1st Oct 2013 by Kuwait Times

CR IP TI ON BS SU

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2013

Syria probe ends ahead of UN mission

Amanda Knox’s 2nd appeals trial opens

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THULQADA 25, 1434 AH

Malian army clashes with Tuareg rebels

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Seahawks down Texans in OT

Kuwait warns ‘stateless’ people against protests Court refrains from issuing sentence on 9 activists

Max 39 Min 20º High Tide 08:16 & 22:22 Low Tide 02:44 & 15:59

By B Izzaak KUWAIT: Kuwait’s interior ministry yesterday warned stateless people against staging demonstrations to mark the international day for non-violence, saying it will firmly deal with any protest. The ministry said in a statement that any processions or protests by “illegal residents”, the phrase the government uses to describe stateless people or bedoons, “would be dealt with firmly and harshly in accordance with the law and procedures”. Kuwaiti police have repeatedly dispersed bedoon protests by force, using tear gas and stun grenades and arresting hundreds of protesters who are currently in trial for taking part in illegal gatherings and resisting police orders. Bedoon activists have been urging their people to demonstrate peacefully in large numbers on the international day for non-violence which falls on October 2, using social networks, especially Twitter. Bedoon activists yesterday distributed leaflets calling for bedoons to take part in the planned protests. Continued on Page 13

WASHINGTON: With hours to go until a possible government shutdown, visitors tour the Rotunda of the Capitol in Washington yesterday. — AP

US careens towards shutdown Obama says ‘he is not at all resigned’ WASHINGTON: A conservative challenge to President Barack Obama’s landmark healthcare law pushed the federal government yesterday to the brink of the ﬁrst partial shutdown in 17 years.

Just hours before the midnight (0400 GMT) deadline, the Democraticled Senate rejected a measure passed by the Republican-led House to tie government funding to a delay in the health plan. Now, it will be up to the

House to accept a spending bill that doesn’t delay the health initiative which it has refused to do - or ﬁnd an alternative acceptable to the Senate. If it fails to do either of those options, the government faces closures

car bombs kill 54 in Baghdad BAGHDAD: Car bombs killed at least 54 people in mostly Shiite Muslim areas of Baghdad yesterday as suspected Sunni Muslim militants pursued a campaign to plunge Iraq back into sectarian strife. Altogether 14 bombs shook Baghdad, the deadliest of them in Sadr City, where a white car blew up near where men had gathered to seek work, killing seven people, including two soldiers. “The driver said he would move the car soon, but it exploded a few minutes later,” said Abu Mohammed, a worker at the scene, where bits of molten metal lay among cars wrecked in the blast. Violence blamed mostly on Sunni militants who view Shiites as heretics has killed more than 6,000 people this year, according to the monitoring group Iraq Body Count, reversing a decline in sectarian bloodshed that had climaxed in 2006-07. At that time, Sunni tribesmen

that would force 800,000 federal workers oﬀ the job without pay and rattle the shaky US economic recovery. Obama said yesterday he was not giving up hope for a deal to avert a Continued on Page 13

Driving does not hurt ovaries: doc RIYADH: A Saudi doctor has gone on-air to dismiss claims made by a well-known cleric who caused a stir when he said medical studies show driving affects a woman’s ovaries. In comments aired over the weekend by the privately owned Rotana channel, gynecologist Mohammed Baknah says scientific studies have not proven that driving has adverse effects on women’s reproductive health. He was addressing remarks by Sheikh Saleh Saad ElLeheidan who said that women who drive suffer from having the pelvis forced upward. His remarks were published Saturday in an interview with the website El-Sabq. Hardline clerics have opposed a campaign scheduled for October 26 calling on women to drive in defiance of a ban in the kingdom. Another cleric this month called on people to harass women who drive. — AP

BAGHDAD: A general view of the scene following a car bomb in a car park in Baghdad yesterday. — AFP helped US forces rout Al-Qaeda, but many of those “Sahwa (Awakening)” ﬁghters say the Shiite-led government has reneged on promises to reward them. Their discontent reﬂects wider resentment among minority Sunnis against the government that came to power after the

US-led invasion that vanquished Saddam Hussein in 2003. Sunnis launched street protests in December after Shiite Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki sought to arrest a senior Sunni politician. A bloody raid by security forces on a Continued on Page 13

Qaeda militants eat human hearts: Syria

This undated image provided by NASA shows Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has detected the presence of a plastic ingredient in Titan’s atmosphere, the first time the chemical has been found in a world other than Earth. —AP

UNITED NATIONS: Syria’s foreign minister claimed yesterday that his government is fighting a war against AlQaeda-linked militants who eat human hearts and dismember people while they are still alive, then send their limbs to family members. Walid Al-Moallem, addressing world leaders at the UN General Assembly in New York, also charged that the US, Britain and France had blocked the naming of the real perpetrators of chemical weapons attacks in Syria. He claimed “terrorists” fighting the regime in the civil war are being supplied with chemical weapons, but he did not name specific nations accused of supplying them. President Barack Obama told the UN last week that it was the President Bashar Assad’s regime that was behind a chemical weapons attack in August that killed hundreds in the Damascus suburbs and brought threats of a US strike. Syria has committed to getting rid of its stockpiles of chemical weapons and the UN Security Council voted unanimously Friday to oblige it to do so based on a plan made by the Organization for the Prohibition of Continued on Page 13

Gulf states weigh US-Iran overtures DUBAI: Lost in the blizzard of attention on Iran’s cautious openings to the US was another bit of noteworthy outreach by President Hassan Rouhani: Sending greetings to Saudi Arabia’s king and appealing for more cooperation between the two regional rivals. Rouhani’s message last week also carried a subtext for Saudi Arabia and the other Western allied Arabian Gulf states. As Iran’s diplomatic profile rises with attempts to recalibrate its dealings with Washington, the Gulf rulers will have to make adjustments, too. That’s not such an easy thing for the monarchs to swallow. Leaders such as Saudi King Abdullah are accustomed to having Washington’s undivided focus and a prominent voice in shaping policies over Iran, which Gulf officials routinely denounce for allegedly trying to undermine their rule through suspected proxies and spies. The prospect of Iran and the US becoming something less than arch foes - a flirtation at the UN General Assembly capped by President Barack Obama’s groundbreaking telephone call to Rouhani - pushes the Gulf states toward unfamiliar territory. They certainly remain a pillar of US diplomatic and military strategy in the region, with key bases and one of the State Department’s main Iran listening posts in Dubai. But a core reason for the cozy ties - beyond maintaining reliable oil supplies - has been mutual worries over Iran. That basis could now be chipped away slightly as Tehran and Washington explore possible direct talks over Iran’s nuclear program. If nothing else, the Gulf’s Arab leaders may have to compete a bit harder for the White House’s ear. Continued on Page 13

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2013

LOCAL

AMMAN: Kuwait Parliament Speaker Marzouq Al-Ghanim and his accompanying delegation pictured during their visit to Jordan yesterday. The Kuwaiti chief parliamentarian is currently on his first visit to Jordan since assuming office. The Kuwaiti parliamentary delegation also visited Syrian refugee camps in Jordan.

Ministries trade blame for Kuwait traffic jams Attempts to avoid responsibility KUWAIT: Weeks after the Interior Ministry officials blamed lack of sufficient road projects for the traffic jams after a long summer break, the Ministry of Public Works argued that they should not be held responsible for “errors in statistics and data” they were provided, based on which road projects are planned. Meanwhile, a local youth group commented on the blame game by insisting that state departments work together to address the snowballing traffic jams crisis rather than blame each other. Minister of Public Works Abdul-Aziz AlIbrahim, in a statement published by local press on Sunday, said that the studies presented by the Interior Ministry and Kuwait Municipality include statistics that determine a road’s projected capacity on the basis of which MPW projects are outlined.

Furthermore, he cited figures that the General Traffic Department at the Interior Ministry announced previously which indicate that the maximum capacity of Kuwait’s roads network reaches 900,000 compared to nearly 1,600 million registered vehicles in the country; whereas 400,000 are considered old vehicles which need to be removed from Kuwait’s roads. “Is removing decrepit cars from streets the responsibility of the Public Works Ministry or the Interior Ministry?” Minister Al-Ibrahim asked rhetorically. In response to the minister’s remarks, the ‘Lay meta zahma?!’ (For how long are we going to suffer traffic jams?!) campaign criticized what they called “the ministry’s attempts to avoid responsibility despite being solely responsible for road construction projects”.

The youth group said in a statement on Sunday that state departments including the interior and public works ministries are required to “accept their responsibility for the deceleration seen on the ground, experienced by everyone living in Kuwait”. “The Ministry of Public Works is in a position to go ahead with projects accordingly and expand road capacity in parallel with the natural population growth.” the statement read. In other news, Minister Al-Ibrahim who is also Kuwait’s Minister of Electricity and Water announced that this year’s summer has been a “success” in terms of meeting energy demands, and added that the ministry has been able to save an average of 850 megawatts of electricity which is enough to power 9,000 residential units.

Interior plans traffic awareness campaign Marina murder probe continues

Col Adel Al-Hashash

By Hanan Al-Saadoun KUWAIT: Director of Public Relations and Moral Guidance, Acting Director of Security Information Col Adel Al-Hashash said the Interior Ministry seeks to spread traffic awareness to safeguard the lives of motorists, particularly the youth among them. He said an awareness contest for media students at Kuwait University will be held to produce a TV, Radio and advertisement material that contains a “trafficsecurity” idea, to make it easy for youth to communicate, and relay the ideas to their families, in addition to increase awareness and instill traffic and security principles with the contribution of the youth. He said the goal of the contest is to utilize youth energy in KU, and the graduation projects to produce ideas with youth flavor, that can be used in traffic awareness. The contest will be named “For You Kuwait.” The Interior Ministry may broadcast the films for noncommercial purposes, and all material will be in the archives. The Interior Minister has allocated several prizes and appreciation certificates for the contestants to motivate them. The deadline to submit the material is December 1, at Afaq newspaper, Shuwaikh.

KUWAIT: The Public Prosecution extended the detention of the three teenagers accused for murdering a Kuwaiti youth at Marina Mall last Thursday. The trio, two bedoons and one Kuwaiti, will remain in custody, the defendants’ lawyer told a local daily on Sunday. Meanwhile, attorney Sultan AlMandeel who was assigned to represent the three youngsters in court, said “I understand society’s rejection of the idea of representing the defendants in this case because it is human nature to reject criminal action. However, I am certain that if society reads the finer details of the case, they will realize the actual role of legal defense and their perspective regarding the case will change”. On Saturday, the Public Prosecution questioned the perpetrators for a second time and this time the prime suspect said that he fatally stabbed the victim after he

attacked him first. The trio who are expected to re-enact the crime towards the end of questioning, claimed self-defense during preliminary interrogations. “We denounce crime, violence and youngsters carrying knives”, Al-Mandeel said. “We demand law enforcement and punishment for the suspects in accordance with the law, especially after investigations painted a clearer picture regarding what happened and it turned out that the victim carried a knife and attacked my client first”. Al-Mandeel also indicated that both the victim, 24-year-old Jamal Al-Enizy, and the prime suspect, 17year-old Saad Thuwaini, have committed mistakes, but argued that Al-Enizy’s actions “could have motivated” his client’s actions. Thuwaini said during initial questioning on Friday that he stepped in to break a fight between his friend and the victim after the two accidentally bumped

into each other at the Marina Crescent. He claimed that Al-Enizy was the first to draw a knife out before his friend did the same. According to him, the incident climaxed when he was stabbed on his shoulder on coming between the attacker and his friend to protect him. This pushed him to stab the victim back. “Sometimes I have to put myself in place of the victim’s family and demand maximum penalty against the perpetrators, and sometimes I have to put myself in place of the suspect’s family and demand that things are viewed in their right proportions”, AlMandeel said. The crime prompted immediate action from the Interior Ministry who announced on Sunday that preparations were underway to adopt a “comprehensive security system to provide full protection and maintain safety and security at malls.”

Kuwait to build first solar power plant KUWAIT: Kuwait will soon be home to a rather large, 280MW solar thermal power plant - located in Abdaliya, just southwest of the farming region of Kabad. The solar power plant will be Kuwait’s first. Current projections are that the project will end up costing somewhere around or $3.27billion-therefore representing quite a substantial investment

into the country’s energy infrastructure. The contract for the concentrating solar power (CSP) plant-which will rely on and utilise a parabolic trough-was just recently signed, with project details being finalised only in the past couple of weeks. According to a report from the Kuwait News Agency, the Ministry of Finance’s Technical Office for

KUWAIT: The solar power plant will be Kuwait’s first and the project will end up costing somewhere around or $3.27billion.

Examining Development Projects and Initiatives signed a contract with HSBC, which offered consultancy for the Abdaliya project. The CSP plant is the first solar power facility in the fossil fuel-rich nation. The Technical Office for Examining Development Projects and Initiatives also announced that it would float the venture for public tender under the country’s public private partnership programme (PPP). This project represents the first time in Kuwaiti history that a private company has been involved in the state’s development strategy. Kuwait is currently aiming to get at least 15 per cent of its energy needs met via renewable energy sources by the year 2030 — with the country’s aim being to eventually move away from its dependency on oil. Not a surprising goal, nor one unique for the region - Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain, and the UAE have all made their renewable energy goals publicly known. Saudi Arabia is currently aiming to generate 1/3 of its electricity via solar energy by the year 2032.

KUWAIT: The Ambassador of the People’s Republic of China Cui Jianchon hosted a reception at the Crowne Plaza hotel on the occasion of the 64th anniversary of the founding of his country. A large number of high-ranking officials , diplomats and media persons attended the function. — Photos by Joseph Shagra

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2013

LOCAL

KKCF continues charity despite obstacles, problems Devoted to support volunteer work By Nawara Fattahova KUWAIT: The Khair Al-Kuwait Charity Foundation (KKCF) held a press conference at Kuwait Journalist Association on Sunday to speak about its establishment and goals. It was founded in 2007 as a non-profit foundation devoted to support vol-

of the orphanage through the donation of His Highness the Amir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah. “All members share the same feeling of social responsibility to give back to Kuwait. In the first place, we work for the orphans, as they in the category that needs care, irrespective of whether the country is rich or

KUWAIT: Adnan Al-Rashid awarding Sheikha Firyal Al-Sabah. — Photos by Yasser Al-Zayyat unteer work in Kuwait. The Chairman of KKCF Sheik ha Fir yal Duaij AlSalman Al-Sabah spoke about the nature and experience of the foundation in charity, humanitarian, and voluntary work. She also spoke about the rehabilitation and reconstruction

poor” said Sheikha Firyal during the conference. “We are facing many obstacles and problems in our work, especially governmental bureaucracy at the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor in this and other projects. Many

employees in the public authorities don’t trust our projects. The former minister of Social Affairs Mohammed Al-Afasi showed his support after meeting us but he unfortunately passed away. I don’t have any official post so my suggestions are always refused as I don’t have any authority, although we give and don’t take,” she stated. “The KKCF executed the renovation project of the orphanage with the Amiri grant and we even added the rest from our budget to ensure the project wasn’t stalled, although the Ministr y of Social Affairs is responsible for the renovation and reconstruction work. Such delays and bureaucracy may cause disappointment to young generations who are involved in voluntary activities” she further said. The foundation wants to take care of the orphans to stop this issue from turning into a phenomenon. “ We have to help these orphan children who are not responsible for their situation. They are growing in an unhealthy environment with unqualified people and they need to be raised by specialists to receive the right education and manners. We had to deal with experts from abroad despite having local experts who receive a good salary from the ministry, only because of their ignorance” explained Sheikha Firyal. There are many wrong decisions or rules applied by the Ministry of

Parliament considers health insurance law KUWAIT: The National Assembly’s Committee on Health and Social Affairs yesterday discussed the health insurance law and how to provide better health services to people. Emerging from the committee meeting on the issue, Dr Hassan Al-Qwayan, the rapporteur of the committee, said the meeting had also thrashed out overtures purposed to build new clinics, increase working hours at medical centers and set up first-aid centers on highways. The committee represented a report to the National Assembly on medical priorities in the country, primarily better health services to people, he pointed out. Meanwhile, the cabinet discussed the results of the country’s municipal elections held on Saturday, hoping that the new Municipal Council would contribute to speeding up the national development process. During a meeting held at Seif Palace and presided over by Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Sabah Khaled Al-Hamad Al-Sabah, the cabinet was apprised of a report presented by the Interior Ministry on the findings of the municipal polls, Minister of State for Cabinet Affairs and Minister of Health Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah Al-Mubarak Al-Sabah said in news remarks following the meeting. The cabinet appreciated dis-

Ministry sued in child drowning KUWAIT: The Ministry of Education could face a court order requiring compensation to be paid to the family of a child who drowned in a pool in Jahra’s private school which was rented by a club during the summer. The incident reportedly happened in July 2012, and the family blames the ministry for allowing the school’s administration to rent the pool without maintaining safety conditions. But according to a letter sent to the Fatwa and Legislation Department quoted by Al-Rai yesterday, the ministry insists that the management rented the pool without contacting the ministry for permission and therefore cannot be held responsible for the tragic incident. The letter signed by Acting Undersecretary Dr Khalid Al-Rushaid indicates that the ministry’s General Department of Private Education does not assume its supervisory duties over private schools during the summer break. The same daily reported on Sunday that the Appeals Court ruled that KD 100,000 was paid as compensation to a student’s family who sued the ministry over an incident where the boy was reportedly raped by the principal of his private school. It also quoted a letter sent by the ministry to the Fatwa and Legislation Department requesting that they avoid paying the compensation because they are “not responsible for the principal’s actions”.

tinguished efforts by the interior and education ministries, supervising judges and other state bodies to ensure a smooth, easy and fair municipal electoral process, he said. During the meeting, the ministers also reviewed two letters recently received by His Highness the Amir Sheikh Sabah AlAhmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah from Qatari Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani and Egypt’s interim president Adly Mansour, welcoming invitations to attend an ArabAfrican summit due here in November. The ministers were also apprised of a recent letter to HH the Amir from Eritrean President Isaias Afewerki, which came within the framework of existing relations between Kuwait and Eritrea, he said. The cabinet then listened to a briefing from Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Sabah Khaled Al-Hamad Al-Sabah on the participation of HH the Prime Minister Sheikh Jaber Mubarak AlHamad Al-Sabah, the envoy of HH the Amir, in the 68th session of the UN General Assembly, and his meetings with other participating leaders and senior officials, mainly UN Secretary-General Ban Kimoon, on the sidelines of the UN meeting. The meetings focused on bilateral relation, issues of mutual interest and the latest regional and international developments, the minister pointed out.— KUNA

Social Affairs. “Among other mistakes of the ministry is their rule of not allowing KKCF to take the orphans on entertainment trips, which is part of our voluntar y work. We have assigned some of the volunteers to handle these entertainment trips who will even take care of the expenses and yet our proposal. Still we insist on continuing with our voluntary work,” she pointed out. Fawzi Al-Ruweishid, Member of the Board, presented the PowerPoint presentation, explaining the phases of the project being executed by KKCF now at the Childhood’s House building. “The first phase is done, and there are another four phases waiting to be carried out. These include a number of houses, ballrooms, halls, playing grounds, and other utilities,” he noted. KKCF Mission: To supplement the role of volunteer work in the development of Kuwaiti society by way of social solidarity achieved through the support and sponsorship of the disadvantaged societal segments targeting with an aim of providing a suitable social environment and improving their living conditions. KKCF Strategic Goals: To ser ve Kuwaiti society and spread the awareness of charitable volunteer work. To extend a bridge of cooperation between private and government efforts when it comes to community services. To develop understanding and social weakness in dealing with

Municipal poll results reflect ‘disinterest in development’ KUWAIT: The Municipal Council election results and poor turnout reflects a reality that Kuwaitis, either knowingly or not, are not positively interactive with demands of development that they aspire for. This was reported by Al-Qabas yesterday quoting observers who indicated that the results “undoubtedly prove” that Kuwaiti voters still put tribalism and sectarianism ahead of developmental needs. Meanwhile, the observers believe that the level of participation which was considered the lowest in Kuwait’s history exposes the fact that citizens are not interested in electing a council whose job includes improving, planning the state’s general structure, organizing areas as residential, investment, commercial, and industrial, in addition to other duties such as the buy-operate -transfer (BOT) projects. “Blaming the government for deceleration of developmental projects is not enough when citizens are also responsible for electing specialized members to the Municipal Council which handles around 10 sectors that pertain to improving the country in various fields”, the observers added.

KUWAIT: Naser Al-Ayar, Sheikha Firyal Al-Sabah and Adnan Al-Rashid. the targeted segments of society. To homes in Kuwait to identify the shortwork with the respective government comings and problems, in order to sector or societal organization in suggest the necessary remedial proimproving services offered to the dis- grams, including educational, behavadvantaged. To study the negative ioral, psychological, social and finanphenomena in society and propose cial programs. To prepare specialized studies on the negative social phesolutions for them. KKCF General Strategy: To draw nomena related to particular segthe attention of all members of socie- ments of society and make recomty and to encourage the greatest mendations on methods to end the number of volunteers in the founda- negative perceptions of these segtion’s work. To seek the assistance of ments. To review all laws and regulaexperts and specialists from Kuwait tions related to residents of social and abroad to propose related sug- benefit homes and make associated gestions in accordance with the recommendations to the concerned Foundation’s executive programs. To authorities. To raise contributions to conduct a general sur vey and a fund development programs, training detailed study of the social benefit sessions and necessary programs.

MP seeks monopoly ban law By A Saleh KUWAIT: MP Riyadh Al-Adsani said that he filed an inquiry to the Minister of Commerce and Industr y about the monopoly ban law. “The Constitution stipulates that competition should be free but the law was kept in the drawers of the first annulled parliament”, he said noting that this law encourages competition and helps fight unemployment. “Monopoly hinders implementation of a free economy”, he said and elaborated that because of non-monopoly, goods prices in KSA are 22 percent cheaper than in Kuwait. MP Khalaf Dumaitheer declared his intention to question the justice minister about the interference of a judge and some candidates in directing court sentences about writing off some parliamentary candidates. MP Khalil Al-Saleh pleaded to HH the PM Sheikh Jaber Al-Mubarak to stop what he described as the “massacre of compulsory retirement” of officials who had been in service for 35 years and public servants who had been in service for 30 years. “This decision has created tension in various governmental establishments and made citizens lose trust in them”, he underlined noting that most near-retire-

ment employees were performing indifferently. He also noted that some ministries had not put the retirement decision into practice so far. MP Saleh Ashour said that it was high time for the government, represented in the finance minister, to pay more attention to the stock market where bidding citizens were the biggest losers. “Instead of considering closing the bourse for bankrupt citizens, officials should consider saving it”, he underlined. MoE’s Dr Khaled Al-Rasheed, Acting Undersecretary, issued a directive regulating Hajj leave for ministry employees and teachers. The directive had a condition that the applicant should not have taken the same leave before, even if he used to work for any other ministry of government establishment. Kuwait applicants should spend a minimum one year in service before applying while nonKuwaitis should be in service for at least two years. Al-Rasheed also said that syllabus coverage should not be affected in case applicants were teachers and left the decision in such cases to school directors and instructed them to give priority to older teachers and those in service for longer. He also laid a condition that upon returning, applicants should present documented proof that they went on Hajj.

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2013

LOCAL

kuwait digest

Al-Anbaa

Blame it on bedoons By Dr Ibtihal Al-Khateeb

kuwait digest

What is the opposition up to? By Thaar Al-Rashidi

have no idea what the opposition might say at the conference they intend to hold today, but I do know of the new things they might have call for. In my opinion, they will have nothing new to add but instead might renew their old demands. However, this conference is not expected to be anything more than the previous ones which didn’t result in anything significant. This is mainly because the opposition has been retreating for the past six months and its icons have been fading away which unfortunately was welcomed by many who applauded this state of “opposition political low tide” and considered it a victory for the government. In fact, the opposition’s recession that may seem like a victory for the government is not good for national interests. Any country that is void of true opposition can be torn apart by corruption, tyranny and eventually, go into a state of ‘dictatorship hibernation’. Back in the eighties when the British Conservative Party conquered its rival, the Labor Party, many conservatives considered it a major unprecedented political triumph. Nevertheless, the

most radical conservatives rejected such a political victory achieved under Margret Thatcher because it came at the expense of democracy! In a democratic country like Kuwait, it is not wise to crush the opposition or work on uprooting it because a country without opposition is one without democracy. Under no circumstance should we allow the opposition to crumble, no matter how much we disagree with them. The absence of opposition means spread of corruption. The opposition is an integral part of the political scene. It is actually the most important constituent of political formulae in any country. Hence, we should support the opposition’s return regardless of our differences with them and the methods they follow. Yet, we never disagree in principle and should not disagree about the significance of their strong presence. So, if you are anti-opposition and do not wish to support them, then at least try not to discourage them from coming back. Finally, for those asking what the opposition is up to, they should realize that in the partial absence of the opposition, corruption has alarmingly and unbelievably prevailed! — Al-Anba

e live in a society where we have problems similar to people from other societies and cultures. But what makes us different is our strange contradiction. We live a certain lifestyle but dress according to a completely different one. We say something and do the exact opposite. We cheer for something and then get caught doing something that goes against it. Following the heinous crime at Marina Mall where a man in his twenties was murdered, we traded barbs with each other instead of searching for the real factors behind the increase in crimes. The lack of security, psychological circumstances such as the role of school, family and media are some of the reasons behind the increase in crime rates. Since we always seek a rapid solution for the problem, we always look quickly for reasons to blame them on. We have to find a criminal to accuse until he succumbs along with his whole clan after which we can celebrate our victory and go home. Soon after the news of the crime broke out, Kuwait’s bedoon community was accused as usual. Of course, they are the cause of all of our problems. They are the reason behind corruption, slow development, wasta, traffic jams, the Kuwait Airways’ woes, the extremely hot summer and while we are at it, the hole in the ozone layer. Does blaming others make us feel better about ourselves? Yes but only for humans who are imperfect by nature yet claim perfection. It is easier to claim perfection and blame a hundred thousand people living in Sulaibiya and Jahra for our own problems. It is easier to accuse them of “conspiring” against us and “daring” to mingle with us in our malls to destroy our perfect lives.

We live in a contradicting society where people cover their head, expose their body and preach loudly about virtue. There is no offense greater to the deceased young man or a greater stab in the heart of his family than the accusations which weren’t only targeted at the bedoon killer but also the entire bedoon community in Kuwait. It is offensive to the victim and his family that the society finds it easier to stereotype a community than actually find the real reasons behind growing violence. One of the three suspects is Kuwaiti, and the other two are bedoon. It is easier to turn a blind eye to the Kuwaiti man and let the other two bedoons take all the blame while we continue to salvage our angelic reputations as Kuwaitis. Another young man, and another victim. In the meantime, we continue to swim in the sea of our discrimination. How many young men are we going to lose as we continue to sing along with and dance to the same tune? How can a society that always preaches about religion and morals, go on offending others, and in the process forget the basic principle of “No bearer of burdens can bear the burden of another” (Holy Quran - 39:7)? How can a society with so many mosques, pilgrimage campaigners, fasting (not optional during Ramadan), preachers on TV programs and religious curricula, accept corruption, wasta and discrimination to continue spreading within? How can a person who preaches religion day and night send a text message saying “See? I told you the killer was bedoon”. Why this contradiction between our appearance and acts? We either abandon discrimination, or we abandon morals and religion. The two attributes can never co-exist, can they? — Al-Jarida

In my view

Sectarian rampage By Nicola Nasser

he blind sectarian rampage, which has been waging a war on worship mosques, churches and religious shrines have become a modern Arab trade mark phenomenon, since what the western media called from the start the “Arab Spring” overwhelmed the Arab streets. The sectarian rampage is sweeping away in its rage cultural treasures of archeology and history, hitting hard at the very foundations of the Arab and Islamic identity of the region, but more importantly tormenting the souls of the Arab Muslim and Christian believers who helplessly watch the safe havens of their places of worship being desecrated, looted, bombed, leveled to the ground and turned instead into traps of death and monuments of destruction by the “suicide bombers” who are shouting “God is great.” The only regional precedent for the destruction of worship places on such a scale was the destruction of some one thousand mosques since the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. A research by Israeli professor Ayal Banbanetchi, Rapaport noted that after 1948, only 160 mosques remained in the area. In the following years, this number shrank to 40, meaning that 120 were destroyed. Palestinians in the Gaza Strip documented the names and locations of 47 mosques that were destroyed completely and 107 others partially damaged by Israeli bombing during the “Operation Cast Lead” in 2008. Maybe because those crimes went unpunished the western public opinion turns a blind eye to the new Arab phenomenon. Most likely, the leaders of the Israeli fundamentalist Jewish “Temple Mount and Land of Israel Faithful Movement” are watching closely and wondering whether the current destruction of mosques by the Muslims themselves would be enough justification to carry out the movement’s public threats to build the “third temple” on the debris of Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam’s third holiest site, in Jerusalem. It is noteworthy that this destructive phenomenon was an integral part of the “Arab Spring,” which so far has ousted two Presidents in Egypt and three others in Tunisia, Yemen and Libya, but successfully contained in the Moroccan and Jordanian monarchies. However, containment has been so far unsuccessful in the Kingdom of Bahrain, where the ongoing anti-government mass protests still rage uncontainable to the extent that the tiny island kingdom was forced to invite a Saudi Arabian contingent of the GCC’s “Peninsula Shield Force” to move in for help. Nonetheless, opposition sources and the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights reported “documented” attacks by “the ruling regime” on 37 Shiite mosques, destroying 27 of them, some one thousand years old. The “Arab Spring” was optimistically named after a season in nature during which life is reborn and was supposed to promise a renewal of the stagnant political, social and economic life in the Arab world. Unfortunately it turned instead into a sectarian season of killing, death and destruction by counterrevolution forces nurtured financially, logistically, militarily and politically by the most conservative among the Arab ruling regimes in the Arabian Peninsula and their US-led western sponsors and backers. The sectarian cleansing in Iraq and Syria commit-

ted by the exclusionist sectarian zealots has become an Islamist modern copy of the European Christian inquisition in the Middle Ages, with the difference that the old European one was more systematic and organised by the Vatican institution and its allied states while it is perpetrated by uncontrolled sporadic and shadowy gangs of terror in the modern Arab case. The fact that this horrible phenomenon came into life only with the US-led invasion then occupation of Iraq in 2003 and exacerbated with the on-record US campaign for a “regime change” in Syria could only be interpreted as an outcome of a premeditated policy to divide and rule in the Arab world. On Aug 24, the Maronite patriarch Bechara Boutros al-Rai’e told the Vatican Radio: “There is a plan to destroy the Arab world for political and economic interests and boost inter-confessional conflict between Sunnis and Shiites,” adding, “We are seeing the total destruction of what Christians managed to build in 1,400 years” in terms of peaceful cohabitation and coexistence with Muslims. This interpretation is vindicated, for example, by the fact that both the sectarian ruling antagonists, who were brought to power in Iraq by the invading US army, and the Al-Qaeda-linked protagonists, whose presence in Iraq coincided with the US occupation of the country and who are waging a sectarian war of terror to remove them from power, were both US-made warriors, the first as the “democratic opposition” to the national “dictatorship” of late Saddam Hussein and the second as the “freedom fighters” against the military occupation of Afghanistan by the former Soviet Union “empire of evil,” according to the US propaganda terminology. In Iraq, AFP reported on May 20, that a “war on mosques” still “rages.” Seven years earlier the bombing of the dome of the Shiite Al Askari Mosque in Samarra, or the Golden Mosque, was followed by attacks on more than 200 Sunni mosques within two days according to the UN mission in the country. This is indeed a sectarian civil war, but its seeds were sown during the US “Operation Phantom Fury” in 2004 on what Iraqis call “the city of mosques” of Fallujah, where scores of mosques were destroyed completely or damaged by the Americans. Misleadingly or otherwise, the mainstream western media is singling out the plight of Arab Christians in this blind rampage, although their plight is incomparable to that of their Muslim compatriots neither in numbers and magnitude of the phenomenon nor in the resulting human, social, political, cultural and material losses. Writing in the Gulf News on September 11, Dr. Joseph A. Kechichian said, “it was impossible to separate the fate of Arab Christians from their Muslim brethren, a term used here in the sense of fellow citizens not necessarily brotherhood. Indeed, when Iraqi, Egyptian and now Syrian churches were/are destroyed, it is necessary to also note that Sunni and Shiite mosques were and are shelled on a regular basis.” In Iraq for example more than sixty churches were attacked since the US invasion in 2003, but more than four hundred Muslim mosques were targeted. An estimate of two thirds of Iraq’s 1.5 million Christians have been forced to flee the country, but four million Iraqi Muslims became refugees abroad and a few millions more were internally displaced as the result of mass sectarian cleansing campaigns.

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2013

LOCAL

KUWAIT: Pakistan’s Naval Forces Frigate Tariq, docked at Shuwaikh port, its third and last stop, within Pakistan’s naval forces mission to fight illegal activities in the Arabian Sea. The ship is in Kuwait waters after visiting Oman and UAE before heading back to Pakistan.

Drunk holds ‘free concert’ in Jahra Two dead in Fourth Ring Road crash KUWAIT: Two men died and a third one was left critically wounded in an accident reported on the Fourth Ring Road on Saturday night. Paramedics and police rushed to the scene near Jabriya where a two-car collision was reported. A 26-year-old Jordanian man and a 45-year-old Egyptian man who were in the same car were pronounced dead on the scene while a Kuwaiti man in the other car was rushed to the hospital in a critical condition. A case was opened to determine the circumstances behind the accident. Stray dogs Interior Ministry snipers killed two stray dogs which terrorized business-owners and people in Sulaibiya’s industrial zone. Patrol officers accompanied by trained snipers rushed to the area recently following repeated reports about a herd of stray dogs which posed a risk to people’s safety. The snipers shot dead two dogs that people singled out as most likely to target civilians, and

left the scene after making sure that the location was clear. The Interior Ministry has repeatedly denied allegations of shooting stray dogs in the past after animal rights organizations condemned them when hunters targeted the canines after they attacked a child in Khairan (south) two months ago. Wolf in sheep clothing Investigations are ongoing in search of a man who attempted to sexually assault a female driver according to a report filed in Sulaibiya. The case was filed after a Kuwaiti woman approached local police and told them that she asked a man for directions after she lost her way and entered Sulaibiya accidently when she was on her way from Jahra to Saad Al-Abdullah. The man told her to follow him but instead lured her to a remote location near Sulaibiya’s industrial zone. He stopped at the side of the road, went to the woman’s car and then began to harass her as soon as she rolled the window down. She man-

UCLG Congress a good platform to share municipal experiences RABAT: Governor of Kuwait’s Ahmadi Governorate, Sheikh Dr Ibrahim Al-Duaij AlSabah arrived here yesterday, leading Kuwait’s delegation to the Fourth World Summit of Local and Regional Leaders. The gathering, organized by the United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG) under auspices of Moroccan King Mohammad VI, will kick off today and last until Oct 4. Speaking upon his arrival at the RabatSale Airport, Sheikh Ibahim expressed joy for attending this global event and having the chance to meet Moroccan municipal leaders. “Kuwait partakes in this gathering for the first time. We hope to share experience with the other participants in the areas of local government, the democratic decentralized administration of cities and sustainable development, “ he said. “We hope to be able to discuss with municipal leaders from around the globe, notably Rabat Mayor and Morocco’s ex-minister of finance Fatehallah Walow, the best practices in the municipal affairs,” he pointed out. Such gatherings provides an ample opportunity for local and regional leaders to network and twin their respective cities and

regions with each other, Sheikh Ibrahim said, noting that Ahmadi is twinned with several Arab and foreign cities. He commended the organizers of the event for the good preparations and constant contacts with the participants, which, he said, ensures the complete success for the event. The four-day event, themed “Imagine Society - Build Democracy,” is to bring together over 3,000 local and regional leaders; it coincides with the 100th anniversary of the international municipal movement. The conferees are scheduled to discuss a host of issues including ways to promote development of territories, ensure solidarity and sustainability, foster well-being, manage diversity and solidarity between different communities, and shape the future of urban development. They will also assess the progress made by their respective cities towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for the post-2015 era and the agenda for Habitat III in 2016. Sheikh Ibrahim and his party were received by Kuwait Ambassador to Morocco Shamlan Abdulaziz Al-Roumi and other diplomats. —KUNA

Kuwait-India cooperation KUWAIT: Undersecretary of His Highness the Premier’s Diwan Sheikha Etemad Khalid Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah received at Seif Palace yesterday Indian Ambassador to Kuwait Satish C. Mehta. During the meeting, the two sides discussed consolidating the distinctive bilateral relations between the two countries and

ways to improve them, as well as expanding cooperation prospects for the interests of people of both countries. The meeting was also attended by superintendent of the office of the Undersecretary of the Prime Minister’s Diwan Sheikh Mohammad Ahmad AlKhalid Al-Sabah.— KUNA

TEC hosts handwriting training courses

Saqr Al-Badr

Noura Al-Majid

Kuwait: The Touristic Enterprises Company announced yesterday that it will be hosting an Arabic handwriting and Islamic decoration training course, which is the first of its kind to be held in Kuwait. “The course takes place in coordination with the Islamic Decoration and Handwriting Dewan at the beginning of the school year in order to give students the opportunity to practice what they learn during their daily homework”, said Acting Public Relations and Media

Director at the TEC, Saqr Al-Badr. Meanwhile, Al-Badr added that Arabic handwriting instructor Noura Al-Majid has been selected to oversee workshops that will be held as part of the event. The first workshop will be held on Thursday at the Ras Al-Ardh Sea Club between 7 pm and 8pm, while the second takes place on Oct 10 at the Shaab Sea Club between 7pm and 8pm as well. Al-Badr added that a third workshop will be held in Khairan Resort at a date to be announced in the future.

aged to escape and went to the Sulaibiya police station immediately to report the case. Teacher charged A middle-school teacher in Jahra faces charges after he physically abused a student and left him with multiple bruises. The case was filed at the Saad Al-Abdullah police station on Sunday when a Kuwaiti handed officers a medical report from the Jahra Hospital describing injuries that his son reportedly sustained at the hands of his Islamic studies’ teacher. The man first noticed bruise marks on his son’s body, and the 9th grader explained that his teacher “broke a stick” on his body, slapped him repeatedly and verbally abused him. Police summoned the teacher for questioning on charges of physical and verbal assault. Maid suicides A domestic helper died in Salmiya after falling from a 12th floor apartment in a suicide bid,

according to preliminary investigations. Paramedics and police rushed to the scene as soon as the incident was reported, but the Filipina woman was dead by the time they arrived. Investigations so far indicate that the housemaid committed suicide by jumping from the kitchen window of her Egyptian employer’s apartment. The body was taken to the forensic department and a case was filed at the area’s police station. Meanwhile, a housemaid attempted suicide after her employer caught her in the company of an unknown man at home but the maid eventually escaped. The incident took place in Salmiya when a female Arab employer approached the maid’s room to inspect the source of unusual noises heard late at night. The woman opened the door and saw that the Nepalese maid had hosted a man in her room. The Arab employer closed the door and immediately called the police. While waiting for officers to arrive, the sponsor spied on the duo through a keyhole and

saw the stranger escape through the window and when she opened the door, she saw the maid wrapping a headscarf around her neck, getting ready to hang herself. According to the employer, the maid then hit her own head with an iron bar which left her bleeding, and then managed to escape in the middle of the chaos she had created. Blood traces were found in the maid’s room during investigations. Local medical facilities were notified about the maid’s identity and description as part of ongoing search operations. Drunk singer A middle-aged man was arrested in Jahra after he sat down by the side of a road and held an open-air concert in an inebriated state. Police rushed to Al-Naeem where several people reported seeing a drunk man singing loudly. The Kuwaiti man was arrested and taken to the Jahra police station where he was charged for public nuisance and intoxication.

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2013

LOCAL

Professional online presence essential DUBAI: The Bayt.com Personal Branding in the Middle East and North Africa poll, conducted recently by Bayt.com, has shown that managing one’s online presence and creating a powerful personal brand is more important than ever, with nine out of 10 respondents turning to the internet to search for people they’ve just met or are about to meet, and 70.5% of polled professionals saying they have changed their mind about a candidate based on their online presence. More than half of the poll’s respondents (54.3%) say they are aware of the concept of personal branding, with 81.9% claiming to search for themselves online on search engines like Google (with 46.5%) stating they ‘always’ look themselves up on the internet, while 46.2% ‘always’ turn to online search engines to find out more about those they have met, or are about to meet. At the same time, 41.5% of responding companies ‘always’ research new hires online before hiring, with a fifth maintaining they (19.8%) ‘sometimes’ do so. “The large number of companies that research candidates makes it more essential than ever for a candidate to have a professional and appealing online presence on a leading professional careers platform with significant regional inroads in order to secure a job,” said Suhail Masri, VP of Sales, Bayt.com. “. In fact, even something as simple as a photograph could influence decisionmakers, with eight in 10 (79.6%) respondents of the belief that their online photo effects how they are perceived.” The majority of respondents (68.9%) feel that current social networks allow them to convey their key strengths at a professional level, though three quarters (74.6%) are concerned that sharing information online poses a threat to their privacy. The majority of respondents (37.6%) also claim that privacy is one of the biggest issues when it comes to managing their personal brand, followed by the challenge of not knowing where to start with formulating a professional personal brand (21.1%). Despite this, the overwhelming majority (92%) of respondents think that personal online branding increases their career opportunities, with the most important benefits being the ability to showcase their abilities (23.2%), and connect to their target audience (21.1%). Being able to distinguish themselves from others in their field (14.7%) and becoming an expert or thought leader (13.2%) are also important. When asked whether they would like to showcase their key skills and expertise in a more creative way, 97% of respondents said yes. More than half (51.1%) believe that their own CEO’s personal branding skills are ‘excellent’, with a further 20.2% stating that they are ‘above average’, suggesting that those higher up the corporate ladder have already established the best ways

to promote their image and are already reaping the results and benefits of professional online branding. “The time has never been more apt for people in the MENA region to start shaping and monitoring their online presence,” continues Masri. “Developing a strong online personal brand as the poll shows, is essential not only for job seekers, but also for ambitious professionals at all career levels and in all industries looking to move up the corporate ranks and connect with peers, employers and clients. At Bayt.com, we have been serving the region for over 13 years, empowering professionals and employers in the MENA with the tools and information to build their lifestyle of choice. Our mission of empowerment combined with our knowledge of the importance of branding has resulted in the recentlylaunched Bayt.com Specialties platform, which allows people to harness the power of the internet to create empowering sophisticated and customized online professional profile. The best part isthat the Bayt.com platform is designed with two principal tenets in mind: to enable professionals to control their privacy as per their comfort level as well to empower them to truly shine by demonstrating their abilities, connecting to their target professional audience and establishing themselves as experts in their chosen fields. Bayt.com Specialties provides the ideal platform for professionals wishing to establish a professional online brand at no cost and with maximum visibility, utility and flexibility.” Data for the Bayt.com Personal Branding in the Middle East and North Africa poll was collected online from August 16 to Sept 19, 2013, with 8,154 respondents from UAE, KSA, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Algeria, Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia. Bayt.com is the largest and most relevant community of professionals interested in the MENA region, with over 11,250,000 registered jobseekers and 40,000 employers. Bayt.com has 11 regional offices, more than 270 staff and a 13-year track record of successfully matching the region’s top talent with top employment opportunities at every career level, in every industry. Founded in 2000, Bayt.com has become one of the most trusted and respected brands in the region. Over the years, they have won numerous awards of recognition, including the “Leading E-Commerce Website in the Pan Arab Region” by the Pan Arab Web Awards (2007), the “Company of the Year ” award by the TECOM Investments Pearl Awards (2009), SME Advisor Stars of Business Awards (2011), the “Top Companies to Work for in the UAE” award by the Great Places to Work Institute (2011 and 2012), and the “Gulf Capital Business of the Year” and “People & Culture of the Year” by SMEInfo Awards (2012). — Bayt.com

ABK sponsors students conference KUWAIT: As part of its Corporate Social Responsibility program, ABK is proud to sponsor the National Union of Kuwaiti Students (NUKS) - USA Branch 30th Annual Conference. The sponsorship of one of the largest gatherings of Kuwaiti students living abroad symbolizes the Bank’s commitment and social responsibility to its national youth. Sahar Therban, PR Manager at ABK, stated, “Al Ahli Bank of Kuwait is proud to sponsor this annual conference for the fifth consecutive year in order to support Kuwaiti students studying abroad. ABK believes in the importance of investing time,

effort and resources in future generations that will contribute to the development of our beloved country.” The NUKS - USA Branch Union Secretary. Mohammed Al Hamad stated, “ABK’s timely support gives NUKS a fresh impetus to organize the event so Kuwaiti students studying in the USA are updated with the latest information of existing career opportunities. NUKS-USA is delighted that the Kuwait banking sector in general, and ABK in particular is keen on supporting and sponsoring NUKS conferences, since NUKS represents the largest sector of Kuwaiti youth studying overseas.”

Huge orders at Expo Pakistan ISLAMABAD: Foreign buyers placed orders worth millions of dollars with Pakistani exporters as Expo Pakistan 2013 came to a close in the southern city of Karachi, with over 15 Kuwaiti companies among those seeking good business. The four-day mega event took place from Sept 26 to 29 and attracted a large number of foreign and local buyers, and the Kuwaiti companies present included some operating in the fields of information technology , consumer goods, fruits and produce, textiles and electronic industries. According to Trade Development Association of Pakistan officials, buyers from Azerbaijan, Kuwait, and the US finalized deals worth $29 million for import of

consumer goods. The exhibitors of agro food in rice, fruits and vegetables, and herbal items negotiated deals of $35 million with Malaysia, Singapore, and Hong Kong. Other deals included orders of $8 million from Bangladesh, and a chunky $100 million from the UAE home furnishing sector. Expo Pakistan 2013 was termed a big success with over 1,000 foreign buyers showing up from 70 countries including leading importers of food items, sports goods, surgical goods, food processing equipment, textile raw material, machinery and plants. This year buyers from other potential areas like the marbling sector, super store chains and retail outlets, and pharmaceuticals have also visited the expo. — KUNA

Sharp increase in number of Crohn’s patients in Kuwait KUWAIT: “There has been an alarming increase of people suffering from Crohn’s disease, a chronic inflammatory bowel disease that affects the small intestine and colon. This year, we have and are still currently treating many patients at Al Amiri Hospital, “said Dr Fahad AlIbrahim - IBD Specialist and Consultant Gastroentologist at Thunayan Al-Ghanem/Al-Amiri Hospital. Crohn’s disease can be described as a condition which affects an individual’s digestive tract leading to the inflammation of the lining of the intestinal tract that can spread deeper into the bowel tissue. While there is no cure for Crohn’s disease, treatment can vary through medications, restoring and maintaining proper nutrition, and surgery if needed. People suffering from Crohn’s experience loss of appetite resulting in weight loss followed by a feeling of low energy and fatigue. With Crohn’s disease, often the small intestine is inflamed, making it hard to digest and absorb key nutrients from food. The lack of sufficient nutrients, along with a poor appetite, can lead to malnutrition for people with Crohn’s disease. That malnutrition may result from alterations in taste, reduced food or nutrient intake, poor absorption, or the inflammatory bowel disease process itself. When Crohn’s disease affects just the small intestine, it results in diarrhea and undernourishment. In the case of inflammation of the large intestine, the diarrhea can be comparatively severe leading to a loss of essential nutrients needed for the body, for e.g., a person with Crohn’s disease may suffer from anemia and have low levels of vitamin B12, folic acid, or iron. “Nutritional deficiencies and an inability to maintain a normal weight are serious problems for many people, even among younger children, as it may delay growth and development. Therefore, measures such as change in lifestyle and eating habits need to be improved at an early stage to avoid a crippling future,” added Dr Ibrahim. While there is no scientifically proven diet for inflammatory bowel disease, most experts believe that some patients can identify specific foods that trigger their gastrointestinal symptoms, particularly during disease flares. So, by avoiding these “trigger foods,” sufferers may find that their GI symptoms of gas, bloating, abdominal pain, cramping, and diarrhea are more manageable while giving the inflamed intestines time to heal. “If sufferers have problems absorbing nutrients, it’s vital to follow a high-calorie, high-protein diet, even if there is no appetite. In this setting, an effective Crohn’s disease diet plan, based on expert recommendations, would emphasize eating regular meals along with a daily dose of additional two or three snacks, “added Dr. Ibrahim. Thereby, ensuring patients receive ample protein, calories, and nutrients without forgetting to ensure doctor-recommended vitamin and mineral supplements. By doing so, Crohn’s patients will be able to replenish the necessary nutrients in their body. Consuming fiber found in fresh fruits and vegetables is considered part of a healthy diet however, in people suffering from Crohn’s disease, fiber could aggravate diarrhoea. A healthy alternative is to steam, grill or bake vegetables instead of having them raw. It is also advised to eliminate or limit intake of dairy food products as individuals with inflammatory bowel disease are generally lactose intolerant - a condition

Dr Fahad Al-Ibrahim

wherein the body is unable to digest lactose present in dairy foods which brings about gas and abdominal pain. Dr Ibrahim emphasized that, in the case of Crohn’s disease, what patients should observe more, is the foods that trigger symptoms and work around those findings with the nutritionist, to build a fortified and healthier diet regime. By understanding the nature of the food that lead to disease flares, patients can then determine which foods to leave out of their diet plan. Possible foods that can trigger symptoms are butter, mayonnaise, margarine, oils, carbonated beverages, coffee, tea, chocolate, corn husks, dairy products ,fatty foods (fried foods),foods high in fiber, gas-producing foods (lentils, beans, legumes, cabbage, broccoli, onions),nuts and seeds (peanut butter, other nut butters),raw fruits and vegetables, red meat and pork, spicy foods , whole grains and bran. Once a sufferer has identified foods that cause the symptoms to flare, they can choose either to avoid them or learn new ways of preparing them that will make them more tolerable. To do that, you’ll need to experiment with various foods and methods of preparation to see what works best for you. “Maintaining a food journal on foods which worsen signs is imperative. Recording foods eaten each day and the serving sizes that were agreeable should be noted down to later evaluate with the dietician. Proper nutrition helps the body heal itself and keeps patients happier both physically and mentally. So, an effective diet plan with the help of an established nutritionist/dietician is important to a patients overall well being and to the management of Crohn’s disease.” commented Dr Ibrahim.

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2013

India court convicts ruling party ally in ‘fodder scam’

Syria attack probe ends ahead of disarmament team Page 8

FLORENCE: Francesco Sollecito (C), father of Raffaele Sollecito, speaks to the press as he arrives at the Florence’s courthouse yesterday for the retrial of Amanda Knox (inset) and her former lover Raffaele Sollecito for the murder of British student Meredith Kercher. — AFP

Amanda Knox’s murder retrial opens Italian court orders new DNA testing FLORENCE: Judges at the retrial of Amanda Knox for the murder of a British student yesteray ordered new DNA testing on the alleged murder weapon, a kitchen knife, on the first day of hearings. The court in Florence also said it would re-hear the testimony of Luciano Aviello, a jailed mafia turncoat who at one point had accused his own brother of the grisly murder but then retracted. Lawyers for the US student and her Italian former lover Raffaele Sollecito told the court the fresh tests were essential in clearing the defendants, as the victim’s lawyer said the truth behind one of Italy’s most notorious crimes was long overdue. Knox and Sollecito spent four years behind bars for the murder of Meredith Kercher, who was found in a pool of blood in the house she shared with Knox in 2007, her body riddled with stab wounds. An appeals court overturned their convictions in 2011 and Knox quickly returned to Seattle, but Italy’s Supreme Court in March ordered a retrial following an appeal by prosecutors against what they slammed a “superficial ruling.” “We need a key step forward on the DNA evidence... We want the truth,” Knox’s lawyer Luciano Ghirga told the retrial’s presiding judge Alessandro Nencini. The knife, recovered from a kitchen drawer in Sollecito’s house, bore tiny traces of Knox’s DNA on the handle, and Meredith’s DNA on the blade. A third DNA trace had gone unexamined because it was seen as too low to produce conclusive results but the defence hopes it could help clear the pair. Knox, 26, has insisted she will not return to Italy for any part of the retrial. “I was depicted as a young, unscrupulous liar. A sex fiend, a murderess. I’m not coming back,” she told Florence’s local Corriere Fiorentino daily. If Knox is convicted again and loses another Supreme Court appeal, experts say there is a very remote chance that she could be extradited. Sollecito, 29, has been living in the Dominican Republic but he has said he will attend court later on in the trial, which could last months. “It seems to be a pretty never-ending saga of nightmare. My life is still on hold and I cannot move on,” he

told NBC television yesterday. Kercher was found naked apart from a t-shirt. Her throat had been slit and she suffered a “slow, agonising” death, according to the coroner. “I hope that we will take a step towards the truth, for the Kercher family. A truth which will finally reveal what really happened,” the family’s lawyer Francesco Maresca said. Ivory Coast-born drifter Rudy Guede, who like the other two has always denied the murder, is the only person still in prison for the crime. The defence asked for the court to focus on the DNA evidence rather than the witness testimonies, which they said were flawed. Sollecito’s lawyer Luca Mauri called for semen stains on the pillow found under Meredith’s corpse to be tested for the first time, saying he was “shocked that an investigation purportedly into a ‘satanic orgy’ overlooked the semen.” The prosecution has claimed that the murder was the result of “an erotic game that spun out of control”-a hypothesis the Supreme Court suggested was valid and asked the retrial to probe. Defence lawyer Giulia Bongiorno ridiculed the idea that a four-way, violent sex game could have taken place in Meredith’s bedroom and left behind multiple DNA traces belonging to Guede but no trace of Knox and only one trace of Sollecito. Sollecito’s DNA was found on a bra clasp, which was only collected from the crime scene 47 days after the murder. Prosecutors insist Knox and Sollecito left no or little DNA behind because they cleaned up after themselves. “I ask the court to appoint experts to see whether or not it is possible to remove certain traces of DNA from a crime scene and leave others, considering you cannot see naked handprints or skin cells,” Bongiorno said. She insisted the original probe into the murder was flawed-with police caught using dirty gloves to bag evidence and failing to store it properly, allowing for possible DNA contamination. The mafia turncoat Aviello is set to testify at the next hearing in the retrial on Friday. — AFP

Thirteen migrants drowned swimming ashore in Italy ROME: Thirteen asylum-seekers drowned yesterday while attempting to swim ashore after their vessel ran aground off Italy’s coast, the local mayor said. “There were 13 dead. Some people were saved and sent to nearby hospitals,” Franco Susino, the mayor of Scicli in Sicily near where the incident happened, said on the news channel SkyTG24. “We did what we could to save human lives. Some tourists raised the alarm and helped out,” he said, adding he believed the migrants had been thrown overboard by crew members. “These people are treated like animals,” he said. The bodies could be seen splayed out on the beach in video images taken shortly after the incident. They were later wrapped in white blankets. The mayor declared Tuesday as a day of mourning. SkyTG24 and the ANSA news agency said there were between 150 and 200 people packed on the boat and Susino said most of them were from Eritrea. He has declared Tuesday as a day of mourning. Prime Minister Enrico Letta expressed his “profound pain” for the incident and referred back to a visit in July by Pope Francis to the island of Lampedusa, where many asylum-seekers arrive. “I think back to the words of Pope Francis on Lampedusa on the need to fight the globalisation of indifference and feel the pain of these migrants as our own,” Letta said. “Italy will continue to respect the fundamental rights of migrants and fight against the criminals who take part in human trafficking,” he said. Father Giovanni La Manna, head of the Astalli refugee centre in Rome, said: “It is no longer possi-

ble to remain indifferent in front of the continuous repetition of avoidable tragedies.” “There should be humanitarian corridors to allow those fleeing conflicts and persecution to seek protection. This is the only way to avoid human traffickers putting lives in danger,” he said. Ansa said two suspected crew members from the boat have been arrested under an Italian law against people who facilitate illegal immigration. Police and volunteers came to the aid of survivors as they reached the shore but many fled and police are now searching for them in the nearby area. One migrant was hit by a car and taken to hospital in a serious condition. The driver did not stop to help him. Six others have also been taken to local hospitals. A swimmer had warned coastguards after seeing a small abandoned boat in poor condition near the shore. The coastguards are continuing to search the maritime zone around the boat and divers are looking for any other victims. In a similar incident in Catania in another part of Sicily in August, six young Egyptians drowned trying to reach the shore. The victims had jumped from the trawler thinking they had arrived onshore when in fact they were some 15 metres (50 feet) away. Since the start of the year over 22,000 immigrants have reached the southern coast of Italy, three times more than the total number last year. Also yesterday, around 100 migrants landed in the southern region of Calabria and 107 Nigerians and Ghanaians were rescued and taken to the port of Trapani in another part of Sicily. — AFP

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TUESDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2013

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Turkey unveils reforms, some aimed at Kurds ANKARA: Turkey yesterday moved to scrap restrictions on the use of the minority Kurdish language among democratic reforms seen as key to the stalled peace process with the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan also announced that women in the civil service, with a few exceptions, will hencefor th be allowed to wear the Muslim headscarf. “Turkey is irreversibly moving in the direction of democracy,” Erdogan told a news conference. “ This is a historic moment, an important stage.” Kurdish-language education will be permitted in private schools, and candidates in elections will be allowed to campaign in Kurdish, Erdogan announced. The reforms will also aim to ease rules preventing pro-Kurdish and other smaller parties from entering parliament, he said.

Turkey has long refused to recognise the Kurds, a largely Sunni Muslim people who were considered cofounders of the new republic born from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire after World War I. The minority of some 15 million has complained of discrimination at the hands of the Turkish state, which they claim deprived them of their Kurdish identity and stigmatised them as “mountain Turks”. Among other reforms the prime minister announced, schoolchildren will no longer be required to recite the pledge of allegiance-”How happy is the one who calls himself a Turk”-each morning. In addition, towns can revert to their previous Kurdish names, and a quirky ban on the use of three letters of the Kurdish alphabet that do not exist in Turkish will be lifted, he said. The long-awaited reforms are aimed at breaking an impasse in the peace process with the PKK, which is classified

as a terrorist organisation by Turkey and many other countries. In March the PKK’s jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan declared a historic ceasefire after months of clandestine negotiations with the Turkish secret service. In return for withdrawing its fighters, the PKK demanded amendments to the penal code and electoral laws as well as the right to education in the Kurdish language and a degree of regional autonomy. The PKK’s olive branch raised hopes of an end to a nearly three -decade Kurdish insurgency in Turkey’s southeast that has claimed more than 40,000 lives. But earlier this month the rebels announced they were suspending the withdrawal of their fighters, accusing Ankara of failing to deliver the promised reforms. Erdogan indicated yesterday that scrapping a 10 percent threshold

Israel showcases Iranian spy case JERUSALEM: A man arrested on suspicion of being an Iranian spy appeared in an Israeli court yesterday and some Israeli analysts questioned the timing of the affair, suggesting it was being showcased as part of efforts to discredit Tehran’s new opening to Washington. As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu flew on Sunday to the United States for a visit focused on Iran’s nuclear programme, Israel’s Shin Bet security service announced that Ali Mansouri had been arrested on Sept. 11 on suspicion of spying for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. It said Mansouri, a 55-year-old Iranian-Belgian national, had photographed the US Embassy in Tel Aviv and intended to establish business ties in Israel as a cover for espionage. An Israeli official told reporters on Netanyahu’s flight that Mansouri’s picture-taking outside the embassy whose exterior can be seen in numerous images on the Internet - was an attempt “to collect intelligence for a possible terror attack”. That allegation was challenged by Mansouri’s lawyer, Michal Okabi, after a hearing on Monday in a court in the Tel Aviv suburb of Petah Tikva in which the suspect, who did not speak, was ordered held for eight more days. “The apocalyptic picture that the Shin Bet is painting is a lot more complicated and the attempt to claim that our

client came here in order to carry out attacks in Israel is far from reality and without foundation,” Okabi told reporters. Some Israeli media commentators questioned the timing of the news, released in a Shin Bet statement that included photographs it said he had taken outside the beachfront mission and at Tel Aviv’s Ben-Gurion airport. No formal charges have been filed. Asked by Reuters whether the decision to publicise Mansouri’s arrest was influenced by Netanyahu’s US trip, the Shin Bet declined to comment. Alex Fishman, the well-informed military affairs reporter for Israel’s biggest newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, wrote that the Shin Bet, which is overseen by Netanyahu’s office, does not usually rush to reveal details of new espionage cases. “It was not by chance that it was decided in the Prime Minister’s Office to disclose the affair on the eve of (Netanyahu’s US visit),” Fishman said. “Israel is trying to embarrass the Iranians to counter the successful public relations campaign that Iranian President Hassan Rouhani waged in the United States last week,” he said. Israel Radio’s military affairs correspondent said the Shin Bet had agreed to publicise the case “out of a national interest - that is, the prime minister’s trip to the United States and his speech at the General Assembly”. Israel and Iran

are bitter adversaries. Israel, widely believed to be the Middle East’s only nuclear power, says Iran is covertly seeking to develop atomic bombs. Iran says it is enriching uranium solely for peaceful purposes.—Reuters Netanyahu and President Barack Obama were to meet at the White House later yesterday, three days after the US leader and Rouhani spoke by telephone in the highest-level contact between their two countries in 34 years. Israeli officials said Netanyahu, who will speak to the UN General Assembly yesterday, planned to voice scepticism about Iran’s intentions in its agreement to returning to nuclear negotiations with six world powers, and to call for a tightening of punitive economic sanctions on the Islamic Republic. He also extended his US visit by a day, the Prime Minister’s Office said yesterday, to give him more time to conduct “interviews and briefings with the international media”. Rouhani said that in his phone call with Obama the two leaders “expressed their mutual political will to rapidly solve the nuclear issue”. Today, he told the UN General Assembly that Iran would never develop atomic weapons and he later called for a nuclear deal in three to six months. Obama said he and Rouhani had directed their teams to work quickly toward a settlement on Iran’s nuclear activity.

required to secure seats in Turkey’s parliament would be “open to debate”, noting that his Islamic-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP) had yet to introduce legislation on the reform. He also said political parties that garner more than three percent of the vote would be able to receive state aid for their election campaigns. The minimum was seven percent in the past. Parliament will discuss the proposed reforms after it returns from its summer recess today, Erdogan said. Kurdish politicians have criticised the government for drafting the reforms without consulting with them. “We have insistently called on the government to discuss the package with us and with the public but we did not receive any response,” Gulten Kisanak, co-chair of the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party, told AFP last week. “In its current form, we do not believe that the package will address

our demands for rights and freedoms and contribute to the peace process,” she said. The prime minister also said that civil servants would henceforth be allowed to wear headscarves after a long-standing ban is overturned, in a move seen as a gesture to his own grassroots. However the ban will remain in effect for judges, prosecutors, police and military personnel. Erdogan’s AKP has already relaxed the ban on university students wearing headscarves. The Islamic-rooted party insists that the ban flouts freedom of conscience and undermines the right to education. Erdogan’s government was hit by a wave of nationwide unrest in June that threw up the biggest challenge to his decade -plus rule. Protesters called Erdogan a “dictator”, accusing him of Islamising the predominantly Muslim but staunchly secular country. — AFP

Syria attack probe ends ahead of disarmament team FMs plead for more support to deal with refugees DAMASCUS: UN experts wrapped up their investigation of alleged gas attacks in Syria yesterday, as a chemical weapons disarmament team arrived in neighbouring Lebanon ahead of their trip to Damascus. President Bashar alAssad has insisted Syria will comply with a UN resolution under which his regime must turn over its chemical weapons for destruction. In New York, his foreign minister accused Western states of supplying chemical weapons to the Syrian opposition, in an address to the UN General Assembly. Meanwhile the foreign ministers of Syria’s neighbours Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Turkey pleaded at a meeting of the UN refugee agency for more international support to deal with an influx of refugees. The Syrian war has killed more than 110,000 people and forced more than 2.1 Syrians to flee to neighbouring countries since it erupted in March 2011. The UN Security Council is to begin talks today on a statement about the humanitarian crisis which could include a disputed call to allow cross-border missions, diplomats said. On the ground, the violence continued with regime forces launching air raids in the provinces of Homs and Aleppo, and a car bomb exploding in Damascus province. A UN team of chemical weapons experts left Syria after an almost week-long mission to probe seven alleged attacks, heading for Beirut on route to their next destination. They are expected to draft a final report on the alleged attacks by late October, after an initial one that confirmed the use of sarin gas in an August

DAMASCUS: The convoy of a UN team of weapons inspectors, who concluded its almost week-long mission in Syria, arrive at Rafik Hariri international airport in Beirut, Lebanon, yesterday. The inquiry determined that the nerve agent sarin was used in the Aug. 21 attack on a Damascus suburb in Syria, but it did not assess who was behind it. —AP 21 attack in the suburbs of Damascus. The United States threatened military action following that attack, accusing regime forces of killing hundreds with chemicals. Syria denied the allegations but agreed to relinquish its chemical arsenal to head off a strike under a USRussian deal which was enshrined in a landmark UN resolution. The team of 20 inspectors from the Hague-based Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons overseeing the agreement arrived in Lebanon on Monday on their way to Syria. Today they are expected to hold talks with Syrian officials in Damascus to prepare for an ambitious and dangerous mission. “At this point, we have absolutely no reason to doubt the infor-

mation provided by the Syrian regime,” an OPCW official said Sunday. In his first comments since the UN resolution was passed on Friday, Assad on Sunday told Italy’s Rai News 24 his regime “will comply” with plans to destroy Syria’s arsenal. “Of course we will comply with it, and history proves that we have always honoured all treaties we have signed,” state news agency SANA quoted him as saying. The UN arms resolution calls for the convening of a much-delayed peace conference in Geneva as soon as possible, with UN Secretary General Ban Kimoon proposing a mid-November date. Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem told the UN General Assembly yesterday his government supports a negotiated settlement but rejects conditions ahead of the peace talks.—AFP

Gunmen kill three Egyptian policemen CAIRO: Gunmen killed three policemen in Egypt’s volatile Sinai Peninsula yesterday, security sources said, and an Islamist militant group released a video of an earlier drive-by shooting of an army colonel. Security sources confirmed that gunmen had killed the colonel, identified as Mohamed al-Komi, on Aug. 14 on a desert highway near the Suez Canal city of Ismailia. The Sinai has become a major security headache for the Egyptian authorities since the army overthrew elected President Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood in July. His overthrow has plunged the most populous Arab nation into political crisis. A security crackdown on the Brotherhood has raised fears that Islamists will hit back with violence. In the latest bloodshed, gunmen killed two policemen as they ate breakfast outside a police station in the city of El-Arish in North Sinai. In a separate attack, a police officer walking in the city was shot in the head and chest and killed. Gunmen also killed a civilian in the nearby town of Sheikh Zuwaid. Almost daily attacks by al Qaedainspired militants in the Sinai have killed more than 100 members of the security forces since Mursi’s ouster, the army spokesman said on Sept. 15. Militant violence elsewhere in Egypt has raised concerns that an Islamist insurgency, like one that Mubarak’s government eventually crushed in the 1990s, could take hold beyond Sinai. The Sinai-based Ansar Bayt alMaqdis group claimed responsibility for a failed suicide bombing in Cairo on the interior minister this month. State neglect has long stoked resentment among the Sinai’s Bedouin population. Authorities have done little to promote economic development in the vast and lawless desert region. Instability there worries Western governments because the peninsula borders Israel and flanks the strategic Suez Canal, the quickest sea route between Asia and Europe. The army says the Sinai is hard to police partly because it borders the

Gaza Strip, which is run by Hamas, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. The military says Gaza-based militants take part in attacks over the border and accuses Hamas of doing too little to stop them, allegations the Islamist group denies. Attacks in Sinai have risen sharply since Mursi’s overthrow, although militants and smugglers had already been exploiting a security vacuum left by the 2011 fall of autocrat Hosni Mubarak. Sinai militants have published online footage of some of their attacks - a common practice among al Qaeda-linked groups trying to motivate fighters and intimidate their enemies. In a video posted on a jihadi website yesterday, a group calling itself “alNusra Battalion” shows what appears to be footage of security forces firing on Mursi supporters. The video then shows what it says was the attack on Colonel Komi on Aug. 14, the day security forces crushed pro-Mursi protest camps in Cairo, killing hundreds of people. A man with an assault rifle is filmed aiming from a car window and shooting at another vehicle driving on a desert road. “Targeting the criminal

apostates and liquidating them,” a caption reads. A picture of the uniformed officer flashes on the screen next to the car seen in the drive-by shooting, a back window pocked with bullet holes and blood running down the driver’s door after what appears to have been a well-planned assault. “It’s likely that they learned his daily routine by a combination of relatively good intelligence on their part and perhaps poor operational security on the part of the Egyptians,” said David Hartwell, a Middle East analyst at IHS Jane’s. The video says al-Nusra Battalion is a unit of “al-Firqan Brigade”, a militant group that took responsibility for an attack this month on a container ship in the Suez Canal. The army, which has been operating with the police in Sinai, said on Aug. 7 that it had killed 60 militants in the month since Mursi’s overthrow. “There are great security successes on the ground in Sinai now,” Interior Ministry spokesman Hany Abdel Latif said when asked about the al-Nusra Battalion video. “We’ve arrested dangerous elements and confiscated heavy weapons, and we have a large degree of control.” — Reuters

CAIRO: A supporter of Defense Minister Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi holds a poster bearing photo of him and Arabic that reads, “continue your duties and choose your president, campaign,” during a campaign to collect signatures and nominate El-Sissi to run for Egypt’s president at Pyramisa hotel in Cairo, Egypt, yesterday. — AP

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Govt to sue N Carolina over new voter law WASHINGTON: The Justice Depar tment will sue the state of North Carolina for alleged racial discrimination over tough new voting rules, the latest effort by the Obama administration to fight back against a Supreme Court decision that struck down the most powerful part of the landmark Voting Rights Act and freed southern states from strict federal oversight of their elections. North Carolina has a new law scaling back the period for early voting and imposing stringent voter identification requirements. It is among at least five Southern states adopting stricter voter ID and other election laws. The Justice Department on Aug. 22 sued Texas over the state’s voter ID law and is seeking to intervene in a lawsuit over redistricting laws in Texas that minority groups consider to be discriminatory. Republican lawmakers in southern states insist the new measures are needed to prevent voter fraud, though such crimes are infrequent. Democrats and civil rights groups argue the tough new laws are intended to make voting more difficult for minorities and students, voting groups that lean toward Democrats, in states with legacies of poll taxes and literacy tests. Attorney General Eric Holder is expected to announce the lawsuit against North Carolina at a news conference Monday, according to a person who has been briefed on the department’s plans but is not authorized to speak publicly about the matter and spoke only on condition of anonymity. Holder will be joined at the news conference by the acting assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s civil rights division, Joceyln Samuels, and the three U.S. attorneys from North Carolina, the person said. In the North Carolina lawsuit, the person said, the government will challenge requirements in state law that eliminate the first seven days of early voting opportunities and eliminate same-day voter registration during the early voting period. Sameday registration allows voters to cast a ballot immediately after presenting elections officials with proof of their name and home address. The Justice Department challenge

also is aimed at a provision eliminating the counting of certain types of provisional ballots by voters who cast ballots in their home counties but do not vote in the correc t precincts. Finally, the federal government will challenge a provision in the new law that requires voters to present government-issued identification at the polls in order to cast ballots. In North Carolina, a recent state board of elections survey found that hundreds of thousands of registered voters did not have a state-issued ID. Many of those voters are young, black, poor or elderly. I n remarks Sept. 20 to the Congressional Black Caucus, Holder said the Justice Department will not allow the Supreme Court’s action to be interpreted as “open season” for states to pursue measures that suppress voting rights. The Justice Department will ask a federal judge to place the four provisions in North Carolina’s new law under federal scrutiny for an indeterminate period - a process known as pre-clearance. However, the provision of the Voting Rights Act that the Justice Department is invoking may be a difficult tool for the Obama administration to use. A handful of jurisdictions have been subjected to pre-clearance, or advance approval, of elec tion changes through the Civil Rights Act provision it is relying on, but a court first must find that a state or local government engaged in intentional discrimination under the Constitution’s 14th or 15th amendments, or the jurisdic tion has to admit to discrimination. Unlike other parts of the voting law, the discriminator y effec t of an ac tion is not enough to trigger court review. Nowhere is the debate over voting rights is more heated than in Florida, where the chaotic recount in the disputed 2000 presidential race took place. Florida election officials are set to resume an effort to remove noncitizens from the state’s voting rolls. A purge last year ended in embarrassment after hundreds of American citizens, most of whom were black or Hispanic, were asked to prove their citizenship or risk losing their right to vote. — AP

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2013

Small jet hits hangar at Santa Monica Airport ‘This was an unsurvivable crash’ SANTA MONICA: A small jet that took off from Idaho ran off the runway and into a storage hangar at a Southern California airport on Sunday night, causing the hangar to collapse in flames around it, officials said. Firefighters were still contending hours later with the smoldering ruins of the building and the plane at Santa Monica Municipal Airport, and had yet to determine how many people were inside the jet, but it was unlikely anyone was alive inside. “ This was an unsurvivable crash,” Santa Monica Fire Department Capt. John Nevandro said at a media briefing at the airport. The twinengine Cessna Citation that had taken off from Hailey, Idaho, went off the right side of the runway at about 6:20 p.m. and struck the hangar, Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Ian Gregor said. The blaze did minor damage to two other buildings and destroyed the hangar. “It was a total loss,” Fire Department spokeswoman Bridgett Lewis said. News helicopter footage showed all but the tail of the plane trapped under a collapsed section of the small hangar. Neither aviation nor rescue officials were yet able to say how many people were aboard the plane, nor whether anyone was inside the hangar. A crane would be required to remove the remains of the hangar, and investigators were unlikely to be able to get to the plane until Monday, Gregor said. A plume of smoke rising above the airport could be seen in the twilight sky over the populous neighborhoods surrounding the airport in the hours after the crash. Jack Bonner, 15, said he was hanging out at his home near the airport with a friend when he heard a boom “like a thunderclap.” “I was like, ‘Wow, what the heck is going on?’” he told the Los Angeles Times, before turning on the TV and learning about the plane. The jet, a Cessna 525A manufactured in 2003, is registered to a Malibu, Calif. address and its corporate owner, Creative Real Estate Exchange, is based in Birmingham, Ala., and Atlanta, according to FAA public records. Phone messages left after hours at the real estate company’s two offices were not immediately returned. Santa Monica Airport, located in the coastal tourist destination known for its trendy bars, restaurants and wooden-pier carnival, is home to many private jets, many of them used by wealthy Southern Californians from the entertainment industry.The airport in Hailey serves Idaho’s Sun Valley resort area, which is a frequent destination for many celebrities, and the rich and powerful alike. — AP

SANTA MONICA: Firefighters work to extinguish fire at the site of a plane crash in Santa Monica, California, on Sunday. Authorities say a twin-jet Cessna Citation went off the right side of the runway and crashed into a hangar after landing about 6:20 pm. It was not immediately clear how many people were on the plane or whether anyone was inside the hangar, and there was no immediate word on any injuries or deaths. — AP

NY accountant sentenced to 18 years for aiding al Qaeda NEW YORK: An accountant who scoped out the New York Stock Exchange as a potential target for al Qaeda was sentenced yesterday to 18 years in prison. Sabirhan Hasanoff, a dual US and Australian citizen living in New York, provided financial support to al Qaeda and conducted surveillance of the New York Stock Exchange in 2008, prosecutors said. He also sought to travel overseas to receive military training to fight Americans, they said. U.S. intelligence officials said in June that Hasanoff’s arrest was indirectly the result of monitoring by the U.S. National Security Agency of a “known extremist in Yemen.” Hasanoff, who had previously worked at accounting firms including KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers, pleaded guilty in June 2012, nearly two years after he was arrested on charges of conspiring to provide material support to al Qaeda. US District Judge Kimba Wood said yesterday that Hasanoff appeared to be “a charita-

ble, loving, good family man” before he became radicalized. “None of that, however, deterred him from planning to leave his family and die fighting jihad against Americans,” Wood said. Wood also ordered Hasanoff to forfeit $70,000. Hasanoff’s lawyer, Joshua Dratel, portrayed his client as a family man who was “psychologically lured” into extremism. Like some Muslims in the West, Dratel said, Hasanoff was “guilt-tripped” into his crimes. Hasanoff, 37, apologized to the court and his friends and family, many of whom were present. “I’m very sorry for my conduct,” Hasanoff said. “I should have known better and I don’t have any excuse.” Prosecutors said Hasanoff cased the NYSE in 2008 and sent a one-page report back to a co-conspirator in Yemen. Hasanoff additionally acquired items at al Qaeda’s request, including a device that could be used to remotely detonate explosives, prosecutors said. —Reuters

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2013

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Cardinals to begin reform summit with Pope Francis VATICAN CITY: Eight cardinals will begin closeddoor meetings with Pope Francis today to help him reform the Vatican’s troubled administration and map out possible changes in the worldwide Church. Francis, who has brought a new style of openness, simplicity and a conciliatory tone to the papacy, wants to consult more with Church officials around the world before making decisions affecting the life of the 1.2-billion-member Church. Some of the topics expected to be discussed are how to give women a greater role in the Church short of the priesthood, financial reform, the position of divorced Catholics, and the continued fallout from the worldwide sexual abuse crisis. Francis announced the papal advisory board of cardinals, revolutionary for a Church steeped in hierarchical tradition, a month after his election as the first non-European pope in 1,300 years and the

ﬁrst from Latin America. His decision to take advise from the cardinals from Italy, Chile, India, Germany, Democratic Republic of Congo, the United States, Australia and Honduras, is a clear sign that he intends to take seriously calls from within the Church for de-centralisation in a traditionally top-heavy institution. Each cardinal polled their faithful and bishops about what should be discussed at the meetings, which will be closed to even top oﬃcials from the Vatican’s Secretariat of State, which is itself a target of reform. The group’s chairman, Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, told a Canadian Catholic television network he had 80 pages of suggestions from Latin America alone. The other cardinals on the advisory board are Giuseppe Bertello of Italy, Francisco Javier Errazuriz

Ossa of Santiago, Chile, Oswald Gracias of Mumbai, India, Reinhard Marx of Munich, Laurent Monsengwo Pasinya of Kinshasa, Sean Patrick O’Malley of Boston and George Pell of Sydney. The group’s main task is to suggest changes to a constitution by the late Pope John Paul II called “Pastor Bonus,” which gave the various departments that run the Church their current structure in 1988. The Curia, as it is known, has been riven by scandals over the years and bishops around the world have deemed it heavy-handed, autocratic, condescending and overly bureaucratic. Maradiaga said the constitution governing the structure of the Curia would have to be re-written rather than modiﬁed. Former Pope Benedict, who resigned in February, left a secret report for Francis on the problems of the Curia, which were exposed when sensitive documents were stolen from

Benedict’s desk by his butler and leaked to the media. There have been suggestions that some Vatican departments be merged and others closed in order to make the Curia more eﬃcient and to prevent corruption. Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi told reporters on Monday about 80 documents had been prepared for discussion. “No-one should expect the Curia or the governance of the Church to be reformed in three days,” he said, adding Francis had decided to make the council a permanent ﬁxture with an open-ended mandate. After three days of meetings, the eight cardinals will accompany Francis to the central Italian hill town of Assisi on Friday. Francis took his name from the saint who is revered around the world as a symbol of austerity, simplicity, concern for the poor and a love of the environment. — Reuters

Malian army clashes with Tuareg rebels for second day Al Qaeda claims Timbuktu attack

YAOUNDE: A policeman looks for a name in a list at a polling station in Yaounde yesterday, for legislative and local polls set to shore up the strong parliamentary majority of the President’s ruling party. — AFP

Cameroon ruling party expected to win polls YAOUNDE: Voters in Cameroon began going to the polls yesterday for legislative and local polls set to shore up the strong parliamentary majority of President Paul Biya’s ruling party. The election in the central African country began on schedule at 8:00 am (0700 GMT), but few people turned out in the early hours and some flaws in the electoral rolls were already noticed by an AFP correspondent in the capital Yaounde. “I’ve just seen that the number on my voter’s card is not the same as the one next to my name on the electoral roll,” voter Tcheck Tcheck said at a polling station in a Yaounde school requisitioned for the ballot. “I simply hope that everything will take place clearly, with justice and that there will be no cheating,” said another voter, Marthe Mbazi. Biya, 80, was prime minister in 1982 when then president Ahmadou Ahidjo stepped down, in a move that made his government chief head of state. Since winning a presidential election in 1984, Biya has ruled with extensive powers and has taken steps to prolong his term in office. His Cameroonian People’s Democratic Movement (RDPC) holds the majority of seats in the National Assembly and municipal authorities and is widely expected to make further gains.The party wound up its campaign with a grandiose rally on Sunday on the forecourt of Yaounde’s city hall. The main goal of the opposition parties, including the Social Democratic Front (SDP) which currently holds 16 seats, is to avoid losing ground in both the assembly and the municipalities, according to political commentator Mathias Nguini Owona. But the opposition is deeply fragmented and 29 parties are fielding candidates for parliament while 35 parties are in the running for local government seats. Some 5.4

million voters have been called to the polls to elect 180 members of parliament and thousands of town councillors in 360 polling stations across the country in a single round of voting. The terms of the current cohort of lawmakers elected in the last elections in 2007 expired in 2012, but have been extended on three separate occasions. “We are likely to see a confirmation of the RDPC’s hyperdomination because the electoral contest is greatly unequal,” said Owona. Opposition parties regularly accuse Biya’s party of electoral fraud and of using state funds to wage their election campaigns while their opponents face financial troubles. The government announced campaign funding totalling 1.7 billion CFA francs ($3.5 million, 2.6 million euros) and recently made half that sum available to parties contesting the election. In October 2011, Biya was re-elected after beating long-time opponent John Fru Ndi, leader of the SDP, which has its roots in an English-speaking part of the country. The United States and France pointed to “irregularities” in the voting process. After challenges to virtually every election result in the last two decades in the oilrich but poverty-stricken country, both sides admit that the latest campaign has failed to capture the public’s imagination. “This lack of enthusiasm is indicative of the lack of confidence Cameroonians (have) in the electoral regulator Elecam,” said Owona. Polling stations are due to close at 6:00 pm and the country’s borders, which have been closed since Saturday, are due to reopen Tuesday. The government in 2006 launched a high-profile campaign to tackle rampant corruption, arresting a number of prominent figures including former ministers and heads of public companies. — AFP

BAMAKO: Malian troops clashed with Tuareg rebels in the northern desert town of Kidal for a second day yesterday, residents said, after the separatists ended a ceasefire with the new government last week. The clashes threaten to derail peace efforts in northern Mali and complicate France’s plan to reduce its troop presence in the West African country following a military operation that destroyed an Islamist enclave. The fighting began on Sunday afternoon outside a bank in the centre of Kidal, with both the military and the MNLA rebels accusing the other of firing first. After calm returned overnight, shooting re-started early on Monday morning. “The firing began at around 5 o’clock (0500 GMT) this morning between the army and the MNLA,” said Mohamed Toure, a trader. “I have not opened my shop today.” Colonel Souleymane Maiga, an army spokesman, said the shooting erupted outside the Malian Solidarity Bank (BMS) where fighting raged on Sunday. The MNLA said three of its fighters were wounded in Sunday’s combat. On Friday, two soldiers were wounded in a grenade attack at the same place, a day after the MNLA suspended its participation in the peace process. The rebels accuse newly elected President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita of failing to honour a June ceasefire accord. The agreement had committed Mali to opening talks on greater regional autonomy for the north within two months of a new government taking office. Keita won an Aug. 11 presidential run-off by a landslide with a pledge to reunite the impoverished former French colony. The clashes in Kidal followed a suicide car bomb attack near an army camp in the northern town of Timbuktu on Saturday in which the two attackers and at least two civilians were killed. In a statement to Mauritania’s Alakhbar news website, which has contacts with militant groups, a spokesman for Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) - its north African wing - claimed respon-

KIDAL: In this July 27, 2013 file photo, Malian Tuareg soldiers loyal to Col. Major El-Hadj Gamou listen during a visit by Mali’s army chief of staff in Kidal, Mali. Malian soldiers and ethnic Tuareg separatist rebels clashed again in the northern desert town of Kidal early yesterday. — AP sibility for the suicide attack. In Kidal, a resident who asked not to be identified said the Tuareg rebels had brought arms and fighters into the town overnight. The combatants were loyal to local chieftain Iyad ag Ghali, he said. Ag Ghali founded Islamist group Ansar Dine, one of three armed Muslim militant factions that seized control of the northern two-thirds of Mali last year following a military coup in March. The coup had been triggered by the government’s failure to tackle effectively a Tuareg revolt last year. Ag Ghali’s whereabouts has remained unclear since France launched a ground-and-air operation in January that broke the control of the al Qaeda-linked groups over the sparsely populat-

ed desert region. A military official, who also asked not to be identified, confirmed that Iyad Ag Ghali’s forces were entering the town. Last week, a source close to the political talks had said that Ag Ghali’s men had camped some 40 km (25 miles) from Kidal. France, which had more than 4,000 troops involved in Operation Serval at the height of the conflict, aims to have just 1,000 soldiers deployed in Mali by year end as a rapid reaction force to respond to any terrorist threat. The deployment of a 12,600-strong UN peacekeeping force, meanwhile, is being hobbled by a lack of aircraft and troop commitments from member states. — Reuters

Austerity clobbers Portugal’s ruling party in local votes LISBON: Portugal’s ruling Social Democrats took a heavy beating in Sunday’s local elections as voters passed their verdict on national austerity measures accompanying the country’s 2011 bailout by international lenders. The elections, for 308 municipal mayors, took place during a review visit by oﬃcials from the lenders, the European Union and International Monetary Fund, during which they are expected to demand more spending cuts. Preliminary election results released early yesterday showed the vote boosting the main opposition Socialists, with 36.3 percent of votes counted so far, while the Social Democrats (PSD) had polled 26.5 percent. Independent candidates also advanced, winning the country’s second-largest city of Porto and its industrial satellite city of Matosinhos, a traditional Socialist bastion. Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho acknowledged that the centre-right government was taking a hit for its austerity measures, which have contributed to Portugal’s worst economic crisis since the 1970s, with two and a half years of recession and record unemployment. “We know there’s always a price to pay in politics,” said Passos Coelho. “But we also know that this path will give us the chance to end our bailout programme and recover our opportunity to grow and give more social justice and prosperity for all.”

With 25 of the 308 results still to be declared, the Socialists were already up five at 137 mayors elected against 100 for the PSD, down from 137. The PSD’s worst previous record was a haul of 114 mayors in 1989. The PSD’s coalition partner, the CDS, had five, the Communist-Greens alliance had 30, while 11 independents were elected, up from seven, after a record 80 stood. Full election results will not be ready until later in the day, the interior ministry said. Officials had predicted delays because of a new vote counting system following the merging of many local councils. Socialist leader Antonio Jose Seguro said the results showed “an enormous will for change” among the Portuguese, while analysts put it down to voter fatigue with the waves of spending cuts and the biggest tax hikes in living memory. The local results have no direct bearing on national government. Passos Coelho, whose government nearly collapsed in July over a dispute about austerity, said he would continue policies to complete the bailout plan as scheduled in mid-2014. The government has promised spending cuts of more than 4 billion euros by the end of 2014 in order to meet its budget deficit goals, but has been facing growing resistance at home from business groups, unions and the opposition, which want it to negotiate a new easing of the targets. — Reuters

LISBON: Portugal’s Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho delivers a statement in Lisbon acknowledging his party’s defeat in Portugal’s local elections Sunday. — AP

Dublin’s austerity drive puts upper house at risk

MANCHESTER: London Mayor Boris Johnson visits McKenna Bothers makers of destination boards in Middleton, near Rochdale in Greater Manchester, yesterday during the second day of the Conservative Party conference in Manchester. —AFP

DUBLIN: It has been described as elitist, a political dinosaur and a mere talking shop but next month’s referendum on whether to abolish Ireland’s upper house of parliament is proving harder to sell than Dublin might have predicted. Support for abolishing the upper house has ebbed away since the idea was ﬁrst mooted and polls show only half of likely voters remain in favour of the move. The proposal has the backing of the coalition government and some of the opposition but a hefty percentage of voters are undecided, lending momentum to the main ‘no’ to abolition campaign as the October 4 vote nears. The reluctance to scrap the Senate is at odds with the sceptical view of many in Ireland of politicians and the high cost of government, especially after Dublin entered an European Union-International Monetary Fund bailout in 2010 after a decade of the ‘Celtic Tiger’ economic boom.

Voters have levelled heavy criticism at Prime Minister Enda Kenny’s ruling Fine Gael party for its approach to the referendum, with Kenny controversially declining to debate the issue on television with the leaders of those opposed to the plans. Posters and repeated claims from Fine Gael detailing how much the abolition will save have also been challenged. “This represents an extraordinary grab for power by the government,” one veteran senator, David Norris, told AFP. “The government won the presidential election, they have an overwhelming majority in the lower house, they own a big chunk of the banks at our expense and they naturally control all the services of the state, so what is left? The Senate at least was a voice of dissent,” he added. Norris, Ireland’s longest-serving senator, became one of the ﬁrst openly gay people to hold public oﬃce in the world when he took his seat in the upper chamber in 1987. After a failed

run for president in 2011, Norris, also an expert in the work of writer James Joyce, returned to the upper house, where three of Ireland’s nine presidents, including the incumbent, have served in oﬃce. “I must say I am very much hurt by the idea that after nearly 30 years of work for the public... with noticeable results including the changes in the laws surrounding homosexuality, that people in government would intimate that I wasn’t worth it, that I was wasting my time,” Norris fumed. The government, now almost three years into an austerity programme imposed by the bailout conditions, continues to seek savings. “The Irish people have been asked to sacriﬁce tremendously over the last number of years and to do more with less, so there’s no reason the political class shouldn’t be doing exactly the same,” Regina Doherty, a Fine Gael member and deputy director of the party’s campaign. — AFP

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2013

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

India court convicts ruling party ally First politician to be disqualified from parliament Ex-finance minister to run for Afghan president KABUL: Former finance minister Ashraf Ghani yesterday launched his bid to become the next president of Afghanistan, kickstarting the 2014 election race as the first big name to declare his candidacy. Ghani, who is also a former World Bank academic, confirmed he would run in the April poll to succeed Hamid Karzai as the NATO-led military coalition withdraws and officials seek a peace deal with Taleban militants. “(I) plan to contest in the upcoming presidential elections,” Ghani said on his Twitter account, in a message that was verified by a senior official working in his office. Clearing the way for his shot at power, Ghani resigned as chairman of the Transition Coordination Committee (TCC), which oversees Afghanistan’s return to full sovereignty after the US-led ousting of the Taliban regime in 2001. Ghani came a distant fourth in the 2009 presidential election, collecting less than three percent of the vote, but has used his role at the TCC to travel extensively around all parts of Afghanistan and raise his profile. An acerbic character known for his quick temper, Ghani spent time at Columbia, Berkeley and Johns Hopkins universities in the US before joining the World Bank and then serving as Afghan finance minister from 2002-2004. This year, he came second in a “world thinkers” poll by Prospect magazine, which described him as one of the “few academics

(who) get the chance to put their ideas into practice”. Ghani, born in 1949 in Logar province near Kabul, may again struggle to secure enough popular support needed for victory at the ballot box. He is a Pashtun, the country’s largest ethnic group, but is not a tribal leader and has a limited vote base. The election, due on April 5, is widely seen as the key test of progress in Afghanistan after 13 years of huge international military and civilian assistance. With Karzai barred from standing after serving two terms, it will be Afghanistan’s ﬁrst ever democratic transition of power. But the 2009 vote was marred by fraud and violence, and the authorities face a tough challenge organising a peaceful election and ensuring a transparent vote counting process. Karzai has vowed not to endorse any candidate, and has said he considers a credible election as a central part of his legacy. Backstage political manoeuvering in Kabul has reached fever pitch ahead of the October 6 deadline for nominations, though it remains unclear who else will run for president. Abdullah Abdullah, the 2009 runner-up, is expected to put his name forward this week, while other candidates may include current Foreign Minister Zalmai Rassoul, Karzai’s brother Qayum and former warlord Abdul Rab Rasoul Sayyaf. — AFP

PESHAWAR: People gather near a building damaged by a car explosion in Peshawar, Pakistan, yesterday. The deadly car bomb exploded on a crowded street in northwestern Pakistan Sunday in the third blast to hit the troubled city of Peshawar in a week, officials said. — AP

Peshawar bombing death toll up 42 PESHAWAR: The death toll from a car bomb attack in Pakistan’s northwestern city of Peshawar rose to 42 yesterday, hospital authorities said. The bombing on Sunday, which caused carnage in a busy market area, was the third deadly strike in a week to hit the city, the gateway to tribal regions which are a stronghold of militants linked to the Taleban and Al-Qaeda. “The death toll in the attack rose to 42 after three more people died in the hospital overnight,” a senior official at Peshawar’s Lady Reading Hospital, Dr. Arshad Javaid, told AFP. He said 64 injured people were still under treatment at the hospital and seven of them were in critical condition. The top local administration official, Sahebzada Muhammad Anis, confirmed the new toll. The dead also included eight women and six children aged five to nine. The bomb went off near a police station but officials said it did not appear to have been the target. “It looks like the market was the target,” said bomb disposal chief Shafqat Malik. He told AFP a car parked by the roadside had apparently been converted into a remote-controlled bomb. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who is in New York for the UN General Assembly, strongly condemned the blast. “Those involved in the killing of innocent people are devoid of humanity and all religions,” he said in comments released by his office. The blast caused major destruction, toppling a two-storey building and gutting several shops, an AFP reporter at the scene saw. Thick grey clouds engulfed the entire area after several shops caught fire. At least 50 shops were either damaged or completely destroyed. On Sunday last week a twin suicide attack at a Peshawar church killed 82 people, triggering nationwide protests by the Christian community and others demanding better protection for minorities. On Friday a bomb tore through a bus carrying government employees on the edge of Peshawar, killing 18 people. Peshawar is the gateway of the semi-autonomous tribal belt that US officials consider a safe haven for Al-Qaeda and other insurgents fighting both in Pakistan and across the border in Afghanistan. Pakistan is on the frontlines of the US-led war on Al-Qaeda. Since July 2007 it has also been gripped by a local Taleban-led insurgency, concentrated largely in the northwest. — AFP

PATNA: An Indian court convicted a regional government ally of corruption yesterday, making him one of the first politicians set to be disqualified from parliament under new rules barring criminal MPs. Lalu Prasad Yadav, a former federal minister whose Rashtriya Janata Dal party supports the ruling coalition, was found guilty along with 44 others of conspiracy and cheating over a scam which first came to light in 1996. The conviction means Yadav is liable to be kicked out of federal parliament, following a recent Supreme Court ruling that national and state lawmakers be disqualified if they are found guilty of a serious crime. Low-caste figurehead Yadav was chief minister of India’s poorest state Bihar when some 380 million rupees ($6 million) of public money intended to buy cattle feed for use by poor villagers was allegedly siphoned off. “Lalu was found guilty of criminal conspiracy, corruption and cheating,” A.K. Singh, a lawyer for the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) which led the trial, told reporters. Yadav did not say anything to media as he was escorted by police from the packed special CBI court in the city of Ranchi in the state of Jharkhand, which was part of Bihar until 2000. The veteran politician was taken to prison before sentencing by the CBI court on Thursday, a police official in Ranchi said. He could face a minimum of four years in jail, according to local media reports. The 66-year-old, known for his often amusing oratory in parliament, was born into a cow herder’s family and is an outspoken critic of the elite. He has always denied any wrongdoing over the so-called fodder scam. His conviction comes after political controversy erupted last week over the Supreme

RANCHI: Lalu Prasad Yadav (C), a former Indian federal minister, whose Rashtriya Janata Dal party supports the ruling coalition, walks into court before a hearing in Ranchi, Jharkhand yesterday. An Indian court convicted, Yadav, a regional government ally, of corruption making him one of the first politicians set to be disqualified from parliament under new rules barring criminal MPs. — AFP

Court’s ruling in July that lawmakers should be barred if they are found guilty in criminal cases carrying jail terms of more than two years. The Congress-led government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh drew up an executive order to negate the decision and shield convicted lawmakers from being ejected ahead of national elections next year. But Congress party scion Rahul Gandhi called the order “nonsense” in a surprise move on Friday that left the government red-faced.

The order still needs the president’s approval and its future is unclear after Gandhi’s comments. If it fails to go into force, Yadav would be among the ﬁrst thrown out. A Congress MP, Rashid Masood, is also set to lose his seat after being convicted in a separate corruption case earlier this month. One of Yadav’s sons said his father would appeal against the conviction, claiming he was being made a scapegoat for the scam. — AFP

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2013

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

China detains activist ahead of UN human rights review BEIJING: China has detained a human rights activist who helped stage a sit-in this year outside the Foreign Ministry to press for the public to be allowed to contribute to a national human rights report, her friend said yesterday. The detention of Cao Shunli could fuel criticism of China’s rights policy when it comes up for scrutiny at a U.N. meeting in Geneva on Oct. 22, when groups and governments will be given the chance to press China on issues ranging from the death penalty to the treatment of dissidents. Cao went missing in mid-September after authorities prevented her from ﬂy-

ing to Geneva to attend a human rights training programme, her friend, Liu Xiaofang, told Reuters by telephone. Beijing police told another of Cao’s friend, Feng Shuying, yesterday that Cao has been “criminally detained” since last Saturday, Liu said. Feng could not be reached for comment. Liu said she believed authorities had detained Cao, whose disappearance has sparked an outcry from human rights groups, because Cao had staged a twomonth sit-in with other activists outside the Foreign Ministry, beginning in June. Hundreds of activists had urged oﬃcials to reply to their requests to partici-

pate in drafting China’s national human rights report ahead of the country’s Universal Periodic Review by the United Nations this month. “I think that action really angered the ministry,” Liu said. Cao, who has been at the forefront of eﬀorts to take part in the process to join the Universal Periodic Review since 2008, is believed to be in a detention centre in Beijing, Liu said. Beijing police could not be reached for comment. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said he had no knowledge of Cao. “But China is a country with rule of law and the legal rights of Chinese citi-

zens are protected by the law and the constitution, which at the same time all people must abide by,” he said. Maya Wang, a researcher at Human Rights Watch, said by detaining Cao, the government was sending one message: “Independent voices on human rights are not welcome.” “Instead of listening to people’s voices and legitimate grievances, the government has unfortunately opted to shoot the messenger,” Wang said. All UN members are expected to undergo the United Nations Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review. Begun in 2008, the process will examine each

country every four years. International human rights groups have already laid out their criticisms of China in submissions to the review. The main ones include the detention of dissidents and activists, using sweeping security laws and party-run courts to punish critics. In 2009, China rejected calls from Western and some Latin American countries to end the death penalty but agreed to suggestions by Cuba that it ensure firm action against “selfstyled human rights defenders working against the Chinese state and people”. — Reuters

Australia’s new PM makes maiden trip to Indonesia Abbott seeks to ease refugee tensions

SEOUL: South Korean President Park Geun-hye (R) shakes hands with US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel (C) as US Ambassador to South Korea, Sung Kim, (2nd L) and US Army General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (L), look on before their meeting at the presidential Blue House in Seoul yesterday. — AFP

Hagel tours last Cold War frontier in Korea PANMUNJOM: US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel toured the South-North Korean border yesterday, ahead of talks on switching command of combined US and South Korean forces in the event of war with the North. “There is no margin of error up here,” Hagel told reporters at the heavily fortified Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) that still separates the two Koreas 60 years after the end of the Korean War. Hagel was on the first leg of a trip to South Korea and Japan-two key regional military allies with a major stake in the battle to halt Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons programme. His visit follows signs that North Korea may be expanding its weapons-grade fissile material output even while calling for the resumption of six-party denuclearisation talks. After watching a live-fire exercise near the border, Hagel toured the DMZ once described by former US president Bill Clinton as the “scariest place on earth”-with his South Korean counterpart Kim Kwan-Jin. “This is probably the only place in the world where we have always a risk of confrontation, where two sides are looking clearly and directly at each other,” he told reporters at the Panmunjom truce village where the Korean War armistice was signed. Hagel and Kim are due to hold talks today which are likely to focus on Seoul’s request for an extension of US wartime command over South Korean troops. In the event of war with North Korea, the alliance currently calls for the US military commander to lead the 28,500 US troops deployed to the country, as well as South Korea’s 640,000strong force. South Korea had agreed to take over wartime operational command of all troops starting in 2015, a decision that was already delayed from a 2012 target date. South Korean defence policymakers now say they need more time to prepare for the transition, citing increased military threats from the North after it held a nuclear test in February. “Currently, peace on the Korean peninsula is once again precarious because of the North’s nuclear programme,” President Park Geun-Hye said at a dinner function with Hagel later yesterday.The command issue is a divisive one in South Korea. Left-leaning opposition par-

ties view the existing command structure as quasi-colonial and tend to favour a rapid transition. Some right-wing hardliners also perceive a slight to national pride, but the conservative establishment sides with the belief that US command is the best guarantee of its long-term commitment to South Korea’s defence. US officials have reaffirmed the 2015 schedule and, in a briefing to reporters on his flight to Seoul, Hagel noted that the South Korean military had become “much more sophisticated, much more capable” over the past 10 years. And while stressing it was too early to make a “final decision”, Hagel said it was inevitable that time would bring change to the dynamics of the military partnership. “Even though our alliance has never been stronger than it is today, that does not mean we cannot grow and mature,” he said at the dinner with President Park. The visit to the DMZ had been a “chilling reminder of the threat North Korea poses not only to this country, but to the region, and to the United States homeland as well,” he added. Tensions on the Korean peninsula, which sky-rocketed after the nuclear test, have eased a little in the past month, but concerns over Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions remain acute. Analysis of recent satellite images suggest it has restarted the plutonium reactor that provided the fissile material for at least two of its three nuclear tests, and may have doubled its uranium enrichment capacity at the Yongbyon nuclear complex. Hagel said the recent use of chemical weapons in Syria and the international community’s response had been closely followed by officials in Seoul. “The South Koreans are very concerned because the North Koreans possess a very significant stockpile of chemical weapons,” he said. North Korea and its main ally China have both urged a resumption of six-party talks on the North’s nuclear programme, but Washington and Seoul insist Pyongyang must demonstrate a commitment to denuclearisation before any substantive dialogue can be held. The six-party process, which the North exited in 2009, involves the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States. — AFP

JAKARTA: Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said he had frank and constructive discussions on immigration issues with his Indonesian counterpart yesterday during his first trip abroad since taking office, a visit that comes as the death toll continues to climb from the latest boat tragedy involving Australiabound asylum seekers. “We are resolved together, united, to tackle this problem and to beat it, on land and at sea and at the borders of our countries,” Abbott said after meeting President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. “We are determined to end this scourge, which is not just an affront to our two countries, but which has so often become a humanitarian disaster in the seas between our two countries.” The visit came three days after a boat packed with asylum seekers sank in Indonesian waters, killing at least 36 and leaving dozens more missing. Abbott also stressed the importance of boosting economic ties between the neighboring countries from the current 14.6 billion Australian dollars ($13.6 billion) a year. He said a new Australian-Indonesia study center would be created at Monash University. Abbott is accompanied on the two-day trip by Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, Trade Minister Andrew Robb and 20 senior businesspeople. Border issues have been a long-standing headache between the two countries. Indonesia, with its thousands of islands and shortage of maritime resources, is often used as a transit point by asylum seekers desperate to reach Australia’s Christmas Island in hopes of starting a better life. Thousands board rickety fishing boats every year to make the often deadly journey, which typically crosses about 340 kilometers (210 miles) of open sea. Abbott won the Sept. 7 election on the promise that he would stop the asylum seeker boats. Indonesia has expressed concern over Abbott’s “towback” plan, which involves the Australian navy intercepting and forcing back Indonesian fishing boats crowded with asylum seekers. Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa has warned that the move could breach the country’s sovereignty. “I do want to stress publicly as well as privately, bapak president, Australia’s total respect for Indonesia’s sovereignty, a total respect for Indonesia’s territorial integrity,” Abbott said, referring respectfully

JAKARTA: Australia’s Prime Minister Tony Abbott (L) speaks to journalists next to Indonesia’s President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (R) during a joint statement at the presidential palace in Jakarta yesterday. — AFP to Yudhoyono in the Indonesian language. Yudhoyono agreed that the two countries must work closely together to combat the problem. “The solution is cooperation,” he said, adding that specific details would be worked out at another forum between the countries. “Effective, precise and good cooperation.” Australian Immigration Minister Scott Morrison yesterday maintained his government’s policy of refusing to say whether any boat had been turned back to Indonesia since the new administration took power on Sept. 18. “I’m not going to comment on operational issues at sea that compromise current and future operations,” Morrison told a weekly news briefing, adding that the new government had not changed how Australia responds to search and rescue emergencies.

On Friday, a boat thought to be carrying more than 100 asylum seekers from the Middle East sank oﬀ West Java’s Sukabumi district after being hit by high waves. The exact number of people aboard the boat was unknown due to the lack of a manifest. The search continued Monday for dozens believed missing after 35 survivors were rescued. Seven more bodies were found late Sunday and Monday, bringing the conﬁrmed death toll to 36, said Capt. Warsono, police chief of Agrabinta in the neighboring district of Cianjur. Separately, Australian navy boats rescued 80 asylum seekers and crew from two sinking boats last week en route from Indonesia to Australia and handed them over to Indonesian authorities, said Air Marshal Mark Binskin of the Australian military. Four other boats reached Australian waters last week, he said. — AP

Malaysia faces backlash over tough new laws KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia’s bid to bring back detention without trial and toughen a range of other laws has triggered a backlash from civil society groups who call the move politically motivated and a major step back for human rights. Home Minister Zahid Hamidi was due to debate the proposed changes in parliament yesterday, justifying them as necessary to battle a rise in violent crime, as the government tries to push through the controversial bills this week. The proposed amendments appear to mark a reversal of Prime Minister Najib Razak’s steps in recent years to repeal draconian security laws, such as the Internal Security Act (ISA), that were sometimes used to jail government critics. They come weeks ahead of a ruling party assembly where Najib faces pressure to make concessions to hard liners, following a weak election result in May that cut the ruling coalition’s majority, undermining the prime minister’s moderate agenda. “After the elec-

tion they are showing their real colours,” said Nalini Elumanai, executive director of human rights group Suaram. “It’s not because they want to curb crime. They want to stop the civil society movements, that’s the real motive.” The tougher laws come as Najib’s dominant United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) struggles to retain its traditional grip on the multi-ethnic Southeast Asian nation in the face of growing demand for more freedoms. Najib attempted to rebrand UMNO after a dismal election showing in 2008, liberalizing security laws and pledging to phase out privileges for majority ethnic Malays. But he is widely seen as having been pegged back by UMNO traditionalists, particularly after May’s election, in which minority ethnic Chinese and most urban voters rejected the ruling coalition. The changes to the 1959 Prevention of Crime Act provide for a board made up of three members and headed by a judge to issue detention orders for up to two years that

can later be renewed. The suspect has no right to legal representation, according to a copy of the bill seen by Reuters, and lawyers said there would be limited scope to appeal against decisions. In addition, the government is proposing amendments to the country’s penal code, mandating prison terms of 5 to 15 years for promoting a false national flag and up to three years for “vandalism”, which includes the display of banners or placards without proper permission. Judges’ powers of discretion in sentencing are curtailed in favour of minimum mandatory sentences. The new laws could be so broadly interpreted that they were “wide open to abuse,” said Andrew Khoo, co-chairman of the Malaysian Bar Council’s Human Rights Committee. The Bar has said the changes are “repugnant to the rule of law”. Khoo told Reuters, “I think the average citizen, rather than feeling safer as a result of these amendments, could actually feel much less safe.” — Reuters

Australia’s first woman PM surprised by sexism CANBERRA: Australia’s ﬁrst woman prime minister, who was dumped by her party ahead of September’s election loss, revealed yesterday she was surprised by the level of aggressive sexism directed at her during three years in power. Julia Gillard made the comments in her ﬁrst interview since she was deposed in a ballot of her center-left Labor Party colleagues in June by a vote of 57 to 45 as public opinion polls pointed to the administration heading for a catastrophic election defeat. She was replaced by Kevin Rudd, a prime minister she had deposed in a similar leadership showdown three years earlier in the face of poor opinion polling. Rudd led his party to a crushing election defeat on Sept. 7, causing some observers to ask whether the leadership change had served any purpose. Gillard, who turned 52 Sunday, told a sold-out audience of 2,600 people in the Sydney Opera House in an interview televised nationally that she reacted with “murderous rage” to the sexist attacks on her in social media and

elsewhere. She was called “witch” and “bitch” on protesters’ banners, while a popular Sydney radio broadcaster said she should be dumped at sea in a sack. “I was surprised by it. I had issues related to my gender before I became prime minister,” she said, mentioning a senator condemning her as unﬁt to lead because of her decision not to have children. “There was this underside of ... really violent, ugly sexism that came forward, and I think it ﬁnds easier expression because of the social media, but I think it would have been there anyway,” she said. Tony Abbott, who became prime minister after his Conservative party won the election, has been criticized for appointing only one woman to his Cabinet. The 55-year-old former Roman Catholic seminarian was branded “a misogynist” and “sexist” by Gillard in a speech to Parliament last year that was lauded by feminists around the world. Gillard, who did not run in the election, returned on Sunday from the United States where she accepted a position with the Washington-based

Brookings think tank as a senior fellow specializing in global education. Gillard also met last week with Hillary Rodham Clinton in New York, and said the former US Secretary of State was “full of ideas” about politics and the world. “... wouldn’t it be fantastic to follow the ﬁrst African-American president with the ﬁrst woman president?” she said. Clinton’s supporters have encouraged her to run for president in 2016, but she has not revealed her plans. Gillard said her administration, and others such as President Barack Obama’s and British Prime Minister David Cameron’s, has struggled with the evolving media environment, which she felt contributed to her political demise. She said social media allowed governments to instantly get the truth “to thousands and thousands of people in a way that you never could before, but in an age in which lies and half-truths and odd political claims and silly slogans can also get automatic and widespread currency.” — AP

SYDNEY: Journalist Anne Summers, left, gestures while she chats with former Prime Minister of Australia Julia Gillard prior to an interview at the Opera House in Sydney, Australia, yesterday. This is Gillard’s first interview since she was ousted as Labor Party leader by her predecessor, Kevin Rudd in June. — AP

NEWS

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2013

Bibi urges US to keep Iran sanctions in place WASHINGTON: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday urged President Barack Obama to keep tough economic sanctions on Iran in place, even as the US weighs a potential warming of relations and a restart of nuclear negotiations with Tehran’s new government. “If diplomacy is to work, those pressures must be kept in place,” Netanyahu said during an Oval Office meeting with Obama. The two leaders met at the White House just days after Obama’s historic phone call with new Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. The 15-minute call marked the first direct conversation between US and Iranian leaders in more than 30 years. Obama credited the flurry of US sanctions that have crippled Iran’s economy with bringing Rouhani to the negotiating table. While he said it was important to “test diplomacy,” the president also said that Rouhani must back up his more conciliatory words with actions that give the international community confidence that Iran is not seeking to produce a nuclear weapon. “We enter into these negotiations very clear-eyed,” Obama said, adding that while he preferred a diplomatic solution, all options remain on the

table, including military action. Obama and Netanyahu, whose tense relationship has somewhat improved in recent months, also addressed the tenuous peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, the bloody civil war in Syria, and unrest in Egypt, the first Arab country to forge a peace treaty with Israel. The two leaders had not met in person since March, when Obama made his first trip to Israel as president. The sudden prospect of diplomacy with Iran overshadowed a host of pressing issues on the US-Israeli agenda. Netanyahu has long been skeptical of Obama’s preference for negotiating with Iran, repeatedly pressing his US counterpart to issue credible threats of military action if Tehran gets close to producing a nuclear weapon. Sitting side-by-side with Obama, Netanyahu echoed his recent warnings that the US and other Western nations should not be swayed by Rouhani’s courtship. Israelis derisively called Iran’s efforts the “smiley campaign.” “The ultimate test of a future agreement with Iran is whether or not Iran dismantles its military nuclear program,” he said. Iran has offered to open its nuclear facilities to international inspectors as part of broad negotiations with the

United States but has insisted that its nuclear program is its right and is for peaceful purposes only. The US, Israel and other allies have long accused Iran of seeking a bomb. Iran says it is enriching uranium for peaceful purposes. Netanyahu was expected to bring intelligence with him to Washington that Iran was on the cusp of achieving the ability to produce a nuclear weapon. He has previously argued for action to block Iran from acquiring the tools to reach that threshold. Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, in an interview Sunday, scoffed at Israel’s warnings, saying Israeli leaders have been warning that Tehran is months away from having a nuclear weapon since 1991, and those fears have never been realized. Zarif, a former nuclear negotiator for Iran, met with Secretary of State John Kerry at the United Nations last week. American and Iranian officials had been negotiating a possible meeting between Obama and Rouhani while both were in New York for the UN General Assembly meetings. However, US officials said the Iranians told them an in-person meeting would be “too complicated” and the phone call was arranged instead. —AP

All options open on Iran: Peres AMSTERDAM: Israeli President Shimon Peres says “all options” are being kept open in forcing Iran to give up its nuclear program, which Iran says is for peaceful purposes but Israel and others believe is aimed at building nuclear arms. He said the economic sanctions against Iran now have not dissuaded the country from enriching uranium or building long-range missiles, although it may have aﬀected Tehran’s public statements. Peres said it would be better if sanctions did stop Iran from being “a center of terror, but all options are otherwise being kept.” “The Syrians were forced this time by an agreement between the United States and Russia to give up their chemical arsenal,” he said. “They didn’t do it before the world threatened them with the military option.” Peres spoke at the Peace Palace in The Hague after meeting with judges at the International Court of Justice, sometimes called the World Court, yesterday. The ICJ ruled in 2004 in a nonbinding advisory opinion that Israel’s security barrier violated international law. Israel rejected the opinion. Asked whether Israel would be willing to join the Organization for the Prohibition for Chemical Weapons as Syria is now doing, Peres said his government, which is widely believed to possess chemical weapons, “will

consider” it. Israel has signed but not ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention, which forbids the production, stockpiling or use of chemical weapons and automatically leads to membership in the OPCW. After Syria’s agreement last week to join the organization, only Israel, Egypt, North Korea, Burma, Angola and South Sudan are not members. On Friday, the UN Security Council ordered the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to help Syria destroy its chemical weapons by mid-2014. Inspectors from the OPCW were leaving the Netherlands yesterday for Syria to begin the process. Asked what he thought of the speech by Iran’s new President Hassan Rouhani to the United Nations last week in which Rouhani argued Iran’s nuclear program is purely civilian, Peres told reporters it contradicted a speech the Iranian leader gave just two days earlier to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. In that, Rouhani vowed to continue building long-range missiles. Peres said those missiles could have no purpose other than to carry nuclear warheads, so the two speeches were contradictory. “I hope that the facts will justify the hopes of many that we will see a different Iran, but finally we can judge only by the acts and by the deeds,” he said. — AP

Gulf states weigh US-Iran overtures Continued from Page 1 “So much of the Gulf relationship with Washington has been built on the concerns over Iran: the US bases, the huge Gulf arms purchases, the protection of oil shipments,” said Theodore Karasik, a security and political aﬀairs analyst at the Dubai-based Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis. “All of a sudden, here’s the chance that the US and Iran could start talking directly. That cuts the Gulf out of a loop somewhat,” he added. Washington’s Gulf partners have already been feeling slightly under-appreciated. When then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton visited the region last year she heard a list of complaints that included worries about Obama’s perceived strategic emphasis on Asia and how Washington failed to stand by their common ally, Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, during the Arab Spring uprisings. And the Gulf leaders - strong backers of Syria’s rebel forces - could hardly contain their displeasure when the US pulled back from possible military action against Bashar Assad’s regime in favor of a Russian plan seeking the dismantlement of Damascus’ chemical arsenal. A former US diplomat in the region said that a senior Saudi oﬃcial grumbled to him recently: I wish the Americans stood by us like the Russians stand by Assad. The diplomat spoke on condition of anonymity because the conversation recounted was private. “There will no doubt be some tensions between the Obama administration and Gulf leaders” over Syria, said Ayham Kamel, a Middle East analyst at the Eurasia Group in London. Iran, though, is an issue even closer to home. The diplomatic energy lavished on Rouhani by Washington - particularly at last week’s UN General Assembly - is likely to leave Gulf leader questioning their place in the US pecking order if there is a thaw in the 34-year diplomatic freeze between the US and Iran. Such a prospect may still seem distant. Iranian hardliners have made it clear they are highly uneasy with the fast-paced overtures at the UN Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi tried to address the worries even as his boss, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, stayed behind in the US to continue his pitch for a quick resolution to the nuclear impasse - that would, Iran insists, include easing sanctions.

“Definitely, a history of high tensions between Tehran and Washington will not go back to normal relations due to a phone call, meeting or negotiation,” Araghchi was quoted as saying Sunday by the semiofficial Fars news agency. He added: “We never trust America 100 percent. And, in the future, we will remain on the same path. We will never trust them 100 percent.” In the Gulf, Sunni Arab leaders view Shiite power Iran with deep suspicion. In some ways, Gulf views on Iran are often more in line with Israel than other Arab states. A leaked US diplomatic cable described how Saudi’s King Abdullah urged in 2008 for a US-led attack against Iran to “cut off the head of the snake” and cripple its nuclear weapons program, which Saudi officials and others fear could touch off a frightening nuclear arms race in the region. More recently, arrests of alleged Iranian espionage rings have been announced in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. In Bahrain - where the Western-backed government accused Iran of encouraging a Shiite-led uprising since 2011 - a court yesterday sentenced 50 people to prison sentences ranging from five to 15 years on charges that include spying for Iran. “Arab countries in the region are watching the talks between Iran and the US with concern in their hearts,” said Mahdi Motaharnia, a professor of international politics in Qom Azad University in Iran. “They fear that many concessions they were receiving from the West because of tensions between Iran and the US could be in jeopardy.” Clearly, the overall US ties with the Gulf are too extensive and strategic to suffer any major blows. The Pentagon’s footholds include air bases, thousands of ground troops in Kuwait and the US Navy’s 5th Fleet in Bahrain. Gulf nations spend billions on the latest US weapons. It’s more about the Gulf perceptions that Washington’s policies are no longer closely overlaid with their own, said Sami Al-Faraj, director of the Kuwait Center for Strategic Studies and a security adviser to the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council. “The Gulf states once believed they always had American in their corner,” said Al-Faraj. “Syria changed that. What’s happening in Iran may change it even more.” — AP

Qaeda militants eat human hearts: Syria Continued from Page 1 Chemical Weapons. Al-Moallem claimed that it is clear to all that offshoots of Al-Qaeda - “the most dangerous terrorist organization in the world” - is fighting in the Syrian civil war. But some countries refuse to recognize it, he said. “The scenes of murder, manslaughter and eating human hearts were shown on TV screens, but did not touch blind consciences,” Al-Moallem said. “There are innocent civilians whose heads are put on the grill just because they violate the extremist ideology and deviant views of Al-Qaeda. In Syria ... there are murderers who dismember human bodies into pieces while still alive and send their limbs to their families, just because those citizens are defending a unified and secular Syria.” A video published online in May purported to show a member of Syria’s armed opposition eating a human

heart while the body of a Syrian soldier lay close by. Another video the minister referred to purportedly showed rebels grilling the head of a Syrian soldier. The video with the heart drew condemnation from human rights groups as well as the Syrian National Council, one of the main opposition groups. As rebels gain more territory and a multitude of militias, jihadists and criminals join the fight against Assad, reports of serious human rights abuses committed by armed opposition elements are on the rise. Summary executions committed by rebel forces albeit on a far smaller scale than the regime’s alleged atrocities - have put the West in a difficult position as it seeks to arm, train and otherwise aid the rebels. AlMoallem said his government was committed to a political solution to his country’s conflict which he called a war against “terror” and not a civil war as the international community has been calling it for months. — AP

Mir ship from Russia takes part in the Mediterranean Tall Ships Regatta “Voiles de Legende” (Legendary Sails) yesterday in the Mediterranean Sea, near Toulon, southern France. — AFP

US careens towards shutdown Continued from Page 1 shutdown of the federal government in a matter of hours. “I am not at all resigned” to a shutdown, Obama told reporters when asked about it.But Obama said he would not negotiate under the threat of the US government shutting down or defaulting on its debt. “There’s not a world leader, if you took a poll, who would say that it would be responsible or consistent with America’s leadership in the world for us not to pay our bills,” Obama said. “We are the foundation of the world economy and the world financial system. And our currency is the reserve currency of the world. We don’t mess with that,” he said. Obama said he expected to speak later Monday to leaders of Congress, where his Republican opponents are pushing to strip his signature health care reform program in exchange for keeping the government running. “There’s a pretty straightforward solution to this. If you set aside the short-term politics and you look at the long-term here, what it simply requires is everybody to act responsibly and do what’s right for the American people,” Obama said. The prospect of a shutdown contributed to a decline in stock markets around the world, and US stocks tumbled sharply after Wall Street opened yesterday. Some critical services would continue, such as patrolling the borders, inspecting meat and controlling air traffic, and health care programs for the poor and elderly. The State Department would continue processing foreign applications for visas, and embassies and consulates overseas would continue to provide services to American citizens. Since the last government shutdown in 1995-1996, temporary funding bills have been noncontroversial, with neither party willing to chance a shutdown to achieve legislative goals it couldn’t otherwise win. But with the 3-year-old healthcare law nearing implementation, hardcore tea party conservatives are determined to use the spending bill as leverage to derail Obama’s chief domestic accomplishment. Even if Congress averts a shutdown, Republicans are sure to move the health care fight to another must-do meas-

ure looming in mid-October: a bill to increase the government’s borrowing cap to avert a market-rattling, first-ever default on US obligations. The healthcare overhaul, which has come to be known as “Obamacare,” is aimed at providing health coverage for millions of uninsured Americans. Exchanges are set to open today under the law where people can shop for health care coverage from private insurers. Republicans insist the initiative is already costing jobs and will drive up health care costs. Democrats argue otherwise and accuse Republicans of holding a routine funding measure hostage to unfairly extract concessions. The battle started with a House vote to pass the short-term funding bill with a provision that would have defunded implementation of the health care overhaul. The Senate voted along party lines to strip that out and lobbed the measure back to the House. The latest House measure, passed early Sunday by a near party-line vote of 231-192, sent back to the Senate two key changes: a one year delay of key provisions of the health insurance law and repeal of a new tax on medical devices that partially funds it, steps that still go too far for The White House and its Democratic allies. Senate rules often make it difficult to act quickly, but the chamber can act on the House’s latest proposals by simply calling them up and killing them on a nondebatable motion. Even some Republicans said privately they feared that Democratic Senate leader Reid holds the advantage in the fast-approaching end game. Republicans argued that they had already made compromises; for instance, their latest measure would leave intact most parts of the health care law that have taken effect, including requiring insurance companies to cover people with pre-existing conditions and to let families’ plans cover children up to age 26. They also would allow insurers to deny contraception coverage based on religious or moral objections. Democrats were confident they could hold firm, and some more senior Republicans acknowledged that the situation is rife with political risk for their party. — AP

Kuwait warns ‘stateless’ people against... Continued from Page 1 Around 21 Kuwaiti opposition and civil society groups on Sunday declared their total backing for the bedoon planned protests, saying it is part of their basic rights. The groups also called on the government to embark on a comprehensive and fundamental solution to the decades-long problem of around 110,000 bedoons by ﬁrst proving them their essential rights and then start naturalizing them. The government claims that only 34,000 of bedoons qualify to be considered for citizenship while the rest are citizens of other countries who or their forefathers deliberately destroyed their passports to claim Kuwaiti citizenship. In another development, the Court of Misdemeanors yesterday refrained from issuing any sentence against nine opposition activists including ﬁve former MPs for taking part in an “unlicensed” gathering. Under Kuwaiti

legal system, the ruling is a conviction but without any physical punishment. The court however asked the nine activists to pledge to keep good conduct for a year and pay a bail of KD 100 each. The former MPs include Mussallam Al-Barrak, Jamaan Al-Harbash, Khaled Shukhayer, Khaled Al-Tahous and Waleed Al-Tabtabai. The activists were among thousands of Kuwaitis who took to the streets last year in protest against the government for unilaterally amending the electoral constituency law. The Appeals Court meanwhile upheld the acquittal of opposition activist Sager Al-Hashash from the charge of insulting HH the Amir on Twitter. The lower court had acquitted the activist several months ago. Hashash was however convicted and handed a twoyear jail term by another court early this year and served several months in jail before he was released on an Amiri pardon in the fasting month of Ramadan.

car bombs kill 54 in Baghdad Continued from Page 1 protest camp in April touched off a violent backlash by Sunni militants. “The (security situation) will get worse because al Qaeda and its allies will increase their attacks against both sects to incite people and force them to respond,” said a senior security official who declined to be named. So far Shiite militias, most of which disarmed in recent years and joined the reconstituted security forces or entered the political process, have largely held their fire, but several attacks in recent weeks suggest that some are retaliating. Iraq’s sectarian balance has come under further pressure from the civil war in neighboring Syria, where mainly Sunni rebels are fighting to topple a leader backed by Iran. Both Sunnis and Shiites have crossed into Syria from Iraq to fight on opposite sides of the conflict. Al-Qaeda’s Iraqi and Syrian branches merged earlier this year to form the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, which has claimed responsibility for attacks on both sides of the border. On Sunday, the Kurdistan region, a northern enclave relatively insulated from the violence that afflicts the rest of Iraq, suffered its first major bombing since 2007. A charred crater in the road marks where a car bomb exploded during a suicide assault on the security headquarters in the regional capital Arbil in which at least six

people were killed. A stench of burnt tarmac still hung over the scene, and the remains of a slain assailant lay on the grassy road divider. “We realize that Arbil is a big, attractive target for terrorists,” said the city’s governor Nozad Hadi. “During the past seven years there were constant attempts by terrorists to undermine the security of the capital.” Kurdistan’s relative security has attracted some of the world’s largest oil companies including ExxonMobil, Chevron Corp and Total to the region, which is autonomous and polices its own borders. Most of these oil firms have their main offices in Arbil, but after Sunday’s attack they took extra security measures and restricted the movements of their staff, industry sources said. No group has claimed responsibility for the Arbil attack, but it was hailed by hardline Sunni Islamists, who in recent months have been fighting a Kurdish militia in Syria. Analysts say the assault may have been carried out by al Qaeda-affiliated militants in revenge for the Kurdistan Regional Government’s perceived support for Kurds in Syria. A risk consultancy said militants would try to strike the region again, but would find it difficult because the Kurdish security apparatus is “relatively well developed”. “Further attacks should therefore be expected but they are likely to remain infrequent occurrences,” said John Drake, of the AKE consultancy. “The day-to-day operating environment will remain stable but we will continue to warn against complacency.” — Reuters

TUESDAY, OCTOMER 1, 2013

ANALYSIS

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Issues

Compulsions behind Iran’s overtures By William Maclean and Marcus George ehind Iran’s overtures to Washington lie pent-up pressures for change - from sanctions and internal dissent to regional turmoil - that are shaping a rare chance to end decades of hostility. For new President Hassan Rouhani, speed is of the essence. Sanctions are squeezing Iran’s oil exports, economic misery is palpable, Arab Spring contagion poses a persistent threat and involvement in Syria’s civil war is a drain on hard-pressed resources. As well as addressing these pressures, Iran may be hoping its softer tone in nuclear talks with the West will bring longer term opportunities, diplomats say. Ultimately Tehran desires Western recognition of what it sees as its legitimate interests in the wider region - in Syria and Lebanon where Shiite Muslim Iran supports the interests of its co-religionists and in its ‘backyard’ the oil-producing Gulf, where Iran seeks to expand its influence. For now it is the threats that appear uppermost in the thinking of the Islamic Republic, as it surveys its diminished economy and regional upheaval. Shaul Bakhash, professor at George Mason University, Virginia, said he believed Rouhani realized how seriously the economy had been hurt by the confrontational policies of his “disastrous” predecessor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Rouhani’s opening to Washington was ‘not a bluff’, he said. “Adults are once again leading the Iranian government.” Iran is adept at surviving economic pressure, but sanctions have bitten deeply. Existing US and EU measures have reduced Iran’s oil exports by more than half from pre-sanction levels of about 2.2 million barrels per day (bpd), costing Tehran billions of dollars in lost revenue a month. The US Congress could soon pass a bill to squeeze Iran’s oil exports further. Deeper cuts in oil sales, if accomplished, could worsen the damage Western sanctions have already done to Iran’s economy, which suffered a loss of about $26 billion in petroleum revenue in 2012 from a total of $95 billion in 2011; soaring inflation; and a devaluation of its currency, the rial. Iran had the ability to adjust to sanctions, a July 2013 research paper by the US Congressional Research Service (CRS) said. But it added: “The election of Rouhani ... suggests that sanctions are affecting political outcomes in Iran.” In April, the International Monetary Fund forecast gross domestic product would shrink 1.3 percent in 2013 after contracting 1.9 percent last year. Mehrdad Emadi, an economist at Betamatrix consultancy, said knock on effects of sanctions on businesses included lack of investment and job losses. In the car and related components sector, about a third of workers had lost jobs in an industry that is Iran’s largest after oil, he said. As before, a key immediate goal for Tehran is to win acceptance of its right to enrich uranium under a nuclear energy program it says is entirely peaceful but which the West suspects is aimed at developing a nuclear weapons capability. But what has changed is that powerful conservatives within the factionalized leadership including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei have assented to Rouhani’s opening, signalling they are willing to explore the compromises essential to any deal. They went along with Rouhani, diplomats speculate, largely because his big June election win revealed the depth of anger over years of economic mismanagement and the extent of popular support for his aim of ending Iran’s international isolation. “People wouldn’t have been so vocal in their dissatisfaction without such tough sanctions. They applied soft pressure and translated dissatisfaction into voting,” said Emadi. As they tackle a nuclear dispute that for years has been a potential flashpoint for a regional war, Iran’s nuclear negotiators now have the challenge of rebuilding confidence with the West while not being seen to cave in to Western pressure. However they go about that task, speed is critically important. Rouhani’s comment to the Washington Post that a deal should be “a question of months not years” suggests he must show quick results to keep security hawks hostile to the West on board. “He is a man in a hurry,” said Bakhash. Conservatives were likely to overwhelm Rouhani without swift and significant sanctions relief, he said. When Rouhani returned from New York, a small group of hardliners threw eggs at his car. — Reuters

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FOCUS

Navies cruise back into vogue By Peter Apps fter a quarter century of Middle Eastern land wars and a sharp fall in big powers’ naval spending after the Cold War, sea power is back in vogue in response to the rise of China and Western reluctance to deploy ground troops in conflicts like Syria. The greater interest in navies is being felt from the corridors of Washington to the pirate hunting grounds off Africa and the shipyards of Asia. “You’re going to see a much greater emphasis on using sea-based forces to produce an effect,” said Admiral Gary Roughead, who retired as Chief of Naval Operations, the professional head of the US navy, in 2011. “You’re seeing it in the Mediterranean, with Syria, and you’re seeing it in the Pacific and the Middle East,” said Roughead, who is now a visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. India last month launched its first locally built aircraft carrier and a dozen such ships are to be completed worldwide in the next decade, including two US Gerald R Ford-class giants, two British vessels, a refurbished Russian carrier for India and one or more of the first indigenous carriers to be built by China. US-based consultancy AMI International estimates about $800 billion will be spent globally on naval programs in the next two decades, a quarter of it in Asia, which now surpasses austerity-hit Europe as the second-largest naval market after North America.

In April’s 2014 budget, the US Navy pulled ahead to win the biggest chunk of funding of all three services. The Pentagon requested $155 billion for the Navy, just under 30 percent of the total $527 billion baseline budget, which does not include contingency funding for Iraq and Afghanistan. That did not take into account the automatic across-the-board spending cuts of “sequestration” that the Navy says could leave it with 10 percent less than its budget submission in 2014 if Congress cannot agree a deal to tackle the US deficit. “Sea power is growing in importance,” said US Rear Admiral Robert Kamensky, commander of NATO’s submarine force, in a presentation on behalf of the US Navy in London. “We are experiencing increased demand ... at the same time as a reduction in resources.” Washington is moving ships from the Atlantic to Pacific in part to confront Beijing’s People’s Liberation Army Navy, seen the primary beneficiary of years of double-digit defense budget increases. Beijing began operating its ex-Soviet carrier late last year, though it says it is not yet fully operational. It is also building submarines, patrol boats and other warships. In September, state-backed China Shipbuilding Industry announced it planned to raise $1.4 billion through a private share sale to buy assets used for building warships, the first time Beijing had tapped the capital market to fund its military expansion. Worried nearby nations - particularly

those with maritime boundary disputes with China - are upgrading everything from radar to missiles and torpedoes. Japan will next year see its largest defense spending rise in 22 years, purchasing patrol boats and helicopters and creating a force of marines. Australia is boosting its navy to include new assault ships, while Vietnam is buying Russian submarines. The Philippines is dramatically expanding its once almost moribund force, acquiring two former US Coast Guard cutters, Japanese patrol boats and a second-hand French warship. Western defense firms struggling elsewhere are keen to get in on the act. BAE Systems is working with Thailand on building an offshore patrol boat, while other smaller firms are selling electronic equipment and weaponry. Washington’s ability to strike from the sea remains without parallel, going well beyond its 10 massive carriers, currently over half the global total. Five US navy destroyers and an unspecified number of submarines are still holding position off Syria, ready to make good on threats of a cruise missile strike should a US-Russian deal to put Syrian chemical weapons beyond use collapse. Still, if the sequestration budget cuts continue throughout the decade, the US Navy says it could be left with 38 fewer ships and might have to consider cutting its carrier fleet to eight or nine. Sources say spending cuts are already affecting major US shipbuilders such as Huntingdon Ingalls,

with projects delayed, including the construction of the new USS John F. Kennedy nuclear carrier. In the Gulf, worries over Iran’s swarms of small boat flotillas and the U.S. reduction of permanent carrier presence from two taskforces to one has prompted Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to buy and build new patrol boats. Such deals can be highly lucrative. In July, Saudi Arabia asked to buy 30 Mark V special forces-style patrol boats worth $1.2 billion from unlisted Mississippi-based Halter Marine Inc. In number of ships, many European fleets - including Britain’s Royal Navy, once the world’s pre-eminent maritime force - are now at their smallest in centuries. Britain has spent the last three years without a single operational aircraft carrier. Though smaller, European navies remain potent. Spain, France and Italy have all built new carriers since 2000, the latter two using theirs heavily during the 2011 Libya war. Britain’s “Queen Elizabeth” class - built by a BAE Systems-led consortium, with the first due to launch in 2014 - will be even more capable, the Royal Navy says, even if they will not have Lockheed Martin F-35 jets to fly for at least three years. By 2022, naval spending will have increased to 46 percent of Britain’s entire defense equipment budget. “It amounts to nothing less than a maritime renaissance,” Britain’s First Sea Lord Admiral George Zambellas told an arms fair in London. “The Navy is back in business.” — Reuters

World not ready for aging population By Kristen Gelineau he world is aging so fast that most countries are not prepared to support their swelling numbers of elderly people, according to a global study going out today by the United Nations and an elder rights group. The report ranks the social and economic well-being of elders in 91 countries, with Sweden coming out on top and Afghanistan at the bottom. It reflects what advocates for the old have been warning, with increasing urgency, for years: Nations are simply not working quickly enough to cope with a population graying faster than ever before. By the year 2050, for the first time in history, seniors over the age of 60 will outnumber children under the age of 15. Truong Tien Thao, who runs a small tea shop on the sidewalk near his home in Hanoi, Vietnam, is 65 and acutely aware that he, like millions of others, is plunging into old age without a safety net. He wishes he could retire, but he and his 61-year-old wife depend on the $50 a month they earn from the tea shop. And so every day, Thao rises early to open the stall at 6 a.m. and works until 2 p.m., when his wife takes over until closing. “People at my age should have a rest, but I still have to work to make our ends meet,” he says, while waiting for customers at the shop, which sells green tea, cigarettes and chewing gum. “My wife and I have no pension, no health insurance. I’m scared of thinking of being sick - I don’t know how I can pay for the medical care.” Thao’s story reflects a key point in the report, which was released early to The Associated Press: Aging is an issue across the world. Perhaps surprisingly, the report shows that the fastest aging countries are developing ones, such as Jordan, Laos, Mongolia, Nicaragua and Vietnam, where the number of older people will more than triple by 2050. All ranked in the bottom half of the index. The Global AgeWatch Index (www.globalagewatch.org) was created by elder advocacy group HelpAge International and the UN Population Fund in part to address a lack of international data on the extent and impact of global aging. The index, released on the UN’s International Day of Older Persons, compiles data from the

UN, World Health Organization, World Bank and other global agencies, and analyzes income, health, education, employment and age-friendly environment in each country. The index was welcomed by elder rights advocates, who have long complained that a lack of data has thwarted their attempts to raise the issue on government agendas. “Unless you measure something, it doesn’t really exist in the minds of decision-makers,” said John Beard, Director of Ageing and Life Course for the World Health Organization. “One of the challenges for population aging is that we don’t even collect the data, let alone start to analyze it. ... For example, we’ve been talking about how people are living longer, but I can’t tell you people are living longer and sicker, or longer in good health.” The report fits into an increasingly complex picture of aging and what it means to the world. On the one hand, the fact that people are living longer is a testament to advances in health care and nutrition, and advocates emphasize that the elderly should be seen not as a burden but as a resource. On the other, many countries still lack a basic social protection floor that provides income, health care and housing for their senior citizens. Afghanistan, for example, offers no pension to those not in the government. Life expectancy is 59 years for men and 61 for women, compared to a global average of 68 for men and 72 for women, according to UN data. That leaves Abdul Wasay struggling to survive. At 75, the former cook and blacksmith spends most of his day trying to sell toothbrushes and toothpaste on a busy street corner in Kabul’s main market. The job nets him just $6 a day - barely enough to support his wife. He can only afford to buy meat twice a month; the family relies mainly on potatoes and curried vegetables. “It’s difficult because my knees are weak and I can’t really stand for a long time,” he says. “But what can I do? It’s even harder in winter, but I can’t afford treatment.” Although government hospitals are free, Wasay complains that they provide little treatment and hardly any medicine. He wants to stop working in three years, but is not sure his children can support him. He says many older people cannot find work because they are not strong enough to do

day labor, and some resort to begging. “You have to keep working no matter how old you are no one is rich enough to stop,” he says. “Life is very difficult.” Many governments have resisted tackling the issue partly because it is viewed as hugely complicated, negative and costly - which is not necessarily true, says Silvia Stefanoni, chief executive of HelpAge International. Japan and Germany, she says, have among the highest proportions of elders in the world, but also boast steady economies. “There’s no evidence that an aging population is a population that is economically damaged,” she says. Prosperity in itself does not guarantee protection for the old. The world’s rising economic powers - the so-called BRICS nations of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa rank lower in the index than some poorer countries such as Uruguay and Panama. However, the report found, wealthy nations are in general better prepared for aging than poorer ones. Sweden, where the pension system is now 100 years old, makes the top of the list because of its social support, education and health coverage, followed by Norway, Germany, the Netherlands and Canada. The United States comes in eighth. Sweden’s health system earns praise from Marianne Blomberg, an 80-year-old Stockholm resident. “The healthcare system, for me, has worked extraordinarily well,” she says. “I suffer from atrial fibrillation and from the minute I call emergency until I am discharged, it is absolutely amazing. I can’t complain about anything - even the food is good.” Still, even in an elder-friendly country like Sweden, aging is not without its challenges. The Swedish government has suggested people continue working beyond 65, a prospect Blomberg cautiously welcomes but warns should not be a requirement. Blomberg also criticized the nation’s finance minister, Anders Borg, for cutting taxes sharply for working Swedes but only marginally for retirees. “I go to lectures and museums and the theater and those kinds of things, but I probably have to stop that soon because it gets terribly expensive,” she says. “If you want to be active like me, it is hard. But to sit home and stare at the walls doesn’t cost anything.” — AP

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2013

S P ORTS Gnabry justifies Wenger’s faith

Nadal pushes for top spot

LONDON: Arsene Wenger feels that his selection of Serge Gnabry for Arsenal’s 2-1 weekend win at Swansea City has been vindicated after the 18-year-old became the second-youngest player to score a Premier League goal for the club. The German winger, in only his second Premier League start, found the net early in the second half with a composed finish after a typically intricate build-up involving Bacary Sagna, Olivier Giroud, Jack Wilshire and Aaron Ramsey. Wenger voiced his satisfaction in Gnabry’s performance in the wake of a win which saw Arsenal climb two points clear at the top of the Premier League after six games. “I feel he has justified my faith,” the Frenchman told Arsenal’s official website (www.arsenal.com). “This boy has potential, he has personality on the pitch and purpose, and he has shown that again so overall I feel it’s very positive.” Wenger earlier told reporters: “He has the talent, but he has the personality on the pitch as well. “He doesn’t look timid, he looks to play with belief and, of course, talent. Unfortunately he is another player for Germany, he’s not English. “He was one-year-old when I came to Arsenal, I can’t believe it. Now I have some players in my squad who were not born when I arrived at Arsenal.”—Reuters

CHINA: Rafa Nadal starts the final push to what he hopes will be a return to the top of the world rankings when he gets under way at the China Open yesterday. The Spaniard has played only one singles and a doubles match since winning the US Open earlier this month, during a crushing Davis Cup victory over Ukraine, and is re-energised for the final stretch of a season that started under a cloud but has turned into one of his best. Since returning from a seven-month injury lay-off in February the 27year-old has been virtually unstoppable, winning 10 titles and compiling a 61-3 record. Novak Djokovic, who he beat in the French Open semi-finals and in the US Open final, remains number one but with no points to defend between now and the ATP World Tour finals, Nadal looks a strong favourite to climb above the Serb. It could happen as soon as next Monday if Nadal at least reaches the final in Beijing, even if Djokovic wins the title. “It will be very tough to become number one,’ Nadal was quoted on the ATP website (www.atpworldtour.com), although to all intents and purposes the hard work is already done. “If I am still playing the same way that I have the past couple of months, I hope to have my chance here or in the next few weeks. I am completing a great season.—Reuters

Petkovic upsets Azarenka CHINA: Victoria Azarenka’s China Open title defence wilted in the first round when the Belarussian lost to Germany’s Andrea Petkovic 6-4 2-6 6-4 yesterday. Azarenka’s 15 double faults, to go with 44 unforced errors, mirrored her erratic display over two hours 22 minutes against Petkovic who appeared to be feeling dizzy in the second set. The loss for second seed Azarenka followed her second-round defeat by Venus Williams in Tokyo last week. Petkovic looked in discomfort in the second set, needing medical time out, and she lost seven straight games as Azarenka forced the decider. The defending champion traded breaks with Petkovic to level at 44 in the third set but her 15th double fault on break point left the German ser ving for the match.—Reuters

Oracle sailors learned flying for Cup comeback SAN FRANCISCO: The come-from-behind victory of Larry Ellison’s America’s Cup team is a tale of learning how to fly a boat — and pushing the equipment, the rules and the crew to the very limit in the process. Ellison’s Oracle Team USA fought back from an 8-1 deficit against the mighty Emirates Team New Zealand to win sailing’s biggest trophy last week in a series of races in 72foot high-tech catamarans that sometimes exceeded 50 miles per hour (80 kph) on San Francisco Bay. The Oracle comeback was lauded as one of the greatest in sports history. Yet the abrupt turnaround in the team’s performance in the middle of the finals series also has set off a flurry of speculation about whether Oracle, which began the regatta with a penalty for illegally modifying a practice boat last year, had used secret technological enhancements to engineer its comeback. An online article in Sail-World summarized speculation that Oracle may have used “superhuman’ technology,” such as a computer-controlled stabilization system, that would have been against the rules. Oracle emphatically rejected the notion of any high-tech silver bullet, and there is no evidence that the team did anything illegal. Some of the speculation appears to stem from a protest lodged by New Zealand just before the finals began over an Oracle system that used an electrical switch to control the movements of the boat’s daggerboards. The challenge was rejected by the jury that addresses rules disputes, in part because it was lodged too late. The system might have helped Oracle perfect the intricate movements of daggerboards, sails and rudders that were needed to keep the boat sailing at top speed - although it was far from being any sort of computerized control system. Oracle says it achieved the turnaround the oldfashioned way: continual adjustments to the intricate boats, experimentation with sailing tactics, and relentless hard work by the sailors and the shore crew. TURNAROUND TIMING The turnaround appeared to begin just before race six, when Oracle was down 4-1 and used its single “postponement card” to take a 47-hour timeout to overhaul its boat, crew and training

regimen. It started tweaking its boat each night when it was hauled out of the water and the 135foot wing was removed - and practicing on rest days, which New Zealand did not appear to do, or need to do. It returned to the race course each day with improved speed and crew work. The America’s Cup yachts are 72-foot catama-

the wind. Early races were an eye opener and the focus shifted from performance with the wind to sailing into it, which required stabilizing the boat on its foils and a new approach to steering and wing trim. Oracle began the finals two races behind and without a key crew member as punishment for breaking the rules by adding weight

SAN FRANCISCO: Oracle Team USA celebrates defeating Emirates Team New Zealand in the 34th America’s Cup on September 25, 2013, in San Francisco. Oracle Team USA clinched the America’s Cup on Wednesday in an epic comeback destined for sports history books. —AFP rans, which by design are fast because they can sail with just one hull in the water for less resistance. But the New Zealand team was the first to perfect hydrofoiling, finding that the boats could be nudged to lift the hulls completely out of the water onto thin carbon-fiber blades. As they ‘foil,’ they appear to fly above the water - and their speed increases with reduced drag. The rival boats had never faced off on the water before the finals started on Sept. 7. Throughout the regatta the boats looked evenly matched on the downwind legs, reaching speeds approaching 50 mph. The regatta was won and lost during the upwind zigzags, where Oracle’s team mastered the trick of flying on the foils. Oracle’s lead designer, Dirk Kramers, told Reuters the U.S.-based team initially misjudged how fast the Kiwis would be sailing the boat into

to its boat in a preliminary series. It had to recover from a capsize during training last year in which its boat was dragged out to sea and all but destroyed, an event Skipper Jimmy Spithill cited as a devastating moment but one that ultimately helped pull the team together. The class rules allowed teams to make certain changes to their purpose-built AC72s. But even the tiniest alterations were checked by a team of independent measurers before racing and certified as conforming to specifications. Sail experts and insiders have been speculating about how Oracle stabilized their boat, allowing it to foil better. BETTER FOILING “Before they postponed that race, the (Oracle) boat was unstable when it was foiling, and they weren’t foiling upwind,” said Peter Thomas, who

was on the building team at Cookson Boats, which built the New Zealand boat. “They definitely weren’t foiling as well as Team New Zealand were. And after two days in the shed, the boat came out foiling everywhere.” Much of the discussion was based on whether electronics, computers or a motion-stabilizing gyroscope did some of the work meant to be handled by the crew. David Le Pelley, manager of the Yacht Research Unit and Wind Tunnel at the University of Auckland, which helped the New Zealand team, said both teams tuned their boats. “Team New Zealand had a lot more time in the water given the Oracle crash, so Oracle had been on the back foot to some extent, so they’d had to play catch up and they got to the point where they managed to get more out of the boat than we did at the end,” he said. Kramers on Saturday denied any use of computer-automated controls to manage the foils and stabilize the yacht. “Negative. No,” he said. The yacht had a stabilization system but it was operated by humans, Kramers said. “There’s no computer driving any surfaces at all.” Small electronic switches were used to open and close the hydraulic valves clutches. Theses were commercially available, not customized, according to Kramers. The measurement committee gave Oracle permission in August to use an “electro-mechanical actuator” to move a valve. The jury on Sept. 6 dismissed New Zealand’s claim that the actuator violated the manpower-only rule but on the basis that it was filed too late. “Most items we used in there are literally servos from your kid’s remotecontrol airplane,” Kramers said. “It’s exactly as simple as that. It gets bolted to a valve and that is what operates things.” Kramers said the many changes made to the yacht were “all small and all visible.” “A lot had to do with the balance of the boat,” he said. Minor changes were made to the shape of the 135-foot tall wing — the catamaran’s main sail - and to the rear of the hulls. To reduce wind resistance, they swapped out the pointy bowsprit between the boat’s two hulls with a stubbier version, because the winds were too strong for the billowing headsail that attaches to it. The top of the vertical fixed wing was tilted slightly forward and rearward to try different

“rake” angles. Oracle also replaced renowned tactician John Kostecki, a San Francisco hometown favorite, with British Olympic sailing champion Ben Ainslie, the backup skipper on Oracle’s practice yacht, leaving a single American on the winning boat. “The sailors made a change to the way they were sailing the boat so we adapted the boat to help them make that change. There was no silver bullet,” said Grant Simmer, general manager of the Oracle team, denying speculation that Oracle had flown in extra carbon fiber components from New Zealand where parts of its 72-foot catamaran were built. Meanwhile, Ellison, the billionaire software mogul of Oracle Corp, was a cheerleader on the sidelines, leaving the decisions to well-paid professionals. “He was encouraging us to keep going and never give in,” Simmer said. A QUESTION OF MONEY In New Zealand, the loss has frequently been explained as boiling down to money - that the Kiwis in the end could not compete with a billionaire. Oracle acknowledged it had outspent New Zealand but it is not clear how much by. Estimates of Oracle’s cup defense range well over $100 million but sources said the spigots were not opened any wider for the emergency work carried out after the team lost four of the event’s first five races to the Kiwis. New Zealand backed its team with about $30 million in government funds. Managing Director Grant Dalton also raised tens of millions of dollars from sponsors over several years, and said the team spent about $100 million in all.Oracle Team USA CEO Russell Coutts told Reuters that the team probably spent 10 percent more than New Zealand, based on his estimate of a Kiwi outlay of 105 million to 110 million euros ($142 million to $149 million.) He said salaries for designers and sailors made up 56 percent of Oracle’s cost. In the end, though, a dejected Dean Barker, skipper of the Kiwi yacht, said in a post-racing blog that his team had wrung all the performance possible out of its boat before the race, while Oracle came in with room to improve. Oracle just learned to fly the boat well, he wrote. “Their boat was better suited for doing that for extended periods,” Barker said. “They certainly were doing a better job finding that extra gear that we simply couldn’t.”—Reuters

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2013

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Lane Kiffin no longer a Boy Wonder NEW YORK: The end for Lane Kiffin came in the middle of the night at the airport, as his team sped off into the darkness without him. There’s little sentiment left anywhere in college football, but give USC athletic director Pat Haden some credit. At least he didn’t offer Kiffin a blindfold and one last cigarette before disposing of him like yesterday’s trash. Not that anyone in Southern California is feeling terribly sorry for Kiffin, who never seemed able to connect in any meaningful way with the alumni who were calling for his firing or the media who were simply trying to cover a football team. Football coaches are paranoid by nature, but Kiffin took it to new levels as his team collapsed around him. He was supposed to not only be Pete Carroll’s successor but his match as a coach and big-time recruiter, someone who would keep the Trojans a national powerhouse. He turned out to be neither, but it’s not as if USC didn’t have a warning.

This was a guy so eager to get to USC that he fled Tennessee after one year, prompting students to burn t-shirts with his name and angering players, who screamed at him that he was a traitor. The same guy, you might remember, who thought he could teach the late Al Davis a thing or two about football when hired by the Oakland Raiders as the youngest head coach in the NFL’s modern era. Somehow, USC was fooled into thinking he really was a coaching Boy Wonder. Instead, all the school got for its millions was Boy Blunder. Kiffin should have been gone after last season, which the Trojans opened as the No. 1 team in the country only to stumble to a 7-6 season. He had to go early Sunday morning after USC and its once vaunted defense were pushed around the field in an embarrassing 6241 loss at Arizona State. Give Haden credit for finally recognizing that, even if Kiffin had to be told his fate at 3 in the morning in a small room at Los Angeles International

Airport. Haden said Sunday he saw things beginning to go bad early in the season, but withheld judgment until the debacle in Arizona convinced him things were not going to magically get better. “I fully supported Lane Kiffin 100 percent until last night,” said Haden, who assumed his job from Mike Garrett, the man who hired Kiffin in 2010. Haden said Kiffin pleaded with him for 45 minutes to keep his job, but to no avail. Fitting justice, Tennessee fans surely believe, for a coach that thought so little of his job there that he paid $800,000 to get out of his contract after only one year to return to USC, where he got his start as tight ends coach under Carroll. It wasn’t that long ago that Kiffin was being hailed as a coaching genius who would shake up the NFL. Now he’s still two years short of reaching 40 and already a three-time coaching loser who will have trouble now getting a high school program to return his calls. At least Haden had some nice words

of farewell for Kiffin, saying he did a good job graduating players and helping USC get through a NCAA probation that limited scholarships and bowl appearances. That was better than Davis calling him a liar and the even more unprintable things people at Tennessee had to say about him. For Kiffin, it was probably always a case of too much, and much too soon. The son of Monte Kiffin, who helped win a Super Bowl as defensive coordinator in Tampa Bay, he was 26 when first hired as a USC assistant and only 31 when Davis and the Raiders came calling. He had coaching genes and football knowledge. But he didn’t have the maturity to know what to do when things went wrong, or the judgment to stay planted in a place that gave him every opportunity to succeed. Yes, Kiffin had to follow a coach who won big and won often. He had to deal with NCAA sanctions that weren’t his doing, and he had to figure out how to get recruits who were being told bad things about the future of the USC pro-

gram. He was given a chance to succeed, but had to walk a tightrope to do it. That he wasn’t up to the task was evident last year, when the Trojans lost five of their last six games. Further evidence came this season when USC lost to Washington State and struggled to beat Utah State at home, amid boos from those who bothered to show up at the Coliseum for what in previous years would have been a mismatch. Kiffin tried desperately to turn things around, parting ways with his father who was making a reported $1.4 million as a USC assistant - and shutting off access to practice to both fans and media. He juggled quarterbacks and tried to fix the defense, but nothing seemed to work. Now Kiffin is gone, unceremoniously dumped in the middle of the night by an athletic director who couldn’t wait any longer to give him a chance to succeed. Even worse for Kiffin is he’ll no longer be a Boy Wonder by the time someone else lets him try again. —AP

Johnson wins at Dover

Patrick Kane in action in this file photo

Blackhawks set sights on back-to-back Stanley Cups LOS ANGELES: The NHL is set to raise the curtain on a new season as 30 teams have their sights set on a Stanley Cup title, including the defending champion Chicago Blackhawks. Chicago, who beat Boston last year to capture the championship for the second time in four years, will get the regular season started with a banner-raising ceremony at United Center arena today. “You get excited looking around the locker room because it is almost the same team as we had last year,” playoff MVP Patrick Kane said. The Toronto Maple Leafs visit the Montreal Canadiens, Taylor Hall’s Edmonton Oilers host the Winnipeg Jets and the Blackhawks take on the Washington Capitals at home today. Chicago beat Boston in six games in June after a lockout-shortened 48-game regular season. The Blackhawks know this season won’t be like the last time they tried to repeat as champions when they had to purge their roster because of the salary cap. Kane and captain Jonathan Toews will lead the way as Chicago is seeking to become the first team to win back-to-back titles since the Detroit Red Wings in 199798. Time will tell what effect off-season realignment will have on the 2013-14 season, which this year includes an extended break in February so the world’s top hockey players can showcase their skills at the Sochi Winter Olympics. The Jets moved from the Eastern Conference to the Western Conference, while the Red Wings and Columbus Blue Jackets went the other way. For the first time there will be a wild-card playoff format with the top three teams in each division qualifying for the post-season in addition to the two next-best finishers in each conference. This year it looks like the young Oilers are finally ready to break through. Edmonton brought in a new head coach, Dallas Eakins and signed veteran defenseman Andrew Ference, but more importantly former first round draft picks RyanNugent Hopkins, Nail Yakupov and Hall are set to take the team to the next level. Nashville should be another much improved team this season and challenge for a playoff spot. Their best player is Shea

Weber, who will also anchor Canada’s defensive corps at the Sochi Games. Goaltender Pekka Renne is primed for a bounce-back season following offseason hip surgery. The Vancouver Canucks will no doubt regret trading goaltender Cory Schneider in the offseason to New Jersey in favor of keeping the eccentric and inconsistent Roberto Luongo who has yet to prove he can win a Stanley Cup. The Canucks also brought in new head coach John Tortorella. As hard as Tortorella tries to be like Toe Blake, Punch Imlach or even Mike Keenan, his abrasive coaching style won’t wash in Vancouver and he will be lucky to last more than 12 months in that role. The realignment is good news for Winnipeg, who will fly fewer miles this season after moving to the West in their third season since returning to the NHL. They added Michael Frolik and Devin Setoguchi, and last year’s goal scoring leader Blake Wheeler was rewarded with a new six-year, $33.6 million contract as the club is hoping to continue their steady improvement. Look for the rivalry between Pittsburgh Penguins superstar Sidney Crosby and Washington’s Alex Ovechkin to heat up early in the new season. Crosby showed in the pre-season that he hasn’t lost a step and he is healthy again after concussion problems the last few years. Ovechkin will step up his play as he gets set to lead the favored Russian national team into the Olympic ice hockey tournament which begins on February 8. Last season, Los Angeles was unable to validate their 2012 Stanley Cup title when goaltender Jonathan Quick failed to carry an overachieving team like he did the previous season. The Kings are solid in goal with Quick but they need better production from their veterans if they are to succeed. Captain Dustin Brown has arguably benefitted more from the instigator rule than anyone in the league, but his teammates can only protect him for so long. Brown’s scoring dropped last season and he hasn’t been the same player since his dangerous knee -on-knee hit on Phoenix Coyotes Michael Rozsival in the 2012 playoffs.—AFP

DOVER: Jimmie Johnson held off a teammate, passed a pair of Hall of Famers, and dominated once more at Dover. His latest win at his favorite track put the Chase field on notice that his run at a sixth championship in the No. 48 car is gathering steam. Johnson never let Dale Earnhardt Jr. catch him down the stretch Sunday and won for a record eighth time at Dover International Speedway. His slice of track history was more than just another milestone to tack on his bio. Johnson had shared the mark of seven wins on the concrete mile with Bobby Allison and Richard Petty. “ Truthfully, it was the first thought that went through my mind when I crossed the finish line,” Johnson said. “It wasn’t long after I thought about the impact of winning in the Chase.” Johnson’s win bumped him from third to second in the Chase for the Sprint Cup championship standings. Matt Kenseth, who won the first two Chase races, holds an eight-point over Johnson as the series heads to Kansas for the fourth race. The entire top 10 was made up of Chase drivers. Joey Logano, Jeff Gordon and Kyle Busch rounded out the top five. Kevin Harvick, Kenseth, Ryan Newman, Greg Biffle and Clint Bowyer completed the top 10. “You’ve got to win when you’re at your best track,” Johnson said. “We had to win here today. I think any points on the 18 or 20 would have been a very good day. Max points, it’s an awesome day.” Not so much for Earnhardt, who had one of the fastest cars, but he missed pit road and gave up the lead early in the race. He had a strong enough No. 88 Chevrolet to

DOVER: Jimmie Johnson, driver of the No. 48 Lowe’s / Kobalt Tools Chevrolet, poses with the ‘Miles the Monster’ trophy after winning the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series AAA 400 at Dover International Speedway. —AFP get back into the race and contend for his first win of the season but couldn’t pass Johnson. “We left everybody in the mirror. We were clicking off some laps,” Earnhardt said. “But just not fast enough to get to Jimmie.” Kenseth kept his points lead even as he fell short in trying to become the first driver to win the first three Chase races. “For how bad I felt like we struggled with the car, that was a decent finish,” Kenseth said. Johnson dominated as he usually does at Dover and led 243 of the 400 laps to help extend his Chase record with his 23rd career win in 93 starts in NASCAR’s

version of the playoffs. He swept Dover in 2002 and 2009 and won races in 2005, 2010 and 2012. He jumped a restart and served a pass-through penalty that cost him the win in the spring race. Crew chief Chad Knaus brought the same car back for this one and, this time, Johnson was pretty much flawless. Johnson has his sights set on a bigger piece of NASCAR history. He’s in the hunt for his sixth Cup championship, which would put him one behind Petty and Dale Earnhardt Sr. for most in series history. “Jimmie is probably the most underrated champion we have in this industry,” Knaus said. “He is by

far and above the most powerful driver over the course of the last 25, 35 years in this sport.” Johnson caught a huge break when Earnhardt slowed during a green-flag pit stop and missed the entrance to pit road. He went from holding a 3.7-second lead on Johnson to trailing by more than 9 seconds after he finally made his stop. Johnson took the lead - and took off for his 65th victory in 428 career starts. Even smart pit strategy that included a late four-tire stop wasn’t enough to boost Earnhardt past his Hendrick Motorsports teammate. —AP

Dream bring down Fever INDIANAPOLIS: Angel McCoughtry led Atlanta to its third WNBA finals spot in four years, scoring 27 points in the Dream’s 67-53 victory over the defending champion Indiana Fever on Sunday. Seeking their first title, the Dream swept the best- of-three Eastern Conference finals to set up a WNBA finals series against Western Conference champion Minnesota, which swept Phoenix. Tamika Catchings had 24 points and six rebounds to lead Indiana, which was trying to become the first team to win consecutive titles since Los Angeles in 2001 and 2002. “I’ve been through so much,” McCoughtry said. “It means so much more when you can get to this point after what you went through.” McCoughtry willingly played a decoy role at times. Coach Fred Williams designed sets that had her run away from the ball. Those actions helped Atlanta dominate inside in Game 2 to the tune of 14 layups, 48 points in the paint and a 4333 edge on the glass. Dream center Erika de Souza added 12 points and eight rebounds. “Angel really sacrifices a lot to get our teammates open,” Williams said. “When Angel cuts, that takes two (defenders) away. I’m going to slide somebody in there on the weak side. I compliment Angel for making that happen.” McCoughtry scored 11 points in the third quarter to help the Dream break

open a game they led 34-33 at halftime. Drafted with the No. 1 overall pick in 2009, McCoughtry has won back-to-back scoring titles, started two All-Star games and made the WNBA’s all-defensive team. She has reached the playoffs every season, falling just shy of titles in 2010 and 2011. At Phoenix, Maya Moore scored 27 points and Seimone Augustus had 22 as the Lynx beat the Mercury 72-65 Sunday to advance to the WNBA finals for the third straight year. Minnesota will open the finals on Friday at home against Atlanta. Diana Taurasi had 21 points for Phoenix, but was 6 of 21 from the field. Candice Dupree added 17 points, while No. 1 draft pick Brittney Griner was held to six points and 10 rebounds. The Lynx swept Atlanta in the 2011 finals and lost to Indiana in four games last season. Minnesota led by as many as 13 in the fourth quarter, but Taurasi hit a 3-pointer and another basket to cut the lead to 6963 with 1:24 remaining. Dupree got loose for a layup with 33 seconds left to get Phoenix within 69-65. The Lynx, who won eight of nine at the end of regular season, have won all four of their playoff games in the postseason, winning by an average of 12 points a game. Minnesota won all seven meetings with the Mercury this year and has beaten Phoenix 14 straight times dating to 2011.—AP

INDIANAPOLIS: Atlanta’s Arminitie Herrington (right) shoots over Indiana’s Shavonte Zellous in the first half of Game 2 of the WNBA basketball Eastern Conference finals. —AP

Cup solution still possible, say European rugby bosses

Derek McGrath

CARDIFF: European rugby bosses have accused English clubs of plotting to bring about the end of the European Cup in a row over broadcasting rights. With the future of the current tournaments - European Cup and Challenge Cup still unknown, ERC chief executive Derek McGrath insists the door remains open to the English Premiership Rugby. Talks have been planned for October 23 and 24 to thrash out a solution for crisis that threatens to tear European rugby apart. Premiership Rugby have signed a television deal with BT Vision wor th

£152million, with £52million of that earmarked for European competitions. But ERC insist they will stand by current broadcast partners Sky, with a contract agreed until 2018. Speaking yesterday, McGrath said: “That (BT) deal is an important factor in what is happening. It is very clear to us that the one reason the clubs don’t want ERC to continue is to frustrate the Sky contract. “It’s not about performance or the competitions, it’s about winding down the company with the expectation that the Sky deal would fall away with it.

“That is clearly not something the ERC board are willing to accept and all the parties are committed to any obligations or commitments the competition has made. ERC will not walk away from Sky.” ERC bosses were keen to voice their record in developing the European Cup, which will kick off for the 19th season next week, and stated stakeholders would see a £10million increase from the coming campaign. McGrath said: “We (ERC) stand by our record over the past 18 years of developing these competitions to where they are today, the most successful

competition in the world that regularly delivers sell-out crowds, huge broadcast audiences and top level supporters. “Last year we delivered £45 million to all the stakeholders and that will increase by a further £10million based on projections we know and deals being made.” Among the stumbling blocks to negotiations is qualification for the European Cup. English and French clubs want to see the number of teams reduced from 24 to 20 and an end to national guarantees that ensures Celtic nations and Italy places in the tournament.—AFP

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2013

S P ORTS

Hadley wins tournament, Lee Williams wins a card PONTE VEDRA BEACH: Chesson Hadley won the Web.com Tour Championship. John Peterson won a trip back to the TPC Sawgrass to play in a far bigger tournament. Lee Williams felt like the biggest winner of them all Sunday. Needing a birdie on the 18th hole to have any chance of a PGA Tour card, Williams rapped a 55-foot birdie putt over the ridge and into the cup for a 69. Andres Gonzalez, playing in the same group, gave him a high-five and then missed a 12-foot birdie putt that would have knocked Williams out of the top 25 from a four-tournament money list that determines tour cards for next season. “I knew what I had to do. There was no uncertainty in the moment,” Williams said. “When you know what you have to do, it almost calms you down a little bit.” The last hope for Gonzalez was for Andrew Loupe to make bogey on the final hole. Loupe ran his birdie attempt 5 feet past the hole, and made it coming back for par to join Peterson, his teammate at LSU, on the PGA Tour next month. The tournament wrapped up the inaugural Web.com Tour Finals - four tournaments in which 25 cards were awarded based on the money list from those events. The tournaments were for the top 75 on the Web.com Tour money list during the regular season, and Nos. 126-200 from the FedEx Cup on the PGA Tour. The top 25 from the Web.com regular season were assured their cards. The final event had plenty of drama, although the players weren’t entire sure what was at stake until it was over. Money mattered more than a score. Hadley started the final round one shot behind Scott Gardiner, who took a double bogey on the fourth hole with a double hit and never caught up. Hadley closed with a 69 for his second Web.com Tour win of the year. He finished No. 4 on the money list, so his card already was safe. “This is incredible,” he said. “I was just trying to not puke on myself on the way in, even though I tried. This course is brutal and I’m glad I was able to conquer it.” What hurt him was Gardiner’s mistake late in the round - a bogey on the 17th hole - that dropped Gardiner from second place alone into a four-way tie for second. That was worth an additional

$14,000 for Peterson, who was part of that four-way tie. Peterson won the Web.com Finals money list by $567 over Hadley. “At the end of the day, he played the best of anyone in the four tournaments,” Hadley said. Peterson didn’t finish outside the top five in any of the Web.com Finals events. By winning the Web.com Finals money list, he has full status on the PGA Tour next year and a spot in The Players Championship, the richest tournament in golf. Hadley finished at 10-under 270 and still earned $180,000 and a high priority ranking for his rookie season on the PGA Tour. Brendon Todd, who already had his card through the regular-season money list, closed with a 65 and joined Peterson (67), Gardiner (72) and Brad Fritsch of Canada. Fritsch had missed the cut in the previous three Web.com Finals events and was just looking for a good score to build confidence. His 68-66 weekend took him from going nowhere to return to the PGA Tour. “I just wanted to play well and see where the chips fell,” Fritsch said. Others who were outside the top 25 on the money list and ended up with tour cards were Billy Hurley III, Joe Durant and Russell Knox of Scotland. Just like Qschool, there were plenty of meltdowns. Andrew Putnam, whose older brother won the Web.com Tour money list in the regular season, was in fourth place and two shots out of the lead going into the final round. He only needed to finish about 13th to get his card. Instead, he took triple bogey on the eighth hole on his way to a 75 to tie for 24th. Jhonattan Vegas and Rod Pampling, past PGA Tour winners, were inside the top 25 starting the last day. Vegas had a 74 and Pampling shot 73. Chad Campbell, a three-time Ryder Cup player, closed with a 73 to end his hopes. Sean O’Hair and Heath Slocum were among the former PGA Tour winners who earned back their cards this week. O’Hair had such a tough year that at one point he asked himself if he still wanted to play golf for a living. “I still think I’ve got my best golf ahead of me,” O’Hair said. “That’s what answered that question for me. I’m glad I got it done.”—AP

Howell ends long wait at Alfred Dunhill Links GLASGOW: England’s David Howell claimed his first European Tour title in seven years after beating American Peter Uihlein in a play-off to win the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship on Sunday. Having completed a final round of 67, Howell saw overnight leader Uihlein fail to sink a 15-foot birdie putt on the 18th hole at St Andrews that would have given the American the title. With the pair tied on 23 under par, the match went to a sudden death play-off and 38-year-old Howell prevailed on the second hole when he sank a birdie putt from eight feet after Uihlein had left his own putt inches short. “It’s incredible. The sun is shining and the crowd have come out,” said Howell, who had lost all four of his previous playoffs. “I have never played in an Open Championship here, but to win a golf tournament as a professional at the Home of Golf is quite amazing and I am really thrilled. “I was really nervous all week and

strangely less nervous today. I can’t explain that at all. I stayed calm and smooth under pressure and that was really pleasing. “It’s been a long, long road from the depths of despair. I have had a lot of support from people around me and this is as much for them as it is for me.” Ireland’s Shane Lowry and Englishman Tom Lewis missed out on competing in the play-off by a shot, with Lewis carding a superb final round of 64 and Lowry a 68. It had been a dramatic tournament for 24year-old Uihlein. In the second round at Kingsbarns he missed scoring the first 59 on the European Tour by inches as his putt on the final hole drifted left. The following day at St Andrews he holed a 47-yard wedge shot for an eagle on the final hole. “Hats off to David, he played great, made a nice birdie in the play-off and congratulations to him. He made more putts than I did at the end of the day,” said Uihlein. “I just didn’t make the putts when I needed and that’s the way it is.”—AFP

Photo of the day

Stefan Bradl races at the Moto Grand Prix 2013 at Motorland Aragon in Alcaniz, Spain.— www.redbull.com

Mikulak looks up to Uchimura at worlds ANT WERP: There is always a moment of awe when you finally get to compete against your spor ting hero. But when Sam Mikulak is in his first world championships and Kohei Uchimura is favored to win an unparalleled fourth title in a row, it puts it in a different league altogether. US champion Mikulak confidently took the early lead in qualifying for the men’s all-around final late yesterday. The real challenge will come only on Thursday when he will face Uchimura, the reigning Olympic all-around champion from Japan. “I will always look up to him, winning worlds three years in a row, and Olympic Games,” Mikulak gushed after he scored 89.532 points to move into a good position to be among the top six qualifiers that will compete together in the final. Uchimura competes later yesterday. “I mean, no other gymnast has done that. He is definitely my hero but he is also something that I am thriving to reach,” the 20year-old said. The fact that the greatest hope in men’s gymnastics for the United States should look up to someone only four years his senior shows just what Uchimura already has achieved in the sport. Though Uchimura holds the men’s record for all-around world titles, he still shares it with retired women’s gymnast Svetlana K hork ina of Russia. Break ing through for a fourth all-around gold would give even more credence to all the talk that he is the greatest ever. And Mikaluk wants to be right there when it happens, even though he ack nowledges his chances of preventing Uchimura from getting gold are slim. “I just want to see how close to him I can get,” the easy-going Mikulak said. Points are awarded both on difficulty and execution, and even if two athletes look as good as each other to the uninitiated, the grade of difficulty can make all the difference. It is another division where Uchimura excels. “He has a lot higher start values than me. So if he goes out and hits it, I am not going to be hurt if I don’t win,” Mikulak said. “I

BELGIUM: Gymnast Samuel Mikulak from the US performs the rings exercise, during the qualification round at the artistic gymnastics World Championships in Antwerp. —AP

ANTWERP: Gymnast Kohei Uchimura from Japan performs on the parallel bars, during the qualification round at the artistic gymnastics World Championships. —AP am going to do my routines all-around competition so far this championship rookie but never regardless.” Even though he year. In the US, he won the Big felt the nerves. He was drawn in already carries the weight of a Ten and NCAA title this spring the morning subdivision, forcnation looking for the next Paul then backed it up by overwhelming him to be up at 6.30 a.m. Hamm, the only American man to ing his competition at the nation- local time. Eggs, bacon, chocolate croissants - and still he felt win a world (2003) or Olympic al championships. Quite a streak. “I don’t think of it too much good. “I found myself nodding (2004) all-around title, Mikulak won’t be criticized for losing to but it is definitely a nice back- off here and there. I hope a get Uchimura just yet. Then again, he ground I have,” he said. Still, he a little more sleep next time,” he has been on a roll, unbeaten in came into Antwerp as a world said.—AP

Tsonga beats Monfils to advance at Japan Open

ST ANDREWS: English golfer David Howell posses on the Swilcan Bridge with the trophy after winning the Alfred Dunhill Links Championships golf competition. —AFP

TOKYO: Second-seeded Jo-Wilfried Tsonga needed four match points to beat Gael Monfils 6-3, 7-6 (8) yesterday to advance to the second round of the Japan Open. Tsonga fired 11 aces and didn’t drop a service game in the match to improve his record to four wins in five tourlevel matches against his French compatriot. After Tsonga got the decisive break of the first set in the second game, the second set went with serve until the tiebreaker. Monfils rallied from a 5-1 deficit to level the tiebreaker at 5-5, then fought off three match points before Tsonga sealed the victory. “I started well and played offensively,” Tsonga said. “I know this is the only way for me to beat Gael.” Tsonga began the year strongly, reaching the quarterfinals at the Australian Open and the semifinals at the French Open. After finishing runnerup to Andy Murray at Queen’s, however, Tsonga was forced to retire with a knee injury in the second round at Wimbledon and did not enter the U.S. Open as a result. “I have not played much in the last two or three months, so it will take me time to adjust,” said Tsonga, adding that was cramping near the end of the match. In other first-round action, sixth-seeded Nicolas Almagro of Spain beat German qualifier Benjamin Becker 7-6 (4), 7-6 (3) and Alexandr Dolgopolov of Ukraine defeated Daniel Brands of Germany 6-3, 6-1. Top-seeded Juan Martin del Potro of Argentina was scheduled to play Marcos Baghdatis of Cyprus in a first-round match today, when defending champion Kei Nishikori was due to meet Jurgen Melzer of Austria.—AP

JAPAN: Jo-Wilfried Tsonga of France serves to his compatriot Gael Monfils during their first round match of the Japan Open tennis tournament. —AFP

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2013

S P ORTS

Lennon wary of Barca despite Messi absence

ROMANIA : Chelsea’s Portuguese manager Jose Mourinho kicks the ball during a training session on the eve of the UEFA Champions League Group football match against Steaua Bucharest. —AFP

Chelsea in crunch Steaua clash BUCHAREST: Chelsea will attempt to kick their Champions League campaign into gear at the second attempt today when they visit Steaua Bucharest for their second Group E fixture. The London club were stunned 2-1 by FC Basel in their first group outing and can ill afford further setbacks with a double-header against Schalke to come. Chelsea last season became the first defending champions to be eliminated in the group phase and manager Jose Mourinho has described today’s match as “the game that we cannot lose”. “Even a draw, probably, is not a good result for us, so now we have to prepare ourselves,” said the Portuguese, who is bidding to win the competition with a third different club. “We have to get 12 points to be out of any danger, so if we lose there we still have four matches to play and we will have to win them all. We don’t want to put ourselves under so much pressure.” Chelsea do not have fond memories of their last visit to Bucharest, however, having lost 1-0 to Steaua in the away leg of a Europa League last 16 tie in March before winning the second leg 3-1. Centre-back Vlad Chiriches claimed Steaua’s goal at Stamford Bridge, but he has since left the Romanian capital for Tottenham Hotspur and was on the

bench for his new side’s 1-1 draw at home to Chelsea on Saturday. Juan Mata tipped the momentum of the game in Chelsea’s favor after coming on as a half-time substitute at White Hart Lane and Mourinho subsequently confirmed that he would start at Steaua’s Arena Nationala. Should Mourinho elect to make further alterations to his starting XI, Gary Cahill, Samuel Eto’o and Willian are among the players who could be drafted into the team. Brazilian midfielder Ramires is also available for selection after serving a one-match ban following his dismissal in the UEFA Super Cup defeat by Bayern Munich. Beaten 3-0 at Schalke in their Group E opener, Romanian champions Steaua warmed up for today’s game with a 3-0 win at home to Poli Timisoara in the domestic championship on Saturday. Laurentiu Reghecampf’s side won a league and cup double last season, but Steaua have not appeared in the Champions League group stage since 2008 and have not won a game in the competition since September 2006. However, the 1986 European champions boast an admirable home record against English clubs, having lost only one of eight previous encounters. —AFP

GLASGOW: Celtic manager Neil Lennon insists his side are still heavy underdogs despite Lionel Messi’s absence from today ’s Champions League clash against Barcelona. Argentina striker Messi injured his thigh in Barca’s 2-0 win over Almeria on Saturday and has been ruled out for up to three weeks. Lennon, whose side lost their Group H opener 2-0 to AC Milan, admitted it is a boost for Celtic to face Barca without Messi, but he is well aware the Spanish champions remain a formidable outfit. “It is obviously very good news for us because he is the best player in the world,” Lennon said yesterday. “However, it is tinged with sadness because it is always fantastic to see the great players play here in Glasgow. “We are looking forward to the game, we welcome Barcelona with open arms and we are hoping it is going to be another great occasion.” Aside from missing Messi, the visitors head into the tie likely to be without defenders Javier Mascherano, Jordi Alba and Carles Puyol. But a cautious Lennon said: “You say that they have defensive problems with injuries but they keep on keeping clean sheets; against Rayo Vallecano, Real Sociedad and Almeria. So, regardless of personnel, they are still defending very well. “They are unbeaten domestically, they got off to a great start in the group (4-0 win over Ajax). They are a fantastic team. “They will be one of the favorites to win the trophy. Whether they are better than last year, you won’t be able to gauge that until the turn of the

GLASGOW: Celtic’s English born Scottish striker Kris Commons (second left) controls a ball during a training session ahead of their UEFA Champions League football match against Barcelona. —AFP year.” Brazilian forward Neymar will be charged with leading the Barca attack in Messi’s absence, but Lennon does not believe the two players can be compared. “It is like comparing a dog with a cat. They are two different types, two different players altogether,” he said. “Neymar is wonderfully gifted, quick, predominantly playing on the left-hand side and he has goals in him. “He is only young and he has a fantastic future but it is far too early to make comparisons to Messi. “There is only one player currently who could

arguably be around the calibre of Messi and that is Cristiano Ronaldo.” Lennon, whose side famously beat Barca 2-1 in Glasgow last November on their way to the last 16 of the competition, also admitted Celtic would still regard even a point against the Spaniards as a bonus regardless of the injury to their talisman. “Our approach will be the same whether Messi plays or not,” he added. “Barcelona don’t change their system, they don’t change their

style of play really and 4-3-3 is just what they believe in. It has worked well for them very well over the years. “It would be fantastic if we could get something out of it like we did last year. “We didn’t really budget for it, as it were, in both the games last year, so if we can get something it will be a huge bonus for us. “It will be very much at times containment; to limit Barcelona to as few chances as we can and at the same time maximise the opportunities that we get, as we did last year.”—AFP

Arsenal ready to defuse Napoli’s ‘bombs’ LONDON: Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger has told his players to watch out for Napoli’s quickfire counter-attacks when the two high-flying sides meet at the Emirates Stadium in Champions League Group F today. Wenger learnt a lot about the Italians when they drew 2-2 in a pre-season tournament and is also very familiar with their manager Rafael Benitez from the Spaniard’s time managing in the Premier League with Chelsea and Liverpool. Napoli are unbeaten in all competitions under Benitez, who was appointed in May, and Wenger has identified the Italian side’s breakaways as their big strength and earmarked diminutive playmaker Lorenzo Insigne as key to that threat. “He is mobile, he is not tall but quick and very good in the transition from defence to attack,” Wenger told Arsenal Player. “He is a good dribbler as well and is an intelligent mover. That makes him an interesting prospect. “That’s what struck me as well in the (pre-season) Emirates Cup - when they win the ball they come out very quickly with (Jose) Callejon, (Marek) Hamsik, Insigne and (Gonzalo) Higuain, (who) come out like bombs all the time they win the ball. “The transition from our side from offence to defence will have to be very quick.” Premier League leaders Arsenal, who went two points clear with a 2-1 win at Swansea City on Saturday, have enjoyed an excellent start to the season including their European group opener when they beat Olympique Marseille 2-1 in France. Napoli are in similarly good shape and kicked off their continental campaign with a 2-1 victor y over last year ’s Champions League runners-up Borussia Dortmund which Wenger believed would give them extra confidence. Even though Arsenal were beaten by Napoli to the signature of striker Gonzalo Higuain in the close season, they are proving to be an exciting attacking prospect with Aaron Ramsey scoring eight goals in nine games and new signing Mesut Ozil shining. Wenger will be without winger Theo Walcott who has undergone surgery on an abdominal injury, while Abou Diaby, Lukas Podolski and Alex Oxlade Chamberlain are also sidelined. Appearing in the group stage of

Europe’s elite club competition for a 16th consecutive season, Arsenal know from experience that collecting six points from the opening two games would put them well on the way to the knockout stages. “We have started very well but you know if you win the second game at home you have a good chance to qualify,” Wenger said. “It’s a game that will have a great weight on the end result of the qualifying teams.” Napoli, who have scored 14 goals in six Serie A matches with Hamsik, Callejon and Higuain netting 10 of them, enjoyed a 2-0 win over Genoa on Saturday despite starting with some of their key players on the bench with a view to today’s game. “I am consistent rather than courageous. I have experience and have been in Europe many times, so I know squad rotation is necessary to make everyone in the side stronger,” Benitez told Sky Sport Italia. —Reuters

Matches on TV (Local Timings)

UEFA Champions League Zenit v Wien Aljazeera Sport HD 5