27 Dec

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THURSDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2012

Syria military police chief defects to opposition

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SAFAR 14, 1434 AH

World’s longest bullet train service launched in China

Hawkish Abe elected as Japan’s next prime minister

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Man United seven-up after seven-goal thriller

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MPs warn govt: Don’t take us for granted Lawmakers insist Assembly ‘not in govt’s pocket’

Max 19º Min 11º High Tide 12:26 & 22:28 Low Tide 05:19 & 16:17

By B Izzak

KUWAIT: MP Maasouma Al-Mubarak speaks to MP Askar Al-Enezi as MP Safa Al-Hashem looks on at the National Assembly yesterday. — Photo by Yasser Al-Zayyat

UAE busts ‘terror’ cell ‘Deviant group’ made up of Saudis, Emiratis DUBAI: Security forces in the United Arab Emirates have arrested a cell of UAE and Saudi Arabian citizens which was planning to carry out militant attacks in both countries and other states, the official news agency WAM said yesterday. The US-allied UAE, a federation of seven emirates and a major oil exporter, has been spared any attack by Al-Qaeda and other insurgency groups. But some of its emirates have seen a rise in Islamist sentiment in recent years, and Dubai, a business and tourism hub cosmopolitan city that attracts many Westerners, could make an attractive target for Islamist militants, analysts say.

The arrested group had acquired materials and equipment for use in what WAM called terrorist operations. “The security authorities in the UAE, in coordination with the related security parties in Saudi Arabia, announced the arrest of an organised cell from the deviant group that was planning to carry out actions against national security of both countries and some brotherly states,” WAM said without elaborating. The phrase “the deviant group” is often used by authorities in Saudi Arabia to describe AlQaeda members.

In July, Abu Dhabi said it dismantled a group plotting against state security without identifying their affiliation or the number of arrests. The prosecutor general, Salem Said Kabish, said an unspecified number of people were being questioned for having formed “a group aimed at damaging the security of the state”. WAM said at the time they were also suspected of “rejecting the constitution and the founding principles of power in the Emirates” and of having links with foreign organisations.

In August, Saudi authorities arrested a group of suspected Al-Qaeda-linked militants - mostly Yemeni nationals - in Riyadh. Saudi Arabia has arrested thousands of suspected militants since the 2003-2006 attacks on residential compounds for foreign workers and on Saudi government facilities in which were dozens of people were killed. The United States has poured aid into Yemen to stem the threat of attacks from Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and to try to prevent any spillover of violence into Saudi Arabia, the world’s top oil exporter.

In 2010, AQAP, a merger of Al-Qaeda’s Yemeni and Saudi branches, said it was behind a plot to

send two parcel bombs to the United States. The bombs were intercepted in Britain and Dubai. The UAE has escaped the upheaval that has shaken the Arab world but moved swiftly to stem any sign of political dissent by detaining more than 60 local Islamists this year over alleged threats to state security and links to a foreign group. Those detainees, who belong to an Islamist group called Al-Islah, have confessed to setting up a secret organisation with an armed force whose aim was to take power and establish an Islamic state, local media reported in September. Islah denied the accusations. Many of the detained Islamists come from the more religiously conservative northern emirates such as Sharjah and Ras al-Khaimah, which produced one of the Sept 11 hijackers.

In May 2002, Al-Qaeda militants sent a letter to UAE authorities saying continued UAE cooperation with Washington in arresting what it called holy warriors would “bring the country into an arena of conflict,” according to Al-Qaeda documents captured by the US military and published by the Combating Terrorism Center at the US military academy at West point. — Agencies

KUWAIT: MPs in what is perceived as a totally pro-government Assembly yesterday strongly criticized the government on several issues and warned that the government should not think that the National Assembly is in “its pocket”. The criticism came during the traditional debate over the Amiri address delivered by Prime Minister HH Sheikh Jaber Al-Mubarak Al-Sabah during the inaugural session of the new Assembly which was elected in polls boycotted by the opposition.

Shiite MP Saleh Ashour expressed dismay that only one minister was present in the session, “which shows that the same attitude of the previous government has continued”. He said that the caretaker government had no right to award two mega projects - the Subbiya causeway worth KD 700 million and the Al-Zour power station for KD 600 million - adding that these projects must be stopped otherwise the government will face stern accountability. “The government will commit a grave mistake if it thinks that the Assembly is in its pocket. The Assembly will give you enough time and if the government fails to perform, it will be held to account,” Ashour said.

MP Ahmad Al-Mulaifi also sent a stern warning to the government. “If you think that the battle has ended after the election on the basis of the amended electoral law and the presence of the Assembly, you are surely mistaken. The battle has just started and we will have something to say to the prime minister,” Mulaifi, a former minister said. Mulaifi held local Al-Rai newspaper in his hand showing the impact of heavy rain over the past two days in several areas, adding the prime minister should fire the officials responsible for the floods.

Nabil Al-Fadl said ministers must perform well or they should go home. If they fail to do that, we will act and remove them, he said. MP Saadoun Hammad continued his attacks on Oil Minister Hani Hussein, saying he will grill the minister to force him to resign. Hammad claimed that the minister illegally sanctioned a refinery deal with Vietnam and like the agreement with Dow Chemical, has accepted that Kuwait will pay a fine of $3.5 billion in case of nullifying the deal unilaterally. The lawmaker said that the government must form an Continued on Page 2

O’Driscoll sacked by Forest’s Kuwaiti owners

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Iran rejects Gulf states’ interference accusation DUBAI: Iran rejected accusations from Gulf Arab states that it was meddling in their affairs, saying those countries were “running away from reality”, an Iranian news agency reported yesterday. Six USallied states demanded Iran end what they called interference in the region, in a statement on Tuesday at the end of a two-day summit of the Saudi-led Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), reiterating a long-held mistrust of their main rival. The communique did not elaborate, but the most common Gulf Arab complaint relates to Bahrain, which has repeatedly accused Tehran of interference in its internal politics by provoking protests.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast dismissed the statement. “Shifting the responsibility for the domestic problems of the regional

countries is a way of running away from reality, and blaming others or using oppressive methods are not the right ways to answer civil demands,” he said, according to the Iranian Students’ News Agency (ISNA).

The GCC had in its Tuesday statement also condemned Iran’s “continued occupation of the three Gulf islands” of Abu Musa, Greater Tunb and Lesser Tunb claimed by both Iran and the United Arab Emirates since 1970s.

Mehmanparast said the UAE’s sovereignty over the islands was a “baseless claim” and stressed that the three islands are an “inseparable part of Iran”. The petro-GulfArab states also expressed concern that any accident at Iran’s nuclear plant located at the Gulf port city of Bushehr would Continued on Page 13

Morsi signs charter into law President calls for unity, vows to fix economy

CAIRO: Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi signs into law the country’s Islamistbacked constitution late Tuesday. — AP

CAIRO: Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi signed into law a new constitution shaped by his Islamist allies, a bitterly contested document which he insists will help end political turmoil and allow him to focus on fixing the economy. Anxiety about a deepening political and economic crisis has gripped Egypt in past weeks, with many people rushing to buy dollars and withdraw their savings from banks.

The Egyptian pound tumbled yesterday to its weakest level against the US currency in almost eight years.

Late yesterday, Morsi urged all political powers yesterday to take part in a national dialogue to resolve lingering tensions and promised to take necessary steps to heal the economy. In his first address to the nation since the adoption of a new constitution, he said he was considering possible cabinet

changes and planned to introduce incentives to make Egypt a more attractive investment destination. “The coming days will witness, God willing, the launch of new projects ... and a package of incentives for investors to support the Egyptian market and the economy,” he said in a televised speech.

The new constitution, which the liberal opposition says betrays Egypt’s 2011 revolution by dangerously mixing religion and politics, has polarised the Arab world’s most populous nation and prompted occasionally violent protest on the streets. The presidency said yesterday that Morsi had formally approved the constitution the previous evening, shortly after results showed that Egyptians had backed it in a referendum. The text won about 64 percent of the vote, paving the way for a new parliamentary election in

about two months.

The charter states that the principles of sharia, Islamic law, are the main source of legislation and that Islamic authorities will be consulted on sharia - a source of concern to the Christian minority and others. The referendum result marked yet another electoral victory for the Islamists since veteran autocrat Hosni Mubarak was toppled in 2011, following parliamentary elections last year and the presidential vote that brought Morsi to power this year.

Morsi’s government, which has accused opponents of damaging the economy by prolonging political upheaval, now faces the tough task of building a broad consensus as it prepares to impose austerity measures. The atmosphere of crisis deepened this week after Continued on Page 13

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THURSDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2012

LOCAL

Algonquin College to open campus in Kuwait

OTTAWA: Dr Kent MacDonald, President of Algonquin College, Hamed Al-Bader, Vice Chairman of Orient Education Services, Kuwait, Saud Jafar, Chairman of Algonquin College-Kuwait with other officials during the renewal of agreement in Ottawa.

KUWAIT: Dr Kent MacDonald, President of Algonquin College, Hamed Al-Bader, Vice Chairman of Orient Education Services, Kuwait and Saud Jafar, Chairman of Algonquin College-Kuwait renewed their agreement recently at Algonquin College’s Main Campus in Ottawa, Canada to establish Algonquin College-Kuwait as a branch campus providing high quality Algonquin programs and credentials in

Kuwait. Attendees were Dr Fahad AlNaser, Cultural Attache and Anas AlSaloum, Third Secretary, Embassy of Kuwait in Ottawa, Canada. In attendance from Algonquin College were the Vice President Academic, Claude Brule, International Education Centre Director Ernest Mulvey, and a number of Deans and Department Chairs.

Orient Education Services Co (OES) was

granted an Amiri Decree in 2010 to establish and operate Algonquin College Kuwait and has begun the process of constructing a state of the art, purpose built facility offering the latest in educational technology, design, and student centered learning environments. Innovative features will include a “Green” sustainable building design, intensive use of Information Communication Technology

(ICT) enhanced and supported learning across all program areas and multi-media rich “smart” classrooms, full broadband wireless access across all campus areas, and a campus wide networked learning environment.

AC-Kuwait will begin offering programs in 2014. Initial diploma program offerings will include Business Accounting, Business Marketing, Computer Programmer and

Computer Systems Technician and diploma programs, with additional programs to follow. Graduates of these programs will receive internationally recognized diplomas from Algonquin College in Canada and will have the option of further study and degree completion through Algonquin’s credential recognition agreements with a wide range of colleges and universities in Canada and globally.

Oil spill threatens desalination plants Iraqi fisherman freed after 2-yr detention

By A Saleh KUWAIT: A local environmental group issued a warning yesterday about discovery of an oil spill recently along the country’s southern shores which was moving towards water desalination plants and could raise serious concerns about the state’s water security strategies.

“Water desalination plants face a serious threat created by a large oil spill that formed on a gradual basis in the waters between AlMiseelah and Al-Fintas beaches,” reads a statement released by the Green Line yesterday. The non-government organization further indicated that it contacted one of the plants to notify the staff there about the spill “but it turned out that they never received any such warning from the Environment Public Authority.”

The Green Line went on to criticize the state-backed EPA, accusing it of “being too busy with crackdowns at desert camps to even notice a large oil spill threatening the environment along Kuwait’s southern coast and posing a serious threat to desalination

plants.” They also held the state-owned Kuwait Petroleum Corporation responsible for the oil spill.

one year in prison after he was arrested.” He further hoped for “the release of all Iraqi fishermen locked up in Kuwaiti jails.”

Fisherman’s release A society representing Iraqi fishermen operating in Al-Basra province announced yesterday that the Kuwaiti authorities “released an Iraqi fisherman who had spent nearly two years in captivity following his arrest while fishing in a “sea border zone”.

Meanwhile, a representative for Al-Fao Judicial Department released a statement claiming that the 16-year-old had spent twice the time in Kuwaiti jails than what he was sentenced to.

“Fisherman Husain Abdulnabi, who was arrested in Kuwait in early 2011, travelled through the Safwan outlet into Al-Basra and was in a good condition,” said the director of the Sinbad Society for Fishermen, Badran Essa, in a press statement.

In the meantime, a surrogate of Al-Fao Judicial Department, Waleed Al-Shuraifi, indicated that the release came almost one year late “since he was sentenced for only

Medical unionist A senior medical unionist demanded the resignation of Kuwait University Rector Dr. Abdullatif Al-Badr after the Court of First Instance found him not guilty of libel charges pressed by the rector.

The head of the doctors’ union in the Ministry of Health, Dr Husain Al-Khabbaz, was charged for statements he made against Al-Badr during the latter’s tenure as secretary general for the Kuwait Institution for Medical Specialties. “Al-Badr denies any form of criticism about alleged errors and violations committed during his time at KIMS,” Al-Badr said in a statement issued after the verdict, which he described as “the best answer to the rector’s repeated accusations.”

In other news, Secretary General of the Kuwait Medical Association, Dr Marzouq AlAzmy, announced that the KMA elections will take place on Tuesday, January 22, 2013.

Municipality honors Eng Al-Hassawi

By Hanan Al-Saadoun KUWAIT: Assistant General Director of Kuwait Municipality Eng Waleed AlJassem hailed the efforts of the employees working in organizing sector of the municipality in achieving the goals set by the municipality. According to him, the employees are executing the jobs in a commendable manner which will help the sector achieve its objectives.

He was speaking during a ceremony held by the employees of roads supervision sector in honor of their supervisor

Eng Sara Fahad Al-Hassawi whose efforts and outstanding work lifted the level of performance among the employees.

In a speech to the audience, Al-Jassem said honoring of the engineer was only the beginning of more such events which will be held soon to honor many employees in the sector whose initiatives further strengthen the work performance of the municipality.

Al-Jassem presented Eng Sara a memorial shield on the occasion while she expressed her gratitude to everyone who participated in the ceremony.

Nepalese maid commits suicide

By Hanan Al-Saadoun KUWAIT: A 32-year-old Nepalese maid committed suicide by hanging herself at the residence of her sponsor in Al-Nuzha area. A case was filed.

In another news, a Kuwaiti man told officers at the Sulaibikhat police station that two teachers, an Egyptian and a Kuwaiti, beat up his son, and supported his complaint with a medical report. He said that the school management called

him and asked him to sign an undertaking that his son should abide by school’s regulations and threatened to rusticate him from the school.

A bunch of girls scuffled with each other at the Basic Education College and were asked to report to the police station for questioning about what led to the fight. A guard working at a wedding hall was stabbed by a young man in the capital governorate. The culprit was later arrested.

MPs warn govt: Don’t take us...

Arab Police Day celebrations successful KUWAIT: Public Relations Director Colonel Adel Al-Hashash said that the top brass of the ministry, and primarily the First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Interior, Sheikh Ahmad Al Hmoud, and Undersecretary General Ghazi al Omar, contributed immensely to ensure the success of the Arab Police Day celebrations.

The celebrations were organized by public relations department in coordination with

Society Growth Center, a part of the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor, at Al-Zahraa area.

Al-Hashash explained that ministry leaders were keen to make this event successful as they believed in the great efforts put in by the policemen for the protection of the state and its people. Colonel Emad Al-Mulla, assistant director of public relations, attended the ceremony and gave an opening speech. The event featured

competitions and recreational activities.

Colonel Al-Mulla emphasized that the Society Growth Center made considerable efforts to make this event successful and provided a platform for the ministry employees and their families to enjoy a family gathering. Colonel AlHashash and Col Al-Mulla thanked all the companies and organizations which supported this festival.

KUWAIT: The National Council for Culture, Arts and Letters (NCCAL) hosted an exhibition recently for disabled Iranian artists at the New Arts Museum located opposite to Souq Sharq. The Iranian Ambassador Rouhallah Qahramani attended the event along with other diplomats and senior guests. —Photos by Yasser Al-Zayyat

Continued from page 1 investigation panel into the Vietnam deal and into a $800 million contract with Shell.

MP Ahmad Lari strongly lashed out at the government’s handling of the development plan, charging that the company that was contracted to supervise the plan went bankrupt about two months ago. He said that the consultant of the company is a pro-Israel figure. Lari charged that the development plan was not made by the ministry of development but by highly influential people mainly to benefit from its projects.

MP Khaled Al-Shulaimi thanked HH the Amir for accepting to host a donors conference for the Syrian people in Kuwait at the end of next month. MP Khalil AlSaleh said the composition of KUWAIT: MP Nabeel Al-Fadl chomps on a cigar at the Cabinet did not reflect the National Assembly yesterday. — Photo by the outcome of the election. Yasser Al-Zayyat

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2012

local

Amir heads Cabinet meeting after GCC summit KUWAIT: HH the Amir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah headed an extraordinary Cabinet meeting at Bayan Palace yesterday to discuss the results of the recently-concluded Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) summit he had attended in Bahrain. The meeting was held in the attendance of HH the Crown Prince Sheikh Nawaf Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, HH the Prime Minister Sheikh Jaber Mubarak Al-Hamad Al-Sabah and National Assembly Speaker Ali AlRashed.

A concluding statement, on behalf of the ministers, was read out by the State Minister for Cabinet Affairs and State Minister for Municipality Affairs Sheikh Mohammad AlAbdallah Al-Mubarak Al-Sabah upon the conclusion of the meeting.

The statement read that HH the Amir briefed the attending ministers on the decisions, adopted by the GCC heads of states meeting which ended on Tuesday, which called for conforming to supreme council resolutions aimed at achieving GCC integration in the fields of security, the economy, human rights, the environment and social, cultural and political affairs.

The GCC Summit also affirmed the need for the development of united defensive capabilities and the adoption of the amended version of the GCC security agreement in order to attain stability and security in the states. HH the Amir expressed his appreciation of the speech delivered by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, which

called for the transition of the GCC to confederation status. GCC leaders, in turn, thanked HH the Amir’s proposal for Kuwait to host a Syrian donors’ conference, aimed at providing humanitarian assistance for the people affected by the political crisis in that country. The warm hospitality and hosting of the summit by Bahrain was thanked by HH the Amir, who expressed gratitude for the good organization carried out by Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Issa Al-Khalifa.

HH the Amir also briefed the ministers on separate sideline meetings he had held with leaders during the summit.

For their part, HH the Crown Prince Sheikh Nawaf Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, National Assembly Speaker Ali Al-Rashed and HH the Prime Minister Sheikh Jaber Al-Mubarak AlHamad Al-Sabah each expressed their appreciation of the efforts assumed by HH the Amir and GCC leaders, pledging their full support of the KUWAIT: HH the Amir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah heads an extraordinary Cabinet decisions which arose out of the meeting. meeting at Bayan Palace yesterday. — KUNA Meanwhile on the local scale, HH the Amir urged the need for accelerated efforts to imple- merce Ali Muhammad Thenayan al-Ghanim and al-Sebaiei, board chairperson of the union of ment government plans for development in the chairpersons of GCC union of chambers of com- manufacturers Hussein al-Kharafi, and board country, stressing on the education sector in merce. The meeting was held on the occasion of chairperson of the union of real estate developorder to achieve the aims of developing man- the 41st convening of the union’s meeting to ers Tawfiq Al-Jarrah, where they submitted altopower in the country along with the importance take place in Kuwait. HH the Amir also met with gether a unified memo to HH the Amir in which of better cooperation between the legislative the board chairperson of the union of Kuwaiti they embodied their perception of the (parliament) and executive (cabinet) branches of banks Hamad Al-Marzouq and members of the approaches needed to push ahead the national economy. Attending HH the Amir’s meetings union’s board. the political set-up in the country. today was minister of the Amiri Diwan Sheikh Furthermore, HH the Amir met with board HH the Amir met at Bayan Palace yesterday Ali Jarrah al-Sabah. — KUNA chairperson of the Investment Company Bader with president of the Kuwaiti chamber of com-

Folkloric heritage festival to kick off on January 15 Premises getting ready for handover: Al-Basman

Coast Guard averts suicide bid by girl

By Hanan Al-Saadoun KUWAIT: Coast Guards personnel rescued a girl who attempted to commit suicide. After rescuing her, the officials provided her necessary treatment.

Acting on information that a girl was spotted on a beach in front of a restaurant in suspicious circumstances and that she was out there to commit suicide, the Coast Guard sent three patrols to the area. Marine rescue team was alerted about the incident.

On seeing the approaching men, the girl tried to resist them and run away. But eventually she was overpowered and taken to the ambulance that was kept standby to deal with any possible situation.

The girl was shivering from cold.

Meanwhile, another ambulance was also called for one of the coast guards men who encountered certain health problem. The coast guard officials were praised for their timely action to save the life of a person.

Al-Maimouni case internationalized?

KUWAIT: A case pertaining to the custodial death of a Kuwaiti man under police torture could soon be ‘internationalized’ with the legal team representing the victim reportedly planning to contact international organizations with a complaint against procedures adopted by local authorities.

The Appeals Court had upheld the first degree ruling earlier this week which sentenced a number of police officers to life in prison after finding them guilty for the death of citizen Mohammad AlMaimouni under torture. In this regard, sources close to the victim’s legal team told Al-Rai newspaper about the team’s plans to “hold a meeting at the victim’s house next week to discuss further legal procedures”, which they say include “forwarding a complaint to international human rights organizations.”

Speaking on the condition of anonymity, the sources explained that the complaint would focus on the fact

that the Public Prosecution charged the accused with ‘battery assault that led to death’, which in the legal team’s opinion was “in violation of article 180 of the Penal Code under which kidnapping with the intention of assault is punishable by death.” The sources added that a complaint “by the victim’s family” could be forwarded to the United Nations Human Rights Council.

Investigations in the case which rocked Kuwaiti polity and led to the resignation of former interior minister Sheikh Jaber Al-Khalid Al-Sabah in early 2011, had indicated that Al-Maimouni died under torture carried out inside a police station as well as at a remote location in Kuwait’s desert. Former MP Dr. Obaid Al-Wasmi had stated during a press conference held by former MP Mohammad Hayef on Monday night that he plans to “hold a meeting soon in order to discuss details of the [Appeals Court] ruling.” — Al-Rai

KUWAIT: Chairman of the Board and Managing Director of Integral European Halls Company Saleh Al-Basman said premises of the Folkloric Heritage festival will soon be ready and handed over as the festival will be held on January 15 and continues until the end of February under the patronage of HH The Amir Sheikh Sabah AlAhmad Al-Sabah.

Businessman Al-Basman said that work is going on full speed to finish the festival location which will include a large number of races including camel racing, falcons contests and Mizayen (camel beauties), and expressed pleasure for participating in such gathering as it bears the name of Kuwait and attracts a large crowd from the Gulf.

He said the festival will be held during the celebrations of the National and Liberation days. He said there will be areas that can accommodate the large number of people who were invited by the Higher Organizing Committee under the chairmanship of Sheikh Dhari Al-Fahad, in addition to a VIP hall.

Al-Basman said “Integral” European Halls are asked to prepare guests quarters and fans stands in addition to other halls as requested by the higher organizing committee including dining halls and various committee’s offices. He said the company owns one of its kind hall with a space area of 3500 meters squared.

Al-Basman said “Integral” European Halls won the popular heritage festival for the third consecutive year following stiff competition. He said the company gains good confidence in this field, and won in the largest festivals in the middle east by participating in King Abdulaziz prize, as well as for-

KUWAIT: Chairman of the Board and Managing Saleh Al-Basman mula one in Bahrain, and the preparation of the locations of the largest project in Jordan which is rebuilding Iraq, Baghdad International Airport and American Army.

He said “Integral” European Halls is distinguished by following a clear policy in running its business, which calls for setting targets and means to reach the best. Its commercial philosophy is

Director of Integral European Halls Company characterized by creativity and professionalism.

The companies facilities are known for safety and security of all its materials and skeletons.

Buildings are approved according to ( Tuv) Standers, and meet the strict European standards including the German (DiN), they also resist storms and meets the highest of European standers to prevent fires.

KUWAIT: Shuwaikh Port received tourist Ship Astor that called on its port yesterday with 500 passengers on board. Tourists from Europe and America will visit touristic and heritage places in Kuwait as part of the ship’s voyage to several countries including Qatar, Bahrain and Dubai. — KUNA

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THURSDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2012

LOCAL

kuwait digest

kuwait digest

Find a solution to loans issue

A failed society?

By Fahad Al-Handal

By Nawaf Al-Fuzaie e do not want any exercise in exaggeration nor are we asking for the moon as far as the loans issue is concerned. All we want is a solution to a real problem.

But before we start looking for a solution, we must admit that there indeed exists a problem.

We have worked on this issue and have filed hundreds of cases and our research shows that there exists a problem, and it continues unabated.

The justifications being offered to defend the decision about not writing off the loans sounds more a silly excuse to anyone who understands and respects the law. The notion of justice is deeply connected with and emanates from the principle of equality before the law and an equivalent relationship of power. The fact is that those buried under debt and others who are not do not share the same relationship with power centers. Justice is always relative and never absolute.

How can you defend that what the army pays to its officers to encourage them to accept retirement is fair when someone of the same age and with a similar experience in a civil job is not offered such amounts? Is everyone not here to ser ve his or her countr y even when are employed in different jobs? This is no time to display a silly understanding of justice.

Where was this justice when you wrote off what you considered bad debts? Whatever happened to such an understanding of justice when we came out of the Invasion with such heavy losses? Some people have decided to raise a hue and cry all of a sudden about justice when an economic catastrophe has hit tens of thousands of Kuwaiti families? Do they pause to consider who caused this catastrophe? Is it not the government when it was found lax in its supervision of the financial institutions?

Have some fear of Allah when you take a stance. A brother or sister or father or mother of yours may be suffering severely because of unjustifiable interest rates due to which repayment periods had to be extended. People are forced to continue working much after their retirement age and they slave to repay the loans and the heavy interests accrued on them. The tragedy is that the measures which should have secured them against such a fate did not kick in - the contract that was to protect an employee did not provide that protection and the Central Bank that should have intervened to secure his interests failed to play its due and expected role.

Today, solutions cannot be in the form of charity or aid. People who are indebted need quick solutions. The issue does not affect the debts of Islamic financial groups for whom profits are not a problem. They do not involve the investment companies and their debts, or any debts above KD 70,000. Debts incurred after 2008 are also out of the purview of the latest controversy because by then the banks had tightened their grip and ended the laissez-faire culture.

Even in regard to the bank’s foreign debt, it must be borne by one who was responsible for making people avail of foreign loans from a foreign bank. Writing these loans off is the least punishment for those who violated the rules and regulations of Kuwaiti banks.

Again, Kuwaiti people are not looking for charity, but want justice in an issue in which the injustice was exposed by courts’ rulings. These pronouncements of the courts have brought those responsible for the state of affairs under a cloud of suspicion forever.

We want a solution, and we do not anyone to complicate this issue unnecessarily. We do worry because there are some people in this government who do not like the current assembly since it is free of business interests and factionalism. We want a solution and we are determined to achieve it. —Al-Watan

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kuwait digest

Inadequate democracy

By Mohammad Al-Mishaan hat we are going through these days is being presented to us as the reality, but this is a reality of an inadequate democracy. Many in this country have been wishing to end this democracy ever since 1967, but their efforts have failed over the last four decades.

The policy of presenting the current scenario as a reality that people must live with is not working, though the government is trying to achieve that purpose with all its might. It wants us to stop objecting to the state of affairs by asking us to learn to co-exist with the reality on the ground. We are telling the government that this cannot happen. All logic and historical experience goes against it, and this situation cannot continue regardless of the efforts of the government to marshal support from politicians, loyalist writers, journalists and those active on Twitter.

It is not logical to continue to live with an order that has been rejected by a large number of the Kuwaiti people. The elections and the unprecedented rallies that followed under different slogans are the

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best proof that this so-called reality will not last long.

The country is going through a real political crisis never seen before, and it is naive to say that it is all because of rejection of an election mechanism. The demand for change in the voting mechanism is not the only demand. The fact is that charges of corruption have piled up over the years, and corruption has increased during the past four years in a major way. Therefore, the government would be wrong if it believes that it can continue as if nothing has happened and people have made peace with the reality after the elections. The damage cannot be repaired with the passage of time and the media and religious men will no longer be able to oblige the government by asking people to learn to co-exist with this reality. The government needs to pause and consider putting the interests of the state and its stability above any vested interests. It must look quickly for a political solution which is the only thing that can make people happy. In short, it has to first convince itself that the public must be a participant in the decision-making process. —Al-Anbaa

Latters to Badrya Darwish kuwait digest

Al-Muwaizri’s accusations

By Abdullatif Al-Duaij nimaginable and shocking is how one can describe the accusations leveled by former minister and MP, Shuwaib Al-Muwaizri about the alleged theft of millions of dinars from state funds which he said was committed mostly through the Kuwait Investment Authority. What makes the charges even more unbelievable is the government’s complete silence.

The government is behaving as if it was not concerned with protecting the public funds, or as though the accusations were not made by someone who was until recently a member of its own team and a representative of thousands of Kuwaiti voters.

There is little room for speculation in this matter. Either Al-Muwaizri is talking nonsense, though one doubts if anyone can simply conjure out of nowhere such serious accusations, or he knows exactly what he is saying, based on his experience.

There is no smoke without fire.

If Al-Muwaizri was a candidate in an ongoing election campaign, or was put in a position where he had to defend himself from any accusations leveled against him, then someone might have inter-

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preted his statements as being motivated by personal interest or vendetta. The fact that he made his accusations at a time when the step does not seem to benefit him in any way adds credibility to what he said.

While Kuwait does have regulations that protect public funds as well as commissions which follow up any accusations of fraudulent practices, no one has ever been convicted of such crimes.

In fact, cases in which someone is made to face trial or even investigations for have allegedly wasted or stolen public funds are very rare.

As I mentioned above, the accusations AlMuwaizri made have gained more credibility, given his previous positions as a former minister and a lawmaker. It is neither fair nor wise for the cabinet and parliament alike to remain silent regarding clear and direct accusations. Either Al-Muwazri should be put on trial for making baseless accusations and sentenced for violating regulations which bar anyone from spreading rumors pertaining to public funds, or, in case he is correct, legal action should be initiated against the people involved. — Al-Qabas

kuwait digest

Bid you farewell, off to the Avenues!

By Dr Ali Abdullah Jamal

By Dr Ali Abdullah Jamal midst the government’s failure to achieve any form of development in health, educational, housing or cultural fields, a gigantic commercial project backed by the private sector has become a landmark edifice in Kuwait and attracts thousands of citizens, expatriates and tourists, if we have any.

Yes, the Avenues is indeed a tangible piece of evidence that the private sector is capable of reviving Kuwait if only our sleeping beauty, the government, wakes up from its hibernation and owns up its responsibilities including lending support to the private sector.

The horrible murder that took place in that mall in which a young dentist was brutally killed is actually the responsibility of many bodies. It is obvious that the murderer’s family failed to inculcate humane values in that child who then grew up into a monster and extinguished a life to the

A

hen an accident happened recently in Egypt involving a train and a school bus carrying children who were killed in the mishap, Egyptian media figure Amr Adeeb came out on television with an emotional statement in which he proclaimed that “we live in a failed society”. He went on to talk about reasons for failure and blamed various elements of society for the tragic incident. And while his statement could have been inspired by a wish to ‘settle scores’, it must make us take a deeper look into the society’s role in preventing people from committing cruelty against each other.

The family’s role is to promote basic humane principles that go into how a person’s personality evolves. It must inculcate certain values in the children to make them worthy members of the human society. After that, the family relies on school to teach the children life experiences and discover their talents. Then it is the turn of colleges who play a role in improving their skills and making them academically ready to contribute positively to their societies. Meanwhile, those administering and managing the work places have a duty to help people acquire necessary experience so that they can find their way through life’s troubles.

These are the supposed roles the society needs to play in the life of its members. Is this what we find happening in our society today?

The answer to that question is usually connected to our emotions more than reason as we find ourselves standing at a crossroad. We wonder whether we must pretend that we live in an angelic society which only occasionally features individual negative incidents and consider them mere aberrations, or whether we live in a sinful society that is simply waiting to meet its fateful demise.

But there is a middle path also. It is to return to the basics and understand the place of each individual in society through a deep study that will throw up some bold results, serious recommendations and make obligatory their implementation.

The youngsters today think it is alright to bully someone because of a misconception that the law can only be enforced upon the weak. Based on this misconception, children are taught at home that they are ‘better’ and ‘stronger’ than others, and can outfox their foes by wriggling out of possible prosecution.

Such tendencies are spreading because young people are taught how to force others to respect them, rather than trying to earn that respect through good behavior. Believing that smoking a cigarette at a young age or driving while still being underage is something ‘cool’ would logically lead to only a turn for the worse. Swimming against the stream leads to further anxiety. —Al-Rai

shock of everyone.

It would be unfair not to hold responsible the family, the society, mosques and, on top of them all, a government so feeble that it is unable to

The government consists of officials who, in violation of this law, enjoy a puff with their morning coffee at their offices. We are dealing with a government that did not build a clinic or a police station in a shopping mall frequented by thousands of people daily where some families may spend an entire day. even enforce a ban on smoking in public places.

The government consists of officials who, in violation of this law, enjoy a puff with their morn-

ing coffee at their offices. We are dealing with a government that did not build a clinic or a police station in a shopping mall frequented by thousands of people daily where some families may spend an entire day. Nevertheless, the Ministry of Interior considers it apt to brag about having arrested the suspect within 24 hours after he killed an innocent human being in cold blood.

This is not the first crime of its kind and will not be the last. Such crimes are happening in all societies with a different degree. Yet, the government has to seriously consider stricter law enforcement if it wants to retrieve the state’s prestige.

May Allah rest your soul in peace, doctor Jaber, my colleague whom I never knew until it was too late. May Allah bestow patience on your family and help us all to bear with the absence of laws.

An official statement after the murder said that the government would seriously work on the issue of illegal weapons. I feel like saying, Good Morning. —Aljarida

Dear Badrya, After reading your article, a new dimension of the whole tragic story comes to my mind. I want to ask as to what were the people in the mall doing when this man was hacking Dr. Jaber to death?

Don’t you think that noble people, particularly the expats in Kuwait, are too afraid of the police and prefer to live their lives peacefully, irrespective of what is happening around them? Ironically, the bad people are left free to do whatever they want.

My second point is about media ethics. Was it necessary for Kuwait Times to publish pictures of the blood soaked body of Dr. Jaber?

I hope you will shed some light on these dimensions in your future articles.

Best Regards, S Faisal Hello, I read your article “Nightmare at Avenues”. It was indeed a very sad story. I went to school in Kuwait and remember that this “wasta” system made non-Kuwaitis feel very unsafe. I hope that this dentist’s family gets justice and I would be very sad if the killer gets away by using his “wasta” link. I think, like in other countries, the media in Kuwait needs to push harder for a just society.

Dr Sohail Nassir Paediatric Registrar - West Midlands Deanery Dear Badrya, I read your article online. I think that there is nothing called destiny. It is all in your mind. It is true that what you do will lead to what you become, just like what you eat will make you what you look like.

Many people who won lottery later did worse financially than how they were prior to winning the lottery. It is not because money is bad, because receiving a windfall is one thing, creating wealth is another. People who buy lottery are essentially those who are not really confident of making enough money by themselves. That simple reason is enough to make you lose all the money you win. But, how does he win a lottery in the first place, isn’t that destiny? Now, I would need to take longer mail to ‘logically’ reply to that. It was nice reading your article.

Cheers!

Prem Assalamu Alaikum Ms Badrya, Have a nice day and hope my message finds you well.

My Name is Yahia Mohamed and this is the first time that I am writing to you. Please refer to your article “The untouchables” published on 19th December that touched upon the horrible massacre at the Connecticut school where innocent children lost their lives. We all were sympathetic to their families and entire American society after such a heartrending incident. However, a huge number of innocent children are being killed at Myanmar and Palestine. I recall the scene of Muhammad Al Durra embracing his father a few seconds before his death. I think the whole world needs to change the mindset under which weapon manufacturing industry works and then sells these to the common people not only in America but all over the world. How many people are we losing everyday, be it in Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Sudan, and the republic of Mali? Who is responsible for distribution of these weapons? Is selling such weapons for profit not unethical marketing practice? Anyway, I did enjoy reading your article.

Thank you.

Truly yours, Yahia

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2012

LOCAL Lebanese, Palestinian bodies hail Kuwaiti aid to Syrian refugees

KUWAIT: His Highness the Crown Prince Sheikh Nawaf Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah meets with the Chairman of the Kuwait Banks Union Hamad Abdulmohsen Al-Marzouq and the members of the union yesterday.—KUNA

BEIRUT: A number of Lebanese and Palestinian institutions, associations and unions praised the great role Kuwait plays in offering humanitarian relief to Palestinian and Syrian refugees fleeing their country to Lebanon.

An official at “Istijaba” charitable association Nadeem Hijazi hailed the Kuwait’s humanitarian efforts in helping the Syrian and Palestinian refugees in Lebanon through several Kuwaiti charities including The Society of the Revival of Islamic Heritage (RIHS).

Istajaba charity is offering medical services for Syrian refugees at Al-Hamshari Hospital affiliated to Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS), and Istijaba Clinic.

Member of General Union of Palestinian Doctors Dr Imad Hallaq expressed his appreciation to Kuwaiti humanitarian efforts represented by (RIHS) and other bodies.

Meanwhile, thousands of Syrians and Palestinians rushed to Istijaba charity in Saida to receive the offered Kuwaiti aid.

They expressed their thanks to His high-

ness the Amir and the Kuwaiti people for alleviating their suffering through such aid.

A total of 164,000 Syrian refugees are living in Lebanon, most of them in the northern areas and the Beqa region. A number of Kuwaiti charities are offering help to the Syrian refugees in Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan including Zakat House, Islamic Society for Social Reform, and HIS. Meanwhile, Kuwait’s hosting of the first international donors’ conference for Syria reflected the Gulf nation’s strong sense of human compassion and keenness to support those in need, said Chairman of the International Islamic Charitable Society (IICO) and UN Humanitarian Envoy to Kuwait, Dr Abdallah Al-Matouq here yesterday. Al-Matouq told KUNA that the Kuwaiti leadership’s keenness on holding the conference mirrored the Kuwaiti people’s eagerness for charitable work. He added that UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon would be attending the conference in addition to figures from regional and international organizations. The conference will be held in Kuwait January 30, 2013. — KUNA

Crown Prince receives memo on development KUWAIT: His Highness the Crown Prince Sheikh Nawaf Al-Ahmad AlSabah met yesterday at Bayan Palace with His Highness the Prime Minister Sheikh Jaber Al-Mubarak Al-Sabah. Sheikh Nawaf also met with Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Sabah AlKhalid Al-Sabah. The Crown Prince met with board chairperson of the Investment Company Bader AlSebaiei, board chairperson of the union of manufacturers Hussein AlKharafi, and board chairperson of the union of real estate developers Tawfiq Al-Jarrah, where they submitted a unified memo to HH the

Amir in which they embodied their perception of the approaches needed to push ahead the national economy. Attending yesterdayís meetings was the undersecretary to the office of the Crown Prince for media affairs Sheikh Mubarak Al-Humoud Al-Sabah.

Meanwhile, the Crown Prince met with a number of citizens who gifted him with copies of their university doctoral dissertations. Dr Saad Al-Merriís dissertation was entitled Competition seeking public tenders. Dr Faisal Al-Metairiís dissertation was entitled Practical steps toward fighting terrorist crimes. Dr

Muhammad Al-Otaibiís dissertation was on the subject of biology. Dr Abdullah Al-Ajmiís dissertation was on the art of decision-making. The Crown Prince also received a copy of a book entitled States of the Arabian Gulf from its author Mousa Al-Matrook.

Meanwhile, HH the Prime Minister Sheikh Jaber Al-Mubarak Al-Sabah met at Bayan Palace with board chairpersons of unions of banks, investment companies, manufacturing companies, and real estate companies. There were also members from these unions at the meeting today, where the focus was

on perceptions, ideas, and recommendations on how to ameliorate the course of the national economy and boost the pace of development. Sheikh Jaber stressed the governmentís support of all meaningful studies that aim at pushing forward the national economy and fulfilling the objectives of the countryís development plans. Moreover he emphasized the governmentís keenness on encouraging the private sector to become a full partner with the government in achieving growth and development of the economy for the benefit of all citizens. — KUNA

Spate of robberies in Kuwait, car stolen

By Hanan Al-Saadoun

KUWAIT: Officials of the Drugs Control General Department arrested an Asian on charges of trading in drugs. Acting on information received about the curious behavior of the man, he was kept under surveillance and when the officials became certain about his activities, necessary legal permission was sought to arrest him. Subsequently, the police searched his residence and found 150 gram of heroin and 200 pills of other narcotic drugs. He was sent to concerned authorities.

KUWAIT: Four separate cases of robbery were registered around the state. In the first case, an Asian expat complained to the police that he was beaten up by four people who also robbed him of KD 50 and a mobile. In the second case, an Egyptian expat at Khaitan filed a similar complaint of having been beaten up by an unknown person who also robbed him of KD 700. In the same area, a Bengali expat complained that he was robbed by two people who took away KD 650. An Egyptian in Jaber Al-Ali area accused four Asian expats of robbing him of KD 1000, an amount that belonged to a company in which they work.

Car stolen In the mean time, a Kuwaiti woman

complained to the police in Qurtuba that he Japanese car model 2001 was stolen. She claimed that she had parked her car in front of her house last night but it was found missing in the morning. It is suspected that the thieves used a duplicate set of keys to steal the car.

Inebriated A Kuwaiti man in his thirties was arrested in Khaitan area after police noticed that he was under the influence of liquor. Police recovered a few pieces of Hashish and a bottle of “Red Label” whiskey from him. Security sources said a police patrol in the area noticed a car being driven in a rather peculiar way in Khaitan area and intercepted it. The driver was found heavily drunk and whiskey and hashish was recovered. He was taken to drugs enforcement department.

KUWAIT: Several parts of Kuwait witnessed heavy rains on Tuesday. Jleeb AlShoyoukh area bore the brunt of incessant rains as several roads and open grounds lay submerged on Tuesday as drainage outlets got clogged by scattered garbage and dirt making motoring difficult. The pictures show motorists wade through the flooded roads and kids frolic on the grounds in Jleeb area where rain water played havoc.

— Photos by Yasser Al-Zayyat

6

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2012

LOCAL

Sulaibiya gas station attackers in custody KUWAIT: The Jahra police arrested three men involved in a merciless attack against a driver at a gas station in Sulaibiya on Sunday night. Preliminary investigations suggested that it was an honour crime as the victim had a relationship with a female kin of the main suspect. A video clip depicting a man being forced out of a vehicle and stabbed by three people went viral on social networks before investigations led to the arrest of the main suspect, a Bedouin (stateless) resident, from a Jahra house early Monday morning. He provided whereabouts of his two accomplices, a Bedouin and a Syrian, who were later caught in Saad Al-Abdullah.

The main suspect confirmed during the interrogation that the three followed their Bedouin victim and chose to attack him when he stopped at a gas station. The three remain in custody pending legal action.

Dock cleaning to continue for two months KUWAIT: The Kuwait Dive Team announced yesterday that efforts to remove debris from the Shamlan docking area which have been ongoing for four weeks are expected to continue for two more months before the operation is offi-

cially finalized. Team leader Waleed Al-Fadhel noted in statements to KUNA yesterday that the current operation is the fourth since they started the project to restore the historical place located at the Sharq beach on the Kuwait Bay. Several

volunteers from the public and private sector are joined in the operation, including the Kuwait Municipality who provided heavy machinery used to remove heavyweight debris and sunken boats.

Station break-in prevented Tight security measures prevented angry protestors from breaking into the Sabah Al-Nasser police station on Monday night after a court order upheld jail terms against officers involved in the custodial death of a Kuwaiti citizen as a result of torture. According to reports, about 250 “stone hurling young men” at a gathering chanted demands for capital punishment against the police officers found guilty in the case, then moved to the Sixth Ring Road after a security cordon prevented the procession to move towards the police station. Special task forces later used teargas and stun grenades to stop the protestors from blocking traffic at the key highway. No legal actions were filed.

Shooting suspect held A man who found that the specifications of a vehicle he bought in Salmiya did not match what he was promised became so angry that he grabbed a gun and fired a few shots before trying to run over the car dealer. Under arrest now, he faces charges of attempted murder, among others. The Kuwaiti suspect reportedly became infuriated after he discovered that his new vehicle’s specifications did not match what he was promised earlier. As the dispute flared up, he grabbed a gun and fired multiple shots that hit the shop’s exterior and a vehicle outside. The man then got into his car and attempted to run over the shop owner before escaping from the scene. Hawally detectives were later able to locate and arrest the suspect within hours of the case being reported. He has confessed to the crime and will remain in custody pending legal action.

Amendments planned for environmental law EPA seeks suggestions from bodies KUWAIT: A state department is studying amendments to be made to articles in an environmental draft law proposed in the parliament a few years ago. This will be a prelude to the law being forwarded again after incorporating the amendments to meet changes in international environment standards, as well as terms of regional and international agreements that Kuwait

signed in recent years.

To achieve this purpose, the Environment Public Authority contacted the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation, the Kuwait Municipality and other bodies concerned with environment in order to obtain their recommendations. These were to be addressed during the discussions about proposed amendments, Planning and Environmental

Impact Assessment Department Manager, Sameera Al-Kandari, said.

“Some major flaws were found in the proposed law, especially when it comes to articles regulating environmental impact assessment,” she explained in recent statements to Al-Qabas, mentioning the assessment of the World Bank representatives “who found these articles to be weak.”

According to Al-Kandari, the draft law contains only two articles pertaining to environmental impact assessment and these do not make it mandatory for the firms to carry out environmental impact assessment studies for projects they execute, nor do they give the EPA exclusive powers to give licenses based on environmental assessment.-Al-Qabas

Ethiopian infiltrator held at Abdali point

Suicide A family driver apparently committed suicide by hanging himself in his room in a Fahaheel house yesterday. Paramedics and police rushed to the scene after a Kuwaiti man reported that his driver had hung himself. The Indian man was pronounced dead on the scene and criminal investigators were called in. The body was taken to the coroner for an autopsy.

Illicit relationship A man involved in a furtive relationship with a married woman in Farwaniya jumped from her fifth floor apartment window, when her husband returned home unexpectedly, and landed on the balcony on the third floor where he remained precariously perched till firefighters rescued him. He was taken to the area’s police station where the husband pressed charges against him. He was taken into custody. Preliminary investigations indicated that the couple had been in an illegal relationship for seven months during which the woman allowed her lover in when her husband left for his nightshift.

Cow kicks farmer A man was hospitalized with serious injuries after he was kicked by a cow he tried to milk in Sulaibiya recently. The Egyptian victim was diagnosed with broken ribs and abdominal bleeding at the Jahra Hospital where he was rushed by a coworker at the farm and had to be admitted to the intensive care unit. A case was filed at the area’s police station and classified under ‘work injury’. —Al-Watan, Al-Qabas, Al-Rai, Al-Anbaa

News

in brief

KUWAIT: Border security officers apprehended a man who attempted to infiltrate into the country through its northern border. The Ethiopian man was reportedly caught trying to sneak his way from Iraq through the Abdali border point. No contrabands were found in his possession upon arrest. He was taken to the proper authorities for further action.

Threat to kill A man who threatened to kill his relative was arrested after detectives tracked him to his mother’s house in Salmiya recently. Police waited outside the house until the Kuwaiti man stepped out and then placed him under arrest. He said during investigations that he had lost his temper during an argument with a relative, and ended up issuing a threat which he termed “non-serious”.

Plan to avert crimes at malls KUWAIT: First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Interior Sheikh Ahmad Al-Hmoud extensively briefed the Council of Ministers on the heinous crime that resulted in the death of a young doctor Jaber Sameer in front of many shoppers at the Avenues mall. Sources said that the Ministry of Interior has put into operation a plan to secure and provide protection to everyone. The plan has been made operational in cooperation with malls’ managements to avoid recurrence of such crimes, which are unprecedented for the Kuwaiti society. Sheikh Ahmad told the Cabinet that there will be no interference in the course of justice and law will be fully applicable to everyone.

Search for conman Investigations are on for a male suspect accused of cheating and stealing thousands of dinars from a Kuwaiti citizen. A case was filed recently at the Salhiya police station where the Kuwaiti man told officers that he was cheated of KD65,000 he had paid as part of an alleged business project to import goods from East Asia. The suspect reportedly disconnected service from his phone after the Kuwaiti man repeatedly called to ask him for his share of the profits and later wanted to call off the deal.

Gas oil contract with Bangladesh Oil sources revealed that the market sector has recently renewed a contract with Bangladesh Petroleum Corp, owned by Bangladesh government, to supply 1.2 million tons of gas oil and 201,000 tons of jet fuel. The contract will be for more than a billion dollars. It has been agreed at mark up price of $ 4.3 for gas oil, provided Kuwait Oil Tankers carry the product using their own oil tankers.

Sources said that Bangladesh is one of the important markets that KPC deals with.

Drunken driver A driver was arrested in an inebriated state in Sabah Al-Salem after being involved in a traffic accident. Police responded to an emergency call after two vehicles collided and soon found out that an Asian man in one of the cars was under the influence of liquor. A bottle of homebrewed liquor was also found in his car. No one was injured in the accident.

EQUATE hosts KU engineering students KUWAIT: EQUATE Petrochemical Company hosted a number of electrical engineering students from Kuwait University’s College of Engineering and Petroleum. The visit included a tour of Greater EQUATE joint venture plants, as well as a presentation on a number of technical and industrial issues.

EQUATE and Kuwait University’s College of Engineering & Petroleum

signed a memorandum of understanding in 2008 for cooperation in relevant industrial and academic matters, reflecting the company’s “Partners in Success” tagline.

Established in 1995, EQUATE is an international joint venture between Petrochemical Industries Company (PIC), The Dow Chemical Company (Dow), Boubyan Petrochemical

Company (BPC) and Qurain Petrochemical Industries Company (QPIC). Commencing production in 1997, EQUATE is the single operator of a fully integrated world-scale manufacturing facility producing over 5 million tons annually of high-quality petrochemical products which are marketed throughout the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Europe.

Alcohol poisoning A man who had consumed liquor was hospitalized after he passed out in public in Al-Mangaf recently.

According to eyewitnesses, the man, a Kuwaiti in his forties, was seen walking unsteadily between cars, sometimes even dancing and singing loudly. He collapsed on the floor before an ambulance arrived at the scene and rushed him to Al-Adan Hospital. A case was filed at AlMangaf police station.

Driver held for rape bid A family driver unsuccessfully tried to molest his employer’s child inside their home in Al-Qairawan.

Officers at the area’s police station filed a case after they were approached by the Kuwaiti employer who arrived with his newly hired Asian driver to report the incident.

The man rushed back home from work after his son, having escaped from the clutches of the driver, called him. The suspect remains in custody pending legal procedures. —Al-Watan, Al-Rai, Al-Anbaa

KUWAIT: The Awqaf General Secretariat signed a contract with the Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs yesterday to launch a program to fund various educational, cultural and entertaining activities for students studying overseas on government-paid scholarships. —KUNA

Sabah Al-Ahmad City housing Sources revealed that Minister of Communication and State Minister for Housing Affairs, Eng. Salem Al-Othaina, has asked the leaders of public authority for housing to distribute the Sabah Al-Ahmad City houses. A total of 2201 houses, each built over 600 square meters, are to be allocated before June 2013. In addition, the dwelling units of Al-Khairan City are also to be allocated in the first quarter of 2013, including 280 plots of 600 square meters each and 47 plots of 400 square meters each. AlWafra’s 346 housing plots measuring 600 square meters each and 24 plots measuring 400 square meters each are also to be allocated.

Plan to improve consumer protection Informed sources said the Ministry of Commerce and Industry presented a proposal to the finance committee at the National Assembly to improve and strengthen the consumer protection laws to bring them at par with recent developments. They said that Minister Anas AlSaleh wanted to give the issue priority after finalizing the new companies law that will be dependent on cooperation between the ministry and the finance committee at the Assembly. The sources said that the intention was to ensure that those who commit commercial cheating are named as soon as they are convicted in a court of law.

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2012

Syrian death toll spirals as Brahimi mission stumbles

India announces gang-rape inquiry

Page 8

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News

in brief

Iran bans flights during call to Islamic prayer DUBAI: Iran’s parliament has banned airplanes from flying in the country during the Azan call to Islamic prayer, the semi-official Mehr news agency reported yesterday.

“According to the new directive, airplanes are banned from flying during Azan, especially during the call to morning prayers,” Mehr quoted the spokesman for parliament’s cultural committee Ali Taheri as saying. The head of the Aviation Organization, Hamid Reza Pahlevani, said aircraft will be allowed to take off 30 minutes after the call to the morning prayer so that passengers have the time “to carry out their religious duties”, the Iranian Students’ News Agency (ISNA) reported. Iran has practiced Sharia law since its 1979 Islamic revolution. Hardliners have pressed for stricter enforcement of religious measures since President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won office in 2005 promising a return to the revolution’s values. Taheri also said serious attention will be given to observing the strict Islamic dress code for women working at airports or airline companies.

Women in Iran are obliged to cover their hair and wear long, loose clothing to disguise their figures and protect their modesty. Violators can be flogged, fined or imprisoned.

CAIRO: Egyptian men try to climb a concrete wall built by police forces to avoid clashes in Tahrir Square in Cairo yesterday. —AFP

Egypt government sets priorities after charter Islamist-dominated Shura Council begins work

CAIRO: Egypt’s government set legislative priorities for parliament yesterday as it convened for the first time since a new constitution was passed, asking lawmakers to focus on setting rules for upcoming elections, regulating the media and fighting corruption. The official confirmation Tuesday that the Islamist-drafted constitution passed in a referendum ushered in a new chapter in Egypt’s two-year transition from authoritarian rule, likely to be characterized more by legal battles and less by street protests.

The dispute over the constitution deeply polarized the country, reigniting mass street protests that turned deadly at times.

“We have now moved from conflict in the streets between political forces and the regime to a new phase of legal disputes over legislation and control of state institutions,” said Nasser Amin, the head of the Center for the Independence of the Judiciary and Legal Profession. “This is the most critical phase...and the battle won’t be very clear to regular people.”

The constitution’s supporters, including Islamist President Mohammed Morsi and his government, had argued it would pave the way for more stability in Egypt and the building up of state institutions.

The largely secular and liberal opposition who opposed the constitution fear it enshrines a prominent role for Islamic law, or sharia, in governing the country’s affairs and reinforces

Islamists’ hold on power. They say it constitution restricts freedoms and ignores the rights of women and minorities. The main opposition group has questioned the legitimacy of the charter itself, saying it was rushed through without national consensus. “Egypt constitution (is) void as it conflicts (with) certain peremptory norms of international law,” such as freedom of belief and expression, opposition leader Mohammed ElBaradei said on his Twitter account yesterday.

Under the new constitution, the Islamistdominated Shura Council, the traditionally toothless upper house, was granted temporary legislative powers and began its work a day after the official results of the referendum said the charter passed with nearly 64 percent. It will legislate until elections for a new lower house are held within two months. “I congratulate the Egyptian people on behalf of the government for the passing of the constitution of the second republic, which establishes a modern democratic state where the people’s voices are heard and where injustice, dictatorship, repression, nepotism and corruption take a back seat,” Cabinet Minister Mohammed Mahsoub, who hails from the Islamist Wasat Party, told the session.

But the 270-member council is boycotted by the largely liberal and secular opposition groups -which has also rejected the presidential appointments to the upper house. Morsi

appointed 90 members to the council on the last day of the referendum on the constitution, in a bid to make it more representative. The other two-thirds of the members were elected last year with no more than seven percent of eligible voters. But the new appointments maintained the hold of Islamists on the house. Morsi has had legislative powers for months since a court dissolved the law making lower house of parliament.

In its first act, the Shura Council convened to swear in the 90 new members appointed by Morsi. The government used the session to set its priorities for the coming period. Speaking to the council, Mahsoub, the minister in charge of parliamentary affairs, said the government will prepare new legislation for parliament to discuss, including a law to regulate the upcoming parliamentary elections, anti-corruption laws, and laws to organize Egypt’s efforts to recover money from corrupt officials from the era of ousted President Hosni Mubarak.

Mahsoub said such bills can be ready as early as next week, when the council convenes again for its regular working session. He said the government also wants to draft laws to revise maximum and minimum wages, expand social insurance coverage and regulate the media, as well as institute Egypt’s first freedom of information act. “At this critical time for the nation, this respected council is required to pass a set of

laws for the state to complete building its institutions,” he said.

Amin, the judicial expert, said the constitution will also reduce the number of judges sitting on the country’s top court, the Supreme Constitutional Court, from 19 to 11. This was seen by some as a way to get rid of some of the most critical judges of Islamists. Some of them were appointed during the Mubarak era, and Morsi viewed them as holdovers who tried to undermine his authorities. “The court now will constitute little danger to the legislation to be passed in the coming period,” Nasser said.

“After the end of the street battle, and after the constitution and new legislature, (the government) will make all the amendments it wants through the law.”

The opposition also refused to attend a national dialogue hosted by Morsi’s vice president, saying the agenda for the talks are not clear and the disputed constitution was already rushed through. Instead, it says it will contest the upcoming parliamentary elections and hopes to achieve a sizeable representation to challenge the constitution. The opposition will be watching the Shura Council to see whether new legislation increases civil liberties and addresses poverty and social inequalities - or increases the ability of the state to crack down on its critics and impose an Islamist rule, as many fear. —AP

Spanish police seize 11 tons of hashish MADRID: Spanish police yesterday said it had busted a major drug trafficking ring, seizing more than 11 tons of hashish destined for Europe and arresting 35 people. “The dismantled organization controlled the entire chain of trafficking, from production to packing, as well as transport to Spain, storage, and distribution throughout Europe, especially in France, Belgium, England and the Netherlands,” police said in a statement. The ring’s main warehouse was located in the central Spanish region of Toledo, where police seized 8.5 tons of the drug, out of a total of “more than 11 tons” confiscated in all, it said. In addition, police seized 150,000 euros in cash and 14 vehicles and 109 cell phones used by the ring.

Gunman hits Catholic priest in Zanzibar City ZANZIBAR: A gunman shot and seriously wounded a Catholic priest late Tuesday in Zanzibar City, capital of the semi-autonomous Tanzanian archipelago, police said. The Christmas Day shooting happened as Father Ambrose Mkenda was returning home from his church at around 7:45 pm, Zanzibar police spokesman Aziz Juma said. Mkenda was hit in his arm and chest. As doctors battled to save his life, members of the Christian minority community gathered at Mnazi-Mmoja Hospital in the old town of Zanzibar. “The injured priest is the head of the Tomondo Catholic Church and also cashier” Aziz Juma said, adding that it was not immediately clear if the attack had been religiously motivated. “Investigation continues, but it may be also that the attackers thought the priest had money”, he said, adding that a pistol had been used in the attack. This is the second attack on a cleric in recent weeks, but the last one, in November, was an acid attack on a Muslim cleric, who was injured on his face and chest. Zanzibar’s Christian community is a minority there, an estimated three percent of the 1.2 million population, which is almost entirely Muslim.

Pipeline blast, quake strike Russia’s Sochi MOSCOW: Russia’s Black Sea resort of Sochi, which will host the 2014 Winter Olympics, has been hit by a gas pipeline blast and a mild earthquake, a government spokeswoman said yesterday. Irina Gogoleva, of Russia’s Emergencies Ministry, said no one was hurt and there was no apparent damage to the city’s infrastructure after a 5.3 magnitude earthquake was reported at 0242 local time yesterday.

“Emergencies Ministry servicemen scoured through the city districts, bridges and electrical cables, there was no damage,” Gogoleva said. The epicenter of the quake was about 150 km off Sochi in the Black Sea. President Vladimir Putin ordered authorities to inspect Olympic sites, particularly those under construction, to ensure there was no damage, Interfax news agency reported. Authorities said a explosion on a gas pipeline that feeds a a local power station occurred before the earthquake and was not related. Gogoleva said the power plant had switched to fuel oil and the city was receiving electrical power. She said the reason for the blast was unknown.

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2012

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

Assad’s inner circle takes hard line in Syria conflict NICOSIA: The Syrian vice president’s criticism of leader Bashar Al-Assad has highlighted the cracks in the regime’s highest ranks, pitting supporters of compromise against the president’s hardline inner circle. Assad’s closest aides believe the regime should keep fighting and that they can still win a war against rebels which has left more than 44,000 dead in almost two years.

“Power has become increasingly concentrated in the hands of just a few people in Assad’s clan, which has grown autistic and seems to have chosen to just keep going,” Paris-based expert Karim Bitar said.

Assad’s circle includes his brother Maher, 44, who heads the army’s elite Fourth Division and his wife Asma, an analyst said on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. The group also includes Assad’s notorious businessmen uncle Mohammed Makhluf, 80, cousin Rami Makhluf, 43, and Damascus security chief, Hazem Makhluf, 41. Like Assad, all are members of the minority Alawite community, except his wife, who is a Sunni Muslim. Presidential affairs minister since 2009, Mansur Azzam, 52, and former Al-Jazeera journalist Luna Al-Shibl are also close to Assad. Both are members of the Druze community.

Alawite Hussam Sukkar, a security advisor to the president, is also key, as are two Sunni veterans: National Security director Ali Mamluk and Political Security chief Rostom Ghazali.

“This is the group that takes the decisions,” the analyst said. “Bashar, who runs the show, only listens to people who owe him, for the most part, for their rise.” But several high-level officials, members of the state apparatus and par t of the army command, understand-like Vice President Faruq Al-Sharaa-”that neither the rebels nor the army can secure an all-out victory,” said Bitar.

“As such, they are hoping for a negotiated solution, which would prevent them all being swept away should Assad fall.” In an interview published in a pro-Damascus Lebanese daily, Sharaa, who for 22 years served as foreign minister, said he favors a negotiated solution to the conflict, rather than the president’s strategy of crushing the revolt militarily. Assad “does not hide his desire to press on militarily until the final victory (and he believes that) after this, political dialogue will actually still be possible,” Sharaa told Beirut-based Al-Akhbar.

Experts say that out of those who share Sharaa’s views, two women stand out. One of them is Buthaina

Shaaban, a 59-year-old Alawite who was close to Assad’s father Hafez, and worked as his translator before becoming minister of expatriate affairs. In 2008, Shaaban became Bashar al-Assad’s advisor. The other is Najah Al-Attar, a 79-year-old Sunni, who was minister of culture from 1976 to 2000, and was then appointed vice president along with Sharaa in 2006.

“It seems this group has been totally excluded from decision-making, because they think the war should end with no winner or loser,” said a former minister who took a distance from the regime when the revolt broke out in March 2011.

Assad’s clique, the minister added on condition of anonymity, “treats them like cowards.” The journalist who interviewed the vice president for Al-Akhbar said “Sharaa is not in the decision-making circle, and communicates infrequently with the president.” On Sunday, Information Minister Omran al-Zohbi played down Sharaa’s assessment. “It is one opinion among 23 million opinions in Syria, which is a state led by institutions and leaders who will give the final opinion,” he said. After 50 years in power, differences have emerged even among Alawites, as young members of this offshoot of Shiite Islam are killed daily in battle. — AFP

DAMASCUS: A combo picture shows (top) members of President Bashar AlAssad’s inner circle, brother Maher Al-Assad (left), his cousin Rami Makhluf (center) and his Political Security chief Sunni Rustom Ghazali (right). (Bottom) Syria’s Vice President Faruk Al-Sharaa (left), advisor to Bashar Al-Assad Alawite Buthaina Shaaban (center) and vice president Sunni Najah Al-Attar. —AFP

New protests break out in Iraqi Sunni heartland Shiite-led government accused of marginalizing Sunnis

ALEPPO: In this image made from video broadcast on Al Arabiya TV, Syrian Maj Gen AbdulAziz Jassem Al-Shalal makes remarks saying he is joining ‘the people’s revolution.’ — AP

Syrian death toll spirals as Brahimi mission stumbles DAMASCUS: The death toll in Syria’s civil war has topped 45,000, a watchdog said Wednesday, as a new push by peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi to bring the warring parties to the negotiating table appeared to have failed. The grim statistics added gravity to a warning by the United Nations that Syrians are losing hope of any end to the bloodletting and that the humanitarian situation across the country is rapidly deteriorating.

“In all we have documented the deaths of 45,048 people,” Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, adding that more than 1,000 people were killed in the past week alone.

He said those killed included “31,544 civilians, 1,511 defectors, 11,217 soldiers and 776 unidentified bodies.” The Observatory, which relies on a network of medics and activists on the ground, said the actual number of people killed since an uprising against President Bashar Al-Assad’s regime erupted in March last year could be as high as 100,000, with both sides concealing many of their casualties.

The Britain-based watchdog reported that army shelling of a village in the north Syrian province of Kahtaniyeh on Wednesday killed at least 20 people, among them eight children and three women. It also reported new clashes in the Yarmuk Palestinian camp in southern Damascus, the site of fierce fighting last week. “The camp was relatively quiet until Tuesday night, but new clashes broke out that lasted through the early hours of the morning,” said Abdel Rahman.

Violence first broke out in Yarmukhome to some 150,000 people-when regime warplanes carried out an air strike on the camp on December 16, killing at least eight people. For five days, battles in the camp pitted Syrian and Palestinian rebels opposed to Assad’s regime against pro-Damascus Palestinian militia. The army later surrounded the camp but allowed people who initially fled to return last Thursday. Brahimi arrived in Syria on Sunday to push a new initiative aimed at ending the bloodshed and getting the regime and opposition to the negotiating table. A UN Security Council diplomat however said the veteran Algerian diplomat had received no support from any of the warring parties.

“Assad appears to have stonewalled Brahimi again, the UN Security Council is not even close to showing the envoy the kind of support he needs and the rebels will not now compromise,” the diplomat said on condition of anonymity.

Opposition activists also blasted Brahimi.

“Brahimi’s arrival in Damascus to discuss a new political initiative to solve the crisis caused by the regime... has not put a stop... to massacres,” the Local Coordination Committees, a grassroots network of anti-

regime activists said on Tuesday. The LCC rejects “any initiative that puts Syrians in a position where they are extorted and forced to choose between accepting unfair compromises, or the continuation of the regime’s crimes against them.”

A French daily has reported a supposed US-Russian initiative for a transition in Syria, causing rage among opponents who reject any compromise with the regime. Le Figaro said a solution in the offing would involve keeping Assad in power until 2014 while preventing him from further renewing his mandate. The United Nations said worse was to come inside Syria. With four million people in need of aid inside Syria and well over 500,000 registered as refugees outside, “it’s becoming more and more difficult just to do the very basic things to help people to survive,” John Ging, a top UN relief official, said in New York on Tuesday.

“People are losing hope because they just see more violence on the horizon, they just see a deterioration.” Analysts, meanwhile, said only a few in Assad’s regime now controlled power. “Power has become increasingly concentrated in the hands of just a few people in Assad’s clan, which has grown autistic and seems to have chosen to just keep going,” Parisbased expert Karim Bitar said. “Bashar, who runs the show, only listens to people who owe him, for the most part, for their rise,” said another analyst on condition of anonymity. Meanwhile, the head of Syria’s military police has defected from the army and declared allegiance to the uprising against President Bashar Al-Assad, according to a video and a Syrian security source.

The high-level defection, while not a strategically significant development in the 21-month-old conflict, will be a blow to morale for Assad’s forces, which are hitting back at a string of rebel advances across the country. “I am General Abdelaziz Jassim Al-Shalal, head of the military police. I have defected because of the deviation of the army from its primary duty of protecting the country and its transformation into gangs of killing and destruction,” the officer said in a video published on YouTube.

A Syrian security source confirmed the defection but played down its significance.

“Shalal did defect but he was due to retire in a month and he only defected to play hero,” the source said. Wearing a camouflage uniform with red officer insignia on the shoulder, Shalal spoke from a desk in a room in an undisclosed location. Some rebel sources said he had fled to Turkey. It was not clear when Shalal had changed sides. “The army has destroyed cities and villages and has committed massacres against an unarmed population that took to the streets to demand freedom,” he said.

“Long live free Syria.” — Agencies

RAMADI: Thousands of Iraqi demonstrators massed again in a Sunni-dominated province west of the capital yesterday, determined to keep up the pressure on a Shiite-led government that many accuse of trying to marginalize them. It was the third major protest in less than a week in Iraq’s largest province of Anbar, once the heart of the deadly Sunni insurgency that erupted after the US-led invasion in 2003.

The demonstrations follow the arrest last week of 10 bodyguards assigned to Finance Minister Rafia Al-Issawi, who comes from Anbar and is one of the central government’s most senior Sunni officials. The case is exacerbating tensions with Iraq’s Sunnis, who see the detentions as politically motivated.

Protesters turned out yesterday near the provincial capital Ramadi, 115 kilometers west of Baghdad. The city and nearby Fallujah were the scenes of some of the deadliest fighting between US troops and Iraqi insurgents.

Demonstrators gathered along a highway linking Baghdad with neighboring Jordan and Syria. They held banners demanding that Sunnis’ rights be respected and calling for the release of Sunni prisoners in Iraqi jails. “We warn the government not to draw the country into sectarian conflict,” read one. Another declared: “We are not a minority.”

Iraq’s majority Shiite rose to power following the 2003 US-led invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein’s Sunni-dominated regime, though the country’s minority Sunni Arabs and Kurds do hold some posts within the government. Many Sunnis see the arrest of the finance minister’s guards as the latest in a series of moves by Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki against their sect and other perceived political opponents. Vice President Tariq alHashemi, one of the country’s highest-ranking Sunni politicians, is now living in exile in Turkey after being handed multiple death sentences for allegedly running death squads - a charge he dismisses as politically motivated.

RAMADI: Protesters chant slogans against Iraq’s Shiite-led government as they wave national flags during a demonstration in Ramadi, west of Baghdad yesterday. — AP

“This sit-in will remain open-ended until the demonstrators’ demands are met, and until the injustice against ends,” cleric Hamid Al-Issawi said at the protest.

He accused Al-Maliki’s government of trying to create rifts among Sunnis and Shiites.

“These practices are aimed at drawing the country into a sectarian conflict again by creating crisis and targeting prominent national figures,” the cleric said. Al-Maliki has defended the arrests of the finance minister’s guards as legal and based on warrants issued by judicial authorities. He also recently warned against a return to sectarian strife in criticizing the responses of prominent Sunni officials to the

detentions. In a recent statement, the prime minister dismissed the rhetoric as political posturing ahead of provincial elections scheduled for April and warned his opponents not to forget the dark days of sectarian fighting “when we used to collect bodies and chopped heads from the streets.” The political tensions are rising at a sensitive time. Iraq’s ailing President Jalal Talabani is incapacitated following a serious stroke last week and is being treated in a German hospital. The 79-year-old president, an ethnic Kurd, is widely seen as a unifying figure with the clout to mediate among the country’s ethnic and sectarian groups. — AP

Qaeda blames France for Sahel hostage deadlock PARIS: A leader of Al-Qaeda’s North African arm, AQIM, has accused France of failing to engage in negotiations to release French hostages the group is holding in the Sahel. In a four-minute video message carried by regional news website Sahara Media, Abdel Hamid Abu Zeid said four hostages seized in Niger two years ago were alive and said Paris had not taken up AQIM’s invitation to negotiate their release.

“About a year ago we alerted France to our willingness to negotiate and since then we have been waiting for a response,” Abu Zeid said in a French transcript provided by Sahara Media, viewed as a reliable news portal with strong Islamist contacts. The statement appeared to be in response to a Dec 8 message from the brother of one of the hostages who said he did not understand why the situation appeared to be deadlocked.

Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius has said that Paris is working “discreetly” to try to secure the hostages’ release. AQIM, which operates across the vast Sahara desert and with its Islamist allies controls the northern two-thirds of Mali, is holding four Frenchmen seized in a Niger mining town in 2010 and two others kidnapped in northeast Mali in late 2011. A seventh Frenchman was kidnapped by a separate Islamist rebel group, MUJWA, in southwest Mali in November.

AQIM threatened in September to start killing hostages if Paris mounted a military intervention in northern Mali.

Despite that risk, Paris has been a vocal supporter of plans for an international opera-

tion to try to wrest back the territory from the Islamists’ control. Western leaders are concerned the area could become a platform for militant attacks. The UN Security Council this month authorized a French-drafted resolution for the deployment of an African-led force to

retrain Mali’s defeated army and ultimately support such an operation. The four AQIM hostages were working for French nuclear group Areva and Sogea-Satom, a subsidiary of construction group Vinci, in the uranium mining town of Arlit in Niger.— Reuters

Tehran denies hijab payment Russian women ‘paid to cover up’ TEHRAN: Iran yesterday denied statements by a lawmaker that is it paying Russian women working as technicians at its sole nuclear power plant to adhere to the Islamic dress code, the Fars news agency reported.

“Based on the reports we got from our local office and the governor’s office in Bushehr, hijab payment for Russian women is absolutely not true,” Hassan Ghashghavi, deputy foreign minister in charge of consular affairs, was quoted as saying.

MP Mehdi Mousavinejad, who represents a constituency in southern Bushehr province, told the ISNA news agency on Tuesday that “based on contracts signed with female Russian employees at the Bushehr (nuclear) power plant, they receive a hijab payment,” but despite the payment they do not fulfill their “commitments”.

“Unfortunately, they do not properly observe what is (asked of them), which is mentioned in the contracts,” he said, while criticizing authorities for a lax oversight on Russians working at the plant.

He did not how much money was paid, or how many female technicians are working at the Bushehr nuclear plant. Ghashghavi however disputed the comments. “There is no mention of such issue in the contract between Russia and Iran’s atomic energy organization or any local contracts. There is no hijab payment to the Russian women nor to any foreigner working in Iran,” he stressed.

Ghashghavi added that the Russian women adhere to the “moral codes and norms of the religious people of Bushehr.”

Women in Iran, regardless of their nationality or religion, are required to cover their hair and much of the body.

Those who do not abide by the ruleknown as hijab-may face arrest. Russia took over as the main contractor at Bushehr in the mid-90s, but the plant is yet to be fully operational and connected to Iran’s national grid.

A defining element of Iran since the Islamic revolution in 1979, the hijab has translated into women wearing long, loose clothing to conceal their figures. — AFP

9

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2012

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

NY firemen’s killer mapped out plan for slayings WEBSTER: The ex-con turned sniper who killed two firefighters wanted to make sure his goodbye note was legible, typing out his desire to “do what I like doing best, killing people” before setting the house where he lived with his sister ablaze, police said. Police Chief Gerald Pickering said Tuesday that the 62-yearold loner, William Spengler, brought plenty of ammunition with him for three weapons including a military-style assault rifle as he set out on a quest to burn down his neighborhood just before sunrise on Christmas Eve. And when firefighters arrived to stop him, he unleashed a torrent of bullets, shattering the windshield of the fire truck that volunteer firefighter and police Lt. Michael Chiapperini, 43, drove to the scene. Fellow firefighter Tomasz Kaczowka, 19, who worked as a 911 dispatcher, was killed as well. Two other firefighters were struck by bullets, one in the pelvis and the other in the chest and knee. They remained hospitalized in stable condition and were expected to survive.

On Tuesday, investigators found a body in the Spengler home, presumably

that of the sister a neighbor said Spengler hated: 67-year-old Cheryl Spengler. Spengler’s penchant for death had surfaced before. He served 17 years

William H Spengler Jr

in prison for manslaughter in the 1980 hammer slaying of his grandmother. But his intent was unmistakable when he left his flaming home carrying a pumpaction shotgun, a .38-caliber revolver and a .223-caliber semiautomatic Bushmaster rifle with flash suppression, the same make and caliber weapon used in the elementary school massacre in Newtown, Conn, that killed 26. “He was equipped to go to war, kill innocent people,” the chief said of a felon who wasn’t allowed to possess weapons because of his criminal past. It was not clear how he got them.

The assault rifle was believed to be the weapon that struck down the firefighters. He then killed himself as seven houses burned on a sliver of land along Lake Ontario. His body was not found on a nearby beach until hours afterwards.

The motive was left unclear as well, Pickering said, even as authorities began analyzing a two- to three-page typewritten rambling note Spengler left behind.

He declined to reveal the note’s full content or say where it was found. He read only one chilling line: “I still have to get ready to see how much of the neighbor-

hood I can burn down, and do what I like doing best, killing people.” Pickering added: “There was some rambling in there and some intelligence we need to follow up on.”

It remained unknown what set Spengler off but a next-door neighbor, Roger Vercruysse, noted that he loved his mother, Arline, who died in October after living in the house in a neighborhood of seasonal and year-round homes across the road from a lakeshore popular with recreational boaters. Pickering said it was unclear whether the person believed to be Spengler’s sister died before or during the fire. “It was a raging inferno in there,” Pickering said. As Pickering described it and as emergency radio communications on the scene showed, the heavily armed Spengler took a position behind a small hill by the house as four firefighters arrived after 5:30 am to extinguish the fire: two on a fire truck; two in their own vehicles.

Several firefighters went beneath the truck to shield themselves as an off-duty police officer who came to the scene pulled his vehicle alongside the truck to try to shield them, authorities said. The

first police officer who arrived chased and exchanged shots with Spengler, recounting it later over his police radio. “I could see the muzzle blasts comin’ at me. ... I fired four shots at him. I thought he went down,” the officer said. At another point, he said: “I don’t know if I hit him or not. He’s by a tree. ... He was movin’ eastbound on the berm when I was firing shots.” Pickering portrayed the officer as a hero who saved many lives.

The audio posted on the website RadioReference.com also has someone reporting “firefighters are down” and saying “got to be rifle or shotgun - highpowered ... semi or fully auto.” Spengler had been charged with murder in his grandmother’s death but pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of manslaughter, apparently to spare his family a trial.

After he was freed from prison, Spengler had lived a quiet life on Lake Road on a narrow peninsula where Irondequoit Bay meets Lake Ontario. That ended when he left his burning home Monday morning, armed with his weapons, a lot of ammunition and a measure of hate. “I’m not sure we’ll ever know what was going through his mind,” Pickering said.—AP

Storm brings tornadoes, white Xmas to US South Snowstorm heads US east; 3 dead MOBILE: An enormous storm system that dumped snow and sleet on the nation’s midsection and unleashed damaging tornadoes around the Deep South has begun punching its way toward the Northeast, slowing holiday travel. Post-Christmas travelers braced for a second day of flight delays and cancellations, a day after rare winter twisters damaged numerous homes in Louisiana and Alabama. The vast storm system stretching across numerous states has been blamed for three deaths and several injuries though no one was killed out-

second.” They were all fine, though the school was damaged, as were a church and several homes, but officials say no one was seriously injured. Camera footage captured the approach of the large, frightening funnel cloud. Mobile was the biggest city hit by numerous by the rare winter twisters. Along with brutal, straight-line winds, the storms knocked down countless trees, blew the roofs off homes and left many Christmas celebrations in the dark. Torrential rains drenched the region and several places saw flash flooding.

NEW YORK: Edward ‘’Roaddawg’ Manley, a volunteer and honorary firefighter with the Point Breeze Volunteer Fire Department, places a star on top of a Christmas Tree in the Breezy Point neighborhood of the Borough of Queens yesterday. —AFP right in the tornadoes. The storms also left more than 100,000 without power for a time, darkening Christmas celebrations.

Drenching rains and blustery winds moved early Wednesday across Georgia, a slew of tornado watches still in effect. The severe weather system was set to lash the Carolinas later in the day before taking aim next at the heavily populated Northeast corridor. Farther north on a line from Little Rock, Ark, to Cleveland, blizzard conditions were predicted before the snow up to a foot in some places - made its way into the Northeast. Rick Cauley’s family was hosting relatives for Christmas when the tornado sirens went off in Mobile. Not taking any chances, he and his wife, Ashley, hustled everyone down the block to take shelter at the athletic field house at Mobile’s Murphy High School in Mobile.

It turns out, that wasn’t the place to head.

“As luck would have it, that’s where the tornado hit,” Cauley said. “The pressure dropped and the ears started popping and it got crazy for a

More than 500 flights nationwide were canceled by the Tuesday evening, according to the flight tracker FlightAware.com. More than half were canceled into and out of Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport that got a few inches of snow. Holiday travelers in the nation’s much colder midsection battled treacherous driving conditions from freezing rain and blizzard conditions from the same fast-moving storms. In Arkansas, highway department officials said the state was fortunate the snowstorm hit on Christmas Day when many travelers were already at their destinations.

Texas, meanwhile, dealt with high winds and slickened highways. On Tuesday, winds toppled a tree onto a pickup truck in the Houston area, killing the driver, and a 53-yearold north Louisiana man was killed when a tree fell on his house. Icy roads already were blamed for a 21-vehicle pileup in Oklahoma, and the Highway Patrol there says a 28-yearold woman was killed in a crash on a snowy

US Highway near Fairview. Trees fell on homes and across roadways in several communities in southern Mississippi and Louisiana.

Mississippi Gov Phil Bryant declared a state of emergency in the state, saying eight counties reported damages and some injuries.

It included McNeill, where a likely tornado damaged a dozen homes and sent eight people to the hospital, none with life-threatening injuries, said Pearl River County emergency management agency director Danny Manley.

The snowstorm that caused numerous accidents pushed out of Oklahoma late Tuesday, carrying with it blizzard warnings for parts of northeast Arkansas, where 10 inches of snow was forecast. Freezing rain clung to trees and utility lines in Arkansas and winds gusts up to 30 mph whipped them around, causing about 71,000 customers to lose electricity for a time.

Christmas lights also were knocked out with more than 100,000 customers without power for at least a time in Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama. Blizzard conditions were possible for parts of Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky up to Cleveland with predictions of several inches to a foot of snow. By the end of the week, that snow was expected to move into the Northeast with again up to a foot predicted Jason Gerth said the Mobile tornado passed by in a few moments and from his porch, he saw about a half-dozen green flashes in the distance as transformers blew. His home was spared. “It missed us by 100 feet and we have no damage,” Gerth said.

In Louisiana, quarter-sized hail was reported early Tuesday in the western part of the state and a WDSU viewer sent a photo to the TV station of what appeared to be a waterspout around the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway in New Orleans. There were no reports of crashes or damage. Some mountainous areas of Arkansas’ Ozark Mountains could get up to 10 inches of snow, which would make travel “very hazardous or impossible” in the northern tier of the state from near whiteout conditions, the weather service said.

The holiday may conjure visions of snow and ice, but twisters this time of year are not unheard of. Ten storm systems in the last 50 years have spawned at least one Christmastime tornado with winds of 113 mph or more in the South, said Chris Vaccaro, a National Weather Service spokesman in Washington, via email.

The most lethal were the storms of Dec 24-26, 1982, when 29 tornadoes in Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee and Mississippi killed three people and injured 32. In Mobile, a large section of the roof on the Trinity Episcopal Church is missing and the front wall of the parish wall is gone, said Scott Rye, a senior warden at the church in the Midtown section of the city. On Christmas Eve, the church with about 500 members was crowded for services. “Thank God this didn’t happen last night,” Rye said.—AP

US Republicans willing to bend after election DES MOINES: For years, Republicans have adhered fiercely to their bedrock conservative principles, resisting Democratic calls for tax hikes, comprehensive immigration reform and gun control. Now, seven weeks after an electoral drubbing, some party leaders and rank-and-file alike are signaling a willingness to bend on all three issues.

What long has been a nonstarter for Republicans - raising tax rates on wealthy Americans and on capital gains - is now backed by Republican House Speaker John Boehner as he negotiates with President Barack Obama to avert a potential fiscal crisis. Party luminaries, including Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, have started calling for a wholesale shift in the Republicans’ approach to immigration after Hispanic voters shunned the party’s candidates. And some Republicans

who previously championed gun rights now are opening the door to restrictions following a schoolhouse shooting spree earlier this month that knew no partisan boundaries. “Put guns on the table.

Also, put video games on the table.

Put mental health on the table,” Rep Jack Kingston of Georgia said last week. Other prominent Republicans echoed him in calling for a sweeping review of how to prevent tragedies like the Newtown, Connecticut, massacre.

Among those who were open to a re-evaluation of the nation’s gun policies were Sens Marco Rubio of Florida and Chuck Grassley of Iowa.

“You’ve got to take all these things into consideration,” Grassley said.

And yet, the head of the influential gun-rights lobbying-group, the National Rifle Association, silent for a week after the Newtown shoot-

ings, has proposed staffing schools with armed police, making clear the Republican-leaning group will continue pushing for fewer gun restrictions, not more.

Meanwhile, Boehner’s attempt to get his own members on board with a deficit-reduction plan that would raise taxes on incomes of more than $1 million crashed and burned last week, exposing the reluctance of many in the House Republican caucus to entertain more moderate fiscal positions.

With Republican leaders being pulled at once to the left and to the right, it’s too soon to know whether the party that emerges from this identity crisis will be more or less conservative than the one that marched so confidently into the 2012 election. After all, less than two months have passed since the crushing defeat of

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, who moved far to the right during the primary season and, some in the party say, lost the general election as a result.

But what’s increasingly clear is that the party is now engaged in a public, uncomfortable fight over whether its tenets, still firmly held within the party’s most devout ranks, conflict with the views of Americans as a whole. Must Republicans recognize that to remain relevant in a country whose views are changing, they too must change. “We lost the election because we were out of touch with the American people,” said John Weaver, a senior adviser to past presidential candidates John McCain, the Republican nominee in 2008, and Jon Huntsman, who ran for the nomination this year. —AP

CONNECTICUT: People stare in silence at a memorial for those killed in the school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementar y School in Newtown, Connecticut. —AFP

Young children are often victims of gunfire in US WASHINGTON: Before 20 first-graders were massacred at school by a gunman in Newtown, Conn, first-grader Luke Schuster, 6, was shot to death in New Town, ND. Six-year-olds John Devine Jr and Jayden Thompson were similarly killed in Kentucky and Texas. Veronica Moser-Sullivan, 6, died in a mass shooting at a movie theater in Aurora, Colo, while 6-year-old Kammia Perry was slain by her father outside her Cleveland home, according to an Associated Press review of 2012 media reports.

Yet there was no gunman on the loose when Julio Segura-McIntosh died in Tacoma, Wash. The 3-year-old accidentally shot himself in the head while playing with a gun he found inside a car. As he mourned with the families of Newtown, President Barack Obama said the nation cannot accept such violent deaths of children as routine.

But hundreds of young child deaths by gunfire whether intentional or accidental - suggest it might already have.

Between 2006 and 2010, 561 children age 12 and under were killed by firearms, according to the FBI’s most recent Uniform Crime Reports. The numbers each year are consistent: 120 in 2006; 115 in 2007; 116 in 2008, 114 in 2009 and 96 in 2010. The FBI’s count does not include gun-related child deaths that authorities have ruled accidental. “This happens on way too regular a basis and it affects families and communities - not at once, so we don’t see it and we don’t understand it as part of our national experience,” said Daniel Webster, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research.

The true number of small children who died by gunfire in 2012 won’t be known for a couple of years, when official reports are collected and dumped into a database and analyzed. The

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention expects to release its 2011 count in the spring. In response to what happened in Newtown, the National Rifle Association, the nation’s largest gun lobby, suggested shielding children from gun violence by putting an armed police officer in every school by the time classes resume in January.

“Politicians pass laws for gun-free school zones ... They post signs advertising them and in doing so they tell every insane killer in America that schools are the safest place to inflict maximum mayhem with minimum risk,” said NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre. Webster said children are more likely to die by gunfire at home or in the street. They tend to be safer when they are in school, he said. None of the 61 deaths reviewed

by The Associated Press happened at school.

Children die by many other methods as well: violent stabbings or throat slashings, drowning, beating and strangulation.

But the gruesome recounts of gun deaths, sometimes just a few paragraphs in a newspaper or on a website, a few minutes on television or radio, bear witness that firearms too, are cutting short many youngsters’ lives. One week before the Newtown slayings, Alyssa Celaya, 8, bled to death after being shot by her father with a .38-caliber gun at the Tule River Indian Reservation in California. Her grandmother and two brothers also were killed, a younger sister and brother were shot and wounded. The father shot and killed himself amid a hail of gunfire from officers.

Delric Miller’s life ended at 9 months and Angel Mauro Cortez Nava’s at 14 months. Delric was in the living room of a home on Detroit’s west side Feb 20 when someone sprayed it with gunfire from an AK-47. Other children in the home at the time were not injured. —AP

Thousands sign petition to deport Piers Morgan LOS ANGELES: More than 48,000 people have signed a petition that they posted on the White House website demanding that British CNN talk show host Piers Morgan be deported over comments he made on air about gun control. Morgan last week lambasted pro-gun guests on his show, after the Dec 14 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, where a gunman shot dead 26 people, including 20 children.

“We demand that Mr Morgan be deported immediately for his effort to undermine the Bill of Rights and for exploiting his position as a national network television host to stage attacks against the rights of American citizens,” the petition said. The petition, started on Dec 21 by a man identified as Kurt N from Austin, Texas, accuses Morgan of subverting the second amendment of the US Constitution, which

Piers Morgan

guarantees the right to bear arms.

US citizens can file a petition on the White House website, whitehouse.gov, if they collect at least 25,000 signatures within 30 days. The White House is then obliged to issue a response.

Morgan, 47, a former newspaper editor in London, shot back at his critics on Twitter. He repeated his past calls for the United States to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines and conduct background checks on all gun purchases. Five days after the Connecticut massacre, Morgan called a guest, Larry Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners for America, an “idiot,” “dangerous” and an “unbelievably stupid man” when Pratt argued that more guns were needed to combat crime in the United States.

“I don’t care about a petition to deport me. I do care about poor NY firefighters murdered/injured with an assault weapon today. #GunControlNow,” Morgan tweeted on Monday, referring to a shooting in New York that killed three people, including the gunman. Christa Robinson, a CNN spokeswoman, said the network had no immediate comment on the petition.

Publicist Howard Bragman, vice chairman of Reputation.com, said the controversy will get Morgan attention that may translate into higher ratings and wouldn’t harm his reputation. “A lot of it comes from his being British, he’s seen the differences between the US and UK, he’s passionate and authentic in taking this issue on, and it’s probably only going to help him attract more people to his show,” Bragman said. —Reuters

10

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2012

international

Central African rebels seize another town BANGUI: Rebels waging an offensive in the Central African Republic seized another major town Tuesday, a military source said, bringing them a step closer to the nation’s capital. The rebel coalition known as Seleka, an alliance of three groups, reached Kaga-Bandoro, the fourth regional capital they have captured during their offensive that began on December 10. While one of the rebel leaders has said they do not want to march on the capital, the fighters have nevertheless made a rapid advance south and west towards the capital, meeting little resistance from government troops. However a Central African military source said late Tuesday that a contingent of Chadian troops invited into the countr y by Central Africa’s President Francois Bozize were moving north from Sibut towards KagaBandoro.

Sibut lies roughly equidistant between the capital Bangui, further south, and Kaga-Bandoro. “Chadian soldiers have their base in Sibut, but several hours ago, a part of the contingent took the road for Kaga Bandoro, but we don’t know for what reason,” said the source. It is not clear how many soldiers Chad has sent into the Central African

Republic, its southern neighbor. Chad’s forces previously helped Bozize during rebellions in the north in 2010.

Last week Chad offered to mediate between the two sides and has said its

troops are a peacekeeping force. Thus far, they have not opposed the rebels’ swift advance. Earlier Tuesday, a military source in Bangui said Bozize had met with military officers to discuss the situ-

BANGUI: Central African Republic (CAR) soldiers parade in Bangui. Rebels in the Central African Republic have seized the south-central city of Bambari after battling government forces. —AFP

ation. Rebels arrived in the market town Kaga-Bandoro “in vehicles and on motorcycles, and started using heavy weapons to fire at strategic points: a military base, police stations, the customs office,” said a military source in Sibut, about 130 kilometers south. “Members of the Central African armed forces resisted briefly then began to retreat towards Sibut,” he added. Sibut itself lies around 100 kilometers from Bangui.

“A large part of the population took cover in their homes when they heard the explosions, and many residents fled in the direction of neighboring villages,” the Sibut military source added. KagoBandoro is the fourth regional capital to be captured by rebels after Ndele in the north; Bria in the central region of HauteKotto; and Bambari, further to the southwest. They now control large swathes of the north and the east of the country and are moving ever closer to Bangui, which sits on the border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo and also lies near the Republic of the Congo.

The Central African army is illequipped, under-paid and poorly organized and has offered scant resistance to the rebels. Government troops surrendered their stronghold in Bambari, in

the south-central Ouaka region, in just a few hours on Sunday. The rebels want the government to honor peace accords signed between 2007 and 2011 that offered financial support and other help for rebel fighters who laid down their arms. Despite pressure from the international community, the rebels have refused to halt their operations.

Tomorrow, Bozize and other central African leaders meeting in the Chadian capital N’Djamena proposed talks.

The same day, one rebel leader said they were suspending their advance to give such talks a chance. A day later however, another of the rebel alliance’s leader had announced the capture of two more towns. In Bangui, the government said Monday it would only hold talks if the rebels pulled back from the towns they had captured. The rebels said Monday they were still open to talks, provided Bozize announced a ceasefire first. Bozize himself seized power in a coup in 2003. The Central African Republic is a mineral-rich, landlocked country with less than five million residents. It ranks 179 out of 187 countries on the UN’s latest development index and has seen frequent coups and mutinies. —AFP

Kazakh rescuers find flight recorder after plane crash Crash kills 27, including border guards commander ALMATY: Rescue teams have recovered a flight recorder from a plane which crashed in Kazakhstan on Tuesday, killing all 27 people on board in the country’s worst military air disaster since independence. The twin-engine Antonov An-72 transport jet disappeared from radar screens at about 1900 local time as it was circling in a raging blizzard, trying to land at the city of Shymkent, the capital of the South

commander of the country’s border guards, Turganbek Stambekov, and his wife.

President Nursultan Nazarbayev ordered a national day of mourning on Thursday, his press service said.

“Most probably, the black box (flight recorder) will give us a clue about what caused this catastrophe,” KNB chief Nurtai Abykayev told a news conference in Shymkent, according to local

designed plane, which can take off from rough gravel runways just 800 metres long, is widely considered to be a reliable and sturdy workhorse of the air forces of several former Soviet states.

The one that crashed near Shymkent was made in 1990, and in November it underwent maintenance at the factory in Ukraine that built it, after which it had accumulated just 40 hours of flight time,

ALMATY: File photo shows an An-72 military transport jet of the Kazakhstan’s federal border service descending at Almaty airport. —AFP Kazakhstan Region. It crashed into an open-cast mine, littering the area with mangled, burning fragments.

The plane belonged to the border troops of Kazakhstan’s KNB security service. Those killed included the

media. “Special commissions that are investigating will look into various possible causes. These can include weather conditions, the human factor or the plane’s technical condition. Anything.” The Soviet-

including 30 take-offs and landings, local media said. The plane was carrying officers from Kazakhstan’s southern border protection district who had attended an annual meeting in the capital Astana.

Russia MPs approve ban on American adoptions MOSCOW: Russia’s upper house of parliament yesterday unanimously backed a bill barring Americans from adopting Russian children, leaving the controversial measure in the hands of President Vladimir Putin. The vote was the last legislative hurdle for the bill, one of the toughest pieces of anti-US legislation in Russia in years that now just needs to be signed by Putin to become law. Putin has expressed understanding for the bill but has not yet explicitly vowed to sign it.

The tough piece of anti-US legislation-retaliation for a new law sanctioning Russian officials implicated in the prison death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in 2009 - has inflamed tensions between the two former Cold War rivals. The draft legislation has already passed the three required readings in the State Duma lower house despite the protests of human rights advocates and even senior officials. The Federation Council upper chamber-comprised exclusively of Putin allies and ruling party members-passed the measure in a 143-0 vote. “I believe that any foreign adoption is detrimental to our country,” Russia’s children’s rights commissioner Pavel Astakhov said after the vote. “The more children are adopted abroad, the less we do here to help them,” news agencies quoted Putin’s adviser as saying. Although Putin has not explicitly said whether he would sign the bill into law, comments by his spokesman on Tuesday appeared to indicate that he backed the measure. “This will not lead to any infringement of international rights,” Dmitry Peskov said. “Russia is fully implementing the rights it has under international law.” The bill also includes a provision banning Russian political organizations that receive US funding.

In Washington, the White House said Tuesday that “we deeply regret recent efforts to restrict

civil society activity in Russia” and vowed to continue raising concerns over the proposed adoption ban. “Children should have every opportunity to grow up in loving families,” US President Barack Obama’s national security staff said in a statement. “Their fate should not be linked to unrelated political considerations.” The legislation came up this month after Obama signed into law the so-called Magnitsky Act-a measure paying tribute to the Russian lawyer who died in custody after exposing a $235 million police embezzlement scheme.

The US law blacklists Russian officials allegedly involved in his death. Magnitsky’s employer Hermitage Capital-once Russia’s largest Western investment fund-and family both believe he was tortured to death. But Russian prosecutors this week moved to drop charges against the only person on trial in the case. They are also due to hold hearings today into a separate set of fraud charges that originally put Magnitsky under arrest. The Russian lawmakers’ response has agitated some cabinet members including Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov who has said banning adoption as an institution “is wrong”, in a rare rebuke to the official position.

Putin’s advisory human rights council also condemned the pending legislation as potentially unconstitutional. “The entry of this bill into law in its present form... could lead to negative consequences for the Russian legal system and in other areas,” the human rights council’s conclusion states. Leading rights advocate Lyudmila Alexeyeva said she planned to appeal to the constitutional court should Putin sign the bill into law. The United States remains the number one foreign destination for orphans in Russia-a country that since Soviet times has relied on state-run homes for children and has a weak tradition of adoptions. —AFP

Oil-producer Kazakhstan, Central Asia’s largest economy, has seen accidents with smaller military aircraft and helicopters during the 21 years of its independence after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

GRIEF AND ANGER Kazakhstan is predominantly Muslim and according to Islamic tradition the first funerals of those killed in the crash should have been held yesterday. But this was not possible because medical experts still had to identify badly mutilated bodies, Abykayev said. Several distraught relatives could be seen near the cordoned-off crash site yesterday. They did not try to conceal their anger and frustration. “They should have allowed us to take away the remains and bury them,” a middle-aged woman, whose brother was among the killed officers, told Kazakhstan’s Channel 7 television.

“My brother left four children.

They must know where their father died so they can bring flowers here,” she said. “He had great plans which will never be realized. He aspired to rise to the rank of general.” Today will be the second time Kazakhstan, a vast nation of 17 million people, will observe a day of national mourning this year. In June, the country mourned 14 border guards and a herder killed by a fellow serviceman at a remote border post near China’s border. In one of the world’s worst civilian air disasters, an Ilyushin IL-76 cargo plane from Shymkent collided in midair with a Saudia Boeing 747 near New Delhi in November 1996, killing all 349 aboard both planes. —Reuters

Italians urged to ‘rise up’ and renew politics ROME: Outgoing Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti urged compatriots late Tuesday to “rise up” and commit to renewing national politics, in a further sign he would remain on the political stage. “Together we have saved Italy from catastrophe,” Monti said in comments which referred to the country’s improved financial position, the result of economic reforms and support from the European Central Bank.

“Now we must renew politics. There is no point in complaining, we must commit ourselves. ‘Rise up’ in politics,” the technocratic Italian premier wrote. Monti announced on Friday that he would step down after 13 months at the head of an unelected team of technocrats that was appointed to steer Italy out of a financial crisis that could have had dire consequences for the entire 17-nation euro-zone. The tweeted comments late on Tuesday were a further signal that Monti, a former European commissioner dubbed “The Professor,” would remain in the fray as Italy prepares to elect a new parliament. As an Italian senator for life, the former premier cannot himself run for office, but is in a position to be renamed prime minister if a party or coalition that he supports wins the vote on February 24-25. Monti said on Friday: “If one or more political forces adhere to my agenda and put forward the idea of proposing me for the post of premier, I would weigh the option.” That means allied political movements could include his name as a candidate for the post when they submit electoral lists on February 11-12.

Monti is seen as a recourse to prevent scandal-tainted former Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi from returning to power and undoing hard-won reforms. The “Monti Agenda” proposes to cut public funds for political parties and parliamentary groups, and also includes measures to make more room for women and environmental issues. By remaining indirectly in the race, Monti could bar the route for Berlusconi, who is running for the premiership for the sixth time in 18 years, but who is now isolated on the right side of the political spectrum with support from anti-tax and anti-euro factions. Analysts currently expect Pier Luigi Bersani of the centre-left Democratic Party to be named prime minister, and to then appoint Monti as a “super economy minister.” —AFP

LOGAS: Building stocked with fireworks on fire in Lagos Island yesterday. —AFP

Blast, fire rip through dense Lagos neighborhood; 30 hurt LAGOS: Fire ripped through a crowded neighborhood in Nigeria’s largest city yesterday and wounded at least 30 people after a huge explosion rocked a building believed to be storing fireworks, officials said. The blast and fire led to panic in the densely packed area of Lagos, a city of some 15 million people, with residents jumping from windows to flee and others salvaging goods from their shops in the neighborhood’s large market.

Fireworks continued to explode well after the fire began while smoke was heavy and the blaze intense, making it difficult for rescue workers and firefighters to approach the scene. Huge crowds gathered in the area, including onlookers and those seeking to help. Three tankers at the scene from the fire service later ran out of water and an emergency official said military personnel had been called in to help.

More water arrived later in the day and the blaze appeared to be gradually subsiding.

Officials said the blaze appeared to have begun at a warehouse storing fireworks, where a major explosion shook parts of the sprawling city. An emergency source said initial reports indicated fire caused the explosion at the building, but an official statement from the National Emergency Management Agency later said the precise cause was yet to be determined. The fire spread following the explosion, with at least nine buildings in the neighborhood ablaze when an AFP journalist arrived on the scene. A school across from the warehouse was badly damaged from the blast, with windows shattered and materials inside affected.

Residents rushed to help firefighters as they neared the fire, bringing containers of water and helping carry hoses, but the

volatile situation made it difficult. “We have treated up to 30 people so far,” Red Cross worker Nicolas Adesile said at the scene, adding there had not been any reports of deaths. One man treated for a cut on his leg said he jumped from his building to escape. “I had to jump from the first floor to save my life,” Wasiu Olaleye said. Officials were seeking to confirm further details on the incident, with the force of the explosion so strong that rumors even spread over whether there had been a plane crash.

“While security agencies would investigate and determine the real cause of the explosion and fire outbreaks, casualty figures are yet to be determined,” NEMA said in a statement. “But some residents who were injured while attempting to assist in putting off the fire have been taken to hospital for treatment. So far no death has been recorded.” Rescue workers had difficulty reaching the scene due to traffic and crowds. Residents reported hearing the explosion and running, with some helping fetch water for firefighters.

Yesterday was a public holiday in Nigeria, though some shops in the area were open. “We just heard ‘bwaahhh!’ and before we knew it we saw fire coming from the building,” said one man who had been on his nearby balcony. The incident occurred in Jankara, home to a large market and located in the Lagos Island area, among the oldest and most densely packed neighborhoods in the city.

Fireworks are popular in Nigeria during the Christmas and New Year holidays. Nigeria is Africa’s most populous nation with some 160 million people, and Lagos is considered the continent’s second-largest city after Cairo. —AFP

Emerging powers to pay more for United Nations UNITED NATIONS: China, Brazil, India and other emerging powers agreed to major increases in their United Nations payments as the global body hammered out a new budget deal this week to avoid its own fiscal cliff. The boom countries will pay more as economic crisis allows European nations, such as Britain, Germany and France and Japan to cut their contributions. While the sums involved are not huge by global standards-the revised UN budget for 2012-2013 is $5.4 billiondiplomats say the new shareout is a snapshot of the world’s changing economic fortunes.

And the UN system has maintained sum of its quirks with Greece, despite its economic slump, still paying more than India, which aspires to become a permanent member of the UN Security Council. UN contributions are worked out according to a country’s share of global gross national income (GNI). China will pay an extra 61 percent in UN fees, taking its share of the budget from 3.2 to 5.1 percent. It will overtake Canada and Italy to become the sixth biggest UN contributor. Brazil has agreed to an 82 percent hike in payments. It will pay 2.9 percent of the budget instead of 1.6 percent. India’s payments will increase 24 percent, taking its budget share from 0.5 to 0.66 percent. And Russia’s payments will go up by 52 percent. The United States remains the major UN financier, though its contributions are pegged at 22 percent while it accounts for 24.2

percent of world GNI. Other major contributors will all see payments decrease. Japan, in second place, will see a 13.5 percent drop to 10.8 percent of the budget.

It previously accounted for 12.5 percent of UN finances. Germany’s share of the budget will fall from 8.0 to 7.1 percent, France from 6.1 to 5.6 percent and Britain from 6.6 to 5.18 percent.

“This is a start brought on by the economic crisis in Europe, but there will have to be more changes eventually,” said one western diplomat.

Another noted the new payment breakdown reflects changes around the world, and that the contrast between Greece and India was “striking.”

Greece’s share of budget will decrease from 0.7 to 0.64 percent.

But its share of global GNI is 0.5 percent, while India, which pays about the same amount, accounts for 2.2 percent of world GNI. A complicated series of rebates allows various countries to claim reductions in payments. China and the other emerging powers still pay less than their share of the world economy. The Europeans and Japan still pay more. The UN’s regular budget does not include its peacekeeping operations, which cost more than $7.5 billion a year and are paid for with separate assessments. Under the deal agreed this week, a pay freeze has been ordered for the estimated 10,000 UN staff in New York.— AFP

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2012

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

Blogger’s death stirs political hornet’s nest in Iran Letter from other inmates says he was tortured BEIRUT: There was little about Sattar Beheshti that made him stand out in a working-class suburb south of Tehran called Robat Karim. Like many of his peers, the 35-year-old laborer was devout and lived at home with his mother. But his life changed when he started a blog called “My Life for Iran” last year.

His entries often focused on the struggles of the working class as well as the political restrictions in Iran, sometimes mixed with personal anecdotes from Beheshti’s daily life. As months passed, the tone on the blog became sharper and more political, with unveiled criticism of the establishment and even the Supreme Leader, a red line in the Islamic Republic.

In one recent post, Beheshti criticized a speech made by the leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, at a meeting of the NonAligned Movement in Tehran with the title “You presented a bunch of lies instead of a speech” superimposed over a picture of the cleric. Other posts faulted Iran’s unwavering support for Hezbollah in Lebanon or highlighted the plight of human rights activists.

Retaliation quickly followed. “Yesterday they threatened me and told me your mother will soon be wearing black,” Beheshti wrote in a post on Oct 29.

The next day security agents from Iran’s cyber police, known by the acronym FATA, arrested him. His bruised and battered body was handed to his family a week later, his death the result of torture, according to a smuggled letter from fellow prisoners. The backlash was swift and furious, especially from other bloggers, even pro-government ones, disturbed at the fate of a pious young man with no known history of

political activism. Their most pointed criticism was directed at the cyber police and their campaign to stop any attempt at a “velvet revolution” in the Islamic Republic through the Internet.

Government officials have not denied the abuse. “This individual was beaten but this beating was not in a manner that would result in his death,” AttorneyGeneral Gholam Hossein Mohseni-Ejehi told a news conference on Dec 3. Within a month of Beheshti’s death, seven policemen were arrested and the head of the cyber police was ousted, a dramatic turn of events in a divisive scandal that has shocked Iran. As international pressure mounts over Iran’s disputed nuclear program and harsh economic sanctions bite, the leadership is wary of domestic turmoil, especially with a potentially turbulent presidential election due in June.

IMPACT OF INTERNET Beheshti’s death exposed Iran’s political fissures as a handful of lawmakers badgered President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government and the judiciary into ordering an inquiry. But the most effective tool in publicizing Beheshti’s unusual death was the one he had chosen - the Internet. “I really do believe this is one of the great examples of the impact of the Internet in Iran,” said Mahmood Enayat, director of the Iran Media program at the University of Pennsylvania and the founder of Small Media, a non-profit group that focuses on improving information flows in closed societies. The Internet had become a watchdog, forcing the government to react to anything gathering enough attention, he argued. “They can’t

just ignore it anymore.”

Although many of the details of Beheshti’s detention and death are murky, some are no longer in dispute.

On the night of Oct 30, he was arrested at his home in Robat Karim and transferred to section 350 of Tehran’s notorious Evin prison. Fellow prisoners there said he was hung from the ceiling of a cell and beaten. His arms and legs were then tied to a chair and he was beaten again. At times, his interrogators threw him on the ground and kicked him in the head and neck. A group of political prisoners talked to Beheshti while he was detained, and slipped out a letter based on their observations and his account to opposition activists. “When they brought Sattar to section 350, the marks of torture were visible on all parts of his body,” said the letter signed by 41 prisoners and published on opposition websites.

Despite his injuries, Beheshti filed a complaint about his treatment to prison officials. Shortly before he was transferred to another detention facility, Beheshti told his fellow prisoners that his captors intended to kill him. Four days later, authorities informed his family that he was dead. After Beheshti’s death, security forces warned his family not to talk to media outlets, and security agents threatened to arrest Beheshti’s sister if the family did not sign a consent form regarding the circumstances of his death, his mother said in an interview with the Persian service of German radio Deutsche Welle.

BLOOD-STAINED SHROUD The family was also offered diye, or blood money, but Beheshti’s mother, Gohar Eshqi, refused. When the family

was allowed to see Beheshti’s body, they noticed that blood from his knee and head had stained the burial shroud.

“They killed him and handed me back his body,” Eshqi said in an interview with the pro-opposition Saham News website. On Dec 13, a small crowd of friends, neighbours and family gathered to commemorate the fortieth day after Beheshti’s death at his gravesite. The previous day security agents tore up notices about the ceremony in the neighborhood, Beheshti’s sister Sahar told Kalame, another opposition website.

Videos of the event posted online show Eshqi, Beheshti’s mother, holding his picture and shouting “I’m proud of my son” and “My son’s killers must be executed.” Police later attacked the crowd and beat Eshqi, wounding her leg, Sahar said. Kalame published pictures of Eshqi’s injuries. Few Iranians could have predicted that Beheshti’s death would make any waves. But the Internet buzz kept building. Websites linked with the opposition Green Movement took up the cause and published details of his detention and physical abuse. That led even conservative bloggers to speak out, concerned that the case would damage the image of the Islamic Republic.

The cyber police, a unit within the Iranian police force, was created in January 2011 with a relatively broad mandate. While the Revolutionary Guards and Intelligence Ministry do their own web surveillance, the cyber police are mainly responsible for tracking down dissidents online. They are also responsible for blocking websites with controversial content and for pursuing cases of web sabotage. Earlier this year, new

cyber police guidelines directed all Internet cafes to install cameras to monitor customers. But in Beheshti’s case, little sophisticated surveillance was necessary - he was blogging openly under his own name.

OUTRAGE AT HOME AND ABROAD The affair has drawn international attention, with the United Nations, the United States and several other countries calling for an impartial investigation into Beheshti’s death. In Iran, Ahmadinejad’s political foes smelled an opening. “Foreign governments have raised an uproar about this issue. Why don’t the foreign ministry and the judiciary explain the issue?” Ahmad Tavakoli, a parliamentarian from Tehran and one of Ahmadinejad’s foremost opponents, said on Nov 11. “A death has happened and there must be an explanation.” The outcry about Beheshti in Iran’s majles, or parliament, may be linked partly to next year’s presidential election.

A disputed 2009 election, in which Ahmadinejad was declared the winner, led to widespread violence and a loss of faith in the political system among some voters. Shining a spotlight on Beheshti’s death is an opportunity to restore confidence in the system and reassure Iranians that the government operates in a transparent and just fashion. Hadi Ghaemi, director of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, said the authorities were sensitive about their domestic image.

“They want to say: ‘Yes, we have a working system,’ to say: ‘Look, one bad apple committed a crime and we are going to make sure whoever is responsible is going to pay.’”—Reuters

Suicide attack on US base kills 3 Afghans France to take in Afghans facing security threats

ALLAHABAD: Indian students protesting against the brutal gang-rape of a woman on a bus last week in New Delhi, hold a banner and placards during a protest in Allahabad yesterday. The banner reads, “We need a fearless society and equal rights to live”.— AP

India announces gang-rape inquiry NEW DELHI: India’s government ordered a special inquiry yesterday into the gangrape of a student which sparked mass protests, as police announced the arrest of 10 men over another multiple sex assault.

While a wave of angry protests over the December 16 assault on the student in New Delhi subsided, news of a Christmas Eve gang-rape in rural Tamil Nadu again shone the spotlight on the frightening levels of violence against women.

The victim of the attack in New Delhi is still fighting for her life while an officer who was admitted to hospital while policing the protests died Tuesday. Finance Minister P Chidambaram, who is also the government’s top spokesman, said a retired judge, Usha Mehra, had agreed to head a commission of inquiry. The inquiry would “identify the lapses if any on the part of the police, or another authority or person that contributed to the occurrence, and fix responsibility for the lapses or negligence”, he said after a cabinet meeting.

Chidambaram also said a separate panel would examine existing legislation and “suggest changes in the laws in order to make punishment for such horrific crimes stiffer”. The panel will submit its report in 30 days, he added. “Whatever we do now is intended to demonstrate the government’s serious intent in the matter that we will

apprehend and punish the perpetrators, we will try and find out what went wrong... and fix responsibility and amend the laws.”

The Delhi gang-rape victim remains in a critical condition in hospital after suffering horrific injuries during her assault on a bus, which began when she and a male companion were picked up after a night out at the cinema.

Police and prosecutors say six men, who were drunk and were joy-riding in an offduty bus with tinted windows, took turns in raping the student before throwing her off the vehicle. The victim suffered enormous intestinal injuries after being assaulted with an iron rod during the 40-minute attack. All six alleged rapists have now been arrested and remanded in custody. Official figures show that 228,650 of the total 256,329 violent crimes recorded last year were against women, with the number of rapes in the capital rising 17 percent to 661 this year.

Thousands of people have taken to the streets since December 16 to demonstrate both against the levels of violence and also the notoriously slow criminal justice system. Speaking alongside Chidambaram, Information Minister Manish Tiwari appealed for calm and restraint. “It is important to underscore sensitivity and restraint from all sides is called for,” he said.— AFP

KHOST: A suicide car bombing at a US military base near a flashpoint city in eastern Afghanistan killed at least three Afghans and wounded seven others yesterday, officials said. The blast, powerful enough to rattle windows four kilometers away, took place at the entrance to Forward Operating Base Chapman in Khost. It came two days after an Afghan policewoman shot dead a US NATO adviser inside Kabul police headquarters, the latest “insider” attack by a member of Afghanistan’s security forces on their foreign allies.

Khost province shares a porous border with Pakistan’s tribal belt, which lies outside government control and where US officials say the Taleban and Al-Qaeda have carved out rear bases for operations in Afghanistan. Afghan interior ministr y spokesman Sediq Sediqqi said yesterday’s attack was a suicide car bombing. Camp Chapman lies on the edge of Khost city, which has been hit by at least three major suicide attacks this year. “Three Afghan nationals are killed and seven Afghan nationals are wounded. We have no report of coalition casualties right now,” said Major Martin O’Donnell, a spokesman for NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).

The Taleban claimed responsibility for the attack. They have waged a bloody insurgency against foreign and Afghan forces since being ousted from power in a 2001 invasion led by the United States. “The attack was carried out by a mujahid named Omar from Khost who knew the area ver y well,” Taleban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahed told AFP by email. He said the attacker “detonated a car bomb while American invading forces were searching visitors going to the base”. Abdul Qayoum Baqizai, the Khost provincial police chief, said in

KHOST: A worker covers the lifeless bodies of victims from a suicide attack at a hospital in Khost yesterday.—AP a live TV interview that the blast happened at the eastern gates of the base. “One police officer who tried to search the vehicle and two civilians nearby were killed,” he said.

Khost province borders Pakistan, which is widely believed to be a key source of fighters, funds and supplies for the Taleban. The Haqqani network, a militant group close to Al-Qaeda and blamed for some of the most daring insurgent attacks in Afghanistan, is particularly active in the province. Khost city has been the scene of several bloody attacks this year. In May, a suicide bomber killed 13 at a lunch gathering of police and civilians; in June a bomber on a motorbike rammed an Afghan-NATO patrol, killing 21; and in October another suicide

attack on a patrol killed 20.

In August 2010 24 Taleban militants, some wearing US uniforms, were killed when they tried to storm Camp Chapman and another nearby US base, Camp Salerno, which was also the target of a suicide truck bombing in June this year. NATO is handing over security duties to Afghan forces as it prepares to withdraw the bulk of its 100,000 troops by 2014, but there are fears the country will descend into civil war when foreign soldiers leave. Efforts to train local forces have been hit this year by dozens of insider attacks by Afghan soldiers and police on their NATO colleagues, known as “green-on-blue” in military jargon. The scale of the insider assaults is unprecedented in

modern warfare, and has seriously undermined trust between NATO forces and their Afghan allies.

AFGHANS FACING RISK Paris will take in a “few dozen” Afghans who have worked alongside French troops in the war-ravaged country for 11 years and whose security is at risk at home, the defense ministry said yesterday. The ministry did not give exact numbers but said the bulk comprised people who had worked as translators on the ground. On December 15, France flew its last combat troops out of Afghanistan, two years before allied nations in the 100,000-strong NATO mission led by the United States are due to recall their fighting forces.—Agencies

Bomber brings down Afghan juice empire

HERAT: Afghan women are transported in the back of a three wheeled motorbike after receiving a sack of flour each, donated by the women’s affairs department, in the Gozara district, Herat province yesterday. —AP

KABUL: When a Taleban suicide bomber killed two people on the edge of the Afghan capital this month, there was another casualty - a global fruit juice business optimistically called “Spring Wish” which provided work for thousands of farmers across the country. Mustafa Sadiq’s empire had been expanding healthily, bringing in badly needed foreign capital, before the attack inflicted the kind of financial loss cash-strapped Afghanistan can ill afford.

The pomegranate juice business was nearly wiped out in the split second it took the militant to detonate explosives in a truck parked near the factory on Dec 17. Pieces of shredded metal were scattered everywhere. Chairs were hurled across the office where Sadiq had spent so much time figuring out how to beat the odds against decades of war, instability and hopelessness.

Sadiq was in Dubai drumming up new export deals when an assistant called with the bad news. The call that Sadiq said he did not get is also troubling him. “So far no officials, for the sake of sympathy, have called us,” Sadiq, 40 said, standing beside a year’s supply of juice in con-

tainers that were ruined in the attack - nearly $10 million in losses overall. “In this situation they should have called me and asked what kind of help they could provide. The agriculture, finance, commerce ministries. Nobody so far has visited or called.”

The impact of the war, and expectations for the future, are often seen only through the eyes of Western or Afghan soldiers, or officials who point to the progress that has been made. Sadiq offers another perspective. Some workers told him the bomber triggered the loudest blast they had heard in 30 years. A Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 was followed by a decade of resistance by mujahideen fighters who drove them out. Then warlords carved out fiefdoms and destroyed half of the capital in the civil war that followed.

The Taleban took over, were toppled in 2001 and are now raising fears they may return when US-led NATO troops hand over security to Afghan forces in 2014. But Sadiq does not see the Taleban as the biggest threat to Afghanistan’s future. Instead, he says, officials have turned poli-

tics into a commercial enterprise driven by corruption. “Government employees think it’s time to fill their pockets and grab whatever they can.

That will pave the way for civil war,” said Sadiq, as workers feverishly loaded boxes of the little fruit juice left onto a truck, and others worked to rebuild a brick wall. “You have to struggle, not run away. It is kind of like running away now.

They have walls around themselves sitting there and they do not have contact with ordinary Afghans.” His disillusionment is shared by the Afghanistan Chamber of Commerce and Industries. “There is no guarantee for investment in Afghanistan. People are afraid of the government, there is no rule of law. Government officials can do anything they want,” the chamber’s first vice-chairman, Jan Alokzai said. “President (Hamid) Karzai’s words are only on paper and don’t have any value.” Afghanistan’s US-backed government says it is committed to building up the economy, attracting foreign investment and helping Afghans secure a brighter future. Karzai says it is contracts with foreigners that spread graft.—Reuters

12

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2012

international

Abe the hawk lands back in Japan’s premiership TOKYO: Shinzo Abe, who returned to Japan’s premiership yesterday, is a rhetorical hawk with strident views about Japan’s place in the world but a likely pragmatist in office-at least for now. The conservative ideologue was the

nation’s youngest-ever prime minister when he stepped into the role in 2006 at the age of 52. He left office abruptly, citing bowel problems, after an election loss the following year.

Now 58, the Liberal Democratic Party

TOKYO: Japan’s new Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (front, 2nd left) and his cabinet members step down for a photo session after their first cabinet meeting at the prime minister’s official residence yesterday. —AFP

leader heads to the prime minister’s residence with promises of tougher diplomacy in the face of an increasingly assertive China and an always unpredictable North Korea. Abe has also voiced willingness to amend laws to force monetary easing moves by the Bank of Japan.

These would see it print more money, buy more bonds and meet an inflation target to stimulate the feeble economy. But many analysts believe Abe will not take political risks or implement controversial policies before an upper house election next summer which could further solidify his power base.

His landslide election victory this month came partly by default as voters punished the disappointing rule of the Democratic Party of Japan. Electors also remember his lacklustre first tenure. When he stepped down in 2007 he became the first in a series of premiers to last around a year. His return makes him the country’s seventh leader in less than seven years.

Abe first came to power as the hand-picked successor to the popular Junichiro Koizumi, whom he had served as an eager and earnest deputy. His tough talk on North Korea, which has admitted it abducted Japanese civilians in the 1970s and 1980s to train its spies, also appealed to voters.

But the third-generation politician, groomed from birth for the job by his elite conservative family, stepped down on the grounds of illness following an election defeat and after a series of scandals involving his ministers. His grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi, was a World War II cabinet member and briefly jailed as a war criminal. Kishi later became a post-war prime minister, fighting leftists to build a new alliance with Washington. His father was Shintaro Abe, a foreign minister who never achieved his ambition of becoming prime minister. Shinzo Abe took his father’s parliamentary seat in 1993 following his death.

Since his return to the LDP’s helm Abe has aggressively pushed for his nation to take a strong stance on the world stage, and said there is no room for compromise on islands disputed with China. One of his most passionate causes has been the revision of the pacifist constitution imposed on a defeated nation by the United States in 1947. He has also promised to instill patriotism among schoolchildren.

And during his first tenure, he sparked controversy by saying he wanted to review the country’s previous admissions over wartime sex slavery.

At the time he argued there was no evi-

dence Japan’s army directly coerced thousands of “comfort women” into brothels across Asia, prompting a call from US lawmakers for a fresh apology from Tokyo. Abe quickly backpedalled on the issue. Despite his rightwing rhetoric, Abe proved more pragmatic than many had expected in his first term. He worked to improve ties with China, Tokyo’s biggest trading partner, and with former colony South Korea. Politics professor Mikitaka Masuyama has said the electorate would also keep his more extreme inclinations in check.

“It’s not that voters gave credibility to Mr Abe’s hawkish agenda. He knows that he has to moderate his confrontational posture on China if he wants to achieve results in economic recovery and keep public support,” he said. Abe now appears to be practicing strategic ambiguity-particularly on whether he will visit the Yasukuni war shrine seen in Asia as a symbol of Japan’s wartime aggression. Abe has said he regrets not visiting the shrine during his first premiership, but did not say whether he would go this time around. His hawkish image may be softened by his wife Akie Abe, the daughter of a prominent businessman who is known for her love of Korean culture. They have no children.—AFP

Myanmar crash survivors recount brush with death Govt probes deadly plane crash-landing

HEHO: Survivors of a crash-landing in Myanmar on Christmas Day recounted yesterday fleeing the burning plane as smoke filled the cabin after the ageing airliner came down in a field short of the runway. There was no warning from the pilots or cabin crew that anything was wrong as the Fokker 100 jet descended in thick fog towards Heho airport in eastern Shan state, according to passengers on board. “When I looked out, I saw all of a sudden there was no runway. Then there was

we didn’t know that yet... I was thinking the fuel would explode there at any minute. So that was the scary part of the thing,” added Bartsch, who escaped without serious injury.

Seventy of the 71 people on board miraculously survived the accident, while one Burmese tour guide on board was killed along with a motorcyclist on the ground. Air Bagan described the incident as an “emergency landing” and officials said it was too soon to pinpoint the cause.

HEHO: Officers from the Department of Civil Aviation inspect the remains of a plane that crash landed near Heho airport in the southern Shan state yesterday. —AFP an impact,” said David Antoni, 27, from Germany.

“It came to a stop and within two minutes we all just got on our knees because there was a lot of smoke coming through the airplane...

This was a very scary moment,” he said while recovering at a nearby hotel. “Some people jumped through the fire (to get) out because they couldn’t go through the front due to too much smoke,” he said. “This is a once-in-a-million chance I guess to crash-land, lucky to survive.” Anna Bartsch, a 31-year-old Australian on board who had planned to visit nearby Inle Lake and its vineyards with her partner for Christmas, described the landing as “like a rough roller-coaster”.

“It got very hot and we knew to get out of the plane very quickly. We knew that the back was burning,” she said in Yangon after returning on a special flight organized by Air Bagan.

“It turns out that the wings had come off but

Duong Bich Hanh, 38, from Vietnam was also on board the plane along with her family.

“We were informed that the plane will be landing soon... then a few huge bumps... then I woke up... I grabbed my son. We rushed out of the airplane. We got out and on the way we looked back to see the airplane on fire”. “We were not aware that the plane was on fire. We thought that it was just a type of very bumpy landing,” Hanh said. The incident raised fresh questions about the safety standards of Myanmar’s fast-growing but stretched aviation industry as foreign visitors flock to the country as it emerges from decades of junta rule.

PROBE LAUNCHED Meanwhile, Myanmar yesterday hunted for clues about the cause of an airplane crashlanding that left two people dead, as foreign tourists told of their miraculous escape from the burning jet. The ageing Air Bagan Fokker

100 jet came down in thick fog Tuesday and caught fire in a field short of the runway at Heho airport-the gateway to the popular tourist destination of Inle Lake, according to officials. One Burmese tour guide on board was killed along with a motorcyclist on the ground. About 11 people received hospital treatment including foreigners.

Passengers on board said there was no warning that anything was wrong as the plane descended. “When I looked out, I saw all of a sudden there was no runway. Then there was an impact,” said David Antoni, 27, from Germany. “ We all just got on our knees because there was a lot of smoke coming through the airplane,” he said while recovering at a nearby hotel. “Some people jumped through the fire” to escape from the plane, he said. The carrier said the injured included two Americans who were flown to Bangkok for treatment. Two Britons, one Korean man and the two pilots were also hurt.

“We are still working to find out the cause,” Civil Aviation Department deputy director general Win Swe Tun, who is heading the investigation into the crash said at Heho airport. He said the plane appeared to have hit a power cable while approaching the runway but it was unclear if that was the reason for the accident. “Seventy of the 71 people on board survived and one died-it’s very rare,” he added. Air Bagan, which described the incident as an “emergency landing”, said the plane’s black box data recorder had been retrieved.

One eyewitness said flames were already spewing from the plane before it crash-landed. “We followed the plane as it flew on fire,” said 27-year-old villager Phoe La Pyae. “When we saw the plane, the wing was broken already,” he said. “It was so lucky. If the emergency exit had not been opened, no one would have survived.” The body of the aircraft was almost entirely burned while part of a wing was seen lying next to a nearby road. “It turns out that the wings had come off but we didn’t know that,” said 31-year-old Australian Anna Bartsch who was on board. “I was thinking the fuel would explode there at any minute.”

The airline-owned by tycoon Tay Za who is known for his close links to the former juntasaid 26 passengers were flown to Yangon on a special flight Tuesday and taken to hospital for examination while others would follow. “Air Bagan deeply regret the deaths of two persons and tender its condolences to the bereaved families,” the airline said in an English-language statement posted on its Facebook page. “Air Bagan in collaboration with the Ministry of Transport is investigating into the cause of the accident. We will take full responsibility for all passengers and will release further information as we received it.” —Agencies

S Korea stages live-fire drill near disputed border SEOUL: South Korean Marines staged a live-fire exercise yesterday near the disputed Yellow Sea border with North Korea amid high tensions over a display of front-line Christmas lights.

The exercise involving self-propelled howitzers and a multiple rocket launch system was held on two islands-Baengnyeong and Yeonpyeong, the Joint Chiefs of Staff said. Hundreds of island residents evacuated into safe zones during the two-hour drill, but there was no response from the North, it said.

A similar drill on Yeonpyeong in 2010 provoked a North Korean artillery barrage which killed four people and sparked international alarm. The exercise came after the Marines strengthened guard around a giant display featuring thousands of glittering bulbs on a tree-shaped steel tower in Gimpo west of Seoul. The lights, put up on Saturday, will remain switched on until early January. They can be seen several kilometers away in the impoverished North.

The North has condemned the display as “psychological warfare” by its capitalist neighbor, aimed at spreading Christianity in the communist state. “This is not just a mere religious service but part of anti-DPRK (North Korea) psychological warfare aimed to rattle the nerves of the DPRK and slander it,” Minju Joson, the North’s government newspaper, said yesterday. “This risks the occurrence of a shocking armed conflict in the West coast where military tension simmers,” it said, warning Seoul would be “fully accountable for any shocking conflict that may occur because of the tower”.

Before Seoul’s “Sunshine Policy” of engagement with Pyongyang was launched in 1998, the seasonal lighting displays were common. In 2004 the Koreas agreed to halt official-level cross-border propaganda and the South stopped the Christmas border illuminations. They were resumed in 2010 after the shelling of a South Korean island, but were suspended

last year in a conciliatory gesture following the death of the North’s leader Kim Jong-Il. This year’s illuminations have provoked fear among some local residents who staged a protest amid concerns about potential retaliation from the North.

US GLOBAL HAWKS South Korea is not necessarily committed to buying US Global Hawk surveillance drones, a spokesman said yesterday, after the Pentagon requested congressional permission for such a sale. Seoul’s Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) said it would decide early next year whether to buy the high-altitude unmanned aerial vehicles made by Northrop Grumman that have come with a higher than expected price tag, at $1.2 billion for four of the drones.

“We will decide whether to proceed with the purchase plan only after we receive a letter of intent and carefully study the sale’s terms,” a DAPA spokesman said. Yonhap news

agency quoted an unidentified top government official as saying Seoul could consider other choices, such as Boeing’s Phantom Eye and the California-based AeroVironment Global Observer. The US Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) said Tuesday it had notified Congress of a possible sale of four remotelypiloted Global Hawk aircraft.

“We’ve never said we would buy no other surveillance drones than Global Hawks,” the South Korean official was quoted as saying by Yonhap after the price tag suggested by DSCA appeared to be prohibitively high. “Competing drones could be considered”, the official said.

“Negotiations would have to start anywhere below 800 billion won (745 million dollars) in total, as was suggested by the US side last October,” the official added. South Korea relies heavily on its ally the United States for intelligence gathering and surveillance capabilities over nuclear-armed North Korea. —Agencies

KUANTAN: Picture shows flooded streets of the northeastern town of Kuantan. —AFP

Thousands flee Malaysia floods; Dam wall broken KUALA LUMPUR: Floods triggered by torrential monsoon rains in Malaysia forced almost 14,000 people to flee their homes and seek shelter at relief centers, the official Bernama news agency said yesterday.

Heavy rain coinciding with high tide flooded hundreds of homes in three northeastern states-Terengganu, Pahang and Kelantan-with some 13,746 people moved to evacuation centers, it said amid forecasts of more downpours. Bernama said the flood situation was deteriorating as the number of evacuees continued to rise and some major roads in Pahang were closed as rivers burst their banks.

Muhammad Helmi Abdullah, the meteorological department’s weather forecast director, warned that there could be more rain in Terengganu, Pahang and southern Johor state in the next few days.

“We expect intermittent rain to heavy showers in (some parts of) the states,” he said, adding that the northeast monsoon season would last until March and the affected states could experience at least three more “heavy rain” episodes. Part of the $108 million Paya Peda irrigation dam wall under construction in Terengganu had to be broken to release pressure, according to Bernama. The move caused flash floods in some parts of the oil-rich state. Bernama also reported that a 36-year-old woman had drowned in Terengganu after she slipped and fell into a rain-swollen river on Tuesday while fishing in a water-logged area. No other deaths from the floods have been reported so far.

In the Pahang state capital Kuantan, thousands of people and some businesses were affected by flash flooding after three days of continuous rain, forcing around 3,000 people to relief centers housed in schools and community halls, where hot meals and blankets were provided.

Hundreds of motorists were caught in the floods which caused massive traffic jams, while hundreds of cars in parking lots and underground parking areas were submerged by fast-rising water. Nagandran Bangariah, 31, from Kuantan said the floods he had seen there were the worst he had experienced in ten years. “It was a terrible sight. There was rubbish floating everywhere. Motorists struggled to get their cars to high ground,” he said.

“Today, a major clean-up is going on.

Furniture showrooms in Kuantan were dumping their damaged sofa sets and cabinets. My neighbor is busy cleaning his house after water and mud entered his home,” he said. Razali Sulong, a 52-year-old flood evacuee in Pahang state said he had sought shelter at a school along with his wife and five children. “Floods are an annual affair for us but this time the water rose very fast. “We have been staying for two days at the evacuation centre where food and blankets were provided,” he said.

Razali said the family was preparing to return home yesterday as flood water has receded but knew that from past experiences there would be at least two more rounds of flash floods before the monsoon season ends.—AFP

Chinese scholars pushing for mild political reform BEIJING: More than 70 prominent Chinese scholars and lawyers have urged new Communist Party leaders to undertake moderate political reforms including separating the party from government, though they avoid any mention of ending one-party rule. The petition drafted

by Peking University law professor Zhang Qianfan calls on the party to rule according to the constitution, protect freedom of speech, encourage private enterprise and allow for an independent judicial system. It calls for the people to be able to elect their own representatives, without interference from the Communist Party.

Zhang said there is an urgent need for change to better address the myriad and widespread problems the country faces, such as social inequity, abuse of government powers and corruption. “China runs the risk of revolution and chaos if it does not change,” Zhang said. The document echoes some of the requests made in Charter 08, a 2008 manifesto that made an unusually direct call for an end to single-party rule and other democratic reforms. The manifesto landed its lead architect, dissident writer Liu Xiaobo, in prison for inciting subversion - an 11-year term he is still serving.

The petition, released on Christmas

Day, adopts a milder tone, asking the party leadership to rule within existing laws.

“It is indeed mild,” Zhang said Wednesday of the petition. “We hope it can be accepted by the government and will kick off conversations between the government and the people and among the public.” China’s communist leaders have tolerated no political challenges to their authority since the military crushed prodemocracy protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989. Many dissidents have been harassed into inactivity, imprisoned or exiled.

The petition, made public 40 days after the party installed its new leadership for the next five years, is the latest effort by Chinese intellectuals to push for political reform in a country that many believe is in urgent need of change but also has become more divided. Zhang said he wants to build consensus among people from various factions with often conflicting views. Beijing-based independent scholar Zhang Lifan has signed the petition, though he is less optimistic that China’s ruling party will initiate political change. Still, it is important for the public to let its will be known, said Zhang Lifan, who is not related to the Peking University professor. —AP

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2012

NEWS Iran rejects Gulf states’...

Morsi signs charter into law

Continued from Page 1

Continued from Page 1

spread radiation throughout the region. In reply, Mehmanparast said the power plant has been built to “high-level international standards”.

The oil-producing GCC states wield influence out of proportion to their sparse populations due in part to global energy and investment links, generous international aid and Saudi Arabia’s role as home to Islam’s two holiest sites. Iran sees the Gulf as its own backyard and believes it has a legitimate interest in expanding its influence there.

In Manama, Bahraini Foreign Minister Khalid Bin Ahmed Bin Mohammed Al Khalifa told reporters on Tuesday that Iran posed a “very serious threat”. “Politically, (there is) lots of meddling in the affairs of GCC states; an environmental threat to our region from the technology used inside nuclear facilities; and there is of course the looming nuclear program,” he said, referring to Iran’s disputed atomic

work. When asked about the Bahraini remarks, Mehmanparast said they were not worth responding to, ISNA said.

The Sunni Muslim-dominated Bahrain government has been struggling since early last year to suppress pro-democracy unrest led mainly by the Gulf Arab kingdom’s majority Shiites, who say they been politically and economically marginalised, erupted last year. Bahrain, where the US Fifth Fleet is based, has accused Shiite power Iran of being behind the unrest. Tehran denies this.

Bahrain’s rulers brought in Saudi and United Arab Emirates forces last year to help quell the protests. Iran condemned the move, saying it could lead to regional instability. Iran is also at odds with the United States and its allies over its disputed nuclear activities which the West fears is aimed at making nuclear weapons, a charge Tehran denies. The GCC is made up of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar and Kuwait. — Agencies

the Standard & Poor’s agency downgraded Egypt’s long-term credit rating and warned of a possible further cut. The government has imposed currency restrictions to reduce capital flight.

The pound traded as low as 6.1775 against the dollar yesterday, close to its all-time low of 6.26 hit on Oct 14, 2004, on concerns that the government might devalue or tighten restrictions on currency movements. “All customers are rushing to buy dollars after the downgrading,” said a dealer at a Cairo-based bank. “We’ll have to wait to see how the market will operate with the US dollar, because as you know there is a rush at the moment.”

Keen to be seen as decisive, the government is now in talks with business figures, trade unions and other groups to highlight the need for tax increases to resolve the crisis. Morsi has committed to such austerity measures to receive a $4.8 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund. However, Al-Mal newspaper quoted Planning Minister Ashraf Al-Araby as saying the government would not implement the tax increases until it had completed the dialogue with different parts of society.

In Cairo’s bustling centre, people openly expressed their frustration with economic instability as they went about their daily business. “The country’s going to the pits. Everything is a mess,” Hamdy Hussein, a 61year-old building janitor, said angrily. “It’s worse than ever. Mubarak was better than now. People were living and there was security.” Ashraf Mohamed Kamal, 30, added: “The economic situation will be a mess in

the next few years. It already is. People will get hungrier. People are now begging more.”

Morsi, catapulted into power by his Islamist allies this year, believes adopting the constitution quickly and holding the vote for a permanent new parliament will help to end the long period of turmoil and uncertainty that has wrecked the economy. Morsi’s government argues the constitution offers enough protection to all groups, and that many Egyptians are fed up with street protests that have prevented a return to normality and distracted the government from tackling the economy.

The charter gives Egypt’s upper house of parliament, which is dominated by Islamists, full legislative powers until the vote for a new lower house is held. While stressing the importance of political stability to heal the economy, Morsi’s government has tried to play down the economic problems and appealed for unity despite the hardship. “The government calls on the people not to worry about the country’s economy,” Parliamentary Affairs Minister Mohamed Mahsoub told the upper house in a speech. “We are not facing an economic problem but a political one and it is affecting the economic situation. We therefore urge all groups, opponents and brothers, to achieve wide reconciliation and consensus.”

Sharpening people’s concerns, the authorities imposed currency controls on Tuesday to prevent capital flight. Leaving or entering Egypt with more than $10,000 in cash is now banned. Adding to the government’s long list of worries, Communications Minister Hany Mahmoud has resigned citing his “inability to adapt to the government’s working culture”. —Agencies

14

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2012

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Issues

Abe faces tests on diplomacy and economy

By Kyoko Hasegawa apan’s new premier faced a long to-do list as he took office yesterday, including mending ties with Asian neighbours and reviving a limp economy that bedevilled previous governments, analysts say. High on the agenda for Shinzo Abe will be addressing prickly relations with China and South Korea, which greeted his rise to power with alarm after a series of hardline comments on territorial disputes and a conservative position on sensitive issues linked to Japan’s imperialist past.

Tokyo is embroiled in bitter rows over separate island chains claimed by Beijing and Seoul, which have raised their eyebrows at Abe’s musings about revising Japan’s postWorld War II pacifist constitution. However Abe, who has been premier before, is unlikely to follow through on his hard-right rhetoric at least until he solidifies his power base after elections in Japan’s upper house of parliament next year, said Jiro Yamaguchi, a politics professor at Hokkaido University.

Abe botched the diplomatic file during his lacklustre 2006-2007 tenure in Japan’s top political job, sparking controversy by saying he wanted to review the country’s previous admissions over the touchy issue of wartime sex slavery.

He argued there was no evidence Japan’s imperial army directly coerced thousands of so-called “comfort women” into brothels across Asia during World War II, prompting a call from US lawmakers for a fresh apology from Tokyo. The now 58-year-old leader quickly backpedalled, saying he supported Japan’s landmark 1993 apology over the comfort women issue, expressing similar sympathies during a visit to the United States five years ago.

“If he makes those kinds of gaffes again by professing his conservative beliefs, Japan would be isolated from the rest of the world,” said Yamaguchi, a former key policy advisor for the centre-left Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), which was booted from power this month. “Voters didn’t give him a mandate to pursue his conservative policy agenda but they wanted to punish the DPJ for its various policy failures,” he added, referring to the national elections earlier this month.

But even Abe conceded the victory - based largely on promises to inject life into Japan’s moribund economy while getting tough on diplomacy - was far from a resounding show of support for his LDP. The party had ruled Japan for most of the past six decades until the DPJ’s historic electoral upset in 2009 with promises to shake up Japan’s staid political scene. However, the DPJ stumbled due to policy flipflops, a failure to turn around the economy and a sometimes confused response to last year’s quake-tsunami disaster, which sparked the worst atomic accident in a generation.

“The DPJ failed to realise its own election pledge for social equality and improving peoples’ quality of life as the gap between rich and poor widened,” said Shigeki Uno, a professor of political thought at Tokyo University.

The world’s third-largest economy has been hit hard by financial turmoil in Europe, an export-sapping strong yen and a diplomatic row with China that weighed on trade, dousing hopes Japan had cemented a recovery after last year’s disasters. Tokyo is also grappling with a public debt that is more than double gross domestic product, the worst in the industrialised world and a debt mountain that keeps growing as a rapidly ageing population leans on the social security system.

Abe pledged to boost Japan’s fortunes by pressing the central bank to take more aggressive monetary policy measures while promising a huge government spending package worth about $118 billion. The incoming leader met the head of the Bank of Japan last week, calling on him to strike a policy deal with government. Two days later, the BoJ announced fresh monetary easing measures, a move widely seen as stoked by comments from Abe who appeared to challenge the central bank’s independence. However, Abe’s prescription to cure Japan’s woes has been dismissed by some economists as likely to worsen the fiscal situation while doing little to boost growth, especially if the money disappears into white elephant projects.

Another key challenge for the new administration is whether to embrace or reject the pork-barrel politics honed under successive LDP regimes, said Hiroshi Hirano, politics professor at Gakushuin University. Joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a regional free trade deal that has sparked ire in the protected agricultural sector among others, would help force long-called-for structural change in Japan’s economy, Hirano said. “Japan needs a truly functioning growth strategy that prompts industrial sector restructuring,” he said. “But this would collide with demands from vested interest groups. “If the LDP wants to address the needs of these traditional support groups by spending on infrastructure, for example, it has to show it has the bankroll.” —AFP

J

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Hijab stands in way of Palestinian journalists

By Diana Atallah ubna Abu Safiyeh was forced to leave her media job and now works in an administrative position in a Ramallah company - all because her ambition to work in the TV world did not fit her choice of wearing a headscarf. “When I was being interviewed for a job in a new Palestinian television channel, the interviewer asked me if I would be willing to take off my hijab,” she told The Media Line. After that, she refrained from seeking other job interviews in places where she heard the management was anti-hijab. “Why I should bother?” she asked.

The hijab - the traditional scarf that religious Muslim women wear to cover the hair, ears and neck - has become one of the decisive criteria determining who can be in front of the camera, and usually indicates a television channel’s policy. Many of the journalists who cannot get their chance in the limelight compromise for a behind-the-scenes role. Reem Abu Laban, a media graduate, was asked by her interviewer to remove her hijab to be hired as a correspondent. “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? I don’t need your job,” Abu Laban scolded her potential employer.

Four months after that incident, she was asked to join the television station as a producer behind the camera. “I didn’t want to go there, but I was a fresh graduate and desperate for work,” the 25-year-old told The Media Line. After earning a Master’s degree in television broadcasting from a Jordanian university, she now works for the Palestinian National News Agency (WAFA) as a correspondent in the multimedia section, but still is not seen on camera. “This is the policy regarding these reports,” she explains. “No one gets to be on camera.”

As more Palestinian women wear a hijab, some admit they do so for cultural and not religious reasons.

Nevertheless, the notion of losing the hijab is taken as an offense by many women who consider religion a personal right. Women who remove their hijab often find themselves criticized more than those who don’t wear one at all. This pressure discourages women from taking off their hijab, even if some are considering it. Abu Safiyeh balked at being asked to remove her hijab. “I didn’t know whether I should consider this as harassment or not ... In the end, I did not respect the request,” she says. Her only chance was in radio. “It wasn’t as fulfilling - not in terms of salary, nor the future prospects. I dreamed of becoming famous,” said Abu Safiyeh, who topped her Birzeit University undergraduate class in media studies.

L

Taking Sides Three television channels currently broadcast from the West Bank: the government-run Palestine TV and private sector channels Mix-Maan of

Bethlehem and Al-Falastinia in Ramallah. On the other hand, Arab and Islamic television stations seeking correspondents specifically ask for headscarfed women when they have vacancies. One of those channels is Palestine Today, a Beirut-based satellite channel reputedly affiliated with the Islamic Jihad political party. Farouq Elyat, the head of Palestine Today’s office in the West Bank, told The Media Line that his station has a policy of not hiring bareheaded female correspondents. “We follow a religiously-committed mode where the correspondents should wear a hijab,” he said, adding that the channel does not impose wearing long dresses on the journalists.

Abu Safiyeh, wearing tight jeans, a green shirt and a colored hijab, says that her head scarf was not good enough for the Islamist channels. “From looking at my modern clothing style, [my interviewer] concluded that I could belong to Fatah,” she said. One journalist told The Media Line that she believes the current split between Fatah and Hamas, and the regional changes, have influenced the media into taking sides.

“Some TV stations think that showing a journalist with a hijab indicates they are linked to Hamas. That’s not right,” said Kenana Issa, a young journalist who does not wear a head scarf.

Nell Burden, a British correspondent for the Iranian Press TV in the West Bank, also does not normally wear a hijab.

However, she is often seen in the field covering her hair before speaking in front of the camera as part of the channel’s policy. “I consider it as a part of my uniform. I wouldn’t go to work in my jogging suit,” she told The Media Line.

Burden explained that some people laugh when they see her adjusting her scarf before speaking to the camera, “but I’m comfortable doing it.”

During her hiring process, Burden was asked to cover her hair when she has to be on camera. “My freedom in sending out my stories is more important for me as a journalist - and that is worth fighting for,” she said. The London-raised and tutored journalist added that before coming to work in the Palestinian territories she used to find the idea of wearing a hijab aggressive. “I still think this is a patriarchal society but I have to admit that I’ve never felt too oppressed here,” she says.

The Right to Work A group of young female journalists organized a sit-in last November, protesting not being able to work in Palestinian television, especially the Palestinian Authority’s station, because of their hijab. Amoon Al-Sheikh, the organizer of the event, told The Media Line that she was hired as a program correspondent after applying for an anchor’s position.

“They wanted me not to be on camera as a correspondent because I wear a hijab but I refused.” In her segment, she appeared on camera for a few seconds in her hijab, only to be fired a few months later for what they said were “restructuring proposes,” she told The Media Line.

However, Abu Safiyeh did not participate in the sit-in because she doesn’t believe all the blame should be put on the media. “Several journalists succeeded with their hijab. For me, my dream to join a competitive institution and become a success seems further away,” she said. The Palestinian Authority consists mostly of members of the Fatah party, which is known as a secular party.

Inside sources at the Palestine TV told The Media Line that previous television supervisor Yasser Abed Rabbo banned headscarfed women from being on television, keeping the ones who were already in front of the camera at the time: two correspondents, one in Nablus and one in Gaza, and a children’s show presenter. Sources said that Abed Rabbo comes from a leftist background.

Ahmed Hazzouri, the director general of Palestine TV denied that the station rejects journalists because of their hijab.

“We look for talent and professionalism and looks are important as well - after all, it is television. But no one was ever refused because they wore a hijab,” he said, adding that veiled journalists are using the hijab as an excuse for other reasons that they were not hired.

Hazzouri explained that 60 percent of women working at the Palestine Broadcasting Corporation cover their heads. “The threat that our society is facing is those who are refusing to hire non-hijab wearing women even behind the camera,” he added.

However, the director of the Palestinian Ma’an news agency, Raed Othman, told The Media Line that MixMaan TV is a secular station whose staff does not wear hijabs or crosses on camera, particularly in its news broadcasts. “I still haven’t made a decision to appoint a head-scarfed woman, but this may change,” he said. Othman says the Palestinian audience doesn’t care how the anchor is dressed but rather about the content and correspondent’s ability, adding that there is a lack of available qualified Palestinian female journalists, especially as Maan-Mix’s studios are in Bethlehem, making it harder for those who live in the Ramallah area to work.

Both Hazouri and Othman told The Media Line that they are willing to hire a qualified and talented head-scarfed journalist. “Get us a Palestinian Khadija Bin Qana, and we will hire her now,” Othman said, referring to the famous Algerian Al Jazeera news anchor, who wears a hijab.

More female journalists are appearing on Palestinian screens and discussing hard issues. Three journalists present Palestine TV’s main news bulletins, six correspondents have daily reports from inside and outside the country, and another two work in political talk shows. Hazzouri did not give specific numbers of women versus men in television, but did say the figures change depending on the programming cycle. He added that hiring in Palestine TV is not based on gender. He also believes that there are some limitations on women’s work, explaining that female journalists don’t usually work during late hours, which means more male news anchors than women. —Media Line

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2012

sp orts Wonders slam ‘broken promise’

UEFA appeals own sanctions

Del Piero dismisses exit talk

SEOUL: South Korea’s Goyang Wonders have expressed anger at not being allowed to join the minor leagues next year, accusing the Korea Baseball Organisation (KBO) of breaking a promise to allow the team to join the professional ranks.

General manager Ha Song told local media yesterday that KBO officials had reneged on a pledge to let the Wonders join the lower-tier Futures League in 2013. “As one of the preconditions for launching our ball club, the KBO had promised that we would be in the Futures League by 2013,” Ha was quoted as saying by Yonhap news agency.

“But the KBO simply told us that we will play 48 games in 2013 again. The KBO has given us no reason for that.” The Wonders, the only independent club with no league affiliation in South Korea, played 48 unofficial games against minor league affiliates of top-flight clubs since being founded a year ago. This year, five teams in the northern division played 92 games and six clubs in the south played 100 games in the Futures League. The Wonders are managed by Kim Sung-keun, a triple KBO championship winner, and posted a 20-21 record with seven ties in 2012, while losing five players poached by KBO clubs. —Reuters

LONDON: UEFA has appealed against the sanctions that its own control and disciplinary body imposed on Serbia and England for incidents in an Under-21 match in October, European soccer’s governing body said yesterday. “Having reviewed the motivated decisions for the sanctions imposed in this specific case... the UEFA disciplinary inspector felt it necessary to immediately confirm his intention to appeal on UEFA’s behalf,” UEFA said in a statement. UEFA has the right to appeal against decisions made by its own disciplinary committee and to ask for tougher sanctions if it considers they are too lenient. The English FA criticised UEFA for not sending a “strong enough message” on racism after the Serbia FA was fined 80,000 euros ($104,700) by UEFA and told it must stage its next Under-21 home match behind closed doors after its players and fans were found guilty of improper conduct.

The punishments followed England’s 1-0 victory in the European Under-21 championship playoff on Oct. 16 in Krusevac when visiting fullback Danny Rose complained he was racially abused by Serbia supporters before, during and after the game. England scored with the last kick of the match and fighting broke out between players and officials immediately after the final whistle. —Reuters

SYDNEY: Alessandro Del Piero’s uncertain future in Australia could be close to being resolved, with the former Italy striker pledging his support for struggling Sydney FC. The 38-year-old former World Cup winner arrived at the club to much fanfare this season but has failed to prevent Sydney’s plummet to the foot of the A-League.

But with negotiations to take up the option to extend his lucrative one-year deal dragging on, Del Piero appeared keen to dismiss rumours he would leave at the end of the season.

“Everything is clear for me and the club,” the former Juventus forward, who has struggled recently with a hamstring tweak, told local media yesterday. “We can do earlier than we think about the contract. It’s not a stress here for me. I want to put all my knowledge and my heart into games.” Del Piero asserted his management team, including brother Stefano, were working hard on negotiating a second season at the A-League side. “My brother talks about that,” he said of his contract.

“It’s his problem, not mine. “I’ve spent a really good time here. At the moment the best thing for me, the club and for teammates and everyone here is to concentrate about the games. —Reuters

Clippers top NBA standings LOS ANGELES: The Los Angeles Clippers extended their franchiserecord winning streak to 14 games by beating the Denver Nuggets 112-100 on Tuesday - and moved to the top of the NBA standings in the process.

Jamal Crawford led a dominant performance by the Los Angeles reserves with 22 points, while Matt Barnes added 20.

The Clippers’ bench outscored the team’s starters 64-48 in claiming the NBA’s best record at 22-6, one win better than Oklahoma City. The Miami Heat defeated the Thunder 103-97 in an NBA Finals rematch earlier Tuesday.

In the other games on Christmas, the Boston Celtics defeated the struggling Brooklyn Nets 93-76, the Los Angeles Lakers beat the New York Knicks 100-94 and the Houston Rockets routed the Chicago Bulls 12097. The Clippers haven’t lost since Nov. 26 when the New Orleans Hornets handed them their fourth straight defeat.

Crawford’s 3-pointer to open the fourth quarter pushed the Clippers’ lead to 20 points and kept the starters on the bench for the final 12 minutes.

Crawford, who leads the NBA’s reserves in scoring, topped 20 points for the 12th time this season.

Chris Paul led Los Angeles’ starters with 14 points, while Blake Griffin had 13. Kosta Koufos and Jordan Hamilton each scored 16 points to lead the Nuggets. The Heat survived a frantic finish to beat the Thunder for the fifth straight time going back to June’s title series and improve their season record to 19-6, matching the team’s best 25game start.

LeBron James finished with 29 points, nine assists and eight rebounds, Dwyane Wade scored 21 and Mario Chalmers had a season-high 20 for the defending NBA champions.

Kevin Durant scored 33 points and Russell Westbrook added 21 for Oklahoma City, but both Thunder stars missed potentially game-tying 3-point attempts in the final seconds. Serge Ibaka and Kevin Martin each added 15 for the Thunder, who have dropped two straight for the first time this season. Oklahoma City got within one when Durant made a jumper over James with less than a minute to play,

MIAMI: Heat’s Chris Bosh (1) pressures Oklahoma City Thunder’s Russell Westbrook (0) into a pass during the second half of an NBA basketball game.

Heat won 103-97. —AP

but Miami hit all five of its free throws in the final moments to seal the victory.

Kobe Bryant engineered a secondhalf comeback to help the Lakers win their fifth straight game earlier in Los Angeles. Bryant scored 34 points in his NBA-record 15th Christmas Day game and Metta World Peace added 20 points and seven rebounds while defending Carmelo Anthony, whose 34 points led the Knicks. Bryant, the league’s leading scorer, has topped 30 or more points in nine straight games.

The Lakers improved their record to 14-14 - 9-9 under new coach Mike D’Antoni - and upped their holiday record to 21-18, including 13-9 at home. The Knicks controlled most of the game behind Anthony and J.R. Smith, who had 24 points. But they struggled offensively in the fourth quarter, when Anthony was limited to seven points and Smith had five.

Steve Nash had 16 points, 11 assists and six rebounds in his second game with the Lakers in nearly two months.

He missed 24 straight games while recovering from a small fracture in his lower left leg.

Dwight Howard had 14 points and 12 rebounds, and Pau Gasol added 13 points and eight rebounds. The Celtics easily defeated the Nets in the teams’

first meeting since their contentious game a month ago in which three players were ejected for fighting.

Rajon Rondo scored 19 points and rookie Jared Sullinger tied a career high with 16 points. Rondo had been thrown out of the Nets’ Nov. 28 victory in Boston after shoving Brooklyn’s Kris Humphries into the courtside seats.

Gerald Wallace and Brook Lopez each scored 15 for the Nets, who have lost four of five. There was a brief skirmish in the fourth quarter that resulted in four technical fouls, but that was the most fight the Nets put up in a disappointing performance on the national stage of the Christmas opener. Deron Williams had only 10 points on 3-of-7 shooting and Joe Johnson shot 4 of 14 for his 12 points.

Houston outscored Chicago 31-19 in the second quarter to open up a 17point halftime lead the Bulls couldn’t overcome. James Harden scored 26 points, Jeremy Lin added 20 points and 11 assists and former Bull Omer Asik had 20 points and 18 rebounds in his first trip back to Chicago since signing with the Rockets in the offseason. Nate Robinson led the Bulls with 27 points, and Marco Belinelli scored 15. The points allowed and margin of defeat were season worsts for Chicago. — AP

NBA results/standings Boston 93, Brooklyn 76; LA Lakers 100, NY Knicks 94; Miami 103, Oklahoma City 97; Houston 120, Chicago 97; LA Clippers 112, Denver 100.

NY Knicks Brooklyn Boston Philadelphia Toronto Indiana Chicago Milwaukee Detroit Cleveland Miami Atlanta Orlando Charlotte Washington

Eastern Conference Atlantic Division W L 20 8 14 13 14 13 13 15 9 19 Central Division 16 12 15 12 14 12 9 21 6 23 Southeast Division 19 6 16 9 12 15 7 20 3 22

PCT .714 .519 .519 .464 .321

GB 5.5 5.5 7 11

.571 .556 .538 .300 .207

0.5 1 8 10.5

LA Clippers Golden State LA Lakers Phoenix Sacramento

.760 .640 .444 .259 .120

3 8 13 16

San Antonio Memphis Houston Dallas New Orleans

Oklahoma City Minnesota Denver Utah Portland

Western Conference Northwest Division 21 6 13 12 15 14 15 14 13 13 Pacific Division 22 6 18 10 14 14 11 17 9 18 Southwest Division 21 8 18 7 15 12 12 16 5 22

.778 .520 .517 .517 .500

7 7 7 7.5

.786 .643 .500 .393 .333

4 8 11 12.5

.724 .720 .556 .429 .185

1 5 8.5 15

Poore sent off in Boxing Day brawl

CHICAGO: Houston Rockets’ Chandler Parsons (25), goes up for a shot against Chicago Bulls’ Jimmy Butler during the fourth quarter of an NBA basketball game. Houston won 120-97. —AP

LONDON: Australian prop Justin Poore was sent off on his Wakefield debut after provoking a Boxing Day brawl with Super League champions Leeds in yesterday’s challenge match at Headingley.

Poore, a former Parramatta forward, was dismissed by referee Jamie Leahy after fighting with Leeds prop Ryan Bailey just 20 minutes into his first appearance on English soil in the festive friendly.

It was a nightmare debut for the 27year-old, who had already conceded three penalties before being sent off, and he could miss the start of the Super League campaign in February if he is banned by the disciplinary committee.

There wasn’t much Christmas spirit in evidence at Headingley as Bailey was sin-binned for his part in the fracas, along with team-mate Mitch Achurch and Wakefield winger Ben Cockayne.

Leeds hooker Paul McShane, making

his return from a loan spell with Widnes, became the fourth player to be shown a yellow card when he was sin-binned on 57 minutes for a high tackle. Once the teams finally concentrated on their rugby rather than trading blows, the star of the show was acting Leeds captain Danny McGuire, one of three members of the Rhinos’ Grand Final-winning team.

Joe Vickery, a 23-year-old Australian on trial with Leeds, boosted his chances of securing a contract by scoring two well-taken tries in the first 22 minutes.

Meanwhile, struggling English Premiership club Sale on Monday sacked their social media executive after she launched a foul-mouthed tirade against supporters on her Facebook page.

Holleh Nowrouz, 26, was dismissed

by Sharks chief executive Steve Diamond after an internal disciplinary review. In comments posted in October,

Nowrouz had written: “Oh, the joys of managing a sport club’s social media when we’ve lost the last 7 Premiership home games.”

“To the Sale Sharks fans who comment about the club needing to spend less time blogging and tweeting and more time coaching, the staff who create content for the website and social media platforms are not the same members of staff who coach the team.”

Diamond said that Nowrouz had overstepped the mark. “As a club we have always been proud of the backing we receive from our supporters through thick and thin over our 151-year history,” Diamond said.

“At this crucial time for the club Holleh’s comments, though private, just overstepped the mark and left her position untenable.” Sale are bottom of the Premiership with just one victory from 11 matches. — AFP

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2012

sp orts

Davids, Phangiso clinch series for South Africa PORT ELIZABETH: Henry Davids hit his second successive half-century and Aaron Phangiso took crucial wickets as South Africa beat New Zealand by 33 runs in the series-deciding third and final Twenty20 international.

Davids struck 68 at St George’s Park in a South African total of 179 for six and Phangiso dismissed New Zealand’s big guns, Martin Guptill and captain Brendon McCullum, in successive overs, effectively ending the touring team’s challenge.

New Zealand finished with 146 for nine. “South Africa played a very good game,” said McCullum. “There were some clutch moments and they stood up and applied some pressure. Against a good side, they expose you. We weren’t quite at our best but throughout the series we’ve seen some improvements and we can take some heart out of the series.”

The slightly-built Davids, who made his debut in the first match of the series, hit seven fours and two sixes in a 51-ball innings. A third wicket stand of 89 off 61 balls with Justin Ontong (48) enabled South Africa to overcome a poor start.

Left-arm seamer Mitchell McClenaghan was again the pick of the New Zealand bowlers, taking two for 24 off four overs. McClenaghan, originally picked only for the Twenty20 series, will

stay on to replace the injured Tim Southee in a two-match Test series starting in Cape Town on January 2.

Doug Bracewell also took two wickets, striking with the last two balls of the innings as David Miller (28) and Farhaan Behardien (22) perished in going for big shots after a fifth wicket stand of 44 off 23 balls.

Corey Anderson held four catches, three of them in the deep. New Zealand lost Rob Nicol in the first over but briefly entertained hopes of victory as Guptill (24) and McCullum (25), the team’s leading batsmen, put on 47 off 37 balls for the second wicket.

Guptill, who made a match-winning century in the second international in East London, hit left-arm spinner Phangiso’s first ball for six but chipped a simple catch to midwicket off the last ball of the over.

McCullum followed in Phangiso’s next over when he was caught at wide longoff. Phangiso added the wicket of James Franklin to finish with three for 25 off four overs. Opening bowler Ryan McLaren also took three for 25.

Faf du Plessis, who captained South Africa for the first time during the series, said he believed his team had played consistently well. “It’s a young team and there’s so much energy,” he said. —AFP

PORT ELIZABETH: South Africa’s batsman Justin Ontong (right) plays a side shot as New Zealand’s captain Brendon McCullum (left) looks on during the Twenty20 cricket match at the St Georges Stadium. — AP

SCOREBOARD PORT ELIZABETH: Final scores in the third and final Twenty20 international between South Africa and New Zealand at St George’s Park yesterday: South Africa H. Davids c Anderson b McClenaghan 68 F. du Plessis b Hira 1 Q de Kock c Anderson b McClenaghan2 J Ontong c Anderson b Franklin 48 D. Miller c Anderson b Franklin 28 F. Behardien c McClenaghan b Bracewell22 R. Kleinveldt not out 0 Extras (lb4, w6) 10 Total (6 wkts, 20 overs) 179 Fall of wickets: 1-2 (Du Plessis), 2-26 (De Kock), 3-115 (Ontong), 4-135 (Davids), 5-179 (Miller), 6-179 (Behardien) Did not bat: R. McLaren, R. Peterson, M Morkel, A Phangiso Bowling: McClenaghan 4-0-24-2 (2w), Hira 4-0-24-1, N. McCullum 3-0-27-0, Franklin 3-0-30-1, Bracewell 3-0-35-2 (1w), Neesham 3-0-35-0 (3w) New Zealand R. Nicol lbw b McLaren M. Guptill c Peterson b Phangiso B McCullum c Ontong b Phangiso

5 24 25

C. Munro c De Kock b McLaren 3 J. Franklin c Ontong b Phangiso 16 J. Neesham c Morkel b Peterson 12 N. McCullum c Peterson b McLaren 17 C. Anderson run out (McLaren) 12 D. Bracewell not out 15 R. Hira c Ontong b Kleinveldt 12 M. McClenaghan not out 1 Extras (lb1, w3) 4 Total (9 wkts, 20 overs) 146 Fall of wickets: 1-6 (Nicol), 2-53 (Guptill), 3-56 (B. McCullum), 4-60 (Munro), 5-84 (Franklin), 6-87 (Neesham), 7-116 (Anderson), 8-116 (N. McCullum), 9-137 (Hira) Bowling: McLaren 4-0-25-3 (1w), Peterson 3-0-24-1, Morkel 4-0-37-0 (1w), Kleinveldt 4-0-25-1 (1w), Phangiso 4-025-3, Ontong 1-0-9-0.

Result: South Africa won by 33 runs Man of the match: Henry Davids (RSA) Series: South Africa won the three-match series 2-1

MELBOURNE: Australia’s David Warner (left) and Ed Cowan run between wickets against Sri Lanka on the first day of their cricket Test match at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. — AP

Australia on top despite Sangakkara’s milestone MELBOURNE: Australia reached 150-3 at the close of the opening day of the second test, punishing Sri Lanka after the visitors had failed to build on Kumar Sangakkara’s landmark half-century and were dismissed for just 156 yesterday.

Openers Ed Cowan and David Warner charged to 95 without loss but Sri Lanka checked the hosts with three quick wickets following the drinks break in the final session at a sunbathed Melbourne Cricket Ground.

The mini-revival stalled, however, with two demoralising dropped catches late in the day that allowed Australia captain Michael Clarke (20 not out) and Shane Watson (13 not out) to survive a watchful final hour to stumps.

Sri Lanka won the toss and elected to bat first in glorious sunshine, but barring Sangakkara’s elegant 58, which saw him notch his 10,000th test run, the tourists suffered a calamitous bout of stage-fright in front of a huge Boxing Day crowd of 67,000.

Only quick wickets in the morning session of day two may save Sri Lanka, with the MCG’s drop-in pitch expected to flatten out in the sun and offer less for bowlers.

“We’re definitely in a strong position. I think the two openers started exceptionally well,” seamer Mitchell Johnson, who took his 200th test wicket and led the team’s bowling with 4-63, told reporters.

“We’re three down, we’re 150 and we’ve got a great wicket, but we’ve just got to move on from that and we have a big day ahead of us to put on some runs.” After dismissing Sri Lanka just before tea, swashbuckling opener David Warner got Australia off to a flying start, blasting eight fours and a massive six over long on off the bowling of seamer Chanaka Welegedera.

Warner despatched Sri Lanka’s pace trio to all corners of the ground before all-rounder Angelo Mathews ended his innings at 62 when he belted a pull shot straight to Dhammika Prasad in front of the rope at deep mid-wicket.

That precipitated a minor collapse, with number three batsman Phillip Hughes run out for 10 and Cowan caught behind for 36 six balls later. Hughes fell in farcical circumstances, failing to leave his crease as Cowan charged through for a single after poking the ball to midwicket.

The misjudgement allowed the fielding Tillakaratne Dilshan enough time to fumble the ball before whipping it back to the stumps where replacement wicketkeeper

Sangakkara whipped off the bails.

Cowan soon brought about his own downfall with an indiscriminate swipe at a Prasad delivery that flew into the welcoming hands of Sri Lanka captain Mahela Jayawardene at second slip.

Sri Lanka failed to maintain the momentum, however, with Dilshan dropping a sharp chance off Clarke in close, with the in-form Australia captain on six. Clarke, who became the first man to score four double-centuries in a calendar year during Australia’s lost test series to South Africa, went on to notch his

hat-trick straight after the drinks break in the middle session. The mercurial left-armer captured his 200th test victim with the prized wicket of Sangakkara, but had birthday-boy Matthew Wade to thank, the 25-year-old wicketkeeper bolting 50 metres behind the wicket to take a brilliant lunging catch after the batsman sent a top edge soaring into the heavens.

Sangakkara had earlier become the 11th batsman in test history to reach the 10,000-run milestone and did it in style with a glorious cover drive for four off the same bowler in the final over before lunch.

SCOREBOARD MELBOURNE: Scoreboard at the close of the opening day of the second test between Australia and Sri Lanka at the Melbourne Cricket Ground yesterday: Sri Lanka won the toss and chose to bat

Sri Lanka first innings D. Karunaratne c Wade b Bird 5 T. Dilshan b Johnson 11 K. Sangakkara c Wade b Johnson 58 M. Jayawardene c Wade b Siddle 3 T. Samaraweera c Warner b Bird 10 A. Mathews c Hussey b Siddle 15 P. Jayawardene c Hughes b Johnson 24 D. Prasad c Wade b Johnson 0 R. Herath c Hussey b Lyon 14 S. Eranga not out 4 C. Welegedera c Hussey b Lyon 0 Extras: (lb-5 nb-7) 12 Total (all out, 43.4 overs) 156 Fall of wickets: 1-13 2-19 3-37 4-79 5-99 6134 7-134 8-147 9-156 10-156 Bowling: Johnson 14-2-63-4 (nb-4), Bird 135-32-2 (nb-2), Siddle 8-1-30-2 (nb-1),

1,500th test run in 2012.

Watson, on five, edged a catch behind the wicket off the bowling of Welegedara, but Sangakkara spilled the diving chance. Sri Lanka’s woes were further compounded by a broken thumb to regular wicketkeeper Prasanna Jayawardene, and it was unclear whether he would take the gloves for the rest of the match.

It was all smiles for Australia, however, as their seamers reduced the tourists to 79-3 by lunch and took the last seven wickets for a paltry 77 runs. Johnson, back in the side after being overlooked for Australia’s first-test victory in Hobart, unleashed a mean spell of short-pitched bowling and missed out on a

Watson 3-2-3-0, Lyon 5.4-0-23-2.

Australia first innings D. Warner c Prasad b Mathews 62 E. Cowan c M. Jayawardene b Prasad 36 P. Hughes run out 10 S. Watson not out 13 M. Clarke not out 20 Extras (b-2, w-5, nb-2) 9 Total (three wickets, 39 overs) 150 Still to bat: M. Hussey, M. Wade, M. Johnson, P. Siddle, N. Lyon, J. Bird Fall of wickets: 1-95 2-117 3-117 Bowling: C. Welegedara 11-4-36-0, S. Eranga 10-2-53-0 (2-nb, 1-w), D. Prasad 8-1-39-1, A. Mathews 4-2-9-1, R. Herath 6-1-11-0.

Series: Australia won the first test in Hobart.

The 35-year-old former captain bathed in a standing ovation and shook hands with the Australian team but his dismissal left Sri Lanka 147-8, snuffing out their hopes of a more competitive total.

While Johnson showed venom, and enjoyed fine support from seamers Peter Siddle (2-30) and debutant Jackson Bird (232), Sri Lanka’s batsmen were culpable as they flashed carelessly on a wicket that deserved more respect. “Pretty clearly we’re back to playing catch up unfortunately,” Sri Lanka coach Graham Ford said. “We found ourselves doing that in the last test and we’re desperate not to do it this time round, but that’s what it is.” — Reuters

Wild Oats XI leads Sydney-Hobart race SYDNEY: Favorite Wild Oats XI led a 76-yacht fleet out of Sydney Harbor and held a four-nauticalmile lead over fellow super maxi and defending champion Ragamuffin Loyal late Wednesday on the first night of the annual Sydney to Hobart yacht race.

With spinnakers up, the fleet weaved its way around thousands of spectator craft in the harbor before heading out to the Tasman Sea for the 628nautical-mile (723-mile; 1,163-kilometer) race south to the island state of Tasmania.

Late Wednesday evening, Wild Oats XI held its lead over Ragamuffin Loyal, with Lahana in third place as the yachts sailed down the coast of New South Wales state into a strong southerly wind.

Ichi Ban was in fourth place, followed by Black Jack and Loki.

Many yachts were reporting bigger waves and swells than what were initially forecast. “At the moment we are all paying the rent,” Jennifer Wells, navigator of the 27-year-old Farr 43, Wild Rose, said on the race’s website. “All the crew are soaked,” she added. “I’m the navigator, so I’m below decks, and even I’m soaked.”

The leaders were well off the 2005 race record pace of Wild Oats XI (1 day, 18 hours, 40 minutes, 10 seconds), although they were expected to gain speed if the forecast northerlies arrived on

Thursday. “It’s a hard tactical race,” Ichi Ban sailing master Michael Spies said. “There won’t be too much sleep for the decision-makers.” Ragamuffin

Loyal was being skippered by 85-year-old Syd Fischer, who is taking part in his 44th Sydney to Hobart race. Two hours before the start of the

SYDNEY: The race fleet head towards Tasmania as Wild Oats (far right) leads them out of the heads after the start of the Sydney Hobart yacht race in Sydney. — AP

race, officials said super maxi Wild Thing, the 2003 line honors winner, would not be allowed to compete because it had not provided necessary documentation following hull modifications.

Cruising Yacht Club of Australia commodore Howard Piggott said the boat’s owner had failed to provide paperwork after the length of the yacht’s hull was extended from 98 feet to 100.

“The race committee has worked with the owner of the boat to allow him up to three hours prior to the start of race to provide the documentation required,” Piggott said. “However, this has not been forthcoming. The race committee has no option but to not accept the entry of Wild Thing.”

Wild Thing had not raced since being modified.

“We are absolutely devastated to be told at the 11th hour that we are unable to race to Hobart,” Wild Thing skipper Grant Wharington said. “We’re a bit stuck for words as to why it happened.”

Wharington said he had his mobile phone switched off during a pre-race briefing to his crew when Piggott tried to call on Wednesday morning.

“As everybody turned their phones back on just before 11 o’clock (two hours before the race), hundreds of messages from everybody saying, ‘It’s all over the press, we’ve been knocked out,’ and we were absolutely dumbfounded,” Wharington said. — AP

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2012

S P ORT S

Manning, Peterson, Pagano: 2012 a year to remember DENVER: From Peyton Manning overcoming four neck surgeries to Adrian Peterson’s rebound from a shredded knee to Chuck Pagano’s fight with leukemia, this has been the Year of the Comeback in the NFL. A season besmirched by tragedies, replacement officials and a bounty scandal also will go down as one in which some of the game’s greats not only regained their old form but somehow surpassed it.

There are always feel-good stories about those who overcome long odds and broken bodies to regain at least a sliver of their past glory. This season provided an abundance of them.

When the season started, who could have expected Manning to recapture his MVP play so quickly with a new team? Or for Peterson to come back less than nine months after shredding his left knee. Or for Jamaal Charles to return better than ever after suffering a similar injury. Then there’s Pagano beating the biggest opponent of his life.

A year ago, Manning was in the midst of four neck operations to fix a nerve injury that had caused his right arm to atrophy and had sidelined him for an entire season. Soon, he would say a tearful farewell to Indianapolis, a city he’d put back on the NFL map, and hook up with John Elway in Denver. Peterson’s left knee was still swollen after he’d shredded it on Christmas Eve, an injury similar to the one Charles suffered earlier last season. Yet both would defy medicine and conventional wisdom alike to rebound as better runners than they were before getting hurt.

Pagano’s fight started three months ago when it was disclosed he had cancer, forcing the first-year Colts coach to take time off for chemotherapy treatments. He returned to work this week, taking the reins from assistant Bruce Arians, who guided the team to a surprising playoff berth in his absence.

“When I asked for Bruce to take over, I asked for him

to kick some you-know-what and to do great. Damn Bruce, you had to go and win nine games?” Pagano said. “Tough act to follow.”

If all goes well at practice this week, Pagano will be on the sideline for the regular-season finale against Houston. That’s a final tuneup for the AFC wild-card playoffs that nobody saw coming for the Colts so soon after cutting ties with Manning, who switched teams, coaches, cities and colors and didn’t miss a beat in 2012.

Despite a new supporting cast and a 36-year-old body he insists continues to confound him, the quintessential quarterback has had one of the best seasons in his storied career. Manning set franchise or NFL records just about every week while completing 68 percent of his passes for 4,355 yards with 34 TDs and just 11 interceptions.

And yet, he insists he’s not anything close to what he used to be, that all he can do is maximize what’s left in a body that’s been slowed by so many surgeons’ scalpels, and trips around the sun.

“I know you don’t believe me when I say this; I’m still learning about myself physically and what I can do, it’s still the truth,” Manning said after guiding Denver to its 10th straight win. “I still have things that are harder than they used to be, so (there’s) things I have to work on from a rehab standpoint and a strength standpoint. That’s just the way it is and maybe that’s the way it’s going to be from here on out, I don’t know.”

Maybe Manning’s being modest, maybe he’s suckering opponents into blitzing him more often so he can burn them again. Either way, it’s a remarkable rebound for a man whose right arm was so weakened after one of his neck surgeries that he could hardly throw the football 15 yards.

Long before Manning ever dreamed he’d be wearing the orange-mane mustang on his helmet instead

of the blue and white horseshoe, Manning met up with college buddy Todd Helton of the Colorado Rockies for a workout during last year’s NFL lockout.

They retreated to an indoor batting cage at Coors Field with a trainer in tow, and Manning’s first pass nose-dived so badly that Helton told him to quit goofing around.

Manning wasn’t messing with him. He was dead serious. His arm was shot, his future in football in doubt. A few days later, he underwent spinal fusion surgery and would miss the entire 2011 season.

If doctors had told him that was it, Manning said he would have called it a career without regret. But they gave him a bit of hope and that’s all he needed to embark on his comeback in Colorado.

Coach John Fox, never one to lobby for awards, suggested this week that Manning deserves a fifth MVP honor for the numbers he’s put up, the obstacles he’s overcome, the shift of culture he’s engineered.

Manning isn’t interested in talking about MVPs or comeback awards. He just wants enough wins to get a shot at hoisting another Lombardi Trophy in New Orleans in six weeks.

Peterson, on the other hand, is unabashedly clear in his desire for some recognition after overcoming torn anterior cruciate and medial collateral ligaments in his left knee, requiring the kind of reconstructive surgery that usually turns dominant players into ordinary ones. There’s a long, long list of players who had shortened careers because of such injuries. But Peterson returned to the Vikings lineup less than nine months after his operation, and with a league-high 1,898 yards, he’s 207 yards shy of Eric Dickerson’s single-season record. He can topple it with another big game Sunday when Minnesota faces Green Bay with a playoff berth on the line for the Vikings.

With typical unflinching confidence, Peterson said in a recent interview with The Associated Press he’s

expecting to win the comeback award. “I kind of have that in the bag, especially how I’ve been telling people I’m going to come back stronger and better than ever,” he said.

Carrying the Vikings to the playoffs without a potent passing game in a league dominated by strong-armed, accurate quarterbacks would only burnish the credentials of this thoroughbred throwback.

In any other year, the zenith of comebacks might be that of Carolina linebacker Thomas Davis, who battled back from three torn right ACLs - in 2009, 2010 and 2011 - to be a major contributor to the Panthers this year. No player in NFL history has returned after tearing the same ACL three separate times. Charles missed nearly all of 2011 with a torn left ACL. Yet the former All-Pro running back has run for 1,456 yards, the seventh-best season in franchise history. He can break his single-season-high set in 2010 with 12 yards against the Broncos on Sunday.

Charles ran for 226 yards last weekend, when he surpassed 750 career carries, which also qualifies him for the NFL record for yards per carry. Charles is averaging 5.82 yards on 770 attempts, which far surpasses the 5.22 yards that Hall of Famer Jim Brown averaged in 2,359 attempts from 1957-65. Charles, Peterson and Davis are all better than ever. Manning might be, too, but he’ll never say it.

“I’m trying to be as good as I can at this stage,” Manning said. “A 36-year-old quarterback coming off a year and a-half off, playing on a new team, I’m trying to be as good as I possibly can in this scenario.

“It’s a different kind of body I’m playing in and just a different kind of quarterback play for me.” Yet, as transcendent as ever. “If he’s lost anything, I can’t see it,” said Broncos receiver Brandon Stokley, who played with Manning in his prime in Indianapolis. “I’m sure in some ways he’s better than he ever was. And he’s always been great.” — AP

Choi excels on the course and English SOUTH KOREA: Na Yeon Choi won her first major at the US Women’s Open, and she closed the season by winning the LPGA Titleholders.

But her most remarkable performance came when the season was over.

Players for whom English is their second (or third) language can get by in an interview with print reporters. They tend be a lot more uncomfortable when cameras are involved. Choi showed how much progress she has made the day after winning the Titleholders. She went into the studio for a live segment on Golf Channel’s “Morning Drive.” The LPGA staff helped her prepare for questions that might be asked, and when it didn’t go according to script, Choi still handled it beautifully. That wasn’t an accident.

As hard as Choi has worked on her game, she might have worked even harder on her English. Last year, she hired a personal tutor Greg Morrison, a Canadian based in South Korea - and brought him with her on the road.

She had a one-hour lesson every day, and practiced her English with him in casual conversation. Se Ri Pak would have been proud. The pioneer for South Koreans on the LPGA Tour, Pak preached years ago about the importance of learning English. Along with fitting in, Pak said it would make them feel more comfortable in public and ultimately improve their golf.

“First year when I was here, I couldn’t speak English well and then very hard to tell my feelings to people, even media or fans or even swing coach,” Choi said. “When I learned English and when I tell my feelings to people, I feel way more comfortable than before. I think that made it good golfer, too. And on the golf course, I can relax and I can talk with the other players.”

Morrison couldn’t travel with her this year, though they still practiced through Skype. She had another one -hour lesson during the Titleholders and planned to meet with him again while she was home during the offseason.

“We talk about not only golf, we talk about anything,” Choi said. “Like, I said I’m going to look for a new house and he tried to help me with which house is better for me. He’s more like, not just English tutor, he’s more like manager or assistant to me.”

Do they ever talk baseball? “Not really,” she said. “I think he’s a hockey fan.”

RANKING TOURS Most of the world’s best players are going to the Middle East in the winter and the Far East in the fall, both part of the European Tour. But over the course of the year, the PGA Tour is where biggest offering of world ranking points can be found.

Throw out the four majors and the four World Golf Championships, and the PGA Tour averaged 46.7 points for the winner of its tournaments, compared with 34.9 points for the winner of regular European Tour events. Add the majors and the WGCs, and the winner received an average of 54.3 points on the PGA Tour and 44.6 points on the European Tour.

The BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth is guaranteed 64 points as the flagship even on the European Tour. After that, the strongest fields on the European Tour (based on points awarded the winner) were Abu Dhabi and the season-ending event in Dubai (58 points), and

the BMW Masters in Shanghai (56).

The Players Championship gets 80 points as the PGA Tour’s flagship event. That was followed by The Barclays and Deutsche Bank Championship (74), the BMW Championship (70), Memorial (68), and the Northern Trust Open and Tour Championship (62).

Along with attracting the best from all over the world - the top 28 players in the world are PGA Tour members - it is helped immensely in the ranking by the FedEx Cup playoffs. Those events are nearly as strong as WGCs. An argument could be made that The Barclays features the strongest field of any PGA Tour event, including The Players Championship. It might not have as many players from the top 50 or top 100 in the world ranking, but it has the top 125 players based on current form. Take a bow, Nick Watney.

TIME TO RECHARGE Before winning his final event of the year at Sherwood, Graeme McDowell talked all week about how badly he was in need of a 10-week break. He feels he made a mistake by playing the first FedEx Cup playoff event, and that he was out of gas even in the high-charged atmosphere of the Ryder Cup. And that concerned him. He says he played so much this year that he lost an estimated 10 percent of what he calls his “buzziness.” “I love the sport. I love to play,” he said. “But too much a good thing ... you start going through the motions. I don’t want to be like that. I want to get my excitement level up for the game.”

McDowell wants to cut back on his schedule, aiming for about 26 tournaments a year on two tours. But where to cut back is going to difficult, for there are too many good tournaments, especially at the end of the year. “The end of the year has become a joke,” he said. “It’s almost too much golf.” Being among the top 50 in the world and having Europe as his home tour (meaning he doesn’t need releases from the PGA Tour), McDowell said he gets to cherry-pick the tournaments he plays. But there are so many important events to him that he can’t get to some places he would like to play. That includes the Memorial at Muirfield Village.

“I’m dying to go there,” McDowell said. “But I looked at the schedule and, nope, I can’t go.” To play Muirfield Village would mean four straight weeks in three countries, and no doubt would cost him plenty of “business.”

BIGGEST TROPHY The iGATE CEO Cup thinks so much of its new tournament - executives of Global 2000 companies in North America on Jan. 12-13 on the Stadium Course at the TPC Sawgrass - that it wanted a trophy to mark the occasion. So it commissioned the largest gold sports trophy in the world, even bigger than the FIFA World Cup trophy. Designed by India-based sculptor Amit Pabuwal, the iGATE CEO Cup trophy will be 21 inches tall, weigh 18 pounds of gold and be adorned with diamonds and rubies. The World Cup trophy is more than 14 inches tall and weighs 11 pounds. “The iGATE CEO Cup is a premier event and we should have a trophy that a CEO will be proud to life,” iGATE chief executive Phaneesh Murthy said. Gary Player is the co-host of the $100,000 event, with the CEOs donating all the prize money to their chosen charities.—AP

An overview of the National Stadium

GCC fans get chance to support Gulf Cup teams free of charge BAHRAIN: Football fans from across the GCC will have the opportunity to attend next month’s Gulf Cup, scheduled from January 5 to 18, and support its teams free of charge, the organising committee announced yesterday.

In a first-of-its-kind initiative, the gates of the National Stadiums and Khalifa Sports City Stadium that will host the tournament matches will be open for everyone wishing to witness the action with absolutely no charging fees. The decision was in compliance with the directives of Supreme Council for Youth and Sports chairman and organising committee chairman Sheikh Nasser bin Hamad Al Khalifa, aimed to provide all means of success to the much-awaited football competition in the Gulf region.

Sheikh Nasser

Gulf Cup logo

10 days remaining for tournament kick-off.

The committee reviewed technical reports submitted by the General Organization for Youth and Sports and companies overseeing the projects at the National Stadium and Sheikh Khalifa City Stadium, as well as the training stadiums of the Bahrain Football Association, Al Ahli Club, Al Najma Club, Askar Club and Hamad Town.

The committee also reviewed reports and procedures of the stadiums committee, which included all of the preparations related to the main stadiums hosting the matches, well as the teams’ training sessions stadiums.

The meeting also highlighted the results of the last inspection visit of the GCC Inspection Committee, which were positive due to the completion of work on time and up to the standards required by FIFA. Meanwhile, the technical meeting for the GCC team have been scheduled for January 4, just 24 hours before tournament kick-off. A special ceremony for the delegations VIPs will be held on January 10, at the Regency Hotel, while the organising committee decided to hold the general meeting for delegations dig-

Field Marshal Sheikh Khalifa

nitaries on January 14 at the Regency Hotel.

Executive Committee members were also briefed by tournament director Ahmed Al Nuaimi on the working committees’ progress, which includes the Technical Committee, the Media Committee, the stadiums Committee, the hospitality and accommodation committee, the Public Relations Committee, the ceremonies committee and the transportation committee.

At the next meeting will be held on Sunday. The executive committee consists of Sheikh Abdulla bin Rashid Al Khalifa, Abdulrahman Askar, Khalid Al Khayyat, Yousif Jassim, Jehad Khalfan, Dr. Saeed Al Yamani, Jaffer Al Qassab, Mohammed Abdulraheem, Ahmed Al Nuaimi and Mohammed Mujbil.

Sheikh Salman, meanwhile, will tour the National Stadium today at 12pm afternoon to inspect the completion of maintenance of the facilities.

Representatives of the Shura Council, Parliament Council, Works Ministr y, the General Organization for Youth and Sports, along with Al Nuaimi, will also visit these facilities today.

Gulf Cup mascot

Na Yeon Choi

Sheikh Nasser’s generous gesture was announced by Executive Committee chairman Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa during the 10th meeting of the committee.

Sheikh Salman noted the constructive cooperation of the Bahrain Defence Force, headed by Commander-in-Chief Field Marshal Sheikh Khalifa bin Ahmed Al Khalifa, with the organising committee.

Sheikh Salman added that this co-operation underlines the community partnership between different governmental parties in the k ingdom, and their keenness to Bahrain’s success in hosting this major regional gathering. The meeting also reviewed latest arrangements and plans overseen by the committee with less than

Sheikh Salman chairs the executive committee meeting.

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2012

S P ORT S

Boxing for bread: A forgotten story from Auschwitz WARSAW: The memory of Prisoner Number 77 still brings hope to the heart of Auschwitz survivor Tadeusz Sobolewicz as he remembers how his friend boxed for bread in the notorious Nazi German camp.

The story of fellow inmate and boxer Tadeusz Pietrzykowski has been all but forgotten nearly seven decades after the end of World War II. The very idea of sport at Auschwitz seems preposterous.

The camp was set up by the Nazis in southern Poland after their 1939 invasion to hold and kill Polish political prisoners, and was to become a hub of the Holocaust, during which the Nazis murdered six million Jews.

Polish author Marta Bogacka, in a new book “The Auschwitz Boxer”, has brought the story of Pietrzykowski, little known outside Poland, back into the spotlight. To Sobolewicz, 89, it still seems like yesterday.

“The first bout took place on a Sunday in March 1941 next to the Auschwitz kitchens between Tadeusz Pietrzykowski and the German ‘kapo’ Walter Dunning,” he told AFP, using the term for the common criminals deployed by the Nazis as overseers. A rumour went around that Dunning, a former middleweight professional who had fallen foul of the law, was looking for an opponent in

exchange for a loaf of bread and some margarine.

Pietrzykowski, a pre-war bantamweight at the boxing club Legia Warsaw, rose to the challenge.

“Teddy, as the Polish media nicknamed him before the war, must have weighed about 45 kilos (99 pounds), and Walter around 70 (154 pounds),” Sobolewicz said. In peacetime, the maximum fighting weight in Pietrzykowski’s category was 54 kilos, and 75 kilos in Dunning’s.

In June 1940 Pietrzykowski had been on the first train convoy of 700 Polish political prisoners deported to Auschwitz-a former army barracks in the city of Oswiecim.

“So he was already very thin after eight months of backbreaking work and malnutrition,” Sobolewicz said. “He was the smaller of the two, but he was agile and fast. He had an incredible punch, aimed right for the stomach, and knew how to duck his opponent’s blows. He won the fight and got his bread and margarine. You have to admit that the Germans kept their promise.” More fights were to follow.

Pietrzykowski threw himself into them, knowing full well that he risked death by starvation. For his fellow inmates, every blow he struck was a source of pride and hope. “We were elated. We said to ourselves, ‘As long as there’s a Pole punching a German in the face, Poland’s not finished’,” Sobolewicz said.

The SS placed bets on bouts After Germany’s defeat by the Soviets at the Battle of Stalingrad in early 1943, the camp guards from the Nazis’ notorious SS sought ways to forget that the tide of the war was turning, Sobolewicz said. They watched the matches-pitting prisoners amongst themselves as well as against the kapos-and placed bets.

After the first scratch bouts, the camp authorities let the boxers build a proper ring and allowed them to make gloves, according to Bogacka’s research. Pietrzykowski notched up some 40 fights, and around 20 more after he was transferred to the Neuengamme camp in northern Germany in 1943. He survived the war, passing away in 1991 in Bielsko-Biala in southern Poland.

His most celebrated Auschwitz match was against Schally Hottenach, a 96-kilo German. He won with a second-round knockout. That bout inspired the 1963 film “The Boxer and Death” by Slovak director Peter Solan.

Auschwitz’s twin camp of Birkenau was purpose-built nearby in 1942. Jews from across Europe-often told by the Nazis that they were being “resettled” in the East-were sent there direc tly by train to be murdered in its gas chambers.

The new arrivals had a meagre chance of sur-

viving thanks to the “selection”, where the SS picked out individuals deemed suitable for forced labour because of their peacetime professions.

Boxers were on the list Jewish middleweight Salamo Barouch, from Greece, was one who survived as a result, though he is not known to have faced Pietrzykowski in the ring. The camp also saw football matches.

“The kapos wanted to amuse themselves. They played football amongst themselves, but taking on players of a different nationality had an extra edge,” said Kazimierz Albin, who escaped in February 1943 and joined the Polish resistance.

“And for us, being on the team meant getting extra food rations and getting given lighter forced labour, so it was a chance to survive,” recalled Albin, 90. Adam Cyra, a historian at the AuschwitzBirkenau Memorial and Museum, said a football pitch was set up to the right of the Birkenau trainramp. “For people who were about to die, the vision of prisoners playing football against the kapos was meant to be reassuring,” he said.

A million Jews perished at Auschwitz-Birkenau, along with tens of thousands of others including Poles, Roma and Soviet prisoners of war, between 1940 and its liberation by the Red Army in January 1945. — AFP

Big money, but is China worth it?

MECHELEN: Mechelen’s Xavier Chen is honored by his teammates after the Jupiler Pro League match between KV Mechelen and KAA Gent during the Belgian football championship. — AFP

Long Run reclaims King George crown KEMPTON PARK: Long Run became only the seventh horse to reclaim the prestigious King George VI Chase crown as he edged Captain Chris by a neck in a thrilling finish here yesterday.

The seven-year-old gelding - ridden as ever by Sam Waley-Cohen - was always prominent but a terrible mistake five from home looked to be costly in the gruelling contest raced on heavy ground.

However, Waley-Cohen - who rode him both to King George and Cheltenham Gold Cup glory in the 2010/11 season - conjured up a terrific last effort from the 15-8 favourite after jumping the last to get past 16/1 shot Captain Chris, who looked to have won the prize after finishing third last year. Grands Crus finished third at 7/1 while long time pacesetter Champions Court ran a cracking race to end up fourth.

Long Run joins such greats as Kauto Star

and Desert Orchid in regaining the crown after relinquishing it the year before. “He was so brave!” gasped Waley-Cohen, who is a dentist by profession. “I had to keep asking him questions but he reacted courageously. He really is a brave lad!” added the 30-year-old. Waley-Cohen’s father Robert, the owner of Long Run, said that it had been a wonderful experience. “Well there was no Kauto Star (who had been paraded before the races temporarily taking time off his new duties as a dressage horse) but he still had to win it and it is fantastic, wonderful,” beamed Waley-Cohen, who was draped in a scarf in the colours of his star.

The winning trainer Nicky Henderson admitted his heart was in his mouth when Waley-Cohen set sail for home five fences out. “Both horse and rider covered themselves in glory and guts in spades,” said the 62-year-old. —AP

Cardiff sink Palace to boost promotion push LONDON: Cardiff boosted their bid to reach the Premier League with a 2-1 win over promotion rivals Crystal Palace yesterday. Malky Mackay’s side moved five points clear at the top of the Championship thanks to Aron Gunnarsson’s second half winner as the Bluebirds came from behind to see off Palace at the Cardiff City Stadium.

The visitors had made a superb start when Australia midfielder Mile Jedinak fired home in the fourth minute, but Craig Noone equalised on the stroke of half-time. Cardiff’s goal led a charmed life with Arsenal and Manchester United transfer target Wilfried Zaha hitting the bar, but half-time substitute Gunnarsson helped turn the tide for the Bluebirds.

And that pressure paid off in the 73rd minute when Gunnarsson rose to head in Craig Bellamy’s right-footed corner via the underside of the bar. Palace’s defeat dropped

Aron Gunnarsson

Ian Holloway’s team to fourth place, two points behind second placed Hull and one behind Middlesbrough in third.

Hull were frustrated by former boss Nigel Pearson as the hosts had to settle for a 0-0 draw against Leicester at the KC Stadium. The Tigers came closest to scoring when striker Jay Simpson saw a shot cleared off the line by Richie De Laet in the first half.

Fifth-placed Leicester have now failed to score in their last three matches.

Middlesbrough bounced back from Saturday’s defeat at Leeds to keep their automatic promotion hopes alive with a 1-0 win over Blackburn at the Riverside Stadium.

Polish striker Lukas Jutkiewicz struck for the second successive game with a clinical low finish from the edge of the penalty area to lift Tony Mowbray’s side to within a point of Hull.

Blackburn, who have now won only once under manager Henning Berg in 10 matches, were made to pay for missed chances and continue to slide down the table after securing just one point from their last six fixtures.

Watford remain in the final play-off place after their match at Bristol City was postponed at the last minute due to a waterlogged pitch.

Billy Sharp struck twice as Nottingham Forest turned on the style either side of halftime to send in-form Leeds spiralling to a 4-2 defeat at the City Ground. Forest, who had slipped to 11th place after taking only four points from their previous five matches, equalised when Sharp converted a late firsthalf penalty to cancel out Paul Green’s early opener for Leeds.

Sharp fired his second of the game soon after the restart and a three-goal blitz in nine minutes - Rodolph Austin scored a clumsy own goal and Dexter Blackstock headed home the fourth - stunned the visitors.

Elsewhere, Sheffield Wednesday maintained their recent revival with a 1-0 win at Bolton, while Peterborough improved their hopes of avoiding relegation thanks to a 3-0 victory at Wolves. Burnley beat Derby 2-0, Ipswich won 2-1 at Charlton, Birmingham defeated Barnsley 2-1 and Huddersfield drew 1-1 with Blackpool. — AFP

SHANGHAI: If Frank Lampard is to swap Chelsea for China, he might do well to first consider the colorful experiences of his former team-mates Nicolas Anelka and Didier Drogba.

Pay disputes, off-pitch rows and an alien culture have seen many of the foreign stars to have joined the Chinese Super League beating down the door to get out again, sometimes months after arriving, after being unable to settle. Former France striker Anelka became the first genuine world football figure to play in China when he was snapped up by Shanghai Shenhua for a widely reported 175,000 pounds ($283,000) a week 10 months ago. He was joined in Shanghai in the summer by Drogba, who signed for an eye -watering 200,000 pounds a week.

But the 33-year-old Anelka quickly saw his move turn sour and is in talks with the club to leave, with reports suggesting Drogba might go with him. Drogba is yet to receive his salary for December because of a boardroom row, said the Oriental Sports Daily, while Shenhua told AFP that talks are under way with Anelka to cancel the remaining year of his mammoth contract.

Drogba has at least been a hit on the pitch, scoring eight goals in 11 games for a side that finished the recent season ninth out of 16 teams. Anelka netted only three goals all season. It is a far cry from the fanfare that greeted Anelka-who has not always endeared himself to supporters during his nomadic career-upon arrival in February. He insisted he was not going to China just for the money.

Things soon unravelled. The Shenhua head coach, former Fulham boss Jean Tigana, was sacked following a player revolt after just five games in charge. The taciturn and media-shy Anelka-dubbed “Le Sulk” in England-was probably as surprised as anyone to be given the chance to replace Tigana in the hot seat.

Weeks later Anelka was making headlines again by threatening to quit Shenhua-whose middle-aged owner gives himself a game occasionally-after the club asked the Frenchman to make way for former Argentina manager Sergio Batista. And then there is the strange case of the Argentine Dario Conca. The attacking midfielder, voted the league player of the year in Brazil for two years in a row at Fluminense, has followed that up with consecutive Chinese championships at Guangzhou Evergrande.

Didier Drogba He joined Guangzhou in the summer of 2011 for a Chinese record $10 million transfer fee, on a three-year deal worth a staggering $1.3 million a month, according to the Sina Sports website. Now he too looks set for the exit door.

Last month he left a note with the club saying “I’ve gone and I’m not coming back”. He told Sina Sports that he was unhappy at the “many strange things which go on here”, but did not elaborate and remains in dispute with the club.

It’s not only the current crop of international stars who have run aground in China.

Perhaps most famously was the case of former England, Spurs and Lazio midfielder Paul Gascoigne, who joined Gansu Tianma in 2003 but left after four games saying he wasn’t getting paid-Anelka and Drogba might sympathise.

Lampard, 34, who is yet to be offered a new contract with Chelsea and has been heavily linked with a lucrative move to China next season, might like to have a word with Ian Walker, a coach at Shanghai Shenhua.

The former Spurs goalkeeper has spoken openly about the difficulty of settling into a wholly unfamiliar culture on the other side of

the planet. “The worst thing is the food,” he said recently. “I haven’t been served any dog yet. They tell me they don’t do that anymorebut I did have a very suspicious burger once.

“There’s the heat and the humidity, which I found tough at first. And it’s dangerous crossing the road. Forget zebra crossings; that’s not an option here. Just try to dodge the cars. It’s very noisy, too, because everyone beeps their horn every five seconds,” he told the South China Morning Post.

He added: “I used to go out, but not that much. I’m quite happy to sit at home and watch TV. There’s one sports channel luckily.

Even though it’s Chinese it has all the football and tennis and motor racing.”

Success stories of players coming from Europe’s top leagues are few. Former Everton and Blackburn striker Yakubu scored nine goals in 14 appearances for Guangzhou R&F last season, which saw members of the city’s large expat African population regularly cheering the team alongside locals.

The former Aston Villa, Nottingham Forest and West Ham striker Marlon Harewood also enjoyed a successful spell at Guangzhou R&F, scoring four times before opting to return to England after just 10 games in 2011. — AFP

Racist fans shame Russia ahead of 2018 World Cup MOSCOW: Racist behavior by football fans in Russia is damaging the country’s attempts to seek international respect for the increasingly big money domestic game ahead of its hosting of the 2018 World Cup. A supporters’ group for Russian champions Zenit Saint Petersburg provoked outrage this month by publicly urging the club not to sign any black players. Yet officials and clubs seem reluctant to acknowledge the scale of the problem.

The Russian Premier League has in recent seasons seen an unprecedented influx of foreign talent-often from Africa or South America-that has sharply raised its profile abroad. But in scenes reminiscent of Britain in the 1970s, players from Africa and South America still face monkey chants and brandishing of bananas. “Whenever we played Zenit and Spartak Moscow, they were constantly shouting ‘ooh,ooh’. They were comparing me to a monkey,” Liberian midfielder Sekou Oliseh, who plays for CSKA Moscow, told Sport Express daily. Hardcore “Ultras” openly take part in an annual nationalist march although this year the Russian Football Union urged fans not to go.

This month, Zenit fan group Landskrona asked the club not to sign black or gay players or those from South America, apparently referring to star Brazilian striker Hulk and Belgian midfielder Axel Witsel, whose father originated from Martinique.

Zenit director of spor ts Dietmar Beiersdorfer swiftly insisted: “We make our player selections without any limitation

regarding origin, religion or skin color.” Yury Fedotov, head of Zenit’s security service, reacted angrily when asked if racism was a problem. “I categorically reject the message that racism is in any way characteristic of Zenit,” he told AFP, criticising the media for blowing out of proportion the opinion of “a small group of fans.”

But many felt officials did not go far enough. “The manifesto is just another proof of complete anarchy in Russian football,” wrote a commentator in liberal business daily Vedomosti.

“Fans are openly declaring the racial purity of their club, and the leaders of the Russian Football Union and the Russian Football Premier League don’t even make a statement.” Anzhi Makhachkala defender Christopher Samba, who is black, told BBC Five live radio: “Everybody knows Zenit supporters are no good and racist.”

“Unfortunately, the incident at Zenit once again shows, that the Russian FA still has a way to go in its fight against racism”, FIFPro players’ union spokesperson on anti-racism, Tony Higgins, said in a statement.

‘If Russia wants to be the perfect host for the 2018 FIFA World Cup, then it will have to do its utmost to guarantee that players will not be racially abused.” Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko played down the impact of racism in football earlier this year.

“We have no out-and-out problems. Yes, there are incidents, but they are noted. Every one is investigated. The stadiums and the people who let them happen are punished.”

Zenit was fined 300,000 rubles ($9,732) last year when a fan brandished a banana at Anzhi’s Roberto Carlos, although the club claimed it was a misunderstanding.

“Someone shoved (the fan) from behind and to avoid dropping the banana, he held it through the railings,” the head of Zenit’s legal department, Pavel Pivovarov, told a recent roundtable on fan control.

Racists boo wealthy Anzhi-based in the Muslim region of Dagestan-not just over star striker Samuel Eto’o from Cameroon, but simply because they hate Russians from the North Caucasus.

At a Europa League group match in October, the director of Anzhi’s legal department Mikhail Margulis said: “I saw how fans of other Moscow teams tried to destabilise it.

They shouted nasty things, things against the Caucasus.”

In December 2010, fans ran amok in central Moscow, beating up those from the North Caucasus after men from the region allegedly shot dead a Spartak Moscow fan in a fight. Twenty-nine were injured.

Strongman Russian leader Vladimir Putin responded by meeting fans and visiting the fan’s grave. “I don’t think that we have more or less of those racist elements,” Alexander Meitin, the security chief of the Russian Football Premier League, told AFP. “We have exactly the same problem as in England. All over the world this is an illness that the UEFA and the FA are fighting and issuing punishments for. We are not an exception.” —AFP

19

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2012

SPORTS

O’Driscoll axed by Forest’s Kuwaiti owners LONDON: Nottingham Forest’s Kuwaiti owners made the shock decision to sack manager Sean O’Driscoll yesterday just hours after the Championship club’s 4-2 win over Leeds.

Former European champions Forest moved to within touching distance of the play-off places in English football’s second tier thanks to their victory at the City Ground, but it wasn’t enough to save O’Driscoll’s job.

Chairman Fawaz Al Hasawi said: “We cannot speak highly enough of Sean as a man. He was appointed at an extremely difficult time for the club and can

count himself unlucky to have lost his job with the team just one point away from the top six. “But we have a responsibility to look to the future for this great club because we have huge ambitions for it.”

O’Driscoll, who left League One club Crawley in pre-season to take over at the City Ground, had taken Forest to eighth in the table, but he paid the price for failing to immediately fulfill the ambitions of Al Hasawi and co-owner Abdulaziz Al Hasawi.

The Kuwaiti pair made the move because they want a manager with

Everton 2 (Osman 52, Jagielka 77) Wigan 1 (Kone 82); Fulham 1 (Berbatov 8) Southampton 1 (Lambert 85-pen); Man Utd 4 (Evans 25, Evra 58, Van Persie 71, Hernandez 90) Newcastle 3 (Perch 4, Evans 28-og, Cisse 68); Norwich 0, Chelsea 1 (Mata 38); QPR 1 (Cisse 68) West Brom 2 (Brunt 29, Green 49-og); Reading 0, Swansea 0; Sunderland 1 (Johnson 53) Man City 0.

Division Two Aldershot 2, Bristol Rovers 2; Bradford 2, Accrington 1; Burton 3, Rochdale 2; Cheltenham 4, Wycombe 0; Chesterfield 3, York 0; Dagenham and Redbridge 0, Southend 3; Exeter 1, Oxford 3; Fleetwood Town 1, Morecambe 0; Gillingham 0, Barnet 1; Plymouth 1, Torquay 1; Rotherham 1, Port Vale 2.

English Football League results Championship Barnsley 1, Birmingham 2; Bolton 0, Sheffield Wednesday 1; Burnley 2, Derby 0; Cardiff 2, Crystal Palace 1; Charlton 1, Ipswich 2; Huddersfield 1, Blackpool 1; Hull 0, Leicester 0; Middlesbrough 1, Blackburn 0; Nottingham Forest 4, Leeds 2; Wolves 0, Peterborough 3.

Scottish Premier League results Dundee Utd 1 (Gunning 2) St Johnstone 1 (McLean 47-og); Hibernian 0, Ross County 1 (Brittain 57); Inverness CT 2 (Shinnie 38, Foran 67) St Mirren 2 (Imrie 2, Thompson 55); Kilmarnock 1 (Kelly 27-pen) Hearts 0; Motherwell 4 (Hateley 9, Murphy 31, 45, Higdon 55) Aberdeen 1 (Hayes 34).

Scottish Football League results First Division Dunfermline 0, Falkirk 1; Hamilton 3, Airdrie 0; Partick 1, Morton 2.

Second Division Brechin 3, Arbroath 2; Albion 2, Ayr 0; Queen of the South 4, Stranraer 1.

Third Division Rangers 3, Clyde 0.

English Premier League table after yesterday’s matches (played, won, drawn, lost, goals for, goals against, points): Man Utd Man City Chelsea Everton West Brom Arsenal Tottenham Liverpool Swansea Stoke Norwich West Ham Sunderland Fulham Newcastle Aston Villa Southampton Wigan Reading QPR

19 19 18 19 19 18 18 18 19 18 19 18 19 19 19 18 18 19 19 19

48 34 37 32 28 32 30 27 27 15 20 22 20 29 23 15 23 19 21 16

28 16 17 23 23 18 25 23 23 13 28 22 24 34 30 32 34 35 37 33

46 39 35 33 33 30 30 25 25 25 25 23 22 21 20 18 16 15 10 10

English Football League tables Championship Cardiff 24 16 2 6 46 Hull 24 14 3 7 35 Middlesbrough 24 14 2 8 41 Crystal Palace 24 12 7 5 45 Leicester 24 11 5 8 37 Watford 23 11 4 8 41 Millwall 24 10 7 7 37 Nottingham 24 9 9 6 34 Leeds 24 10 5 9 37 Brighton 23 8 10 5 31 Blackpool 24 8 9 7 41 Derby 24 9 6 9 36 Burnley 24 9 6 9 38 Wolves 24 9 4 11 31 Huddersfield 24 8 7 9 30 Bolton 24 7 8 9 36 Blackburn 23 7 8 8 29 Charlton 24 7 8 9 29 Birmingham 24 7 8 9 32 Ipswich 24 7 6 11 25 Sheff Wed 24 7 3 14 28 Peterborough 24 7 1 16 33 Barnsley 24 5 6 13 24 Bristol City 23 5 4 14 33

29 27 31 31 22 31 33 30 40 23 34 36 39 33 37 38 32 32 38 45 40 44 38 46

50 45 44 43 38 37 37 36 35 34 33 33 33 31 31 29 29 29 29 27 24 22 21 19

Division One Sheffield Utd Tranmere Brentford Doncaster Swindon Milton Bournemouth Crawley Town Stevenage Notts County Coventry Yeovil Crewe Preston Leyton Orient Walsall Oldham Carlisle Shrewsbury Colchester Portsmouth Bury Scunthorpe Hartlepool

18 24 23 22 18 21 33 34 32 24 31 37 30 28 26 39 32 43 34 38 35 38 43 43

46 44 44 43 39 39 38 38 37 36 34 33 33 31 31 29 26 26 24 23 21 21 20 9

24 24 23 23 23 23 23 24 23 23 24 24 23 24 22 24 24 23 24 24 23 24 23 23

15 11 10 8 10 8 9 6 6 5 6 6 5 5 5 4 4 4 1 1

12 12 12 13 11 11 10 11 10 9 9 10 9 7 10 7 7 7 5 6 5 4 5 1

1 6 5 9 3 6 3 7 7 10 7 5 7 6 5 6 4 3 7 7

10 8 8 4 6 6 8 5 7 9 7 3 6 10 1 8 5 5 9 5 6 9 5 6

3 2 3 2 6 4 6 5 6 3 6 7 7 8 9 8 10 12 11 11

2 4 3 6 6 6 5 8 6 5 8 11 8 7 11 9 12 11 10 13 12 11 13 16

34 40 36 33 37 33 40 33 31 35 41 36 29 33 25 30 24 31 29 24 28 25 24 15

Division Two Gillingham 23 Port Vale 23 Cheltenham 24 Southend 24 Bradford 23 Rotherham 23 Fleetwood 23 Burton Albion 24 Chesterfield 24 Exeter 23 Northampton 23 Torquay 23 Rochdale 24 Dagenham 23 York 23 Oxford Utd 23 Morecambe 23 Accrington 24 Wycombe 23 Plymouth 24 Barnet 24 Aldershot 24 AFC Wimbledon 22 Bristol Rovers 23

13 12 12 11 11 11 9 10 9 10 9 8 9 8 7 8 7 7 7 5 5 5 5 4

6 7 6 7 6 4 9 6 8 4 6 9 6 7 9 5 6 6 5 9 7 7 4 7

for the players we bought in to settle but that process has taken longer than we anticipated,” Fawaz Al Hasawi said.

“We feel we have developed a really strong squad of players but are still searching for consistency in terms of team performance, underlined by the fact that we have not won more than two games in succession in the Championship this season.

“And with the January transfer window approaching, we feel it’s the right time to make a change. “We are looking to bring in an ambitious manager with Premier League experience.”

Abdulaziz Al Hasawi was at The City Ground for yesterday’s game against Leeds and had earlier described it has a great victory. But within hours O’Driscoll was gone, with even Al Hasawi admitting the move was sure to create controversy.

“The timing of our decision may look a little odd after the win over Leeds but sometimes you need to make changes with the long term future in mind,” he said. “Sometimes those changes need to be made from a position of strength rather than weakness and that is what we are trying to do.”—AFP

Mata’s winner sinks Norwich

Soccer results/standings

Division One Bournemouth 3, Yeovil 0; Carlisle 3, Hartlepool 0; Colchester 1, Brentford 3; Milton Keynes Dons 2, Walsall 4; Oldham 1, Doncaster 2; Portsmouth 1, Crawley 2; Preston 0, Bury 0; Sheffield Utd 3, Scunthorpe 0; Shrewsbury 2, Notts County 2; Stevenage 1, Coventry 3; Tranmere 2, Crewe 1.

“Premier League experience” to lead Forest into the top flight this season.

Before beating Leeds, Forest had slipped away from the top six after winning just one of their previous six matches.

That wasn’t good enough for Forest’s owners, who are determined to restore the club to its former glory. Forest won the European Cup under legendary manager Brian Clough in 1979 and 1980 and lifted the old First Division title in 1978.

“We knew when we bought the club in the summer that it would take time

4 4 6 6 6 8 5 8 7 9 8 6 9 8 7 10 10 11 11 10 12 12 13 12

Scottish Premier League table Celtic 18 11 4 3 Inverness CT 19 8 8 3 Motherwell 19 8 6 5 Hibernian 19 8 4 7 Aberdeen 19 7 6 6 Hearts 19 6 7 6 St Johnstone 19 6 7 6 Dundee Utd 18 6 6 6 Kilmarnock 18 6 5 7 St Mirren 19 5 5 9 Ross County 19 3 9 7 Dundee 18 3 3 12

41 47 36 41 35 36 31 35 32 34 37 30 40 34 30 34 29 28 27 28 23 22 24 26

21 25 32 23 25 33 22 34 27 35 31 27 40 32 34 38 32 37 36 33 38 38 41 46

45 43 42 40 39 37 36 36 35 34 33 33 33 31 30 29 27 27 26 24 22 22 19 19

37 42 31 30 24 20 22 27 28 23 20 12

14 33 26 28 21 21 25 27 24 32 30 35

37 32 30 28 27 25 25 24 23 20 18 12

Scottish Football League tables First Division Partick 15 10 2 3 35 Morton 16 9 5 2 35 Dunfermline 16 9 3 4 35 Falkirk 16 6 5 5 22 Livingston 15 6 5 4 23 Raith 15 5 6 4 23 Hamilton 15 4 4 7 17 Cowdenbeath 15 3 5 7 19 Airdrie Utd 16 3 3 10 17 Dumbarton 13 1 2 10 11

13 21 17 19 21 21 21 25 39 40

32 32 30 23 23 21 16 14 12 5

Second Division Queen of South 16 13 2 1 Alloa 16 10 2 4 Forfar 16 7 2 7 Brechin 15 7 1 7 East Fife 16 6 2 8 Arbroath 16 5 5 6 Stenhousemuir 16 4 7 5 Ayr 15 5 2 8 Stranraer 16 4 3 9 Albion 16 4 2 10

37 31 30 27 25 26 28 22 19 22

9 17 33 26 23 33 33 27 34 32

41 32 23 22 20 20 19 17 15 14

Third Division Rangers Elgin Queen’s Park Montrose Peterhead Berwick Annan Athletic Clyde East Stirling Stirling

47 35 22 30 17 24 27 16 22 24

13 29 16 31 17 26 34 25 38 35

39 27 23 23 22 19 17 16 14 13

16 12 3 1 16 7 6 3 14 6 5 3 16 6 5 5 16 6 4 6 15 5 4 6 16 4 5 7 15 5 1 9 15 4 2 9 15 4 1 10

Norwich 0

Chelsea 1

NORWICH: Juan Mata was the Chelsea match-winner after his goal turned out to be enough to defeat Norwich City 1-0 at Carrow Road yesterday. The Spain international broke the deadlock seven minutes before half-time to record his 13th goal of the season.

It turned out to be a valuable one as Rafa Benitez’s side were able to close the gap on Manchester City, beaten 1-0 at Sunderland, in second place. Chelsea are now four points behind last season’s title winners, and have a game in hand.

There was no place in the Chelsea starting line-up for either Frank Lampard or Eden Hazard even though both had scored in Sunday’s 8-0 victory over Aston Villa, a record defeat for the Midlands side.

John Obi Mikel and Oscar replaced them at a time when a newspaper report had stated that Lampard, whose contract expires at the end of the season, had been told by the Chelsea hierarchy that he must find a new club in January.

It took a while for either side to fashion a chance and the first fell to Norwich but Alex Tettey miscued his effort from the edge of the box so much the ball ended up going out for a throw-in.

Chelsea’s reply, which took 10 minutes to arrive, was hardly more impressive as David Luiz, playing in a defensive midfield role, blasted a

long range effort well over the Norwich crossbar.

Mata saw a shot blocked by Sebastien Bassong as Chelsea began to threaten. Luiz’s ball reached Ashley Cole on the left of the City box but Michael Turner was in quickly to block.

Another Luiz ball set Mata up on the other side of the Norwich box but the Spain midfielder fired wide of Mark Bunn’s near post and found only the side-netting. Mikel fired another shot over the bar following an elaborate build-up and Chelsea finally broke the deadlock in the 38th minute when Mata received the ball from Oscar and beat Bunn from 20 yards with a perfectlyplaced shot.

Cole fired wide early in the second half and Fernando Torres, who had been very quiet, soon saw a shot on the turn blocked by a defender. Victor Moses was next to have ago but the angle was tight on the left of the box and Bunn was able to save.

Home hopes were boosted by a fine interchange between Wes Hoolahan and Grant Holt but the latter fired across goal and wide, and the flag was up for offside anyway.

It was not long before Norwich were back under pressure but Bunn made a comfortable save to keep out Mata’s free-kick from 30 yards out and once again the goalkeeper was not required when Luiz blasted another long-ranger metres over his crossbar.

Moses could have made it 2-0 in the 68th minute when he chested down a cross from the right Cesar Azpilicueta to elude his marker but his first-time shot ended up thumping into an advertising hoarding rather than the net.

LONDON: Norwich City’s English midfielder Jonny Howson (right) and Chelsea’s Brazilian defender David Luiz (left) jump for the ball during the English Premier League football match.—AFP Azpilicueta was hurt at the other end as Bradley Johnson challenged with a high boot before Lampard replaced Mikel in the 73rd minute and Johnson was booked for a clear dive moments before being replaced by Jonny Howson.

Bunn made another quality save to deny Hazard, who had come on for Moses in the 79th minute, after a clever back-heel from Torres had opened up the Norwich defence on

the left. Hazard, on as a substitute, was then booked for a cynical trip on Russell Martin.

Cole had to hack the ball away for a corner in front of his own goal as Norwich piled on some late pressure and Bassong headed over from the resulting corner. It was too little too late for the Canaries and Chelsea were not troubled again before the final whistle.—AFP

Everton extend unbeaten streak

LONDON: Fulham’s English midfielder Steve Sidwell (left) vies with Southampton’s English defender Nathaniel Clyne (right) during the English Premier League football match.—AP

Lambert late show rescues Saints Fulham 1

Southampton 1

LONDON: Rickie Lambert lashed home an 85th-minute penalty to rescue a 1-1 draw for Southampton at Fulham on Wednesday that helped Nigel Adkins’ side keep their noses above the Premier League relegation zone.

Dimitar Berbatov had put the hosts ahead in the eighth minute at Craven Cottage and the London club were on course for only a second win in 11 games until Chris Baird’s handball allowed Lambert to level from the spot.

The draw left the Saints a point above the bottom three in 17th place, with Fulham slipping to 14th. Fulham had already seen Steve Sidwell shoot narrowly wide from 20 yards

when Berbatov broke the deadlock, helping the ball over the line after visiting goalkeeper Kelvin Davis had taken the sting out of Sascha Riether’s cross. The Bulgarian celebrated by revealing a T-shirt that bore the slogan ‘Keep Calm and Pass the Ball to Me,’ and earned a booking for his trouble.

The former Manchester United striker then headed off-target following a sweeping move, before Jack Cork reacted for the visitors with a powerful effort that was well fielded by Fulham goalkeeper Mark Schwarzer.

Jason Puncheon threatened for Southampton early in the second period but a point seemed destined to elude them until former Saints star Baird handled the ball under pressure from Lambert at a corner.

Schwarzer got a glove to Lambert’s spot-kick, but the power on the ball took it past him.

Close-season signing Gaston Ramirez almost gave Southampton all three points with a swerving effort that caused Schwarzer a moment of unease, while Sidwell flashed a volley wide at the death.—AFP

LIVERPOOL: Everton extended their unbeaten run to seven matchEverton 2 es on Wednesday beating struggling Wigan 21 to move into fourth Wigan 1 place in the table. Goals

by Leon Osman and fellow England international Phil Jagielka Wigan’s coming from Arouna Kone - sees them occupying the fourth and last Champions League spot after just one defeat in their last 16 Premier League games.

Defeat for Wigan leaves them with just four points from their last nine league games and facing another hard slog to escape relegation. David Moyes handed veteran Phil Neville a start - making it the 35-year-old former Manchester United and England fullback’s 500th Premier League appearance while former German international midfielder Thomas Hitzlsperger earned a rare starting spot.

His Wigan counterpart Roberto Martinez restored captain Gary Caldwell to his starting line-up after the Scottish defender recovered from a hamstring injury, with Franco Di Santo dropping to the bench.

Everton had the better of a dull first-half with Nigerian international striker Victor Anichebe letting go from outside the area in the first minute only to see his shot go over the bar. His strike partner Nikica Jelavic sent a header wide while Wigan’s only chance at goal was a long range freekick by Shaun Maloney which was easily saved by Tim Howard.

The hosts started the second-half in terrific shape, Hitzlsperger unleashing a stunning 30-yard strike, which beat Omani goalkeeper Ali Al Habsi but hit the bar, though, it was only the briefest of respites for the visitors. Osman struck in the 52nd minute although his goal had a huge element of luck in that his shot struck Caldwell’s arm and went in past Al Habsi. Wigan then went down the other end and thought they had won a penalty after Maloney was brought down by Osman, but referee Lee Mason turned down their appeals and booked Maloney after he grabbed hold of his shirt to protest his decision. The hosts then looked to have wrapped up the points 13 minutes from time when Neville floated in a super cross and England international Jagielka rose above his marker to head home, helped by the woodwork.

However, Martinez’s side reduced the deficit five minutes later when Jagielka failed to clear the ball and Arouna Kone sneaked in to put the ball past Howard.—AFP

QPR deep in trouble QPR 1

West Brom 2

LONDON: QPR slipped back to the bottom of the Premier League after a dismal display from England goalkeeper Robert Green gifted West Bromwich Albion a controversial 2-1 win at Loftus Road yesterday.

Green allowed Chris Brunt’s longrange strike to elude his weak attempted save in the first half and the former West Ham star then

scored an own goal early in the second half after being challenged by Marc-Antoine Fortune.

QPR protested in vain that Green had been fouled but although the hosts got one back through Djibril Cisse, it was too late to prevent Harry Redknapp’s side slumping back to the foot of the table.

The west Londoners are now six

points from safety, while West Brom climbed to fifth place, keeping their surprise challenge for a place in the Champions League firmly on track.

Kick-off was delayed by 11 minutes after West Brom’s team bus was held up by the shoppers causing heavy traffic around Loftus Road, but it was Green who was handing out all the gifts.—AFP

Australia on top despite Sangakkara’s milestone

Clippers top NBA standings

16

15

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2012

Big money, but is China worth it?

Page 18

LONDON: Manchester United’s Javier Hernandez scores past Newcastle United’s goalkeeper Tim Krul (right) during the English Premier League soccer match at Old Trafford.—AFP

United seven-up after goal thriller Man United 4

Newcastle 3 MANCHESTER: Javier Hernandez’s goal in the 90th minute gave Manchester United a potentially vital 4-3 win over Newcastle United yesterday to give them a sevenpoint Premier League lead.

The Mexican forward slid in to meet Michael Carrick’s right-wing cross with two seconds left on the clock to break the hearts of a Newcastle side who had dreamt of a famous win on at least three

occasions during a pulsating game.

Jonny Evans scored at each end after James Perch had claimed an early opening goal for Alan Pardew’s team, who came to Manchester without an away league victory this season.

Patrice Evra equalised for the home team, as did Robin van Persie, after Papiss Cisse had shot Newcastle into the lead for the third, and final, time. Substitute Samuel Ameobi might have handed the visitors the lead for a fourth time, hitting the post with an 85th-minute shot.

But a breathtaking game may yet come under the scrutiny of the Football Association following the actions of United manager Alex Ferguson as the players waited for the second half to kick off. The veteran Scot marched onto the

pitch to remonstrate with referee Mike Dean, his assistant and fourth official over the decision to award Newcastle’s controversial second goal after 28 minutes.

Evans put the ball into his own goal from Danny Simpson’s cross and although Cisse was in an offside position, Dean allowed the goal to stand after a long discussion with linesman Jake Collin, who had initially flagged for offside.

Newcastle had taken just four minutes to take the lead, thanks to an error by goalkeeper David de Gea and the defenders in front of him, who allowed Demba Ba too much space on the edge of the area after he had pounced on a poor piece of control from Carrick.

The Newcastle forward sent in a low, hard shot that the goalkeeper kept out,

but Perch had the simple task of driving the ball into the gaping net.

With Wayne Rooney and Danny Welbeck absent, through injury and illness respectively, United struggled to carve out a meaningful chance prior to their equaliser on 25 minutes.

Van Persie’s left-wing free-kick was helped into the area by Ryan Giggs, passing through a mass of bodies before arriving at the feet of Hernandez, whose initial shot was well saved by Tim Krul, but the ball broke for Evans to finish.

Sylvain Marveaux hit the bar for Newcastle with a free-kick just before the break but United’s first-half problems persisted, and Ba might have extended the lead when he headed just wide from a Cisse cross.

There had been no sign of the equaliser coming when van Persie pumped in a long 58th-minute ball from the left, but Newcastle failed to clear and Evra planted an impressive 18-yard shot past the dive of Krul.

The lead lasted 10 minutes before Newcastle yet again exposed United’s defensive weaknesses. Former United winger Gabriel Obertan, brought on as a substitute moments earlier, gathered Davide Santon’s throw-in, sprinted down the left and picked out Cisse with a pullback that the striker converted with minimal fuss.

United were well below-par but needed just two minutes to equalise for a third time after a right-wing run by Antonio Valencia ended with him finding van

Reading deeper in trouble after Swansea stalemate

Johnson leaves City’s EPL title bid in tatters Sunderland 1

Man City 0

SUNDERLAND: Manchester City’s hopes of retaining the Premier League title are in tatters after their former midfielder Adam Johnson fired Sunderland to a shock 1-0 win over the champions yesterday.

Rober to Mancini’s side wasted a chance to keep the pressure on Manchester United at the top and they are now seven points behind the leaders, who scored a late winner to beat Newcastle 4-3.

Johnson’s 53rd-minute winner eased Sunderland’s relegation fears as the England international profited from a rare error by goalkeeper Joe Hart to hand City their first away league defeat since April.

With City protesting at a foul on Pablo Zabaleta in the build-up, Johnson accepted a pass from defender Carlos Cuellar to cut in from the right past David Silva and fire in a low shot which should have been collected by Hart.

However, he was guilty of failing to cover his near post, allowing the ball to creep into the bottom corner under his outstretched left hand.

Stephane Sessegnon should have doubled the lead within moments, dragging a clear chance across the face of goal, before Hart partly made amends, blocking with his feet as the Benin international raced onto a through-ball from

Fraizer Campbell to see his first-time shot denied.

Sunderland’s margin of victory could have been more clear cut, with substitute Campbell spurning a close-range chance to double the lead seven minutes from time.

It’s now almost four-and-a-half years since City have won at the Stadium of Light, with the pain of defeat heightened after the loss was inflicted by one of their old boys.

Despite earning a title -winner ’s medal with City, Johnson enjoyed mixed fortunes in a two-and-a-half-year spell at Eastlands, returning to his native NorthEast in a £10 million move in August after making just 39 top flight starts.

The 25-year-old has struggled to scale the heights in the first half of the season, but helped his bid to win over the Wearside faithful with a goal that could have ramifications at both ends of the season at the end of the campaign.

City skipper Vincent Kompany came up from the back to send an early header from 10 yards against the bar from Silva’s corner, with keeper Simon Mignolet using his feet to save the closerange follow-up from Yaya Toure.

Mignolet was called into action again, this time with an agile save to pluck a 25-yard effort from Yaya Toure out of the air that was destined for the top corner.

Mignolet rounded off an impressive first-half with a fine point-blank block to deny Silva, who arrived at the near post to deflect a Sergio Aguero cross towards goal in a swift counter-attack launched by an incisive 40-yard pass from Carlos Tevez.

It proved to be a much quieter half

Persie just inside the area.

Krul saved well from the initial shot before Carrick neatly worked the rebound back to the Dutchman, who converted from 15 yards. That was the catalyst for an extraordinary final 20 minutes in which victory could have gone to either side.

Hernandez rounded Krul but could not produce a shot from a bad angle, while Marveaux tested de Gea from 20 yards and Hernandez appealed for a penalty after his shot hit Fabricio Coloccini.

Van Persie then rolled a shot just wide, Hernandez’s diving header flew inches off target, and the Mexican steered an 88thminute header directly at Krul from a Giggs cross. Amid all that, Ameobi struck the post, but Hernandez’s aim was to prove truer.—AFP

LONDON: Manchester City’s Edin Dzeko (right) vies for the ball with Sunderland’s Matthew Kilgallon (left) during their English Premier League soccer match at the Stadium of Light.—AP

for Mignolet’s opposite number Hart, but the City keeper was equal to the task in the only major threat to his goal before the break.

Steven Fletcher, the eight-goal top scorer, reacted first to a Sessegnon flick to fire in a firm 20-yard effort, but the low shot was brilliantly saved by England number one Hart diving to his

right. Mignolet made a fine reaction save to deny Aguero after the Argentine beat Sunderland’s offside trap to meet Silva’s slide-rule pass.

But it was the hosts who looked more likely to add to Johnson’s strike as the contest wore on in what proved to be a famous victor y for Mar tin O’Neill’s side.—AFP

READING: Relegation threatened Reading had Reading 0 a goal disallowed as their winless streak was extended to eight matches in an entertainSwansea 0 ing 0-0 draw against Swansea yesterday in their Premier League clash.

Reading may be second from bottom and six points from safety, but the point gained here followed a respectable showing against champions Manchester City last Saturday, losing to a goal in time added on, will give them reason to be optimistic at escaping the drop.

Swansea dominated for large stages of the match but had to withstand a late Reading onslaught as they kept up their fine recent away form that has seen them lose just once in their last five outings.

Reading’s Australian international Adam Federici kept his side in the match on 65 minutes as he made a brilliant save to deny Nathan Dyer as Swansea tried to break the deadlock in a frantic second half.

Reading then had a goal disallowed with 17 minutes remaining as Adam le Fondre handled the ball as he pushed it past Swansea’s Dutch ‘keeper Michel Vorm.

The first half featured few clear cut chances as Reading were able to shackle the threat of the Premier League’s top scorer Michu, who has been a sensation for Swansea since signing for just two million pounds in the summer from Rayo Vallecano having already scored 13 goals.

Swansea manager Michael Laudrup looked on in frustration as he saw his side create six shots at goal with none of them hitting the target. Russian international Pavel Pogrebnyak was Reading’s greatest threat as the former Fulham, Stuttgart and Zenit Saint Petersburg striker was a constant menace but almost found himself sentoff for a rash tackle on Swansea captain Ashley Williams after 57 minutes.

However neither team were able to find the breakthrough during the final exchanges and Reading will look to get back on a winning track at home to West Ham and Swansea are away again at lowly Fulham.—AFP

India’s Ratan Tata hands over reins of empire Page 23

Bayt.com hosts Virtual Job Fair for Egypt Page 22

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2012

Over the fiscal cliff: What kind of landing?

Page 24

Mohammed Nasser Al-Ajmi wins KD 250,000 in NBK’s draw Page 26

CHICAGO: This photo shows shoes in an interior view of the new Burberry Flagship store opened in November 2012 on Michigan Avenue in Chicago.— AP

Classic fashion brand Burberry goes digital Mobile commerce gives customers instant access CHICAGO: Angela Ahrendts may be CEO of Burberry, but one of her favorite accessories is an Apple iPhone5 that she’s used to oversee a mobile makeover at the 150-year-old company best known for trenchcoats and tartan plaids. “This is the biggest flagship store in the world,” Ahrendts says, holding up her iPhone during an interview in Chicago where Burberry just last month opened a new store. The Michigan Avenue site immerses customers in all things digital - from iPads for children to play with to video screens streaming Burberry fashion shows.

Burberry has long stuck to its English roots, giving its look from time to time modern tweaks, but it’s been Ahrendts and chief creative officer Christopher Bailey in the past few years who have pushed the brand’s digital, and now mobile, boundaries. “It’s very easy to allow an iconic brand to remain true to its heritage and at the same time obsolete itself,” says Marshal Cohen, chief retail industry analyst with market research firm The NPD Group. “The hard thing to do is keep the iconic brand relevant. This is about somebody at the helm deciding they’re going to find a way to keep the brand relevant for the future.”

Burberry has done that by making moves that it says attract a millennial consumer. That includes monthly updates at Burberry.com, where Ahrendts said more people visit every week than walk into all the brand’s stores around the world combined. The company has an internal social network called Burberry chat. And since Ahrendts started in 2006 she started hiring a team of “digital natives” with titles like mobile director and music director. The brand also has a strategic innovation council.

While some efforts were underway when she took the helm, Ahrendts says Burberry was “a manual spreadsheet organization” at the time. “We just kept evolving the structure,” she says. “We always said if we were going to target a millennial consumer then we had to do it in their mother tongue, which is digital.” Cohen says iconic luxury fashion brands have the story to attract consumers, but the challenge is finding the right means of communicating it in the digital world. “They have to turn the store into a story and the story into a site,” Cohen said. The Burberry website offers 10 times more online than what the company has in stores “because we say that is ‘the world’s store,’” Ahrendts says. Mobile commerce gives customers instant

access to products they aspire to own. “To me, the key is that even the luxury brands have to learn, have to evolve,” Cohen says. “Without evolution the luxury brands will be overtaken by more progressive, up and coming luxury brands. Luxury has to worry about keeping their brand alive.”

Burberry is interacting directly with consumers in the digital sphere too, launching projects like artofthetrench.com. The website invites users to upload pictures of themselves wearing Burberry trenchcoats, which have been made by the label since World War I. The result is a collage from around the world. Burberry.com also features Burberry Bespoke, which lets users customize their own trench, down to buttons and belts.

Ahrendts wants Burberry online and Burberry offline to be seamless for customers. But it’s not without challenges in a digital world where fashion buyers can become overwhelmed with emails, tweets and others messages. “How do we keep the brand so cool and so pure and so relevant so it cuts through that clutter?” she wonders - then answering her own question. “But by the same token how do we keep the marketing and the communication much more customized and personalized.” —AP

World’s longest bullet train service launched in China BEIJING: China launched service yesterday on the world’s longest highspeed rail route, the latest milestone in the country’s rapid and-sometimes troubled-super fast rail network. The opening of the new 2,298-kilometre (1,425-mile) line between Beijing and Guangzhou means passengers will be whisked from the capital to the southern commercial hub in just eight hours, compared with the 22 hours previously required.

State broadcaster China Central Television showed the 9:00 am (0100 GMT) departure of the first train live from Beijing West Railway Station and its arrival later in Guangzhou at about 5:00 pm. It also carried occasional live reports inside the train throughout the day, showing passengers toting cameras to apparently snap commemorative photos, as well as shots from outside as it sped through the countryside. Another train depar ted Guangzhou for the capital at 10:00 am, the official Xinhua news agency reported. Trains travel at an average speed of 300 kilometres per hour over the line, which includes 35 stops in major cities such as Zhengzhou, Wuhan on the Yangtze River and Changsha. State media have reported that December 26 was chosen to start passenger ser vice on the BeijingGuangzhou line to commemorate the birth in 1893 of revered Chinese leader

Mao Zedong. The Beijing-Guangzhou route was made possible with the completion of a line between Zhengzhou and Beijing. High-speed sections linking Zhengzhou and Wuhan and Wuhan and Guangzhou were already in service. China’s highspeed rail network was only established in 2007, but has fast become the world’s largest. Xinhua said that China now operates 9,300 kilometres of high-speed railways.

The state-run China Daily newspaper repor ted yesterday that the nation’s high-speed rail network is set to jump to 50,000 kilometres by 2020, with four main lines running north and south and another four east and west. China has relied on technology transfers from foreign companies, including France’s Alstom, Germany’s Siemens and Japan’s Kawasaki Heavy Industries, to develop its high-speed rail network.

But the country is now seeking to capitalise on what it has learned and has been building high-speed rail networks in foreign countries such as Turkey and Venezuela, and has ambitions further afield. The China News Service reported yesterday that the major type of train running on the Beijing-Guangzhou high-speed rail route is produced by state-owned China CNR Corp., headquartered in Beijng and founded in June 2008.

GUANGZHOU: In this photo, a bullet train G80 leaves for Beijing from the Guangzhou South Railway Station in Guangzhou yesterday. — AP China’s domestic network, while a symbol of its emergence as the world’s second-largest economy, has also been plagued by graft and safety scandals, such as a collision in July 2011 that killed 40 people. The accident was China’s worst rail disaster since 2008 and caused a torrent of public criticism aimed at the government amid accusations that authorities compromised safety in their rush to expand the network.

Authorities said they have taken steps ahead of the new line’s opening

to improve maintenance and inspection of infrastructure, and emergency response measures. “The emergency rescue system and all kinds of emergency pre-plans are established to improve emergency response ability,” according to a ministry booklet. Still, safety concerns remain. The Global Times newspaper, with close ties to China’s ruling Communist Party, yesterday quoted a Ministry of Railways official acknowledging continuing problems despite intense efforts to solve them during trial runs. —AFP

Egypt slips to 9-day low MIDEAST STOCK MARKET DUBAI: Egypt’s bourse slipped to a nine-day low on Wednesday, extending losses as political tensions encouraged investors to book gains from the rally of the past two weeks. Gulf markets were mixed. Cairo’s benchmark index slipped 0.3 percent to 5,301 points, down for a third session from last week’s one-month high. Mid-caps weighed, with Orascom Telecom losing 1.1 percent and Citadel Capital falling 1.4 percent. There was fresh evidence of how the controversy over Egypt’s new constitution is hurting economic policy, as the Al-Mal newspaper quoted Planning Minister Ashraf Al-Araby as saying the government would not implement a series of planned tax increases for at least two weeks, until it completed a dialogue with different parts of society.

Nevertheless, the index closed well off the day’s low because in a pattern seen often in the last several weeks, buying by non-resident Arab and foreign investors offset selling by locals. Much of Egypt’s economic problems are already baked into stock prices so unless political tensions become a lot worse, many investors may stay bullish about the medium term. Major technical support for the index is believed to lie on the 200-day average, now at 5,126 points.

Saudi In Saudi Arabia, the measure recovered intraday losses to close near flat after late-session buying in petrochemical stocks helped steady the market.

The index halted a three-session losing streak, edging up 0.03 percent to close at 6,867 points. Saudi Basic Industries Corp (SABIC) and Saudi Kayan Petrochemical rose 0.3 and 0.4 percent respectively. National Industrialization (Tasnee) gained 0.7 percent, adding to Tuesday’s 4.9 percent gain after the firm proposed a cash dividend of 2.0 riyals per share.

“Petrochemicals have steady demand and earnings should be higher than Q3 - there is a positive sentiment overall on petchems and telecoms,” said Mohammad Omran, a Riyadh-based independent financial analyst and a member of think tank Saudi Economic Association. “If we get this positive boost, the index could break the 7,000 level.” Shares in Riyad Bank declined 0.4 percent. The bank’s board proposed a cash dividend of 0.65 riyals per share for the second half of 2012.

Elsewhere in the Gulf, small caps helped lift Dubai’s market as retail investors bet on stronger fourth-quarter earnings. Dubai’s Deyaar Properties jumped 5.6 percent and Shuaa Capital surged 15.0 percent, the maximum allowed daily gain.

“Retail investors are getting in, speculating on Q4 results...Generally the market is quiet - most people are away” for year-end holidays, said Yousry Kassem, assistant vice-president of sales trading at EFG Hermes. The emirate’s index rose 0.6 percent, up for five sessions in the last six. In neighbouring Abu Dhabi, the benchmark shed 0.4 percent, down for a second session since Monday’s two-week high. Investors booked gains in heavyweight lender First Gulf Bank , which fell 1.3 percent. The stock rallied to a 52-month closing high on Sunday on expectations for strong dividends and quarterly earnings.

In Doha, the index dropped 0.6 percent to its lowest finish since Aug. 1.

Banks extended declines with Masraf Al-Rayan and Qatar International Islamic Bank losing 2.0 and 1.7 percent respectively. “Most stocks in Qatar are defensive and it’s very hard to find an entry right now. Dividends in banks used to be high but with the acquisitions and merger deals happening, banks will have difficulty in paying high dividends,” Kassem said. A lack of trading volume in Qatar’s market is making it difficult for buyers to find sellers at specific prices. Analysts say a string of capital raisings will also put downward pressure on dividends of Qatari banks. Doha Bank announced plans in October to increase its share capital by 50 percent in the first quarter of next year, raising about $1.6 billion. Ahli Bank raised its capital by 20 percent through a rights issue in September. Elsewhere, Kuwait’s measure gained 0.5 percent, snapping a four-session losing streak. — Reuters

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2012

BUSINESS

UAE bad loan provisions drop

Bayt.com hosts Virtual Job Fair for Egypt CAIRO: After several incredibly successful events across the region, Bayt.com, the region’s number one job site, announced that it will be hosting its third Virtual Job Fair (VJF) in Egypt from January 6-10, 2013.

The hassle-free online job forum aims to boost the country’s job market and get job seekers and employers to interact directly without the need for intermediation. The Bayt.com VJF presents a unique concept allowing jobseekers to fully interact with potential employers within a virtual environment, styled to look like a real job fair.

Using a range of digital tools, such as chat rooms, webcasts and webinars, jobseekers and employers can exchange vital job-related information. Jobseekers can search for available jobs and submit their CVs, while employers can interact with jobseekers through virtual ‘booths’.

“Efficiency, effectiveness and convenience are essential considerations for everyone, especially in today’s busy times. Our Virtual Job Fair event successfully combines all three, allowing employers and job seekers to connect with as many parties as possible, with optimal flexibility and convenience,” said Suhail Masri, VP of Sales, Bayt.com. “After having hosted Virtual Job Fairs in the UAE and KSA, we are pleased to now launch this innovative, pioneering platform in Egypt. We have had consistently positive feedback from employers and job seekers alike based on their participation in previous VJFs, and we look forward to having a similar impact in Egypt.” Job seekers wishing to participate in Bayt.com’s Egypt Virtual Job Fair can register for free at virtualjobfair.bayt.com.Once logged in, candi-

Banks are over the worst of problems DUBAI: Outstanding provisions for bad loans set aside by banks in the United Arab Emirates fell in October for the first time since the global financial crisis began building in 2008, central bank data showed yesterday. The small drop does not indicate an end to the corporate debt problems that have weighed on UAE banks’ earnings over the past several years. But it does suggest the banks are over the worst of those problems, helped by solid economic growth and a fledgling recovery of Dubai’s real estate market.

Provisions set aside for specific non-performing loans edged down to 65.3 billion dirhams ($17.8 billion) at the end of October from 65.4 billion dirhams in September, the data showed.

The official WAM news agency said it was the first time since 2008 that provisions had dropped. In October 2011 they stood at 51.9 billion dirhams and at the end of 2008 they amounted to 19.7 billion dirhams, according to the central bank. General provisions earmarked for other purposes by the 23 UAE-based banks

dates can apply to jobs 24/7, at their own convenience and from the privacy and comfort of their own home or office environment.

Participating employers benefit from increased brand awareness. With Bayt.com’s Virtual Job Fair there are minimal resource requirements in return for maximum exposure, meaning less costs and a higher return on investment compared to a traditional job fair. The VJF allows employers to reach and interact with a large audience of talented professionals; it is cost-efficient with several booth options available to meet all employers’ needs, and its outcome is measurable at the end of the event.

“We’re glad to be joining Bayt.com Virtual Job Fair this year,” mentioned Mobinil Recruitment. “We’re hoping to seize this unique opportunity and get introduced to more job seekers who will be visiting our online booth. We believe that what distinguishes this fair is that it enables us to reach job seekers wherever they in an efficient & effective way!”

Job seekers benefit from the Bayt.com Virtual Job Fair in myriad ways, not least of which is attending a free event from a convenient location and during the time of their choice, with round-the-clock access.

They are presented with the opportunity to interact confidentially with employers through text, voice and video chat, with access to HR career consultants and increased amounts of career-based information to help them make a better decision.

Adding to this is the ability to apply to jobs, or to leave their CV in a ‘CV Drop’ corner for maximum exposure.

and 28 units of foreign banks also fell slightly in October to 17.4 billion dirhams from 17.6 billion dirhams in September; they totalled 15.4 billion dirhams in October 2011. Banks in the UAE were hit first by the global financial crisis, then by the Dubai corporate debt disaster of 2009-2010, when the emirate’s real estate market crashed and conglomerate Dubai World asked to restructure $25 billion of debt.

The debt problems have not yet been fully worked through. For example another investment conglomerate, Dubai Group, is still struggling to restructure $10 billion of debt, and it is not clear whether banks may have to take further provisions against that debt.

Early this month, credit rating agency Moody’s Investors Service downgraded ratings of three Dubai banks including the emirate’s biggest, Emirates NBD. It cited large amounts of problem loans and said the banks had low levels of balance sheet coverage for loan losses and would need additional provisioning. But a recov-

Monti urges Italians to ‘rise up’

Yen falls as Japan forms new govt TOKYO: Expectations that Japan’s incoming prime minister will pursue drastic stimulus policies to drive the country’s economy out of deflation helped weaken the yen and underpinned the Nikkei yesterday, while Asian shares were capped in thin holiday trade.

Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and South Korea were closed on Tuesday for the Christmas holiday, reopening on yesterday. Hong Kong and Australia remain closed yesterday.

MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan inched up 0.1 percent, after rising 0.3 percent the previous day on the back of a surge in Shanghai shares to fivemonth highs and a jump in Taiwan shares.

Shinzo Abe, who won a landslide victory in an election earlier this month, will be sworn in as premier yesterday, when he is also expected to appoint his cabinet. He is prescribing a mix of aggressive monetary policy easing and big fiscal spending to beat deflation and rein in the strong yen. He has kept up pressure on the Bank of Japan to deliver much stronger monetary easing policies and called for a 2 percent inflation target to beat deep-rooted deflation, pushing the yen to a 20-month low of 85.08 yen on trading platform EBS early yesterday. Minutes of the BOJ’s policy-setting meeting in November showed yesterday that some board members said the central bank must act decisively, without ruling out any policy options, if the outlook for the economy and prices worsens further.

Japan’s Nikkei stock average opened up 0.5 percent, after recapturing the key 10,000 mark it ceded on Friday and ending up 1.4 percent. “The market is overbought, so the

ery in Dubai’s real estate market has greatly improved the bond market’s confidence in the financial strength of UAE banks and many of their big customers, and their bond yields have plunged this year.

Moody’s predicted last month that the ratio of problem loans to gross loans in the UAE banking sector would be between 10 and 12 percent for 2012 and drop marginally in 2013. Banks in the UAE have built up strong capital buffers against losses; they had core capital worth 17.2 percent of risk-weighted assets in September, a much higher level than banks in many Western countries, central bank data showed.

However, the aftermath of the debt crisis has slowed growth in their lending, which rose just 2.8 percent from a year earlier to 1.10 trillion dirhams in October. Total deposits, boosted by the real estate recovery and Dubai’s ability to attract foreign funds as a safe haven in an unstable region, jumped 9.4 percent to 1.16 trillion dirhams. — Reuters

Nikkei may not rise sharply, but ‘Abe trades’ may invite some buying,” said Hiroichi Nishi, general manager at SMBC Nikko Securities, adding that if the dollar trades above 85 yen, investors are likely to chase the Nikkei higher to near 10,200.

Aside from the Japanese factor, the dollar was also expected to stay firm this week as investors repatriate dollars, and as the US fiscal impasse is likely to continue to sap investor appetite for risky assets and raise the dollar’s safe-haven appeal. US lawmakers and President Barack Obama were on Christmas holiday and talks were unlikely to resume until later in the week.

House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner failed to gain support for a tax plan at the end of last week, raising fears that the United States may face the “fiscal cliff” of some $600 billion in automatic spending cuts and tax increases set to start on Jan 1. “With the exception of the US fiscal talks, there is no particular issue that could dampen investor appetite to any great degree,” said Lee Kyungmin, an analyst at Woori Investment & Securities. Activity is likely to remain subdued, with volume low and without major economic news. Later in the session, Thailand will release trade data, which is expected to show exports in November posting very high annual growth as a result of low levels last year reflecting the damage from the flooding.

South Korea’s key consumer sentiment index held steady in December from November and stood below the neutral point for a fifth consecutive month, the central bank said yesterday, diminishing hopes of a quick economic rebound. — AFP

KARACHI: Pakistani labourers work at a small iron factory yesterday. Pakistan’s central bank lowered its benchmark interest rate by 0.5 percentage points to 9.5 percent, in the light of a fall in inflation. — AFP

Grounded Kingfisher lacks funding plan planes, had been rejected. But he noted that the airline owed money to banks, staff, airports, and tax authorities. All those stakeholders needed to be convinced the relaunch plan was viable before the DGCA allowed the airline to fly again, Singh said.

Kingfisher, which has been trying unsuccessfully to raise fresh cash for more than a year, is hoping to tap Etihad Airways as an investor. The Gulf carrier, which is seeking to widen operations in India and other Asian markets, is in the final stages of talks to buy part of either Kingfisher or Indian rival Jet Airways , an Indian government official said last week. Last month, Diageo Plc bought a majority stake in United Spirits, also a UB Group company, for $2.1 billion. UB did not specify if part of that money would be injected into Kingfisher. Kingfisher shares erased intraday gains of as much as 3.8 percent yesterday to end flat on the day. — Reuters

NEW DELHI: Grounded Indian carrier Kingfisher Airlines has failed to present regulators with a clear funding plan under a proposal to get it flying again, the country’s aviation minister said yesterday. The airline, owned by liquor tycoon Vijay Mallya and suspended in October over unpaid debts and salaries, submitted a plan on Monday to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) to resume a limited service.

According to local media reports, Kingfisher’s parent company, UB Group, offered to inject 6.5 billion rupees ($118.3 million) into the carrier - a key condition for getting it airborne again.

But Aviation Minister Ajit Singh told reporters yesterday that UB “did not say they are going to give anything” to Kingfisher, which has estimated debts of $2.5 billion.

He did not specify if the proposal, to resume operations with five

ROME: Outgoing Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti urged compatriots late Tuesday to “rise up” and commit to renewing national politics, in a further sign he would remain on the political stage.

“Together we have saved Italy from catastrophe,” Monti said in comments which referred to the country’s improved financial position, the result of economic reforms and support from the European Central Bank. “Now we must renew politics. There is no point in complaining, we must commit ourselves. ‘Rise up’ in politics,” the technocratic Italian premier wrote.

Monti announced on Friday that he would step down after 13 months at the head of an unelected team of technocrats that was appointed to steer Italy out of a financial crisis that could have had dire consequences for the entire 17-nation euro-zone.

The tweeted comments late on Tuesday were a further signal that Monti, a former European commissioner dubbed “The Professor,” would remain in the fray as Italy prepares to elect a new parliament.

As an Italian senator for life, the former premier cannot himself run for office, but is in a position to be renamed prime minister if a party or coalition that he supports wins the vote on February 24-25.

Monti said on Friday: “If one or more political forces adhere to my agenda and put forward the idea of proposing me for the post of premier, I would weigh the option.” That means allied political movements could include his name as a candidate for the post when they submit electoral lists on February 11-12.

Monti is seen as a recourse to prevent scandaltainted former Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi from returning to power and undoing hard-won reforms. The “Monti Agenda” proposes to cut public funds for political parties and parliamentary groups, and also includes measures to make more room for women and environmental issues.

By remaining indirectly in the race, Monti could bar the route for Berlusconi, who is running for the premiership for the sixth time in 18 years, but who is now isolated on the right side of the political spectrum with support from anti-tax and anti-euro factions. Analysts currently expect Pier Luigi Bersani of the centre-left Democratic Party to be named prime minister, and to then appoint Monti as a “super economy minister.”— AFP

EXCHANGE 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 Egyptian pounds US Dollar/KD GB Pound/KD Euro Swiss francs Canadian dollars Danish Kroner Swedish Kroner Australian dlr Hong Kong dlr Singapore dlr Japanese yen Indian Rs/KD Sri Lanka rupee Pakistan rupee Bangladesh taka UAE dirhams Bahraini dinars Jordanian dinar Saudi Riyal/KD Omani riyals Philippine Peso

.2740000 .4500000 .3680000 .3040000 .2810000 .2890000 .0040000 .0020000 .0762030 .7424230 .3880000 .0720000 .7278130 .0430000 CUSTOMER TRANSFER RATES .2807000 .4526010 .3701030 .3065410 .2828210 .0496120 .0430560 .2909880 .0362170 .2293110 .0032920 .0000000 .0000000 .0000000 .0000000 .0764540 .7448590 .0000000 .0748730 .7293750 .0000000

.2840000 .4620000 .3770000 .3130000 .2910000 .3020000 .0067500 .0035000 .0769960 .7498850 .4060000 .0770000 .7351280 .0510000 .2828000 .4559870 .3728720 .3088350 .2849370 .0499840 .0433780 .2931650 .0364870 .2310270 .0033170 .0051680 .0022360 .0029150 .0035530 .0770260 .7504310 .4000000 .0754330 .7348320 .0069240

Al-Muzaini Exchange Co. Japanese Yen Indian Rupees Pakistani Rupees Srilankan Rupees Nepali Rupees Singapore Dollar Hongkong Dollar Bangladesh Taka

ASIAN COUNTRIES 3.309 5.121 2.892 2.216 3.212 231.080 36.400 3.491

Philippine Peso Thai Baht Irani Riyal - transfer Irani Riyal - cash Saudi Riyal Qatari Riyal Omani Riyal Bahraini Dinar UAE Dirham Egyptian Pound - Cash Egyptian Pound - Transfer Yemen Riyal/for 1000 Tunisian Dinar Jordanian Dinar Lebanese Lira/for 1000 Syrian Lier Morocco Dirham

UAE Dirhams Bahraini Dinar Egyptian Pound Jordanian Dinar Omani Riyal Qatari Riyal Saudi Riyal

6.851 9.203 0.271 0.273 GCC COUNTRIES 75.257 77.543 733.010 749.570 76.846 ARAB COUNTRIES 47.800 45.642 1.317 182.290 398.080 1.893 3.066 33.988

GOLD 311.000 157.000 81.500

SELL DRAFT 296.49 288.49 312.78 375.09 281.50 457.75 3.38 3.521 5.122 2.217 3.215 2.896

Rate for Transfer US Dollar Canadian Dollar Sterling Pound Euro 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

Selling Rate 281.750 284.290 455.440 371.830 308.010 745.925 76.685 77.335 75.095 397.165 45.625 2.220 5.123 2.885 3.494 6.839 691.135 4.315 9.290 4.370 3.290 91.965

Bahrain Exchange Company

UAE Exchange Centre WLL COUNTRY Australian Dollar Canadian Dollar Swiss Franc Euro US Dollar Sterling Pound Japanese Yen Bangladesh Taka Indian Rupee Sri Lankan Rupee Nepali Rupee Pakistani Rupee

77.400 748.500 47.400 398.850 734.000 77.850 75.600

Dollarco Exchange Co. Ltd

EUROPEAN & AMERICAN COUNTRIES US Dollar Transfer 282.100 Euro 373.500 Sterling Pound 456.010 Canadian dollar 284.950 Turkish lire 157.310 Swiss Franc 308.880 Australian dollar 283.380 US Dollar Buying 280.900 20 Gram 10 Gram 5 Gram

76.71 749.54 45.63 401.04 732.63 77.74 75.28

SELL CASH 296.000 288.000 311.000 373.500 283.000 457.500 3.690 3.667 5.500 2.370 3.600 3.050

COUNTRY 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

SELL CASH 295.900 749.820 3.790 287.500 553.700 45.900 50.800 167.800 47.740 376.000 37.070 5.490 0.032 0.161 0.242

SELL DRAFT 294.400 749.820 3.499 286.000

232.400 45.683 374.500 36.920 5.126 0.031

Japanese yen Jordanian dinar Lebanese pound Malaysian ringgit Morocco dirham Nepalese Rupees New Zealand dollar Nigeria 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

3.410 399.560 0.191 94.930 45.900 4.330 235.100 1.826 51.500 732.370 3.080 7.270 77.990 75.280 231.970 35.220 2.686 458.500 44.200 311.400 3.400 9.570 198.263 76.870 282.300 1.360

399.520 0.190 94.930 3.230 233.600

732.190 2.903 6.868 77.560 75.280 231.970 35.220 2.222 456.500 309.900 3.400 9.400 76.770 281.900

GOLD 10 Tola 1,764.990

Sterling Pound US Dollar

TRAVELLER’S CHEQUE 456.500 281.900

Al Mulla Exchange Currency 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

Transfer Rate (Per 1000) 281.500 373.600 456.000 285.000 3.325 5.133 45.570 2.214 3.497 6.845 2.895 749.200 76.600 75.300

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2012

BUSINESS

Uncertainty: Biggest challenge facing global oil markets in 2013 KAMCO MARKET RESEARCH he OPEC Reference Basket dropped in November on the back of higher supply growth and concerns regarding the health of the global economy that have been pressuring oil prices since mid-September. Worries of a global economic deceleration and a soft landing in China, which could negatively affect demand, dragged on prices. Some easing in revived geopolitical factors also helped to dampen concerns that had pushed prices higher. Downward pressure is sustained by mounting concerns of a global economic downturn and significant crude stock builds in the US. Furthermore, uncertainty regarding the world economy’s future energy consumption due to a pessimistic outlook for the global economy is the main driver behind the decline in prices as industrial activity provides negative signals. US oil consumption has been growing on the back of rebuilding efforts from Hurricane Sandy, while Indian oil demand has risen significantly pushing global demand higher. On the other hand, the shutdown of most of Japan’s nuclear power plants led to excess use of crude and fuel oil burning in 9M-12, which is now beginning to fade. Furthermore, the transportation sector contributed to the slowdown in oil use as a result of both slower economic activity and higher retail prices. Should the current situation persist, world oil demand growth for 2012 is estimated to be at 0.8 mb/d, to average 88.8 mb/d.

On a monthly basis, OPEC Reference Basket averaged $106.77/b during November 12, a decrease of 1.5 percent from last month’s average of $108.4/b, and closed the month at $107.46/b. Nevertheless, the average YTD-12 price reached $110.09/b compared to an average of $107.47/b for the same period in 2011, while the average price in 2010’s comparable period was at $76.30/b. On the other hand, Kuwait Blend Spot Price FOB averaged $107.9/b, and closed the month at $109.07/b, down from an average of $108.3/b for October 2012. As well, European Brent Blend Spot Price FOB averaged around $110.77/b, down 1.8 percent from an average of $112.85/b recorded during October 2012, to close the month at $110.46/b.

According to the statement released by OPEC after their last meeting, OPEC members reviewed the oil market outlook, as presented by the Secretary General, in particular the supply/demand projections for 2013. Ministers noted that the price volatility witnessed throughout 2012 remained mostly a reflection of increased levels of speculation in the commodities markets, exacerbated by geopolitical tensions and, latterly, exceptional weather conditions. The conference observed: the mounting pessimism over the global economic outlook, with downside risks continuing to be presented by the sovereign debt crisis in the euro-zone;

T

high unemployment in the advanced economies, especially the euro-zone; and inflation risk in the emerging economies. Indeed, the biggest challenge facing global oil markets in 2013 is uncertainty surrounding the global economy, with the fragility of the euro-zone remaining a major concern.

The conference further noted that, although world oil demand is forecast to increase slightly during the year 2013, this is likely to be more than offset by the projected increase in non-OPEC supply and that projected demand for OPEC crude in 2013 is expected to contract to 29.7 mb/d. Given the demand uncertainties, the conference decided

to maintain the current production level of 30 mb/d. The conference also agreed that member countries would, if necessary, take steps to ensure market balance and reasonable price levels for producers and consumers. In taking this decision, member countries confirmed that they will swiftly respond to developments that might have a detrimental impact on an orderly oil market.

World oil demand - supply World oil demand growth in 2012 dropped to 0.8 mb/d, to average 88.8 mb/d. Despite the economic turbulence in the OECD, oil consumption is

following its usual seasonal pattern worldwide.

World oil demand has overcome the earlier notion of declining momentum and moved to a more stable trend as oil use in the US, Japan and India has been growing due to various reasons, while nonOECD countries’ demand is also gaining some strength; the only exception is European demand which continues its downward trend. The summer driving season, the heat, the shutdown of Japanese nuclear power plants and the massive electricity shutdown in India has led to an excess of crude and fuel oil burning. A few variables will play a major role in oil demand this winter, such as weather and the health of the global economy.

Non-OPEC supply is expected to increase by 0.5 mb/d in 2012 to average 52.95 mb/d, representing a downward revision of 0.05 mb/d from last month’s average. A historical revision in 2011 to the oil supply estimate saw Africa revised the most followed by North America, OECD Pacific and the Middle East. Meanwhile, many revisions were introduced to the forecast for 2012, with more weight in the second half. The largest revision took place in Latin America, mainly on updated production data. The overall supply forecast remains relatively stable, with North America expected to have the highest growth, followed by the FSU, China and Latin America, while supply in Africa, the Middle East and OECD Western Europe is projected to decline. On a quarterly basis, non-OPEC supply is seen to average 53.21 mb/d, 52.61 mb/d, 52.49 mb/d and 53.47 mb/d respectively.

Total OPEC crude oil production averaged 30.95 mb/d in October-12, a decrease of 67 tb/d over last month. Crude oil production experienced a considerable increase in Angola, while it fell in Nigeria, Saudi Arabia and Iran led declines in October.

Preliminary figures indicate that global oil supply increased by 1.01 mb/d in October-12 compared to the previous month, to average 90.22 mb/d.

OPEC crude is estimated to have a 34.3 percent share in global supply, a minor decrease from the previous month.

Venezuela, the largest OPEC member with proven reserves (296.5 billion barrels) leads OPEC members with a reserves-to-production ratio of 347 years followed by Iran (reserves: 151.2 billion barrels) and Iraq (reserves: 143.1 billion barrels) recording a reserves-to-production ratio of 158 and 123, respectively. Although Saudi Arabia holds the second largest reserve in OPEC, totalling 265.4 billion barrels, its yearly production tops the list of members with annual production hitting 3.54 billion barrels, indicating a reserves-to-production ratio of 75 years. Kuwait ranks 5th among members with a reserves-to-production ratio of 99 years.

India’s Ratan Tata hands over reins of huge empire Jaguar Land Rover contributes 80% of Tata Motors’ earnings

TOKYO: Japan’s auto giant Toyota Motor president Akio Toyoda poses as he introduces the company’s flagship sedan “Crown”. — AFP

Toyota ups 2012 sales forecast to 9.7m cars TOKYO: Japan’s Toyota group forecast yesterday a 22 percent jump in worldwide sales this year to 9.7 million units, driven by surging demand which may help it regain the top spot in the global auto market. Those figures could put Toyota ahead of General Motors and Volkswagen as the world’s biggest automaker, a title it held between 2008 and 2010 but lost last year after a slump in sales and production.

Japan’s quake-tsunami disaster, floods in Thailand and a strong yen took a heavy toll on the auto giant, whose brands include Lexus, Daihatsu and Hino.

It topped the global carmakers’ table in the first half of 2012, accelerating past US-based GM and the German auto giant.

Japan’s biggest automaker said it expects to sell about 9.91 million vehicles in 2013, up two percent on-year. It was on track to produce 9.94 million vehicles in 2013, nearly unchanged from this year, the company added. Toyota said domestic sales would jump 35 percent this year to 2.4 million vehicles, with its overseas annual sales forecast to rise by 18 percent to 7.3 million units.

The automaker said last month it was on track to earn 780 billion yen ($9.1 billion) in the fiscal year to March, up from 760 billion yen, but said sales would be 21.3 trillion yen, trimming an earlier target of 22 trillion yen. A strong yen and turmoil in key European markets weighed, while a territorial dispute with China hurt sales.

The upward boost in earnings expec-

tations was largely due to cost-cutting, including a decrease in labour and research and development expenses, Toyota said. The automaker also said it had been aided by robust Asian sales and a pick-up in the North American market. However, Japan’s automakers have seen a drop in their China revenue stemming from a bitter row between Tokyo and Beijing over a disputed island chain.

Tokyo nationalised the East China Sea islands also claimed by Beijing in midSeptember, sparking a diplomatic row that was marked by huge demonstrations across China and a consumer boycott of Japanese exports.

Toyota previously said it was expecting to sell 200,000 fewer vehicles in China in the second half of its fiscal year and take a 30 billion yen hit to its bottom line from slumping demand in the world’s biggest vehicle market. Toyota sold 900,000 vehicles in China in 2011.

Japanese firms have also struggled with the negative impact of a high yen which has weighed on the nation’s manufacturers by making their products less competitive overseas and shrinking foreign income.

The yen hit record highs around 75 against the dollar late last year and remains historically strong although it has slumped recently as a conservative government takes power in Tokyo.

Japan’s new prime minister Shinzo Abe was officially installed yesterday after his Liberal Democratic Party triumphed in national elections this month.— AFP

MUMBAI: Indian industrialist Ratan Tata retires on his 75th birthday this week, handing over the reins of his sprawling business empire after decades at the top of the country’s turbulent corporate world. Ratan Tata has been credited with transforming the Tata group into a streamlined conglomerate of more than 100 companies and earning a global reputation for eye-catching purchases of Western firms. With a portfolio ranging from salt and software to tea and telecoms, Tata is India’s largest group, and new boss Cyrus Mistry faces a challenge as the first chief appointed from outside the immediate Tata family in its 144-year history. “I have devoted my life, as best I could, to the welfare of the group,” Tata said ahead of his retirement tomorrow.

The highly-respected, media-shy mogul, who spent 50 years with the company, is likely to mark his last day at the helm in the unassuming manner in which he took over from his uncle JRD Tata in 1991.

The same year saw India unleash radical free-market reforms that transformed the country’s economy, and Tata took full advantage.

“Ratan Tata came with zilch expectations and in an environment where the group was headed by people who thought they could perhaps ‘manage’ him,” said financial consultant R Balakrishnan. “The transition today is amazing,” Balakrishnan told AFP. Tata companies include India’s largest IT firm, the biggest vehicle maker and a ritzy hotel chain. In one of the group’s most successful moves, Tata Motors turned around

fortunes of loss-making British luxury brands Jaguar and Land Rover just a year after buying them out from Ford Motors for $2.3 billion in 2008.

Jaguar Land Rover now contributes nearly 80 percent of Tata Motors’ earnings and the deal has vaulted the Tata firm from a commercial vehicle and small-car maker into a global player. Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), went public in 1994 under Ratan Tata’s

Rahul Bajaj. But Tata could not escape some controversy: he was one of the business leaders questioned in 2011 by a parliamentary watchdog probing a multi-billiondollar telecom licensing scam that rocked the government. India’s federal police agency later cleared the Tata group of any wrongdoing.

Mistry, the current vice-chairman, was announced as heir more than a year ago, and Tata has said the group will be “in the hands of

GENEVA: In this file photograph, chairman of India’s Tata Motors Ratan Tata watches during the unveiling of the Tata Megapixel during a press day ahead of the 82nd Geneva Motor Show in Geneva. — AFP leadership, when investors were unsure about the future of technology stocks. It is currently growing faster than rivals Infosys and Wipro.

Tata is exiting with the group’s total combined sales at $100 billion in 2011-12, nearly 60 percent of which come from business outside India, mainly the United States and Britain. “His reign has been outstanding,” said fellow industrialist

somebody who understands the business environment better” than he did. The pair, both from India’s tight-knit Zoroastrian community of Parsis, do have a family connection: Mistry’s sister is married to Tata’s younger half-brother Noel, who was initially tipped to be the group successor. Mistry, who has not spoken to the media since being appointed, is the son of

Pallonji Mistry, whose construction firm Shapoorji Pallonji is the biggest shareholder of Tata Sons.

Educated at London’s Imperial College and the London Business School, the new chief takes charge when some of Tata’s senior management are also heading into retirement. “The challenge for Mistry will be to find the next growth sector for the group,” said Sonam Udasi, head of research with IDBI Capital. “How long can it ride on the success of Tata Motors and TCS?” Tata has tried hard to expand the global footprint of the group’s Indian Hotels, which runs the landmark Taj Hotels Resorts and Palaces and has posted losses in the past four quarters. Tata Steel’s daring $13.7 billion purchase of AngloDutch firm Corus in 2007 — then India’s largest overseas acquisitionnow appears ill-timed, as business conditions continue to look downbeat in Europe.

But Mistry has time-and Ratan Tata-on his side. After retirement, Tata plans to remain head of the charitable trusts that own twothirds of main holding company Tata Sons and distribute millions.

He also wants to work towards “relaunching” the Nano, his pet project billed the world’s cheapest car, which has been struggling in a competitive market. A bachelor, Tata is set to continue to pursue his passions for fast cars, flying, books and his dogs. “I will not disappear.

You will continue to see my face whether you like it or not,” Tata told emotional shareholders earlier this year. — AFP

Strong currency hurts Philippine call centres MANILA: The peso’s rise is hitting call centres in the Philippines, handicapping the global leader in the lucrative business as it combats a challenge from top rival India, industry officials said yesterday. Forty percent of the members of the Business Processing Association of the Philippines had cancelled expansion plans and an equal number reported losing business to other destinations, the industry group said.

Nearly half disclosed in a group survey that they were having trouble meeting revenue targets because of the strong peso, it said in a statement.

The association said the local currency had become uncompetitive compared to the

rupee in India, the Philippines’ main rival for outsourced business services. “The combination of an appreciating peso and a depreciating Indian rupee has provided India with a meaningful cost advantage,” the statement said. The Philippine peso has strengthened by about seven percent from about 43.90 to the dollar on January 2 to about 41.05 at the close of last week.

Industry president Benedict Hernandez said Philippines-based call centres must be able to operate “within acceptable market prices”, but added: “That’s becoming increasingly difficult as the peso continues to appreciate”. The Philippines overtook India as the world leader

in call centres in revenue terms in 2009 and in manpower terms in 2010, according to industry figures.

Manila is also making strides in other outsourced businesses like medical and legal transcription, accounting, software writing and animation. Earlier this year the association had forecast that call centre revenues would rise to $8.4 billion this year with 493,000 people employed.

They said this should increase to $14.7 billion by 2016, when the sector is tipped to employ 862,000 people. Hernandez did not say if the targets were now in danger of not being met. — AFP

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2012

BUSINESS

China warns of rising financial risks BEIJING: China’s financial system is facing increasing risks due to soaring bank loans, with lending to the property sector and local governments a particular concern, the finance ministry warned yesterday. Bank lending has been rising “at a high speed” in recent years and the quality is yet to be tested, Li Yong, vice finance minister, was quoted in a statement as saying.

“There are rather high potential risks, particularly in (loans extended to) the real-estate sector and its related industries and in the poorly designed maturity of lending granted to local government financing vehicles,” he said, without elaborating. He made the remarks at a national financial work conference earlier this month, according to the statement.

Chinese banks extended 7.75 trillion yuan ($1.2 tril-

lion) in new loans in the first 11 months of the year, 919.1 billion yuan more than the same period last year, official data showed. Lending to the property sector totalled 982.1 billion yuan in the first three quarters of the year, 10.2 billion yuan less than the same period in 2011, according to the latest central bank quarterly report. China has for the past two years sought to tighten policies on the property sector to rein in rising home prices. Measures included limits on second and third home purchases, higher minimum downpayments, and annual taxes in some cities on multiple and non-locally-owned homes. These dampened speculation and strained developers’ cash flow.

The National Audit Office last year put the debt held by local governments at 10.7 trillion yuan at the

end of 2010, or about 27 percent of China’s gross domestic product that year. Some economists have said most of the debt was cheap medium to long-term loans granted by commercial banks, according to previous media reports.

Li also said China’s economic growth was set to slow over the long term due to sluggish foreign demand, insufficient domestic consumption, rising labour costs and increasing resource and environment constraints. The world’s second-largest economy has slowed for seven consecutive quarters. It expanded 7.4 percent in the three months ended September 30, its worst performance since the first quarter of 2009. The government has cut its target to 7.0 percent annually for the five years through 2015. — AFP

CHICAO: In this photo, a customer shops for greeting cards at a Target store in Chicago. — AP

Over the fiscal cliff: What kind of landing?

WASHINGTON: Efforts to save the nation from going over a year-end “fiscal cliff” were in disarray as lawmakers fled the Capitol for their Christmas break. “God only knows” how a deal can be reached now, House Speaker John Boehner declared. President Barack Obama, on his way out of town himself, insisted a bargain could still be struck before Dec. 31. “Call me a hopeless optimist,” he said. A look at why it’s so hard for Republicans and Democrats to compromise on urgent matters of taxes and spending, and what happens if they fail to meet their deadline: New year’s headache Partly by fate, partly by design, some scary fiscal forces come together at the start of 2013 unless Congress and Obama act to stop them.

They include: Some $536 billion in tax increases, touching nearly all Americans, because various federal tax cuts and breaks expire at year’s end. About $110 billion in spending cuts divided equally between the military and most other federal departments. That’s about 8 percent of their annual budgets, 9 percent for the Pentagon. Hitting the national economy with that double whammy of tax increases and spending cuts is what’s called going over the “fiscal cliff.” If allowed to unfold over 2013, it would lead to recession, a big jump in unemployment and financial market turmoil, economists predict.

What if they miss the deadline?

If New Year’s Day arrives without a deal, the nation shouldn’t plunge onto the shoals of recession immediately. There still might be time to engineer a soft landing. So long as lawmakers and the president appear to be working toward agreement, the tax hikes and spending cuts could mostly be held at bay for a few weeks. Then they could be repealed retroactively once a deal was reached.

The big wild card is the stock market and the nation’s financial confidence: Would traders start to panic if Washington appeared unable to reach accord? Would worried consumers and businesses sharply reduce their spending? In what could be a preview, stock prices around the world dropped Friday after House Republican leaders’ plan for addressing the fiscal cliff collapsed. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has warned lawmakers that the economy is already suffering from the uncertainty and they shouldn’t risk making it worse by blowing past their deadline.

What if they never agree?

If negotiations between Obama and Congress collapse completely, 2013 looks like a rocky year. Taxes would jump $2,400 on average for families with incomes of $50,000 to $75,000, according to a study by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. Because consumers would get less of their paychecks to spend, businesses and jobs would suffer. At the same time, Americans would feel cuts in government services; some federal workers would be furloughed or laid off, and companies would lose government business. The nation would lose up to 3.4 million jobs, the Congressional Budget Office predicts. “The consequences of that would be felt by everybody,” Bernanke says.

The taxes Much of the disagreement surrounds the George W. Bush-era income tax cuts, and whether those rates should be allowed to rise for the nation’s wealthiest taxpayers. Both political parties say they want to protect the middle-class from tax increases. Several tax breaks begun in 2009 to stimulate the economy by aiding low- and middle-income families are also set to expire Jan 1. The alternative minimum tax would expand to catch 28 million more taxpayers, with an average increase of $3,700 a year. Taxes on investments would rise, too. More deaths would be covered by the federal estate tax, and the rate climbs from 35 percent to 55 percent. Some corporate tax breaks would end. The temporary Social Security payroll tax cut also is due to expire. That tax break for most Americans seems likely to end even if a fiscal cliff deal is reached, now that Obama has backed down from his call to prolong it as an economic stimulus.

The spending If the nation goes over the fiscal cliff, budget cuts of 8 percent or 9 percent would hit most of the federal government, touching all sorts of things from agriculture to law enforcement and the military to weather forecasting. A few areas, such as Social Security benefits, Veterans Affairs and some programs for the poor, are exempt.

There’s more at stake All sorts of stuff could get wrapped up in the fiscal cliff deal-making. A sampling: Some 2 million jobless Americans may lose their federal unemployment aid. Obama wants to continue the benefits extension as part of the

deal; Republicans say it’s too costly. Social Security recipients might see their checks grow more slowly. As part of a possible deal, Obama and Republican leaders want to change the way cost-of-living adjustments are calculated, which would mean smaller checks over the years for retirees who get Social Security, veterans’ benefits or government pensions.

The price of milk could double. If Congress doesn’t provide a fix for expiring dairy price supports before Jan. 1, milk-drinking families could feel the pinch. One scenario is to attach a farm bill extension to the fiscal cliff legislation - if a compromise is reached in time.

Millions of taxpayers who want to file their 2012 returns before mid-March will be held up while they wait to see if Congress comes through with a deal to stop the alternative minimum tax from hitting more people.

Call the whole thing off?

In theory, Congress and Obama could just say no to the fiscal cliff, by extending all the tax cuts and overturning the automatic spending reductions in current law. But both Republicans and Democrats agree it’s time to take steps to put the nation on a path away from a future of crippling debt. Indeed, the automatic spending cuts set for January were created as a last-ditch effort to force Congress to deal with the debt problem. If Washington bypassed the fiscal cliff, the next crisis would be just around the corner, in late February or early March, when the government reaches a $16.4 trillion ceiling on the amount of money it can borrow.

Boehner says Republicans won’t go along with raising the limit on government borrowing unless the increase is matched by spending cuts to help attack the long-term debt problem. Failing to raise the debt ceiling could lead to a first-ever US default that would roil the financial markets and shake worldwide confidence in the United States. To avoid that scenario, Obama and Boehner are trying to wrap a debt limit agreement into the fiscal cliff negotiations.

So what’s the holdup?

They’re at loggerheads over some big questions. Obama says any deal must include higher taxes for the wealthiest Americans.

Many House Republicans oppose raising anyone’s tax rates. Boehner tried to get the House to vote for higher taxes only on incomes above $1 million but dropped the effort when it became clear he didn’t have the votes.

Republicans also insist on deeper spending cuts than Democrats want to make. And they want to bring the nation’s long-term debt under control by significantly curtailing the growth of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security - changes that many Democrats oppose. Obama, meanwhile, wants more temporary economic “stimulus” spending to help speed up a sluggish recovery.

Republicans say the nation can’t afford it.

It’s not just Washington Seems like they could just make nice, shake hands and split their differences, right?

But there’s a reason neither side wants to give ground. The two parties represent a divided and inconsistent America. True, Obama just won re-election. But voters also chose a Republican majority in the House. Republican and Democrats alike say they are doing what the voters back home want. Neither side has a clear advantage in public opinion. In an Associated Press-GfK poll, 43 percent said they trust the Democrats more to manage the federal budget deficit and 40 percent preferred the Republicans. There’s a similar split on who’s more trusted with taxes.

About half of Americans support higher taxes for the wealthy, the poll says, and about 10 percent want tax increases all around. Still, almost half say cutting government services, not raising taxes, should be the main focus of lawmakers as they try to balance the budget.

When asked about specific budget cuts being discussed in Washington, few Americans express support for them.

The countdown Time for deal-making is short, thanks to the holiday and congressional calendars.

Some key dates for averting the fiscal cliff: Lawmakers aren’t expected to return to the Capitol until Thursday, leaving less than a week to vote on a compromise before year’s end.

Obama and his family also left town for a Christmas vacation in Hawaii. The president said because the fiscal cliff was still unresolved, he would return to Washington this week. If lawmakers reach Dec 31 without a deal, some economists worry that the financial markets might swoon. - The current Congress is in session only through noon Eastern time on Jan 3. After that, a newly elected Congress with 13 new senators and 82 new House members would inherit the problem. — AP

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2012

BUSINESS

Denmark scrambles to save ‘flexicurity’ as economy stalls COPENHAGEN: In Copenhagen’s central station, thousands of Swedes step off the train each morning to head for jobs that many say they could not be found on the Swedish side of the border.

Although the workers come from different backgrounds-many are from the immigrant-heavy city of Malmoe-they agree on one thing: getting hired in Denmark is easier than in Sweden. “Here you could just talk to the employers to see if they were hiring. In Sweden it seemed like you needed more contacts to find a job,” said Denny Crona, a 25year-old sales clerk in the Copenhagen airport who has been making the 30-minute commute for more than four years.

The Danish model of mixing flexibility for employers, who can hire and fire personnel easily, with social security for workers, was credited with virtually eradicating unemployment in the Nordic nation, before the financial crisis hit. The system differs markedly from those in neighbouring Sweden and Germany, where terminating an employee is often expensive and cumbersome.

If workers who lose their jobs receive generous benefits and are offered courses and training schemes that help them improve their skills, they

will be less inclined to demand a high level of job security, the Danish argument goes. In recent years, flexicurity has garnered attention across Europe, especially in countries beset by high youth unemployment.

Italian lawmakers looked to Denmark earlier this year before passing legislation that would make it easier to fire workers while also making employees eligible for a modernised welfare scheme. But back in Copenhagen, politicians are trying to tailor flexicurity to a new reality of sluggish growth and rising unemployment in the wake of a property market crash that has shaken the country’s banking system. With unemployment at 7.7 percent of the workforce in the third quarter, Denmark is scrambling to find jobs for thousands of people whose unemployment benefits are set to expire.

The period when a person is eligible for the country’s famously generous job seekers’ allowance was halved in 2010 — to two years from four years-by the previous centre-right government, rolling back a crucial “security” component of the system. Trine Bramsen, a member of parliament for the ruling Social Democrats, admits that budget cuts means flexicurity is facing challenges,

but claims statistics show that most of the people who previously found a job towards the end of the four-year benefits period are now doing so after less than two years.

“As Danish social democrats, we don’t believe it’s in a person’s best interest to spend a long period of time outside the job market,” she said. “We would rather offer these people the opportunity to re-train as something else.” To that end, the government has said that anyone whose benefits are about to expire will be able to extend them for another six months on the condition that they apply for training that makes them more employable in the future.

The opposition claims it’s merely trying to cover up a failed jobs pact between the government, local governments and private employers. In October, the government struck a deal with the Confederation of Danish Employers to create 12,500 jobs that would be earmarked for those who have been unemployed for two years and who are about to “fall out of the system” of generous benefits, Bramsen said.

So far, that effort has fallen short of its target, with not a single job vacancy being earmarked for

the long-term unemployed in many parts of the country. However, Danish unemployment might have been even higher than it is today if it weren’t for flexicurity, argued Soeren Kaj Andersen of the University of Copenhagen’s Employment Relations Research Centre.

“We can see that the number of jobs that have disappeared in Denmark during the crisis has been high compared to the rest of northern Europe, but so has the number of jobs being created,” he said.

In other countries, it would have been more difficult for those losing their jobs to be matched with a new one, he added.

But Martin Aagerup, the managing director of free market-leaning think tank CEPOS, said there was little evidence to suggest that high spending on unemployment benefits and professional training was needed to achieve those outcomes. Britain has had a high level of labour mobility and, historically, a relatively low unemployment rate, but without Denmark’s high level of public spending, he noted. “There is nothing to suggest that you can’t make changes to one parameter (benefits) without the other parameter (labour mobility) changing,” he said. — AFP

Brent climbs above $109 ahead of US budget talks Investors see last-minute deal

CHICAGO: A double decker Megabus pulls into the company’s service area. — MCT

Megabus, discount intercity bus rivals enjoying the ride ELGIN: We’re running late this weekday afternoon and the road is a bit bumpy en route to Madison, Wis. For Megabus, the still-growing discount intercity bus line, however, the ride has been faster and smoother than anyone would have guessed when it made its US debut 6 years ago, linking eight Midwestern cities to a Chicago hub for as little as $1 a ticket.

Within two years, Megabus was carrying 2 million passengers annually. That number is approaching 6 million riders in about 100 cities in the US and Canada. Its North American fleet of 194 double-decker buses last year has grown to 260, and its network of hubs has expanded to eight cities.

The intercity bus industry’s indelible image of Dustin Hoffman’s destitute Ratso Rizzo in “Midnight Cowboy” expiring on the way to Florida is giving way to a new reality from the curbside operators, so named because they spare the expense of maintaining traditional bus stations.

There is free onboard Wi-Fi, power outlets and tables on which riders can eat, play or set up a laptop and phone and get to work on, say, a newspaper column.

Along the way, these carriers have breathed life into a mode of transportation that was practically in hospice care for close to a half-century. Not even a spate of incidents this summer that raised safety concerns across the curbside bus business seems to have slowed the revival.

“The bus sector was flat on its back,” Joseph Schwieterman, a DePaul University transportation professor and the director of DePaul’s Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development, said by phone. “Megabus started its Chicago hub in spring of ‘06, and that began the whole curbside boom. It’s spreading across the US really rapidly, so we think this year the curbside bus (service overall) is up in scheduled departures by about 15 percent, and that’s after huge growth the last few years.”

“Greyhound (a traditional intercity company that’s a partner in Megabus rival BoltBus) and others have tried to argue that the whole curbside sector is going to collapse of its own weight,” Schwieterman said. “I don’t think that’s true. But it is a hard way to make a buck.”

A part of Coach USA, which itself is a subsidiary of United Kingdom-based Stagecoach Group PLC, Megabus is racking up about $125 million in revenue and turning an overall profit, according to a spokesman. FirstGroup PLC’s BoltBus, a 2008 venture between Greyhound and Peter Pan Bus Lines, also has said it’s in the black, but it hasn’t broken out figures.

Schwieterman said it usually takes about four years for a hub to become profitable, which would suggest Chicago and New York are carrying Megabus, while Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio are still establishing themselves. An attempt to expand into California, Nevada and Arizona a few years back was aborted after just a few months, an example (both bad and good) of just how nimble the company can be, unsubsidized and unbeholden to anything but its own needs.

Half of the intercity curbside bus passengers are 25 or younger, and three-

quarters are no older than 35. Amtrak has taken a hit, as more than a quarter of the bus passengers have been diverted from rail travel, leading some to wonder what impact sustained growth of the curbside buses might have on future rail subsidies.

Megabus and the others benefited from rising fuel prices, a bum economy, digital technology that facilitates cost-cutting by moving most ticket sales online, and, well, that oft-touted $1 fare ($1.50, when a booking fee is added).

“It was price first,” explained Michael Alvich, Megabus’ vice president of marketing and public relations. “That’s what got everybody’s attention. They couldn’t understand how we could do it for a dollar. They thought it was going to be a promotional gimmick only out there for a short time.” Instead, it was a promotional gimmick for which the company would be best known, available on at least a few seats on every bus on every route, with prices going up as available seats dwindle and departure nears.

Tickets may go as high as $70 or $80 for a trip from New York to Toronto. My midday Chicago-Madison seat last Thursday ran $19.65, a bargain compared to driving. Never mind flying, and Amtrak goes wide of the Wisconsin capital. Alas, our bus didn’t get to our pickup spot at Jackson Boulevard and Canal Street until 45 minutes after our scheduled departure, and no one seemed to have an explanation why. Then we had to wait for a fresh driver, ultimately leaving about 90 minutes late, which meant we would lose more time snarled in rush-hour traffic.

But really, isn’t that just like flying?

Biding time on the sidewalk wasn’t too bad, thanks in part to it being unseasonably warm for late October in Chicago.

But come winter, even when the company brings in idling buses on which waiting customers can stay warm, it may not be so agreeable, even if the delay was an aberration, as Alvich explained.

Because of the low cost, growth of the curbside sector and the way the bus industry is monitored, there have been concerns raised about safety despite the government giving Megabus a satisfactory rating on that front.

The Federal Motor Coach Safety Administration, which oversees 4,000 companies, announced in May it was shutting down 26 bus operations after a yearlong investigation. And the agency and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration this summer warned of the blowout danger posed by doubledecker buses exceeding their tires’ weight limits.

Indeed, a tire blowout was said to have figured in the Megabus crash in August that killed one person and injured almost 50 in Litchfield, Ill. But it’s in the interest of Megabus, BoltBus and others that safety concerns not deter travelers. “There’s been nothing like this since airline deregulation in terms of the excitement it creates,” Schwieterman said. “And there’s been nothing like this to re-energize downtowns and downtown travel since World War II. Plus there’s the whole environmental side in what kind of mileage bus companies get.” It’s traveled a long way already. — MCT

SINGAPORE: Brent crude climbed above $109 per barrel yesterday in thin trade a day after Christmas, with investors hoping for a lastminute deal to avoid a fiscal crisis in the United States, the world’s largest oil consumer. Brent crude had gained 50 cents to $109.30 a barrel by 0249 GMT, after settling 17 cents lower on Monday before Christmas. US crude increased by 46 cents to $89.07.

“The market is very thin, with global markets trading thinly since Christmas eve,” said Ken Hasegawa, a commodity sales manager at Newedge Japan. “There are not that many participants and thus it’s easy to move markets up and down, so I don’t think it’s reflective of the actual market and it will probably move after the Europe market wakes up.”

The next session of the US Senate was set for Thursday, but the issues presented by the “fiscal cliff” of tax hikes and spending cuts scheduled to take effect next year were not on the calendar.

The US House of Representatives has nothing on its schedule this week, but its members have been told they could be called back on 48 hours notice, making their Thursday return a theoretical possibility. Some investors are now looking at a stop-gap that puts everything off for a while as the most promising alternative. Such a fix may help delay the spending cuts and tax hikes further into 2013 as well as work to address in a long-term way a budget that has generated deficits exceeding $1 trillion in each of the last four years. Oil had slumped on Friday after the budget talks dissolved, but many investors doubt that lawmakers will risk the fragile US economy tipping into recession again.

Investors also took direction from the equity markets where expectations that Japan’s incoming prime minister will pursue drastic stimulus policies to drive the world’s third largest oil consumer’s economy out of deflation helped weaken the yen. “There were gains in the stock mar-

kets yesterday, so that might be a factor pushing up prices in the oil market as it catches up,” Hasegawa said.

Middle East violence Oil prices also found support on tensions in the Middle East. International envoy Lakhdar Brahimi pursued mediation efforts in Damascus on Tuesday, but there was no pause in the bloodletting as Syrian Christians marked a bleak Christmas Day with prayers for peace.

More than 44,000 Syrians have been killed since a revolt against President Bashar Al-Assad erupted 21 months ago. Six US-allied Gulf Arab

states demanded on Tuesday that Iran end what they called interference in the region, reiterating a long-held mistrust of their main rival. The Islamic Republic denies trying to subvert Saudi Arabia and its wealthy Gulf neighbours. A communique issued at the end of a two-day summit of the Saudi-led Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) also urged action to halt mass killings and violations of international law in Syria. The oil-producing GCC states wield influence out of proportion to their sparse populations due in part to global energy and investment links, generous international aid and Saudi Arabia’s role as home to Islam’s two holiest sites. — Reuters

NEW YORK: In this file photo, Floor official Nicholas Brigandi (center) works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. — AP

Youtoo aims to put viewers in touch with their televisions Teri Osborn vividly remembers the first time she appeared on television. “I was freaking out,” Osborn said. “I was calling my husband into the living room.”

Osborn’s 15 seconds of fame were achieved without an appearance on a reality TV program, game show or local news segment. In fact, she never even left her home in Des Moines, Iowa. She was using an interactive technology that puts viewers on television.

Developed by Youtoo Technologies, it uses smartphones, tablets and laptop computers to enable viewers to record brief videos themselves in high definition and send these segments, with the press of a button, to a cable or broadcast network. The software filters the submissions for obscenity and nudity, then places the videos in a queue for a show’s producer to review.

If selected, the viewer’s submission airs alongside the program.

“This is where all the rocket science happens,” Youtoo Chief Executive Chris Wyatt said. “Within three clicks and in under three minutes, you can be on national TV.” Youtoo is the latest wrinkle in interactive TV, a concept that dates from the 1950s, when the children’s show “Winky Dink and You” handed young viewers a “magic” crayon and encouraged them to draw pictures and save the hero. The Dallas company’s technology seeks to capitalize on behavior that’s already occurring, as viewers reach for their “second screen” devices to cast votes during ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars” or trumpet San Francisco Giants slugger Pablo Sandoval on Twitter.

Youtoo’s software uses smartphones, tablets and laptops to record and transmit broadcast-quality video, conduct real-time polling and post viewer comments on TV screens.

“Forty-one percent of tablet owners

use their tablets while they’re watching TV. They’re chatting with friends and they’re looking up stuff about the show,” said Colin Dixon, senior analyst for The Diffusion Group, a consulting firm specializing in the digital home.

“Youtoo seems to be tapping into this community aspect.”

The company is the brainchild of Wyatt, a 43-year-old serial entrepreneur who worked for several years in TV before catching the Internet bug.

While attending the Dallas Theological Seminary, Wyatt came up with the idea for GodTube, an online Christian video destination once ranked as the nation’s fastest-growing website, that combined user-generated video (a la YouTube), social networking (a la Facebook) and live webcasting (a la Ustream). Wyatt, its telegenic chief executive, received lots of media attention but resigned his

post in 2008, when a new buyer took over and proposed taking the company in a different direction.

Wyatt launched his next startup with his father-in-law, the Rev. Robert A. Schuller, son of televangelist and Crystal Cathedral founder Robert H. Schuller. Their ComStar Media Fund acquired television networks AmericanLife TV Network and FamilyNet, with a plan to use the channels to provide family-friendly programming. The younger Schuller served as chairman and the on-camera face of FamilyNet until its sale in October to Rural Media Group. He is looking to return to the ministry. The operation was more than it appeared to be. Wyatt used the networks to test the interactive TV technology that would become Youtoo in “stealth mode,” to avoid attracting the attention of would-be competitors. “From

The technology company Youtoo, a new interactive TV company that allows viewers to put themselves in TV shows, has an app called ViewerMeter, which can be used on multiple devices and allows for direct interaction with TV shows. — MCT

my days as a network producer, I knew no broadcast or cable network would allow us anywhere near their broadcast facility,” Wyatt said. “And I knew we had to develop, test and then prove our technology before any network would license it. Proving it was critical.” For six months before its launch in September 2011 as Youtoo TV, the company conducted overnight tests of the technology on its own networks. “The biggest eureka moment was when we saw the first piece of video go from a mobile phone and be on television,” Wyatt said.

Using a computer and Web browser, or applications for the iPhone, iPad or Android devices, anyone can record a 15-second “Fame Spot,” such as a response to a question like, “If you could be a game show host, which one would it be?” Users can also record a 30-second “Peoplemercial” to discuss a topic of their choice. The system communicates with the user every step of the way, informing them when their video has been received, approved and, when relevant, scheduled to air - building anticipation and social media buzz along the way.

“I refer to this technology as ‘grandma-proof,’ “ said David Armour, a former executive at reality TV production firm Endemol who recently joined Youtoo as executive vice president. “If you want the masses to adopt, you cannot be speaking only to people who are technically inclined.”

Osborn, a 53-year-old video blogger whose first 15-second “fame spot” aired during a rerun of a 1966 episode of “Batman,” said she found the process much easier than posting a submission to YouTube - which requires recording, editing and then uploading a video. With Youtoo, she said.—MCT

26

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2012

business

Mohammed Nasser Al-Ajmi wins KD 250,000 in NBK’s draw KUWAIT: National Bank of Kuwait (NBK) announced Mohammed Nasser Efnais Al-Ajmi as the winner of KD 250,000, NBK’s Al-Jawhara quarterly prize. Al-Ajmi expressed his gratitude and appreciation, explaining that this gave him the chance to finally purse his dreams.

NBK re-launched Al-Jawhara account, offering customers more chances to win bigger prizes. NBK customers have chances to win KD 5,000 weekly, KD 125,000 monthly and a grand prize of KD 250,000 quarterly. Al-Jawhara account offers numerous benefits to NBK customers. Not only is it an interest-

free account with regular deposit and withdrawal privileges, but also entitles account holders to enter the weekly, monthly and quarterly Al-Jawhara draws. Each KD 50 in an Al-Jawhara account entitles the customer to one chance in any of the draws. All prizes are automatically credited to the winners’ accounts the day after the draw. The more money held in your Al-Jawhara account, the greater your chances of winning. AlJawhara accounts are available to both Kuwaitis and expats and can be opened at any one of NBK’s branches around Kuwait.

Gulf Bank promises exciting start to 2013 KUWAIT: The winner receives his prize from Mazin Al-Nahedh, NBK’s General Manager, Consumer Banking Group, Ahmed Al-Khader, NBK’s Assistant General Manager, Consumer Banking Group and Mohammed Al-Othman, NBK’s Executive Manager, Consumer Banking Group.

VIVA announces lucky winners of Benz C180, Chevrolet Camaro KUWAIT: VIVA, Kuwait’s fastest-growing telecom operator, announced yesterday two more winners in the ‘Win a car every week’ campaign. The lucky draw winners were Maryam Mohammad who won the Mercedes Benz C180 and Shamayel Al-Olayan who won the Chevrolet Camaro.

The winners drawn on December 17, 2012 will have until January 16, 2013 to claim their prize, otherwise the prize will be given to the alternate winner. VIVA congratulated the lucky winners and invited its customers to participate in the longest on-going campaign of its kind, and to anticipate many more surprises planned for 2013.

With the continuous success this campaign is witnessing, VIVA is keen to further engage its customers by presenting them with several means to enter the draw. Entering the draw can be done through one of the following options. The first option is to subscribe with 500 Fils per day giving customers infinite minutes and SMS to any VIVA line. This option entitles the customer to one chance to enter the draw each week.

The second option is to subscribe to the BlackBerry KD3.9 service, which gives customers full and unlimited

BlackBerry Services. This option provides customers with 7 automatic chances to enter the draw each week.

The third option is to purchase the KD 2 prepaid line.

Upon activating the line, customers should simply send ‘GO’ to 535, and will be presented with four chances to enter the draw each week.

The fourth option is to recharge for KD 3 or more, and entitles the customer to six chances to enter the draw, each time. Last but not least, customers who choose to enjoy the prepaid internet service will receive either 2 chances for the KD 1 - 500 MB recharge or 10 chances for the KD 5 - 1 GB recharge, automatically upon activation. Customers can also subscribe to more than one of the five options, increasing their chances each week to win the valuable prizes. In the case a customer does not win, the points will be accumulated and carried on to the next draw.

VIVA also created the ‘Flavor of the Week’, an additional mean to entering the draw and increasing the customers’ chances to win a new car every week. The ‘Flavor of the Week’ will be a ‘special service’ for that week, to which the customers can subscribe.

KUWAIT: Gulf Bank’s Al-Danah draw has enthralled the public over the years and is set to make an even bigger impact in 2013. The upcoming 1 Million dinar Al-Danah draw will take place at the Avenues Mall on Thursday, January 10, 2013, where an exciting event will be hosted by Khaled Al-Ansari and Oussama Fouda.

The highly anticipated 1 million Dinar Al-Danah draw, where one lucky winner will be announced, will be held with the presence of a representative from the Ministry of Commerce. As the exciting event progresses throughout the evening, the bank will also unveil to the audience the Al-Danah draw line-up for 2013, showering them with on-the-spot prizes and

many surprises. Every Al-Danah account holder with a minimum of KD 200 maintained in their account before the closing date is eligible and automatically entered into the Al-Danah draws. Conditions of opening an Al-Danah account are very simple as no salary transfer is required. Minors require their parents or their legal guardian to open the account on their behalf.

Al-Danah also offers a number of unique services including the Al-Danah Deposit Only ATM card, which helps account holders deposit their money at their convenience; as well as the Al-Danah online calculator to help customers calculate their chances of becoming an Al-Danah winner.

LONDON: A shopper stands by a sale sign on a store window, during the traditional Boxing Day sales on Oxford Street yesterday. — AP

US holiday sales weakest since 2008

Cheap Canadian crude hurts US oil production efforts KANSAS CITY: An unfolding tale in the Great Plains is raising questions of just how serious the United States is about boosting domestic production and breaking its “addiction” to foreign oil. At a time when soaring energy prices and mounting international instability would seem to put a premium on every barrel of US oil, some domestic wells have been shut down and others are in danger of closing. The culprit is a flood of cheaper Canadian crude which, instead of replacing supply from members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, is replacing oil production in states close to the Canadian border.

Producers in several Great Plains states say refinery customers are replacing their product with Canadian crude, which is increasingly being cooked and squeezed out of petroleumrich “tar sands.” Moreover, they say it is becoming more difficult to ship their oil to other markets because the cheaper Canadian product is crowding them out of pipelines. Domestic oil is being discounted as much as 40 percent in such states as Montana, Wyoming and North Dakota - giving small producers there less than what Big Oil companies and members of OPEC are getting.

As a result, some projects to drill new wells are being postponed or reconsidered, and in a few cases, producing wells are actually being closed. Some owners of oil wells, who have farmed out the production to the oil companies, have even received letters saying their wells may have to be shut down.

The situation also is an indication of a US energy policy that lacks focus, some American producers say.

“This oil isn’t displacing unfriendly foreign oil but domestic producers,” said Robert Harms, president of The Northern Alliance of Independent Producers in Bismarck, ND. Many Great Plains producers say they are stunned by recent market changes. They find it especially galling that they are confronting the situation amid the talk about easing the US addiction to foreign oil. Instead, producers now fear that production gains in the

last few years will unravel. “Here we are destroying it,” said Harold Hamm, chairman of Continental Resources Inc, one of the largest producers of oil in the Rocky Mountain region. In theory, at least, more and cheaper crude from Canada offers at least the prospect of lower prices for consumers. But Stephen Brown, an economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, said such a narrow, market-based, supply-and-demand view may be too narrow when our domestic energy security is involved.

“I would say from a national perspective it is not a good thing,” Brown said. The issue, which has been brewing in recent months, is getting more attention of late. The Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission, made up of oil-producing states, has formed a task force to recommend steps that can be taken to help the producers. Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal, who leads the task force, is expected to have a final report at the group’s annual meeting in October.

Two US senators and a representative from North Dakota have also weighed in with a recent letter to the chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, saying the Canadian crude could curtail energy investments to produce more oil in their state. They also asked for federal help to expand pipeline capacity in the region. Commission Chairman Joseph Kelliher will reply to the letter soon, a spokeswoman said.

The states thought to be most affected are Colorado, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming, which are served by pipelines from Canada. Toss in Kansas, whose refineries have been getting Canadian crude since March, and the states are responsible for about 10 percent of US oil production and supply roughly 3 percent of the country’s total demand for crude. Even though they are on declining oil fields, the Great Plains states have seen a recent resurgence in their oil industries. Higher oil prices have financed more drilling rigs and new techniques to recover hard-to-get oil. —MCT

WASHINGTON: US holiday retail sales this year were the weakest since 2008, when the nation was in a deep recession. In 2012, the shopping season was disrupted by bad weather and consumers’ rising uncertainty about the economy. A report that tracks spending on popular holiday goods, the MasterCard Advisors SpendingPulse, said Tuesday that sales in the two months before Christmas increased 0.7 percent, compared with last year. Many analysts had expected holiday sales to grow 3 to 4 percent. Shoppers were buffeted this year by a string of events that made them less likely to spend: Superstorm Sandy and other bad weather, the distraction of the presidential election and grief about the massacre of schoolchildren in Newtown, Connecticut. The numbers also show how Washington’s current budget impasse is trickling down to Main Street and unsettling consumers. If Americans remain reluctant to spend, analysts say, economic growth could falter next year. In the end, even steep last-minute discounts weren’t enough to get people into stores, said Marshal Cohen, chief research analyst at the market research firm NPD Inc. “A lot of the Christmas spirit was left behind way back in Black Friday weekend,” Cohen said, referring to the traditional retail rush the day after the Thanksgiving holiday in late November. “We had one reason after another for consumers to say, ‘I’m going to stick to my list and not go beyond it.’”

Holiday sales are a crucial indicator of the economy’s strength. November and December account for up to 40 percent of annual sales for many retailers. If those sales don’t materialize, stores are forced to offer steeper discounts. That’s a boon for shoppers, but it cuts into stores’ profits. Last-minute shoppers like Kris Betzold, of Carmel, Indiana, embraced discounts that were available before Christmas. “We went out yesterday, and I noticed that the sales were even better now than they were at Thanksgiving,” said Betzold while shopping Monday at an upscale mall in Indianapolis. Betzold, who said the sluggish economy prompted her and her husband to be more frugal this year, noted that she saved about $25 on a Kindle Fire she found at Best Buy. Spending by consumers accounts for 70 percent of overall economic activity, so the eight-week period encompassed by the SpendingPulse data is seen as a critical time not just for retailers but for manufacturers, wholesalers and companies at every other point along the supply chain. The SpendingPulse data include sales by retailers in key holiday spending categories such as electronics, clothing, jewelry, luxury goods, furniture and other home goods between Oct. 28 and Dec. 24. They

Oman Air welcomes Kuwaiti familiarization trip MUSCAT: Oman Air showcased its internationally-acclaimed products and services when the national carrier of the Sultanate of Oman hosted a delegation of prominent travel professionals and Media personalities from Kuwait headed by Country Manager Oman Air - Kuwait, for a familiarization trip to Sri Lanka. Wayne Pearce, Oman Air’s Chief Executive Officer, comments: “We are delighted to have offered this highly influential group of decision-makers from Kuwait the opportunity to see and enjoy the award-winning products of Oman Air and to learn more about Oman Air’s much-praised quality, comfort and value.

This trip also gave the delegates a first-hand experience of enjoying the services at our premium class lounge at the Muscat International

Airport. We look forward to promoting Sri Lanka as a tourist destination and this trip helped to explore Sri Lanka which has everything for a perfect holiday. We are confident this trip will help our valuable travel agents to get more passengers on board Oman Air to Sri Lanka.”

The five-day FAM (familiarization) trip gave the delegates an opportunity to enjoy Oman Air’s seamless passenger experience, and to inspect the airline’s long haul Business Class seat, which has been named Best Business Class Airline Seat in the World for two years running at the World Airline Awards. The guests also revelled at the splendid facilities offered onboard including the WI-FI facility and on air Mobile Service. Oman Air is the first airline in the world to offer these facili-

ties on board.

The group visited places like Danbulla Elephant Orphanage, Kandy and Nuwara Eliya as part of the trip. The group also experienced the ethnic beauty of Sri Lanka and the cultural heritage through the various excursions arranged by Oman Air in conjunction with the local Oman Air office. They also had an opportunity to interact with the tour operators and hoteliers of Sri Lanka organized by Sri Lanka tourism department. The wide variety of food and beverages, beside the other range of services offered to the premium class passengers in Oman Air’s new stylish and elegant Business Class Lounge at Muscat International Airport, were greatly appreciated by the group members.

include sales across all payment methods, including cards, cash and checks.

It’s the first major snapshot of retail sales during the holiday season through Christmas Eve. A clearer picture will emerge next week as retailers like Macy’s and Target report revenue from stores open for at least a year. That sales measure is widely watched in the retail industry because it excludes revenue from stores that recently opened or closed, which can be volatile. Despite the weak numbers out Tuesday, retailers still have some time to make up lost ground. The final week of December accounts for about 15 percent of the month’s sales, said Michael McNamara, vice president for research and analysis at MasterCard Advisors SpendingPulse. As stores offer steeper discounts to clear some of their unsold inventory, they may be able to soften some of the grim results reflected in Tuesday’s data.

Still, this season’s weak sales could have repercussions for 2013, he said. Retailers will make fewer orders to restock their shelves, and discounts will hurt their profitability. Wholesalers, in turn, will buy fewer goods, and orders to factories for consumer goods will likely drop in the coming months. In the run-up to Christmas, analysts blamed the weather and worries about the “fiscal cliff” for putting a damper on shopping. Superstorm Sandy battered the Northeast and mid-Atlantic states in late October. Many in the New York region were left without power, and people farther inland were buried under feet of snow. According to McNamara, the Northeast and mid-Atlantic account for 24 percent of US retail sales.

Buying picked up in the second half of November as retailers offered more discounts and shoppers waylaid by the storm finally made it into malls, he said.

But as the weather calmed, the threat of the “fiscal cliff ” picked up. In December, lawmakers remained unable to reach a deal that would prevent tax increases and government spending cuts set to take effect at the beginning of 2013. If the cuts and tax hikes kick in and stay in place for months, many economists expect the nation could fall back into recession.

The news media discussed this possibility more intensely as December wore on, making Americans increasingly aware of the economic troubles they might face if Washington is unable to resolve the impasse. Sales never fully recovered, Cohen said. The results were weakest in areas affected by Sandy and a more recent winter storm in the Midwest. Sales declined by 3.9 percent in the mid-Atlantic and 1.4 percent in the Northeast compared with last year. They rose 0.9 percent in the north central part of the country.—AP

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2012

TECHNOLOGY

Slapshot bots PHILADELPHIA: After a 4 weeks binge of laser-cutting, wiring, soldering, programming and debugging, it all came down to the moment when a tall man in a dark gray suit took the stage. “It’s time to plaaayyyy some HOCKEY!” he shouted. Guns N’ Roses’ “Welcome to the Jungle” blared from the sound system. The crowd, many of them zonked from pulling repeated all-nighters, was in a state of neardelirium. This was Robockey 2012 — hockey played by wheeled robots. It is the culmination of a notoriously tough engineering course at the University of Pennsylvaniataught every fall by Jonathan Fiene, the man in the gray suit-and it is a wild scene.

For sheer concentration of energy, it would be hard to top Robockey. More than a hundred spectators crammed into an auditorium at Penn’s Levine Hall on Dec 12 to watch the violent clash of machine on machine. They spilled into the aisles, alternately whooping, fist-bumping, jumping up, and yelling themselves hoarse. Four guys even went shirtless. “Fraternity brothers,” explained Justin Starr, a member of the team that the bare-chested guys were supporting. (Starr himself sported a coat and tie for the occasion. Who says engineers don’t know how to dress up?)

The class, a mix of undergraduates and grad students, was divided into 17 teams of three or four people from various disciplines, such as mechanical engineering, computer science or robotics.

Each team built three robots for the double-elimination tournament, which first took place in 2008. The robots were limited to roughly the size of a half-gallon carton of ice cream, and the rink measured about 8 feet by 4 feet.

The robots were fitted with sensors taken from a Nintendo Wii remote, which can detect infrared light.

These allowed each robot to tell where it was in relation to a “constellation” of infrared lights mounted on the ceiling, navigating as early sailors did by the stars.

The puck also was studded with infrared lights, so the robots could sense its location. Each bot contained a small computer chip that the students programmed with instructions, such as what path to travel and when, depending on the location of the puck and the goal. Each team had a budget of $120.

Public demonstrations have long been a staple of college engineering curriculums. Students make and break scale-model bridges. They program robots to drive cars or play soccer. And down the street from Penn, Drexel University is a perennial contender in a national competition to make concrete canoes. (Floating isn’t the hard part.

It’s the brittleness.) Sure, we knew they were good at math and science, but are engineers really defined by a willingness to risk public humiliation?

That is not Fiene’s goal. He does Robockey because it motivates his students, and because he likes the power of learning by doing. Robockey is just a game. But by taking part in the tournament and in other projects over the course of the semester, students get an intense dose of electronics and mechanics that several said made it the toughest course they’d taken at Penn.

Several students said they spent well over 100 hours on the Robockey project alone, wrapping up in the last week with 14-hour overnight sessions in the lab. Some of the matches last week, consisting of two 60-second periods, were more even than others.

Team 16 jumped out to a quick 4-0 lead against Team 14. Fiene respectfully averted his gaze from the bloodbath.

By the end it was 7-0, one of the goals coming when a Team 16 forward simply drove the opposing goalie backward into the goal. Brutal. “It was tough,” said Team 14 member Rafi Pelles, slipping easily into the role of a cliche-spouting athlete in a postgame interview. “You go out there and you try your best.”

He attributed the team’s loss to a few bugs in its computer code, along with unspecified issues in the “interface between hardware and electronics.” Before his team’s first match of the evening, Nick Parrotta bounced on his feet a few times to warm up, as if he were the one about to step into the rink, not the robots.

Dubbed the Avengers, after the comic-book superheroes, Parrotta’s team lost its match. But it finished with a respectable record of five wins, three losses and a tie, counting preliminary rounds. Fellow Avenger Vivienne Clayton was not feeling downcast. “Adrenaline rush!” Clayton said afterward. “That was so much fun.”

Easily tops in the spirit category was Starr’s team, dubbed Team ‘Murica, as in the faux down-home pronunciation of “America.” Like Starr, the rest of the team wore blazers. Starr also wore a red-white-and-blue baseball hat backward, while Tarik Tosun sported a red-and-black-checkered hunting cap. Their robots had presidential names: Millard Killmore, Martin van Bruisin’, and Grover Cleaveland.

There was substance to go with the flash. Many teams’ robots got stuck in a fierce scrum from time to time, wheels spinning madly. But if one of ‘Murica’s robots got stuck, it was programmed to back up and allow its teammate to attack from a different angle. “It was beautiful to watch,” Fiene said later. Another strong contender was Team 8, whose members were clad in neon-yellow T-shirts. They started each match by placing their three robots in single file, so the wheeled combatants could plow forward as one.

“That’s our train formation,” said team member Ian Rafter. It was a good strategy, until they met Team 10 in the finals.

That team consisted of Wenbin Zhao, Daniel Chabolla and Sean Gowen, all seniors in mechanical engineering.

Designing the robot required making decisions, and one of the biggest was selecting a motor. Speed or brute force?

Claude Giroux or Chris Pronger? Team 10 opted for speed.

“Our strategy was, if we got the puck first, we’re not going to have to worry about being pushed around,” Gowen said.

They won the championship, beating Team 8 by a score of 6-5. But there was no time for celebration, Gowen said: “We had a report due the next day for another class.”— MCT

Robockey - six combatants, one puck, and the violent clash of metal on metal. — MCT photos

Facebook and Google dip their toes in sale of physical goods NEW YORK: Google and Facebook made their names by helping people find information or friends online. But in recent weeks the two rivals have made some surprising moves in a different direction - the business of selling and delivering goods.

Facebook is trumpeting its new Gifts service that lets users order a wide range of stuff, from wine and cupcakes to pet toys and children’s clothes, and have them delivered to friends. aGoogle, meanwhile, has been tight-lipped about its recent deal to buy a small company that operates temporary lockers where shoppers can take delivery of items they purchase online. But some believe Google will combine the startup’s delivery expertise with other services to help merchants sell products through Google.

Each venture is new and faces challenges. But if today’s ecommerce is dominated by well-known retailers like Amazon and Walmart.com, analysts say Google and Facebook may see these initiatives as both a potential source for new revenue and a strategy for keeping their users engaged - while giving people one less reason to visit Amazon or competing sites. “These companies want to keep people from leaving. They would love to have a complete ecosystem where they own every part of the customer experience, from browsing to buying and repeat visits,” said Sucharita Mulpuru, an e-commerce expert at the Forrester tech research firm. Google in particular may have reason to be concerned. While it still dominates the business of selling advertising keyed to Internet search queries, online shoppers today are more likely to start their quests on Amazon than Google, according to some studies. If that trend continues, analysts warn, it could make Google’s site less attractive to retail advertisers.

Facebook also has good reasons to offer shopping on its site, as the social network seeks to broaden its business beyond selling advertising and games. Facebook made Gifts available to all US users in December. But Sterne Agee investment analyst Arvind Bhatia estimated the program could become a significant revenue source, contributing “several hundred million dollars” of annual earnings. Facebook isn’t selling its own products; instead it partnered with big chains and independent merchants that sell items through the Gifts program and give Facebook a cut of the proceeds. Facebook won’t say how much, although Bhatia believes the cut is 10 to 15 percent.

After a customer places an order on Facebook, most of the partners handle their own processing and delivery. But Facebook said it’s operating a small warehouse to store and ship goods from smaller partners that don’t have their own infrastructure. While Facebook seems unlikely to match the size and scale of a retail giant like Amazon, Gartner tech analyst Brian Blau said the social network has a tremendous advantage in the information it has about each user’s friends, their personal interests and important dates like birthdays and anniversaries, all of which can be used to nudge people into buying gifts. “The act of gift-buying is a very social activity,” said Blau, adding that Facebook could eventually sell other products,

such as concert souvenirs or clothing, that people talk about with their friends. Others are skeptical. People visit Facebook to interact with friends, not to buy things, said Mulpuru, who added that online companies like RedEnvelope have had little success in building a business around suggesting gifts for friends.

Google, meanwhile, has already waded into retail com-

delivery service in San Francisco, according to reports citing unnamed sources. As described in The New York Times, Google may contract with courier companies to deliver merchandise that customers order from Google’s retail partners. A Google spokeswoman declined comment on those reports and wouldn’t discuss plans for BufferBox, except to say, “We want to remove as much friction as possible from the shop-

KANSAS: In this photo, Adam Arredondo (left), CEO, and Matthew Marcus, CTO, of Local Ruckus, a Hanover Heights fiberhood in Kansas City, high five near the completion of the Google Fiber installation process. — MCT merce. In addition to selling digital goods such as music and videos through its Google Play online store, the company has experimented with electronic payments through the Google Wallet service, launched a daily-deals program called Google Offers and revamped its shopping-search service by shifting to a model where merchants pay to have their products listed.

But the search giant has said little about its late-November purchase of the Canadian startup BufferBox, which operates lockers at locations such as transit stations and grocery stores.

Online shoppers can have items shipped to a locker that’s secured with a temporary PIN code, and pick them up later if they’re not able to be home for delivery.

Google has also been quietly testing plans for same-day

GEORGIA: Kathy Schwobe, of Duluth, uses her smartphone to shop as she looks for shoes for her daughter Gabi, 17, (not pictured) at Off Broadway Shoes in Sugar Loaf Mills in Lawrenceville. — MCT photos

ping experience, while helping consumers save time and money.”

But analysts say it makes sense to offer a fast-delivery service for people who purchase items through Google, since rivals such as Amazon, Walmart.com and eBay have similar programs.

“It could be attractive for retailers who advertise on Google,” said Kerry Rice, who follows Internet business for Needham & Company. “It’s another thing that a company could use to highlight their listing in Google’s results.” It’s unclear if Google will offer delivery service on a broad scale. Amazon has experimented with delivery lockers, but Mulpuru said the concept has yet to catch on. “These tech companies throw a lot of stuff against the wall, just to see what works,” she added. — MCT

GEORGIA: Holding her smartphone, Gabi Schwobe, 17, of Duluth, looks through shoes in the clearance section at Off Broadway Shoes in Sugar Loaf Mills.

Mobile devices change shoppers’ habits, retailers’ strategies ‘There are dangers associated with easy access to technology’ ATLANTA: Tamara Lewis uses her iPhone to search for Christmas presents for her daughter while waiting in the carpool line. At night, while watching the news in bed, she looks for boots on eBay from her iPad. From the WalMart parking lot, the 50-year-old Sandy Springs, Ga, resident Googled “dance games for Wii” on her phone.

When a store employee told Lewis the game she wanted was sold out, she said she might see if a nearby Target had it. If not, she would probably buy it online.

“I love the Internet,” Lewis said. “I probably use it more and more.” As smartphones and tablet computers become ever-present, constant access to the Internet is tearing down the walls between online and in-store shopping. It means purchases that begin with an online search from an iPad at a child’s soccer game can finish with a coupon pushed to a phone, and a subsequent trip to the store to buy.

Mobile devices promise smarter shopping and potential savings, but people also spend more on average when they buy from a tablet or smartphone than they do from a computer. Even consumers without those devices will notice the changes as retailers adjust to the always connected shoppers. For instance, stores like Home Depot are changing what they have in stock, reducing the number of generators or outdoor tractors, while Nordstrom is removing some standalone cash registers in favor of mobile checkout.

About half of Americans own smartphones, according to a study by consulting firm Deloitte. Nearly 60 percent of those smartphone owners said they have used them for store-related shopping.

“There’s been a sea of change,” said Anuj Nayar, a PayPal spokesman. “Holiday 2012 is going to be the year it will go mainstream. It has gone mainstream.” Mobile sales on Black Friday alone have increased fivefold since 2010, to 16 percent of all online sales, according to IBM Smarter Commerce. That follows a rise in traffic on mobile devices. On Thanksgiving, 25.3 percent of all online traffic came from mobile devices, a 66 percent increase from the year before.

The ability to research price on the go can be a boon

to shoppers, said Mechel Glass, vice president of community outreach for credit counseling organization CredAbility. But the ease of buying from a device could be problematic for those who are inclined to overspend.

“There are dangers associated with easy access to technology,” Glass said. “It doesn’t give you that ‘think about it’ time to ask, ‘Do I really need this?’ “ People are likely to spend the most when they shop on smartphones-an average of $97.82, compared to $96.84 when shopping on a tablet and $91.76 when buying on a computer, according to data from Monetate, a firm that provides personalization services for online marketers.

While people are still most likely to hit the “buy” button from a computer, tablet purchases are not far behind.

That doesn’t always mean that a purchase is made from a device, though. It simply means that shoppers like Atlanta resident Nathan Koskovich, who in the past would have left a store without buying a book if he couldn’t decide between two biographies, now will pull out his phone to read the reviews. “It’s pretty helpful. I plan a little less ahead of time,” Koskovich said. “I’m probably more likely to buy it.”

Though some small shop owners said the idea of people checking prices from the store aisle makes them nervous, many larger retailers embrace the shift.

Shoppers who get a coupon via text message from Off Broadway Shoes redeemed it at nearly twice the rate of an emailed one, said Phil Lamantia, the company’s director of operations. Shoppers redeeming text-based offers also spend more.

Those who send their friends photos of shoes they’re trying on before buying them are less likely to return them later, Lamantia said. And shoppers can research brand names they don’t know to decide whether they’re worth the money.

As more people use mobile devices, it is likely that a relatively small percentage of retailers will ultimately succeed in blurring the lines between online and instore shopping, said Christine Barton, a partner at the consulting and business advisory firm Boston Consulting Group. Stores have varying abilities to spend money on

technology and adapt their physical spaces.

In the long term, that could affect how many options shoppers have, which could in turn impact prices. As more shoppers get used to ordering items online, stores could shrink and could choose to sell fewer items-perhaps limiting colors or sizes-meaning it might be harder to walk into a store and walk out with a specific item.

Although mobile purchasing is still a relatively small percent of all online buying, the influence of devices is such that all shopping will in some way be tied to the Internet, whether the purchase is made there or not, said Kasey Lobaugh, a principal at Deloitte Consulting.

“It really starts to be a game-changer,” he said. “It’s not economical to have 50 styles of blenders in one store.”

Atlanta-based Home Depot is devoting less in-store space to patio furniture and generators, after seeing research and sales shift online. Instead, it’s using that space to sell cleaning supplies and plumbing repair supplies, betting that people do not want to wait for those items to be delivered.

“If a toilet breaks, you’re going to run down to Home Depot,” said Hal Lawton, president of Home Depot online. When shoppers are outside stores, access to a tablet or smartphone can mean they are more likely to buy an item they see advertised, or make a note to shop for it later. It makes customers more able to buy when the moment of inspiration hits them, said Lelah Manz, chief e-commerce strategist for cloud platform company Akamai.

Stores will continue to push for that by sending notifications to people’s devices. Technology company NCR is testing a mobile app that would offer a coupon for toothpaste if a customer uses a smartphone to scan a toothbrush. Digital coupons sent to a phone can change a person’s behavior and send them to a store they might not have visited otherwise, said Marcia Crosland, NCR’s director of customer experience consulting. Apps also can help a customer who is already in the store. “I don’t have to get you to buy it in the store,” said John Rose, senior partner at the Boston Consulting Group. “I just have to have you buy it from me. — MCT

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health & science

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2012

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THURSDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2012

health & science

Isolation and hardship hit Morocco mountain Berbers TIMAHDITE, Morocco: In a country on the doorstep of western Europe and popular for sunshine holidays, an unusually bitter winter has hit isolated mountain villages, causing hardship not usually associated with Morocco. On an icy morning in December, Salem Said trudges with his son along a snow-swept road to the only school in this area of the Atlas Mountains. The predominantly Berber region is a victim of poor infrastructure and harsh winters, as starkly illustrated on Friday when a week-old baby died in Anfgou village after falling ill because of the extreme cold, according to witnesses. They blamed her death on the lack of vital medical

the winter months. “People like us have no life here,” he sighed, glancing towards his three mules, laden with bags of wheat and other food that they hauled along the mountain road.

Holding the hand of his 8-year-old son, sometimes carrying him, Salem Said battled on foot through the snow to get to the school in the village of Timahdite, three kilometres away.

“I have to take him, because he can’t go on his own,” he said, as he criticised the lack of state support for the people of the area. “We are not asking for the moon. A simple, passable road to link us up is all we’re asking for,” said Said, before heading off towards the school. Despite its huge

TIMAHDITE, Morocco: A woman rides her donkey along a path in Timahdite in the Middle Atlas Mountains on Dec 7, 2012. —AFP treatment.

An unusual bout of heavy snowfall has made many roads unpassable, leaving vehicles unable to supply the weekly markets in the villages of the Middle and High Atlas, where temperatures plunged to minus 5 degrees Celsius last week.

“The lorries and pick-up trucks can no longer drive along this road. I travel dozens of kilometres by mule to get supplies,” said Moha Ouaali, a father struggling to provide for his family during

tourist trade and proximity to Europe, much of rural Morocco remains below the poverty line, and the country ranked 130th in the latest human development index published by the United Nations.

The local authorities themselves do not hide their frustration at the lack of resources, a factor that they say limits the region’s development and its links to the outside world. “There is one snow-plough for the whole region, it’s not

enough,” an elected local official told AFP by phone. “Don’t forget that the municipal budget is very limited. Without the state developing a nationwide strategy for road infrastructure in rural areas, the problem of isolation will return every year,” the official added. The region of Timahdite, as well as Anfgou in the High Atlas, around 100 km south, is considered the worst affected by the problem, and residents say the first snowfalls this year have been particularly bad.

“The effects of the snow are not just negative. It also allows the wells and the reservoirs to fill up. But the lack of infrastructure isolates the inhabitants, especially the poorest,” said Lahcen Ouhalli, a local activist with the Moroccan Association for Human Rights. “Those who have the means buy tractors that they use to get their supplies. They are less isolated than the others, who only have their mules, their donkeys and their feet,” he added.

Fadma Bouba, a mother in Timahdite, readily admits to her dependency on the more primitive form of transport. “It’s thanks to the donkey that I can get around and buy what I need.

Otherwise, with this snow and this cold, we couldn’t do anything.” The family of the 40-dayold baby that died in Anfgou will feel more isolated than most this winter, although they are not the first to suffer such tragedy in recent years. More than 20 children froze to death in the same deprived village in the High Atlas in the winter of 2006-2007, and according to unconfirmed local press reports, at least four children have already died from cold weather this month.

In response, Morocco’s Health Minister Hossein El-Ouardi visited the area. And his ministry said last week said that it was launching a campaign to provide medical aid to the Timahdite region, as part of ongoing efforts to combat the effects of the extreme weather and to improve healthcare. But a doctor in the region said better access to medical treatment during the winter months was not enough.

“We need to educate women in these villages about not exposing their children to the cold,” he said. —AFP

New Mowasat Hospital holds doctors’ recognition awards KUWAIT: About a hundred guests joined the New Mowasat’s top physicians as they were honored with official certificates and trophies for their exceptional contribution to various medical categories. Attending the event were Mowasat Hospital’s Director Nadeem Nazir; Mowasat’s Deputy Hospital Director Eduard Lotz, Mowasat’s Medical Director Gamal Al-Afghani and Medical Advisory Committee Chairman Dr Samer Abdullah.

In his welcoming speech, Lotz stated that physicians are an important pillar in delivery of high-quality patient care and that he is delighted to see these distinguished doctors recognized for the wonderful work they do every day. Abdullah then gave his speech in which he expressed his great pride in being a part of this important occasion. “As Chairman of MAC, my colleagues and I came up with the idea that it was essential to thank our hard-working doctors. Thanks to the support of our Management, our idea has materialized for the second consecutive year” he explained.

Abdullah presented the awards, certificates and trophies to the distinguished

doctors honoring them for “working hard and endlessly giving their best, for working late at night and early in the morning”. The first of the five awards was for “Hospital Loyalty” which was given to Dr Osman Sonji who has worked in New Mowasat Hospital for over 13 years as an anesthesiologist. Dr Ali Al-Mukaimi, was awarded for “Outstanding Contribution to Best Practice” as he is regarded by his colleagues as a pioneer in sport and knee surgery.

The “Outstanding Contribution to Best Performance” award was given to Dr Habib Steitieh, Specialist Diabetologist and Dr Verginia Marin Semen, Consultant OB/GYN for their distinguished performance and contribution to their department’s success.

Dr Tarek Darwish, Consultant Radiologist received the “CME” award for his effort to organize hospital-wide Continued Medical Education and Academic Achievements.

Last but not least, “Outstanding Contribution to Performance as Registrar” award was given in memory of Dr Ayman Mustafa, Registrar in the Anesthesia Department. The ceremony concluded with group photos and a wonderful dinner enjoyed by all the attendees.

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THURSDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2012

W H AT ’ S O N

SEND US YOUR INSTAGRAM PICS

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hat’s more fun than clicking a beautiful picture? Sharing it with others! Let other people see the way you see Kuwait - through your lens. Friday Times will feature snapshots of Kuwait through Instagram feeds. If you want to share your Instagram photos, email us at instagram@kuwaittimes.net

Greetings

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appy Birthday to you Raziya Sultana Mim. Special birthday greetings from dad, mom, brothers, sisters friends and well-wishers.

May God give you long life with sound health.

Announcements

Shirva feast

‘Maths can be fun’- learn mental calculation at Achievers Academy

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chievers Academy organized a workshop organized under the supervision of Mona Furaih (Director Department of Student Activities) and with kind support of the Ahmadi Evening Club headed by Rashid Doman Mutairy Sayed Ragab.

There was a training course for mental calculation “AbacusWizkid” provided by the Achievers Academy for ages 7-12 years to develop the mental abilities of

children by increasing the capacity of the brain. This technique develops the skills of focus and attention and memory to have speedy and accurate calculations thus making Mathematics easy.

The audience enjoyed the program and the students expressed noticeable enthusiasm during training and at the end of the session, Ashish Jain,Director of Achievers Academy honored the supervisors.

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hirva Welfare Association Kuwait (SWAK) will be celebrating their Shirva Parish feast-2013 here in Kuwait.

On this occasion there will be a mass offered at 9.15 am on February 8, 2013 at the Holy Family Cathedral.

Kuwait and the celebration / get-together with a of variety entertainment programme will he held from 4:30 pm - 9 pm on the same day at the Indian Community School, Salmiya.

SWAK members or their children who would like to participate in the variety entertainment programme and show their talent are requested to contact any of the SWAK committee members listed below to avail the opportunity before January 10, 2013. Likewise if any of members children have excelled in academics or any other extra curricular activities in the past 1 year will be appreciated and hence are requested to inform any of the SWAK committee members listed below before the 10th of January. Last date for enrollment in the talent show is January 15, 2013.

Arabic courses

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WARE will begin Winter 1 Arabic language courses with new textbooks and curricula on from December 2, 2012 until January 24, 2013. AWARE Arabic language courses are designed with the expat in mind. The environment is relaxed & courses are designed for those wanting to learn Arabic for travel, cultural understanding, and conducting business or simply to become more involved in the community. For more information or registration, please log-on to our website.

Charity show

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n the occasion of New Year Hangama 2013, which will be held on December 31, 2012 , from 6:00 pm to 12:00 am at Carmel School, Khaitan. Rak Dance Academy is conducting dance competition in Telugu, Tamil, Kannada and Hindi. The winners will be rewarded.

Goan Culinary Club

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he Goan Culinary Club - Goa encourages you to log on to their website where you can find a video of Odette and Joe Mascarenhas sharing their thoughts on Goan cuisine. These videos were recorded at the launch of the Goan Culinary Club in Goa on March 3, 2012. Thanks to support from all at the Goan Culinary Club, we have made great progress in six months.

Basketball Academy

Arabic World Day U

nder the auspices and with the attendance of the Ministry of Education’s private education director, Mohammed AlDahes and Al-Ma’refa Model Co for Educational

Services, the Arabic Supervision recently celebrated the World’s Arabic Language Day. The ceremony which was held at Cambridge Theatre, Mangaf featured play, poems and an exhibition

for participant schools. It was attended by AlMa’refa chairman of board, Dr Zeyad Ahmed AlSarhan, the Arabic general supervisor and Boshra Al-Khalaf.

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he new Premier Basketball Academy offers coaching and games every Friday and Saturday from 10 am onwards for 6 to 18 year olds, boys and girls. Located in Bayan Block 7, Masjed Al-Aqsa Street by Abdullah Al-Rujaib High School. Free Basketball and Tee Shirts for all participants, with certificates and special awards on completion of each 6 week course. Qualified and experienced British and American Coaches, Everyone Welcome.

Embassy holidays French Embassy The French Embassy in Kuwait will be closed on the occasion of the New Year Tuesday, January 1st, 2013.

Indian Embassy The Embassy of India will remain closed on 01 January, 2013, Tuesday being New Year Day. Australian Embassy On the occasion of Christmas and New Yearís, the Australian Embassy wishes to advise that it will be closed today December 26, 2012, Thursday December 27, 2012 and Tuesday January 1, 2013. The Embassy will reopen on Sunday, December 30, 2012 after Christmas holidays and on Wednesday January 2, 2013 after the new yearís holiday.

ACK invites teachers to discuss challenges

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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

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ife Abundant International Fountain Church recently held its Christmas carol.

The event attracted lots of Christians from other denominations.

he Australian College of Kuwait (ACK) is preparing to host a conference on “The Challenges of Teaching English to Arab Students in Higher Educational Institutions” at its campus on Wednesday and Thursday, 9-10 January 2013. This two-day event will feature a number of international and local speakers who specialize in language teaching in higher education. The conference will be an opportunity for educators to discuss the needs, challenges and opportunities that teaching English in higher educational institutions in the region brings about. For the first time in the region a conference is entirely devoted to learning and teaching English in higher educational institutions. By hosting this event, ACK aspires to start a long term scholarly and professional commitment to this important issue and establish partnerships between institutions and professionals in the field to better serve our students

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THURSDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2012

W H AT ’ S O N

Celebrate New Year with Moevenpick Hotel & Resort Al Bida’a

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oevenpick Hotel & Resort Al Bida’a has set the stage for a grand celebration to see out 2012 and welcome the New Year with a Gala Dinner complemented by music and entertainment. The gourmet menu has been especially selected by the hotel’s Executive Chef Emmanuel Thomas to create a sumptuous experience. The menu includes international buffet, seafood specialties, live cooking stations, a wide range of sweets and much more. In addition to chef creations, guests can look forward to the music and entertainment which will be available throughout the evening.

Moreover, to make sure that the New Year’s Eve go with a swing, Moevenpick Hotel & Resort Al Bida’a has put together an attractive room package. From as low as 99KD per room per night double occupancy, guests can enjoy one night stay in one of the hotel’s breathtaking rooms, New Year’s Eve Gala Dinner for two and breakfast on New Year’s Day for two. The Spa at the hotel also launched a special package “Energize and rejuvenate” to kick off the celebrations and help guests welcome the New Year relaxed and rejuvenated.

The package includes romance crystal bath, full body relaxing massage, mini facial and mini manicure and mini pedicure.

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 Consulate-General 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. � � � ��� � �

EMBASSY OF CANADA The Canadian Embassy in Kuwait does not have a visa or immigration department. All processing of visa and immigration matters including enquiries is conducted by the Canadian Embassy in Abu Dhabi, UAE Individuals who are interested in working, studying, visiting or immigrating to Canada should contact the Canadian Embassy in Abu Dhabi, website: www.UAE.gc.ca or www.goingtocanada.gc.ca, E-mail: abdbi-im-enquiry@international.gc.ca. The Embassy of Canada is located at Villa 24, Al-Mutawakei St, Block 4 in Da’aiyah. Please visit our website at www.Kuwait.gc.ca. The Embassy of Canada is open from 7:30 to 15:30 Sunday through Thursday. The reception is closed for lunch from 12:30 to 13:00. Consular services for Canadian citizens are provided from 09:00 until 12:00, Sunday through Wednesday. � � � ��� � �

Premier Goal Academy 2012 Winter Festival of football

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he 2012 Winter Festival of Football event organized by the Premier Goal Academy in association with Everton FC and sponsored by PORSCHE Centre Kuwait, Behbehani Motors Company was held at Bayan Park on Saturday 15th December under the patronage of HE the British Ambassador, Frank Baker. The Festival kicked off early morning with the Junior Tournament and 20 teams played matches in three age groups; 3-5 years, 6-8 years and 9-11 years.

Each team played 5 or 6 games resulting in over 100 matches played on the 4 pitches during the course of this all day event - the biggest and best attended football tournament in Kuwaits’ sporting calendar, packed with goals, near misses, fantastic team and individual performances and most importantly, immensely enjoyable for players and spectators alike. The Senior Tournament took place throughout the afternoon with matches for under 13s, 14s, 15s and 16s with a further 24 teams involved.

In total over 550 players from 3 to 16 years of age participated in the event, including teams from the PGA/Everton Coaching Courses and Everton Centre of Excellence, British and American Schools,Hawally Pakistan English School, Scorers Academy, Mawhoob Academy, Skelps Academy, Kick Start Academyand International Academy of Kuwait. A huge turn-out of enthusiastic parents and spectators cheered and encouraged the players who were superbly organized and guided by their coaches throughout a series of exciting, closely fought and sporting matches. Go Sport sponsored the matchballs and equipment and provided gifts for all the players.

The PGA freestyle players Jonathan and Tala presented a display of amazing football tricks and skills in front of a 1000+ crowd,

prior to the Awards ceremony when HE the British Ambassador, Frank Baker, and several other VIP guests from the Ministry of Education and sponsors presented medals to all participants. Certificates of appreciation were presented to the event sponsors and supporters. Supporters of the event contributed free gifts and special offers to ensure everyone had a great time and included; Porsche Centre Kuwait, Behbehani Motors Co., Go Sport, ABC Juices, Light Foods (Mickey Snacks), Kuwait National Bottling (Aquafina Water/Pepsi), Camco Events and Kuwait Dairy Co (KdCow).

HE the British Ambassador Frank Baker expressed his appreciation and recognition of their support for such an important community event and congratulated all the players and coaches who took part. “It’s fantastic to see so many young people participating in this programme and obviously having a great time. Apart from the joy of the game itself, football is a wonderful way to encourage young people to become physically active, improve fitness and develop their communication and good teamwork - essential skills as they grow up.

Congratulations to all who took part and made this fabulous event possible - to the PGA organizers Mike and Baker, Porsche Centre Kuwait, Go Sport and the other generous sponsors and all the teachers and coaches who have taught and encouraged the players and teams to such an exceptionally high standard” The PGA Winter Camp will take place from 21st to 23rd December and 28th to 30th December 2012 from 0930-1330 daily at Bayan Park whilst the PGA football coaching program resumes on11th January 2013 with courses held each day of the week catering to all ability levels from 3 to 18 years of age with fully qualified British FA/UEFA coaches.

EMBASSY OF CYPRUS In its capacity as EU Local Presidency in the State of Kuwait, the Embassy of the Republic of Cyprus, on behalf of the Member States of the EU and associated States participating in the Schengen cooperation, would like to announce that as from 2nd October 2012 all Schengen States’ Consulates in Kuwait will use the Visa Information System (VIS). The VIS is a central database for the exchange of data on short-stay (up to three months) visas between Schengen States. The main objectives of the VIS are to facilitate visa application procedures and checks at external border as well as to enhance security. The VIS will contain all the Schengen visa applications lodged by an applicant over five years and the decisions taken by any Schengen State’s consulate. This will allow applicants to establish more easily the lawful use of previous visas and their bona fide status. For the purpose of the VIS, applicants will be required to provide their biometric data (fingerprints and digital photos) when applying for a Schengen visa. It is a simple and discreet procedure that only takes a few minutes. Biometric data, along with the data provided in the Schengen visa application form, will be recorded in the VIS central database. Therefore, as from 2nd October 2012, first-time applicants will have to appear in person when lodging the application, in order to provide their fingerprints. For subsequent applications within 5 years the fingerprints can be copied from the previous application file in the VIS. The Cypriot Presidency would like to assure the people of Kuwait and all its permanent citizens that the Member States and associated States participating in the Schengen cooperation, have taken all necessary technical measures to facilitate the rapid examination and the efficient processing of visa applications and to ensure a quick and discreet procedure for the implementation of the new VIS. � � � ��� � �

EMBASSY OF KENYA The Embassy of the Republic of Kenya wishes to inform the Kenyan community residents throughout Kuwait and the general public that the Embassy has acquired new office telephone numbers as follows: 25353982, 25353985 - Consular’s enquiries 25353987 - Fax Our Email address: info@kenyaembkuwait.com. � � � ��� � �

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, Al-Salaam 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 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 PERU The Embassy of Peru is located in Sharq, Ahmed Al Jaber Street, Al Arabiya Tower, 6th Floor. Working days / hours: SundayThursday /9 am - 4 pm. Residents in Kuwait interested in getting a visa to travel to Peru and companies attracted to invest in Peru are invited to visit the permanent exposition room located in the Embassy. For more information, please contact: (+965) 22267250/1.

Classifieds THURSDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2012

ACCOMMODATION Room available, rent KD 65, near the big Jamiya, Bahrain St, Ghadeer Clinic building. Tel: 66792392/ 66282602/ 60421240.

(C 4263) 25-12-2012 FOR SALE Indoor plants, 7-seater coffee colored velvet sofa, center table and other. items at Hateen Villa. Contact: 25221890 / 99405162.

(C 4257) 20-12-2012 Mazda (6) white color 2003, excellent condition, insurance one year, KD 1,100.

Mob: 66729295. (C 4256) 18-12-2012

Passport No H0113546 hereby change my name as Abdul Rasheed Parambil, Pottayil House, Periymbalam, P O Pulikkal, Malappuram - 673637, Kerala. (C 4259) 24-12-2012 I, Ali Bhai, holder of Indian Passport No: G1349572 hereby change my name to ALI BHAI JIVAJI ALI KAKA. 19-12-2012

SITUATION WANTED Systems Engineer (2-3 years experience in Infosys Ltd) Configuration Controller and Release Management, UNIX, Oracle, B-Tech Electronics & Comm.

Mob: 65015932. (C 4260) 24-12-2012

SITUATION VACANT A decent housemaid is urgently needed for a family in Mangaf. Please call 60055305, 23741548 25-12-2012

TUITION Learn Holy Quran in perfect way, private tuition available for elders and children by Hafiz-E-Quran.

Contact: 66725950.

(C 4262) Tuition available for Web Designing & Professional Graphic Designing. Learn to create your own website just in 3 months. Flexible schedule, join us to build your career as Web Designer. Call 60078629,

22403408. (C 4264) 25-12-2012 AutoCAD tuition available by Highly Qualified Experienced Teacher, Learn professionally AutoCAD 2D&3D with Projects, Flexible Schedule, and individual tutorial.

Contact: 99302850 / 22467301. (C 4251) 20-12-2012

MATRIMONIAL Proposals invited for a Keralite Christian Orthodox girl, 26 years, M-tech, doing doctorate in Netherlands.

Parents working in Kuwait, seeking alliance from parents of well qualified God fearing boys. Contact email: proposal1987@hotmail.com (C 4261) 24-12-2012

CHANGE OF NAME

I, Raguri Subbaiah Reddamma holder of Indian Passport No: F0419527 hereby change my name to Ravuri Reddamma Venkata Subbaiah. (C 4258) I, Mohammed Pervaiz S/o Mohammed Jahangir, R/o 19-4-281/A/30, Sanjeev Gandhi Nagar, Hyd. Passport bearing No: H1841911 hereby changed my name to Syed Parvez S/o Syed Jahangir Parvez.

(C 4267) 27-12-2012 I, Suresh Dhanapal, Indian Passport No: E6840843 have converted from Hindu to Islam and changed my name to Barakath Ali Dhanapal (C 4265) 25-12-2012 I, Abdul Rasheed Nelliyot Thodi, holder of Indian

THE PUBLIC AUTHORITY FOR CIVIL INFORMATION

Prayer timings

I, Jafar Mohammed Hussain Warekar, holder of Indian Passport No: E8758097 hereby change my name to Zafar Mohammed Hussain Warekar. (C 4266)

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

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DIAL 161 FOR AIRPORT INFORMATION

Airlines JAI THY JZR JZR QTR SAI ETH GFA UAE ETD DHX QTR FDB MSR THY JZR JZR JZR BAW KAC KAC KAC FDB IRA IRA KAC KAC UAE IZG ABY QTR FDB ETD IRC GFA BAB JZR MSC MEA MSR UAE SYR KAC JZR FDB KNE KAC KAC SVA QTR KAC JZR KNE KAC

Arrival Flights on Thursday 27/12/2012 Flt Route 574 MUMBAI 772 ISTANBUL 267 BEIRUT 539 CAIRO 148 DOHA 441 LAHORE 620 ADDIS ABABA 211 BAHRAIN 853 DUBAI 305 ABU DHABI 372 BAHRAIN 138 DOHA 67 DUBAI 612 CAIRO 770 ISTANBUL 503 LUXOR 555 ALEXANDRIA 529 ASSIUT 157 LONDON 412 MANILA 354 COCHIN 206 ISLAMABAD 53 DUBAI 605 ISFAHAN 617 AHWAZ 302 MUMBAI 332 TRIVANDRUM 855 DUBAI 4161 MASHAD 121 SHARJAH 132 DOHA 55 DUBAI 301 ABU DHABI 6588 SHAHRE KORD 213 BAHRAIN 436 BAHRAIN 165 DUBAI 403 ASSIUT 404 BEIRUT 610 CAIRO 871 DUBAI 341 DAMASCUS 382 DELHI 563 SOHAG 57 DUBAI 472 JEDDAH 672 DUBAI 546 ALEXANDRIA 500 JEDDAH 140 DOHA 788 JEDDAH 257 BEIRUT 470 JEDDAH 284 DHAKA

Time 0:30 0:35 0:45 0:50 1:00 1:30 1:45 1:50 2:35 2:45 2:55 3:01 3:05 3:10 5:30 5:55 6:00 6:35 6:40 6:45 7:35 7:40 7:45 7:50 7:55 7:55 8:15 8:40 8:50 9:05 9:10 9:15 9:20 9:25 9:55 10:05 11:20 11:35 11:55 12:45 12:50 12:55 12:55 13:05 13:50 14:10 14:15 14:15 14:30 14:45 14:55 15:05 15:10 15:10

QTR OMA JZR JZR KNE KAC UAE ETD RJA GFA SVA JZR QTR ABY UAL KAC JZR RBG KAC TAR BAB FDB MSC KAC KAC KAC KAC KAC OMA FDB JAI AXB MSC MSR JZR ABY QTR ALK KAC MEA QTR GFA ETD UAE JZR JAI FDB AIC JZR GFA KAC JZR UAL BBC DLH

134 645 787 535 474 118 857 303 640 215 510 777 144 127 982 542 177 3553 786 327 438 63 405 176 618 674 104 774 647 61 572 393 401 618 189 129 146 229 562 402 136 221 307 859 135 576 59 981 239 217 502 185 981 43 636

DOHA MUSCAT RIYADH CAIRO JEDDAH NEW YORK DUBAI ABU DHABI AMMAN BAHRAIN RIYADH JEDDAH DOHA SHARJAH WASHINGTON DC DULLES CAIRO DUBAI ALEXANDRIA JEDDAH TUNIS BAHRAIN DUBAI SOHAG GENEVA DOHA DUBAI LONDON RIYADH MUSCAT DUBAI MUMBAI KOZHIKODE ALEXANDRIA ALEXANDRIA DUBAI SHARJAH DOHA COLOMBO AMMAN BEIRUT DOHA BAHRAIN ABU DHABI DUBAI BAHRAIN COCHIN DUBAI CHENNAI AMMAN BAHRAIN BEIRUT DUBAI BAHRAIN DHAKA FRANKFURT

15:30 15:40 16:10 16:25 16:30 16:35 16:40 16:50 16:55 17:15 17:20 17:45 17:50 17:55 17:55 18:05 18:15 18:20 18:30 18:35 18:40 18:45 19:00 19:15 19:20 19:35 19:35 19:50 19:55 20:00 20:10 20:15 20:20 20:25 20:30 20:35 20:45 20:55 21:05 21:20 21:25 21:30 21:35 21:40 21:50 21:55 22:00 22:30 22:45 22:50 22:55 23:05 23:25 23:45 23:55

Airlines AIC AXB UAL DLH JAI KAC ETH THY SAI KAC FDB UAE ETD MSR QTR QTR JZR JZR GFA KAC THY FDB BAW IRA IRA JZR JZR KAC KAC KAC ABY UAE FDB ETD IZG IRC QTR GFA BAB KAC KAC JZR MSC MEA JZR KAC MSR JZR SYR UAE FDB KAC KNE KAC

Departure Flights on Thursday 27/12/2012 Flt Route 976 GOA 390 MANGALORE 981 WASHINGTON DC DULLES 637 FRANKFURT 573 MUMBAI 283 DHAKA 621 ADDIS ABABA 773 ISTANBUL 442 LAHORE 381 DELHI 68 DUBAI 854 DUBAI 306 ABU DHABI 613 CAIRO 139 DOHA 149 DOHA 562 SOHAG 164 DUBAI 212 BAHRAIN 545 ALEXANDRIA 771 ISTANBUL 54 DUBAI 156 LONDON 606 MASHHAD 616 AHWAZ 256 BEIRUT 534 CAIRO 101 LONDON 787 JEDDAH 671 DUBAI 122 SHARJAH 856 DUBAI 56 DUBAI 302 ABU DHABI 4162 MASHHAD 6589 SHAHRE-KORD 133 DOHA 214 BAHRAIN 437 BAHRAIN 541 CAIRO 165 ROME 776 JEDDAH 406 SOHAG 405 BEIRUT 786 RIYADH 785 JEDDAH 611 CAIRO 176 DUBAI 342 DAMASCUS 872 DUBAI 58 DUBAI 673 DUBAI 473 JEDDAH 561 AMMAN

Time 0:05 0:15 1:10 1:20 1:30 2:25 2:45 2:55 3:00 3:15 3:45 3:50 4:00 4:10 4:50 6:05 6:30 6:55 7:00 7:30 7:35 8:25 8:45 8:50 8:55 9:05 9:15 9:20 9:25 9:40 9:45 9:55 10:00 10:05 10:15 10:25 10:30 10:40 10:50 11:30 11:50 12:15 12:35 12:55 12:55 13:00 13:45 13:50 13:55 14:15 14:30 15:05 15:10 15:40

Directorate General of Civil Aviation Home Page (www.kuwait-airport.com.kw)

KAC SVA JZR KNE QTR KAC OMA KAC JZR KNE ETD JZR QTR UAE RJA GFA JZR SVA ABY JZR QTR RBG JZR UAL TAR FDB BAB MSC FDB KAC KAC OMA JAI AXB ABY KAC MSC MSR KAC DHX ALK MEA ETD QTR GFA FDB KAC JZR UAE JAI KAC QTR GFA JZR KAC KAC

617 505 188 471 141 773 646 501 238 475 304 538 135 858 641 216 184 511 128 266 145 3554 134 982 328 64 439 404 62 351 331 648 571 394 120 343 402 619 543 373 230 403 308 137 222 60 361 554 860 575 205 147 218 528 415 411

DOHA JEDDAH DUBAI JEDDAH DOHA RIYADH MUSCAT BEIRUT AMMAN JEDDAH ABU DHABI CAIRO DOHA DUBAI AMMAN BAHRAIN DUBAI RIYADH SHARJAH BEIRUT DOHA ALEXANDRIA BAHRAIN BAHRAIN TUNIS DUBAI BAHRAIN ASSIUT DUBAI KOCHI TRIVANDRUM MUSCAT MUMBAI KOZHIKODE SHARJAH CHENNAI ALEXANDRIA ALEXANDRIA CAIRO BAHRAIN COLOMBO BEIRUT ABU DHABI DOHA BAHRAIN DUBAI MUSCAT ALEXANDRIA DUBAI KOCHI ISLAMABAD DOHA BAHRAIN ASSIUT KUALA LUMPUR BANGKOK

15:45 16:00 16:05 16:10 16:15 16:25 16:40 17:00 17:15 17:30 17:35 17:40 17:45 17:50 17:55 18:15 18:30 18:35 18:40 18:45 18:50 19:00 19:05 19:10 19:25 19:25 19:30 20:00 20:40 20:45 20:55 20:55 21:10 21:15 21:15 21:15 21:20 21:25 21:40 21:50 21:55 22:20 22:20 22:25 22:30 22:40 22:40 22:45 22:50 22:55 23:00 23:10 23:50 23:50 23:55 23:55

34

s ta rs CROSSWORD 51

STAR TRACK Aries (March 21-April 19) There is much talk today about resolutions and goals in the workplace. Your goals inspire others to achieve and plan. As long as you keep reality in view, you will reach your visions. You encourage others in many ways but this is one of the beneficial ways. You have creative ideas for the customers that come across your path today as well as for performing your work well. In obtaining a positive outlook you ooze positive energy. With all this energy, you attract others that never seem to want to leave your presence. It is wonderful to be able to set an example, but you may have to get tough in order to have time to yourself, especially this evening when there are things to do and see.

Everyone wants to marry you; everyone wants to be your best friend.

Taurus (April 20-May 20) You may develop an interest in spiritual studies as well as some new selfimprovement skills. You feel optimistic, tolerant and secure. You may find travel to be rejuvenating, bringing renewal to your sense of optimism. You have plenty of ideas to talk about today. The timing may be a bit off for any involved conversations, however. It is a good time for letters, telephone calls and visits with family or neighbors. Other people’s opinions can be important to you and you would be wise to bide your time instead of pushing for answers. Even though this is a busy day, it is quite manageable. A sweet and patient friend comes to you in the form of an animal you could either visit frequently or adopt.

Consider this: love waits on welcome, not on time.

Gemini (May 21-June 20)

ACROSS 1. Committee formed by a special-interest group to raise money for their favorite political candidates.

4. A nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (trade name Lodine).

12. Having leadership guidance.

15. Title for a civil or military leader (especially in Turkey).

16. Moths whose larvae are cutworms.

17. American prizefighter who won the world heavyweight championship three times (born in 1942).

18. A small cake leavened with yeast.

20. The local time at the 0 meridian passing through Greenwich, England.

21. Someone who designs or supplies costumes (as for a play or masquerade).

23. A colorless and odorless inert gas.

24. A person who is abnormally small.

26. (Jungian psychology) The inner self (not the external persona) that is in touch with the unconscious.

29. A boy or man.

31. (Akkadian) A goddess.

33. A complex red organic pigment containing iron and other atoms to which oxygen binds.

34. Realistic Norwegian author who wrote plays on social and political themes (18281906).

36. (Sumerian and Babylonian) A solar deity.

40. A port city of south central Ukraine on an arm of the Black Sea. 42. Yellow-fever mosquitos.

44. Queen of England as the 6th wife of Henry VIII (1512-1548).

45. Keep under control.

47. A very poisonous metallic element that has three allotropic forms.

49. A state of southwestern India.

50. A strong emotion.

51. The elementary stages of any subject (usually plural).

54. An outstanding Spanish cellist noted for his interpretation of Bach's cello suites (18761973).

58. Evergreen trees or shrubs of mountains of Australia and Tasmania.

59. The Mongol people living the the central and eastern parts of Outer Mongolia.

63. Large Indian antelope.

66. Christian holiday.

68. Be obedient to.

69. The capital and largest city of Yemen.

72. Large west African tree having large palmately lobed leaves and axillary cymose panicles of small white flowers and onewinged seeds.

73. The food served and eaten at one time.

74. A medical instrument used to inject or withdraw fluids v 1.

76. Tag the base runner to get him out.

77. A shaft on which a wheel rotates.

78. Ark shells.

79. A loose sleeveless outer garment made from aba cloth.

DOWN 1. A metabolic acid found in yeast and liver cells.

2. Any culture medium that uses agar as the gelling agent.

3. A compartment in front of a motor vehicle where driver sits.

4. An international organization of European

countries formed after World War II to reduce trade barriers and increase cooperation among its members.

5. Aggravation by deriding or mocking or criticizing.

6. Essential oil or perfume obtained from flowers.

7. An official prosecutor for a judicial district.

8. Held or filled or in use.

9. A mountainous landlocked communist state in southeastern Asia.

10. Thickening of tissue in the motor tracts of the lateral columns and anterior horns of the spinal cord.

11. Relating to or denoting or characteristic of Catalonia or its inhabitants.

12. (folklore) A corpse that rises at night to drink the blood of the living.

13. Fragrant resin obtain from trees of the family Burseraceae and used as incense.

14. English theoretical physicist who applied relativity theory to quantum mechanics and predicted the existence of antimatter and the positron (1902-1984).

19. A metrical unit with unstressed-unstressedstressed syllables.

22. Remove the clip from.

25. Norwegian explorer of the Arctic and director of the League of Nations relief program for refugees of World War I (1861-1930).

27. Any of 12 kings of ancient Egypt between 1315 and 1090 BC. 28. A soft white precious univalent metallic element having the highest electrical and thermal conductivity of any metal.

30. Old World woody vines.

32. The compass point that is midway between north and northeast.

35. The Tibeto-Burman language spoken in the Dali region of Yunnan.

37. Medium-sized tree having glossy lanceolate leaves.

38. Extremely robust.

39. (informal) Exceptionally good.

41. Any of various plants of the genus Aralia.

43. Old breed of tall swift keen-eyed hunting dogs resembling greyhounds.

46. The value of a coordinate on the horizontal axis.

48. Visit famous or interesting sights.

52. Functioning correctly and ready for action.

53. An Indian tree of the family Combretaceae that is a source of timber and gum.

55. A sock knitted or woven with a diamondshaped pattern.

56. A ductile gray metallic element of the lanthanide series.

57. A state in the United States in the central Pacific on the Hawaiian Islands.

60. Minute aquatic herbs floating on or below the water surface of still water consisting of a leaflike frond or plant body and single root.

61. Cubes of meat marinated and cooked on a skewer usually with vegetables.

62. Jordan's port.

64. Wild goat of mountain areas of Eurasia and North Africa having large recurved horns.

65. (archaic or Scottish) Faithful and true.

67. The (prehensile) extremity of the superior limb.

70. A port in southwestern Scotland.

71. Government agency created in 1974 to license and regulate nuclear power plants.

75. A rare silvery (usually trivalent) metallic element.

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2012

There are plenty of things to do today. Any lull you may have experienced yesterday has more than made up for itself now. For optimum results, it is important to pace yourself today. Figuring out how to organize projects and people is apt to become a topic of special interest—and a challenge—at this time. You know just what to do and can act without haste and emotion. Less of your time belongs to you and you must give up part of your freedom in cooperating with others in order to protect your interests and investments. What you have worked for can now take material significance in land, property and a home that you can call your own. If you are not ready for these things just yet, you will find beneficial ways to invest much of your income.

Cancer (June 21-July 22) With busy times during this time of year, you may still find time to gain a new friendship with a co-worker. This is a person you can trust when you leave the office and vice versa. You have a lot of energy for improving your surroundings or life situations. You may learn or teach a class in solving problems or negotiation. You may ask others to learn to communicate through better cooperation . . . walking a mile in the other guy’s shoes. Those of you that are married could find a renewal of vows during this time. Small changes have a way of turning into something big. You have the power to change your life by changing momentum and shifting gears. You will see finances improve over the next few months. A trip may be in the forecast.

Leo (July 23-August 22) By being able to put your thoughts into words, you captivate others. This could mean you do well in teaching, entertaining or writing creatively and cleverly. You work hard to rise above the competition. This is certainly a time for new ideas.

Talented and expressive, you are able to gain the attention necessary to put you in first place or give you first choice in whatever competition you find yourself involved with today.

This may mean that you win the trip, the prize or the right to sit by the window; whatever the case, you enjoy the competition. Every win puts you closer to your goals. At home this evening, be alert to environmental concerns. Your ideas can be beneficial to others. Carry through with your positive insights by helping others.

Virgo (August 23-September 22) An unfinished report from a prior day, a forgotten deduction, missed appointment or any number of other unfinished things could leave you feeling rushed before coffee time this morning. There are time limits and you find you work as quickly as possible to get work completed. There could be some desire to further your education and you may decide to make it a point to plan for that extra class for your schedule next year.

This may involve something like a self-guided software program on the computer or a couple of night classes for a few weeks. Publishing or advertising could be a profession you might want to consider. Together with your loved ones, this evening you plan the month’s activities. Leave time for the unexpected.

Word Search

Libra (September 23-October 22) In your place of business, you could be in charge of some party plans for your department. This may be a year end party or possibly an end of the year award party. Food could be brought in for the party by providing a sign-up list. You will be wise to trust that intuition of yours . . . your choices as well as your advice are workable, strong and positive. People enjoy being around you and tend to want to help you with whichever project you become involved. You may have to be pushy when it comes to having time to yourself for research or for attending to the work in progress. This afternoon, take an opportunity to shop for yourself. A new coat or warm gloves may be needed. A massage would be nice to share this evening.

Scorpio (October 23-November 21) There could be something exciting about your work today that will make you want to work a bit of overtime. Your discipline is admirable but leave work when you can; your family or a loved one may have some fun plans that include you this afternoon. An important relationship with someone who has a great deal of influence in your life may come into focus this evening. Honest communication with compromise or negotiation on your part may be necessary. Lots of short trips are in order now for this future weekend. You may even be visiting family or friends you have not seen in a while.

Talking about past, present and future goals will bring fun conversations your way, as well as a few things over which to meditate.

Sagittarius (November 22-December 21) A demanding co-worker may require diplomacy, tact and patience on your part today. Making yourself understood concerning your personal limitations could be the determining factor to your peace of mind. You could be most persuasive with others and eloquent in speech and communication. The situation is a natural for selfexpression and lends itself to your particular ideas and thoughts. This afternoon brings opportunities to guide, teach or just be with young people. You might have some fun conversations about gifts they can make or ideas for useful certificates. This could take the form of a promise for one week of raking leaves, sweeping, washing dishes, carrying out the trash, etc. Memories of past experiences come to your mind.

Capricorn (December 22-January 19) Understanding the basic idea of a new project today will help you to carry out your responsibilities with great determination. An important issue for you now is in getting facts and messages straight as any misunderstanding may cause problems. If it is possible to put travel plans off, you might do so for a while as this may not be the best of times to travel. Cash may be in short supply—stay away from the department stores—at least for about a week. There is a door of opportunity opening just ever so slightly this afternoon concerning money, sex and health. This is a month in which you will be aware of your power and your ability to control your own life situations—within reason.

Think about making small gift baskets for New Year surprises.

Aquarius (January 20- February 18) A period of great mental activity and heightened communication with others begins now. In the afternoon you may put more importance on your friends, which could prove to be unrealistic in some cases. Find ways to enjoy your friends without involving them in any responsibility—other than just enjoying each other’s company. This is a month to show appreciation for the people in your life—a good time to begin new traditions. Be creative sometime during this day; it will raise your spirit. Perhaps a bit of poetry writing is where you will find an outlet for your expression. Record your poems for use on blank greeting cards, get well notes, thank you messages, etc. Put your dreams into words on paper and do some contemplation about your goals.

Pisces (February 19-March 20) You are more practical and conscientious today. Taking care of the necessary underpinnings of life—health, work, etc., becomes a greater preoccupation now. Sorting things out and getting them organized to the utmost efficiency keeps you busy. Positive thinking is imperative. Come from the truth no matter what it sounds like. You and your friends will be better able to understand what is expected of them if you tell it as it is—with a positive slant. This could cause you to be extremely personal and passionate about several subjects. If you treat others as you would want to be treated you will remove frustrations and learn some lifetime lessons. You will learn how to communicate by asking questions and getting to the very heart of matters.

Yesterday’s Solution

Yesterday’s Solution

Daily SuDoku

Yesterday’s Solution

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 27, 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

Rawda

22517733

Adaliya

22517144

Khaldiya

24848075

Kaifan

24849807

Shamiya

24848913

Shuwaikh

24814507

Abdullah Salem

22549134

Nuzha

22526804

Industrial Shuwaikh

24814764

Qadsiya

22515088

Dasmah

22532265

Bneid Al-Gar

22531908

Shaab

22518752

Qibla

22459381

Ayoun Al-Qibla

22451082

Mirqab

22456536

Sharq

22465401

Salmiya

25746401

Jabriya

25316254

Maidan Hawally

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 KUW K WAIT A

Te el.: 161

DIRECTORA ATE T GENE GENERAL OF CIVIL AV VIA ATION T PA ARTMENT METEOROLOGICAL DEP DA AY: Y Wednesday e

26/12/2012

BY Y DA AY:

Clouds will decrease gradually with moderate to fresh north westerly wind, with speed of 20 - 45 km/h with a chance for scattered rain

BY Y NIGHT:

Cold with light to moderate north westerly wind, with speed of 15 - 38 km/h and some high clouds will apap pear Thunder storms

WARNING A

15 °C

KUW WA AIT AIRPOR RT

18 °C

14 °C

NUW WA AISEEB

21 °C

15 °C

WAFRA A

21 °C

14 °C

SALMI

16 °C

12 °C

ABDAL LY

15 °C

13 °C

JAL ALIY YA AH

15 °C

13 °C

25623444

FAILAKA A

18 °C

15 °C

Bayan

25388462

AHMADI POR RT

20 °C

15 °C

Mishref

25381200

UMM AL-MARADEM

22 °C

19 °C

W Hawally

22630786

WARBA A A - BUBY YA AN

17 °C

14 °C

Sabah

24810221

Jahra

24770319

New Jahra

24575755

West Jahra

24772608

South Jahra

24775066

North Jahra

24775992

North Jleeb

24311795

ST TATION T

SFC. CHART

26/12/2012 0000 UTC

4 DA AY YS FORECAST Temperatures DA AY

DA AT TE

WEA AT THER

MAX.

MIN.

Wind Direction

Wind Speed

Thursday

27/12

cool

19 °C

09 °C

NW

15 - 35 km/h

Friday Saturday

28/12

cool

20 °C

08 °C

NW

12 - 35 km/h

29/12

cool

19 °C

07 °C

NW-N

08 - 28 km/h

Sunday

30/12

cool + scattered clouds

19 °C

08 °C

NW-VRB

06 - 26 km/h

PRA RA AYER Y TIMES

RECORDED YESTERDA AY AT KUW WA AIT AIRPORT

Fajr

05:16

MAX. Temp.

18 °C

24884079

Sunrise

06:41

MIN. Temp.

12 °C

24892674

Zuhr

11:48

MAX. RH

94 %

Asr

14:38

MIN. RH

77 %

Omariya

24719048

Sunset

16:57

MAX. Wind

E 53 km/h

N Khaitan

24710044

Isha

18:19

TOT TA AL L RAIINF FALL A L IN 24 HR.

13.59 mm

Fintas

23900322

All times are local time unless otherwise stated.

26/12/12 03:07 UTC

V1.00

T1.06

PRIVATE CLINICS 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-Faiha

22545051

Al-Farwaniya

24711433

Al-Sulaibikhat

24316983

Al-Fahaheel

23927002

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36

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2012

lifestyle G O S S I P

Affleck won’t run for US Senate in Mass en Affleck is taking his name off the list of possible candidates for US Sen John Kerry’s seat, which would be open if the Democratic senator from Massachusetts is confirmed as secretary of state. Affleck says in a Monday posting on his Facebook page that while he loves the political process, he will not be running for public office.

Speculation about the Cambridge, Mass, native rose slightly when he did not completely rule out a Senate bid during an appearance on CBS’ Face The Nation on Sunday. In his Facebook posting, Affleck says he would continue working with the Eastern Congo Initiative, a nonprofit organization that helps direct humanitarian aid to the war-torn region, and for other causes. Affleck says Kerry would make a great secretary of state.

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Westwood’s fashion hate ame Vivienne Westwood used to “hate” fashion. The long-serving British fashion designer often had moments during her 40-plus-year career where she found it tough to keep going, especially when the media largely ignored her for ten years, but says the rewards of creating your own clothing line are worth the effort. She said: “I used to hate fashion. Well, not hate it completely. There always comes a point where you think: well, that’s incredible.

When you’re really pleased. But it’s very hard work. How do I keep going? I tell myself that when I’ve finished this pair of trousers, I can read my book. “I was successful when I started out. That’s how fashion works - the new thing is the news!

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Then they want somebody else new. I was completely ignored by the fashion press for about - easily 10 years. I thought it was terrible. In France, they would have looked after you better. In England, they’re so bourgeois.” The 71year-old flamboyant diva - who brought punk and new age fashion into the mainstream - revealed model Jerry Hall is her ideal clothes horse and she thinks the statuesque 56year-old star is the epitome of glamour. Vivienne enthused: “I once opened the show with her; she came up through the floor and stood still for about 10 minutes. I think she just feels the glamorous, Hollywood thing. She spritzes perfume before walking down the catwalk. She’s amazing.”

Simpson tweets hint of possible pregnancy

Ant

hopes his sectioning was ‘llegal’

Richard Armitage was a bossy dwarf T

Wonder, Gil give Rio Christmas cheer

singer Stevie Wonder joined Brazil’s Gilberto Gil late Tuesday for a massive free Christmas concert on Rio’s Copacabana beach attended by half a million people. “Tudo bem?” (Everything allright?) Wonder shouted out to the crowd in Portugese after being led on stage by his sons. Dressed in a golden suit, the blind singer began his set with “What a Wonderful World,” then performed hits like “I Just Called to Say I Love You,” “You Are the Sunshine of My Life” and to sing a cover of the late Michael Jackson, “The Way You Make Me Feel.” Earlier, Gil opened the show with “Realce” and “A Novidade” on a stage set with the exclusive Copacabana Palace Hotel as a backdrop. “Good night Rio, Merry Christmas.

Thank you for the gift of your presence,” he said. Up to a million spectators had been initially expected, but police estimates cited in local media put the number at 450,000 to half a million people who braved sweltering temperatures around 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) on one of the hottest evenings of the year. During a benefit concert a week ago, Wonder and Gil performed for thousands of people who paid a $400 entry fee each. Rio is expecting to host 752,000 tourists for its lavish New Year’s Eve celebrations. Throughout the Southern hemisphere’s summer season, which began on December 21 and ends in March, about 3.2 billion tourists are expected to flock to the city and spend $2.6 billion, according to Tourism Ministry figures. For February’s Carnival, the state government hopes 900,000 tourists will visit the city and spend about $665 million.

US

fond to ‘bad boys’

essica Simpson’s daughter has the news all spelled out: “Big Sis.” Simpson on Tuesday tweeted a photo of her baby daughter Maxwell playing in the sand, with the words “Big Sis” spelled out. The 32-yearold old singer has been rumored to be pregnant again. The tweet appears to confirm the rumors.

“Merry Christmas from my family to yours” is the picture’s caption. Simpson used a tweet in 2011 to announce she was pregnant with Maxwell. She is engaged to Eric Johnson.

Electra was

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Richard Armitage enjoying bossing his fellow dwarves around while filming ‘ The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey’. The 41-year-old actor - who plays powerful dwarf warrior Thorin Oakenshiel - enjoyed taking on the role of leader and taking control of the unruly gang of 13 dwarves during a physically demanding boot camp. He explained: “There was one improvisation that we did during our dwarf boot camp where we were taken outside and it was the first time that I actually found the confidence to command a crack unit of troops. We were crouching in tress and building campfires... “It was brilliant to feel the aura amongst the dwarves. I think the training process we went through, the physical, really bonded us

together and I think when we came to work on set it was pretty moving.” Richard’s revenge-consumed character Thorin is on a mission to reclaim his father’s lost kingdom of Erabor from Smaug the dragon, but the actor admits he is actually extremely laid back as person so it was a challenge to embody his alter ego. Speaking at the press conference for ‘The Hobbit’ at London’s Claridge’s Hotel, he told BANG Showbiz: “He’s got quite a lot to be angry about I think! For Thorin it’s very much a now or never moment.

“One of the Nordic translations for Thorin comes from Thor and I feel he carries that thunder very much in his heart.

As a person I’m quite calm and placid so it’s nice to give vent to a little anger!”

armen Electra was attracted to “bad boys” when she was a teenager.

The actress-and-model admits she always dated “macho” men when she first moved to Hollywood at the age of 18, and she now feels “foolish” for believing guys had to be tough. She said: “I had been brought up with macho guys.

All my four older brothers were karate black belts. A lot of guys do not want to show they are vulnerable because they regard it as weakness. “So I ignored that for a time. I was foolish. But at 18 I was attracted to bad boys. I watched what went on around me in Hollywood and wanted to learn.” However, the 40-yearold beauty - who is currently dating 53-year-old music mogul Simon Cowell - has since realized there is more to being a man than having a “good body” and having an ego.

Speaking to The Sun newspaper, she added: “Am I still interested in a guy’s body? Now I have grown up, I am much more of a ‘vibe’ kind of person! If a man has a good body, that is an added plus. But I do not think it is the most important. “A big turn-on to me is a guy who can have any girl he wants but says no. He has self-control. Not the guy with all the chicks who is insecure.” Carmen - who was previously married to rock guitarist Dave Navarro and hell raising basketball player Dennis Rodman - is now looking forward to the next stage of her life and hopes she settles down with a partner who has a “good heart”. The former ‘Baywatch’ star also hopes to start a family when she meets her very own ‘Mr. Right’. She said: “I want someone who can keep me on my toes, has a good sense of humor and a good heart. I love a man who has lived a full life and lived on the edge. “I want to have a baby and look forward to being a mother one day. At 18, nothing could have been further from my mind!” —Agencies

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Cruise always wanted to be a movie star om Cruise has wanted to be a movie star since he was four years old. The 50-year-old actor always relishes the challenge of taking on a new character with every film he makes and feels very “privileged” to enjoy his work so much. He said: “It’s always exciting to create new characters and I get to live the dream by travelling the world and meeting new people and new cultures. “I feel very privileged to be able to do something that I love. I

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remember being four years old and dreaming about making movies. It’s a great life.” Tom can next be seen in ‘Jack Reacher’ portraying the titular retired military policeman and enjoyed working on the action flick - which is based on Lee Child’s best-selling novels - because his character was so “extraordinary”. He added: “Jack’s a great character. I loved the books, I’ve read them all and Lee wrote such an extraordinary character. That made it so much fun to play.”

he ‘Prince Charming’ hitmaker - who has a history of bipolar disorder - was detained under the mental health act in 2010 and while he admits his problems were a “long time coming”, he still hopes it will be found that his hospitalisation was a mistake. He said: “Being sectioned was like a big test, we’ve all got tests in our life, these disasters. Mine was a long time coming really, but what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. “Being sectioned unfortunately is extremely easy in this country, to have someone sectioned. There are figures that come out, even last week saying that at least 2,000 sectionings were done quite illegally by doctors who were not qualified to do them - hopefully one of them was mine. You just don’t know.” Adam, 58, believes his problems can be attributed to his showbiz lifestyle, comparing them to being part of a “war zone”.

Adam - whose real name is Stuart Goddard - exclusively told BANG Showbiz: “The kind of lifestyle I was leading, when you work to the point of beyond exhaustion and you take no time off at all, the buck stops with you, something’s got to give. “It’s like being in a warzone and coming out - you’re not the same person you were afterwards then when you were coming in, you’ve gone from that innocent little lamb and you’ve taken quite a kicking emotionally and you don’t realise it. “It took time, 20 years to catch up with me, all this depression about it.” Adam’s comeback single ‘Cool Zombie’ is out now while his new album ‘Adam Ant Is the Blueblack Hussar in Marr ying the Gunner ’s Daughter’ is out next month.

Wood

wants a baby

onnie Wood wants a baby with his new wife. The Rolling Stones rocker wed third wife Sally Humphries - who, at 34, is 31 years his junior - on Friday and now the couple are keen to start trying for a family together as soon as possible. A friend of the newlyweds told the Sunday People newspaper: “Sally has always wanted to have children and thinks Ronnie will be a great dad to them now he’s settled down. They have enjoyed being by themselves and have a real laugh but a baby is something they both really want in the near future.” Ronnie - who has four grown-up children from his first two marriages - has been inspired by his two best men Rod Stewart, 67, and Sir Paul McCartney, 70, who both have young children. The source added: “Ronnie thinks the world of Rod and they spend a lot of time together. There isn’t really any pressure to have kids but it seems like the natural thing to do. The feeling is that if Rod can do it, so can Ronnie.” Ronnie and Sally - who were dating for six months - secretly tied the knot at the Dorchester Hotel, in Mayfair, London.

R

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2012

lifestyle

A huge collection of odd TV stuff needs a home ames Comisar is the first to acknowledge that more than a few have questioned his sanity for spending the better part of 25 years collecting everything from the costume actor George Reeves wore in the 1950s TV show “Superman” to the entire set of “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson” chat show. Then there’s the pointy Spock ears Leonard Nimoy wore on “Star Trek” and the guns Tony Soprano used to rub out a mob rival in an episode of “The Sopranos.” “Along the way people thought I was nuts in general for wanting to conserve Keith Partridge’s flared pants from ‘The Partridge Family,’” the good-natured former TV writer says of the 1970s sitcom as he ambles through rows

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Comisar shows costumes from the “Star Trek” original series.

James Comisar shows Fess Parker’s “Daniel Boone” coonskin hat worn in the late 1960s TV show.

A dress worn by Lucille Ball. of costumes, props and what have you from the beginnings of television to the present day.

“But they really thought I needed a psychological workup,” Comisar, 48, adds with a smile, “when they learned I was having museum curators take care of these pieces.” A museum is exactly where he wants to put all 10,000 of his TV memorabilia items, everything from the hairpiece Carl Reiner wore on the 1950s TV variety program “Your Show of Shows” to the gun and badge Kiefer Sutherland flashed on “24” a couple TV seasons ago. Finding one that could accommodate his collection, which fills two sprawling, temperature-controlled warehouses, however, has sometimes been as hard as acquiring the boots Larry Hagman used to stomp around in when he was J.R. on “Dallas.” (The show’s production company finally coughed up a pair after plenty of pleading and cajoling.)

Comisar is one of many people who, after a lifetime of collecting, begin to realize that if they can’t find a permanent home for their artifacts those objects could easily end up on the trash heap of history. Or, just as bad as far as he’s concerned, in the hands of private collectors. “Some of the biggest bidders for Hollywood memorabilia right now reside in mainland China and Dubai, and our history could leave this country forever,” says Comisar, who these days works as a broker and purchasing expert for memorabilia collectors. What began as a TV-obsessed kid’s lark mor-

Comisar shows boots worn by actor Larry Hagman as oil tycoon J. R. Ewing in the TV show “Dallas.” phed into a full-fledged hobby when as a young man writing jokes for Howie Mandel and Joan Rivers, and punching up scripts for such producers as Norman Lear and Fred Silverman, Comisar began scouring studio back lots, looking for discarded stuff from the favorite shows of his childhood. From there it developed into a full-on obsession, dedicated to preserving the entire physical spectrum of television history.

“After a couple years of collecting, it became clear to me,” he says, “that it didn’t much matter what TV shows James watched in the early 1970s but which shows were the most iconic. In that way, I had sort of a curator’s perspective almost from the beginning.” In the early days, collecting

The New Year sees TV’s most popular shows premiere exclusively on OSN

anuary promises to be an exciting month as some of TV’s most popular shows return to the region, exclusively on OSN, the leading pay-TV network in the Middle East and North Africa. Highly acclaimed singing reality show American Idol Season 12, new hit series Awake and Carrie Diaries, and Homeland are just a few among the stellar line-up on OSN First HD/OSN First, set to keep viewers glued to their TV screens.

One of the highest rated shows in television history, American Idol returns to the region with a star studded line up on January 17th - just hours after it airs live in the USA. This season’s celebrity judging panel includes music’s biggest divas, Mariah Carey and Nicki Minaj, along with country music sensation, Keith Urban.

Randy Jackson also returns as a judge and Ryan Seacrest will reprise his role as the face and voice of the hit show.

American Idol airs on Thursdays and Fridays at 21:00 KWT time on OSN First HD/ OSN First. The highly anticipated

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Comisar holds an original TV Guide issue featuring William Shatner, and Leonard Nimoy of “Star Trek.” The item is part of his television memorabilia collection in a temperature- and humidity-controlled warehouse in Los Angeles. —AP photos such stuff was easy for anyone with access to a highest bidder,” he says.

He, and every other serious collector of cool studio back lot. Many items were simply thrown out or given away when shows ceased produc- but somewhat oddball stuff, face two major tion. When studios did keep things they often obstacles, say museum curators: Finding a muserented them out for small fees, and if you lost or um or university with the space to take their broke them you paid a small replacement fee. So treasures and persuading deep-pocketed individComisar began renting stuff right and left and uals who might bankroll the endeavor that promptly losing it, acquiring one of Herman there’s really any compelling reason to preserve these items.

Munster’s jackets that way.

“People hold television and popular culture so These days almost everything has a price, although Comisar’s reputation as a serious col- close to their hearts and embrace it so passionlector has led some people to give him their ately,” says Dwight Bowers, curator of entertainstuff. If he simply sold it all, he could probably ment collections for the Smithsonian’s National retire as a millionaire several times over. Just last Museum of American History, who calls Comisar’s month someone paid $480,000 for a faded dress collection very impressive. “But they don’t put it Judy Garland wore in the 1939 film “The Wizard on the same platform as military history or politiof Oz.” What might Annette Funicello’s original cal history.” When the Smithsonian acquired Mickey Mouse Club jacket fetch? He won’t even Archie Bunker’s chair from the seminal TV comethink about that. “I’ve spent 25 years now reunit- dy “All in the Family,” Bowers said, museum offiing these pieces, and I would be so sick if some cials took plenty of flak from those offended that day they were just broken up and sold to the some sitcom prop was being placed down the

hallway from the nation’s presidential artifacts.

The University of California, Santa Cruz, took similar heat when it accepted the Grateful Dead archives, 30 years of recordings, videos, papers, posters and other memorabilia gifted by the band, said university archivist Nicholas Meriwether. “What I always graciously say is that if you leave the art and the music aside for one moment, whatever you think of it, what you can say is they are still a huge part of understanding the story of the 1960s and of understanding the nation’s counterculture,” says Meriwether.

Comisar sees his television collection serving the same purpose, tracing societal changes TV shows documented from the post-World War II years to the present.

The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Foundation looked into establishing such a museum some years back, and Comisar’s collection came up at the time, said Karen Herman, curator of the foundation’s Archive of American Television. Instead, the foundation settled on an online archive containing more than 3,000 hours of filmed oral history interviews with more than 700 people.

While the archive doesn’t have any of Mr Spock’s ears, anyone with a computer can view and listen to an oral history from Spock himself, the actor Leonard Nimoy. Comisar, meanwhile, believes he’s finally found the right site for a museum, in Phoenix, where he’s been lining up supporters. He estimates it will cost $35 million and several years to open the doors, but hopes to have a preview center in place by next year. Mo Stein, a prominent architect who heads the Phoenix Community Alliance and is working with him, says one of the next steps will be finding a proper space for the collection. But, really, why all the fuss? “In Shakespeare’s time, his work was considered pretty low art,” Comisar responds. Oh, he’ll admit that “Mike and Molly,” the modern TV love story of a couple who fall for each other at Overeaters Anonymous, may never rank in the same category as “Romeo and Juliet.” “But what about a show like ‘Star Trek’?” he asks. — AP

Drop Dead Diva, Eureka returns with Season 5 and last but not the least fuel heads can look forward to Season 19 of Top Gear UK and Season 3 of Top Gear US. If you’re up for laugh out loud brand new comedy series to keep you entertained, you’re in the right place. OSN Comedy brings you new series The Neighbors, Unsupervised and the Mindy Project. In addition make way for the top rated How I Met Your Mother which returns with Season 8 and Two and a Half Men is back with its tenth season this January. Plus, Season 2 of the popular

with Carrie’s quirky personality. The Carrie Diaries airs January 16th at 23:00 KWT time exclusively on OSN First HD/ OSN First.

The new hit series, Awake, premieres in the Arab World with a storyline set to confuse even the cleverest of fans. A car accident leaves Michael Britten, a detective with the LA Police Department, living two parallel lives - one in which his wife survives the accident and the other in which his child survives. Not knowing which life is ‘real’, he is forced to determine his true reality piece by piece.

Awake airs 5th of January at 21:00 KWT time exclusively on OSN First HD/OSN First. Rounding up January’s headliners is the Emmy award-winning thriller, Homeland, returning for its second season exclusively on OSN. Picking up after the explosive conclusion of the first season, Homeland’s season premiere shows viewers how life has evolved for the main characters. Sergeant Brody is now a congressman while the paranoid CIA agent,

American Idol S12

Carrie Diaries

2 Broke Girls prequel to the runaway success, Sex and the City, The Carrie Diaries is set to take viewers on a trip back down memory lane. The main character, Carrie Bradshaw, returns to the small screen as her high school career is chronicled. Set in the 1980s, this nostalgic show is sure to be a hit with anyone who fell in love

Carrie Mathison, is an English teacher.

However, it does not take long for each character’s past to hunt them down and force them to reluctantly resume their dangerous secret lives. Homeland Season 2 premieres on January 8th at 21:00 KWT time on OSN First HD/ OSN First. Other series to look forward to on OSN First

Homeland S2 HD/OSN First include new series Banshee and The Finder, Season 8 of the ever popular Criminal Minds, Season 4 premiere of

Awake series 2 Broke Girls and Breaking In are also back. Watch it first this New Year as OSN brings you the very best of TV entertainment exclusively for its viewers across the region. For more information on OSN’s January specials, visit www.osn.com.

In addition to premiering some of the biggest, latest and award winning programs, OSN will launch five new channels going live from January 1st. Adding to OSN’s existing exclusive offering the new channel line-up includes two premium HD Arabic channels - OSN Ya Hala Shabab HD and OSN Ya Hala Arabella HD, as well as three new and exclusive English channels - Discovery World, Fuel TV and Fine Living.

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2012

lifestyle F e a t u r e s

sraeli archaeologists have uncovered a rare temple and religious figurines dating back to the Judaean period nearly 3,000 years ago, Israel’s Antiquities Authority said yesterday. The discoveries were made at Tel Motza, outside Jerusalem, during archaeological work taking place ahead of new highway construction in the area. “The ritual building at Tel Motza is an unusual and striking find, in light of the fact that there are hardly any remains of ritual buildings of the period in Judaea,” the dig directors said in a statement.

Anna Eirikh, one of the directors, told AFP that the discoveries were rare evidence of religious practice outside Jerusalem during the Judaean period. “What we can say for sure is the figurines served for religious purposes, and that Tel Motza was a Judaean kingdom,” she said. The findings date to the 9-10th century BC, when

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Israel Antiquities Authority archeologist Anna Ririkh displays a clay figurine used for religious rituals and practices.

Clay figurines used for religious rituals.

e may be acclaimed in the art world and coveted by thieves but Edvard Munch is starved of recognition in his native Norway, where squabbles have delayed a new museum worthy of his oeuvre. Next year will mark the 150th anniversary of the birth of the expressionist master, who painted the now iconic “The Scream”. But the anniversary is clouded by the city of Oslo’s inability to provide a proper setting for the art gems the painter left in his will. Munch, who died in 1944, bequeathed an enormous collection to the Norwegian capital, including 1,100 paintings, 3,000 drawings and 18,000 etchings.

But the current Munch Museum, constructed cheaply after World War II in a rather rundown Oslo neighborhood, does not do justice to the priceless trove. “It’s time to have something more modern that would enable us to better welcome the public and exhibit Munch’s work from other perspectives, in broader contexts, both his and ours,” museum director Stein Olav Henrichsen said. While all agree on the need for a better museum, there are divisions over where to place it.

Oslo’s city council agreed in 2008 to erect a building near the new, futuristic opera house on the shores of the Oslo fjord, but those plans were scrapped three years later when the populist right suddenly withdrew its support without a concrete explanation. The move was a shock and an embarrassment: a Spanish architecture firm had already been hired and had drawn up plans for Lambda, a super-modern leaning glass building, to great expense.

The issue has been at a standstill ever since, and Oslo has been unable to come to an agreement on any of the current options. Those include a return to the Spanish concept; or a move to the ageing main building of the National Gallery downtown; or perhaps a total renovation of the museum’s current location just outside the city centre. All are estimated to cost around 1.6 billion kroner (215 million euros, $285 million). Failure to reach agreement could be interpreted as a Norwegian cold shoulder to the country’s most famous artist, in sharp contrast to his huge international appeal.

A million people recently visited a Munch exhibit that toured Paris, Frankfurt and London. And one of the four versions of “The Scream”-the only one in private hands-was sold this year at a New York auction for the record sum of $119.9 million. By comparison, the Munch Museum in Oslo attracts around 126,000 visitors per year, even though it owns two versions of “The Scream”, perhaps the most famous expression of existential angst. And it’s not certain the visitor numbers will soar even if Oslo gets a brand new Munch museum. “I don’t think Norwegians really understand the power of Edvard Munch’s work,” Henrichsen said. “His cultural and economic importance is underestimated here.”

The artist’s descendants are meanwhile eager to see the issue resolved.

His great-great-niece, Elisabeth Munch Ellingsen, called the impasse “shameful and scandalous”. “Considering the treasure they’re sitting on, it’s shameful the local politicians can’t find a solution. When they decided to apply to host the Olympic Winter Games, it took them five minutes,” she said. Ellingsen has sent a letter to the government asking it to intervene, but to no avail. —AFP

Anna Ririkh displays the temple site and the altar used for religious rituals and practices. — AFP photos

An Israel Antiquities Authority archeologist displays a clay figurine used for religious rituals and practices.

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An art critic eyes Edvard Munch’s ‘Self portrait’ hanging in the Royal Academy of Arts in London, 27 September 2005.— AFP

eputed French Maison Van Cleef & Arpels hosted a high jewellery exhibition on 12th December 2012, at Beit Al-Sadu in Kuwait City, with its local partner Hussein Morad Behbehani Est. The exhibition that showcased exclusive high jewellery was the first of its kind in Kuwait and provided a unique journey in the enchanting world of the Maison.

Beit Al-Sadu, a heritage structure and artistic house and museum in Kuwait, was transformed into a magical domain to host the unveiling of the spectacular Izmir necklace from the Bal Oriental of the Bals de Legende high jewellery.

Inspired from the Thousand and One Nights tale, the Izmir necklace carries the name of the famed Turkish port under the Ottoman empire. The impressive necklace reflects the majesty of the Oriental castles in a sculpture craftwork that combines 9 different gemstones in complete harmony.

Star pieces that shined at the exhibition included the Big Sur set from California Reverie high jewellery collection made with 15 remarkable rare rubellites, and Bella Maniera necklace from Les Jardins high jewellery collection characterized by the ability of transforming the 2 detachable pendants into earclips.

Van Cleef & Arpels also showcased more than 60 extraordinary creations inspired by Nature, Couture and Flying Beauties, all long-standing sources of inspiration for the Maison; designs that seem to capture movement suspended in time, butterflies and birds constantly in flight, flowers blossoming. An exceptional range of Between the Finger Rings took centre stage at the exhibition as it represents an iconic Maison design,

the First Temple would have already been built in its Jerusalem location. The Jews of that era seemed to have kept some of the prevalent pre-Judaism practices alongside the mainstream worship in the Jerusalem temple, she said.

“It’s very interesting to see these religious artifacts and temple so close to Jerusalem, a walking distance,” she said. “We know very little about religious practice during the Judaean kingdom, there are two or three more sites of worship, and this is the closest to Jerusalem.”The items discovered, near an altar of a temple, include ritual pottery vessels, fragments of chalices and figurines of animals. — AFP

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first seen in 1972.

The rings are designed in a way that they either form an open band with motifs spread over several fingers, for instance the Two Butterflies ring and the Flying Butterfly ring, or employ a mechanism that transitions between wearing closed on a single finger, or open on several like the Virevolte and Lotus rings.

The exhibited jewellery creations were specially selected to imbue a dreamlike and poetic atmosphere inviting the visitors to discover a world of exclusivity, technical prowess, beauty and virtuoso craftsmanship. The jewellery brought to life by the Mains d’Or of the Maison encapsulate the most inspiring elements of the best in high jewellery making, harnessed to bring joy to the wearer and convey the core values of Van Cleef & Arpels: excellence, eternal elegance and enchantment.

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2012

lifestyle T r a v e l

A skier rides a chairlift in the late afternoon at Mammoth Mountain ski resort.

By Christopher Reynolds efore we get to the early snow, the new businesses, the zipping skiers and beaming boarders at Mammoth Lakes, let’s remember how bad things have been this year for this corner of the Eastern Sierra.

First, Mother Nature delivered scant snow in the 201112 season, driving tourism down just as the larger economy seemed to be recovering. Then in June, management at Mammoth Mountain, the resort that dominates the town, trimmed staff, cut salaries and announced the shuttering of its June Mountain ski operation-a painful blow to the tiny mountain community of June Lake, 20 miles north of Mammoth.

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lasagna at Toomey’s on Minaret Road, a tiny, year-old place that specializes in catering and takeout and looks like the Kansas City Royals’ dugout. (Owner-chef Matt Toomey is a big baseball fan.) Whether you order to go or sit among the handful of tables, Toomey’s serves memorable breakfasts, lunches and dinners, from coconut mascarpone pancakes to wild buffalo meatloaf. And as locals will tell you, Toomey is already a US 395 celebrity, having wowed serious eaters for more than a decade as the chef at the Whoa Nellie Deli in the Tioga Gas Mart in Lee Vining. After a few days of nosing around, I predict that after dark in Mammoth this season, hard-partying twenty somethings will be watching snowboarding videos while doing shots amid the tikitinged tumult of the Lakanuki Bar in the Village, as they have for years. Locals will be spooning up hearty albondigas soup at Roberto’s Cafe (on Old Mammoth Road), as they have for decades.

In the morning, serious coffee consumers from near and far will queue at Black Velvet Coffee (opened this year on Main Street), a spare white space where baristas labor over their concoctions like post-docs solving DNA riddles. At least a few foodies will nip into Bleu Handcrafted Foods (which opened in July a few doors from Black Velvet Coffee) to gather artisan beers, wines, cheeses and meats for the larders of their rental condos.

As is often the case in ski resorts, some of the worst bargains are found closest to the slopes: A slice of pizza at the Mammoth Mountain main lodge’s slope-adjacent Broadway Marketplace costs you $5.25, and a 16.9ounce bottle of water costs $4. (Four steps beyond the cash registers, savvy skiers and boarders get tap water in paper cups for free.) Then again, the lift line is right outside.

Mammoth Lakes was born as a ski town in the 1950s, when Dave McCoy started the resort on US Forest Service land on the slopes of 11,053-foot Mammoth Mountain. The slope-side Mammoth

A young boarder covers up on the bus back to town from the slopes of Mammoth Mountain.

Oh, and in July the town of Mammoth Lakes declared bankruptcy after it lost a breach-of-contract lawsuit. Recovery, town officials said, would depend on layoffs, pay cuts and a plan to make debt payments of $2 million a year for 23 years. These have been hard times, especially in June Lake, where local businesses are doing without their own ski mountain for the first time in decades.

Yet the winter of 2012-13 has begun in Mammoth Lakes with a happy bang, because nothing dilutes red ink faster than real snow. On Nov 8 — the same day the Mammoth resort opened its season with a handful of trails covered in manufactured snow-a storm started dumping the real thing. By the following Saturday afternoon, more than a foot of fresh powder had fallen and about 2,800 skiers and boarders had hit the slopes. By Sunday six lifts were open, serving a dozen trails, and at least one local was using the word “dreamy.”

Hovering above the flocked pines, you could almost make out a community thought balloon saying: “Maybe this year ...” Another storm arrived the next weekend, and then another. By early December, the mountain had a base of four to six feet. A great start. If Mammoth seems like a winter possibility but you haven’t been here for a while (or ever), here’s what I learned on a quick visit last month.

The 5-year-old Westin Monache Resort Mammoth, which stands on a hill towering over the condos, shops and restaurants of the Village, is the ritziest hotel in town. The Westin’s Whitebark bar and restaurant, a contemporary space full of dangling round stones and sleek wood paneling, is a fine venue for a round or two of drinks, but the kitchen’s too-rich fusilli didn’t do much for me.

My favorite meal, in fact, was a flavor-packed veggie

Snowboarders advance on the line for chair lift 1 at Mammoth Mountain.

Dorothy Matthews, 90, relaxes in her room at the Swiss Chalet Bed & Breakfast Inn in Mammoth Lakes.

A skier flies through the air at Mammoth Mountain ski resort.— MCT photos Mountain Inn went up in 1959, and McCoy continued to build the resort and town before selling the resort to Starwood Capital Group in 2005.

Nowadays the town’s year-round population is about 8,200, swelling to as many as 35,000 in winter. In town the ski area also owns the Village Lodge condohotel, the Juniper Springs condo-hotel and the rustic Tamarack Lodge, a haven for cross-country skiers that dates to 1924. I stayed anonymously in a pleasant onebedroom condo at the Village Lodge, just above the shops and restaurants along the pedestrian paths of the Village at Mammoth. (Arriving on a weekday in early November, I got a rate of less than $180 a night.)

time high this year, up 6.5 percent from the summer before.

“The events were packed, and you couldn’t find a place to park. It was great. And it was a long summer,” said George Shirk, news editor of the Mammoth Times.

Among local entrepreneurs, Shirk said, “Nobody’s complaining about the summer.”

Meanwhile, 20 miles north in June Lake, this winter looks daunting, whether snow comes or not. With about 800 residents in a community surrounded by four scenic lakes, June gets many summer fishermen and families. But for decades its winters have been dominated by June Mountain, the ski area (on US Forest Service

A snowboarder is framed by snow-covered windows on top Panorama Lookout at Mammoth Mountain ski resort.

Just about every local I talked to had something to add about how and why the last few years have been tough in Mammoth-the faltering national economy, the town’s lawsuit liability (which stems from a broken promise to a developer about airport-adjacent land) and, most of all, the fickle snow.

In December 2010, on the way to a 661-inch season, the resort’s ski patrol logged about 200 inches of snow.

The total for December 2011: 2 inches, on the way to a much-lamented season total of about 240 inches. (Or 263, depending on who’s counting.)

Since last winter, the Village’s Hyde Lounge nightclub and Auld Dubliner pub have closed. An upscale Italian restaurant, Campo Mammoth, is expected to open in the former Hyde space about Dec 20. A new Greek restaurant, Jimmy’s Taverna, is expected to open soon above the Red Lantern restaurant on Old Mammoth Road.

As for the town’s municipal bankruptcy, it was officially dismissed Nov 16, and out-of-towners are unlikely to spot any signs of it. Though the number of police in town could be cut from 17 to as few as 10, the Town Council (knowing that local government gets most of its income from taxes paid by tourists) is so far leaving hotel tax rates the same (about 13 percent) and continuing to pay for the free shuttle buses that carry visitors around Mammoth Lakes. Management at Mammoth Mountain continues to bankroll the shuttle buses that carry skiers and boarders four miles up the road from the town to the ski area’s main lodge.

I was surprised to hear that last summer, while the Town Council was struggling with a bankruptcy and settlement plan, many of the innkeepers and restaurateurs of Mammoth were doing pretty well, enjoying a long season of sales. Stuart Need, owner of the Lakanuki bar, said his summer income was up about 12 percent over the year before. John Urdi, executive director of Mammoth Lakes Tourism, reports that the town’s hotel tax revenue from June through September hit an all-

land) that has been owned by the Mammoth Mountain resort company since the 1980s.

In June, when Mammoth Mountain was struggling with the red ink from the previous low-snow winter, management decided to shut June Mountain for this winter, leaving the community’s eateries and lodgings with plenty of gorgeous scenery but no tourism centerpiece.

The embattled community responded by creating a series of homespun special events, including a villagelighting ceremony Dec 15, a February winter-sports triathlon and a March snowmobile rally (for details, go to visitjune.com).

At June Lake’s Double Eagle Resort & Spa, owner Connie Black has cut her prevailing winter rental rates by $100 — from $369 to $269 a night for a two-bedroom cabin. At the Sierra Inn Restaurant, owner Candy Logue said she would drop prices about 15 percent and open only for winter weekends and holiday weeks, not regular week days. Ernie’s Tackle & Ski Shop will cut back its hours similarly.

Many in the community took comfort in Mammoth Mountain management’s vow (made in early November by Chief Executive Rusty Gregory) to reopen the June Mountain ski operation in the winter of 201314. But there’s no denying a difficult winter is ahead.

“Everyone’s working together to make this winter as good as we can make it,” Black said, but “there’s a fine line between optimism and hallucination.” — MCT

Guests at the Mammoth Inn enjoy drinks in the lodge while looking at The fish tacos are one of the more popular dishes at Toomey’s restauthe view of the ski resort. rant in Mammoth Lakes.

Israeli dig uncovers ancient Judaean temple

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2012

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Indian Sand artist Sudersan Pattnaik works on a sand sculpture with over 500 Santa Claus statues at Golden Beach in Puri on about 65 kilometers away from Bhubaneswar. — AFP

he ghetto called Aroma reeks of putrefying trash collected by its residents for recycling. Half-naked children with grimy faces play on muddy dirt roads lined by crumbling shanties of tarpaulin walls, cracked tin roofs and communal toilets. From this Manila slum of garbage collectors emerged an unlikely Cinderella: ballerina Jessa Balote who at the age of 10 was plucked out of her grubby life by a ballet school to prepare her for a life on stage.

In four years since her audition in 2008, Jessa has performed in various productions, including Swan Lake, Pinocchio, Don Quixote and a local version of Cinderella.

She rode a plane for the first time in August to compete in the 2012 Asian Grand Prix ballet competition for students and young dancers in Hong Kong, where she was a finalist.

The 14-year-old Jessa’s unlikely success is as much a celebration of a unique effort by the Philippines’ most famous prima ballerina, Lisa Macuja, to help slum kids of Manila by providing them a scholarship and classical ballet training for six to seven years. More than a quarter of the Southeast Asian nation’s 94 million people live in abject poverty, many in sprawling and unsanitary shanty towns like Aroma in the capital city. Despite a recent economic upturn, there are not enough full-time jobs.

Education skills are lacking and incomes are low. At least 3,000 Filipinos leave their families behind every day to seek employment abroad.

Jessa, who would have likely followed her family to a life of garbage picking, had not much of a future to look forward to. “I used to tag along with my father and mother when they collected garbage in the evening,” Jessa said in her home about the size of a shipping container with a small attic. Her family would gather trash from houses in the nearby Quiapo district or rummage for scrap metal in the huge garbage dump not far from home. That was until her successful audition for the Project Ballet Futures dance scholarship established by Macuja, founder and artistic director of Ballet Manila who is married to business tycoon Fred Elizalde.

The outreach program of Ballet Manila - which runs a dance company and a school by the same name - initially accepted 40 students from Jessa’s charity-run school in

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Filipino slum dweller Jessa Balote, center, practices with other students during a class at Ballet Manila in the Philippine capital. — AP photos Manila’s Tondo district dump site. Some dropped out, but new batches have been accepted. Today, the program has 55 scholars, aged 9 to 18, from five partner public schools such as Jessa’s. They train daily after school along with 60 paying students.

“I can help my parents more with what I do now. I earn money from ballet,” said Jessa, sitting on a plastic bench in her shorts and t-shirt, her long hair loose. The slim teenager, perhaps so used to dancing on her toes, would often have her toes pointed at the wooden floor even while sitting during the interview.

Behind her, the plywood wall of the family shack was adorned with pictures of her in gossamer tutu on stage.

Sharing the space were frames of ballet certificates and a newspaper clipping about the garbage picker-turned-bal-

Jessa Balote holds her hair outside her cramped home at a place called Aroma in Tondo.

lerina. A pair of satin pointe shoes lay on top of a gym bag, a few meters (yards) from sacks of used plastic bottles and other garbage piled up outside the door of her cramped home. Jessa and other kids are trained in the rigorous Russian Vaganova ballet and are required to keep up with their academics in school. They are provided a monthly stipend of 1,200 pesos to 3,000 pesos ($30 to $73) depending on their ballet level, as well as meals, milk and ballet outfits. They also receive fees of 400 pesos to 1,500 pesos ($10 to $37) for each performance.

Pointe shoes alone cost $50 to $80 a pair - a fortune for someone eking a living on $2 a day - and wear out within weeks or days, said Macuja. The daughter of a former senior trade official, Macuja was 18 years old when she

The area where Jessa Balote lives at a place called Aroma.

received a two-year scholarship at the Vaganova Choreographic Institute (now the Academy of Russian Ballet) in Saint Petersburg in 1982, where she graduated with honors. She was the first foreign principal ballerina for the Kirov Ballet in St. Petersburg before returning to the Philippines, where she worked as artist-in-residence at the Cultural Center of the Philippines and a principal dancer at the Philippine Ballet Theatre.

Macuja, 48, founded Ballet Manila in 1994 with the aim of making the high art of classical ballet more accessible to common people. The dance company has held performances in malls, schools, town halls and remote villages of the archipelago. She set up the scholarship program in 2008 as a way of paying back for her good fortunes. For Jessa and the other slum children, it opened a whole new world. Literally so, when she flew to Hong Kong for the ballet competition. Her glee while on a roller coaster in Disneyland was captured in a photo in her humble home. During the competition in Hong Kong, she said she often felt nervous and shy to be dancing among well-off peers. But she overcame her fear, remembering Macuja’s advice “to persist despite the odds and to not let poverty hinder me.”

As a company apprentice she makes around 7,000 pesos ($170) a month, sometimes more, from stipend and performance fees. The money is not enough to lift her family from poverty, but ballet has given her a choice in life. Her father, Gorgonio, works part-time as a construction worker besides collecting garbage. His meager pay is insufficient to feed his large family of six children and two grandchildren. One son works in a factory while another daughter collects garbage. Jessa’s childhood dream is to become a school teacher. But she also wants to dance as a professional ballerina. She says she is challenged by the feisty acting and difficult dance turns of the Black Swan character in Swan Lake and aspires for that role.—AP

Jessa Balote uses her smartphone beside a wall filled with her ballet certificates and pictures inside her cramped home at a place called Aroma.