11 Feb 2013

CR IP TI ON BS SU 40 PAGES

NO: 15716

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MONDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2013

RABI ALTHANI 1, 1434 AH

Court suspends jail for three opposition ex-MPs Duwaisan files to grill interior minister over ‘dealing’ with Israel

By B Izzak conspiracy theories

Hamdulillah ala salama!

By Badrya Darwish

badrya_d@kuwaittimes.net

G

www.kuwaittimes.net

uys I am so angry. I came straight from the airport to the office of the newspaper to express my anger in writing. I just landed at Kuwait Airport at 5 o’clock. There was no other airline which landed at that hour, but we had to wait 45 minutes for the conveyer belt to make its squelching noises that the luggage is coming out.

What is going on in Kuwait? Don’t we care for our country? Even at airports of poor countries, your luggage will be on the conveyer after 5 to 10 minutes. There were no 10 aircraft that landed at the same time. It was the only flight that landed from Amman and not a single conveyor was busy.

The three conveyers were empty. We still had to wait and wait and wait.

The wait was so long in fact that it seemed like a performance. When the first suitcase came out of the luggage compartment, they all clapped and said hooray. Just imagine! What is the parliament busy with these days? We have parliaments after parliaments and cabinets after new cabinets.

Continued on Page 2

Gulf war games begin in Kuwait KUWAIT: Joint Gulf force the Peninsula Shield began a 17-day exercise in Kuwait yesterday as officials said the war games were not related to unrest in the region. “The exercise was prescheduled and agreed for years. It is unrelated to any regional or political events,” the head of Kuwaiti army public relations, Brigadier Abdulaziz Al-Rayes, was cited as saying by KUNA. It aims at “activating the concept of joint defence... and implementing the unified defence strategy of the Gulf Cooperation Council states,” he said.

The main part of the exercise will take place in the Kuwaiti desert, but naval and air forces will also feature in the manoeuvres slated to end on Feb 26, coinciding with Kuwait’s national day celebrations.

General Rayes did not give details of troop numbers taking part, but did say the exercise would include units from Kuwait’s national guard and the interior ministry.

Kuwait marks its 51st independence from Britain on Feb 25 and the 22nd anniversary of liberation from seven months of Iraqi occupation on Feb 26 in which units from the Peninsula Shield took part. The Peninsula Shield force was formed by the six GCC member states - Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates - in 1982 as a 5,000-strong force but has since expanded to more than 30,000 troops.

Two years ago, Peninsula Shield troops were deployed in Sunni-ruled Bahrain to help the kingdom’s security forces confront protests led by the Shiite majority. Kuwait has witnessed street protests in the past several months by opposition groups calling for the dissolution of the pro-government parliament elected on Dec 1 after HH the Amir amended a controversial electoral law. — AFP

KUWAIT: The court of appeals yesterday suspended the implementation of the three-year jail terms against three former opposition MPs who were handed the harsh sentence by the lower court last week. The lower court’s ruling sentenced the former MPs and ordered that they go to jail immediately even before the appeals court can look into their case. But the appeals court, which opened the hearing into the case, decided to suspend the implementation of the jail sentence until after their appeals had been settled by the court itself.

The former opposition MPs Khaled Al-Tahous, Falah AlSawwagh and Bader Al-Dahoum

attended the session and the judge ordered their detention briefly before he issued his ruling to free them but asked them to pay a bail of KD 5,000 each and set March 10 as the date for the next hearing to hear the testimony of the investigating officer. The decision means that as long as the appeals court continues to hear the case, police will not be able to arrest them for the same case.

Tahous, Sawwagh and Dahoum were sentenced to three years in jail last week for allegedly insulting HH the Amir through addresses at a public rally on Oct 10. They had categorically denied the charge.

Protests broke out last week after the ruling which also prompted opposition calls for unity.

Max 25º Min 12º High Tide 13:16 Low Tide 07:03 & 19:01

Opposition groups were expected to form a unified coalition to press for democratic demands. Youth activists have been staging sit-ins outside the Palace of Justice every night until midnight in protest against jailing activists for expressing opinions. So far, at least four youth activists have been jailed for between two to 10 years for allegedly undermining the status of the Amir and his authorities. Many more are on trial over similar charges.

Meanwhile, grillings from members of the pro-government National Assembly are rolling as Shiite MP Faisal Al-Duwaisan yesterday filed to grill the interior minister for allegedly dealing with Israel and Continued on Page 2

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2013

LOCAL

Al-Qallaf under pressure to withdraw NA grilling MPs critical of wrong timing

KUWAIT: His Highness the Amir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah’s envoy Deputy Minister of Amiri Diwan Affairs Sheikh Ali Jarrah Al-Sabah forwarded a letter yesterday from HH the Amir to the Omani Sultan Qabous Bin Said. The letter deals with bilateral relations and ways to boost them in various fields, in addition to recent regional and international developments.

The letter was received by Omani Minister of Diwan of Royal Court Khalid bin Hilal Al-Busaidi.

KUWAIT: A number of lawmakers are putting pressure on MP Husain Al-Qallaf with the hope of talking him into withdrawing a grilling motion he filed last week against Minister of Communications Salem Al-Othaina. A report in the AlQabas yesterday quoted MPs who were mainly critical of the timing of Al-Qallaf ’s step rather than the issues that his grilling motion involved.

“Talks are ongoing in order to convince Al-Qallaf to withdraw his grilling, but if all attempts fail, then our assessment will be based on the arguments that both sides make during the debate,” said MP Khalid Al-Adwah. Meanwhile, MP

Nasser Al-Merri said that Al-Qallaf should have held more talks with fellow lawmakers about the interpellation before he submitted it, while MP Hammad Al-Dousar y called the grilling “individualistic.”

The parliament’s budgets committee, meanwhile, submitted a request asking the government for results of its own investigations into violations cited in State Audit Bureau reports released in recent years. Panel chairman Adnan Abdulsamad told Al-Qabas in this regard that the committee needs the data as part of its plans to follow up the issue.

In other news, MP Saleh Ashour said that he plans to submit a pro-

posal calling on the government to pay an ‘end of service’ allowance to state employees equal to two years’ salaries, similar to the allowance given to army and police recruits, physicians, Kuwait Oil Company employees and Kuwait Airways staff. Ashour further told Al-Rai that he also plans to propose increasing the rent allowance from KD150 to KD250, and the child support allowance from KD50 to KD100.

Meanwhile, member of Parliament Faisal Al-Dwaisan officially lodged a motion with the National Assembly , requesting to grill the Interior Minister Sheikh Ahmad Al-Humoud Al-Sabah, in his official capacity, in line with Article

100 of the Kuwaiti Constitution.

Said article states that, “Every member of the National Assembly may address to the Prime Minister and to Ministers interpellations with regard to matters falling within their competence.”

The Dwaisan motion lists the two themes for his interpellation as, “implication in slack regarding the threat of Zionist espionage,” and “adopting policies that violate ethics and values upheld by security personnel and compromising their role and respectability within society.”

This is the second interpellation motion filed in the 14th legislative session.

Fire drill at Mangaf area

Cancer prevention conference kicks off in Kuwait KUWAIT: “The Cancer Prevention in the Arab World: Applied Strategies Conference” kicked off here yesterday with the participation of scores of professors and international and Arab medical experts.

The two-day conference is initiated by the Cancer Aware Nation (CAN, Kuwait) in cooperation with the Gulf Federation for Cancer Control, Arab Medical Association Against Cancer (AMAAC), Kuwait Society for Smoking and Cancer Prevention and Kuwait Oncology Society.

“Cancer has become the second major cause for death after heart diseases,” Kuwait Society for Smoking and Cancer Prevention Chairman and ex-

health minister Abdulrahman Al-Awadi said at the opening session, stressing that need for clear-cut strategy to control the deadly disease. He cited regular medical examinations and development of diagnoses techniques and tools to discover and treat the disease early.

For his part, Cancer Aware Nation (CAN-Kuwait) Deputy Chairman and the Conference Organizing Committee Chief Khaled Saleh said that cancer is a major challenge to the whole world.

He pointed out that an estimated 10 million deaths from cancer occurred in 2012. An estimated 95,000 cancer cases were diagnosed in the Arab Gulf region till 2007, he said. — KUNA

MEW bad debts exceed KD18m KUWAIT: The Ministry of Electricity and Water has identified that bad debts which are now perceived as impossible to realize exceed KD 18 million, sources said. The estimate is made annually before the Audit Bureau.

Sources said that the Ministry has asked the Ministry of Finance to look into this debt to delete it from its books as it is impossible to collect it. The debt amount was due to be realized from con-

sumers who left the country after liberation.

Sources said that Ministry of Finance was asked to study this debt which is a burden on MEW. One of the suggestions made concerned selling this debt to a specialized company. Such a company can pay a certain percentage of the debt, say 20%, and can then collect whatever it can from the debtors after obtaining all debt related details from the Ministry.

By Hanan Al-Saadoun KUWAIT: The Ahmadi governorate fire department organized a fire drill for Mangaf and Fahaheel fire centers yesterday morning at Mangaf area in the presence and under the supervision of Deputy Director Brig Khalid Al Mikrad and Ahmadi Fire Director Colonel Talal Al Sarraf.

The drill was headed by Mangaf fire center director, Major Ahmad Al Habdan, Fahaheel fire center director, Major Maath Al Hamadi, Mina Abdullah fire center director Major Faisal Al Kandari, besides Major Abdul Aziz Al Zawawi.

The drill is part of the monthly practical training meant to help firemen enhance their experience and physical fitness and apprise themselves of the pre-drafted plans to deal with different accidents.

The drill involved a fire on the 10th floor in a 16-storey building with one person stuck in the fire. Al Mikrad said that there twin aims of the drill: firstly, increasing the performance level of firemen in dealing with safety and security and check the equipments available in the building and, secondly, the use of fire department pumps to make water reach the 10th floor in case the building’s own pumps stopped working and evacuate people through the stair case and by using firemen’s ladders.

After the drill was over, Al Mikrad met the firemen and thanked them for their efforts.

Guinness invited to record-breaking Hala February opening ceremony KUWAIT: The publishers of the Guinness World Records Book have been invited to attend the 2013 Hala February opening carnival to record the world’s largest celebratory theater which will take place over nearly 100 meters stretch across the Salem Al-Mubarak Street

in Salmiya. This was announced by Programs and Activities Manager Madina Ismail, who promised “unprecedented events” during the opening ceremony of the festival in its 14th consecutive year.

Meanwhile, the organizing committee for the festival met senior

officials from the Ministry of Interior to discuss the security preparations for the opening day on February 15th. Undersecretary Assistant for General Security Affairs, Major General Mahmoud AlDousary, assured the committee that security departments were ful-

Madina Ismail

Maj Gen Mahmoud Al-Dousary

Saleh Ashour

ly prepared to maintain law and order during the anticipated event.

In the meantime, Chairman of the Retro Motors Auto Company, Khalid Al-Khashram, announced the firm will participate in the opening carnival as a sponsor, and planned to take part with 20 classic cars. He also announced in a recent statement that eight classic cars with vintage ranging between 1964 and 1972 will be auctioned during the Hala February festival.

The auction will be held at the Regency Hotel.

Meanwhile, MP Saleh Ashour called for support from the public and private sectors in Kuwait to the Hala February festival in the form of sponsorship and participation in the events as well as discounts and offers.

500 complaints against police in 2012 KUWAIT: Around 500 complaints were filed against police officers last year, a rise of 20 percent compared to 2011, according to a newspaper report published yesterday quoting sources with knowledge of the official statistics.

Meanwhile, the sources who spoke to Al-Qabas on the condition of anonymity said that disciplinary measures were taken against at least 65 officers after they were found guilty during investigations.

Fifteen of these officers spent time in jail for abusing power, said the sources who also noted that the majority of complaints were made against traffic police officers and detectives.

While indicating that some cases are still awaiting further investigations, the sources pointed out that a number of complaints were dismissed due to lack of evidence.

In the meantime, the sources revealed that at least 1250 Ministry of Interior employees, including police officers and desk job staff members, were reported absent from work in 2012. Of these, 50 had reportedly ‘fled’ their offices after initially checking in, the source added.

Meanwhile, the sources said that the Control and Inspection Department plans to carry out inspection tours at migration and traffic departments around Kuwait to inspect the process of work. This was being mulled after complaints about employees leaving their offices around 1:00 pm everyday, which is one and a half hours before the official working day comes to a close. The sources noted that the department conducted more than 3,500 similar checks last year.

Hamdulillah ala salama!

Continued from Page 1 They all come with 100 ideas which we do not see solved or completed. Lately of course, they are only busy when the opposition is fighting with the parliament accusing them that they are a puppet parliament. Then the gentlemen from the alleged puppet parliament are busy answering back at the accusations in a worse and more diabolical discourse. They use all the insults from the Arabic dictionary. They refreshed my classical Arabic knowledge of rudeness. Thanks, guys.

Why don’t they hold a session at the airport. I am sure that even if they don’t, they travel themselves a lot. So they have experience of other airports and what kinds of services are there. I will stop comparing us to Dubai because it is beyond comparison with any Arab country. If you want to compare Dubai, then maybe you will compare it to Charles de Gaulle or New York’s JFK or Heathrow or any other big airport. I settle down for the Middle Eastern airports. Where do we stand in this ranking? Nowhere.

It is not only the airport. A friend of mine said he is waiting for a parcel that was sent to

him from the UK a month ago. It is over a month and he keeps calling every day to find out what is happening with the parcel. It is just a small parcel with a book and CD in it.

Another editor just told me that he received his Christmas greetings yesterday.

Hamdullilah ala salama (Thank God you arrived). I am sure all of you who live here have heard this expression. Our post office sucks.

I do not know where to start or end. I am sad. Where are the projects? Where is the development? All what we get is talk and more talk. We have many young men and women who would like to start small businesses. Why doesn’t someone update the rules and regulations and modernize them to 2013? We are over-regulated when it comes to opening a business. Sometimes we face many rules and enigmas that do not mean too much. They are rules for the sake of rules.

They are no longer practical for modern age and technology. Nobody cares to modernize us. Look at the snags that annoy the day-today life of citizens.

I think this is enough complaining for one day. Have a good day!

Court suspends jail for three...

Continued from Page 1 failing to handle opposition unrest, amid more threats to grill other ministers. The grilling comes just after a week from another grilling submitted against the communications minister, while several other lawmakers have threatened to grill the ministers of oil, finance and defense over a variety of allegations.

The current Assembly is perceived as totally pro-government after the opposition boycotted the Dec 1 general polls in protest against the amendment of the electoral constituency law.

Duwaisan had previously threatened to grill Interior Minister Sheikh Ahmad Al-Humoud AlSabah but his timing was surprising especially that it comes only a few days after MP Hussein Al-Qallaf submitted the grilling against the communications minister and MPs Saadoun Hammad and Abdullah Al-Tameemi threatened they would soon file to grill Oil Minister Hani Hussein.

In his grilling, Duwaisan claimed that the interior ministry recently sent a delegation of experts to inspect a border security system it acquired from SENSTAR Corp based in Canada through a

local company. The purchase is part of a major KD 40 million contract to fortify the borders with Iraq with high-tech security systems to detect intruders. Duwaisan said that he found that SENSTAR is totally owned by the Israeli Magal Security Systems company which is based in Tel Aviv. He claimed that the deal subjects Kuwaiti to danger because of the Israeli company. In addition, he accused the minister of violating the Israel boycott laws. Duwaisan claimed that continuing in the deal amounts to “treason” and “subjects Kuwait’s national security to danger”.

The second issue in Duwaisan’s grilling is the accusation that the minister has failed in controlling the opposition-led protests because of the contradictory orders that were issued to security officials. Opposition activists have repeatedly demonstrated in various parts of the country during the past several months over the amendment of the electoral constituency law and the holding of election on its basis. The protests have also called for dissolving the new Assembly and for scrapping the amendment. Riot police have repeatedly clashed with protesters using tear gas and stun grenades. Duwaisan alleged that the minister’s policy on the issue has been lacking.

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2013

LOCAL

KUWAIT: Abdulaziz Al-Ibrahim, Minister of Public Works and Minister of Electricity and Water launching the exhibition of the Young Engineers Conference.

Minister Al-Ibrahim and other officials at the booth of the Kuwait Society of Engineers.

The organizers of the conference awarding the minister. Also seen are the former foreign minister and the minister of information.

— Photos by Joseph Shagra

Ghazali Bridge ‘won’t affect Jahra road project’ Kuwait hosts engineers conference

By Nawara Fattahova KUWAIT: The Young Engineers/ Future Leaders (YE/FL), a standing committee of the World Federation of Engineering Organization (WFEO), is holding an international conference from Feb 10 to 12 at the Al-Rayah Ballroom. This event is held under the patronage of His Highness the Amir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah.

The conference also includes an exhibition related to it.

The three-day conference includes issues such as self skills development (interpersonal relations), development of project management and finance, promotion of entrepreneurial and marketing skills, development of young engineers’ responsibilities towards society, success stories and others.

Supporting youth is one of the priorities of the parliament. “This event highlights many interesting skills and programs that deserve supporting. Recently a Ministry for Youth Affairs was established which is supervised by the Amiri Diwan. Also there are programs in all the ministries for training contracts for youth,” said Abdulaziz Al-Ibrahim, Minister of Public Works and Minister of Electricity and Water, during the launch of the conference yesterday.

Regarding the Ghazali Bridge project, AlIbrahim assured that the project was not postponed or canceled due to opening of one road. “I went personally to the location and saw the traffic jam there, so I decided to open the road to relieve the congestion. This will not affect the execution of the whole project at all and we are continuing with the venture that has two main

Domestic workers shelter ready KUWAIT: A state-sponsored shelter for domestic workers who have standing disputes with their employers has been finalized while it is still to be decided on which date will it be opened, a local newspaper reported yesterday quoting Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor sources.

Speaking to Al-Rai on the condition of anonymity, the sources indicated that the official inauguration was pending finalization of the procedures currently on for “transfer of the medical clinic” that will be managed by the Ministry of Health to provide health care to the housemaids.

It is hoped that the shelter will provide better accommodation for displaced domestic workers who are often caught in disputes with their employers over salary

and other labor-related issues, or run away from abuse. The government hoped that it would help improve the image of the state which often comes in for criticism by international human rights groups over the treatment that some domestic workers receive in Kuwait. The criticism is also because the country lacked any law to administer the working conditions of maids.

The shelter is located in Jleeb AlShuyoukh area south of Kuwait City with an estimated capacity of 900 people who would be entitled to both medical attention and counseling. The shelter would also provide mediation services to find a solution to workers’ disputes with their employers.

Biker riding at 304 kph caught KUWAIT: As the Hawally traffic department carried a campaign to check over speeding at the Arabian Gulf Road yesterday (Sunday), among the vehicles it intercepted was a motorcycle being driven at a speed of 304 km per hour.

Seven vehicles were caught for over speeding to varying degrees on a road where the speed limit is 80 km per

hour. The motorcycle and other seven vehicles were detained.

Traffic department emphasized that such campaigns will continue to ensure compliance with traffic regulations and to prevent tragic accidents.

The traffic department urged everyone to abide by traffic laws for their own safety.

Hectic moves to solve loans issue KUWAIT: The Members of Parliament and the government are reconciling their views about finding a solution to the loans problem, particular in case of those who have been severely affected by accumulated interest as also about including others who did not avail of loans but belong to limited income category.

Both sides have to finalize their positions before February 19 when voting on the report of the financial committee will take place.

The report includes a draft law of four articles concerning government absorbing the remaining interests owed by borrowers affected during the period 2002 - 2009 and a grant to the citizens.

I t also includes a proposal to increase the sum a retired person can borrow to 40% of the salary. The proposal also envisages opening an insolvent fund indefinitely and to create a unit in the Central Bank to receive and deal with those affected.

New economic report released KUWAIT: The Kuwait News Agency (KUNA)’s Economic and Petroleum Affairs Department released yesterday a new report on the latest economic developments in the oilexporting Gulf nation.

In a press statement, Awatef AlHasawi, director of the KUNA’s Economic and Petroleum Affairs Department, pointed out that the report includes reliable information and statistics on the performance of the different sectors of the national economy, together with interviews with relevant experts and specialists.

Al-Hasawai noted that the report contains three chapters, the first of which discusses the performance of the Kuwait Stock Exchange and major transactions witnessed during 2012. It also highlights the impact of the global economic crisis on the local market.

It also includes experts’ assess-

ment of the situation, the challenges and their recommendations for improving the stock market performance as well as their forecasts for prospects of the stock market in the coming period.

In Chapter Two, Chairman of the Kuwait Union of Investment Companies (UIC) Bader N. Al-Subaie unfolds the UIC’s efforts to overcome the grave impacts of the global economic crisis and subsequent crises in other par ts of the world on the national economy. He also offers a package of proposals and recommendations to help restructure lime duck companies, regulate bonds market, outline a clear policy for the financial sector. Meanwhile, chapter three of the report sheds lights on the manpower and state executive body restructuring program; its objectives, strategies and efforts to create jobs for citizenry. — KUNA

parts, Al-Jahra Road and Jamal Abdulnasser Road. The Ghazali Bridge will connect these parts to the Jaber Bridge. This project is slated to be over within four to five years. The main reason for opening the Ghazali was that more than 65 percent of students of the Kuwait University had been registering delays which would have later affected their marks,” he explained.

The government is taking care of the youth and is supporting them. “The governmental support is not limited to the young engineers only, but is meant for all young citizens. Establishment of the new Ministry for Youth Affairs is the best evidence. I consider this conference an important event, and whatever will be presented by the officials and researchers will be useful and considered for execution,” concluded Al-Ibrahim.

On his part, engineer Husam Al-Kharafi,

Chairman of the Kuwait Society of Engineers, highlighted the role of the Society in supporting the engineers through organizing different events and activities.

“The whole world speaks about the role of youth in building their community and we hope that this conference will make recommendations to strengthen this role and make it a reality. For instance, the job opportunity for young fresh graduate engineers is very limited. In Kuwait we are missing a unified strategy to benefit from these skills, so we demand governmental support for our volunteering work. We feel sorry for some negative behavior by certain public institutions that is complicating the engineers’ work, while HH the Amir is supporting us through sponsoring this event,” he pointed out.

Dr. Hamed Al-Ajlan, Director of the Scientific

Culture Department at the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences (KFAS) noted that the engineers are the people who changed the sciences originally focused on understanding the universe into applications that transferred human’s life from the primitive style to the modern lifestyle and combined simplicity and complexity.

“Since its establishment, the KFAS has been participating in building a base of experiences and scientific manpower through supporting the researches and spreading a culture of science in the community. KFAS is currently working on a study in cooperation with Massachusetts Institute of Technology to find new system for pricing water and power to encourage preserving water resources, and save money at the same time,” stressed Al-Ajlan.

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2013

LOCAL in my view

In my view

Housing crisis worsening

Bedoons issue snowballing

By Eid Al-Shihri

K

uwait is a rich country with an abundance of capital and undeveloped land. The total population of Kuwait is a little more than three million people.

There are a total of one million Kuwaiti citizens. It is estimated that Kuwaiti families are between 200,000 to 300,000, most of them young and growing.

The government of Kuwait has failed on the housing sector front.

Government bureaucracy is responsible for shortage in housing for low and middle income families. There are more than 100,000 families on the waiting list for social housing. Ten years ago, at least 25% of the new families were able to buy houses or land to build houses.

However, real estate prices have skyrocketed in the past decade making it difficult for the Kuwaiti middle class to afford their first house.

As a result, there are parents who are retiring without having bought a house and 90% of them have no option but to wait for social houses. Some of these families have been waiting for 20 years to buy a house at a subsidized price from the government.

It is shocking that such a housing bubble exists in Kuwait where urban land is less than 10% of the total Kuwaiti land. The recent political struggle between the government and the parliament is partly responsible for the housing shortage. In November 2011, a small group of people had joined together to draw the government’s attention towards housing troubles. This group had launched “Waiting for a House” campaign and they used Twitter as a means to deliver their message. Their Twitter account is called “@na6er_bait” which means “Waiting for a House.”

This group of people demanded that the government supply and build houses at a rate of 12,000 units a year.

This figure was based on the fact that the annual demand was for 9,000 units. Last November, the government changed the law to make it more profitable for companies to build houses. The Public Authority for Housing Welfare has promised to deliver 14,000 units in the years 2013 and 2014. However, there are no commitments to provide housing for the years between 2015 and 2019. This lack of planning could result in the waiting list soaring to include 140,000 applicants. Such inaction is expected to hike the house prices and rents by 40%.

Waiting for A House campaign will continue its mission and activism to make its voice heard. It is a force for low and middle income families. Even if the government feels that it could ignore these families, they have a responsibility to fight for fair housing for their children.

(Eid Alshihri is the official spokesman for “Waiting for A House” campaign.

kuwait digest

Why do we actually write?

By Labeed Abdal

local@kuwaittimes.net

T

he latest Humans Rights Watch report addresses many issues concerning Kuwait, including the political tension between the parliament and the government, the Islamic opposition, women’s rights and the issue of bedoons. I will address today the bedoons issue since the report mentioned that they have the right to citizenship and have longstanding roots in Kuwaiti territory. This issue requires elaboration.

Frankly speaking, the bedoonsissue in Kuwait has been snowballing and has grown in size and complexity.

It now attracts multiple local and international concerns.

The issue needs to be dealt with comprehensively,

kuwait digest

Lack of political awareness

By Abdullatif Al-Duaij

I

have no problem with the opposition, but certainly have one with the issues it raises. Actually, my problem has nothing to do with the objectives or the intentions behind these issues, but the way these are brought to the surface and how they propose to solve them. It goes without saying that a majority of issues that the opposition raises did figure at one or the other point during Kuwait’s political history. But when Musallam Al-Barrak warns the labor unions about unannounced repercussions if they failed to attend a meeting at his dewaniya last Thursday, it becomes necessary to stop and address the nature of the opposition’s approach in a more critical manner than I have ever done before.

The oppositionist group has no political awareness.

And despite the “progressive” and democratic issues they promote, the opposition leaders, and Al-Barrak in particular, hardly follow the spirit of democracy or understand the standpoint of others.

Through their ‘either with me or against me’ mentality, the opposition has always been the one which fought against media outlets, grilled the ministers for failing to take punitive action against TV channels for an expressed opinion, and banned people from entering Kuwait due to certain ideologies they promote.

The opposition spent a majority of its time in the parliament addressing the most trivial of matters while

completely ignoring freedoms that we have been pestering the MPs to take care of. All MPs without exception focused their attention on public funds, while completely ignoring freedoms and the need to improve political system.

Not only did the MPs have a chance to address state security regulations that sent people to jail for the most trivial of reasons or based on intentions, but they also ignored objections and warnings which should have actually motivated them to reconsider these laws.

Instead of codifying the laws in a more legal and democratic manner, the MPs were busy with public funds, either protecting or distributing them.

The opposition, whose latest accomplishment was passing a death penalty for a person expressing his or her opinion, is now protecting freedoms and announcing its objection to the very regulations that they passed and supported a few years ago. It is sad that their current objection is based on tribal concerns, not political.

They are now voicing their opposition to the imprisonment of certain people, not for being jailed for expressing an opinion. This exposes the tribal nature of the opposition’s movement in which they object to the judicial system instead of opposing the oppressive regulations that they legislated in the first place. — Al-Qabas

By Arwa Al-Waqian

I

started writing when I was a university student.

Frankly speaking, I did not know then why I was writing but realized later on that I write because I wanted to do something more than just crib and complain.

Writing has a certain glamour that makes ‘letting out steam’ an elegant process; at least that is what I thought at the time. There would be no readers if there were no books. I once read that a handsome smart man stood before Socrates and started walking proudly in admiration of the way he looked. “Speak up so that I can see you,” Socrates told him.

We communicate through letters and words without which views, cultures and experiences could not have been exchanged. We write to document history the way the pharaohs did on walls and on papyrus and used these to pass down detailed images and information about their quotidian life.

As human beings, we are often beguiled by others’ appearance and, sometimes, by their talk. Socrates’ comment will always remain engraved in my memory because so many people may actually be extremely good-looking and attractive but once they talk, their interlocutors immediately realize how shallow they are.

We write because we want to express our feelings and thoughts. We write because we are aware of the power a pen has; we write because writing is a sort of disclosure and there would not be any reading if there were no writing.

I still remember when I started writing a decade or so ago that I received great encouragement but do not remember the ones who asked me: ‘Why do you write?

Well, my answer to that question was, and still is: ‘Just to let some steam out.’ Writing is indeed a way to let out steam about inner feelings and thoughts. Those claim otherwise are only being evasive. We write on every issue. Even the social media mainly depend on talking or speaking because they realize how important the power of expression is.

We communicate through letters and words without which views, cultures and experiences could not have been exchanged. We write to document history the way the pharaohs did on walls and on papyrus and used these to pass down detailed images and information about their quotidian life. That is why we write, though now we do so with different tools and use social media instead of papyrus. That’s the answer to the ubiquitous ‘why do you write’ query.

We write to express, to register history, to tell tales to future generations about what happened in our time.

But why are some people always trying to discourage us by claiming that there is no use writing? Well, I insist that the world still has a considerable number of readers without whom there would be no newspapers, websites or social media. —Aljarida

kuwait digest

The opposition’s double standards

By Dr. Hassan Abbas

T

he opposition’s latest procession which concluded at Musallam Al-Barrak’s dewaniya was clearly different from the earlier processions it held since this one was to protest against a court ruling. Thus, it is being seen as a wrong political decision and both, the organizers as well as the participants, share the blame.

I know that politics has ‘polluted’ everything in Kuwait including medicine, sports, education and even co-operative societies.

But the judiciary has been one institution that has stayed aloof from politics, given its status as the authority with a final say in disputes. If the judiciary too succumbs to political pressure, then the consequent harm would not remain limited to judicial authority, but would impact the country as a whole.

The latest development also shows the opposition’s double-standards in dealing with complex subjects. It is the same judicial system which the opposition hailed till a few months ago when the Constitutional Court ruled in their favor after the cabinet challenged the constitutionality of the four-votes-per-voter system.

The impartiality of the judiciary can never be assessed on the basis of personal interests.

The court ruling which sentenced former MPs Falah Al-Sawagh, Khalid Al-Tahous and Badr Al-Dahoum to jail was supported as correct by both the opposition and other ‘impartial’ parties. When it came to the oppo-

sition, the convicted politicians argued that the ruling was void only because it was not dated. So in their opinion, the lack of a date on the court papers was the only reason why they believed the sentence should not become effective, while their silence on the sentence itself and the actions they were convicted of implied that they admitted that the crime was indeed committed.

As for ‘impartial’ parties, constitutional expert Mohammad Al-Moqatei wrote a column last Thursday in which he criticized the ‘harsh’ sentence while conceding that a crime was committed. Regardless of our opinion about the judge’s assessment of the sentence I also believe it was exaggerated - the fact remains that the former MPs were sentenced after being found guilty of violating the law, something Al-Moqatei never denied.

The opposition’s claim is that it is comprised of men of principles. Now, common sense holds that men of principles always stand by their principles. Hence, after making the offensive remarks, they have only three options, and can choose any: admit their guilt, apologize and show remorse for what they said which they perhaps did due to over enthusiasm, admit their guilt and tr y to convince us that their words were overblown, or admit their guilt, stand by their principles and pay the price courageously.

kuwait digest

Get rid of our racism

By Dr. Ali Abdullah Jamal

D

oes a sane person nowadays have no right to criticize or comment on the actions of members of the so-called human rights societies found all around us in Kuwait? Some of these so called human rights outfits actually applauded the assault on Dr. Obaid Al-Wasmi at Al-Harbash Diwaniya even though they, at one stage, claimed to be fighting for freedom of expression when it suited their interests.

These are the same bodies that supported the protests in Egypt and then mourned the doings of Morsi’s security troops. They remained immune from all Fatwas issued by the Muslim Brotherhood’s Guide ( Murshid) while brutally stripping and dragging an Egyptian citizen around the streets of Cairo last week.

It was the same mindset at work when they rejected calls to elect a cabinet in Bahrain, advancing an excuse that they were fighting Iranian interference and Safavid invasion. They filed an ill-intentioned grilling motion against Kuwait’s attempt to stop the shedding of Bahrainis’ blood. It is the same group that nowadays shouts angrily, demanding dignity, freedom and an elected Kuwaiti cabinet as if they have a monopoly over the concepts of freedom and dignity.

They also wanted our border exits to be operated as per their wishes and ideas and to filter arriving and departing passengers as they deemed fit, regardless of human dignity and freedom of expression guaranteed by the constitution. They have been professionally tailoring accusations of infidelity and slapping them on whoever they wanted, all under the garb of religion.

They have been presenting a skewed picture of people’s dignity. We did not hear any of these so called proconstitution and pro-freedom people whispering anything by way of protest when clergyman Kathem AlOmari, one of the most prominent scholars in Al-Madina Al-Monawwara, was humiliated on his arrival at the Kuwait airport.

So, if we want to preserve a robust nation for us all, we should discuss all these problems and find solutions to them. We should fight racism within our souls because any of us can be subjected to one or the other form of oppression or injustice.

We need to all work to restrain those operating in the shadows and preserve the constitution as a whole, an integral entity that cannot be divided along the lines of race, doctrine, mindset or belief. — Aljarida

Undoubtedly, whoever provides a solid proof of his/her legal position must be granted the nationality or a permanent stay. Otherwise, such a person will be clearly considered an ‘illegal immigrant’ and would not be able to stay officially as per the immigration rules and relevant international conventions. especially when the number of bedoons is now pegged at over 113,000. There are two main categories of bedoons, the first being the one in which the stateless people have solid proof that they are related to Kuwait and have been struggling to prove it because of lack of certain evidence.

The second category concerns the thousands who allege a relationship with this country but do not have any evidence. There are hundreds of bedoons whose origins lye in Syria, Iraq or Iran or some other countries but who perceive Kuwait as a better place.

The focus now must shift to the new Parliament also which should come up with new laws to speed up a resolution to these lingering situations. Without question, we cannot only blame the Kuwaiti government for all these and rather need the intervention of the local courts to review the cases of such people on a case by case basis. Undoubtedly, whoever provides a solid proof of his/her legal position must be granted the nationality or a permanent stay. Otherwise, such a person will be clearly considered an ‘illegal immigrant’ and would not be able to stay officially as per the immigration rules and relevant international conventions.

The government continues to violently disperse bedoon protests while promising to grant them social benefits including government-issued documentation and free education and health care. Authorities prosecuted individuals for expressing political opinions in a non-violent manner, including through web commentary. Kuwaiti courts issued two landmark rulings cancelling legally sanctioned discrimination against women in the judicial and education sectors. At least 106,000 Bedoonslive in Kuwait. After an initial registration period for citizenship ended in 1960, authorities shifted Bedoon citizenship applications to a series of administrative committees that have avoided resolving their claims.

Authorities claim that most bedoons are ‘illegal residents’ who deliberately destroyed evidence of their actual nationality in order to receive the generous benefits that the state provides to its citizens.

In March 2011, the government granted bedoons benefits and services such as free health care and education, as well as registration of births, marriages, and deaths. However, those benefits do not provide a path to citizenship. Some bedoons complained that bureaucratic processes prevented many of them from accessing those benefits.

Since February 2011, hundreds of bedoons have frequently taken to the streets to protest the government’s failure to address their citizenship claims. The government issued repeated warnings that bedoons should not gather in public, despite the country’s obligation under international law to protect the right to peaceful assembly. Article 12 of the 1979 Public Gatherings law bars non-Kuwaitis from participating in public gatherings. The security forces beat up bedoon protesters and detained dozens of them in a bid to suppress peaceful demonstrations. Detained bedoons reported physical abuse in detention. In one instance, on May 1, security forces violently dispersed around 300 protesters in Taima, northwest of Kuwait City, and arrested 14 of them. The Ministry of Interior said protesters had committed ‘shameful acts,’ such as trying to burn tires and block roads. Local rights activists told Human Rights Watch that the gathering was peaceful. The detained bedoonswere freed after nearly two weeks. According to local activists and lawyers, nearly 180 bedoons and Kuwaitis were tried on charges such as participating in an illegal gathering, resisting, insulting, and threatening police officers, and destroying police property, stemming from their participation in demonstrations in 2011 and 2012. Last year saw some gains for free expression, but authorities continued to detain and criminally prosecute individuals based on non-violent political speech, including web commentary. In December 2011, authorities allowed the bureau of the television news network Al Jazeera to reopen after shutting it down in late 2010 for reporting on security forces’ crackdown on opposition protests. In March 2012, a criminal court suspended Al Dar newspaper for three months and sentenced its editor-in-chief, Abd Al-Hussain Al-Sultan, to a six-month suspended jail term and fined him KD 1,000 for allegedly publishing articles that raised sectarian strife and incited to violate public order. The charges arose after the newspaper published three articles that contained statements critical and demeaning to the Shia minority in Kuwait. On May 14, 2012, a court of appeal increased the sentence to a one-year suspended jail term. In May 2012, parliament amended the country’s penal code to authorize the death penalty or life imprisonment for religious blasphemy.

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2013

LOCAL

Joint efforts needed to boost security in Gulf Al-Rashed visits Bahrain MANAMA: Kuwait’s National Assembly Ali AlRashed stressed yesterday here importance of coordinating joint efforts among legislatures of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), so as to contribute to achieving security and stability of the region and come out with appropriate solutions to address challenges.

Al-Rashed’s statement came after his meeting with Bahraini Prime Minister Khalifa Bin Salman Al-Khalifa, Chairman of the House of Representatives Khalifa Al-Thahrani and Chairman of the Shura Council Ali Al-Saleh.

Al-Rashed, who is, along with the delegation accompanying him, in a three-day visit to the Kingdom, said yesterday’s meetings addressed many issues of common concern, describing his meeting with Al-Thahrani as “fruitful.”

For his part, Speaker Al-Thahrani emphasized on the need to coordinate GCC efforts in order to achieve the unity project, explaining that the GCC countries needed more cooperation on all levels. Meanwhile, Chairman Al-Saleh said the Kuwaiti delegation’s visit comes amidst a diffi-

cult situation, both on political and security levels, witnessed by the region, calling in this regard for further coordination among GCC states.

The next leg of the Kuwaiti parliamentary delegation will be Saudi Arabia.

In another development, the activities of a three-day training course on human rights, organized by the Kuwait Ministry of Foreign Affairs, kicked off yesterday on the occasion of the second session of human rights under the title “Human rights and the fight against human trafficking”.

Director of Follow-up department at the Foreign Ministr y Ambassador Khalid AlMaghamis said in the opening ceremony of the session that it comes within the framework of a development project adopted by the ministry under the title “Enhancing the role and efforts of the State of Kuwait in the field of Human Rights”.

Al-Maghamis said “The aim of the session is to prepare a number of cadres of diplomats and administrators to gain more human rights basics

in order to fight human trafficking and to be able to convey their country’s view professionally and thoughtfully.

“In addition, the ministry is looking forward to achieving its goals by its cooperation with the International Organization for Migration (IOM),” he added.

For her part, Chairperson of IOM-Kuwait, Eman Oraiqat, said that the third offense that generates profits according to international statistics, following the trade of drugs and arms is human trafficking, noting that it puts us in front of major challenges.

She expressed gratitude and appreciation to the Foreign Ministry’s keenness on strengthening the skills of its members with international expertise in human rights issues, especially combating human trafficking.

Head of the project, second secretary Nasser Al-Mutairi said that the project is divided into three main parts, which are organizing training courses inside and outside Kuwait and issuing a book on human rights. — KUNA

KUWAIT: The police officers club held its 5th spring camp for officers’ families amidst a cordial family atmosphere, thus providing a platform for wholesome entertainment for everyone participating. The Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Officers Club, General Sulaiman Fahad Al-Fahad, was present on this occasion. The program included recreational competition and several social, sports and cultural activities for children and adults. Valuable gifts were distributed to all camp participants by the club management which also supplied eatables.

Kuwait hosts dental conference KUWAIT: A dental surgery conference attended by several local and international specialists in the field began in Kuwait yesterday.

The conference is expected to shed light on the latest issues in the field through a number of lectures, workshops and an exhibition, said the Health Ministry’s Assistant Undersecretary for Dental Affairs Dr. Yousif Al-Duwairi in a keynote speech on behalf of the event’s patron Health Minister Dr. Mubarak AlHaifi. Speaking about the ministry’s accomplishments, the official said that it

has been taking it upon itself to improve dental healthcare in the country, most recently on several fronts.

Steps in this regard include initiating a specialised training programme which now operates across 35 clinics, integrating digital dental photography and an IT database in everyday public practice and constructing a public dental healthcare internet website for closer interaction with local patients. In schools, an awareness campaign on the importance of maintaining healthy teeth has also been launched, he added. — KUNA

Entertainment City plans new activities

KUWAIT: The newly promoted officers in the administration yesterday met General Director of Legal Affairs Department, Brig Asaad Al Ruwayeh, in the presence of the administration leader. Al-Ruwayeh congratulated the promoted officers and conveyed to them the greetings of the First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Interior, Sheikh Ahmad Al Hmoud Al Sabah, and the Undersecretary of Ministry of Interior, General Ghazi Abdul Rahman Al Omar, and wished them success.

All Kuwaiti students along US East Coast safe WASHINGTON:- All Kuwaiti students studying in cities along the US East Cost are safe and unaffected by snowstorm ‘Nemo’, Deputy Vice Chairman of National Union for Kuwaiti Students (NUKS) USA-Branch Abdulhadi Johar said yesterday.

The NUKS emergency committee

had in coordination and cooperation with members of the Kuwaiti embassy in Washington, and the Kuwaiti Cultural Attaché Abdulaziz Al-Omar, contacted Kuwaiti student in the affected states and checked on their safety. Johar thanked the Kuwaiti Ambassador in Washington Sheikh

Salem Al-Abduallah Al-Sabah for facilitating all services and satisfying the needs of our students.

Johar also praised the calm with which the students behaved throughout this situation, and the way they followed the instructions of local authorities. — KUNA

Seminar on growth of security organizations KUWAIT: The Institute of Strategic Studies concluded a seminar course for middle management titled “Growth of security organizations in the society.” The three-day course was organized from February 5-7, 2013. Several leaders from the Ministry of Interior participated in it.

The course, organized under the patronage of Assistant Undersecretary for training affairs General Ahmad Nawaf Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, was also graced by the General

Director of National Security College, Lt. General Mohammed Rafiae Al-Deehani and the director of Strategic Studies Institute, Colonel Hizam Abdul Rahman Al-Rashidi.

The seminar was directed by retired General Musaed AlGhuwainem and Dr. Rabie Mohammad Al-Mutairi. It covered society’s needs for security and the role of policemen in society as also the importance of their cooperation to achieve growth and social security.

KUWAIT: The Entertainment City is set to host various activities as part of the Touristic Enterprises Company’s spring break preparations, a top TEC official announced yesterday.

Deputy Managing Director Meshari Al-Sanousi said the Entertainment City welcomes visitors during winter hours throughout the spring break. Visitors are thus welcome beginning Friday, Feb 8, until Thursday, Feb 21. The facility will remain open during this period from 2 pm to 11 pm on weekdays, and from 10am to 10pm on weekends. AlSanousi further added that the two Mondays falling during the period, Feb 11 and 18, will be exclusively reserved for female visitors only. Al-Sanousi also announced that the Entertainment City will open on Thursday, Feb 14 at 4pm as the facility will be allocated exclusively to Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs employees starting from 10am that day.

Meshari Al-Sanousi

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2013

LOCAL

Iran revolution yielding new fruits

By Rohallah Qahramani Iranian ambassador to Kuwait

T Government Summit in Dubai partners with UN for workshops DUBAI: The Government Summit, the first of its kind regional initiative to be held in Dubai on Feb 11 and 12, is partnering with the United Nations to organise workshops on the UN Public Service Award - the most prestigious international recognition in public service excellence.

Prior to the Summit, on Feb 10, a capacity building workshop on innovation in government was held in cooperation with the United Nations Award on Public Service. The pre-Summit workshop was organised by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA).

“The Government Summit, through its strategic partnership with the United Nations and other international organizations, seeks to transfer knowledge and best practices on government services to institutions in the UAE and the Arab world. The focus of these workshops is to promote creativity and innovation, ensuring the continuous development of government services,” said Ohood Al-Roumi, Director General of the Prime Minister Office at the Ministry of Cabinet Affairs. “ The UN Public service awards are regarded as the most prestigious recognition for excellence in government services, and by hosting the workshops attended by international experts and UAE government representatives, The Government Summit aims to encourage governmental agencies to further improve their services in line with the criteria for the Awards,” she added.

Vincenzo Aquaro, Chief - e-Government Branch at UN DESA’s Division for Public Administration and Development Management (DPADM) presented the opening remarks at the capacity building workshop, attended by over 400 delegates. This was followed by two sessions on ‘Recognising and Rewarding Innovation in Government’ and on ‘Promoting Transfer and Adaptation of Innovations in the Arab Region’ by Dr. Adriana Alberti, Co-ordinator, Innovation in Public Governance Programme and Senior Governance and Public Administration Officer at DPADM. The second session was also addressed by Ms. Anni Haataja, Information Management Officer, e-Government Branch of DPADM, UN DESA. The UN Public Service Awards best practice workshops, during the Summit, covers three key areas: ‘Innovation in regulatory

reform and administrative simplification for effective service delivery;’ ‘Innovation in public governance through networks and partnerships;’ and ‘Innovation in e-Services.’

Her Excellency Ohood Al Roumi said that several government entities in the UAE have won the United Nations Public Service Awards in different fields, underlining the best services and practices adapted by UAE Government.

Organising international workshops that focus on innovation in government services is part of the objective of The Government Summit to establish a global platform to further enhance government services in the region.

The UN General Assembly, in its Resolution 57/277, designated 23 June as Public Service Day (A/RES/57/277). The UN Public Service Day celebrates the values and virtues of public service to the community; highlight the contribution of public service in the development process; recognize the work of public servants, and encourage young people to pursue careers in the public sector. Since the first Awards Ceremony in 2003, the United Nations has received an increasing number of submissions from all around the world.

The United Nations Public Service rewards the creative and innovative achievements and contributions of public service institutions that lead to a more effective and responsive public administration in countries worldwide. Through an annual competition, the UN Public Service Awards promotes the role, professionalism and visibility of public service.

The Government Summit will host regional and international speakers, including representatives of the United Nations, the World Bank and the World Economic Forum, among others. The agenda of the Summit covers all aspects of government services, and will include a detailed discussion on the UAE’s model in developing government services covering Abu Dhabi and Dubai’s experiences in government service provision. Several country-specific best practice workshops will be held with representatives from Singapore, Canada, South Korea, Denmark, Australia, and Brazil, among others, sharing their learnings in efficient government services, e-governance, citizen-centric services, and innovation, among other topics, with the participants.

he Iranian people and many others are these days celebrating the 34th anniversary of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the end of the authoritarian monarchy.

These celebrations come while the revolution is still yielding new fruits despite the economic blockade and imposed sanctions, and our people with their solid will have proved once again the superiority of their potential and their ability to be creative and able to achieve self-sufficiency.

The policy of the Islamic Republic of Iran while it is celebrating the 34th anniversary of Islamic Revolution Victory led by the late Imam Khomeini revolves around the following priorities: 1. Peace and security establishment in neighboring countries 2. Cement relations and friendship with the Islamic world, especially neighboring countries.

3. Political, cultural and economic cooperation with all countries except the Zionist entity.

4. Participation and effective cooperation with international organizations.

Peace promotion and security in neighboring countries is at the heart of Iran’s foreign policy.

The Islamic Republic of Iran is located in the center of a sensitive and geostrategic area, and it is one of the richest countries in terms of mineral reserves as it owns 10% of oil reserves and 15% of the world’s gas reserves. Iran also is the historic link between Asia and Europe and enjoys the safest transit routes, the most economical towards Central Asia, production services networks and trained human capital.

Moreover, it is considered a trusted economic and trade partner. Iran’s commitment, keenness to regional cooperation and its quest to achieve peace and security in the region and the world, enhances its position.

The regional policy is designed based on the sensitive characteristics of the region we live in where our country gains a unique position, and I would like to shed light on some important points in this regard: l Our relations with neighboring countries have a special significance because cementing them, especially with Kuwait, is based on many cultural, social, economic, and religious broad ties. l The intimidation and exaggeration practiced by major powers against Iran and turn it into a scarecrow for other countries in the region is only an attempt to mislead the public opinion.

However, Tehran always extended a hand of brotherhood and love to neighboring countries and never thought of one day to attack anyone, asserting that its nuclear development and military achievements are to serve the regional countries and defend their lands against any Zionist aggression that may be undertaken by adventurers. * The principle of indivisibility of regional security seems clear and evident at the regional level as the integration among coun-

tries leads to stabilizing or destabilizing security and impacts everyone. Therefore, all countries in the region should contribute to stability and security through cooperative efforts. l Our region which suffered through two decades from two painful wars against Iran and Kuwait needs an urgent initiative to reduce tension. In addition, providing security and stability of the region can be achieved perfectly through its countries which can ensure the legitimate interests of the international community about energy sources in the region. Based on this, regional countries are capable through continuous exchange of views and intensive efforts to reach acceptable security arrangements in order to invest their wealth for the sake of construction. l Peaceful coexistence in Iran The consecration of peaceful coexistence between religions and sects is a prominent feature and a rich experience characterized by the Islamic Republic as it embraces more than quarter-million of Christians and thousands of Jews living in peace and security in Iran, and enjoy full civil, humanitarian and political rights equally with Muslims, and they are represented through MPs in Islamic Shura Council who reflect their aspirations and ambitions.

We believe in treating all citizens without any discrimination.

Here we must point out that our Sunni brothers are practicing their religious and social activities freely and high minarets of hundreds of mosques of our Sunni people in Iranian governorates are operating, as well as broadcasting Azan and teaching Islamic Sharia in religious institutions according to Sunni jurisprudence.

Foreign Policy: Based on the principle of good neighborliness, the Islamic Republic of Iran focused on cementing bilateral relations with regional and international friendly countries, especially Kuwait, and the history proves the Iranian integrity in dealing with the rest of the friendly people. If we read the history, we will see that our lands were attacked many times by some neighboring countries and major powers throughout the history.

Fighting Terrorism and Drugs: The Islamic Republic of Iran always aims to confront this ominous phenomenon in all its forms, and deal with the origins and causes away from temperament and selectivity.

Moreover, due its geographical position (being near main drugs producing countries, especially Afghanistan), Iran has shouldered expensive human and financial costs to combat drug smuggling. However, it did not receive enough international support commensurate with the quantum of drugs smuggled.

Nuclear Energy Iran believes that peaceful use of atomic energy is an irrevocable right of all people, and should not be restricted only to authoritarian states. Accordingly, Tehran under the

super vision of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), started to invest in peaceful utilization of nuclear energy.

Iran is serious about reassuring some countries about concerns related to its peaceful nuclear program, and it proved it through the continuation of its peaceful projects.

Depending on religious concepts, it refuses massacres and killings, and always stresses to eliminate any nuclear weapon in its defense and military plans, where it always demanded denuclearization and freeing the world from mass destruction weapons regionally and worldwide. The Fatwa of the Islamic revolution leader Imam Khamenei on banning the use of nuclear weapons proves the peaceful methodology of Iran.

The Role of the Iranian Community in building modern Kuwait The Iranian community contributed in building modern Kuwait, and had a key role in construction works, reflecting the cohesion that exists between the two Muslim neighbors. Moreover, Iranians work in Kuwait with dedication as if they are serving their second country, believing in the Islamic and fraternal spirit that combines the two peoples of our countries.

Kuwaiti Tourism in Kuwait In recent months, Kuwaiti tourism doubled as Kuwaitis visited Iranian cities especially the City of Mashad for religious and therapeutic tourism. Iran enjoys four seasons and this attracts Kuwaitis.

Technical and Scientific innovations The youth of Iran achieved the following achievements: 1. The National American Information Council considered Iran as one of the top ten countries in the world in the field of scientific and technical advancements during the last two decades, stressing that scientific production in Iran were striking.

2. Iran ranked 13th in the world in terms of scientific productions according to Information Science institute (ISI) organization with 14,000 scientific articles.

3. Dr. Gholam A. Peyman, received the National American Medal of Technology in 2013 due to his innovations in the Lasik eye surgery.

4. Scientific and engineering exchange between Iran and 30 countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America in the field of geology and mining is continuous.

5. Iran is one of the first countries in the field of genetically engineered agricultural products, where it was successful in producing unique Iranian rice and products free of any genetic disorders.

6. Scientific advancements in the field of nanotechnology, where our youth could product the self-cleaning glass, quick dry paints and other innovations in medicine and engineering.

UAE achieves breakthrough in membrane desalination

23 arrested in ‘illegal calls’ raid in Farwaniya, Khaitan

ABU DHABI: Masdar Institute of Science and Technology announced here yesterday a pioneering breakthrough by two faculty members in developing a novel membrane that can operate in an ‘in-situ’ cleaning system for desalination purposes.

The path-breaking innovation — a novel out-of-the-box concept in preventing membrane fouling — firmly places the UAE in the forefront in obtaining clean energy and advanced technology solutions. A patent application has been filed for the new system that is considered superior to other existing techniques. Dr Nidal Hilal, Professor in

Nano-membranology and Water Technologies and Dr Raed Hashaikeh, Associate Professor in Materials Science and Engineering, have together invented this system based on a new approach to tackle the challenges in fouling using novel nano-materials.

In addition to cleaning the membrane, the novel system has the potential to even prevent fouling in the first place using a clean and simple periodic procedure without external additives. Instead, it utilizes the seawater as a component of the system and reduces the steps required for desalination. More

importantly, this system allows cleansing of membranes without the need to shut-down the water treatment unit, thus saving operational expenses and the exorbitant cost incurred by using other technologies for desalination.

Dr Fred Moavenzadeh, President, Masdar Institute, said: “Such inventions illustrate Masdar Institute’s unique interdisciplinary environment that facilitates collaboration among faculty members of various programs. It also reflects that we are on the right path, as mandated, to contribute to Abu Dhabi’s objectives in human capital development

and scientific advancement for creating a knowledge-based economy.

We congratulate Dr Nidal Hilal and Dr Raed Hashaikeh for this innovation that will consolidate the status of the UAE regionally and globally.

The continuing support of the UAE’s leadership has placed Masdar Institute in a remarkable position for driving innovation.”

Current statistics indicate that the GCC region accounts for nearly 50 percent of the world’s desalinated water. The GCC countries are also expected to invest more than $100 billion in their water sectors between 2011 and 2016. — KUNA

Husband charged with theft KUWAIT: A total of 23 people were arrested for illegally providing international calling services. The arrests came during a joint operation carried out by the Farwaniya Security Department and the Ministry of Communications. The crackdown targeted locations in Farwaniya and Khaitan where the suspects had set up cabins from where people can make cheap online calls in violation of the MOC regulations. It was also found that the arrested people were staying illegally in the country.

Drugs in car A man smashed a car’s window in Salmiya and escaped. But when the owner wanted to ascertain that nothing was stolen, she actually found the suspect had instead left a contraband drug in the car. The car was parked near her house.

The woman owner of the car found that while nothing was missing, there was a piece of hashish lying in the car that the suspect apparently had left inside. Police responded to her emergency call and launched investigations in search of the suspect.

Homicide investigation A dead body was found by the road side on Saturday but since crime scene sleuths found evidence of foul play, police filed a case of homicide in Farwaniya. A man reported about the body lying wrapped in a blanket near a concrete barrier by the roadside, and was identified as

that of a Kuwaiti national. Based on the fact that blood and bruises were found on the body, police believed the man was murdered. Investigations are on.

Unfaithful husband A woman who gave her husband a cheque for 20,000 Egyptian pounds has now filed a complaint with Khaitan police accusing him of stealing her money. In her statements to officers, the Egyptian woman explained that she had given the cheque to her husband to deposit it in her bank account back home. When she returned home, she discovered that the cheque was never deposited. The husband claimed that he had deposited the money with an investment company.

After learning through her own investigations that the alleged company did not exist, the woman pressed charges against her husband who is being summoned for investigations. (Rai) Kidnap attempt A man who was under the influence of liquor tried to kidnap a woman in Salwa.

In her statements to local police, the Kuwaiti woman explained that the man known to her showed up outside her apartment and then tried to forcibly pull her out when she answered the door. He eventually escaped after neighbors heard the commotion and came out. The woman told the officers that the Kuwaiti suspect was drunk when the incident happened.

Gulf Bank management along with staff after receiving their certificates

Gulf Bank congratulates 57 employees KUWAIT: Gulf Bank has celebrated the success of 57 of its employees at the annual Institute of Banking Studies (IBS) graduation ceremony. The employees attended the ceremony which was held at the Kuwait Chamber of Commerce and Industry to receive certificates for completing one of the institute’s specialist banking courses during 2011-2012.

Gulf Bank’s employees completed a number of programs, including the Certified Credit Management (CCM), Advance Certificate in Credit Management (ACCM), Risk Management Certificate (RMC), Certified Bank Branch Manager (CBBM), and Certified Assistant Bank Branch Manager programs (CABBM).

Gulf Bank has a long-term commitment to

investing in its employees and encouraging them to take up training opportunities to develop their skills. The Bank benefits from this investment through increased employee knowledge and loyalty, and improved performance, which is reflected in the high level of service standards and efficiency the Bank provides its customers.

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2013

US northeast digs out from deadly blizzard

Jordan’s king wants new electoral rules Page 8

Page 10

TEHRAN: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad flashes the sign for victory as he greets supporters prior to giving a speech, in which he lashed out at the West and Israel, during a rally in Tehran’s Azadi Square (Freedom Square) to mark the 34th anniversary of the Islamic revolution yesterday. — AFP

I’ll talk with US if pressure stops: Ahmadinejad Washington unlikely to relax sanctions TEHRAN: Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said yesterday that he is ready to have talks with United States if the West stops pressuring his country, the latest in a series of hints from leaders in both Washington and Tehran about the prospect of direct bilateral negotiations over the Islamic Republic’s controversial nuclear program. However, Washington is highly unlikely to relax sanctions on Iran - and Tehran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has final say on key state decisions, says that his country won’t negotiate under threat. This makes it hard to envision how talks could take place. Ahmadinejad is in his final months of his term of office and his fol-

lowers are weakened by a feud with the Islamic Republic’s clerical establishment. His latest statement, which implies that he is an equal player with Khamenei in foreign policy matters, may simply be an attempt to appear as though he is still politically relevant. “You pull away the gun from the face of the Iranian nation, and I myself will enter the talks with you,” Ahmadinejad said at a ceremony marking the 34th anniversary of the 1979 revolution that toppled a Western-backed monarch and ushered in the Islamic Republic.

He said the West had recently taken a “better” tone toward Iran - a nod to statements made by Vice President Joe Biden last week, in which he

said the United States was prepared talk directly to Iran. But the Iranian president said this was not enough. The West claims Iran’s nuclear activities are aimed at developing weapons. Iran denies it seeks atomic arms, saying its nuclear fuel is only for energy-producing reactors and medical applications, and insists that its operations will continue. “The Iranian nation will not give up one iota of its rights,” Ahmadinejad said. “Your efforts had aimed at preventing us from become nuclear, but we did.” However Ahmadinejad admitted that sanctions have taken a bite. “Today, because of dishonorable pressure by enemies, people are under pressure. The government is concerned

about the uneasy situation of a big portion of the country.” Ahmadinejad also said Iran will soon send a satellite into geostationary orbit.

“God willing, soon Iran’s satellite will be located at an orbit at (an altitude of) 36,000 kilometers (22,000 miles) next to others from four or five advanced powers and it will relay a message of peace and fidelity to all world,” said Ahmadinejad.

Iran regularly announces technological breakthroughs, most of which are impossible to verify independently. Iran says it has launched small satellites to low orbits of up to 450 kilometers (280 miles). In January, Iran claims it sent a monkey into suborbital space and recovered the ani-

mal safely. It says it hopes to send astronauts to orbit by 2018.

Iran displayed a model of the Pishgam rocket, which the country says it used to send the monkey into space, in a corner of Tehran’s Azadi Square where demonstrators gathered to listen to the president. The West fears that technology Iran’s space program can be used to develop long-range missiles. State TV meanwhile broadcast rallies throughout the country to mark the anniversary. Many demonstrators chanted “Down with the US” and “Death to Israel,” slogans traditionally used to denounce the Islamic Republic’s arch-enemies. — AP

Gun battle rocks N Mali city after suicide attack

GAO: French soldiers (background right) patrol at the site where the suicide bomber blew himself up yesterday on the road to Gourem. — AFP

GAO: Northern Mali’s largest city was rocked by a second suicide bombing and rebels clashed with Malian troops yesterday as Islamist militants defied a security lock-down on territory reclaimed by French-led forces. A gun battle between Malian soldiers and suspected Islamists erupted in the streets of central Gao near the main police station, an AFP correspondent said. The clash, which sent residents running for cover, came after a bomber blew himself up late Saturday at the same army checkpoint where the first such attack in Mali occurred on Friday. His severed head, still lying on the ground the next morning, was later picked up and placed in a wheelbarrow as French troops combed the site at the edge of Gao for landmines, uncovering several of the explosive devices, AFP correspondents said.

The suicide blasts underlined the threat of a

drawn-out insurgency as France, whose warplanes were still bombing northern territory yesterday, tries to map an exit strategy nearly one month into its intervention in its former colony. The Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO), one of the Islamist groups that seized control of northern Mali for 10 months in the wake of a military coup in March, claimed the first attack and had threatened Saturday that there would be more.

“We are dedicating ourselves to carrying out more attacks against France and its allies. We ask the local population to stay far away from military zones and avoid explosions,” spokesman Abou Walid Sahraoui said. The two suicide bombers were the only fatalities, although one soldier was lightly wounded in Friday’s bombing. Troops have now placed two walls of sandbags at the checkpoint, cut

down trees to increase visibility and set up heavy machine guns.

Malian troops and Islamist fighters exchanged gunfire after the blast, witnesses said, and French military helicopters could be heard in the air. The army closed the road where the attack occurred, which leads north from Gao to Bourem and Kidal, two other key towns in the region. French troops arrived at the scene in six armoured vehicles yesterday and worked to secure the area, uncovering several landmines.

To the northwest, French warplanes bombed a government building in the town of GourmaRharous, between Gao and Timbuktu, a local official said. The building “held vehicles and military equipment belonging to the Islamists,” the official said on condition of anonymity. —AFP

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2013

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

Tunisian prez’s party quits Islamist-led govt TUNIS: Tunisian President Moncef Marzouki’s secular party withdrew yesterday from an Islamist-led government already reeling from last week’s assassination of secular opposition leader Chokri Belaid. Belaid’s killing on Wednesday - Tunisia’s first such political assassination in decades - has thrown the government and the country into turmoil, widening rifts between the dominant Islamist Ennahda party and its secular-minded foes. “We have been saying for a week that if the foreign and justice ministers were not changed, we would withdraw from the government,” Samir Ben Amor, an official of Marzouki’s Congress for the Republic Party (CPR), told Reuters.

The CPR has criticised the performance of the two ministers, one of whom,

Foreign Minister Rafik Abdessalem, is the son-in-law of Ennahda party leader Rachid Ghannouchi. Ben Amor said the CPR’s withdrawal was unconnected to Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali’s decision, announced after Belaid was killed, to form a non-partisan government of technocrats to run the country until elections can be held later in the year.

Senior politicians in Ennahda, as well as in its two non-Islamist coalition partners, had criticised Jebali’s proposal, saying he had failed to consult them first.

Jebali said on Saturday he would unveil his new cabinet this week, but would resign if political parties did not support it. A senior Ennahda official, who asked not to be named, said the National Constituent Assembly would have the final say, but added: “We see that it will

be possible to form a government of technocrats that includes political parties.” Ben Amor said Marzouki’s CPR would formally submit the resignation of its three ministers to Jebali on Monday.

Political analyst Youssef Ouslati said the party was “trying to jump out of a sinking ship”, but that its decision had no great weight because Jebali was now the central player. He said that if political uncertainty continued, “the street will be the crucial element”.

Divisions on streets Belaid’s funeral drew tens of thousands of mourners in Tunis and other cities on Friday in what turned into mass political protests against Ennahda and the government it dominates. About 6,000 Ennahda supporters took to the

streets of the capital on Saturday in a peaceful show of strength. The CPR’s departure is the first major shake-up in the government set up in December 2011 after an election for a National Constituent Assembly to draft a new constitution.

The CPR came a distant second in the election, winning 29 of the assembly’s 217 seats to Ennahda’s 89, but Marzouki was elected interim president by the assembly in a show of unity and his party entered a coalition government led by Ennahda. Marzouki had opposed former President Zine Al-Abidine Ben Ali from exile until a popular uprising swept the long serving Tunisian leader from power in January 2011.

Since then Islamists and their opponents have tussled over the role of Islam

in politics, society and the constitution, while economic grievances that helped drive the revolt against Ben Ali have gone largely unaddressed. Belaid’s killing, for which no one has claimed responsibility, shocked the nation of nearly 11 million.

The politician’s widow Basma said on Saturday she was asking the government to protect her family with official protection. Some members of Belaid’s family have accused Ennahda of being behind the shooting, something the party denies. Ghannouchi, Ennahda’s leader, has threatened legal action against politicians or journalists pointing the finger at him, saying they were “exploiting the blood of the deceased for narrow political ends at the expense of the truth”. — Reuters

Jordan’s king wants new electoral rules Tribal establishment resists changes to election rules

BAGHDAD: Iraqi women dance in a Baghdad nightclub late on February 9, 2013. —AFP

Iraq TV bombed after slamming Kurd leader SULAIMANIYAH: A bomb exploded on the roof of an Iraqi satellite channel’s offices a day after the broadcaster aired a caller’s criticism of a revered Kurdish leader, an official said yesterday. The explosion in the Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah came as Human Rights Watch (HRW) criticised the autonomous Iraqi region for infringing on free speech by wrongly detaining journalists, activists and opposition figures for insulting public figures.

On Friday evening, the Nalia television station briefly aired a caller’s criticism of Mullah Mustafa Barzani, a Kurdish nationalist leader and the father of Kurdistan’s current president, during its “Free Microphone” programme before cutting off the caller. On Saturday, 300 supporters of Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) tried to storm the broadcaster’s offices but were turned away by riot police, an AFP journalist said. Later that day, a bomb went off on the roof of Nalia’s offices, a security official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

It was unclear who was behind the attack.

Abdulwahab Ali, the KDP’s chief in Sulaimaniyah, said the party had not

orchestrated the demonstration. Nalia’s offices were again attacked in February 2011 by masked gunmen who wounded a security guard and fired their weapons at the broadcaster’s equipment.

Yesterday, New York-based HRW issued a statement criticising Kurdish authorities for arresting opponents and journalists under legislation that has not been approved by the region’s parliament.

“These are dark days for freedom of expression in Iraq’s Kurdistan region,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, HRW’s Middle East director.

“Instead of ensuring the justice system investigates high-level corruption, the Kurdistan regional government is ignoring its own laws to protect free speech and assembly, and using ‘laws’ that are not in force to silence dissent.” “Sadly, the Kurdistan regional government today looks less and less like the open and thriving democracy it paints itself to be.” The watchdog said that in 2012, regional security forces reportedly arrested at least 50 journalists, opponents and activists, prosecuting seven of them for insulting public figures. — AFP

Rebels and troops battle for key Damascus highway BEIRUT: Syrian troops and opposition forces battled for control of a key highway outside Damascus for the fifth straight day yesterday as the rebels continued their campaign to push into the capital, the seat of President Bashar Assad’s power.

This week’s fighting has been the heaviest in Damascus since a failed rebel drive into the capital in July. The rebels captured several neighborhoods then, but were soon forced out by a punishing government counteroffensive. Both the rebels and the government consider the fight for Damascus the most likely endgame in the nearly two-year-old civil war that has killed more than 60,000 people. But while rebels threaten the heavily fortified capital from opposition strongholds around the city, Damascus so far has been spared the degree of violence and destruction witnessed in other major urban centers.

Since Wednesday, when the latest rebel campaign for Damascus started, checkpoints on the main artery into the capital have changed hands several times. The road is strategically important because it leads to northern Syria and Assad’s regime uses it to move troops and supplies. Rebels cut the road off from Damascus with burning tires on Friday after seizing checkpoints from regime troops in fighting that brought the civil war within a mile of the heart of the capital.

There were conflicting reports on whether the rebels had made new progress yesterday. A rebel fighter told The Associated Press that opposition forces overran another roadblock, AlAdnan checkpoint in Jobar, northeast of Damascus. He spoke on condition of anonymity for security reasons. But the Britain-based Observatory for Human Rights, an anti-regime activist group, said that while the fight for the highway continues, government troops regained control of the area yesterday after using fighter jets to bomb rebel positions the day before. A resident of the capital said yesterday was relatively quieter, saying it appeared the military had limited its use of warplanes and helicopters due to a ceremonial mass for the enthronement of a new patriarch for Syria’s Greek Orthodox

Church in Damascus. The ceremony in the Church of Holy Cross was attended by religious and political dignitaries from Syria and abroad.

John Yazigi, 57, replaced Ignatius Hazim, who died in December, as the Eastern Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch and All the East. Patriarch Yazigi pledged to work for peace and pray for unity. “We are certain that Syria will find a way to salvation through dialogue and a peaceful political solution,” the patriarch said after his inauguration, which was broadcast live

by Syrian State TV. The rebels’ latest push for Damascus is similar to rebel offensives in other Syrian cities. The opposition controls large swathes of land outside urban centers like Homs and Deir el-Zour and even whole neighborhoods like in the northern city of Aleppo - but cannot oust all government troops because of the regime’s superior fire power. The fighting has settled into a bloody stalemate and shows no signs of stopping, despite several tentative proposals from both sides to find a peaceful resolution to the conflict. — AP

BERLIN: A counter-marcher protests against a rally of demonstrators supporting Syrian President Bashar AlAssad’s regime yesterday. — AFP

AMMAN: Jordan’s king yesterday called for electoral changes to make parliament more representative, after Islamists boycotted last month’s national poll saying rules were skewed against urban areas where they have most support.

Independents and candidates allied to Jordan’s powerful tribal establishment, which is strongest in the countryside, won most seats in the national elections Jan. 23, after the Islamic Action Front, the Muslim Brotherhood’s political wing in Jordan and the country’s largest opposition party, shunned the vote.

King Abdullah, who has close relations with the United States, told the opening session of the 150-member assembly, the first to be elected since the Arab Spring, that electoral rules must change to nurture multi-party democracy.

“The elections were held under a law that was not ideal ... Therefore I call for revisiting this law and reviewing the electoral system in a way that wins consensus, promotes fair representation,” the monarch told the assembly. The elections were the first since the king enacted constitutional changes last year devolving some of his powers to parliament, which critics said had become sidelined as powers shifted to the palace and security forces.

But Jordan’s tribal political establishment resisted the king’s efforts to grant a higher proportion of parliamentary seats to cities dominated by Jordanians of Palestinian origin, who make up a majority of the population of seven million.

Jordanians of native descent enjoy preferential access to state jobs and government funds, although businesses owned by citizens of Palestinian origin are pillars of the economy.

Constitutional change came after protests against corruption and critical of King Abdullah.

Though inspired by the Arab Spring, they were not on the scale of those that toppled rulers in

Egypt and Tunisia and sparked civil war in Libya and Syria. Jordan’s native elite is wary of Islamists, especially the Muslim Brotherhood, with its demand for political reform.

The electoral law as it stands gives disproportionate representation to sparsely populated rural tribal and Bedouin areas - the bedrock of support for the Hashemite dynasty. Only twenty percent of seats were won by Jordanians of Palestinian origin and their resentment could strengthen the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood, which has a strong following

among poor Palestinians living in camps.

The Muslim Brotherhood says it is not turning its back on democracy but protesting what it called meaningless elections. Abdullah said he hoped the emergence of parliamentary blocs in the next few days would allow him to consult with deputies for the first time before he appoints a new prime minister. The king remains for many citizens the ultimate guarantor of stability in Jordan, whose neighbors include Israel, civil-war torn Syria, and an Iraq also riven by sectarian strife. — Reuters

AMMAN: Jordan King Abdullah II (center) reviews the honor guard prior to addressing the opening of the Jordanian parliament yesterday. — AFP

Fear of assassinations haunt Egypt opposition CAIRO: Watching the events in Tunisia, where a leading anti-Islamist politician was shot to death this past week, members of Egypt’s liberal opposition are fearfully asking: Could it happen here too? Their fears of a renegade Islamist attack on any of the top opposition leaders have been hiked by religious edicts issued by hardline clerics on TV saying they must be killed. But even before those edicts, activists have been worried by signs they say show that ruling Islamists are starting to target their ranks - disappearances of activists from protests, telephone death threats, warnings from security officials.

Some in the opposition say there’s no sure proof of a campaign, just worrisome patterns. But the fears point to how agitated the atmosphere has become in Egypt, with tempers hiked on both sides.

The mainly liberal and secular opposition accuses Islamist President Mohammed Morsi of unleashing security forces to crush their protests against him. In turn, many Islamist backers of the president are convinced that the opposition is trying to topple a democratically elected leader by force.

In that environment, an assassination against a top opposition figure like that of Tunisia’s Chokri Belaid could be explosive. Authorities appear to recognize the potential danger. The government increased security at the homes of Egypt’s top opposition figures, including Mohamed ElBaradei, a senior figure in the National Salvation Front. On Saturday, there was a startling moment when ElBaradei was getting into vehicle, tightly surrounded by bodyguards, and a middle aged man pushed toward him, shouting hysterically, “You’ll wreck Egypt, you’ll wreck Egypt” before guards pulled him aside.

And some in the Islamist camp are worried violence could disrupt their goal of installing an Islamic state in Egypt. Some of the hardestline Islamist groups postponed proMorsi rallies planned for last Friday at the presidential palace, fearing colli-

sions with opposition protesters. “We are practicing extreme self-restraint,” Mohammed Al-Zawahri, who is the brother of Al-Qaeda leader Ayman Al-Zawahri and is himself a prominent jihadi figure in Egypt, said in an earlier interview with The Associated Press. Morsi’s office, his prime minister and the Muslim Brotherhood which forms the foundation of Morsi’s rule - all condemned the edicts, or fatwas, calling for the killing of opposition figures. In one fatwa, an ultraconservative cleric, Mahmoud Shaaban, accused the Salvation Front’s leaders of “setting Egypt on fire to gain power” and said the “verdict against them under God’s law is death.” Some in the opposition, however, say the rhetoric of the Brotherhood and of Morsi’s office fuels such threats by depicting opposition protesters as thugs and vandals and accusing the opposition’s political leadership of using street violence to topple Morsi. The president has denounced opponents as “weevils eating away at the nation” and claimed to have recordings of the opposition plotting against his rule. In December, senior Brotherhood member Mohammed Yacout told an independent TV station that the Brotherhood has information that the Front planned to kidnap Morsi to take power.

Salvation Front spokesman Khaled Dawoud said such talk is “dangerous because it is definitely preparing the general atmosphere for attacks against opposition leaders.”

“You demonize me, you accuse me of being an agent who receives money from abroad though I can’t pay installments for my car,” he said.

“They don’t use the word death, but certainly it could incite young men to take action by their own hands.”

Dawoud said he and leading members of the Front receive death threats by phone and text message.

“I used to take these threats lightly,” he said. “But after what is happening now, when I go down the street, I look left and right because I am afraid a man with a knife is standing at a corner waiting to stab me.”

There have been plenty of deaths

already in Egypt’s recent tensions.

Around 70 people, mostly anti-Morsi protesters, were killed in protests that erupted in late January across much of the nation and continue to simmer. Around a dozen people were killed in November and December. Most of the deaths have come in clashes as security forces clamp down on stone-throwing protesters. But an outright assassination would be a dangerous new turn in Egypt’s turbulent transition since the toppling of autocrat Hosni Mubarak nearly two years ago. There are certainly precedents.

The Muslim Brotherhood, which was banned until Mubarak’s fall, renounced violence in the 1970, but it killed a string of top politicians in the 1940s and 1950s and was accused of trying to assassinate former leader Gamal Abdel-Nasser. In 1981, then-President Anwar Sadat was gunned down by Islamic extremists on live TV. The Islamic militant insurgency against Mubarak in the 1990s saw a number of assassinations. One radical tried to stab Nobel Laureate novelist Naguib Mahfouz, but he narrowly survived.

Writer Farag Fouda, who was a scathing critic of Islamists, was gunned down as he left his office, days after a fatwa called for his death as an apostate. Fouda’s daughter, Samar, warned ElBaradei this week about the new fatwas. “They killed my father after a fatwa permitting the shedding of his blood. Don’t take lightly what might happen and what they say. They are sick,” she wrote on her Twitter account. Some activists worry that there is already a pattern of their members being targeted whether for intimidation or worse.

Hamdi El-Fakharani, a lawyer with the Salvation Front, says he has been beaten up several times by suspected Brotherhood members in his hometown, the industrial city of Mahallah El-Kubra in the Nile Delta.

Brotherhood members have raised lawsuits against him, accusing him of inciting riots against Morsi in the city the past two weeks. “It is very possible that one day while the Front leaders are meeting all together, a

man with machine gun kills us all,” said El-Fakharani. “I am really worried about my family and myself. I change cars all the time.” The opposition is also alarmed about the killing of several young activists since November, most of whom worked on anti-Brotherhood pages on Facebook. Three were shot to death amid crowds of protesters during police crackdowns on rallies in which others died as well. Still, their comrades are convinced that they were specifically targeted. The first was 16year-old Gaber Salah, known by the nickname Jeka, who died after being hit by a spray of birdshot at his head and chest from close range during a protest near Tahrir Square on Nov. 15. He was a founder of a Facebook page called “Together Against the Muslim Brotherhood.” Others involved in the page have faced troubles. One founder, a Christian, was summoned by the National Security Agency, the main internal security apparatus, and told not to work on the page anymore, said another administrator of the page, who spoke on condition he be identified only by his first name, Ahmed, for fear of reprisals by police. Yet another founder was snatched from his home on the same day that Jeka was shot, Ahmed said. “What do you think? I believe this is all planned,” Ahmed said.

Mohammed Hussein, also known as Kristi, the founder of a Facebook page called “Brotherhood Liars,” was shot to death outside the palace on Feb 1. Another prominent activist, Mohammed El-Gindi, disappeared from a Jan. 25 protest in Tahrir, was later brought to a hospital in a coma and died last week. Medical reports say he had burns from electrical shocks on his tongue, wire marks around his neck, smashed ribs and a broken skull.

The Interior Ministry denied he was ever held by police.

Justice Minister Ahmed Mekki told the state-run Al-Ahram newspaper Saturday that the coroner concluded El-Gindi died in a car accident. Omar Morsi, founder of an anti-Brotherhood page called MolotovCola, disappeared from a Jan. —AP

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2013

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

Have hired guns finally scuppered Somali pirates?

ABOARD RMS QUEEN MARY 2: Posted between septuagenarian passengers in deck chairs, lookouts stand watch over the Gulf of Aden, scanning the horizon for pirates. After more than half a decade of Somali men attacking Indian Ocean shipping from small speedboats with AK-47s, grappling hooks and ladders, the number of attacks is falling fast. The last merchant ship to be successfully hijacked, naval officers monitoring piracy say, was at least nine months ago. It’s a far cry from the height of the piracy epidemic two years ago, when several ships might be taken in a single week to be traded for airdropped multi-million dollar ransoms.

But as the Queen Mary 2, one of the world’s most recognisable ocean liners, passes through the Red Sea, Indian Ocean and out towards Dubai, its owners and crew are taking few chances. “The pirates have weapons and are not afraid to use them,” Lieutenant Commander Ollie Hutchinson, the British Royal Navy liaison officer aboard the liner for its trip through the Indian Ocean, tells a briefing of passengers in the ship’s theatre. “Once the pirates have identified their target, they will try whatever means they can to get on board.”

To underline his point, he displays a picture of an Italian helicopter hit by small arms fire from a pirate dhow late last year followed by assorted images of gunmen holding AK-47 assault rifles and rocket propelled grenades. In truth, the Queen Mary 2 - carrying 2,500 passengers and 1,300 crew from Southampton to Dubai on the first leg of a world cruise - is not particularly at risk.

Some 345 metres long and 14 stories high, even its promenade deck is seven floors above the sea.

The liner is fast, hard to board and - on this passage at least - moderately well armed. Like many merchant vessels, the QM2 now carries armed private contractors when passing through areas of pirate

risk. Cunard will not discuss precise security arrangements. But contractors on other vessels routinely carry M-16-type assault rifles and sometimes belt-fed machine guns, often picked up from ships acting as floating offshore armouries near Djibouti and Sri Lanka. Additional lookouts from the ship’s regular onboard security force - mostly Filipinos are also posted on the main deck to give warning of any suspicious craft. “Depending on what happens with attacks, I’m hopeful we may be able to reduce our security measures when we pass through the same waters next year,” says Commodore Christopher Rynd, senior captain of the Britishbased Cunard line and current master of the QM2.

“But that’s not a decision we will be making at this stage.”

A changing game?

When ships do come under attack, the first phone to ring is usually in a nondescript white bungalow in the gardens of the British Embassy in Dubai. The UK Marine Transport Operation (UKMTO) was set up shortly after the Sept 11, 2001 attacks to provide security advice to British shipping in the area. As pirate attacks soared in the second half of the last decade, it found itself coordinating international shipping across much of the Indian Ocean.

Most vessels passing through the area - container ships, tankers, cruise liners and dhows - now register daily with UKMTO. If they believe they are in danger, they will contact the British team to request military support.

“We’ve had calls when you could hear gunfire and rocket propelled grenades in the background,” says Lieutenant Commander Simon Goodes, the current officer in charge. “But lately, the phones are ringing much less.” The only confirmed attack this year, Goodes said, was on a merchant vessel in early January as it sailed towards the Kenyan port of

Mombasa. On-board private security guards repelled the assault after a 30 minute firefight.

According to the European Union anti-piracy task force EU NAVFOR, 2012 saw only 36 confirmed attacks and a further 73 “suspicious events” - incidents in which a crew report a suspicious craft that might be pirate but could also be simply an innocent fishing boat. That itself was a substantial fall from 2011, with 176 attacks and 166 “suspicious events”.

Only five ships were captured in 2012, down from 25 in 2011 and 27 in 2010. “This is an important year,” says Lieutenant Commander Jacqueline Sheriff, spokeswoman for EU NAVFOR. “We will find out whether this fall in piracy is really sustainable.”

Sea-borne attacks off West Africa, however, appear to be on the rise in what some analysts believe is a sign that Nigerian and other criminal gangs may be tempted by the Somali pirate model.

Pirate business model failing?

Exactly what is behind the fall in Somali piracy is a matter of debate. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the navies patrolling the Indian Ocean say the numbers show they are finally having an impact. Since piracy first grabbed global attention in 2008, a number of nations have sent ships to the region. Sailing through the Internationally Registered Transit Corridor, a protected route between Somalia and Yemen, the QM2 passed warships from the United States, France, India and Australia.

As well as the EU force, there are separate flotillas from NATO and US-led coalition forces that often include Asian vessels. Several other nations including China and Russia also keep ships there, running convoys through the “high-risk zone”. In May last year, EU NAVFOR launched its first onshore raid, targeting a suspected pirate group on the beach as it

prepared to head to sea with helicopter and small arms fire. Not everyone, however, believes that explains the fall. For many in the shipping industry, the fall in attacks is a vindication of the decision to massively ramp up the use of armed guards. So far, not a single ship with armed guards has been taken by pirates - although naval officers and other piracy specialists say hired guards can be excessively trigger-happy and have fired on innocent fishermen from India, Oman and Yemen. The situation is also changing in Somalia, which has been without a functioning government for two decades. The present administration is becoming more effective, as is an African military force tasked with tackling Islamist rebels.

Retired pirate, darkened liner Last month, one of Somalia’s highest profile pirates told Reuters he was giving up his life of crime at sea. “I have given up piracy and succeeded in encouraging more youths to give up piracy,” said Mohamed Abdi Hassan. “It was not due to fear of warships. It was just a decision.” In an apparently separate development, three Syrian hostages held since 2010 were released without the payment of a ransom. Four vessels are currently still held by pirates along with 108 hostages, the EU says.

The bottom line, some military officers and analysts believe, may be that the lower success rate for pirates in the last year has prompted those bankrolling them to stop. But no one is taking the pirates for granted. An apparent attempted nighttime attack on a merchant ship only a handful of miles from the entrance to the Gulf at the Strait of Hormuz was a reminder attacks can take place across a huge area. Shortly before entering the Suez Canal, QM2 held a security drill to instruct passengers in what to do if the ship comes under attack. — Reuters

Attackers kill three North Korean doctors in Nigeria Boko Haram suspected for deaths

MINSK: A man plays with his dog in a park after major snowfall yesterday. — AFP

Merkel counts cost as minister resigns BERLIN: German Chancellor Angela Merkel was left licking her wounds yesterday after her education minister quit amid a plagiarism scandal, depriving her of a key ally as she gears up for September elections. Merkel betrayed rare emotion as she accepted “with a very heavy heart” the resignation of Annette Schavan, a personal friend, who quit to fight charges from her former university that she plagiarised her thesis 33 years ago.

Although Merkel enjoys a sizeable lead in the polls and a high level of personal popularity, this is the second body blow in recent weeks after what she termed a “painful” loss in a state election on January 20.

“The year could hardly have started worse for Mrs Merkel,” gloated the chief whip of the opposition Social Democratic Party (SPD), Thomas Oppermann. Nevertheless, the level of alleged plagiarism in Schavan’s thesis “Person and Conscience” was thought to be much less than in a similar case two years ago when popular defence minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg quit. And even some opposition figures showed some sympathy for Schavan, who has vowed to fight Duesseldorf University’s decision to strip her of her doctorate in the courts.

SPD head Sigmar Gabriel said in an interview in the Welt am Sonntag weekly that he valued Schavan as an “honest and competent” minister and he was “extremely sorry” to see her go but he believed it was the right decision. The media was full of praise for the manner of Schavan’s departure, perceived as dignified, and for the way she appeared to put her party and Merkel ahead of her personal ambition.

Addressing her leader and friend as “dear Angela”, Schavan said the accusations that she cheated affected her “deeply” and said

her priorities had always been “first my country, then my party and then me personally.”

Merkel has already survived zu Guttenberg’s more damaging resignation; the loss of another defence minister over controversial comments on Afghanistan; and the departure of party ally Christian Wulff as president over a home loan scandal.

Several media reports said the loss of Schavan would not inflict too much damage on Merkel, even in the run-up to elections on September 22. “Merkel can distinguish between the demands of her office and of friendship. The office demanded a quick, concise decision. Friendship demanded glowing words. She offered... both,” said the Berlinbased Tagesspiegel daily.

“That makes Merkel unassailable in this case because no-one could have done it better,” added the paper. The left-leaning Sueddeutsche Zeitung said the resignation “will not harm Merkel.” “Until now, no resignation has been seen by the people as due to her own political failings. There were always individual reasons. That is the art that Merkel has mastered. Everything bounces off her,” noted the paper.

“In this case, that is completely right.” The chancellor moved quickly to mitigate the fallout, immediately appointing the 61-year-old Johanna Wanka, a mathematician with wide experience in education, as the new minister.

But the influential Die Zeit weekly noted that things were getting “lonely” around Merkel, as she loses yet another ally from her own conservative ranks amid a loveless relationship with her coalition partner, the Free Democrats. “With Schavan’s resignation, Merkel loses a further faithful ally. There aren’t many people around her that can help her,” said the paper. —AFP

POTISKUM: Assailants in northeastern Nigeria killed three North Korean doctors, beheading one of the physicians, in the latest attack on health workers in a nation under assault by a radical Islamic sect, officials said yesterday. The deaths Saturday night of the doctors in Potiskum, a town in Yobe state long under attack by the sect known as Boko Haram, comes after gunmen killed at least nine women administering polio vaccines in Kano, the major city of Nigeria’s predominantly Muslim north. The two attacks raise new questions over whether the extremist sect, targeted by Nigeria’s police and military, has picked a new soft target in its guerrilla campaign of shootings and bombings across the nation.

The attackers apparently struck at the North Korean doctors inside their home, said Dr Mohammed Mamman, chairman of the Hospital Managing Board of Yobe State. The North Korean doctors had no security guards at their residence and typically traveled around the city via three-wheel taxis without a police escort, officials said. By the time soldiers arrived at the house, they found the doctors’ wives cowering in a flower bed outside their home. At the property, they found the corpses of the men, all bearing what appeared to be machete wounds.

An AP journalist later saw the North Korean doctors’ corpses before they were moved to nearby Bauchi state for safe keeping. Two of the men had their throats slit. Attackers beheaded the other doctor. The doctors lived in a quiet neighborhood filled with other modest homes in the town. Initially, doctors at the hospital who worked with the physicians identified them as being from South Korea, while police identified the dead as being from China. Ultimately, Mamman of the health board told journalists those killed were from North Korea and had lived in the state since 2005 as part of a medical program between the state and the North Korean government. Yobe state police commissioner Sanusi Rufai confirmed the attack took place and said officers had begun an investigation. Rufai said officers had made some arrests after the killings, though police in Nigeria routinely round up those living around the site of a crime, whether or not there is any evidence suggesting their complicity.

No one claimed responsibility for the attack, though suspicion fell on the Boko Haram sect. The killings of the doctors come after the attack Friday on polio vaccinators in Kano, northern Nigeria’s most populous city. No group has yet claimed responsibility for that attack either, though it follows alleged Boko Haram attacks now focusing on softer targets, like lightly guarded mobile phone towers. Those mobile phone tower attacks have limited the ability of residents and security forces to call for help during attacks, as well as have cut the government’s ability to use the signals to track suspected militants.

Boko Haram, whose name means “Western education is sacrilege,” has been attacking government buildings and security forces over the last year and a half. In 2012 alone, the group was blamed for killing at least 792 people, according to a count by AP. The sect, which typically speaks to journalists in telephone conference calls at times of its choosing, could not be reached for comment yesterday. In recent months, however, Boko Haram has not claimed any attacks, raising questions about whether the shadowy sect that already had a loose command-and-control structure had splintered into smaller, independently operating terror groups.

Since late 2011, Potiskum, about 500 kilometers (300 miles) northeast of Nigeria’s central capital, Abuja, has been targeted by Boko Haram fighters in attacks.

The attacks killed dozens at a time and brought the deployment of a heavy contingent of police officers and soldiers to the town.

For the last few weeks, however, the town has been quiet. Soldiers still mount a series of checkpoints throughout the town, where in the past the military has put neighborhoods in lockdown and launched door-to-door searches for militants. In a statement Friday, President Goodluck Jonathan condemned the killings of

the polio workers and promised that efforts to cut child mortality wouldn’t be stopped by “mindless acts of terrorism.”

“While the government will continue to do everything possible to track down and apprehend agents of terrorism in the country, the president has directed that enhanced security measures be put in place immediately for health workers in high-risk areas,” the statement read. Despite that promise, however, attackers apparently were able to kill the North Korean doctors and slip away. Reuben Abati, a presidential spokesman, did not respond to a request for comment yesterday. — AP

BINCHE: Belgian Prime Minister Elio Di Rupo (center) takes part in the carnival yesterday in the streets of Binche. The Binche Carnival tradition is one of the most ancient and representative of Wallonia and inscribed in 2008 on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO. — AFP

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2013

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

Ex-Pentagon chief Gates OK with drone oversight WASHINGTON: Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates says he finds merit in “some check” on a president’s ability to order drone strikes against American Al-Qaeda suspects overseas, lending support to creating a special court that would review such requests.

“I think that the rules and the practices that the Obama administration has followed are quite stringent and are not being abused. But who is to say about a future president?” said Gates, Pentagon chief for Presidents George W Bush and Barack Obama.

The potential model that some lawmakers are considering for overseeing such drone attacks is a secret court of federal judges who now review requests for government surveillance in espionage and terrorism cases.

“Something that would give the American people confidence that there was, in fact, a compelling case ... to launch an attack against an American citizen, I think just as an independent confirmation or affirmation, if you will, is something worth giving serious consideration to,” Gates told CNN’s “State of the Union” in an interview broadcast Sunday.

WASHINGTON: In this file photo, Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif (right) welcomes CIA Director nominee John Brennan on Capitol Hill in Washington. —AP The issue gained momentum in the run-up to the confirmation hearing last week for John Brennan, Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser who helped

managed the drone program, to be CIA director. Before the hearing, Obama directed the Justice Department to give the congressional intelligence commit-

tees access to classified legal advice providing the government’s rationale for drone strikes against American citizens working with Al-Qaeda abroad.

Demands for such information grew after the leak early last week of an unclassified memo on how decisions are made to target US citizens abroad.

The memo says it is legal for the government to kill US citizens abroad if it believes they are senior Al-Qaeda leaders continually engaged in operations aimed at killing Americans, even if there is no evidence of a specific imminent attack.

The leader of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen Dianne Feinstein, said she intended to review proposals for “legislation to ensure that drone strikes are carried out in a manner consistent with our values” and she suggested something similar to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. That special court reviews requests on government surveillance in espionage and terrorism cases.

Gates said that “this idea of being able to execute, in effect, an American citizen, no matter how awful, having some third party having a say in it or

perhaps ... informing the Congress or the intelligence committees or something like that, I just think some check on the ability of the president to do this has merit, as we look to the longer term future.” A September 2011 drone strike in Yemen killed Anwar Al-Awlaki and Samir Khan, both US citizens. A drone strike two weeks later killed alAwlaki’s 16-year-old son, a Denver native. The strikes came after US intelligence concluded that the elder alAwlaki was senior operational leader of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula plotting attacks on the US, including the abortive Christmas Day bombing of an airplane landing in Detroit in 2009.

In Thursday’s hearing, Brennan defended drone strikes as necessary, saying they are taken only as a “last resort,” but he said he had no qualms about going after Anwar Al-Awlaki. He said the White House had considered the concept of the special courts, and he said he would be open to discussing it because “American citizens by definition are due much greater due process than anybody else by dint of their citizenship.” —AP

US northeast digs out from deadly blizzard New storm taking aim at US northern plains NEW YORK: The US northeast slowly dug out early yesterday from a mammoth blizzard that choked air, road and rail travel, left some 650,000 homes and businesses without power and caused at least seven deaths.

The storm, which hit New York and other areas still scarred by Superstorm Sandy back in October, dumped as much as three feet of snow across New England, with hurricane-strength gusts helping to create massive drifts. By late Saturday, the system had moved north to Canada, battering three provinces there.

service with delays. However, FlightAware.com listed almost 2,000 cancellations around the region, on top of the 3,000 plus flights scrapped Friday. The blizzard engulfing Boston’s Logan Airport was so severe that plowing operations were abandoned for several hours overnight. Amtrak said its rail link between New York and Boston remained closed, but trains were resuming normal schedules to Washington.

A driving ban in Massachusetts, where some two feet (0.6 meters) of snow fell in the blizzard and buried

time to dig out of the snow. Stalled or abandoned vehicles will only slow that process. Unless you face an emergency, please stay put.” The 31.9 inches (81 cm) that piled up in Portland, Maine, is the most recorded there from a single snowstorm, officials said.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) said FEMA liaisons have been positioned in state emergency operations centers in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York (in Albany and New York City), Rhode Island, and Vermont.

MASSACHUSSETTS: Wet snow coats houses along the South River at high tide in the Humarock coastal neighborhood of Scituate Mass yesterday. —AP And a new snowstorm was taking aim at the US northern plains, the National Weather Service warned yesterday. “A major winter storm will bring heavy snow and strong winds from northeast Colorado into central Minnesota yesterday into today.

Snowfall amounts in the hardest hit areas across eastern South Dakota will reach over a foot with 50 mph winds creating whiteout conditions,” it said.

New York area airports LaGuardia, John F. Kennedy and Newark, which halted all flights during the height of the east coast storm Friday, resumed

Boston streets, was lifted Saturday afternoon. “We have a lot of snow to dispose of and to remove and it will take some time to do that. That is a necessary prerequisite to getting to power lines and getting power restored,” Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick said.

Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy lifted a similar ban but urged people to stay home anyway. “It’s critical right now that residents stay off the roads, so that our plows can continue their efforts to clear our streets and highways,” Malloy said. “This is a record setting storm. It’s going to take

But in New York City, where just under a foot of snow accumulated in Central Park, most roads were cleared by morning.

“Looks like we dodged a bullet,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg said. At midday the sun even came out, as people with sleds flocked to parks and took photographs. Organizers of New York Fashion Week welcomed the end of the white mess, on the third day of the shows. “We were in a very white mood... it’s a sheer delight!” producer Alexandre de Betak told AFP after the Lacoste show at Lincoln Center.

“It’s been three days that we knew it would snow, and we just had to change the planning a bit to get the set up earlier.” With the wind and heavy snow having snapped power lines, more than 650,000 customers lost electricity, including around 400,000 in Massachusetts, 187,000 in Rhode Island, and 35,000 in Connecticut.

Utility companies in Connecticut said they were planning for up to 30 percent of their customers, or more than 400,000 homes, to eventually lose power. Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Plymouth, Massachusetts lost power late Friday and automatically shut down during the snowstorm, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. It was classed an “unusual event,” the least severe emergency designation, the statement said.

The severity of the disruption was lessened by the storm’s timing at the start of a weekend, but the almost deserted roads across the region were highly dangerous, with the death toll from the storm at seven as of Saturday. A car driven by a young woman went out of control in the snow on a highway in the town of Poughkeepsie, New York, striking and killing a 74-year-old man who was walking on the shoulder of the road.

In Auburn, New Hampshire, a man was killed after losing control of his car and hitting a tree, local officials said. And a Massachusetts boy aged 11 died when he and his father were warming up in their car and inhaled carbon monoxide after an exhaust pipe had been blocked by snow. Four other storm-related deaths were reported in Connecticut. Minor injuries were reported in a 19-car pileup on Interstate 295 in Falmouth, Maine, caused by poor visibility and slippery road conditions.

The National Weather Service said “travel conditions (on Saturday) will continue to be extremely hazardous, if not impossible.” The storm came a little over three months after Hurricane Sandy devastated swaths of New York and New Jersey, killing 132 people and causing damage worth some $71.4 billion. —AFP

4 hurt in shooting during Mardi Gras NEW ORLEANS: Gunshots and then screams erupted in a French Quarter crowd celebrating the countdown to Mardi Gras, and police who released a bystander’s video footage early yesterday said four people had been wounded in the Bourbon Street shooting after an argument involving some of the revelers. Four shots rang out rapidly amid the throng, followed by the screams also heard on the videotape released by police. Authorities did not immediately say if any arrests had been made. They appealed for the public’s help in their investigation of the shooting Saturday night on the famed French Quarter street.

Tourism is a lifeblood industry for New Orleans and Mardis Gras is one of the city’s leading events along with Jazz Fest and major sporting events such as the recent Super Bowl.

Yet New Orleans remains plagued by violent crime, including gun violence that has soared in the years since Hurricane Katrina devastated the city in 2005. Those wounded in the Saturday shooting included a male victim in guarded condition with shots to the abdomen, thigh and pelvis area along with one other male and two female victims with lesser gunshot wounds, New Orleans Police spokesman Frank B. Robertson said in a statement early Sunday.

The other victims included a male struck in

the buttocks, a female struck on the chin and the bottom of the right foot and another female struck on a toe, police added. Police had said late Saturday that the most severely wounded male was in critical condition and underwent surgery. The others were previously reported in stable condition. None were identified by age or name. In the same email linking to the bystander’s footage, Robertson appealed for anyone with information to come forward about the shooting, which came on the frenzied last weekend of partying before Mardi Gras, French for the Fat Tuesday celebration.

The French Quarter was thronged with crowds ahead of the city’s signature party event of the year. The bystander’s footage showed many partying in costumes, several with drinks in hand, before the shooting. Police said that two men initially were arguing with a male victim who ended up being the most seriously wounded. According to police, the two suspects briefly withdrew after the initial argument, then one of them returned with a third man and the shooting erupted.

Authorities described the three as “perpetrators” and said one was 18 to 22 years old, another about 20 to 25 and a third as a man with a heavy build and beard. Police gave no further information about them or their where-

abouts. Some bartenders and revelers said the block of Bourbon Street where the shooting occurred was closed off to the crowds for a time while detectives investigated. Some of the visitors stayed hunkered in the bars, eateries and entertainment venues before the partying resumed in force hours later across that stretch of Bourbon Street. Andrew Pittman, 20, said it wasn’t his first Mardi Gras after attending last year, but it was his first shooting incident. “ We were just walking down Bourbon Street, and people walked by and said there was a shooting. We saw like 12 cops on horses, so we just turned around.” Julia Rosenthal, a 19year-old visitor, had mixed feelings about hanging out in the French Quarter after the shooting. “It’s not an OK thing that happened, and it’s definitely scary. But I’m not going to let it affect my night,” she told the AP. Patrick Clay, 21, told The Times-Picayune he was standing on the corner of Bourbon Street when suddenly he saw a crowd running and people screaming there was a shooting.

“Everyone immediately started running and the cops immediately started running toward where people were running from,” Clay said. “I was with a group of about seven people and at that point we all just kind of grasped hands and made our way through the crowd as soon as possible.” —AP

WASHINGTON: In this photo Sen Marco Rubio, R-Fla, answers a question during a Capitol Hill news conference as he and leading senators announce a bipartisan agreement on the principles of sweeping legislation to rewrite the nation’s immigration laws in Washington. —AP

Rising star Rubio stirs talk of presidential run WASHINGTON: Struggling Republican party is hanging ever more hope for its revitalization on Sen Marco Rubio, a Cuban-American seen by many as a top contender for its 2016 presidential nomination. Rubio is fast becoming a star. Republican leaders picked the 41-yearold to give the party’s response to President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address Tuesday. That’s an honor typically reserved for the party’s most impressive rising figures.

He’s young, a deft communicator and may have the political talents needed to span a growing split in Republican ranks, to patch over divisions between the no-compromise, small-government, low-tax tea party wing and the more pragmatic, old-line establishment.

He also could have the kind of national appeal that chips away at middle-of-the-road support for Democrats. But that kind of moderation might end up alienating his strong base among the most conservative Republicans and could damage his presidential aspirations in party primaries in 2016.

Still, he is clearly in the political spotlight.

Time magazine put Rubio’s picture on its latest cover, calling him the “Republican Savior.”

A charismatic politician like Rubio embodies the skills his party sees as necessary if it is to somehow remodel its image after a poor showing in the November election. He stands out in a party that tends to hand power to older, white men. And his race and full-throated backing for immigration reform, including a path to citizenship for illegal residents, could improve the party’s poor standing with Hispanics, a growing part of the electorate. In the 2012 election, Obama captured 71 percent of the Hispanic vote. Opponent Mitt Romney pulled down just 27 percent after saying he favored “self-deportation” of illegal immigrants: making their lives in the country so difficult that they wouldn’t want to stay.

Asked this week about his White House ambitions, Rubio was coy. “I really believe that if I do the best job that I can in the Senate, in a couple years I’ll be in a position to make a decision about whether I want to run for reelection, leave politics and give someone else a shot, or run for some other position,” he said.

Rubio is unquestionably conservative, yet he avoids the divisive, over-the-top rhetoric that frightens moderates.

“Ultimately, the real answer is to convince people that what we stand for, that free enterprise and limited government is the best way to create the conditions for their dreams to be possible,” he said. He proved his talent for selling himself and his immigration ideas with an appearance on the talk-radio program of Rush Limbaugh, long a beacon for the most conservative Americans. Limbaugh and his admirers are intense opponents of relaxing immigration laws, particularly of offering citizenship to illegal immigrants - a move they equate with granting amnesty to criminals.

But Rubio proved persuasive. When he was done, Limbaugh praised the senator. “What you are doing is admirable and noteworthy,” Limbaugh said. “You are recognizing reality.

I’m just worried the president is trying to change reality.” Limbaugh didn’t note that

Obama’s plan differs little from the one backed by Rubio. While being vague about his plans, Rubio has been trying to cultivate Republicans who would be critical in a presidential run. Right after the November election, he visited Iowa, the Midwestern state that holds the first-in-the-nation caucus that will mark the start of the long process of choosing a presidential candidate in 2016. In December, he and other potential candidates spoke at a high-profile dinner attended by top Republicans.

Rubio’s speech suggested that poverty and education might be central to a 2016 campaign. “The path to a prosperous and growing American middle class,” Rubio told the dinner gathering, “is the combination of a vibrant economy that creates these middle-class jobs and a people with the skills needed for these new jobs.” Rubio had been a darling of his party’s tea party wing after his 2010 victory in the race for the Florida Senate seat, a political battle that saw him humiliate Florida’s once-popular Republican Gov. Charlie Crist, who ran as an independent after it became clear that Rubio would win the Republican nomination.

While Rubio took a hard line against immigration reform then, things have changed.

Many centrist Republicans, realize that party positions on an array of issues - immigration perhaps first and foremost - no longer appeal to much of America’s increasingly diverse electorate. They know they must remodel the party’s image. By taking a softer stand on immigration, the speculation is, the party can win more Hispanic support. But many bedrock conservatives still see a change on immigration as a renunciation of party ideals. Some prominent Republicans have already denounced Rubio’s stance. Sen. David Vitter said Rubio is “amazingly naive on this issue.” Rick Santorum, a former senator and Republican presidential contender, said Rubio was playing with “a dangerous group.”

That creates a potential risk for Rubio.

Pushing for an immigration overhaul could alienate the very voters that produced his overwhelming Senate victory. Those same voters would be critical for him to win his party’s presidential nomination. The American system of primary elections to decide a party’s candidate for elected offices tends to favor candidates on the extremes of the political spectrum. Primary voters often prefer candidates most committed to their ideologies, rather than moderates whose broad appeal boosts prospects for victory in the general election.

That tendency could also doom chances of passing an immigration overhaul like the one favored by Rubio. Key Republican senators, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn of the border state of Texas, have withheld judgment until a draft of any proposal is ready. They are among Republicans facing re-election in 2014 who could see challenges from more conservative rivals.

Republicans have already lost several congressional seats after long-standing moderate members lost primaries to right-wingers, who were then defeated by Democrats in the general election. —AP

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2013

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

Kashmiris chafe under curfew Fresh debate sparked on capital punishment

ALLAHABAD: A “Naga sadhu”, or Hindu holy man, returns after taking a ritual dip in Sangam, the confluence of Hindu holy rivers Ganges, Yamuna and the mythical Saraswati, during the Maha Kumbh festival yesterday. — AP

Tens of millions of Indians bathe at Ganges festival ALLAHABAD: Tens of millions of Hindus gathered yesterday for a holy bath in India’s sacred river Ganges on the most auspicious day of the world’s largest religious festival.

Ash-smeared naked saints led the ritual bathing before dawn-which is said to cleanse pilgrims of their sins-with millions following them into the swirling river waters at the festival site in Allahabad in northern India. The population of the city has swollen from its normal 1.2 million to about 40 million yesterday morning, with about 20 million packed inside the vast sealed off bathing area on the banks of the river, spokesman Ashok Sharma said.

Amid the crush, the thousands of volunteers on duty and police were urging pilgrims to take one short dip and then leave the freezing waters to make space for the flow of humanity behind them. “Aerial surveys by choppers, flying cameras and our estimates put the figure at around 2O million people taking a holy dip in the rivers,” Sharma told AFP. “Public address systems are asking people to leave the ghats (steps) after bathing to avoid a crush.”

The “Maha Kumbh Mela”, which began last month and ends in March, takes place every 12 years in Allahabad. Smaller, similar events are held every three years in other locations around India. The bathing takes place at an area called Sangam, the confluence of the rivers Ganges and Yamuna and a third mystical water way called the Saraswati.

Devotees believe entering the mighty rivers cleanse them of sin and free them from the cycle of rebirth. Assorted dread-

locked holymen, seers and self-proclaimed saints from all over the country have assembled for the spectacle that offers a rare glimpse of the dizzying range of Indian spiritualism.

Despite the hardships of waking early, plunging into the freezing and heavily polluted water and the crush of the crowds, pilgrims described being spiritually uplifted and amazed by the scale of the event.

Swapna Bhatia, an interior designer from New Delhi, called it “simply an out of the world experience”. “I feel so light now,” Bhatia said.

More than 7,000 policemen had been deployed to oversee the bathing ritual, along with 30,000 volunteers, police say.

“The security is in full swing and our first concern as of now is the smooth exit of people after bathing as the number of devotees at Kumbh on this day has surpassed our expectations,” police officer Ganganath Tripathi, who is overseeing security, told AFP. The festival has its origins in Hindu mythology, which describes how a few drops of the nectar of immortality fell on the four places that host the festivalAllahabad, Nasik, Ujjain and Haridwar. The “Mother Ganges” is worshipped as a god and is seen as the giver and taker of life.

“One dip in the river has the power to change life forever,” said 65-year-old Malti Devi from London, who was taking part in the festivities for the first time. Most devotees dunk their heads under the water, some drink it and others bottle it and take it home as gifts. — AFP

SRINAGAR: Residents of India’s Kashmir valley complained yesterday about the second day of curfew imposed following the hanging of a local separatist which has sparked a fresh debate on capital punishment. Mohammed Afzal Guru, a Kashmiri convicted of helping plot the 2001 attack on the Indian parliament which left 10 people dead, was executed Saturday in New Delhi’s Tihar jail. Fearing a backlash over his death, Indian authorities imposed a tight curfew on Saturday in major populated areas of Kashmir, shut down Internet ser vices and blocked local newspapers in a bid to prevent demonstrations.

At least four people were injured on Saturday during protests, including two who received bullet injuries when government forces fired on a crowd in a village 40 kilometres (25 miles) from the biggest city of Srinagar. Abdul Hafeez, a resident of Srinagar, said his two-month-old granddaughter needed milk, but they were unable to go shopping because of the strict orders restricting people to their homes which have been imposed indefinitely.

“We have seen so much violence in the past.

We just hope that things return to normal as

Alert AI Express crew saves passenger’s life: Mangalore MANGALORE: Air India Express flight IX586 from Sharjah to Trivandrum made an emergency landing at Mangalore International Airport after one of its passengers suddenly fell ill. Sources at the airport said that P A Sabu from Trivandrum started vomiting blood during the flight. The captain of the flight and the crew swung into action and immediately asked for medical assistance at Mangalore airport.

The pilot made an emergency landing at Mangalore airport at 3:30 pm. As the crew had already alerted the airport officials, ambulance and doctors were ready when the aircraft landed. The passenger was rushed to Yenepoya hospital in the city, where he is said to be recovering. Air India Express Mangalore manager Melwin D’Silva rushed to the airport and handled the situation, making all necessary arrangements and informing Sabu’s family in Trivandrum. The flight that was supposed to reach Trivandrum at 4:30 pm took off from Mangalore at 5:30 pm.

New commander takes the helm in Afghanistan KABUL: Marine Gen Joseph Dunford took over yesterday as the new and probably last commander of all US and international forces in Afghanistan. The American-led NATO coalition is entering the final stretch of its participation in a war that will have lasted more than 13 years when most foreign combat troops pull out at the end of 2014.

Dunford took over leadership of the International Security Assistance Force, and a smaller but separate detachment of American troops, from Marine Gen. John Allen, who had led them for the past 19 months. “Today is not about change, it’s about continuity,” Dunford told a gathering of coalition military leaders and Afghan officials. “What’s not changed is the growing capability of our Afghan partners, the Afghan national security forces.

What’s not changed is our commitment, more importantly, what’s not changed is the inevitability of our success.”

He takes charge at a critical time for President Barack Obama and the military. NATO decided at its 2010 summit in Lisbon to withdraw major combat units, but to continue training and funding Afghan troops and leave

a residual force to hunt down al-Qaida and other terrorist groups. Gen Martin Dempsey, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said “much work lies ahead” for Dunford as he tries to meet those objectives while at the same time withdrawing about 100,000 foreign troops, including 66,000 from the United States.

Dunford, from Boston, Massachusetts, will face serious challenges as he tries to accommodate an accelerated timetable for handing over the lead for security responsibility to Afghan forces this spring - instead of late summer as originally planned. “I told him our victory here will never be marked by a parade or a point in time on a calendar when victory is declared. This insurgency will be defeated over time by the legitimate and well-trained Afghan forces that are emerging today and who are taking the field in full force this spring,” Allen said.

He added that success would be described as an “Afghan force defending Afghan people, and enabling an Afghan government to serve its citizens. This is victory; this is what winning looks like.” Although the Afghan security forces are almost at their full strength of 352,000, it is unclear if

KABUL: US Marine Gen Joseph F Dunford (right) shakes hands with outgoing NATO commander US Gen John Allen during a change of command ceremony at the ISAF headquarters yesterday. — AP

they are yet ready to take on the fight by themselves.

Before departing, Allen admitted that the Afghans still need much work to become an effective and self-sufficient fighting machine, but he said a vast improvement in their abilities was behind a decision to accelerate the timetable for putting them in the lead nationwide this spring when the traditional fighting season begins.

Obama said last month that the Afghans would take over this spring instead of late summer - a decision that could allow the speedier withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan.It is also unclear when the remaining 66,000 US troops would return home, or how many American soldiers will remain after the end of 2014. Obama may use his State of the Union address tomorrow to announce the next steps for concluding the war and a timetable for withdrawal along with plans for a residual force post-2014. Much of that depends on the US negotiating a bilateral security agreement with the government that includes the contentious issue of immunity from Afghan prosecution for any US forces that would remain here after 2014.

President Hamid Karzai has said he will put any such decision in the hands of a council of Afghan elders, known as a Loya Jirga.

Although Dempsey said earlier in the week that the United States had plans to leave a residual force, a failure to strike a deal on immunity would torpedo any security agreement and lead to a complete pullout of USforces after 2014 - as it did in post-war Iraq. It is widely believed that no NATOmember nation would allow its troops to remain after 2014 to train, or engage in counterterrorism activities, without a similar deal.

The head of NATO joint command in Europe, German Gen. Hans-Lothar Domrose, said the alliance was already making plans for a post-2014 presence, plans he said that were “all well advanced.” Allen, 59, of Warrenton, Virginia, was the longest serving ISAF commander so far. Nearly two dozen generals have commanded troops from the United States and ISAF since the American invasion in late 2001 - with six US generals including Dunford running both commands in the past five years alone. Also attending the ceremony were US Marine Corps Gen. James N Mattis, Commander, US Central Command, and Gen. James Amos, head of the Marine Corps. Karzai did not attend. — AP

quickly as possible,” he told AFP. Guru was convicted of waging war against India and conspiring with the Islamist militants who attacked the parliament-an event that brought nucleararmed India and Pakistan to the brink of another conflict.

The one-time fruit merchant and a medical college dropout always insisted he was innocent and claimed he was denied a proper legal defence, while protesters in Kashmir have often accused the police of framing him. The world’ biggest democracy uses capital punishment for the “rarest of rare” crimes.

It had not carried out an execution since 2004 until the hanging in November last year of Mohammed Kasab, the lone surviving gunman of 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai. The two executions-both approved under new President Pranab Mukherjee-raised concerns among human rights activists who had hoped India was phasing out the practice following its informal eight-year moratorium.

“India should end this distressing use of executions as a way to satisfy some public opinion,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director at Human Rights Watch. Amnesty International was

also quick to condemn Guru’s hanging as a “disturbing and regressive trend” towards executions in India. A section of the Indian press speculated on who could be the next to face the gallows, while respect left-of-centre newspaper The Hindu slammed the execution.

“Guru was walked to the gallows... at the end of the macabre rite governments enact from time to time to propitiate that most angry of gods, a vengeful public,” it said. “ There is no principle underpinning the death penalty in India today except vengeance.

And vengeance is no principle at all,” the daily wrote. In Kashmir, where a bloody separatist conflict has claimed an estimated 100,000 lives over the last 20 years, some feared that the execution could feed local anti-India feeling and spur more violence.

Police also prevented local newspapers from publishing yesterday and seized copies of four dailies who managed to go to press in defiance of the restrictions. “Police seized our newspaper from the press without any prior information to our management,” Haji Hayat, editor-in-chief of the English language newspaper Kashmir Reader, told AFP. — AFP

Games to replace war for Philippine leader’s visit MANILA: Soldiers and Muslim guerrillas will meet in sporting events instead of combat when Philippine President Benigno Aquino makes a historic visit to a rebel camp to promote a peace pact, officials said yesterday. A “fluvial parade” of dozens of colourfully-decorated motorboats will also welcome Aquino today when he visits the outskirts of the main base of the 12,000-member Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in the country’s south.

Aquino and MILF chairman Murad Ebrahim will meet in the strife-torn island of Mindanao to hand out social security benefits to impoverished Muslim residents to show their sincerity in furthering the peace process.

Local military spokesman Colonel Dickson Hermoso said both soldiers and MILF fighters would guard the area although presidential guards would handle Aquino’s personal security. The two sides, who once fought each other fiercely, will also play “friendly matches” of football, softball and volleyball to welcome the president, Hermoso told radio station DZBB. However popular sports like basketball were

deliberately left out, he said. “We did not include the contact games for now because there might be some people who will be provoked. They might lose their tempers and things might get heated,” the colonel said.

There are no reports of any threat to the president, Hermoso said. But he added: “We are not complacent in our security precautions. The worst-case scenario has been considered”.

Chief MILF negotiator Mohagher Iqbal told AFP the event was historic as it as the first time for a president to enter the main MILF stronghold.

The two leaders may not have time to discuss substantive issues, he said. “The most special thing (about the event) is the confidencebuilding”. Aquino’s spokeswoman Abigail Valte said the president’s visit would show the sincerity of both sides in reaching out to Muslims who are among the poorest people in the archipelago. She said the mood would be “very festive”. An estimated 150,000 people died in a decades-long fight by Muslim guerrillas for a separate state in the southern third of the mainly Christian Philippines. — AFP

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Issues

France runs into German wall on EU growth drive

By Mark John rench efforts to divert Europe from economic austerity have foundered twice in a week due to German resistance, underlining a growing policy divide that is hobbling the core partnership. Berlin rejected President Francois Hollande’s call on Tuesday to set a mid-term target for the euro, a move he hoped would bring the single currency down to a level that would make it easier for French industry to sell its goods abroad. Three days later, German Chancellor Angela Merkel joined forces with Britain’s David Cameron at a Brussels summit to push through the first ever cut in the 27-nation’s budget, taking an axe to spending on infrastructure projects backed by Paris.

“Is it the budget I would have liked if it was just up to me? No. But the problem with Europe is that there are others involved,” a resigned Hollande told reporters after allnight talks secured a deal on EU funding from 2014-2020.

Both Hollande and Merkel have insisted that the FrancoGerman motor is still driving EU integration 50 years after the friendship pact between the former World War Two foes.

But while they say achievements such as last year’s deal on EU banking supervision show that Paris and Berlin can still overcome their differences to forge compromises, the French voice is increasingly struggling to make itself heard.

“EU budget: Hollande left out of pocket”, ran the headline of the left-leaning Liberation newspaper on the roughly three-percent cut in EU spending, mainly at the expense of transport, energy and telecoms projects which Paris has argued would foster growth and make Europe’s economy more competitive. “Cameron and Merkel impose austerity on Hollande” was how the conservative Le Figaro summed up the meeting.

Hollande could have expected a hero’s welcome in Brussels for his handling of his first war in the African state of Mali, where French forces have driven Al-Qaeda-linked rebels out of its main northern towns and into the hills.

Moreover, with Cameron having put Britain’s EU membership on the line by promising a referendum on it if re-elected, last week’s summit could have offered France and Germany the stage to rally together in a demonstration of European solidarity.

But in the budget wrangling that ensued, it was Hollande who looked isolated as his efforts to forge a coalition of southern and eastern European states demanding more generous spending were quashed by Germany, Britain and other northern countries. EU officials were mystified when Hollande, citing other engagements, chose not to attend a pre-summit huddle with Cameron, Merkel and EU President Herman Van Rompuy on Thursday afternoon where key details of the deal were hammered out. From then on, what Cameron called the band of “like-minded budget disciplinarians” including Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and Finland had the upper hand and for France, it was a matter of salvaging what it could from the summit.

While the overall EU farm spending of which France is the main beneficiary will fall sharply from its 2007-2013 level, Hollande managed to limit the damage to French farmers with a small rise in related funds for rural development.

But he had to concede that Britain’s cherished 29-year-old rebate from EU spending, about which he had noisily complained in the run-up to the summit, would have to remain untouched. “We are seeing the Germans extending a hand more and more often to the British than to us,” French political analyst Eric Zemmour said, suggesting Merkel’s priority was to give Cameron ammunition at home to defend Britain’s membership in the EU. Ultimately, cuts to an EU budget which in total represents barely one percent of the region’s economic output are unlikely to influence how quickly it comes out of the current downturn. However the clash between Paris and Berlin on the level of the euro currency points at deep-rooted differences in the national interests of the two countries that may prove more telling in the long run. A study by Deutsche Bank last month calculated that France’s exporters start being priced out of world markets when the euro rises above $1.22-1.24 - a level it has already long left behind to trade at $1.33 now.

Germany’s higher value-added export products, however, only start to be disadvantaged when the exchange rate is above $1.54. Until that point, there is little damage to the German economy and indeed some benefit in a strong euro because it keeps the prices of imported goods and hence inflation in check.

“We do not agree on economic policy and a number of other areas,” Jean-Dominique Giuliani, head of the Robert Schuman Foundation, a French think tank on Europe, told Europe 1 radio. “The gulf between France and Germany is widening somewhat and that worries me.” —Reuters

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

The editor reserves the right to edit any submission as necessary.

Republican rebrand: Is it more than skin deep?

By Michael Mathes Republicans are rebranding themselves in the wake of last year’s defeat, but the makeover is looking less like a genuine bid to woo women and minorities and more like a civil war within the party.

The party was hammered in the November election, with voters rejecting Republican nominee Mitt Romney’s harsh rhetoric on immigration, the poor and big government.

Democrats retained the White House and gained seats in both the Senate and the Republican-led House of Representatives. Republicans have now lost the popular vote in five of the last six presidential elections, and demographics are against them. More than nine out of 10 blacks voted to re-elect President Barack Obama, as did 71 percent of Hispanics and a majority of women.

With their traditional base - white males - ceding ground to growing numbers of minorities, a consensus has emerged: the party must reform or risks marginalization. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal’s demand in a January speech for fellow Republicans to “stop being the stupid party” became the tough love heard round the political world and kicked off the reinvention. “ The Republican Party must do a better job of explaining our values,” Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus acknowledged in an op-ed. “We want to be a party for everybody, but that requires earning the trust of voters who have left the party and of those who have yet to support us.” Eric Cantor, the number two House Republican, pledged a renewed commitment “to ensure ever y

US

American has a fair shot at earning their success and achieving their dreams”.

But it will take more than one policy speech to restore the party, and many are seeking to soften the GOP’s tone, if not its core principles. Kingpin Republican strategist Karl Rove has launched a group to push more mainstream candidates to go up against Tea Party conservatives, some of whose shocking remarks last year - think anti-abortionist Todd Akin discussing “legitimate rape” - cost Republicans two seats in the Senate. Fox News, the conservative media flagship where pundit Dick Morris had predicted a Romney “landslide”, has meanwhile dumped Morris and Tea Party favorite Sarah Palin, the failed 2008 vice presidential nominee, as contributors.

And Cuban-American Senator Marco Rubio, the rising star whose personal story gives Republicans cover on the all-important immigration debate, will be presenting his party’s response to Obama’s State of the Union speech tomorrow. But there is no hard evidence that the GOP is transforming itself into a party of compassion and inclusion that is willing to compromise at crunch time. Aside from a last-gasp deal on tax hikes for the very wealthy, there has been little cooperation with Democrats on major legislation.

Even though Rubio - declared “The Republican Savior”

by Time magazine, which featured him on its cover this week - has proposed a pathway to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States, he follows conservative orthodoxy. He has voted “no” on major bipartisan bills that recently passed Congress,

including the fiscal cliff deal, temporary suspension of the debt ceiling and relief for victims of Hurricane Sandy.

“No single person is going to be the savior of the Republican Party,” Brad Marston, a Republican campaign expert at FourTier Strategies, told AFP. “Rubio is going to be an important voice, especially on immigration, (but) I don’t think you’ll see Rubio moderate either his views or his tone until he decides to run for president.”

Any moderation by the party would not come without an internal fight. Rove’s new Conservative Victory Group received intense pushback from the Tea Party, with congressman Steve King - an arch-conservative from Iowa who is mulling a Senate run in 2014 - leading the charge. “I have not made a decision” about running, King said in a fiery email to backers Thursday, “but already Karl Rove and his army have launched a crusade against me”. Leading conservative William Kristol meanwhile expressed frustration about the prospect of a rebrand. “If I hear another politician talking about rebranding the party or changing the image,” Kristol mused on Fox. “I really think they should talk less about rebranding themselves, and actually pass some legislation... which embodies conservative principles.”

Ultimately, the makeover may prove only skin deep, especially if conservatives use the party primaries to press their case for far-right candidates like King. “In the United States, party leaders do not choose candidates,” cautioned professor John Pitney of Claremont McKenna College. “No rebranding effort will get very far if people who vote in Republican primaries choose not to go along.” — AFP

Obama heading to Israel: Why now?

By Stephen Collinson e’s hardly best buddies with Benjamin Netanyahu and his drive for a Palestinian state is comatose, so why did Barack Obama pick Israel to fire up his legacy-boosting second term diplomacy? The US president sprung a surprise last week by announcing he would pick the turmoil-laced Middle East for the first trip since reelection. The twisted personal chemistry between Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu is no secret, and was not helped by the Israeli leader rooting for Republican Mitt Romney in November’s election. After Obama’s first term peace efforts were spurned by Israel, and Palestinians embarrassed him by seeking UN recognition, the chances of the president coming home with nothing to show for his trip seem high.

But the political timetable reshaped power dynamics after US and Israeli elections, and crises both nations face including Syria’s mayhem, uproar in Egypt and Iran’s nuclear defiance -mean a visit may make sense. The success of the centrist Yesh Atid Party in the Israeli elections, noises from new Secretary of State John Kerry and Obama’s trip have sparked some optimism of a new USsponsored peace drive by Washington.

The White House quickly dampened expectations that Obama, burned by a failed effort in his first term, would launch his second with a blockbuster peace initiative.

Paradoxically, current hibernation of the IsraeliPalestinian track may make now the optimal time for Obama to visit. Freed from expectations of a breakthrough, White House officials can bill the trip as a chance for both sides to coordinate positions on issues certain to dominate the new governments on both sides. Had Obama

H

waited, the shelf life on that narrative would have passed and the Israeli-Palestinian question would have loomed larger.

Obama may benefit from heading to Israel at a time when his power as a re-elected president is at its apex, before second term lame duck beckons. An early visit also smacks down Republicans who complain he is yet to visit Israel, and underlines to foes like Iran that the alliance is unshakeable despite personal tiffs between Obama and Netanyahu. “It is better to go at the beginning of your term, than in year seven or eight when you are on your way out of the door,” a senior US official told AFP. Bruce Jentleson, a Duke University professor who was once a senior advisor to Obama’s State Department, said presidential trips are about more than chalking up points on a diplomatic scorecard. “I don’t think that presidential trips are just about deliverables,” he said. “If you look at the trips the president made in his first term, to China for instance, these were about moving the relationship.”

For all the talk of Obama’s first-term foreign policy pivot to Asia, his trip, also including the West Bank and Jordan, will also demonstrate that the Middle East remains an important foreign policy focus. The fact that Netanyahu, who had his maximum point of leverage over Obama before the last year’s US election, has emerged in a weaker political position after his own date with voters is not lost on the White House. After Democratic complaints Netanyahu meddled in US politics, the way Obama’s trip is looming over the Israeli leader’s coalition building is ironic.

Democrats also savor the fact that Romney lambasted Obama for throwing “Israel under the bus” and pledged to make Israel his first foreign stop as president - and now it is Obama who gets to make that journey. Privately, White House officials do not even pretend Netanyahu and Obama are close, following their spats over Israeli settlements and the Israeli leader’s lecture on Israeli history in the Oval Office.

Differences are not only personal. The dispute over the imminence of the Iranian nuclear threat, Netanyahu’s demands for US “red lines” which could trigger military action, and the Israeli leader’s threats of a go-it-alone strike estranged the two men. Netanyahu worries that Iranian underground nuclear development could reach a point where Israel could not hope to thwart it with air power.

Washington, granted a longer timetable for action

by its deadlier arsenal, feared an early Israeli strike could drag the United States into another war as Obama seeks to extricate troops from Muslim world battlefields.

Perhaps shared threats, less US pressure on the peace process, and mutually threatening crises like Syria and Iran could bring Netanyahu and Obama closer. Washington would also welcome an Israeli coalition that relies less on ultra-Orthodox Jewish parties, while Netanyahu and Obama, shrewd politicians both, may seek successes to define their legacies.

They also have something else in common: they are survivors. Since they took power in 2009, the world has changed around them: Middle Eastern tyrants have been swallowed by the Arab Awakening, and economic crises and term limits have dispensed with European and Asian leaders. “The president already has a longer and deeper working relationship with Netanyahu than any other world leader,” said one US official. — AFP

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2013

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Gascoigne in intensive care for monitoring

Police deploy to contain racist football supporters

LONDON: Former England midfielder Paul Gascoigne, who is being treated for alcohol addiction in a United States clinic, has been moved to a hospital intensive care unit but should be able to resume rehabilitation treatment soon, his ex-team mate Gary Mabbutt said yesterday.

“Unfortunately Paul had a very bad reaction to the detox and the clinic decided that as a precaution it was best to transfer him to hospital... where he went into intensive care so they could monitor him 24/7,” Mabbutt told Sky Sports. “I spoke to Paul’s medical team this morning here in the UK, they have spoken to Paul and he’s recovering from the situation and hopefully will be back into the clinic soon and continuing with his rehab,” the former Tottenham captain added. The 45-year-old Gascoigne, who has struggled with alcoholism since playing for clubs including Tottenham, Lazio and Rangers, had travelled to the US willingly for treatment, his management company said this week. “A lot of the time the media make him out to be a celebrity drunk,” Mabbutt added— Reuters

JERUSALEM: More than 600 Israeli police deployed yesterday outside Jerusalem’s Teddy stadium to contain possible racist protests by football supporters during a visit by an Arab team, a security spokesman said.

“We put 600 to 700 uniformed and plain clothes policemen in place to avoid any disorder and restrain any racist protest,” Micky Rosenfeld told AFP. Teddy stadium’s Beitar Jerusalem football club was hosting a match against the Arab Israeli team Benei Sakhnin.

A fortnight ago, security was deployed for a match between Beitar and another Arab team, which ended without incident.

Sakhnin supporters arriving on buses for Sunday’s match were to be given police escort to Jerusalem, Rosenfeld said.

Interior Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch told military radio that racism “must be dealt with at the root. We have a policy of zero tolerance against these kinds of criminals.”

His comments came after Beitar’s offices were torched on Friday, after it signed up two Chechnyan Muslim players.

The attack took place hours after prosecutors on Thursday filed charges against four Beitar supporters accused of racist chants aimed at the Muslim players during a match and at a training session.—AFP

Federer faces down French challenge ROTTERDAM: Roger Federer launches the defence of his title against a posse of French challengers as the Rotterdam World Tennis tournament begins today. The indoor event at the Ahoy stadium marked a comeback for the Swiss a year ago when he played here for the first time since 2005.

He is lined up for a potential re-match of that 2012 final, with last year’s runner-up Juan Martin del Potro seeded second.

Both of the top two are rested after skipping Davis Cup first round matches this month. But lying in wait are a group of eager French challengers, including third-seed Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, number four Richard Gasquet, fifth seed Gilles Simon plus wild card Gael Monfils, who tackles Del Potro in the first round. Monfils now stands at 108 in the world as he attempts to recover form after an injury-filled 2012.

He lost to eventual champion Gasquet in Montpellier last week. Federer’s last appearance was in the Australian Open semi-finals where he lost to Andy Murray, with the Swiss playing a carefully programmed schedule in 2013. —AFP

Red Bull X-fighters Jams set to thrill Kuwait on Feb 15 KUWAIT: Four of the finest freestyle motocross (FMX) athletes in the world will be performing at the Red Bull X-Fighters Jams in the capital city of Kuwait on February 15th 2013, and the venue chosen is just as befittingly exotic as the sport.

The FMX stars will showcase their gravity defying stunts against the gorgeous backdrop of Kuwait Towers. Known for the most bonechilling freestyle motocross acts in the world, this is the first time that the Red Bull XFighters Jams clique will be visiting Kuwait.

Red Bull X-Fighters Jams, sponsored by Nissan and held under the cooperation of Quarter Mile Club, is a series of freestyle motocross exhibitions that is conducted across the globe with the top stars of FMX putting up quite a show. Some of the top names that will visit Kuwait for the Red Bull XFighters Jams session include Nick Franklin, Chris Brock, Daniel Boudin and Martin Koren, all of whom have been associated with freestyle motocross for a long time and have played an instrumental role in popularizing the sport.

Friday February 15th, 2013 at 7:30pm, the best motocross freestyle show in the world will take place at the iconic Kuwait Towers.

The Red Bull X-Fighters Jams in Kuwait will be hosted by famous Lebanese TV presenter Michel Kazzi, better known as Micho, and will also host the best stunt riding show in the world performed by world champion Chris Pfeiffer who will show some amazing ground shots that emulate the aerial shows which defy the gravity laws.

The event which will take place on February 15th at the Iconic Kuwait Towers will start at 7:30 and is free for public. For more information visit www.redbullmea.com/xfightersjams or follow@redbullkuwait on twitter.

What is Freestyle Motocross?

Freestyle Motocross (also known as FMX) is a variation on the sport of motocross.

The two main types of freestyle events are: Big Air (also known as Best Trick), in which each rider gets two jumps - usually covering more than 60 feet (18 m) - from a dirt-covered ramp. A panel of judges evaluates the style, trick difficulty, and originality and produces a score on a 100-point scale. Each rider’s highest single-jump score is compared; top score wins.

Freestyle Motocross, the older of the two

disciplines. Riders perform two routines, lasting between 90 seconds and 14 minutes, on a course consisting of multiple jumps of varying lengths and angles. Like Big Air, a panel of judges assigns each contestant a score based on a 100-point scale, looking for difficult tricks and variations over jumps.

The Backflip was once considered the “holy grail of FMX”. It was a trick that every rider considered impossible and was considered more appropriate in video games than in real life.

Speculation of the possibility began with the Motocross film “Children of a Metal God” featuring riders attempting the trick into water off a modified ramp. Also it had been done many times on BMX bikes, and FMX riders were using tricks from BMX riders, such as when Travis Pastrana performed an Indian Air, originally from TJ Lavin, a BMXer. In 1993, Bob Kohl was the first ever person to perform the backflip on a motocross bike.

The bike was an 1993 Honda Cr80. He was a professional BMX rider who had performed the trick regularly on a bicycle. He continued to exhibit the trick until a crash in 1995 left him with serious injuries.

In 2000, Carey Hart attempted the first ever backflip on a full size motocross bike off a modified dirt landing ramp at the Gravity Games 2000. The landing was less than perfect with Carey crashing immediately after.

Speculation in the motocross community following, with many people claiming he completed the trick and others claiming to have attempted it. Regardless of the outcome, Freestyle Motocross was forever changed.

Many people started to attempt it themselves, such as Travis Pastrana, who attempted the backflip off a Step Up jump at Summer X Games Freestyle.

He bailed off midflight, breaking his foot.

The trick was still not attempted on a normal FMX setup, off a ramp to dirt setup. Carey Hart attempted the backflip again at Summer X Games in 2001, during the Moto X Best Trick competition, but bailed off the bike 14m in the air.

In 2002, Caleb Wyatt (born January 1, 1976) is the first person to ever perform a successful backflip on a large motorcycle. On April 25, 2002 at the Rogue Valley Motocross track (RVMX), Caleb Wyatt executed the backflip.

Caleb Wyatt’s first successful backflip was performed over a mulch pile of grass clipping, leaves and bark which was originally intended

for the maintenance of the RVMX track. Wyatt constructed a quarter pipe ramp with the take-off completely vertical shoved into the pile of mulch.

2002 saw the backflip taken to X Games glory. Travis Pastrana and Mike Metzger were both capable doing flips off ramps. Kenny Bartram was still learning flips, doing them off the backsides of dirt landings, much like Hart in the 2000 Gravity Games. The unthinkable had become reality; a backflip was now common place in freestyle competition. Mike Metzger had achieved a back-to-back backflip, which won him Freestyle Gold, at Summer X Games 8.

Many riders had done the amazing feat of a backflip, with this came many variations in 2003. Regular tricks were being used in backflips such as ‘No Footers’, ‘HeelClickers’, and ‘One Handed’ Backflips. It was then when the backflip wasn’t a one trick wonder, it had become a trick that could be used over longer distances, but was more dangerous than any other stunt before it.

2003 - 2005: These years saw the development of the trick, with many variations including cliffhangers, cordovas etc. As well as the disputed 360s which some consider only offaxis flips. The backflip was perfected over large distances including over 30m. In 2009 while filming for Nitro Circus Travis Pastrana completed a 37m backflip as part of a larger crossover jump, flipping over a number of riders below in the process.

2006: Early 2006 saw footage emerge of Travis Pastrana completing a double backflip on an uphill/sand setup on his popular Nitro Circus Freestyle Motocross Movies. On August 4, 2006, at X Games 12 in Los Angeles, he became the first rider to land a double backflip in competition. This trick, which many considered impossible, had now been completed on a dirt set-up almost perfectly. He also vowed to never do it again.

2007: Early 2007 saw the emergence of footage of rider Scott Murray performing a number of double backflips successfully, to a foam pit/ramp setup, where a large piece of foam was placed over the end of a foam pit, on which he landed many double backflips.

Later that year Murray attempted the double backflip at X Games but was unsuccessful and crashed upon landing.

After the crash at X Games, Scott Murray, tried again, successfully landing the trick at a Supercross event in Italy. Now he performs them regularly at the 2008 Crusty Demons tours, though he had a crash at Canberra, Australia, during a show.

At the 2008 Summer X games Jim Dechamp tried a front flip. He was not able to land it and crashed during the attempt, also breaking his back. And then just over 3 months later during Nitro Circus season 1 on MTV Jim landed the front flip successfully during the guinness world record episode.

In early 2009, Metal Mulisha rider Jeremy Lusk attempted a Hart Attack Backflip. He under-rotated, and crashed, hitting his head on the landing. On February 10, he was pronounced dead due to head and spinal cord injuries.

Rider Gear FMX riders typically use much of the same riding gear as MX racers. This includes a helmet, goggles, gloves, boots, jersey,a chest pro-

tector and MX pants. They may supplement this with elbow and knee pads. Riders may also choose to wear ‘body armor’ to protect the chest and legs when performing the most dangerous of tricks, as did Travis Pastrana when performing his double backflips. A neck brace may also be worn if riders are concerned about neck injuries or are attempting dangerous tricks.

Motorcycle Modifications Riders use modified motocross bikes with aftermarket parts to lower weight and improve performance. Riders will often shave down the seat foam to give a wider range of motion and better grip on the seat. Steering stabilizers are also common, and help keep the front tire running straight when tricks requiring the rider to let go of the handle bars are performed. Many riders will also shorten the width of the handle bars, to make it easier to put the legs around the bars, like such tricks as the ‘heelclicker’ or ‘rodeo’. Excess cables, such as brakes and clutch cables are usually redirected away from the bars, to avoid riders getting their boots caught on the bike. The engine and mechanical details of a FMX bike are fairly stock, not needing the fine tuning of a racing bike. Riders may also choose to have

‘lever’ on their handlebars to help then when performing ‘Kiss Of Death Backflips.’ A ‘lever’ is usually a metal plate or pipe coming off the handle bars, and going in front of the riders wrist or lower arm to stop the rider from rotating during the flips, but letting the bike continue to move. Bikes have after market performance pipes that give more power. The bike must have very strong suspension and very high quality tires. Also most riders have graphic kits on their bikes to show off.

Non-Bike or Rider Equipment 1 One major component of Freestyle Motocross is the foam pit. These vary in size, but are usually a rectangular box filled with shredded or cubed foam. The FMX rider will jump from a ramp, practicing one of the more dangerous or prototype tricks, and execute a safe landing into the safe foam regardless of the actual landing position.

2 Ramps are usually made out of metal, as this keep the ‘lips’ of the ramp consistent.

3 The landing ramp is normally constructed from dirt. If the event has limited resources, landings ramps may be built on trucks or trailers.

Buckle up and get ready as the Red Bull XFighters Jams is landing soon in Kuwait.

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2013

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Group photo of officials and female winners.

Group photo of officials and winners.

Sheikh Jaber Al-Abdallah Al-Sabah tourney concludes

By Abdellatif Sharaa KUWAIT: Tournament of Sheikh Jaber Al-Abdallah Al-Jaber Al-Sabah came to conclusion with the closing ceremony that was held on Saturday evening at Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Olympic Shooting Complex.

President of Asian and Kuwait Shooting Federations Sheikh Salman Sabah Al-Salem Al-Humoud AlSabah, representative of the tournament Sheikh Mishal Jaber AlAbdallah, President of the Arab Shooting Federation, Vice President of KSF Engr Duaij Khalaf Al-Otaibi, Secretary General of ASF and KSF Obaid Al-Osaimi and Kuwait shooting officials attended the closing ceremony.

Secretary General Obaid AlOsaimi said this tournament was held this year while the shooting community is preparing for an important event which is HH the Amir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Second International Grand Prix Tournament, in which a large num-

ber of Arab and friendly associations will participate along with Olympic medals winners of London 2012.

Al-Osaimi said KSSC officials are keen on organizing this tournament in appreciation and recognition of Sheikh Jaber Al-Abdallah contribu-

tions to the development of the sport of shooting during its beginning and until now.

His contributions had a great effect on making many achievements in the name of Kuwait. He said 120 shooters from the club and

Sheikh Salman Al-Humoud and Engr Duaij Al-Otaibi sharing a light moment. — Photos by Sherif Ismail

National Guard participated and the competition was very strong for this valuable tournament.

Al-Osaimi thanked Sheikh Mishal for attending the ceremony to hand winners their trophies and prizes.

Sheikh Salman Al-Sabah said following the ceremony, KSSC is proud to organize Sheikh Jaber AlAbdallah shooting tournament annually, as Sheikh Jaber is one of the supporters of the sport since it was established until now, so the club makes sure that it is on the annual agenda. He said this year’s tournament comes ahead of HH the Amir Grand Prix to be held at beginning of March. Sheikh Salman AlHumoud thanked Sheikh Jaber AlAbdallah, organizers and winners.

Meanwhile Sheikh Mishal Jaber Al-Abdallah congratulated Sheikh Salman Al-Humoud and the KSSC board for the organization of this tournament which has been held regularly since Kuwait liberation. He congratulated the winners and wished them success.

Results of the tournament are as follows: Skeet men:

Skeet women:

1- Zaid Al-Mutairi 2- Abdallah Al-rashidi 3- Abdelaziz Al-Saad

1- Iman Al-Shamma 2- Futooh Adel 3- Afrah Mohammad

Trap men:

Air Rifle men:

1- Abdelrahman Al-Faihan 2- Talal Al-Rashidi 3- Tami Al-Rashidi

1- Khalid Al-Subaie 2- Ali Al-Mutairi 3- Abdullah Al-Harby

Double trap - men:

Air Pistol women:

1- Mishal Al-Mutairi 2- Fuhaid Al-Daihani 3- Mishfi Al-Mutairi

1- Huthama Al-Baghli 2- Israa Bahman 3- Iman Bouland

Trap women:

Air Rifle women:

1- Sarah Al-Hawal 2- Shahad Al-Hawal 3- Asmaa Al-Qatami

1- Mariam Erzouqi 2- Heba Erzouqi 3- Zahraa Al-Saffar

Nuggets win ninth straight, beat Cavaliers 111-103 Marion, Mavericks down slumping Warriors NBA results/standings Denver 111, Cleveland 103; Philadelphia 87, Charlotte 76.

Eastern Conference Atlantic Division NY Knicks Brooklyn Boston Philadelphia Toronto

W 32 29 26 22 18

L 16 21 23 27 32

PCT .667 .580 .531 .449 .360

GB 4 6.5 10.5 15

Indiana Chicago Milwaukee Detroit Cleveland

Central Division 31 20 .608 30 20 .600 25 24 .510 20 32 .385 16 35 .314

Miami Atlanta Washington Orlando Charlotte

Southeast Division 33 14 .702 27 22 .551 7 14 35 .286 20 14 36 .280 20.5 11 39 .220 23.5

Oklahoma City Denver Utah Portland Minnesota

Western Conference Northwest Division 38 12 .760 33 18 .647 5.5 28 24 .538 11 25 25 .500 13 18 29 .383 18.5

LA Clippers Golden State LA Lakers Sacramento Phoenix

Pacific Division 35 17 .673 30 21 .588 24 27 .471 18 33 .353 17 34 .333

San Antonio Memphis Houston Dallas New Orleans

Southwest Division 39 12 .765 31 18 .633 7 28 24 .538 11.5 22 28 .440 16.5 17 33 .340 21.5

0.5 5 11.5 15

4.5 10.5 16.5 17.5

CLEVELAND: Danilo Gallinari scored 19 points, Kenneth Faried added 17 and the Denver Nuggets won their ninth straight game with a 111-103 victory over the Cleveland Cavaliers on Saturday night.

The Nuggets, who have won 15 of 17, are on their longest winning streak since posting 10 straight victories from March 30-April 15, 2005.

Kyrie Ir ving led Cleveland with 26 points, but was plagued by foul trouble.

The All-Star guard picked up his fourth foul with 5:20 remaining in the third quarter and went to the bench with the Nuggets leading 72-61. Irving returned to star t the four th quar ter with Denver ahead 84-73. He scored 12 points in the period, but Cleveland’s rally fell short.

The loss ended Cleveland’s three-game winning streak that matched a season high. The Cavaliers haven’t won four games in a row since March 17-24, 2010, which was LeBron James’ final season with the franchise.

Alonzo Gee scored 20 points for Cleveland with 16 coming in the first quarter. The Nuggets built a 14-point lead in the fourth quarter. The Cavaliers cut the gap to 105-99 with 1:40 remaining, but Gallinari’s two free throws and Faried’s dunk put the game away.

Denver outscored Cleveland 19-5 in fast-break points. The Nuggets also had 62 points in the paint compared to 32 for the Cavaliers. The Nuggets committed 20 turnovers, leading to 24 points for the Cavaliers.

The game featured physical play by both teams, particularly in the second half. Cavaliers center Tyler Zeller was given a technical foul in the third quarter for shoving Nuggets center JaVale McGee while Faried and Cleveland for ward Tristan Thompson got tangled up on a couple of occasions.

Denver coach George Karl had to be restrained by his assistants for going after the officials in the third quarter. Karl was angry about a foul call that went against his team.

Denver took a quick 8-0 lead, but Gee, who had scored 14 points his last two games combined, kept Cleveland in the

game by scoring 15 of the Cavaliers’ first 17 points. Cleveland led 46-41 late in the second quarter, but Denver finished the half on a 17-6 run. The Nuggets scored the last six points of the half over the final 41.9 seconds to take a 58-52 lead into the locker room.

Irving picked up two fouls in a span of 20 seconds late in the quarter, giving him three for the half.

Faried appeared to injure his knee in the first quarter, but still had 13 points and five rebounds in the half. Andre Iguodala scored 14 points for the Nuggets, while McGee added 13. Ty Lawson had 11 points while Kosta Koufos, Andre Miller and Corey Brewer scored 10 apiece.

In Dallas, Shawn Marion scored a season-high 26 points, O.J. Mayo added 19 and the Dallas Mavericks handed the Golden State Warriors their fourth straight loss, 116-91 on Saturday night. Dirk Nowitzki scored 15 points and Darren Collison keyed a first-quar ter run for Dallas, which beat Golden State for the first time this season after dropping their first two meetings to the Warriors by a combined seven points.

The Mavericks built a 27-point lead in the second quar ter to put away the Warriors early. Golden State’s Stephen Curry had 18 points on 8-of-23 shooting and Carl Landry added 13. The Warriors were winless on a four-game road trip that star ted with a 140-109 loss to Houston on Tuesday night.

The Mavericks, who are five games behind eighth-place Houston in the Western Conference, improved to 2-0 on a five-game homestand. The Warriors beat the Mavericks 105-101 in overtime on Nov. 19 and edged Dallas 100-97 on Jan. 31. Dallas coach Rick Carlisle was fined $25,000 for criticizing the late-game officiating after that setback.

The Mavericks, however, didn’t have to worry about a close game in this one as they led by double digits most of the way.

The Mavericks ended the first quarter with a 21-6 run.

Collison scored 11 points in the surge, including a 3-pointer that put the

Mavericks ahead 26-12. The Mavericks point guard finished with 18 points and eight assists. Rodrigue Beaubois hit a 20footer with 9.8 seconds left to give Dallas a 30-16 lead af ter the first quar ter.

Golden State, who missed 10 straight shots at one point, was 7 of 22 in the opening quarter.Dallas quickly built on that lead in the second quarter against the Warriors, who were playing their fourth game in five nights.

The Mavericks pushed their advantage to 43-21 on Nowitzki’s three-point play.

Marion’s dunk gave Dallas a 54-27 lead with 5:06 remaining in the first half.

Golden State, which trailed 62-36 at halftime, got within 87-74 early in the fourth. Dallas answered with an 18-5 run, which was capped when Mayo saved a loose ball from going out of bounds near midcourt and hit a streaking Marion for a dunk that made it 105-79. — Agencies

Detroit Pistons’ Greg Monroe shoots in traffic during the first half of an NBA basketball game against the Milwaukee Bucks on Saturday, Feb. 9, 2013, in Milwaukee. —AP

Cipollini lawyer threatens to sue MILAN: A lawyer for retired Italian cycling star Mario Cipollini threatened to sue Italy’s biggest-seling newspaper over “false and absurd” allegations that he was a client of a sports doctor currently standing trial on doping charges.

“We refute these false and absurd allegations,” lawyer Giuseppe Napoleone said in a statement published in La Gazzetta dello Sport yesterday.

“In light of these (allegations) I have been instructed to protect the rights of my client whether in a civil court or a court of law.”

Spanish doctor Eufemiano Fuentes is currently standing trial in Madrid on charges of supplying and administering

banned doping products to a number of top cyclists and athetes.

Cipollini, a former star sprinter who was crowned world champion in 2002, was accused Saturday by La Gazzetta dello Sport of being one of Fuentes’ clients.

The report claims to have solid evidence of the doping programme Fuentes prepared for Cipollini during the period 2001-2004, which included the use of the banned blood booster EPO (erythropoietin), blood transfusions and growth hormones.

The allegations claim Cipollini was, like many of the other cyclists implicated in the affair - given a codename and referred to as ‘Maria’.

A report in yesterday’s Gazzetta went further in detail, claiming Cipollini benefited from a “more complex and sophisticated” programme put in place

by Fuentes in 2002.

Cipollini had an outstanding year in 2002, winning the Milan-SanRemo oneday classic, Ghent-Wevelgem semi-classic, six stages at the Giro d’Italia, three at the Tour of Spain and then the world title in Zolder, Belgium.

In its inside pages Sunday, Gazzetta published charts from 2002 and 2003 which claim to show the exact dates of when Cipollini took drugs and extracted then re-injected blood.

The report claimed that in 2002, Cipollini used “13 blood bags”, continu-

ing in the same pattern through 2003 when he used up to nine before the start of the Giro d’Italia in May. Blood transfusions are particularly attractive for endurance athletes because they boost performance via the added oxygen-rich blood cells in the blood while being difficult to detect.

The Italian cycling federation (FIC) responded on Saturday by saying it would become a civil party in the case, effectively in a bid to see Cipollini face doping charges.

“The Italian Cycling Federation will constitute a civil party in the ‘Operation Puerto’ investigation, in the light of the allegations against Mario Cipollini,” FIC president Renato Di Rocco announced.

With nearly 200 wins in his career from 1989 to 2005, Cipollini is considered one of the greatest sprinters of all time.

Included in his honours list are 12 Tour de France stages and 42 from the Giro d’Italia. The biggest names to have already served suspensions for their role in Operation Puer to are Spaniard Alejandro Valverde and Italian Ivan Basso.

The FIC statement added that representatives from Italy ’s Olympic Committee (CONI), which usually deals with doping cases in the country, will be in Madrid today for the anticipated testimony of Basso, who rides for the Liquigas team. —AFP

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2013

S P ORTS

Svindal, Kostelic favored for super-combined gold SCHLADMING: Aksel Lund Svindal already has two medals from the opening two races at the Alpine skiing world championships. Expect him to get a third in today’s super-combined.

Svindal is the two-time defending world champion in the event, which combines the times from one downhill run and one slalom leg.

If the first run goes like it did in Sunday’s race, when Svindal won the gold medal in downhill by a large margin, the Norwegian could have a big lead entering the slalom leg.

“He has to have a big lead because I think the slalom is going to be pretty

tough for the downhillers,” said Ivica Kostelic, the Croatian who has won five World Cup super-combined races.The downhill run is scheduled for 10 a.m. local time (0900 GMT), with the slalom leg under the lights at 6:15 p.m. (1715 GMT). Other contenders include Alexis Pinturault of France, who won the only previous super-combined this season in Wengen; Silvan Zurbriggen, who finished sixth in the downhill and began his career as a slalom skier, and Swiss teammate Carlo Janka, the 2009-10 overall World Cup winner; Italians Christof Innerhofer and Peter Fill, who took silver and bronze behind

Svindal in Garmisch-Partenkirchen two years ago; and Austrian veteran Benjamin Raich, the 2005-06 overall winner.Ted Ligety, the American who won the combined under the old format with two slalom runs at the 2006 Turin Olympics, could also be a threat.

However, Ligety has never been on the podium in super-combined.

“Everybody expects big things but right now we got to focus on a good downhill run and a good slalom run,” U.S. head coach Sasha Rearick said. “That’s what we got to put the effort into.” Ligety had a podium finish in sight in Wengen last month until his right ski slipped free

two-thirds down his slalom run. In the traditional combined in Kitzbuehel a few weeks ago, Ligety missed a gate early in his first slalom run.

The toughest challenge for Ligety this time should be the downhill. “It’s definitely more of a gliders’ course and a lot of terrain,” said Ligety, who opened the championships by winning the super-G. “It’s pretty awkward, it doesn’t really flow that well. It’s a lot harder for me to do this downhill than a downhill like Kitzbuehel, so hopefully I can figure it out.” With 2010 Olympic champion Bode Miller out for the season recovering from left knee surgery, and Norway’s Kjetil

Jansrud also injuring his left knee in the super-G, Kostelic likes his chances.

“My goal is podium. I hope the knee will be in good enough condition to race at top level,” said Kostelic, who has struggled with knee problems his entire career. “I’m pretty optimistic.”

A slalom specialist, Kostelic hired former Italian downhiller Kristian Ghedina to coach him in the speed disciplines this season. “It’s good to have a guy with so much experience because I’m not an experienced downhiller,” Kostelic said.

“I’m always interested to hear Kristian’s advice on technical stuff and tactics as well.” — AP

Rolland shocks field to win world downhill SCHLADMING: France’s Marion Rolland upstaged a raft of big-name favourites to come out a surprise winner of the women’s downhill at the World Ski Championships yesterday.

The 30-year-old has just two World Cup podiums to her name, tellingly both in Schladming last year, and nailed a near-perfect run down the testing, 3kmlong Streicher course, scene of more woe for the vaunted Austrian team.

Rolland, who gained some notoriety after suffering an embarassing fall just three seconds into the downhill at the 2010 Winter Olympics, clocked 1min 50.00sec.

Italian Nadia Fanchini took silver at 0.16sec, with Germany’s Maria-HoeflRiesch claiming bronze, a further 0.54sec adrift, to go with her super-combined gold medal. “It’s a dream come true,” said Rolland, whose gold follows medals for teammates Gauthier de Tessieres (superG silver) and David Poisson (downhill bronze) and now sees France top the medal table.

“It’s amazing,” she said of her team’s medal charge. “Gauthier wasn’t supposed to make these championships and he got a medal so I knew it could happen to me.”

Fanchini was left delighted with her silver, to go with compatriot Dominik Paris’ in the men’s downhill. “I’m happy for me, for Paris,” the 26-year-old said.

“Let’s hope there’s another medal for Italy in the next few days.

“It’s fabulous. I didn’t expect it, I wasn’t the favourite at all.” Hoefl-Riesch said the result was a shock, joking that it was a “cruciate ligament podium-I think each of us has had at least two torn cruciate ligaments!”

“I was surprised that Marion raced so brutally and mercilessly,” the German added. “Personally I’ve had so much bad luck this year and this is just as I wished, that my luck would come back at the world champs.

“I’m really happy to get this second medal.” In sunny, cold conditions, Rolland

safely negotiated a tricky top section and powered through the snaking bottom part of the icy piste that saw three dramatic crashes in the first 10 runners.

Austrian hope Stephanie Moser was an early casualty, one of her skis popping off and sending her crashing into the side netting. Germany ’s Veronique Hronek and Swiss racer Dominique Gisin soon after joined her in the nets.

A quartet of US racers failed in their bid to fill the sizeable hole left by Lindsey Vonn, the reigning Olympic champion who sustained season-ending knee injuries in a crash in Tuesday’s opening super-G. Olympic silver medallist Julia Mancuso, fresh from a super-G bronze here, finished fifth behind Switzerland’s Nadja Kamer and one place ahead of US teammate Stacey Cook, currently lying second in the World Cup downhill standings.

“It was bumpy and fast but it was a lot of fun,” Mancuso said, adding that crashes were part and parcel of racing. “It was hard to feel perfect, I don’t think anyone felt perfect, you just had to really charge hard and I’m missing a little bit of that.

“I know it was really close to be on the podium but I’m happy and that was a good downhill run for me.”When you’re at the world championships everyone’s just charging hard, nothing else matters and sometimes you go down.”

There was also no third medal for Slovenian Tina Maze, the runaway World Cup overall leader who won the super-G and picked up a silver in the super-combined here.

She finished in seventh at 1.21sec.

With Moser crashing out, Austrian hopes were pinned on reigning world downhill champion Elisabeth Goergl, Andrea Fischbacher, Anna Fenniger and Regina Sterz, who had topped the two opening training runs here.

Fischbacher was first home for the host nation in eighth, 1.23sec off Rolland’s pace, with Goergl in 10th spot, a further 0.25sec adrift. — AFP

OSAKA: Ladies winner Japan’s Mao Asada (C) poses with silver medalist Japan’s Akiko Suzuki (L) and bronze medalist Japan’s Kanako Murakami (R) during the awarding ceremony of the Four Continents figure skating championships in Osaka, yesterday. — AFP

Mao Asada leads Japan sweep at Four Continents OSAKA: Former two-time world champion Mao Asada led Japan’s medal sweep in the women’s singles at the Four Continents championships, remaining unbeaten with five wins in the preOlympic season.

Cushioned by a comfortable lead from the short programme and skating to Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake”, the 2012 Grand Prix Final winner topped the free skating table with 130.96 points for a two-day total of 205.45.

But Asada, who landed her trademark triple axel for the first time in two years in the short programme on Saturday, under-rotated the high-scoring 3.5-revolution jump as one of a few flaws in her long programme.

Akiko Suzuki, the 2012 world bronze medallist, marked the second best free-skate score of 124.43 points to finish second overall at 190.08.

Another Japanese national Kanako Murakami, the 2010 world junior champion, came in third overall as she did in the short programme with a total of 181.03. Asada’s winning total was the season’s best in the world and close to her personal best of 205.50 scored at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics where the 2008

and 2010 world champion finished runner-up to South Korea’s Kim Yu-Na. “I per formed superbly in the short programme but I skated the free programme just like I did in training. I should still aim higher,” 22year-old Asada said.

Just after opening her free skate with a clean triple loop, she under-rotated and two-footed on landing a triple axel to show that Asada, the only female skater who regularly attempts the jump, has work to do.

Her triple-triple attempt stopped short by under-rotating the second jump, and used the wrong edge in landing a triple lutz. But she hit a maximum level-four in three spins along the way to top the field in both technical and artistic elements. Asada had refrained from attempting the triple axel this season until the Four Continents because she frequently bungled the high-scoring jump in the past two seasons after her duel with Kim in Vancouver.

“I want to jump the triple axel at the world championships. I will work hard so that I may be able to perform better still,” she said.

She will clash with Kim at the worlds next

month in London, Ontario. The South Korean, also 22, hailed at home as “Queen Yu-Na”, made her comeback after a break of two seasons in a second-tier competition in December.

But she skipped this annual event which brings together talent from the non-European continents.

It was the third Four Continents title for Asada and the first in three years.

Asada has won two Grand Prix titles in China and Japan as well as the Grand Prix Final and the national championship so far this season.

Canada’s national champions Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford won the pairs title with a total score of 199.18 points.

Kirsten Moore-Towers and Dylan Moscovitch, the runners-up to Duhamel and Radford at the Canadian nationals last month, topped the free skating table but finished second overall on 196.78 points.

The ice dance title went to the US duo of Meryl Davis and Charlie White as they came from behind to overtake the short-dance leadersOlympic and world ice dance champions Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir of Canada. - AFP

Devils win 3-1 to end Penguins streak

SCHLADMING: Winner France’s Marion Rolland celebrates with gold medal after the women’s downhill event of the 2013 Ski World Championships in Schladming, Austria yesterday. — AFP

NHL results/standings Dallas 3 Anaheim 1.New Jersey 3, Pittsburgh 1; Philadelphia 4, Carolina 3 (OT); Winnipeg 1, Ottawa 0; Detroit 2, Edmonton 1; Phoenix 1, San Jose 0 (SO); Toronto 6, Montreal 0; Buffalo 3, NY Islanders 2; Washington 5, Florida 0; Anaheim 6, St. Louis 5 (SO); Minnesota 2, Nashville 1 (OT).

Eastern Conference Atlantic Division

New Jersey Pittsburgh Philadelphia NY Rangers NY Islanders

W 7 8 5 5 4

Boston Toronto Ottawa Montreal Buffalo

7 7 6 6 5

Tampa Bay Carolina Winnipeg Florida Washington

6 5 5 4 3

LOTL GF GA PTS 1 3 30 23 17 4 0 40 29 16 6 1 29 33 11 5 0 24 26 10 6 1 32 37 9 Northeast Division 1 1 26 20 15 5 0 34 31 14 4 2 31 23 14 4 1 31 30 13 6 1 38 43 11 Southeast Division 4 0 42 27 12 4 1 28 30 11 5 1 30 37 11 6 1 25 40 9 8 1 30 41 7

Western Conference Central Division Chicago 9 0 2 39 25 20 Nashville 5 2 4 24 23 14 Detroit 6 4 1 30 30 13 St. Louis 6 4 1 38 36 13 Columbus 3 6 2 23 36 8 Northwest Division Vancouver 7 2 2 33 24 16 Minnesota 5 5 1 24 29 11 Edmonton 4 4 3 25 29 11 Calgary 3 4 2 25 33 8 Colorado 4 6 0 21 26 8 Pacific Division Anaheim 8 2 1 39 31 17 San Jose 7 2 2 34 22 16 Dallas 6 5 1 26 28 13 Phoenix 5 5 2 32 33 12 Los Angeles 3 4 2 20 28 8 Note: Overtime losses (OTL) are worth one point in the standings and are not included in the loss column (L)

NEWARK: The New Jersey Devils extended their winning streak to four games by beating Pittsburgh 3-1 on Saturday, ending the Penguins’ own five-game streak.

Adam Henrique and Bobby Butler scored power-play goals 2:12 apart in the third period for the Devils, who celebrated ageless goaltender Martin Brodeur’s 1,200th NHL game.

Elsewhere, Anaheim rookie Viktor Fasth became the first goalie in eight years to win his first five starts as the Ducks edged St. Louis in a shootout, Phoenix also won after a shootout to beat San Jose, Toronto routed Canadian rival Montreal, and one goal was enough for Winnipeg to win at Ottawa.

New Jersey’s Ilya Kovalchuk assisted on the late goals, and defenseman Andy Greene had two assists. Penguins captain Sidney Crosby had a six-game point streak snapped; his longest since 2010.

Anaheim’s Fasth stopped three of six attempts in the shootout as the Ducks downed the St. Louis Blues 6-5. Bobby Ryan had two goals and two assists for Anaheim, while David Backes had a goal and an assist for the Blues, who have dropped four straight.Phoenix goalie Mike Smith made 33 saves through overtime and then turned aside two more shots in the shootout to carry the Coyotes past the San Jose Sharks 1-0. Mikkel Boedker and Radium Vrbata both netted shootout goals for Phoenix. The Toronto Maple Leafs made the most of their chances to win 6-0 despite being outshot 37-28 by the Montreal Canadiens.

James Reimer made 37 saves while Phil Kessel had a goal and two assists for Toronto, which has a 6-1 home record in road games this season.

Winnipeg’s Al Montoya made 33 saves, and Alex Ponikarovsky scored the only goal in the Jets’ 1-0 win at the Ottawa Senators.

Ponikarovsky broke the scoreless deadlock 5:57 into the third period and gave Winnipeg its first road win in four attempts.

The Minnesota Wild ended a three-game los-

ing skid with a 2-1 overtime win over the Nashville Predators. Devin Setoguchi’s powerplay goal at 4:21 of overtime sealed the win, and gave him his first goal of the season.

Nashville had a four-game winning streak broken. Detroit’s Niklas Kronwall broke a thirdperiod tie and Pavel Datsyuk had a goal and an assist as the Red Wings edged the Edmonton Oilers 2-1.

Vancouver rookie Jordan Schroeder scored his first two NHL goals and Cory Schneider stopped 33 shots as the Canucks rallied to defeat

the Calgary Flames 5-1 and notch a fifth consecutive victory.

Philadelphia’s Danny Briere scored 1:47 into overtime to lift the Flyers to a 4-3 win over the Carolina Hurricanes. The Buffalo Sabres had a 3-2 win at the New York Islanders despite being outshot 43-15, the Washington Capitals earned a much-needed win by beating the Florida Panthers 5-0, while the game between the Boston Bruins and Tampa Bay Lightning was postponed because of a blizzard in the Boston area. — AFP

ST LOUIS: Anaheim Ducks’ Saku Koivu, of Finland, scores past St. Louis Blues goalie Brian Elliott during the shootout of an NHL hockey game Saturday, in St. Louis. The Ducks won 6-5. — AP

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2013

S P ORT S

Blatter angry with UEFA over declaration on FIFA reforms JOHANNESBURG: FIFA president Sepp Blatter took a swipe at European governing body UEFA yesterday for what he said were attempts to block his reform process to make soccer’s governing body more transparent and less prone to corruption.

Blatter said he was surprised that UEFA, headed by Michel Platini who is a possible rival for the FIFA presidency in two years’ time, had declared itself a ga i nst k e y pro p o s a l s fro m FIFA’s refor m wor k i n g party the Independent Governance Committee (IGC).

UEFA, in a declaration last month, rejected a proposal to limit FIFA execut i ve co m m i tte e m e m b e rs to t wo four-year mandates and called for the FIFA president to serve a maximum of 12 years instead of the eight put for-

ward by the IGC. Blatter, who was in S o u t h Af r i c a fo r S u n d ay ’s Af r i c a n Nations Cup final, said it was UEFA’s job to consult their national associations, not to issue their own declaration on the proposals.

“The reform process is on the way to conclusion,” he told a media roundtable meeting. “Two parts have been implemented by Congress: the establishment of an independent ethics committee and the fact Congress and not the executive committee will choose future World Cup hosts. “ Now t here are 10 o r 11 o t her points that have to be dealt with by the next FIFA Congress in Mauritius in May. So I’m surprised by the reaction of UEFA, because the executive committee told the confederations they should consult their national associa-

tions about the reforms and what they t hink ab o ut t he last pa r t of the amendments to the statutes.

“And I’m surprised because it did not seem like a consultation, it seemed like was decision-mak ing from UEFA where the national associations have signed a declaration against this. “The idea was that at the FIFA Congress, all national associations have the right to speak on the amendments in favour or against. We have asked the confederations to make consultations, we have not asked them to make decisions.

“I f all the Confederations make decisions, what is the point of the FIFA Congress?” Blatter was also angry that UEFA appeared to take a stand against security checks FIFA wants to introduce for anyone being elected to the

executive committee, following a series of high-profile scandals involving FIFA officials.

“What is important to me, and I will defend it, is that all members of FIFA shall have a scrutiny check, because ever yone work ing somewhere has one. All the referees and linesmen on the FIFA list have to have one and sign a document which is recognised by their national association.

“So if it is good enough for FIFA referees, why should it not be the same for the FIFA executive committee and all the members of FIFA? Why is UEFA now against this? I don’t understand it.”

Last week the IGC, headed by Mark Pieth, a professor in criminal law, said it was disappointed that UEFA was trying “to dilute the thrust of the reform”.

Blatter, 77 next month, declined on Sunday, not for the first time, to say that he would definitely stand down as president when his term of office ends in 2015.

Blatter was elected FIFA president in 1998 and will complete four terms of office in 2015.

Asked what his plans were, he replied: “As far as 2015 is concerned, no-one can see into the future but I will fight for the reform of FIFA and I will fight to keep what FIFA is now, a federation of national associations and not a holding of confederations (who make decisions). I will fight that until the last day of my mandate in 2015. “My mandate ends in 2015, if God gives me my health, and I know I have to stop but I don’t know when I will stop.” — Reuters

Voges ton sees Australia whitewash West Indies West Indies lose final ODI by 17 runs

MOSCOW: Russia’s Elena Vesnina (R) and Ekaterina Makarova return a ball to Japan’s Morita Ayumi and Misaki Doi during the International Tennis Federation Fed Cup quarterfinal match between Russia and Japan in Moscow yesterday. Russia won 3-2. — AFP

Russia beat Japan 3-2 in Fed Cup MOSCOW: Ekaterina Makarova won the second reverse singles match and paired with Elena Vesnina to secure Russia a 3-2 victory over Japan in the Fed Cup yesterday.

Makarova and Vesnina beat Japan’s Ayumi Morita and Misaki Doi 6-2, 6-2.

Earlier yesterday, Morita put Japan in a 2-1 lead by beating Vesnina 6-4, 6-1 in the first reverse singles, but Makarova put Russia back on track by routing veteran Kimiko Date-Krumm 6-1, 6-1.

The two teams split Saturday’s opening singles when Maria Kirilenko won the first point for Russia by defeating Date -Krumm, while Morita downed Makarova to even the tie at one-all.

The Russian pair of doubles specialists - with both in the top 10 on the WTA Tour doubles rankings - won four consecutive games in the first set and jumped to a 4-1 lead in the second to leave no doubts about the outcome on a hard court at the Olympic indoor stadium.

“I really wanted to win this clash to rehabilitate myself for a defeat in today’s singles,” Vesnina said. “We were a bit nervous at the beginning of the match but in the late stages we found our normal play.”

Makarova dominated the match

against Date-Krumm with her Japanese opponent able to hold serve only once in each set. “I felt some extra responsibility today as the result of this rubber could have decided the entire match,” Makarova said.

Morita broke Vesnina in the fourth game and rallied from 40-love down in the seventh game for a 5-2 lead. The Russian broke back for 5-4 but was broken on her next serve to lose the set.

Vesnina, who substituted for originally drawn Kirilenko, broke Morita in the opening game of the second set but Morita dominated the rest of the games and served the match out at love to record her 14th straight Fed Cup victory.

“I played well in both my matches here and I’m really pleased with my performance this weekend,” Morita said.

“The fact that I managed to win two points for my team boosted my self-confidence a great deal.” Vesnina could not match her opponent’s form. “She is feeling confident right now and she likes this surface,” Vesnina said. “Ayumi is playing her best tennis right now.” Four-time winner Russia was without Maria Sharapova, Svetlana Kuznetsova and Vera Zvonareva. Russia will host Slovakia or travel to Serbia in the semifinals on April 20-21.— AP

Nadal advances to final in Chile VINA DEL MAR: Rafael Nadal looked sharp Saturday as he booked a finals berth in an ATP South American clay court tournament, his first event back from a seven-month injury absence.

Nadal, seeded number one as a wildcard in the $410,200 tournament, needed just 64 minutes to defeat thirdseeded Frenchman Jeremy Chardy 6-2, 6-2.

Nadal, eager to get in as many matches as possible, is also slated to contest the doubles final on Sunday.

“I’m really happy with what I’ve been doing this week,” he said. “I have a good feeling on the court. So I cannot ask for anything more. I will try to play better and better every day.”

Former world number one Nadal, currently ranked fifth, raced to a 4-0 lead before Chardy was finally able to hold serve.

Nadal closed out the opening set after little more than half an hour, pulling Chardy wide with a deep ball to the corner then blasting an overhead winner into the open court to end the rally on set point.

He broke Chardy at love in the third game of the second set to gain the upper hand, then saved three break points in the sixth game to maintain his advantage.

He broke Chardy for a 5-2 lead and

took the contest with an ace on his second match point to book a title clash with Argentinian Horacio Zeballos.

“I played well today, better than the days before, which is important,” Nadal said. “I won’t compare myself to seven months ago, it’s just the first week of competition. It’s a great feeling to be in a final match after so much time without playing.

“Tomorrow, it will be a tough match against Horacio, who is playing great tennis. I hope to keep enjoying myself like I’ve been doing during this tournament and that my physical condition remains good.”

Zeballos, ranked 73rd in the world, reached the second ATP final of his career with a 6-3, 7-6 (7/4) victory over eighth-seeded compatriot Carlos Berlocq.

Zeballos has beaten three straight seeded opponents en route to the title match, which will be his first appearance in a final since he was runner-up at St. Petersburg in 2009.

Nadal and Zeballos have met once before. Nadal beat the Argentinian in straight sets in the round of 64 at Roland Garros in 2010 en route to one of the seven French Open titles he counts among his 11 Grand Slam triumphs.—AFP

MELBOURNE:- Australia bowled out West Indies for 257 to secure a 17-run victory and a 5-0 whitewash in their one-day international series yesterday, thanks to a century from stand-in Adam Voges.

The tourists had looked on target to chase down a 275-run target at the MCG when Johnson Charles struck his maiden century to match Voges, who scored a magnificent unbeaten 112. The West Indian opener struck a boundary to bring up his 100 off 120 balls, including eight fours and a six. But he fell next ball, caught

by Ben Cutting at square leg playing a poor shot to Clint McKay. He had ridden his luck, surviving two dropped catches and two television reviews.

After that wickets fell regularly as the required run rate soared and the West Indies were forced to hit out. Captain Darren Sammy had a late chance to guide the tourists to the target but he was caught behind by Brad Hadddin off McKay for 23 off 18 balls.

West Indies still needed 18 runs off five balls and it proved too much. Opener Kieran Powell had been the first to go, caught in the slips by Aaron Finch off paceman Mitchell Johnson for just two.

Darren Bravo managed 33 in a partnership of 106 with Charles before all-rounder James Faulkner held a fine low catch off Xavier Doherty’s finger spin. Brother Dwayne had made 13 when Johnson clean-bowled him with a late inswinger.

After Charles went, Narsingh Deonarine was out for four, caught Haddin bowled Cutting.

Devon Thomas smashed 19 off 18 balls but was run out by Shaun Marsh.

Big-hitting Kieron Pollard holed out for 45, caught by Finch at long on off Faulkner. Sammy lamented his side’s failure to take chances. “We were right in there again,” he said. “I think we shot ourselves in the foot. We should have chased down these runs.” Voges, batting at number five, had earlier steadied the Australian innings after a disastrous start and went on to complete his ton off 98 balls.

The 33-year-old was only drafted into the side on Friday to replace the injured George Bailey, but he played the star role despite being a fringe player in the six years since he made his debut.

Australian captain Shane Watson paid tribute to Voges, saying he “was absolutely amazing, the way he controlled the innings.”

For Voges, it was all about taking his chance.

“I guess you never say never... the great thing is, the selectors have brought me back when I’m playing well,” he said. “You have to make the most of it while it lasts.” West Indies had the home side at 2 for 2 wickets, but they let Australia off the hook and went for 100 runs in the final 10 overs.

When Voges came in they were three for 63 and a high total looked unlikely with skipper Michael Clarke also on the injured list following more hamstring trouble. But only two more wickets fell.

Voges cracked a six to bring up a 100 partnership with fellow veteran Brad Haddin. Haddin skied a top edge off Kemar Roach to Kieran

Powell in the deep when he had made 43 off 45 balls out of a partnership of 111 with Voges.

Faulkner accompanied Voges through the final overs, adding a quickfire 31 off 24 balls. The pair put on 81 runs from 51 balls. West Indies had looked in control in the opening stages when Best bowled Watson first ball.

Finch then top-edged a Best bouncer to Narine at fine leg on the boundary in the third over for just one run. Shaun Marsh, in for Clarke, found the first boundary in the fifth over. Phillip Hughes patiently built a partnership of 61 with Marsh before Dwayne Bravo had him caught for

29 off 61 balls. Pollard took the freak leaping catch at backward point, knocking the ball into the air with an outstretched left hand and holding it easily at second bite.

Keeper Devon Thomas snapped up Marsh, who had reached 40 off 58 balls and was looking set at the start of the 25th over. It was Dwayne Bravo’s 150th ODI wicket, the third quickest West Indian to the milestone.

Australia take on the world Twenty20 champions in a T20 format amtch , at the Gabba in Brisbane on Wednesday, the final game of the tour.— AFP

MELBOURNE: Australia’s Adam Voges hits a shot during their One Day International Cricket match against West Indies in Melbourne, Australia, yesterday. — AP

SCOREBOARD MELBOURNE: Scoreboard after Australia beat West Indies by 17 runs in the fifth and final oneday international yesterday at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. Australia won the series 5-0: West Indies won the toss and elected to bowl first.

Australia innings S. Watson b Best 0 A. Finch c Narine b Best 1 P. Hughes c Pollard b DJ Bravo 29 S. Marsh c Thomas b DJ Bravo 40 A. Voges not out 112 B. Haddin c Powell b Roach 43 J. Faulkner not out 31 Extras (b-1 lb-9, w-7, nb-1) 18 Total (five wickets, 50 overs) 274 Did not bat: M. Johnson, B. Cutting, C. McKay, X. Doherty Fall of wickets: 1-0 2-2 3-63 4-82 5-193 Bowling: Best 10-1-71-2 (w-5), D. Sammy 101-37-0, Roach 10-0-52-1 (1-nb), Narine 10-127-0, DJ Bravo 8-0-62-2 (1-w), Pollard 2-0-15-0.

West Indies innings J. Charles c Cutting b McKay 100 K. Powell c Finch b Johnson 2 DM Bravo c Faulkner b Doherty 33 DJ Bravo b Johnson 13 K. Pollard c Finch b Faulkner 45 N. Deonarine c Haddin b Cutting 4 D. Thomas run out 19 D. Sammy c Haddin b McKay 23 S. Narine b Johnson 0 K. Roach not out 2 T. Best c Coulter-Nile (sub) b McKay 0 Extras (b-1, lb-6, w-9) 16 Total (all out, 49.5 overs) 257 Fall of wickets: 1-7 2-113 3-129 4-182 5-186 6-228 7-234 8-246 9-257 Bowling: McKay 9.5-0-52-3 (w-3), Johnson 10-150-3 (w-2), Cutting 10-0-53-1 (w-1), Faulkner 10-047-1 (w-1), Doherty 9-0-46-1 (w-1), Finch 1-0-2-0.

Gasquet beat Paire in Montpellier final MONTPELLIER: Frenchman Richard Gasquet beat compatriot Benoit Paire 6-2, 6-3 yesterday in the Open Sud de France final for his second title this season.

“It’s fabulous to win two titles in a season, especially so early,” Gasquet told Canal Plus television. “I’m very motivated for the remainder of the season.” Gasquet broke Paire twice for a 5-2 lead and took the opening set when a backhand return from Paire sailed wide. The third-seeded Frenchman dropped serve once in the second set, but broke Paire three times.

He clinched victory when Paire netted a backhand.

It is Gasquet’s ninth career singles title.

He also won the Qatar Open in January. “I knew I could rely on my experience. He was playing his first final in France - it’s always a tricky situation,” Gasquet said.

“Benoit is a very dangerous player. He has a very special game that can be disconcerting.”

Paire was appearing in only his second final on the main tour. He was runner-up in Belgrade last year, losing in straight sets to Andreas Seppi of Italy. “I rushed a lot of my shots,” Paire said. “I thought about the final in Belgrade where things went bad for me. When I lost the first set 6-2, I told myself ‘it’s happening again.’ I think the result is a bit normal. You must play a few finals to know how it feels.” — AP

MONTPELLIER: French tennis player Richard Gasquet poses with his trophy after winning over France’s opponent Benoit Paire at the end of the Open Sud de France world tour ATP Series final tennis match, yesterday in Montpellier, southern France. — AFP

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MONDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2013

SPORTS

Ronaldo-inspired Madrid ready for United MADRID: Real Madrid assistant manager Aitor Karanka believes his side are hitting form at the right time as they swept aside Sevilla 4-1 thanks to a Cristiano Ronaldo hat-trick.

The Spanish champions take on Manchester United on Wednesday in the first-leg of their Champions League last16 tie and Karanka is hoping Ronaldo can carry his recent form into the clash against his former club.

“Cristiano has had the love of the crowd here for some time. The important thing though is for the team to have a player like Cristiano in this form heading

into the period we now have,” he said.

Coach Jose Mourinho had taken the chance to rest a few important players with Wednesday’s game in mind, but it mattered little as Karim Benzema put the hosts in front from barely a yard on 17 minutes before Ronaldo fired a fierce drive past Beto in the Sevilla goal eight minutes later.

The Portuguese captain rounded off his 20th hat-trick in a Madrid jersey with two goals in 14 minutes after half-time before a red card for Gonzalo Higuain and Manu del Moral’s late consolation soured an otherwise comfortable night

for Mourinho’s men.

Thoughts now turn to their attempt at a 10th European crown and Karanka is hopeful that playing 18 hours ahead of United this weekend could make a difference. “You notice a day extra rest and it has been good with the changes we made to also give a rest to some important players. We will see what players they play tomorrow,” said Karanka, a reference to United’s league clash with Everton.

Sevilla boss Unai Emery was far more concerned at what he saw as his side making things easy for Madrid. “We have

made things too easy for them. In the first 25 minutes I didn’t recognise my team,” he said. “We didn’t have the perseverence that we’ve had in other games. We saw Real Madrid win easily. “My intention was that we would have much more presence on the pitch. We need to demand more and work hard because the team hasn’t been at the level we expected.”

The win moved Madrid back to within four points of city rivals Atletico and 13 off Barcelona, with the top two set to take on Rayo Vallecano and Getafe respectively.

Malaga maintained their place in fourth after they came from behind to beat Levante 2-1 thanks to two goals from Isco. Valencia, who have a Champions League date against Paris Saint-Germain on Tuesday, remain just two points adrift of the Andalusians as Nelson Valdez’s stoppage time header handed them a 1-0 away win at Celta Vigo.

Mallorca began life under Gregorio Manzano with a 1-1 draw against Osasuna but Deportivo La Coruna lost 3-0 at home to Granada to remain bottom. — AFP

United sink Everton to open up 12-point lead Man Utd 2

Everton 0

BARCELONA: FC Barcelona's Lionel Messi from Argentina (center) duels for the ball against Getafe's Alberto Lopo ( left) during a Spanish La Liga soccer match a at the Camp Nou stadium yesterday. —AP

Messi strikes again as Barca crush Getafe 6-1 MADRID: Lionel Messi notched up his 35th league goal of the season as an understrength Barcelona strolled to a crushing 61 home win against Getafe that put them 12 points clear at the top of La Liga yesterday. Alexis Sanchez and David Villa made the most of a rare place in the starting lineup with goals either side of Messi’s strike and Andres Iniesta, Cristian Tello and Gerard Pique were also on the scoresheet as Barca racked up a 20th victory in 23 matches to move on to 62 points.

Atletico Madrid have 50 points in second place ahead of their game at Rayo Vallecano later on Sunday (2000 GMT), four ahead of third-placed Real Madrid, who thrashed Sevilla 4-1 at the Bernabeu on Saturday.

“We are not going to repeat all the praise we have showered on him (Messi),” Barca sporting director Andoni Zubizarreta said in an interview with Spanish TV broadcaster Canal Plus.

“Alexis and Villa gave us a lot of speed and created spaces and showed they are also capable of putting the ball away,” the former Barca and Spain goalkeeper added.

“Some of the players who don’t feature so often were very impressive.” Barca’s

interim coach Jordi Roura, standing in for Tito Vilanova who is recovering from throat surgery, rested several key players for Getafe’s visit to the Nou Camp, including Spain trio Pedro, Cesc Fabregas and Sergio Busquets.

Unusually, Barca had been handed the midday kickoff slot but the unfamiliar starting time failed to dampen the players’ hunger for victory in front of more than 85,000 fans thronging the giant arena and enjoying the sunshine.

Alexis struck in the sixth minute, Messi made it 2-0 seven minutes later and Villa put the game well beyond Getafe, who are 12th on 29 points, with a third just before the hour. As Getafe started to wilt, Messi surged forward and laid the ball off for substitute Tello to curl in a fourth 11 minutes from time before a mistake from Jordi Alba let in Alvaro Vazquez to pull a goal back for the visitors in the 83rd minute.

Iniesta, who caused Getafe constant problems with his pace and guile, picked up a loose ball and fired in from close range in the 90th and Pique rounded off the party in the second minute of added time with a tap-in from Thiago Alcantara’s unselfish layoff. — Reuters

MANCHESTER: Ryan Giggs and Robin van Persie scored the goals as Manchester United opened up a commanding 12-point lead at the top of the Premier League after a 2-0 win over Everton yesterday. With Real Madrid manager Jose Mourinho watching from the directors’ box at Old Trafford ahead of his team’s Champions League tie against Alex Ferguson’s side at the Bernabeu on Wednesday, United took full advantage of second placed Manchester City’s surprise defeat at Southampton on Saturday. Giggs opened the scoring early on with his first league goal of the season, maintaining his astonishing record of having scored a league goal in each of his 23 seasons as a United player, a sequence which now covers every year in Premier League history.

Van Persie got the second just before the break and, with City stumbling of late, the destiny of the title is firmly in United’s hands once again.

United should have taken the lead after 10 minutes and would have done so but for an uncharacteristic error by the prolific van Persie, who collected Wayne Rooney’s through ball and rounded goalkeeper Tim Howard only to hit the outside of the post as he attempted to convert.

It was a rare slip by a forward just two goals shy of the 20-league goal barrier, but it did not take the Dutchman long to make amends as he set up Giggs for a 13th minute opening goal.

Antonio Valencia out-jumped Leighton Baines to head on a long

OLD TRAFFORD: Manchester United’s Welsh midfielder Ryan Giggs (R) has his shot blocked by Everton’s English defender Phil Jagielka (L) during the English Premier League football match between Manchester United and Everton at Old Trafford, Manchester, North West England, yesterday.— AFP ball from Jonny Evans which van Mirallas cross and, again, when and should, in fact, have extended Persie collected. His pass was perfect Osman flashed a hopeful volley wide their lead after 66 minutes. for Giggs, who had the time to steady after a poor punch from de Gea. But, Van Persie’s right-wing corner was himself before clinically placing the on the stroke of half-time, Everton’s flicked on at the near post by Giggs ball past Howard. In response, until tactic of playing a high defensive line and, having seen his initial header Leon Osman’s weak, off-balance shot to try and catch van Persie offside blocked by Howard, Evans had two dribbled into David de Gea’s grasp failed as Rafael played through a per- more unsuccessful attempts to force after 24 minutes, Everton generated fectly-weighted pass and the the ball over the line. The league little to worry the home defence.

Dutchman timed his run superbly. leaders maintained the pressure secDe Gea was required to be far With Phil Neville playing him onside, onds later when Tom Cleverley met a more alert just before the half hour, van Persie sped away from Heitinga half-cleared corner and saw his 20however, when he dived acrobatical- and rounded Howard, this time suc- yard volley tipped over the bar ly to his left to keep out an Osman ceeding where he had failed earlier expertly by Howard and van Persie volley from the edge of the area and converting despite the defend- rolled a shot wide after being set up which appeared destined for the cor- er’s attempt to clear off the line. The by Giggs. ner of the United goal. timing of that second goal proved Osman looked Everton’s best Buoyed by their best passage of significant and took away the hope of getting off the mark with the game, Everton also asked ques- momentum Everton had been build- some creative midfield play but it was tions of the United defence when ing prior to half-time. United easily a mistake by United substitute Chris Rafael da Silva was forced into a goal- negotiated the opening 20 minutes Smalling that let in Nikica Jelavic for saving challenge on Victor Anichebe, of the second half without allowing an 82nd minute shot which was well who looked poised to covert a Kevin Everton any foothold in the game saved by de Gea. — AFP

Balotelli saves Milan blushes at Cagliari MILAN: Mario Balotelli scored his third goal in two games for AC Milan to snatch a share of the points in a 11 draw at Cagliari yesterday as Roma’s slump continued with a 3-1 defeat to Sampdoria.

AC Milan remain fourth, 14 points behind leaders Juventus but will drop to fifth if city rivals Inter account for Chievo at the San Siro in Sunday’s late game.

Balotelli, signed from Manchester City 10 days ago, grabbed a brace, including one goal from the penalty spot, in a 2-1 win over Udinese last week.

But despite securing a share of the points in Sardinia, the striker spurned several chances to secure all three points for Milan during a finale in which the visitors belatedly laid siege to the Cagliari goal.

Cagliari, who won a last gasp bid to stage the match at their new Is Arenas stadium despite official fears over security, dominated the first half and took a 45th-minute lead through Victory Ibarbo’s close range header.

It was the Colombian’s first goal this season for Cagliari, who looked set to grab a precious victory until Milan levelled late in the match. In a goalmouth melee, Balotelli prepared for an overhead kick but was impeded by Cagliari defender Davide Astori, who was sent off for a second bookable offence as the referee pointed to the spot.

The Italy international stepped up to send Michael Agazzi the wrong way to level and claim his third goal in two games. Yet the 22-year-old was guilty of missing a superb

CAGLIARI: AC Milan’s forward Mario Balotelli (R) kicks the ball past Cagliari’s defender Luca Rossettini (L) during their Italian Serie A football match at Cagliari’s Is Arenas stadium yesterday. The match ended in a 1-1 draw. — AFP

chance to put the visitors ahead, and twice found himself offside while presented with goal-scoring chances in the final 10 minutes.

First, Balotelli’s attempt to head Philippe Mexes’s header from the edge of the area past Agazzi from close in went straight at the ‘keeper.

He was then offside when Bojan flicked the ball into his path, and offside again when he tried to nod home the rebound from the Spain international’s probing 20-metre drive.

Roma suffered their 10th defeat of the campaign, a result, which coupled with Udinese’s 1-0 home win over Torino, dropped them to ninth place. Roma sacked coach Zdenek Zeman last week after a humiliating 4-2 home reverse to Cagliari.

However, caretaker coach Aurelio Andreazzoli has work to do if he is to plug the holes in Roma’s defence which has now conceded 45 goals.

Paraguayan midfielder Marcelo Estigarribia broke the deadlock on 56 minutes with a low angled drive and the hosts doubled their lead on 73 minutes when second-half substitute Gianluca Sansone rifled a freekick past Maarten Stekelenburg.

Argentine midfielder Erik Lamela reduced arrears two minutes later, however Sampdoria secured the win when Argentine Emanuele Icardi was left unmarked to beat Stekelenburg at the back post from a 77th minute corner.

Juventus, who face Celtic in Glasgow in the first leg of their Champions League last 16 tie on Tuesday, beat Fiorentina 2-0 on Saturday and now have a five-point lead on Napoli after they could only sneak a 1-1 draw at Lazio. — AFP

BIRMINGHAM: Aston Villa's Belgian striker Christian Benteke scores a penalty during the English Premier League football match between Aston Villa and West Ham United at Villa Park in Birmingham, West Midlands, England, yesterday. — AFP

N’Zogbia downs Hammers West Ham 1

Aston Villa 2

BIRMINGHAM: Charles N’Zogbia inspired Aston Villa to a crucial 2-1 win over West Ham as the Premier League strugglers climbed out of the relegation zone yesterday.

Paul Lambert’s team have endured a miserable campaign filled with embarrassing cup exits and woeful league defeats, but N’Zogbia’s influential display gave Villa renewed hope that they can at least avoid sinking into the Championship. N’Zogbia won the penalty that Christian Benteke converted to break the deadlock in the closing stages at Villa Park and the former Wigan winger then curled in a superb free-kick to give the hosts much-needed breathing space.

An own goal from Villa’s Ashley Westwood ensured a nervous finale, but Lambert’s men held on for their first league win in 10 matches, a dismal run that stretched back to a victory at Liverpool in December.

Villa now sit one point clear of the bottom three but their battle to preserve their long-held top-flight status looks certain to go down to the wire. “I think it will be huge for us. We’ve taken a lot of knocks but football is a funny game and we are only three points behind Newcastle now,” Lambert said.

“We know what we have got to do and there’s 12 games to go. Every game is really tough, but that was a huge win for us, especially with the results for the teams around us this weekend.”

After squandering a 3-1 lead in their previous match at Everton last weekend, it was hardly surprising that Villa’s players and fans seemed wracked by nerves in the early stages.

They should have been ahead after just two minutes but when Jussi Jaaskelainen spilled Benteke’s shot into Andreas Weimann’s path the Austrian for-

ward somehow fired wide. Villa defender Ron Vlaar came close to opening the scoring with a half-volley from a corner but his effort was narrowly off target.

Sam Allardyce’s visitors were slightly more threatening after the break and Villa fans’ anxiety was clear to see when Ciaran Clark headed clear from a corner, prompting ironic cheers from supporters still scarred by their team’s shocking defending from set-pieces this season.

But Villa gradually regained the momentum and Benteke lashed just wide before the hosts finally took the lead in the 74th minute. N’Zogbia was the catalyst with a clever turn in the penalty area that forced Mark Noble to trip the winger and Benteke stepped up to send Jaaskelainen the wrong way with his spotkick. Villa doubled their lead four minutes later when N’Zogbia curled a fine free-kick over the static West Ham wall and past the flat-footed Jaaskelainen. Even with a two-goal lead there was still an air of tension around Villa Park and the nerves really started jangling when Westwood, attempting to clear a Joe Cole cross, could only loop it into his own net. — AFP

Voges ton sees Australia whitewash West Indies

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United sink Everton to open up 12-point lead

19

Nadal advances to final in Chile

Page 18

JOHANNESBURG: Nigeria's soccer team hold the trophy as they celebrate after winning the African Cup of Nations final soccer match against Burkina Faso at Soccer City Stadium in Johannesburg, South Africa, yesterday. — AP

Nigeria win Africa Cup Sunday ends Nigeria’s drought JOHANNESBURG: Nigeria returned to the top of African football yesterday by beating Burkina Faso 1-0 in the Cup of Nations final for its first continental title in nearly two decades.

Sunday Mba’s goal in the 40th minute delivered another triumph for coach Stephen Keshi after he captained Nigeria to its last African Cup crown in 1994. Mba decided the game in front of around 87,000 fans at Soccer City with a leftfoot volley into the far right corner after he expertly controlled a rebound and clipped the ball over a defender. Burkina Faso fell short of what would have been a surprising triumph in its first final, having progressed beyond the group stage for only the second time at the African championship.

Mba’s goal came after Victor Moses’ shot was blocked, and was worthy of deciding a final. In three swift motions, Mba controlled the ball, chipped it over Mohamed Koffi and then volleyed across goalkeeper Daouda Diakite and into the far right corner. It was enough to give Nigeria its third African Cup title and make Keshi just the second man to win the tournament as both a player and coach.

Wilfried Sanou sent a powerful low shot just wide in the 74th minute for Burkina Faso but Nigeria controlled most of the game and wasted several good chances to extend its lead.

The victory also made Nigeria the last country to qualify for June’s Confederations Cup in Brazil as continental champion. Keshi brought Joseph Yobo off the bench in the 89th minute to give the veteran defender and regular captain a chance to finally lift the trophy in his sixth African Cup. Nigeria’s Efe Ambrose hit the first shot of the game inside a minute and then headed a free kick from Moses just over the crossbar in the seventh.

Moses also caused trouble for the Burkina Faso defense and Nigeria was far more enterprising than its underdog opponent in the first quarter. The Chelsea forward beat his marker down the left wing in the 20th - having also

threatened earlier down the right - and put in a dangerous low cross that Diakite smothered.

Tall blonde-haired striker Aristide Bance had Burkina Faso’s first real effort in the 25th, but sent it rising high and to the right of Vincent Enyeama’s goal. Bance’s 28th-minute free kick then skipped just wide of the left post as the Burkinabes began to slowly find their feet in their country’s biggest ever game. The teams retreated to cautious play toward the end of the first half, with the sellout crowd at Soccer City responding with a wave around the stadium.

Bakary Kone’s header at the back post from Charles Kabore’s deep free kick seven minutes before halftime was well wide.

Minutes later, Mba’s strike gave the Nigerians a deserved lead as his surging run, juggle and quick-witted volley left Diakite stationary near his goal-line as the ball flew past him.

Brown Ideye hit a low shot across the Burkina Faso goal in the opening minutes of the second half after more work from Moses as Nigeria remained in control.

Burkina Faso was looking to cause a similar upset to Zambia’s victory a year ago, but found its first major final tough going at Johannesburg’s 2010 World Cup final venue, having played all their previous games in Nelspruit. Star player Jonathan Pitroipa, who was cleared to play after having a red card from the semifinals rescinded, failed to make an impact in the game.

Nigeria seemed content with defending its slender lead from around the 70th minute and Burkina Faso began to make some late progress. After Musa Ahmed slipped when through on goal for Nigeria on a counterattack, Sanou sent his blistering low shot from the right inches past the left post for Burkina Faso in one of their best chances for an equalizer. Nigeria then twice went close in the 86th, but couldn’t find the sharp finishing to double the lead. — AP

JOHANNESBURG: Nigeria's Ikechukwu Uche, left, is challenged by Burkina Faso's Saidou Mady Panandetiguiri, right, during their African Cup of Nations final soccer match at Soccer City Stadium in Johannesburg, South Africa, yesterday. —AP

Business

Nissan’s net income at 54.1bn yen in 2012 Q3 Page 23 Ford F-150 marks 65 years of truck leadership Page 25

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2013

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Ernst & Young presents new era of HR and training Page 22

DUBAI: Passengers wait to board an Emirates Airbus A380 aircraft at the new Concourse A of Dubai airport in Dubai yesterday. Dubai’s airport authorities say a purpose-build concourse for Airbus’ A380 aircraft is fully open after weeks of phased-in operations. —AP

Emirates sees new 777 model soon Dubai’s A380 concourse in full operation DUBAI: Emirates expects a revamped version of Boeing’s 777 airliner to be available to customers in six to nine months, the carrier’s president said, adding technical issues affecting Dreamliner jets will not affect progress.

“The engagement on 777X continues. I believe it will be launched and we’ll see that in six to nine months,” Tim Clark told reporters in Dubai yesterday.

Boeing appears to be at least a year away from offering a new version of the 777, Reuters reported in November, quoting people familiar with talks between the aircraft maker and its customers.

Emirates, Boeing’s biggest customer, has said it will need to replace its old 777s from 2017, which is prompting the push for a new version. The airline has been pressing for the 777X to come out sooner rather than later.

The 777 is one of the most successful jets of all time in terms of sales, and airlines are eager for a version that can go farther on less fuel with more passengers.

Clark said problems arising out of a series

of battery-related issues that led to grounding of Boeing’s 50 Dreamliner aircraft in commercial service in the last three to four weeks is likely to worsen in the short-term but he expressed confidence that the company would address it.

“The problem is extremely challenging for the planemaker and its customers but Boeing will sor t it out. It will get worse before getting better. They’ll overcome it,” Clark said. The groundings have cost airlines tens of millions of dollars, with no solution in sight. Emirates does not own any Dreamliners and it has no orders for it.

Clark also said he was not worried about a potential tie-up between Abu Dhabi’s Etihad Airways and India’s Jet Airways . Etihad is close to taking a stake in India’s Jet, the Abu Dhabi airline said last week after reporting a tripling in profits for last year.

“I am more threatened by the fact that we have not got more seats. They are already full and we need some more,” he said. Emirates expects revenue for the fiscal year ending 2012-2013 to grow between 18 percent to 20

percent and expects profits to rise over the previous year, he said, without giving details.

“There will be an increase in net earnings but that will not be without difficulties,” he said, adding that revenue would grow at an annual rate of 18 to 20 percent as it has almost every year for the airline.

Dubai’s airport authorities say a purposebuild concourse for Airbus’ A380 aircraft is fully open after weeks of phased-in operations. The aircraft is a double-decker that seats 525 people and is so large some airports have to be adjusted to accommodate it. The 20-gate concourse, which hosted its inaugural flight on Jan. 2, is part of a wider $7.8 billion expansion plan for Dubai’s international airport, which seeks to become the world’s busiest by 2015.

The new concourse, formally unveiled yesterday, is also a boost for the European Airbus consortium in its rivalry with Boeing Co, whose 787 has been grounded since mid-January as investigators examine possible problems in its lithium ion batteries. — Agencies

‘Currency wars’ back on global agenda PARIS: The strength of the euro, the state of the global monetary system and controversy over a so-called “currency war” will dominate the economic stage at euro-zone and G20 ministerial meetings this week. The currency issue has been revived by Japan and is beginning to cause concern in some quarters in Europe.

France will raise the issue of the strengthening euro at a meeting of euro-zone finance ministers on Monday. Then a meeting of G20 ministers is likely to focus on the big picture in Moscow on Friday and Saturday. Euro-zone finance ministers, meeting as the Eurogroup in Brussels on Monday, hold their first session under their new president Jeroen Dijsselbloem of the Netherlands, against a background of calmer conditions for their debt crisis.

Dijsselbloem has taken over from Jean-Claude Juncker of Luxembourg who chaired the meetings throughout the global financial crisis and then the euro-zone debt turmoil.

This meeting is not expected to take any decisions either on help to debt-stricken Cyprus in the run-up to next week’s presidential election there; or on the creation of a banking union, still the subject of intense negotiations.

The main focus of discussion is likely to be the rise of the euro: French Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici called last week for a debate on the euro’s exchange rate.

France is worried that the strengthening euro makes euro-zone exports look more expensive and could undermine government efforts to improve the competitive position of French industry and services. The Socialist administration is already grappling with weak growth and a big trade deficit.

France wants the euro-zone to arm itself with a policy for the foreign exchange rate. The external value of the euro should not be left to market forces of the moment, French President Francois Hollande has argued. Germany and the European Central Bank however, are keen to nip the debate in the bud, arguing that the European currency is not over-valued.

The ECB has statutory independence in managing mon-

etary policy and its main obligation is to ensure price stability. While the exchange rate is one of many factors affecting inflationary pressures, any targeting of an exchange rate would potentially interfere with the money supply and therefore monetary policy. ECB president Mario Draghi was nevertheless cautious on Thursday about the strength of economic recovery in the euro-zone. Many analysts saw his remarks as an attempt to talk down the rise of the euro. If so, he succeeded: the euro was being quoted at $1.33 at the end of the week having risen a few days earlier to the highest level for 14 months and above $1.37.

Race devaluation The subject is expected to be on the agenda at the end of the week in Moscow, where finance ministers and central bankers from the leading rich and emerging economies, the Group of Twenty (G20), meet with a Russian as president for the first time.

With the economic recovery is struggling to gain momentum globally, Russia has set as the main target in the run-up to a G20 summit in Saint Petersburg on September 5 and 6, the search for new sources of growth.

Rich countries, forced to contain or reduce debt, are injecting huge amounts of money into their economies to support activity.

Leading central banks have used various levers to this end, notably the United States. The Japanese government has just convinced its central bank to go down this road in an attempt to arrest a deflationary spiral that has sapped its economy. But this use of the monetary lever has had the effect of pushing down the yen. That may be a relief for Japanese industrialists, but it is a problem for countries such as Germany, one of the biggest exporting countries in the world.

For some analysts, the main is problem is a lack of coordinated decision-making, running against the spirit of the G20, which is intended to coordinate economic policies around the world. — AFP

DUBAI: Emirates cabin attendants prepare the inside of an Airbus A380 aircraft for a flight at the new Concourse A of Dubai airport in Dubai yesterday. —AP

Emaar rises to new high; Gulf upbeat MIDEAST STOCK MARKETS DUBAI: Dubai’s Emaar Properties surged to a four-year high yesterday as upbeat research reports from international banks bolstered demand from local and foreign investors, while oil price gains helped lift most Middle East markets. Emaar, the Dubai Financial Market’s largest listed company, climbed 5.7 percent to 5.01 dirhams, its highest finish since November 2008.

Since that peak, Dubai property prices have slumped, ravaging the sector and leading to a slew of cancelled or postponed projects.

Emaar has sought to offset this slump by diversifying into retail and hospitality and its shares are up 34 percent in 2013. In a Feb. 4 report, Bank of America Merrill Lynch gave Emaar a buy rating and a target price of 5.3 dirhams, while HSBC’s Feb. 7 report set the developer a target price of 6 dirhams and an overweight rating.

“We continue to be surprised by the strength in the Dubai property market, on the residential, hotel, and retail side,” HSBC wrote. “Supply additions are still a concern but not as much as in the past.” Traders say these reports have buoyed sentiment for Emaar, with property prices also bottoming out and even increasing in some districts after declines of about 60 percent from their 2008 peaks. Investors also seem to have shrugged off Emaar’s 28 percent drop in fourth-quarter profit.

“The market saw a lot of institutional interest in Emaar today, which is mainly due to its potential upside in revenue in 2013 and expectations for high dividend yields,” said Marwan Shurrab, vice-president at Gulfmena Investments. “We’ve been seeing a lot of (analyst) upgrades from major houses and that’s helping raise interest from institutional investors abroad, bringing in

new cash to our market.” Dubai’s index climbed 2.2 percent to its highest finish since Nov. 30, 2009 and up 17.1 percent this year. The benchmark now has a relative strength index reading of 75.2 - a value above 70 typically indicates it is overbought - and it followed a similar pattern last year when an early-year surge petered out from early March. Yet 2013’s rally appears more convincing, said Sebastien Henin, portfolio manager at The National Investor in Abu Dhabi. “It’s very different from last year, which was extremely speculative with movement in penny stocks and high-beta names - this time it’s mainly driven by bluechip stocks,” he said. Oil price gains - Brent crude hit a nine-month high on Friday have underpinned foreign interest in regional equities and stocks from the United Arab Emirates in particular.

“This will be the main theme in the coming days,” said Henin. “We’re starting to see sector rotation towards banks - results were pretty good and their dividend yields are extremely attractive in the current world of low interest rates.”

In Kuwait, late buying helped the main price index rise 0.07 percent, nearing Tuesday’s nine-month peak.

“Speculation is the driving force behind the appreciation in stock prices,” said Naser Al-Nafisi, general manager for Al Joman Center for Economic Consultancy in Kuwait.

The market slumped to an eight-year low in November as Kuwaitis took to the streets to demonstrate against changes to electoral rules that opponents said would benefit the government and sideline critics.

Since then, the political temperature has cooled and shares have rallied, helped by equity buying by statelinked institutions. — Reuters

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2013

BUSINESS

Ernst & Young presents new era of HR and training KUWAIT: Ernst & Young has organized a complimentary seminar for the local HR professionals introducing the new trends in Human Resources and Training Management. The half-day breakfast event was held at Holiday Inn Salmiya and has covered important issues such as talent development, the new direction of corporate training, and measuring the return on investment on corporate training programs. More than 100 HR executives have attended the event.

On this auspicious occasion, Ernst & Young MENA Leader for Financial Accounting and Advisory Solutions and Audit Partner, Nadeem Shafi expressed his views; “We are delighted to offer such a unique and leading edge events to our HR professional community in Kuwait. Ernst & Young has taken this initiative to provide a learning platform on a regular basis for our valuable Human Resource Executives to gain-benefit from our experienced subject matter experts and from other colleagues to exchange their views on best local practices.

We hope that this will help them to make a step change in respect of certain HR practices in their organizations.

Globally HR departments are going through a time of tightening budgets but increasing demands from the executive management. This environment dictates that today’s HR professionals need to expand their traditional administrative focused roles and acquire skills that will enable them to strategically align HR operations with corporate goals. To achieve this, it is vital that HR Managers have the ability to develop staff skills based on company specific competency frameworks, and implement targeted corporate training programs in the most appropriate format (classroom, e-learning, or blended).

Ensuring that training is efficient and effective is also one of the key parameters in the context of the new role assumed by the HR professionals. Setting measurable KPI’s throughout the organization will allow for all training initiatives to be targeting specific outcomes, which can be evaluated and presented in the form of monetary return on investment (ROI).

The three key speakers of the event, Nadia Hashem, Dimitris Tolis and Yiannos Ashiotis with their international but also local experience have addressed the above topics providing global best practices and trends.

C Suisse’s Qatar investment banking head Touma resigns The Zurich-based bank planned to trim its investment banking team in Dubai and move some of its staff to Qatar, as part of efforts to cut costs and focus on niche markets, sources told Reuters in September last year. “I am not sure how well that plan is working, at least on the investment banking side. They haven’t been able to move any of the senior bankers to Doha so far,” a second banking source said late last week.

Other senior bankers have left the bank’s Dubai office in recent months, the three sources said. Mumtaz Kazmi, a director and head of the bank’s mergers and acquisitions business for the Middle East, left the bank late in 2012.

Kazmi, who worked at the bank since 2001, was named M&A head for the region in 2011. Michael Katounas, another Dubaibased investment banking director, who joined Credit Suisse in 2005, has resigned and will leave the bank shortly.

The departures follow that of senior banker Bassam Yammine’s resignation last October. Yammine was co-head of Middle East investment banking and co-chief executive for the bank’s operations in the region.

Last week, the bank said it would cut costs by 4.4 billion francs by the end of 2015, up from a previous 4 billion target, by folding its asset management unit into its

private bank and by moving some jobs offshore. Credit Suisse cut 2,300 jobs in 2012. Weak results at its investment

bank led to the bank missing fourthquar ter estimates, it repor ted last week. — Reuters

Dubai utility DEWA posts 6% profit rise DUBAI: State utility Dubai Electricity and Water Authority reported a 6 percent increase in annual profit for 2012 yesterday, after sales revenues and cash generated from core operations rose.

The monopoly, fully-owned by the government, made a net profit of 4.65 billion dirhams ($1.27 billion) in 2012, up from 4.37 billion dirhams in the prior-year period, its financial statement showed.

Cash generated from operations rose to 7.5 billion dirhams, up from 7.4 billion dirhams in 2011, and sales revenue increased 7 percent over the previous year.

“The healthy cash generation from operations was adequate to fund all capital investment requirements and also to pre-pay some of the loans maturing in future,” a directors’ report,

By Hayder Tawfik

I

New trends on HR community in Kuwait

DUBAI: Credit Suisse’s top investment banker for Qatar has resigned, three banking sources said, in a move that comes as the Swiss bank tries to bolster operations in the Gulf state, home to its second-largest shareholder.

Rami Touma, a director at the bank, has been running Credit Suisse’s Qatar investment banking business since 2007. Touma handled relationships with key clients, primarily the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), the Gulf state’s sovereign wealth fund, one of the banking sources said.

Credit Suisse was not immediately available to comment. The sources, who are familiar with the matter, spoke on condition of anonymity due to sensitivity of the matter.

QIA owns a 6.2-percent stake in Credit Suisse through its investment arm Qatar Holding, making it the second-largest shareholder after Saudi Arabia’s Olayan Group, which has a 6.6 percent stake, according to Reuters data. The Swiss bank’s Qatar operations are headed by Aladdin Hangari, who also runs an asset management venture with the Gulf state’s sovereign wealth fund.

Like its peers, Credit Suisse is cutting back on riskier assets and reducing costs to meet tougher regulations aimed at preventing a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis.

Yen is not weak, it is still super strong

posted on the Nasdaq Dubai bourse, said. “Consequently we reduced interest costs during the year and also brought down the level of debt.”

Net debt at the end of 2012 stood at 20.6 billion dirhams, compared to 22.9 billion dirhams at the end of 2011.

Of the debt figure, 4.23 billion dirhams is due to be repaid this year.

The Dubai government will receive 500 million dirhams from a dividend payment approved by DEWA’s board of directors.

DEWA has picked banks to arrange an Islamic bond, or sukuk, of at least $500 million, sources said last month.

The company’s chief executive officer has said DEWA plans to raise up to $1 billion in sukuk in the first quarter to refinance existing debt and invest in projects. — Reuters

t is about time the Japanese get some relief from a super strong currency they have been struggling with. The yen’s recent plunge against major currencies may help struggling Japanese manufacturing industries being electronics makers, auto makers, electrical and engineering companies turn themselves around after a long term struggle against more devalued currencies such as the Euro, Chinese Yuan and obviously the US dollar. It may help them to trim the massive losses they have been incurring over the years and capture some lost markets.

Companies such as Panasonic, Sharp, Nissan, Honda and Toyota have expressed hope for positive effects resulting from the yen’s recent depreciation, which is set to improve their overseas competitive edge and earnings. Panasonic Managing Director Hideaki Kawai said the company has so far seen only a limited impact from the yen’s fall on its performance, but is expecting more favorable effects in upcoming earnings. This is just one example of companies that has reacted to the recent fall in the Yen. I am sure the rest will follow.

Why now the Yen has started the long-awaited depreciation against most major currencies?

Back in November 2012 the Yen was trading at the 80 levels against the dollar. This was the same level it reached back in March 1995, i.e. 18 years ago. Since then it traded within a range of about 10% on either side. Some credit must be given to corporate Japan as they tried very hard to co-op with very strong Yen. They trimmed the work force, they restructured some of their business units and they shifted some production to cheaper countries like China, Thailand, Vietnam and others. However, all these measures were taken just to keep them afloat as their competitors kept devaluing their currencies against the yen and the dollar. On top of all these the introduction of the Euro back in 2000 has helped the Germans to lock themselves into a weaker Euro rather than the strong DMark. This has left the Japanese to start again the ongoing struggle.

Japanese have the habit of reinventing themselves and keep on fighting but politely and quietly. They adjusted themselves to live with a super strong Yen. Some of them managed very well and kept reporting profits albeit smaller than what they used to report when the Yen was much weaker.

The super strong yen had dampened inflation for years and it created deflation in the process. Consumers in Japan have been living with deflation for years and it has caused them some psychological problem. The kept delaying purchases on the basis that why buy today when you know the price will be lower tomorrow. So, this attitude has become self-fulfilling and it weakened the economy further. So a weaker Yen and a pick-up in inflation might be just the right medicine for an economy that has stuck in the past. I said in my previous article that for the global economy to go back to trend growth the Japanese contribution is a must.

Unfortunately, some countries like Germany and China have been reaping the benefits of their weak currencies without adding much to global growth.

The Yen’s recent fall against the dollar of 10% has been less dramatic than its fall against the euro of 20% and that is where the load noise has been heard. The euro-zone has its own problems to worry about but it is in Germany where the alarm bells will be ringing and deservedly so. I personally think that the recent fall in the Yen is a long term reversal process which started 3 months ago and will go on for the next few years. We cannot predict at what level it should stop but history tells us that once a process starts it take a while to stop. I am saying this because neither the Federal Reserve nor the European Central bank is in a position to intervene in the Foreign Exchange market to stop the Yen from depreciating further. I am sure the hedge fund industry will have a go at testing the authorities.

My advice to investors is to start investing in those Japanese companies which have very big export ratios and have very good competitive quality products and trading at reasonable valuation. Just make sure that you do not miss a long waited rally in the Japanese stock market. — Hayder Tawfik - Executive Vice President of Asset Management, at Dimah Capital- HT@dimah.com.kw

EXCHANGE RATES Commercial Bank of Kuwait US Dollar/KD GB Pound/KD Euro Swiss francs Canadian Dollar Australian DLR Indian rupees Sri Lanka Rupee UAE dirhams Bahraini dinars Jordanian dinar Saudi riyals Omani riyals 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 .4380000 .3780000 .3070000 .2800000 .2880000 .0040000 .0020000 .0762570 .7429510 .3900000 .0720000 .7283310 .0420000 CUSTOMER TRANSFER RATES .28100500 .4406300 .3813010 .3094920 .2821790 .0511270 .0443400 .2901140 .0362420 .2269640 .0029980 .0000000 .0000000 .0000000 .0000000 .0765490 .7457870 .0000000 .0749670 .7302850 .0000000

Al-Muzaini Exchange Co. Japanese Yen Indian Rupees Pakistani Rupees Srilankan Rupees Nepali Rupees Singapore Dollar Hongkong Dollar Bangladesh Taka

ASIAN COUNTRIES 3.048 5.266 2.882 2.231 3.303 230.050 36.425 3.549

.2840000 .4510000 .3870000 .3160000 .2880000 .3000000 .0067500 .0035000 .0770240 .7504180 .4050000 .0760000 .7356510 .0470000 .2831500 .4439230 .3841500 .3118050 .2842870 .0515090 .0446720 .2922820 .0365120 .2286600 .0030200 .0053530 .0022530 .0029030 .0036390 .0771210 .7513600 .4004950 .0755270 .7357410 .0070220

Philippine Peso Thai Baht Irani Riyal - transfer Irani Riyal - cash

UAE Dirhams Bahraini Dinar Egyptian Pound Jordanian Dinar Omani Riyal Qatari Riyal Saudi Riyal

6.934 9.485 0.271 0.273 GCC COUNTRIES 75.350 77.639 733.920 750.500 76.941

Saudi Riyal Qatari Riyal Omani Riyal Bahraini Dinar UAE Dirham

EUROPEAN & AMERICAN COUNTRIES US Dollar Transfer 282.450 Euro 380.880 Sterling Pound 449.660 Canadian dollar 284.730 Turkish lire 159.590 Swiss Franc 311.410 Australian dollar 298.500 US Dollar Buying 281.250 GOLD 311.000 157.000 81.500

SELL DRAFT 295.69 287.83 315.97 386.11 281.85 445.33 3.08 3.570 5.298 2.239 3.327 2.884

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 282.250 285.310 450.050 377.280 301.730 747.250 76.825 77.475 75.230 397.875 42.694 2.227 5.236 2.885 3.540 6.948 692.360 4.125 9.540 3.970 3.320 93.365

SELL CASH 296.000 286.000 313.000 385.80 282.000 445.000 3.750 3.800 5.350 2.520 3.450 2.933

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 295.000 751.280 3.970 285.200 554.800 46.000 51.700 167.800 42.340 382.000 37.120 5.370 0.032 0.161 0.245

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

3.120 400.330 0.191 94.290 46.300 4.340 239.600 1.830 52.200 733.800 3.000 7.210 78.140 75.430 229.710 33.830 2.691 450.400 45.100 311.600 3.400 9.810 198.263 77.020 282.900 1.360

Sterling Pound US Dollar

400.300 0.190 94.290 3.320 238.100

733.620 2.889 6.946 77.710 75.430 229.710 33.830 2.233 448.400 310.100 3.400 9.680 76.920 282.500

GOLD 1,800.110

10 Tola

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

77.000 747.000 46.750 398.000 733.000 78.500 75.400

Dollarco Exchange Co. Ltd

ARAB COUNTRIES Egyptian Pound - Cash 42.450 Egyptian Pound - Transfer 41.977 Yemen Riyal/for 1000 1.318 Tunisian Dinar 182.400 Jordanian Dinar 398.940 Lebanese Lira/for 1000 1.896 Syrian Lier 3.070 Morocco Dirham 34.445

20 Gram 10 Gram 5 Gram

76.81 750.47 41.98 401.54 733.54 77.83 75.37

TRAVELLER’S CHEQUE 448.400 282.500

Al Mulla Exchange

SELLDRAFT 293.500 751.280 3.553 283.700

229.700 42.014 380.500 36.970 5.268 0.031

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) 281.800 385.250 446.400 285.550 3.060 5.265 41.955 2.231 3.550 6.930 2.880 750.650 76.700 75.300

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2013

BUSINESS

Indonesia’s economy is still resilient KCIC WEEKLY ASIA ANALYSIS KUWAIT: Indonesia’s economic growth rate was resilient in the fourth quarter. It eased slightly from 6.2% year-on-year (YoY) to 6.1%. The biggest drag on growth was the strong rebound in imports, which grew 14.5% from the third quarter.

However, this is a sign that the domestic economy is still robust, as private consumption and investments continue to drive the economy. For instance, investments grew sequentially for the third quarter in a row, and auto sales set a record of 1 million vehicles in 2012. This is a clear sign of the transformation of the economy, as higher internal demand more than offset falling exports, which have been weakening throughout 2012. The fall in export growth numbers was already expected at the beginning of the year due to industrial policy measures. Indonesia, whose main exports are commodities, imposed export taxes on raw materials such as unprocessed metal ores with the goal of forcing its industry to move up on the supply chain. With commodity prices overall lower than in 2011, and global demand still weak, exports of the country’s main materials steeply fell. However, exports showed signs of a gradual recovery in the fourth quarter, as they grew

6.9% from the previous quarter.

Interest rates have been set at a historical low, at 5.75% since last year, and this has helped prop up domestic consumption and private investments. Accordingly, credit to the private sector is still growing above 20% YoY. Given the current global environment, the current growth levels are relatively high and resilient, especially as the economy is undergoing a structural shift. However, one of the main risks for this year is inflation, which stood at 4.6% in January, up from 4.3% the previous month.

Real GDP is a measure of the economic output or of the size of the economy adjusted for inflation or deflation. It is the sum of the values of all final goods and services produced by that country or region over a given time period. The values depend on the quantities (volume) of the goods produced and their prices. Real GDP is a measure that holds prices constant by using a given year’s value (the base date) for all items and services. Then these values are used to calculate GDP for years prior to the base year and subsequent years.

GDP can be measured in several ways, and Statistics Indonesia, the government body responsible for national accounts data, publishes GDP by expenditure and sector

output. The graph illustrates the expenditure breakdown of GDP, which consists of private consumption, government expenditure, fixed capital investments, exports and imports. Private consumption is a strong driver of growth in the domesticoriented nation, but exports have traditionally contributed more to GDP growth.

Growth is likely to remain above 6% in 2013. While the government is expect-

ed to continue to enforce structural reforms this year, we still expect some strong investment inflows in the growing economy. A ban on all raw materials is coming up in 2014, and major companies are already setting up mines and processing plants in order to benefit from the lack of competitiveness in the processing industry. The rising minimum wage will also support the growing mid-

Nissan’s net income at 54.1bn yen in 2012 Q3 DUBAI: Nissan Motor Co, Ltd, announced financial results for the third quarter of fiscal year 2012, ending March 31, 2013, as well as for the first nine months.

In the third quarter (October-December 2012), the consolidated net income after taxes totalled 54.1 billion yen ($670 million, euro 510 million), a year-on-year decline of 34.6%. Third quarter net revenue was 2.2084 trillion yen ($27.23 billion, euro 21.01 billion), down 5.3% year-on-year. Nissan reported an operating profit of 62.1 billion yen ($770 million, euro 590 million), down 47.4% compared to the same period in FY2011, and an operating profit margin of 2.8%. Ordinary profit was 89.0 billion yen ($1.10 billion, euro 850 million).

Nissan sold 1.159 million vehicles worldwide in the October-December quarter, a 3.8% decrease

compared to the prior year. “Nissan’s performance in the third quarter did not meet our expectations. This was primarily the result of difficult operating conditions in Europe for the entire auto industry, in China for Japanese automakers, and in the US for Nissan,” said Nissan President and CEO Carlos Ghosn. “We have taken action to reignite our sales momentum and growth under the Nissan Power 88 business plan. Looking forward, we have important vehicle launches. We anticipate further yen correction. We have made swift organizational changes to help stimulate our business performance. And we remain confident that we will meet our full-year outlook.”

For the nine months ending December 31st, 2012, Nissan reported consolidated net revenues of 6.7552 trillion yen ($84.44 billion, euro 66.23 billion) and an operating profit of 349.2 billion

yen ($4.37 billion, euro 3.42 billion), which equates to an operating margin of 5.2%. Ordinary profit totalled 364.6 billion yen ($4.56 billion, euro 3.57 billion) while net income came to 232.4 billion yen ($2.91 billion, euro 2.28 billion).

For the April-December 2012 period, Nissan sales increased 6.0% year-on-year to reach 3.635 million units. Nissan’s forecast for the full fiscal year ending March 31, 2013, is unchanged.

Although the operating environment remains challenging, positive contributions from yen correction, and disciplined cost management within the company will enable a renewed focus on achieving robust operating profit. Nissan has forecast full fiscal year operating profit outlook of 575 billion yen ($7.21 billion, euro 5.65 billion) and net income of 320 billion yen ($4.02 billion, euro 3.14 billion).

Swiss private banking sector faces revolution

KANDAHAR: An elderly Afghan man sells traditional drums in Kandahar. Over a third of Afghans are living in abject poverty, as those in power are more concerned about addressing their vested interests rather than the basic needs of the population, a UN report said. — AFP

Dutch ask should older workers earn less?

THE HAGUE: A French multinational’s suggestion in the Netherlands to ask older workers to accept pay cuts as a cost-cutting measure has touched a raw nerve as the Dutch economy faces a slowdown and rising unemployment.

Unions see the idea doing away with the principle of paying older workers more for their experience as an attack on a fundamental right, while employers see it as a solution to avoid layoffs in a crisis-hit economy.

The debate has raged in the Netherlands since French IT giant Capgemini’s Dutch general manager, Jeroen Versteeg, said he was looking at “calibrating” 5,000 Dutch-based employees to see if salaries matched current market value and productivity. “Previously, this branch has always done well, with skyrocketing salaries to match,” Versteeg told the Financieele Dagblad (FD) daily last month.

“But the market has changed and we have to bring ourselves in line with it.” Versteeg said the relentless economic crisis raging in Europe since 2008 has changed the situation in the sector dramatically. Versteeg said in some cases, specialist fees in the IT market have dropped by as much as half over the last four years.

Consequently, newspaper reports said Capgemini will ask some 400 workers who the company thinks might be earning too much, to take voluntary salary cuts of up to 10 percent.

The company denies it’s about age, but spokeswoman Madelon Kaspers said: “A person aged 23 and at the start of a career is not likely to have a salary imbalance.”

“With a person aged 35 or 45, it may well be the case. It’s not about age, but about the balance between market value and reward.”

Kaspers said Capgemini saw the request for a voluntary pay cut as an alternative to mass job losses, which it believed to be “socially undesirable”.

Under Dutch law, a company may not force workers to accept lower salaries and those who refuse to take a voluntary cut will be offered training to broaden their skills base, Kaspers said. But, she added, “in the current financial situation it’s not possible to guarantee jobs.”

In the Netherlands-as well as in France and Belgium-employees have always earned more as they grow older and Dutch workers see the principle of a salary increasing with age and experience as sacrosanct. But with ageing workforces around much of the world, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development warned agelinked pay scales are becoming costlier.

“Seniority-pay arrangements probably make less economic sense for employers today than they did in the past,” the OECD noted in a report. In 1966, half of employees in industrialized nations were under 35 and the average age was 34. By 2011 that figure had dropped to just over a third, with the average age climbing to 40 years. By 2050, the average age will stand at 42.

“It is not possible for employers to pay a growing number of older workers more than their worth in productivity terms when there is a declining number of younger workers who are paid less than their productivity,” the OECD report pointed out.

A recent study by three Dutch academics found that 75 percent of the country’s employers expect the wage-productivity gap to increase further as the workforce ages. —AFP

GENEVA: The specter of revolution is stalking the world of Swiss private banking, as two paragons of discretion, Pictet and Lombard Odier, prepare to open their books.

The Geneva-based operations, founded over 200 years ago, have both decided to drop their special statutes and transform themselves into banks almost like any other.

The move is seen as part of a drive to improve transparency and protect the sector from risks associated with scandals such as the Madoff case in the United States, analysts say.

Swiss private banks operate under rules which make the wealthy managing partners personally responsible for the money they manage. In other words, if the bank gets into trouble, the managing partners can lose all their assets, not just those they have invested in the operation.

Drawn from an elite social circle of Geneva Protestantsthe city was the hub of the Reformation five centuries ago-the private bankers have over the centuries refreshed their ranks by tapping wealthy, likeminded members from their own community.

That tradition of unlimited responsibility for those who run private banks has long been seen as a commercial argument for rich customers who want the comfort such a guarantee provides.

Not being listed on the stock exchange, they do not have to publish their results, meaning their business is the preserve of a closed circle of clients. But from next year, both Pictet and Lombard Odier are to recast themselves as a “corporate partnership”, a hybrid status that will make it easier to compare them with fully-listed Swiss players such as Credit Suisse and UBS. Similar to the “limited company” structure in the British Isles-with its well-known “Ltd.” label-the structure will enable the banks to tap the investment market while maintaining the managing partners’ responsibility.

According to a Pictet spokesman, neither bank will be publicly-listed, and only private investors are to be tapped for capital.

After the reform is in place, the managing partners will only risk the funds they have invested in the bank, rather than having to put all of their personal assets on the line.

“This legal structure allows us to maintain the benefits of a private partnership, such as our independence, strict sense of responsibilities and our long-term management outlook while ensuring that our interests remain aligned with those of our clients,” Patrick Odier, senior partner of Lombard Odier, said in a statement. “The Lombard Odier Group will continue to be distinguished by its partnership structure, which offers a personal and lasting commitment on behalf of all of the partners to the management of the group,” he added.

Pictet described the change as a logical step. “Over the past 20 years the Pictet Group has experienced an internationalization and, in addition to its traditional private banking business, a major diversification of its activities, notably with the growth of institutional asset management, mutual fund distribution and asset services,” a company statement said.

According to Luc Thevenoz, a law professor at the University of Geneva, a swathe of financial sector scandals have put the focus on the personal risks of the private bankers’ profession. The high-profile Bernard Madoff fraud case in the United States was a prime example. “US liquidators demanded 150 million Swiss francs from Pictet,” he told the Swiss daily Le Temps. “The price for winning legal protection is transparency, as they will now have to publish their accounts,” he added. —AFP

dle class and drive consumption.

The main risk is the rising inflation, exacerbated by the weakening currency (already fell 8% YoY ) which makes imports more expensive. On the domestic side, the increased minimum wage will also fuel core inflation. This is why we think Bank Indonesia could raise the interest rate. However it is unlikely that it be a large rise given growth will still be their main priority as the nation becomes less reliant on commodity exports.

In the short term, the minimum wage should support consumption, and the prospective ban should boost investment as it encourages firms to build smelters. The main risk will be inflation in 2013. In the medium term, if the ban gets implemented in 2014, the main question will be whether Indonesia can carry on growing at 6% levels without its commodity export industry. However, if not plausible, we expect the government to delay the ban beyond 2014.

Overall, our outlook for Indonesia is very positive, both for the short and medium term, given our view that reforms won’t hamper growth.-Prepared by Camille Accad, economist at KCIC.

CBK holds extraordinary general meeting Feb 10 KUWAIT: Fowzi Abdulmohsen Al-Ateeqi, General Manager of Investments Secretar y to the Board and official spokesman of Commercial Bank of Kuwait said that the extraordinary general meeting of the bank was held on 10/2/2013 with 83.78% presence of shareholders representing 1,065,642,337 shares of the original 1,272,022,346 shares comprising the share capital of Commercial Bank of Kuwait. The shareholders approved the amendment of Item (13) of the Bank’s Memorandum of Association, namely to increase the number of the Bank’s board of directors from (7) members to (10) members. As such, the text of Item 13 of the Bank’s Memorandum of Association will read as follows: “The Company shall be administered by a Board of Directors comprising at least ten members elected in general meeting by secret ballot from amongst its members, having due regard to the provisions of related Articles of the Decree Law No. 25/2012. The Company’s General Meeting may also increase the number of the Board Members as deemed appropriate for the interest of the Company along with adhering to the instructions issued by the regulators. If an elected member declines he must inform the Board of Directors in writing within seven days from the date of his election, otherwise he shall assume all the obligations of membership as set out in the Law”.

Al-Ateeqi explained that the extraordinary general meeting was held with the objective of obtaining the shareholders’

approval to increase the number of the Bank’s Board of Directors from seven members to ten members so as to allow the Board of Directors form the adequate numbers of board related committees within

Fowzi Abdulmohsen Al-Ateeqi the requirements of sound corporate governance. “Subsequent to the approval of the shareholders on the amendment of the above Item and after obtaining the approvals of the regulators and completing the required procedures as per the Central Bank of Kuwait’s instructions in this regard, the Bank will invite for election to select additional nominees for the board membership”, added Al-Ateeqi.

US tax rules sour life for Americans abroad GENEVA: Scott Schmith is a patriot and a US military veteran but he is no longer a US citizen: Sick of complex tax rules making his life in Switzerland miserable he recently handed back his passport.

“It was a pretty big decision and there was a bit of anxiety,” said the 50-year-old photographer who served in the 1990-91 Gulf war and has been living in Switzerland since 1993.

But once he received his Swiss passport and handed back his US one last September, “it was like a load of weight off my shoulders.”

Schmith is one of a growing number of American expats who are opting to give up their citizenship rather than deal with the increasing difficulties imposed on them by US tax authorities, observers say.

John, a 60-year-old business strategy specialist who asked that his last name not be used, told AFP he had decided to give up his US passport after losing sleep for years over the intricate tax filing requirements Washington places on all US citizens, regardless of where they live in the world and where they make their money. When the United States recently began pushing through regulations aimed at fighting offshore tax evasion, the implications for him-a “squeaky-clean” lawabiding citizen-became too overwhelming, he said.

“I just got more and more anxious about my ability to protect myself and my family from the administrative overhead of the US government,” said John, who has been based in Switzerland since 2002. Six European countries, including Switzerland, have recently agreed to comply with the 2010 US Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), requiring banks to report all holdings by their US clients to the Internal Revenue Service.

“Offshore tax evasion costs the US jobs and billions of dollars each year, and it puts an unfair burden on the average American taxpayer to make up the difference,” Senator Max Baucus, who chairs the Senate Finance Committee and sponsored the legislation, told the New York Times last year to explain why FATCA was needed.

Jackie Bugnion, a Geneva-based tax expert working for the American Citizens Abroad lobby group, however told AFP that while the aim in theory is to “go after the wealthy resident in the United States who is hiding money overseas,” only a small minority of those affected fall into that category.

An estimated four to seven million Americans live outside the country, ranging from US military personnel, diplomats and others on temporary assignments, to so-called “accidental” Americans who happened to be born in the United States to foreign parents and dual citizens who may have lived most or all of their lives abroad.

According to observers, most of these people don’t owe any taxes to the United States, but they still have to go through the process of filing complex IRS returns each year. “Over the past 10 years, I have paid more to tax preparers than I have in tax,” John said, insisting his decision to give up his US passport had nothing to do with the amount of tax he was being asked to pay, but rather the filing burden and fear of penalties if he messed up. The United States is the only country in the world besides Eritrea that taxes based on citizenship rather than on residence or the source of revenue, Bugnion said.

This also means that anyone who happens to have a US passport falls under the new FATCA rules, regardless of their background or fortune.

Fearing the workload of ensuring compliance with FATCA and especially the consequences if they slip up, “banks have been actively eliminating American clients,” Bugnion said, lamenting that Americans often “can no longer get mortgages, and are being told their bank don’t want their business.” While this is happening all over the world, Americans are especially feeling the heat in Switzerland-the main target of a US campaign to track down institutions and individual bankers who help US clients open secret accounts overseas.

“Switzerland is the canary in the coalmine on this issue,” Bugnion said. Switzerland’s largest bank UBS, for instance sent out letters to all its American clients late last year telling them to prove compliance with US tax rules or to take their business elsewhere. That letter came as a shock to many, Bugnion said, adding that she had been receiving desperate calls from people who had spent their entire careers abroad and had never realized before they were supposed to file US tax returns.

“Suddenly they realize their entire life’s savings could be at risk,” she said. In addition to making it difficult for Americans to simply open bank accounts abroad, the US tax rules also trip up US citizens’ attempts to do business in other countries, observers say. —AFP

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2013

BUSINESS

Egypt turmoil slows Euro bank divestments DUBAI: Go back a few months and the disposal of Egyptian assets seemed like a good option for European banks desperate to raise funds by selling non-core operations.

Flash forward and Egypt’s deteriorating political situation, together with the resultant sharp drop in its currency, threaten to hamper further selloffs, with international banks unwilling to accept the fire-sale prices that are increasingly on offer. For investment bankers on the hunt for fees, it threatens to be a lengthy wait for dealmaking to revive. And last year’s flurry of activity may start to look like no more than a blip.

“People who sold last year appear a lot

smarter now than those who waited,” said one financial institutions group banker, asking not to be quoted because of the sensitivity of his position advising clients. “Clearly, the current situation in Egypt does not look like it would lure even the most bullish of investors,” the banker said. “Clients are not asking about buying opportunities now but want to know how (much) worse the situation may get.”

European banks, under pressure to cut costs and bolster their capital levels in the post-credit crunch regulatory clampdown, have been looking to sell Egyptian operations to regional banks more familiar with the country’s politics and bullish on its long-term

prospects.

French banks Societe Generale and larger rival BNP Paribas agreed to sell their banking arms in Egypt to Qatar National Bank and Dubai’s Emirates NBD respectively in 2012.

Some had expected other deals to follow.

Those at the top of the list were France’s Credit Agricole, which holds a 61 percent stake in Credit Agricole Egypt, and Italy’s Intesa Sanpaolo, which has a 70 percent stake in Bank of Alexandria. But neither has yet raised a “for sale” sign. Intesa Sanpaolo Chief Executive Enrico Cucchiani said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, two weeks ago:

“Egypt is a country to be monitored.

However at the moment Bank of Alexandria is having positive results. We look at it carefully.”

A Credit Agricole spokeswoman in Paris declined comment.

Already at least one mooted deal has not gone ahead. Piraeus Bank, Greece’s fifthlargest lender by market value, halted the sale of its Egyptian subsidiary valued at more than $200 million in July last year. And a dramatic worsening of Egypt’s political situation in recent weeks has hurt investor sentiment, making disposals increasingly difficult, bankers say.

Protests marking the second anniversary of the uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak have led to nearly 60 deaths since Jan. 25, prompting the head of the army to warn that the state was on the verge of collapse if immediate action was not taken. “The government has not done as well as most expected and the transition to democracy has not been smooth,” Jaap Meijer, an equity research director at Dubai-based Arqaam Capital, said.

Meanwhile, the Egyptian pound has dropped sharply and the central bank stepped in this week with measures to protect the currency. The currency’s weakness creates uncertainties for any acquisitions in Egypt. “In the short term, a drop in the value of the pound makes it cheaper for the buyer, especially on the public equities side,” said one Egyptian banking source, speaking on condition of anonymity. “But if the situation continues and the pound continues to fall, then it impacts your profitability in the long-term. You have to view it from either side.”

Another potential concern for European banks is the shrinking pool of potential regional buyers.

Qatar National Bank for instance has been on an acquisition drive but now has its sights set on Turkey, having paid $2.2 billion for the majority stake in Societe Generale Egypt.

Emirates NBD probably has its hands full after shelling out $500 million for BNP’s business in Egypt, a deal which marks a major

strategy shift for the bank which has been hard hit by exposure to Dubai’s state entities.

Other regional banks, such as Dubai’s Mashreq, Morocco’s Attijariwafabank and Lebanon’s Audi Bank , are keen on gaining exposure to Egypt, bankers say, but most are looking for mid-sized transactions and not big-ticket ones.

All three looked at BNP’s business and Attijari hired UBS as an advisor before losing out to ENBD, a Dubai-based banking source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“Yes, there are two to three potential buyers, but it’s not like they need to buy in the country and they are really cautious on valuation,” the banker said.

Another barrier to deals is the frequently significant valuation discrepancy that separates buyers and sellers of Egyptian assets.

“Prior to the revolution, you would not see any banking deals in Egypt at less than three times book (value). There have been bids at one time book for some of these assets,” the Dubaibased banker said, referring to a common valuation measure for banks.

“Yes, valuations have fallen, but people are looking at the political situation and saying, ‘we want it to be even cheaper’.”

BNP sold its business in Egypt at 1.6 times book value, while the Qatari purchase of SocGen assets was at nearly 2 times.

National Bank of Abu Dhabi would be keen to buy the Egyptian units of French banks, its chief executive said in July, but it has been relying more on organic growth.

International banks, on the other hand, are staying away as they still consider the risks to be not worth taking. Standard Chartered for example held talks with Piraeus for its Egyptian business in 2011 but backed out as the political situation worsened.

“The recent bout of instability is but a reminder that the transition is rocky,” said Rachel Zeimba, a senior analyst at Roubini Global Economics in London. “And that political, policy and regulatory risk is stifling the economy.” —Reuters

Commodities Weekly Updates

Brent’s rise towards $120 raises new growth worries

By Ole Hansen KUWAIT: Commodities were generally lower during the past week as the strong January rally gave way to an element of caution as the need for consolidation had been building.

Economic data, especially from China, continue to support the growth story but the re-emergence of political risk associated with Spain’s potential political scandal and upcoming Italian election together with the talk of a currency war helped slow progress.

On the issue of currency war, attention turned to the ECB President and his attitude to the current strength of the euro, especially against the yen. At his bi-weekly press conference, Mario Draghi did not disappoint as he managed to send the euro lower by saying that a strong euro could lead to lower inflation which the market interpreted could result in lower rates and less support for the euro.

The stronger dollar helped trigger some additional profit-taking in commodities with Brent crude especially being one of the exceptions. Geopolitical worries continued to support the global oil benchmark as focus on the tensions between Iran and the West will not go away. Gold traders, meanwhile, took comfort in the fact that a key support level withstood any downside selling attempts over several days. The spread between high and low quality coffee narrowed to a four-year low as they went their separate ways due to a monster Arabica crop in Brazil and Columbia pressuring its price while demand for the cheaper blend supported Robusta. Platinum reached its highest level since September 2011 on supply concerns while sugar fell to near its lowest since August 2010 as a global supply glut is likely to occur for a third year in a row.

Brent continues higher Brent crude oil, which has rallied nonstop over the last three weeks, reached and breached the September high at $117.95/barrel on a wave of continued investor buying as momentum remained strong.

The early-2013 rally (a copy of what happened in the previous two years) has mainly been led by expectations of increased demand as the global economy puts in a tentative recovery, particularly the world’s two largest consumers - the US and China.

In addition, the heightened geopolitical risk because of the situation in Syria and Iran means that the direction of least resistance has so far been up. A continued rally towards $120 /barrel once again carries the risk of upsetting the rising growth expectations and verbal intervention from either the IEA or Saudi Arabia could soon be heard.

WTI crude oil failed to keep up with the rally in Brent crude as bottlenecks in the domestic transportation system still prohibit oil from flowing freely from the producing regions, both in the US and Canada.

The focus here is obviously Cushing in Oklahoma which, despite seeing a small reduction in storage levels this week, continues to have a large overhang of supply.

This is preventing WTI crude, which is deliv-

ered into Cushing, from following Brent crude higher and as a consequence the discount to Brent crude has risen back to almost 22 dollars from a recent low at just 15 dollars. The fact that geopolitical risk is primarily priced into Brent crude because of its role as global benchmark further underscores WTI’s underperformance.

Saudi Arabia has been cutting production over the last couple of months, most likely in response to reduced domestic demand. This is being viewed by many as bullish for oil prices as less supply could help drive the price of oil even higher.

However, with Saudi Arabia’s stated preference for a price closer to 100 dollars per barrel rather than the $120/barrel we are now approaching, we believe that the Kingdom’s response to demand and its increase in spare capacity will help as buffers against potential supply disruptions elsewhere.

The biggest near-term threat to Brent crude’s continued move higher is the speculative community itself which has accumulated a record net-long position. This position, measured as a percentage of total open interest, is approaching levels which both in 2011 and 2012 proved unsustainable and led to major corrections.

Momentum on stock markets has also been slowing and with the potential trouble brewing in Southern Europe, the question is how much further this rally will go before the urge to take some profit exceeds hopes for additional gains.

Technically WTI crude has formed support at $95/barrel while a mini correction in Brent crude was met with support at $115/barrel before it continued its ascent, Brent now has the potential of challenging the psychological level of $120/barrel.

Gold range bound Gold has remained range bound for the past couple of weeks, not swaying too far away from its 200-day moving average, as seen in the chart below.

The down trend, which has existed for four months, is currently offering resistance at 1690 dollars per ounce and this is the level which needs to be breached before any uptrend can resume. Several headwinds need to be negotiated for this to happen, such as lack of inflationary pressures despite massive amounts of monetary stimulus being applied. Fears of quantitative easing in the US being scaled back earlier than expected also need to be allayed for an uptrend to resume. On a, positive note, we have seen gold remain stable despite the dollar rally which followed Mario Draghi’s comments on Thursday and this points towards continued resilience among investors looking to buy on dips.

Technically, gold has now stayed within the boundaries determined by its 55-day and 200-day moving averages for eight days.

This raises the likelihood of a price extension once that range, which is currently between 1664 and 1681, gets broken. As the markets in China and across the Far East close down for their Lunar New Year celebrations, activity over the coming week will be much reduced leaving the gold and other markets exposed to choppy price action. A break out of the above mentioned range should trigger a move to 1690 ahead of 1710 or down to 1652 ahead of 1626. — Saxo Bank

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2013

BUSINESS

Ford F-150 marks 65 years of truck leadership America’s best-selling truck shows its might with 150% growth in GCC DUBAI: The Ford F-150 trucks registered an impressive 150 per cent increase in sales across the GCC in 2012, owed to the continuously growing popularity of the truck in the region.

Backed by a strong truck heritage since 1948, the Ford F-150 joins the ranks of more than 32 million trucks which have proudly worn the F-Series badge. As Ford’s tough trucks celebrate their 65th anniversary, these legends also mark another important milestone having been the best-selling pickups for 36 consecutive years, and America’s overall bestselling vehicle for 31 years.

Building on this sterling performance, Ford recently unveiled the Ford Atlas Concept, a bold vision for the future of pickups which already collected its first accolade as Autoweek Magazine’s Most Significant Vehicle at the 2013 North American International Auto Show (NAIAS).

Ford Atlas’s breakthrough features include active aerodynamic elements in the grille, front air dam and wheels that reduce wind resistance to save gas. Truckspecific features that improve capability, durability and productivity include a Dual-Purpose Tailgate Step that integrates with a roof cradle to become a rack for long objects like ladders, Hidden Cargo Ramps to load ATVs and motorcycles, Trailer Backup Assist to enable accurate reversing with a trailer via the simple twist of a knob, and more.

“Ford clearly sets the benchmark in

US S&P suit points to ratings industry role in turmoil NEW YORK: The US government’s $5 billion lawsuit against Standard & Poor’s for exaggerating mortgage bond ratings in 2007 has cast a pall over the ratings industry and exposed its role in the financial crisis. S&P competitors Moody’s and Fitch find themselves potentially facing penalties after the Justice Department alleged S&P knowingly kept ratings on high-risk mortgage securities high in order to win revenues from issuers.

The Justice Department has not said whether it has the other two ratings agencies in its sights, but Moody’s spent much of the week fending off questions about whether it faces similar action following the S&P suit.

The New York Attorney General has meanwhile launched an investigation into all three companies over their ratings prior to the 2008 crisis, sources close to the matter told AFP. S&P parent McGraw-Hill’s shares plunged 27 percent after the suit was filed, and Moody’s dropped 22 percent for the week, underscoring the market’s worry that the crackdown on S&P may be just the tip of the iceberg.

“Investors have been selling those stocks aggressively this week and keep doing so out of fear that the situation with the Department of Justice could get a lot worse in the future,” said Wedbush Securities analyst Michael James.

“They think there is probably more bad news to come.” The government’s case argues that S&P knowingly placed triple-A ratings on billions of dollars worth of mortgage-based financial securities even as the US housing market collapsed, misrepresenting their true credit risk.

Many of the top-rated issues cited in the suit were in default within one year or less.

S&P exaggerated the ratings in part to please clients and keep issuer revenues high, the suit alleges.

US Attorney General Eric Holder called S&P’s conduct “egregious,” saying “it goes to the very heart of the recent financial crisis.” S&P has dismissed the lawsuit as “meritless” and said it plans to vigorously contest the claims. The litigation, which reportedly came after settlement talks failed, poses a huge financial challenge to S&P and McGraw-Hill.

Justice Department officials said they intend to press for at least $5 billion in civil penalties to match the losses suffered by investors on the securities. S&P is also being sued by 13 states, adding to the potential damages.

The attorney general of California cited two large institutional investors, the California Public Employees Retirement System and the California State Teachers Retirement System, which lost approximately $1 billion on the high-rated mortgage bonds. A California statement said the suit claims triple damages. To put those figures in context, McGraw-Hill earned $911 million in all of 2011.

Many were wondering if or when the government will take action against Moody’s. A multi-billion dollar suit could devastate that company as well: on Friday Moody’s reported 2012 earnings of $690 million. Jacob Frenkel, a former federal criminal prosecutor now in private practice with Shulman Rogers, said S&P could possibly settle the case in the range of “hundreds of millions of dollars.”

But he said that the terms of a settlement-what the company admits to, in addition to paying fines-are crucial. A key question concerns whether the government insists on S&P admitting liability, which could expose the firm to additional suits by investors in the securities it rated, Frenkel said.

Charles Elson, director of the John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance, thinks the government could have a hard time proving its case against S&P. “Unless you can show the opinion was reached in an intentionally reckless way, it’s pretty hard to prove,” Elson said. Frenkel said the language in the complaint suggests the government could have pursued a criminal case against S&P. That would raise the stakes: the 2002 US criminal conviction of former accounting giant Arthur Andersen in the aftermath of the Enron scandal eventually led to the firm’s demise.

But Frenkel said the government is mainly focused on “integrity in the ratings process.” “The government would prefer to win a civil case than lose a criminal case,” he said, “particularly where there is a concern about vaporizing the company.” — AFP

truck leadership with our Built Ford Tough platform, specifically for the F-150 marque,” said Paul Anderson, Ford Middle East’s Marketing director. “GCC customers are increasingly learning about the features that make the F-150 the uncontested leader in its category, with best in class power, best in class towing capability and best in class payload. And that’s not all, the F-150 today features various classexclusive technologies and features that stamp its leadership as the must have truck.”

Ford also leads the luxury truck segment. In 1999, the company introduced the special-edition 2000 Harley-Davidson F-150. In 2001, the first King Ranch F-150

arrived. The 2009 F-150 took truck luxury to new heights with the Platinum model.

And for 2013, Ford is launching an improved and refined version with a new statement on pickup luxury for 2013 - the F-150 Limited.

Refined exterior design The 2013 Ford F-150 Limited design combines unique 22-inch polished aluminum wheels and center caps with a monochromatic exterior theme available in three handsome hues - Ruby Red Metallic Tinted Clearcoat, Tuxedo Black Metallic and White Platinum Metallic TriCoat. The theme carries through the F150 Limited exterior design with body-

color front and rear bumpers, front bumper valance, sideview mirror caps, wheel-lip molding, upper fascia and grille surround. Segment-first HID headlamps provide a signature look while delivering two and a half times more light than conventional halogen lamps. Lamp detailing even incorporates F-150 insignias. Jewellike chrome highlights the bold three-bar grille, tie-down hooks lining the cargo box, the single tip of the tuned exhaust and the tow hooks on 4x4 variants. “LIMITED” dimensional lettering accents the box sides.

F-150 Limited is available exclusively with a SuperCrew four-door cab configuration.

Inside Limited Leather-trimmed seats take luxury and style to new heights, also offering cooling and heating with memory functionality to remember seating preferences for two different drivers. Head restraints are fourway-adjustable.

Aluminum trims the center panel and console, lending a sophisticated yet technical touch that complements the piano black accents. Ambient lighting can shift the mood of the F-150 Limited interior, offering five accent colors.

A standard moonroof provides the upward view, while the rear view camera aids maneuvering visibility. A power-sliding rear window features privacy tint and defrost functionality. Connectivity comes standard with MyFord Touch powered by SYNC.

Limited offers a unique gauge cluster design with a 4.2-inch driver-programmable productivity screen that can be customised to monitor various vehicle systems. The new series level also includes a media hub with USB ports, an SD-card reader and RCA video input jacks. A powerful Sony(r) Audio System is standard.

Built Ford Tough F-150 Limited brings uncompromised capability for entrepreneurial and lifestyle pursuits with an electronic six-speed automatic transmission with tow/haul mode, trailer tow package, trailer brake controller, Reverse Sensing System and power-deployable running boards.

PowerFold side mirrors keep warm and dry in inclement weather and help ensure driver visibility with heated glass, memory position functionality, puddle lamps, turn signals and self-dimming actuation.

F-150 Limited is powered by Ford’s 6.2L V8 engine offering: * Best in Class 411 horsepower at 5,500 rpm. * Best in Class 434 lb.-ft. of torque at 4,500 rpm. * Best in Class towing capacity of 11,300 pounds.

To complement that power, sporttuned dampers are fitted front and rear for confidence-inspiring road dynamics.

The F-150 is one of only three trucks to get the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety’s “Top Safety Pick” ranking.

GCC bourse upbeat as Global concerns ease KAMCO GCC Equity Markets Overview KUWAIT: Improved global financial market conditions, intensified central bank intervention through large-scale asset-purchase programs, prolonged global liquidity injection and renewed pursuit of highyielding assets helped ease concerns of another global economic slowdown.

Increasing stabilization of financial market conditions in Europe together with less fiscal-related tension in US markets and on-going signs of economic recovery in China have contributed to a moderation in risk aversion globally. As a result, investors’ risk appetite in the GCC replenished on hopes that a recovery in economies that have been experiencing a slowdown after the global financial crisis may show signs of improvement in the near future. All combined, this pushed GCC equity markets to record highs in what seems to be a strong and positive beginning for 2013.

GCC Bourses began 2013 on the upside with all markets recording healthy gains during January 2013. Dubai Financial Market was the best performer for the month adding 16.34% following a solid year 2012 which witnessed the DFM General Index leading the GCC Bourses benchmarks with an annual return of 20%.

Recovery in the property market, acceleration in business activities driven by tourism and increasing trade volume, along with the benefits of the Arab spring that triggered a flow of capital to Dubai are the major catalyst that are driving DFM. Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange is benefiting from the government’s massive capital spending plan to develop the emirate by investing in infrastructure and real estate projects along with robust oil prices and healthy corporate profits; ADX General Index followed with a monthly gain of 9.54% compared to 9.52% gain in full year 2012.

Qatar Exchange, TADAWUL and Kuwait Stock Exchange also recorded corresponding healthy gains of 4.38%, 3.56% and 3.48%, respectively during January-13 driven by the positive market sentiment, improvement in business environment, healthy corporate earnings and governments’ backup of key economic sectors and capital spending.

During January, the combined market capitalization of the 7 GCC bourses added $29.7bn to record $792.5bn driven by the gains witnessed by TADAWUL and the UAE markets which mounted to $10.7bn and $11.2bn, respectively. Abu Dhabi and Dubai witnessed a surge in market performance during the month on clear signs that both economies are witnessing strong recover y fuelled by the government attempting to diversify the economy through the record spending plans.

Although TADAWUL remains the main driver for market growth in the GCC region, Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange was able to add $5.8bn to its market cap while Dubai Financial Market gained $5.2bn.

Saudi Arabia’s gross domestic product (GDP) growth slowed to 6.8% in 2012 compared with the 8.5% growth in 2011, data from the Central Department of Statistics and Information (CDSI) showed. The statistics department has revised the 2011 GDP figure upward to 8.5% from the earlier 7.1%.

The world’s largest crude exporter saw growth in the oil sector slow to 5.5% in 2012 compared to 10.4% in 2011 when the Kingdom ramped up production to make up for disruptions in Libyan output.

Elsewhere, Oman’s gross domestic prod-

uct, adjusted for inflation, grew an estimated 8.3% in 2012, faster than the government’s target of 7% on the back of heavy government spending which boosted growth, according to the Ministr y of Finance; while Qatar’s GDP grew by around 3.9% in Q3-12, helped by a surge in manufacturing and other non-hydrocarbon sectors.

Kuwait’s budget surplus for the first 8 months (April 2012 - Nov. 2012) of fiscal year 2012/2013 reached KD14.7 billion, exceeding the KD11.6bn surplus recorded during the same period of FY 2011/2012.

Revenue stood at KD21.6bn, far exceeding the budgeted amount of KD9.3bn. Oil revenue continues to make up almost all of the government’s income, accounting for nearly 95% of total revenue.

Saudi Arabia Although the Saudi economy slowed in 2012 compared to 2011 and FY-12 earnings were not up to expectations, the Saudi Market was able to follow its GCC peers and end the month of January on a positive note on speculations that the recent budget announced will help suppor t the economy continue to post growth. As a result, the TASI was up 3.56% in January to breach the psychological 7,000 mark and end at 7,043.55 points. By the end of the month, market breadth skewed heavily towards the gainers with an advancer-to-decliner ratio of 101-to-49 and 7 stocks unchanged.

Accordingly, TADAWUL market capitalization rose 2.85% adding SAR 40bn ($10.7bn) to reach SAR 1.44 trillion ($383.9 bn) as compared to SAR 1.4 trillion ($373.3bn) recorded at the end of December-12, as all sectors in the market increased with the exception of Insurance

and multi-investment sectors.

Market heavyweight Petrochemical Industries added 3.83% to its market cap to reach SAR 456.8bn ($121.8bn) while the Banks and Financial sector was up 4.35% to SAR 320.8bn ($85.5bn) and the Telecommunications & IT sector gained 0.46% to SAR 153.5bn ($40.9bn). Trading indicators rose during the month with volume traded increasing 6% to 4.7bn shares distributed over 2.8mn transactions while value traded gained 3.4% to SAR 128.1bn from SAR 124bn in December-12.

Kuwait While in Kuwait, despite the lack of economic fundamentals from the country and the lower than expected FY-12 earnings announced so far, the Kuwaiti bourse was able to reverse last month’s fall and begin the year to the upside, trailing its GCC peers. Although trading was focused on

small cap stocks as investors were targeting quick gains, the KSE Price Index ended as the third best performing market following Dubai Financial Market and Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange to end the month gaining 5.24%. On the other hand, the KSE Weighted Index rose 3.48% while the KAMCO TRW Index advanced 2.42%.

During the month of January 2013, the market capitalization of Kuwait Stock Exchange added 3.12% or around KD 909mn ($3.2bn) to record KD 30 billion ($106.1bn) at the end of the month, supported by heavyweight Banking and Telecom sectors adding KD 257.4mn ($910.7mn) and KD249.5mn ($882.8mn), respectively. Compared to December-12, trading indicators ended the month mixed with volume increasing 15% to 8.24bn shares from 7.16bn shares in December-12; while value traded decreased 11% to KD 651mn down from KD730mn in December12.

Abu Dhabi The Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange, as measured by ADX General Index, jumped 9.54% in January to end as the second best performing market following neighbor Dubai, on the back of a AED 330 billion spending drive announced by the Abu Dhabi government which added to investor confidence on speculation that the Emirate will witness a prosperous economic recover y. Accordingly, market breadth was heavily skewed towards the gainers with advancers-to-decliners ratio of 42-to-12 while 9 companies remained unchanged from last month.

began 2013 on a positive note to end as the fourth best performing market among its peers in the GCC region.

Strong FY-12 corporate earnings and positive economic fundamentals helped boost investor confidence to nearly wipe out 2012 losses. As a result, the QE 20 index added 4.38% to end the month of January at 8,724.77 points and recover the majority of the 4.79% slump witnessed in 2012. Market capitalization for the month was up by 3.37% to QAR 475.4 billion as compared to QAR 459.9 billion in December-12 supported by the jump in the heavyweight Banking sector which gained 2.3% to QAR 183.7 billion followed by the industrial sector adding 7.14% to its market cap to reach QAR 134 billion in January.

Bahrain The Bahrain All Share Index continued its upward trend for the second consecutive month and started 2013 on a positive note to post a gain of 1.83% in January and closed the month at 1,085.14 points.

Gains for the month stemmed from the heavyweight Commercial Banks and Ser vice sectors, which saw returns of 6.76% and 4.65%, respectively, while the Insurance sector also gained 1.45%.

Whereas market heavyweight Investment sector which represents 29% of the total market cap shed 4.51% during the month.

Dubai In Dubai, expectations of an economic recovery in the Emirate, coupled with

Oman In Oman,strong economic growth data coupled with robust growth in FY-12 earnings support the Omani Bourse during the first trading month of 2013 as it increased for the second consecutive month to follow its GCC peers and end on a positive note. The MSM 30 index ended the month

strong earnings in FY-12 helped push the index higher to end as the best performing market in the GCC with a whopping 16.34% gain during January to end as the best performing market among its GCC peers. Boosted investor sentiment resulted in a buying spree taking the DFM General Index to a fresh 34 month high as foreign investors buy into the Emirate’s blue-chips.

In line with the positive performance during the month, the bourse’s market cap added 11% to its value to reach AED 193.8bn ($52.8bn) supported by the banking and real estate & construction sectors gaining 15.13% and 27.19% to AED 52.4 bn ($14.3bn) and AED 40.5bn ($11bn), respectively. Liquidity surged during the month of January, with volume and value jumping 211% and 213% to 7.6bn shares and AED 8.7 bn, respectively, over 93,969 transactions. In Qatar, the Qatar Exchange snapped a two month losing streak and

advancing 0.68% to 5,799.79 yet was at the bottom of the list within the region as other markets outper formed Oman.

Accordingly, market breadth skewed towards the gainers with an advancer-todecliner ratio of 32-to-21 while 7 stocks remained unchanged. Nevertheless, trading indicators fell with volume decreasing 6% during the month to 416.5 mn shares compared to 442.5 mn in Dec-12, while value traded was down by 1% to OMR 103.8 mn versus OMR 104.9 mn in the previous month.

Market heavyweight banking & investment sector gained 2.08% to reach OMR 3.3 bn, supported by the 6.77% and 3.92% rise in sector heavyweights Bank Muscat and Bank Dhofar, respectively; while the services & insurance sector decreased 0.67% to OMR 2.48 bn from OMR 5 bn and the industrial sector rose 2.85% to OMR 1.29bn from OMR 1.25 bn.

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2013

BUSINESS

Exceptional offers on Chevrolet Yusuf A Alghanim & Sons Automotive launches special promotion KUWAIT: In celebration of Kuwait’s national festivities and shopping season, Yusuf A. Alghanim & Sons Automotive, the exclusive distributor of Chevrolet vehicles in Kuwait, launched its special annual promotion throughout the month of February on its fleet of Chevrolet vehicles.

The promotion includes various discounts that reach up to KD 500 on an assortment of 2013 Chevrolet models including the TrailBlazer, Silverado, Malibu, Tahoe and Cruze. People can also benefit from this special promotion during the month of February on other Chevrolet vehicles as well.

A beloved choice amongst the youth in Kuwait, the high-powered 2013 Silverado proves to be the ultimate answer for any terrain whether it is rough rides in the desert or leisurely outings.

Available in two and four-wheel-drive configurations, the 2013 Silverado is powered by a 4.8, 5.3 or 6.0-liter engine that generate 360 hp, also, available as 1500,

2500 and the 3500 HD. The 2013 Silverado comes in regular, extended or crew cab versions, all of which merge smart technology that features an independent air conditioning unit, Stabilitrak and much more.

Another featured 2013 Chevrolet vehicle is the all-new TrailBlazer that comes in LT and LTZ trim levels.

Available in two and four-wheel-drive configurations, the TrailBlazer is powered by a 3.6-liter V6 engine that generates 239 hp with variable valve timing matched with a 6-speed automatic transmission that delivers an optimal balance of power, performance and fuel efficiency. All these features allow a smooth and controlled drive in rough terrain without requiring drivers to press the brake pedal.

Luxury lovers can benefit from this limited time promotion by choosing the 2013 Chevrolet Cruze, a car that continues to evolve into one of Chevrolet’s most impressive vehicles in its segment,

offering competitive amenities, quietness, safety features and space expected of a larger sedan, but still providing

brand-new and sophisticated infotainment system, which brings Smartphone capabilities into the vehicle. Chevrolet

the efficiency and value of a compact car. Now available with the new infotainment system ‘MyLink’, the 2013 Cruze offers more value for customers than ever. Chevrolet MyLink is the

MyLink aggregates content from a Smartphone onto the seven-inch, high resolution, full color touch-screen display. Available at a range of colors, the Cruze also proves to be the economical

Celebrating 100,000 fans on Facebook Xcite.com awards two winners with valuable prizes KUWAIT: Kuwait’s leading e-commerce portal for consumer electronics www.xcite.com has celebrated 100,000 fans on Facebook

Mohammad Al Mansoor were awarded with a Fujitsu Laptop and Monster Headphones gifts, respectively.

page will reach 100,000 fans. After the page has achieved 100,000 fans on February 4th, a random selection took place amongst those who

by engaging with customers in a simple and fun contest on its Facebook page. The two lucky winners William Veigas and

Conditions to entering the contest were very simple, customers were asked to like X-cite’s Facebook page and guess which date the

guessed the date correctly and two winners were awarded.

Xcite.com runs an average of 3 monthly contests on its social

Burgan Bank launches painting competition ‘Express your love to Kuwait’ KUWAIT: To celebrate the upcoming National Day and Liberation Day for Kuwait, Burgan Bank launches the painting competition “Express your love to Kuwait” for its BuBa Kids Account holders. The competition runs from February 10th - 28th.

Participants are required to draw BuBa the parrot celebrating Kuwait’s National Day and the winner will receive a mini I-Pad. Paintings have to be submitted to the Burgan Bank branch in Discovery Center during its working hours.

The BuBa Kids Account is for children up to 14 years of age and has benefits and merchant’s discounts.

Established in 1977, Burgan Bank is the youngest commercial Bank and third largest by assets in Kuwait, with a significant focus on the corporate and financial institutions sectors, as well as having a growing retail and private bank customer base.

Burgan Bank has five majority owned subsidiaries, which include Gulf Bank Algeria AGB (Algeria), Bank of Baghdad - BOB (Iraq & Lebanon), Jordan Kuwait Bank - JKB (Jordan) Tunis International Bank - TIB (Tunisia), and fully owned Burgan Bank - Turkey, (collectively known as the “Burgan Bank Group”).

The Bank has continuously improved its performance over the years through an

expanded revenue structure, diversified funding sources, and a strong capital base.

The adoption of state-of-the-art services and technology has positioned it as a trendsetter in the domestic market and within the MENA region.

Burgan Bank’s brand has been created on a foundation of real values - of trust, commitment, excellence and progression, to remind us of the high standards to which we aspire.

‘People come first’ is the foundation on which its products and services are developed.

Earlier this year, ‘Brand Finance’ - the international brand valuation company- rated Burgan Bank brand as AA with positive outlook. The rating places Burgan Bank Brand at 2nd amongst the most valuable banking brands in Kuwait.

Excellence is one of the Bank’s four key values and Burgan Bank continually strives to maintain the highest standards in the industry. The Bank was re-certified in 2010 with the ISO 9001:2008 certification in all its banking businesses, making it the first bank in the GCC, and the only bank in Kuwait to receive such accreditation. The Bank also has to its credit the distinction of being the only Bank in Kuwait to have won the JP Morgan Chase Quality Recognition Award for twelve consecutive years.

Burgan Bank announces names of winners of Yawmi account KUWAIT: Burgan Bank announced yesterday the names of the five lucky winners of its Yawmi account draw, each taking home a prize of KD 5,000.

The lucky winners for the daily draws took home a cash-prize of KD 5000 each, and they are: l1. Fatma Faisal Alqatan l2. Rashed Mubarek Alsaif l 3. Mohammed Ahmed Stareian Asfahani l4. Claude Antoine Yammine l5. Hanaa Abdulrazzaq Yousef Alkhamis With its new and enhanced features, the Yawmi Account has become more convenient, easier, and faster for customers to benefit from. Now, customers will be eligible to enter the draw after 48 hours only from opening the account. Customers are also required to deposit KD 100 or equivalent only to enter the daily draw, and the coupon value to enter the draw stands at KD 10.

The newly designed Yawmi account has been launched to provide a highly innovative offering along with a higher frequency and incentive of winning for everyone. Today, the Yawmi account is a well understood product, where its popularity can be seen from the number of increasing account holders.

Burgan Bank encourages everyone to open a Yawmi account and/or increase their deposit to maximize their chances to becoming a daily winner. The more customers deposit, the higher the chances they receive of winning the draw.

Opening a Yawmi account is simple, customers are urged to visit their nearest Burgan Bank branch and receive all the details, or simply call the bank ’s Call Center at 1804080 where customer service representatives will be delighted to assist with any questions on the Yawmi account or any of the bank’s products and services.

media platforms which include Facebook, Instagram and Twitter where followers and fans are free to participate for a chance in winning prizes, trips and much more.

Besides having the opportunity to take part in competitions and winning gifts, X-cite’s social media channels guarantees that customers stay up to date on latest offers, attractive promotions, exclusive deals that are available on both xcite.com and the showrooms. In addition, social media channels serve as customer service platform to ensure customer satisfaction is met.

To participate in the next popular contest which will be running on Instagram very soon, all what customers need to do is follow the company’s page on Facebook.com/XcitebyAlGhanim and Instagram and Twitter accounts on @xcitealghanim.

luxury 4-wheel drive as it is powered with a 1.8-liter engine that generates an impressive 140 hp.

Whichever Chevrolet you take home, you will enjoy excellent customer service, quality maintenance options and competitive prices on spare parts, all of which is provided by a team of professional and skilled team members and technicians. An element that further enhances customers’ peace of mind is Yusuf Ahmed A. & Sons Automotive’s service center that is distinguished by its continuous and successful efforts in providing the highest quality of services that have set an international standard.

The largest in the world, the service center is equipped with a large variety of the most advanced equipment operated by a team of skilled professionals and effective consultants who ensure timely service. Make the best out of the joyous and festive month of February by choosing your favorite new Chevrolet vehicle at the best price.

VIVA launches new Surf On plans KUWAIT: VIVA, Kuwait’s fastest-growing telecom operator, launched today new exciting Surf On plans for both its postpaid and prepaid customers. The new Surf On plans allow VIVA customers to access high speed internet on their smartphones at amazing low rates.

The unique and innovative Surf Ons offer VIVA customers unlimited free internet access to WhatsApp; the most used instant messenger in Kuwait which is made possible due to VIVA’s partnership with the WhatsApp Inc. In addition, the Surf Ons also provides unlimited internet access to the most famous social media applications which are Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

In light of its aim to present its postpaid and prepaid customers with the best plans that suit their needs, VIVA is offering two new monthly Surf On plans. The first one that is for just KD3.9 offers not only the aforementioned unlimited internet access but also give an additional 500 MB for browsing or accessing other applications.

The second surf on plan for just 7.9 KD enables subscribers to get unlimited access to download applications and iOS upgrades from the App Store, unlimited internet

access to several local news websites and applications in addition to the unlimited access to WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Customers wishing to have unlimited access to all sites and applications, can subscribe to the KD18 per month plan and enjoy uninterrupted access. VIVA has also arranged for 3.9KD or 7.9 KD subscribers who have consumed the capacity dedicated, the opportunity to subscribe for KD1 and enjoy an additional 500 MB of internet usage while continuing with unlimited internet access of said applications.

With the latest Surf On plans, VIVA’s customers will have the freedom to use applications and browse online without the worry of consuming internet credit or experiencing a change in the internet speed, after reaching their data limits.

VIVA strives to continuously bring the latest technologies to the Kuwaiti market at the most affordable prices, while offering the best value. The company acknowledges the importance of applications in today’s world, and hence created these latest plans to satisfy its customers’ needs of unlimited application usage.

Al-Tijari announces winners of Najma Account draw KUWAIT: Commercial Bank of Kuwait held the Al Najma Account Daily draw yesterday.

The draw was held under the supervision of the Ministry of Commerce & Industry represented by Mr. Abdulaziz Ashkanani. The winners of the Najma daily draw are: Abdulla Jerri Fahad Al Jerri — KD 7000, Mahmoud Yousef Motlaq — KD 7000, Salah Abu Al-Majed Diab— KD 7000, Mohammed Arshad Mohammed Hayat — KD 7000, Mohammed Ahmad Mohammed Al-Sagir — KD 7000.

The Commercial Bank of Kuwait announces the biggest daily draw in Kuwait with the launch of the new Najma account. Customers of the bank can now enjoy a KD 7,000 daily prize which is the highest in the country and another 4 mega prizes during the year worth KD 100,000 each on different occasions: The National Day, Eid Al Fitr, Eid Al Adha and on the 19th of June which is the date of the bank’s establishment.

With a minimum balance of KD 500, customers will be eligible for the daily draw provided that the money is in the account one week prior to the daily draw or 2 months prior to the mega draw. In addition, for each KD 25 a customer can get one chance for winning instead of KD 50.

Commercial Bank of Kuwait takes this opportunity to congratulate all lucky winners and also extends appreciation to the Ministry of Commerce and Industry for their effective supervision of the draws which were conducted in an orderly and organized manner.

UAE Exchange opens 2nd branch in Abbassiya KUWAIT: UAE Exchange opened its 23rd branch in Abbasiya residential area on February 8. The branch was inaugurated jointly by UAE Exchange Country Head Pancily Varkey, Dhari Al-Mohareb and M K Pothen (businessman) and witnessed by a huge crowd. Several Indian community members residing in Abbassiya attended the function.

Gifts were distributed to winners Biyju Thankachan (Samsung S3 mobile phone), Joseph Chacko (tablet), Khalid Pathikkare (cemera), Shaji Panayal (home theater) and Alexander Thomas (sun glass) who had predicted the branch opening date correctly through an SMS contest ‘Predict & Win’ held on 98.4U FM. After the opening ceremony, UAE Exchange County Head Pancily Varkey said, “To extend a good quality service and con-

venience to our customers, we have introduced an online service Money2Anywhere (M2A), where customers can do their remittance from their home, office or on move through a smart phone. “ UAE Exchange is a leading global money transfer and foreign exchange brand trusted by millions of customers and partners, across the world. A people’s brand, it is known for quality and customer-centric approach. Started over 32 years ago, its consistent world class service has earned the trust of over 4 million customers worldwide. With 660+ direct offices in 33 countries across five continents make UAE Exchange the only brand in the segment to own a global network of this magnitude. Its correspondent banking relationship with over 150 global banks adds to this strength.

Investors who trample land rights risk bottom line PARIS: Companies that invest in land and resources in emerging economies risk financial and public relations disasters if local inhabitants feel they are getting ripped off, consultants warned in a report last week.

The report was released by a group known as the Munden Project and founder Lou Munden said: “When we looked at companies involved in international land acquisitions, we found that they experience an astonishing amount of financial damage.”

This ranged from “massively increased operating costs, as much as 29 times above a normal baseline scenario, to outright abandonment of functional operations when they ignore pre-existing or customary local land rights.”

The report was entitled “The Financial Risks of Insecure Land Tenure: An Investment View,” and Munden emphasised that the financial risks were many and varied from delays in construction timetables to the expropriation of assets “following the loss of insurance coverage.”

He commented that “even more troubling, the escalation of risk can be extremely rapid”, and that conventional techniques for managing risk were inadequate for coping with insecure local land tenure. Projects go wrong when local people feel they have not been adequately compensated and are being deprived of their land, jobs, water and forests.

This can lead to disruption of many kinds, from roadblocks to frequent acts of sabotage and other forms of violence. An investing company which then turns to local authorities to put down the resistance can find that its international image is badly damaged.

The report cited the case of Malaysian industrial group Sime Darby in Liberia which had to suspend the plantation of oil-bearing palm trees in the north of the country under pressure from local communities, and had to renegotiate the amounts paid for land.

Another example occurred in Chile where

Chilean company SN Power had to abandon a hydroelectric project with the loss of $23 million already invested because it had not obtained approval from native populations.

An attempt by a biofuels company SEKAB to buy land in Tanzania for a huge plantation which would affect the environment ran into controversy and cost the company more than $20 million.

For Andy White, the coordinator of Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI) in Washington, “the mining sector is the most exposed because it needs a lot of investments.” He told AFP: “The mining sector is a ticking time bomb all across Africa and now in Myanmar.” RRI said that “the pace of deforestation in the country (Myanmar)...has raced forward unabated.”

The project coordinator for the Center for People and Forests, Maung Maung Than, said that a conflict in the north of Myanmar “like so many around the world, has its roots in community forest rights and land tenure.” —AFP

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2013

technology Warning! Corporate data loss: Customers are also affected Whatever the causes, data loss affects everybody: the company, its employees and even its customers. According to B2B International survey customer information as well as financial data, both at 36%, are lost most often. This is closely followed by employee data - lost or stolen in 31% of cases.

The causes of data leakage can be both external and internal. 35% of IT specialists confirmed their companies had lost data due to malware infection - the most common external threat. The next most common causes are email-based attacks (21%) and phishing (17%).When it comes to internal threats, the loss of important data is most often caused by vulnerabilities in a company’s software (25%) that cybercriminals exploit to infect victim computers.

A high proportion of data leaks were from mobile devices: 23% of respondents identified the loss of data and 15% the theft of a mobile device as the cause of a data breach. In 13% of cases, important information fell into the wrong hands due to negligence, for example, sending messages to the wrong email address.

Petr Merkulov, Chief Product Officer, Kaspersky Lab points out that the range of cyber-threats leading to data loss illustrates how important it is for every company to realize the necessity of multi-level protection. An effective corporate security solution must protect against both external and internal threats using the right tools for the job: anti-malware technologies, corporate security policies, data leakage prevention methods, control tools and many other features. I’m glad to say you can find all these security measures and more in Kaspersky Lab’s business solutions.”

The survey involved over 3,300 IT specialists in 22 countries worldwide and was conducted in conjunction with Kaspersky Lab. The participants represented all business sizes: small, medium and enterprise.

Kaspersky Lab is the world’s largest privately held vendor of endpoint protection solutions. The company is ranked among the world’s top four vendors of security solutions for endpoint users*.

Throughout its 15-year history Kaspersky Lab has remained an innovator in IT security and provides effective digital security solutions for consumers, SMBs and enterprises. The company currently operates in almost 200 countries and territories across the globe, providing protection for over 300 million users worldwide.

Original programs beef up streaming video sites NEW YORK: The big-budget original series “House of Cards” launched this month on Netflix highlights the growing importance of streaming video, which is ramping up competition against traditional TV. With stars including Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright, the new 13-episode series estimated by some to cost $100 million is a sign of the clout of Netflix, which claims 30 million members in 40 countries and a large chunk of the streaming video market. “‘House of Cards’ illustrates how Netflix is transforming into a digital/Internet only cable network,” said Richard Greenfield, analyst at BTIG Research.

Analysts say these types of services will become more important as consumers receive streaming Internet directly on their television, or through adapter boxes, for watching at their convenience on demand.

This means programming from Netflix and others can compete with cable or satellite television and over-the-air broadcasts, and even with premium TV outlets like HBO and Showtime.

Netflix, which launched its first original series called “Lillyhammer” last year in a Norwegian-American project, is not the only streaming service to offer its own programs.

Its chief rival Hulu, which is backed by some of the largest US broadcasters, has produced four original series in the past two years and has three more on the way. And Amazon, which operates its own instant video service, has 11 projects in the works, including original comedies and children’s programs. These streaming services “are trying to attract subscribers with unique content,” said Michael Corty, a Morningstar analyst.

“Consumers will go where they see the best value: it can be the quality of the content, or the price you pay.” Up to now, Netflix and its rivals have been competing for content from the major television and film studios. Netflix recently signed a deal with Disney for its films, while Amazon has secured rights for British-produced “Downton Abbey,” which has a following among US viewers.

But these deals push up costs for the streaming outlets, which could be spent on original programs, which would eliminate the middle man for services like Netflix.

“With the cost of exclusive syndicated content escalating as competition builds... success in original programming, which by definition is exclusive, should help Netflix better manage/leverage its content spending,” said BTIG’s Greenfield.

Morningstar’s Corty said that “the long-term battle that is going on is how much time people spend on current pay TV, and watching programs on services like Amazon and Netflix.”

“For now watching on Amazon or Netflix really hasn’t cut into the traditional viewing,” Corty said. “But if Amazon and Netflix continue to get more subscribers, it will increase the competition for consumers’ time.”

A research note from Morgan Stanley said that “an expanding original content portfolio will allow Netflix to expand its (subscriber) base beyond HBO’s, over time.”

“Netflix will throw out the rule book for writers, directors and producers alike,” said the Morgan Stanley note from analyst Scott Devitt, who estimated that Netflix will be spending $200 million to $300 million annually on original programs.

“During 2013, Netflix will have six original series debut, a major milestone for the company.”

But the traditional names in the entertainment sector do not appear worried for now. Time Warner chief executive Jeff Bewkes, whose firm owns HBO, and a number of big cable channels, said Netflix deserves credit but that competition is welcome.

“They’re doing a great job,” Bewkes said on a recent conference call. But he noted that HBO has been doing this for 20 years and Netflix is just getting started, adding that “it takes a while to get that up to scale.” —AFP

Apple and Samsung: Frenemies for life SAN FRANCISCO/SEOUL: It was the late Steve Jobs’ worst nightmare. A powerful Asian manufacturer, Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, uses Google Inc’s Android software to create smartphones and tablets that closely resemble the iPhone and the iPad. Samsung starts gaining market share, hurting Apple Inc’s margins and stock price and threatening its reign as the king of cool in consumer electronics.

Jobs, of course, had an answer to all this: a “thermo-nuclear” legal war that would keep clones off the market. Yet nearly two years after Apple first filed a patentinfringement lawsuit against Samsung, and six months after it won a huge legal victory over its South Korean rival, Apple’s chances of blocking the sale of Samsung products are growing dimmer by the day.

Indeed, a series of recent court rulings suggests that the smartphone patent wars are now grinding toward a stalemate, with Apple unable to show that its sales have been seriously damaged when rivals, notably Samsung, imitated its products.

That, in turn, may usher in a new phase in the complex relationship between the two dominant companies in the growing mobile computing business.

Tim Cook, Jobs’ successor as Apple chief executive, was opposed to suing Samsung in the first place, according to people with knowledge of the matter, largely because of that company’s critical role as a supplier of components for the iPhone and the iPad. Apple bought some $8 billion worth of parts from Samsung last year, analysts estimate.

Samsung, meanwhile, has benefited immensely from the market insight it gained from the Apple relationship, and from producing smartphones and tablets that closely resemble Apple’s.

While the two companies compete fiercely in the high-end smartphone business - where together they control half the sales and virtually all of the profits - their strengths and weaknesses are in many ways complementary. Apple’s operations chief, Jeff Williams, told Reuters last month that Samsung was an important partner and they had a strong relationship on the supply side, but declined to elaborate.

As their legal war winds down, it is increasingly clear that Apple and Samsung have plenty of common interests as they work to beat back other potential challengers, such as BlackBerry or Microsoft.

The contrast with other historic tech industry rivalries is stark. When Apple accused Microsoft in the 1980s of ripping off the Macintosh to create the Windows operating system, Apple’s very existence was at stake. Apple lost, the Mac became a niche product, and the company came close to extinction before Jobs returned to Apple in late 1996 and saved it with the iPod and the iPhone. Jobs died in October 2011.

Similarly, the Internet browser wars of the late 1990s that pitted Microsoft against Netscape ended with Netscape being sold for scrap and its flagship product abandoned.

Apple and Samsung, on the other hand, are not engaged in a corporate death match so much as a multi-layered rivalry that is by turns both friendly and hardedged. For competitors like Nokia, BlackBerry, Sony, HTC and even Google whose Motorola unit is expected to launch new smartphones later this year - they are a formidable duo.

The partnership piece of the AppleSamsung relationship dates to 2005, when the Cupertino, California-based giant was looking for a stable supplier of flash memory. Apple had decided to jettison the hard disc drive in creating the iPod shuffle, iPod nano and then-upcoming iPhone, and it needed huge volumes of flash memory chips to provide storage for the devices.

The memory market in 2005 was extremely unstable, and Apple wanted to lock in a supplier that was rock-solid financially, people familiar with the relationship said. Samsung held about 50 percent of the NAND flash memory market at that time.

“Whoever controls flash is going to control this space in consumer electronics,” Jobs said at the time, according to a source familiar with the discussions. The success of that deal led to Samsung supplying the crucial application processors for the iPhone and iPad. Initially, the two companies jointly developed the processors based on a design from ARM Holdings Plc, but Apple gradually took full control over development of the chip. Now Samsung merely builds the components at a Texas factory.

The companies built a close relationship that extended to the very top: in 2005, Jay Y Lee, whose grandfather founded the Samsung Group, visited Jobs’ home in Palo

duced in 2009, was so reviled that some customers hammered it to bits in public displays of dissatisfaction.

Meanwhile, Samsung publicly dismissed the iPhone’s success.

“The popularity of iPhone is a mere result of excitement caused by some (Apple) fanatics,” Samsung’s then-president, GS Choi, told reporters in January 2010.

Privately, though, Samsung had other plans. “The iPhone’s emergence means the time we have to change our methods has arrived,” Samsung mobile business head JK Shin told his staff in early 2010, according to an internal email filed in US court.

Steve Jobs

Jay Y Lee

Alto, California, after the two signed the flash memory deal. The partnership gave Apple and Samsung insight into each other’s strategies and operations. In particular, Samsung’s position as the sole supplier of iPhone processors gave it valuable data on just how big Apple thought the smartphone market was going to be.

“Having a relationship with Apple as a supplier, I am sure, helped the whole group see where the puck was going,” said Horace Dediu, a former analyst at Nokia who now works as a consultant and runs an influential blog. “It’s a very important advantage in this business if you know where to commit capital.”

Samsung declined to comment on its relationship with a specific customer. As for Apple, it reaped the benefit of Samsung’s heavy investments in research and development, tooling equipment and production facilities. Samsung spent $21 billion (23 trillion won) on capital expenditures in 2012 alone, and plans to spend a similar amount this year.

By comparison, Intel Corp spent around $11 billion in 2012, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd (TSMC) expects to spend $9 billion in 2013. But component expertise, cash and good market intelligence did not assure success when Samsung launched its own foray into the smartphone market. The Omnia, a Windows-based product intro-

Later that year, Samsung launched the Galaxy S, which sported the Android operating system and a look and feel very similar to the iPhone.

Standoff Jobs and Cook complained to top Samsung executives when they were visiting Cupertino. Apple expected, incorrectly, that Samsung would modify its design in response to the concerns, people familiar with the situation said. Apple’s worst fears were confirmed with the early 2011 release of the Galaxy Tab, which Jobs and others regarded as a clear rip-off of the iPad. Cook, worried about the critical supplier relationship, was opposed to suing Samsung. But Jobs had run out of patience, suspecting that Samsung was counting on the supplier relationship to shield it from retribution. Apple filed suit in April 2011, and the conflagration soon raged in Europe, Asia and Australia. When Apple won its blockbuster billion-dollar jury verdict against Samsung last August, it appeared that it might be able to achieve an outright ban on the offending products - which would have dramatically altered the smartphone competition.

But Apple has failed to convince US judges to uphold those crucial sales bans in large part because the extraordinary profitability and market power of the iPhone made it all but impossible for Apple to show

it was suffering irreparable harm. “Samsung may have cut into Apple’s customer base somewhat, but there is no suggestion that Samsung will wipe out Apple’s customer base, or force Apple out of the business of making smartphones,” US District Judge Lucy Koh wrote. “The present case involves lost sales - not a lost ability to be a viable market participant.”

Samsung, meanwhile, came under pressure from antitrust regulators and pulled back on its effort to shut down Apple sales in Europe over a related patent dispute.

A US appeals court recently rejected Apple’s bid to fast-track its case, meaning its hopes for a sales ban are now stuck in months-long appeals, during which time Samsung may very well release the next version of its hot-selling Galaxy phone.

The world is ours The legal battles have been less poisonous to the relationship than some of the rhetoric suggests.

“People play this stuff up because it shows a kind of drama, but the business reality is that the temperature isn’t that high,” said one attorney who has observed executives from both companies.

Still, the hostilities appear to have put some dents in the partnership. Apple is likely to switch to TSMC for the building of application processors, according to analysts at Goldman Sachs, Sanford Bernstein and other firms. But analysts at Korea Investment & Securities and HMC Securities point out that Apple will not be able to eliminate Samsung as a flash supplier because it remains the dominant producer of the crucial chips.

Apple declined to comment on the details of its relationships with any one supplier.

Meanwhile, both companies are deploying strategies out of the other’s playbook as they seek to maintain and extend their lead over the pack. Samsung has developed a cheeky, memorable TV ad that mocks Apple customers, and dramatically ramped up spending on marketing and advertising, a cornerstone of Apple’s success. US ad spending on the Galaxy alone leaped to nearly $202 million in the first nine months of 2012, from $66.6 million in 2011, according to Kantar Media.

For its part, Apple is investing in manufacturing by helping its suppliers procure the machinery needed to build large-scale plants devoted exclusively to the company.

Apple spent about $10 billion in fiscal 2012 on capital expenditures, and it expects to spend a further $10 billion this year. By contrast, the company spent only $4.6 billion in fiscal 2011 and $2.6 billion in fiscal 2010. But Apple and Samsung retain very different strategies. Apple has just one smartphone and only four product lines in total, and tries to keep variations to a bare minimum while focusing on the high end of the market.

Samsung, by contrast, has 37 phone products that are tweaked for regional tastes and run the gamut from very cheap to very expensive, according to Mirae Asset Securities. The company also makes chips, TVs, appliances and a host of other products (and its brethren in the Samsung Group sell everything from ships to insurance policies).

Apple devices are hugely popular in the United States; Samsung enjoys supremacy in developing countries like India and China.

Apple keeps its core staff lean - it has only 60,000 employees worldwide - and relies on partners for manufacturing and other functions. Samsung Electronics, part of a sprawling “chaebol,” or conglomerate, that includes some 80 companies employing 369,000 people worldwide, is far more vertically integrated.

It is those differences, combined with the formidable strengths that both companies bring to the market, that may render quiet cooperation a better strategy than all-out war for some time to come.

Said Brad Silverberg, a former Microsoft executive who was involved in the Mac vs.

Windows wars, “Apple had learnt a lot of lessons from those days.” —Reuters

BANGALORE: Visitors look at scaled down models of Indian armed forces helicopters at a stall on the fifth and final day of Aero India 2013 at Yelahanka Air Force station in Bangalore yesterday. India, the world’s leading importer of weaponry, opened one of Asia’s biggest aviation trade shows February 6 with Western suppliers eyeing lucrative deals and a Chinese delegation attending for the first time. (Right) The Dassault Rafale fighter aircraft.—AFP

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2013

H E A LT H & S C I E N C E

Relax! Yoga helps the heart, researchers say KANSAS CITY: The same kind of exercise that can bring peace to your mind may bring peace to your heart as well.

Researchers at the University of Kansas Hospital are finding that regular time spent doing yoga breathing and stretching exercises may help keep potentially dangerous heart rhythm disorders in check.

A hospital study published late last month in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology found that as little as two one-hour yoga sessions per week can help significantly reduce the number of episodes of rapid, out-of-control heartbeats experienced by patients with atrial fibrillation. These patients also cut their blood pressure and lowered their levels of anxiety and depression.

The results of this preliminary study are so promising, two similar yoga studies at the University of Kansas Hospital are enrolling patients with other disorders that cause faulty heart rhythms. “Yoga is not a solution in itself, but it provides very profound effects,” said University of Kansas heart specialist Dhanunjaya Lakkireddy. “It’s not a drug; it’s not a (medical procedure).

It’s something you can do in your living room for not very much money.”

Lakkireddy wants to see if yoga training can work for other patients.

He has started recruiting people with tachycardia, another rhythm disorder with accelerated heart rates, and syncope, a disorder that causes fainting when the heart stops beating temporarily. Lakkireddy’s

studies are too small to prove definitively that yoga is effective. He hopes to persuade the National Institutes of Health to fund large-scale research to determine with more certainty what yoga may do.

Yoga, with its meditation, breathing exercises and sometimes-difficult poses,

the heart rate. But there has been little study aimed at using yoga as a medical treatment.

Lakkireddy was born and raised in India.

His grandfather was a yoga instructor. But Lakkireddy gave up yoga when he was a teenager and started practicing again only

KANSAS CITY: A yoga class is instructed in Mill Creek Streamway Park. —MCT has been practiced for more than 5,000 years. Because it’s known for its ability to bring inner peace, yoga often is recommended to heart and cancer patients as a way to relieve stress. Research suggests yoga can lower blood pressure and slow

in the past few years. When a couple of his patients told him yoga helped dampen their atrial fibrillation, he was skeptical. “I laughed at them, ‘Show me.’ I sent them home with a (heart) monitor.” Positive results piqued his interest in taking a scien-

tific look: “I couldn’t dismiss it.” Atrial fibrillation is the chaotic beating _ sometimes several hundred times per minute-of the two upper chambers of the heart. The irregular rhythm causes the heart to pump less efficiently. Blood can pool and clot in the heart, raising risks of stroke and heart attack. About 3 million Americans have atrial fibrillation. More than a half-dozen drugs are available for to treat the condition, but they don’t work for every patient, and even when they do, they can lose effectiveness over time. There also is a heart procedure that destroys electrical “hot spots” that trigger atrial fibrillation; it works about 70 percent to 80 percent of the time. Lakkireddy theorized yoga may act on the autonomic nervous system-the body’s own yin and yang-to bring heart rhythms into balance. The autonomic system has two components. The sympathetic nervous system produces the “fight or flight” response of rapid heartbeat and elevated blood pressure; yoga may tone it down. The parasympathetic system slows the pulse and lowers blood pressure; yoga may enhance its action.

Several years ago, Lakkireddy began putting about 50 atrial fibrillation patients through a three-month course of yoga training. They visited a yoga studio in Overland Park twice a week for one-hour classes and also did yoga at home, if they wished. Study participants wore a portable heart monitor to record episodes of atrial fibrillation during the three months before

they started yoga classes and the three months they were going to class. They also filled out surveys to measure anxiety and depression. Lakkireddy found that yoga training reduced instances of atrial fibrillation by about 30 to 40 percent.

While Although yoga is not a substitute for medical treatment, it does improve patients’ quality of life, Lakkireddy said. And by reducing the number of atrial fibrillation episodes, it could potentially lower medical bills. Atrial fibrillation is one of the most common heart problems that end up in emergency rooms. “It almost competes with chest pains and heart attacks. Even a small reduction can translate to billions of dollars,” Lakkireddy said.

Teresa Perkins, 60, of Lake Quivira, Kan, still, does some of the breathing and stretching exercises she learned as a participant in the study. “I feel that when you’re having an (atrial fibrillation) attack, I can calm down and it stops,” she said. “You’re more comfortable with it. You’re not as panicky that you think you’re going to have a heart attack.”

While conducting the atrial fibrillation study, Lakkireddy encountered a patient who helped convince him that he should expand his research. Trayce Loyd, 23, of Moundville, Mo., developed syncope when she was 16. She fainted repeatedly, leading to trips to the emergency room.

“Everything they would test came back normal,” she said. “It wasn’t anything serious, they said.” — MCT

Southern diet, fried foods, may raise stroke risk NEWYORK: Deep-fried foods may be causing trouble in the Deep South. People whose diets are heavy on them and sugary drinks like sweet tea and soda were more likely to suffer a stroke, a new study finds.

It’s the first big look at diet and strokes, and researchers say it might help explain why blacks in the Southeast - the nation’s “stroke belt” - suffer more of them. Blacks were five times more likely than whites to have the Southern dietary pattern linked with the highest stroke risk. And blacks and whites who live in the South were more likely to eat this way than people in other parts of the country were. Diet might explain as much as two-thirds of the excess stroke risk seen in blacks versus whites, researchers concluded.

“We’re talking about fried foods, french fries, hamburgers, processed meats, hot dogs,” bacon, ham, liver, gizzards and sugary drinks, said the study’s leader, Suzanne Judd of the University of Alabama in Birmingham. People who ate about six meals a week featuring these sorts of foods had a 41 percent higher stroke risk than people who ate that way about once a month, researchers found.

In contrast, people whose diets were high in fruits, vegetables, whole grains and fish had a 29 percent lower stroke risk. “It’s a very big difference,” Judd said. “The message for people in the middle is there’s a graded risk” - the likelihood of suffering a stroke rises in proportion to each Southern meal in a week. Results were reported Thursday at an American Stroke Association conference in Honolulu.

The federally funded study was launched in 2002 to explore regional variations in stroke risks and reasons for them.

More than 20,000 people 45 or older - half of them black - from all 48 mainland states filled out food surveys and were sorted into one of five diet styles: Southern: Fried foods, processed meats (lunchmeat, jerky), red meat, eggs, sweet drinks and whole milk.

Convenience: Mexican and Chinese food, pizza, pasta.

Plant-based: Fruits, vegetables, juice, cereal, fish, poultry, yogurt, nuts and wholegrain bread.

Sweets: Added fats, breads, chocolate, desserts, sweet breakfast foods.

Alcohol: Beer, wine, liquor, green leafy vegetables, salad dressings, nuts and seeds, coffee.

“They’re not mutually exclusive” - for example, hamburgers fall into both convenience and Southern diets, Judd said. Each person got a score for each diet, depending on how many meals leaned that way.

Over more than five years of follow-up, nearly 500 strokes occurred. Researchers saw clear patterns with the Southern and plant-based diets; the other three didn’t seem to affect stroke risk.

There were 138 strokes among the 4,977 who ate the most Southern food, compared to 109 strokes among the 5,156 people eating the least of it. There were 122 strokes among the 5,076 who ate the most plantbased meals, compared to 135 strokes among the 5,056 people who seldom ate that way.

The trends held up after researchers took into account other factors such as age, income, smoking, education, exercise and total calories consumed. Fried foods tend to be eaten with lots of salt, which raises blood pressure - a known stroke risk factor, Judd said. And sweet drinks can contribute to diabetes, the disease that celebrity chef Paula Deen - the queen of Southern cuisine - revealed she had a year ago.

The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, drugmaker Amgen Inc. and General Mills Inc funded the study.

“This study does strongly suggest that food does have an influence and people should be trying to avoid these kinds of fatty foods and high sugar content,” said an independent expert, Dr. Brian Silver, a Brown University neurologist and stroke center director at Rhode Island Hospital. “I don’t mean to sound like an ogre. I know when I’m in New Orleans I certainly enjoy the food there. But you don’t have to make a regular habit of eating all this stuff.” —AP

CHARLOTTE: Photo shows a hamburger and tater tots at a restaurant. —AP

Council of Churches addresses health care issues LEXINGTON: Parish nurse Jackie Graves sees her job at Second Presbyterian Church in Lexington, Ky, as the perfect blend of faith and profession. “It is a wonderful opportunity to encourage a healthier lifestyle in the context of our faith,” said Graves, who recently retired as a professor of nursing at the University of Kentucky.

Second Presbyterian was an early adopter of the parish nurse model, creating the position in 1990. In her part-time job, Graves visits about eight people a week and offers blood-pressure checks and referrals for other health concerns.

Graves sees it as an extension of the work the church community does during services, a way of putting biblical ideals into action to improve health and health care access. The Kentucky Council of Churches is working to create the same kind of church engagement in health care across the state.

The council is nearing the end of a five-year program to create a health advocacy net-

work, share models that are working among churches and other religious groups, and share health information.

Funded the past five years by a $50,000 annual grant from the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky, the council has been exploring ways individual churches are already providing health services to their members. The group is also advocating the view that access to health care is a socialjustice issue that should be promoted by the religious community.

The nonprofit council’s executive director, Marion McClure Taylor, says that at its simplest, churches are in a unique position to effectively help improve the health and health care access because they are where people come together.”The one thing that we have that we can bring that hardly anybody else could is that we regularly communicate” with people, she said. Graves calls it “having a wonderful, captive audience.” — MCT

FLORIDA: Synthetic marijuana, sold in colorful packages with names like Cloud Nine, Maui Wowie and Mr Nice Guy, sits behind the glass counter at a Kwik Stop in Hollywood.—MCT

Despite crackdown, synthetic drugs are still easy to get ORLANDO: The names may sound harmlessincense, potpourri, spice, bath salts-but the synthetic drugs popular among Florida’s youth are anything but. Those who have smoked synthetic marijuana and its cocaine like sister, bath salts, describe the experience as “crazy” and “retarded.”

They recall a disturbing, mind-addling high. The trips these drugs induce can trigger heart palpitations, vomiting, seizures, paranoia, violent outbursts, extreme agitation and psychotic episodes, say emergency room doctors, who call the reaction “excited delirium.”

Although a new crackdown by law enforcement is starting to curb the abuse, synthetic drugs continue to attract a vulnerable demographic: young men looking for an easily accessible thrill. Although no official statistics exist, media reports have attributed at least nine deaths in Florida to synthetic drugs.

Still, young Floridians-users’ average age is 24, and 70 percent are male-think the drugs are OK because they’ve been sold at smoke shops and convenience stores. “Because this stuff is sold in head shops, kids think it’s a safe way to get high,” said Dr Timothy Huckaby, an addiction medicine specialist and medical director of the UF & Shands Florida Recovery Center at Orlando Health.

“That simply isn’t the case,” he said. “The synthetic version is three times more powerful than the marijuana sold on the street today.”

Interviews with Broward County teens in a drug rehab program revealed why the synthetic drug, sold in slick packaging, had become so popular during the past few years. It’s not the high, the boys said. The reason is pragmatic: It’s still cheap, easy enough to find and effective at deceiving most drug tests.

“You have to understand: We’re teenagers. It doesn’t sound that bad to say, ‘Let’s smoke spice and be retarded for 30 minutes,’” said former user Sam Hathaway, 17, of Pembroke Pines, using synthetic marijuana’s street name. “It literally changes your brain, like the way you think,” he said. Another teen in the program, Nico Souberville, 18, of Miramar, said that after smoking the drug: “I wanted to do something crazy. I wanted to hurt someone.”

That these dangerous products ever made it to store shelves is a testament to drug designers’ illicit skills. Drugmakers tinker with their compounds in ways that not only skirt the law but also slip by drug tests.

“The bad guys are three to four steps ahead of law enforcement and five to six steps ahead of clinicians,” said Dr Nabil El-Sanadi, director of emergency medicine at the Broward Health System in Fort Lauderdale. El-Sanadi said that patients often show up at his emergency room with signs of psychosis: hearing voices, hallucinating, with paranoid delusions of being chased or attacked. Because no laws expressly banned them, the drugs manufactured in labs to mimic marijuana and cocaine were hanging in packets near the candy section in stores.

Although a statewide ban on such substances took effect a year ago, it wasn’t specific enough. Retailers got around it. Users knew which convenience stores continued to sell the stuff under the counter.

So in December, state Attorney General Pam

Bondi issued a tougher ban, prohibiting 22 specific substances used in synthetic drugs. Since then, law enforcers across Central Florida have been visiting convenience stores and head shops giving out one-time warnings.

Last month, Volusia County deputies inspected 172 convenience stores, smoke shops, liquor stores and other retailers throughout the county, said Sheriff’s Office spokesman Gary Davidson.

They found 15 still selling the banned products.

The officers reminded store clerks of the new law and the penalty (a five-year prison sentence and fine of up to $5,000) for selling or possessing the products.

Similarly, Seminole County law enforcers have been visiting more than 350 retailers during the past several weeks, said Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Kim Cannaday. Although the Orlando Police Department does not have a formal crackdown program, officers do routinely check convenience stores to be sure what they’re selling is legal, said spokesman Jim Young.

“We also look at city ordinances from across the state and what other departments are doing to address synthetic drugs to find ways to reduce these crimes,” he said. “The chemicals in these drugs are constantly changing, so it’s hard to keep up. The new law helps because it gives us more to go after.” Still, those who want synthetic marijuana or bath salts can easily score them online. All they need is a credit card and an address, poison center officials said.

Mirroring a national trend, calls to state poison-information centers about synthetic marijuana and bath salts began rising in 2010. The Florida Poison Information Center in Tampa received 49 calls that year from five Central Florida counties and 81 calls last year, said Cynthia Lewis-Younger, poison center spokeswoman. Calls about synthetic marijuana outnumber those related to bath salts by 6 to 1.

“The numbers are undoubtedly underreported,” said Lewis-Younger. They represent only the sickest patients. Many others suffer in silence, afraid of repercussions. Call centers and doctors say the new law, combined with word spreading about the bad trips, is helping to curtail use of fake drugs. Some, however, worry that the crackdown is just pushing the use further underground. “In my entire emergency medicine career, I have never been exposed to a substance so dangerous and so available,” said Dr. Dale Birenbaum, lead emergency room physician for Florida Hospital’s East Orlando campus.

Birenbaum estimates that he has seen a couple of dozen bad reactions, including cases that required law enforcers to use Tasers to control the subject. Some users, especially those on bath salts, become very violent, he said. “That stuff is really, really dangerous, and is almost certainly solely responsible for some horrific crimes.”

Although tests could not confirm it, many think bath salts were behind the vicious act by the “Causeway Cannibal.” Growling and naked, Rudy Eugene of Miami ate the face off a man at the beach near MacArthur Causeway in May before being shot to death by police. Toxicology tests found nothing more than marijuana in Eugene’s system, but many scientists think he

had ingested a newer generation of bath salts that escaped the lab’s detection.

“What scares me is that we don’t know exactly what this stuff is,” said Dr Josef Thundiyil, an emergency medicine physician and toxicologist at Orlando Regional Medical Center. “This is not a homogeneous product. It could be any mixture of substances. The unpredictable nature can lead to a variety of reactions, the most feared being respiratory or cardiac arrest,” Thundiyil said. Volusia County Sheriff Ben Johnson, whose office has been cracking down, said that using the drugs is like playing Russian roulette. “You don’t know if you’re going to end up in the hospital, or even the morgue, after using this stuff.”

Synthetic marijuana What is it? A psychoactive designer drug marketed as “herbal potpourri” or “herbal incense,” meant to mimic a marijuana buzz when smoked.

What’s it called? Known on the streets as “spice,” it is also called fake weed, fake marijuana and synthetic weed. Popular brand names include Spice, K2, Mr Nice Guy, Maui Wowie, M@ry Joy and Barely Legal.

How’s it made? Natural herbs such as damiana or marsh-mallow leaves are sprayed with a synthetic mixture derived in a lab from a cannabinoid compound. The coated herbs are then chopped to look like marijuana and packaged for sale. What does it do? Reactions may include seizures, chest pain, hallucinations, psychosis, nausea, vomiting, panic attacks, paranoia, rapid breathing, rapid heartbeat, memory deficits, violent tendencies and death.

Bath salts What are they? Synthetic cathinones, which are said to mimic the effects of cocaine, LSD and amphetamines, packaged as white crystals that resemble Epsom salts. Often chopped into a fine powder like cocaine, the drug is snorted, swallowed, smoked or injected. What are they called?

Popular brands include Cloud Nine, Vanilla Sky, Ivory Wave and White Dove.

How are they made? Cooked in a lab, they typically contain synthetic compounds such as MDPV (methylenedioxypyrovalerone), mephedrone, pyrovalerone and methylone, but other ingredients are often added, including hydrochloride salt and caffeine.

What do they do? Reactions may include agitation, paranoia, hallucinations, chest pain, suicidal urges, difficulty breathing, sweating and chills, dizziness, insomnia, psychotic delusions, combativeness, extreme and prolonged panic attacks and death. — MCT

H E A LT H & S C I E N C E

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2013

Caring for generations caring for employees KUWAIT: New Mowasat Hospital launched its Employee Recognition Program in January 2013. As part of the hospital-wide program, a ceremony was recently arranged to honor and recognize almost 300 employees for their commitment, loyalty and dedication to the hospital.

Among the honorees were 150 who achieved a service anniversary of five to nine years in 2012; 85 honorees with 10-14 years of service; and 55 who have served 15 or more years at New Mowasat Hospital.

To mark the momentous occasion, each employee was presented with a special award as recognition for five or more years of service.

Mr Nadeem Nazir, Hospital Director stated in his opening speech:”The main element which is common to most successful organizations is the retention of its valuable employees, as is the case at New Mowasat Hospital where 40% of our employees have achieved at least five years of service.” Dr Eduard Lotz, Deputy Hospital Director, announced at the ceremony: “Patients rely heavily upon the quality and dedication of well-trained, professional staff. We are privileged to honor this large number of employees for their outstanding service and commitment to our patients.”

New Mowasat Hospital is committed to employees’ health and welfare by providing the best working environment and continues to invest in its people to achieve this. In addition to the Years of Service annual ceremony, the Employee Recognition Program includes the Employee of the Month award, presented

to an employee who is nominated by peers for their exemplary work and contribution to New Mowasat Hospital; and the Leadership Honor Roll, which recognizes physicians and managerial staff for motivating and inspiring staff to achieve their goals and objectives, thereby creating an overall productive work experience. In December 2012 New Mowasat Hospital also held its Annual “Doctors’ Recognition Awards Function 2012” in the Holiday Inn Hotel to honor its distinguished physicians with official certificates and trophies for their exceptional contribution to various medical categories.

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 hospitalwide Continued Medical Education and Academic Achievements. The fifth awards and last was the “Outstanding Contribution to Performance as Registrar” award which was given in memory of Dr Ayman Mustafa, Registrar in the Anesthesia Department.

Horsemeat scandal spreads PARIS: The Europe-wide scandal over horsemeat sold as beef spread yesterday as six French retailers pulled products from their shelves and France promised to have the results of an urgent inquiry within days. A senior British lawmaker meanwhile upped the stakes by calling for a temporary ban on importing EU meat, as a French minister suggested London was threatening food safety standards by pushing for EU budget cuts.

Several ranges of prepared food have been withdrawn in Britain, France and Sweden after it

emerged that frozen food companies had been using horsemeat-traced back to Romania-instead of beef in making lasagnes and other pasta dishes, shepherd’s pies and moussakas. Frozen food giant Findus has lodged a legal complaint in France after evidence showed the presence of horsemeat in its supply chain “was not accidental”, while a French meat-processing firm has said it will sue its Romanian supplier.

Highlighting the complexity of European food supply chains, the meat has been traced back

from France through Cyprus and The Netherlands to Romanian abattoirs. Romanian officials have also announced an urgent inquiry. French retailers Auchan, Casino, Carrefour, Cora, Monoprix and Picard announced yesterday they were withdrawing products provided by Findus and French producer Comigel over the horsemeat concerns.

In a statement through the FCD retail association, the retailers said the withdrawal was the result of “labelling non-compliance in regards to the nature of the meat” in the products.—AFP

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2013

W H AT ’ S O N

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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

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Happy birthday to you Shan Kumar. May God bless you with prosperity. Love from Vinay, Helen, Vishala, and all friends.

Announcements ECC organizes Omra trip for Egyptians ecretary general of the Egyptian Community Council (ECC), Dr Azmi Abdul Fattah congratulated all Egyptians on the second anniversary of the January 25 revolution urging everybody to consolidate and unite for the best of Egypt as a whole. On this occasion, Abdul Fattah announced that the council would organize its annual Omra trip pointing out that it would last eight days in the period of February 21 till 28.

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Kuwaiti wheelchair fencing champ Al-Qallaf honored Kuwaiti wheelchair fencing champion Tariq Al-Qallaf was recently honored in a ceremony held at the Najla Al-Naqqi Forum for winning three gold medals in recent competitions held in the United States of America where he practices the sport professionally, as well as maintains his position as Number 1 in the world’s wheelchair fencing ranking. Several political and social figures attended the event, including MP Abdulhameed Dashty, Kuwaiti historian Farhan AlFarhan, and President of the Ideal Son Award, Ibrahim Al-Baghli.

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 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.

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Kitchen Rock Band music itchen Rock’s Valentine program on February 15 at Asia Asia Royal Hall, AlWatiya Complex, Kuwait City, 7pm onwards.

Enjoy the New Version band, Selda band and Freefall band.

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CGS Hosts “Challenges to Transition: The Egyptian Case”

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he Center of Gulf Studies (CGS) at AUK will be holding a lecture about the transformation of the political landscape in Egypt and its challenges to adapt to the changes caused by the revolution. The talk will be held on Wednesday on February 13 at 6:30 p.m. and will take place at the AUK Auditorium. The lecture is open to public.

The talk will be presented by Dr. Ann Lesch, professor of Political Science and the Associate Provost of International Programs at the American University of Cairo (AUC). The lecture will highlight and address the struggles and obstacles faced by the Egyptian people and the region’s attempts to transition.

Dr. Lesch acquired her doctorate from Columbia University and joined AUC as Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences in 2004. As co-founder of the Palestinian American Research Center, Dr. Lesch’s research interests cover Palestinian, Egyptian, and Sudanese politics. Dr. Lesch has published 60 academic articles and book chapters, and authored 10 books that focus on the Arab-Israeli conflict and inter-Arab relations.

Safir Hotel & Residences Kuwait-Fintas offers exclusive promotions

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afir Hotel & Residences KuwaitFintas, a 5-star business and luxury hotel, has gone all the way to make sure its valued guests will get the most out of this month’s double festivities - Valentine’s Day and the Hala February Festival. Make February 14, Valentine’s Day, a night to remember at Safir Fintas hotel. Treat your loved ones to Safir Fintas’ exclusive Valentine’s package on luxury rooms and apartments which include a Valentine dinner for two and an option of a full buffet breakfast or in-room breakfast for two.

In addition, rooms are specially decorated with flower petals for a romantic touch on this occasion.

Experience an unforgettable Valentine’s dinner in a variety of settings and a selection of cuisines to choose from, whether is a sumptuous Valentine’s buffet at Flavors Restaurant, a special four-course Kuwaiti Valentine’s set menu at the Al-Roshinah, a casual four-course Valentine’s set menu at the

Chit Chat Cafe & Restaurant, a special Valentine’s BBQ night at the Anchor Beach Garden or a romantic candle-lit

dinner at the Sky Lounge, it’s love everywhere at the Safir Hotel & Residences Kuwait.

February 25-26, Safir Fintas will say “Hala” to Hala February in celebration of the National and Liberation Days of Kuwait. It is a festival for the whole family to celebrate with a special room package offer and dining options that will guarantee fun and satisfaction for both adults and children. Spend your holiday in the comfort and elegance of our 5star rooms and apartments at an exclusive Hala February promotional rate and enjoy our indoor and outdoor dining offers. Indulge in Flavors Restaurant’s extended Friday breakfast from 5:00 am until 12:00 noon and late Friday lunch special from 1:30 pm until 5:00 pm.

Kuwaiti food lovers can enjoy AlRoshinah Kuwaiti Restaurant’s authentic Kuwaiti dishes at KD 8 per person for lunch or dinner. Also savor a delectable array of barbeques in an amazing outdoor setting at Anchor Beach Garden’s Barbeque Night. This Hala February promotion is valid during the month of February 2013.

Write to us Send to What’s On upcoming events, birthdays or celebrations by email: local@kuwaittimes.net Fax: 24835619 / 20

Indian Ambassador visits Sahara Air-Conditioning Co

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ahara Air-Conditioning Company, one of the leading providers of heating, air-conditioning and ventilation services in the country, was privileged to recently host at their premises, a visit by Satish C Mehta, the Indian Ambassador to Kuwait.

During his hour-long visit, the ambassador interacted with the staff and shared a few words to motivate them and boost their morale. He also engaged in discussions with the managing director and executive management team to learn more about the company and its policies. Following the successful

conclusion of his visit, the ambassador expressed his pleasure in visiting a very successful Indian enterprise and his appreciation in meeting the very engaged team behind the company.

The ambassador wished the company and its management the very best in all their future endeavors.

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2013

W H AT ’ S O N

Embassy

Rayyan family celebrates wedding grandly

Information Ibrahim Khalil Rayyan celebrated the wedding of his son, Ahmad, to the daughter of Khalil Ibrahim Al-Assaf, Heba, in a ceremony held recently attended by a large number of family members, friends and dignitaries.

—Photos by Joseph Shagra

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.

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The Bride and Groom with their fathers

The groom Ahmed Rayyan

EMBASSY OF CANADA The Embassyof Canada 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, U.A.E. 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-imenquiry@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 07:30 to 15:30 Sunday through Thursday. The reception is open from 07:30 to 12:30. Consular services for Canadian citizens are provided from 09:00†until 12:00, Sunday through Wednesday.

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Osama Rayyan, Adnan Saad, Ashraf Khalil, Abd Al-Rahman Al-Alyan, Ibrahim Rayyan, Waleed Rayyan and Taleb Kanjo

Waleed, Osama and Ibrahim Rayyan with the groom’s uncle, Emad Al-Eter

The groom kissing his father’s hand

The Bride’s relatives Mohammed Darweesh, Mustafa Afana and Khalil Ibrahim Al-Assaf

The groom and his father with a guest

Congratulators

Bride & Groom family with a guest

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. ■■■■■■■

The groom receiving congratulations

Dancing the Dabkeh

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.

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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.

Kuwait Carnatic Music Forum Thyagaraja program

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The groom in action

J Nandini disciple of Bombay Jayasree who sang the title song in the Oscar nominated movie Life of Pi and winner of Ragarathnam program Amrutha TV classical music competition; accompanying artistes: Kanchi Kamakodi Pitham asthana vidwan Karunagappalli S Balamurali on violin; Kanchi Kamakodi Pitham asthana vidwan Perunna G Harikumar on mridangam; Gireesh Sundareshan on ganchira; Vazhappalli G Anil kumar on ghatam; and Manoj Mavelikkara on morshankh will perform. Full day classical music program on Feb 19 am - 4.30 pm.

Participants: music students and devotees.

Pancharathna keerthanaalapanam at 5 pm at the Indian Community School Salmiya (senior girls). All are welcome.

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2013

TV PROGRAMS

00:20 Karina: Wild On Safari 00:50 Untamed & Uncut 01:45 Lions Of Crocodile River 02:35 Animal Cops Houston 03:25 Wildest Arctic 04:15 My Cat From Hell 05:05 Karina: Wild On Safari 05:30 Karina: Wild On Safari 05:55 Animal Cops Houston 06:45 Wildest Arctic 07:35 Wildlife SOS 08:00 Meerkat Manor 08:25 Dogs 101 09:15 Crocodile Hunter 10:10 Michaela’s Animal Road Trip 11:05 Monkey Life 11:30 Dick ‘n’ Dom Go Wild 12:00 Extraordinary Dogs 12:25 The Really Wild Show 12:55 Wildest Arctic 13:50 Wild France 14:45 Wild France 16:35 Wildlife SOS 17:30 Too Cute!

18:25 My Cat From Hell 19:20 Call Of The Wildman 20:15 Venom Hunter With Donald Schultz 21:10 Squid Invasion 22:05 Wildest Arctic 23:00 Untamed China With Nigel Marven

00:00 Extreme Makeover: Home Edition Specials 01:20 Homes Under The Hammer 05:35 Rick Stein’s Mediterranean Escapes 06:25 New Scandinavian Cooking 06:55 The Hairy Bikers USA 07:20 The Hairy Bikers USA 07:45 MasterChef 11:00 Rick Stein’s Mediterranean Escapes 11:50 New Scandinavian Cooking 12:15 The Hairy Bikers USA 13:05 Come Dine With Me: Supersize 14:40 Come Dine With Me: South Africa 15:35 Antiques Roadshow 16:30 Bargain Hunt 17:15 Extreme Makeover: Home Edition Specials 20:00 Come Dine With Me: Supersize 21:30 Gok’s Fashion Fix 22:20 Antiques Roadshow 23:15 Bargain Hunt

00:00 00:30 01:00 01:10 02:00 02:30 03:00 03:30 04:00 04:30 05:00 05:30 06:00 06:10 06:30 07:00 07:10 07:30 08:00 08:10 08:30 09:00 09:10 09:30 10:00 10:10 10:30 11:00 11:30 12:00 12:15 12:30

BBC World News Dateline London BBC World News My Country BBC World News Newsnight BBC World News Click BBC World News Politics Europe BBC World News Fast Track BBC World News World Features Spirit Of Yachting BBC World News World Features Dateline London BBC World News World Features Changing Fortunes BBC World News World Features BBC World News BBC World News World Features Newsnight BBC World News The Bottom Line BBC World News Sport Today Click

13:00 13:30 14:00 14:10 15:00 15:30 16:00 17:30 18:00 18:15 18:30 19:00 19:10 19:30 20:00 20:30 21:00 21:30 22:00 22:30 22:45

BBC World News Horizons BBC World News My Country BBC World News Politics Europe BBC World News The Ideas Exchange BBC World News Sport Today Spirit Of Yachting BBC World News World Features Changing Fortunes BBC World News Horizons BBC World News Our World Newsday Asia Business Report Sport Today

00:20 Yogi’s Treasure Hunt 00:45 Duck Dodgers 01:10 Sylvester & Tweety Mysteries 01:35 Dastardly And Muttley 02:00 Popeye 02:25 Wacky Races 02:50 Scooby Doo Where Are You! 03:15 The Flintstones 03:40 The Jetsons 04:00 What’s New Scooby Doo? 04:20 Taz-Mania 04:45 The Looney Tunes Show 05:10 Tom & Jerry Tales 05:35 Johnny Bravo 06:00 Bananas In Pyjamas 06:25 Jelly Jamm 07:00 Ha Ha Hairies 07:20 Baby Looney Tunes 07:45 Cartoonito Tales 08:10 Gerald McBoing Boing 08:35 Lazy Town 09:00 Krypto The Superdog 09:25 Bananas In Pyjamas 09:40 Cartoonito Tales 09:55 Ha Ha Hairies 10:10 Jelly Jamm 10:25 Gerald McBoing Boing 10:45 Lazy Town 11:05 Krypto The Superdog 11:30 Baby Looney Tunes 11:55 Ha Ha Hairies 12:20 Jelly Jamm 12:45 Gerald McBoing Boing 13:10 Lazy Town 13:35 Krypto The Superdog 14:00 Johnny Bravo 16:05 Johnny Bravo Goes To Bollywood 17:20 Johnny Bravo 22:40 Puppy In My Pocket 23:05 The Perils Of Penelope Pitstop 23:30 The Addams Family 23:55 Droopy: Master Detective

00:40 Chowder 01:30 Bakugan Battle Brawlers 01:55 Bakugan Battle Brawlers 02:20 Foster’s Home For...

02:45 Foster’s Home For...

03:10 Courage The Cowardly Dog 04:00 The Amazing World Of Gumball 04:25 Ben 10: Ultimate Alien 04:50 Adventure Time 05:15 The Powerpuff Girls 05:40 Generator Rex 06:05 Ben 10 06:30 Ben 10 06:55 Angelo Rules 07:00 Casper’s Scare School 07:30 Casper’s Scare School 08:00 Grim Adventures Of...

08:45 Total Drama Island 09:10 Total Drama Island 09:35 Ben 10: Ultimate Challenge 09:55 Level Up 10:15 Transformers Prime 10:35 Ben 10: Omniverse 11:00 Thundercats 11:25 Mucha Lucha 11:50 Adventure Time 12:40 Regular Show 13:35 The Amazing World Of Gumball

14:20 Johnny Test 15:10 Total Drama Island 15:35 Total Drama Island 16:00 Level Up 16:25 Level Up 16:50 Ben 10: Ultimate Alien 17:15 Ben 10: Ultimate Alien 17:40 Transformers Prime 18:30 Hero 108 18:55 Hero 108 19:20 The Amazing World Of Gumball 19:45 Adventure Time 20:35 Regular Show 21:00 Mucha Lucha 21:25 Total Drama Island 21:50 Total Drama Island 22:15 Grim Adventures Of...

23:00 Ben 10: Ultimate Alien 23:25 Ben 10: Ultimate Alien 23:50 The Powerpuff Girls

00:15 02:05 02:30 03:00 03:25 03:55 04:20 04:50 05:15 05:40 06:05 06:35 07:00 07:50 08:45 09:40 10:30 11:25 12:20 14:35 16:55 19:10 20:05 21:00 21:30 21:55 22:50 23:45

00:10 00:35 01:25 02:15 03:05 03:55 04:20 04:45 05:10 05:35 06:00 06:25 06:40 07:05 07:30 07:55 08:05 08:20 08:30 08:45 09:10 09:35 10:00 10:25 10:50 11:15 12:40 12:55 13:15 13:20 13:40 13:45 14:05 14:10 14:30 14:35 14:45 14:55 15:00 15:25 15:50 16:15 16:40 17:00

Auction Kings How It’s Made How Do They Do It? How It’s Made How Do They Do It? How It’s Made How Do They Do It? How It’s Made How Do They Do It? How It’s Made How Do They Do It? How It’s Made Fast N’ Loud Jesse James: Outlaw Garage American Chopper Gold Rush Gold Divers Around The World In 80 Ways How It’s Made Auction Kings Border Security Mythbusters Mythbusters Magic Of Science Time Warp How We Invented The World Secret Service Secrets World’s Top 5

Stitch A Kind Of Magic Replacements Emperor’s New School A Kind Of Magic Replacements Replacements Emperor’s New School Emperor’s New School A Kind Of Magic Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Jake & The Neverland Pirates Suite Life On Deck A.N.T. Farm Wizards Of Waverly Place Phineas And Ferb Phineas And Ferb Prank Stars Prank Stars Good Luck Charlie Shake It Up Jessie Austin And Ally A.N.T. Farm Gravity Falls Girl vs Monster Phineas And Ferb Wizards Of Waverly Place Minnie And You Suite Life On Deck Minnie And You Good Luck Charlie Minnie And You Gravity Falls Minnie And You Phineas And Ferb Phineas And Ferb Minnie And You Jessie Good Luck Charlie Gravity Falls Wizards Of Waverly Place Phineas And Ferb Sharpay’s Fabulous Adventure

18:25 18:35 18:45 19:10 19:35 20:00 20:25 20:35 20:50 21:15 21:40 22:05 22:55 Cody 23:45

Prank Stars Prank Stars Phineas And Ferb Wizards Of Waverly Place Shake It Up Austin And Ally Prank Stars Prank Stars A.N.T. Farm Jessie Jessie Good Luck Charlie The Suite Life Of Zack And Stitch

00:20 Little Einsteins 00:50 Special Agent Oso 01:00 Special Agent Oso 01:15 Lazytown 01:40 Jungle Junction 02:10 Handy Manny 02:20 Handy Manny 02:30 Mickey Mouse Clubhouse 03:00 Lazytown 03:25 Special Agent Oso 03:40 Special Agent Oso 03:50 Imagination Movers 04:20 Handy Manny 04:30 Handy Manny 04:40 Special Agent Oso 04:50 Special Agent Oso 05:00 Timmy Time 05:10 Lazytown 05:35 Little Einsteins 06:00 Jungle Junction 06:15 Jungle Junction 06:30 Little Einsteins 06:50 Special Agent Oso 07:15 Jungle Junction 07:30 Jungle Junction 07:45 Handy Manny 08:00 Special Agent Oso 08:15 Jungle Junction 08:30 Little Einsteins 08:55 Lazytown 09:20 Imagination Movers 09:45 Timmy Time 09:55 Mickey Mouse Clubhouse 10:20 The Hive 10:30 Doc McStuffins 10:45 Zou 11:00 Jake & The Neverland Pirates 11:15 Cars Toons 11:20 New Adventures Of Winnie The Pooh 11:45 Art Attack 12:10 The Adventures Of Disney Fairies 12:35 Lilo And Stitch 13:10 Timmy Time 13:20 The Hive 13:30 Doc McStuffins 13:45 Doc McStuffins 14:00 Zou 14:15 Jake & The Neverland Pirates 14:30 Mouk 14:45 Lilo And Stitch 15:15 Cars Toons 15:20 New Adventures Of Winnie The Pooh 15:40 Mickey Mouse Clubhouse 16:05 The Hive 16:20 Mouk 16:35 Zou 16:50 Jake & The Neverland Pirates 17:20 Doc McStuffins 17:45 Zou 19:05 Mouk 19:20 Jake & The Neverland Pirates 19:35 New Adventures Of Winnie The Pooh 20:00 Cars Toons 20:05 Timmy Time 20:15 Winnie The Pooh: Tales Of Friendship 20:25 Doc McStuffins 20:40 Jake & The Neverland Pirates 21:10 Zou 21:30 Mouk 21:45 Handy Manny 22:00 Mickey Mouse Clubhouse 22:25 The Hive 22:35 New Adventures Of Winnie The Pooh 23:00 Timmy Time

00:00 Programmes Start At 7:00am KSA 07:00 Pokemon: BW Rival Destinies 07:20 Rated A For Awesome 07:45 Phineas And Ferb 08:10 Almost Naked Animals 08:35 Lab Rats 09:00 Ultimate Spider-Man 09:30 Fort Boyard - Ultimate Challenge 09:55 Kickin It 10:20 Crash & Bernstein 10:45 Pair Of Kings 11:10 Mr. Young 11:35 Scaredy Squirrel 12:00 Slugterra 12:30 Phineas And Ferb 12:40 Phineas And Ferb 13:00 The Suite Life Movie 14:20 Phineas And Ferb 14:35 My Babysitter’s A Vampire 15:00 My Babysitter’s A Vampire 15:25 Scaredy Squirrel 15:50 Lab Rats 16:15 Slugterra 16:40 Mr. Young 17:05 Almost Naked Animals 17:30 Crash & Bernstein 17:55 Crash & Bernstein 18:20 Phineas And Ferb 19:20 Phineas And Ferb 19:35 Lab Rats 20:00 My Babysitter’s A Vampire 20:25 Zeke & Luther 20:50 Mr. Young 21:15 Phineas And Ferb 22:05 Almost Naked Animals 22:30 Rekkit Rabbit 22:55 Kick Buttowski 23:20 The Avengers: Earths Mightiest Heroes

LORDS OF DOGTOWN ON OSN ACTION HD

00:00 Scouted 00:55 Style Star 01:25 15 Most Infamous Child Star Mugshots 03:15 E! Investigates 04:10 E!es 05:05 Extreme Close-Up 05:30 Extreme Close-Up 06:00 THS 07:50 Behind The Scenes 08:20 E! News 09:15 Extreme Close-Up

09:45 10:15 11:10 12:05 13:05 17:00 18:00 19:00 19:30 20:00 20:15 21:15 22:10 22:40 23:35

Extreme Close-Up E!es Opening Act E! News E!es THS E! News Married To Jonas Married To Jonas Red Carpet Wrap-Up Live From The Red Carpet Ice Loves Coco E!es Opening Act Opening Act

00:15 Diners, Drive-Ins & Dives 01:30 Andy Bates American Street Feasts 02:20 Unwrapped 02:45 Diners, Drive-Ins & Dives 04:20 Kid In A Candy Store 04:50 Unique Sweets 05:15 Charly’s Cake Angels 05:40 Chopped 06:30 Iron Chef America 07:10 Unwrapped 07:35 Unwrapped 08:00 Food Network Challenge 08:50 Kid In A Candy Store 09:15 Unwrapped 09:40 United Tastes Of America 10:05 Barefoot Contessa - Back To Basics 10:30 Barefoot Contessa - Back To Basics 10:55 Cooking For Real 11:20 Easy Chinese: San Francisco 11:45 Easy Chinese 12:10 Mexican Made Easy 12:35 Mexican Made Easy 13:00 Iron Chef America 13:50 Tyler’s Ultimate 14:15 Easy Chinese 14:40 Easy Chinese 15:05 World Cafe Asia 15:30 Easy Chinese: San Francisco 15:55 Easy Chinese 16:20 United Tastes Of America 16:45 Chopped 17:35 Barefoot Contessa - Back To Basics 18:00 Barefoot Contessa - Back To Basics 18:25 Diners, Drive-Ins & Dives 18:50 Diners, Drive-Ins & Dives 19:15 Andy Bates American Street Feasts 19:40 Tyler’s Ultimate 20:05 Guy’s Big Bite 20:30 Chopped 21:20 Chopped 22:10 Iron Chef America 23:00 Iron Chef America 23:50 Iron Chef America

00:15 00:40 01:05 01:30 02:20 03:05 03:55 04:45 05:10 05:30 06:20 07:10 08:00 08:50 09:40 10:05 10:30 11:20 12:10 13:00 13:50 14:15 14:40 15:30 16:20 16:45 17:10 18:00 18:50 19:40 20:30 21:20 22:10 23:00

I Married A Mobster Evil, I Evil, I Ghost Lab Dr G: Medical Examiner Blood Relatives I Married A Mobster Evil, I Evil, I Ghost Lab Dr G: Medical Examiner Disappeared Killer Outbreaks Street Patrol Real Emergency Calls Who On Earth Did I Marry?

On The Case With Paula Zahn Murder Shift Disappeared Killer Outbreaks Street Patrol Street Patrol Forensic Detectives On The Case With Paula Zahn Real Emergency Calls Who On Earth Did I Marry?

Disappeared Murder Shift Forensic Detectives On The Case With Paula Zahn Disappeared Nightmare Next Door Couples Who Kill Reel Crime/Real Story

00:45 Market Values 01:40 Into The Drink 02:35 Ultimate Traveller 03:30 Food Lover’s Guide To The Planet 04:25 One Man & His Campervan 04:50 Street Food Around The World 05:20 Amish: Out of Order 06:15 On Surfari 07:10 Don’t Tell My Mother 09:00 Bite Me With Dr. Mike Leahy 09:55 By Any Means 10:50 Market Values 11:45 Into The Drink 12:40 Ultimate Traveller 13:35 David Rocco’s Dolce Vita 2 14:30 One Man & His Campervan 14:55 Street Food Around The World 15:25 Cruise Ship Diaries 15:50 Destination Extreme 16:20 Don’t Tell My Mother 17:15 Bite Me With Dr. Mike Leahy 18:10 By Any Means 19:05 Amish: Out of Order 20:00 On Surfari 21:00 Don’t Tell My Mother 22:00 A World Apart 22:55 David Rocco‚Äôs Dolce Vita 3 23:20 Food Lover’s Guide To The Planet 23:50 David Rocco’s Dolce Vita 1

00:00 01:00 01:55 02:50 03:45 04:40 05:35 06:30 07:25 08:20 09:15 09:40 10:10 11:05 12:00 13:00 14:00 15:00

Unlikely Animal Friends Ultimate Animal Countdown Alaskan Killer Shark Ultimate Animal Countdown The Pack Animal Intervention Secrets Of The King Cobra Dangerous Encounters Dangerous Encounters Wild Case Files Snake Wranglers Snake Wranglers Secret Brazil Desert Seas Monster Fish Bears Of Fear Island Ultimate Animal Countdown The Pack

RESTITUTION ON OSN ACTION HD 16:00 17:00 Quest 18:00 19:00 20:00 Quest

World’s Deadliest GPU Kenny And Zoltan’s Venom Secrets Of The King Cobra Monster Fish Kenny And Zoltan’s Venom

00:00 Deadtime Stories 2-18 02:00 Wake Wood-18 04:00 Anaconda-PG15 06:00 Lords Of Dogtown-PG15 08:00 Walled In-PG15 10:00 True Justice: Vengeance Is Mine-PG15 12:00 Restitution-PG15 14:00 Walled In-PG15 16:00 Batman: Year One-PG15 18:00 Restitution-PG15 20:00 The Crazies-18 22:00 Kill List-R

01:00 John Carter-PG15 03:30 Happiness Is A Warm Blanket, Charlie Brown-PG 04:30 Unmatched-PG15 05:30 Feed The Fish-PG15 07:15 Relative Stranger-PG15 09:00 John Carter-PG15 11:30 Princess Lillifee-FAM 13:00 Blank Slate-PG15 15:00 The Dragon Chronicles: Fire & Ice-PG15 17:00 Soldier Love Story-PG15 19:00 Water For Elephants-PG15 21:00 A Little Help-18 23:00 The Devil Inside-18

00:30 The Daily Show With Jon Stewart 01:00 The Colbert Report 01:30 Saturday Night Live 02:30 Eastbound & Down 03:00 Parks And Recreation 03:30 Baby Daddy 04:00 Less Than Perfect 04:30 The Tonight Show With Jay Leno 05:30 Til Death 06:00 Seinfeld 06:30 Hope & Faith 07:00 Late Night With Jimmy Fallon 08:00 Less Than Perfect 08:30 Parks And Recreation 09:00 Til Death 09:30 The Neighbors 10:00 Hot In Cleveland 10:30 Hope & Faith 11:00 The Tonight Show With Jay Leno 12:00 Seinfeld 12:30 Less Than Perfect 13:00 Til Death 13:30 Hope & Faith 14:00 Baby Daddy 14:30 Hot In Cleveland 15:00 The Neighbors 15:30 The Daily Show With Jon Stewart 16:00 The Colbert Report 16:30 Seinfeld 17:00 Late Night With Jimmy Fallon 18:00 The Simpsons 18:30 Baby Daddy 19:00 Two And A Half Men 19:30 Hot In Cleveland 20:00 The Cleveland Show 20:30 Breaking In 21:00 The Daily Show With Jon

00:00 01:00 02:00 03:00 04:00 05:00 06:00 08:00 08:30 10:00 12:00 13:00 14:00 15:00 16:00 18:00 18:30 19:00 20:00

Criminal Minds C.S.I. Miami Strike Back Top Gear (US) Six Feet Under Jane By Design Good Morning America Emmerdale Coronation Street Jane By Design Criminal Minds Top Gear (US) Jane By Design C.S.I. Miami Live Good Morning America Emmerdale Coronation Street Top Gear (UK) Eureka

00:00 Deadtime Stories 2-18 02:00 Wake Wood-18 04:00 Anaconda-PG15 06:00 Lords Of Dogtown-PG15 08:00 Walled In-PG15 10:00 True Justice: Vengeance Is Mine-PG15 12:00 Restitution-PG15 14:00 Walled In-PG15 16:00 Batman: Year One-PG15 18:00 Restitution-PG15 20:00 The Crazies-18 22:00 Kill List-R

00:00 Tommy Boy-PG15 02:00 No Strings Attached-18 04:00 The Winning Season-PG15 06:00 12 Dates Of Christmas-PG15 08:00 Scooby-Doo! Curse Of The Lake Monster-PG 10:00 Despicable Me-FAM 12:00 The Winning Season-PG15 14:00 Elf-PG 16:00 Despicable Me-FAM 18:00 The Ladykillers-PG15 20:00 Paul-PG15 22:00 Super-18

00:45 04:30 06:15 09:15 10:45 PG15 12:30 14:15 15:45 PG15 17:30 19:15 21:00 23:00

Woodstock-18 Fargo-18 Neverland—PG15 Call Of The Wild-PG15 An Invisible Sign Of My OwnHenry’s Crime-PG15 Paws-PG An Invisible Sign Of My OwnFilm Socialisme-PG15 Cruel Intentions-18 Road To Perdition-18 1941-PG15

02:15 Larry Crowne-PG15 04:00 Tower Heist-PG15 05:45 Alvin And The Chipmunks: Chipwrecked-PG 07:15 Justin Bieber: Never Say Never-PG 09:00 Stolen Lives-PG15 11:00 Tower Heist-PG15 13:00 Fat Albert-PG 15:00 Glee: The Concert MoviePG15 17:00 Stolen Lives-PG15 19:00 I Don’t Know How She Does It-PG15 21:00 Thor-PG15 23:00 The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo-R

01:00 Crab Island-FAM 02:45 Mr. Popper’s Penguins-PG 04:30 Marco Macaco-FAM 06:00 The Nimbols: Part I-FAM 08:00 Mickey’s Twice Upon A Christmas-FAM 10:00 The Nimbols: Part II-FAM 11:30 Judy Moody And The Not Bummer Summer-PG 13:00 The Three Bears: The Amazing Adventurers-FAM 14:30 Mr. Popper’s Penguins-PG 16:15 Alpha And Omega-PG 18:00 The Nimbols: Part I-FAM 20:00 Diary Of A Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules-PG 22:00 The Three Bears: The Amazing Adventurers-FAM 23:30 Alpha And Omega-PG

02:00 Top 14 04:00 Super League 06:15 Live Cricket One International 14:30 ICC Cricket 360 15:00 Rugby League 17:00 Super League 19:00 Top 14 21:00 Live PGA Tour 22:30 Inside The PGA Tour 23:00 Live PGA Tour

Day

01:00 01:30 06:00 07:00 08:30 11:30 13:30 17:30 21:00 22:00

PGA European Tour Weekly PGA European Tour Trans World Sport PGA European Tour PGA European Tour Top 14 Live PGA European Tour Premier League Darts Trans World Sport Rugby League NRL

01:00 04:30 05:00 07:00 11:30 13:30 14:30 15:00 22:00

Premier League Darts Futbol Mundial Pro 12 European PGA Tour Pro 12 Trans World Sport Total Rugby Cricket One Day International Pro 12

00:00 01:00 03:00 06:00 07:00 08:00 09:00 10:00 10:30 11:00 13:00 16:00 18:00 19:00 20:00 21:00 22:00 22:30 23:30

WWE Vintage Collection NHL UFC 156 UFC Unleashed WWE Bottom Line WWE NXT WWE Experience WWE This Week Mobil 1 The Grid NHL Prizefighter WWE Smackdown WWE Bottom Line UFC TUF UFC Unleashed WWE Experience WWE This Week WWE Vintage Collection NHL

00:00 01:00 02:00 03:00 05:00 07:00 08:00 10:00 12:00 14:00 16:00 18:00 20:00 Us 22:00 23:00

Storage Wars Unlocked Soviet Storm: WWII In The East Ancient Aliens Storage Wars Pawn Stars American Restoration Storage Wars Pawn Stars American Restoration Storage Wars Pawn Stars American Restoration Mankind The Story Of All Of

00:05 01:00 01:30 02:00 02:55 03:50 04:20 05:15 06:10 07:05 08:00 09:00 10:00 11:50 13:50 15:45 19:25 23:10

Fashion Police Videofashion Specials Videofashion Specials Chicagolicious Videofashion Daily Big Boutique In The City Jerseylicious Whose Wedding Is It Anyway?

Married Away Open House Videofashion News Videofashion Daily Kimora: Life In The Fab Lane How Do I Look?

Big Rich Texas Tia And Tamera Giuliana & Bill Chicagolicious

00:45 02:20 04:30 06:10 08:00 09:35 11:15 14:25 16:00 18:00 19:35 21:20 23:00

They Drive By Night-FAM The Fixer Party Girl-PG Ask Any Girl-FAM Northern Pursuit-PG It Started With A Kiss-PG Doctor Zhivago-PG They Drive By Night-FAM Stay Away, Joe-U Billy The Kid-PG Dial M For Murder-PG Party Girl-PG The Fixer

Ancient Aliens Ancient Aliens

Classifieds MONDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2013

Kuwait SHARQIA-1 BULLET TO THE HEAD (DIG) THE GUILT TRIP (DIG) WARM BODIES (DIG) BULLET TO THE HEAD (DIG) THE GUILT TRIP (DIG) BULLET TO THE HEAD (DIG) NO SUN+TUE+WED

1:30 PM 3:45 PM 5:45 PM 8:00 PM 10:00 PM 12:05 AM

SHARQIA-2 SNOWFLAKE, THE WHITE GORILLA HANSEL & GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS SNOWFLAKE, THE WHITE GORILLA 3ALA GOSETY (DIG) 3ALA GOSETY (DIG) HANSEL & GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS 3ALA GOSETY (DIG) NO SUN+TUE+WED

12:30 PM 2:15 PM 4:15 PM 6:00 PM 8:15 PM 10:30 PM 12:30 AM

SHARQIA-3 SILENT HILL: REVELATION (DIG) 2:00 PM BROKEN CITY (DIG) 4:00 PM SILENT HILL: REVELATION (DIG) 6:30 PM BROKEN CITY (DIG) 8:30 PM BROKEN CITY (DIG) 10:45 PM BROKEN CITY (DIG) 1:00 AM NO SUN+TUE+WED MUHALAB-1 BULLET TO THE HEAD (DIG) THE GUILT TRIP (DIG) FRI+SAT+MON BULLET TO THE HEAD (DIG) NO FRI+SAT+MON THE GUILT TRIP (DIG) NO FRI+SAT+MON MIRCHI (DIG) (TELUGU) FRI+SAT+MON BULLET TO THE HEAD (DIG) THE GUILT TRIP (DIG) BULLET TO THE HEAD (DIG) NO SUN+TUE+WED

12:45 PM 2:45 PM

FOR SALE

KNCC PROGRAMME FROM THURSDAY TO WEDNESDAY (07/02/2013 TO 13/02/2013)

4:45 PM 7:45 PM 9:45 PM 11:45 PM

2:30 PM 4:45 PM 7:00 PM 9:15 PM 11:30 PM

BAIRAQ-1 3ALA GOSETY (DIG) HANSEL & GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS 3ALA GOSETY (DIG) HANSEL & GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS 3ALA GOSETY (DIG) 3ALA GOSETY (DIG) NO SUN+TUE+WED

12:30 PM 2:45 PM 4:45 PM 7:15 PM 9:15 PM 11:30 PM

360º- 3 SNOWFLAKE, THE WHITE GORILLA SNOWFLAKE, THE WHITE GORILLA SNOWFLAKE, THE WHITE GORILLA SNOWFLAKE, THE WHITE GORILLA SNOWFLAKE, THE WHITE GORILLA THE LAST STAND (DIG) NO SUN+TUE+WED

1:45 PM 3:45 PM 5:45 PM 7:45 PM 9:45 PM 11:45 PM

BAIRAQ-2 THE GUILT TRIP (DIG) BULLET TO THE HEAD (DIG) THE GUILT TRIP (DIG) BULLET TO THE HEAD (DIG) THE GUILT TRIP (DIG) BULLET TO THE HEAD (DIG) NO SUN+TUE+WED

2:15 PM 4:15 PM 6:15 PM 8:15 PM 10:15 PM 12:15 AM

360º- 4 3ALA GOSETY (DIG) 3ALA GOSETY (DIG) 3ALA GOSETY (DIG) 3ALA GOSETY (DIG) 3ALA GOSETY (DIG) NO SUN+TUE+WED

1:30 PM 4:00 PM 6:30 PM 9:00 PM 11:30 PM

BAIRAQ-3 SNOWFLAKE, THE WHITE GORILLA SNOWFLAKE, THE WHITE GORILLA SNOWFLAKE, THE WHITE GORILLA BROKEN CITY (DIG) BROKEN CITY (DIG) BROKEN CITY (DIG) NO SUN+TUE+WED

1:30 PM 3:30 PM 5:30 PM 7:30 PM 9:45 PM 12:05 AM

1:00 PM 3:00 PM 4:45 PM 6:30 PM 9:30 PM 12:30 AM

MARINA-1 THE GUILT TRIP (DIG) WARM BODIES (DIG) THE GUILT TRIP (DIG) LINCOLN (DIG) THE GUILT TRIP (DIG) WARM BODIES (DIG) NO SUN+TUE+WED

1:30 PM 3:30 PM 5:30 PM 7:45 PM 10:45 PM 12:45 AM

MARINA-2 BULLET TO THE HEAD (DIG) FRI 3ALA GOSETY (DIG) NO FRI 3ALA GOSETY (DIG) 3ALA GOSETY (DIG) BULLET TO THE HEAD (DIG) 3ALA GOSETY (DIG) BULLET TO THE HEAD (DIG) NO SUN+TUE+WED

1:30 PM 1:00 PM 3:30 PM 5:45 PM 8:00 PM 10:00 PM 12:15 AM

MARINA-3 SNOWFLAKE, THE WHITE GORILLA BROKEN CITY (DIG) SNOWFLAKE, THE WHITE GORILLA SILENT HILL: REVELATION 6:15 PM BROKEN CITY (DIG) HANSEL & GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS BROKEN CITY (DIG) NO SUN+TUE+WED

1:30 PM 3:45 PM 6:00 PM 8:00 PM 10:00 PM 12:15 AM

AVENUES-1 WARM BODIES (DIG) WARM BODIES (DIG) WARM BODIES (DIG) QUARTET (DIG) WARM BODIES (DIG) WARM BODIES (DIG) NO SUN+TUE+WED

MUHALAB-3 SNOWFLAKE, THE WHITE GORILLA 3ALA GOSETY (DIG) SNOWFLAKE, THE WHITE GORILLA HANSEL & GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS 3ALA GOSETY (DIG) 3ALA GOSETY (DIG) HANSEL & GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS NO SUN+TUE+WED

12:30 PM 2:15 PM 4:30 PM 6:15 PM 8:15 PM 10:30 PM 12:45 AM

FANAR-1 BULLET TO THE HEAD (DIG) THE GUILT TRIP (DIG) WARM BODIES (DIG) BULLET TO THE HEAD (DIG) THE GUILT TRIP (DIG) BULLET TO THE HEAD (DIG) THE GUILT TRIP (DIG) NO SUN+TUE+WED

AVENUES-2 SNOWFLAKE, THE WHITE GORILLA SNOWFLAKE, THE WHITE GORILLA SNOWFLAKE, THE WHITE GORILLA SNOWFLAKE, THE WHITE GORILLA SILENT HILL: REVELATION 8:45 PM SILENT HILL: REVELATION (DIG) SILENT HILL: REVELATION (DIG) NO SUN+TUE+WED

1:00 PM 3:00 PM 5:00 PM 7:00 PM 9:00 PM 11:00 PM 1:00 AM

2:00 PM 4:15 PM 6:15 PM 8:30 PM 10:30 PM

360º- 2 WARM BODIES (DIG) WARM BODIES (DIG) WARM BODIES (DIG) WARM BODIES (DIG) WARM BODIES (DIG) NO SUN+TUE+WED

FANAR-3 SNOWFLAKE, THE WHITE GORILLA SNOWFLAKE, THE WHITE GORILLA SNOWFLAKE, THE WHITE GORILLA SPECIAL 26 (DIG) (Hindi) SPECIAL 26 (DIG) (Hindi) THE LAST STAND (DIG) NO SUN+TUE+WED

MUHALAB-2 BROKEN CITY (DIG) BROKEN CITY (DIG) SILENT HILL: REVELATION (DIG) WARM BODIES (DIG) BROKEN CITY (DIG) BROKEN CITY (DIG) NO SUN+TUE+WED

FANAR-2 SILENT HILL: REVELATION (DIG) HANSEL & GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS BROKEN CITY (DIG) HANSEL & GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS BROKEN CITY (DIG)

BULLET TO THE HEAD (DIG) NO SUN+TUE+WED

BROKEN CITY (DIG) BROKEN CITY (DIG) NO SUN+TUE+WED

360º- 5 SILENT HILL: REVELATION (DIG) SAT SILENT HILL: REVELATION (DIG) FRI+SAT SILENT HILL: REVELATION (DIG) NO MON THE LAST STAND (DIG) SILENT HILL: REVELATION (DIG) SILENT HILL: REVELATION (DIG) SILENT HILL: REVELATION (DIG) NO SUN+TUE+WED

3:45 PM 5:45 PM

9:15 PM 11:45 PM

12:45 AM

BROKEN CITY (DIG) NO SUN+TUE+WED

AVENUES-3 BULLET TO THE HEAD (DIG) BULLET TO THE HEAD (DIG) BULLET TO THE HEAD (DIG) BULLET TO THE HEAD (DIG) BULLET TO THE HEAD (DIG) BULLET TO THE HEAD (DIG) BULLET TO THE HEAD (DIG) NO SUN+TUE+WED 360º- 1 BROKEN CITY (DIG) BROKEN CITY (DIG) BROKEN CITY (DIG)

12:30 PM 2:15 PM 4:30 PM (DIG) 8:15 PM 10:30 PM 12:30 AM

AL-KOUT.1 HANSEL & GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS FRI 3ALA GOSETY (DIG) NO FRI 3ALA GOSETY (DIG) HANSEL & GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS 3ALA GOSETY (DIG) 3ALA GOSETY (DIG) HANSEL & GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS NO SUN+TUE+WED

1:15 PM 3:30 PM 5:45 PM 8:00 PM 10:15 PM 12:30 AM

12:45 PM 2:45 PM 4:45 PM 6:45 PM (DGA) 10:45 PM 12:45 AM

1:15 PM 3:15 PM 5:15 PM 7:15 PM 9:15 PM 11:15 PM 1:15 AM

3:00 PM 5:00 PM 7:00 PM 9:15 PM 11:15 PM 1:15 AM

1:30 PM 1:15 PM 3:30 PM 5:45 PM 7:45 PM 10:00 PM 12:15 AM

AL-KOUT.2 THE GUILT TRIP (DIG) SILENT HILL: REVELATION (DIG) LINCOLN (DIG) THE GUILT TRIP (DIG) THE GUILT TRIP (DIG) SILENT HILL: REVELATION (DIG) NO SUN+TUE+WED

1:00 PM 3:15 PM 5:15 PM 8:15 PM 10:15 PM 12:30 AM

AL-KOUT.3 BROKEN CITY (DIG) WARM BODIES (DIG) BROKEN CITY (DIG) WARM BODIES (DIG) BROKEN CITY (DIG) BROKEN CITY (DIG) NO SUN+TUE+WED

2:00 PM 4:15 PM 6:15 PM 8:30 PM 10:30 PM 12:45 AM

AL-KOUT.4 SNOWFLAKE, THE WHITE GORILLA SNOWFLAKE, THE WHITE GORILLA BULLET TO THE HEAD (DIG) GANGSTER SQUAD (DIG) BULLET TO THE HEAD (DIG)

1:45 PM 4:15 PM 6:45 PM

1:00 PM

1:45 PM 3:45 PM 5:30 PM 7:30 PM 9:45 PM

12:05 AM

PLAZA MIRCHI (DIG) (TELUGU) MIRCHI (DIG) (TELUGU) MIRCHI (DIG) (TELUGU)

3:30 PM 6:30 PM 9:30 PM

LAILA 3ALA GOSETY (DIG) NO WED HANSEL & GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS NO WED 3ALA GOSETY (DIG) NO WED BROKEN CITY (DIG) NO WED Special Show “A Good Day to Die Hard” WED

4:00 PM 6:15 PM 8:15 PM 10:30 PM

2009 Hyundai Sonata, single use, white color, excellent condition, agency maintained, 37,000 km only, still under warranty, expecting price KD 3,000, negotiable. Contact: 97182559.

6-2-2013

MATRIMONIAL Australian man new in Kuwait turn Muslim looking for a Kuwaiti lady must fear God and come from a good family, widow or divorcee no problem. Email: gulfinportexport@hotmail.co m (C 4302) SITUATION WANTED A European qualified and experienced company coordinator/administrator looking for employment in Kuwait. Speaks 5 languages. city.break@gmx.com (C 4303) Highly qualified experienced British executive looking for a management position in any private company in Kuwait. All offers considered. siam2011@hotmail.co.uk (C 4304) 11-2-2013

7:00 PM

No: 15716

AJIAL.1 MIRCHI (TELUGU) MIRCHI (TELUGU) MIRCHI (TELUGU)

3:30 PM 6:30 PM 9:30 PM

AJIAL.2 SNOWFLAKE, THE WHITE GORILLA SNOWFLAKE, THE WHITE GORILLA 3ALA GOSETY (DIG) 3ALA GOSETY (DIG)

4:00 PM 6:00 PM 7:45 PM 10:00 PM

AJIAL.3 SPECIAL 26 (DIG) (Hindi) SPECIAL 26 (DIG) (Hindi) SPECIAL 26 (DIG) (Hindi)

3:45 PM 6:45 PM 9:45 PM

AJIAL.4 KAMMATH & KAMMATH KAMMATH & KAMMATH KAMMATH & KAMMATH

3:45 PM 6:45 PM 9:45 PM

METRO-1 KAMMATH & KAMMATH KAMMATH & KAMMATH 3ALA GOSETY (DIG)

3:30 PM 6:30 PM 9:30 PM

METRO-2 MIRCHI (DIG) (TELUGU) MIRCHI (DIG) (TELUGU) MIRCHI (DIG) (TELUGU)

3:45 PM 6:45 PM 10:00 PM

DIAL 161 FOR AIRPORT INFORMATION

Airlines JAI PIA THY JZR JZR QTR ETH QTR GFA UAE ETD AFG FDB MSR QTR DHX THY JZR BAW KAC KAC FDB KAC UAE ABY QTR FDB ETD KAC GFA KAC JZR MSC IRC MPH MEA MSR UAE FDB KNE KAC SVA KAC QTR JZR KAC KAC QTR

Arrival Flights on Monday 11/2/2013 Flt Route 574 MUMBAI 205 LAHORE 772 ISTANBUL 267 BEIRUT 539 CAIRO 148 DOHA 620 ADDIS ABABA 6130 DOHA 211 BAHRAIN 853 DUBAI 305 ABU DHABI 416 JEDDAH 67 DUBAI 612 CAIRO 138 DOHA 170 BAHRAIN 770 ISTANBUL 503 LUXOR 157 LONDON 412 MANILA 206 ISLAMABAD 53 DUBAI 302 MUMBAI 855 DUBAI 121 SHARJAH 132 DOHA 55 DUBAI 301 ABU DHABI 352 COCHIN 213 BAHRAIN 344 CHENNAI 165 DUBAI 403 ASSIUT 6521 LAMERD 97 AMSTERDAM 404 BEIRUT 610 CAIRO 871 DUBAI 57 DUBAI 472 JEDDAH 672 DUBAI 500 JEDDAH 546 ALEXANDRIA 140 DOHA 561 SOHAG 788 JEDDAH 284 DHAKA 134 DOHA

Time 0:05 0:15 0:35 0:45 0:50 1:00 1:45 1:45 1:50 2:35 2:45 2:55 3:05 3:10 3:45 5:15 5:30 5:55 6:40 6:45 7:40 7:45 7:55 8:40 9:05 9:10 9:15 9:20 9:50 9:55 10:40 11:20 11:30 11:45 11:50 11:55 12:45 12:50 13:50 14:10 14:10 14:30 14:30 14:35 14:50 14:55 15:10 15:30

OMA JZR KAC UAE ETD RJA GFA SVA JZR QTR ABY UAL KAC JZR KAC BAB FDB MSC KAC KAC KAC KAC KAC OMA FDB JAI AXB MSR ABY MSC ALK QTR MEA QTR GFA ETD UAE JAI DHX FDB AIC TAR GFA PIA JZR UAL BBC JZR DLH

645 535 118 857 303 640 215 510 777 144 127 982 542 177 786 438 63 405 618 742 674 104 774 647 61 572 389 618 129 401 229 146 402 136 221 307 859 576 372 59 975 327 217 205 185 981 43 239 636

MUSCAT CAIRO NEW YORK DUBAI ABU DHABI AMMAN BAHRAIN RIYADH JEDDAH DOHA SHARJAH WASHINGTON DC DULLES CAIRO DUBAI JEDDAH BAHRAIN DUBAI SOHAG DOHA DAMMAM DUBAI LONDON RIYADH MUSCAT DUBAI MUMBAI MANGALORE ALEXANDRIA SHARJAH ALEXANDRIA COLOMBO DOHA BEIRUT DOHA BAHRAIN ABU DHABI DUBAI COCHIN BAHRAIN DUBAI CHENNAI TUNIS BAHRAIN LAHORE DUBAI BAHRAIN DHAKA AMMAN FRANKFURT

15:40 16:25 16:35 16:40 16:50 16:55 17:15 17:20 17:45 17:50 17:55 17:55 18:05 18:15 18:30 18:40 18:45 19:15 19:20 19:30 19:35 19:35 19:50 19:55 20:00 20:10 20:20 20:25 20:35 20:50 20:55 21:00 21:20 21:25 21:30 21:35 21:40 21:55 22:00 22:00 22:30 22:45 22:50 23:00 23:05 23:25 23:45 23:45 23:55

Airlines AIC JAI UAL DLH PIA NCR KAC ETH THY QTR FDB UAE ETD AFG MSR QTR QTR JZR GFA THY KAC JZR FDB BAW JZR KAC KAC ABY UAE FDB ETD QTR GFA KAC KAC JZR KAC MSC IRC MEA KAC MPH MSR JZR UAE FDB KAC

Departure Flights on Monday 11/2/2013 Flt Route 982 AHMEDABAD 573 MUMBAI 981 WASHINGTON DC DULLES 637 FRANKFURT 206 PESHAWAR 202 KABUL 283 DHAKA 621 ADDIS ABABA 773 ISTANBUL 6131 DOHA 68 DUBAI 854 DUBAI 306 ABU DHABI 416 JEDDAH 613 CAIRO 139 DOHA 149 DOHA 164 DUBAI 212 BAHRAIN 771 ISTANBUL 545 ALEXANDRIA 560 SOHAG 54 DUBAI 156 LONDON 534 CAIRO 787 JEDDAH 671 DUBAI 122 SHARJAH 856 DUBAI 56 DUBAI 302 ABU DHABI 133 DOHA 214 BAHRAIN 541 CAIRO 165 ROME 776 JEDDAH 103 LONDON 406 SOHAG 6522 LAMERD 405 BEIRUT 785 JEDDAH 97 AL MAKTOUM 611 CAIRO 176 DUBAI 872 DUBAI 58 DUBAI 673 DUBAI

Time 0:05 1:05 1:10 1:20 1:35 2:00 2:25 2:45 2:55 3:15 3:45 3:50 4:00 4:00 4:10 4:50 6:05 6:55 7:00 7:35 7:45 8:15 8:25 8:45 9:15 9:25 9:35 9:45 9:55 10:00 10:05 10:10 10:40 11:30 11:50 12:15 12:20 12:30 12:35 12:55 13:00 13:20 13:45 13:50 14:15 14:30 15:05

Directorate General of Civil Aviation Home Page (www.kuwait-airport.com.kw)

KNE SVA KAC QTR KAC KAC OMA JZR ETD JZR QTR UAE RJA GFA JZR SVA ABY JZR QTR UAL FDB BAB MSC FDB OMA KAC KAC KAC JAI ABY MSR MSC DHX ALK MEA ETD QTR GFA KAC FDB UAE JAI DHX KAC QTR JZR TAR GFA KAC

473 501 617 141 773 741 646 238 304 538 135 858 641 216 184 511 128 266 145 982 64 439 404 62 648 331 361 351 571 120 619 402 171 230 403 308 137 222 301 60 860 575 373 205 147 502 328 218 411

JEDDAH JEDDAH DOHA DOHA RIYADH DAMMAM MUSCAT AMMAN ABU DHABI CAIRO DOHA DUBAI AMMAN BAHRAIN DUBAI RIYADH SHARJAH BEIRUT DOHA BAHRAIN DUBAI BAHRAIN ASSIUT DUBAI MUSCAT TRIVANDRUM COLOMBO KOCHI MUMBAI SHARJAH ALEXANDRIA ALEXANDRIA BAHRAIN COLOMBO BEIRUT ABU DHABI DOHA BAHRAIN MUMBAI DUBAI DUBAI KOCHI BAHRAIN ISLAMABAD DOHA LUXOR DUBAI BAHRAIN BANGKOK

15:10 15:45 15:45 16:15 16:25 16:30 16:40 17:15 17:35 17:40 17:45 17:50 17:55 18:15 18:30 18:35 18:40 18:45 18:50 19:10 19:25 19:30 20:15 20:40 20:55 20:55 21:00 21:10 21:10 21:15 21:25 21:50 21:50 21:55 22:20 22:20 22:25 22:30 22:35 22:40 22:50 22:55 23:00 23:00 23:10 23:35 23:45 23:50 23:55

34

stars CROSSWORD 97

STAR TRACK Aries (March 21-April 19)

It’s time to face up to certain things about yourself that you may have denied for some time, Aries. You have only yourself to answer to, so relax. You aren’t the first one to have to deal with old issues that probably aren’t as shameful as you think. You don’t have to be proud of them. You can’t keep hiding them from yourself. This could cause more problems than dealing with them once and for all.

Taurus (April 20-May 20)

It scares you when life seems like it’s slipping through your fingers and you can’t slow it down. But it isn’t life that’s playing tricks on you. You aren’t seeing things as clearly as you should be. You feel a little left out, but don’t worry. You’re just out of energy. Try and think of this empty feeling inside as a kind of purification or a much-needed break from everything.

Gemini (May 21-June 20)

ACROSS 1. A federally chartered savings bank.

4. A woman's headscarf folded into a triangle and tied under the chine.

12. Liquid containing proteins and electrolytes including the liquid in blood plasma and interstitial fluid.

15. A plant hormone promoting elongation of stems and roots.

16. Of or relating to Aram or to its inhabitants or their culture or their language.

17. A unit of pain intensity.

18. A unit of weight used in some Spanish speaking countries.

20. Small dark geese that breed in the north and migrate southward.

21. South American wood sorrel cultivated for its edible tubers.

22. A crown-like jewelled headdress worn by women on formal occasions.

23. Tropical starchy tuberous root.

25. The blood group whose red cells carry both the A and B antigens.

26. A radioactive transuranic element which has been synthesized.

29. A family of languages of the Fula people of west Africa in the sub-Sahara regions from Senegal to Chad.

32. Wearing or provided with clothing.

34. Acting like a clown or buffoon.

36. Formerly a term of respect for important white Europeans in colonial India.

39. (astronomy) The angular distance of a celestial point measured westward along the celestial equator from the zenith crossing.

40. Learns from a tutor.

41. Lower in esteem.

42. A brim that projects to the front to shade the eyes.

45. A silvery soft waxy metallic element of the alkali metal group.

47. A long thin fluffy scarf of feathers or fur.

48. An independent agency of the United States government responsible for collecting and coordinating intelligence and counterintelligence activities abroad in the national interest.

49. A graphical recording of the cardiac cycle produced by an electrocardiograph.

53. Date used in reckoning dates before the supposed year Christ was born.

54. Unknown god.

56. (Judaism) An eight-day Jewish holiday commemorating the rededication of the Temple of Jerusalem.

60. Suggestive of the supernatural.

61. African antelope with ridged curved horns.

64. An agency of the United Nations affiliated with the World Bank.

66. The length of a straight line passing through the center of a circle and connecting two points on the circumference.

67. Fastener consisting of a resinous composition that is plastic when warm.

71. The act of escaping physically.

73. A person who loves or is loved.

75. Aircraft landing in bad weather in which the pilot is talked down by ground control using precision approach radar.

76. The residue that remains when something is burned.

77. Someone who performs magic tricks to amuse an audience.

79. A member of a Mayan people of southwestern Guatemala.

80. A strong solution of sodium or potassium hydroxide.

81. In a surreptitious manner.

82. A loose sleeveless outer garment made from aba cloth.

DOWN 1. A legally binding command or decision entered on the court record (as if issued by a court or judge).

2. A dress worn primarily by Hindu women.

3. United States writer of poems and plays about racial conflict (born in 1934).

4. A small cake leavened with yeast.

5. A constellation in the southern hemisphere near Telescopium and Norma.

6. A soft silvery metallic element of the alkali earth group.

7. Resembling an umbel in form.

8. Small fatty fish usually canned.

9. (of persons) Highest in rank or authority or office.

10. Valuable fiber plant of East Indies now widespread in cultivation.

11. (prefix) Opposite or opposing or neutralizing.

12. The capital and largest city of Japan.

13. A South American shrub whose leaves are chewed by natives of the Andes.

14. Loose or flaccid body fat.

19. Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (trade names Orudis or Orudis KT or Oruvail).

24. Divulge information or secrets.

27. The process of taking food into the body through the mouth (as by eating).

28. A resentment strong enough to justify retaliation.

30. North American republic containing 50 states - 48 conterminous states in North America plus Alaska in northwest North America and the Hawaiian Islands in the Pacific Ocean.

31. According to the Old Testament he was a pagan king of Israel and husband of Jezebel (9th century BC).

33. Genus of western United States annuals with showy yellow or white flowers.

35. Kenyan statesman and the first president of independent Kenya (1893-1978).

37. An isogram connecting points having equal barometric pressure at a given time.

38. (of a shore or shoreline) Having an extensive gently sloping area covered with sand or gravel or shingle down to the water line.

43. (Akkadian) God of wisdom.

44. German philosopher whose three stage process of dialectical reasoning was adopted by Karl Marx (1770-1831).

46. An inflammatory disease involving the sebaceous glands of the skin.

50. Weedy Eurasian plant often a pest in grain fields.

51. A soft yellow malleable ductile (trivalent and univalent) metallic element.

52. English philologist (1835-1912).

55. Small terrestrial lizard of warm regions of the Old World.

57. Preaching the gospel of Christ in the manner of the early church.

58. Any member of Athapaskan tribes that migrated to the southwestern desert (from Arizona to Texas and south into Mexico).

59. North American bluebirds.

62. A young woman.

63. An association of nations dedicated to economic and political cooperation in southeastern Asia.

65. Abounding in or covered with ferns.

68. Made of fir or pine.

69. Someone who works (or provides workers) during a strike.

70. God of love and erotic desire.

72. A syndrome that occurs in many women from 2 to 14 days before the onset of menstruation.

74. Being one more than six.

78. A brittle gray crystalline element that is a semiconducting metalloid (resembling silicon) used in transistors.

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2013

When you were younger, your humanity and generosity seemed limitless. You felt very involved in the world and what was going wrong with it. Today you may remember these great dreams. It may be time to make some of those dreams come true. It would be especially beneficial to you if you could somehow connect this to the work you do for a living. It’s never too late to make a dream come true.

Cancer (June 21-July 22) You’ve always been sensitive to the pain of an unhappy childhood, Cancer. Today you can no longer stand the thought of all those children living in misery, victims of war or other atrocities. And this becomes especially painful when you take a look at the happy children full of joy around you. You may think that it’s time for you to do something about it. You may be right.

Leo (July 23-August 22)

You may feel like you need to work for a cause or political party, Leo. The period you’re in right now is bringing you closer to social issues or humanitarian causes and pushing you to think about what you can do for people less fortunate. You can help develop a new strategy as far as human relations are concerned. Don’t hesitate to listen to your heart and be a little more generous in life.

Virgo (August 23-September 22)

Unfortunately, Virgo, this may be a period of conflict and tension in your family life, especially where siblings are concerned. Don’t you think it’s time to deal with these problems once and for all? It would be nice to build a new relationship with them. It might be painful, but it’s up to you to take the first step. Call a family meeting and put all your cards on the table.

Word Search

Libra (September 23-October 22)

You now seem to be able to do everything you want to do, Libra. Things are going well as you reap the rewards of important past decisions you made. The obstacles that tended to get in your way are history now. Your family is happy and healthy. Your success is encouraging you to make plans for the future. It also enables you to look forward to much better days for you and those close to you.

Scorpio (October 23-November 21)

You need to be more spontaneous, Scorpio, and stop trying to organize other people’s lives. You will see that it isn’t so hard to just let things happen. The unexpected also has a special charm. You’re a slave to routine. You need to take a big bite out of life and put your trust in chance for a while. The people around you would like to see more originality in your personality. Listen to them.

Sagittarius (November 22-December 21)

You’re a hard worker, Sagittarius, and you expect the same from the people around you. Today you may want to take a look at your personal and work relationships. Demanding person that you are, you may be concerned about the quality of your friendships. Don’t be afraid to separate good from bad. Life is too short to devote your energy to bad relationships.

Capricorn (December 22-January 19)

Watch for any errors in orientation or strategic mistakes, Capricorn. You may be having some communication problems with almost everyone today. You feel like whatever you say falls on deaf ears and that no one really wants to listen to you.

Don’t get frustrated. Relax and see it with humor. Just be an observer for one day and see what happens.

Aquarius (January 20- February 18)

At the moment, there’s a great deal of electricity in the air, especially in your life at home. Ignore those people who try to provoke you. Don’t get involved in conflicts that could degenerate into fights. Go somewhere to be alone. Reenergize by really listening to your desires, feelings, and instincts. Why not spend the afternoon in a museum, for example?

Pisces (February 19-March 20)

If people say that you’re stubborn when you’re just determined, let them talk, Pisces, and do what you need to do.

However, when you think you’re being determined but you’re actually being obstinate, you may want to listen to the people around you. They don’t tell you to calm down because they’re jealous of you but because they care about you. They may not know that you hate to lose.

Yesterday’s Solution

Yesterday’s Solution

Daily SuDoku

Yesterday’s Solution

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2013

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 Sharq

PHARMACY

ADDRESS

PHONE

Al-Shuwaikh

24810598

Al-Nuzha

22545171

23915883 23715414 23726558

Sabhan

24742838

Jahra

Modern Jahra Madina Munawara

Jahra-Block 3 Lot 1 Jahra-Block 92

24575518 24566622

Al-Helaly

22434853

Capital

Ahlam Khaldiya Coop

Fahad Al-Salem St Khaldiya Coop

22436184 24833967

Al-Faiha

22545051

Farwaniya

New Shifa Ferdous Coop Modern Safwan

Farwaniya Block 40 Ferdous Coop Old Kheitan Block 11

24734000 24881201 24726638

Al-Farwaniya

24711433

Al-Sulaibikhat

24316983

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

Al-Fahaheel

23927002

Jleeb Al-Shuyoukh

24316983

Ahmadi

23980088

Al-Mangaf

23711183

Al-Shuaiba

23262845

Al-Jahra

25610011

Al-Salmiya

25616368

Hawally

ST TAT TE OF KUW K WA AIT

Tel.: e 161

DIRECTORA AT TE GENE GENERAL OF CIVIL AV VIA AT TION METEOROLOGICAL DEP PA ARTMENT DA AY: Y Sunday

Ext.: 2627 262 - 2630

Fax: 24348714 WWW.MET.GOV V..KW

10/02/2013

INTERNATIONAL CALLS

07:00

Issue Time

Expected Weeather for the Next 24 Hours Sunny with light variable wind changing to light to moderate south easterly wind, with speed of 06 - 26 km/h

Cold with light variable wind, with speed of 06 - 20 km/h and some scattered clouds will appear

No Current Warnings arnin a

WARNING A MIN. REC.

KUW WAIT A CITY

22 °C

14 °C

KUW WAIT A AIRPOR RT

26 °C

10 °C

NUW WAISEEB A

24 °C

10 °C

22456536

WAFRA A

27 °C

09 °C

22465401

SALMI

28 °C

12 °C

Salmiya

25746401

ABDAL LY

26 °C

09 °C

Jabriya

25316254

JAL ALIY YAH A

25 °C

13 °C

FA AILAKA

ST TATION T

23 °C

13 °C

AHMADI POR RT

20 °C

17 °C

QARUH ISLAND

22 °C

18 °C

UMM AL-MARADEM

21 °C

17 °C

Maidan Hawally

25623444

Bayan

25388462

Mishref

25381200

W Hawally

22630786

Sabah

24810221

Jahra

24770319

DA AY

New Jahra

24575755

Monday

11/02

24772608

Tuesday

12/02

Wednesday e

13/02

Thursday

14/02

SFC. CHART

10/02/2013 0000 UTC

4 DA AYS Y FORECAST Temperatures DA AT TE

WEA AT THER

MAX.

MIN.

Wind Direction

Wind Speed

sunny + scattered clouds

25 °C

12 °C

VRB-SE

06 - 26 km/h

sunny + scattered clouds

25 °C

13 °C

SE-VRB

08 - 30 km/h

sunny + blowing dust

23 °C

12 °C

SE

20 - 45 km/h

sunny

22 °C

11 °C

NW

20 - 45 km/h

South Jahra

24775066

North Jahra

24775992

North Jleeb

24311795

Fajr

05:11

MAX. Temp.

Ardhiya

24884079

Sunrise

06:32

MIN. Temp.

11 °C

Zuhr

12:02

MAX. RH

95 %

PRA RA AY YER TIMES

RECORDED YESTERDA AY AT KUW WAIT A AIRPORT 26 °C

Firdous

24892674

Asr

15:10

MIN. RH

Omariya

24719048

Sunset

17:33

MAX. Wind

Isha

18:51

TOT TA AL L RAIINF FALL A L IN 24 HR.

N Khaitan

24710044

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23900322

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24 % SE 21 km/h 00 mm

10/02/13 02:12 UTC

V1.00

T1.06

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36

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2013

LIFESTYLE F a s h i o n

The sound of

NY Fashion Week:

Smartphones snapping R

emember clapping? As in when a fashion designer puts on his runway finale and then takes a bow before an adoring crowd. The fashion hordes these days are way too busy tweeting, Instagramming and taking video with their smartphones to put those busy hands together. But more often than not, so are the fashion houses. Technology has taken over in important ways for designers and was ready made for this New York Fashion Week as the huge storm had the elite teetering around Manhattan in blowing snow, clutching those phones.

Audiences had already been on the bandwagon, taking phone pics from their seats and posting reviews online before the models were off the

Paris after the shows close here Feb. 14.

ALEXANDER WANG With buzz and anticipation building for his debut collection for Balenciaga, Wang used his own show to make the statement that his signature line is still very much on his mind. The collection of finely tailored pieces in luxe and lush textured fabrics seemed elevated from the more casual and funky styles he’s turned out the past few seasons, although there was the sportswear twist he is best known for woven into every look.

It was a sophisticated turn - and trick - to pull off.

The song “Eye of the Tiger” of “Rocky III” fame was the underlying theme music as the models

PRABAL GURUNG

Alexander Wang

JILL STUART

stepped onto the runway in the lobby of the ornate Cunard Building at the southern tip of Manhattan. (It was a drastic change in vibe from the airplane-hanger feel of the pier he had shown in for years that now is hosting the Westminster Dog Show.) The catwalkers wore fur boxing gloves and hoods, with an opening for their ponytails, wrapped tightly around their heads, and fuzzy footwear. Sweatshirt-style tops were made of mohair with a touch of metallic, and fur had a burnout effect. He said he “disguised” some of the richest fabrics by brushing them, re-embroidering them and mixing them to make them modern.

runway, but designers are figuring out how to use all the instant feedback to their advantage. Before the snow hit, information went out to retailers, editors, stylists and bloggers on how to view the Donna Karan and Helmut Lang shows online and through phone apps for those unable to attend in person.

Rachel Roy and Peter Som switched to entirely digital catwalk shows. Rebecca Minkoff and Kenneth Cole beamed live tweets on the walls, with Cole pledging donations to amFAR if a certain was used during the show. Tommy Hilfiger collected curated interactions - and added some himself - that were shared with guests entering and exiting his menswear show. He planned to do the same Sunday for his women’s collection.

Still clutching those phones, the crowds dealt Saturday - Day 3 of the eight days of fall previews - with the storm’s mush of an aftermath in their dash around town and at the MercedesBenz Fashion Week tents at Lincoln Center. The industry will shift to Milan, London and then

tailored dress in black wool with more sharply cut flowers, and a white sheer man-tailored shirt paired with black evening shorts and a full-cut long black coat.

HERVE LEGER Max Azria wanted to infuse the metal sculptures of the artist duo Les Lalanne with the bandage silhouette of the Herve Leger line, but what

he got was urban jungle-inspired armor. Azria mixed studs, exposed zips, fur and beading with the bandage silhouette for which Leger and his namesake label are known, creating a riot of black, white and autumnal animal prints. It all seemed demure, thanks to a below-the-knee hem and fur hooded goatskin sweatshirts that didn’t seem out of place after the blizzard.

Demure isn’t a word normally associated with Herve Leger, yet nary a knee peeked out of the collection. Whenever the lower hem wasn’t covering up legs, tight black leggings made of bandage strips and knee-high boots covered up any skin. The brand, long popular among club-going types, debuted a line of footwear during the show boots that were, like the clothes, dark, sleek and skin tight. —AP

HERVE LEGER

PRABAL GURUNG Military touches are shorthand in high fashion for strength and confidence. Gurung added some exclamation points, specifically citing as his muse a woman in combat. There has been much in the news - and Gurung is a newshound - about the Pentagon’s decision to open more on-the-ground options to women and also technological advances in women’s body armor. “They’re redesigning the whole uniform for women because all this while they’ve been wearing men’s uniform,” he said backstage. That led Gurung to think about women’s empowerment, all the way to women he read about from the Ukraine who are coming together in self-defense against human trafficking. There were smart jackets with gold hardware and some with red-and-black brocades, crisp navy suits, and leather harnesses over stretch-crepe dresses with sexy slashes on the bodice and asymmetric peplums and hemlines.

There had to be a little femininity mixed in with the aggressiveness, Gurung explained, because it’s femininity that gives women their best tool “to rule a man’s world.”

JILL STUART It was that easy: Stuart woke up one day thinking about how stylish British model Stella Tennant and her friends were, so Stuart thought she would create a wardrobe just for them. She aimed to dress an aristocratic fashion risk-taker for all those parties at castles in the English countryside. “I was thinking about the beautiful dinners and the charades she and her friends play, and the great performances they see at the end of the night,” Stuart said backstage. Her offerings include a plum-colored halter dress covered in satin flowers, a more

Argentine gauchos cling to trademark riding pants

A

rgentina’s gauchos, or cowboys, are a proud lot. As economic forces trigger changes in agriculture-namely a big rise in soybean farming-they try to preserve their centuryold lifestyle, including the trademark “bombacha” or baggy riding pants.

Famed for their horsemanship, these rugged cowboys of the central ‘Pampas’ vast, fertile plains and grasslandshelped defeat Spanish troops and win Argentine independence in the 19th century. But today, as mechanized soybean farming increasingly encroaches on pasture land, the gauchos are under pressure and doggedly trying to keep alive the bombacha-making business.

“There is a deep loss of identity, but people are resisting. They want to preserve this lifestyle,” said 74-year-old Jose Peluffo as he showed off his collections of “bombachas” in his homestead in

Ayacucho, 366 kilometers (225 miles) south of Buenos Aires in the heart of the Pampas. From his grandfather Serafin, he picked up a taste for the most traditional form of the loose pants, still tailor-made by a Buenos Aires store called “Carpenters” and founded in 1888 by a French family. “I am used to wearing the “bombacha”. It is really comfortable and I wear it with pride,” he added, recalling that he ordered his first pair in that store at the age of 16.

“This suit, with the waisted jacket and bombacha, is my favorite to go to farm meetings,” he added. Since 2003, skyrocketing soybean prices have led to 11 million hectares of arable land being switched from cattle-raising to farming, threatening the gaucho culture. In the central plains, chief herdsmen and horse tamers are now hard to find.

These skilled jobs are now being

pushed to peripheral regions, less adapted to soybean growing, such as the northeastern province of Corrientes.

But bombacha-making is holding firm, even in the middle of the Pampas, in large part due to the popularity of the “Carpenters” store which even attracts foreign tourists.

“I sense that it will never disappear,” said 57-year-old store owner Juan Robiglio said of the garment as he stood behind a quaint, wooden counter in Buenos Aires’s old Montserrat district. “The bombacha requires a lot of work,” said a seamstress named Carmen, who would not give her last name. “This pair one has five pockets, while the machine-made one has only three and no buttonhole or button,” she added. The trousers must customfit the client and each region has a different style. The further north you go,

the wider they get.

Founded by Frenchman Louis Pot and later managed by two other compatriots, Jean Maynard and Jules Febre, “Carpenters” owes its name to its first success: work pants made for carpenters. But the French owners quickly realized that the future of their business lay with the ‘bombacha’. At the end of the Crimean War in 1856, another Frenchman, diplomat Charles Lefebvre de Becourt, offered Argentina a stock of 100,000 pairs of loose pants initially ordered by the Turkish army in exchange for local products. The offer was accepted and the country quickly adopted the “bombacha”, ideal for horse riding. For Peluffo as for many other Argentinians, wearing a tailored-made bombacha is their way of holding off the spread of transgenic plants and globalization. —AFP

A mannequin at Aux Charpentiers store and ‘bombachas’ (baggy trousers used by the-gauchos) factory, in Buenos Aires. —AFP

37

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2013

LIFESTYLE F e a t u r e s

An Indian dancer warms up before a competition organized by the Indian dancer, Pankaj Shivpur practices inside his house.

Slumgods, a group of breaking or ‘b-boying’ dancers, in Vashi on the outskirts of Mumbai. —AFP photos

Break-out time for

T

he youngsters from India’s best-known slum spin, twist and flip their bodies to the hip hop beat-but don’t call them breakdancers. And definitely not slumdogs. These are the SlumGods, who want to show there is more to life in a Mumbai shantytown than poverty, squalor and trying to escape-even if the hit film “Slumdog Millionaire” suggested otherwise. “When we heard the name we didn’t like it. Why slumdogs?” asked 20-year-old Akash Dhangar, known as B-boy Akku, who co-founded the crew of “breakers”, graffiti artists, DJs and rappers.

“I felt very bad about it because after the movie, people started thinking this was just a dirty, unhygienic slum area,” he said of his neighborhood Dharavi, a sprawling backdrop to the Oscar-winning movie. When the film came out in India in 2009, Akku was newly hooked on b-boying or breaking, the hip hop street dance that was born in the ghettos of the Bronx in the 1970s and has since spread across the globe-better known to laymen as breakdancing.

Akku’s mentor was B-boy HeRa, now 30 and living in New

Indian dancers take part in a practice session at the Sion fort in Mumbai.

India’s SlumGods

Delhi, who honed his moves growing up in New York’s Queens before his Indian family moved back to the subcontinent in the early 2000s. Visiting Dharavi with a friend, HeRa found a spiritual home for b-boying-”it kind of clicked”, he said, and he found the youngsters there were eager to learn.

“It’s a community thing that people learn off each other.

You’ve been given something and you pass it on,” he told AFP. That philosophy led him and Akku to set up SlumGods, which now has 40 to 50 core members across the cities of Mumbai, New Delhi and Bangalore. The crew works hand-in-hand with Tiny Drops, a non-profit group founded by HeRa in Dharavi and his Delhi neighbourhood, offering “a space for kids in the hood” to explore hip hop dance and culture. They have inspired hundreds of urban Indian youngsters to try their hands at graffiti, rapping or especially b-boying, a cheap and funky combination of exercise and self-expression.

“Dancing is in us. It’s part of our culture,” HeRa said,

although it seems breaking has struck a particular chord with the children of Dharavi. “Indian middle-class kids are fat and in malls. These kids are lean and mean and don’t have inhibitions.” Their love of the culture can be seen atop the crumbling Sion Fort, a 17th-century, British-built structure that has become-as a graffitied sign indicates-a very different kind of “Battlefort Mumbai”. Offering more space than the nearby cramped confines of Dharavi, the fort ruins have hosted dance-off contests and regular practices for bboys and the odd b-girl, who show off their routines to tinny music from a mobile phone.

As Akku leads the dancing crew, young children who crowd around to watch are shooed away by fort guards with sticks. “It’s a cool space but it’s informal. We want to ask the city of Mumbai if they can give it to the kids, to give them ownership,” said HeRa. The options are otherwise limited. Tall and gangly B-boy Sin, as Pankaj Shivpur is known, almost fills the small room in Dharavi that he shares with several relatives as he backflips to Bollywood

tunes on the television. The tiny passageway outside, where a goat, cats and children mingle beneath clothes hanging on tangled cables, offers little alternative space for the 18-year-old college student. He snatches a practice whenever he is home alone, but he goes to the fort several times a week. “It’s spacious and my friends practice here too,” he said.

As their quest for open spaces continues, HeRa hopes Tiny Drops will grow to become a self-sustaining business; he remains suspicious of the idea of outside help and wants the communities to support themselves. One profitable sideline for the dancers is to appear in Bollywood films, which can earn them about 2,000 rupees (37 dollars) a day, although parents sometimes moan that their children are neglecting their studies, says Akku. He however sees the hobby as a good way to keep them on the straight and narrow. “Some people who were involved in drinking, bullying or stealing, they left these things when they started breaking,” he said. —AFP

Fall in love with OSN’s February hit line up

O

SN kicks off February with a tour de force of some of the most popular programmes on television. The leading pay-TV network in the Middle East and North Africa will exclusively air award winning series as well as cult

favourites, featuring highly anticipated premieres as well as the finale of a hit comedy series all showing on OSN Comedy HD and OSN First HD. The hit comedy show, 30 Rock, will come to an end this year in its seventh and final season.

Based loosely on Tina Fey’s experience on Saturday Night Live, the show follows the cast and crew of a popular sit-com television show. Its poignant, satirical humor has been praised by many critics as the show pokes fun at itself and the very industry it operates in. This season, the cast will face challenges that they must overcome as a team in true 30 Rock fashion. 30 Rock airs exclusively on OSN Comedy HD from February 1st at 20:00 UAE time.

As 30 Rock draws to an end, a new show makes its series debut on OSN in February.

Exclusively premiering on OSN in February is Malibu Country with mega country star, Reba McEntire, returning to television for the first time since 2007. She stars as Reba MacKenzie, the wife of a country music star who has been caught cheating on her, and as a result, the two divorce.

As part of her settlement, she moves to a house that her husband owns in Malibu, California. This modern comedy features a classic clash of cultures as the Southern upbringing of Reba adjusts to the coastal life of California. Malibu Country airs exclusively on OSN Comedy HD on February 18th at 19:30 UAE time.

Once Upon a Time returns for its second season to remind us that the magical world of fairytales may be closer than we think. Set in the fictional town of Storybrooke, Maine, the story chronicles the lives of the residents of the town, who are all characters from the most popular fairy tales. The characters were all transferred to the ‘real world’ by the Evil Queen, who also robbed them of all of their memories. Their only hope to break the curse is Emma Swan, the daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming.

Once Upon a Time airs exclusively on February 11 at 22:00 UAE time on OSN First HD/ OSN First.

Bringing the fantastic line up for February to an end, the second season of the highly popular smash, returns putting the focus on a talented group of people who create Broadway musicals.

Offering a unique perspective of New York City, the characters must balance their demanding work schedules with their turbulent personal lives as they seek to win over the hearts of the world through their extraordinary talent and performances. Smash season two premieres on February 15th at 22:00 UAE time exclusively on OSN First HD/ OSN first. Other popular series returning to OSN First HD/OSN First include new series The Mob Doctor, the edgy and intelligent series, Franklin and Bash Season 2, Grimm Season 2, Season 5 of In Plain Sight, the UK and US versions of Top Gear, and the hit show Survivor season 26.

For those seeking the best comedy series, OSN Comedy is the ultimate destination, with Parks and Recreation returning for its fourth season, the third season of the dark comedy The Big C, and the daring series premiere of The New Normal.

Revelers of Gavioes da Fiel samba school perform atop a float during the second night of Carnival parades at the Sambadrome. —AFP

Brazil Carnival honors South Korea, Korean immigrants

W

ith samba music and allegorical pageantry, the Brazilian Carnival pays glowing tribute this year to South Korea’s ancient culture and technological prowess, and to 50 years of Korean immigration.

Friday, South Korean popstar Psy was a star guest at Carnival celebrations in the northeastern city of Salvador, wowing the crowd with his “Gangnam Style” hit that made Internet history last December by clocking more than one billion views on YouTube.

Saturday, he was warmly applauded as he watched the sumptuous parades of samba schools at the Sambodrome parade ground in Rio. But the accolade to South Korea was taken to new heights in Sao Paulo early yesterday with a spectacular parade by 4,000 members of a local samba school on the theme “Made in Korea.”“We are paying tribute to the courage, perseverance and dedication of Korean immigrants in this country,” Isabel Napolitano, an official of the 50-year-old Unidos de Vila Maria samba school, told AFP at the 30,000-seat Sao Paulo sambodrome.

“We are representing Korean history, culture and technology with five allegorical floats,” she said. Led by samba queens hoisting Brazilian and South Korean flags, a Psy impersonator danced “Gangnam Style” atop a giant dragon float surrounded by performers illustrating Korean folklore and mythology. Another float in the form of a huge tiger symbolized the economic strength of the Asian Tigers, particularly the phenomenal growth of South Korea from the 1970’s to 1990’s.

One section of the parade focused on the

Korean martial art of Taekwondo, with a skillful display by dozens of practitioners led by master instructor Yao Jun Kim, who has been living in Brazil for 35 years. Another wing celebrated Korean gastronomy while another depicted a gold course. “It’s fantastic, a very authentic, very Brazilian tribute,” Jonas Chun, a South Korean photographer who has been living in Brazil since 1972, told AFP as he snapped pictures of the parade.

At the Rio Sambodrome, another samba school, Inocentes de Belford Roxo, was also to pay its own colorful homage to Korean culture, with a theme called “the Seven confluences of the Han River” invoking the protection of the ancient Korean wind goddess Yondung Halmoni.

“It’s a historic moment, a recognition of the contribution Koreans have made to Brazilian society,” said Marcelo Choi, vice president of the Sao Paulo-based Korean-Brazilian Association.

“The whole world can see that we are an integral part of the Brazilian family. So yes, it’s a moment of great pride not just for us KoreanBrazilians but for Koreans around the world,” he told AFP. According to the South Korean consulate in Sao Paulo, there are around 50,000 ethnic Koreans in Brazil. But Choi said the real size was closer to 100,000 when descendants of immigrants are included. The overwhelming majority of Koreans live in Sao Paulo, where they have set up around 2,500 small businesses, notably in the Liberdade Japanese district and in Bom retiro, a neighborhood also populated by various European, Arab and Latin American immigrants. —AFP

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2013

lifestyle M U S I C

DJ Afrojack performs on stage during the Clive Davis & The Recording Academy’s 2013 Pre-Grammy Gala And Salute To Industry Icons in Beverly Hills yesterday. — AP/AFP photos

Neyla Pekarek, right, and Wesley Schultz of the band The Lumineers perform on stage.

Newcomers veterans celebrated in pre-Grammy festivities and

M

Rihanna, his on-again Barbadian-pop star girlfriend, after the incident. “Chris’ vehicle was totaled due to this agressive pursuit by the paparazzi. He is okay,” a representative for Brown told TMZ entertainment news. LA police already were due to be out in force to protect the stars and crowds — but also on the lookout for former cop Christopher Dorner, accused of killing three people and threatening to kill more officers, in a chilling online manifesto.

usic’s biggest names gathered to celebrate the trailblazers and veterans of their industry at music producer Clive Davis’ annual pre-Grammy party, remembering Whitney Houston and honoring the work of Epic Records’ L.A. Reid. Last year’s pre-Grammy festivities was marred by the sudden death of Houston in a bathtub at the same hotel a few hours before Davis’ party.

Dubbed the hottest ticket in town on the eve of yesterday’s Grammy awards, Davis’ party attracted celebrities such as Johnny Depp, Sting, Katy Perry, John Mayer, Miley Cyrus, Joni Mitchell, P. Diddy, The Foo Fighters and Frank Ocean.

Davis kicked off the party by “introducing” his audience to electronic dance music, with a performance by Dutch DJ Afrojack, who played his remix of chart-topping hits including Beyonce’s “Run the World (Girls)” and

Recording artist Jennifer Hudson performs Recording artist Patti Smith performs on stage.

Recording artists Jennifer Hudson, left, and Gladys Knight perform.

Gotye’s Grammy-nominated hit “Somebody That I Used to Know.”

The night featured a range of musical guests taking the stage, including veteran rocker Patti Smith, who performed “Gloria” and “People Have The Power,” while R&B singer Miguel sang his Grammy-nominated hit “Adorn.”

The annual Grammy Awards ceremony, to be aired later on Sunday on CBS, honors the best musicians of the year, but is also a promotional showcase for rising stars and new albums. Best New Artist Grammy nominees The Lumineers, a indie-folk band from Denver, Colorado, got the party crowd dancing to their chart hits “Ho Hey” and “Stubborn Love.”

Throughout the evening, Davis often referred to Houston, and showed a montage of the late singer’s career highlights, including footage of her singing “All The Man That I Need.” “I felt her energy, I felt her love ... and I want to remind you why she was so special ... she was the greatest contemporary singer of our lifetime,” Davis said. Houston’s brother Gary and sister-in-law Pat were at the party.

And Chris Brown could not steer clear of drama, wrecking his Porsche in Beverly Hills, and blaming paparazzi for the crash, police said. No one was injured in the crash, and Brown was photographed being hugged by

John Mayer

Sting and his wife Trudy

Lifetime achievements Each year, Davis picks an artist or band as the “one to watch,” and this year he chose British singer Emeli Sande, saying “her performance you will not soon forget. She is about to break out in a big way.” Sande, 25, who gained worldwide attention after performing at both the opening and closing ceremonies at the London Olympics last summer, sang her hits “Heaven” and “Next to Me.” The night’s honoree was Epic Records chairman and CEO L.A. Reid, who has been responsible for launching the careers of many chart-topping artists in the past decade, including Mariah Carey, OutKast, Babyface, Jennifer Lopez, Usher, Pink, Avril Lavigne, Kanye West, Rihanna and Justin Bieber. Reid, who appeared as a judge on television reality singing competition “The X Factor” for two seasons, said his “existence” was about music.

“I live for opening doors for young, creative people ... all of us that have success, we have a responsibility to pass it on, to pave it forward for the next generation of superstars,” he said. Reid was introduced by Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds, who regaled the audi-

ence with stories from their youth, while Usher took the stage to sing his hit song “U Got it Bad,” interjecting his performance to tell stories about Reid.

Davis ended his party with a performance

by Jennifer Hudson and soul singer Gladys Knight, in a tribute to Knight’s career. Hudson sang Knight’s “Take My Hand” solo, before the veteran singer joined her on stage for a duet of “I Heard it Through The Grapevine.” Knight wrapped up the festivities with renditions of “Neither One of Us” and “Midnight Train to Georgia.”

Earlier in the night, the Recording Academy hosted their Special Merits awards at a non-televised ceremony in Los Angeles, handing out the technical Grammys and lifetime achievement accolades. Jazz musician Charlie Haden, 75, was on hand to collect his lifetime achievement award, saying he was “honored and privileged” to receive a Grammy. Singer-songwriter Carole King and Motown group The Temptations also received awards for their illustrious musical careers and contributions.

Among those honored posthumously with lifetime achievements were pianist Glenn Gould, acoustic blues rocker Lightnin’ Hopkins, country-pop singer Patti Page, and Indian sitar player Ravi Shankar, who died aged 92 in December 2012. Shankar’s daughters, sitar player Anoushka and Grammy-winning singer Norah Jones, accepted the award.

“When I watched him play, he could take people to this incredible meditative state where they’d close their eyes and just cry and get in touch with something more important,” Anoushka said.

Musician John Legend and model Chrissy Teigen

Singer Miley Cyrus

Katy Perry

Singer Emeli Sande

Miguel performs on satge.

Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins, right, and Alison Hawkins.

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2013

lifestyle M U S I C

M O V I E S

Beyonce, Jay-Z, Rihanna

List of nominees for 2013 Grammys

hang at Roc Nation brunch

Record Of The Year (for producers of song): * “Lonely Boy” - The Black Keys * “Stronger ( What Doesn’t Kill You)” - Kelly Clarkson * “We Are Young” - fun. featuring Janelle Monae * “Somebody That I Used to Know” - Gotye featuring Kimbra * “Thinkin Bout You” - Frank Ocean * “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” Taylor Swift Album Of The Year: * “El Camino” - The Black Keys * “Some Nights” - fun. * “Babel” - Mumford & Sons * “Channel Orange” - Frank Ocean * “Blunderbuss” - Jack White

&

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Melissa Rivers and Joan Rivers

Musician Alice Cooper and Sheryl Goddard

ay-Z and Beyonce sat tightly with Solange. Kelly Rowland embraced Beyonce with a huge hug. And Rihanna spilled some of her drink laughing with Rowland. Music’s top stars attended the annual pre-Grammy Roc Nation and Nokia brunch Saturday at the Soho House.

Grammy nominee Miguel, Timbaland, Jill Scott and Kylie Mingoue also attended the exclusive event. Jay-Z is one of six acts nominated for six awards at Sunday’s Grammys. Rihanna is up for three trophies, and Beyonce is nominated for one award. The crowd Saturday was full of members of music industry, who mingled with performers like The-Dream, Jordin Sparks, Melanie Fiona, Diane Warren, Christina Milian, MC Lyte and Santigold. —AP

Song Of The Year (for songwriters) * “The A Team” - Ed Sheeran (songwriter: Ed Sheeran) * “Adorn” - Miguel (songwriter: Miguel Pimentel) * “Call Me Maybe” - Carly Rae Jepsen (songwriters: Tavish Crowe, Carly Rae Jepsen and Josh Ramsay) * “Stronger ( What Doesn’t Kill You)” - Kelly Clarkson (songwriters: Jorgen Elofsson, David Gamson, Greg Kurstin and Ali Tamposi) * “We Are Young” - fun. featuring Janelle Monae (songwriters: Jack Antonoff, Jeff Bhasker, Andrew Dost and Nate Ruess) Best New Artist: * Alabama Shakes * fun. * Hunter Hayes * The Lumineers * Frank Ocean Best Pop Solo Performance: * “Set Fire To The Rain” (live) - Adele * “Stronger ( What Doesn’t Kill You)” - Kelly Clarkson * “Call Me Maybe” - Carly Rae Jepsen * “Wide Awake” - Katy Perry * “Where Have You Been” - Rihanna Best Pop Duo/Group Performance: * “Shake It Out” - Florence + the Machine * “We Are Young” - fun. featuring Janelle Monae * “Somebody That I Used To Know” - Gotye featuring Kimbra * “Sexy And I Know It” - LMFAO * “Payphone” - Maroon 5 and Wiz Khalifa —AFP

Elton John performs ‘Streets of Philadelphia’ at the MusiCares Person of the Year tribute honoring Bruce Springsteen at the Los Angeles Convention Center on Friday Feb. 8, 2013, in Los Angeles. —AP

Elton John shares Grammy stage with young rockers

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Kylie Minogue arrives at Roc Nation’s Pre -Grammy Brunch at the Soho House on Saturday.

AKON

File photo shows recording artists Jay-Z and Beyonce at the Capitol in Washington for the Presidential Barack Obamaís ceremonial swearing-in ceremony. — AP

Snoop Dogg blazes one during BMI songwriting panel

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usic fans who turned out to BMI’s annual pre-Grammy Awards “How I Wrote That Song” discussion got a little more than they expected thanks to Snoop Dogg - a contact high. The rapper smoked marijuana during Saturday’s panel discussion, lighting up a large, Kush-filled blunt on stage at The Roxy. He briefly passed it off to B.o.B before methodically reducing it to ash over a 15-minute period. The panel also included Busta Rhymes and songwriters Luke Laird and Evan Bogart, all of whom abstained - at least on stage.

Fittingly, the conversation eventually turned to Snoop’s groundbreaking work on “The Chronic.”

Actor Johnny Depp applauds during performances on stage.

Laird recalled growing up at the end of a dirt road 10 miles outside Conneaut Lake, a small town of 700 in rural Pennsylvania. Yet Snoop’s work with Dr. Dre still infiltrated his world and that of all the other country kids around him. “Let me just say, the album everyone was listening to was ‘The Chronic,’” Laird said, noting how surreal it was to be sitting on stage with Snoop. With acoustic guitar in hand, he played a bit of his Blake Shelton hit “Hillbilly Bone” in its original form: a rap song. The NashvilleThis July 30, 2012 photo based songwriter had everyone bobbing their shows Snoop Dogg pos- heads to the beat. “Now I feel like more than ever ing for a portrait at Miss you see these influences crossing genres,” Laird said. — AP Lily’s in New York. — AP

Music producer Clive Davis addresses the audience on stage.

Record artist Kenneth ‘Babyface’ Edmonds speaks on satge.

lton John still fills stadiums worldwide on his own, but he’ll share the spotlight with a dozen other musicians at yesterday’s Grammy Awards.

The 65-year-old entertainer rehearsed Saturday alongside young Grammy nominees Mumford & Sons, Zac Brown, Ed Sheeran and Brittany Howard of Alabama Shakes. John prepared for two performances: a rousing rendition of the Band’s “The Weight” that also featured T. Bone Burnett and Mavis Staples, and a duet of Sheeran’s single “The A Team.”

“The fun of it for me is playing with other people,” John said. He also loves the Band’s classic American sound. “You’ve got a lot of British people up there playing American music, because that’s what we love,” he said of the Levon Helm tribute, which John dedicated to “the teachers and students of Sandy Hook Elementary School, whose songs ended too soon.” The school was the target of a mass shooting in December that left 20 young children and six adults dead.

The Grammy Awards honor all kinds of music, but John said, “It should be more of a potpourri than it is.”

“It’s a bit ageist,” he added. “You’re lucky it’s ageist!” joked Grammy Awards executive producer Ken Ehrlich. “T. Bone and I are the oldest people to play the Grammys,” John said. “And we’re only 30.”

Nominee for Best New Artist and Best Americana Album The Lumineers.

Day-Lewis as Lincoln set for home triumph at top UK film awards H

was the latest in a long string of awards disappointments for Bond fans over the decades. William Hill predicted “Skyfall” would lose out to “Les Miserables” in the outstanding British film category. “Anna Karenina”, an experimental British adapta-

ome fans will be hoped for British success at the BAFTAs yesterday with Daniel DayLewisthe strong favorite to win best actor for the title role in “Lincoln” and local box office hits “Les Miserables” and “Skyfall” up for a shelf-full of prizes. US hopes at Britain’s top film awards ceremony will be resting on “Argo”, Ben Affleck’s drama about the rescue of American hostages from Iran in 1979, which eclipsed Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln” at several major Hollywood award nights.”Argo” has seven BAFTA nominations including for best film.

The other contenders for the top honour are “Lincoln”, “Les Miserables”, “Life of Pi”

US actor Bradley Cooper poses for photographs arriving for the BAFTA British Academy Film Awards nominees party. —AFP photos and “Zero Dark Thirty”. Top of the nominations table with 10 entries is the biopic of President Abraham Lincoln but a sweep of statuettes may not be a foregone conclusion after disappointing performances at the Golden Globes and elsewhere.

However, Day-Lewis seems a safe bet for the leading actor gong, with odds of 1/25 offered by gambling firm William Hill. The elusive Briton, hailed last year as “the world’s greatest actor” by Time magazine, has already won a string of U.S. awards for his performance as Lincoln and he is nominated for what would be his third best actor Oscar for the role. In the best film category the odds suggested “Argo” was in pole position with odds of 1/4, ahead of “Lincoln” on 9/2.

Ang Lee’s “Life of Pi”, about a man and a tiger lost at sea, has nine BAFTA nominations including best director for the eclectic Taiwanese veteran. “Les Miserables”, the film version of a global hit stage musical, also has nine BAFTA nominations including best supporting actress for Anne Hathaway.

Photo shows US actress Sally Field, who is nominated in the Supporting Actress category for her role in the film ‘Lincoln’.

BOND The latest James Bond movie, “Skyfall”, is nominated in eight categories but despite becoming the most successful film in British box office history did not make the shortlist for best film or director. That

US actor George Clooney

US actor Ben Affleck, who is nominated in the Leading Actor and Director categories for his work on the film ‘Argo’. tion of Leo Tolstoy’s classic novel, is up for six BAFTAs. Quentin Tarantino’s slavery-era Western “Django Unchained” and Kathryn Bigelow’s “Zero Dark Thirty”, a thriller about the hunt for Osama bin Laden, have five nominations apiece.

Tarantino and Bigelow, both heavy hitters among US filmmakers, are both up for the best director award. They will be up against Austria’s Michael Haneke, nominated for “Amour”, about an elderly couple struggling to cope with the aftermath of a stroke. The French-language film has four nominations, an unusually high number for a film not in English. French actress Emanuelle Riva, 85, is nominated for the leading actress BAFTA for her role in “Amour”. Her rivals for the award are Helen Mirren in “Hitchcock”, Jennifer Lawrence in “Silver Linings Playbook”, Jessica Chastain in “Zero Dark Thirty” and Marion Cotillard in “Rust and Bone”.

The contenders for best actor are DayLewis, Affleck in “Argo”, Bradley Cooper in “Silver Linings Playbook”, Hugh Jackman in “Les Miserables” and Joaquin Phoenix in

Austrian-German actor Christoph Waltz, who is nominated in the Supporting Actor category for his role in the film ëDjango Unchainedí.

Photo shows French actress Marion Cotillard, who is nominated in the Leading Actress category for her role in the film ‘Rust and Bone’.

“The Master”. Versatile British director Alan Parker, whose body of work ranges from child musical gangster film “Bugsy Malone” to Turkish-set prison thriller “Midnight Express” and civil rights drama “Mississippi Burning”, will receive a BAFTA fellowship. The BAFTAs ceremony is scheduled to start at 1900 GMT at the Royal Opera House in the Covent Garden area of London.— Reuters

Break-out time for India’s SlumGods

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MONDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2013

A performer takes part in a night parade to celebrate Chinese New Year in Hong Kong yesterday. — AP/AFP photos

Raucous celebrations as Asia greets Year of Snake A

billion-plus Asians ushered in the Year of the Snake yesterday with a cacophony of fireworks, after a Chinese televised gala featuring megastars including Celine Dion kicked off a week of festivities. From Australia to South Korea, millions of people travelled huge distances to reunite with their families for Lunar New Year-the most important holiday of the year for many in Asia-indulging in feasts and celebrations. As the clock struck midnight, Beijing’s skyline lit up with colour as residents braved freezing temperatures to set off fireworks, traditionally believed to ward off evil spirits-a scene repeat-

ed across China. But the capital’s streets were eerily quiet yesterday, with nine million out of 20 million residents returning to their ancestral homes for the festival, according to the state-run China Daily. This year also saw a sharp reduction in the sale of fireworks as heavy smog in recent weeks has fuelled fears that Beijing’s notorious air pollution levels could touch dangerous highs during the festival. More than 260,000 boxes of fireworks were sold in the city in the days leading up to the New Year, a 37 percent drop compared to last year’s sales, after the smog left citizens “worried”, the Beijing News reported.

Thai-Chinese residents celebrate the Chinese New Year in Bangkok’s China town.

State broadcaster CCTV aired its annual gala variety show during the countdown to the New Year-which rakes in hundreds of millions of viewers-featuring a gamut of iconic stars including Celine Dion who sang in Mandarin. Dion performed the classic Chinese folk song “Jasmine Flower” in a duet with local idol Song Zuying, before launching into her global hit “My Heart Will Go On” from the Hollywood blockbuster Titanic. Celebrations were also reported aboard Chinese patrol ships in waters surrounding East China Sea islands known as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China, which are at the centre of a bitter territorial row with Japan.

According to reports, the dispute had led to a ban on sales of fireworks labelled “ Tokyo Explosion”, though a stall in southern Beijing visited by AFP was still offering them on Saturday.

In China the snake has traditionally been seen as a symbol of wisdom, wealth and longevity, but it is considered less auspicious than other animals in the 12-year Chinese Zodiac such as the Dragon.

Children in the North Korean capital Pyongyang celebrated the new year with kite-flying and other competitions, the official news agency reported. Displayed on most kites were messages such as “Our satellite” and “Satellite launch”, it said-a reference to the country’s December rocket launch which put a satellite into orbit. The UN Security Council punished the banned launch with tighter sanctions. In Taiwan temples were thronged with the faithful seeking blessings, with President Ma Ying-jeou seen handing out traditional “red envelopes” with money (a token Tw$1) to well-wishers in Taipei. —AFP

Performers take part in a night parade to celebrate Chinese New Year in Hong Kong yesterday.

A girl burns incense sticks before praying to celebrate the Chinese Lunar New Year of the nake at a Dharmayana temple in Kuta on Indonesia’s resort island of Bali.

China’s ‘Snake Village’ seeks New Year riches F

nosed vipers preserved in alcohol awaiting sale to traditional medicine factories, which pay 3 yuan (50 cents) apiece. Snakes were worshipped by the earliest Chinese as a totem, with millennia-old stone carvings depicting Fuxi and Nuwa, the mythological

or Zisiqiao in eastern China, the arrival of the Year of the Snake yesterday carries a special meaning, as the scaly reptile has given the tiny village its main industry and prosperity. In the 1980s, villagers began raising snakes for food and

A 25-year-old Huang Guangyu holding a snake.

A 25-year-old Huang Guangyu holding a snake. traditional Chinese medicine, transforming the village in Zhejiang province near Shanghai.

Scores of households now raise serpents, earning the settlement of more than 800 people the nickname “Snake Village” in Chinese media. They include Gao Shuihua, 50, who began breeding snakes three decades ago instead of the traditional farming and raising fish.

“We were poor before. We didn’t have anything else to do so we started raising snakes,” he said. The snake is not considered to be among the most adorable of Chinese zodiac animals-which are based

on the lunar year and not the calendar month-but Gao said they provide food and medicine as well as his livelihood. “Some people don’t like to eat snake because they think it’s weird. But every kind of snake has its own method of preparation,” he said, adding he preferred his in soup, which makes the meat more tender.

“Business ought to be better this year because of the Year of the Snake,” he added, as he pulled out glasses for visitors to sample his homemade snake penis wine-the males have two such appendagesmade from the venomous Chinese krait. His nephew praised the drink’s benefits. “This is a tonic for building up health. It’s especially good for men.”

But Gao warned: “If this snake bites you, you will be dead in four hours.” Upstairs in one of the bedrooms, the family keeps nine buckets of sharp-

A 25-year-old Huang Guangyu, who suffers from ankylosing spondylitis, or arthritis of the spine, holding a snake at a snake farm in the village of Zisiqiao in eastern China. — AFP photos Snake breeder Gao Liang holding a bottle of snake wine. ancestors of all Chinese, as half-human, half-snake.

And some historians also believe the dragon, regarded as China’s national symbol and typically depicted with a long serpentine body, was based on images of snakes. Huang Guangyu, 25, believes that medicines made from the creatures are highly effective. He suffers from ankylosing spondylitis, or arthritis of the spine, and came to Zisiqiao from his home in the southern province of Guangxi after reading about the curative properties of snake.

Huang takes a daily cocktail made from several species. “It’s not cheap,” he said, but added: “I couldn’t even walk last year.”

He is a client of the Deqing Snake Culture Museum, opened by Zisiqiao’s most successful businessman Yang Hongchang, which combines a treatment centre, tourist attraction and retailer. Inside a specially heated room, hundreds of snakes dulled by winter hibernation rest in wooden boxes including the notorious “Five-Step Snake”, so venomous that its victims are said to die within five paces of being bitten. But such dangers are far from Yang’s mind. “We wish for business success and happiness in the Year of the Snake,” he said. — AP