdabiya, where a depot containing electoral material was torched earlier this week, an official in Benghazi said. Another official said voting was disrupted at oasis towns in southeastern Libya, including Jalo and Ojla, after federalism supporters prevented a plane carrying polling material from taking off. Abdeljawad Al-Badin, spokesman of the self-appointed Cyrenaica Council, said voters in Quba, near the town of Derna, were boycotting the electoral process altogether. Interim leader Mustafa Abdel Jalil, who voted in his eastern home town of Al-Bayda said “we hope that our brothers in Benghazi will stay away from such problems and that the voting will go ahead as planned.” —AFP

BEIRUT: Syria’s conflict spilled further into Lebanon yesterday when mortar fire from government forces crashed into villages in the north, killing two women and a man after rebels crossed the border for refuge, residents said. In contrast with Turkey, which openly harbors rebels fighting to topple Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, Lebanon was not expected to respond militarily and has played down the effect of regular clashes along the frontier.

But rebels have used north Lebanon as a base and Assad’s forces have at times bombed villages and even crossed the border in pursuit of militants, threatening to inflame tensions in Lebanon given a long history of Syrian domination there. Residents of Lebanon’s Wadi Khaled region said several mortar bombs hit farm buildings five to 20 km from the border at around 2 am. At midday villagers reported more explosions and said they heard gunfire close to the border.

In the village of Al-Mahatta, a house was destroyed, killing a 16-year-old girl and wounding a two-year old and a four-year old, family members said. A 25-year-old woman and a man were killed in nearby villages, residents said. The Lebanese army issued a brief statement about the incident. There was no immediate response from the prime minister or the foreign ministry, both of whom have expressed fears that Lebanon could be dragged into the conflict.

Turkey reinforced its border and scrambled fighter aircraft on several occasions last week after Syria shot down a Turkish warplane on June 22. In Syria, the army bombarded towns across northern Aleppo province yesterday in a concerted effort to root out insurgents who have taken control of some areas, the anti-government Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. “The bombing is the heaviest since the start of military operations in rural Aleppo in an attempt to control the region after regular Syrian army forces suffered heavy losses over the past few months,” the British-based activist group reported. It said three people had died, including two rebels. The Observatory said many families had been displaced and water, electricity and medical supplies were running short.

DANGER AROUND ALEPPO Aleppo, Syria’s second largest city and commercial hub, has been largely spared of the violence. But the outskirts of the city and the wider province have seen rebels gaining territory since the uprising began 16 months ago. Opposition activists say at least 15,000 people have been killed over that time. Assad says the rebels are foreign-backed terrorists who have killed thousands of army and police troops in hit-and-run attacks and roadside bombings.

Residents say rebels have set up checkpoints along roads in the Aleppo region and in some towns the army is confined to barracks. The Observatory said 93 people, mostly civilians, were killed across Syria on Friday, when protesters took the streets to call for a “people’s libera-

tion war.” Opposition activists said they feared for the lives of the residents of Khan Sheikhoun after the army seized control of the rebel stronghold in the northern Idlib province on Friday in an assault with helicopter gunships.

On the diplomatic front, China yesterday joined Russia in rejecting US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s accusation that Beijing and Moscow have hindered efforts to bring about a peaceful resolution of the crisis in Syria. Any attempt to “slander” China was doomed to fail, it said. Clinton had urged Assad’s international opponents meeting in Paris on Friday to make Russia and China “pay a price” for helping the authoritarian leader keep power in Damascus.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin said Clinton’s comments were “totally unacceptable”. “Any words and deeds that slander China and sow discord between China and other countries will be in vain,” he said.

Manaf Tlas, a Republican Guard brigadier and son of the longtime defense minister under Assad’s father Hafez, has yet to surface abroad or clearly to throw his lot in with the rebels. But his desertion, leaked by family friends, was confirmed by the French government, giving a boost to the “Friends of Syria” conference it hosted in Paris. Western powers and Sunni Muslim Arab rulers opposed to Assad, whose minority Alawite sect - an offshoot of Shiite Islam - has dominated Syria’s power structure for decades, agreed to “massively increase” aid to the Syrian opposition.

Deadlock in global diplomacy has left the Western powers trying to give an impression of momentum growing against Assad, holding a series of meetings, trumpeting defections and piling psychological pressure on Assad’s ruling elite. Tlas and his father Mustafa, who friends said left for Paris some months ago claiming medical

HATAY: A picture shows smoke rising from the Yayladagi refugee camp in Hatay. A fire in a camp for Syrian refugees in southern Turkey killed two people and left six others injured, the Anatolia news agency reported, saying a short-circuit was the probable cause. — AFP DIPLOMATIC DEADLOCK Russia and China have repeatedly used veto power at the UN Security Council to block international attempts to persuade Assad to leave power to make way for a democratic transition in the pivotal Arab country. They say they are committed to the peace plan of UN envoy Kofi Annan that proposes national dialogue. UN peace monitors effectively gave up on their mission last month after just weeks in Syria as it became clear there was no peace to monitor. News on Friday that one of Assad’s personal friends had defected and was headed for exile in France was hailed by Clinton as proof that members of the Damascus leadership were starting to “vote with their feet” and leave a sinking ship.

problems, were rare faces from Syria’s Sunni majority in the Alawite-led ruling clique. Their flight may show Assad is losing support among wealthier Sunnis.

It also suggests the Tlas clan, whatever moral scruples friends say were their prime motive for abandoning their friend and patron, has seen the writing on the wall for Assad’s rule. Thousands of families have fled their homes in the past two weeks due to heavy fighting between government forces and rebels and many face food shortages, the United Nations said on Friday. Late on Friday, about 300 refugees, including about 30 military personnel, crossed into Turkey at the border at Bukulmez in Hatay province, according to a Reuters cameraman. — Reuters

Israeli draft pits secular Jews vs ultra-Orthodox JERUSALEM: Deep in the heart of Mea Shearim, a Jerusalem bastion of hardline ultra Orthodox Jews, hundreds of bearded young men in black suits have their noses burrowed into books, immersed in biblical study and oblivious to their surroundings. They are the creme de la creme of a cloistered community, the privileged elite who are expected neither to work for a living nor serve in the military with other Israelis. As students at the prestigious Mir Yeshiva, prayer and study of scripture is their full-time job.

These young men, and their sheltered lifestyle, are at the heart of a battle that is tearing Israel apart in a clash between tradition and modernity, religion and democracy. The fight is focused on whether ultra-Orthodox males should be drafted into the military along with other Jews, but it really is about a much deeper issue: What is the place of Judaism in the Jewish state? The issue has come to the fore as the government races to meet a Supreme Court-ordered deadline to revamp the

nation’s draft law. In its current form, secular males must perform three years of compulsory service when they turn 18.

Ultra-Orthodox men, like the young scholars at the Mir Yeshiva, have special exemptions that allow them to continue studying in their isolated enclaves while collecting government subsidies. For their supporters, seminary students are preserving a tradition that has served as the very bedrock of Judaism for thousands of years. “Jews need to study the Bible.

That is what makes us unique as a people,” Yerach Tucker, a 30year-old spokesman for the ultra-Orthodox community, said proudly as he guided a visitor through the Mir Yeshiva. “It is the essence of our lives.”

But the vast majority of Israelis, who risk their lives and put their careers on hold while serving in the military, see this system as the essence of everything that is wrong with their country. This resentment has fueled a broader high-decibel culture war. In recent months, secular activists have rebelled

against what they consider growing religious coercion by the ultra-Orthodox, such as attempts to enforce gender segregation on buses and public places, and a religious backlash by ultra-Orthodox who feel unfairly persecuted.

“It is something so ethical, so basic, that we have all grown up upon: service, giving to the state. Everyone here has to give something to society because we are one society,” said Boaz Nol, a reserve officer who has set up a “sucker’s tent” protest encampment in Tel Aviv and is among those planning a massive demonstration this weekend there against the continued exemptions. Israeli reservists sometimes ironically refer to themselves as “suckers” for reporting for duty when others do not.

Wading into the debate, the Supreme Court earlier this year ruled the draft exemptions illegal and gave the government until Aug 1 to figure out a new, fairer system. That is proving far more difficult than expected. The deep divisions

between religious and secular parties inside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government led to the collapse of a special committee formed to draft new legislation.

Netanyahu’s largest governing partner, the centrist Kadima Party, is now threatening to quit the government, just two months after joining the coalition with the goal of reforming the draft. Netanyahu has vowed to find a compromise. A glimpse into the world of the ultra-Orthodox shows just how intractable the issue has become. The draft exemptions date back to the time of Israel’s independence in 1948, when founding father David Ben-Gurion exempted 400 exemplary seminary students to help rebuild great schools of Jewish learning destroyed in the Holocaust, when 6 million Jews were murdered. As ultra-Orthodox parties became power brokers, the numbers mounted. Ultra-Orthodox officials now estimate there are about 100,000 full-time Torah learners of draft age. —AP

SUNDAY, JULY 8, 2012

I N T E R N AT I O N A L

Romania lawmakers vote to impeach president BUCHAREST: Romania’s parliament has voted to impeach President Traian Basescu in a spiraling political crisis, with the US warning that the EU country’s democracy is under threat. A total of 256 lawmakers out of 432 voted on Friday in favor of the move against the centre-right Basescu, according to an official count, and he could be definitively ousted from power af ter a national referendum to be held within 30 days.

In the meantime Crin Antonescu, 52, of the ruling Liberal Social Union (USL) has been appointed interim president.

The bitter feud between Basescu and his arch-rival, the centre-left Prime Minister Victor Ponta, 39, has thrown Romania into its worst crisis since it emerged from communist dictatorship just over two decades ago. This week, Ponta’s USL coalition fired the speakers of both houses of parliament and the ombudsman and threatened to sack judges of the Constitutional Court, the nation’s highest court.

The United States led Western concern that Ponta’s coalition government, which took office only in May, has been eroding democratic checks and balances in its campaign to oust the 60year-old Basescu, who first took office

in 2004. “ We are concerned about recent developments occurring in Romania, our NATO ally and partner, which threaten democratic checks and balances and weaken independent institutions, such as the courts,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said in a statement. “The United States stands with our EU partners and urges that Romania uphold and protect the common values and principles that unite the European and trans-Atlantic community of nations,” she added.

The European Union as well as France, Germany, the Council of Europe and several rights groups, including Freedom House and the Helsink i Committee, also expressed concern at events in Romania. “The rule of law, the democratic checks and balances and the independence of the judiciary are cornerstones of the European democracy and indispensable for mutual trust within the European Union,” warned the European Commission. The turmoil comes only days after a scandal involving Ponta who was found to have plagiarized parts of his PhD thesis. It also follows a bitter feud between the premier and the president over which one should represent Romania at European summits.

In a sign of the heightened political tensions, Ponta said after the vote Friday that “my family, my children have been threatened”. He added that he had asked for help from the authorities and did not feel in danger. The political crisis in one of Europe’s poorest countries has seen the currency nosedive in recent days. Ponta has sought to allay Western fears over the health of its democracy, pledging to visit Brussels next week to “give assurances” to the bloc which Romania joined in 2007 under Basescu.

Lawmakers in the early evening voted to impeach Basescu, a former sea captain, over claims he improperly assumed the powers of the prime minister when he announced drastic austerity cuts in 2010.

At that time Romania, badly hit by recession, agreed to tough belt-tightening including public sector wage and benefit cuts in return for a multi-billion-dollar bailout from the European Union and IMF. In parliament ahead of the Friday ’s impeachment vote, Basescu rejected the charges and said the campaign against him had violated the rule of law and put at risk “the stability and reputation of the country”.

Ponta, a lawyer, and the new interim

BUCHAREST: Members of the parliament vote on procedural issues during a special session to vote on impeaching Romanian President Traian Basescu, (not seen) in Bucharest, Romania. — AP president Antonescu, a historian and former museum curator, first joined forces in 2011, when some commentators likened their alliance to that between a camel and an ostrich, a Romanian byword for “improbable”.

Ponta’s cabinet sparked widespread concern with a decree Wednesday barring the Constitutional Court from ruling on parliamentary decisions-removing what could have been an obstacle to Basescu’s impeachment. —AFP

Free speech claims tossed in N Irish ‘Troubles’ case Boston College archive could tie leaders to past killings

OUAGADOUGOU: (From left) The presidents of Niger Mahamadou Issoufou, Togo Faure Eyadema, Ivory Coast Alassane Dramane Ouattara, of Burkina Faso Blaise Compaore, Nigeria Goodluck Jonathan, Benin Bony Yayi and Ecowas delegation member Kadre Desire Ouedraogo pose for a photo yesterday in Ouagadougou. — AFP

West African bloc targets unity government in Mali OUAGADOUGOU: West African leaders met in Burkina Faso yesterday with civil leaders from Mali amid moves to create a government of national unity to tackle a crisis in the north where Islamists have enforced sharia law. Burkinabe President Blaise Compaore, a mediator for the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), will preside over the talks in Ouagadougou with six other regional leaders but with Mali’s leaders notable by their absence. Mali’s interim president Dioncounda Traore has been receiving medical care in Paris since being attacked in his office in May and will not be attending.

An official in Mali’s national assembly said Thursday that Traore’s decision not to attend the Ouagadougou talks had less to do with his condition than with perceptions in his home country, where he has not returned since the incident.

Renegade soldiers toppled the elected president on March 22 but, under intense regional and international pressure, later agreed to hand power back to a civilian administration. Traore was attacked by a group of people backing the coup. There was no reason given for the absence of Prime Minister Cheikh Modibo Diarra, though his relations with ECOWAS have been strained as the regional grouping looks for a more “inclusive” government

in Mali. The Popular Movement of 22 March (MP 22), which supports the coup of March 22, also announced it would not participate in Saturday ’s meeting in Ouagadougou. Mali has continued its descent into chaos since then and is de facto split in two, with Islamist groups linked to Al-Qaeda controlling the north, a territory larger than France or Texas. For ECOWAS the urgent priority is to reinforce and stabilize Mali’s transitional authorities in order to handle the crisis in the north. The option of a military intervention by a regional force in order to restore the country’s territorial integrity is also on the table, though such a move would require the UN’s blessing.

The UN Security Council on Thursday passed a resolution calling for sanctions against Al-Qaeda-linked fighters blamed for the desecration of the tombs of Muslim saints. The council expressed “deep concern” at the increased terrorist threat in the north due to the presence of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) fighters. The group has been blamed for kidnappings and attacks in several west and north African countries.

But the council held back from giving a UN mandate to any West African force to help the interim government to take back territory from the Islamist rebels in the north.—AFP

Church of England set to vote on women bishops LONDON: The Church of England is set to take a final vote tomorrow on whether to ordain women bishops, after years of wrangling between traditionalists and liberals. The General Synod, the governing body of the worldwide Anglican Communion’s mother church, voted Friday to stage a further discussion and a vote tomorrow.

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the communion’s spiritual leader, warned the Church it was “looking into the abyss” over the issue, saying a vote against the move would put it off the agenda until 2015. “Like the majority of members of the synod, and the majority of the members of the Church of England, I am very firmly of the view that we need to proceed as speedily as we can to resolve this question because I, like most of you, long to see women bishops in the Church of England,” he said.

“I also long for there to be the kind of provision for those who continue to have theological reservations on this subject, for their position to be secured in such a way that they can feel grateful for the outcome as others do.” However, a last-ditch amendment would give traditionalist parishes the right of access to an alternative male bishop who shares their views about women clergy. Pro-women campaigners have claimed this would enshrine discrimination against women in law, and are therefore threatening to vote

alongside traditionalists. The Guardian newspaper said yesterday that a carefully-stitched compromise risks failing.

“Messy compromises are so integral to the contemporary Church of England that one can imagine the communion wafer being replaced with a lump of fudge,” the liberal daily said in its editorial. It said the outgoing Williams had a progressive heart but has shown himself to be “a pluralist first and a liberal only second. His desire to respect every religious opinion is such that he leaves office without settling any arguments. “He talked tough about the process on Friday, but in the substantive ballot yesterday the ludicrous prospect is of campaigners for women bishops voting against.”

The legislation will need a two-thirds majority in all three Houses of the General Synod, of clergy, laity and bishops, if it is to get final approval. If it clears the final hurdle it will then go for approval in the Houses of Parliament before receiving royal assent, paving the way for the first women bishops in 2014. The Church of England-the officiallyestablished state church in England voted to create women priests in 1992 and they now constitute around a third of all its priests. The General Synod is being held at the University of York in northern England. The 61-year-old Williams will step down as church leader in December after a decade in the post.— AFP

BOSTON: Researchers do not have free speech protections that would allow them to keep interviews with fighters from Northern Ireland’s sectarian “Troubles” sealed, a US Appeals Court ruled Friday, siding with prosecutors who want access to their papers. The decision could open an unsettling diplomatic process because material already released from the archive kept at Boston College has connected public figures to a notorious killing by the Irish Republican Army during the armed conflict, ended by a 1998 peace treaty.

After an account was published in 2010, British authorities enlisted the US Justice Department to subpoena the papers last year from Boston College. The college and the researchers who conducted the interviews filed legal actions to block the release. Efforts by the college to block some disclosures are still underway, leaving the immediate impact of Friday’s ruling uncertain. The researchers - IrishAmerican journalist Ed Moloney and former IRA member-turned-historian Anthony McIntyre had argued in court against any disclosure of the material.

They stressed that fighters they interviewed from both the Catholic and Protestant sides of the conflict were promised confidentiality until their deaths. But the researchers’ arguments were rejected by lower courts and again on Friday by a three-judge panel. In her ruling, Chief Judge Sandra Lynch wrote the researchers could not state a claim that they have rights under a legal-assistance treaty between the United States and the United Kingdom.

She also wrote that while the researchers claim an academic research privilege under their

constitutional rights to freedom of speech, the US Supreme Court ruled in its 1972 “Branzburg v Hayes” decision that journalists do not have the right to refuse subpoenas based on their own promises of confidentiality. “As in Branzburg, there is no reason to create such a privilege here,” Lynch wrote. “The choice to investigate criminal activity belongs to the government and is not subject to veto by academic researchers.”

Another judge on the panel, Juan Torruella, wrote in a concurring opinion that he reluctantly agreed with the decision to reject the researchers’ claims, based on precedents. But he wrote that he did not agree with what he described as the other judges’ apparent view that the First Amendment of the US Constitution does not provide some protection to the researchers.

CALLS TO BACK OFF The case has been closely watched on both sides of the Atlantic, partly because it marked a rare intrusion of prosecutors into academic efforts. US leaders including John Kerry, chairman of the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee, had also urged authorities to back off their efforts on fears that they could destabilize still-touchy efforts at reconciliation in Northern Ireland.

Court filings have stated the matter began when UK police officials followed up new leads that emerged in 2010 in a notorious killing, the 1972 abduction and killing of Northern Irish woman Jean McConville. A widowed mother of 10, McConville was killed by the IRA on suspicion of being a government informer - something her family has denied. Her body was recovered in

2003. Her case got new attention in 2010 following the death of an IRA figure, Brendan Hughes.

His death freed Moloney to publish a book based partly on interviews Hughes had granted for the archive. In the interviews Hughes connected political leader Gerry Adams to McConville’s death.

Now president of the Sinn Fein political party, Adams has consistently denied being part of the IRA. Moloney said via email on Friday he would not immediately comment. A spokesman for Boston College did not return a message. In a statement, a US Justice Department spokeswoman said the agency was pleased the court recognized the legal-assistance treaty does not create private rights for individuals. “The decision of the Court also recognizes the strong public interest in not impeding criminal investigations, and the federal interest in reciprocal cooperation in criminal proceedings between foreign nations,” it said.

Jim Cotter, one of the researchers’ attorneys based near Boston in Quincy, Massachusetts, said in a telephone interview he was “tremendously disappointed” by the ruling. Cotter said he fears ramifications both on the peace process and on the safety and welfare of his clients and the people they interview, if the material becomes public earlier than they were promised. “I don’t like losing a case based on the law, but in this case I’m more concerned about the safety of our clients and the participants in the Belfast Project,” Cotter said, using the name of the archive. “This is just going to raise old issues that were put to rest with the Good Friday Agreement,” the 1998 peace treaty, he said. — Reuters

How 1 man derailed Mali 20 years of democracy SEGOU: On the morning three months ago when the fate of Mali was irrevocably changed, Mamadou Sanogo awoke in the house here where he and his wife had raised six children, including a 39-year-old son, now a captain in the nation’s army. It was still dark outside. The elderly man got up and turned on the TV, setting the volume to low so as to not disturb his sleeping wife, according to relatives and friends. What he saw next made him shake her awake. “Come see what your imbecile son is doing,” he yelled.

Instead of the normal newscast, they saw a group of soldiers huddled in front of the TV camera. It took them a moment to recognize their son, Capt Amadou Haya Sanogo, who was announcing that the military had overthrown the government of Mali. If the coup was a shock to his parents - his mother subsequently fainted - it seems also to have come as a surprise to Sanogo himself, who by all accounts had no plans for it. Perhaps most of all, it was like a bucket of ice water over the heads of Mali’s 15.4 million people, who saw two decades of democracy collapse in just a few hours into what is rapidly becoming an ungovernable hole and a haven for Al-Qaeda-linked terrorists.

The ease of the takeover, just six weeks before a presidential election, shows how quickly the course of a nation in this part of the world can change, despite or even partly because of funding and training from the West. And it underscores how fragile democracies remain in Africa, and how the fate of an entire country can still be bent by the ambitions of a single man.

“This is considered a thing of the past in Africa. If you look at the video, it looks like a caricature of a 1970s coup,” said Jennifer Cooke, director of the Africa program at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“This is why this is so tragic and disappointing the trend for this kind of ham-handed power grab has been, fewer and fewer.” Mali is a landlocked nation twice the size of France that has long taken pride in its democratic track record, despite chronic poverty and repeated rebellions in the north. In the past decade, the US alone has poured close to $1 billion into Mali, including development aid as well as military training to battle an Al-Qaeda offshoot in the north. In

BAMAKO: ECOWAS Chief of Staff and Colonel-Major Hasan Nomane Lai (left) speaks alongside the Malian Defense Minister and Colonel-Major Yamoussa Camara (2nd left) and Malian Army Chief of Staff Ibrahim Dembele (2nd right), during an extraordinary session in Bamako yesterday. — AFP doing so, the US unwittingly also helped prepare the soldiers for the coup: Sanogo himself benefited from six training missions in the US, the State Department confirmed, starting in 1998 when he was sent to an infantry training course at Fort Benning, Ga.He returned in 2001, 2002, 2004, 2008 and 2010 to attend some of the most prestigious military institutions in America, including the Defense Language Institute at the Lackland Air Force Base, Texas. He took a basic officer course at Quantico, Virginia, and learned to use a light-armored vehicle at Camp Pendleton, Calif. Just a few weeks before the March takeover, Sanogo made a trip to Segou to say goodbye. He’d been accepted into a peacekeeping training course abroad and was due to leave sometime in April, said his cousin, Salif Sanogo. What happened next is described by those who know him as an “accidental coup.”

It started at the Kati military camp, where Sanogo lived in a decrepit housing unit with cement walls and a tin roof, just 10 kilometers over a barren hill from the presidential palace.

Sanogo, an English-language teacher at a military college, had failed several exams in officer school, according to Lt Col Oumar Diawara, an officer also stationed at the camp. However,

because of his training in the United States and because he spoke and taught English, he gave off a worldly air. The rank-and-file soldiers looked up to him because he frequently socialized with them, unlike other officers who adhered to the strict hierarchy of military life.

Sanogo, officers said, was among the instructors fired last fall at a military college where five recruits died in a widely publicized hazing incident. He was sent back to Kati, said Diawara. “He was there with no function,” he said. “He had absolutely nothing to do.” In the meantime, anger was growing at the corruption that had spread like a tumor across the arteries of Mali’s government and military: In recent years, the country dropped from No 78 out of 182 countries to No 118 on Transparency International’s index tracking corruption.

In the military, generals sat in lavishly decorated offices while soldiers were routinely sent to the battlefield without proper boots. Earlier this year, an entire company of several dozen soldiers was wiped out after fighting a new rebellion in Mali’s north without enough ammunition. The troops at Kati started to plan a march to protest how the government had handled the rebellion. —AP

SUNDAY, JULY 8, 2012

I N T E R N AT I O N A L

Mogul Murdoch steps up visibility in US politics NEW YORK: Rupert Murdoch has never been shy about voicing a political opinion, using his worldwide empire of television and newspaper outlets to promote conservative causes. Now, with a raft of complaints about Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, the billionaire media baron is signaling that he intends to boost his visibility in US politics. Murdoch is the founder and CEO of the global media conglomerate News Corp which owns several outlets popular with conservatives in the US, including Fox News Channel, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post.

Until now, Murdoch has been far less influential in US politics than he has in his native Australia and until recently in England, where a phone hacking scandal involving several Murdoch-owned newspapers has shaken his status as a fearsome power broker. The hacking scandal forced the departure of many Murdoch’s deputies, peeling away a protective layer around him while also liberating him to take such risks as openly criticizing the man conservatives hope can defeat President Barack Obama in November, some who know him say.

Murdoch, 81 and a naturalized US citizen, chose to launch his critique of Romney on Twitter, the social networking site where information is exchanged in 140-character blasts known as tweets.

“When is Romney going to look like a challenger? Seems to play everything safe, make no news except burn of Hispanics,” Murdoch tweeted from his iPad on June 24. “Easy for Romney

to spell out restoration of the American dream and bash incompetent administration. But not a word!” he said later that day. “ Tough O Chicago pros will be hard to beat unless (Romney) drops old friends from team and hires some real pros.

Doubtful,” Murdoch tweeted on July 1.

On Monday, Murdoch appeared to acknowledge his tweets might be causing consternation for the Romney campaign. “Romney people upset at me! Of course I want him to win, save us from socialism, etc but should listen to good advice and get stuck in!”

The Wall Street Journal’s editorial

News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch and his wife Wendi Deng

Obama tries ‘retail politics’ in his middle America tour POLAND: Flying on Air Force One to Ohio, President Barack Obama confided to his advisers that this, his final campaign, made him think about his first race for state senator in Illinois in 1996, which he won. Several hours later, after riding a campaign bus into middle America, past corn fields and strip malls, Obama talked off-the-cuff at a campaign event about those reflections and his last race as a candidate.

“One way or another, this will be my last campaign,” he told locals sitting on picnic tables at a park in Parma, Ohio, before going through the highlights of his life in public office. Obama has reason to muse about his prior political battles and his future. Unemployment remains high. Polls with Republican Mitt Romney are tight. Money is not flowing into his campaign coffers as quickly as he hoped.

So as he tries to convince voters to give him a second term, the Democratic incumbent did what served him well in 2008: the “retail politics” of kissing babies and shaking hands without showing boredom. That skill was on clear display during the two-day swing, his first bus trip of this election cycle. He lifted children, visited with patrons over a cheeseburger lunch, bought corn at a vegetable stand, sipped beer at a bar, and eased to the little extent that he could - out of the presidential bubble of Washington. “I’ve been eating a lot,” he declared at a campaign stop in Poland, Ohio.

Showing a human touch in the Rust Belt of Ohio and Pennsylvania could be critical to Obama’s chances of re-election, which will depend largely on his ability in these states to win over bluecollar workers, many of whom have been hurt by the economy. While his opponent Romney has a reputation for being stiff and wooden, Obama can seem aloof at times, but on the campaign trail he appeared to relish meeting regular Americans.

At a bar in Amherst, Obama moved from table to table, chatting with patrons and lingering to talk with one group of mostly Republican locals about education policy. “Very charismatic guy, but I just don’t like his politics,” said Dan DeNicola, 54, after speaking with the president. He said the Democrat had not won his vote.

DIFFERENT AS AN INCUMBENT Winning over skeptical voters this year is a different exercise than it was in 2008. Obama is now an incumbent with an economic record. He came under criticism from Republicans on Friday for weak monthly jobs numbers and an unemployment rate that stayed at 8.2 percent.

Obama said that private-sector job creation was a “step in the right direction” and por trayed his economic vision as an effort to help working Americans. “I want to get back to a time when middle class families and those working to get into the middle class have some basic security. That’s our goal,” he said in Poland, Ohio.

Economic conditions aside, the differences in Obama’s campaign from four years ago are evident. Instead of a bus decked out with his campaign’s

page followed Murdoch’s lead Thursday, unleashing a surprisingly harsh attack on the Romney campaign’s response to the Supreme Court’s affirmation of Obama’s health care law. News Corp. purchased the Journal in 2007 and the paper’s editorial page is viewed as an authoritative voice among conser vatives. The Journal responded to mixed messages from the Romney campaign about whether the mandate to buy health insurance constituted a tax as the court suggested, calling the confusion “politically dumb.”

The paper also urged Romney to

colors, the president rides in a shiny black bus with the presidential seal as its only ornament. Red and blue lights flicker on the sides as if it were a giant police car. His motorcade, which includes two ambulances if he were to get sick, is some 25 vehicles long. The length of his trips are different, too. In 2008, as a US senator, Obama would go out on the trail for weeks at a time. This trip, with stops in Ohio and Pennsylvania, lasted two days and was scheduled to get him back to the White House in time to sign a transportation bill into law on Friday.

His campaign music has been updated. He still bounds on to stages with his 2008 signature song, U2’s “City of Blinding Lights” playing, but his closing song on Friday was new: Bruce Springsteen’s working class tune “We Take Care of our Own” - perhaps a subtle dig at Romney’s past as an executive at Bain Capital and its outsourcing of jobs.

David Axelrod, a longtime Obama adviser and chief campaign strategist, said the president was glad to be back on the road, even under different conditions from 2008. “There are more challenges when you’re the incumbent, and you know there’s restrictions in terms of your range of movement, the time you can spend and so on,” he said.

Obama flaunted his 2010 healthcare law, which the Supreme Court ruled last week was constitutional. “I’ll work with anybody who wants to work with me to continue to improve our healthcare system and our healthcare laws.

But the law I passed is here to stay,” he said to applause in Maumee, Ohio, standing in front of a barn with a large American flag on its roof. Obama will have four more months to replicate that message.

“There is this sense that, you know, 120 days left in what will be the last campaign of (Obama’s) life. He feels that,” said Axelrod, who sees this campaign as his last as well. The tour took a tragic turn on Friday when Josephine “Ann” Harris, 70, the owner of a restaurant in Akron, Ohio, died about an hour after serving breakfast to Obama. — Reuters

Josephine “Ann” Harris

shed staff and offer more detailed policy proposals. And it dinged him for playing into Democrats’ “rich-guy” caricature by jet-skiing this week at his New Hampshire lakeside retreat. “Mr Romney promised Republicans he was the best man to make the case against President Obama, whom they desperately want to defeat. So far Romney is letting them down,” the Journal said.

The former Massachusetts governor couldn’t even catch a break in The Weekly Standard, a conservative magazine Murdoch launched. “Is it too much to ask Mitt Romney to get off autopilot and actually think about the race he’s running?” asked Bill Kristol, the magazine’s editor.

Romney advisers have taken note of Murdoch’s public comments, though they decline to discuss them publicly. “Gov. Romney respects Rupert Murdoch and also respects his team and has confidence in them,” Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul said. The Romney campaign has no immediate plans to make changes to its senior staff, though officials say they are still in the process of hiring new people for the fall push against Obama. Michael Wolff, author of “The Man Who Owns the News,” a Murdoch biography, said Murdoch’s use of Twitter reflects a new determination to address politics using his own voice and to carve out a separate identity from Fox News, which has grown more conservative than Murdoch himself over time.

“He’s not a Fox conservative and he’s not a tea party conservative. That’s why he’s angry about Romney,” Wolff

said. “Romney is closer to a Murdoch conservative but he is now pandering to the conservative wing of the party that Murdoch has always had contempt for.” Judd Legum, who has researched Murdoch for the liberal Center for American Progress, a Washington-based think tank, agreed that Murdoch was attempting to separate himself from Fox but for a different reason: he believes the network had gone too easy on Romney.

“They’ve positioned Fox News to be largely supportive of Romney, with lots of sympathetic interviews,” Legum said. “Murdoch is suggesting another approach. He wants to push Romney into a more aggressive posture.”

As a political donor, Murdoch has contributed to both Republicans and Democrats including Hillary Rodham Clinton during her run for re-election to the Senate from New York. Murdoch also came close to endorsing Obama in 2008, calling Obama a rock star and saying rival John McCain had “a lot of problems.” News Corp contributed $1 million each in 2010 to the Republican Governors Association and the US Chamber of Commerce, prompting the company’s board to announce News Corp would disclose its political giving annually on its website.

Murdoch was cool to Romney even during the Republican primaries, at one point musing on Twitter that he wished the candidate would show more “heart and stomach.” Murdoch also made a point of praising Romney’s rivals as they surged into contention against him, praising former Pennsylvania Sen. —AP

‘Innocent’ man freed after 32 years in jail DNA evidence helped overturn conviction CHAMPAIGN: A Chicago man who spent more than 30 years behind bars before DNA evidence helped overturn his conviction in the rape and killing of a 3-year-old girl was released from prison late Friday, just hours after prosecutors dropped the case against him. An Illinois appeals court in March had ordered a new trial for 50-year-old Andre Davis after tests found that DNA taken from the scene of the 1980 killing of Brianna Stickle wasn’t his. The girl was attacked in Rantoul, about 20 miles north of Champaign.

Davis was released from the super-maximum security prison in Tamms in far southern Illinois around 7:30 pm, said Illinois Department of Corrections spokeswoman Kayce Ataiyero. Champaign County State’s Attorney Julia Rietz had decided earlier in the day not to pursue charges against him. Judy Royal of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University, which represented Davis, said he was the longest-serving of the 42 people exonerated by DNA evidence in Illinois. “Mr Davis served 32 years in prison for a rape and murder he didn’t commit,” Royal said. “Tamms is a difficult place to do time.

He’s hoping to rebuild his life, with the support of his family.”

It wasn’t immediately known if Davis’ family was at the prison when he walked out.

Davis’ father was traveling to Tamms on Friday afternoon and couldn’t be reached for comment. Reitz said that while she didn’t doubt the results of the DNA tests, she decided not to retry Davis because of the difficulty in taking a 32-year-old case to trial - not because of those tests. “After 30 years, witnesses are either deceased, missing or no longer credible to testify,” said Rietz, who has been state’s attorney in Champaign County since 2004.

“Based on the age of the case and the current state of the evidence, we elected to dismiss.”

She noted that Davis was twice convicted by juries. His first conviction was overturned because of a mistake made by a bailiff during jury deliberations. Rietz said any further steps in the investigation of Briana’s death will be up to police.

Rantoul Police Chief Paul Farber did not return a call regarding the status of the investigation. Davis was arrested shortly after Briana was found on Aug 8, 1980, in a house

on the street where she lived with her mother and stepfather in Rantoul.

According to trial testimony, Davis - who was 19 at the time - was visiting his father in Rantoul. He spent the day the girl died drinking at the home where she was eventually found with the two brothers who lived there.

At some point the brothers left, leaving Davis there alone. Briana’s stepfather, Rand Spragg, said he left the girl playing in the family’s front yard and last saw her sitting under a tree. The family later searched for her. She was found in

Friday’s planned release caught Davis’ attorneys off guard. Most were on vacation, expecting that he might be released next week. Royal, who works closely with Davis’ lead attorney, Jane Raley, didn’t represent him. She wasn’t sure what plans Davis had, but she said that after so many years he was fortunate that family members were still alive to greet him and help him acclimate to life outside prison.

“A lot of times when people are incarcerated for lengthy periods of time, family mem-

TAMMS: Andre Davis speaks with his mother as his father Richard Davis holds a cell phone to his ear outside the Tamms Correctional Center after being released on Friday, July 6, 2012. — AP the brothers’ home, naked and under bed clothes in a utility room. She died that night at a local hospital. An acquaintance of Davis told police that Davis said he’d killed “a woman” at the home.

DNA testing wasn’t available in 1980. But in 2004, Davis requested that evidence gathered at the scene of Briana’s death be DNA tested.

According to the tests, blood and semen found at the scene weren’t from Davis. That led to the March appellate court decision.

bers die,” Royal said. “That is one good thing, that he will have their support.” “I think it’s difficult for him to know exactly what to do,” she added, noting that the Center on Wrongful Convictions works with the people it helps free to aid in their adjustment.

“I know that he’s very intelligent and he has been assisting in the preparation of his appeal for years and giving some good suggestions in that regard.” Attempts to reach members of Briana’s family were not successful. — AP

Elite counterdrug units proposed for Mexico

2 die as violent storm lashes Great Smokies

BOGOTA: The top security adviser for Mexico’s next president said yesterday that he is recommending the creation of elite units of police and troops who will target not just major drug traffickers but also lower-level cartel hitmen as a way of swiftly reducing violence. The proposal newly retired Colombian police director Gen Oscar Naranjo explained in an interview with The Associated Press offers a glimpse of how President-elect Enrique Pena Nieto might fulfill his promise to slash the number of murders and kidnappings by 50 percent during his six years in office.

Similar to the approach that Naranjo employed against Colombian traffickers, the proposal raises the question of whether the widely respected general can reproduce his success in a very different country. More than 47,500 people have been killed in drug-related violence since President Felipe Calderon launched a military-led offensive against Mexico’s cartels nearly six years ago.

Pena Nieto has pledged to reduce violence by refocusing lawenforcement efforts away from the current administration’s heavy reliance on the military to capture drug-cartel leaders and seize their product. He says he wants to better protect ordinary citizens from criminals. He provided few specifics during his three-month campaign, leading to speculation he would ease pressure on traffickers as long as they throttled down violence. — AP

TOWNSEND: Crews spent yesterday clearing trees and reaching stranded visitors at Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee, a day after violent thunderstorms swept through the popular tourist spot, killing at least two people and injuring several others. The storms hit Thursday evening at the west end of the 500,000-acre, densely forested reserve on the Tennessee-North Carolina line. The storms then moved down the mountains to the Tennessee River Valley.

At Abrams Creek Campground, a tree fell into a swimming hole, killing 41-year-old Rachael Burkhart, of Corryton, Tenn, park officials said. The same tree struck a family, including a 7-year-old girl, who was unconscious when pulled from the water, but revived after her mother performed CPR. The father suffered vertebrae fractures, multiple broken ribs and a collapsed lung and the mother was injured less seriously.

Carole Cooper came upon the scene when she was returning to her private cabin nearby after swimming with friends. Campers helped bring the 7-year-old to Cooper’s SUV, where Cooper performed first aid.

Meanwhile Cooper’s friends, one of whom is a physician, went to the creek to try to help Burkhart and the girl’s father. Cooper used her OnStar satellite communications service to call for help, but with the roads blocked, emergency workers had to walk in to the campsite, she said. Her vehicle became a makeshift command post as the rescue workers used her OnStar to communicate with other first responders. — AP

SUNDAY, JULY 8, 2012

I N T E R N AT I O N A L

India’s street children bank on the future

NEW DELHI: Ram Singh, 17, earns just one dollar from the 100 cups of tea he makes every day outside Delhi railway station, but each evening, after packing up, he goes to the bank and deposits nearly half of it. Singh holds an account at a special bank, run for-and mostly by-Indian street children, that keeps what little money they have safe and seeks to instill the idea that savings, however meagre, are important. Just one among millions of street children who rely on menial jobs for survival, Singh is determined to make his work pay some sort of future dividend.

“I’m smar t, but that alone isn’t enough to start a business. “I save money everyday, hoping to start something of my own. Someday soon,” he said as he served glasses of India’s ubiquitous, spicy milk tea in sweltering heat at a stall near the teeming train station. The Children’s Development Khazana (treasure chest) opened its first office in New Delhi 2001 and has since spread across the country and overseas with 300 affiliated branches in India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and Kyrgyzstan.

Delhi counts 12 branches with around 1,000 child clients aged between nine and 17. The brightly painted metal cubicles which serve as teller counters are located in shelters that provide children with free meals and sleeping mats, as well as school classes. The branches are run almost entirely by and for the children, with account holders electing two volunteer managers from the group every six months. “Children who make money by begging or selling drugs are not allowed to open an account. This bank is only for children who believe in hard work,” said Karan, a 14-year-old “manager”.

During the day, Karan earns a pittance washing up at wedding banquets or other events. In the evening, he sits at his desk to collect money from his friends, update their pass books and close the bank. “Some account holders want to withdraw their money. I ask them why and give it to them if other children approve. Everyone earns five per cent interest on their savings.” ‘A good feeling’-An adult staff member is always present to collect the takings at

the end of each day, depositing the cash in a nationalized bank to earn the interest component.

Sharon Jacob, who works for the rights group Butterflies that set up the bank, said it aimed to give the children a genuine stake in their own future. “ They work in shops as hawkers or porters but they never had a safe place to keep their money. They were always cheated of it or somebody also stole their money,” Jacob said. “So this is a place where they could keep their money safely and they are also taught life sk ills, how to manage their finances. They are taught budgeting, they are taught democratic participation,” Jacob said. Child labor is officially illegal in India but millions of boys and girls have no choice but to earn a living to support themselves or help their families.

Many move to the cities from rural areas, seeking an escape from grinding poverty or abusive homes. “I ran away from home at the age of 11 after my father beat me for stealing a kitchen appliance,” said Samir who works in a sweatshop. “For days I slept on a rail-

NEW DELHI: An Indian child laborer Ram Singh makes tea at a shop in old quarters of New Delhi. — AFP way platform. I was beaten by the police and even harassed by the drug peddlers.

I wanted to go back home but was ashamed of myself.” Now 14, Samir lives in the children’s shelter and holds an account in the bank. “I have saved

4,000 rupees (70 US$) in the last seven months. It’s a good feeling to have some money. I will buy a shirt and a watch for my father and send it to him to seek his apology.” “He might forgive me and ask me to be with him at home.”—AFP

US names Afghanistan a major non-NATO ally Status applies to small number of US partners

BEIJING: Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping gestures as he attends the opening ceremony of the World Peace Forum in Beijing yesterday.—AFP

Leader-in-waiting says no need to fear China

BEIJING: China’s leader-in-waiting Xi Jinping insisted yesterday that Beijing would never impose its will on the rest of the world and instead wanted to “abandon the old mindset” and strive for global peace. Speaking at a forum in Beijing, Vice President Xi sought to reassure other countries that the rise of China, which in 2010 became the world’s second largest economy, was not something to be feared.

“Even when China becomes developed in the future, it will never seek hegemony,” Xi told the World Peace Forum. “China is always committed to economic development, world peace and common development of mankind.” “We must abandon the old mindset and approach that has been rendered obsolete, we must keep pace with the times, forge ahead with innovation and foster a new security concept,” he added. China has been pushing for emerging powers to take a bigger role in international institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund where Beijing is playing a leading part, and Xi said this trend would continue. “China will actively participate in the reform of the international system for governance with a view to move toward a more just and equitable international political and economic order.” Besides its growing economic power, China’s increasing military might has also irked other countries, especially its regional neighbors and the United States, which has realigned its forces to address Beijing’s buildup. Xi is widely expected to be named head of the ruling Communist Party later this year and become president next March in the country’s once-in-a-decade leadership transi-

tion, replacing Hu Jintao.

SOUTH CHINA SEA The United States will emphasize the importance of easing friction over competing claims in the South China Sea during regional talks in Cambodia next week, a US government official said yesterday. The talks of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and regional powers including China will be attended by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with the South China Sea likely to be high on the agenda. Tensions have risen recently over territorial claims in the resource-rich waters amid a standoff between China and the Philippines at the Scarborough Shoal and between China and Vietnam over the Spratly and Paracel islands.

All parties must realize that “there is an enormous potential for developments that undermine the very confidence on which Asia prosperity is built”, a US government official told reporters in Beijing. “With the slowdown in Europe and some uncertainties on the recovery in the United States, it’s clear that role of Asia is central,” he added.

“The South China Sea issues are complicated by the fact that they stir intense nationalist sentiment in all of the countries involved.” Clinton, who paid an unannounced visit to Kabul yesterday, will attend a major development conference for Afghanistan in Japan today, before travelling to Mongolia, Vietnam and Laos ahead of the talks in Cambodia. China claims nearly all of the South China Sea, even waters close to the coasts of neighboring countries.— Agencies

Bombs, rocket kill 11 Afghan civilians KABUL: Bomb blasts and a rocket attack have killed 11 civilians including at least four children in the space of 24 hours in southern Afghanistan, officials said yesterday. A roadside bomb ripped through a pickup truck yesterday in the Chora district of Uruzgan province killing six people, provincial police spokesman Jawed Faisal said. “All six civilians on board were killed and their vehicle was destroyed,” he said.

On the same day a bomb exploded in the Gereshk district of southern Afghanistan’s volatile Helmand province, killing one child and wounding another, a statement from the provincial media office said. In the same district on Friday a bomb blast killed three children and wounded two others, the statement said. Meanwhile, a rocket attack yesterday targeting the governor ’s office in the southwestern province of Farah killed one civilian and wounded 26 others, officials said.

Improvised explosive devices (IEDs) planted on Afghan roads are a common insurgent tactic but they frequently miss their intended target-Afghan and NATO troops-resulting in civilian deaths. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the bombings but officials in Uruzgan and Helmand blamed them on the “enemies of Afghanistan”, a standard phrase used to refer to the Taleban. Thousands of Afghan civilians have been killed in the

decade-long insurgency being waged by the Taleban to topple the US-backed government of President Hamid Karzai.

According to the United Nations, the number of civilians killed in the war has risen steadily in the past five years, reaching a record 3,021 in 2011 - the vast majority caused by insurgents.

DONORS CONFERENCE Meanwhile, donors at a major development conference for Afghanistan will pledge total aid of more than $16 billion for four years to 2015, Japanese Foreign M inister Koichiro Gemba yesterday.

Japan, which will co-chair the one-day conference today with Afghanistan, will provide up to $3 billion for the five years to 2016, in addition to $1 billion for the war-torn nation’s neighboring states, he said. The total pledge of more than $16 billion will include part of the aid to be declared by Japan, he said. “This scale of pledge will satisfy the fiscal gap that the World Bank and the Afghan government have said would be needed for the development of the country,” he said. Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who will be in Tokyo along with officials including US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon, has called for $4 billion a year in civilian aid for Afghanistan. — Agencies

KABUL: The United States has named Afghanistan a major non-NATO ally, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said yesterday, a move that could reinforce Washington’s message to Afghans that they will not be abandoned as the war winds down. Clinton announced the decision, formally made by President Barack Obama, during her unannounced visit to Kabul where she will meet Afghan President Hamid Karzai on the eve of a major donors’ conference in Tokyo which will draw pledges for aid.

“I am going to be announcing formally with President Karzai in just a little bit...

There is a very small number of countries that fit into that category,” Clinton told US embassy staff in Kabul. Obama’s decision meets a pledge he made on a visit to Afghanistan this year to upgrade Kabul to a special security status given to only a limited number of US partners- including close allies like Israel and Japan-which are not members of NATO. The status upgrade, which will make it easier for Afghanistan to acquire defense materiel from the United States, follows NATO’s decision to withdraw most combat troops by the end of 2014.

Participants at the Tokyo meeting are expected to commit just under $4 billion annually in development aid for Afghanistan at today’s meeting, though the central bank has said the country needs at least $6 billion a year to foster economic growth over the next decade. US officials with Clinton declined to say how much aid the United States would pledge, which has significantly reduced aid since the peak year of 2010 when more than $6 billion was given, two thirds from Washington. “I think both the overall hard number of the international assistance as well as the US percentage of that number will be coming down,” said one senior official traveling with Clinton. Now, donor fatigue and war weariness are taking their toll on how long the global community is willing to support Afghanistan, and there are fears that without financial backing, the country could slip back into chaos when foreign troops withdraw. US officials acknowledged that

JALALABAD: An Afghan elderly woman bakes bread at her home in Jalalabad yesterday.

Poverty and an ongoing insurgency by the ousted Taleban still pose a threat to the stability of the country.— AFP the trend lines for donating development aid were heading down. Major donors and aid organizations have warned that weak political will and graft could prevent funds reaching the right people at a critical time, when fragile gains in health and education could be lost if funding does not continue.

Assuaging those fears, the US official added: “But that (amount) is still high enough and specific enough to show that there is a true commitment by the entire international community”. US officials may be reluctant to cite a specific pledge because the sum actually given is ultimately controlled by Congress, which holds the US government’s purse strings. Enthusiasm for foreign aid has generally waned in Congress because of massive US budget deficits. Clinton’s talks with Karzai were expected to touch on efforts to achieve reconciliation with the Taleban, the US official added.— Reuters

Blasts, gunfire rock restive Nigeria city

KANO: Explosions and gunfire rocked Nigeria’s restive northeastern city of Damaturu yesterday, police said, in an area plagued by repeated attacks by Boko Haram Islamists. “There have been huge explosions and sporadic gunfire around (the) Shagari Low Cost area of the city,” said Gbadegesin Toyin, police spokesman in Yobe state of which Damaturu is the capital. “We still don’t have details of what is going on but we have alerted our men to confront any eventuality,” he said.

Damaturu, which is near Boko Haram’s base of Maiduguri, is under curfew, with residents forced to be in their homes from dusk to dawn following running clashes between troops and Islamists last month. A resident of the affected area, Babagana Abdullahi said earlier that his neighborhood had been “besieged by loud explosions and shootings,” and that he could not tell what was happening because he was confined to his home due to the curfew.

Contacted again, he said, “the explosions and shootings have stopped in the last twenty minutes but they lasted two hours.”

Nigeria’s radical Islamists have repeatedly attacked the city, typically targeting the security services, while a specialized army unit has initiated raids on suspected Boko Haram hideouts.

One such raid occurred last Saturday, when the Joint Task Force (unit) said it received intelligence about an impending Boko Haram attack and launched a pre-emptive offensive that left three of

the sect members dead. The group rents residential homes in the city, converts them into arms depots and then uses the buildings to plan raids, according to security sources. Boko Haram’s attacks in the area have previously hit police stations as well as prisons, where the Islamists say their leaders are being illegally detained.

The group has said it wants to create an Islamic state in northern Nigeria, although its demands have varied widely since it renewed its insurgency in 2010. The city was shut down by fierce fighting last month after suspected Boko Haram gunmen launched coordinated gun assaults on several targets after learning that one of their senior operatives had been arrested. The resulting clashes killed at least 40 people, led the Yobe state government to impose a city-wide ban on movement, which temporarily stranded residents unable to return home or access food.

Nigeria has been criticized for what some term the heavy-handed raids on alleged Boko Haram targets, while doing little to temper the Islamist threat. Three of Boko Haram’s leaders were last month designated global terrorists by the US State Department, which said the group was responsible for more than 1,000 deaths since the start of last year. Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country and the world’s eighth largest oil producer, is roughly divided between a predominantly Muslim north and a southern, wealthier half, where most are Christian.—AFP

News

in brief

Drone attack kills 19 MIRANSHAH: The death toll from a drone strike in northeastern Pakistan has risen to 19, Pakistani intelligence officials said yesterday. Twelve people were originally reported dead in Friday’s strike on a compound in the Dhattakel region in North Waziristan. Public anger over US drone attacks has helped inflame tensions between Pakistan and the United States. Friday’s strike took place a day after two trucks carried NATO supplies across the border into Afghanistan-the first shipments since convoys were halted by Pakistan last November. Pakistanis say the drone attacks kill civilians and encroach on Pakistani sovereignty. The United States says the attacks are highly selective and that few civilians are killed. The CIA has stepped up operations in North Waziristan in recent weeks. The area is seen as a hub for militants crossing the porous border to fight US forces and their allies in Afghanistan.

Buddhist relics seized ISLAMABAD: Pakistani officials say police have seized a large number of ancient Buddhist sculptures that smugglers were attempting to spirit out of the country. Salimul Haq, who is a director of the government’s archaeology department, said yesterday that the artifacts likely would have fetched millions of dollars on the international antiquities market. Police seized the relics Friday from a 20foot (6-meter) container in the southern port city of Karachi that was being trucked north toward the capital, Islamabad. The load included many sculptures of Buddha and other related religious figures that experts indicated could be over 2,000 years old. The country’s northwest was once part of Gandhara, an ancient Buddhist kingdom that stretched across modern-day Pakistan and Afghanistan and reached its height from the first to the fifth century.

Protester dies in silver mine unrest in Bolivia LA PAZ: A Bolivian man died and at least four others were hurt as protesters occupied a silver mining property belonging to South American Silver Corp in the Andean highlands, local media reported on Friday. Violence flared at the Malku Khota project on Thursday as authorities negotiated with peasant farmers holding five Bolivian employees hostage to demand the Canadian company leave. They also want the release of a leader, jailed for leading earlier protests. The Erbol radio network initially said the peasant farmer was shot dead during clashes with police. It later reported that doctors were unable to access the site to establish the cause of death. The government denied armed confrontations had taken place and said he died due to “mishandling” dynamite. “There were no clashes of any kind because the police sent there weren’t carrying firearms,” government minister Carlos Romero told local television.

SUNDAY, JULY 8, 2012

I N T E R N AT I O N A L

E Timor votes in key test for young democracy DILI: East Timor’s voters went to the polls yesterday in parliamentary elections seen as a key test for the young and fragile democracy and likely to determine if UN peacekeepers can leave by the end of the year.

Polls opened at 7:00 am and voting continued until 3:00 pm for some 645,000 registered voters, with

authorities saying the elections had been peaceful.

There have been concerns that violence could reignite in the energy-rich but underdeveloped state if, as predicted, none of the 21 parties wins a parliamentary majority and a fragile coalition takes power.

Presidential polls that were held over two rounds in

DILI: East Timor parliamentary election officials empty a ballot box to start counting in Dili yesterday. — AFP

March and April, however, passed off peacefully. The United Nations sees yesterday’s elections-and their aftermath-as the last big test that will decide whether its remaining 1,300 peacekeepers and other security staff can withdraw as planned within six months.

“I’d like to congratulate the citizens of Timor-Leste (East Timor) who in a free way cast their vote. It was a very peaceful and safe day,” said Luis Carrilho, commissioner of the United Nations Police (UNPOL).

National police chief Longuinhos Monteiro also said “everything went well” during voting, and that his force would remain vigilant until the formation of a government next month. “From now forward, until the forming of a government we will still execute our operation plan to make sure we guarantee the stability and tranquility of our people,” he told reporters.

Following the end of Portuguese rule in 1975, East Timor was occupied by Indonesia for 24 years. Some 183,000 people died from fighting, disease and starvation before the half-island state voted for independence in 1999. The country has offshore fields of oil and natural gas and its Petroleum Fund has swelled to $10 billion, but corruption is endemic. Half of East Timor’s 1.1 million people are officially classified as living in poverty, posing the main challenge for the future government. “I want the government to look after infrastructure and improve healthcare for the people,” said Martinho Afonso, a 55-year-old farmer, as he cast his ballot in the Dili suburb of Farol.

“Things need to improve for the poor people in rural areas, where people have no home, no electricity, no water,” he said. The left-wing Fretilin party,

which is synonymous with the pro-independence struggle, has campaigned on a populist platform of spending oil revenues to lift income and education levels. The centre-left National Congress for Timorese Reconstruction (CNRT) is promoting longer-term investment on major infrastructure projects such as roads, electricity and water. CNRT leader Xanana Gusmao, a charismatic figure and a resistance hero during the struggle for independence, is fighting to stay on as prime minister.

The elections and their outcome test whether East Timor, which celebrated a decade of formal independence in May, is ready to take on its own security.

A 450-strong International Stabilization Force (ISF) made up of troops from New Zealand and Australiais also awaiting the outcome of the poll before finalizing a pullout. The United Nations Integrated Mission in East Timor (UNMIT) - with a total current military, police and civilian force of about 3,000 - was deployed in 2006, after a political crisis in which dozens were killed and tens of thousands displaced, with a mandate to restore security.

The only major violence since then was a failed assassination attempt in 2008 on then president Jose Ramos-Horta, the Nobel peace laureate who lost to Taur Matan Ruak in the recent presidential election.

Fretilin, which received the largest number of votes in 2007 but failed to form a coalition, has dismissed any talk of working with the CNRT on forming a postelection government. “Fretilin should win, and I believe that even if we don’t Fretilin will still have a political role in the future,” said party president Francisco Guterres, popularly known as “Lu Olo,” after casting his ballot.— AFP

California high-speed rail gets green light Line would connect San Francisco to Los Angeles

SACRAMENTO: California lawmakers gave final approval to a high-speed rail plan on Friday in a make-or-break vote for $8 billion in funding to start construction on a 130-mile section of track through the state’s central agricultural heartland. The 21-16 vote in the state Senate was a substantial win for Democratic Governor Jerry Brown, who says a bullet train network will boost job creation and provide an alternative to car and plane travel in the country’s most populous state.

Unions also lobbied hard for the network, the most ambitious public works project to date in California. Republicans opposed it, saying the $68 billion project would be a massive financial burden that could jeopardize state spending on basic services such as education and healthcare. “ The Legislature took bold action today that gets Californians back to work and puts California out in front once again,” Brown said in a statement after the vote, which passed with the minimum number of required ‘yes’ votes in the Democratic-led Senate.

Outside the Senate chamber, union representatives counted votes closely and cheered when it became clear the bill would be approved. The state and federal financing approved by the legislature includes the issuance of $2.6 billion in state bonds, which would in turn unlock $3.2 billion in federal funds for construction of track in the Central Valley that was expected to begin at the end of 2012 or the start of 2013.

The bill, which passed the Democratic-controlled Assembly by a 51-27 vote on Thursday, also approves spending over $2 billion in federal, state and local funds on rail projects in urban areas to prepare to link them to a statewide system.

The bullet train network, expected to take decades to complete, would eventually connect Sacramento and San Francisco to Los Angeles, with stops along the way. “Literally, this project means tens of thousands of jobs,” said Mark Kyle, director of government affairs for the Operating Engineers Local Union No 3, which was among the bill’s supporters. California has a 10.8 percent unemployment rate. Kyle, whose group represents operators of large construction equipment, added he was confident the High Speed Rail Authority would attract private money to help build the entirety of its planned system.

UNCERTAIN FUNDING Critics worry that funding for the project will eventually run dry before the rail network can be completed, leaving California with a “train to nowhere” in its agrarian midsection for which it spent billions of public dollars. The US government has insisted that construction on the bullet train line start in the Central Valley, where trains could reach 220 mph over flat and more sparsely populated terrain. The federal government has cited logistical and cost reasons for its geographic preference.

That insistence irked both lawmakers from urban centers in coastal Northern and Southern California, as well as farmers who described the project as an “imminent threat” to some of the most agriculturally productive land in the United States.

But with federal funds involved, the state has had to make concessions in some aspects of the project, whose cost estimates have ballooned to $68 billion from $45 billion previously.

The Legislative Analyst’s Office, an independent

Japan mulls buying disputed islands TOKYO: Japan is considering buying a chain of islands at the centre of a bitter territorial dispute with China and Taiwan, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda said yesterday. The move could potentially reignite tensions with both Beijing and Taipei, which also claim the islands in the East China Sea, called Senkaku in Japanese and Diaoyu in Chinese.

“There is no question that the Senkakus are an integral part of our country’s territory in terms of history and international law,” Noda told reporters. “There exists no territorial issue or ownership issue as Japan is in effective control of the islands.” “From the viewpoint of how to maintain and manage the Senkakus in a calm and stable manner, we are making comprehensive studies on the matter by keeping in touch with the owner,” he said.

The prime minister’s comments come after a report in the Asahi Shimbun said the government on Friday informed Tokyo’s governor Shintaro Ishihara of its plan to buy three of the islands from their private Japanese owner. In April, Ishihara announced he was in talks to buy the three islands-Uotsurijima, Kitakojima and Minamikojima-claiming that Japan was not doing enough to protect the territory. The chain includes two other islands and an outcropping of rocks. The influential daily said senior government officials were already negotiating with the owner, the Kurihara family, hoping to finalize the nationalization plan by the end of the year.

The Tokyo metropolitan government said it had already collected more than 1.3 billion yen ($16.3 million) in donations from across the country to fund the purchase.

The governor confirmed later yesterday that senior government officials had visited him on Friday to apprise him about Noda’s plan to put the three islands under state control. “It could be a mere publicity stunt,” said the outspoken Ishihara, well known for

IWAKI: Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda speaks about disputed islands, in Iwaki, Fukushima prefecture yesterday. — AP his nationalistic views. “If they really want to buy them, they should have said earlier.”

The island chain, which lies in rich fishing grounds and may harbor valuable mineral reserves, was bought by the Kurihara family decades ago from descendants of the previous Japanese owners. The islands were inhabited by Japanese fishermen before the end of World War II. The waters around them have been the scene of territorial spats including the arrest of a Chinese trawlerman in late 2010 when he rammed his boat into two Japanese patrol boats. On Thursday, two Japanese nationals swam to Kitakojima and stayed there for 90 minutes, the coastguard said. Earlier this week Taiwanese vessels brushed against Japanese patrol ships in waters near the islands. — AFP

budget watchdog agency, said the source of funding for the project beyond Friday’s initial round was “highly uncertain.” State Senator Joe Simitian, a Democrat who voted against the plan, told Reuters he was concerned about the system’s costs growing beyond current projections, that too few riders would use the train, and that private-sector funds and more money from the government might never materialize. “There are billions of reasons why none of us should go along with the program,” Simitian said during the three-hour debate over the bill. “This is the wrong plan in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Voter sentiment on the high-speed rail line has soured since a 2008 statewide vote in which Californians approved nearly $10 billion in state debt to help finance the plan. A June USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll found a majority of voters would oppose the project if given another chance to vote on it. The California high-speed rail project is the centerpiece of President Barack Obama’s priority to upgrade the nation’s transportation infrastructure, a goal he highlighted in this year’s State of the Union address.

The United States has fallen sharply in the World Economic Forum’s ranking of national infrastructure systems in recent years. In its 2007-2008 report, US infrastructure ranked sixth in the world, but fell to 16th in the 2011-2012 report. Other bullet train projects have fared poorly. Last year, Florida Governor Rick Scott rejected $2.4 billion in federal funds to build a high-speed line between Tampa and Orlando, saying it would put the state on the hook for billions of dollars it did not have.

Ohio and Wisconsin also rejected federal funds for high-speed rail projects — Reuters

Notorious US killer appeals conviction LOS ANGELES: A US man convicted eight years ago of murdering his wife and unborn son in a high-profile case has appealed to California’s Supreme Court, officials said. Scott Peterson is on death row after being found guilty in 2004 of suffocating his pregnant wife Laci and dumping her body in San Francisco Bay on Christmas Eve 2002, but has always maintained his innocence.

The former fertilizer salesman’s attorney, noted death penalty lawyer Cliff Gardner, filed a 427-page appeal to California’s highest court on Thursday, said court clerk Cecilia Wong. Peterson claims his wife was killed sometime after he left their home in Modesto, California on December 24, 2002, to go fishing in San Francisco Bay, according to the Los Angeles Times. Her remains and those of the fetus of their son, to be named Connor, were found on the shore of the Bay four months later. Peterson’s attorney says media coverage surrounding the case influenced the jury, even though the trial was moved from Stanislaus County to San Mateo County in order to reduce the impact of publicity.

“Before hearing even a single witness, nearly half of all prospective jurors admitted they had already decided Mr Peterson was guilty of capital murder,” his lawyer said in the legal filing, obtained by AFP. “San Mateo County was saturated with publicity about the case including print media, radio coverage, network television and cable, they added.

“This publicity, some of which was plainly inflammatory, continued unabated from the time of the crime itself until the time of trial.” This made a fair trial impossible “by creating a belief in Mr. Peterson’s guilt through presentation of both admissible and inadmissible evidence as well as the views of prominent public officials as to Mr. Peterson’s guilt,” the document said.

He highlighted notably the fact that a radio station posted a large billboard outside the courthouse with a telephone number to vote on the question “Man or Monster.

Vote innocent or guilty.” “Mr Peterson recognizes, of course, that he was not entitled to a perfect trial. But he was still entitled to a fair one... Scott Peterson received neither,” he added. The California Supreme Court clerk meanwhile said that, following Thursday’s filing by Peterson’s lawyer, a brief by prosecutors is due on May 21, 2015, “but there could be some kind of paperwork filed in between.” If he loses the case in California’s top court, he is entitled to pursue his appeal in the US federal court system. — AFP

SANFORD: George Zimmerman (center) leaves Seminole County Jail after posting a million dollar bond in Sanford, Florida. — AFP

Trayvon Martin’s killer leaves US jail on bond ORLANDO: Former neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman, who is charged with second-degree murder in the killing of unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin, was released on Friday from a Florida jail on $1 million bail, a sheriff ’s spokeswoman said.

Zimmerman walked out of the John E Polk Correctional Facility in Sanford, Florida, at 2:49 pm, fitted with an electronic monitoring device, the Seminole County Sheriff’s spokeswoman said. Zimmerman, whose bond restrictions are significantly tighter than when he was first freed on bond in April, was expected to be moved to a temporary safe house secured by his lawyer.

His release came shortly after Zimmerman’s official website said a legal defense fund set up in his name raised $20,000 in the 24 hours after a judge said he was flight risk and granted him bond for a second time. Zimmerman was released on a $150,000 bond in April but later ordered to return to jail in June after prosecutors alleged he misled the court about his finances and failed to surrender a valid passport. Martin’s parents, Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin, told reporters in New Orleans they believed Zimmerman deserves to be in jail but respected the judge’s decision.

“Trayvon was my baby and I usually get emotional just thinking about the situation, just to know that the killer of my son may walk free someday,” Fulton said. “It just really hurts.”

In setting the $1 million bond on Thursday, Circuit Judge Kenneth Lester said he believed Zimmerman and his wife Shellie had intended to flee the country but were thwarted by the judge’s requirement that Zimmerman wear an electronic monitoring device. Defense attorney Mark O’Mara said on Thursday that Zimmerman and his family could not post the $1 million bond, which typically would require

a deposit of 10 percent cash and the rest secured by collateral if requested.

Zimmerman’s defense fund held $211,000 as of Thursday, according to the website, and owed $40,000 in expenses before the new donations came in. Shawn Vincent, who manages the website for O’Mara, told Reuters on Friday the largest donation overnight was $1,000, and that most contributions ranged between $10 and $25. Since May 3, when O’Mara took control of Zimmerman’s defense fundraising, donations have averaged $500 to $1,000 per day, he said.

In granting bond, Lester said that if released from jail again, Zimmerman must submit to electronic monitoring, remain in Seminole County, stay away from the Orlando-Sanford International Airport, refrain from applying for a passport or holding a bank account, avoid alcohol and obey a curfew from 6 pm to 6 am.

The defense website said Zimmerman’s security team had established a temporary safe house for him to go to but that a permanent location was being sought Zimmerman is charged in the Feb. 26 shooting death of 17-year-old Martin in a gated community in the central Florida city of Sanford.

Martin’s killing drew national attention because police initially declined to arrest Zimmerman.

They cited Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” selfdefense law and Zimmerman’s claim that he used deadly force because he believed his life was being threatened by Martin. Zimmerman, 28, was later arrested on second-degree murder charges, which carry a penalty of 25 years to life in prison. Shellie Zimmerman has been charged with perjury for allegedly working with her husband to hide from the judge at least $135,000 that was raised by Zimmerman through a personal website and PayPal account, prior to his arrest. — Reuters

Myanmar activists arrested on eve of crackdown anniversary YANGON: Myanmar police rounded up at least 16 student leaders ahead of the 50th anniversary of a brutal army crackdown, activists and family members said yesterday, raising doubts about the government’s reformist credentials.

The activists were picked up in four different cities late on Friday and taken to undisclosed locations on the eve of the military’s suppression of student protests in 1962, the same year when late General Ne Win seized power to usher in 49 years of authoritarian army rule in the former Burma.

Among those arrested was 23-year-old Phyo Phyo Aung, the secretary of All Burma Students Union and a former political prisoner freed last year in an amnesty. Her mother told Reuters about 20 people, led by a police officer, had taken the activist. “They said they would send her back home after questioning,” she said. “We don’t know where and how she is now.” Ma Nilar of the 88 Generation Student Group, which led the country’s biggest uprising against military rule in 1988, said she could confirm 16 arrests had been made in Yangon and Mandalay,

Myanmar’s two largest cities, as well as Lashio and Shwebo in the north.

Police in the four cities could not be reached for comment. Dozens of students were killed when Ne Win’s four-month-old junta crushed the 1962 demonstrations and used dynamite to blow up the students’ union building of Yangon University. The arrests could dent the positive image of the 15-month quasi-civilian government, said the ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Myanmar Caucus (AIPMC), a group of Southeast Asian lawmakers providing support to Myanmar’s democratic transition and currently visiting the country. Mynamar has implemented a slew of reforms which have resulted in some countries suspending sanctions. The changes include the release of more than 600 political prisoners and the introduction of laws allowing demonstrations. “This act of oppression has given us the impression that the old ways of practice are still in effect, despite all the positivity for change that we have been hearing,” Cambodian lawmaker Son Chhay, AIPMC’s vice president, said in a statement.—Reuters

SUNDAY, JULY 8, 2012

NEWS

PAMPLONA, Spain: A reveler is tossed by a Dolores Aguirre Yabarra ranch fighting bull during the running of the bulls during the San Fermin festival yesterday. — AP

Six injured in opening Pamplona bull run Palestinian nationalist veteran Hassan dies at 74 RAMALLAH: Veteran Palestinian according to Palestinian think-tank nationalist Hani Al-Hassan, a confiPASSIA. In 1979 he became the first dant of late leader Yasser Arafat, has official Palestinian representative died aged 74, the Palestinian to Iran. From 2002 he was head of Authority said yesterday. A foreign Fatah in the Israeli-occupied West ministr y statement said that Bank and then briefly interior minHassan, born in Haifa in 1938, died ister of the Palestinian Authority. in the Jordanian capital Amman on He differed with colleagues in the Friday.

Palestinian leadership on several It did not give the cause of death. occasions in recent years.

With the foundation of the state of Hostile to the Oslo peace talks Israel in 1948 his family joined the of 1993, he instead advocated exodus of hundreds of thousands of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations Palestinians, in their case fleeing to under United Nations auspices. neighbouring Lebanon. Hassan More recently, he criticised the studied in Germany in the 1950s, attitude of some Fatah leaders durwhere he set up the first Palestinian in g th e sh owdown with th e political organisation in Europe, Islamist Hamas in the Gaza Strip in which joined Arafat’s Fatah after its June 2007, which lost him his posiHani Al-Hassan foundation in 1962 in Kuwait. tion as adviser to president A former member of the Fatah Mahmud Abbas. A state funeral, central committee, Hassan was a political adviser attended by Abbas, will be held tomorrow at the and confidant of Arafat and a founder-member of Palestinian presidential headquarters in Ramallah, the Palestine Liberation Organisation in 1964, the PA said. — AFP

Egypt women speak up against sexual violence CAIRO: Egyptian women are speaking up against sexual violence after harrowing tales of mob attacks in Cairo’s iconic Tahrir Square prompted initiatives to combat the “epidemic ”.

Surrounded by volunteers to protect them, dozens of women took to the street on Friday to demand a “safe Tahrir,” as part of a series of events aimed at raising awareness.

“We want to be treated as citizens, not females,” said Rasha Kamel, a 38-year-old gynaeocologist and a protest organiser, as she wrote on a large piece of cardboard “I am like your sister” in a thick black marker.

On Cairo’s streets, sexual harrassment of women, regardless of whether or not they wear an Islamic headscarf, is common in the form of obscenities, touching or groping. But an increase in accounts from Tahrir of mob attacks and sexual violence against women have raised the alarm. On Feb 11, 2011, as hundreds of thousands were celebrating president Hosni Mubarak’s downfall after an 18-day uprising, Lara Logan - a reporter with US news channel CBS - was attacked by 200 to 300 men who raped her “with their hands”.

Later in November, a French journalist working for public television channel France 3 said she had been violently beaten and sexually assaulted while covering

the protests. Caroline Sinz told AFP she was “beaten by a group of youngsters and adults who tore my clothes” and then molested her in a way that “would be considered rape”. The two incidents put a spotlight on sexual assaults in this conservative Muslim country, but failed to trigger any reaction from authorities.

On June 2, a young foreign women described her ordeal to Nazra, a Cairo -based women’s rights group. “My pant was pulled down by the many men and they raped me with their dirty fingers ...

The men were like lions around a dead piece of meat and their hands were all over my body and under my destroyed clothes,” she said. Several days later, a group of men attacked a women’s march against sexual harassment in Tahrir Square, assaulting several of the protesters. Days later yet again, British journalism student Natasha Smith wrote on her blog that she too had been the victim of a sexual attack in the square.

Many believe that the recurring pattern of the attacks and the fact they often take place in the same part of the massive Tahrir Square point to the fact they are premeditated. These attacks “are calculated and organised to scare women and chase them away from the public sphere, punishing women for their participation,” according

to Nazra. Ahmed Niazy, one of the men who joined Friday’s protest in solidarity, believes “the regime, which never fell, uses sexual harrassment to repress freedom of expression”. It “believes women are a weakness, and it’s a way of putting pressure on us. They have managed to taint the square,” Niazy told AFP. “How many times have I not gone to Tahrir because I don’t want to feel hands all over my thighs?” said Nana Al-Hariri, 22.

Women have staged protests, formed human chains in main Cairo thoroughfares holding signs against harassment and conducted online campaigns against what many call an “epidemic”. On Friday, they arrived in Tahrir with water pistols, filled with red liquid (mercurochrome) and chilli powder, to defend themselves against any attack and mark the attacker.

Circled by volunteers in fluorescent yellow jackets, the protesters attracted attention, and some times derision. “Excuse me, but what exac tly is sexual harassment?” asked one passer-by.

Another tried to trivialise the issue.

“It’s not that bad, they are adolescents. When they say “sweetheart,” it’s flattering,” he said, to furious looks from some of the protesters.

According to a security official, no arrests have been made in connection with the sexual assaults in the square. — AFP

PAMPLONA, Spain: An elderly man was gored and five other people hurt as daredevils fled half-tonne bulls thundering through the streets yesterday in the first bull run of Spain’s San Fermin festival.

Runners in traditional white shorts and trousers and red neckerchiefs tripped over each other or slipped in the dash through the winding streets of the northern Spanish city of Pamplona. A 73-year-old man from Pamplona was gored in his right leg at the start of the run but the injury was not serious, the regional government of Navarra said in a statement. It said the other people hurt included a 26-year-old from Australia who bruised his left knee and a 21-year-old from Japan who hurt his back.

Some dared to run just at arm’s length from the six huge fighting bulls and six steers, glancing nervously behind at the beasts’ curved

horns. Others chased behind the pack, occasionally touching the bulls’ sides, or cowered on the sidelines as the animals raced by. “It was very scarey, very fast,” said Matthew Kalespi, an Australian in his 20s. “I got very close, the horn was very close to me.” The bulls, weighing between 520 and 590 kg, stampeded along an 850-m course from a pen to the city’s bull ring in just two minutes, 53 seconds, watched by millions on television.

On the final stretch a bull knocked a runner to the ground, and one of its horns got hooked in the man’s red neckerchief. The animal then dragged him on his back for about 30 m into the entrance of the bull ring. Another bull’s horn pierced the white trouser leg of a man who had fallen and tore off part of the material. The bull ran the rest of the course with the scrap of white cloth dangling from its horn.

Runners jumped up and down and did other warm-up exercises as they waited behind a line of police for a firecracker to go off indicating that the bulls have been released from their pen. “It was really crowded at first and everyone started pushing,” said Cliff Guyton, a 20-year-old American who took part in the run.

“My heart was pumping really fast, it was huge adrenalin.”

The San Fermin festival features round-the-clock drinking, with bars allowed to open until 6:00 am, and loudspeakers repeatedly played an announcement in Spanish, English, French and Japanese warning people not to run drunk. “It is something you have to experience and feel. It’s a new experience, something that is impossible to forget,” said Aaron Bejar, a 31-year-old banker from Zaragoza who came to Pamplona with two friends to take part in a run. — AFP

Buyers beware: Kuwait no country for recalls Continued from Page 1 offending parts are quietly replaced. This throws up an important question. What about vehicles that are out of warranty or those that are not brought in for pricey checkups at the dealership’s garage?

A call to an agent of a product line that was recalled globally due to health hazards confirmed the cavalier and combative - attitude of distributors here. The product manager railed against the recall notice, blaming it for scaring away customers. He also denied that this particular product line was sold in Kuwait, but later confessed that sales had been suspended and the product was pulled off the shelves. Customers who have bought the product can return it or get a replacement, he said, without elaborating how customers can even be aware of a recall if the company hasn’t publicised it in the local media. This is not an isolated case. Calls to agents of other products that have been recalled were in a similar vein -

defensive, in denial or downright hostile.

The indifference of customers has also emboldened sellers here, many of whom have become synonymous with the brands they represent. Consumers are unaware, don’t want to pick a fight with the agents, or just don’t care. Like tissues, the ‘use and throw’ mindset prevails. The transient nature of expatriates here is also a reason, as goods are purchased in Kuwait and consumed elsewhere.

Lax laws are to be blamed too, though the Ministry of Commerce and Industry is getting its act together and has set up a 24-hour hotline (135) and centres around the state for aggrieved customers to complain.

But ingrained attitudes are hard to change. A product manager Kuwait Times spoke to compared the possible health danger of a recalled item to smoking. “Smoking causes cancer, but that does not mean if someone smokes one cigarette, he would immediately be afflicted with the disease,” he argued. It seems what doesn’t kill the customer will only make him stronger.

Libyans vote in historic polls Continued from Page 1 Tripoli, with voting under way in 1,453 out of 1,554 centres. “Some of the polling stations were not opened.

Because of security reasons, logistical materials haven’t reached them,” he said. The commission said it was sending fresh materials to the affected centres.

Protesters unhappy over the east’s share of seats in the new assembly targeted polling centres and forced oil facilities to shut down ahead of the election. And on the eve of the landmark vote an election worker was killed when a helicopter carrying election materials was targeted. UN envoy to Libya Ian Martin yesterday condemned the protesters’ “resort to violence,” but said the disruptions were unlikely to “spoil the election”.

Voting in his hometown of Al-Bayda in the east, interim leader Mustafa Abdel Jalil was jubilant. “This happy day sets the foundations of a new Libya,” he said. Visiting US Senator John McCain, an early backer of anti-Gaddafi rebels and their political leaders, hailed the country’s “first step towards democracy”. Alexander Graf Lambsdorff, who heads a team of 21 European Union observers, said the vote marks a major milestone after 42 years of dictatorship. “We believe that to have this election in Libya less than one year after the fall of Tripoli is an important achievement,” Lambsdorff told AFP. “We only hope that the situation remains peaceful across the country. The majority of Libyans want to vote. Eighty percent want to vote.”

The make-up of the congress has been a matter of heated debate, with factions such as the federalist movement

calling for more seats. The outgoing National Transitional Council (NTC) says seats were distributed according to demographics, with 100 going to the west, 60 to the east and 40 to the south. But factions in the east, which was marginalised under Gaddafi, want an equal split and threatened to sabotage the vote if their demand was not met. The authorities dismiss such groups as a minority, noting that more than 2.7 million people, or about 80 percent of the electorate, registered to vote. Libya has not seen elections since the era of the late king Idris, whom Gaddafi deposed in a bloodless coup in 1969.

Political parties were banned as an act of treason during Gaddafi’s iron-fisted rule. Now there are 142 parties fielding candidates. A total of 80 seats are reserved for party candidates while 120 seats are open to individual candidates.

Altogether, 3,707 candidates are standing in 72 districts across the country. From the parties, the coalition of ex-revolution prime minister Mahmud Jibril is seen as a key contender among liberals, facing stiff competition from two Islamist parties - Justice and Development and Al-Wattan.

The winds of the Arab Spring that ushered Islamists into power in neighbouring Tunisia and Egypt may well bring about the same result in Libya. The incoming congress will have legislative powers and appoint an interim government. But a last-minute decree by the NTC stripped its right to appoint a constituent assembly, which will be chosen in a separate election instead. The uprising that began in Benghazi in Feb 2011 ended more than four decades of rule under Gaddafi who was captured and killed in October in his final bastion and hometown of Sirte. — AFP

14

SUNDAY, JULY 8, 2012

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Issues

Republicans hope jobs rate dooms Obama

By Charles Babington istory repeats itself, until it doesn’t. That musty truism is worth remembering as pundits speculate on whether the lumbering economy will doom the reelection hopes of President Barack Obama, who has shown a knack for beating odds and breaking barriers. Clearly, some important trends are working against him. The latest evidence is Friday’s lackluster jobs report, which found the nation’s unemployment rate stuck at 8.2 percent. Franklin D Roosevelt was the last president to win re-election with so much joblessness. Voters ousted Presidents Jimmy Carter and George H W Bush when the jobless rate was well under 8 percent.

And it’s not as if Obama can divert the nation’s attention from the economy, which has dominated the election from the start. His signature domestic achievement, the 2010 health care overhaul, is a mixed political blessing, uniting Republicans against him. Voters show little interest in how his administration wound down the Iraq war and killed Osama bin Laden. And yet Obama runs even with, or slightly ahead of, Republican rival Mitt Romney in poll after poll.

Campaign strategists debate the reasons.

They might include Obama’s personal likeability, gaps in Romney’s strategy, or Americans’ grudging acceptance of a new normal in which millions of jobs are gone for good, and no single person is responsible. If high unemployment “was a killer, he’d already be dead,” said Republican consultant and pollster Mike McKenna. “The survey data tells you he’s not dead.” There’s a problem with applying historical precedents and conventional wisdom to Obama: He sometimes defies them.

Before the 2008 campaign took shape, how many people thought America would elect a black president? Or that a man four years removed from the Illinois Legislature would outmaneuver Bill and Hillary Clinton’s political machine? Besides, no senator had been elected president in more than four decades. Obama’s political resilience has left Republicans quarreling over how best to combat him.

Romney has largely adopted a play-it-safe approach. It suggests he and his aides think the president is on a slow but steady decline and there’s no need to take big gambles.

Friday’s job report might bolster that view, as economists say a dramatic turnaround before Election Day is highly unlikely. But some Republican activists are anxious, saying Romney is running an overly cautious campaign that doesn’t spell out his differences with Obama in crisp, inspiring terms. The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page - it’s an important forum for conservative thought - blasted Romney’s campaign this week for “squandering an historic opportunity” and said the campaign looked “confused” and “politically dumb”. McKenna agrees that Romney must be more daring and aggressive. A strategy of holding the ball, he said, “never wins basketball games that you’re behind in.” Campaign consultants also differ about how much Obama might be helped if job creation accelerates in the next few months, which is by no means certain. Some strategists believe voters cement their views of the economy several months before Election Day. If true, it could bode badly for Obama. In 2010, jobs suddenly rebounded in October. In 2011, another sharp rise began in September, only to drop significantly seven months later. If that pattern repeats itself this fall, then Obama might enjoy a lastminute bump before the Nov 6 election, assuming enough voters remain persuadable.

Temple University political scientist Christopher Wlezien said research finds that voters’ feelings about the economy “come into focus over time” - chiefly during a campaign’s last six or seven months. He said Obama doubtlessly would like to swap this year’s first quarter - in which an average of 225,000 jobs were added each month - with the recently ended second quarter, which saw only 75,000 new monthly jobs on average. “It’s not good news, but it’s not devastating news,” Wlezien said of the slowdown. “Voters seem to have taken into account what Obama inherited,” he said, referring to a monthly job-loss rate of about 800,000 in the months just before and after Obama took office.

Come November, the barrier-breaking president may prove mortal indeed. He might fall victim to voters’ fears and anger over an economy that has left millions jobless and many others underemployed. But if there’s a new normal in a brutal global economy, might there be a new normal in US politics that has yet to be examined and understood? Blogs, Twitter and cable outlets spew out political tidbits and barbs at a dizzying pace. Minority voters play bigger roles, especially in key states such as Nevada and Florida. Public opinion shifts dramatically on issues such as gay rights.— AP

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All articles appearing on these pages are the personal opinion of the writers. Kuwait Times takes no responsibility for views expressed therein. Kuwait Times invites readers to voice their opinions. Please send submissions via email to: opinion@kuwaittimes.net or via snail mail to PO Box 1301 Safat, Kuwait. The editor reserves the right to edit any submission as necessary.

What’s wrong (and what’s right) with CNN

By Tim Molloy ou know the knocks on CNN: Its ratings are down. Its reputation for breaking news took a hit last week with an embarrassing mistake about the Supreme Court’s Obamacare ruling. Its nonpartisan approach to news denies it the built-in liberal audience of MSNBC and conservative audience of Fox News. CNN doesn’t deny any of it.

And it’s trying to improve. But it also sees some of its perceived weaknesses as strengths. “We continue to do very well when there are big news stories,” CNN Worldwide managing editor Mark Whitaker told TheWrap. “When there aren’t, we still don’t have enough programming that people come to, just for the programming. That’s something that we continue to work on.”

The oldest cable news network, which trails Fox News and to a lesser extent MSNBC, in May posted its worst primetime ratings in two decades. It can blame some of its ratings problems on a slow news cycle in which the Obamacare ruling was one of the few major stories. CNN, Fox and MSNBC were all down in primetime ratings in the most recent quarter covering April through June - in the 25-54 age group most important to news advertisers. But CNN was down 40 percent, a percentage greater than Fox and MSNBC’s percentage losses combined. (Fox, as usual, trounced its rivals in viewership.)

Some ratings falloff was to be expected from a 2011 second quarter that included such huge stories as Osama bin Laden’s death. But CNN can’t blame all of its recent problems on a slow news period. The losses highlighted the weakness of a primetime schedule that includes “Anderson Cooper 360,” CNN’s most-watched show in the key demo, and “Piers Morgan Tonight,” its mostwatched show in total viewers.

Now CNN is searching for the kind of Bill O’Reilly and Rachel Maddow-sized personalities that can lure viewers even during a dry spell. It has made several recent lineup changes, including canceling the low-rated 6

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pm show “John King USA” and bringing in celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain, who will leave the Travel Channel to begin a CNN food and travel show in early 2013.

But those are relatively minor tweaks. A news executive at another network, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the network known for fast responses to breaking stories has been slow to respond to viewers’ changing expectations for TV news. “They’re doing the same kind of coverage they’ve done since 1980. They’ve got their head in the sand: ‘We’re going to give you headlines all day long,’” the executive said. “The media revolution is taking place all around them, and they didn’t change.” Viewers today can get their news from countless sources besides their televisions, the executive said, so networks need to do more than break news.

That’s something of which Whitaker is keenly aware. He was brought in to CNN last year in part to help the network adapt. He joined the network after four years at NBC and eight as the editor of Newsweek. Editing a weekly magazine required constantly finding new approaches to stories that had broken days before - the same challenge now facing CNN, but on a drastically accelerated timeline. “CNN could not prosper by continuing to function as the place where people are learning about news for the first time,” he said. “We absolutely have to be providing extra value for people who we assume are likely to already know what’s been going on, or at least the headlines.”

But CNN refuses to turn to what Whitaker calls “partisan” analysis - “or sometimes just ranting”. CNN’s better-rated rivals deny that what they air in primetime is ranting. But Fox News and MSNBC do draw their largest audiences for opinionated shows like “The O’Reilly Factor” and “The Rachel Maddow Show”. In an election year, Whitaker said, especially at this early stage in the presidential campaign, partisans are more likely to seek out shows that affirm their viewpoints. He said MSNBC and Fox are both benefitting from such partisan viewers, especially in primetime. “Both of

them are preaching to the choir,” he said.

“They’re playing to a very narrow audience on the left and the right. Rather than challenge the beliefs of their audience, they’re just feeding and reinforcing them.”

Fox draws a distinction between its news coverage, which it says is non-partisan, and its talk shows, which lean conservative.

MSNBC president Phil Griffin, meanwhile, rejects the notion that people watch his network to hear what they already think. “There’s no question we have a view, but it’s not about a viewpoint,” he said. “What viewers want is really smart analysis. They want to connect with someone who they trust. Rachel Maddow does nine hours of preparation for her show. And then they come to trust her judgment and they connect. They listen to her and come to believe she’s right.” MSNBC’s strength lies in providing that type of analysis, Griffin said, with a strong focus on politics.

CNN does include plenty of Democrats and Republicans - but its hosts, unlike Maddow or Fox’s Sean Hannity, for example, interview their guests without openly agreeing or disagreeing with them. And CNN hosts do take sides on nonpartisan issues.

Anderson Cooper has waged a long campaign against bullying, a topic that has become especially pressing because of the recent suicides of bullied gay teens. (Cooper came out as gay this week.) Dr Sanjay Gupta has aggressively reported on the risks of traumatic head injuries in youth sports. And CNN’s “Freedom Project” has tried to expunge slavery across the globe. “To be nonpartisan doesn’t necessarily mean to be passionless,” Whitaker said.

CNN doesn’t just have journalistic motives for refusing to side with Democrats or Republicans. Although it has fewer viewers, CNN can make the case to advertisers that it appeals to more swing and undecided viewers than Fox News or MSNBC. (Fox, meanwhile, has cited a recent Pew Research Center study that found it has a higher percentage of independent viewers.) CNN’s current personalities are also less risky for advertisers than

divisive hosts like Glenn Beck, who shed advertisers during his time on Fox News. (He joined Fox from CNN’s Headline News, where he was generally less contentious than he was on Fox.) CNN’s broader focus may also play better worldwide. The network stresses that for all its domestic ratings woes, it is only part of a global news empire that far exceeds that of Fox News or MSNBC. That empire includes CNN International and CNN Espanol, and reaches 259 million households abroad. It boasts that it is the top news provider in Europe and is the top English-language news outlet in the Middle East. The network also points to CNN.com’s 100 million video starts per year globally, one sign of the strength of CNN Digital, which has a whopping 73 million monthly unique visitors.

CNN’s strong reputation for international reporting extends back to its coverage of the outbreak of the first Gulf War, which made household names of Wolf Blitzer, now the host of “The Situation Room”, and Christiane Amanpour, who reports for both CNN and ABC. Their coverage helped brand CNN as the place for breaking news. But that reputation suffered last week when the network - along with many others, including Fox News - initially misreported the Supreme Court decision on Obamacare, saying the court seemed to have struck it down. “I was very disappointed,” Whitaker said. “We pride ourselves on our reputation for thorough and accurate reporting, and in that case we got it wrong. We corrected it and we admitted our mistake - not everybody did - but it shouldn’t have happened.”

Was it a case of CNN trying to break the news too fast because of ratings pressure? “I don’t think that was the case,” Whitaker said.

He added that it “wasn’t one person’s error, it was a matter of process,” and that CNN is reviewing that entire process. He also denied a recent New York Post report that he has clashed with Ken Jautz, the executive vice president of CNN responsible for US coverage. — Reuters

Lopez Obrador mixed blessing for Left

By Dave Graham ime and again, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has proven that Mexico’s leftwing parties cannot compete without him. But after his defeat in last Sunday’s presidential election, they may not be able to prosper with him either. The most successful Mexican leftist in a generation has taken his followers to within sight of power in the last two presidential elections - only to fall short, reject the results and end up in a defiant standoff with rivals. Six years after he brought central areas of Mexico City to a standstill protesting the outcome of the 2006 election, Lopez Obrador is now challenging last Sunday’s election result, raising fears of new chaos in the capital and deep divisions in Congress.

He has built up a loyal following that extends from the poorest sections of society to intellectuals who applaud his talk of ending corruption and eradicating poverty. But he has fallen short of the votes needed to win power and seems unable to broaden his appeal much further, with many voters worried he would be a radical and divisive president. His uncompromising attitude has sown division in the Left’s ranks in the past, and could now restrict its ability to influence legislation as it prepares to enter the lower house of Congress as the second strongest force.

Lopez Obrador has accused winning candidate Enrique Pena Nieto and his opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, of conspiring with powerful business interests to steal the presidential election with vote buying and illegal funding. As US President Barack Obama and other world leaders congratulated Pena Nieto on his win, Lopez Obrador called him “totally immoral” and said everyone who voted for his rival, apart from the poor, were deliberately backing a “regime of corruption”.

The words are unlikely to encourage cooperation between the two camps in Congress, where results suggest the centrist PRI has fallen short of an absolute majority, making it reliant on the support of other groups to pass bills. Some senior leftist politicians are worried that they will again be sidelined. “We shouldn’t make the mistake we made in 2006,” said Jesus Ortega, a former chairman of the Party of the Democratic Revolution, or PRD, the main leftist group in Congress and in the coalition that

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backed Lopez Obrador’s candidacy. “We can’t isolate ourselves or get marginalized or hide in systemic opposition. We need to be actors in the deals and the negotiations for the progressive reforms the country needs.”

The PRD, which also tightened its hold on Mexico City by winning more than 60 percent of the vote in an election for mayor on Sunday, is eager to use its strength to press the case for democratic, political and judicial reform in Mexico. Boosted by a recent upsurge in student-led opposition to the PRI and its ties with Mexico’s dominant media, the PRD is also riding a wave of popular demands to loosen the television stranglehold of broadcasters Televisa and TV Azteca. Progress on these reforms could help curb the kind of abuses Lopez Obrador has linked to the PRI, which ruled Mexico for 71 years between 1929 and 2000, often resorting to vote-rigging, corruption and the repression of dissent to get its way.

But if Lopez Obrador pours more scorn on Pena Nieto and refuses to recognize him as president, Congress is likely to be dominated by Pena Nieto’s efforts to strike deals on economic reforms with the biggest losers of Sunday’s elections, President Felipe Calderon’s conservative National Action Party, or PAN. Famed as a defender of the poor and the downtrodden, Lopez Obrador has been a canny political operator when in power and forged a successful relationship with Carlos Slim, the world’s richest man, while mayor of the capital. Since cutting his teeth in politics in his home state of Tabasco in the 1970s and 1980s, the 58-year-old Lopez Obrador has noisily contested several votes, and political analysts are highly skeptical he will back down in 2012. “This is the only thing he knows how to do,” said Ulises Beltran of polling firm BGC. “Lopez Obrador is a loose cannon. The Left will again have real trouble uniting.”

Lopez Obrador won 2.5 million votes more in 2006 than the leftist candidate received in the previous two presidential elections combined, and his combined vote tally in the past two elections was greater than that of the PAN or the PRI. However, though half of Mexico’s population is poor, he was unable to win over enough centrist voters and instead came in a close second in both races. The PRD has been unable to win power since it was formed in the late 1980s by a mix of communists, socialists and dissident PRI politicians such as Lopez Obrador. Within the

party, there are still at least six identifiable factions and the party must also contend with the push and pull of smaller leftist parties.

Supporters say that only Lopez Obrador can bring all of the disparate elements under one roof. “He may not be the best leader, but he’s the only one,” said Jonathan Dominguez, an 18year-old supporting Lopez Obrador’s defiance of the voting authorities. The power base of the Left is Mexico City, which the PRD has held since mayoral elections were first held there in 1997. Lopez Obrador’s popular administration cemented that hold on the metropolis but has also created competition for him there. Current mayor Marcelo Ebrard, a moderate, challenged Lopez Obrador for the PRD’s presidential nomination and narrowly lost, but is still touted as a potential president of Mexico as is the man who will succeed him after a record victory in the mayoral election on Sunday, Miguel Angel Mancera. Neither is a polarizing figure in the mold of Lopez Obrador and would likely appeal to more middle-class voters, but neither has the popular base that he has built up outside Mexico City.

Austere and priding himself on his incorruptibility, Lopez Obrador has never accepted his 2006 defeat by President Felipe Calderon of the ruling National Action Party (PAN). After election authorities rejected his claims of fraud in 2006, Lopez Obrador declared “to hell with your institutions”, and drew huge crowds of supporters onto the street. But public opinion turned against the protests. In 2009, the Left’s share of the vote fell from nearly a third to less than a fifth in congressional elections. But it did not make the bloc any more pliant in Congress. So obstructive was Lopez Obrador to Calderon’s economic reforms that it made him an important factor in the PRI’s election victory on Sunday, said George W Grayson, a Mexico expert at the College of William & Mary in Virginia. “He attacks anyone who doesn’t march to his drumbeat,” said Grayson, a biographer of Lopez Obrador. “He thinks only he has the correct vision. This makes it very difficult for the Left.” Leftist victories last week have created new power bases with first-time captures of the states of Morelos and Tabasco. Graco Ramirez, the winner in Morelos, wasted little time in advising Lopez Obrador not to stage another protracted protest. “I don’t think it’s what we need or what Andres Manuel needs.”— Reuters

SUNDAY, JULY 8, 2012

sp orts Sri Lanka bowling lineup

Lille signs forward Kalou

Hesjedal out of Tour

KANDY: Sri Lanka are set to change their bowling lineup in a bid to secure their first test series success since 2009 when they face Pakistan in the third and final Test starting today. The hosts, who lead the threematch series 1-0, only need a draw at the Pallakele Stadium to triumph.

They last won a series against New Zealand three years ago since when they have lost five and drawn three. Sri Lanka are likely to replace Nuwan Kulasekara and Nuwan Pradeep with Dilhara Fernando and Thisara Perera.

“This is a perfect opportunity for us to win the test series,” said Sri Lanka allrounder Angelo Mathews. “ The second test was pretty boring because the wicket was pretty flat and it was interrupted by the rain, so we couldn’t go for a win.” He expects Pakistan to come back strongly after putting up a good performance in Colombo. “Pakistan has always been a tremendous force in world cricket so we always expect a good challenge and it’s not going to change in tomorrow ’s game,” said Mathews. — Reuters

LILLE: French club Lille signed Ivory Coast forward Salomon Kalou from European Cup winner Chelsea on a four-year deal. The 26year-old Kalou was available on a free transfer after seeing out the final year of his contract with the Premier League club.

Lille announced the deal on its website yesterday. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. “Lille is an ambitious club,” Kalou said, adding that he joined the club after convincing talks with coach Rudi Garcia. “Lille plays very good football, which it has shown over the last few seasons.”

Kalou said that his Ivory Coast teammate Gervinho, who left Lille last season to join Arsenal, also spoke highly of the club. “The infrastructure here shows that Lille has nothing to envy Europe’s top clubs,” Kalou said. Kalou scored 36 league goals in 156 league games for Chelsea. He was not a regular on the field with the London club, and was used more as a wide player when he did feature. His versatility has worked in his favor at times, and he started both the FA Cup final against Liverpool and the Champions League final against Bayern Munich to help Chelsea to win both titles. As an Ivory Coast international, Kalou has scored 17 goals in 49 appearances. Lille is strengthening following the departure of French player of the Year Eden Hazard, who joined Chelsea. Lille recently signed France midfielder Marvin Martin from Sochaux. —AP

TOMBLAINE: Giro d’Italia champion Ryder Hesjedal of Canada is now focusing on the London Olympics after a left leg and hip injury forced him out of the Tour de France. Hesjedal, who was injured during the crashmarred sixth stage of the race, did not join his Garmin teammates at the start of Stage 7 and was flying home later yesterday. His Garmin-Sharp team said that Hesjedal was not able to pedal normally.

Hesjedal was among at least two dozen riders caught up in a nasty crash with 26 kilometers left to go on Friday. He lost more than 13 minutes and dropped to 108th overall.

“The problem is that the swelling is to a degree that he can’t actually bend his leg, and you obviously need to bend your leg to race a bike,” Garmin manager Jonathan Vaughters said.

In a statement released by his team, Hesjedal said he was disappointed to abandon the race, ruing the fact that he was in good form and looking forward to reaching the mountains. — AP

Yankees edge past Red Sox BOSTON: New York’s Mark Teixeira hit a two-run single in a five-run first inning and a two-run triple in the seventh as the Yankees beat the Boston Red Sox 10-8 in the American League on Friday. Alex Rodriguez had three hits and Curtis Granderson scored three times for the Yankees, who improved to 3-0 against Boston this year. It was a wild start to the game, with Boston immediately replying to New York’s first inning, leaving the game tied 5-5 after the first frame. New York’s Boone Logan (4-0) wound up with the win and Andrew Miller (2-1) took the loss.

PITTSBURGH: San Francisco Giants’ Melky Cabrera (right) rounds third to greetings from coach Tim Flannery (1) after hitting a two-run home run off Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Erik Bedard during the fourth inning. —AP

Giants see off Pirates PHOENIX: San Francisco’s Melky Cabrera hit a homer and Ryan Theriot drove in two runs as the Giants edged the Pittsburgh Pirates 6-5 on Friday in the National League.

San Francisco starter Barry Zito (7-6) survived five eventful innings as the Giants snapped a three-game losing streak. Pittsburgh starter Erik Bedard (410) endured another short outing, failing to get through the fourth inning as the Pirates’ four-game winning streak ended.

D’backs 5, Dodgers 3 In Phoenix, Justin Upton broke out of a slump with a key two-run triple as Arizona rallied to beat Los Angeles and snap a six-game losing streak.

Diamondbacks starter Josh Collmenter (1-2) scattered six hits over six innings, striking out six.

Dodgers starter Clayton Kershaw (6-5) allowed one hit through five innings but ended up yielding five runs over 5 1-3 innings. Los Angeles suffered its first loss in four games.

Marlins 3, Cardinals 2 In St. Louis, Ricky Nolasco allowed one unearned run in six innings, leading Miami to a tight win over St. Louis.

Nolasco (8-6) got the big outs when it counted against the Cardinals, holding them to 1 for 11 with runners in scoring position. The Cardinals were 2 for 16 with runners in scoring position, stranding five at third base to frustrate a sellout crowd. Jose Reyes got the go-ahead RBI with an infield hit in the seventh.

St. Louis starter Jake Westbrook (7-7) allowed two runs in 6 2-3 innings and made a wild throw on Reyes’ soft tapper.

Braves 5, Phillies 0 In Philadelphia, Brian McCann’s grand slam was enough to give Atlanta victory over a Philadelphia team held scoreless despite Ryan Howard’s belated season

debut. Howard doubled in his first at-bat and was 2 for 4 in his first game since rupturing his left Achilles tendon in a playoff game last season.

But even with their regulars together for the first time, the struggling Phillies generated nothing on offense. The fivetime defending NL East champions are a season-worst 11 games under .500.

Braves starter Tim Hudson (7-4) pitched seven scoreless innings, as did Phillies starter Kyle Kendrick. Antonio Bastardo (2-3) replaced Kendrick to start the eighth and immediately ran into trouble.

Rockies 5, Nationals 1 In Washington, Tyler Colvin homered twice to power Colorado past Washington, ending the Nationals fourgame winning trot.

Colvin hit a solo shot in the second inning and a two-run drive in the fourth to become the first player to hit two home runs against Washington’s young ace Stephen Strasburg in the same game. Strasburg (9-4) allowed eight hits in six innings, losing a third straight start for the first time in his three-year career.

Rockies starter Drew Pomeranz (1-3) went 6 1-3 scoreless innings.

Reds 6, Padres 0 In San Diego, Bronson Arroyo pitched a scoreless complete game, directing Cincinnati to victory over San Diego.

Arroyo (4-5) threw his first complete game of the season. He retired 14 of the final 15 batters for the Reds’ fifth shutout, but the first solo effort by a starting pitcher. He struck out eight and walked one.

Ryan Hanigan, Todd Frazier and Zack Cozart all homered for the Reds. Kip Wells (1-2) took the loss for the Padres, who had won six straight. — AP

had 10 in 1991. Delmon Young homered for the Tigers, who got back to .500 for the first time since May 15. Royals’ Jonathan Sanchez (1-5) had his winless streak extend to 10 starts, allowing four runs in 5 2-3 innings.

Athletics 4, Mariners 1 In Oakland, Chris Carter hit a three-run homer in the bottom of the 11th inning, powering Oakland past Seattle to match a season-high

five-game winning streak. Carter sent the pitch from Steve Delabar deep into the stands in left field to bring the A’s back to .500 for the first time since May 22. Oakland’s Josh Reddick flicked a single to left off Oliver Perez (0-1) to start the final rally. After a fly out, Seth Smith hit a checked-swing infield single to chase Perez and set the stage for Carter’s homer. Jordan Norberto (1-1) struck out Seattle’s side in the 11th for his first career win. —AP

Orioles 3, Angels 2 In Anaheim, Steve Pearce hit a three-run homer and that proved enough for Baltimore to edge Los Angeles. Orioles starter Miguel Gonzalez (1-0) pitched seven stellar innings in his first career victory, yielding one run and striking out six. Angels starter CJ Wilson (9-5) allowed four hits over seven innings in his final start before his All-Star game appearance, but the Angels lost with him on the mound for the first time in nine starts.

White Sox 4, Blue Jays 2 In Chicago, Jake Peavy pitched one-run ball into the eighth inning, notching his first victory in five weeks and leading Chicago over Toronto.

The White Sox finally gave Peavy some run support. He’d been 0-4 in his previous four starts - throwing two complete games - when Chicago scored only two runs total during those losses.

Peavy (7-5) struck out seven, including the leadoff hitter in the eighth inning before leaving after 115 pitches. AJ Pierzynski homered for the White Sox, who won their fourth straight. Aaron Laffey (0-1) took the loss.

Rays 10, Indians 3 In Cleveland, Luke Scott snapped his teamrecord hitless streak with a two-run homer as Tampa Bay broke out of its slump by routing Cleveland. Scott was 0 for 41 since June 1 until connecting against Justin Masterson (5-8) in a six-run fifth inning. Tampa Bay had scored more than four runs in a game only once in its previous 11 contests.

Rays starter Alex Cobb (4-5) overcame a shaky start to pitch six innings. Cleveland had won three straight coming in.

Twins 5, Rangers 1 In Arlington, Texas, Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau drove in two runs each for Minnesota in the win over Texas. Twins starter Francisco Liriano (3-7) allowed only one run with six strikeouts in 6 2/3 innings. Minnesota touched Rangers rookie Martin Perez (1-1) for four runs in first four innings, but two were unearned after a missed popup. Rangers slugger Josh Hamilton left the game with back spasms in the fifth inning.

Tigers 4, Royals 2 In Detroit, rookie Drew Smyly struck out a career-high 10 in six impressive innings, guiding Detroit past Kansas City.

Smyly (4-3) allowed two runs and didn’t walk a batter. He was the first Tigers rookie to reach double figures in strikeouts since Mark Leiter

BOSTON: New York Yankees’ Mark Teixeira follows through on a two-run triple as Boston Red Sox catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia watches in the seventh inning of a baseball game. —AP

MLB results/standings Tampa Bay 10, Cleveland 3; Detroit 4, Kansas City 2; Colorado 5, Washington 1; Atlanta 5, Philadelphia 0; San Francisco 6, Pittsburgh 5; NY Yankees 10, Boston 8; Chicago Cubs 8, NY Mets 7; Milwaukee 7, Houston 1; Minnesota 5, Texas 1; Chicago White Sox 4, Toronto 2; Miami 3, St. Louis 2; Arizona 5, LA Dodgers 3; Baltimore 3, LA Angels 2; Oakland 4, Seattle 1 (11 innings); Cincinnati 6, San Diego 0.

American League Eastern Division W L PCT GB NY Yankees 50 32 .610 Baltimore 45 38 .542 5.5 Tampa Bay 44 40 .524 7 Boston 42 41 .506 8.5 Toronto 42 42 .500 9 Central Division White Sox 46 37 .554 Cleveland 43 40 .518 3 Detroit 42 42 .500 4.5 Kansas City 37 45 .451 8.5 Minnesota 36 47 .434 10 Western Division Texas 50 34 .595 LA Angels 46 38 .548 4 Oakland 42 42 .500 8 Seattle 35 50 .412 15.5

National League Eastern Division Washington 48 33 .593 NY Mets 45 39 .536 Atlanta 44 39 .530 Miami 41 42 .494 Philadelphia 37 48 .435 Central Division Pittsburgh 46 37 .554 Cincinnati 45 38 .542 St. Louis 44 40 .524 Milwaukee 39 44 .470 Chicago Cubs 32 51 .386 Houston 32 52 .381 Western Division LA Dodgers 47 38 .553 San Francisco 46 38 .548 Arizona 40 43 .482 San Diego 34 51 .400 Colorado 32 51 .386

4.5 5 8 13 1 2.5 7 14 14.5 0.5 6 13 14

Adidas unleash their latest weapon in Kuwait - The Predator KUWAIT: Adidas has proudly revealed the next instalment of the world’s most iconic football boot in Kuwait, the Predator(R) Lethal Zones.

Designed and developed by world-class players such as Xavi (Spain & FC Barcelona), Van Persie (Netherlands & Arsenal FC), Nasri (France & Manchester City FC) and Nani (Portugal & Manchester United FC) the new Predator (R)Lethal Zones

will be unleashed in the forthcoming UEFA European Football Championship held in Poland and Ukraine from 8 June to 1 July 2012.

Complete with five deadly zones for controlling the game, the Predator(R) Lethal Zones positions an arsenal of possibilities at a player’s feet. One zone for high-speed dribbling, another for the perfect first touch, a sweet spot to generate pace

Van Persie in Adidas Predator Lethal Zones.

while striking at goal, a driver to open up the game with long distance passing and a fifth zone for precision passing. Five lethal zones, one deadly result: Perfect Ball Control.

Following extensive research over the last two years, Adidas learnt that modern players are on the ball for a maximum of 90 seconds during a 90 minute match, so every touch counts. To pinpoint areas of the boot most critical for perfect control in those 90 seconds, Adidas provided leading professionals with white boots and colored marker pens to highlight and name the part of the boot they controlled and kicked the ball. The results of this activity helped identify the Predator(r) Lethal Zones.

With the new boot debuting on pitches across the globe including the UEFA European Championship and now available in Adidas retail stores in Kuwait, Arsenal star Robin Van Persie said about the new boot; “If you want to be a top player it’s vital that you are an all-rounder and that’s what the new Predator Lethal Zones are about. The five areas on the boot cover where players touch

and strike the ball and the design works to maximise accuracy, power and control. Based on my opinion, and the opinions of my fellow professional players, Adidas have created the new Predator. It’s great that they listen to us carefully as we know how it should be and how it should feel and their expertise does the rest.”

Having trialed the new Predator lethal zones, Portuguese and Manchester United star Luis Nani said; I’ve been involved in the design process for the new Predator Lethal Zones and I’m excited to see the final product and test it out across the 5 different zones. The boots are light, comfortable and help me with ball control whether I’m passing, shooting or dribbling.”

Jad Chouman, Head of Marketing, MENA, described how the Adidas vision of perfect ball control started as a concept before coming to life.

“The modern game requires every single touch to be perfect. Through research and testing Adidas has used player insight directly to give players exactly what they want, even more power, more control and more accuracy. The Adidas Predator (R) team

has always used player input to push design to new limits and I’ve no doubt Predator(r) Lethal Zones will change the game forever.”

“For the first time ever Predator wearers including Xavi, Van Persie, Nani and Nasri will have the complete weapon of control. We have been working with elite and amateur players for a number of years and with Lethal Zones we have taken the

Predator to a whole new level”. The new Predator(r) Lethal Zones football boot will be available in the Adidas own-retail outlets in Kuwait as well as specialist stores worldwide now in Bright Blue / Infrared / Collegiate Navy / White. For further information please visit adidas.com/football or go to facebook.com/adidasfootball or @adidasfootball on twitter to join the conversation.

Xavi in Adidas Predator Lethal Zones.

SUNDAY, JULY 8, 2012

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DAYTONA BEACH: Kurt Busch celebrates with the winner’s trophy after winning the Nationwide Series NASCAR auto race at Daytona International Speedway.

(Right) Brad Keselowski (22), James Buescher (30), Mike Wallace (01) and others get caught up in a wreck in Turn 2 during the Nationwide Series NASCAR auto race. —AP

Busch wins Nationwide race DAYTONA BEACH: Kurt Busch didn’t want to talk about his future. All he wanted to do was celebrate his victory with underfunded Phoenix Racing.

Busch won a wild Nationwide race at Daytona International Speedway on Friday night, holding off several challengers over the final hundred yards in a battered race car.

“I don’t care about me right now,” Busch said. “Tonight is about Phoenix Racing.”

Busch’s victory was his second in the Nationwide Series this season and first with Phoenix Racing. He won for his brother’s team, Kyle Busch Motorsports, at Richmond.

The latest one was more improbable, given that Busch’s No. 1 Chevrolet was spewing steam over the final 10 laps and had what seemed like a roll of tape holding it together.

“It’s just a matter of putting yourself in position to win,” Busch said. “Tonight, we overcame our damage. We could have folded, but these guys jumped into action and didn’t give up.”

The race set a Nationwide Series record with 42 lead changes and 16 different leaders, besting the previous mark set at Daytona in February. The two-car tandem racing and

recently paved track made for exciting passes and lots of action. Plenty of wrecks, too.

Less than half the field remained on the lead lap for a green-white-checkered finish. Busch started the two-lap sprint pushing Austin Dillon, but made a move to the front with a lap left thanks to help from Ricky Stenhouse Jr., who was 11th on the final restart. Busch and Stenhouse held off Michael Annett and Dillon as they neared the finish line.

“There’s heart and passion out there that these big teams don’t got,” Busch’s crew chief, Nick Harrison, said. The win seemingly meant a lot to Busch, the 2004 NASCAR champion who was suspended for a weekend earlier this season by NASCAR for verbally abusing a media member.

“I’m a racer,” said Busch, who lost his ride with Penske Racing last season after several public blowups. “I don’t know much about anything else. You get caught up in marketing or PR and everything else that goes along with it, but you’ve got to do all the steps in this day and age. I keep saying I grew up 30 years too late, and I still haven’t grown up, even though I’m 33. But back in the 80s, that’s what this team reminds me of.

It’s family. And you go hard, or you go home.”

Stenhouse was second, followed by Annett, Dillon and Joey Logano. Logano’s car failed a post-race inspection, and the team could be penalized this week.

Dillon’s car spun across the track as he crossed the finish line and made contact with at least two others before coming to a stop.

“It’s not fun coming to the checkered spinning out, but we did it in the best fashion you can,” Dillon said. “There’s no better feeling than coming to Daytona and coming to the checkered and having the run on the two leaders there. Ricky blocked high, and I tried to cross him up, got hooked a little bit. I probably should have just wedged it in there and crashed everybody. But I got hooked back left. It was a fun race. It was an awesome feeling. I was smiling the whole last lap.” Dillon might not be smiling next week.

His car failed post-qualifying inspection earlier Friday. It was the second failed inspection for the team in two weeks and could lead to another penalty. He was docked six points after officials deemed his car was too low following a victory at Kentucky last Friday.

“I am not concerned,” said Dillon, whose grandfather is

NASCAR team owner Richard Childress. “It was just a bummer because we made another mistake. It’s two in a row and it’s not fun and I know grandfather was upset with the guys.”

Danica Patrick had reason to be upset, too.

She was involved in one of the earlier wrecks - her car slammed head first into an inside retaining wall with 16 laps remaining - and finished 31st.

“Yeah, bummer,” she said. “It kind of felt like the IndyCar days when you are close a couple of times. It’s just frustrating when that’s the case. What are you going to do? There was an accident happening in front of me, and the best thing that you can do is try and get around it. I haven’t seen a replay, but I know there was an accident in front of me.” Busch did everything right down the stretch and got to celebrate another victory. “It just worked out beautifully,” he said. “The seas parted. I juked and jived and found the right holes. I went high. I went low. I’m glad I didn’t have to move people out of the way at the end ‘cause Stenhouse was pushing hard.

He knew he had to get us in position to go for the win. He stayed with us the right amount and then we could settle it on who could win it.” — AP

Woods and Mickelson to miss cut, Simpson leads

GERMANY: Honda rider Casey Stoner from Australia steers his bike during MotoGP qualifying practice of the Motorcycling Grand Prix of Germany. — AP

Stoner on German GP pole SACHSENRING: Defending champion Casey Stoner will start today’s German motorcycling Grand Prix on pole position after topping yesterday’s wet qualifying session at the Sachsenring.

The Australian recorded a fastest time of 1min 31.796sec on his final lap to record the 42nd pole of his career, as he pipped American Ben Spies to top spot by 0.193.

Stoner’s Honda teammate Dani Pedrosa was third — 0.285 off the pace. Stoner has three victories to his name through seven races of this year’s World Championship and is level with Yamaha’s Jorge Lorenzo on 140 points at the summit of the riders’ standings.

Stoner, who is retiring at the end of this season, later revealed that he had claimed his fourth pole of the season on a spare bike. “I was a little bit nervous going out there for the last 10 minutes because I didn’t have the best set-up,” he reported.

“I am very happy because I didn’t think we had done enough to be honest. I wasn’t really happy with the way the bike was feeling in the turns but in the end we ended up with pole position.” Lorenzo qualified fifth and will start on the second row of the grid flanked by Britain’s Cal Crutchlow and home favorite Stefan Bradl. Meanwhile, Ducati’s Italian star Valentino Rossi was ninth fastest. — AFP

Politics awaits for high jumper Beitia MADRID: Spanish high jumper Ruth Beitia has one last shot at Olympic glory before devoting herself to her other calling — a career in regional politics and helping the Iberian nation recover from the crippling effects of the financial crisis.

A member of parliament for the conservative People’s Party (PP) in her native Cantabria, Beitia will retire from athletics after trying to convert the European title she won last week into a medal at the London Games.

Tall and slim - Beitia stands at 1.95 metres and weighs 63 kilograms - she finally triumphed in a major competition in Helsinki after a career spanning almost two decades. Beitia is hopeful she can be equally effective in helping Spain deal with its economic woes. “We’re in a pretty big crisis and the situation we inherited (from the previous government) wasn’t the best,” the 33year-old told Reuters.

“The PP relaunched the economy while in government in the past and we hope to do it again,” added Beitia, who spends her mornings in parliament in the northern coastal city of Santander and her afternoons training. She dismisses the suggestion that sweeping austerity measures and cuts in sports funding being implemented by the government of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy could damage the prospects of young athletes.

“In a way, practising sport is free,” she said. “If there are going to be budget cuts it is better to do them in sport than in subsi-

dies for families where both parents are unemployed.”

Beitia was practically raised on an athletics track. Both her parents are referees and her father officiated at the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona. Her four brothers and sisters are also athletes.

She enjoys telling the story of when Cuban men’s high jump world record holder Javier Sotomayor, the athlete she most admired, visited Santander when she was a child. “I will never forget the words he said to me. I was 12 and he said that I would be a great high jumper,” she said. “I got his autograph, and these days he is my friend and he laughs when I tell him this anecdote.”

Beitia will probably have to improve on her Spanish record of 2.02 metres if she wants to challenge favourites such as Russian world champion Anna Chicherova and Croatian Blanka Vlasic in London.

“I have to keep working hard, keep training with a smile on my face, as always, and we could put the icing on the cake,” she said.

“At the last Games (in Beijing in 2008) I said I would carry on four more years. “I think it is a good moment to retire, and if it is at the top, even better,” she added. “I have seen many people suffering, reluctant to retire.” At a time of phenomenal success for Spanish sport, with high-profile champions including the national soccer team, tennis world number two Rafa Nadal and Formula One driver Fernando Alonso, athletics has been lagging behind in recent years and the outlook for London is rather bleak. —Reuters

WEST VIRGINIA: Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson were set to miss the cut as US Open champion Webb Simpson moved one stroke clear in Friday’s second round of the weather-delayed Greenbrier Classic at White Sulphur Springs in West Virginia.

Woods, the hottest player on the US circuit this season with three victories in his last seven events, struggled with distance control in his approach play on the way to a one-under-par 69 on the Old White TPC Course.

The 14-times major champion needed to ace the par-three last to ensure he advanced to the weekend but his tee shot settled seven feet from the cup from where he sank the birdie putt for an even-par total of 140.

It will be only the ninth time Woods has missed the cut in a PGA Tour event as a professional, and the second occasion this year after his failure to progress at the Wells Fargo Championship in May. “I didn’t quite have it,” a frustrated Woods told reporters after mixing four birdies with three bogeys. “I drove it really good today and I just did not have the feel for distances. “The ball was just going forever. I know we’re at altitude but I just couldn’t get the ball hit pin-high no matter what I did. And consequently I made some bogeys.”Woods, who overtook Jack Nicklaus in second place on the all-time list of PGA Tour winners with his two-shot triumph at the AT&T National on Sunday, missed the cut in his next start after a victory for the third time in his career.

“It happens,” the world number four said. “You miss cuts out here. I’ve been doing it for a long time (as a pro) and I’ve missed nine cuts. So one every couple of years, I guess.” Mickelson carded a second successive 71 to finish three strokes outside the projected cutline as he and Woods are poised to miss the cut in the same event for the first time since the 1993 Byron Nelson Championship. “I don’t know what to say about that,” Mickelson said after a round including three birdies, two bogeys and a double-bogey at the par-three 15th. “The parts don’t feel that far off, but I haven’t been putting them together.

“I just don’t get it,” added the American left-hander, who also missed the cut here 12 months ago. “I certainly struggled a little bit on the greens both years, but nothing that should have led to these scores.” Play was suspended for just over two hours earlier on Friday due to the threat of lightning and the second round was eventually halted for the day in fading light with 12 players still out on the course. While Mickelson and Woods were set to exit, fellow American Simpson carded a flawless four-birdie 66 to take control of the tournament with a nine-under total of 131 after 36 holes.

The 26-year-old, who clinched his first major title by one shot in last month’s US Open at the Olympic Club, knocked in a six-foot birdie putt on the 18th green to snatch the outright lead. Compatriots Jonathan Byrd (68), PGA Tour

WEST VIRGINIA: Webb Simpson watches his shot from a bunker on the 17th hole during the second round of the Greenbrier Classic PGA Golf tournament. — AP rookie Charlie Beljan (62), Jeff Maggert (68) and Jerry Kelly (66) were tied for second. Simpson, who played with Woods for the first two rounds this week, needed no reminding by reporters that he led last year’s Greenbrier Classic after 36 holes before falling back into a tie for ninth.

“I was confident last year, I’m confident this year,” he said. “I don’t think a whole lot has changed. I’ve learned a lot about myself in the final round since last year. “But I’ve still got a long way to go, and there’s a bunch of good players right there.” Eight-times major champion Tom Watson, at the age of 62, birdied four of his first seven holes on Friday to shoot a 68 and will go into the weekend seven strokes off the lead. The cut was projected to fall at one-under 139 with former major winners Jim Furyk, Lucas Glover and Trevor Immelman also poised to miss out. — Reuters

Pettersen leads, Wie one back

KOHLER: Paula Creamer tees off the sixth hole during the second round of the US Women’s Open golf tournament. — AP

WISCONSIN: Norway’s Suzann Pettersen, following her game plan to near perfection, seized overall control while Michelle Wie provided the sizzle in Friday’s second round of the US Women’s Open in Kohler, Wisconsin.

Pettersen, two strokes off the pace overnight at the year’s third major, fired a sparkling four-under-par 68 on a slightly cooler day at Blackwolf Run to grab a oneshot lead with a five-under total of 139. Wie was in hot pursuit, a best-of-the-week 66 lifting her into a share of second place with fellow American Cristie Kerr, who carded a 71. Germany’s Sandra Gal (70), South Korea’s Park In-bee (70) and American Vicky Hurst (70) were a further stroke back at threeunder 141.

Pettersen, who won her first major title at the 2007 LPGA Championship, was delighted with her position going into weekend after launching her second-day charge with four birdies in her first seven holes. “I got off to a very good start, hit a lot of the shots I tried to hit, and just tried to execute my game plan,” the 31-year-old Norwegian told reporters after mixing five birdies with a bogey at the par-four fourth.

“There are definitely low scores and birdies out there, so I’m very happy where I’m at. I can put my legs up now and rest a little bit.” Pettersen surged up the leaderboard with birdies at the 10th, 12th, 14th and 16th after starting out on the back nine.

Though she bogeyed the fourth, she recovered with a birdie at the eighth to retain the outright lead. “The course is very playable,” she said. “You hit the fairways, you give yourself a lot of chances out here. The greens are rolling perfect.

“You don’t try to attack every pin. You try to give yourself some makeable putts on the more difficult holes, and the few holes where you feel you can be aggressive you have to try to step on it.” Wie, who has yet to live up to the lofty expectations heaped upon her when she turned professional in 2005 at the age of 15, captured the spotlight at Blackwolf Run with a sizzling sevenbirdie display.“It went well today,” beamed the 22-year-old Hawaiian. “It was just fun. I just went out there and kind of tried to be patient. When putts started dropping in, it makes for a low round. “But it’s only halfway done. I got a long way in front of me. I’m really glad I shot the score I did today and that I’m back in contention.

I’m really looking forward to this weekend.” Wie, who has triumphed twice on the LPGA Tour but has yet to win a major title despite several close calls, felt the course was a little easier to play on Friday. “For starters it wasn’t quite as hot, which is nice, and the pins are a little bit more in the centre today than yesterday,” she said. “But overall it’s still a US Open golf course. I played out of my butt today to shoot sixunder.” —Reuters

SUNDAY, JULY 8, 2012

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‘All the Bells’ to ring out at start of Olympics LONDON: Church bells, bicycle bells, handbells, ship’s bells, and even mobile phones will sound across Britain in a “cacophonous, amazing sound” to mark the start of the Olympics, artist Martin Creed told AFP. The 43-year-old Turner Prize winner was commissioned to create his “ Work No. 1197: All the bells in a country rung as quickly and as loudly as possible for three minutes” as part of the government’s Cultural Olympiad, encouraging people to take in some culture along with the London 2012 Games.

And in the case of “All the Bells”, said Creed, everyone can even take part. All people need to do is ring any kind of bell for three minutes starting at 8:12am (0712 GMT) on July 27, exactly 12 hours

before the start of the opening ceremony pre-show.

If the mobile phone is their chosen instrument, they can download a special ringtone from the project website, where participants can upload recordings of their bell-ringing afterwards.

For Creed, speaking at his cluttered east London studio, the project is part of a mission to take art out of the gallery into the public sphere.

“Art galleries are... a special place that’s separate from the world and it makes me a bit uneasy, because I think that to a certain extent anything can look good in a gallery,” the British artist said.

“They’re beautiful spaces; very protected and cosseted. If my work has to be

protected by an art gallery I think that’s not good enough. It’s like a child that can’t make its way in the world.

“If it’s any good, my work, it’ll be able to survive in a hostile environment.” His “All the Bells” project has encountered some hostility from the Central Council of Church Bell Ringers, a group that maintains the very English art of “change ringing” according to set formulas.

They argued that ringing church bells “as quickly and as loudly as possible” was unsuited to their medium and even dangerous. Creed labelled them “a bunch of meanies”. But they now support the project-after being advised the instructions are flexible.

“All the Bells” echoes a long British tra-

dition, says Creed, with bells rung out to celebrate historic events like Queen Elizabeth II’s 1953 coronation and the end of World War II in 1945.

The Royal Navy and Royal Fleet Auxiliary will join in, ringing ship’s bells and those at shore bases.

Other participants signed up on the website include Lilly, a Welsh schoolgirl with her grandmother’s handbell, and a pair of dogs who will apparently ring their collar bells on time.

Creed carried out a trial run in San Gimignano in Italy, which he said was “brilliant”, but has concerns about how far sound will carry in the Britain-wide event.

However, the BBC will be broadcasting

“All the Bells” live from many locationshelping ringers feel they are par t of something big. Creed previously created a work in which a sprinter ran up and down part of London’s Tate Gallery, and says he relates closely to athletes.

“Everything I do involves moving my body, so to work best, I need to move well,” the Scot said. “What’s beautiful about sport is the movement of the body is honed down to one very narrow area.”

He is enthused by the Olympics as a public event, with his only complaint that “they haven’t given me any tickets”. But “All the Bells”, he said, marks an artistic direction from which there is no going back. “I think that all my work should be public work,” he said.—AFP

Blake is ‘legitimate challenger’ to Bolt

Zou Shiming

Patriot Zou takes one last swing for China BEIJING: Trailblazer Zou Shiming struck a thunderous blow for China when he won his country’s first Olympic boxing gold at the Beijing Games and has again chosen national glory over the lure of professional riches to defend his title in London. Zou clinched the light flyweight title when Mongolia’s Purevdorjin Serdamba threw in the towel early in their bout due to injury. His victory may have lacked the romance of compatriot Liu Xiang’s 110 meters hurdles win at the 2004 Athens Games but the pint-sized Zou was nonetheless feted as a hero at home for his triumph in a “foreign” sport that had long chewed up and spat out China’s elite boxers.

Zou, the son of a factory worker and a kindergarten teacher in the backwater province of Guizhou, has further enamored himself to home fans and officials with his decision to step into the Olympic ring once more. “I am a highly ambitious man,” he told state broadcaster CCTV. “All of these Asian, world or Olympic gold medals, whatever China hasn’t got, I want!” Following Beijing, Zou’s drive saw him win gold at the 2010 Asian Games on home soil in Guangzhou and a third world title at Baku last year.

The 31-year-old will head to London one of the most favored fighters in his division, but his achievements are a far cry from his downtrodden boyhood, when he was too scared to tell his mother about his love of the ring. Zhang describes himself as a “weak child” who was bullied not only by boys, but also by girls.

He can point to a scar that one terrifying schoolgirl scratched into his face. His mother

coddled him, and sometimes dressed him in girl’s clothes and tied his hair into pig-tails.

He was pushed into wushu, China’s gymnastic martial art, but rebelled and began boxing training in secret at school. The martial arts training stuck, however, and Zou credits it for giving him the speed and lightning reflexes that offset his relatively short reach, allowing him to counter-punch and steal points off more powerful opponents.

Zou’s style, honed with his long-time coach Zhang Chuanliang, was derided by opponents’ coaches early in his career, but is perfect for amateur boxing bouts where knockouts are rare and point-scoring is paramount. “People overseas say I fight like a pirate ... or like a martial arts fighter in a novel,” Zou, who also took bronze at the Athens Games, told CCTV. Others see shades of his hero Muhammad Ali in his dancing footwork and his habit of letting his gloves fall to his waist when he backs away from opponents, tempting them to take the money-shot at their peril. While perhaps sharing some of Ali’s showmanship, the softly-spoken Zou displays none of the heavyweight great’s trash-talking bravado and is content to let his fists do the talking. “I have confidence, because after all, my technique is up there with the world’s best, but it’s going to be very, very tough (at London),” Zou told state media.

“There will definitely be a lot of opponents focusing on me especially. Also, this will be my third Games and I’m getting on in years, that doesn’t help. “But at the same time, there aren’t many competitors there who will have my bigtournament experience.”— Reuters

Kenya, Ethiopia lead African medal hunt JOHANNESBURG: Kenya and Ethiopia are set to continue their traditional role as the strongest African medal contenders at the Olympics. While South Africa may be unable to match the men and women from East Africa in podium appearances, they are desperate to better a dismal showing in Beijing four years ago when 253 athletes delivered just one medal between them. Nigeria are another country who must believe the only way is up after a one silver and three bronze return from the 2008 Games and there are bound to be surprises from African unknowns preparing under the radar. Some Africans have gone to the ends of the earth to try and secure places at the July 27-August 12 Games with the South African men’s and women’s hockey teams and the Angolan basketball side displaying indomitable spirit.

The South African men’s hockey team qualified by winning a tournament in Japan and the women did likewise in India after domestic Olympic bosses ruled that being the best in Africa was not good enough.

Angola came second behind Tunisia in the African basketball championships to miss automatic qualification so they flew to Venezuela this week and are competing with 11 other countries for three ‘wild card’ places.

Kenya fared best among the African countries in Beijing with six gold, four silver and four bronze-a 14-medal haul that doubled the number they brought back from the 2004 Athens Olympics.

A third-place finish on the 2011 world athletics championships medals table in South Korea confirmed the Kenyans as major international players, but also brought a warning from coach Colm O’Connell. “Kenyans will not be satisfied unless the athletes bring back gold and the pressure on them in London is going to be tremendous,” said the Irelandborn trainer of 20 Olympic and world champions. While the unexplained death of Beijing marathon champion Samuel Wanjiru still casts shadows, Wilson Kipsang, Abel Kirui and Emmanuel Mutai were chosen from 278

hopefuls and are considered worthy successors.

The women’s marathon team of Mary Keitany, Edna Kiplagat and Priscah Jeptoo has its sights on gold after the 2004 and 2008 silvers of Catherine Ndereba and there are high hopes for Vivian Cheruiyot in the 5,000-metre and 10,000m races. David Rudisha is among the 800m favorites, but could face strong competition from rapidly improving 18-yearold Mohamed Aman of Ethiopia, a country more renowned for brilliant long distance runners. Among the greatest was veteran Haile Gebrselassie, who failed at 39 to qualify for London, but believes he is handing the baton to a new, even more exciting generation of athletes with Kenenisa Bekele at the forefront.

Reigning Olympic 5,000m and 10,000m champion Bekele overcame calf and knee injuries and a ban for not attending a mandatory national training camp to post the third fastest 10,000m time in the world this year. “I hope to show the world great things,” was his ominous message after the race in English city Birmingham. “I still have time to prepare for the Olympics and need to work on my endurance.” LJ van Zyl in the 400m hurdles, Caster Semenya in the 800m, where her rivals include defending champion Pamela Jelimo of Kenya, and javelin thrower Sunette Viljoen are considered the best South African hopes for athletics medals.

Cameroon van der Burgh (100m breaststroke) and Chad le Clos (200m butterfly) are set to pose the strongest challenges in the swimming pool with both ranked within the top three this year in their disciplines. Africa has excelled at football in recent Games thanks to Ghana (1992 bronze), Nigeria (1996 gold and 2008 silver) and Cameroon (2000 gold), but all fell by the wayside during the qualifiers. Egypt, Morocco and debutants Gabon and Senegal qualified for the 16-team men’s tournament while South Africa and Cameroon face powerful competition in the 12-nation women’s competition.— AFP

PARIS: Track legend Michael Johnson said Yohan Blake, who won the sprint double at the Jamaican Olympic trials, was a “legitimate challenger” to defending Olympic champion Usain Bolt. But the American insisted that Bolt was still his favorite to win three gold medals in London, as he did at the Beijing Games in 2008. “Yohan Blake showed he will take advantage when Bolt does not perform at his best. Bolt now has a legitimate challenger and will need to be at his best in London to defend his Olympic title,” Johnson said in an interview with Laureus.com. “But I think Usain can do whatever he wants to do! He’s got that type of talent and he wants to win three gold medals again. “I would say if he gets to the starting line healthy, at his best, everyone else at their best, he wins every time, I mean he’s just that good.”

Johnson, who won four Olympic gold medals at 200m, 400m and 4x400m relay and is also an eight-time world gold medalist, added that he thought Bolt could run even faster than his 9.58sec world record. “He could break the world record again, he could run 9.5sec, lower. Ultimately if he were to really be focused and committed on cleaning up his technique, he could probably run 9.4sec, but he would have to do some major training and adjustments in the way that he runs. “He’s not a very clean sprinter, if you look at him from a bio-mechanical standpoint. Usain Bolt could absolutely run faster, but it would take a tremendous commitment on his part to do a complete overhaul of his technique.”

Johnson, who gave up a gold medal from the 4x400m relay in Sydney after team-mate Antonio Pettigrew admitted he had used performance enhancing drugs, said he felt you could never guarantee a “clean” Olympics. “You have to also understand that you’re never going to completely eradicate performance enhancing drugs from the sport and people trying to cheat,” the 44-year-old said. “That would be like thinking that some day we’re no longer going to have crime in society. You’re always going to have crime in society, you’re always going to have people trying to cheat. “But you also have to understand that by and large most people in society are good people and they don’t commit crimes, it’s the same way in sports. By and large most of the people are good people and they don’t use performance enhancing drugs and try to cheat.”

Johnson also said that a two-year ban for doping was not enough of a deterrent, while a life-time ban was too much, instead calling for suspensions of four years to be implemented. “Four years would be appropriate. In a sport like athletics, in particular, if you miss four years, your career’s probably over, but if you really want to try to come back and try to make things right after you’ve served your four years, I’m fine with that.”—AFP

Yohan Blake

Spain still hope to upset US MADRID: The United States will need to have an off day and prospective vanquishers will have to play out of their skins if they are to be denied another Olympic basketball gold, Spain coach Sergio Scariolo said yesterday.

Since the sport was first included at the 1936 Berlin Games, the US have won 13 of the 16 competitions entered and, with a squad stuffed with NBA All-Stars, are overwhelming favourites to retain the title won in Beijing four years ago after beating the Spanish.

Scariolo’s Spain, with plenty of top NBA players of their own, including the Gasol brothers Marc and Paul, Jose Calderon and Serge Ibaka, are widely tipped to take silver again in London, but the Italian is not entirely ruling out an upset.

“Of course everybody believes the United States will win the gold medal,” he told Reuters at Spain’s training centre in central Madrid.

“You have to respect that they are the favourites and, besides our families and our friends, nobody believes they can lose,” added the 51-year-old with a smile. “But at the same time there are many teams that are good at these Olympic Games: Spain of course,

Argentina, Brazil, France. “So, the goal is to be in the fight for the medals and it’s hard to say that one team is absolutely unbeatable.”

Scariolo, who also coaches Milan-based club side EA7 Emporio Armani, took over as Spain coach in 2009, leading them to back-to-back Eurobasket triumphs.

He and his players have been training in Madrid the past week and have friendlies against Britain, France, Tunisia, Australia and Argentina before they test their progress in their last warm-up match ahead of the Games against the US in Barcelona on July 24.

“Probably they are way better than anyone else but we’ll see,” Scariolo said of the latest U.S. Dream Team. “They are probably the only country that could put three different teams on the court and have a chance of winning the three medals.

“Everyone has to try to get to the game against the US at their top level. “If they will be at their top level it’s going to be extremely, extremely difficult to beat them. “If you are not at your top level for sure you are not going to have any chance.”

Scariolo has a couple of injury concerns heading

into the Games, with influential captain Juan Carlos Navarro of Barcelona and former Denver Nuggets swingman Rudy Fernandez recovering from late-season problems.

He will also have to do without Minnesota Timberwolves promising point guard Ricky Rubio, who is on the way back from knee surgery and will be replaced in the starting team by Calderon of the Toronto Raptors. “Of course it’s a big deal,” Scariolo said. “We never want to have one of our guys out because of injury and Ricky had a main role.

“I don’t want to say we are not going to miss Ricky because for sure we are going to miss him from many points of view. “But at the same time I prefer to talk about who is going to play than who’s not.” Both Navarro and Fernandez, who has just signed for Real Madrid, were improving, Scariolo said.

He is banking on the chemistry between his players, many of whom grew up playing together and remain close friends, to help give them an edge in London. “We have a good squad of talented and very committed players and this is probably our secret,” he said.—Reuters

Russia’s Moiseyev bids for Modern Pentathlon history PARIS: Russia’s Andrey Moiseyev will bid to make history at the London Olympics by becoming the first man to win three consecutive gold medals in Modern Pentathlon. Modern Pentathlon - which challenges athletes to complete five different sports in a single day - will mark 100 years as an Olympic sport this year Created by movement founder Pierre de Coubertin the sport first appeared at the Stockholm 1912 Games, while the women’s competition made its debut at Sydney 2000. De Coubertin’s brainchild - athletes compete in shooting, fencing, swimming, showjumping and running - was to find the ultimate, all-round competitor. Russia are the dominant team and have won the last three Olympic men’s titles with Dmitri Svatkovskiy winning individual gold in Sydney followed by Moiseyev’s back-to-back titles in Athens and Beijing. And this year Russia were spoilt for choice for the London Games before world number one Aleksander Lesun was selected alongside number two ranked Moiseyev, the 2011 world champion.

“We have a very strong squad. I heard our men’s team is being compared with the Barcelona football team. So it’s hard to compete with us and, inside the team, competition is high,” said Moiseyev after taking silver behind Lesun at the world championships in Rome in May with South

Korea’s Jung Jin-Hwa taking bronze.

Italy are among their challengers however after winning the world team title ahead of the Russians and South Korea.In the women’s event, Russia will be represented by 2010 World Cup champion Ekaterina Khuraskina and former European champion Evdokia Gretchichnikova.

Britain could however claim women’s gold with world champion Mhairi Spence leading the hosts’ bid, along with Samantha Murray, who won world bronze in Rome.

Britain also won the women’s world team event ahead of Hungary and China. Britain’s men will be represented by world number five Nick

Andrey Moiseyev seen in this file photo

Woodbridge and European silver medalist Sam Weale. “I have every confidence they will deliver inspirational performances,” Team GB Chef de Mission Andy Hunt said.

“British modern pentathletes have an excellent track record in Olympic competition, winning four medals in the last three Games,” he said.Britain’s Stephanie Cook won gold when the women’s event was first added to the Olympic program in 2000. China hopes of winning a first Olympic medal in the sport lie with Qian Chen, their first world champion in 2009 and silver medallist this year. China also won the women’s world bronze medal in Rome.

China’s Qian Zhenhua was fourth in the men’s event in Beijing, while Qian was fifth among the women. At London 2012, the men’s Modern Pentathlon is due to run on Saturday, August 11, with the women’s competition taking place the following day.

The competition starts with fencing in the Copper Box followed by a 200m swim in the Aquatics Centre.

The athletes then leave the Olympic Park for Greenwich Park, where they will complete a show jumping course on an unfamiliar horse. The day concludes with the combined event, in which competitors complete a 3km run, including stop-offs at shooting points where they must hit five targets.— AFP

18

SUNDAY, JULY 8, 2012

S P ORT S

Alonso takes F1 pole at rain-soaked Silverstone

Jean de Villiers

Stormers tame Cheetahs BLOEMFONTEIN: Western Stormers made sure of winning the South African conference of the Super 15 championship when they beat Central Cheetahs 13-6 at a cold, wet Free State Stadium yesterday.

It was the 13th win in 15 matches for the Stormers-but the Western Cape team gave a stumbling performance and maintained a dubious record of failing to secure a bonus point for scoring four tries in any of their games.

They will go into the final round of league matches one point on the overall log behind New Zealand’s Waikato Chiefs.

If they had secured a bonus point they would have taken top spot because of having more wins.

“They were terrible conditions,” said Stormers captain Jean de Villiers. “We couldn’t play too much rugby. We were actually better off not having the ball. “We got the win. It would have been nice to have got the bonus point but we’ll take the four points.”

Chiefs are away to the Hurricanes in Wellington next Friday, while the Stormers host the struggling Melbourne Rebels in Cape Town a day later.

Another win will secure a home semifinal for Stormers-and they could still finish top of the log, with a potential home

final, if the Chiefs slip up.

The slippery conditions made running rugby difficult for both teams, but Stormers let several try-scoring opportunities get away by holding on to the ball too long or kicking possession away.

The only try came in the 54th minute when right wing Gio Aplon ran on to a perfectly-judged chip from fly-half Peter Grant while Cheetahs full-back Willie le Roux was in the ‘sin bin’.

Grant added the conversion and also kicked two penalty goals. Cheetahs flyhalf Riaan Smit landed two penalties for the home team. The teams were level at 33 at half-time.

With rain falling for much of the game, both teams opted to put pressure on their opponents with high kicks. Neither team was willing to run the ball the contest was largely between the forwards. Although Stormers often got good possession, they were thwarted by solid Cheetahs’ defending.

Flank Heinrich Brussow, who was not called up by new Springbok coach Heyneke Meyer for the recent series against England, was in his element, burrowing into the mauls and stealing the ball from Stormers on numerous occasions. —AFP

Lions triumph over Rebels JOHANNESBURG: Golden Lions led by 24 points and trailed by five before a late try from replacement forward Jaco Kriel set up a 37-32 triumph over Melbourne Rebels yesterday in a Super 15 thriller.

Kriel got the thumbs up from the television match official after Francisco Pastrana, the first Argentine to referee a southern hemisphere provincial championship match, was unsure whether the South African had a foot in touch.

Fly-half Elton Jantjies converted from the touchline to edge the South Africans 34-32 ahead and he kicked a penalty from in front of the posts in stoppage time to finish with a 17point haul.

Only pride was at stake in a clash of two season-long strugglers at chilly Ellis Park, and it could be the last Super 15 match at the venue for some time with Southern Kings set to replace the bottom-of-the-table Lions next season. After dominating the opening half and leading 24-7 at half-time, the Lions trailed 32-27 with six minutes left before Kriel barged over in the corner for a bonus-point fourth Lions try that turned the tide. “I do not know what happened to us in the second half,” confessed Lions No 8 and skipper Josh Strauss, “but I am proud of the boys for coming back in the closing minutes and winning.

“This was our final home match of the season and it was great to go out with a bang.

Special praise must go to Elton for his fantastic conversion from the touchline to put us back in front.” Veteran Rebels inside centre and captain Stirling Mortlock, who retired midway through the second half, was not overly disappointed with the result on a tour which continues next Saturday against Western Stormers in Cape Town.

“This match reminded us once again that if we do not defend well in this competition, we will pay a heavy price. There were a lot of pleasing aspects, but our inconsistency is annoying.”

Lions were ahead within two minutes through a try from outside centre Waylon Murray and flank Derick Minnie dotted down twice with Jantjies converting both and kicking a penalty as the home team raced to a 24-point advantage. A first half stoppage-time try from hooker Ged Robinson sparked a Rebels’ revival that continued after the break through two tries from lock Hugh Pyle and another from fly-half James Hilgendorf.

Full-back Julian Huxley converted three and kicked two penalties while the only Lions points came from a Jantjies penalty before a late surge brought the home team only a third victory this season from 15 outings. —AFP

SILVERSTONE: Fernando Alonso claimed his and Ferrari’s first pole since 2010 and 21st of his career after topping the times during yesterday’s rain-drenched qualifying session for today’s British Grand Prix. The Spaniard, who won last year’s Silverstone race and is leading this season’s driver ’s standings, clocked a fastest lap of the ver y wet Silverstone circuit in one minute 51.746 seconds.

That scintillating effort edged out Mark Webber of Red Bull by less than five hundredths of a second. Despite almost missing out on Q3, Alonso, fastest in the morning, rose to the occasion and set his fastest time on his final lap which was enough to see off Webber and claim Ferrari’s first pole in Britain since 2003.

The double champion said he was delighted to have put an end to Ferrari’s run without poles but played down the significance of his grid position, suggesting the weather would have the biggest role to play. He said: “I’m happy to be on pole after nearly two years, but in these conditions the qualifying is probably the least important of the year but obviously for visibility it is always better to be on pole.”

“It was tricky conditions for everyone. You have to be calm in some difficult moments - in Q3 we had the difficult choice between inter and full wet (tyres), but when we saw everyone on the inter, we relax a little and put a lap together.”

Second-placed Webber said: “It was a very tight session. You don’t know how it’s going, you just focus on yourself. In a session like this, it’s a huge amount down to the driver to get comfortable in the car. It was nip and tuck with Fernando to get pole.”

Seven-time champion Michael Schumacher of Mercedes was third fastest ahead of defending

champion Sebastian Vettel in the second Red Bull.

Felipe Massa was fifth-fastest in the second Ferrari followed by Kimi Raikkonen of Lotus and Spanish Grand Prix winner Pastor Maldonado of Williams.

Home-hero Lewis Hamilton on McLaren was eighth-fastest for McLaren ahead of German Nico Hulkenberg in the second Mercedes.

Frenchman Romain Grosjean was not able to run after he spun

Vettel went fastest, but out went McLaren driver Jenson Button, who, despite having a reputation for his wet weather driving and performing in front of his English home crowd, could not put an end to his dismal qualifying run which has plagued him since the Spanish Grand Prix in May. The 2009 champion wound up almost a send off the pace required to escape the cut and wound up 18th fastest, his worst qualifying performance of the

and spins which included wet weather wizard Schumacher, the session was red-flagged with just over six minutes remaining.

After more than an hour’s wait, the session resumed and local hero Hamilton topped the times.

Paul Di Resta wound up 11th in the second Force India after being edged out in the final seconds by double champion Alonso who clocked a faster times despite there being yellow flags in section 14.

LONDON: Spain’s Fernando Alonso driving a Ferrari Formula 1 car during qualifying at the Silverstone circuit. —AP at the end of Q2 and was unable make it back to the pits - he will start tenth.

Despite a relatively dry run during yesterday morning’s final practice, the rain began to fall moments before qualifying started.

That meant all 24 drivers were forced out on track in a desperate attempt to secure a decent lap time before the rain took full effect.

season.

He joined Caterham drivers Heikki Kovalainen and Vitaly Petrov, and Marussia driver Timo Glock, Hispania driver Pedro De La Rosa and Charles Pic in the second Marussia who opted not to run after also receiving a fiveplace grid penalty for changing his gearbox before qualifying.

Drivers continued to struggle as conditions worsened in Q2 and after an array of ‘almost’ crashes

Japanese Kamui Kobayashi was 12th for Sauber ahead of Nico Rosberg of Mercedes who received a five-place grid penalty for changing his gearbox after practice on Friday and will start in 18th place.

That meant Daniel Ricciardo of Toro Rosso, Bruno Senna of Williams, Jean Eric Vergne also of Toro Rosso, Sergio Perez of Sauber and Button all gained a place on the grid for today’s race. —AFP

Blues thrash depleted Force MELBOURNE: The Blues unleashed a three-try burst in the second half to beat an injury-ravaged Western Force 32-9 at Eden Park on Saturday and boost their hopes of avoiding Super Rugby’s wooden spoon. Flanker Steven Luatua scored a try in the first half and Charles Piutau, Ma’a Nonu and Luke Braid all crossed in quick succession in the second to secure the Blues their third win in the penultimate round of a dismal season. The Blues’ bonus-point victory from scoring four tries lifted them a point above Perth-based Force into third from the bottom of the standings. Johannesburg-based Lions sit bottom of the southern hemisphere’s provincial championship, seven points behind the Force with two matches to play. The Blues took a 13-9 lead at the end of an uninspiring first half littered with handling errors and befitting of the teams’ lowly standing. The Blues had the edge in territory and Ma’a Nonu raised a brief burst of enthusiasm from the sparse crowd by driving toward the line in the 28th minute but was denied a try by video review. Luatua burrowed over the line near the right-hand corner moments later, however, to put the Blues up 8-6 against the Force who lacked captain David Pocock and veteran lock Nathan Sharpe due to injury.

Blues fullback Piutau broke open the game 15 minutes after the break, touching down at the right corner again after taking a long pass from Nonu. Nonu helped himself to his 100th first class try minutes later, cantering 10 metres to the line, with an off-load from substitute Peter Saili cutting the Force defence to ribbons. Number eight Luke Braid joined the party with a fourth try 10 minutes from the whistle. Force flyhalf Ben Seymour slotted three penalties in the first half to score all of his side’s points as the visitors were kept scoreless for the last 45 minutes and slumped to their 12th loss of the season. —Reuters

NEW YORK: Race For Water, Foncia and Musandam Oman sail pass lower Manhattan after the start in the KRYS Ocean Race yesterday. Five identical multihull boats took off yesterday from New York in a trans-Atlantic race to the western French city of Brest expected to last about a week. —AFP

Henry Speight (left) in action in this file photo

Brumbies snap Sydney curse SYDNEY: The ACT Brumbies snapped a 10-year losing streak in Sydney to overhaul the New South Wales Waratahs 1915 yesterday, boosting their hopes of sealing a place in Super Rugby’s postseason finals series.

The Waratahs led by six points heading into the final quarter, but a 61stminute try from Brumbies winger Henry Speight and a Jesse Mogg penalty eased the pressure, with the visitors’ hard-working defence keeping the home side scoreless until the final whistle.

The result saw the Brumbies retain a five-point lead over the Queensland Reds in the race for the Australian conference. The Canberra club should seal the title in the final round next week when they return home to face the lowly Blues.

Berrick Barnes was one of the few bright spots of a disappointing night for the Waratahs, setting up their first try, scored by barnstorming hooker Tatafu Polota-Nau with a quick tap from a penalty in the 31st minute.

However, the hosts were made to pay for indiscipline, and allowed three penalty goals that saw the Brumbies go in at halftime with a 9-5 lead.

Barnes span out of two tackles and

collided with one of the upright posts before slamming the ball over the line in the 57th minute to put the Waratahs 139 in front.

The Brumbies responded four minutes later with fly-half Holmes hurling a long ball wide to Speight, who danced around a tackler on the right touchline and cantered over near the right corner.

Mogg, from 35 metres out on a tight angle, curled his penalty kick back just enough to give the hosts a four-point break in the 64th minute, defiantly defended by the Brumbies defence.

“It wasn’t exactly the victory we were after... but there’s quality across that (Waratahs) pack,” Brumbies captain Ben Mowen said in a pitchside interview.

“I’m really proud of these guys, we keep breaking these hoodoos... I thought our defence was much improved from the week before. “It’s good now, because we can say one game (to go) and then finals.” The winners of each of the Australian, New Zealand and South Africa conferences automatically qualify for the playoffs of the southern hemisphere provincial competition, while the next best three in the overall standings also go through. —Reuters

19

SUNDAY, JULY 8, 2012

SPORTS

Bafana Bafana turn 20 with little to celebrate JOHANNESBURG: South Africa ended decades in the football wilderness on July 7 1992 with a 1-0 victory over Cameroon and many starry-eyed supporters believed the national team would soon dominate the continent.

The nickname Bafana Bafana-The Boys in isiZulu-was also born on that wet night at Kings Park in Durban 20 years ago when Doctor Khumalo converted a late penalty against the Roger Millainspired 1990 World Cup quarter-finalists. But two decades after returning from apartheid-induced isolation, South Africa have little cause for celebration as they are ranked only 14 in Africa by FIFA with Sierra Leone among those above them. Sierra Leone football officials were locked out of their offices last month because of unpaid bills and forced to contact Europe-based national squad members from a Freetown internet cafe.

At the same time, South African Football Association (SAFA) officials

were parking luxury German-made sedans outside palatial headquarters beside the 95,000-seat Soccer City national stadium.

While the lifestyles of those who run South African football are the envy of those from many African nations, Bafana Bafana is a source of embarrassment with a recent friendly win over Gabon halting an eight-match winless run.

Multi-award-winning journalist Matshelane Mamabolo of the Johannesburg Star attributes the failure of South Africa to become a dominant force in Africa to the disappearance of schools football. “There used to be nationwide schools football every Wednesday and that is where the stars of the future were born. Now those who should be playing are hanging around street corners drinking alcohol and smoking,” he told AFP. “Winning the Cup of Nations four years after readmission was too soon-we

thought we were world beaters. The team of 1996 was exceptional, full of great players. Most of those wearing national colours today are a disgrace.”

New Bafana Bafana coach Gordon Igesund told reporters this week that “Bafana Bafana need to get back up there and be among the leading football nations in the world.”

Durban-born Igesund, a 56-year-old pragmatist who has guided four clubs to the South African title, took over last month after Pitso Mosimane was fired following a 1-1 home draw with lowly Ethiopia in a 2014 World Cup qualifier.

Igesund has been given a two-year contract reportedly worth $62,500 — half what Mosimane earned-and told to get hosts South Africa to the 2013 Africa Cup of Nations semi-finals at least and the World Cup in Brazil a year later.

It is a tall order with the top teams bar Egypt and Ivory Coast or Senegal set to play at the Cup of Nations while Bafana

Bafana have made a disastrous start to the World Cup campaign with draws against Ethiopia and Botswana.

The popular, silver-haired coach faces the same problem as many before him a lack of young talent coming through because national development has been largely ignored.

Tottenham midfielder Steven Pienaar is the only South African commanding a regular first-team place among the top European leagues and his performances for Bafana rarely match those at club level. If winning the 1996 Cup of Nations and qualifying for the World Cup in 1998 and 2002 were Bafana highlights, failure to make the 2012 African finals in Gabon and Equatorial Guinea was the lowest of many low points.

Mosimane did not understand the qualification rules and told his team to play for a draw at home to Sierra Leone when they needed maximum points to prevent Niger snatching top place.

South African players danced and sang their way around the Mbombela Stadium pitch in Nelspruit after a 0-0 stalemate only to discover later that Bafana Bafana would miss a second consecutive Cup of Nations. The lack of emerging talent has become so serious that Mosimane brought back 34-yearold South African Footballer of the Year and Moroka Swallows striker Siyabonga Nomvethe in a vain attempt to solve a scoring crisis.

There have also been pleas for another 34-year-old striker, Benni McCarthy of Orlando Pirates, to be recalled despite former national coach Ted Dumitru claiming the record Bafana Bafana scorer was 10 kilograms overweight.

A lack of top-class players and locals whose commitment is often questioned it adds up to a mammoth task for Igesund, whose reign begins with a September 7 friendly away to record five-time world champions Brazil. —AFP

England thrash Australia

PALLEKELE: Sri Lankan cricketer Kumar Sangakkara (third from left) shares a light moment with his teammates during a practice session ahead of their third Test cricket match against Pakistan.—AP

Greenish pitch delights Pakistan and Sri Lanka PALLEKELE: Pakistan and Sri Lanka begin the third and final Test in Pallekele today seeking an exciting finale on what appears to be a result-oriented wicket.

Both sides were relieved that the greenish pitch looked different from the lifeless track prepared for the rain-hit second Test at the Sinhalese Sports Club in Colombo, which ended in a tame draw.

“That was a boring Test-flat wicket and lots of rain-but this one will be different,” Sri Lanka’s vice-captain Angelo Mathews told reporters at the Pallekele International Stadium yesterday.

“There will be bounce and movement at the start and the wicket will take spin as the game goes on. Hopefully we will get a result if the rains stay away.” Sri Lanka, who won the first Test in Galle, are hoping to record their first series win in three years since defeating New Zealand 2-0 at home in 2009. Skipper Mahela Jayawardene insisted the hosts will go all out to win the final Test even though a draw would be enough to seal the series.

“We need to go with the intention of winning the Test,” Jayawardene wrote on the Cricinfo website. “Going in with a negative mindset and playing for a draw will never work. “Pakistan are a quality outfit, and if we don’t play to win, then we cannot take up the challenge posed by them. I will tell my guys to play hard cricket and be positive. “It will definitely be a sporting pitch and livelier than the one in the previous Test, but a lot will depend on the weather.”

Light rain has been forecast for next week, but the groundstaff were confident the weather would not interfere with the

cricket. The Pallekele stadium, built in 2009 on the outskirts of the hill town of Kandy, has hosted two drawn Tests so far, both of which were interrupted by bad weather.

Pakistan vice-captain Mohammad Hafeez, who scored 196 in the second Test, hoped dry weather would enable the tourists to seek a series-levelling win.

“No one wants another rain-affected game,” said Hafeez as rain delayed Pakistan’s training session yesterday. “We can’t win the series, but we will return home happy if we can win this match and draw the series. “The morale of the team is high after Colombo and we are ready for the challenge ahead.”

The batting flourished during the Colombo Test with Azhar Ali joining Hafeez as the team’s other century-maker in a first innings total of 551-6 declared after being sent in to bat.

Pakistan then dismissed the hosts for 391, grabbing the last five wickets for 21 runs, after centuries from Kumar Sangakkara and Tillakaratne Dilshan had lifted Sri Lanka to a comfortable 236-1.

Young left-arm seamer Junaid Khan claimed a five-wicket haul on a pitch that offered him no help and was deservedly named the man of the match in the batsmen-dominated Test.

Pakistan had enjoyed an impressive run before the current series, winning seven of their last nine Tests, including a brilliant 3-0 whitewash of top-ranked England earlier this year. But their hopes of clinching a 1-1 scoreline rest on how quickly they can dismiss Sangakkara, who scored an unbeaten 199 in the first Test and 192 in the second.—AFP

QPR close in on United’s Park SILVERSTONE: Queens Park Rangers have agreed to sign South Korean midfielder Park Ji-sung from Manchester United, British media reported yesterday.

QPR owner Tony Fernandes would not confirm the signing but told Reuters at the British Formula One Grand Prix that the club would be making an announcement on Monday at 1400GMT. “Lots is happening in the club. We’ve signed five players, we’ve got a few more to announce,” said the Malaysian aviation entrepreneur.

Reports said the agreement, which could potentially be worth 5.0 million pounds ($7.75 million), will cost QPR an initial transfer fee of 2.0 million for the 31year-old who, a year ago, signed a two-year deal to stay at United until the end of the 2012-13 season.

Park, who has made over 200 appearances for United since joining from PSV Eindhoven in 2005, has a reputation as a big game player able to relentlessly break up opposition attacks and send his own team mates on the offensive.

He was the first Asian to compete in a Champions League final in 2009, and won four Premier League titles at United. The former captain of his country, he made 100 appearances for South Korea between 2000 and 2011. South Korea is also an important growth area for Fernandes’ AirAsia airline.

Park would be the second United player to move to QPR this week following young defender Fabio Da Silva who has joined on a season long loan deal.

Fabio, who can play at fullback or in midfield, has played 53 times for United, but has rarely been a first-choice starter. He

Park Ji-sung

should get plenty of opportunities as QPR bid to establish themselves in the Premier League after staying up on the last day of the season following their promotion in 2011.

Fernandes said the club would probably sign three or four more players on top of those already announced before the start of the Premier League season.

“What (manager) Mark (Hughes) would like to do is have two people in each position,” he said. “Now whether we get to that situation...”

QPR are also planning a new 40-45,000 seater stadium in West London and have hired architects Populous, who designed the new London Olympic Stadium and Silverstone’s Wing pit and paddock complex. That would be more than double the capacity of QPR’s current Loftus Road home. Fernandes said those plans were looking good and a preferred site had been identified in the White City area.

“We could have sold 20,000 season tickets easily and I think with the investment in the squad and some of the ambitions that we have, and the catchment area that we are in, I don’t envisage that it will be difficult to fill up,” he added. —Reuters

CHESTER-LE-STREET: Steven Finn’s four-wicket haul laid the platform for England’s eight wicket hammering of Australia in the fourth one-day international here yesterday.

England, set a modest 201 for victory, finished on 201 for two with 13 balls as they won the series, going 3-0 up in this five match campaign after Wednesday’s clash in Birmingham was washed out.

“Our bowlers set the tone beautifully at the start,” said England captain Alastair Cook.

“Steven Finn took the wickets today, but the other guys bowled well too.”

Jonathan Trott (64 not out) and Ravi Bopara (33 not out) shared an unbroken stand of 65 as England recorded their ninth successive one-day international victory with 13 balls to spare.

Ian Bell (69) and Warwickshire colleague Trott had previously put on 66 for the second wicket.

Bell’s 94-ball knock, featuring nine fours, meant that in five innings since taking over as an opener following Kevin Pietersen’s limited overs retirement he’d scored 364 runs at an average of 72.8 with one hundred and three fifties.

Meanwhile Trott’s effort, in his 47th innings, saw him become the fourth fastest batsman to 2,000 ODI runs behind South Africa’s Hashim Amla (40 innings) and Pakistan’s Zaheer Abbas and Pietersen (both 45).

Earlier, fast bowler Finn’s man-of-the-match haul of four for 37 in his maximum 10 overs sparked an Australia top-order collapse as the visitors struggled in overcast conditions after losing the toss.

“They were great conditions for fast bowling today, it was a key toss to win,” said Finn. “We realised we had to bowl a fuller length and we did that well as a unit.”

Finn, yet to nail down a place in England’s Test side, added: “I have tried to be as consistent as I can in one-day cricket for the last 12 months and wherever that leads me to in Test cricket, I will take.”

Australia captain Michael Clarke said the toss had played its part in the result but stressed his side had been outplayed.

“England were outstanding once again and showed us how to play consistently in this form of the game,” said Clarke. “England had the better of the conditions, but we had the better of them at Lord’s and they still found a way to beat us.”

Clarke added: “England have outplayed us so far, and we have

LONDON: England’s Ravi Bopara (right) plays a shot during their one day international match against Australia at the Riverside cricket ground.—AP plenty of work to do ahead of to use part-time bowlers.

But next ball there was no the Ashes next summer (in Seamer Clint McKay (two for doubt when Peter Forrest was England).”

29) took the only wickets to fall, plumb lbw. Clarke survived the That Australia, still the world having Cook (29) caught at short hat-trick, before being dropped number one side in this format, extra-cover and getting Bell to on 28. But he found scoring recovered from a lowly 96 for six play on. tough and was out for 43 off 85 to 200 for nine was largely down England would have had even balls when bowled by Finn. to David Hussey’s 70. Cook and fewer runs to chase had they not Next ball Finn had Matthew Bell made a sound start to the dropped four catches, with Wade brilliantly caught by chase.

Hussey missed on 15 and 29. opposing wicket-keeper Craig Bell eased fast bowler James Finn, twice on a hat-trick, end- Kieswetter, who dived to his Pattinson, recalled alongside fel- ed just shy of his career-best four right and grabbed the onelow seamer Ben Hilfenhaus in for 34 which he achieved twice handed chance at the second place of of left-arm paceman against Pakistan in the United attempt.

Mitchell Johnson and spinner Arab Emirates in February.

Once again Finn was on a hatXavier Doherty, through the covEngland saw Finn claim two trick but Lee watched his first ers. Australia’s problems intensi- wickets in successive balls as ball pass wide of his stumps. The fied as all-rounder Shane Watson Australia slumped to six for two, series concludes with a and Lee both went off with calf although it needed a review day/night match at Old Trafford problems, meaning Clarke had before David Warner was lbw. on Tuesday.—AFP

SCOREBOARD LONDON: Final scoreboard in the fourth one-day international between England and Australia here yesterday: Australia England A. Cook c sub (Smith) b McKay 29 S. Watson b Bresnan 28 I. Bell b McKay 69 D. Warner lbw b Finn 2 J. Trott not out 64 P. Forrest lbw b Finn 0 R. Bopara not out 33 M. Clarke b Finn 43 Extras (w4, nb2) 6 G. Bailey b Bopara 9 Total (2 wkts, 47.5 overs) 201 D. Hussey c Anderson b Bresnan 70 Fall of wickets: 1-70 (Cook), 2-136 (Bell) M. Wade c Kieswetter b Finn 0 Did not bat: E Morgan, C Kieswetter, S Patel, T B. Lee c Broad b Anderson 27 Bresnan, S Broad, S Finn, J Anderson C. McKay c Bresnan b Anderson 6 Bowling: Lee 2.2-1-12-0; Hilfenhaus 9.4-0-36-0 (1nb, J. Pattinson not out 8 1w); McKay 10-1-29-2 B. Hilfenhaus not out 0 (1w); Pattinson 10-1-46-0 (1nb, 1w); Watson 1-0-5-0; Extras (lb2, w4, nb1) 7 Clarke 5-0-17-0; Hussey Total (9 wkts, 50 overs) 200 8.5-0-48-0 (1w); Warner 1-0-8-0; Fall of wickets: 1-6 (Warner), 2-6 (Forrest), 3-57 Result: England won by eight wickets (Watson), 4-68 (Bailey), Man-of-the-match: Steven Finn (ENG) 5-96 (Clarke), 6-96 (Wade), 7-166 (Lee), 8-174 Series: England lead five-match series 3-0 (McKay), 9-194 (Hussey) Bowling: Anderson 10-3-34-2; Finn 10-2-37-4 (1w); Previous Results Jun 29, 1st ODI, Lord’s: England won by 15 runs Bresnan 9-0-46-2 (2w); Broad 9-1-34-0 (1nb); Bopara 9-0-29-1 (1w); Patel 3- Jul 01, 2nd ODI, The Oval:England won by 6 wkts Jul 04, 3rd ODI, Birmingham: No result, rain 0-18-0

Champions suffer bitter twist of fate LONDON: Olympic Games medallists don’t always live happily ever after. Jesse Owens, who famously won four golds at Hitler’s 1936 Olympics in Berlin, endured tough times after his Games glory, even racing against horses and working as a petrol pump attendant to make ends meet.

But before he died from lung cancer at the age of 66 in 1980, Owens, the grandson of slaves, refused to be bitter. “When I came back from Berlin I couldn’t live where I wanted,” said Owens, aware of the contradiction between dominating an Olympiad planned as a showcase for Aryan might and the treatment of his own people in the United States.

“I wasn’t invited to shake hands with Hitler, but I wasn’t invited to the White House to shake hands with the President, either.”

The 1936 Games were the last before the Second World War. Around 20 of the Polish team were to die in the fighting as were around 25 German medal winners including Lutz Long who, despite Nazi discomfort, played his part in Owens’s achievements by helping the

American avoid missing qualification for the long jump final.

Long, who won silver behind Owens, died during the Allied invasion of Sicily in 1943. “You can melt down all the medals and cups I have and they wouldn’t be a plating on the twentyfour carat friendship that I felt for Lutz Long,” said Owens. New Zealand’s Jack Lovelock, who won the 1500m in Berlin, survived the war and moved to the United States where he worked as a doctor.

But the aftermath of a horse-riding accident was to account for his death just eight days before his 40th birthday. On December 28, 1949, he complained of feeling dizzy as he stood waiting at a New York subway station before suddenly falling onto the track and into the path of an oncoming train.

Polish-American sprinter Stella Walsh also endured a bitter legacy from Berlin. Walsh was second to America’s Helen Stephens in the 100m final. Many of her supporters tried to undermine Stephens by suggesting she was too fast to be a woman, but that slur returned

to haunt them in 1980 when 69-year-old Walsh was gunned down in crossfire during a botched bank robbery in Cleveland. A mandatory autopsy revealed Walsh had male genitalia as well as male and female chromosones.

Scotland’s Eric Liddell, the 400m gold medallist from the 1924 Olympics in Paris, and whose story formed the backdrop for the Oscar-winning movie Chariots of Fire, was another former athlete who never reached old age. He died at the age of 43 in 1945 in a Japanese internment camp in China where he had been working as a missionary. His grave remained unmarked until 1991 when a headstone was erected by the University of Edinburgh with the inscription: “They shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary.”

Later Olympic medallists were dying in more mysterious circumstances. Iranian wrestler Gholam Reza Takhti won a first Olympic gold for his country at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, but his anti-government beliefs were frowned upon by Shah Reza Pahlavi.—AFP

Stoner on German GP pole

SUNDAY, JULY 8, 2012

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Alonso takes F1 pole at rain-soaked Silverstone

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Woods and Mickelson to miss cut, Simpson leads

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WIMBLEDON: US player Serena Williams (left) celebrates with the trophy, the Venus Rosewater Dish beside Poland’s Agnieszka Radwanska (right) after their women’s singles final on day 12 of the 2012 Wimbledon Championships tennis tournament. — AP

Serena wins fifth Wimbledon title LONDON: Serena Williams was crowned Wimbledon champion for the fifth time yesterday as the American subdued a brave fightback from Polish third seed Agnieszka Radwanska to win 6-1, 5-7, 6-2 in a dramatic final.

Serena, who pockets a cheque for £1.15 milllion ($1.78 million), is the first woman over 30 to win Wimbledon since Martina Navratilova in 1990 and she needed all the experience gathered over her illustrious career to survive a remarkable revival from Radwanska.

After being completely out-classed for the first set and a half of her maiden Grand Slam final, Radwanska had Serena on the ropes before the sixth seed finally recovered her composure to reclaim the Venus Rosewater Dish in just over two hours on Centre Court.

Williams has now equalled her sister Venus’s tally of five titles at the All England Club, but more significantly the 30year-old’s 14th Grand Slam crown is her first at the majors since

her last Wimbledon triumph in 2010.

Inspired by the painful memories of her shock French Open first round exit against Virginie Razzano last month and a spell in hospital with a serious illness 18 months ago, Serena has been determined to reestablish her primacy. It is mission accomplished, but only just.

“I can’t even describe it. I almost didn’t make it a few years ago when I was in hospital. Now I’m here again and I’m so happy,” a tearful Serena said.

“I just really never dreamed of being here again after being so down. It just shows you should never give up. “It was really tough. Aggie played so well. But I’ve always wanted everything that Venus has. Sorry I had to copy you again Venus!”

Radwanska added: “I’m still shaking so much. I had the best two weeks of my life. Of course Serena was playing too good today but I’m just happy to be here in the final. “I was unlucky to play a few matches in the cold and rain. That didn’t help me.

It was not my day. I will try again next year.”

Radwanska had been so severely affected by an upper respiratory illness over the last few days that she withdrew from the doubles and cancelled her pre-match media commitments.

The 23-year-old, the first Pole to reach a Grand Slam final for 73 years, recovered sufficiently to play, but she might have wished she was back in her sick bed in the first set.

Serena bludgeoned the first of 17 aces-taking her final tally for the tournament to a remarkable 102 — to clinch the opening game and she was equally powerful with her groundstrokes, converting her third break point for a 2-0 lead.

She broke again in the fourth game and, although sympathetic cheers echoed around Centre Court when Radwanska finally got on the scoreboard, it wasn’t long before Williams closed out the set in just 36 minutes.

After looking out of sorts in the first set, a brief rain delay

Wiggins in yellow as Froome takes stage FRANCE: Race favorite Bradley Wiggins took command of the Tour de France yesterday as Sky teammate Christopher Froome secured a deserved maiden victory on stage seven.

Defending champion Cadel Evans of Australia finished second, with Wiggins in third only 2secs behind as Sky’s pace on the final, 5.9 km climb to the race’s first hilltop finish exacted a costly toll on some contenders.

BMC leader Evans, who made a futile bid for the stage win only to be passed by Froome in the final 100 metres, is now second overall at 10sec behind Wiggins.

Italian Vincenzo Nibali of Liquigas, considered the biggest challenger to Evans and Wiggins, is third at 16 with Estonian Rein Taaramae of Cofidis in fourth at 32.

“It’s a great day for the team,” said Wiggins, who started the first day in the hills in second place only 7sec behind Fabian Cancellara.

“I wanted to go for the yellow jersey and for Chris to win the stage but I had to tell him to slow down towards the end to keep something for the finish.”

Ahead of another, arguably trickier day in the Swiss Jura today and the first of two long time trials on Monday, Wiggins said it was not too early to take the race lead.

He said: “I don’t think it’s ever too early to take the lead of the Tour de France. It’s the yellow jersey. “It’s the hardest and biggest race in the world. It’s huge for me, something I’ve dreamt about since I was a kid.”

Team Sky came to the race with a number of talented climbers and their high pace-setting from the bottom of the steep climb to the ski station finish line was too much for some. Michael Rogers led the way from the first, steep pitches and with 3.8 km of the 199km remaining Australian compatriot Richie Porte took over at the front.

Nairobi-born Froome then took up the duties of pacing Wiggins with 2.1 km to race, dropping Russian Denis Menchov among

others in the process. At that point, only Evans, Wiggins, Nibali and Taaramae could hold on. Evans then made a move for victory with just over 350 metres to go but on one of the steepest sections of the climb Froome eased past the Australian to come over the finish with room to spare.

“I’m really happy because I didn’t expect this, not in the Tour de France,” said Froome, who claimed his maiden Grand Tour stage win on last year’s Tour of Spain where he finished runner-up just ahead of Wiggins.

Former podium finisher Frank Schleck, meanwhile, was among the Radioshack riders dropped relatively early, along with German teammate Andreas Kloden, American Chris Horner and, as expected, overnight race leader Cancellara.

RadioShack’s best placed rider is now Spanish veteran Haimar Zubeldia in fifth at 59. Schleck, however, was not alone in licking his wounds as Belgian Jurgen van den Broeck of Lotto (1:52), Spaniard Alejandro Valverde of Movistar (2:19) and Dutchman Robet Gesink of Rabobank (2:53) all saw their podium hopes crushed.

One of the day’s other big winners, meanwhile, was Taaramae. His encouraging fifth place finish at 19sec adrift allowed him to dispossess American Tejay Van Garderen (BMC) of the white jersey for the best placed rider aged 25 and under. “It’s a great day for me. I hope to take the white jersey all the way to Paris,” said Taaramae, who is now fourth overall at 42. “Who knows, maybe I can claim a top five finish on the way. We might be a small team but we’re not lacking ambition.”

Today’s eighth stage is another day of short, intense climbs from the Vosges to the Swiss Jura, but whether that can soothe Cancellara’s pains at losing the lead remains to be seen. “It’s been a hard first week and we’ll be glad to get to the rest day,” said the Swiss. — AFP

offered Radwanska a chance to regroup, yet it seemed any hopes of a revival had been snuffed out when Serena broke to love in the third game of the second set.

But to her credit Radwanska kept fighting and, finally unfurling the subtle shots which have proved so effective over the last fortnight, she converted her first break point to level in the eighth game.

Serena looked vexed by the Pole’s changes of pace and nerves seemed to get the better of her as she surrendered the set with a succession of errors at 5-6. On cruise control for so long, Williams was now being forced to battle for every point.

She thumped down four successive aces to hold serve and stepped up the power to land the decisive break for a 3-2 lead.

When she bagged another break with a delicate drop-shot, Serena punched the air as though the title was hers. Moments later it was and she was soon clambering into the players’ box to celebrate with Venus and the rest of her family. — AFP

Preview

Playing Federer takes the pressure off me: Murray

FRANCE: New overall leader Bradley Wiggins of Britain celebrates in the yellow jersey on the podium of the seventh stage of the Tour de France cycling race. — AP

The True Olympic spirit LONDON: True Olympic spirit is often found away from gold medallists with their agents and sponsorship deals-it is found in its purest sense in those that come last.

Swimmer Eric “The Eel” Moussambani and Paula Barila Bolopa may have made a splash in Sydney but only the best memories will recall Abdul Baser Wasiqi, Pyambuu Tuul, Charles Olemus, Mala Sakonninhom, Luvsanlkhundeg Otgonbayar, Mira Kasslin and Samia Hireche.

These athletes, however, would have impressed modern Olympic founder Pierre de Coubertin who famously claimed in his native French: “L’important n’est pas de gagner, mais de participer (The important thing is not to win, but to take part).”

Moussambani, Balopa, Wasiqi and co knew they would be nowhere near the winners’ podium but, had he been alive, de Coubertin no doubt would have shaken their hands warmly consider-

ing them Olympic heroes.

Moussambani of Equatorial Guinea at first created mirth with his choppy action, head held up water polo style, in stark contrast to the smooth efficiency of the fastest 100m freestyle competitors.

His time of 1:52.72sec was the slowest ever 100m time and slower even than the 200m world record.

But laughter quickly turned to admiration for a man who had only learned to swim eight months earlier, had never been in a 50m pool and only competed in the 2000 Games because of a special invitiation designed to encourage nations without the best training facilities.

Later compatriot swimmer Barila Bolopa also gained Olympic hero status in front of a packed stadium, clocking the slowest ever women’s 50m Olympic time of 1:03.97.

Why did she gain an ovation from the spectators and have media microphones thrust in front of her on leaving the pool? — AFP

LONDON: Preparing for what could be the defining moment of his career, Andy Murray believes he will be under less pressure in the Wimbledon final today because he is playing 16-times grand slam champion Roger Federer.

The majority of the 15,000 fans with a golden ticket for today’s final, not to mention the millions glued j to television screens around the country, will be willing Murray to become the first Briton to win the Wimbledon men’s singles for 76 years.

Swiss maestro Federer, who boasts a global army of admirers, will be chasing a record-equalling seventh Wimbledon crown and a return to the top spot in the ATP rankings.

It looks a dream scenario and Murray, the first British man to reach the final since Bunny Austin in 1938, said he is glad it is Federer facing him over the net.

“It’s a great challenge, one where I’m probably not expected to win the match, but one that if I play well, I’m capable of winning,” Murray said. “There will be less pressure on me today because of who he is.”

Federer, who will reach another couple of landmarks if he beats Murray, equalling the seven men’s singles titles of Pete Sampras as well as the 286 weeks the American spent at world No.1, produced a brilliant performance to beat 2011 champion Novak Djokovic and reach his eighth Wimbledon final.

After falling in the quarter-finals in the last two years, Federer said it was good to be back on the stage he is graced on the final Sunday for much of the past decade.

“All I hoped for was a good match from me, to be quite honest, to give myself a chance to be in the finals and have a shot at the trophy again really,” Federer said.

“I missed being in the finals here the last couple years obviously.” Federer said losing in the quarter-finals last year to JoWilfried Tsonga after being two sets up had been tough to take.

“I played so well against Tsonga it was a hard one to sort of accept to lose. You have to wait another year for your chance, and now I am finally back in that final. So it’s great.”

Murray enjoys an 8-7 lead over Federer in their previous meetings but the Swiss beat him in straight sets in the 2008 U.S. Open and 2010 Australian Open finals and the Briton is under no illusions about the size of the task facing him as he tries to win a maiden major title.

“He’s obviously one of the greatest players ever to have played,” said fourth seed Murray who beat Tsonga in a gripping four-set semi-final. “I’d be surprised if he wasn’t the best in terms of his win/loss ratio here.

“He’s been doing it consistently over a number of years. The matches he has lost the last couple of years was five sets against Tsonga, five sets against Berdych, five sets against Rafa.

He’s very, very tough to beat here.” — Reuters

Business

Obama defiant, Romney pounces on jobs report Page 23 Stimulus moves, profits to be focus Page 25

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‘Stay alert, stay alive,’ BMW road safety campaign

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Turkmenistan aims to produce 449bcm natural gas in 2012-16 Page 22

IBIZA, Spain: A worker opening a restaurant in Sant Antoni de Portmany on Spain’s Ibiza Island. Along with the millions of German, British, Italian and French tourists for whom the island is Spain’s best-known brand, there are other newcomers: Spaniards themselves, heading to Ibiza and the other Balearic Islands in search of work. — AFP

Iran to dodge ban, sell oil via consortium Tehran reaches agreement with European refiners DUBAI: Iran has reached agreements with European refiners to sell some of its oil through a private consortium, an official said yesterday, a move designed to circumvent sanctions intended to put pressure on Tehran to halt its disputed nuclear program.

The head of the oil products exporters’ union said the agreement between the exporters’ union, Iran’s central bank, and the oil ministry would get round a European Union ban on shipping insurance for tankers carrying Iranian oil, though he gave few details and

did not name the refiners involved. The EU put into effect a ban on the importation, purchase, or shipping of Iranian oil on July 1, and the Islamic Republic will see its oil exports fall by more than 50 percent this month from last year’s regular levels, costing it billions of dollars a month in revenue. “There have been discussions with European refiners, and a final agreement has even been reached,” said Hassan Khosrojerdi, the exporters’ union head, according to Iran’s Mehr News Agency.

Greek socialist leader wants more time for deficit cuts ATHENS: Greek socialist leader Evangelos Venizelos warned that the country’s recession would be deeper than projected this year, and called for extending the deficit-cutting plan to three years, at a meeting with inspectors from the EU, European Central Bank (ECB) and IMF. The socialists are one of the three parties comprising Greece’s new coalition government that emerged after a June 17 vote, keen to soften the punishing terms of a bailout that is keeping the debt-laden country afloat while driving it deeper into recession. Athens, due to run out of cash in weeks without support from the troika of the EU, International Monetary Fund and ECB, has fallen behind agreed targets partly due to a two-month political limbo of repeat elections.

The troika’s inspectors are on a fact-finding mission in Athens, reviewing Greece’s faltering progress on fiscal adjustment and reforms under a 130 billion euro ($162.6 billion) bailout deal.

“Mr. Venizelos insisted on the need to agree on a new, updated mediumterm fiscal strategy program,” a statement from his office said yesterday.

“He raised the issue of revising the bailout in line with the procedures foreseen in it and extending the time period of the fiscal adjustment to three years,” the statement said.

The meeting with Venizelos lasted a little more than an hour. The inspectors have already met with Prime

Minister Antonis Samaras and will meet Finance Minister Yannis Stournaras today.

With Greece’s economy set to contract by more than 5 percent in 2012, its fifth straight year of recession, and with almost one in four Greek workers jobless, the government says the austerity has become intolerable. On Friday, in his first policy speech since taking office, Samaras said his aim was not to demand a change of the goals set in the 130 billion euro bailout deal, but in the austerity policies imposed to meet them.

A Metron Analysis opinion poll published by weekly newspaper Ependytis yesterday showed Greeks are equally split on whether the country should stick to the agreed bailout terms or ditch them.

The poll showed 48 percent were in favor of sticking with the bailout and efforts to improve it, while another 48 percent believed it should be renounced for having failed. A 55 percent majority thinks Greece will avoid bankruptcy versus 40 percent who believes it will not. A 56 percent majority see the euro-zone withstanding the crisis while 39 percent expect the single currency bloc to eventually dissolve.

Asked to comment on the viability of the new coalition government, 48 percent felt the country would be soon led to new elections, while 46 percent expected the government to stay in power for at least one to two years. — Reuters

“In accordance with the agreement, it is planned that 20 percent of Iran’s oil exports will go through this private consortium.” He added: “It is likely that because of international restrictions, we will give minor privileges or discounts to some of the buyers of our oil.”

Khosrojerdi did not say which refiners were involved or how they would receive the oil. Asked what steps had been taken to circumvent the shipping insurance ban, he said only “With the agreement with some of the European refiners, this problem has been solved completely.”

Iran’s oil ministry authorized the private export of Iranian oil in May, the Iranian Student News Agency reported at the time. Historically, Iran’s National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) was solely responsible for the sale and marketing of Iran’s crude.

Before the EU embargo, Iran sold about one fifth of its crude to Europe. EU sanctions targeting insurance have severely disrupted Iran’s oil sales to Asia as well, and Japan, one of Iran’s top buyers, will import no Iranian crude in July. — Reuters

Boeing hopes for year of the Max at air show MINNEAPOLIS: A big air show is all about bragging rights. It’s where airplane makers announce large jet orders, dazzle customers with aerial displays and show off their latest technology.

But a debt crisis in Europe could make the industry more subdued when it gathers at the Farnborough International Airshow near London next week. It’s a huge event in the aerospace world, attracting 1,400 exhibitors and aerospace heavyweights such as Boeing, Airbus, Embraer, Bombardier and ATR. Air travel tracks economic growth, and there isn’t much of that right now in Europe, one of the world’s largest aircraft markets.

Europe’s crisis could crimp aircraft sales for Airbus and Boeing, the world’s two largest airplane manufacturers. Longer term, there is still plenty of demand from growing airlines in China, India and the rest of the developing world.

Barclays analyst Joseph Campbell expects total orders to fall this year, but not because of the economy. He thinks they’ll fall because Boeing and Airbus have a combined backlog of 8,312 planes, and they make roughly 1,000 a year. Their backlogs are so big, “and the first available slots so far away, that there’s not much left to sell” other than Boeing’s 737 Max, he says.

For Chicago-based Boeing, this year’s show offers a chance for its revamped 737, called the 737 Max, to close a gap with a rival jet. The Max has a more fuel-efficient engine than its predecessor and will compete with Airbus’ A320neo, another top-selling plane in the same size range that is getting a new engine. Higher fuel prices mean airlines are willing to pay for more fuel efficiency. Airbus got a jump on Boeing, offering the neo much earlier. It’s already got 1,325 orders from 25 customers. Boeing has

orders for 451 Maxes and commitments for more of the planes, which have a list price between $78 million and $102 million. “This is a year that they need to play catch-up,” says Richard Aboulafia, an aerospace analyst for the Teal Group.

Airbus aims to begin delivering the A320neo in 2015. Boeing’s 737 MAX will go into production in 2015 and start hauling passengers in 2017. Boeing heads to the event with a new chief of commercial aircraft, Ray Conner. Until late June, Conner ran Boeing’s sales efforts, so he’ll be right at home in Farnborough pitching the Max to potential customers.

Toulouse, France-based Airbus, meanwhile, announced last week that it would build its first airplane factory in the United States. The plant will produce the A320 in Mobile, Ala., starting in 2015, aiming to better compete against Boeing. — AP

EVERETT: Workers on Boeing’s 747-8 assembly line work inside the nose cone of a plane, in Everett, Washington. A spokesperson for Boeing said the company will be showcasing a full range of innovative new products, systems and services at The Farnborough International Airshow 2012. — AP

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SUNDAY, JULY 8, 2012

BUSINESS

Turkmenistan aims to produce 449bcm natural gas in 2012-16

Bayt.com report

Four types of difficult employees and how to manage them

Gas-fuelled GDP rises by 11.1% in Jan-June

ASHGABAT: Turkmenistan, holder of the world’s fourth-largest reserves of natural gas, plans to produce a total of 448.7 billion cubic metres (bcm) of the fuel in 201216, state media reported yesterday, in a rare disclosure of such data in the reclusive nation.

The central Asian nation of 5.5 million, where President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov wields sweeping powers and is titled Arkadag (The Patron) amid a rising personality cult, has not published data for the actual volume of its vital natural gas output and exports in recent years.

But lifting the veil of secrecy, state television said Berdymukhamedov had late on Friday presided over a government meeting to personally approve the guidelines of the development of Turkmenistan’s oil and gas sector through 2016. “According to the program ... a total of 448.7 bcm of gas will be produced during this period,” the T V report said, adding that Berdymukhamedov stressed a need to boost foreign investment in the promising sector.

Berdymukhamedov, who remains the main source of macroeconomic statistics in the ex-Soviet desert nation, also said the country’s energy-fuelled gross domestic product (GDP) had risen by 11.1 percent year-on-year in the first half of 2011. This compares to a 14.4 percent rise in the same period of last year and a 9.2 percent increase in the first half of 2010.

Average annual output of around 90 bcm of natural gas targeted by the state program is significantly higher than official and independent data for Turkmen production last year.

Estimates by energy major BP Plc put Turkmenistan’s 2011 natural gas output at

59.5 bcm, or 40.6 percent higher than in the previous year. A Turkmen official told an international gas conference in May that the country produced 66 bcm in 2011.

He gave no comparative data for the previous year.

Industry analysts have until now put Turkmenistan’s production potential at 75 bcm a year. They say that for several years until 2011, actual output was well below

to supply 9 bcm this year, 10 bcm in 2013 and 15 bcm annually from 2014. Natural gas is also exported to neighboring Iran via a smaller pipeline.

In 2011 gas export revenue totaled almost $11 billion, up 2.1 times over the 2010 level, the Turkmen official said in May. BP data show Turkmenistan’s natural gas reserves are equal to those of Saudi

Turkmenistan, holder of the world’s fourth-largest reserves of natural gas, plans to produce a total of 448.7 billion cubic metres (bcm) of the fuel in 2012-16, state media reported yesterday.

50 bcm due to small exports to the nation’s traditional market, Russia.

Increased natural gas output last year was largely due to larger gas exports.

A China-bound pipeline from central Asia was launched in December 2009 and Turkmenistan has up to now been the only supplier of gas to the network, expected

Arabia and are smaller than only those of Russia, Iran and Qatar. Auditor Gaffney, Cline & Associates has ranked Turkmenistan’s largest gas field Galkynysh, better known under its previous name South Iolotan, the world’s second-largest, with gas reserves of between 13.1 trillion and 21.2 trillion cubic metres. — Reuters

Italy raises $11.7bn with housing tax

Saudi’s Dar Alarkan Q2 net profit up 11%

ROME: Italy has raised more than 9.5 billion euros ($11.7 billion) so far in 2012 from a housing tax introduced as part of emergency budget measures, and is on track to meet its target for the full year, the Economy Ministry said yesterday. Prime Minister Mario Monti announced the new real estate tax (IMU) in December, along with a series of tax hikes, spending cuts and pension reforms in a tough austerity package aimed at boosting Italy’s strained public finances.

Following the June deadline for the first IMU installment, the ministry said the tax had raised a total of 9.55 billion euros. About 23.8 million contributors paid an average of about 400 euros, it said.

The results of the first six months of the year suggest the government will meet a target of 20.1 billion euros by the end of 2012, the ministry said. The IMU applies to first homes in addition to other property, reintroducing a similar tax which was scrapped under former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who quit in November amid soaring Italian bond yields and a looming debt crisis.

It has been among the more unpopular measures adopted by Monti’s government, adding to pressure on Italian families already struggling with recession, rising unemployment and stagnant wage growth. The Economy Ministry said in a separate statement on Saturday that the total raised from value added tax (VAT) in Jan-May 2012 had fallen 1.1 percent compared with the same period of the previous year. Italy hiked the main VAT rate to 21 percent from 20 percent in September 2011, but the ministry said stagnating domestic demand had led to the decline in the amount raised. — Reuters

JEDDAH: Saudi Arabia’s Dar al-Arkan, the kingdom’s largest property developer, said its second-quarter net profit rose 11 percent but still missed analyst expectations. The firm made a net profit of 331 million riyals ($88 million) in the three months ending June 30, compared with 298 million riyals in the same period a year earlier, it said in a bourse statement yesterday.

“The increase in net income for the six month period and the second quarter this year compared... is primarily due to the increase in real estate sales, which is attributable to the demand increase on the company’s products,” the statement said. A group of six analysts had forecast that Dar would achieve a net profit averaging 424 million riyals.

Operational profit increased 11.8 percent in the second-quarter to 341.7 million riyals, compared with 305 in the same period a year earlier, it said. The kingdom’s real estate sector is characterized by very strong demand for housing and was given a further boost early this month when the government said it had approved a mortgage law that will regulate lending to house buyers. Dar said in May it would book gains from a 741.7 million riyal ($198 million)-land sale in its second-quarter results. —Reuters

By Lama Atayar eing a manager does have its perks, you may get the corner office with the view, a marked parking space, probably even an attractive pay package, but we all know the managerial role is no walk in the park. So what’s the toughest part of the job?

According to Bayt.com’s ‘Management Challenges in the MENA’ poll, managing multicultural teams can be the most difficult part of their job as per 29.9% of managers. This particular management challenge increasingly comes into the spotlight in the MENA where an average workplace has multiple different nationalities, cultures and ethnicities interacting and working together.

Cultural diversity aside, an average workplace is usually also hugely diverse in terms of job skills, personalities, attitudes towards work and life and individual quirks and preferences. While this can contribute to an interesting and stimulating work environment, it does mean that occasionally we encounter a truly “difficult” employee i.e. someone whose personality, attitude, or approach to work and life is so skewed, it causes problems for a manager and the rest of the team.

The career experts at Bayt.com, the Middle East’s leading job site, have below classified four kinds of difficult employees and how to manage them to ensure that your team is as smooth and efficient as a well-oiled machine.

The Perennial Pessimist: This person will put a damper on every endeavor through their perpetual negativity. While it is good to have a devil’s advocate when brainstorming and bouncing ideas, a perennial pessimist will take a negative approach not for the benefit of idea development but just because they are generally uncooperative.

The Know-it-all: According to Bayt.com’s ‘Management Challenges in the MENA’ poll 37.2% of managers believe that mid-career employees are the hardest to manage. With a large influx of Gen-Y workforce, non-traditional ways of thinking and problem solving are the norm of the day. Interestingly the same poll also shows that 34.4% of managers believe that those at entry level are harder to manage. The Know-it-all is the person who is difficult to convince because they hold rigid views that are resistant to change possibly because they have been doing the job for a while. This brand of difficult employee is characterized by being arrogant, and having a perpetually superior attitude. Their belief that they can do no wrong makes them very stubborn and poorly receptive to constructive criticism.

Managing an employee with such qualities is difficult because it’s hard to get a Knowit-all employee to commit to a new idea or project or change their ways.

B

The Passive Aggressive: The Passive-Aggressive employee may not seem as overtly difficult as the other ‘types’ but they are no less toxic for a workplace. The Passive Aggressive employee is meek, submissive and avoids confrontation.

They have a problem saying ‘no’ which makes them take up more projects/tasks than they can handle, ultimately jeopardizing the deliverables and project timelines.

The Hostile Aggressive: The Hostile Aggressive type is the most overtly difficult type of employee. It’s easy to spot them, they are openly violent, pushy, abusive and generally get the team moral down.

Given that all personalities are different there is no one-size-fits all solution to deal with difficult employees. ‘You can’t control other people’s behavior, but you can control your responses to it’ according to Roberta Cava, author of Dealing with Difficult People - How to deal with nasty customers, demanding bosses and uncooperative colleagues . Below are a few steps you can take to confront this problem.

1. Don’t Ignore: Don’t ignore the problem. While an employee may be of value to the organization, this should not be an excuse for you to condone his/her behavior when it is counterproductive and adverse to the company’s wellbeing and morale.

Also do not wait for the problem to resolve itself, this will probably only reinforce the negative behavior cycle and perpetuate the problem further.

2. Intervene: Timely professional intervention is necessary; if possible take action immediately after such behavior is displayed. Sometimes it is necessary to make the difficult employee realize that their behavior is having a negative effect on the rest of the team. Timely feedback given very constructively and professionally and un-confrontationally can help the employee view their actions form others point of view and realize there are other ways to see and approach a situation.

3. Help: Once the difficult employee starts to see things from the others’ perspective, they can be coached to display healthier behavioral patterns. The HR department can assist in this regard by suggesting coaching and trainings and effective communication techniques. The Perennial Pessimist can learn to give constructive criticism rather than complain, the Know-it-all can learn to be more open to other’s opinions, the Passive-aggressive can undergo assertiveness training and the Hostile-aggressive can start addressing their anger and stress in a healthier manner. Ignoring this issue will not help, addressing difficult employees in a timely manner will ensure that the rest of your team does not suffer and dealing with this will definitely reflect well on your reputation as a manager.

EXCHANGE RATES Commercial Bank of Kuwait US Dollar/KD GB Pound/KD Euro Swiss francs Canadian Dollar Australian DLR Indian rupees Sri Lanka Rupee UAE dirhams Bahraini dinars Jordanian dinar Saudi riyals Omani riyals Philippine peso Egyptian pounds

.2740000 .4350000 .3490000 .2900000 .2730000 .2850000 .0040000 .0020000 .0758370 .7388600 .3850000 .0720000 .7243200 .0040000 .0430000

CUSTOMER TRANSFER RATES US Dollar/KD .2786000 GB Pound/KD .4358140 Euro .3499220 Swiss francs .2913460 Canadian dollars .2749700 Danish Kroner .0470550 Swedish Kroner .0401780 Australian dlr .2861080 Hong Kong dlr .0359290 Singapore dlr .2203240 Japanese yen .0034880 Indian Rs/KD .0000000 Sri Lanka rupee .0000000 Pakistan rupee .0000000 Bangladesh taka .0000000 UAE dirhams .0758820 Bahraini dinars .7392860 Jordanian dinar .0000000 Saudi Riyal/KD .0743130 Omani riyals .7239180 Philippine Peso .0000000

Al-Muzaini Exchange Co. ASIAN COUNTRIES

Japanese Yen Indian Rupees Pakistani Rupees Srilankan Rupees Nepali Rupees Singapore Dollar Hongkong Dollar Bangladesh Taka Philippine Peso Thai Baht Malaysian Ringgit

3.553 5.072 3.053 2.141 3.173 220.090 36.173 3.425 6.439 8.876 89.338

.2830000 .4460000 .3580000 .3000000 .2810000 .2920000 .0070000 .0035000 .0765990 .7462860 .4030000 .0780000 .7316000 .0072000 .0510000 .2822000 .4414450 .3544430 .2951110 .2785230 .0476630 .0406970 .2898050 .0363940 .2231710 .0035330 .0052040 .0021170 .0029970 .0034630 .0768620 .7488390 .3991510 .0752730 .7332730 .0068320

Saudi Riyal Qatari Riyal Omani Riyal Bahraini Dinar UAE Dirham

GCC COUNTRIES 74.883 77.158 729.380 745.850 76.464

ARAB COUNTRIES Egyptian Pound - Cash 48.250 Egyptian Pound - Transfer 46.466 Yemen Riyal/for 1000 1.309 Tunisian Dinar 176.65 Jordanian Dinar 396.190 Lebanese Lira/for 1000 1.884 Syrian Lier 4.899 Morocco Dirham 32.64 EUROPEAN & AMERICAN COUNTRIES US Dollar Transfer 280.700 Euro 354.52 Sterling Pound 441.820 Canadian dollar 274.79 Turkish lire 152.400 Swiss Franc 295.01 US Dollar Buying 279.500

SELL CASH

Australian dollar Bahraini dinar Bangladeshi taka Canadian dollar Cyprus pound Czek koruna Danish krone Deutsche Mark Egyptian pound Euro Cash Hongkong dollar Indian rupees Indonesia Iranian tuman Iraqi dinar Japanese yen Jordanian dinar Lebanese pound Malaysian ringgit Morocco dirham Nepalese Rupees New Zealand dollar Nigeria

291.200 748.360 3.670 280.100 551.100 45.700 48.500 167.800 48.360 357.100 36.860 5.320 0.032 0.160 0.235 3.620 397.650 0.190 91.760 44.400 4.310 229.200 1.818

10 Tola

GOLD 1,709.330

Sterling Pound US Dollar

COUNTRY

Bahrain Exchange Company COUNTRY

48.100 728.870 3.130 6.910 77.620 74.920 223.590 36.240 2.673 443.700 41.400 297.800 4.300 9.280 198.263 76.510 281.000 1.350

728.690 2.977 6.730 77.190 74.920 223.590 36.240 2.110 441.700 296.300 4.300 9.130 76.410 280.600

TRAVELLER’S CHEQUE 441.700 280.600

SELL DRAFT

289.700 748.360 3.435 276.600

223.600 46.330 355.600 36.710 5.150 0.030

397.610 0.189 91.760 3.240 227.700

SELL DRAFT

Australian Dollar Canadian Dollar Swiss Franc Euro US Dollar Sterling Pound Japanese Yen Bangladesh Taka Indian Rupee Sri Lankan Rupee Nepali Rupee Pakistani Rupee UAE Dirhams Bahraini Dinar Egyptian Pound Jordanian Dinar Omani Riyal Qatari Riyal Saudi Riyal

291.34 280.17 292.48 348.98 280.45 438.98 3.60 3.431 5.065 2.098 3.172 2.976 76.42 746.75 46.34 399.55 729.90 77.45 75.00

SELL CASH

283.00 277.00 295.00 356.00 281.50 438.00 3.65 3.550 5.200 2.400 3.700 3.200 77.000 746.000 47.75 397.50 732.25 77.75 75.25

Dollarco Exchange Co. Ltd Rate for Transfer

Selling Rate

US Dollar Canadian Dollar Sterling Pound Euro

280.750 278.155 438.550 351.875

Swiss Frank Bahrain Dinar UAE Dirhams Qatari Riyals Saudi Riyals Jordanian Dinar Egyptian Pound Sri Lankan Rupees Indian Rupees Pakistani Rupees Bangladesh Taka Philippines Pesso Cyprus pound Japanese Yen Thai Bhat Syrian Pound Nepalese Rupees Malaysian Ringgit

292.990 743.276 76.415 77.060 74.825 395.200 46.304 2.091 5.050 2.976 3.431 6.634 688.675 4.530 8.895 5.910 3.165 88.595

Kuwait Bahrain Intl Exchange Co.

UAE Exchange Centre WLL

GOLD 293.000 148.000 75.250

20 Gram 10 Gram 5 Gram

Norwegian krone Omani Riyal Pakistani rupees Philippine peso Qatari riyal Saudi riyal Singapore dollar South Africa Sri Lankan rupees Sterling pound Swedish krona Swiss franc Syrian pound Thai bhat Tunisian dollar UAE dirham U.S. dollars Yemeni Riyal

Currency

Rate per 1000 (Tran)

US Dollar Pak Rupees Indian Rupees Sri Lankan Rupees Bangladesh Taka Philippines Peso UAE Dirhams Saudi Riyals Bahraini Dinars Egyptian Pounds Pound Sterling Indonesian Rupiah Nepali rupee Yemeni Riyal Euro Canadian Dollars

280.500 2.967 5.155 2.100 3.429 6.760 76.475 74.955 745.700 46.318 445.200 2.990 3.250 1.550 359.000 284.500

Al Mulla Exchange Currency

Transfer Rate (Per 1000)

US Dollar Euro Pound Sterling Canadian Dollar Japanese Yen Indian Rupee Egyptian Pound Sri Lankan Rupee Bangladesh Taka Philippines Peso Pakistan Rupee Bahraini Dinar UAE Dirham Saudi Riyal *Rates are subject to change

280.950 349.000 438.250 278.350 3.565 5.068 46.405 2.100 3.432 6.720 2.987 748.200 76.500 75.500

SUNDAY, JULY 8, 2012

BUSINESS

Thai economy in ongoing recovery KCIC WEEKLY ASIA ANALYSIS

By Camille Accad KUWAIT: Thailand is showing promising signs of recovery after suffering from floods at the end of last year. Exports grew in May by 7.7% YoY, the highest rate in 8 months. The industry-led economy fell into contraction when the natural disaster late last year paralyzed the manufacturing sector, damaging the country’s exports. Since then, the Thai economy has been on a gradual recovery, sheltered from the global slowdown so far this year. Manufacturing is the leading sector in Thailand, representing about 40% of the gross domestic product (GDP). Japan has traditionally been the main foreign investor in this sector and in the country, attracted by a combination of skills and cheap labor that resulted in a competitive export sector to feed into the Japanese supply chain.

When demand from Japan was interrupted by the tsunami in March 2011, Thailand’s manufacturing output and exports fell into negative territory. Since the manufacturing-led exports sector account for around 75% of the economy, the country fell into deep contraction. In a moment of softening growth in the region, Thailand’s improving numbers are a relief for the markets.

However, it is unclear if this improvement is led only by reconstruction in Japan and Thailand or if other country’s customers are also recovering.

As the graph shows, manufacturing output contracted almost 50% YoY in November last year, pushing exports to a contraction of 12.5% YoY, when the floods hit the country. Since then, it has gradually improved to 5.6% YoY in May. Thailand has a very diverse manufacturing base,

with the largest component being machinery (mostly computing, but also electrical and machine tool), followed by processed foods and textiles. Most of these goods are exported (about 40% of total exports are machinery products) so, the recovery in manufacturing will remove constraints to the exports sector, boosting growth.

While economic growth is easing around the world, Thailand, the top car maker in Southeast Asia and the world’s second-largest maker of hard disk drives (HDD), has been trending upwards. Thailand has been less exposed than other countries to this year’s global slowdown as

the reconstruction of its supply chain helped sustain growth. Overall, companies resumed production quite rapidly; capacity utilization in May was about 76%, the highest in 12 years. Current lower oil costs are supporting the recuperation.

In May, exports to Europe (+5% YoY, up from 22.3% YoY ) and to China (up to +22.3% YoY ) grew, though this is partly due to base effect caused by Japan’s earthquake last year. However, as the Euro zone debt issue remains unresolved, weaker global demand could potentially damage Thailand’s exports despite companies recovering their capacity.

Despite positive short term prospects for the country, a structural change is expected. Recent salaries increases championed by the new government have eroded the cheap labor competitive advantage against other regional competitors. A government scheme was also introduced to push up rice prices, again affecting the competitiveness of the world’s largest rice exports.

Eventually Thailand will need to move to higher value added activities to regain competitiveness lost via salaries. However, with more than 40% of employment in the agricultural sector, the alternative is stimulating domestic consumption, which currently accounts for half of Thailand’s GDP. The wage increase spurred domestic consumption, which is already exceeding pre-floods levels, as indicated by the strong auto sales. The export-oriented economy even penned a third monthly trade deficit in a row as imports rose 18.2% YoY in May, due to factories still replacing damaged machinery but also to strong demand for consumer goods.

In the medium term, Thailand needs to either move up in the production of higher value added products, become more consumer-oriented or both. Currently the economy is well positioned to face a deterioration of global demand in the short term because (1) its consumer base is on the rise, (2) with inflation under control, the Bank of Thailand has room to cut its benchmark interest rate (currently at 3%), and (3) the manufacturing sector still has room to recover. In the meantime, getting long term position in the growing consumer sector in Thailand could be a good move.

— Camille Accad is an economist at KCIC.

Obama defiant, Romney pounces on jobs report President seeks to look at bright side of the data

FRANKFURT: A broker watches his monitor at the Frankfurt stock exchange Friday one day after the European Central Bank cut its key interest rate by a quarter percentage point to a record low 0.75 percent to try to help ease Europe’s financial crisis and boost its flagging economy. —AP

Wall Street faces fresh growth fears NEW YORK: US stock markets looked set for a rough ride next week after Friday’s disappointing jobs report underpinned fears that the economy’s already tepid growth is slowing.

The much-awaited June labor data showed dull job generation for the third consecutive month-at 80,000 jobs, far below what is needed to reduce the 8.2 percent unemployment rate. Stocks fell sharply as the weak hiring raised alarms the struggling three-year-old recovery from deep recession is petering out under pressure from Europe’s debt crisis.

Adding to the uncertainty for employers was the November presidential election and the automatic spending cuts and tax hikes that kick in at the end of year, analysts said.

“Continuing concern over slow growth in the global economy was the likely culprit for the weak jobs number in June,” said Paul Ausick at 24/7WallSt.com. “The worse news is that those concerns are only likely to get worse in the second half of the year as the US approaches both the presidential election and the fiscal cliff looming at the end of the year,” he warned.

The markets pared heavy losses in late trade, wrapping up a week shortened by Wednesday’s public holiday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished at 12,772.47

points, down 0.84 percent from a week ago.

The S&P 500 index, a broad measure of the markets, fell 0.55 percent over the week to 1,354.68. The tech-rich Nasdaq closed the week in positive territory, with a small gain of 0.08 percent at 2,937.33.

A warning on slowing global growth from International Monetary Fund managing director Christine Lagarde also hit sentiment Friday. Lagarde said the IMF would cut its growth forecast in its global outlook to be released later this month. The week’s economic calendar got off to a gloomy start after the Institute for Supply Management reported US manufacturing fell for the first time in three years in June. Later in the week the ISM reported growth in the massive services sector slowed last month.

Monday brings the unofficial kick-off of second-quarter earnings season, with aluminum giant Alcoa reporting results after the markets close. The economic calendar will lighten up. International trade will be in focus on Wednesday, as well as the minutes of the Federal Reserve’s last meeting of its policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee. “The May trade data will help set expectations for Q2 growth while the minutes of the June FOMC meeting will likely garner the most attention,” Nomura analysts said. — AFP

POLAND: Weak jobs data threw President Barack Obama on the defensive Friday, as Republican White House hopeful Mitt Romney told America’s middle class it did not have to put up with such misery.

Eagerly awaited monthly government figures made for grim reading, showing that only 80,000 jobs were created in June, well short of the rate Obama needs to swiftly cut the 8.2 percent unemployment rate before November’s election. The Labor Department report may interrupt several weeks of political momentum for Obama, and allow his foe Romney to shift the debate away from Democratic attacks on his past as a venture capitalist and back to the president’s record.

“There is a lot of misery in America today, and these numbers understate what people are feeling, and the amount of pain which is occurring in middle class America,” Romney said in New Hampshire, where he is on vacation. The president’s policies “have clearly not been successful in re-igniting this economy, in putting people back to work,” Romney said. “It doesn’t have to be this way. America can do better, and this kick in the gut has got to end.”

Obama, on the second day of a bus tour positioning him as a champion of the middle class, tried to prevent the jobs report, which follows weaker numbers on manufacturing and retail

sales, from suffocating his rationale for reelection. “It’s still tough out there,” Obama said at a school in Poland, Ohio, but took credit for saving the economy from a depression and argued Romney’s policies would risk creating the conditions that caused the crisis.

He chose to look on the bright side of the jobs report, saying it was a “step in the right direction,” but said more work remained to be done, though he noted businesses had created 4.4 million new jobs over the past 28 months.

Obama said the jobs figures were “a step in the right direction” but added: “we can’t be satisfied,” as Republicans branded him an economic failure.

The data, which makes it unlikely that unemployment will dip below the psychological 8.0 percent level before November, jolted Obama on the second day of a “Betting on America” bus tour in swing states Ohio and Pennsylvania. It offered an opening for Romney, who contends that his lucrative business career equips him with unique understanding of the economy and the policies needed to create jobs. “This is a time for America to choose whether they want more of the same; whether unemployment above eight percent month after month after month is satisfactory or not,” Romney said.

The president came across as defiant, animated and combative, in a performance apparently

Bailed-out AIG wants $30.2m in tax interest American International Group, the insurance giant saved by a massive federal bailout, wants some tax money back - from 1991. AIG is suing in Federal Claims Court in Washington for $30.2 million. It says that’s how much interest is owed from an overpayment 21 years ago. AIG said it underpaid taxes for 1997, 1998, and 1999. But it said the government owes it interest for an overpayment in 1991. It said the two claims work out to $30.2 million in the company’s favor.

New York-based AIG said it filed the lawsuit on Thursday because the statute of limitations on its claims was about to run out. The statute of limitations runs for six years on the amounts, which AIG said were determined in July and August 2006. The Internal Revenue Service is run by the Treasury Department, which also owns about 60 percent of AIG common stock, which it has been selling in pieces. AIG’s $182.5 billion bailout was the largest of the financial crisis. Last month, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York said the insurer had completed repaying loans it made as part of the bailout. AIG shares fell 40 cents, or 1.3 percent, to close at $31.57. The stock, which dropped to single digits during the financial crisis, has traded between $19.18 and $35.05 in the past 52 weeks. — AP

Rate rigging probe rages in UK, Germany LONDON: A global investigation into manipulation of interbank lending rates widened on Friday with Britain’s fraud squad taking up the case and sources telling Reuters that Germany’s markets regulator had launched a probe into Deutsche Bank. Authorities in the United States, Europe, Japan and Canada are examining more than a dozen big banks over suspected rigging of the London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor).

Britain’s Barclays has so far been the only bank to admit wrongdoing, agreeing last week to pay a fine of more than $450 million.

The rate-fixing scandal has exploded into the front ranks of politics, especially in Britain, where politicians say the bankers responsible should end up in jail.

Barclays CEO Bob Diamond was forced to resign this week and told a parliamentary committee that some of his firm’s former staff could face criminal charges.

The Libor rates, compiled from estimates by large banks of how much they believe they have to pay to borrow from each other, are used to determine interest rates on trillions of dollars worth of contracts around

designed to show him as undeterred by tough economic news and determined to fight hard right up until the election. Obama had earlier put on a brave face, stopping his imposing black bus in Ohio to share an eggs and bacon breakfast with tire workers, to highlight his decision in 2009 to impose tariffs on Chinese tire imports.

No president for 70 years has won reelection with the national unemployment rate above 7.4 percent, and analysts will be watching to see whether the jobs data tightens the presidential race, in which Obama is narrowly ahead. But the president is better placed than Romney on other issues like foreign policy, health care and on who cares most about the middle class. He is also more popular with key voting blocs such as Hispanics and women.

Obama mentioned the jobs data briefly in a wider speech that included a staunch defense of his unpopular health care law-which was declared constitutional in a surprise Supreme Court ruling last week.

He also accused Romney of a reversal on health care, saying he implemented a penalty for people who refuse to buy health insurance when he was a governor but says a similar plan

by Obama is a tax he would reverse. “The guy I’m running against tried this in Massachusetts and it’s working just fine... even though now he denies it,” Obama said. — AFP

the world. Germany’s BaFin regulator has initiated a “special investigation” into Deutsche Bank, a process which is more severe than a routine investigation initiated by a third party, two sources said on Friday. The sources included a banker and a regulator, both of whom spoke on condition of anonymity.

In Britain, the lack of criminal prosecutions of the rate fixing has been one of the issues infuriating politicians, after e-mails were published showing bankers boasting of fiddling figures and congratulating each other with offers of champagne. Britain’s Serious Fraud Office said in a brief statement that its Director David Green had decided formally to accept the Libor case for investigation. The SFO will now assemble a case team to pursue an investigation - although it could take years. A spokesman noted that its remit would not be confined to Barclays. “We don’t mention Barclays in our statement, just Libor,” the spokesman said. A source close to the SFO and familiar with its Libor case file said: “A lot of people will be calling around to find lawyers.”

The SFO considered launching an investigation into

Libor last summer but dropped the plans in September, in part for budgetary reasons, said the source, who spoke on condition he would not be identified. The SFO has been criticized in the past for failing to achieve convictions in high-profile fraud cases. It gave no further details of how it would conduct its probe. News of a “special investigation” in Germany also raises the stakes. Deutsche Bank said earlier this year it was cooperating with authorities investigating accusations of manipulation of Libor, the only German bank to make such a disclosure so far.

One of the sources who disclosed the investigation to Reuters said the results were expected in mid July.

The bank declined to comment on Friday but referred to its quarterly report, which said it has received subpoenas and requests for information from US and European authorities in connection with setting interbank rates. BaFin declined to comment specifically on whether it was probing Deutsche Bank but said it was in looking into suspected manipulation of Libor rates by banks.—Reuters

TOKYO: International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief Christine Lagarde (center) enters a lecture hall before giving a speech at the Mita University campus in Tokyo yesterday.

Lagarde warned that the global economy was slowing, with a soon-to-be published growth outlook lower than earlier forecasts. — AFP

Almarai Q2 net profit up 8.7% JEDDAH: Saudi Arabian dairy and food producer Almarai Co posted yesterday an 8.7 percent year-on-year rise in its second quarter net profit. The Gulf’s largest dairy firm made 379.5 million riyals ($101.2 million) in the three months ending June 30, compared with 349.3 million riyals in the same period a year earlier, it said.

Almarai said the rise in second-quarter net profit was due to increased sales in all sectors as well as fully consolidating International Dairy & Juice Ltd, in which Almarai now holds a majority stake.

“Sales have increased by 164.6 million riyals as a result of this first time consolidation,” it said.

Operational profit for the second quarter increased by 7 percent to 434.6 million riyals compared with 405.8 million riyals in the same period a year earlier.

Almarai raised 1 billion riyals through its first sukuk, or Islamic bond, in March, which it said was 4.7 times oversubscribed. In May the dairy firm’s board approved a 15.7 billion riyal, five-year investment plan, that will draw on finance from bank loans and Islamic bonds.

The money will replace the company’s existing investments base and fund expansion between 2013 to 1017 of its operations in farming, manufacturing, distribution and logistics, it said.

Almarai has been keen to expand its footprint outside its core presence in the Gulf region. I n December it acquired Fondomonte S.A., which owns and operates firms in Argentina, to secure feed for its dairy herd and poultry business. — Reuters

24

business

SUNDAY, JULY 8, 2012

Kuwait bourse ekes out marginal gains BAYAN WEEKLY MARKET REPORT KUWAIT: Kuwait Stock Exchange (KSE) ended last week in the green zone. The price index ended last week with an increase amounted to 1.24%, while the weighted index increased by 0.44% compared to the closings of the week before, where KSX-15 Index raised by 0.63%. Furthermore, last week’s average daily turnover increased by 1.27%, compared to the preceding week, reaching KD 17.72 million, whereas trading volume average was 249.11 million shares, recording increase of 34.67%.

KSE managed to return to the green zone supported by the buying trend appeared during last week, included a wide variety of stocks, especially those which recorded notable losses in the previous weeks, with special focus on the Financial Services sector.

As far as the annual indices performance, two of the market main indices recorded losses. While the price index recorded increase of 0.81%; the weighted index recorded loss amounted to 0.38% and KSX-15 index retreated by 1.20%.

By the end of the week, the price index closed at 5,861.15 points, up by 0.03% from the week before closing, whereas the weighted index registered a 0.07% weekly loss after closing at 404.08 points. Moreover, the KSX-15 index recorded 0.23% weekly gain after closing at 987.97 points.

Sectors’ Indices Most of KSE’s sectors ended last week in the red zone, expect One Sector no Change while the other Sectors recorded increases. The Technology sector headed the losers list as its index declined by 2.36% to end the week’s

activity at 1,053.64 points. The Telecommunications sector was second on the losers’ list, which index declined by 0.78%, closing at 897.11 points, followed by the Oil & Gas sector, as its index closed at 923.44 points at a loss of 0.72%. The Consumer Services sector was the least declining as its index closed at 948.36 points with a 0.13% decrease. On the other hand, last week’s highest gainer was the Financial Services sector, achieving 3.35% growth rate as its index closed at 857.73 points. Whereas, in the second place, the Consumer Goods sector’s index closed at 938.00 points recording 2.12% increase. The Banks sector came in third as its index achieved 0.69% growth, ending the week at 953.41 points.

Sectors’ activity The Financial Services sector dominated total trade volume during last week with 645.43 million shares changing hands, representing 51.82% of the total market trading volume. The Real Estate sector was second in terms trading volume as the sector’s traded shares were 24.29% of last week’s total trading volume, with a total of 302.59 million shares. On the other hand, the Financial Services sector’s stocks where the highest traded in terms of value; with a turnover of KD32.48 million or 36.66% of last week’s total market trading value. The Banks sector took the second place as the sector’s last week turnover of KD 13.90 million represented 15.70% of the total market trading value.

Market capitalization KSE total market capitalization grew by 0.09% during last week to reach KD 27.39 billion, as Five of KSE’s sectors recorded an increase in their respective market capitalization, but one no change, whereas the other Sixth recorded declines. The Industrials sector headed the growing sectors as its total market capitalization reached KD2.96 billion, increasing by 2.81%. The Banks sector was the second in terms of recorded growth with 0.85% increase after the total value of its listed companies reached KD13.58 billion.

The third place was for the Real Estate sector, which total market capitalization reached KD 1.32 billion by the end of the week, recording an increase of 0.59%.

The Consumer Goods sector was the least growing with 0.12% recorded growth after its market capitalization amounted to KD 594.16 million.

On the other hand, the Telecommunications sector headed the decliners list as its total market capitalization decreased by 3.81% to reach, by the end of the week, KD 3.87 billion. The Oil & Gas sector was second on this list, which market value of its listed companies declined by 3.08%, reaching KD 365.02 million, followed by the Technology sector, as its market capitalization amounted to KD70.04 million at a 2.84% decrease.

For fur ther details, please visit our web site: www.bayaninvest.com —Prepared by the Studies & Research Department Bayan Investment Co.

SUNDAY, JULY 8, 2012

BUSINESS

Global markets still in the throes, Gulf upbeat GULF INVESTMENT CORPORATION MONTHLY REPORT KUWAIT: Despite the substantial fiscal and monetary stimulus, the global economy is expected to grow at a hesitant 2.5-2.8% in 2012. With low growth rates, the burden of old debt weighs increasingly heavily, and could generate acute problems for the euro-zone, and exert drag on global economic growth. The tumbling growth prospects in the US, is a consequence to the compressed grounds for fiscal policy arising from the ongoing political partisan gridlock. Prospectively, as the tax credits expire by the end of 2012, the US economy is likely to be challenged by the fiscal cliff of early 2013, which underscores the need for policies that simultaneously accelerate economic growth and reduce the federal deficit.

The US Fed appears divided on QE3, which on a cost-benefit analysis has its pros and cons. On the positive side, launching another round of quantitative easing could drive up stock prices and depress the US Dollar; outcomes that could in turn help US consumers and Banks while they boost foreign trade. On the downside, QE3 could drive up commodity prices, notably Oil prices and drop interest rates sharply, thus making it less profitable to Banks to provide loans as they receive no or little compensation for the risk of lending.

Global markets continue to be overshadowed by uncertainties resulting from the “odd swaps” of private debts for public debts. Many observers believe that the rescue money that the ECB provided for private EU banks were used by these banks to purchase sovereign debts which creates a vicious circle between privatepublic debts. Accordingly, the severity of the euro area crisis as illustrated the surge in the 10-yr yield on Spanish government bonds will likely force Spain to seek a full sovereign bailout, a move which could make the resources of the ESM appear insufficient and an EU-level commitment to save banks and peripheral economies is underway.

GCC Macro The economic fundamentals of the GCC are strong and the outlook is highly positive. Overall, the combined nominal GDP of the GCC region is expected to hover around $ 1.6 trillion with an overall economic growth rate of nearly 5.8% in real terms for 2012. The forecast growth rate is anchored on several solid foundations; the first is the continued fiscal expansion that the GCC economies have been pursuing since 2008 along with the solidified partnership with private sector corporations and institutions. The partnership yielded dividends seen by the rising share of the nonoil sector in the total GDP of the GCC economies.

The GCC economies have embarked on massive projects especially in the energy and infrastructure sectors which tend to have high investment multiplier effect. It is estimated that the GCC investments in these sector will exceed the $1.1 trillion mark over the course of the next ten years. Secondly, the economies are benefitting from the firm oil prices which exceeded $115 to the barrel during the first half of 2012.

Despite recent downtrends, we anticipate that the market fundamentals will maintain an overall price for

the whole year in the vicinity of $104/ barrel. The third foundation is in terms of the continued efforts to reform the economic and administrative environments including the labor market mobility, the enhanced investment and doing business measures and laws and the increased competitiveness rankings of the GCC economies among countries of the world.

Beyond that, the GCC economies continue to improve the dynamics of the labor markets by enhancing labor mobility, investing in training and ensuring the employability of native workers in order to reap the full benefits of the positive growth outlook.

GCC equity markets Global equities have displayed mixed results during the month of June as the US and Asia try and distance themselves from the deep-rooted debt problems prevalent in their European counterparts. As the summer season gets into full swing, many investors have taken their profits and decided to remain on the sidelines. The European picture remains as unclear as ever, with stiff German resistance to jointly issued eurobonds hampering progress talk amongst the major powers of the EU. While the Greek people have voiced their opinion and chosen the pro-austerity party to rule their debt-ridden country, the future of the euro remains doubtful as Spain’s weak and under-capitalized banking sector becomes the focal point of investor’s worries. Some encouraging US housing data helped propel US equities marginally, but the dark cloud of the European debt crisis continues to dominate proceedings in global markets.

GCC markets were greatly affected by the ongoing episodes in global markets, most notably Europe.

Adding to the woes already bestowed upon the GCC markets by their global counterparts, a severe decline in oil prices due to waning global demand have put the GCC governments under increased scrutiny with their proposed domestic spending plans. WTI and Brent crude have slipped -2.18% and -3.58% respectively for the month. Investors have taken a defensive stance for the time being given seasonality effect and the evident geopolitical tensions in the region. Lack of liquidity and no clear catalyst for a market upturn have prompted the S&P GCC Index to shed -4.00% for the month of June.

Saudi Arabia’s Tadawul Index continued its decline from the fervent rally it experienced earlier in the year, shedding -3.80% for the month. The Real Estate sector was the worst performer, plunging -10.55% for the month while other heavyweight sector declines contributed to the downfall of the index. The Telecom sector also declined significantly, dropping -7.70%.

The heavyweight Banking and Petrochemical sectors fell -4.18% and -6.67% respectively.

In the UAE, Abu Dhabi’s ADSM Index emerged as the only one in the region to end on a positive note, gaining +0.27%. The positive performance stemmed from an upturn in the Real Estate sector in the Emirate, which rose a significant +4.21%. Moreover, a surge in the heavyweight Telecom sector pushed the index up, as the sector soared +4.67% for the month.

On the contrary, the Banking sector declined by 2.24% in Abu Dhabi. In neighboring Dubai, the DFM Index performed poorly compared to Abu Dhabi, as it slid -1.33% for the month. The negative performance was mainly due to a slide in the Banking sector which fell -0.89%. In addition, the Services and Real Estate sector both shed -1.67% and -3.27% respectively.

In Qatar, the QE Index fell -3.49% for the month and continued to disappoint investors in 2012. Qatar has had a weak year compared to previous years as the momentum it once had eludes the GCC nation.

Sectors were down across the board in the Index, with the Industrial sector performing the worst, down 7.43%. The Services and Banking sectors were also down -4.82% and -1.63% respectively.

Oman’s MSM Index fell -1.13% for the month as its heavyweight Banking sector took a plunge, shedding a significant -4.31% for the month, while the Industrials sector was also down -3.00%. In Bahrain, the BSE Index fell -1.13% as the nation continues to be troubled by its political and social unrest. The Hotels & Tourism sector, which weighs significantly in the economy, was down -1.44%. In addition, the Banking and Services sector were both down -2.56% and -1.33% respectively. In Kuwait, continued political wrangling between Parliament and the Emir have weighed the index down heavily. The KWSE (Weighted) and KWSE (Price) indices were down 0.60% and -6.53% respectively.

The price of oil will be a major determinant in how GCC economies and markets perform in the future.

With continued doubts lingering about the recovery of the global economy, and rising evidence of waning demand for oil, GCC governments and markets will remain volatile if oil prices continue to slide as they have been recently. With no short term catalyst evident, as growth in China slows and Europe’s debt problems far from over, the GCC markets continue to be vulnerable in the short term to global events amidst a worrying financial climate.

GCC credit markets Europe was in the thick of the action, as rising yields on Spanish and Italian bonds, Spain’s EUR 100bn request for bank recapitalization, marginal victory for pro-bailout parties in Greece and the weak composite PMI numbers for Euro-zone, dominated headlines. While Cyprus became the fifth EU nation to apply for bailout, China signaled a slowdown as it recorded eight consecutive months of PMI numbers below 50. In the US, the Fed lowered the estimate for 2012 growth to a range of 1.9% to 2.4%. from 2.4% to 2.9% in April, and also expanded its “Operation Twist” program by USD267 bn. The month also witnessed an across the board rating cut for Banks.

The month was good for regional markets with all the major regional indices ending at all-time highs.

The HSBC Nasdaq-Dubai GCC USD Sukuk/Bond TR Index (GCCB) increased m-o-m, to close at 148.33 from 145.27 and spreads tightened significantly by 32bps, yielding 4.07%. The HSBC Nasdaq-Dubai USD Sukuk TR Index (SKBI) increased m-o-m from 138.44 to

140.40, while the HSBC Nasdaq-Dubai GCC Conventional USD Bond TR Index (GCBI) traded in a range of 149-151. Meanwhile, the CDS Sovereign market saw tightening of spreads across the spectrum.

However, High Volatility names like Dubai (-8.40%) and Bahrain (-3.73%) were the outperformers, and Abu Dhabi (-7.26%) led the winners in the Investment Grade space.

The Primary market saw a flurry of action during the month, and all issues were significantly oversubscribed. The month started with a benchmark 2017 Sukuk issuance by Islamic Development Bank (IDB), which, due to strong response, was increased to $800mn and priced at MS+40bps, yielding 1.357%.

This was followed by issuances by Kingdom of Bahrain (BAH) and Majid Al-Futtaim (MAF) in the UAE. BAH tapped the market with a benchmark 2022 bond issuance, which was scaled up to $1.5bn, and priced at MS+437.5bps, as the Order book rose more than $6bn. MAF came to the market with a benchmark size bond of 2019 maturity, which was oversubscribed and priced at MS+389.7bps. This was the second issue by MAF during 2012, following the Sukuk issuance in Jan’12. The pipeline remains strong with Tamweel announcing its plan to launch a Residential Mortgage Bond Security (RMBS), backed by real estate properties in Dubai.

Moody’s upgraded Jebel Ali Free Zone (JAFZA) to ‘B1’ from ‘B2’, as a robust business profile continues to underpin the company’s ratings. It serves more than 6,000 customers, which represent a substantial pool of tenants, and since 2008 the company has managed to maintain EBITDA margins in excess of 60%.

The European crisis has taken centre stage as risky assets start trading around macro headline news. We are in a world characterized by short market cycles driven primarily by investor sentiment and positioning. However, GCC credits are showing some degree of resilience, and GCC credit continues to trade cheap when compared to ratings, as the regional primary and secondary credit markets continue to benefit from a very supportive investor base. Middle East investors acquired 50% of total issuance out of the GCC so far this year.

In the ST, the market will continue to prefer Investment Grade over High Volatility space till the global uncertainty recedes. We continue to prefer the more defensive credits, primarily out of Qatar, Saudi and Abu Dhabi. We like Quasi Sovereign names, given the attractive spread pick up over sovereign. Overall, we suggest remaining on the short end of the curve i.e. reduce duration, given the present global uncertainty.

However, some value is emerging in the 10Y part of the curve for Abu Dhabi and Qatar. 5Y/10Y curve appears to be steep. We also suggest to selectively look at names in High Volatility space with strong franchise value, profitable business model and stable cash flow. Due to technical and fundamental reasons, we continue to like Dubai names in High Volatility space. However, in ST, market in general and Dubai in particular can witness some selective profit booking due to recent sharp run up.

Stimulus moves, profits to be focus WALL STREET WEEKLY OUTLOOK

NEW YORK: Ttraders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Stocks dropped sharply on Wall Street on Friday after the US government reported that only 80,000 jobs were created in June, the third straight month of weak hiring. — AP

Heinz CEO’s pay dropped to $14.4 million in 2012 NEW YORK: H J Heinz Co, the world’s biggest ketchup maker, says it gave its CEO a pay package worth $14.4 million in its fiscal 2012, down 8 percent from last year, according to an Associated Press analysis of a regulatory filing. The drop in pay for William Johnson, who has been chief executive since 2000, was largely the result of lower performance-based bonus pay. The company’s net income for the fiscal year ending April 29 declined 7 percent from the previous year.

The 63-year old Johnson, who also serves as chairman and president, was given a salary $1.3 million, up 4 percent from the previous year. His stock and options came to $4.1 million, compared with $4 million the previous year.

His bonus pay came to $7.7 million, down 13 percent from $8.9 million. The incentive pay is based on a company formula that uses metrics including the company’s sales growth and profitability.

All other compensation, which included car allowances and contributions to retirement plans, amounted to $1.3 million, down from $1.4 million. Like other food companies, Heinz in the past year has raised prices on its products - like Ore Ida frozen potatoes and Classico pasta sauces - to offset rising commodity costs. The Pittsburgh-based company has also said it would cut jobs and close plants

to lower costs and improve productivity.

As growth struggles at home, the company is also focusing on countries such as Brazil, China Russia and Indonesia, which are growing faster than the US and Western Europe.

Looking ahead Heinz foresees fiscal 2013 earnings per share rising 5 to 8 percent, excluding special items. The AP formula calculates an executive’s total compensation by adding salary, bonuses, perks, above-market interest the company pays on deferred compensation and the estimated value of stock and stock options awarded.

The formula doesn’t count changes in the present value of pension benefits. That makes the AP total slightly different in most cases from the total reported by companies to the Securities and Exchange Commission. The value that a company assigned to an executive’s stock and option awards was the present value of what the company expected the awards to be worth to the executive over time.

Companies use one of several formulas to calculate that value. The number is just an estimate and what an executive ultimately receives will depend on the performance of the company’s stock in the years after the awards are granted. Most stock compensation programs require an executive to wait a specified amount of time to receive shares or exercise options. — AP

NEW YORK: Wall Street has been running in circles for the past two months, and the pattern may continue despite the upcoming start of the earnings season. Quarterly report cards from blue-chips Alcoa and JPMorgan next week could fade into the background as traders jockey for position before key data from China and more central bank headlines next week.

After three major central banks eased monetary policy this week, investors will comb through the minutes of the latest Federal Reserve policy meeting, which will be released on Wednesday, to see what officials said about a further round of asset purchases.

US stocks face headwinds from a slowing global economy.

Europe’s debt crisis has drawn much of the attention, but little clarity has emerged about how the euro-zone’s debt and banking problems will be fixed despite numerous meetings. The uncertainty has left the market in the hands of traders, who look for opportunities for quick returns, while investors, who are in the market for the long haul, watch from the sidelines.

The S&P 500 flirted with going negative for the year shortly before posting its best week since December. The benchmark index is less than 0.1 percent above where it was two months ago.

“Traders are happy going in and out of the market within a range, but for the average investor it’s a market in which the path is still unclear,” said Quincy Krosby, market strategist at Prudential Financial in Newark, New Jersey. On Friday, the S&P 500 closed down 0.55 percent for the week. The index has posted four weeks of gains and four of losses in the last eight. Weak US labor market data on Friday raised the chances in favor of the Fed launching a new round of monetary stimulus to boost growth, according to a Reuters poll. The Fed’s minutes midweek will be followed Thursday by the Japanese central bank’s views on the health of its economy after a two-day meeting. “If we do see additional asset purchases from the Bank of Japan that would depreciate the yen and would be a short-term positive for global equities,” said Brian Jacobsen, chief portfolio strategist at Wells Fargo Funds Management in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin. The recent central bank actions are seen as precautionary moves as the global economy stalls. Next week’s gross domestic product data out of China will help give the market important clues about the world’s second-biggest economy. “Some of the negative news is built in, and I’m anticipating a positive surprise coming out of China,” Jacobsen said.

Economists expect China to report year-on-year GDP growth of 7.6 percent, compared to an 8.1 percent yearly gain in the first quarter. Other Chinese data next week include inflation, loan growth, trade balance and retail sales. Europe remains on traders’ minds despite an agreement last week that opens the door for troubled banks to receive rescue funds. However, Italian and Spanish borrowing costs have resumed their rise in a bearish sign for markets.

Testimony by ECB President Mario Draghi to Europe’s parliament tomorrow will be followed by a meeting of euro-zone finance ministers. Aluminum company Alcoa reports second-quarter results tomorrow. Alcoa surprised Wall Street last quarter with a positive outlook, but the global slowdown could make it harder for the aluminum maker to keep its bullish stance.

JPMorgan Chase & Co will also report earnings next week, with investors eager to know how big the bank’s losses will be following a botched trade. The initial estimated loss at the bank was $2 billion but later reports indicated it could balloon to more than four times that. “The idea is that analysts have been marking down not only earnings estimates but revenue estimates, and the reason is because of weakness in Europe, which is spilling over to weakness in global operations for many companies,” said Brian Gendreau, market strategist with Cetera Financial Group in Gainesville, Florida.

The US economic calendar for next week includes import prices and trade, plus producer prices and the preliminary reading on July consumer sentiment from the Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan surveys. — Reuters

STOCKTON: A worker washing the windows at the San Joaquin County building in Stockton, California. In the 19th century, the city of Stockton, California, was a thriving Wild West gold rush town — a destination for optimistic miners looking to strike it rich. — AFP

Bankrupt California city provides cautionary tale SAN FRANCISCO: A California city which was once a thriving Gold Rush town has become a cautionary tale about financial excess and the still-struggling US economy-by going bankrupt.

In the 19th century Stockton, which lies two hours east of San Francisco, was a destination for optimistic miners looking to strike it rich in the Wild West.

Last week, in a sobering reminder of the stillpainful fallout from the 2008 near economic meltdown, it became the largest US city to ever declare bankruptcy. The inland agriculture hub has been crushed by the foreclosure crisis, increasingly costly retiree benefits and debt for civic projects taken on in better times. Connie Cochran, a spokeswoman for the river-port city, said Stockton has been operating on a barebones budget for several years that has forced cuts to essential services like police and firefighters. Officials could not close a $26 million hole in this year’s $521 million budget, she said.

“We’re at such modest levels of essential services, we had to do this to protect the health and welfare of our city,” she said. Stockton’s financial situation, while extreme, is not unusual.

Cash-strapped cities across the Golden Statethe world’s eighth largest economy, if it were a country-are still struggling to recover from the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.

“Cities are obviously in very difficult times economically,” said Eva Spiegel with the League of California Cities. “Lots of cities are really struggling, trying to keep providing the right services.”

As officials look for ways to bring local budgets out of the red, cities are watching the unusual Stockton case closely to see whether bankruptcy may provide a solution. “Everyone is watching to see if someone comes up with a way to quickly, effectively resolve these matters with the least amount of pain,” said Chicago

bankruptcy attorney Jim Spiotto.

Historically, city bankruptcies are extremely rare, Spiotto said. The process is banned or restricted in many states, he said, and there have been only 641 such filings since it became legal in 1937. It wasn’t supposed to come to this.

Stockton, a city of about 292,000, teemed with eager homebuyers in early 2000s. Some 85 miles inland of San Francisco, the agriculture hub and historic gold rush town offered an affordable alternative to the Bay Area. As the economy boomed, officials also spent big. They doled out generous benefits to city employees and took on debt for civic improvement projects, like a revamp of the waterfront promenade and a new sports arena.

Today, a retired city employee who worked full-time-even just for a few weeks-receives free health care for life. The city now plans to phase out those benefits. Officials counting on neverending economic growth had no plan for how to fund such lucrative benefits, city spokeswoman Cochran said.

“There was no funding ever put aside for it,” she said. “There’s no evidence of any analysis that said how are we going to pay for this.”

And when the economy collapsed, Stockton couldn’t pay for it. Today, unemployment is nearly 20 percent. Foreclosure rates are among the highest in the country. While the city is cutting retiree health care, Cochran said officials have no plans to seek cuts to retiree pensions-a major financial liability for the city. Michael Sweet, a San Francisco bankruptcy attorney, said the Stockton case could break new legal ground in addressing whether cities can use bankruptcy to break unaffordable promises regarding retiree health benefits and pensions-expenses that are crushing many local economies. “That’s going to be the big issue,” he said. “Those are huge strains on the city budget.” — AFP

26

SUNDAY, JULY 8, 2012

BUSINESS

5 reasons to buckle up!

‘Stay alert, stay alive,’ BMW road safety campaign split-second is all it takes. Just a momentary lapse in concentration can result in a terrifying collision. It needn’t be your fault, as no one can predict it, yet you need to ensure that all steps are taken to protect you, your family, and all passengers within your vehicle. It is not about how skilled a driver you are but, rather, whether you are a responsible driver.

BMW Group Middle East ‘Stay Alert, Stay Alive.’ road safety campaign aims to raise awareness of the importance of wearing seatbelts. To encourage drivers to really think before they drive, BMW Group urges drivers to ask themselves the following questions: ● Do you buckle up as soon as you get in the car? ● Do you insist that your passengers wear a seatbelt? ● Do your children have the right safety restraints for their weight and age?

If you have answered no, even just once, you need to read the following 5 reasons to buckle up...

A

1. Seatbelts Save Lives It’s been proven time and again.

Seatbelts save lives and reduce injuries in a road traffic accident.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), wearing a seatbelt reduces the risk of a fatality among front seat passengers by 4050% and among rear seat car occupants by 25-75%.

2. It’s the Law Wearing a seatbelt while driv-

5. Seatbelts Reduce Child Fatalities Children are not small adults they need specialised protection in a moving vehicle. Until the age of seven, children’s bones are still forming, which means they must be protected from the force of an accident.

Babies’ skulls are extremely flexible

your car. Therefore, appropriate child restraints are essential to reduce the risk of injury.

It is essential for you as a parent to make sure that you use the right restraint for your child’s age and size.

There are different seats available and the selection of the appropriate one is crucial in ensuring that your child is effectively protected: ● Rear-facing Infant Car Seat: Designed for infants under the age of 1 year, they provide the best protection until the infant is both one

tall for the seat. At BMW, this is known as BMW Junior Seat I-II. ● Booster Seat: Made for small children aged 4-6 years, it works by raising the child to the correct height for the car’s adult seat-belt to work properly. It has a seat back that can provide additional protection in the event of a side impact. The booster seat should be used until the child is approximately 145 cm tall. At BMW, this is known as BMW Junior Seat IIIII. Booster Cushion: The final

and even a small impact can result in significant deformation of the head and brain. Also, an infant’s rib cage is still elastic, and any impact to the chest can damage the heart, lungs and other internal organs. At this age, the pelvis is unstable and cannot withstand the forces from the use of regular seat-belts featured in

year of age and weighs at least 13 kg.

At BMW, this is known as BMW Baby Seat 0+. ● Child Safety Seat: Targeting toddlers aged 1-4 years; they secure your child and spread the crash forces over a wide area. This seat should last until either the child’s weight exceeds 18 kg or it grows too

option before your child transitions to the three-point lap and diagonal seat-belt featured in your car and is designed for children aged 6-11 years that weigh from 22 to 36 kg.

Some manufacturers are now producing backs that cover the full 15 to 36 kg range. At BMW, these are known as BMW Booster Cushions.

ing or as a front seat passenger is UAE law and any person found not to be buckled up will face a considerable fine. Similarly, if a child is over 10 years old they must wear a seatbelt, while children less than 10 years old must be restrained using the correct type of child seat. Adults found to be travelling with children not correctly restrained will face a monetary fine, and worse, if they are involved in a road traffic accident.

gers wearing seatbelts. In a road traffic accident, passengers who are not buckled up will fly toward the point of impact, colliding with anything in their path such as dashboards, windshield or steering wheels with several pounds of moving force.

Seatbelts are designed to stop the uncontrolled movement of people within a vehicle and therefore one of the most important tools to prevent serious injury or death in a road traffic accident.

fore essential that every driver and passenger wears a seatbelt any time they are in a moving vehicle. If you respect life you must take the necessary steps to protect it.

3. Seatbelts = Life According to the laws of physics, if a vehicle is travelling at 120 kilometres per hour, its contents and passengers are also moving at 120 kilometres per hour. A sudden stop or head-on collision at 120 kilometres per hour can mean the difference of life or death to the passen-

4. Even the best drivers have accidents Your driving experience and confidence levels will not account for the often unpredictable actions of other drivers. Even the most skilled drivers cannot be 100 percent certain of the ability to prevent an accident when another driver is at fault. It is there-

FASTtelco announces raffle draw winners for new iPad

A group photo of Gulf Bank & KOC’s management teams.

Yasmeen Mohammad Al-Mousa wins a brand new GMC Yukon in Gulf Bank’s KOC Draw KUWAIT: Gulf Bank announced Yasmeen Mohammad Al-Mousa as the winner of the second quarterly KOC prize draw for 2012. The winner received a brand new 2012 GMC Yukon which was announced by Yaser Sulaiman, Executive Manager, Consumer Banking Group.

Gulf Bank’s Quarterly Prize Draw for a brand new GMC Yukon is part of the benefits offered in the KOC salary package. The KOC salar y pack age is an exclusively designed banking package for KOC staff members. All KOC staff that transfer their salaries and have a valid Gulf Bank credit card are eligible to enter the quarterly draws.

Expressing her gratitude on winning, Yasmeen Mohammad Al-Mousa said, “I would like to thank Gulf Bank for this exciting opportunity that’s allowed me to drive away in a brand new GMC Yukon. The Banks’ effort in offering such exceptional services and rewarding prizes is truly appreciated. To your customers you are more than just a Bank.”

Congratulating the lucky winner, Yaser Sulaiman, Executive Manager, at the Bank’s Consumer Banking Group said: “I would like to express my congratulations to Yasmeen Al-Mousa and wish her the best for the future. We are proud to be able to offer our customers

this exciting prize. The new GMC Yukon draw is just part of the unique KOC salary package. At Gulf Bank we believe that customer service is not just about excellent banking but also about providing our customers with different opportunities.”

The KOC salary package provides a non interest bearing current account especially designed to fulfill KOC staff’s banking needs. KOC staff are entitled to several exclusive benefits such as, vouchers from X- cite by Alghanim Electronics, free issuance charges for Visa and MasterCard Credit Card, special discounts upon using Gulf Bank cards at 100 outlets in Kuwait. Upon entering the draw, KOC staff are further qualified to win a new GMC Yukon as an added bonus to adhering to the KOC salary tailored banking package.

Gulf Bank is the only Bank available at the KOC Head Office and it invites all KOC staff to visit the branch to find out more about the KOC salary package.

To find out more about Gulf Bank’s KOC salary package or any of the Bank’s products and services, customers can visit one of Gulf Bank’s 56 branches, or call the Customer Contact Center on 1805805 for assistance and guidance.

Customers can also log on to www.egulfbank.com, Gulf Bank’s website.

Exclusive offer from CBK to premier banking customers KUWAIT: Commercial Bank of Kuwait offers a unique oppor tunity for its Premier Banking customers. The bank has partnered up with the renowned K allista Jewelr y and Elements for watches and accessories, giving Premier Banking customers an instant discount on their purchase. Premier Banking customers will receive a 35 % discount on Kallista Jewelry and a 20 % discount on Elements watches and accessories as well for the period of July 5th till August 25th 2012.

Premier Banking customers at CBK enjoy a new dimension of personalized

banking services. With a new world of products and ser vices, Commercial Bank of Kuwait brings to its Premier Banking customers exclusive offers and benefits specially tailored to meet their expectations.

Kallista jewelry boutique has 2 retail shops in Kuwait at Al Ghawali Center in Sharq and in the newly opened Al Hamra Mall in the city. CBK is ver y proud to par tner up with such a renowned brand, and urges its Premier Banking customers to visit the showrooms and benefit from this exclusive discount.

KUWAIT: FASTtelco, winner of 2012 with Bizz awards, for most inspirational company and the GCC best change management award, has announced the names of the raffle draw winners of 16 new iPads. The company was keen to include in the draw its loyal and new clients who have joined the beneficiary list of internet services and data transfer.

The lucky iPads winners were: Qaisar nadeem, Abdulaziz Mohammad Almutairi, Samya Ahmed Amarna, Abdulaziz Mohammed Khamis, R afeeq Abdulqadir, Sulaiman Abdullah AlManeie, Hanan Naji AlKhalifah, Mohammed Hadi Abdulaziz, Adel Munief AlMutairi, Ahmed Fayadh Mohammed, Ahmed Mohammed Halhel, Burhan Taibali Gulamali, Fahad Obaid Mohammed AlKhaldi, Sayed Hassan, Esmaiel Ghoulom Ahmed.

The raffle draw reflects the company ’s commitment to present the best technological ser vices that suit different users, including residential and corporate. Additionally it highlights the responsibilit y FASTtelco carries towards its clients through seeking to provide superlative Information Technology services and various promotions.

Public Relations M anager Hamad Al-Selmi said, “This promotion represents only part of our various campaigns dedicated to our clients and our new s u b s c r i b e r s a l l ye a r l o n g. I promise more competitive offers to come, particularly after our last promotion achieved

its development in this sector.

This reflec ts the company ’s interest to seek maintaining our clients’ loyalty through the services the company offers and diversifying the marketing campaigns that concentrate on providing high quality and competitive prices that are afford-

subscribed to and am extremely happy with the way the company deals with its clients,” said one of the winners.

FASTtelco congratulated all its winners who took part in its promotional campaign. It promises its clients more surprises and offers. FASTtelco

able by everyone.

The 16 iPad winners expressed their joy and thanked FASTtelco for offering its clients additional services to its inclusive packages, in addition to the excellent standards of services when dealing with loyal clients. “ I ’m c o m p l e t e l y s a t i s f i e d with FASTtelco’s services that I

also invites all those who were not able to subscribe yet to visit any of its branches and test the quality of the best international standards in the world of internet, or by calling its customer ser vice depar tment for any inquiries to benefit from the unique and valuable offers.

Hamad Saleh Al-Selmi great success through the large number of par ticipants and newly joined subscribers who now benefit from FASTtelco’s unique and pioneer services in the world of data transfer and internet.”

Al-S elmi added that FASTtelco perceives the clients as the most essential base for

Zain KSA shareholders approve capital restructuring at EGM RIYADH: At an Extraordinary General Assembly Meeting (EGM) held in Riyadh on July 4, 2012, the requisite majority of Zain KSA, Mobile Telecommunications Company Saudi Arabia, shareholders voted in favor of the Company’s plans to restructure its capital.

The capital reduction will result in the Company’s paidup capital being reduced from SAR 14.0 billion to SAR 4.801 billion. The subsequent capital increase, which was also approved at the EGM, will result in the paid-up capital of the Company being increased to SAR 10.801 billion by way of a rights issue.

HRH Prince Dr Hussam bin Saud bin Abdul Aziz, Chairman of Zain KSA said: “We are very pleased with the outcome of the EGM. We have received a clear mandate for the capital restructuring.”

The Prospectus for the rights issue is available through the Saudi Arabia Capital Market Authority website at h t t p : / / w w w. c m a . o rg. s a / A r / D o c L i b 1 / Z a i n Redherring%20Prospectus.pdf Zain KSA is providing updates and information about the transaction through a dedicated website at http://www.sa.zain.com/IR/Capital-Restructuring Saudi Fransi Capital is the lead manager of the rights issue and Saudi Fransi Capital and Al Rajhi Capital are the co-financial advisers. The list of receiving banks is Banque Saudi Fransi, Al Rajhi Bank, Alinma Bank, Bank AlBilad, The National Commercial Bank, Samba Financial Group, Saudi Hollandi Bank, Arab National Bank, Bank Aljazira, Riyad Bank, SABB and The Saudi Investment Bank.

Countdown to Burgan Bank’s Al-Thuraya draw begins Winner to take home KD 60,000 KUWAIT: Burgan Bank announced yesterday that there are only a few days left for the Al-Thuraya Account bi-annual draw, and as the draw counts down to a close; Burgan Bank shall promptly announce the lucky winner of the grand KD 60,000 prize on July 8, 2012 at the bank’s head office.

Al-Thuraya Account carries a biannual draw of KD 60,000. The account’s features range from opening the account with a minimum KD 50, the option to hold money in Kuwaiti dinar and any other major currency, access to account-related services such as standing orders, loans and credit cards and much more.

Opening an Al-Thuraya account is simple; customers are required to visit their nearest Burgan Bank branch and obtain all the necessary details, or simply call the bank’s Call Center 1804080. For further information, customers can visit the bank’s

website on www.burgan.com.

Established in 1977, Burgan Bank is the youngest commercial Bank based in Kuwait, with a significant focus on the corporate and financial institutions sectors, as well as having a growing retail and private bank customer base.

Burgan Bank has four majority owned subsidiaries: Gulf Bank Algeria - AGB (Algeria), Bank of Baghdad - BOB (Iraq), Jordan Kuwait Bank - JKB (Jordan) and Tunis International Bank - TIB (Tunisia), (collectively known as the “Burgan Bank Group”).

The Bank has continuously improved its performance over the years through an expanded revenue structure, diversified funding sources, and a strong capital base.

The adoption of state-of-the-art services and technology has positioned it as a trendsetter in the domestic market and within the MENA region.

SUNDAY, JULY 8, 2012

TECHNOLOGY

Apple faces new legal challenge in China Report claims discovery of malware in Apple App store BEIJING: A Chinese technology firm has filed a legal challenge accusing US giant Apple of infringing its patented voice recognition software with its Siri function on the iPhone, the company said yesterday. The move comes just days after Apple paid $60 million to end a dispute over who could use the iPad name in China. Shanghai Zhizhen Network Technology Co Ltd patented its Xiao i Robot software in 2004, while Apple’s Siri, which made its debut with the release of the iPhone 4S last year, was first developed in 2007. The Chinese company’s version operates in a similar way to Apple’s personal assistant and works on the iOS and Android operating systems.

Si Weijiang, a lawyer acting for the Shanghaibased firm, said it had tried to contact Apple two months ago over the alleged infringement but received no response. “We sent legal notices to Apple in May, but no one contacted us. We filed the lawsuit in late June to the Shanghai number one intermediate people’s court,” Si said. “Currently the case is now at the court-mediated stage.” “We mainly ask Apple to stop infringing on our patent and cover the court costs, but once the court confirms Apple has infringed on our patent, we will propose compensation,” he added.

The company’s chairman, Yuan Hui, told the Apple Daily newspaper that the firm had 100 million users in China. “People feel that China has no innovation, that companies here just copy. But in fact, we are leaders in our field, and we have created our own innovation,” Yuan told the paper. It added that Apple was also facing legal action from another Chinese company for allegedly infringing its “Snow Leopard” trademark. The High Court of the southern province of Guangdong said on Monday that Apple had paid $60 million to settle a

SHANGHAI: A customer walks under an Apple logo sign at an Apple shop in Shanghai. — AFP

long-running legal battle with Chinese computer maker Shenzhen Proview Technology over the iPad name.

Both Proview, based in the southern city of Shenzhen, and Apple had claimed ownership of the Chinese rights to the “iPad” trademark.

Proview’s Taiwanese affiliate registered “iPad” as a trademark in several countries including China as early as 2000 - years before Apple began selling its hugely successful tablet computer. Analysts said the Chinese government wanted the matter

resolved, wary of the damage a ruling against Apple could do for the foreign business climate in China. Greater China-which includes Hong Kong and Taiwan-has become Apple’s fastest-growing region, with revenues second only to the United States.

MALWARE IN APPLE APP STORE In another development, an application available for Apple and Google’s mobile operating systems steals the user’s contacts list for the purposes

of text messaging spam, according a report issued Thursday that claims it is the first malware to appear in Apple’s App Store. The app, called “Find and Call,” passes itself off as a mobile phone book application, but users who download and use the app will have all of their contacts uploaded to a remote server, according to a post from Kaspersky Lab security blogger Denis Maslennikov.

Once the app uploads the user’s contacts, it sends text messages to all of the contacts that appears to be from the infected phone’s number, with a link to download the app. Maslennikov traced the app’s creation to a website for a Singapore-based company, which seeks even more information about visitors, including PayPal information. This type of malicious software, called a “Trojan,” has appeared in Android’s Google Play store before, Maslennikov reported, but “it’s the first case that we’ve seen malware in the Apple App Store,” he wrote.

Apple and Google were notified of the malware app available in their stores by Kaspersky, but the app was still available early Thursday morning. In the Google Play store, the app had more than 100 downloads and three one-star ratings, while advertising “Free calls from your mobile phone to domains, email, Skype, social networks. Forget about numbers!!!” In Apple’s App Store, the app received 1.5 stars. Cupertino, Califbased Apple did not immediately respond to an email request for verification and comment.

Mountain View, Calif.-based Google does not comment on specific apps. The malware app adds to problems for Apple’s popular app store after users receiving updates for apps in the past two days suffered through their apps crashing immediately after launching them.— Agencies

Yahoo and Facebook settle patent dispute, ad alliance Internet giants avert a potentially lengthy battle

ARIZONA: Kansas City Royals starting pitcher Bruce Chen tweets on his first day on Twitter as he watches teammates scrimmage at the team’s spring training complex in Surprise, Arizona. — MCT

Twitter beefs up search function SAN FRANCISCO: Twitter said yesterday it was upgrading its search functions to include “autocomplete” and spelling correction features. The new Twitter search will also anticipate when users are looking for posts by people they follow, and offer related suggestions. The move by the popular social media group is similar to search functions offered by Google and other engines.

“We’re constantly working to make Twitter search the simplest way to discover what’s happening in real time,” said Twitter engineer Frost Li in a blog post.

“To that end, today we’re introducing search autocomplete and ‘People you follow’ search results to twitter.com. In addition to recent improvements like related query suggestions, spelling corrections and more relevant search results, these updates make it even easi-

er to immediately get closer to the things you care about.”

The “search autocomplete” shows the most likely terms for a query. So a user who types “Jeremy” might get a suggestion for basketball star Jeremy Lin before finishing the full name. Twitter will also allow users to see tweets about a given topic from only the people they follow if they select that option. “Viewing tweets about a topic from just the people you follow is a great way to find useful information and join the conversation,” Li said. Twitter, which allows its members to post brief comments, links or pictures, claims to have more than 140 million active users, with the largest number being in the United States. A recent survey found one in seven Americans who go online use Twitter and eight percent do so every day.— AFP

SAN FRANCISCO: Facebook and Yahoo have agreed to settle a patent dispute, averting a potentially lengthy battle over the technology running two of the Internet’s most popular destinations. In dropping the lawsuits, the companies agreed to license their patents to each other.

They are also agreeing to an advertising alliance that expands their existing partnership. Friday’s settlement involves no exchange of money. Now that the antagonism is dissolving into an accord that could benefit both companies, the hundreds of millions of Web surfers who use both Yahoo and Facebook should find even more common ground on the two services.

The advertising alliance could help Yahoo recover some of the revenue that it has been losing as marketers shift more of their spending to a larger and more engaged audience on Facebook’s online social network. Facebook, in turn, gains the opportunity to show the ads tailored to fit the individual interests of its 900 million users in other heavily trafficked areas besides its own website. The truce ends a conflict provoked by Yahoo’s short-lived CEO, Scott Thompson, who was dumped from the job two months ago after misinformation on his official biography raised questions about his integrity.

Under Thompson, Yahoo filed the patent lawsuit in March, wielding it as a weapon against a company that Thompson believed had been prospering from the ideas of its older rival. The complaint alleged that Facebook infringed on 10 Yahoo patents covering Internet advertising, privacy controls and social networks. Yahoo Inc. added two more patents to the lawsuit later. But Thompson’s attack on Facebook Inc quickly turned into a public-relations disaster. Much of the technology industry railed against Yahoo’s tactics. Critics viewed the lawsuit as a financial shakedown by a desperate company whose well of innovation had run dry.

New York venture capitalist Fred Wilson summed up the enmity toward Yahoo in an acerbic blog post that ended with this denouement: “I am writing this in outrage at Yahoo. I used to care about that company for some reason. No more. They are dead to me. Dead and gone. I hate them now.” When Yahoo replaced Thompson in May with interim CEO Ross Levinsohn, it opened the door for the company to settle the dispute under a reshuffled board of directors. Six of Yahoo’s 11 directors joined the board after Yahoo sued Facebook on March 12.

Yahoo’s legal assault had exposed Facebook’s vulnerability to patent claims as it prepared to complete the biggest initial public offering of

stock by an Internet company.

Facebook insulated itself by buying 750 patents from IBM Corp. for an undisclosed amount and spending $550 million to acquire an additional 650 patents that one of its biggest shareholders, Microsoft Corp, had purchased from AOL Inc. Armed with its own arsenal of intellectual property, Facebook signaled that it wasn’t backing down and filed its own lawsuit against Yahoo in April for patent infringement.

With Thompson out, Levinsohn was free to work out a deal with Facebook’s chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg. The two issued statements Friday praising each other for working toward a deal. With the agreement, Yahoo and Facebook revert to the amicable relationship that they had been fostering before the lawsuit. And it appears the antagonism is dissolving into a partnership that could benefit both companies.

Yahoo already has been tying many of its services and content to Facebook before the lawsuit was filed. Now the two companies plan to display ads on each other’s sites, while Yahoo plans to feed even more of its coverage of major events to the social network. Although it has been growing at a robust clip, Facebook is still

CALIFORNIA: This combination file photos shows the logos of Yahoo and Facebook, outside their offices in Santa Clara, Calif. — AP

Kodak Gallery photos in limbo as Shutterfly transfer begins LOS ANGELES: If you’re one of the nearly 70 million people who subscribed to the Kodak Gallery photo-sharing site, here’s some bad news: It has officially closed. But no worries. Those cherished set of family photos you uploaded to the site are safe, and you will be able to get them - eventually. Your photos are among the 5 billion snapshots making the journey to the Shutterfly site starting this week from the Kodak site, which was permanently closed Monday. The big question is when you get to see them again. Shutterfly Inc acquired bankrupt Eastman Kodak Co’s online gallery service in April. If you’ve ever uploaded or even just viewed photos on the Kodak Gallery site with an account, you’re counted among the millions moving to Shutterfly.

WHAT OF YOUR PHOTOS? The photos of the most active gallery users will get priority and should move within a couple of weeks, said Geoffrey Weber, Shutterfly’s chief information officer. Less active users probably will get their notification within a couple of months. If you’ve already created a Shutterfly account and linked your former Kodak account, you’ll be able to get to your photos even though they haven’t yet

moved over to Shutterfly servers, the company said.

The Shutterfly page that lets you link your accounts has been down since Monday, frustrating those eager to get their Kodak photos. The company said Tuesday that it expects to restore the site this week. When it is restored, it will ask you to provide the email address and password for your Kodak Gallery account. You will then have to sign in to your Shutterfly account. If you don’t already have one, it will ask you to create one. The free Shutterfly accounts offer unlimited high-resolution photo storage; it makes its money off photo books and other printed items.

If you do create a new Shutterfly account, be sure to use the same email address as the one you used for Kodak Gallery. The email address is what enables the accounts from the two sites to be connected - and the Kodak password is what you use to prove the Kodak photos are yours.

Shutterfly is offering 50 free prints for all new accounts. If you don’t create a Shutterfly account - or have one with a different email address - the photos will be transferred into a newly created account. You will get an email with instructions on how to get to your photos.

Moving 5 billion photos from one of the biggest photosharing sites is no small undertaking. “Think of a room

trying to win over skeptical investors. Doubts about the company’s revenue potential have weighed on Facebook’s stock, which has remained well below its IPO price of $38. The stock gained 26 cents, or nearly 1 percent, to close Friday at $31.73. Yahoo is trying to snap out of a long-running financial funk brought up by Facebook’s success and Google Inc.’s dominance of Internet search and advertising.

As revenue fell, Yahoo has gone through four fulltime CEOs in five years in hopes of engineering a turnaround. The foibles have depressed Yahoo’s stock, frustrating shareholders still angry about a squandered opportunity to sell the entire company to Microsoft in May 2008 for $47.5 billion, or $33 per share. The stock dipped 7 cents to close at $15.78. The Facebook pact may have pushed Levinsohn closer to being anointed as Yahoo’s permanent CEO. Jason Kilar, CEO of online TV service Hulu, had been under serious consideration for the top job at Yahoo, but Hulu said Friday that he had decided not to pursue the position. The statement was issued in response to several published reports citing unnamed people who described Kilar as Levinsohn’s primary competition for the Yahoo post. — AP

filled with 10,000 hard drives,” Shutterfly’s Weber said. It’s akin to the amount of data contained in the Library of Congress’ Web archive. Shutterfly’s own users have amassed 10 billion photos since the company’s inception in 1999. With the absorption of Kodak’s 5 billion photos, the company is increasing its photo collection 50 percent in a matter of months. “It’s an exciting thing to be part of,” Weber said. “Just pulling this off is a neat trick.” Not everything from the Kodak Gallery will live on in Shutterfly.

Projects such as slide shows and custom-made calendars have expired with the Kodak site, as have Kodak Gallerybranded mobile apps.

Also, Kodak wireless photo frames that used the gallery to share and update photos will not be supported by Shutterfly, the company said. But that doesn’t exactly make them into useless bricks. You can, of course, still add photos to the frame using removable memory cards. And one that used to use the gallery - the Kodak Pulse Digital Frame, which is still supported by Kodak - will continue to connect to email and Facebook. Shutterfly expects the photo transfer to be wrapped up before the end of the year, just in time to make Grandma and Grandpa a nice photo book for the holidays. — MCT

App allows users to film police activity NEW YORK: A US civil rights advocacy group has launched a free mobile phone application that allows users to record police activity discreetly, saying it will help boost police force accountability. The New Jersey branch of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) explains that “Police Tape,” available to the public since Tuesday, “allows people to securely and discreetly record and store interactions with police.” The Android phone application, available for download on the website of the ACLU of New Jersey, is “an essential tool for police accountability,” said the office’s executive director Deborah Jacobs. “Too often, incidents of serious misconduct go unreported because citizens don’t feel that they will be believed.”

Unlike traditional smartphone recording apps, “Police Tape” disappears from the screen once it is launched, minimizing the possibility that police will notice the recorder.

The application allows users to send the file to the ACLU for safe-keeping and analysis. “Police Tape” also contains legal advice on the rights of citizens confronted by police. The ACLU of New Jersey website cites several court rulings that recognized citizens’ rights to film police activity. A similar application for iPhone will be available later this summer, the site says. — AFP

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SUNDAY, JULY 8, 2012

health & science

New optimism about stemming AIDS spread

SOLO, Indonesia: This file photo taken on Sept 21, 2011 shows an orangutan named Tori puffing a cigarette from its enclosure at the Taro Jurug Zoo on Java island. — AFP

Orangutan forced to quit smoking JAKARTA: An orangutan who became the star attraction of an Indonesian zoo for her penchant for puffing on cigarettes will be forced to quit cold turkey, a conservationist said yesterday. Visitors began throwing lit cigarettes into the cage of 15-year-old Tori when it was five, and the female orangutan had developed an addiction over the years, Centre for Orangutan Protection coordinator Daniek Hendarto said. “We are working with the zoo’s management to try and move her to an island, in a big lake in the middle of the zoo, away from the other orangutans and where visitors can’t toss her anymore cigarettes,” Hendarto told AFP. He said Tori’s parents had also been smokers, adding that orangutans easily mimic human behaviour, including smoking. News of the smoking orangutan spread quick ly 10 years ago, attracting more visitors to the Taru

Jurug Zoo in the central Javanese city of Solo, Hendar to said. “Until we get approval from the zoo to move her, a guard has been placed outside her cage to make sure she doesn’t smoke and she is undergoing therapy. She will have to go cold turkey,” he said.

Indonesian zoos have drawn international criticism in recent years for their poor treatment of animals. In March, a giraffe at a zoo in eastern Java was found dead with a 20-kilogram beachball-size lump of plastic in its stomach from visitors’ food wrappers thrown into its pen. Indonesia is also one the world’s last bastions of big tobacco, where few restrictions are placed on marketing and smoking rates have risen sixfold over the last 40 years, according to the World Health Organization.

Several cases of children as young as two with smoking addictions have been reported. — AFP

Obeidi hails opening of GOSH clinical building KUWAIT: Dr. Ali Al Obeidi, Kuwait Minister of Health, sent his best wishes as London 2012 Olympics Chairman, Lord Coe opened Great Ormond Street Hospital’s new Morgan Stanley Clinical Building. Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) in London is one of the world’s leading children’s hospitals, and has been collaborating with the Ministry of Health since 2010.

Senior GOSH medical staff provide practical support and training to NBK nurses and doctors and GOSH also provides leading edge diagnostic capability to patients with cancer in Kuwait.

Lord Coe, Chair of the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games and Olympic gold medallist, was joined by fellow gold medallist and Paralympian Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson at the opening of the new Clinical Building, where they traded sporting tips with a group of patients who have enjoyed their own sporting success including at the British or World Transplant Games. Commenting on the opening, Obeidi said: “I would like to thank Great Ormond Street Hospital for the invitation to attend the opening of the Morgan Stanley Clinical Building, which I could not attend due to preceding official meetings. I wish my best to GOSH Executive Members for their spirit and hard work in making the hospital a grand success.”

Great Ormond Street Hospital specialises in rare, complex and life threatening conditions in children and is recognised as one of the world’s leading children’s hospitals. The Morgan Stanley Clinical Building is an important element of the hospital’s major redevelopment plan to ensure patients receive world-class care in 21st century facilities and which will enable the hospital to treat up to 20% more children and advance pioneering translational research programmes.

The new clinical building includes the British Kidney Patient Association Children’s Kidney Centre, Wolfson Heart and Lung Centre and J N and Phyllis Somers Neurosciences Centre as well as a hybrid angiography suite, three state-of-the-art operating theatres for patients requiring cardiac or neuro surgery and new diagnostic facilities. The new wards have more space and en suite bathrooms, providing more privacy and comfort for patients and their families. There is also a new restaurant for staff and families.

As part of its support, The Walt Disney Company has provided a new Play Area designed specifically with the patients’ needs in mind, where children can relax and engage in a range of fun interactive zones with Disney’s characters. Lord Coe said: “I was delighted to accept the invitation to open Great Ormond Street

Hospital’s new clinical building. Great Ormond Street Hospital is recognised internationally as a centre of excellence and the clinical and surgical teams are among the best in the world. Every day they strive for excellence, but just like the best sportsmen and women, they need the best equipment and best facilities if they are to reach their full potential. At the opening I met children on one of the new wards and was left in no doubt that these new facilities and operating theatres will help to give children the very best chance possible.”

Dr Jane Collins, Chief Executive of Great Ormond Street Hospital said: “The opening is very important for Great Ormond Street Hospital as it marks an important step forward in our plans to provide world-class facilities to our patients. We are so grateful to all our supporters who have made this possible. Thanks to their generosity we are now able to provide our world-class care to patients with cardiac, renal and neurological conditions in more comfortable, spacious and appropriate facilities, offering the dignity and privacy the children and their families deserve. “At Great Ormond Street Hospital we aspire to provide world-class care to all of our patients.

We were delighted to see some of those patients who have benefited from transplants in our hospital and then go on to excel in the Transplant Games meet some of their sporting

WASHINGTON: An AIDS-free generation: It seems an audacious goal, considering how the HIV epidemic still is raging around the world. Yet more than 20,000 international HIV researchers and activists will gather in the nation’s capital later this month with a sense of optimism not seen in many years hope that it finally may be possible to dramatically stem the spread of the AIDS virus. “We want to make sure we don’t overpromise,” Dr Anthony Fauci, the National Institutes of Health’s infectious disease chief, told AP. But, he said, “I think we are at a turning point.”

The big new focus is on trying to get more people with HIV treated early, when they’re first infected, instead of waiting until they’re weakened or sick, as the world largely has done until now.

Staying healthier also makes them less likely to infect others.

That’s a tall order. But studies over the past two years have shown what Fauci calls “striking, sometimes breathtaking results,” in preventing people at high risk of HIV from getting it in some of the hardest-hit countries, using this treatment-as-prevention and some other protections.

Now, as the International AIDS Conference returns to the US for the first time in 22 years, the question is whether the world will come up with the money and the know-how to put the best combinations of protections into practice, for AIDS-ravaged poor countries and hot spots in developed nations as well. “We have the tools to make it happen,” said Dr Elly Katabira, president of the International AIDS Society, which organizes the world’s largest HIV conference, set for July 22-27. He points to strides already in Botswana and Rwanda in increasing access to AIDS drugs. But Fauci cautioned that moving those tools into everyday life is “a daunting challenge”, given the costs of medications and the difficulty in getting people to take them for years despite poverty and other competing health and social problems.

In the US, part of that challenge is complacency. Despite 50,000 new HIV infections here every year, an AP-GfK poll finds that very few people in the United States worry about getting the virus. Also, HIV increasingly is an epidemic of the poor, minorities and urban areas such as the District of Columbia, where the rate of infection rivals some developing countries. The conference will spotlight this city ’s aggressive steps to fight back: A massive effort to find the undiagnosed, with routine testing in some hospitals, testing vans that roam the streets, even free tests at a Department of Motor Vehicles office, and then rapidly getting those patients into care.

“These are the true champions,” Dr Mohammed Akhter, director of the city’s health department, said of patients who faithfully take their medication. “They’re also protecting their community.”

A few miles east of the Capitol and the tourist-clogged monuments, the Community Education Group’s HIV testing van pulls into a parking lot in a low-income neighborhood with a particularly high infection rate. An incentive for the crowd at a nearby corner is the offer of a $10 supermarket gift card for getting tested.

Christopher Freeman, 23, is first in line. He was tested earlier this year and says showing off that official paper proclaiming him HIV-negative attracts “the ladies”.

“Forget money, it’s the best thing you can show them,” he said.

But that test was months ago, and Freeman admits he seldom uses condoms. He climbs into the van and rubs a swab over his gums. Twenty minutes later, he’s back for the result: Good news -

no HIV. But counselor Amanda Matthews has Freeman go through a list of the risk factors; it’s education to try to keep him and his future partners safe. “Just try to get yourself in the habit of using condoms,” she said. “You say it’s hard to use condoms but what if you do contract the virus?

Then you’ve got to take medications every day.” Freeman waves his new test result with a grin, and walks off with a handful of free condoms. At a nearby bus

San Juan, Puerto Rico. Many are concentrated in specific parts of those cities.

“Maps tell the story,” said Brown University assistant professor Amy Nunn, who is beginning a campaign that will bring a testing van door-to-door in the hardest-hit Philadelphia ZIP code. “It’s not just what you do, it’s also where you live. There’s just a higher chance that you will come into contact with the virus,” she explained. Prospects for a vaccine

stop, counselor Laila Patrick encounters a little resistance while handing out condoms, when a woman says that encourages sex outside of marriage.

“Stopping AIDS is everyone’s business. You’re looking out for the next person,” Patrick said. “You might just want to help someone be safe.”

About 34 million people worldwide have HIV, including almost 1.2 million Americans. It’s a very different epidemic from the last time the International AIDS Conference came to the

are so far elusive and health disparities are widening, so why the optimism as expressed by the Obama administration’s goal of getting to an AIDS-free generation?

Consider the potential strategies, to add to tried-and-true steps such as condom use and treating HIV-infected pregnant women to protect their unborn babies: Studies found treatmentas-prevention could lower an HIV patient’s chance of spreading the virus to an uninfected sexual partner by a stunning 96 percent.

ing prevention. The AP-GfK poll found 57 percent of adults say they’ve been tested at some point, a bit higher than federal estimates, but not enough. The government recommends at least one test for adults, and that populations at higher risk get tested at least once a year. Following those recommendations depends in part on people’s concern about AIDS. The poll found just over half of Americans consider HIV as much or more of a problem now than two decades ago. But less than 20 percent are worried about getting it themselves, and even populations at higher risk don’t consider HIV a big threat. Some 16 percent of black respondents said they’re very worried about HIV, compared with 4 percent of whites.

“We’ve become complacent about HIV in America, and it’s a real tragedy because hundreds of thousands of people in our own country aren’t getting the care they need,” said Chris Collins of amFAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research. The drugs can cost up to $15,000 a year in the US, and overall treatment costs are rising as people with HIV live longer. In developing countries, those drugs can cost less than $400 a year. The AP-GfK Poll was conducted June 14-18 by GfK Roper Public Affairs and Corporate Communications.

It involved landline and cellphone interviews with 1,007 adults nationwide. Results for the full sample have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4.0 percentage points.

In the US, the government is targeting the hardest-hit communities as part of a plan to reduce HIV infections by 25 percent by 2015, said Assistant Secretary of Health Howard Koh. Work is under way to learn the best steps to get people treated early, including in cities such as Washington, where 2.7 percent of residents have HIV, roughly four times the national

United States, in 1990. Life-saving drugs emerged a few years later, turning HIV from a death sentence into a manageable chronic disease for people and countries that can afford the medications.

Yet for all the improvements in HIV treatment, the rate of new infections in the US has held steady for about a decade. About 1 in 5 Americans with HIV don’t know they have it, more than 200,000 people who unwittingly can spread the virus.

Government figures show most new US infections are among gay and bisexual men, followed by heterosexual black women. Of particular concern, African-Americans account for about 14 percent of the population but 44 percent of new HIV infections. Your ZIP code plays a role in your risk, too. Twelve cities account for more than 40 percent of the nation’s AIDS cases: New York, Los Angeles, Washington, Chicago, Atlanta, Miami, Philadelphia, Houston, San Francisco, Baltimore, Dallas and

In the US, new guidelines recommend starting treatment early rather than waiting until the immune system has weakened.

Abroad, the United Nations hopes to more than double the number of patients being treated in poor countries to 15 million by 2015.

Other studies show a longtime AIDS medication named Truvada can prevent infection, too, if taken daily by healthy people who are at risk from their infected sexual partners. The US Food and Drug Administration is expected to decide by fall whether to formally approve sale of Truvada as an HIV preventive. A study from South Africa found a vaginal gel containing anti-AIDS medication helped protect women when their infected partners wouldn’t use a condom, generating more interest in developing women-controlled protection. Globally, experts also stress male circumcision, to lower men’s risk of heterosexually acquired HIV. Testing is a key step in improv-

rate. Washington resident Zee Turner knows it’s hard to stick with care. She’s had HIV for two decades, learning the news when her baby was born sick. Health workers helped mom and daughter receive then-newly emerging treatments, and they’re doing well today. “I felt that I should get out here and try to help somebody else, because somebody had to help us get into care,” said Turner, now 53 and a community health worker.

The city’s latest HIV count suggests progress, with a slight decrease in new diagnoses and a majority of patients being connected with medical care.

Community workers such as Turner are called to try to help people stay on treatment when other problems intervene. “If they’re on drugs, I take them to the drug program. If they need help going on Medicaid, I go with them to Medicaid,” Turner said.

“Any problem they have, I’m going to try to fix it and get them back into care.” — AP

WASHINGTON: In this photo taken June 27, 2012, Natrussa Williams, an HIV tester and counselor, right, explains how the results of the oral HIV test will show up to Katherine Tapp, 26, inside the HIV Testing Room at the Penn Branch of the District of Columbia Department of Motor Vehicles, in southeast Washington. — AP

Mystery disease kills 61 kids in Cambodia heroes.” Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity is now focused on raising £45m to complete the Mittal Children’s Medical Centre, which will see the redevelopment of the cardiac wing of the hospital. This will complete the hospital’s vision to provide modern facilities for all our inpatients, where a parent or carer can stay comfortably by their bedside.

PHNOM PENH: Health workers are trying to determine whether a mixture of known diseases or something new is responsible for killing more than 60 children in Cambodia over the past three months, a World Health Organization expert said.

The mystery disease has killed 61 of 62 children hospitalized since April, but there’s no indication it is spreading from

person to person. Patients suffer a high fever, followed by severe respiratory problems that progress quickly. Some also experience neurological symptoms.

“At this stage, we cannot rule out if this is a mixture of a number of known diseases (virological, bacterial or toxicological) which have been reported as one syndrome or something

new,” Dr Nima Asgari of the WHO in Phnom Penh said in an email Thursday.

The patients reported were under 7 years old and spread across several provinces in southern and central Cambodia.

However, work is being done to determine whether other age groups may also be affected, he said.

Health Ministry officials alert-

ed WHO on July 1 after learning about the cases from a doctor at Kantha Bopha Children’s Hospital in the capital.

Many patients first visited local health facilities before coming to the city, and investigators are now trying to piece together those reports to determine more about their conditions and what treatments were given, Asgari said. — AP

SUNDAY, JULY 8, 2012

H E A LT H & S C I E NC E

All you need to know about hypnotherapy

By Laila Hemmat, Hypnotherapist

“W

atch the hands on the clock. Listen to my voice. You’re falling into a deep sleep...”

We’re all familiar with movies which deal with the theme of hypnosis or hypnotherapy. From classics such as “Svegali” to the more recent Woody Allen black comedy, “The Curse of the Jade Scorpion”, movies categorise hypnosis as a tool used by unscrupulous practitioners to make people do things against their will. In Allen’s 2001 movie for instance, Allen portrayed the hapless subject, CW Briggs, who is forced to rob jewels by a stage hypnotist. Whilst these make for entertaining movies, unfortunately, many people’s views on hypnotherapy are based on the Hollywood fantasy. In reality however, hypnotherapy is a way of re-focussing your consciousness to allow you to extend your thinking and move beyond the normal limitations we place upon ourselves.

The average person’s subconscious mind has between forty and fifty thought processes happening at any one time. Many of these are subconscious and cause us to feel tension, stress, mood swings and depression, with us often wondering why we feel this way. The more tense we become, the more dysfunctional we can become, with everyday tasks seemingly beyond us. This is where hypnosis comes in.

Hypnotherapy is when someone helps you to obtain control over your thoughts by enabling you to relax and concentrate -or focus -on just one thing while staving off the other things getting in the way and causing the anxiety. So the reality is hypnosis helps you gain control rather than surrendering control to someone else.

Hypnosis is used by more and more people to help them break bad habits such as smoking, over-eating, phobias, anger issues, anxiety, alcohol or drug abuse and anorexia. It is also a positive tool which can be used to overcome procrastination, fears related to public speaking, child birth or stage fright and can help motivate and help goal-setting. By helping a subject to relax, hypnosis can help the mind focus on that bad habit or obsession, find its underlying cause and help bring about solutions based on rational decision-making.

Weight issues are one of the major causes of anxiety

in both men and women. Many women who are overweight lurch from one diet to another, without success and with increasing levels of anxiety. In fact much of female depression can be attributed to weight issues in general. Women who perceive they are unattractive become depressed when their diets are unsuccessful, and this can lead to self- loathing and binge eating. It is a cycle that repeats itself with the anxiety and depression increasing with each failed diet. Weight loss is simple in theory: just consume fewer calories than your body needs per day and you will lose weight. The problem is working out how to keep that weight off when food and eating is such a personal issue. Bad eating habits usually develop over many years and it is these habits that are the root of the problem. Habit-breaking needs to be made at the subconscious level of the mind, where emotions and habits reside. This is where hypnosis works in helping people develop the right frame of mind to lose weight, feel positive about themselves and create strategies to keep that weight off.

Many famous international athletes such as football, tennis, cricket and golf stars have used hypnotherapy to help them improve their game.

Some people ask, how can this be”?

Surely, they argue, to improve at sport is all about the physical performance. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Sport is as much about harnessing the psychological as it is about harnessing the physical.

Hand-eye co-ordination is an integral part of many sports such a batting in cricket or serving in tennis, and being able to “visualise” a perfect shot in one’s mind before actually playing it, is a skill that has helped many an athlete overcome form slumps. Hypnosis can help elite sportsmen and women by helping them focus, divest themselves of distractions and enable them to visualise hitting the perfect shot.

Similarly, many reformed smokers attribute their success at “kicking the habit” to hypnotherapy, after trying many other anti-smoking regimes without success.

Smoking, as we know, is a habit and habits can be controlled with hypnosis by helping smokers relax and uncover the hidden anxieties causing the underlying stress. Modern hypnosis and hypnotherapy is a reliable way to move yourself toward success even when other approaches have failed.

How life coaching creates a new you

By Naseera

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aria had this habit of drinking loads of energy drinks. The Red Bulls, Bio Pluses, Rockstars, Boosts, you name it. She noticed she needed more of the drinks because the energy boosts she got from them were having less of an effect on her. The intensifying habit began making her feel lethargic and ill, and this made her realize and question her habit that became an addiction. With direction and encouragement from her life coach, and by following a simple process her addiction was broken quickly and the results were everlasting.

This process could assist you to break bad habits. You’ll be amazed how this can be achieved with slight effort. And you’ll be on your way to a more desired new you. Now, think of a habit that you’d really like to change with absolute certainty, one that contradicts your values and beliefs. It could be any habit like eating junk food, drinking too much coffee, constant negative self talk, road rage or a short temper...anything that’s annoyingly repetitive. With a powerful desire to break a habit, list 10 despicable and shameful attributes to the habit, things that are inhibiting you from being your true self and reaching your true potential. Be as outrageous as you wish in listing the attributes. Elicit every possible thing that is horrible about doing it.

Negative effects of Maria’s energy drinking habits included: • Huge physiological and psychological effects • Induces agitation, insomnia, irritability, nervousness • Affects your mood and performance tremendously

• Studies show abnormal heart rhythms with energy drink overload • Crash and burn effect • Inability to function without having a fix of the energy drink • Increased health risk therefore perhaps shorter life span Let’s intensify this feeling to make it as real as possible. Maria felt the jitters.

Her nerves weakened. She imagined herself in the severely agitated state where she felt horrid, gave it an unsight-

ly vile green slimy color. And saw herself looking haggard, grey and worn down.

She noticed that as she thought about all this more there was a terrible after taste in her mouth and her breath had a lingering fowl smell. Maria saw herself in the worst-case scenario she could possibly have been in had she continued to over load her body with these drinks.

Can you hear the sounds around you ringing or shrieking in your ears as you indulge in your habit? What kind of feeling does it send to your body? Think about the smells it reminds you of, how disgusted and futile such a habit is and how it hinders you toward your growth and light. Once you tried to imagine it in the most repulsive manner, read it to

your self. Really get into it. Feel how awful it is, how horrid it looks, give it a picture, smell its bad odour, let this stay with you.

How about flipping over this page, read another article somewhere in here and come back to this in a few minutes.

When you return, think of a person you admire, who counteracts this habit that you no longer have, a person who you admire and so wish to emulate, someone who doesn’t involve him/herself in this particular habit. Think about how they behave, what they feel, how they look, in the moments when they are living wonderfully and perfectly without this habit. Can you see it?

Now allow this other persons’ movements to play through your mind as if you were watching a movie of them appearing beautifully, at their peak and looking joyful. Move towards that person and stand along side them, touch them so that you can feel them. Shadow them as if you were their shadow with each move they made and each word they uttered. Now step into that person, become them with all the positivity attributed to them. Feel what it feels like, breathe it in as you become it.

Having a life coach, coupled with dedication and practice, you will become the person you wish to be, a person that you can embrace and be proud of, a person who is feeling wonderful and positive about life and your own renewed identity. Through this process you will find that you accept and welcome this change through acknowledgement that you are no longer carrying the old habit. Your confidence will soar, and you will feel successful. You can now look forward to creating new positive ways of being, with the intention that you are doing so to improve, grow and feel good about yourself.

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SUNDAY, JULY 8, 2012

WHAT’S ON

Announcements Indian Embassy passport and visa Passports and Visa applications can be deposited at the two outsourced centers of M/S BLS Ltd at Sharq and Fahaheel. Details are available at www.bls-international.com and www.indembkwt.org .

Consular Open House Consular Wing is providing daily service of Open House to Indian citizens on all workings days from 1000 hrs to 1100 hrs and from 1430 hrs to 1530 hrs by the Consular Officer in the Meeting Room of the Consular Hall at the Embassy. For any unaddressed issues, Second Secretary (Consular) can be contacted.

Furthermore, the head of the Consular Wing is also available to redress grievances.

Indian workers helpline/helpdesk Indian workers helpline is accessible by toll free telephone number 25674163 from all over Kuwait. It provides information and advice to Indian workers as regards their grievances, immigration and other matters. The help desk at the Embassy (Open from 9AM to 1PM and 2PM to 4:30PM, Sunday to Thursday) provides guidance to Indian nationals on routine immigration, employment, legal and other issues. It also provides workers assistance in filling up labour complaint forms. For any unaddressed issues, the concerned attachÈ in the Labour section and the head of the Labour Wing can be contacted.

Legal Advice Clinic Free legal advice is provided on matters pertaining to labour disputes, terms of contracts with employers, death/accident compensation, withholding of dues by employers, etc. by lawyers on our panel, to Indian nationals on all working days between 1500hrs to 1600hrs.

Ambassador’s Open House The Open House for Indian citizens by the Ambassador is being held on all Wednesdays at the Embassy for redressal of grievances. In case Wednesday is an Embassy holiday, the meeting will be held on the next working day.

ISP excels in ssc (part i) results

‘Leniency of Islam’ An unprecedented initiative of KTV2 (English channel) is the new program by the name ‘Leniency of Islam’ presented by Shaikh Musaad Alsane and directed by Hamid Al-Turkait. The program is mainly meant to address the expatriates living in Kuwait. Religious questions are received through the program email qislam@tv.gov.kw and sms can be sent to97822021 and answered by the lecturer and Imam in Awqaf Ministry Shaikh Musaad Alsane a Master Degree holder in Sharia and fiqih from Kuwait University. So don’t forget to watch the program every Friday at 1:00 pm.

Free Arabic course IPC is opening an Intensive Basic Arabic Course for ladies commencing from June 3 to July 8, 2012. The class will be from 5-7 pm for three days a week. Registration is on! For information, call 22512257.

Aware Diwaniya The AWARE Center cordially invites interested expatriates to its diwaniya presentation entitled, “Fasting in Islam, Judaism and Christianity,” by Iman Martin on Tuesday July 10th, 2012 at 7:00 pm. Is fasting unique to Muslims only? When and how do Jews and Christians fast? Is there any difference in Islam between fasting during Ramadan and other types of fasting? What is the meaning of Ramadan? What were the main reasons as to why people observed fasting in the past? In her 20minute presentation, Iman will answer all the questions and many more.

For more information, call 25335260/80 or log onto: www.aware.com.kw.

Summer Scrabble for kids ood news for kids still here during the summer vacations. You can join up with me to learn some tricks, tips and how to play Scrabble the right way! Need to know more? Then register with me Rohaina at 66634224 or at rainaveer@hotmail.com. You will be given Scrabble boards and have loads of fun games, mind games and quizzes. If this sounds fun, then call soon. Classes will end on July 26th.

Classes are on Thursdays ONLY and from 2.30 4.00 pm. Loads of fun and games in store.

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Write to us Send to What’s On upcoming events, birthdays or celebrations by email: local@kuwaittimes.net Fax: 24835619 / 20

he Federal Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education (IBISE), Pakistan, has declared results of SSC Part I annual examination 2012. 112 students appeared from International School of Pakistan, Khaitan.

32 students got Al grade, 32 were placed in A grade, while the remaining students have also shown a good performance.

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First Five top scorers of the school are as follows: 1. Maryam Amir (498 Marks) 2. Danish Tahira (488 Marks) 3. Afrah Hameed (484 Marks) 4. Fatima Sadiq(482 Marks) 5. Waleed Hassan (481 Marks) The management of school congratulated

the successful students and their parents for the excellent academic results. The role of teachers is highly admired which contributed to make these results brilliant.

Competitions in Patriotic songs ndo-Kuwait Friendship Society, Kuwait (www.indo-kuwaitfriendshipsociety.com) is planning to conduct competitions in Indian and Kuwaiti Patriotic songs. This is the first time in Kuwait, an Indian Association is organizing contests in “Patriotic Songs” for both Indian and Kuwaiti School students. The first 3 places will be declared separately by Judges who are experts in Indian and Kuwaiti Patriotic songs. Several prizes and awards will be handed over for the winning schools.

Pradeep Rajkumar and A K S Abdul Nazar said that IKFS wants let our children learn what they mean as a “Patriotic” to their home country. 4 pages of spot Essay competition related to “Patriotism” also will be held in the same day as a spot registration. 1 Girl and 1 Boy student from each School can participate in the ESSAY contest. Dr. Mohamed Tareq, Chairman of the First Indian Model School in Kuwait “ Salmiya Indian Model School (SIMS) already confirmed as a Co-Sponsor of the Program.

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Conditions apply: 1) The competitions are meant for all the Schools located in Kuwait and should be nominated by school authority.

2) Each school can select group of 7 students for the “PATRIOTIC SONGS (Indian and Kuwaiti)” and nominate separately.

3) Children of above 12 years till 17 years (VII classes to XII classes) are eligible for the contest. But if School is permitted 4) Musical instruments or KARAOKE mixer should be accompanied by the participating students/Children and the school team should operate and select the mixers.

5) Time frame: 7 minutes - Names will be called as “First come” in the Registration.

The Event will be held at the auditorium of “Salmiya Indian Model School” on Saturday, 27th October 2012 from 09:30 am onwards. It will be a full day program with fun and full of entertainments.

Food-stalls of different Kuwaiti and Indian tastes will installed.

Dr. Ghalib Al-Mashoor said in a press release that Invitations for all schools located in various parts of Kuwait are already been sent. Schools under one management but from different locations can also participate in the contest individually. As per the school directory, there 23 Indian schools in Kuwait.

The last date of receiving names of the Participants is scheduled on 2nd day of October, 2012 (INDIA’s GHANDI JAYANTHI DAY). The entry is free to all and due to 2nd day of Eid Al-Adha holidays, a large crowd is expected to attend in addition to, Senior Kuwaiti and Indian citizens will also grace the function.

All the applications of interest should be sent to: ikfsociety@gmail.com Phone:99430786

Condolence meeting held for Indian national condolence meeting was held by Indian Citizens Committee to condole the death of Mohammed Ali Ambavaram, an Indian national hailing from Andhra Pradesh recently.

Ambavaram had sought assistance from the Indian embassy but became violent and damaged Indian embassy property when he was denied proper recourse. He was handed over to the local police for his actions after which he committed suicide in the police station the next day. Ambavaram death was tragic and regretful .

He hails from a very poor family and is survived by his wife.

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31

SUNDAY, JULY 8, 2012

WHAT’S ON

Embassy Information 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 ■■■■■■■

Marriott and Visa team up to offer free nights this summer eading hotel group Marriott International has teamed up with VISA in the Middle East and Africa to offer 3 nights stay for the price of 2, for the duration of the summer. The offer also includes 20% off all food and beverage at participating outlets.

“At Visa, we know the summer season can be an expensive time of year, and what better way to reward our Visa cardholders than by giving them tangible holiday benefits when they pay with their Visa debit or Visa credit card,” said Karim Beg, Visa’s Head of Regional Marketing for MENA. “Added benefits and discounts are one of the best ways to reward our Visa cardholders, both here and overseas, so we are delighted to partner with Marriott hotels across the regional to enhance everyone’s holiday experience and offer great savings through the summer.”

Marriott International’s stable of discerning brands including JW Marriott Hotels, Renaissance Hotels, Marriott Hotels & Resorts, Courtyard by Marriott, Residence Inn by Marriott and Marriott Executive Apartments will all take part in the exclusive offer that is available until September 14th 2012.

Jeff Strachan, Vice President Sales and Marketing, Marriott International Middle East & North Africa, commented today, “Marriott customers have an eye for luxury but they also appreciate great value. We have 27 properties in the region, and our business could never succeed without the thousands of loyal customers we regularly welcome back to our hotels across the Middle East and Africa. It stands to reason that we should look for every opportunity to allow our guests continued enjoyment of our world class locations, food, beverages and service for a little less. We are delighted to be working with VISA to do just that.”

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EMBASSY OF BRAZIL The Embassy of Brazil requests all Brazilian citizens in Kuwait to proceed to the website www.brazil.org.kw (Contact Us Form / Fale Conosco) 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 Brazilian Government to contact and assist Brazilians living abroad in case of any emergency.

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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 non-notarial 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.

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EMBASSY OF KOREA The Embassy of the Republic of Korea wishes to inform that it has moved to Mishref. New Address: Embassy of the Republic of Korea Mishref, Block 7A, Diplomatic Area 2, Plot 6 The Embassy also wishes to inform that it will be opened to the public on the following office hours: Saturday to Thursday Morning: 8:00 am to 12:30 pm Lunch Break: 12:30 pm to 1:00 pm Afternoon: 1:00 pm to 3:30 pm ■■■■■■■

American Society of Safety Engineers organizes three-day training program merican Society of Safety Engineers, Kuwait Chapter organized a three days training program on “HAZOP Leader Training” at Kohinoor Hotel, Fahaheel, Kuwait, in collaboration with International Risk Control Asia (IRCA), India. The three days training program was held from 1st July 2012 to 3rd July 2012. The training session was commenced with a welcome note and the tutor Rajneesh Kumar, was introduced by G. Sampath Reddy, Secretary ASSE Kuwait chapter.

Rajneesh Kumar, IRCA operations in India started the session with his curriculum, Risk Management, Hazard Identification Techniques, HAZOP Introduction & Methodology, HAZOP recommendations & Reporting, Qualitative Risk Assessment, HAZOP of a Batch Process, Role of HAZOP Leader, HAZOP of Procedures, SIL Analysis, & HAZOP Software etc...with session wise workshops and related video presentations. The final exam conducted on 3rd July 2012.

The delegates attended for the training are Nada Al Saleh, Tariq Maqbool, Joseph George, Venkata Surya Prakash Tata, Khaled Mahmoud Yousry, Balaji Santharam, Jacob John, Periasamy Natarajan, B.Sekar, Sunil N.S, Sesh K.S, Safdar Ali khan, Jino George & Mohammed Jabbar Ahmad.

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EMBASSY OF KENYA The Embassy of the Republic of Kenya wishes to inform Kenyan residents throughout Kuwait and the general public that with effect from June 1, 2012 the Embassy has moved from its current location to a new location in Surra Block 1, Street 8, Villa 303.

Please note that the new telephone and fax numbers will be communicated as soon as possible. For enquiries you can contact Consular Section on mobile 90935162 or 97527306.

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EMBASSY OF MEXICO The Embassy of Mexico is pleased to inform that it is located in CLIFFS Complex, Villa 6, Salmiya, block 9, Baghdad street, Jadda Lane 7. The working hours for consular issues are from 9:00 to 12:00 Sunday through Thursday. The reception is closed from 14:00 to 15:00 hours for lunch break. The Embassy of Mexico kindly requests all Mexicans citizens in Kuwait to proceed to the e-mail: embkuwait@sre.gob.mx in order to register or update contact information. Other consultations or/and appointments could be done by telephone or fax: (+965) 2573 1952 ■■■■■■■

EMBASSY OF MYANMAR Embassy of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar would like to inform the general public that the Embassy has moved its office to new location at Villa 35, Road 203, Block 2, AlSalaam Area in South Surra. The Embassy wishes to advice Myanmar citizens and travellers to Myanmar to contact Myanmar Embassy at its new location.

Tel. 25240736, 25240290, Fax: 25240749, email:myankuwait11@gmai1.com ■■■■■■■

EMBASSY OF NEPAL The Embassy of Nepal has moved to a new location in Jabriya, Block 8, St. 13, House No. 514, effective from 15th April, 2012. Till the new telephone connections are installed, the Embassy may be contacted by email: info@nepembku.org ■■■■■■■

EMBASSY OF NIGERIA The Nigerian embassy has its new office in Mishref. Block 3, Street 7, House 4. For enquires please call 25379541. Fax25387719. Email- nigeriakuwait@yahoo.com or nigeriankuwait@yahoo.co.uk ■■■■■■■

EMBASSY OF THAILAND The Royal Thai Embassy in Kuwait, wishes to invite the Kuwaiti companies that deal business with Thai companies or those agencies of Thai commercial companies to visit the Embassy’s Commercial Office to register their relevant information to be part of the embassy’s business and trade database.

The Royal Thai Embassy is located in Jabriya, Block 6, Street 8, Villa No. 1, Telephone No. 25317530 -25317531, Ext: 14.

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Indian Muslim Cultural Center organized a function to release a biography on Ibrahim Sulaiman Sett a member of Indian parliament for 40 years penned by AP Abdulwahab, General Secretary, Indian National League at Orma auditorium, Abbassiya, last weekend.

EMBASSY OF UKRAINE We’d like to inform you that in response to the increasing number of our citizens who work in the state and the need for 24-hour operational telephone in case of emergency the Embassy of Ukraine in the State of Kuwait has opened “hotline telephone number” - (+ 965) 972-79-206.

SUNDAY, JULY 8, 2012

TV PROGRAMS

00:45 01:40 02:35 03:30 04:25 05:20 06:10 07:00 07:25 07:50 08:15 09:10 09:35 10:05 11:00 11:55 12:50 13:45 14:40 15:05 15:35 16:00 16:30 17:25 18:20 19:15 20:10 21:05 22:00 22:55 23:50

Shark Attack Survival Guide Animal Cops South Africa Cats 101 Whale Wars: Viking Shores Wildest Africa Great Ocean Adventures Dogs/Cats/Pets 101 Karina: Wild On Safari Meerkat Manor Bondi Vet Corwin’s Quest Dick ‘n’ Dom Go Wild Breed All About It Crocodile Hunter Dogs/Cats/Pets 101 Michaela’s Animal Road Trip Wild France Wild France Rescue Vet Rescue Vet Safari Vet School Safari Vet School Must Love Cats Bad Dog Max’s Big Tracks Into The Pride Great Ocean Adventures Wildest Africa Wildest Arctic Monster Bug Wars Untamed & Uncut

00:00 Robin Hood 00:45 Monarch Of The Glen 01:35 Live At The Apollo 02:20 My Family 02:50 Last Of The Summer Wine 03:20 Doctor Who Confidential 03:35 Allo ‘allo!

04:05 Balamory 04:25 3rd & Bird 04:35 Bobinogs 04:45 Nina And The Neurons 05:00 Teletubbies 05:25 Boogie Beebies 05:40 Little Robots 05:50 Balamory 06:10 3rd & Bird 06:20 Bobinogs 06:30 Nina And The Neurons 06:45 Teletubbies 07:10 Boogie Beebies 07:25 Little Robots 07:35 Robin Hood 08:20 Keeping Up Appearances 08:50 Lab Rats 09:20 The Old Guys 09:50 Great Ormand Street 10:50 The Inspector Lynley Mysteries 11:35 20,000 Streets Under The Sky 12:25 The Royle Family 13:00 The Impressions Show 13:30 Allo ‘allo!

14:00 Doctors 14:30 Doctors 15:00 Doctors 15:30 Doctors 16:00 Doctors 16:35 Walk On The Wild Side 17:10 Doctor Who 17:55 Doctor Who Confidential 18:10 20,000 Streets Under The Sky 19:00 Blackadder The Third 19:30 Twenty Twelve 20:00 Life On Mars 20:50 Spooks 21:40 New Tricks 22:30 The Inspector Lynley Mysteries 23:20 Live At The Apollo

00:00 Extreme Makeover: Home Edition 01:20 Extreme Makeover: Home Edition 02:00 Come Dine With Me 02:50 Cash In The Attic 03:35 Cash In The Attic 04:20 Bargain Hunt 05:05 Bargain Hunt

05:50 Extreme Makeover: Home Edition 07:10 MasterChef Australia 14:35 MasterChef Australia 15:00 Extreme Makeover: Home Edition 15:40 Extreme Makeover: Home Edition 16:20 DIY SOS 16:50 DIY SOS 17:15 Holmes On Homes 18:00 Holmes On Homes 18:45 Extreme Makeover: Home Edition 19:30 Extreme Makeover: Home Edition 20:10 Gok’s Clothes Roadshow 21:00 Masterchef: The Professionals 21:55 Masterchef: The Professionals 22:20 Extreme Makeover: Home Edition 23:00 Extreme Makeover: Home Edition 23:45 Masterchef: The Professionals

00:00 BBC World News 00:10 The Culture Show Special 01:00 BBC World News 01:10 The Intelligence Squared Debate 02:00 BBC World News 02:10 World Features 02:30 Middle East Business Report 03:00 BBC World News 03:10 World Features 03:30 One Square Mile 04:00 BBC World News 04:30 Dateline London 05:00 BBC World News 05:10 The Culture Show Special 06:00 BBC World News 06:30 Click 07:00 BBC World News 07:30 Newsnight 08:00 BBC World News 08:30 India Business Report 09:00 BBC World News 09:30 Fast Track 10:00 BBC World News 10:10 World Features 10:30 One Square Mile 11:00 BBC World News 11:10 World Features 11:30 Dateline London 12:00 BBC World News 12:10 Faster, Higher, Stronger 13:00 BBC World News 13:10 The Intelligence Squared Debate 14:00 BBC World News 14:30 Newsnight 15:00 BBC World News 15:10 World Features 15:30 Collaboration Culture 16:00 BBC World News 16:15 Sport Today 16:30 Click 17:00 BBC World News 17:30 Rendezvous With Zeinab Badawi 18:00 BBC World News 18:10 The Culture Show Special 19:00 BBC World News 19:30 India Business Report 20:00 BBC World News 20:30 Our World 21:00 BBC World News 21:15 Sport Today 21:30 Collaboration Culture 22:00 BBC World News 22:30 One Square Mile 23:00 BBC World News 23:10 World Features 23:30 Rendezvous With Zeinab Badawi

00:10 00:35 01:00 01:25 01:50 02:15 02:40 03:00 03:25 03:50

Puppy In My Pocket Tom & Jerry Kids Scooby Doo Where Are You! The Flintstones Pink Panther And Pals Looney Tunes Popeye Classics Dexter’s Laboratory Tom & Jerry Looney Tunes

04:15 The Scooby Doo Show 04:40 Johnny Bravo 05:00 The Flintstones 05:25 The Jetsons 05:50 Wacky Races 06:00 Johnny Bravo 06:15 Dexter’s Laboratory 06:35 A Pup Named Scooby-Doo 07:00 Bananas In Pyjamas 07:25 Jelly Jamm 07:50 Baby Looney Tunes 08:15 Gerald McBoing Boing 08:40 Ha Ha Hairies 08:55 Pink Panther And Pals 09:15 The Garfield Show 09:40 What’s New Scooby-Doo? 10:05 What’s New Scooby-Doo? 10:30 Droopy: Master Detective 10:55 The Looney Tunes Show 11:20 Dexter’s Laboratory 11:30 Scooby Doo Meets The Boo Brothers 13:10 Dastardly And Muttley 13:35 The Scooby Doo Show 14:00 Dexters Laboratory 14:15 Dexter’s Laboratory 14:40 The Garfield Show 15:30 Looney Tunes 16:20 Tom & Jerry 16:45 Tom & Jerry 17:00 Pink Panther And Pals 17:25 Pink Panther And Pals 17:50 Johnny Bravo 18:05 Johnny Bravo 18:30 The Jetsons 18:55 The Flintstones 19:20 Dastardly And Muttley 19:45 Popeye 20:00 Dexter’s Laboratory 20:10 The Looney Tunes Show 20:35 What’s New Scooby-Doo? 21:00 Sylvester & Tweety Mysteries 21:25 The Garfield Show 21:50 The Flintstones 22:15 Droopy & Dripple 22:40 Scooby-Doo And ScrappyDoo 23:05 Popeye 23:20 The Jetsons 23:45 Duck Dodgers

00:30 Bakugan: New Vestroia 00:55 Bakugan: New Vestroia 01:20 Powerpuff Girls 02:10 Courage The Cowardly Dog 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 Regular Show 09:20 Batman Brave And The Bold 09:45 Young Justice 10:05 Thundercats 10:35 Hero 108 11:00 Redakai: Conquer The Kairu 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 Powerpuff Girls 18:55 Ben 10: Alien Force 19:20 Ben 10: Alien Force 19:45 Ed, Edd n Eddy 20:35 Bakugan: Mechtanium Surge 21:00 Star Wars: The Clone Wars

IRON MAN 2 ON OSN ACTION HD

21:25 21:50 22:00 22:50 23:15 23:40

Redakai: Conquer The Kairu Grim Adventures Of...

Codename: Kids Next Door Ben 10 Ben 10 Chowder

00:00 00:30 01:00 01:30 02:00 02:30 03:00 03:15 03:30 04:00 05:00 06:00 06:30 07:00 07:30 08:00 08:15 08:30 09:00 09:15 09:30 10:00 10:30 11:00 11:30 12:00 12:30 13:00 14:00 14:30 15:00 16:00 17:00 17:30 18:00 18:15 18:30 18:45 19:00 19:30 20:00 20:30 21:00 21:30 22:00 23:00 23:30

Living Golf World Sport World Report Talk Asia World Report Amanpour CNN Marketplace Europe CNN Marketplace Africa The Brief CNN Presents CNN Newsroom Eco Solutions Inside Africa World Sport Cnngo World Report CNN Marketplace Middle East Talk Asia World Report CNN Marketplace Europe Business Traveller World Sport Mainsail African Voices The Brief World Report World’s Untold Stories CNN Presents World Report Inside The Middle East Fareed Zakaria Gps State Of The Union International Desk Inside Africa Global Exchange CNN Marketplace Africa Global Exchange CNN Marketplace Middle East World Sport Living Golf International Desk African Voices International Desk Cnngo Fareed Zakaria Gps World Report World’s Untold Stories

00:40 Mobster Confessions 01:10 Mobster Confessions 01:35 Surviving Disaster 02:30 How It’s Made 03:00 How Do They Do It? 03:25 How It’s Made 03:55 How Do They Do It? 04:20 How It’s Made 04:50 How Do They Do It? 05:15 How It’s Made 05:40 How Do They Do It? 06:05 How It’s Made 06:35 How Do They Do It? 07:00 How It’s Made 07:25 How Do They Do It? 07:50 How Sports Are Made 08:15 How Sports Are Made 08:45 Wheeler Dealers Revisited 09:40 Fifth Gear 10:05 Fifth Gear 10:30 Hillbilly Handfishin’ 11:25 Extreme Fishing 12:20 How It’s Made 16:25 Auction Kings 16:55 Border Security 18:45 Border Security 19:10 Mythbusters 20:05 Dynamo: Magician Impossible 21:00 Mythbusters Dirty Dozen 21:55 Curiosity 22:50 Inventions That Shook The World 23:45 Inventions That Shook The World

00:35 Stuck With Hackett 01:00 Stuck With Hackett 01:25 Dark Matters 02:15 Bigger, Better, Faster, Stronger 02:45 Sport Science 03:35 Sport Science 04:25 Sport Science 05:15 Sport Science 06:05 Sport Science 07:00 Mega World 07:50 Brave New World 08:40 Head Rush 08:43 Things That Move 09:10 Things That Move 09:40 Engineered 10:30 Game Changers 10:55 Game Changers 11:20 Mega World 12:10 Catch It Keep It 13:00 Bigger, Better, Faster, Stronger 13:25 Bigger, Better, Faster, Stronger 13:50 Scrapheap Challenge 14:45 Weird Or What?

15:35 Ecopolis 16:30 Future Weapons 17:20 Meteorite Men 18:10 Bigger, Better, Faster, Stronger 18:40 Brave New World 19:30 Prophets Of Science Fiction 20:20 Through The Wormhole With Morgan Freeman 21:10 Stuck With Hackett 21:35 Stuck With Hackett 22:00 Prophets Of Science Fiction 22:50 Through The Wormhole With Morgan Freeman 23:40 Dark Matters

00:25 Keeping Up With The Kardashians 00:55 Style Star 01:25 Too Young To Kill 03:15 Behind The Scenes 03:40 Extreme Close-Up 04:10 Sexiest 05:05 E!es 06:00 THS 07:50 Behind The Scenes 08:20 E! News 09:15 Khloe And Lamar 09:45 Khloe And Lamar 10:15 THS 12:05 E! News 13:05 Kendra 13:35 Kendra 14:05 Kourtney & Kim Take New York 14:30 Kourtney & Kim Take New York 15:00 Style Star

15:30 E!es 16:25 Behind The Scenes 16:55 Ice Loves Coco 17:25 Ice Loves Coco 17:55 E! News 18:55 THS 19:55 Giuliana & Bill 20:55 Keeping Up With The Kardashians 21:25 Fashion Police 22:25 E! News 23:25 Chelsea Lately 23:55 Keeping Up With The Kardashians

00:30 01:20 02:05 02:55 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

A Haunting The Haunted Ghost Lab A Haunting A Haunting On The Case With Paula Zahn Mystery ER Disappeared Forensic Detectives Murder Shift Mystery ER Real Emergency Calls Who On Earth Did I Marry?

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

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

On The Case With Paula Zahn Disappeared American Greed American Greed Scorned: Crimes Of Passion

FAST FIVE ON OSN CINEMA 00:00 Geo Sessions 00:30 Geo Sessions 01:00 David Rocco’s Amalfi Getaway 01:30 David Rocco’s Amalfi Getaway 02:00 Food Lover’s Guide To The Planet 02:30 Food Lover’s Guide To The Planet 03:00 Lonely Planet: Roads Less Travelled 04:00 Race To The Bottom of The Earth 05:00 Delinquent Gourmet 05:30 Delinquent Gourmet 06:00 Food Lover’s Guide To The Planet 06:30 Food Lover’s Guide To The Planet 07:00 Lonely Planet: Roads Less Travelled 08:00 Bondi Rescue 08:30 Bondi Rescue 09:00 One Man & His Campervan 09:30 One Man & His Campervan 10:00 Extreme Tourist Afghanistan 11:00 Travel Madness 11:30 Travel Madness 12:00 Into The Drink 12:30 Into The Drink 13:00 Delinquent Gourmet 13:30 Delinquent Gourmet 14:00 Food Lover’s Guide To The Planet 14:30 Food Lover’s Guide To The Planet 15:00 Lonely Planet: Roads Less Travelled 16:00 Bondi Rescue 16:30 Bondi Rescue 17:00 Somewhere In China 18:00 Geo Sessions 18:30 Geo Sessions 19:00 Chasing Che: Latin America On A Motorcycle 19:30 Chasing Che: Latin America On A Motorcycle 20:00 Departures 21:00 Banged Up Abroad 22:00 Don’t Tell My Mother 23:00 Into The Drink 23:30 Into The Drink

00:00 Situation Critical 01:00 Taboo 02:00 Ancient Megastructures 03:00 World’s Deadliest Animals 04:00 Shark Men 05:00 Banged Up Abroad 06:00 Sea Patrol 07:00 Salvage Code Red 08:00 Situation Critical 09:00 Taboo 10:00 Ancient Megastructures 11:00 World’s Deadliest Animals 12:00 Shark Men 13:00 Banged Up Abroad 14:00 Sea Patrol 15:00 Salvage Code Red 16:00 Ultimate Disaster 17:00 Taboo 18:00 Untamed Americas 19:00 Ancient Megastructures 20:00 Machines Of War 21:00 Dangerous Encounters With Brady Barr 22:00 Sea Patrol 23:00 Air Crash Investigation

00:00 Wild Chronicles 00:30 Wild Chronicles 01:00 Kangaroo Kaos 01:55 Great Migrations 02:50 Swamp Men 03:45 Outback Wrangler 04:40 The Real Serengeti 05:35 Rescue Ink 06:30 Dangerous Encounters With Brady Barr 07:25 The Invaders 08:20 Street Monkeys 09:15 Snake Wranglers 09:40 Snake Wranglers 10:10 Built For The Kill 11:05 Great Migrations 12:00 Night Of The Lion 13:00 Camera Trap 13:30 Camera Trap 14:00 Hooked 15:00 The Living Edens 16:00 Grizzly Cauldron 17:00 Snake Wranglers 17:30 Snake Wranglers

18:00 19:00 20:00 21:00 22:00 23:00

Squid vs. Whale The Living Edens Grizzly Cauldron Snake Wranglers Squid vs. Whale Night Of The Lion

00:00 Wild Chronicles 01:00 Kangaroo Kaos 01:55 Great Migrations 02:50 Swamp Men 03:45 Outback Wrangler 04:40 The Real Serengeti 05:35 Rescue Ink 06:30 Dangerous Encounters With Brady Barr 07:25 The Invaders 08:20 Street Monkeys 09:15 Snake Wranglers 10:10 Built For The Kill 11:05 Great Migrations 12:00 Night Of The Lion 13:00 Camera Trap 14:00 Hooked 15:00 The Living Edens 16:00 Grizzly Cauldron 17:00 Snake Wranglers 18:00 Squid vs. Whale 19:00 The Living Edens 20:00 Grizzly Cauldron 21:00 Snake Wranglers 22:00 Squid vs. Whale 23:00 Night Of The Lion

02:00 04:00 06:00 08:00 10:00 PG15 11:45 14:00 16:00 17:15 19:30 22:00

Sniper: Reloaded-18 Anaconda-PG15 The Warrior’s Way-PG15 The Craigslist Killer-PG15 Jesse Stone: Innocents Lost-

01:00 02:45 05:00 07:00 09:00 10:45 13:00 15:00 17:00 19:00 21:00 23:00

Prom-PG15 Fast Five-PG15 District 9-PG15 The Dukes-PG15 Prom-PG15 Fast Five-PG15 Skirt Day-PG15 A Trace Of Danger-PG15 The Art Of Getting By-PG15 Gentlemen Broncos-PG15 Awaydays-18 Salomaybe-PG15

Iron Man 2-PG15 The Craigslist Killer-PG15 No Time To Fear-PG15 Iron Man 2-PG15 Carlito’s Way-18 4.3.2.1.-18

00:30 The Daily Show With Jon Stewart 01:30 Saturday Night Live 03:00 Best Friends Forever 03:30 Bent 04:00 Til Death 04:30 The Tonight Show With Jay Leno 05:30 The Simpsons 06:00 Friends 06:30 10 Items Or Less 07:00 Late Night With Jimmy Fallon 08:00 Til Death 08:30 Best Friends Forever 09:00 The Simpsons 09:30 The Office 10:00 Breaking In 10:30 10 Items Or Less 11:00 The Tonight Show With Jay Leno 12:00 Friends 12:30 Til Death 13:00 The Simpsons 13:30 10 Items Or Less 14:00 Bent 14:30 Breaking In 15:00 The Office 15:30 The Daily Show With Jon Stewart 16:30 Friends 17:00 Late Night With Jimmy Fallon 18:00 2 Broke Girls 18:30 Last Man Standing 19:00 Two And A Half Men 19:30 Happy Endings 20:30 Allen Gregory 21:00 The Daily Show With Jon Stewart 22:00 Saturday Night Live

00:00 01:00 02:00 03:00 04:00 06:00 07:00 08:30 10:00 12:00 13:00 14:00 15:00 16:00 19:00 20:00 21:00 23:00

Criminal Minds C.S.I. New York Law & Order: Criminal Intent Criminal Minds The Killing Good Morning America Terra Nova Coronation Street The Martha Stewart Show Criminal Minds C.S.I. Law & Order: Criminal Intent Live Good Morning America Terra Nova Covert Affairs Bones Burn Notice The Killing

00:00 01:00 02:00 03:00 04:00 05:00 06:00 07:00 07:30 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

Unforgettable Law & Order: Criminal Intent Criminal Minds C.S.I. New York Criminal Minds The Nine Lives Of Chloe King Unforgettable Emmerdale Coronation Street Body Of Proof Law & Order: Criminal Intent Criminal Minds Criminal Minds Emmerdale Coronation Street The Ellen DeGeneres Show Body Of Proof Unforgettable Emmerdale Coronation Street The Ellen DeGeneres Show Body Of Proof Covert Affairs Bones Burn Notice Top Gear (US) Boardwalk Empire

01:00 03:00 05:00 07:00 09:15 11:00 13:00 14:45 16:30 19:00 21:00 23:00

Double Impact-18 Anaconda-PG15 Aeon Flux-PG15 Spider-Man-PG The Reunion-PG15 Aeon Flux-PG15 The Front-PG15 The Reunion-PG15 Kingdom Of Heaven-PG15 The Transporter-PG15 Fade To Black-18 The Nun-18

00:00 Unmade Beds-18 02:00 The Extra Man-PG15 04:00 A Guy Thing-PG15 06:00 Nothing Like The HolidaysPG15 08:00 My Girlfriend’s BoyfriendPG15 10:00 My Sassy Girl-PG15 12:00 Sgt. Bilko-PG 14:00 Elle: A Modern Cinderella Tale-PG15 16:00 My Sassy Girl-PG15 18:00 A Fork In The Road-PG15 20:00 Killing Bono-18 22:00 Idle Hands-18

01:30 03:00 05:15 07:15 09:15 11:00 13:45 15:15 17:00 19:00 21:00 23:00

Dare-18 Sideways-18 The Associate-PG15 Inside Job-PG15 Too Big To Fail-PG15 My Name Is Khan-PG15 The Client List-PG15 Too Big To Fail-PG15 Tresor-PG15 Charlie St. Cloud-PG15 Posse-18 Apres Nous Le Deluge-18

00:00 Evan Almighty-PG15 01:45 Knight And Day-PG15 03:45 Taken From Me: The Tiffany

Rubin Story-PG 05:15 Dear John-PG15 07:00 Senna-PG15 09:00 Strength And Honour-PG15 11:00 Justice For Natalee HollowayPG15 13:00 Love The Beast-PG 15:00 The Tempest-PG15 17:00 Strength And Honour-PG15 19:00 127 Hours-PG15 21:00 The Dilemma-PG15 23:00 Salomaybe-PG15

00:00 Toyz Goin’ Wild-PG 02:00 Christmas In New York-PG 04:00 Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs.

Evil-PG 06:00 Blue Elephant 2-PG15 08:00 The Enchanted Mountain-PG 10:00 Emilie Jolie-PG 12:00 Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs.

Evil-PG 14:00 Ulysses-PG 16:00 Pocahontas & The Spider Woman-PG 18:00 Emilie Jolie-PG 20:00 Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed-PG 22:00 Pocahontas & The Spider Woman-PG

00:00 Devil-PG15 02:00 Jane Eyre-PG15 04:00 Rango-FAM 06:00 Lego: The Adventures Of Clutch Powers-FAM 08:00 Uncorked-PG15 10:00 Kung Fu Magoo-FAM 12:00 Jane Eyre-PG15 14:00 The Marc Pease ExperiencePG15 16:00 Uncorked-PG15 17:30 Transformers: Dark Of The Moon-PG15 20:00 Beautiful Boy-18 22:00 The Rite-18

00:00 07:00 11:00 15:00 19:00

Cricket One Day International Live NRL Premiership Super Rugby Live PGA European Tour NRL Premiership

00:00 02:00 03:00 05:00 09:00 10:00 10:30 12:00 16:00 17:00 19:00 23:00

Super Rugby UFC Countdown Live UFC 148 Prelims Live UFC 148 WWE Bottom Line Volvo Ocean Race Highlights Volvo Ocean Race NRL Premiership UFC Countdown UFC 148 Prelims UFC 148 WWE SmackDown

00:00 04:30 Tour 06:30 07:30 08:00 10:00 13:00 Tour 15:00 19:00 21:30 Tour 23:30

European PGA Tour Sailing World Match Racing

00:00 02:00 03:00 05:00 09:00 11:00 12:00 12:30 13:00 15:00 16:00 17:00 19:00 23:00

V8 Supercars UFC 148 Countdown Live UFC 148 Prelims Live UFC 148 WWE SmackDown WWE Experience WWE This Week V8 Supercars Extra V8 Supercars WWE Bottom Line UFC 148 Countdown UFC 148 Prelims UFC 148 V8 Supercars

Mobil 1 The Grid V8 Supercars Live V8 Supercars Live AFL Premiership Sailing World Match Racing Super Rugby AFL Premiership Sailing World Match Racing Super Rugby

Classifieds SUNDAY, JULY 8, 2012

DIAL 161 FOR AIRPORT INFORMATION

Airlines JZR QTR JZR AEE ETH RJA GFA UAE ETD THY DHX JZR FDB MSR RBG QTR KAC THY CLX KAC JZR DHX JZR KAC BAW KAC KAC IRA FDB KAC KAC KAC UAE ABY QTR FDB IRA ETD GFA IRC MEA JZR MSR MSC JZR JZR AFR SYR KAC MSR GFA KAC FDB KAC KNE KAC JZR QTR SVA RJA KAC JZR QTR ETD UAE UAL GFA SVA JZR JZR ABY KAC KAC QTR KAC KAC FDB MSR MSC JZR KAC KAC JAI KAC JZR KAC AXB FDB OMA MEA QTR GFA ALK KAC JZR KLM UAE JZR ETD KAC ABY QTR DHX LMU KAC JZR AIC FDB GFA UAL JZR FDB DLH MSR THY JAI PIA

Arrival Flights on Sunday 8/7/2012 Flt Route 185 DUBAI 148 DOHA 267 BEIRUT 998 ATHENS 620 ADDIS ABABA 642 AMMAN 211 BAHRAIN 853 DUBAI 305 ABU DHABI 768 ISTANBUL 370 BAHRAIN 189 DUBAI 67 DUBAI 612 CAIRO 3553 ALEXANDRIA 138 DOHA 544 CAIRO 770 ISTANBUL 792 LUXEMBOURG 154 ISTANBUL 1541 CAIRO 170 BAHRAIN 555 ALEXANDRIA 412 MANILA 157 LONDON 206 ISLAMABAD 382 DELHI 615 SHAHRE KORD 53 DUBAI 302 MUMBAI 332 TRIVANDRUM 352 COCHIN 855 DUBAI 125 SHARJAH 132 DOHA 55 DUBAI 603 SHIRAZ 301 ABU DHABI 213 BAHRAIN 6801 AHWAZ 404 BEIRUT 165 DUBAI 618 ALEXANDRIA 401 ALEXANDRIA 561 SOHAG 201 DAMASCUS 6708 PARIS 341 DAMASCUS 742 DAMMAM 610 CAIRO 219 BAHRAIN 672 DUBAI 57 DUBAI 774 RIYADH 472 JEDDAH 538 SOHAG 535 CAIRO 140 DOHA 500 JEDDAH 640 AMMAN 788 JEDDAH 257 BEIRUT 134 DOHA 303 ABU DHABI 857 DUBAI 982 WASHINGTON DC DULLES 215 BAHRAIN 510 RIYADH 177 DUBAI 777 JEDDAH 127 SHARJAH 502 BEIRUT 542 CAIRO 144 DOHA 786 JEDDAH 166 PARIS 63 DUBAI 624 SOHAG 405 SOHAG 787 RIYADH 618 DOHA 674 DUBAI 572 MUMBAI 102 NEW YORK 175 DUBAI 562 AMMAN 389 KOZHIKODE 61 DUBAI 647 MUSCAT 402 BEIRUT 146 DOHA 221 BAHRAIN 229 COLOMBO 514 TEHRAN 481 SABIHA 417 AMSTERDAM 859 DUBAI 135 BAHRAIN 307 ABU DHABI 172 FRANKFURT 129 SHARJAH 136 DOHA 372 BAHRAIN 1109 ALEXANDRIA 678 MUSCAT 539 CAIRO 981 CHENNAI 59 DUBAI 217 BAHRAIN 981 BAHRAIN 239 AMMAN 8051 DUBAI 636 FRANKFURT 614 CAIRO 772 ISTANBUL 574 MUMBAI 205 LAHORE

Time 0:15 0:20 0:50 1:30 1:45 2:10 2:20 2:25 2:30 2:50 2:55 3:00 3:10 3:20 3:20 3:25 4:10 4:35 4:55 4:55 4:55 5:00 6:00 6:15 6:30 7:15 7:30 7:35 7:45 7:50 7:55 8:05 8:25 8:30 9:00 9:20 9:25 9:30 10:00 10:15 10:55 11:05 11:25 12:00 12:25 12:30 12:35 12:35 13:25 13:30 13:40 13:40 13:45 13:45 14:15 14:20 14:20 14:25 14:30 14:55 15:00 15:00 15:15 16:35 16:55 17:10 17:20 17:20 17:30 17:40 17:45 18:00 18:15 18:20 18:40 18:40 18:45 18:55 19:00 19:10 19:20 19:25 19:35 19:35 19:35 19:50 19:55 20:00 20:10 20:15 20:25 20:35 20:55 20:55 20:55 21:05 21:15 21:15 21:20 21:25 21:30 21:35 22:00 22:00 22:05 22:10 22:25 22:30 22:35 22:40 22:55 23:05 23:10 23:35 23:40 23:50 23:55

Airlines AIC FDB UAL DLH MSR JAI THY AEE ETH THY UAE FDB DHX RBG ETD MSR QTR QTR JZR RJA JZR JZR GFA THY JZR KAC CLX BAW FDB IRA KAC JZR ABY KAC KAC KAC UAE QTR FDB ETD IRA KAC KAC GFA IRC KAC MEA KAC JZR MSR KAC MSC KAC JZR JZR SYR AFR GFA FDB MSR KAC KAC JZR KNE KAC JZR KAC SVA RJA JZR QTR KAC ETD JZR QTR UAE GFA JZR ABY UAL SVA JZR QTR FDB MSR MSC JZR KAC JAI FDB KAC KAC OMA MEA KAC GFA JZR DHX ALK KLM JZR ABY ETD UAE KAC QTR KAC KAC DHX JZR LMU QTR AXB FDB GFA KAC FDB KAC JZR

Depature Flights on Sunday 8/7/2012 Flt Route 976 GOA 52 DUBAI 981 WASHINGTON 637 FRANKFURT 615 CAIRO 573 MUMBAI 773 ISTANBUL 999 ATHENS 621 ADDIS ABABA 769 ISTANBUL 854 DUBAI 68 DUBAI 371 BAHRAIN 3554 ALEXANDRIA 306 ABU DHABI 613 CAIRO 139 DOHA 149 DOHA 560 SOHAG 643 AMMAN 164 DUBAI 200 DAMASCUS 212 BAHRAIN 771 ISTANBUL 534 CAIRO 537 SOHAG 792 GIALAM 156 LONDON 54 DUBAI 614 SHAHRE-KORD 171 FRANKFURT 256 BEIRUT 126 SHARJAH 117 NEW YORK 671 DUBAI 787 JEDDAH 856 DUBAI 133 DOHA 56 DUBAI 302 ABU DHABI 602 SHIRAZ 741 DAMMAM 773 RIYADH 214 BAHRAIN 6802 AHWAZ 541 CAIRO 405 BEIRUT 501 BEIRUT 776 JEDDAH 623 SOHAG 103 LONDON 406 SOHAG 785 JEDDAH 480 ISTANBUL 176 DUBAI 342 ALEPPO 6708 DUBAI 220 BAHRAIN 58 DUBAI 611 CAIRO 561 AMMAN 673 DUBAI 538 CAIRO 473 JEDDAH 677 MUSCAT 174 DUBAI 617 DOHA 503 MADINAH 641 AMMAN 786 RIYADH 135 DOHA 513 IMAM KHOMEINI 304 ABU DHABI 238 AMMAN 141 DOHA 858 DUBAI 216 BAHRAIN 134 BAHRAIN 128 SHARJAH 982 BAHRAIN 511 RIYADH 266 BEIRUT 145 DOHA 64 DUBAI 621 ALEXANDRIA 402 ALEXANDRIA 184 DUBAI 361 COLOMBO 571 MUMBAI 62 DUBAI 283 DHAKA 351 KOCHI 648 MUSCAT 403 BEIRUT 543 CAIRO 222 BAHRAIN 502 LUXOR 171 BAHRAIN 230 COLOMBO 417 DAMMAM 1540 CAIRO 120 SHARJAH 308 ABU DHABI 860 DUBAI 343 CHENNAI 137 DOHA 301 MUMBAI 205 ISLAMABAD 373 BAHRAIN 554 ALEXANDRIA 1110 ALEXANDRIA 147 DOHA 390 MANGALORE 60 DUBAI 218 BAHRAIN 411 BANGKOK 8052 DUBAI 415 KUALA LUMPUR 528 ASSIUT

Time 0:05 0:10 0:25 0:30 0:35 0:50 2:15 2:30 2:45 3:40 3:45 3:50 3:55 4:00 4:05 4:20 4:50 5:40 6:00 6:50 6:55 7:00 7:05 7:10 7:30 8:05 8:15 8:25 8:25 8:35 8:55 9:00 9:05 9:05 9:20 9:35 9:40 10:00 10:05 10:15 10:25 10:25 10:25 10:45 11:15 11:30 11:55 12:00 12:15 12:25 12:30 13:00 13:10 13:15 13:20 13:35 14:20 14:25 14:25 14:30 14:40 15:05 15:10 15:15 15:25 15:25 15:45 15:45 15:50 15:50 16:15 16:25 17:20 17:30 17:45 18:05 18:20 18:20 18:25 18:30 18:35 18:50 19:20 19:25 19:55 20:00 20:05 20:20 20:35 20:40 20:45 21:05 21:10 21:15 21:30 21:35 21:45 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 23:05 23:10 23:10 23:15 23:30 23:40 23:45 23:50 23:50

Directorate General of Civil Aviation Home Page (www.kuwait-airport.com.kw)

ACCOMMODATION Sharing accommodation available for decent bachelor, non smoking, Amman street, one room, opposite to Al Rashid hospital.

Contact: 66232356.

(C 4069) 8-7-2012

Full time live out maid/nanny for three months, starting mid July.

Must have own residency.

Work from 7am to 7pm, Saturday - Thursday in Salwa. Call 97687172 for interview.

7-7-2012

112 Ministry of Interior website: www.moi.gov.kw

SITUATION WANTED CHANGE OF NAME I, Thiru D. Suresh, Indian Passport No: E6840843 have changed my name to D. Barakathali converted from Hindu to Islam.

(C 4068) 8-7-2012

Academic teacher 33 years experience in teaching classical Arabic and Kuwaiti dialect all levels for foreigners and ASK, BSK students.

Also German language.

Contact: 99538080.

(C 4067) 5-7-2012

FOR SALE SITUATION VACANT A part-time maid wanted urgently in Mangaf.

Interested applicants should call 60055305.

Mitsubishi Pajero 2000 model, maroon color, full option, good condition, price KD 1,250/-. Contact: 66395004. (C 4063)

Prayer timings Fajr: Duhr: Asr: Maghrib: Isha:

03:22 11:53 15:28 18:51 20:22

THE PUBLIC AUTHORITY FOR CIVIL INFORMATION Automated enquiry about the Civil ID card is 1889988

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

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

34

SUNDAY, JULY 8, 2012

stars CROSSWORD 730

STAR TRACK

CALVIN & HOBBES

Aries (March 21-April 19) Gathering and exchanging information becomes a more important part of your life these days. There is much interest in new techniques and equipment . . . a very educational experience. This afternoon neighbors or siblings have a big impact on your goals and make a big impression. Agree to disagree, if need be, and allow others their opinion for now—especially your close friends. If you allow yourself to become too emotional about any particular issue with friends or neighbors, it may be a long time before you achieve an understanding.

Cultivate peace of mind and make it a habit to remain in this state—often. This is a mentally and socially creative time, meaning . . . you will find wonderful new ways to enhance and deepen your relationships.

Taurus (April 20-May 20) Quick answers, great wit and a surplus of insights and solutions are at the ready today. Continued change, search, discovery and transformation keep you on the move and growing. You are able to penetrate and get to the very heart of things; thus research could be an option for your professional future. This evening you may find yourself involved in some intense soul-searching during which you examine your ideals and goals. Financial issues may be the main subject among family members this evening. Count your blessings; there are many—especially over this last year. Next year will show improvements as well. Taking it slow is best for now . . . you will invest and protect your earnings and come out a winner!

POOCH CAFE ACROSS 1. An honorary degree in science.

4. Eurasian pigeon with white patches on wings and neck.

10. An insecticide that is also toxic to animals and humans.

13. 4-wheeled motor vehicle.

14. American novelist noted for children's books (1832-1888).

15. An associate degree in applied science.

16. European strong-scented perennial herb with gray-green bitter-tasting leaves.

17. Spherical gram-positive parasitic bacteria that tend to form irregular colonies.

18. Tropical starchy tuberous root.

19. (Old Testament) The second patriarch.

21. A light springing movement upwards or forwards.

23. An implement used to propel or steer a boat.

24. A genus of Ploceidae.

25. English theoretical physicist who applied relativity theory to quantum mechanics and predicted the existence of antimatter and the positron (1902-1984).

27. A machine-readable version of a standard dictionary.

28. The mother-in-law of Ruth whose story is told in the Book of Ruth in the Old Testament.

31. The capital and largest city of Yemen.

34. Short and fat.

36. A radioactive element of the actinide series.

37. The act of scanning.

39. A candlestick with a flat side to be hung on the wall.

41. An intricate network suggesting something that was formed by weaving or interweaving.

44. To fix or set securely or deeply.

46. A compartment in front of a motor vehicle where driver sits.

47. (Babylonian) God of storms and wind.

50. Title for a civil or military leader (especially in Turkey).

52. Type genus of the family Arcidae.

56. Cubes of meat marinated and cooked on a skewer usually with vegetables.

57. A small cake leavened with yeast.

60. A former agency (from 1946 to 1974) that was responsible for research into atomic energy and its peacetime uses in the United States.

61. A complex red organic pigment containing iron and other atoms to which oxygen binds.

63. 32nd President of the United States.

64. Acute lung injury characterized by coughing and rales.

65. A yellow pungent volatile oil (trade name Agene) formerly used for bleaching and aging flour.

66. The starting place for each hole on a golf course.

DOWN 1. A certificate whose value is recognized by the payer and payee.

2. (law) A comprehensive term for any proceeding in a court of law whereby an individual seeks a legal remedy.

3. Causing fear or dread or terror.

4. Dried bark of the cascara buckthorn used as a laxative.

5. In or of the month preceding the present one.

6. A burn cause by hot liquid or steam.

7. A populous province in northeastern China.

8. Essential oil or perfume obtained from flowers.

9. (astronomy) A measure of time defined by Earth's orbital motion.

10. Panel forming the lower part of an interior wall when it is finished differently from the rest.

11. An informal term for a father.

12. A male monarch or emperor (especially of Russia prior to 1917).

20. Someone whose business is advertising.

22. Hypothetical remedy for all ills or diseases.

26. Alternatively, a member of the family Nymphaeaceae.

29. (trademark) A liquid that temporarily disables a person.

30. Made agreeably cold (especially by ice).

32. (informal) Of the highest quality.

33. Tag the base runner to get him out.

35. North American republic containing 50 states - 48 conterminous states in North America plus Alaska in northwest North America and the Hawaiian Islands in the Pacific Ocean.

38. Large burrowing rodent of South and Central America.

40. A soft gray ductile metallic element used in alloys.

42. A silvery ductile metallic element found primarily in bauxite.

43. A motley assortment of things.

45. American Revolutionary patriot.

48. Dearly loved.

49. In bed.

51. A river in north central Switzerland that runs northeast into the Rhine.

52. A colorless and odorless inert gas.

53. A flat float (usually made of logs or planks) that can be used for transport or as a platform for swimmers.

54. Give over.

55. A unit of area (4840 square yards) used in English-speaking countries.

58. A decree that prohibits something.

59. A sweetened beverage of diluted fruit juice.

62. The syllable naming the fourth (subdominant) note of the diatonic scale in solmization.

Yesterday’s Solution

Gemini (May 21-June 20) Your drive to succeed is strong, but you often push yourself in a direction against your own best interest. Part of you is in competition with that part of you that wants to conform and go along. Your ambitions may find you at odds with authority figures over and over again. Arguments and emotional drama could exist. When you feel yourself leaning toward a loss of control, take big steps backwards—look for the amusing parts of a situation—as well as the larger picture. This will help you recover and gain some insight. If you are in advertising, this is the time for introducing your new ideas. This is also a good time to approach the family with your ideas regarding investments. Consider purchasing low maintenance pets such as fish or birds.

Cancer (June 21-July 22)

NON SEQUITUR

You are at ease today with a good interest in communicating with others. You may be sought after for your advice regarding some very personal as well as emotional issues. Your ability to understand most people makes you high in demand when it comes to understanding and helping others.

Young people gather around you because they sense you have the answers they need without judging them. You could be a good family counselor, heal friendships, etc. Shopping this evening presents some choice opportunities that will allow you to make investments or just have fun looking at the merchandise. A greater appreciation for things of value is in order now. A new painting to go on your wall would be a good conversation piece and a good investment.

Leo (July 23-August 22) There is a lot of interest in disciplined work, but push too hard and you may break something. You will be able to work more efficiently as you pace yourself. You could uncover a new working method or a new idea that will make the work or the sale of a product move along at a fast pace. If you are not in the office, you could be working out some new method of gardening, painting your house or running a garage sale. Someone visiting this afternoon may compliment you on your work. You may feel especially kind toward a friend and find lots of fun in a phone chat. Later tonight, there is time for a romantic book or a movie. Ideas and thoughts will have greater meaning and form, such as poetry and inventions. You may want to keep notes.

ZITS

Virgo (August 23-September 22) The only negative today is in misunderstanding a message or instruction. If you repeat the instructions or communication that concerns or involves you, you will be pleased with the result. This may involve cooking, driving instructions or any sort of process requiring your close attention. Make sure you are dealing with facts when problem-solving opportunities arise. There will be plenty of time to think before acting. You should succeed at any task you set for yourself or that comes to your attention; don’t worry so much . . . you know what to do. Young people learn from your response and your attitude. A friend or family member may offer to help you with an extra chore or errand this evening and you appreciate their loving thoughtfulness.

Libra (September 23-October 22)

MOTHER GOOSE AND GRIMM

There are many things in your life that put you in control of your world; most of all, it is you making the final decisions. You have an opportunity today to help a young person learn about making choices and taking chances. Pay attention to some of the things in your life that you have lost control over and see where you might want to regain your own power. You have confidence and you are a great doer once you make up your mind about your goals. Good changes are happening around your home. This evening your professional expertise may come into play as an older person wants to discuss real estate, banking or some other financial subject. You can help this person make good decisions based on their financial and personal status.

Scorpio (October 23-November 21) A new or alternate life style interests you. You are economy personified, always able to salvage and redeem things. You like to tend and care for people and things. You relax by working. You have applied force, practical competence, tremendous discipline and a love of routine. You are able to simplify code and reduce a subject to its essential elements. After chores this afternoon, you may partake in a bit of gambling or speculation. Careful—you could lose your winnings as quickly as you came by them. This is an extremely creative period in your life—you should take full advantage of this. Tonight, you are particularly witty and make stimulating company when you find yourself surrounded by a friendly audience.

Sagittarius (November 22-December 21) You are a very feeling person and can sense the drift of a situation without a lot of analysis. This may be a day filled with passion. It is a good time for using your imagination and creativity when it comes to ideas and thinking. You are able to sway others to your way of thinking, but take care not to offend others with insensitivity. There is an air of seriousness to your dealings with partners—business or otherwise. In addition, you are concerned more about the future of business now than at any other time this year. You will tend to experience abrupt changes in fortune, good or bad, in a relatively short period. This day ends with the feeling that there is a possibility of gaining a balance. This evening is the perfect time to relax with soft sounds.

Capricorn (December 22-January 19) Legal work, not necessarily problems, may come into play today. Homework, projects or research may take you in this direction. Someone near you needs your guidance. Your very fine verbal skills and a natural sense of justice make legal work a distinct possibility. You may even be able to give someone ideas that will help him or her avoid legal problems. Your love of job and practical skills makes you a fine manager and businessperson. Your parental, protective instincts toward loved ones are exalted. Depending on other factors, it can also mark a good time to start a relationship. You have an increased understanding of life—especially in practical matters. Relationships that start now will probably be long lasting.

To

Yesterday’s Solution Yester

Aquarius (January 20- February 18) You may find yourself involved in some sort of research or any work that requires digging, searching, investigating and getting beneath the surface of a situation. You are fascinated by social interchange and gossip; you tend not to be emotional and can be somewhat surface-oriented—careful.

Higher-ups, supervisors or customers that are in command may ask for more than you are willing to give; patience, this will pass. You seem ready, willing and able—you enjoy variety and change. Thinking, writing, researching and sciences are good.

Harmony with friends and loved ones are the order this afternoon. This is a good time to socialize, entertain and enjoy those personal relationships that bring you joy. This is a good time for love.

Pisces (February 19-March 20)

Word Sleuth Solution

If you are not on vacation this next week, you probably should be. This is the most amicable time to travel. You may feel that you need a vacation from the usual routine, even if this is not suitable for now. Somehow dealing with people, being on display, or having little time to yourself is beginning to get old—patience, changes are in the forecast. This afternoon you will be able to enjoy a different routine. Call your beloved or best friend and see if either one of you can come up with a unique entertainment idea. Life is just more fun when you create little positive diversions. Enjoy your afternoon; tomorrow you can return to your work and give it your best. This evening you could think on the new things you want to learn; how about a harmonica?

SUNDAY, JULY 8, 2012

i n f o r m at i o n For labor-related inquiries and complaints: Call MSAL hotline 128 GOVERNORATE 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

Kaizen center

25716707

Roudha

22517733

Adhaliya

22517144

Khaldiya

24848075

Keifan

24849807

Shamiya

24848913

Shuwaikh

24814507

Abdullah Salim

22549134

Al-Nuzha

22526804

Industrial Shuwaikh

24814764

Al-Khadissiya

22515088

Dasmah

22532265

Bneid Al-Ghar

22531908

Al-Shaab

22518752

Al-Kibla

22459381

Ayoun Al-Kibla

PHARMACY

ADDRESS

Ahmadi

Sama Safwan Abu Halaifa Danat Al-Sultan

Fahaeel Makka St Abu Halaifa-Coastal Rd Mahboula Block 1, Coastal Rd

23915883 23715414 23726558

Jahra

Modern Jahra Madina Munawara

Jahra-Block 3 Lot 1 Jahra-Block 92

24575518 24566622

Capital

Ahlam Khaldiya Coop

Fahad Al-Salem St Khaldiya Coop

22436184 24833967

Farwaniya

New Shifa Ferdous Coop Modern Safwan

Farwaniya Block 40 Ferdous Coop Old Kheitan Block 11

24734000 24881201 24726638

Tariq Hana Ikhlas Hawally & Rawdha Ghadeer Kindy Ibn Al-Nafis Mishrif Coop Salwa Coop

Salmiya-Hamad Mubarak St Salmiya-Amman St Hawally-Beirut St Hawally & Rawdha Coop Jabriya-Block 1A Jabriya-Block 3B Salmiya-Hamad Mubarak St Mishrif Coop Salwa Coop

25726265 25647075 22625999 22564549 25340559 25326554 25721264 25380581 25628241

Hawally

ST TATE T OF K KUW WA AIT

Tel.: e 161

DIRECTORA ATE T GENE GENERAL OF CIVIL AV VIA AT TION METEOROLOGICAL DEP PARTMENT A

Hot and dusty with moderate to fresh north westerly wind, with speed of 20 - 45 km/h

BY Y NIGHT:

Relatively hot and dusty with moderate to fresh north westerly wind, with speed of 15 - 40 km/h

Dust warning

WA ARNING

32 °C

22451082

KUW WA AIT AIRPOR RT

44 °C

33 °C

Al-Mirqab

22456536

NUW WA AISEEB

45 °C

31 °C

Sharq

22465401

WAFRA A

43 °C

31 °C

Salmiya

25746401

SALMI

41 °C

27 °C

ABDAL LY

44 °C

32 °C

Jabriya

25316254

JAL ALIY YAH A

43 °C

29 °C

Maidan Hawally

25623444

FA AILAKA

42 °C

31 °C

Bayan

25388462

AHMADI POR RT

42 °C

34 °C

Mishref

25381200

UMM AL-MARADEM

37 °C

32 °C

W.Hawally

22630786

WARBA A A - BUBY YAN A

44 °C

31 °C

Sabah

24810221

Jahra

24770319

ST TAT TION

DA AT TE

WEA ATHER T

Sunday

08/07

West Jahra

24772608

Monday

South Jahra

24775066

Tuesday

North Jahra

24775992

Weednesday

North Jleeb

24311795

MAX.

MIN.

Wind Direction

Wind Speed

hot + raising dust

45 °C

32 °C

NW

15 - 40 km/h

09/07

hot

46 °C

32 °C

NW

15 - 38 km/h

10/07

hot

46 °C

32 °C

NW

12 - 35 km/h

11/07

hot

47 °C

32 °C

NW

15 - 38 km/h

PRA RA AYER Y TIMES 03:20

MAX. Temp.

43 °C

Sunrise

04:55

MIN. Temp.

31 °C

Zuhr

11:53

MAX. RH

15 %

Asr

15:27

MIN. RH

Sunset

18:51

MAX. Wind i

Isha

20:22

TOT TA AL L RAIINF FALL A L IN 24 HR.

24892674

23900322

RECORDED YESTERDA AY AT KUW WAIT A AIRPORT

Fajr

24884079

Fintas

07/07/2012 0000 UTC

Temperatures DA AY

24575755

24710044

SFC. CHART

4 DA AY YS FORECAST

New Jahra

N.Kheitan

05 % NW 71 km/h .03 mm

All times are local time unless otherwise stated.

PRIVATE CLINICS Ophthalmologists Dr. Abidallah Al-Mansoor 25622444 Dr. Samy Al-Rabeea 25752222 Dr. Masoma Habeeb 25321171 Dr. Mubarak Al-Ajmy 25739999 Dr. Mohsen Abel 25757700 Dr Adnan Hasan Alwayl 25732223 Dr. Abdallah Al-Baghly 25732223 Ear, Nose & Throat (ENT) Dr. Ahmed Fouad Mouner 24555050 Ext 510 Dr. Abdallah Al-Ali 25644660 Dr. Abd Al-Hameed Al-Taweel 25646478 Dr. Sanad Al-Fathalah 25311996 Dr. Mohammad Al-Daaory 25731988 Dr. Ismail Al-Fodary 22620166 Dr. Mahmoud Al-Booz 25651426 General Practitioners Dr. Mohamme Y Majidi 24555050 Ext 123 Dr. Yousef Al-Omar 24719312 Dr. Tarek Al-Mikhazeem 23926920 Dr. Kathem Maarafi 25730465 Dr. Abdallah Ahmad Eyadah 25655528 Dr. Nabeel Al-Ayoobi 24577781 Dr. Dina Abidallah Al-Refae 25333501 Urologists Dr. Ali Naser Al-Serfy 22641534 Dr. Fawzi Taher Abul 22639955 Dr. Khaleel Abidallah Al-Awadi 22616660 Dr. Adel Al-Hunayan FRCS (C) 25313120 Dr. Leons Joseph 66703427 Psychologists /Psychotherapists

Paediatricians

Plastic Surgeons Dr. Mohammad Al-Khalaf

22547272

Dr. Khaled Hamadi

Dr. Abdal-Redha Lari

22617700

Dr. Abd Al-Aziz Al-Rashed

Dr. Abdel Quttainah

25625030/60

Family Doctor Dr Divya Damodar

23729596/23729581

Psychiatrists Dr. Esam Al-Ansari

22635047

Dr Eisa M. Al-Balhan

22613623/0

Gynaecologists & Obstetricians DrAdrian arbe

23729596/23729581

Dr. Verginia s.Marin

2572-6666 ext 8321

Endocrinologist

25665898 25340300

Dr. Zahra Qabazard

25710444

Dr. Sohail Qamar

22621099

Dr. Snaa Maaroof

25713514

Dr. Pradip Gujare

23713100

Dr. Zacharias Mathew

24334282

(1) Ear, Nose and Throat (2) Plastic Surgeon Dr. Abdul Mohsin Jafar, FRCS (Canada)

25655535

Dentists

Dr. Fozeya Ali Al-Qatan

22655539

Dr. Majeda Khalefa Aliytami

25343406

Dr. Shamah Al-Matar

22641071/2

Dr. Ahmad Al-Khooly

25739272

Dr. Anesah Al-Rasheed

22562226

22618787

Dr. Abidallah Al-Amer

22561444

Dr. Faysal Al-Fozan

22619557

Dr. Abdallateef Al-Katrash

22525888

Dr. Abidallah Al-Duweisan

25653755

Dr. Bader Al-Ansari

25620111

Dr. Salem soso General Surgeons Dr. Amer Zawaz Al-Amer

22610044

Dr. Mohammad Yousef Basher

25327148

Internists, Chest & Heart Dr. Adnan Ebil Dr. Mousa Khadada Dr. Latefa Al-Duweisan

22666300 25728004

Dr. Nadem Al-Ghabra

25355515

Dr. Mobarak Aldoub

24726446

Dr Nasser Behbehani

25654300/3

info@soorcenter.com www.soorcenter.com

3729596/3729581

Neurologists

22639939

Dr. Abd Al-Naser Al-Othman

Dr. Sohal Najem Al-Shemeri

25633324

Dr. Jasem Mola Hassan

25345875

Gastrologists Dr. Sami Aman

22636464

Dr. Mohammad Al-Shamaly

25322030

Dr. Foad Abidallah Al-Ali

22633135

Kaizen center 25716707

25339330

Dr. Ahmad Al-Ansari 25658888 Dr. Kamal Al-Shomr 25329924 Physiotherapists & VD Dr. Deyaa Shehab

25722291

Dr. Musaed Faraj Khamees

22666288

Rheumatologists: Dr. Adel Al-Awadi

Dr Anil Thomas

Soor Center Tel: 2290-1677 Fax: 2290 1688

Al-Shuwaikh

24810598

Al-Nuzha

22545171

Sabhan

24742838

Al-Helaly

22434853

Al-Fayhaa

22545051

Al-Farwaniya

24711433

Al-Sulaibikhat

24316983

Al-Fahaheel

23927002

Jleeb Al-Shuyoukh

24316983

Ahmadi

23980088

Al-Mangaf

23711183

Al-Shuaiba

23262845

Al-Jahra

25610011

Al-Salmiya

25616368

INTERNATIONAL CALLS

BY Y DA AY:

42 °C

24719048

22545171

Expected Weather e for the Next 24 Hours

KUW WA AIT CITY

Al-Omariya

Al-Shohada’a

262 - 2630 Ext.: 2627

WWW.MET.GOV V..KW

MIN. REC.

Firdous

22418714

Fax: 24348714

MAX. EXP P.

Al-Ardhiya

PHONE

Al-Madena

25330060

Dr. Khaled Al-Jarallah

25722290

Internist, Chest & Heart DR.Mohammes Akkad

24555050 Ext 210

Dr. Mohammad Zubaid MB, ChB, FRCPC, PACC Assistant Professor Of Medicine Head, Division of Cardiology Mubarak Al-Kabeer Hospital Consultant Cardiologist Dr. Farida Al-Habib MD, PH.D, FACC Inaya German Medical Center Te: 2575077 Fax: 25723123

2611555-2622555

William Schuilenberg, RPC 2290-1677 Zaina Al Zabin, M.Sc. 2290-1677

Afghanistan 0093 Albania 00355 Algeria 00213 Andorra 00376 Angola 00244 Anguilla 001264 Antiga 001268 Argentina 0054 Armenia 00374 Australia 0061 Austria 0043 Bahamas 001242 Bahrain 00973 Bangladesh 00880 Barbados 001246 Belarus 00375 Belgium 0032 Belize 00501 Benin 00229 Bermuda 001441 Bhutan 00975 Bolivia 00591 Bosnia 00387 Botswana 00267 Brazil 0055 Brunei 00673 Bulgaria 00359 Burkina 00226 Burundi 00257 Cambodia 00855 Cameroon 00237 Canada 001 Cape Verde 00238 Cayman Islands 001345 Central African 00236 Chad 00235 Chile 0056 China 0086 Colombia 0057 Comoros 00269 Congo 00242 Cook Islands 00682 Costa Rica 00506 Croatia 00385 Cuba 0053 Cyprus 00357 Cyprus (Northern) 0090392 Czech Republic 00420 Denmark 0045 Diego Garcia 00246 Djibouti 00253 Dominica 001767 Dominican Republic 001809 Ecuador 00593 Egypt 0020 El Salvador 00503 England (UK) 0044 Equatorial Guinea 00240 Eritrea 00291 Estonia 00372 Ethiopia 00251 Falkland Islands 00500 Faroe Islands 00298 Fiji 00679 Finland 00358 France 0033 French Guiana 00594 French Polynesia 00689 Gabon 00241 Gambia 00220 Georgia 00995 Germany 0049 Ghana 00233 Gibraltar 00350 Greece 0030 Greenland 00299 Grenada 001473 Guadeloupe 00590 Guam 001671 Guatemala 00502 Guinea 00224 Guyana 00592 Haiti 00509 Holland (Netherlands) 0031 Honduras 00504 Hong Kong 00852 Hungary 0036 Ibiza (Spain) 0034 Iceland 00354 India 0091 Indian Ocean 00873 Indonesia 0062

Iran 0098 Iraq 00964 Ireland 00353 Italy 0039 Ivory Coast 00225 Jamaica 001876 Japan 0081 Jordan 00962 Kazakhstan 007 Kenya 00254 Kiribati 00686 Kuwait 00965 Kyrgyzstan 00996 Laos 00856 Latvia 00371 Lebanon 00961 Liberia 00231 Libya 00218 Lithuania 00370 Luxembourg 00352 Macau 00853 Macedonia 00389 Madagascar 00261 Majorca 0034 Malawi 00265 Malaysia 0060 Maldives 00960 Mali 00223 Malta 00356 Marshall Islands 00692 Martinique 00596 Mauritania 00222 Mauritius 00230 Mayotte 00269 Mexico 0052 Micronesia 00691 Moldova 00373 Monaco 00377 Mongolia 00976 Montserrat 001664 Morocco 00212 Mozambique 00258 Myanmar (Burma) 0095 Namibia 00264 Nepal 00977 Netherlands (Holland) 0031 Netherlands Antilles 00599 New Caledonia 00687 New Zealand 0064 Nicaragua 00505 Nigar 00227 Nigeria 00234 Niue 00683 Norfolk Island 00672 Northern Ireland (UK) 0044 North Korea 00850 Norway 0047 Oman 00968 Pakistan 0092 Palau 00680 Panama 00507 Papua New Guinea 00675 Paraguay 00595 Peru 0051 Philippines 0063 Poland 0048 Portugal 00351 Puerto Rico 001787 Qatar 00974 Romania 0040 Russian Federation 007 Rwanda 00250 Saint Helena 00290 Saint Kitts 001869 Saint Lucia 001758 Saint Pierre 00508 Saint Vincent 001784 Samoa US 00684 Samoa West 00685 San Marino 00378 Sao Tone 00239 Saudi Arabia 00966 Scotland (UK) 0044 Senegal 00221 Seychelles 00284 Sierra Leone 00232 Singapore 0065 Slovakia 00421 Slovenia 00386 Solomon Islands 00677

36

SUNDAY, JULY 8, 2012

LIFESTYLE G o s s i p

Seal is in ‘an excellent place’ right now he singer - who is separated from his supermodel wife - revealed that he has moved on from Heidi Klum since announcing their split.

He told USA Today: “When you live your private life in public, and things aren’t necessarily as rosy as people think, you owe it to the public to speak up.

“There were people who were genuinely upset that what they thought was perfect was no longer.” The

T

former couple spent nearly seven years together and have four children, however Seal insists he is over the worst of their break up. He continued: “I’m in an excellent place right now. In a situation like this, your priority is the children. As long as the children are happy, I’m happy.” The performer was reiterating a point made in the original statement which announced the end of their relationship. It

read: “This is an amicable process and protecting the well-being of our children remains our top priority, especially during this time of transition. We thank our family, friends, and fans for their kind words of support. And for our children’s sake, we appreciate you respecting our privacy.”

Demi Moore’s relationship with daughters reportedly at breaking point he actress has three girls with her actor ex-husband, Bruce Willis, and her offspring apparently resent her as she is being extremely “needy”. A source said: “Rumer, Scout and Tallulah just don’t want to deal with the drama at the moment. Since breaking up with Ashton, Demi has been a mess. The girls were there for her through it all - the split and the rehab but now they just feel like they need a little distance.” The insider added to website RadarOnline: “Demi is just being very needy right now and the girls are tired of it, they want a mother not another little sister.

They are all concerned that she is going to relapse and head back to rehab and they can’t deal with the stress and worry of it.”

The last time Demi was photographed with one of her daughters was on January 14, when she and Rumer attended the Friends Cinema for Peace event in Los Angeles and posed for pictures on the red carpet. Just nine days later Demi had a seizure at her home and collapsed, she was rushed to the hospital and subsequently entered a rehab treatment center to deal with her substance abuse problems and eating disorder.

She spent more than a month in rehabilitation and was photographed returning to California on a private jet on March 3, while Rumer was in Miami on March 5 promoting her new film ‘The Diary of Preston Plummer’.

T

Clooney ill with food poisoning in Italy

Jennifer Hudson desperate for a daughter he actress-and-singer - who is already the mother of four-year-old son David Otunga Jr. - admitted that she is eager to have a female child. She said: “It’s always been my dream to have a boy first and then a little girl so he’d be the big brother...

I want one so bad.” Jennifer added that her desire for a daughter has only been spurred by David Jr, the son of World Wrestling Entertainment star David Otunga. She revealed to Life & Style magazine: “He says, ‘Mummy, I want a baby sis-

T

ter,’ every day. [I say], Give me another year or two. “I used to say when David Jr. is four, but he’s almost four now. So maybe [when he’s] five or six, because this is coming too soon!” Jennifer and David got engaged in 2008 after dating for several months. She recently revealed that their child is excited about taking part in the upcoming wedding ceremony. She said: “My son won’t have it any other way. He’ll definitely be part of it. Maybe he’ll even sing!”

Sheen claims he gave Winona Ryder stage name he “Anger Management’ star said he was listening to psychedelic band The Doors with the actress - who’s birth surname is Horowitz - when he was inspired to give her a new moniker. He told US TV show ‘Centerstage’: “We were listening to the Doors, to ‘Riders on the Storm.’

“And I said, ‘You know, I’m thinking Winona Ryder sounds cool,’ and she was like, ‘Yeah!’”

However, despite coining the name, Charlie claims she never thanked him. He added: “She never, never gave me credit to this day.” Charlie, 46, also talked about his firing from TV show ‘Two and a Half Men’ last year following his erratic behaviour and drug abuse, saying he thinks both he and the show’s makers were to blame. He said: “A lot of it was my fault, a lot of it was their fault. They went into my personal space, you know? And then my personal space might have been not the most private place in the world. “It got in the way of the work. I like to think that I didn’t get fired, I got traded for a player to be named later.

When you take away the anchor, you tend to go adrift. So I felt bad for them for a nanosecond.” Charlie also praised Ashton

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he Descendants’ star and his girlfriend Stacy Keibler were sick after eating something bad at a restaurant in Cernobbio, near to where George has a home, earlier last week. Stacy tweeted: “Finally had a bad meal in Italy, our whole dinner party got food poisoning ?#ohwell? at least I’m still in Italy.” The food poisoning wasn’t bad enough for George, Stacy or any of their party to go to hospital. The owner of the restaurant which was thought to have served the questionable food denied to website TMZ it cold have been his

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doing, and said they must have become sick elsewhere. George and Stacy are holidaying at his house on Lake Como in Northern Italy, and are joined on their trip by his dog, black cocker spaniel mix Einstein, who was treated to a day’s pampering at a local pet grooming centre. While there, Einstein reportedly got the works: a bath, a haircut and even a massage. Einstein has also joined his owner on the boating lake, as well as enjoying the Mediterranean weather. George bought the villa in the town of Laglio for a reported £10million in 2002. However, he

Rihanna afraid of getting her heart broken he ‘We Found Love’ hitmaker - who has not had a serious relationship since splitting from Chris Brown after he brutally assaulted her in February 2009 - is wary of falling in love again in case the relationship goes bad. She said: “When I was in love, I fell so hard ... The way it made me feel was priceless. And in a blink of an eye my whole life changed. Everything that I knew was different. I never thought I’d feel that pain in my life. I’m afraid of feeling that again.” The 24-year-old R&B superstar - who has had a brief romance with Drake - admits she is very “conservative” in her personal life because she finds it hard to trust people or let them get close to her. She added to the August issue of America’s Harper’s Bazaar magazine: “I have been conservative in my love life ... it’s pretty much non-existent.

If I come across someone who I find really cool, I’ll hang out. But the minute I find that we’re getting too close I just - I don’t let people in.” Instead, the ‘Where Have You Been’ singer prefers to express her “rebellious” side through her appearance. She explained: “[I’m] rebellious through my music, through my fashion, tattoos, and my hair.”

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became upset with being photographed when he was there and put it up for sale in 2010. A bidding war ensued, in which David Beckham was rumoured to be involved, but eventually George changed his mind and took it back off the market. At the time Mayor Roberto Pozzi, said: “It would be a shame if George went. He has become one of the locals. If George does leave I hope the Beckhams buy the place as it will keep a touch of glamour in Laglio.”

Kutcher, who took over as the star of the show, saying he thought his introduction was “one of the great TV moments ever.”

Fire breaks out on set of Bruce Willis’ latest movie he set of ‘A Good Day to Die Hard’ in Budapest, Hungary, burst into flames, after a pyrotechnics stunt went wrong. A statement from film makers 20th Century Fox said: “No one was injured by the flames, which occurred during a pyrotechnics stunt just after midnight CET on Thursday, and were contained a short while later. “Bruce Willis, was not on set, nor were other principal cast. Principal photography on the movie began in April in Budapest, and is expected to wrap late summer.” Bruce’s stunt double, who was shooting the scene, part of the fifth movie in the ‘Die Hard’ series, was able to escape easily and uninjured from the scene. According to website Perez Hilton, Bruce - who plays the film’s hero, John McClane - was back in his hotel at the time of the disaster, but rushed back to the set to help clear equipment from the fire’s dangerous path. The scene which caused the fire happened when a helicopter had to land near a burning wooden structure.

However, the helicopter’s blades fanned the fire, causing the whole building to burst into flames, rather than just the ‘lobby’. Producers had reportedly spent two months building the structure, which and planned to use it for five days of filming, before the fire accidentally razed it.

Explaining the plot of the film - to be released next year - producer Tom Rothman said: “It’s all set in Russia. Well there’s bookend scenes in New York, but it’s John McClane, goes to Russia and I think the technical term... is f***s everything up. “And the fun part about it, though, is there’s a great moment where he says ‘It’s good a day as any to die.’” —BangShowbiz

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SUNDAY, JULY 8, 2012

LIFESTYLE M u s i c

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Shivaprasad, who is credited with a bunch of off the Mariam Anoop was attracted to the concept of peotrack films wrote and directed the environment movie, ple who are displaced for establishing business projThe Place. ects on their land. She produced the movie, The Place, a homage her generation could give to the older ones, is based on the life of activist Pokkudan.

The movie ends with a note to the young generation.

The Place is an Indian movie discussing the importance of mangroves, the shrubs that grow in saline coastal area of south India. The docu-fiction movie brings home two themes of displacement and ecological encroachment.

Indian environmental film out spaces cinema culture Mangrove forest activist lives and dies in this morality docu-fiction

By Sunil Cherian okkudan, 75, lives his life on the edge, just like the mangroves he has been planting in the marshy northern Kerala land. A film based on his activism could not be otherwise. Director Shivaprasad attempts an environmentally burning and spiritually awakening plot - of a man whose life cannot overcome corporatocracy’s plan to convert the mangrove forest into an IT park - in the philosophical-moral movie Sthalam (The Place). This cinematic attempt is almost holy, like a parable that may have a worn-out form but rich in essence. And technically the film, produced under the banner Avagama Creations, joins the camera revolution too. It is shot by the handy Cannon 5D. Kerala’s living mangrove legend Kallen Pokkudan

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is a character with a similar name in the 2-hour plus film. He is the chieftain who is surrounded by numerous warriors supposedly representing the labyrinths of a society that is intertwined with a plethora of problems that travel beyond space and time. Despite the daily glitches and hitches, people who live below the official geographical line are content materialistically. But they react only when they are uprooted out of their land with government intervention. Displacement, like ecological encroachment is an equal debate here.

Like the mangroves serve as habitat to poor beings from snakes to honeybees, the film tries to row through the tides of politics, bureaucracy, casteism and capitalism. Folksongs and folkdances (theyyam) are sprinkled as an array of characters come and go with missions ranging from failed

Naxalism to flourishing foreign love.

The director, who also scripted the movie based on real events, has intentionally tried to edutain the viewers with the importance of his topic: the mangroves play an essential part in the eco-system where human beings have no control over other animals. The theme takes a pan shot when the script broadens its boundaries from people’s space struggle to what can be achievable with their mental space.

As the audience of this environmentally moral movie, we will have to forego the flabs of the storyline. The writer in Shivaprasad dominates the director in him. Thus we have philosophical musings throughout the movie and they are taxed with deft dialogues too (The opposite of worst is not best but better and good; space is time and time is space).

Shivaprasad reads Pokkudan like a book. Osho and IMF suddenly appear in a conversation. We will have to forgive the director who narrates a sequence in order to bring a philosophical point.

This is always a challenge for storytellers and filmmakers: how to show an inconvenient truth in a comfortable manner.

Considering the relevance of the environment friendly theme, the film deserves an active applause than a Facebook like. My applause without borders goes to Mariam Anoop who assigned this tsunamiresistant like task to Shivaprasad by producing the docu-feature film.

Mumblecore goes to Kosovo in ‘The Return’ ven in a cinematic world increasingly full of cross-cultural experiments and disappearing borders, “The Return” is unusual. The film, which won the Jury Prize at Sundance in January and played at the Palm Springs International Film ShortFest last month, is a 20-minute drama about war partly inspired by the American indie mumblecore movement and made in Kosovo in 10 days from the beginning of shooting until the premiere.

The schedule was ridiculous, the budget tiny and the stylistic inspiration an American indie movement that has virtually nothing in common with the world of armed conflict in the Balkans. But “The Return” is nonetheless a wrenching, emotional experience. It takes what might sound like a gag line - “mumblecore goes to war” - and turns it into a raw, real document that zeroes in on a married couple trying to put their lives together in the aftermath of a devastating conflict.

As the film begins, a man has reappeared after being missing and imprisoned for four years; his wife has her own horror story, which only emerges at the end of the film, in an intimate but searing scene that takes place in bed, as hysterical laughter gives way to harrowing truths. “I wanted to make a universal story - a story that would communicate with every person in the world, no matter the nationality or class,” said director Blerta Zeqiri in an email interview with TheWrap conducted after she returned to Kosovo from Palm Springs.

“The Return” was originally slated for a different director, who left during pre-production. The director of the Nine Eleven Dedication Festival in Kosovo called Zeriqi, who’d spent her teen years as a socially-conscious hip-hop artist in Kosovo before studying drama in her home country and then film in Paris. He asked Zeqiri, a director in her early 30s whose 30-minute film “Exit” had won a number of international festival awards, to take over the film. The catch: the budget was tiny, and the film had to be ready in time for the festival, which was taking place in one month.

Zeqiri liked the basic plot, but not the script; after thinking about it for a week, she said she’d do it if she could overhaul the entire project on the impossibly tight schedule. “The plot was amazing and I knew that if you take a plot like that, and structure the story differently, this could become a good film,” she said. Her goal, and the reason she accepted the project, was to capture the experience of the war and ethnic conflicts that ripped through Kosovo in the aftermath of the breakup of Yugoslavia in the mid1990s.

Zeqiri lived in the town of Suva Reka (or Suhareke) in the south of Kosovo. The town was the location of a massacre in 1999, though she herself did not lose any family members or close friends. Instead, she and her family fled the town and spent 10 days traveling from place to place until they were finally able to leave Kosovo. “The war marked my life forever,” she said. “I think very often about how strong a human being is. People get used to the most unusual situations unbelievably fast. And only when you don’t have major problems anymore, you see how devastated the experience has left you.”

“I remember while I was in the war, I

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would think about these films and books that dealt with war, and I didn’t get them at all. There’s an anecdote in Kosovo about a man who falls out of a pear tree and would only let those people visit who have also fallen of a pear tree. ‘Only they can understand what I’m going through,’ he would say. I guess the same goes for the war.” After deciding to make the film, Zeqiri took two weeks to find a crew, cast the actors and begin working on the characters’ back stories. She wanted them to improvise the entire movie under her guidance, and had an unlikely model in mind: “Humpday,” the 1999 comedy from Lynn Shelton starring Mark Duplass and Joshua Leonard as straight friends who decide to sleep together for an art project.

“In Kosovo we don’t get to watch a lot of independent cinema, in 2010 I watched ‘Humpday’ and liked it a lot,“ she said. “[I liked] the way the film was focused on dialogue, on characters, the way it had the documentary look.” Reading about the film online, she learned the director was femaleand also discovered the genre known as mumblecore, a group of extremely lowbudget American indie films featuring naturalistic, often improvised dialogue. (Key mumblecore films include the Duplass brothers’“The Puffy Chair” and Joe Swanberg’s “Hannah Takes the Stairs”; for a stretch in the mid ‘00s, many of the films seemed to feature the queen of mumblecore, actress Greta Gerwig.)

“It was a revelation to me,” Zeqiri said.

“Mumblecore is what I always wanted in films: make them look as real as possible. Not beautiful, but real. Naked, just as if there is a hidden camera somewhere. If we see two naked people in bed in films it’s always about sex. My goal was to put two naked people on the scene and to make people forget completely that they are naked.”“I still don’t really know what mumblecore is,” she added, “but I feel close to most of the things these filmmakers use for their films.”

She brainstormed ideas with her cast and her editor, Kreshnik Keka Berisha, who is also her husband, and improvised a script that is now partially credited to her two lead actors, Adriana Matoshi and Lulzim Bucolli. The climactic scene (in which yes, the characters are naked) was shot in a 20-minute take; a second take was filmed just in case, but Zeqiri ended up using the first one.

With three days of shooting and seven days to do the editing, color correction, sound mixing, title design, English translation and subtitling, the film was finished in time for the festival - though, she added, she and Berisha “looked like zombies” at the premiere. Zeqiri currently works on TV projects in Kosovo, and hopes to collaborate with her husband on a film about gay rights in Kosovo - a country, she says, in which “not even one gay person that can express their sexuality openly.” And she’s hoping that a screenplay will help open doors to the film industry. “I would love to be able to make films and communicate to the world my ideas and be able to pay my bills by making films,” she said. “That would be the dream.”

“The Return” is due to screen at the Sarajevo and Zanzibar Film Festivals in July. —Reuters

A file picture taken in New York on May 10, 2005, shows Rolling Stones members Mick Jagger (L) and Keith Richards. Most London shoppers rush by 165 Oxford Street without a second glance — but it was here 50 years ago that The Rolling Stones played their first gig and changed the landscape of pop music forever. —AFP

Rolling Stones keep giving satisfaction, 50 years on ost London shoppers rush by 165 Oxford Street without a second glance-but it was here 50 years ago that The Rolling Stones played their first gig and changed the landscape of pop music forever. Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Brian Jones played The Marquee Club on July 12, 1962 with three others, the first time they performed under the band name which would become synomymous worldwide with excess and musical flair.

Childhood friends Jagger and Richards were aged just 18 at the time and Jones-who drowned in the swimming pool at his home in 1969 — was 20 years old. But it was at the club-now a branch of Santander bank-that the seeds were sown of worldwide success which, half a century on, has seen the British band notch up over 200 million album sales globally. Hits like “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”, “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” and “Brown Sugar” are legendary rock favourites decades after topping the charts.

The band’s continued popularity, even though they are now pensioners aged in their sixties and seventies, is shown by the flurry of speculation about whether or not they would mark the anniversary with a gig. Rolling Stone magazinenamed after the same blues song which gave the band its name-reported last month that Jagger, Richards and their bandmates were considering at least one live concert this year to mark the

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anniversary.

But guitarist Richards has said there will be no full tour this year, despite the band rehearsing together for the first time in five years. “Basically, we’re just not ready,” he told Rolling Stone magazine in March, adding that 2013 was a “more realistic” target for hitting the road. Lead singer Jagger has taken to Twitter to deny that the band would stage a show to mark the London Olympics, which get under way on July 27.

“We are not playing the Olympics, but I’m looking forward to watching the games like everyone else!” he wrote last month. The band has also denied recent reports that they will play one last concert together at next year’s Glastonbury festival, with a statement saying the date was “not in our plans.” Diehard fans can look forward to an exhibition of photos of the band opening at London’s Somerset House on July 12, the anniversary of the first gig, which members of the band are expected to attend.

A new documentary covering the history of the band from that first concert to the present day is also being showcased in September. The band’s representatives did not respond to a request for comment on whether any gigs would be held to mark the anniversary, or details of future tours.

The Stones have survived numerous personnel changes as well as an often strained relationship

between songwriters Jagger and Richards, the core of the band. This flared up again in 2010, when Richards’s colourful autobiography, “Life”, took several swipes at Jagger, particularly for accepting a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II. Richards, famed for his vast drug and alcohol intake in the band’s heyday, said he had nicknamed Jagger “Your Majesty” and insinuated that the strutting lead singer had a “tiny todger”.

Jagger’s ex-wife, the model Jerry Hall, later accused Richards of being “jealous,” telling BBC radio that Jagger was “very well endowed.”

Richards wrote in the book: “Sometimes I think, ‘I miss my friend.’ I wonder, ‘Where did he go?’”

Despite the obstacles, the band have continued to perform regularly over the years, although Richards nearly died when he fell from a coconut tree in Fiji in 2006 while touring the band’s last album, “A Bigger Bang”. The band’s longevity can partly be attributed to their ability to absorb the evolving sounds of recent decades, with disco, reggae and punk influences all revealing themselves in later releases. Few would bet against them entertaining millions more fans before their final encore. —AFP

SUNDAY, JULY 8, 2012

lifestyle

Prince Charles among fans of Romania farm tourism O

n the last day of Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations, Prince Charles joined his mother at Buckingham Palace and waved to the crowds in a ceremony watched by millions around the globe. The next day, the 63-year-old heir to the British throne was a world away, in the heart of Transylvania, a tranquil haven he calls “‘the jewel in Romania’s crown,” soaking up rural scenes that look like pages from Grimms’ fairy tales.

Here, in the small 13th century town of Saschiz, life has all but stood still. With its UNESCO heritage site of a Saxon fortified church, wolves and bears roaming the woods, and lush meadows brimming with fruits untainted by chemical fertilizers, it is an unspoiled treasure luring Westerners - like Prince Charles - in search of a quieter life.

“This area is Europe’s last great lowland landscapes ... and this part of Transylvania is unique miles and miles of wildflower-rich grasslands, rolling hills with oak and beech forest sheltering wolves, bears, and eagles. And all this is still in ecological working order, in which small-scale farmers coexist with the richest natural diversity of anywhere in Europe,” said Nat Page, a former British diplomat who now works as a conservationist.

After communism ended in 1989, the region spiraled into economic and social decline as tens of thousands of well-educated young and middleaged Saxons, descended from a Germanic tribe that settled here in the 13th century, emigrated to Germany in search of better jobs and a more stable lifestyle. Their administrative and farming skills and business savvy left a dent in the community, but another trend is emerging: Entrepreneurs and conservationists, mostly British, are moving to Transylvania to turn the bounty of the land into a thriving and sustainable business while respecting the environment and providing a livelihood for local residents.

Take the humble rhubarb. The Saxons brought the rhubarb to Romania 800 years ago and the pink-stalked fruit, together with the elderflower

This June 2012 image supplied by Fundatia ADEPT Transilvania shows Prince Charles on his most recent visit to a rural area of Transylvania, in Romania. —AP and a basketful of other hedgerow fruit, are the core of business here. Jams and relishes based on traditional Saxon recipes are sold in places as diverse as Bucharest airport’s duty- free shop and London’s Fortnum & Mason, the upscale store known for specialty goods and products approved by the royal family.

The elderflower is king of the crops. It is so abundant that a study found 26 tons of elderflowers bought by a British company from 1,200 residents represent just 3 to 4 percent of the local elderflower harvest. After the flowers are picked, the juice is extracted from the scented cream

Travel in style for summer: Go sleek

petals and is then sent to Britain to be bottled as delicate elderflower cordial, sold in upmarket supermarkets and pubs. (In the U.S., the plant’s berries are sometimes used to make elderberry wine and other products.)

“The elderflower product is the backbone of our business. In 2012 we set out to collect 13 tons of elderflower. Now when we thought about it, one flower weighs 6 grams. It’s quite an exercise to envisage what 13 tons would look like,” said Jim Turnbull, a British entrepreneur, who ended up producing twice that amount. “We are putting a huge amount of money into the community every

May and June just for elderflower, but we’re using the same teams to collect other fruit and berries that we’re making into jams and juices.”

Charles visited Turnbull’s premises on his last visit and has given his stamp of approval to Transylvanian “royal” honey, which will soon be sold in Fortnum & Mason. When he visits, Charles stays either in a restored 19th century manor in the hillside village of Valea Zalanului (available for guests when he’s not there), or farther down the valley in the village of Miclosoara, in cottages owned by Transylvanian Count Tibor Kalnoky.

Charles’ younger son Prince Harry spent Easter in the area and was filmed riding a motorbike along snowy tracks.

Saschiz mayor Ovidiu Soaita says the royal visits are a godsend, with unemployment in the town standing at 30 percent, but jokingly lamented that he did not clink a glass of fiery plum brandy with Charles this year, as the prince avoided any event that might have influenced June municipal elections. But while he stays out of local politics, Charles’ professed love for Transylvania and his claims to be related to Vlad the Impaler, the bloodthirsty Romanian prince who inspired Bram Stoker’s 19th century Dracula novel, have clearly boosted tourism and interest in the area. The fabled town of Sighisoara, where Vlad was born, is 15 kilometers (9 miles) from Saschiz.

On a visit in March, the Prince of Wales observed that those who mock small-scale farming as unworkable often “travel to traditional landscapes when they go on holiday. They talk with great relish about the local food they enjoyed, the distinctive wines, the villages and the magical atmosphere of places that can only be found ancient sustainable landscapes.”

Page said that improving business opportunities for local farmers goes hand in hand with nature tourism. “When visitors come here, including Prince Charles,” Page said, “they love it because they feel that this is how the world ought to be.” — AP

Benz

Mercedes Fashion Week in Berlin

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he coveted look for vacationers this summer is sleek and chic - with an emphasis on sleek. Many travelers, especially air travelers, are aiming to get up and go with as few accouterments as they can without sacrificing style. People are thinking about packing light at all stages of the traveling process: from what suitcases they’ll use to the souvenirs they’ll buy. Stylist Amanda Ross, fashion director for travel-themed Departures magazine, says she thinks about packing when she’s doing her initial shopping. “It really comes down to how you shop and what your wardrobe is about.”

But even more basic is the bag it will go in. There are more FedEx boxes of clothes and accessories coming into the lobby of Manhattan’s upscale Mondrian SoHo than one might imagine and fewer luxury-brand suitcases that would complement the handbags that its typical fashion-savvy guests carry, says hotel General Manager Gary Thomas. He personally uses that sendahead system. “You don’t have to carry anything then or worry about an extra pound or two, and it’s even more reliable than taking it with you.”

There are also fewer last-minute items, the ones you rarely “need,” tossed in, he says. “The weight issue has become huge, especially in the past year,” agrees Dan Tarala, vice president of product design and strategy for Victorinox Travel Gear. “It’s the No. 1 thing we hear.” The complaints started in Europe, he says, but have moved west and east, north and south. When he started with Victorinox almost 10 years ago, the goal was to get a suitcase that could be used for two weeks down to 17 pounds; now it’s 5 pounds.

Of course, consumers want to shed weight without losing any of the features they have come to like or looks they want to wear. In the world of suitcases, that means wheels still rule.

They’ve just changed to smaller, more nimble ones, says Tarala. The evolving trend toward four wheels instead of two might seem counterintuitive, but they can be smaller and better distribute weight. They also encourage a lower profile of the bag, which results in more efficient use of the space inside.

Hard-side suitcases made of polycarbonate, as opposed to soft leather or nylon bags, are gaining wider acceptance, Tarala says. The hard bags need less framing inside. They offer durability comparable to nylon, and the modern design can rival the luxury of leather. “The shift is not just looking at the main body material,” Tarala says. “We are looking at the overall frame: switching to honeycombs and laminated foam instead of solid pieces, less dense nylons versus metal for hardware and connection points. We don’t want to take anything away from the customer.” He recommends using a 50-50 split case - the middle divider is the difference between everything inside the bag shifting “all over the place,” Tarala says - and starting packing by filling the voids near the handles and the wheel casings. Ross puts the heaviest item in first: her shoes. She tries to restrict herself to one pair of flat daytime shoes and a dressier pair of evening heels. They have to go with everything, she says, but she won’t skimp with shoes that are flimsy, even if they are lighter. That would be penny-wise and pound-foolish. Could you get away with only black shoes? Only brown? By starting off thinking that way, you’ll end up organizing your outfits ahead of time, which minimizes extra lastminute stuff, Ross says. Whether it’s business or leisure travel, Ross wears a lot of dresses on the road. “They’re the least amount of work, the least amount of thought - and the most multipurpose. You can change from a flat to heel and wear the same thing all day.”

She’s particularly fond of seasonless jersey dresses that don’t wrinkle, even if rolled up tight. And, Ross says, there’s definitely no hangers in her bag. “Even if I’m going to an ‘event,’ it could be cocktail to black-tie, I pack my dress in a plastic dry-cleaner bag, folded in half.” Ross also relies on cashmere cardigans and wraps, which are still needed in summer. They will fold up flatter than you expect, she says.

Jewelry is the one thing she brings knowing that it adds heft to her bag, but it adds even more style. It goes in her carry-on, shopper-style bag with her computer, phone and notebook. Ross says she treats that bag as a mobile office, leaving most personal clutter out of it. She will tuck inside a clutch handbag if a more formal occasion is on the itinerary, and if the trip involves sightseeing, a small day bag with a chain strap.

She leaves her blow-dryer at home. “If a hotel doesn’t have it, I won’t blow-dry my hair, but that almost never happens,” Ross says. Mondrian’s Thomas says she’s safe leaving it - and a lot of other things - behind. He has traded a nice leather dopp kit for a few key things (his toothbrush, for one) in a plastic bag. Hotels expect to provide many grooming products, especially with the liquid limits on airplanes, and many hotels, even and maybe especially - those in remote locations have retail stores. Thomas suspects some people are “strategically underpacking” so they’ll have an excuse to shop. Buying an umbrella, sweater or rain jacket is probably a smarter souvenir than a tchotchke, he says. Still, he packs his hair gel. He’s not willing to chance that. “It’s very specific.” — AP

This product image released by Norma Kamali Inc. shows a model wearing a KamaliKulture all in one dress. The dress, which is shown as a cross halter, can also be worn as a strapless or one shoulder. —AP

Models present creations from German label Minx during the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in Berlin yesterday.— AFP photos

SUNDAY, JULY 8, 2012

lifestyle T R A V E L The Lake Singkarak

The Mount Tangkuban Perahu Volcano. (Inset) Mist lifts off one of the craters.

—Photos by Sajeev K Peter The 19th century steam locomotive

By Sajeev K Peter

the perfect rendezvous

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reathtaking azure blue lakes, green highlands, alluring meadows dotted with hornshaped roofs of houses and picturesque valleys. To an outsider, West Sumatra may resemble a wonderland. A curious traveler may find an array of reasons to visit, explore and experience a multitude of heritage sites and destinations across the province. It may very well be your perfect rendezvous for a holiday.

The land of the ‘Minangkabau’ as West Sumatra is traditionally known, has a unique and diverse

Nature and culture join hands in Indonesia’s tourism sites

raced past highways and crisscrossed mountain passes leaving behind the sprawling coast line. As we entered the hinterland, we could see towering mountain ranges that eventually waned into idyllic valleys and lakes.

Our final rendezvous of the day, Sawahlunto city was located about 95 kilometers from Padang, 80 kilometers from the tourism city Bukittinggi and 42kilometers from the cultural city Batusangkar.

From Padang Panjang, we boarded an exclusive 19th century steam locomotive for a four-hour journey to Solok. The train chugged through dazzling mountain terrains and tunnels towards Solok regency.

On our right, we could get the stunning view of the Lake Singkarak with its blue expanse of water enveloped by mountain ranges. The second largest lake in Sumatra after Toba, located in Solok, Lake Singkarak is nothing but the remnant of a gigantic volcano - the Singkarak volcano - which once blew off its top to form a lake. The lake stretches across two counties in the province of West Sumatra,

Mbah Soero Mine museum, Sawahlunto culture that distinguishes this Indonesian province from the rest of the archipelago. Some of its unique attractions, especially its ecotourism sites preserving rare flora and fauna, cannot be found elsewhere in the world.

“Minangkabau means a victorious buffalo. The horn-shaped roofs of the houses you see across the province symbolize victory,” said Indera Dewantho from the directorate of International Promotion, Jakarta, who along with Yusup from the ministry of Tourism and Creative Economy, Indonesia, accompanied me in my journey throughout West Sumatra.

We arrived in Padang’s Tabing International Airport from Jakarta on a Garuda Indonesia airline.

Though officially I was assigned to cover the opening of the Tour de Singkarak 2012 at Sawahlunto, a journey through West Sumatra was uppermost in my mind when I came out of the airport, the gate-

Indonesia’s ministry of Tourism officials check out Kuwait Times newspaper.

An Asmat tribal chief from Papua way to the province.

On the first day, we toured around Padang, which is the largest city in West Sumatra with a population of more than 833,000 people. On arrival at the airport, I noticed many surfers arriving in Padang with their surfing gear. Yusup told me that Padang is a common transit point for surfers traveling to Batu and Mentawai islands and tourists visiting the West Sumatran highlands.

On way to the Padang beach, we saw the legendary river Kuranji flowing down to Padang harbor. Interestingly, from ancient days, several mythical stories enliven Padang’s cultural life. Standing on the banks of the river Kuranji, Indera spoke about the famous Indonesian novel ‘Sitti Nurbaya’ written by Marah Rusli. The novel touches on the themes of Dutch colonialism, forced marriage and modernity. It delineates the tragic story of two teenage lovers, Samsulbahri and Sitti Nurbaya. The story has been compared to ‘Romeo and Juliet’ or the ‘Butterfly Lovers.’

Yet another legendary story of ‘Batu Malin Kundang,’ is also interesting, whose ‘rocky remains’ on the beach have become another tourist attraction today. According to the legend, Malin Kundang, a wealthy merchant, was cursed by his mother. He was turned into a stone for showing disrespect to his mother.

Journey uphill On day two, we, the media delegates and the entire Tour de Singkarak riders, set out on a journey from Padang city to Padang Panjang on way to Sawahlunto in a convoy of vehicles. The vehicles

Indonesian cuisines as diverse as culture

By Sajeev K Peter

I

ndonesia’s range of cuisines may be a real challenge for your taste buds. Because, they are as diverse as its culture. Each region has its

Families take lunch at a traditional Padang restaurant.

own culinary specialties that might consist of a particular vegetable, soybean, chicken, fish, beef and other varieties of ingredients. And they have unique methods of cooking as well. Coconut oil and milk are widely used in cooking along with spices and chili pepper. Fish, eaten fresh, fried, slated or smoked, is featured in almost all regional cuisines.

Sumatrans use more meat and they are wellknown for their rich spicy dishes. Restaurants specializing in West Sumatran cuisine are called Padang restaurants. For instance if you go to any traditional Padang restaurant for lunch or dinner, invariably you will be served with rendang, a spicy and delicious meat dish. In 2011, an online poll by 35,000 people held by CNN International chose rendang as the number one dish of their ‘World’s 50 Most Delicious Foods’ list. Culinary experts often describe rendang as ‘West Sumatra’s caramelized beef curry’.

Other favorite local delicacies include: Sate or Satay (grilled chicken, beef or goat meat). GadoGado (cooked vegetable salad with peanut sauce(, Nasi Goreng (fried rice), and Bakmi Goreng (fried noodles) are found everywhere and eaten anytime of the day.

Year round sunshine and warm climate make for an abundance of tropical and sub-tropical fruits and vegetables. Some of the best coffee and tea are also grown in the plantations in Sumatra and Java.

Es durian (durian ice cream) is a popular dessert in Indonesia, sold at street side stalls in cities, especially in Java. With its creamy, rich and delicious taste, durian has been one of the great flavors in ice creams.

A traditional Sumatra house Solok and Tanah Datar regencies and has an area of 107.8 square kilometers (1,000 hectares).

As the train moved closer to Solok Regency, two more lakes came into our view. “These lakes are separated only by 300 meters land between them, so people call it ‘Twin Lake,” Robertus Pudyanto, my friend and a photo journalist from Surabaya informed me. Ironically, the upper lake is named as ‘Lake in Bottom’ and the lake below is named as ‘Lake in Above.’

We got off a bit worn out at Solok after the fourhour journey aboard the locomotive. After a short break, we continued our journey from Solok in a convoy of minibuses and finally arrived at Sawahlunto around 4 pm to a rousing welcome by the local populace.

Mining tourism Mining is the hallmark of Sawahlunto’s tourism sector. In fact, Sawahlunto’s name was derived after the first discovery of coal by William Hendrik de Greve near a rice field cultivated by the people of the area who used to irrigate the fields using water from Lunto River. Digging for coal began in 1898 by ‘chain people’ who were treated like slaves by the Dutch colonial rulers. Mbah Soero Tunnel was the first mine tunnel in Soegar area which was closed later in 1930. The tunnel reopened in 2007 and became a major tourist site called Mbah Soero Tunnel that attracts a large number of visitors today. The people in Sawahlunto are hospitable and eloquent though only a few of them could communicate in proper English.

Ecotourism After returning in Jakarta from West Sumatra, we proceeded to Bogor region of the Java Island in the highlands which hosts a few world heritage sites where some of the rarest species of flora and fauna are protected from extinction. A tour of Taman Safari near Bogor may be quite an exhilarating as well as an enriching experience for any tourist where nature and culture join hands in perfect harmony.

“Taman Safari conserves some of the rare animal species in the world that may be living their last few years in the wild,” Agus, my companion from the tourism ministry, informed me. It is also a center for reproduction of some of the endangered species in the world today.

We could drive around the habitat in a vehicle and watch the animals at close quarters as most of them are friendly with the visitors though a few looked dangerous. Taman Safari has around 2,500 animals, the majority of them being Indonesian, including Bengal tigers, giraffe, Malayan Sun bear, Orangutan, hippo, white rhinos, zebra, cheetah, Sumatran elephants, young lowland Anoa, Sambar deer and komodos. It also conserves many faunas including the Bali Starling and the small white Mynah bird.

Land of volcanoes Indonesia has the richest volcanic alluvial soils and a tropical climate that is perfect for the growth of numerous medicinal plants, spices and herbs.

There are more than 500 volcanoes sprinkled throughout the archipelago.

Java is also an island of volcanoes. Of its 121 volcanoes, 30 are still active. Located at an altitude of 1830 meters above sea level, the nature tourism park Tangkuban Perahu volcano is an amazing site

Indonesia takes strategic initiative to boost tourism Giving a picturesque overview of West Sumatra, he said, ‘Sumatera Barat’ is called est Sumatra’s emer‘Green Switzerland’ in view of gence as a vibrant its evergreen landscape tourist destination is including the tropical forests, nothing but a success story. A mountains, volcanoes, lakes, sleepy and idyllic province of valleys, rivers and waterfalls in Indonesia till a decade ago, the highlands, the fauna and West Sumatra has become flora and the beaches around one of the ideal getaways for Padang city.” He also highmany global travelers today. lighted the rich cultural herUndoubtedly, the province itage of the Minangkabau and owes much of its popularity Mentawai people, the original as a tourism haven to Tour de inhabitants of the province.

Singkarak, Indonesia’s prestiMari Elka Pangestu According to West gious event that subtly Sumatra’s Governor Irwan blends tourism and sports.

Prayitno, Tour de Singkarak has brought signifiTour de Singkarak, the country’s international cant positive effects to the image of the province. bicycle race that concluded its fourth edition on “The event has helped fuel economic activities June 10, 2012, has succeeded in spotlighting from tourist mobilization and empowered our West Sumatra’s rich tourism potential over the socio-cultural base,” Prayinto told the Kuwait last four years.

Times on the sidelines of the event.

Indonesia’s Minister of Tourism and Creative “Though it is a sports event, TDS has brought Economy Mari Elka Pangestu told journalists covus close to a borderless and wonderful new ering Tour de Singkarak soon after the flag-off world. West Sumatra is deficeremony at Sawahlunto on nitely on its way to become a June 4, 2012 that the event is world-class tourist destination a strategic partnership today,” he said. As per the between the ministries of international tourism baromeTourism and Sports, designed ter, the province currently has to bolster Indonesia’s positive a rating of 2.2. “Our immediate image globally and support the country’s tourism and target is to achieve a 2.1 ratsports potential. ing,” he added.

Vice Minister of Tourism “We are witnessing considand Creative Economy Sapta erable amount of positive new Nirwandar, in an interview changes in West Sumatra. The with the Kuwait Times, furtourist arrivals have increased ther elaborated on the from 35,000 a few years ago to unique concept of Tour de 3,25,000 per year today. Hotels West Sumatra Governor Singkarak, a mega tourismin the province register up to Irwan Prayitno cum-sport event that rallied 60 to70 percent occupancy around 250 riders from 18 rate around the year,” he said. countries. “We have made tremendous progress He also underlined the culinary diversity of West over the last four years in terms of global particiSumatra, another attraction for tourists from difpation as well as growing popularity,” Nirwandar ferent corners of the globe. said.

Sawahlunto’s Mayor Amran Nur, talking to According to him, tourist arrivals in Indonesia Kuwait Times, gave an overview of the serene especially West Sumatra, have witnessed remarkmountain city Sawahlunto. Tracing the evolution able increase over the last few years with more and growth of Sawahlunto as a bustling tourism and more travelers coming from Asia, Middle hub today from a coal mine town of the 19th East, Australia and Europe as a result of the event. century, he said, “Tourism is the heritage of the The hospitality industry is witnessing a vertical people of Sawahlunto. We have taken some bold growth, with more and more hotels coming up in measures to bolster the tourism industry here. At cities such as Padang, the capital of West the same time, we are keen on safeguarding the Sumatra, Padang Panjang, Solok and cultural heritage of our people,” the mayor conSawahlunto. cluded.

By Sajeev K Peter

W

Vice Minister of Tourism and Creative Economy Sapta Nirwandar (left) and Sawahlunto’s Mayor Amran Nur during the interview. in West Java. Viewed from Bandung, the Mount Tangkuban Perahu appears like a boat upside down. ( Tangkuban means reverse and Perahu means boat). The local Sunda people narrate the legend of ‘Sangkuriang’ and the formation of the mountain in a boat shape.

The area of the Mount Tangkuban Perahu is a remnant natural forest and a biodiversity refuge within a region dominated by human activity.

Though still active, it is a popular attraction where tourists can hike or ride to the edge of the crater to view the hot water springs. Tourists are permitted to visit only seven of the 12 craters of the volcano, according to Sjarif Budiman, my guide in Java. A study conducted in 2001 determined that Tangkuban Perahu has erupted at least 30 times in the last 40,750 years.

Cultural diversity Indonesia has 33 provinces where people speak different regional dialects, follow diverse traditions and religious rituals. Each of its major islands like Sumatra, Borneo, Java, Bali and Papua etc repre-

sents distinct cultural identity offering tourists a wide variety of attractions.

The country’s long history brings with it a myriad of cultural and traditional attributes that has spawned over 483 languages and dialects belonging to more than 350 ethnic groups. Bahasa Indonesia is the official national language using the Roman alphabet. English language is widely spoken particularly in urban cities.

Sprawling over 5,000kilometers from east to west along the equator in the eastern hemisphere, Indonesia is the fourth most populous country and the largest archipelago in the world, comprising 17,508 islands. With a total land mass of 1,919,440 square kilometers, Indonesia is also the most densely forested region in the world and supports the world’s highest level of biodiversity after the Amazon.

Indian environmental film out spaces cinema culture

37

SUNDAY, JULY 8, 2012

Belarussian girls wearing homemade grass-skirts dance in a river while celebrating Ivan Kupala Night, a traditional Slavic holiday, 270km south of Minsk in Turov on Friday. During the celebration, which finds its origin in pagan times, people plait wreaths, jump over fires, and swim. — AFP

Justin Bieber cited for speeding on LA freeway J

ustin Bieber is used to attracting crowds. But he had at least one follower too many when somebody tailed him on a Los Angeles freeway, and it led to a speeding ticket for the teen idol. The singer of “Boyfriend” and “Baby” was cited for driving in excess of 65 mph (104.6 kph) at about 10:45 a.m. Friday, after calls came in complaining of a freeway chase on southbound US Highway 101 near Studio City, said Officer Ming Hsu of the California Highway Patrol.

The 18-year-old crooner told officers he was being chased by paparazzi, and investigators confirmed he was being followed by at least one vehicle, Hsu said. “The second vehicle left the area and there’s a search to find that driver,” Hsu said.

Hsu did not have a description of the other vehicle. A call and an email to Bieber’s publicist weren’t immediately returned.

The claim of a chase is backed by an unlikely eyewitness, Los Angeles City Councilman Dennis Zine, who called authorities after seeing Bieber’s distinctive chrome Fisker Karma being chased by five or six other cars.

On his morning commute to City Hall, Zine, who spent 33 years as a police officer, said he saw Bieber’s sports car drive up behind him and zoom around him, weaving wildly in and out of traffic while five or six other cars gave chase. Zine estimated the chase exceeded 100 mph (160 kph) as paparazzi engaged in wild maneuvers to keep up with Bieber, including driving on the shoulder and cutting off other vehicles.

Zine said Bieber was breaking the law by driving recklessly and speeding, and the paparazzi were breaking the law by hounding him. “This was very bizarre, very outrageous and showed a total disregard for life and property,” Zine said. Zine, a witness to countless crashes and fatalities during his time as an officer, said he was surprised no one crashed.

“The way (Bieber) was driving was totally reckless, I would have arrested him if I had pulled him over,” said Zine. “I wouldn’t have given him a ticket and let him go.” Friday’s incident isn’t the only time the floppy-haired singer has had conflict with paparazzi. In May, a photographer called authorities, complaining he was roughed up by the pop star in a shopping center, The Commons at Calabasas. Authorities said the scuffle happened when a photographer tried to snap photos of Bieber and his girlfriend, teen actress Selena Gomez.

In April 2011, Bieber called off a meeting with the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem, saying he cancelled, in part, because he didn’t want to face the country’s notoriously aggressive paparazzi.— AP

In this Jan. 28, 2012 file photo, Canadian singer Justin Bieber arrives at the Cannes festival palace to attend the NRJ Music awards ceremony, in Cannes, southeastern France. —AP

‘American Idol’ contestant sues MTV for $40 million

A

singer who competed on the second season of “American Idol,” filed a libel lawsuit on Thursday against MT V Networks for more than $40 million, claiming he was unfairly ridiculed by one of its news reporters. The lawsuit claims that after Corey Clark was disqualified from “American Idol,” having reached its “Top 10” finalists, MTV News correspondent Jim Cantiello falsely attacked Clark as a liar and called for a boycott of his music.

Clark was disqualified on March 31, 2003,

after “Idol” officials learned he had faced three misdemeanor charges, including one battery charge involving his sister. He was later acquitted of two of the three charges and pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice, the lawsuit said.

Clark’s lawsuit said Cantiello, who wrote for MTV as an expert on “Idol,” defamed the singer in a series of online posts from early 2007 through July 2011. In them, he described Clark as a “degenerate,” accused him of lying about the charges, falsely called him an “alleged sister-beater” after the charges were dropped,

and instructed readers to boycott his debut album. Additionally, the lawsuit states that Cantiello repeatedly ridiculed Clark about a relationship with “Idol” judge Paula Abdul, saying Clark had invented the romance. The lawsuit claims Clark and Abdul were, in fact, involved.

MTV’s parent company, Viacom Inc, also was named in the suit, which was filed in Tennessee District Court in Nashville. Representatives from Viacom and MTV could not immediately be reached for comment. — Reuters

Photo dated June 16, 2010 shows US actors Tom Cruise and his wife Katie Holmes on the red carpet as they arrive for the international film premiere of the film “Knight and Day” by US director James Mangold in Sevilla. —AFP

Cruise to file divorce suit against Holmes

A

pparently, Tom Cruise’s philosophy toward his estranged wife Katie Holmes is, “You can’t divorce me - I’m divorcing you!” “Mission: Impossible” actor Cruise, who was hit with divorce papers from Holmes last week, will file his own rival divorce case against Holmes, his attorney told the BBC. According to Cruise’s attorney Bert Fields, the plan is to let Holmes’ legal team “play the media” before getting Cruise’s side of the story out. “We are letting ‘the other side’ (Katie and her team), play the media until they wear everyone out and then we’ll have something to say,” Fields said, declining to reveal the venue of Cruise’s divorce case or whether he will seek joint custody of the couple’s six-year-old daughter, Suri Cruise.

Holmes filed for divorce from Cruise last week after five years of marriage. A spokeswoman for the actor said he was “deeply saddened” by Holmes’ decision, and is “concentrating on his three children.” Holmes’ attorney said in a statement that Holmes’ “primary concern remains, as it always has been, her daughter’s best interest.” Cruise, who turned 50 on Tuesday, has recently been filming the sci-fi adventure film “Oblivion” in Iceland.

Meanwhile it was reported that Holmes will ask Cruise for child support at their first divorce hearing. The ‘Dawson’s Creek’ actress will appear in person when the hearing takes place in a family law courthouse in New York on July 17, where she will ask for money from her estranged husband.

A source told RadarOnline.com: “Katie’s legal team will be requesting temporary child support to cover living expenses and the added security she has hired since her split from Tom. “Tom’s Los Angeles lawyers

have officially been given notice. Tom’s New York lawyer will appear and it’s undetermined at this time if Tom will be in court also because he is currently shooting a movie.”

Tom, 50, was “blindsided” when Katie filed for divorce from him last week after five years of marriage and sought legal custody of their six-year-old. It was reported he would file his own application for custody in Los Angeles, but it is not possible to file a case in separate states at the same time.

Tom’s lawyers will have to argue proceedings be halted in New York and heard in Los Angeles instead.

Katie filed for the divorce in New York because she believes she has a better chance of winning sole custody of Suri. A source explained: “Tom will have to file a formal response to Katie’s divorce petition in New York, and he is going to submit a motion to have the case dismissed because he believes it isn’t the proper venue. “Tom is hopeful that New York will do the right thing and allow him to file in California.” At the hearing in New York Tom could also request a temporary visitation order to see his daughter.

Friends of Katie believe she is in the more advantageous position at present, as she already has her legal team in place and prepared. A source said: “Katie clearly has the upper hand in the proceedings at this point.

It can’t be emphasised enough that she took these extraordinary measures to protect her daughter, Suri.” Katie was said to have filed for divorce over her worries about the effects Tom’s belief in Scientology would have on her daughter, and was concerned by his plans to send her to a Scientology camp. — Reuters, Bang Showbiz